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Scientists working at MIT’s Alcator C-Mod experimental fusion reactor have broken the world record for fusion pressure. This achievement came on the day the reactor was scheduled to be shut down.Nuclear fusion power has long been sought as an alternative to current energy sources, but the extreme conditions required for it to work have made efficient fusion power impossible to obtain. Fusion reactions are the power source that fuels the Sun, and the only way fusion power can reliably work is in high-pressure and high-temperature environments like the Sun’s core....

It’s your first chance in months to get out of Dodge. It’ll be great to pack up some cold ones, a couple of fishing rods and some old clothes and escape to the country for a day or two. But as you leave the mercury-vapor-illuminated metroplex, you realize what you forgot–carrots, lots and lots of carrots, because you can barely see the road in front of you in the starlight of the countryside....

The Russian Federation annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea on March 18, 2014. Just a year later in May 2015, construction commenced on a 12-mile bridge to span the Kerch Straight of the Black Sea and physically connect the Taman Peninsula of the Russian mainland to the Crimean Peninsula. The Kremlin is hoping to complete the $4.3 billion project by December 2018, solidifying their claims to the region—claims that are not recognized by the vast majority of United Nations member countries including the United States....

Bitcoin fever has apparently spread to the highest levels of Russian defense. Several scientists working at top-secret Russian nuclear warhead facility have been arrested for mining Bitcoin while on the job. The scientists are being accused of using one of the country’s most powerful supercomputers to mine the cryptocurrency.The scientists were working at the Russian Federal Nuclear Center in Sarov. Computers within nuclear facilities are rarely connected to the internet as a preventative measure against hacking....

A commercial pilot flying a twin engine Piper PA-31 Navajo Chieftain was lucky to avoid disaster when he fell asleep during an early morning flight over Australia. The flight—a short hop from Devonport, Tasmania, to King Island in the Bass Strait—went a bit over course, soaring aimlessly past its destination for 29 miles before air traffic controllers roused the pilot from his slumber. Vortex Air, the carrier employing the pilot, issued a statement about the incident: “[The pilot] unintentionally fell asleep while in command of the aircraft…The issue became apparent when air traffic control was unable to contact the pilot in flight, and the aircraft traveled past the intended destination point while operating on autopilot....

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is probably best known for the high resolution photos of Pluto that it took back in 2015. But on January 1, New Horizons will fly past an object even more distant than Pluto called Ultima Thule. Astronomers are preparing to learn more than ever before about these worlds lurking on the edge of our solar system, and according to new data from the spacecraft they won’t even have to wait until the new year to start: Ultima Thule appears to not have a light curve, which is perplexing scientists....

Over the weekend, Disney hosted the D23 Expo in Anaheim, a mega-event for all things Disney. Naturally, Star Wars took center stage as both The Rise of Skywalker and The Mandalorian approach their release dates this fall. But it was the new footage for the ninth Star Wars film—and the last in a saga spanning more than 40 years—that stole the show. ⚠️ Warning: We’re going to be talking about potential spoilers for The Rise of Skywalker....

Once upon a time, the straight six was a dominant engine design. Jaguar put them in its best cars, Jeep built its late 20th century reputation upon them, and almost every humdrum family car or pickup truck in America had one as standard—then they nearly died out.For years, V6 engines were killing off the straight six, also known as an I6 or inline six, and the entire design appeared destined for oblivion....

The Arctic is supposed to be cold, but right now it’s anything but. Temperatures at the North Pole are reaching a record high, perhaps as much as 35 degrees Fahrenheit for the month of February, which is warmer than the region usually gets during the summer months.That data comes from the U.S. Global Forecast System, a computer model of the Earth’s weather and climate. While there’s a chance the model is wrong about the temperature, independent measurements have confirmed that the temperature in the Arctic is around freezing temperatures....

As drone technology advances, one of the biggest challenges is shrinking down the flying robots. The smaller drones are, the better they will be for purposes both practical (fitting into cramped spaces) and devious (spying). Scientists have turned to insects to understand how beings with tiny bodies produce the energy needed to fly for long periods of time, while our own shrunk-down drones’ batteries die quickly. A new experiment bypasses the studying of insect flight to use living insects themselves as drones....

The U.S. Army’s Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle—Dragoon (ICVD) sports a 30mm cannon designed to shred the armor of light armored vehicles. The new gun is America’s response to the threat of heavily armored Russian tanks and mechanized formations. Now you can watch it in action. The new video below shows off the raw firepower of these Stryker units with their big cannon. Two other systems, the M1128 Mobile Gun System and the ....

Scientists claim to have identified an extremely rare type of meteor called a minimoon.The researchers studied the trajectory of the ultra-bright meteor, which slid across the sky in 2016.In 2014, a meteor that entered Earth’s atmosphere was suspected to have come from a minimoon.You know the moon. You like the moon. It’s a pretty good moon! But have you heard of the “minimoons”—also called temporarily captured orbiters—that occasionally orbit Earth? They’re small, natural satellites that have been swept up in our planet’s orbit and only stay for a short time before being flung out into space or sucked into Earth’s atmosphere by gravity....

Media Platforms Design TeamThere’s a new genre of video sweeping through YouTube right now: Parents attaching their kid’s loose tooth to a drone, and then having the remote-controlled quadcopter yank the baby tooth out. For example:View full post on YoutubeAs with many moments in human achievement, it can be difficult to nail down who actually did it first. While there are several videos claiming to the be the world’s first ever drone tooth pull, as near as we can determine, this is the earliest example, uploaded over three years ago by user TacticalAR15Master....

UPDATE 11/19/08: Somali pirates, once a disorganized group of bandits, have fast become a major international threat. On Monday a group of pirates boarded and captured one of their biggest prizes to date–a Saudi oil tanker carrying two million barrels of oil. The ship’s owners are currently negotiating with the buccaneers, who have the ship anchored on the coast of Somalia. On Tuesday, pirates seized a Thai fishing ship, the eighth capture in two weeks....

MORE NEW REPORTING FROM THE ECO-FRIENDLY SKIES* TEST FLIGHT: Air Force’s Midair Refueling Shows Synthetic Future (With Video!)CoalThe U.S. sits on some of the largest coal reserves in the world, and as oil prices surge, the Air Force is turning over 700 acres of base in Montana for a plant that will turn solid coal into liquid fuel, certifying its planes to run a 50/50 mix of the synthetic-fuel and petroleum-derived JP-8 by 2011....

News of a subtle quadratic equation breakthrough has brought algebra forward from the very back of many people’s minds, and algebra is always part of the “when will I ever use this?” rubric people use to complain about math education. Not only do you already use algebra every day—like deciding how many reusable bags to bring into the store, or buying enough tile to cover the entire floor—but some simple equations could make your life better in other ways....

Billy Mitchell, a competitive video gamer who is best known for his perfect Pac-Man score, has threatened legal action against the Guinness World Records and Twin Galaxies scoreboard.The record keepers removed his high scores after several people within the gaming community last year accused Mitchell of doctoring evidence of his wins.The controversy has roiled the arcade game community. Competitive video gamer Billy Mitchell, who once held a Donkey Kong high score record—1,062,800 points on July 31, 2010—before it was removed last year, is threatening to seek legal action against Guinness World Records and Twin Galaxies, a scoreboard that tracks video game high scores....

Media Platforms Design TeamCredit: Getty Images.Uber, the service that allows you hail a car ride from your smartphone, has faced bureaucratic obstacles and legal challenges in nearly all of the cities where it has tried to expand, typically from local taxi and limousine commissions that aren’t happy about the competition. Today in Paris, those paperwork protests turned into smashed windows and flat tires.Five thousand French taxi drivers are on strike today, and in Paris, one of the world’s great tourism cities, a system-wide cab shutdown could give cabbies lots of leverage....

Earlier this week, Voyager 2 became the second human-made object to reach interstellar space. Yet it has a long way to go before it actually leaves our solar system. Here’s why.Five years ago, when the first Voyager earned the designation as first Earth-built thing to go interstellar, it got the nod because it had traveled beyond the heliosphere, a bubble surrounding our sun encompassing an area that’s primarily influenced by the sun’s energy fields....

Media Platforms Design TeamIn late January, Americans from the Navy destroyer Farragut and Yemeni coast guard forces as it plied the Arabian Sea. After securing the vessel and its crew, the two teams opened the cargo holds to find a cache of gear that reads like an insurgent’s wish list: stacks of C-4 explosives, electronic circuits, small-caliber ammunition, laser range finders, and artillery shells that can be converted to roadside bombs....