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A team of astronomers at the Keck Observatory in Maunakea, Hawaii, have discovered a massive galaxy made of 99.99 percent dark matter.The galaxy, called Dragonfly 44, is part of a collection of galaxies discovered a year ago by the same team. These galaxies are the same size and shape of regular galaxies, but contain far fewer stars. And now we know why: they’re made almost entirely of dark matter. Mysterious OriginsDragonfly 44 is a strange sort of galaxy....

The Claim “Hate paint prepping? Dragging out ladders and nasty splatters?” With Point ‘N Paint, you can “paint an entire room in less than an hour” and “get perfect results every time.” Simply pour the paint into the “no spill tray,” and load it onto the pad painting tools, which “hold five times the paint as a roller, with eight times the painting surface of a brush.” With the “best edger ever,” you can glide along moldings, zip along corners and paint circles around fixtures and fittings....

Media Platforms Design Team Right now, there are two major pushes going on in the PC market. For the frugal buyer, there is the much-publicized atom, a chip fit for netbooks and low-demand devices. At the top is the new Core i7 chip from Intel, a company that has long specialized in cutting-edge processors. The i7 chip contains tech that will be trickling down to many (more affordable) PCs in the near future....

The National Archives and Records Administration just unearthed a 1956 plan outlining where the United States would have bombed if the Cold War had escalated. Commissioned by Strategic Air Command, the plan outlines key targets for hydrogen bomb campaigns. The plan includes a particularly drastic step: bombing population centers of the Eastern Bloc, including Warsaw, Moscow, Beijing, and East Berlin. The document, called The SAC [Strategic Air Command] Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959, outlined some of the logic as going after the industrial centers of the Eastern Bloc, as well as listing 1,100 targets for military air bases....

Brooke OwenAlbuquerque, N.M.Age: 35Years on Job: 14 When hot-air-balloon pilot Brooke Owen goes to a party, he can’t escape work—everyone wants to know what a balloon pilot actually does. “It’s an odd job,” admits the 35-year-old, who got his private pilot’s certification at age 21. In the years since, he’s flown balloons shaped like a tire, the space shuttle and the Canadian maple leaf. Now, he’s a chief pilot for Rainbow Ryders, which carries 11,000 passengers each year 2000 feet above the Rio Grande and the Albuquerque area, where they spot mesas, desert foliage and coyotes....

Media Platforms Design TeamGoogle Voice is a powerful platform, and a great way to streamline your digital life. Voice is a convenient voicemail service that also creates a catchall phone number to ring multiple devices. It provides features you didn’t even know you wanted, such as a way to send text messages from your computer or make a phone call from Gchat.Getting StartedThe service has existed in its current format since 2009, and users sign up through their existing Google accounts....

If you think Earth has seen some weird weather action lately, you should check out what’s happening in the outer rings of the solar system. It’s summer right now for Neptune and Uranus, and has been for years; their seasons are decades-long events. And even for distant ice giants swaddled in methane gas, summer means storms. On Neptune, a dark storm 6,800 miles wide is currently swirling around in the planet’s northern hemisphere—one of four observed by NASA’s Hubble since 1993....

How feasible is the Mars One plan?Currently, it’s not. One of the biggest claims made by the Mars One team is that absolutely no new technology needs to be developed for the success of their mission, which is setting up a colony on Mars. We found that there are several cases for systems like the environmental control and life support where that’s just not true. Even if some of these technologies did exist, we discovered that over time, the Mars One mission would become exceedingly expensive and unsustainable....

After dropping one of the more memorable TV spots during a not-so-memorable Super Bowl, CBS’s relaunch of The Twilight Zone—with showrunner Jordan Peele at its helm— finally has a trailer. And this time, it’s full of actual scenes and performances from Kumail Nanjiani, John Cho, and Adam Scott, among others.So far, we know that Scott, the sweaty gentleman who appears trapped on an airplane, will be reprising William Shatner’s role from the original episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” which aired on October 11, 1963....

NASA is nearly synonymous with science, discovery, and exploration. The agency has managed to stay out of nearly every political storm and cultural controversy, and it’s done so by remaining aggressively neutral and focusing on the science. But all of that might be changing thanks to a new push from some members of NASA’s advisory council.On Friday, an advisory subcommittee voted to allow NASA to venture into the nascent space tourism industry by selling seats on its rockets....

Carbon nanotubes are nearly atomically thin carbon structures — just 1-1.2 nanometers thin. “Pure” carbon nanotubes are a powerful semiconductor, one that can compete with silicon for integration into microprocessors.Today, scientists revealed a 16-bit microprocessor built from all carbon nanotubes, pushing us a step closer to integrating them into real world computers. Carbon isn’t just the stuff life is made of—it’s also the stuff our future is being built on. Carbon—a versatile element that frequently trades off its electrons to create various forms of itself—has been gaining an exciting reputation in tech thanks to the successful exfoliation of graphene, a sheet of carbon that’s just one atom thick and has remarkable chemical properties....

In those ill-fated prequels, Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader. In the original trilogy, Luke struggles against the Empire. And in the sequel trilogy, the entire galaxy must face the aftermath of Luke’s not-so-wise decisions, while Kylo Ren grapples with Darth Vader’s lasting legacy.For more than 40 years, Lucasfilm, and now Disney, has stretched the tale of the Skywalker family to its narrative limits. With The Rise of Skywalker, the newest and final movie in the sequel trilogy, the story of the Skywalker saga finally comes to a close....

Every commercial pilot would prefer nothing but uneventful flights, but sometimes the things go wrong and pilots have to both handle drastically shifting circumstances while maintaining the mental calm to process new information as it comes in. It’s a lot to ask of anyone, which is why scientists at Drexel University have begun measuring the brain activity of pilots in real-time.Using technology called functional near-infrared spectroscopy, or fNIRS, the scientists are able to monitor pilot activity while they move about the cockpit and make decisions....

Update 1:50 p.m. 1/8: Contrary to early reports from Reuters, Sears is still kicking for a little while longer. This afternoon, Sears attorneys announced that the Sears Holdings Corp has accepted a revised bid from chairman and former CEO Edward Lampert that could keep 425 stores open. The deal, which still requires approval by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain of the Southern District of New York, gives Sears a chance to last a little longer, but only if those in favor of shutdown and liquidation do not oppose the deal with a larger bid for the remaining assets....

27,022 kilowatt-hours. That’s how much energy the average U.S. home uses in a year. Here’s where it all goes.This diagram, based on data from the Department of Energy, can help homeowners spot the best ways to boost efficiency. The numbers may surprise you. Refrigerators and air conditioners tend to be the villains in an electric bill, but they don’t dominate total energy usage. Why? The big picture includes not just electricity, but also fuel for heating, which is the typical home’s true energy hog....

SpaceX has been pioneering reusable rockets for years, NASA is contemplating selling its soul to the highest bidder, and a Russian startup is building a nuclear engine for future rockets. But amid all these shakeups and innovations in the space sector, you might have missed the one Silicon Valley startup whose new technology should probably receive more attention.Bloomberg Businessweek reports on Apollo Fusion, a new company designing a propulsion system for rocket engines that would use mercury as a fuel....

The concept of having an official state firearm is a relatively new one, with Utah being the first to do it in 2011, declaring the venerable M1911 pistol to be official gun of the Beehive State. Six other states have joined in, mostly focusing on historic firearms, like Arizona picking the Colt Single Action Army revolver, or Pennsylvania selecting the Colonial-era long rifle. Tennessee, however, decided to go big or go home; it’s named the ....

The U.S. Army has acquired a number of shipping containers that have been converted to remote weapons stations. Each container hides a machine gun, grenade launcher, or even an anti-tank weapon, and can detect and respond to enemy fire. According to Defense News, the Army is showing the system off at the Association of the U.S. Army Symposium and Exhibition in Huntsville, Alabama. Made by Norwegian defense contractor Kongsberg and security contractor HDT Global, the Containerized Weapon System (CWS) is made from a 20-foot-long Tricon shipping container....

The Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator will take its first big step on the road to Mars tomorrow. The spacecraft will undergo a “spin table test” at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii. The event will stream from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. EST on NASA JPL’s live stream.View full post on IframeThe 15-foot-diameter craft is shaped like a flying saucer, and inflates to its size through a series of balloons that increase the surface area of the craft....

A survey of German soldiers has found that an overwhelming majority have doubts about the reliability of their weapons. More than half rated their weapons as unreliable, with less than ten percent expressing confidence in their army-issued G36 rifles. The news comes as the German military prepares to deploy troops to the Baltics to counter an aggressive Russia.The poll, conducted by the Bundeswehr (German Army) research center and reported by the German Bild newspaper, was carried out during the Trident Junction 2015 wargames....