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I sold my skis before I moved to North Carolina. That turned out to be a dumb move, because this subtropical state actually has the highest mountains on the East Coast, and it gets plenty cold from December through February. For a few months each winter, you can go skiing and snow tubing and sledding. But you’ll likely be doing these things at a place with man-made snow. You can count on the cold—where I live, one recent February averaged 27 degrees for the entire month—but you can’t count on the snow....

For some reason, the digital clock in the gauge cluster reads September 20, 2000. Factory glitch. This is appropriate, because the Lamborghini Aventador Superveloce is a time traveler of sorts, a car that evokes a bygone conception of an exotic: the definitive Lambo. Like its predecessors—the Countach, Diablo, and Murciélago—the Aventador SV is an impossibly wide, ridiculously low-slung blade of a car, with doors that scissor skyward and a huge V-12 behind the seats....

Sci-fi fans got a monster streaming surprise this year. Right after the Super Bowl, Netflix launched The Cloverfield Paradox, a surprise new entry in the franchise. It wasn’t all that good. An amusing B-picture and a reasonable excuse for chugging light beer, sure, but that’s about it.Sometimes movies fail. But Netflix’s foray into sci/fi horror was prefaced by last year’s fantasy flop, Bright, and when The Cloverfield Paradox failed, Netflix needed to right the sci-fi ship, so it turned to director Duncan Jones....

Researchers at Washington University and the University of Illinois had developed soft, flexible devices that can be implanted into a patient’s body and theoretically block pain signals from the spinal cord or other parts of the body before those signals reach the brain. Considering that pain is typically something that draws your attention to an area that needs treatment, simply turning it off and ignoring the problem is generally not an ideal solution, so this technology is designed to be a last-resort method of pain relief when other treatments have failed....

Media Platforms Design TeamGlenn Martin’s new jetpack (top) has riled an otherwise chummy niche industry, with early questions on the device’s technology and safety coming from all three main competitors: Thunderbolt Aerosystems, TAM and JetPack International (bottom left to right).The jet-pack family seems to have a new member, but other players in this notoriously long-shot industry aren’t exactly welcoming the newest rocketeer to the party.It’s not just the fancy flight of futurists anymore: There is an industry for personal rocket belts....

The 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which vanished from radar not long after embarking on a routine journey to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, has proved one of the most confounding mysteries in the history of aviation. Believed to have plummeted into the Indian Ocean, the flight has been the subject of two exhaustive search operations which have yielded fleeting returns of the wreckage. A sweep of 112,000 square kilometers of deep ocean between southern Indonesia and western Australia concluded earlier this year....

A new report from the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) adds to the deluge of recent horrifying environmental news about the increasing pressure of climate change and extinctions that are happening at such a pace that nature cannot keep up. According to the WWF’s Living Planet Report, in just the last 40 years, humans are responsible for wiping out 60 percent of the Earth’s wildlife. The staggering loss is reflected in the organization’s Living Planet Index, which tracks global biodiversity by measuring the abundance of mammals, reptiles, birds, and other species....

The march towards electric cars will continue to accelerate. By 2025, 1 of every 6 cars sold will be electric, according to a new study by Swiss global financial services company UBS. The report, which surveyed approximately 10,000 consumers, noted buyers’ strong positive interest in the idea of electric cars, coupled with a declining popularity in diesel engines (a bigger deal in Europe). In addition, the two major road blocks to buying electric cars—pricing and the lack of a charging station infrastructure—are slowly becoming smaller hurdles....

Media Platforms Design TeamYou don’t need to build a house from scratch to take advantage of smart new solar technology, but that’s exactly what 18 college and university teams did for the Solar Decathlon, a competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. The students spent three years designing houses powered exclusively by solar energy, and this past October transported them to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where the doors were thrown open to the public....

It was always a long shot that there would be life on Earth, especially considering that no other planet ever discovered has matched our planet’s ability to sustain living organisms. A new study looks at the key ingredients in the atmosphere when the first life was forming in the hopes of how living beings came into existence.The researchers from MIT and Harvard focuses on molecules known as sulfidic anions. Sulfur is an essential element to life as crucial several amino acids are sulfuric in nature....

Media Platforms Design TeamFor the first time ever, Apple launched a second new iPhone model aimed at budget-conscious buyers: the iPhone 5c. Following months of rumors, Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller finally unveiled the mid-grade iPhone today at a special event in Cupertino—and it looks exactly like the leaks that have seeped out on the Internet. “A few of you might have seen some shots on the web,” Schiller quipped onstage before the big reveal....

Kepler, NASA’s venerable planet-hunting telescope, is officially going offline. Permanently.We knew this day was coming. NASA warned that Kepler’s demise was imminent in March, citing a shortage of fuel as it neared a decade of service—almost three times its original expected lifespan of 3.5 years—since launching in 2009.“We found the [fuel] pressure dropped significantly, from 90 psi to 30, and this really marked the rest of the fuel we had,” Jeff Coughlin, a SETI Institute scientist who works on the Kepler mission, told Popular Mechanics....

Media Platforms Design TeamAdam Savage and Jamie Hyneman have appeared on “The Simpsons.” Now, the Mythbusters are going to take on “The Simpsons.” For their show’s season premiere in January, Entertainment Weekly reports, Adam and Jamie are going to take on myths straight out of Evergreen Terrace. Just how do you put the science of an animated show to the test? The Mythbusters say Springfield abounds with examples to which they could apply some five-fingered scrutiny....

The U.S. Air Force’s secretive new RQ-180 drone is flying from a base in Northern California.The drone reportedly resembles the B-2 bomber. The RQ-180 was designed and flown at Area 51 and is rumored to have flown to the North Pole as a graduation test. The U.S. Air Force is secretly flying a huge new drone from a base in Northern California. The RQ-180 a high altitude, long endurance drone reconnaissance drone, is reportedly operating from Beale Air Force Base, the former home of the SR-71 Blackbird and U-2 spy planes....

The U.S. Army is on the verge of retiring the Vietnam-era 5.56-millimeter caliber bullet.The Army believes the older bullet has insufficient range, armor penetrating power. The new bullet and gun combination will shoot farther, penetrate thicker armor, and weigh less, likely involving new technologies to help the service reach its goals. The U.S. Army is finally poised to field a new bullet designed to penetrate body armor at greater ranges. The new round is part of an overall shift towards big power warfare, where combat against adversaries such as the Chinese or Russian armies could lead to soldiers squaring off with enemies fielding the latest body armor....

The United States approved the sale of Javelin missiles to Ukraine in December, making an audacious geopolitical step. The Javelin is one of the deadliest anti-tank missiles ever designed and will bolster Ukraine’s defenses in its military showdown with Russia. The sale is aimed squarely at Russia’s large and powerful tank fleet.The Javelin missile was designed in the late 1980s and early ’90s to be the standard U.S. medium-range anti-tank missile....

ENTER NOWSpring is here and summer is quickly approaching, and that means the outdoors are waiting. But if you’re going to be spending your time in nature, you’re going to need the right gear to take it on. That’s why Popular Mechanics is teaming up with ReddyYeti to offer our readers a chance to win $2,000 worth of gear. And the best part? Signing up is completely free.Here’s a list of what the giveaway includes:Terracea Station/Peak CW Insulated Jacket My Trail Fork Variety Pack$250 gift card to Buffalo Jackson$100 gift card to Tin Lid Co....

Media Platforms Design TeamLAS VEGAS — Last night was CES Unveiled, the “official” preview event before the Consumer Electronics Show press day, which is before the official opening of CES … but after , which happened two months ago. This is the place where journalists go to get an advance peek at products which will be making news all next week … but might have already made news when they were first unveiled at the first CES Unveiled in New York....

The U.S. Navy says three videos showing reported encounters between Navy aircraft and UFOs are real.But a Navy spokesperson says the clips show “unexplained aerial phenomena,” which is not to say that they’re piloted by aliens.While the videos are unclassified, the Navy says they were never cleared for release.The U.S. Navy has confirmed that three online videos purportedly showing UFOs are genuine. The service says the videos, taken by Navy pilots, show “unexplained aerial phenomena,” but also states that the clips should have never been released to the public in the first place....

A marine biologist has captured footage of a ‘dreaming’ octopus rapidly changing color.This behavior is atypical for animals with the ability to change their coloring, making it all that more fascinating.The video is footage from a PBS documentary set to premiere October 2 at 8 p.m. central time.Mesmerizing footage of Heidi, a ‘dreaming’ octopus that changes color and patterning as she slumbers, has been released—it’s especially exciting because this is an uncommon occurrence in the animal kingdom....