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Media Platforms Design TeamCoast Guard aircraft commander Jason Evans pointed his MH-60 Jayhawk directly into sustained 50 knot winds as he came into a hover 40 feet above the deck of the oil rig Kulluk. Below him, the rig plunged up and down in swells as high as 30 feet. It was the afternoon of Saturday, December 29, two days after a buckle on the tow line connecting the conical oil rig to the Shell tug Aiviq broke, leaving the Kulluk powerless is violent Gulf of Alaska seas....

If you’re driving around off-road in the Russian wilderness, you are going to come across all sorts of snow, ice, mud, dirt, logs, you name it. So if you’re taking your all terrain vehicle to Siberia, it better be able to tackle all terrains. And from the looks of it, these little big-wheeled trucks can do just that, even if they don’t look super imposing while they’re doing it. View full post on YoutubeYou can suss out a lot about the little buggers just from Alex Rudoi’s video of them in action above....

Maybe in a few hundred years we’ll finally have our personalized spaceships. When we do, the landed gentry will be driving this sleek, gravity defying beast.Flavio Manzoni, a Ferrari designer who worked on the FXX K and other wild rides for the company, has already built a portfolio of cars that look like a spaceship, inside and out. Now he’s taking it one step further. Inspired by a childhood obsession with UFOs and science fiction, Manzoni rendered a series of designs for the spaceship of the future....

The U.S. Marine Corps used a new portable jammer system last week to jam an Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle, forcing it to pitch into the sea. The new Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System (LMADIS) jams the signal between drones and their operators, leaving them at the mercy of physics, and inevitably, gravity.The incident took place in the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Gulf of Oman to the Persian Gulf....

An exercise designed to test the Air Force, Navy, and Marines’ ability to fly and fight together has yielded a rare and remarkable moment: All five fighter jets currently flown by the services flying in formation, possibly for the first time. The video was taken during this month’s Orange Flag, a sister exercise to the famous Red Flag:View full post on YoutubeA fact that people know, but probably don’t spend much time pondering, is that the U....

Media Platforms Design TeamWolfram Research is famous for its Mathematica scientific computational language, which gave rise to the Wolfram Alpha answer engine. But lately founder Stephen Wolfram has startled commentators with a promising to introduce a new programming language (called Wolfram Language) that’s intended to do, well, just about everything. blog postWolfram mentioned that the new language would handle natural-language input, raising the possibility that the language would be the long-awaited way for nonprogrammers to write programs using ordinary English rather than frightfully arcane computer languages such as Java and Python, where even a misplaced semicolon can be catastrophic....

Anyone who’s visited a middle-school science fair is familiar the potato’s ability to generate electricity. Now scientists from New Jersey’s Stevens Institute of Technology have discovered a new source of electricity that grows in the ground (and goes great with a salad): classic white button mushrooms.The scientists added 3D-printed clusters of cyanobacteria to the mushroom’s cap, which gave the fungi the ability to generate electricity. Researchers also put in graphene nanoribbons to collect the current....

Into EternityMedia Platforms Design TeamThere are nearly 300,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel on the planet, stored in above-ground facilities where they are vulnerable to natural disaster and war—not to mention all the expense for security and maintenance. The government of Finland has come up with what it thinks is a permanent solution to the problem of nuclear waste: Bury it 1600 feet under the ground in bedrock. They’re calling the facility Onkalo—or “hiding place”—and this is the subject of director Michael Madsen’s documentary Into Eternity, which has its North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival....

The stranglehold of 16 gigs is over. During today’s iPhone 7 announcement, Apple said the device’s storage would start at 32 GB, with 128 GB and 256 GB options available for not only 7 and 7 Plus, but also older phones like the 6S. It’s a victory that is generations overdue, and one that will do wonders for iPhone users who are constantly reaching their device’s capacity and finding themselves forced to delete apps or old pictures to keep going....

Boeing unveiled a surprise new aircraft yesterday, an uncrewed drone designed to fly alongside traditional aircraft in battle. The aircraft, known as the Loyal Wingman, is being developed in Australia as a rapidly configurable platform capable of a variety of tasks to support manned aircraft on dangerous missions. The aircraft was announced at the International Airshow at Avalon, Australia. Boeing Australia will develop three aircraft, officially known as “Loyal Wingman – Advanced Development Program....

Bose, the company you probably know best for noise-canceling airplane headphones, is getting into the sunglasses business. But the coolest part of the Frames is that they are a canvas for new software.Bose Frames will work like Bluetooth earbuds. The part of the temple that sits near your ear plays audio (music, calls, voice assistants) that only the wearer can hear. It’s controlled with a microphone and a multifunction button embedded in the right temple....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today released the , the of which appeared last fall. The 2600-page document underlines the evidence that the world has already begun to feel the impacts of climate change.second part of its Fifth Assessment Reportfirst half"We’re not in an era where climate change is a future hypothetical," Stanford University ecologist Christopher Field said during a press conference today. “We live in a world where impacts of climate change that have already occurred are widespread and consequential....

Researchers working in Indonesia have found the official oldest known cave painting to date.Scientists date cave paintings using a combination of geology, radiation, and chemistry.Motifs and subjects in these ancient works tell us a great deal about what humans were capable of and thinking about.Scientists have confirmed that cave artwork found in a cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is the earliest ever found at 44,000 years old. The new record holder replaces other Indonesian cave paintings, including previously discovered just 35,000 year old paintings elsewhere on Sulawesi....

If you use Firefox, you’ll see a change to your browser’s security encryption starting today.According to a blog post from Mozilla, Firefox’s parent company, the browser will be moving to DNS over HTTPS (DoH) standard.What’s that? It’s a fancy term that basically increases user privacy and security by preventing man-in-the-middle attacks.Let’s say you’re an engineer and you want to send a confidential set of graphics to your attorney, complete with specs for a new patent application you want to file soon....

Popular Mechanics gaming correspondent Brittany Vincent is on the scene this week at the 2019 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles. Check back all week to see her dispatches from the trade show, including the coolest upcoming games and big announcements from major developers.Another day of E3 is in the books, and there’s still so much left on the show floor to see that it’s hard to believe the biggest gaming conference of the year is just about to draw to a close....

Media Platforms Design TeamNASA isn’t heading back to the moon anytime soon, with astronauts or robots, but that doesn’t mean there are no lunar races to follow.Today the organizers of the Google Lunar X Prize announced the final roster of teams competing in a $30 million race to the lunar surface. And much to their surprise, 29 teams have signed on to the mission, more than they ever expected. “When we started this thing [in 2007], we were hopeful that we’d have a dozen teams,” says Will Pomerantz, senior director for space prizes at the X Prize Foundation....

Everybody talks about green buildings today, fine structures with green accolades attached to them. But the average commercial construction site where that masterpiece was built? In many cases, it’s a hell hole of air pollution, dust, noise, and vibration. Diesel and gas engine generators rumble on—hour after hour—belching soot and carbon monoxide while small two-stroke and four-stroke engines howl to power everything from small generators to air compressors.But Milwaukee Electric Tool is seeking to change that and revolutionize the construction industry with one of the most aggressive takes on cordless tool power the construction industry has seen....

The Chinese Air Force is building a mystery missile designed to turn the tables on America’s air power advantage. The weapon, tentatively known as PL-XX, is a very-long-range missile designed to strike enemy aircraft loitering just beyond the edge of an air battle. The point is to shoot down the tankers, airborne early warning planes, and other support aircraft that U.S. combat jets rely upon during wartime. Stripped of these forces, U....

The Los Angeles-class USS Hartford surfaces in the Arctic during ICEX 2018.U.S. Navy/Michael H. LeeA submarine bursting through the Arctic ice is a powerful image. But it’s not an easy one to pull off. “The arctic environment is very unique and presents numerous challenges,” Commander Tommy Crosby told Popular Mechanics. “Our focus is to ensure we conduct every surfacing safely and effectively.”The Arctic is a convenient hiding spot, since sea ice provides submarines with cover making them almost impossible to detect from the air....

Chandrayaan-2 has a launch date. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), the country’s equivalent of NASA, has announced that its lunar lander will launch between July 9 and 16, 2019, when proper weather conditions present themselves. ISRO scientists expect the lander to touch down on the moon’s surface around September 6.View full post on TwitterOnce on the surface, scientists hope Chandrayaan-2 will follow in the steps of its predecessor, the lunar probe Chandrayaan-1, which never touched the surface in the search for water....