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A London design startup is demonstrating airplane seats that fold into individual wingbacks for better privacy and sleep.Airlines are receptive to lightweight designs and quality of life improvements that mitigate fuel use and crowded flights.The folding wings are a brilliant solution that the designers say is ready to install today, not in the far-off future.A new folding airplane seat promises more comfortable sleep, even on economy flights. CNN reports that a London design firm called Universal Movement premiered the seats at Aircraft Cabin Innovation Summit, a commercial flight industry summit, last week....

Astronomers have made a startling discovery about the planet Jupiter: According to a simulation, the giant planet spent much of its early life roaming throughout the solar system and settled into its current orbit only after drifting in from around four times further from the sun than it is now.Over the past two decades, scientists have discovered enough planets around other stars to offer a clearer picture of the average solar system, and to reveal the ways in which our own solar system is really weird....

Kerbal Space Program (KSP) is a difficult game, the kind for people who have mastered flight simulators and want to move on to the next challenge: landing a spaceship on a new planet. KSP is an honest representation of orbital mechanics, and the game has swept through NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Now, one clever player has built an addition that makes it even more enticing: a gorgeous custom-built control board that mimics a real spaceship....

The Army is buying 624 MUTT unmanned ground vehicles.MUTTs can carry up to 1,200 pounds of gear at once and follow soldiers across the battlefield.The Army may ultimately buy thousands of MUTTs, liberating soldiers from backbreaking loads.As long as their were soldiers, militaries have looked for ways to alleviate weird from their fighters’ shoulders. Now, in 2019, things have gone robotic. The U.S. Army is buying hundreds of Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport unmanned vehicles....

Teams of scientists and engineers around the world have been figuratively racing one another to the moon as they try to win the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a $30 million contest meant to spark a new generation of moon rovers. Now, they may wind up literally racing one another on the surface of moon. Rovers will be rolling side-by-side toward the finish line to claim the prize in what may be the first-ever moon motorsports event....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt takes Robert Stone’s controversial new documentary 30 minutes and five apostate environmentalists, but it finally gets to the point: Nuclear power, the energy source many people fear most, is the best and currently only way to satisfy the world’s voracious demand for electricity without producing carbon dioxide and other emissions that contribute to climate change.Pandora’s PromiseStone, perhaps best known for the Oscar-nominated anti-nuclear weapons documentary Radio Bikini (1987) and Earth Days (2009), about the rise of the modern environmental movement, paints himself as one of the converts....

This week, the Parker Solar Probe zoomed by the sun for a third time since its 2018 launch.At its closest approach, the Parker Solar Probe will travel as fast as 430,000 miles per hour.The next solar fly-by is set for January 29, 2020. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe safely zipped by the sun this week, collecting information about the star’s corona, solar wind, and magnetic field. This is the third time since the probe’s 2018 launch that it has has swooped close to the sun....

Welcome to PM/AM, Popular Mechanics’ morning briefing on the top science and tech stories for today. Media Platforms Design TeamJust this week, paleontologists announced another new dinosaur species, this time in the form of an awkward-looking, four-winged critter. With this discovery coming right after news of dinosaur footprints in Alaska, a frilly-headed triceratops lookalike in Montana, and the titanic-sized beast of a dinosaur in Argentina, it feels like new fossils are popping up way more often than they used to....

I saw a lot of customized trailers at a car show last year, and thought, “I could make one of those.” Scott Calahan, my faculty adviser at Central Washington University, agreed to let me build it as my senior project. It incorporates everything I have studied as an industrial and engineering technology major–wiring, woodworking and electronics. The only thing I didn’t build was the wheeled base. The trailer’s plywood and aluminum exterior is 96 in....

When it comes to chord changes, we like either no surprise or maximum surprise, scientists say.Most pop music tends to sound the same.Even the most predictable music makes us feel good, research continues to show.In a new study published in Current Biology, researchers tried to quantify which kinds of chord changes people enjoy the most when listening to music.One 2017 study is emblematic of existing thinking about chords. “To achieve greatness, a song needs a sudden chord change, according to U....

The unexpected guest showed up in our solar system about a year ago. Astronomers didn’t know much about it, but they could tell the drifting object came from beyond our solar system, making it the first such object ever discovered. They named the asteroid ’Oumuamua, and although it has long since left our solar system, scientists are still unraveling its mystery.For instance, here’s a fact that continues to perplex astronomers: As ’Oumuamua left the solar system, it sped up a bit....

Media Platforms Design TeamUntil recently, astronauts rarely worried about what to wear–a standard gas-pressurized spacesuit was the only choice. But in a bulky 300-pound setup would be like doing gymnastics in a suit of armor. “They’re not going there to sit in the habitat,” says Dava Newman, a professor of astronautics at MIT. “They’ll have to work five to seven days a week.” navigating MarsNewman has designed an alternative with enough flexibility to get the job done....

Update 4:45 p.m. EDT: SpaceX successfully launched a Dragon spacecraft filled with supplies and science experiments for the International Space Station. The launch was nominal, and the Dragon spacecraft successfully deployed its solar arrays. The Dragon spacecraft will now undergo a two-day flight to the ISS, arriving at about 7:00 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 4. Original Post: A previously flown Falcon 9 first stage, which hoisted the CRS-12 mission to the International Space Station in August 2017, is standing vertical on Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida....

Canada plans to keep flying its fleet of F/A-18A Hornet fighters into the early 2030s, by which time the oldest of these planes will be more than a half-century old by retirement, which would make them some of the oldest fighters in the industrialized world. Known as CF-18s in Canadian service, the jets were delivered in the early 1980s and are Ottawa’s only fighter jets.According to the National Post, Canada will select a new fighter in 2022 to enter service in 2032....

Kevlar has been the Army’s go-to body armor for decades, but a new technology might be challenging that paradigm. Kraig Biocraft, a bioengineering company based in Michigan, has genetically altered silkworms to produce spider silk. Today, they announced an Army contract to develop this silk, called Dragon Silk, for use in body armor.Spider silk is one of the strongest natural fibers, but it’s difficult to produce in large amounts. Spiders are territorial and cannibalistic, so it’s nearly impossible to create a cost-effective spider farm....

This week the S-300 anti-aircraft weapon system proved why it’s a potential game-changer. It did so without even firing a missile—or even being deployed.President Vladimir Putin lifted a ban on an $800 million sale of S-300s to Iran, a move that sent shockwaves through world capitals, especially Tel Aviv and Washington D.C. Putin’s power play is reportedly jeopardizing the preliminary deal signed by six world powers trying to slow Iran’s nuclear development....

The Saturn V is the biggest, baddest heavy lift rocket ever launched. And now, a LEGO Ideas campaign hopes to commemorate the Apollo-era rocket with a three stage, separable rocket with a lunar command module inside. We only hope the real thing comes to fruition, because this concept is AWESOME. Just look at this: Media Platforms Design TeamSince this is on LEGO Ideas, the project needs to garner the user votes to become a reality....

Using Air Force research, Energetic Materials & Products, Inc. (EMPI) has developed a pocket-sized torch that can burn through locks, chains, rebar grates, metal door hinges, and pretty much anything else in just seconds. The Tec Torch, a “handheld thermal breaching” tool, has two parts: the handle and the cartridges, each weighing less than a pound. The thermite cartridges are filled with a proprietary mix of metals and metal oxides within an aluminum shell that combusts when ignited....

Media Platforms Design TeamDoes water really drain differently in the southern hemisphere? It turns out the answer to that question that got Bart Simpson in so much retrograde hot water is a qualified yes, with a number of caveats. Destin Sandlin at Smarter Every Day and Derek Muller at Veritasiumteamed up to answer the question once and for all, but realized some of the complicating factors along the way. For instance, toilets aren’t a great indicator of the effect....

Researchers have developed a new ingestible battery that could one day power internal medical devices. And they’re hoping their creation, which is made with melanin pigments found in the skin, hair, and eyes, could solve a chicken-and-egg problem for ingestible medical devices.“For decades, people have been envisioning that one day, we would have edible electronic devices to diagnose or treat disease,” says Christopher Bettinger, who headed up the team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon....