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(Published in the July 2004 issue)And read up on the latest, lightest jets.You stow your luggage, settle into your seat and lean back as your plane speeds down the runway and lifts into the sky. Higher, faster, farther with less fuel is the airline industry’s mantra. Driving the industry’s progress is the machine that revolutionized aviation: the jet engine.Consider the behemoths that power Boeing’s big 777, which the Guinness Book of Records certifies as the most powerful commercial jet engine ever built....

China’s second aircraft carrier is about to enter service, and unlike the first the unnamed flat-top was built exactly to the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s requirements. To the surprise of many, the ship resembles the original in many ways, improving in key ones, but leaving major design changes to future ships.Beijing’s first aircraft carrier began life in a Ukrainian shipyard. Originally known as the Varyag, the carrier was an evolution of earlier Soviet designs that included both large numbers of ship-launched missiles but also the ability to launch and recover fixed-wing aircraft....

Imagine a mining disaster in 2012: In the aftermath of an explosion, a group of miners are trapped deep underground. Following established procedures they are hunkered down in a refuge chamber, which means they have air, water and food for a few days. The exit may be blocked, and venturing out means facing poisonous gases, explosive vapor and unsafe tunnels. Their best chance is to stay put and wait for help—but the clock is ticking....

Media Platforms Design TeamWe know, we know—another Nissan crossover? The carmaker already has five in its lineup, but the company clearly believes there are many niches to fill. With the Resonance concept, Nissan explores what a 5-seater of the future might look like. The Resonance is a 4WD hybrid electric vehicle with a 2.5-liter DOHC gas engine and a high-performance electric motor, with Nissan’s one motor/two clutch hybrid technology. The setup is connected to Nissan’s next-gen CVT....

Media Platforms Design Team"As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler," Izaak Walton, author of , once bemoaned. But with fly and reel, cricket, worm, and many other options available, not everyone fishes the same way. A few fishing methods tilt the scale to extreme. The Compleat AnglerNoodlingConsider “noodling,” also known as hand-fishing. Noodling is a way to catch fish, specifically catfish, by (you guessed it) hand....

Engine: 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6, 375 hp and 470 lb-ft of torque / Transmission: ten-speed automatic / Fuel economy: 17 mpg EPA city, 23 mpg highway (4WD) /Transfer case: rear-wheel-drive, part-time four-wheel-drive or all-wheel-drive / Max payload: 3,230 pounds / Max tow rating: 13,200 pounds / Base price: $32,645The Ford F-150, the perennial best-selling vehicle in the U.S., attempts to offer something for everyone. There are stripped-down work trucks, duded-up luxury models, and the desert-racer Raptor....

No streaming service with millions of songs or phone loaded up with dozens of albums can replicate the simple analog joy of adjusting your music’s volume with a knob instead of keyboard keys or a touchscreen slider. Luckily, with only a little bit of work, you can DIY a solution that will let you have it both ways. Knobs for computers aren’t unheard of. In fact, if you can just buy one that will connect to your computer as a Bluetooth device....

Media Platforms Design TeamLook at the current slate of iPhones on Apple’s site and you’ll see the familiar price structure: $199 for the 16-GB iPhone 5S and $99 for the 16-GB iPhone 5C (the reconstituted iPhone 5 that comes in fancy colors), while the iPhone 4S can now be had for free. “Free” is an illusion, of course. So are the other stated prices for iPhones and other high-end smartphones. These dollar figures represent the cost to buy a phone while being locked in to a two-year contract with heavy fees for breaking the deal—the way Americans have purchased smartphones for years now....

Depending on who you ask, Dr. Sergio Canavero is either a self-promoting scientist trying to draw attention to his head transplant concept, or a PR stunt for a new Metal Gear Solid game. He says he is no weird PR flack; conspiracy theorists on the internet say otherwise. Canavero has even gone as far as signing an affidavit with the Italian police claiming that he has nothing to do with Konami or the new game....

Media Platforms Design TeamSome days, a man has to make a statement by driving a car with a 15.8-ft. wheelbase and an engine with a 16-gal. crankcase.Media Platforms Design Team Jay Leno, host of The Tonight Show and PM Contributing Editor (Photo: Matthew Welch/Icon)A few years ago, I bought an M-47 Patton tank-engine car. Any way you look at it, this thing is a monster. Its wheelbase is more than 15 ft....

The CH-53K King Stallion, the Marine Corps’ latest heavy-lift helicopter, is finally ready for production. After years of development, it will relieve the Corps’ 40-year-old CH-53E. Just one problem: The King Stallions will end up costing $138.5 million apiece—even more expensive than the notoriously costly F-35.The CH-53 series dates back to the 1960s, when they were used by the Marine Corps in Vietnam and the Air Force for combat search and rescue....

UPDATE, August 21, 9:15 AM ET: Reuters reports this morning that North and South Korea appear to be on the verge of a weekend clash. South Korea has refused its neighbor’s demands, described below, to stop anti-North Korea propaganda broadcasts along the border by Saturday:South Korean Vice Defense Minister Baek Seung-joo said on Friday it was likely the North would fire at some of the 11 sites where the loudspeakers are set up on the South’s side of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the countries....

Media Platforms Design TeamDeepwater Horizon oil is no longer gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the broken well, but a fishing boat has just sunk, spreading a colorful sheen of gasoline across the pristine waters of the Bon Secour River in Alabama. A flat-bottom boat with adjustable booms projecting from either side of the bow and a device that resembles a giant Shop-Vac on the deck cruises toward the slick....

Taking a chair lift to the top of the slopes is currently the best way to start a run, but in the wilds of Alaska you’d be hard-pressed to find a functioning lift. That forces skiers to get more creative.The current go-to is a helicopter ride to the mountain peak, but Xavier de Le Rue picked a more esoteric option: He got a ride to the peak in a paraglider. The paraglider is smaller and more maneuverable than a helicopter, so de Le Rue can do tricks he would never be able to do otherwise....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamRising among the staid rectangular buildings of midtown Manhattan is an anomaly in the urban landscape: a sleek, faceted skyscraper glittering above a squat, ornate plinth. Architecture critic Paul Goldberger calls the new Hearst Tower the most beautiful addition to the city skyline in 40 years. But accolades extend beyond the curtain wall: Cutting-edge engineering makes it a model of sustainable design.Victor Ganzi, president and CEO of PM’s parent company, Hearst, approved the tower just one month after 9/11, committing to keep its headquarters and 2000 local employees in New York....

In 1990, just before the fall of the Soviet Union, the Red Fleet was big, made up of over 600 ships spread out over dozens of different classes. But here in 2015, 25 years later, the Russian Navy is a fraction of its forebear’s size with under 200 ships. This lovely little graphic really illustrates how big of a difference that is. Made by Louis Martin-Vézian of Contemporary Issues and Geography—the same minds behind those graphics about Air Force Planes—this all-encompassing graphic shows the total inventory of the Red Fleet and the modern Russian Navy side by side, dispensing with that pesky quarter century in between: Media Platforms Design Team(You can look at the giant, full-res version here)You might think that one of the reasons for the big shrink was that many of the Soviet ships floated off to other nations following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but in fact Russia took virtually the whole fleet....

A company in the U.K. has created the ultimate ride to prom: a “TankLimo”. TankLimo is two British Army armored personnel carriers welded into a single, lumbering beast of a vehicle, capable of taking five teenage couples to their fancy dress party in relative (for an ex-army vehicle, anyway) comfort. Not only is it legal to own, it’s also street legal to drive in Britain.The vehicle is based on the British Army’s FV432 armored personnel carrier, which looks similar to and is a contemporary of the U....

Media Platforms Design TeamNASA’s Heat RayBy Seth FletcherWhen–or if–NASA’s Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) flies to the moon and back, it will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere faster than the space shuttle, at some 25,000 mph. “There’s no material out there that can do that without burning up some,” says George Sarver, support project manager for the CEV at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. To develop a shield that’s tougher than the shuttle’s notorious tiles, scientists at Ames blasted hockey-puck-size slabs of composite materials with an arc jet....

Elon Musk has hinted at the new Tesla semi truck for months, and it’s finally arrived. Powering a semi truck using electricity presents huge benefits, turning one of the world’s biggest causes of pollution into a much greener industry. But it also comes with huge challenges, due to the weight of the truck, weight of the load, long-distances, and the obvious aerodynamic hurdles. Battery technology just hasn’t found a way to meet the high demands of a semi truck, but Tesla thinks it’s cracked the case....

Media Platforms Design TeamNew Territory, a neighborhood outside Houston, Texas, is in the process of deciding whether it’s the kind of neighborhood that lets its residents place metal dinosaur sculptures in their front lawns, or whether it’s the kind of neighborhood that is totally not cool.KTRK reports that local resident Nancy Hentschel and her husband acquired two metal sculptures of a Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor (though the latter seems based more on the versions showcased by movies like Jurassic Park than the understood reality of the critters) during a recent trip to Arizona....