Media Platforms Design TeamImagine if, in 2001 when Microsoft launched its Windows XP operating system, company founder Bill Gates had announced that there would be an advertising platform built into the company’s new OS. With a market share for its products well over 80 percent by that time, and a history of anti-competitive behavior, there would have been howls of disapproval from the technology press as well as the Justice Department....
When a new supercar arrives, the motor gets the glory. Which is as it should be—anytime an automaker throws big money into designing an exotic space frame and 200-mile-per-hour bodywork, it needs muscle to match. The wrong engine, meanwhile, can sink a supercar’s reception and reputation (look at the Jaguar XJ220 for a lesson in how a whole car suffers if it’s got a weak heart). Aston Martin can’t be accused of skimping on the heart of its new halo car, the $3....
Editor’s note: January 15 marks the 10th anniversary of the “Miracle on the Hudson,” when Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and crew safely landed US Air Flight 1549 in the Hudson River—just outside the Popular Mechanics Manhattan office—saving everyone on board. This story originally appeared in 2013, as part of “Everything My Father Taught Me.“We did lots of things together as father and son. Once he got a boating magazine and found plans for building a very simple plywood dinghy....
Sitting in a car for hours on end can be an unpleasant experience—for you the driver, but also for your car seats. Before planting your rear end on that cushion, you might have gone to the gym, taken a long run, or finished a day’s outdoor work. Drivers are sweaty, and that sweat can impact the car’s seats. That’s why Ford has upgraded its Robutt to include sweat replication.View full post on YoutubeAs the name would imply, Robutt is a robotic butt Ford invented for the sake of testing wear and tear on car seats....
Media Platforms Design TeamIn “Fracture,” Colonel Randall Gordon, known as “The Colonel,” has made human bombs out of American military patients after they returned from Iraq. By tricking them into injecting an explosive serum into their bodies on a daily basis, Gordon fills the patients up with an explosive fluid. When they have enough serum flowing through their veins, he sends them to his target and triggers the substance in them from afar with radio waves....
If you are embarking on the admittedly dangerous journey of deep-frying a turkey this Thanksgiving, please be careful. It is important that you do it right, but even more important that you do not do it horribly wrong.For your edification, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has taken the time to illustrate a good way to not do it: View full post on YoutubeBut that’s not the only way you shouldn’t do it....
One of the larger trends in astronomy over the last decade has been the explosion in exoplanet discovery. Slowly rising from 1992 onward, discoveries of planets outside the solar system first blew up in 2014, and then again in 2016. Over 4,000 exoplanets have since been confirmed, and now astrophysicists at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio have developed a new algorithm they think will keep the planet discoveries rolling in....
Media Platforms Design TeamI was thrilled with my new laptopuntil a better model hit stores two weeks after I got it. How can I avoid this kind of buyer’s remorse?Of the countless tech-related questions I get from friends and family, one towers above all others: “When is the next iPhone coming out?” My answer is always the same: “I don’t know. But I have a pretty good guess!” At the heart of this question is a fear shared by all would-be gadget buyers: that something better is just around the corner, so buying now would be foolish....
Buying used tools can be a great way to get your workshop setup. You can save hundreds of dollars on tools that have years of life left in them. On the other hand, you can unknowingly buy someone else’s problem and regret your decision as soon as you use it. Before buying any used tools you must evaluate your needs, set a budget, know the market, and test the tools. If you follow these steps you’ll mitigate the risk of buying junk....
Over the past three decades, we’ve gotten used to things blowing up in our faces. The advent of airbags has done wonders to protect cars’ fragile flesh-and-blood cargo when vehicles go smash. Lots of people—especially those who’ve been protected from injury or death by an airbag deployment—must have wondered: What if we put the same technology on the outside of the car? Some of those people must work for German auto supplier ZF Friedrichshafen AG, which has spent 10 years working on the external airbag....
There’s plenty of water to go around in the solar system, but standing lakes are a different thing. So far, we know only of Earth’s bodies of water and the methane lakes on Saturn’s moon Titan, though Mars likely had lakes at one point. Now, NASA researchers working on the New Horizons mission think they’ve found a frozen lake in a faraway place.Just north of Pluto’s most distinctive feature, the heart-shaped Sputnik Planum, an icy structure sits among some old bedrock ice....
Lockheed Martin has announced a new design for a human-rated lunar lander. The design comes only days NASA officially declared its objective of returning humans to the moon by 2024. The global aerospace and weapons manufacturer is putting an emphasis on speed in its new plan. The company’s Space Exploration website leads with “Getting to the Surface of the moon Faster.” To that end, the new lander wouldn’t be entirely new—it would share components of a crew capsule named Orion, which is currently being built for NASA by Lockheed....
The A350XWB, which should hit a major milestone this week by logging its first flight on Friday, is often considered to be Airbus’s answer to the Boeing 787. In reality, the A350 is much more than that. Spanning a large portion of the long-range widebody market with its three variants, the A350 is also poised to challenge Boeing’s highly successful 777 as well. And by taking a more conservative design approach to reach new heights in fuel efficiency, range, and reliability, Airbus might steer clear of the kind of new-plane growing pains that have plagued the Dreamliner....
NASA is a pretty forward thinking bunch. Beyond developing technologies for the next decade that could take us back to the moon or detect signals from the ancient universe, the national space agency is also looking to the more distant future. Recently, NASA’s Planetary Science Director Jim Green floated an idea about launching a magnetic shield to help Mars grow an atmosphere and become habitable. A recent NASA paper also looked at the feasibility of harvesting and using resources in a colony on the Martian surface....
This week federal regulators talked about the startling risks posed to airliners by lithium ion batteries in the cargo holds of airliners. At a public safety forum, regulators said that, contrary to previous assumptions, a laptop battery could catch fire and cause an airliner to crash.One single battery couldn’t do it alone. Researchers with the FAA found the perfect storm scenario: A battery fire that burns hot enough to compromise other flammable materials like cosmetics or flammable gasses in aerosol cans....
When Pacific Rim exploded into theaters in 2013, it didn’t set box office records or redefine the monster movie. But it was fun as hell, and its 2018 sequel Pacific Rim Uprising follows suit.[Warning: Spoilers Ahead]Inspired by Guillermo del Toro’s endlessly creative mind, the storied tradition of Japanese Kaiju films, and a masterpiece by a legendary Spanish artist, Pacific Rim embraced its B-movie campiness, mixed in some high stakes drama, and created something memorable....
It’s easy to forget that the internet isn’t just nebulous thing you connect to with your computer. It’s also a physical system of wires that stretch every which way, some of which travel under the ocean. That’s a point of weakness as recently illustrated when three of these cables were cut by a poorly-dropped anchor. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last. The affected cables run along the seabed in the English Channel and serve the Channel Islands....
The U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels flight demonstration team is getting new planes—but they won’t be F-35s. The team is transitioning to the F/A-18 Super Hornet and skipping the F-35 “Panther.” The new plane simply isn’t ready and the cost of purchasing F-35s for the team would easily exceed a billion dollars.The U.S. Navy’s elite Blue Angels have flown many different airplanes since their creation in 1946, but none more than the F/A-18 Hornet....
The technological difference between the Soviet Union and the U.S. is often discussed in dire terms, like atomic energy. But there are also more mundane examples, like television, which shaped both countries—even with Soviet technology at a disadvantage.View full post on YoutubeTelevisions were first made in the Soviet Union in 1934, but Soviet programming only began in 1938. As with America, it took until after World War II for the technology to really take off....
In the future, perhaps the rarest delicacy will be salt from another world. That’s a possibility now that planetary scientists at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California have announced their latest discovery: On the surface of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, exists common table salt.“The discovery suggests that the salty subsurface ocean of Europa may chemically resemble Earth’s oceans more than previously thought, challenging decades of supposition about the composition of those waters,” NASA says in a press release....
