A planet passes in front of its star, causing the star to appear as though it has slightly dimmed. That’s how the remarkable Kepler Space Telescope found so many new worlds in faraway solar systems. Soon, observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope will use the same kind of transit method not only to spot distant planets, but also to find the composition of their atmospheres. And a recent transit of Venus is teaching them how to do it....
Once upon a time, Ile aux Cochons, an uninhabited island part of an archipelago in the southern Indian Ocean, was home to the largest king penguin population around the world, with around two million king penguins scattered across the island. Today, a study shows that the penguin population have declined as much as 88 percent. “The rate of decline is unbelievable,” Henri Weimerskirch, study author and ecologist at the University of La Rochelle in France, told Gizmodo....
A “zombie app” is pre-installed by the manufacturer and near-impossible to delete.Not only do these zombie apps take up space and precious battery life, but they also leave the door open to hackers. Some zombie apps are worse than others. Here’s how to delete them, or at least minimize their damage.With Halloween approaching, it’s time to purge your phone of the pre-installed “zombie apps” that suck its blood (a.k.a. battery life) and leave your data at the mercy of hackers....
There are few better ways to learn how a game works at its deepest levels than trying to learn how to cheat at it. Case in point, when YouTuber Mark Rober built a machine to cheat at the common “Cyclone” arcade game, he found out it’s not a game of skill like it seems. It’s a game of chance. Cyclone, if you aren’t familiar, is ostensibly a test of your reaction time....
A member of China’s Air Force Engineering University has proposed a space-based laser to reduce the amount of space junk threatening satellites in Earth orbit. While proposed as a tool for the greater good, such a system would almost certainly be useful in destroying and disabling satellites in wartime.The article in the science journal Optik proposes a satellite with a laser “broom” designed to sweep away space junk. According to NASA, there are half a million pieces of booster rockets, obsolete satellites, construction materials, astronauts’ tools, and random parts orbiting the earth, with 20,000 larger than a softball and capable of inflicting real damage....
Here’s a radical idea: the U.S. Navy should embrace airships to supplement its battle fleets. Nearly a hundred years after the Navy tinkered with airships, a new proposal has emerged that would see helium-powered airships carry cargo, act as flying sensor platforms, and even carry boxes of missiles to augment the firepower of surface ships.The idea is put forward in the latest issue of Proceedings, the journal of the U.S. Naval Institute....
Continuing a trend of ambitious sci-fi adaptations, CBS All Access has announced it will be adapting a series based on Walter Tevis’ 1963 novel The Man Who Fell to Earth, also a 1976 film from director Nicolas Roeg starring David Bowie.The new show, according to a CBS press statement, will “follow an alien who arrives on Earth at a turning point in human evolution and must confront his own past to determine our future....
He finally went up — just like the self-taught rocket scientist always pledged he would.He came back down in one piece, too — a little dinged up and his steam-powered vessel a little cracked up.Still, mission accomplished for a guy more daredevil than engineer, who drew more comparisons to the cartoon character Wile E. Coyote from his critics than he did to iconic stunt man Evel Knievel.“Mad” Mike Hughes, the rocket man who believes the Earth is flat, propelled himself about 1,875 feet into the air Saturday before a hard landing in the Mojave Desert....
Media Platforms Design TeamElectricity is really quite lazy. It doesn’t want to stay in your toaster, for example, doing the work it’s assigned. Given the opportunity, it’s likely to head for “the ground,” where it will dissipate and loaf around. The path it takes might be through water or along a damp surface, and the ground might be something as innocent as your kitchen sink, which is connected to the actual ground by means of its plumbing....
Beer drinkers rejoice—we’re living in the renaissance of American beer. Last year the number of breweries in the U.S. grew by almost 400. Even more are expected to start up in 2014.This revival is about more than a growing number of brewers; the collective American beer palate is also evolving in fascinating ways, thanks to the resurgence of craft beer. One plant more than any other factor is driving that resurgence....
Last winter we had snow on the ground that was up to our hips. The drifts on the roof were 5 feet deep. Made me wonder: How much snow is too much for a roof to handle?I wish there were a simple answer, but none exists. You can look for signs of an overloaded roof, though. I’ll explain those in a moment. But first, to provide perspective, I want to answer the simple question: What is a roof?...
Name: Chris LiskPatent Number: 9,903,128Patent: Self-Contained Swimming Pool, a design for a complete mobile swimming pool with a heater and filtration system, built into a roll-off dumpster for easy transport. Sometimes clad in themed wooden designs (like a fire truck or pirate ship).I would never say I’m a smart man. I’m a very simple labor guy. My dad’s an electrician, my brother’s a pool guy. So that right there explains the entirety of how I came up with the whole idea....
A team in Antarctica released a video of a chunk of ice falling down a deep, deep hole.The Doppler effect is responsible for part of the weird sound.The “bore holes” are from climate research where scientists analyze ancient pockets of air.A video of scientists dropping ice into a really deep hole has gone viral because of the wobbly cartoon-spaceship sound the falling ice makes.View full post on TwitterPrinceton University geochemist John Andrew Higgins shared the video, which stars someone’s hands only as they drop a chunk of ice down a 450-foot bore hole....
The James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s next flagship telescope slated to become the largest telescope ever launched to space, recently emerged from Chamber A, a massive cryogenic testing chamber at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. James Webb and its 6.5-meter primary mirror were sealed in the chamber for more than four months of operational testing in space-like conditions.The nearly $9-billion telescope built in partnership with the European and Canadian space agencies is in good shape, but there is a long way to go before Webb is ready to strap to the top of an Ariane 5 rocket and blast off....
Nothing kills the joy of a sunny day like the wrong type of lawn mower. Fortunately, the opposite is also true. The right type of lawn mower can make cutting your lawn a pleasure. If you know you need a new lawn mower, but aren’t sure how much mower you need or what features you might want, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered. Use this guide to select the right machine, and happy mowing....
Star Wars wasn’t really designed for small stories. Every film feels the need to one up the previous one. Blow up the planet-sized death weapon (A New Hope), now blow up a bigger planet-sized death weapon (Return of the Jedi), now blow up an even BIGGER planet-sized death weapon (The Force Awakens) … ok … now … blow up the first planet-sized death weapon again (Rogue One). You get the picture....
It looks like lights out for Opportunity, one of NASA’s most successful missions of all time.The craft, which arrived at the Red Planet in July 2004, has been out of communication since last summer. Many months’ worth of attempts to contact the craft failed. Today, NASA is officially saying goodbye to the craft that, for years and years, couldn’t be stopped. At 2 p.m. Eastern, the space agency will give a press conference on the rover and is expected to say that the last attempts to reach it have failed....
Computer scientist and researcher Janelle Shane is back with another one of her neural network naming experiments, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Shane’s neural network has previously generated bizarre and hilarious Christmas carols, Halloween costume ideas, and names for fish species. This time, she’s trained it to come up with the short, gooey slogans that are printed on traditional candy hearts, which usually read “BE MINE” or “KISS ME”. Janelle ShaneSome of her AI’s creations were on point....
The hardest part of shutting down your pool is… deciding to shut down your pool. You’re shutting down fun. (Think of the noodle jousting!) You’re shutting down waking up on a Saturday and immediately putting on a bathing suit. (The bathing suit as regular clothes!) You’re shutting down the thing where everyone has gone to bed, and you make yourself a drink and swim by yourself in total darkness. Just us?...
We’re running out of time to do something about climate change. The recent Paris Accord now includes every country on Earth—with one notable exception—in an agreement to try and limit the amount of global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, but even achieving that goal will be incredibly difficult. It’s the kind of situation that drives people to try and find extreme solutions.One of those possible solutions would be t0 send aerosols into the atmosphere that have the same sunlight-blocking effect as the large quantities of dust and ash from volcano eruptions....
