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The Centre for Computing History is a computer museum in Cambridge, UK, full of interactive exhibits and nearly a thousand computers. YouTube channel Computerphile got a chance to look through the museum’s physical archives with its director Jason Fitzpatrick. Their discussion shows the wide variety of approaches builders took when designing computers before there were industry standards.View full post on YoutubeThere are computers with early cd readers, cassette decks, wooden housing, and pure word processors—ripoffs or otherwise....

For the first time, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered a distant planet within the zone of potential habitability. The planet is part of a trio orbiting a star known as GJ 357. Known as “GJ 357 d,” NASA calls it “especially intriguing.““This is exciting, as this is TESS’s first discovery of a nearby super-Earth that could harbor life—TESS is a small, mighty mission with a huge reach,” says Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy, director of Cornell’s Carl Sagan Institute, and a member of the TESS science team, in a press statement....

NASA’s been working on 3D-printing new rocket engines for years. In that time, a whole bunch of different pieces have been tested successfully, but NASA’s newest trial run has more of them working together than ever before. In a series of tests this past October, NASA’s prototype engine with 75 percent 3D-printed parts underwent a whole series of fire tests and passed with flying colors. Here’s she is blasting out some 20,000 pounds of thrust:View full post on Youtube3D-printed engines are a big deal for a couple of reasons....

In recent cybersecurity tests run by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), major weapons systems under development at the Department of Defense (DOD) are very vulnerable to hacking. During testing, the new report says, “testers playing the role of adversary were able to take control of systems relatively easily and operate largely undetected.“Speaking on a podcast accompanying the report, GAO’s Cristina Chaplin said that systems in development could be"pretty easily hacked.” The DOD is poised to spend around $1....

Cayenne Turbo Specs: Engine: 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8, 541 hp and 568 lb-ft of torque / Transmission: eight-speed automatic / Top Speed: 177 mph/ Ground clearance: 9.6 inches (air suspension, high level) / 0-60: 3.7 seconds / Tow rating: 7,700 pounds /Base price: $126,500The white calipers are a baller move. Porsche’s new Surface Coated Brake system uses white calipers, a nod to the fact that the mirror-finish tungsten carbide-coated rotors drastically reduce brake dust....

A new report claims that Russian security forces have engaged in extensive spoofing of satellite-based navigation systems, often to protect President Vladimir Putin or Russian armed forces. A report by the nonprofit think tank C4ADS has logged nearly 10,000 instances of spoofing of GPS-type navigation systems. The report highlights interference operations in the Global Navigation Satellite System, or GNSS. These satellites relay position, navigation and timing signals to cell phones, car navigation systems, and ships at sea 24/7 across the globe, providing location and navigation detail with unparalleled accuracy....

High above Antarctica, far from any human interference, stands an antenna designed to find high-energy exotic particles from space as they crash into the Earth’s atmosphere. Recently, the antenna has picked up a couple of particles coming from the other direction—out of the ground. It’s a discovery that just might change physics forever.NASA’s Antarctic Impulse Transient Antenna experiment was built to find exotic particles like neutrinos falling from the sky. Such particles rarely make it past the upper atmosphere, so scientists loft the sensitive electronic equipment into the sky via high-altitude balloon....

The promise of 5G wireless is tantalizing. The fifth generation of wireless tech that races at lightning speed in the millimeter wave band, 5G as a nationwide network is all but required for a future of remote-operated drones and self-driving cars, all of which will need to send enormous amounts of data back and forth at ludicrous speeds. It could also make your phone faster, as data from two simulations by Qualcomm released at Mobile World Congress shows....

August 2018: The badass Bollinger B1 is getting closer to real production. Road and Track reports that the B1 now has 19,000 reservations for this tough all-electric off-roader. Bollinger will announce the vehicle’s price in the second half of 2018 and then begin taking real deposits. The plan is to start building B1s in 2019 and delivering them in 2020. The beast will carry a 120 kwh battery pack and a level 3 charging time of two hours....

Scientists typically define mammals as animals that have hair, produce live young, and produce milk. It’s a simple definition, but nature is very good at defying simple definitions. Platypuses, for instance, lay eggs. And plenty of non-mammals produce milk for their young. One group of researchers from China have discovered that even spiders produce milk, and it’s so nutritious that their offspring eat it for a surprisingly long time.The researchers were studying a species of jumping spider, hoping to learn more about how these spiders cared for their young....

Living on the moon and Mars will require building materials. Cement seems like an obvious answer, and scientists are growing it on the International Space Station (ISS).Growing cement on the ISS is a series of trial-and-error experiments.While there are years of study ahead, scientists have shown that they can harden cement on the ISS.Establishing a permanent human footing on any other planetary world, like Mars or the moon, is a proposition fraught with difficulty....

The All-Time Stingiest: Honda InsightMedia Platforms Design TeamIt seems a bit unfair to put a hybrid in this lineup, but the 2000 Insight was the first gas-electric hybrid on the US market, and its fuel economy is just too monstrous to ignore: 49 city, 61 highway. That’s better than any production vehicle before or since, and the two-seater took home the economy title seven years running. It ran on a 1....

Around 4.3 billion years ago, a planetary blob of hot molten rock named Earth cooled just enough to start forming a crust. Billions of years later, humans evolved. And now, two of those humans have discovered that a chunk of that original crust is actually still around on the surface today.A duo of geologists led by Jonathan O’Neil at the University of Ottawa have just announced the discovery of an ancient chunk of Earth’s original crust....

In April 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency received its first report of what would become the most recognized weapon of the 20th century: the AK-47 assault rifle. Within twenty years, the mysterious “submachine gun” sighted on the outskirts of Leningrad would spread worldwide, carried by soldiers, guerrillas, and terrorists from East Germany to Angola. The CIA report (PDF), dated April 29, 1953 was originally discovered by Kalashnikov Media and picked up by The Firearm Blog....

A group of MIT scientists and engineers have spent the last few years developing robots that can work together to solve problems. First unveiled in 2015, these robots can cooperate and share tasks, working together to achieve a common goal. But Arizona senator Jeff Flake wants the program shut down because he saw those robots serve beer one time.Senator Flake has recently introduced an amendment to the Defense Department appropriations bill currently in Congress....

Humans burn millions of tons of fossil fuels every day, putting a massive amount of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. Recently, a team of researchers figured out a way to reverse the process and turn some of that CO2 back into fuel.Harvard researchers Daniel Nocera and Pamela Silver have developed a bionic leaf’ that mimics natural photosynthesis, converting water and carbon dioxide into fuel, according to a paper published in Science....

Whether you consider it a bold pursuit of scientific advancement or unethical tampering with Mother Nature, genetic engineering is here, and China is leading the charge to discover the limits of its possible applications. Christina Larson’s article forScientific American describes how the Shaanxi Provincial Engineering and Technology Research Center has used the gene-editing tool CRISPR to manufacture a new type of goat—one that has larger muscles, produces more meat, and grows longer hair that can be sheared into wool....

Troops in remote areas of Afghanistan have been receiving supplies from new smart parachutes that could alter the future of military logistics. The Joint Precision Airdrop System (JPADS) steers cargo to specific GPS points in the same way that some smart bombs locate targets. Tow motors that respond to a guidance system adjust control lines on the parachute, constantly compensating until the payload reaches the ground.Warfare in Afghanistan is driving the use of this technology....

Michael Collins, the American astronaut who flew the Apollo 11 Columbia command module around the moon by himself while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar surface, passed away on April 28, 2021 at age 90, after battling cancer. While Armstrong and Aldrin were the first to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969, it was Collins who ensured the Apollo 11 mission was a success. As the mission’s command module pilot, Collins was alone in the Columbia for more than 21 hours running system checks, recording observations, and communicating with Mission Control....

The new Synaptics ClearPad 3000 Series display, which the supplier announced Wednesday, can detect up to 10 discrete touch points. The key to this ability is a completely new mechanism for recognizing touch. The current generation of capacitive touchscreens recognizes points of contact by scanning along the X and Y axes of the screen. The new screen instead acts like a camera sensor and builds an image of all the electrically conductive objects (such as fingertips) within the screen’s sensing region at any given moment....