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Media Platforms Design TeamThe much-hyped Subaru BRZ sports car promises to be feathery-light, quick off the line, and to handle better than just about any car this side of a Porsche Cayman—and do it all for around $25,000. In the sports car world, them’s fightin’ words. Because there’s another car that not only fits that description but has been delivering sports car fans an overdose of fun for the past 20 years: the Mazda Miata....

Media Platforms Design TeamJohn Glenn’s biography reads like that of a superhero: first American to orbit Earth, then a United States senator and eventually the oldest person to go into space. So when PM ran into him at a recent gathering at Ohio State University (home of the John Glenn School of Public Affairs), we couldn’t help but ask him his thoughts on the current space program and America’s world standing....

Astronomers have reported in The Astrophysical Journal that they’ve spotted the most powerful explosion in the known universe.The team collected a mix of X-ray and radio wave data from NASA’s Chandra space telescope, ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope, and Earth-bound telescopes in India and Australia.Astronomers first observed evidence of the explosion, which is emanating from a supermassive black hole, in 2016, but were only able to confirm its occurrence recently. Astronomers have spotted the remains of a ginormous eruption of gas, stellar material, and high-energy particles emanating from the center of distant galaxy cluster....

Twitter released a new policy on manipulated media this week, promising to label some “deceptive” images and videos and pull down others.Tweets will be labeled as fake images beginning in March.While the ban is a step in the right direction, it isn’t comprehensive enough to pull down every deepfake, including a widely circulated video of Nancy Pelosi appearing to drunkenly slur her words.Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, when manipulated media like deepfakes are expected to be most rampant, Twitter has introduced some long-overdue guidelines for handling what it considers to be “deceptive” media....

The first question Ron Capps always gets when he goes on the road to talk about what he does for a living is “What the heck is a funny car?” But that’s not the right question (though we’ll answer it shortly). The right question is: Are you completely insane? When his nitromethane-powered drag racing machine takes off from a dead stop in the starting line (called the water box), Capps experiences 4....

The 2000-pound cylinder of fiberglass, resin and carbon fiber, glossy as a vinyl record, hangs from a mechanical winch above its thick steel chamber. For millennia, flywheels have powered everything from potter’s wheels to steam engines, storing kinetic energy in their momentum as they spin. Now, the flywheel has found a higher purpose in the electrical grid: Wound around a 500-pound rotor, this 5-foot-tall, 3-foot-diameter flywheel assembly at Beacon Power’s plant in Tyngsboro, Mass....

By the 2020s, the United States, China, and Russia aim to have fleets of satellites in orbit armed with robotic arms for servicing spacecraft or lasers to knock debris into the atmosphere to burn up. But those sats could easily be turned on enemy satellites in an age when militaries are more reliant than ever on signals from orbit. Space is becoming a battlefield.Sean O’Keefe has watched these developments as a Syracuse University professor specializing in national security law, and in his roles as Secretary of the Navy under President George H....

Media Platforms Design Team DETROIT— The all-new engine found in the all-new Jaguar FXR is set to replace the 4.2 V8, which will remain in production for at least one year. This engine, which was designed entirely in-house at Jaguar, increases power, lessens the load (while making the block stronger) and improves fuel consumption by making use of some interesting technologies. In normally aspirated form the Gen II puts out 385 hp and 380 lb....

Media Platforms Design TeamMoab, Utah—It’s been a full four model years since Jeep has launched an all-new vehicle. That’s a good while—even for a brand whose vehicles have unusually long legs. And Jeep’s flagship, the current WK Grand Cherokee, has been in the stable since the 2005 model year. So the all-new 2011 Grand Cherokee couldn’t come soon enough. That’s especially true since this is the very first all-new vehicle to emerge from Chrysler’s 2009 alliance with Fiat....

Name: Jay JacobsonPatent Number: 7,460,931Patent: “Method and System for Improving the Efficiency and Reliability of a Power Grid.” A system for metering apartment buildings that saves renters money—but ended up running afoul of utility companies. I’ve been in the energy conservation business since 1979. I started in renewables and whatnot, and I got into apartment buildings, because at the time only a small company could really service them properly. We were very good at fixing what was broken....

A new way to make efficient, high-acidity catalyst material could decrease fossil fuel refinery emissions.The process can benefit the fossil fuel industry, but may also enable new renewable fuel sources.The key is increasing aluminum in order to boost reactive Brønsted acid sites.Scientists in Australia say they’re working on an oil-refinement catalyst material that could create 28 percent less carbon dioxide than what the industry relies on now. The difference is all in the mix, with more acidity that increases how active the catalyst substance is....

Even the president’s ride can be hot-rodded. That’s the best way to describe the 23 choppers scheduled to replace the current fleet of Marine One VH-3Ds and VH-60Ns. Outfitted with a kitchen, a bathroom and a White House-worthy high-speed communications suite, the VH-71 is closer in capabilities (and amenities) to Air Force One than to its short-hop predecessors. Development of the VH-71, which had its first test flight in Yeovil, England, in July, was accelerated following the Sept....

One of the most famous robots in pop-culture history has been sold at auction. The costume for Robby the Robot, made iconic through the film Forbidden Planet, has been sold through the New York auction house Bonhams for $5,375,000.One of the most memorable designs of the 1950s, Robby was created under the supervision of Arnold “Buddy” Gillespie and built by draughtsman and mechanical designer Robert Kinoshita. Kinoshita had previously worked designing washing machines and reflected that in his construction of Robby’s torso....

Scientists in Japan have made major steps towards what’s known as “in vitro gametogenesis,” or creating human eggs and sperm in a dish. Researchers from Kyoto University and Kyushu University have created human oogonia out of stem cells.Oogonia are small diploid cells that form during the early stages of fetal development. As diploid cells, they have copies of both a mother and a father’s chromosomes within. In nature, they’re formed from primordial germ cells and can be seen as precursors to egg cells....

Elon Musk has revealed his new grand vision for the colonization of other planets. Musk has been saying from the beginning that SpaceX’s goal is to make humans “a multi-planetary species,” with a particular focus on Mars. On September 29, at the 68th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Adelaide, Australia, Musk proclaimed SpaceX has discovered the path to the Red Planet: a single rocket, nearly as tall as the Saturn V, with a first-stage booster and an enormous second-stage spacecraft that could fly to the moon, Mars, or a city on the far side of the Earth, making rocket flights a potential super high-speed alternative to airlines....

The Boeing 747 may be a badass plane, but it’s also endangered. A report released by Boeing last year found that demand for the iconic passenger jet is drying up, as demand is shifting toward smaller long-range planes. Even Boeing seemed to sense the direction the winds were blowing, and started shifting its production toward smaller aircraft like the 787 Dreamliner and the 737-MAX. The future for the 747 is grim indeed....

Although its launch date is uncertain and construction has hit delays, astronomers already have stars in their eyes when thinking about the James Webb Space Telescope. Meant to be the replacement for the world-famous Hubble, scientists now hope that with the right conditions it could capture light from single stars within the first generation of stars in the history of the universe.It’s a heady goal, but scientists insist its possible.“Looking for the first stars and black holes has long been a goal of astronomy....

Plants, on the whole, do not move fast. While Venus flytraps and Mimosa pudicas have rapidly moving leaves, plants themselves tend to stay stationary. But what if they had robotic legs to help them out? A robotics company has modded its latest bot to make that dream a reality.The Hexa moving out of the sun.VincrossHexa, developed by the Beijing-based Vincross, is a six-legged bot with 19 servos, infrared and 720p cameras, a customizable Linux-based OS, and big ambitions—the company’s home page imagines a Hexa on Mars....

Recent paleontological findings show dinosaur wings that allowed for flight may have evolved, in part, from dinosaurs using their feathers in flashy displays meant to attract mates.There isn’t a definitive fossil link that proves this theory right—yet—but the study authors believe it’s merely a matter of time.Since the dawn of time, we’ve had to flirt to get our potential mates’ attention—even the dinosaurs. But at least the dinos’ dances, calls, and flamboyant displays paid off from an evolutionary perspective....

Perhaps the biggest mystery in all of science is when and how life arose on Earth. Was life seeded on our planet from elsewhere by hitching a ride on comets or asteroids, or did it arise spontaneously in the presence of organic molecules? In a new study out today, a team of scientists led by Svatopluk Civiš, a chemist at the Central European Institute of Technology in the Czech Republic, has announced a surprising discovery that blurs the lines between these two theories....