After a groundbreaking run resulting in speeds near 300 mph on Monday, Ohio State’s “Buckeye Bullet 2.5” EV has now claimed a new, even higher, battery-powered land speed record at the famed Bonneville Salt Flats, averaging 307.7 miles per hour for two runs on lithium-ion power.The team was prepared to take the vehicle to even greater speeds, but a completely blown out and broken clutch kept them away from that attempt....
Media Platforms Design TeamAnalysts expect Modern Warfare 2’s first week sales to breach $500 million. To provide perspective, The Dark Knight made $155.34 opening weekend. A movie ticket is certainly cheaper than a video game, but half a billion dollars, any way you spin it, screams mainstream hit.So, if you’re reading this, we can assume you’re one of three types: One, someone who’s already bought Modern Warfare 2; Two, someone who’s boycotting Modern Warfare 2 for any of a number of reasons, but will still probably buy it; Or three, a non-gamer who buys three or four titles a year and has been struck with curiosity by an unavoidable hype machine, including but not limited to television commercials, online take over ads and word of mouth....
It’s been a tough year or so for Air Force maintainers. High-profile aircraft failures plagued the service recently, including emergency landings of C-5 cargo aircraft, the grounding of the B-1 bomber fleet, and the loss of a C-130 propeller in mid-flight. The immediate causes of these accidents vary, the but root cause is the same: age. The average age of an Air Force aircraft is 28 years, and many planes are significantly older....
Increasing floods and other climate events threaten cemeteries around the world.Cremation rates have increased for decades and may relieve cemetery pressure.Nations that have successfully addressed burial crises, like Singapore, offer some hope.Most movies about climate change are disaster flicks, but the real-life plight of cemeteries affected by climate change is pure horror. Floods and other extreme weather phenomena present unprecedented challenges to cemeteries, reports Scientific American.Flooding is one of the major and most distressing threats to human remains in cemeteries....
Bees are dying globally. There are many factors to this trend, and man-made climate change is one of the big ones.One beekeeper is trying something different to revive populations: hollowed out logs meant to recreate how bees live in nature.There’s anecdotal evidence that his strategy is working. They’re considered by many the most important animal on the planet, but bees are dying at an alarming rate. Over the past 15 years, there has been a dramatic fall in the number of bees on the planets with 90 percent loss in some areas, a trend that’s known as “colony collapse disorder....
Just five years ago, diesel engines were at the center of a near-term green tech revolution. Because of new engine software and materials, a diesel vehicle’s fuel efficiency could effectively rival a Tesla.But after Volkswagen’s dieselgate scandal in 2015, diesel took a huge public relations nose dive. Now electric powertrains are pitched as the uncontested future. Automakers like GM promise to ditch the internal combustion engine, and some companies are laying down lots of cash for Tesla’s upcoming electric semi....
An equipment operator from Windsor, Ontario, Nick Market has been called the “best of the best” of backhoe operators in North America. He was the 2007 Case Backhoe Rodeo Series Champion. “Nobody expected a Canadian to win,” he says, laughing. “It was quite an upset.“But Market wasn’t always a pro operator of the 14,000 lb. behemoth. “My boss told me it’d take me a year to be a good backhoe operator....
Media Platforms Design TeamChemical combustion engines are an unbeatable technology for escaping Earth’s atmosphere and gravitational pull. In space, however, these rockets are inefficient—they burn through huge quantities of fuel while generating more thrust than necessary. That’s why researchers are increasingly turning to nonchemical propulsion systems, which could drastically lighten spacecraft while achieving higher speeds. Some of the ideas being researched, like antimatter engines, depend on established physics but go far beyond current technology....
There are few mechanical systems as mystifying as a water softener. After all, isn’t all water soft? Fair point. But water softeners were created to combat a surprisingly common problem: hard water.According to the U.S. Geological Survey, about 85 percent of American households have hard water, including homes with city water and well water. But what exactly is hard water and, if your home has this issue, how does a water softener work and how can you make it work best for you?...
Wormholes have never been detected, but scientists have now established what it would take to bring them into existence.All it takes: two electrically charged black holes and hypothetical defects in space time.Although wormholes have never actually been detected, they’re consistent with the general theory of relativity first posited by Albert Einstein in 1915, and later clarified by the scientist in 1935. In a pre-print paper published on arXiv, a team of scientists has established the conditions needed to bring a wormhole into existence....
Bungee cords, ratchet straps, and radiator clamps are all great, but if you really want to secure something, knowing a few knots can get you out of a lot of sticky situations. And if you want a knot that’ll adjust to the size you need—and hold things tightly—a slip knot is a great tool. Technically, this knot is known as a “slip noose,” since it tightens when you pull on it, but we figure this is probably what you’re looking for....
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has been churning for at least 200 years, and probably longer. The Juno spacecraft is studying Jupiter, and its new pictures show that the spot is shrinking.Astronomers don’t fully understand what happens within the crushing depths of gas giant planets. This storm’s demise could teach them something big.On July 12, 2017, the Juno spacecraft made a close pass to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, the famous anticyclonic storm that dwarfs any other vortex in the solar system....
NASA and the Southwest Research Institute are planning to explore some of the solar system’s oldest bodies, a series of asteroids known as the “Trojans.“To do so, they will launch a small spacecraft named Lucy to explore the region through a series of flybys.The mission has just finished its design stage, and now building can begin.In 2021, NASA and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) will launch one of their most technically complex missions in the modern era....
The earthquake that devastated Nepal on April 25 was powerful enough to move the tallest mountain in the world more than an inch (around 1.2, actually) to the northeast, shifting it away from its gradual 1.5 inch shift to the southwest each year. This research comes from a report in China Daily based on the work of Chinese geologists, who measured the aftereffects of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake. The researchers said the subsequent May earthquake did not affect the position of the mountain....
The Edomites were portrayed as aggressors in biblical texts. but there’s more to their story, according to a new study. With help from the nearby Egyptians, the Edomites developed technological prowess with a hot commodity at the time: copper.Studying ancient slag, archaeologists were able to uncover a complex geopolitical situation in the year 10,000 BCE.The Edomites, an ancient kingdom derided in biblical texts as simple, have been underestimated for thousands of years, according to a new paper from a team of archaeologists....
Today scientists have taken a surprising leap toward actually integrating living plants into human electronics and power systems: A team of Swedish botanists and electrical engineers unveiled a fascinating method of growing and powering conductive wires inside living plants. Led by Eleni Stavrinidou—a bioelectronic engingeer at Linköping University in Linköping, Sweden—the scientists employed a transparent, conductive gel that cut roses could naturally soak up into their stems and leaves. After a few hours, the gel material would harden and form flexible wires inside the plants’ stems....
I’m in the cockpit of a modified DC-8 cruising 39,000 ft. above Nevada in the early hours of Jan. 15, 2006. The plane, which is owned by NASA and operated jointly with the University of North Dakota, is on an intercept course with the fastest man-made object ever to enter Earth’s atmosphere—the Stardust spacecraft’s 101-pound Sample Return Capsule (SRC), which is heading home at meteoric speed after a seven-year, 2.9 billion-mile journey....
In Detroit, the horsepower war rages on. One automaker tops the others by packing the gaudiest performance number into an engine, and remains king of the hill until an ever more outrageous car comes along.So it is with power tools, too, and here comes Ridgid with the latest entry into the torque wars. The Model R8611506B cordless drill driver is outrageous, a beast of a power tool that can take on the kind of hole boring and screw driving only larger, corded machines could accomplish before....
Download PM’s list of America’s Top 25 Performance Roads.We’re half an hour into our L.A.-to-New York road trip and Ella is asleep. Seriously. She’s asleep in a brand-new $68,700 Daytona Sunset Orange Metallic Corvette Z06–the quickest, best-handling Vette that Chevy has ever produced. It’s like napping on the back of a Trident missile.Fortunately, she redeems herself by waking up when we turn off I-5 southeast of L.A. and take on the first of a series of high-performance side trips off the interstates–in this case, S22....
A salvage company has located the remains of a Russian warship lost during the the Russo-Japanese War. The battle-damaged cruiser Dmitrii Donskoi was scuttled off the coast of Korea in 1905, reportedly carrying a cargo of gold worth an estimated $130 billion in today’s dollars. An international consortium of companies plans to salvage the gold.According to the Telegraph, the Donskoi was found less than a mile off the coast of Ulleung island, at a depth of 1,423 feet in the Sea of Japan....
