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View full post on TwitterThe BBC is reporting that a vintage Spitfire made a crash landing in a field outside of Kent, England today. The pilot, according to a responder on the scene “only suffered minor injuries and was treated at the scene and was not taken to hospital.” The plane, however, is leaking a large amount of aviation fuel and one wing and propellers have snapped off. The pilot, Rob Davies, speaking to Kent Online, said, “I’m fine, it was a very simple engine failure, I walked away unscathed....

AVELLA, Pa. – The reliability of Pennsylvania’s voting machines was as important as getting people to the polls during yesterday’s much-anticipated Democratic primary, which ended in a key win for Senator Hillary Clinton over Senator Barack Obama. For a nationwide e-vote process that has received as many criticisms and cutbacks as expedited results and accurate counts, residents here and throughout this bellwether state seemed to come away impressed with new high-tech interfaces....

Editor’s note: This is a spoiler-free review. You’re safe to proceed. Star Wars is defined as fantasy rather than science fiction, and the difference is in function. Science fiction is speculative and responsive; it engages with the present and poses ideas, implications, and alternatives concerning the human experience. Fantasy is the opposite. It’s transportive. It’s a mechanism for escaping everyday rules and responsibilities to go somewhere better. Star Wars has always been about escape, and The Rise of Skywalker is desperate to give that to you....

The medals for the Japanese Summer Olympics in 2020 won’t be made from newly mined metals. Instead, the Tokyo games will use medals made of recycled phones.While Olympic medals have varied in their looks in the past, the basic elements have stayed constant. One side of the medal features some version of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, and gold medals must have, according to Olympic rules, “at least 6 grams of pure gold, while the other two medals are of silver of at least 925-1000 grade....

Ford has issued a massive recall for it’s best-selling F-150 truck. Two million select 2015-2018 Ford F-150 Regular Cab and SuperCrew Cab vehicles in North America are being recalled for faulty driver and front passenger seat belt pretensioners.Ford has determined that some front seat belt pretensioners can generate sparks when they deploy, causing a fire hazard that may ignite materials in the B-pillar. There have been 17 reports of smoke or fire in the USA and six in Canada, which is more then enough to issue this recall....

In 1964, Austrian journalist Gerhard Pistor walked into a Vienna travel agency with a simple proposition. He’d like to fly to the moon, and if possible, he’d like to fly there on Pan Am. The travel agency, presumably dumbfounded by this request, decided to simply do its job and make the ask: It forwarded the impossible request to the airline, the legend goes, where it attracted the attention of Juan Trippe, the notoriously brash and publicity-thirsty CEO of Pan American World Airways, the world’s most popular airline....

Media Platforms Design TeamThere’s a dizzying variety of flooring available today, including carpeting, plastic laminate, ceramic tile, and vinyl. Yet, according to the National Wood Flooring Association, Americans bought more than 900 million square feet of wood flooring every year from 2002 to 2011. The widespread popularity of wood flooring continues to grow for one simple reason: There’s no substitute for the warmth and natural beauty of real wood.Wood flooring comes in dozens of styles and sizes, but there are only two basic types: solid wood and engineered wood....

Q: My headlights are always collecting water inside. The dealer says he can replace them, but they’re very expensive, and he wouldn’t guarantee that the new headlights wouldn’t collect water also. I took out the headlamp assemblies and coated all of the seams between the clear lens and the back with bathtub caulk, and gooped up the rubber dingus that goes over the headlight wires with a lot more caulk, but it didn’t help a bit....

There is no shortage of challenges to overcome to build an energy-positive fusion reactor. Researchers have been able to spark nuclear fusion reactions for years, heating hydrogen up to the point that it will fuse into helium, but the reaction typically requires more energy input than it produces—or is a thermonuclear bomb.In addition to getting the correct “recipe” of hydrogen ions and deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen) ions and helium-3, finding a way to heat the mixture, and finding a way to suspend the fuel (most commonly with magnetic confinement), fusion researchers will also need to address a more fundamental problem: How do you build a reactor that can stand up to the immense temperatures and pressures of nuclear fusion?...

TUSCON, Arizona – Though mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab may have temporarily been at the helm of the Phoenix Mars Lander, it’s the science team here at the University of Arizona that will steer the rest of the landmark mission–and the university’s Lunar and Planetary Lab was every bit as exciting a place to watch the landing unfold. The soundstage-like area known as the Payload Interoperability Test Bed (or PIT), is normally home to engineers futzing around with the Phoenix robotic arm....

A collision between a bird and a F-35 Joint Strike Fighter caused more than two million dollars in damage and grounded the jet until repairs are completed. The pilot of the aircraft, based in Japan, was not injured, but the incident highlights how even the most high tech aircraft can be instantly crippled—sometimes with fatal consequences—by a simple collision with wildlife.The incident took place on May 7th and Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni....

The U.S. Army and Marine Corps will jointly test a so-called “active protection” system. These tanks and other armored vehicles will be fitted with an Israeli-developed system that shoots down and jams enemy anti-tank weapons. According to U.S. Naval Institute News, this will be the first test of Trophy on American equipment.The Army is leasing four Trophy units, enough for a platoon, and will test them on M1A2 tanks and Stryker interim armored vehicles....

They’re among the most stunning natural wonders in the world, and unlike, say, the Grand Canyon, the Northern Lights aren’t constant. Auroras are hyperbolic in their beauty, injecting levels of color into the night sky that feel straight out of works of fiction. But what are they, exactly?It’s still something of a mystery. Which is astonishing, considering how long humanity has been aware of their existence. Many northern cultures, from Finnish to Inuit, have traditions and myths based on auroras....

Wind and solar power are getting cheaper every day, and lower costs means renewable energy is giving coal and nuclear power a run for its money—quite literally. A year ago, solar power became the world’s cheapest form of energy, and wind and solar are the best investments in large swaths of the U.S. Now, a new report from financial firm Lazard Ltd. concludes that solar and wind are so cheap that building new wind and solar farms costs less money than continuing to run current coal or nuclear plants....

Media Platforms Design TeamPasadena, Calif.—NASA engineers built the Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity, here at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. And they watched as it streaked towards the surface of Mars, unable to do anything but monitoring the spacecraft’s actions more than 2 million miles away.After each successful part of the mission, the comforting word came from mission control: “We’ve got heartbeat tones.” These beeps meant the spacecraft-turned-aircraft was still healthy....

Reportedly found in the Austrian town of Fuschl am See, researchers are claiming they have dug up what looks like a 2,800-year-old Mesopotamian clay tablet cell phone. (Judging by the picture quality, the photos were also taken on a 2,800-year-old cell phone.)According to the very reputable mysteriousuniverse.org, not much is known about what archaeologists were looking for when they came across this piece of not-so-terrestrial history, but it probably wasn’t clay Sumerian tablets from the 13th century BCE....

Apple just announced its newest slate of iPhones. We now have the iPhone XS and XS Max, successors to the exorbitantly priced iPhone X. But, and perhaps more interestingly, we also have the iPhone XR, an edge-to-edge iPhone in the style of the X, but with a few modifications to make it a bit cheaper so it starts at $750 instead of $1,000 or $1,100 like the iPhone XS and XS Max....

Media Platforms Design TeamToyota is taking a green step into 2010 with the launch of the Prius Plug-In Hybrid. Although derived from the third-generation Prius, the plug-in debuts Toyota’s first lithium-ion battery. Toyota has joined forces with battery production company Panasonic Electric Vehicle Energy to create this first-generation battery design. What does lithium-ion offer for the new Prius? The battery enables the driver to reach increased speeds of up to 60 mph while in the electric-only mode....

Ford is no stranger to building fold-up e-bikes, the idea being that you could store them in the back of your Ford car and then take them out, unfold, and ride when you want to roll on two wheels instead of four. Its third and newest creation is called MoDe:Flex, and the company proclaims that this is the folding smart bike for the cycling enthusiast. We don’t have all the details on the MoDe: Flex—just what Ford shows off in this new video....

Four more members of the Wild Boars—the Thai soccer team trapped in a cave whose predicament has fascinated the world—have been rescued. That brings the number of freed boys up to 8 out of 12. The team’s coach remains below with the four remaining trapped boys.Although rain clouds threatened to impair today’s effort, the good weather held, allowing the same divers from yesterday’s successful rescue to re-enter the winding Tham Luang cave complex....