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Virgin Atlantic has successfully completed a flight using a blend of jet fuel and fuel made from industrial waste gas. The fuel, powering a 747 flying from Orlando, Florida to London’s Gatwick Airport, makes the case for a commercially-viable flight that is also economically sustainable.The fuel was developed by the New Zealand-based energy company LanzaTech. The outgrowth of a partnership that began with Virgin in 2011, the new fuel converts waste gas from processes like steel manufacturing and converts them into ethanol which can be used for a number of processes, including the wordy alcohol-to-jet synthetic paraffinic kerosene (ATJ-SPK)....

RadioShack is having a massive Spring Cleaning sale through Sunday, and it’s worth taking a look at in full. Here are a few of the highlights. Purchasing all of them together will run you under $100.Car Radio FM Stereo Modulator, going for $25 down from $30. A handy device that will turn any FM radio into a machine fit for your MP3 player or smartphone’s music.Travel Alarm Clock with Auto Night Light, going for $16 down from $20....

Even as a government watchdog agency warns that GPS navigation satellites could fail, the Obama administration’s proposed fiscal 2010 budget has quietly killed the nation’s backup navigation system.The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report last week warning, “It is uncertain whether the Air Force will be able to acquire new satellites in time to maintain current GPS service without interruption. If not, some military operations and some civilian users could be adversely affected....

GM-94Media Platforms Design TeamA few years ago, a video showing a supposed Russian quadrotor with a machine gun went viral. That clip was actually publicity for a video game, but now reality is overtaking fiction. The director of Russian arms-makers Rostec saying the company is now working on cheap, flamethrower-armed multicopters. That can dodge bullets.Alexander Yakunin told Russian newspaper TASS that the project is in the works. Judging from the technology his company has already developed—and taking a more nuanced approach to translation—we’d say the flamethrower drone is more plausible than it sounds....

Though most tsunamis are born from remote, offshore earthquakes such as the epic rumble from ‘64, their effects can be devastating halfway around the world. Lori Dengler, tsunami scientist and geology professor at Humboldt State University, explains how a massive earthquake in the middle of the Pacific Ocean could make Mount McKinley beachfront property – and how that can affect our economy at large.Do earthquakes and tsunamis often go hand-in-hand?Yes, but the overwhelming majority of earthquakes do not produce tsunamis....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe all-new 2011 Kia Optima unveiled here at the New York Auto Show sits longer, wider and lower than its predecessor, with freshly restyled sheet metal asserting that the brand’s aesthetic renaissance is well underway. The Optima’s choice of three direct-injected four-cylinder powerplants also suggests Kia is hitting its technological stride. The engine choices range from a naturally aspirated 2.4-liter mill that produces 200 hp to a turbocharged 2....

Media Platforms Design TeamMany Americans cringed as Russia to Edward Snowden, who is wanted in the United States on felonies related to his theft and disclosure of classified materials about the National Security Agency. The diplomatic fallout is yet to be seen, but a summit between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin may be cancelled.granted a year’s worth of asylumSo why did Putin do it? There are a host of domestic reasons: The move is supported by a majority of Russians, Putin needs a boost after massive protests against his government, and the drama is a welcome distraction from a sluggish Russian economy....

Congress is posed to pass a five-year Federal Aviation Authority (FAA)Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) Reauthorization Act of 2018 which represents substantive changes to how drones could be operated within the United States on both amateur and professional levels.The drone industry’s biggest argument with the FAA Reauthorization the removal of 226 also known as the Special Rule for Model Aircraft. Implemented in the FAA Reauthorization of 2012, Section 336 has prevented rules or regulations from being applied to model airplanes or aircraft weighing 55 pounds or less....

Airbus is a pioneer of space-saving ideas that make plane travel look even more horrifying than it already is. Smaller seats. Seats where you basically stand. A new Airbus patent application takes the space-saving measures to their logical extreme. Just stack ’em up!As Airbus writes in the patent application: In modern means of transport, in particular in aircraft, it is very important from an economic point of view to make optimism use of the available space in a passenger cabin....

In October 2017 a series of fires tore through the sleepy goldenrod hills and green trellised vineyards of California’s wine country, 15 miles from where I grew up. My friends packed up their families and left their homes behind. When the fires were extinguished, firefighters eventually deduced that the initial spark came from power lines belonging to Pacific Gas & Electric. If true, the penalty could be in the billions of dollars....

Elon Musk is tweeting again, and this time he is tweeting about Facebook. View full post on TwitterView full post on TwitterWhether or not he genuinely did not know what Facebook was and whether SpaceX had a Facebook page (hard to believe), he does appear to have taken some direct action because as of right now, the Facebook page for SpaceX no longer exists, ditto Tesla, and what appears to have been his own page....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn October 31, the new Nissan NV200 taxis will begin replacing current New York City cabs. Cars in the current fleet, which is 13,237 vehicles strong, have a turnover rate of three to five years. We’ve covered the new taxi a couple of times here on Proving Ground, but this is the first time we’ve gotten to go for a ridealong. This protoype is about 98 percent complete, so it’s very close to what New Yorkers will be riding in come this fall....

Navies of the future could use technology to allow sailors to work remotely. Technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality would allow some crew members to work from shore, operating key sections of ships from thousands of miles away. The result could be semiautonomous warships that sail with smaller crews, putting fewer in harm’s way.The Telegraph reports that the Royal Navy could use A.I. and VR tech in the future to reduce the size of ship’s crews....

Airplane traffic is causing light snowfall in Chicago via a phenomenon called ice nucleation.The same idea is used to make snow, both with machines and with “private weather modification” services.This phenomenon can also cause hole punch clouds and fallstreak holes.Chicago’s chapter of the National Weather Service has suggested that light snowfall in the metro area is being caused by airplane traffic.View full post on TwitterUnlike chemtrails, this science is real. The infographic suggests that when water in the atmosphere is pure enough, it doesn’t freeze until -40 degrees Celsius/Fahrenheit (this is where they converge), and our current cloud cover is well above that....

One of the biggest concerns NASA has when launching spacecraft to Mars—aside from, you know, losing the spacecraft—is inadvertently contaminating the planet with Earth bacteria. One of the biggest open questions in astronomy right now is whether life exists on other planets, and there’s no way to answer that question if we bring our own life along on every expedition.To prevent that from happening, NASA manufactures its spacecraft in the most rigorous of clean rooms....

Legendary astronaut John Young, who walked on the moon and later commanded the first space shuttle flight, has died, NASA said Saturday. Young was 87.The space agency said Young died Friday night at home in Houston following complications from pneumonia.NASA called Young one of its pioneers - the only agency astronaut to go into space as part of the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programs, and the first to fly into space six times....

Media Platforms Design TeamTwo years ago, I interviewed executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse about . And when I introduced myself to Cuse at a recent event, every nerd dream I ever had came true. “Are you still doing that ‘Could it Happen?’ column?” he asked.the science behind their show, Lost"We are," I responded. “You guys are making it kind of hard for us this season, though.““Yeah,” Cuse concurred. “We’re doing more fiction than science these days…“Perhaps instead of fiction, Cuse should have used the word faith....

Media Platforms Design TeamWe’ve seen Lotus’s extruded aluminum Elise platform repackaged ad nauseum, but here’s a pulse-quickening version we can stand behind: the Exige R-GT, which is undergoing final homologation for FIA certification and will see ten examples built, seven of which will be reserved for the official team and European drivers.Clad in classic Lotus black and gold, the car is scheduled to compete in the Rally 1000 Miglia in Brescia, Italy this April, helmed by Super 2000 World Rally Championship driver Bernardo Sousa....

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite—TESS for short—was launched to space a few months ago, and spends its time in looking for planets orbiting other stars. But recently, TESS spotted something else: a comet that happened to be passing by in our galactic neighborhood.After TESS’s spring launch, NASA’s been testing its new planet hunter’s systems. As part of that test, NASA pointed the spacecraft’s cameras at recently discovered comet C/2018 N1, located nearly 30 million miles away from Earth....

Researchers at Brown University have found that Cooper pairs of electrons can model three total phases of matter—and the third is new.The four observable everyday states of matter are just the beginning of a complex array of states.Scientists thought they understood Cooper pairs, but this discovery opens an entire new area that has to be explained with research and theory.Researchers believe they may have identified a new state of matter in the behaviors of Cooper pairs of electrons....