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Russia’s first fifth generation fighter, the Sukhoi Su-57, has entered serial production. Under the terms of a contract signed last June United Aircraft Corporation will produce 76 Su-57s, with the first jet likely to enter service before the end of 2019.First sighted in 2010, the Su-57 takes its name from the famous Sukhoi Design Bureau. The Su-57 was a previously unknown design and its appearance took the West by surprise. The Su-57 is described as a “fifth-generation fighter,” a term referring to to the fifth-generation of post World War II fighter jets....

Last night, Elon Musk debuted the newest member of the Tesla family, the Cybertruck, in an electrifying reveal complete with lasers, holograms, flames and a cadre of henchmen whom Musk tasked with trying to destroy the vehicle. (It didn’t go as planned.)Here’s what it looks like:TeslaThe internet immediately launched into meme-mode…View full post on TwitterView full post on TwitterView full post on TwitterView full post on TwitterView full post on InstagramSome loved it…View full post on TwitterView full post on TwitterView full post on TwitterSome were more reserved with their praise…View full post on TwitterView full post on TwitterCourtesy of r/dankmemesCourtesy of r/carmemesSome thought it looked familiar…View full post on TwitterView full post on TwitterView full post on InstagramSome sympathized with Musk…View full post on TwitterView full post on TwitterThe memes capitalized on that moment…View full post on TwitterView full post on Twitter"I’m gonna tell my kids…“View full post on TwitterView full post on TwitterView full post on TwitterEven mathematicians found their time to shine…View full post on TwitterWhether you love it or hate it, you are not alone....

The 1970s at NASA’s crewed programs were all about Apollo hardware and preparing the way for the space shuttle. But McDonnell Douglas wanted the agency to consider a new vehicle, though it called back to the past of the program. The craft was essentially a giant Gemini capsule, which could seat up to 12. Dwayne Day at The Space Review has the story of the almost-shuttle. The “Big G” was a big change from the two-seat Gemini capsules used by the agency in the early 1960s....

Media Platforms Design TeamAndy Didorosi had a hunch in 2012. He felt that his hometown, given up for dead, was about to start a new life. Didorosi, 23 at the time, leased an old industrial building near the city’s northern limit. He posted a notice on Craigslist, hoping people would come to his big empty building to share tools and ideas, make stuff, and maybe start a small business or two....

Today a team of synthetic engineers has unveiled an entirely new life-form. It’s a bacterium called Syn 3.0. No, the new organism won’t dazzle you with any new or special tricks. In fact, just the opposite. It’s the most stripped-down form of life ever created.“Our hope here is to understand the minimal basis of life.“Scientists led by J. Craig Venter at his namesake nonprofit institute in La Jolla, California, genetically trimmed, clipped and pared down to only the barest essentials for independent, self-sustaining life on a Petri dish....

Even hitting 30 MPH on a bicycle can make you feel like a real speed demon, so just imagine going 85. That’s what the folks at Aerovelo just got up to, setting the record for human-powered land speed in the process. The bike is Aerovelo’s “Eta,” a weird-lookin’ but carefully engineered contraption that the company hopes will someday be able to get up to 100 MPH. The new record was set at the World Human Powered Speed Challenge, and driver Todd Reichert bet the previous record (also set by the Eta) by over two additional miles per hour....

View full post on TwitterAt this year’s Mobile World Congress, Energizer has introduced maybe the thickest smartphone ever made: its honkin’ huge Energizer Power Max P18K Pop with an enormous 18,00 mAh battery. Built by Avenir Telecom (which pays to use the Energizer name) the phone is comically thick, as hefty as about three normal handsets stacked on top of each other in order to fit a battery with more than five and half times the energy storage of the battery you’ll find in an iPhone XS Max....

Media Platforms Design TeamIn June 1937, Amelia Earhart set out to cross the world in a Lockheed Model 10 Electra. On July 2, 1937, she and copilot Fred Noonan were seen alive for the last time in Lae, New Guinea. Now, footage of Earhart in California has emerged, likely shot just before she flew to Miami to begin her journey. Al Bresnik’s photos of the departure have become hauntingly iconic. But his brother John took the home video of the flight, virtually unseen since it was filmed in 1937....

Meet Steven Kennard. He’s a master at woodturning, the art of crafting wood on a lathe, and he is the subject of a fascinating short documentary that’s produced and shot just as beautifully as his creations. In Turns, filmmaker Ben Proudfoot highlights how the self-taught Englishman hand-crafts gorgeous wooden boxes that can sell for thousands of dollars.“The discipline of knowing that it’s got to be a container of some kind—that’s really where my passion has taken me,” he says....

DETROIT — While Dodge executives paraded the company’s latest NASCAR Nextel Cup drivers—Kurt Busch, Elliot Sadler and former Formula One star Juan Pablo Montoya—across the stage, most everyone in the audience was gazing at the covered car at the edge of the stage. Few of us really wondered what was under the cover; we all really kind of knew.And when the cover was pulled off, the flashes popped, and there it was: a NASCAR Nextel Cup “car of tomorrow” in bright red Dodge livery....

Thanks to a see-through material and a little ingenuity, we can now see what’s happening inside a bird’s egg. Scientists from Tsinghua University in Beijing invented a transparent shell made from polydimethylsiloxane, a polymer based on silicon, that mimic the shape and feel of a natural eggshell.Media Platforms Design TeamBefore this invention, the way scientists could see inside an egg was through “windowing,” which is exactly what it sounds like: cutting a tiny hole and peeking inside....

Tesla recently issued a few security updates to make its vehicles less susceptible to hacking, but it’s still possible for thieves to thwart those safeguards if they aren’t used: In a new video, a duo of car bandits hack into a Model S using a tablet and phone to commandeer signals from the car’s keyfob. Anthony Kennedy was the carjacking’s victim. He posted surveillance video to YouTube in an effort to highlight how enterprising thieves can remotely access Tesla keyfobs, overcome their encryption, and pop open the car’s doors....

A C-130 cargo plane operated by the Puerto Rico Air National Guard went down near Savannah, GA during a training mission today. The crash happened about three miles east of Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport. Nine people were on board. All of them perished. Investigators will now try to determine what exactly went wrong in this case. But here’s what we already know: These kinds of military accidents have gotten much too common lately as an overtaxed military is tasked with maintaining a remarkably old fleet of planes....

Media Platforms Design Team"People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results." —Albert EinsteinWhen I was 14, I woke up one Saturday morning to see my father standing at the foot of my bed, sharpening a double-sided ax. “It’s time,” he said. “Let’s go.” My father has a tendency to start conversations in the middle. He’s also suspicious of anything too modern. Like nouns. “Time for what?” I said....

Name: Randy Artruc Patent No.: 10,023,282Patent: Gears for Reversing Rowing Motion for Oars: Artruc’s invention uses a hemispherical pair of gears to make an oar’s movements match a rower’s hand movements. Clamped to the side of a boat, it allows the oarsman to face forward. The idea came from when I was in California, up in the Sierras with some friends. This was in ’88. One of the guys had a rowboat....

Watching last night’s episode of Star Trek: Discovery, “What’s Past is Prologue,” I couldn’t help but think about another Trek episode—The Next Generation’s “The Measure of a Man.”It’s a famous episode, one of the first great outings from TNG. The story centers on Data, the android operations officer. Starfleet considers him a machine, and therefore property of the Federation, but the USS Enterprise and its Captain Jean-Luc Picard see Data as a living being, entitled with all the rights endowed as such....

Media Platforms Design Team Browse expert reviews and compare info on 4 cars at once at Media Platforms Design Team They say it’s far more difficult to build a good, cheap car than a good, expensive one. If that’s true, the folks at Suzuki have their work cut out for them, because the new $14,770 Suzuki SX4 Sport faces some stiff competition in the B-car class from the likes of Honda, Toyota and Nissan....

Global warming is a serious problem, and it’s increasingly looking like we’ll have to take some desperate measures in order to fix it. Simply cutting carbon emissions and investing in renewable energy is not likely to slow down the Earth’s warming, and extreme weather events and feet of sea level rise are nearly inevitable.But maybe there’s something else we can do about it. Some experts have proposed extreme solutions like cloud seeding, giant sun shades in space, or dropping iron into the ocean to increase algae production....

Using artificial intelligence, a number of European evolutionary biologists now believe that humans have an ancient ancestor whose identity is unknown to modern science. The ancestor, based out of Asia, would have been a hybrid of Neanderthals and Denisovans, a subspecies of archaic humans.The Denisovans are less well-known than the famous Neanderthals, but the two were separate groups who split off from their common ancestor around 744,000 years ago. While Neanderthals settled in Europe and parts of western Asia, Denisovan remains have been found in central Asia and Siberia—their name comes from the Denisova Cave in the Siberian Altai Mountains, where a Denisovan bone was first discovered in 2008....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe best place to build the wind farms of the future is the open ocean. While the breeze can be frustratingly variable on land, if you travel just 20 miles off the coastline, the wind blows at a consistent clip of around 33 feet per second. But along most parts of the coastal United States, the ocean floor drops off quickly. That makes standard offshore turbines, the kind that are fixed to the sea bottom for stability, too expensive to be worth it....