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Pluto’s topography—including its massive heart-shaped feature—may influence its atmosphere more than researchers once thought. New research published this week suggests plumes of nitrogen that evaporate from the dwarf planet’s surface drive retro-rotational winds in its atmosphere.NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft imaged the dwarf planet in 2015, giving researchers their closest look yet.Thanks to the New Horizons spacecraft’s Pluto fly-by in 2015, we have vivid images of the mysterious dwarf planet at the edge of our solar system....

The world’s governments are not track to meet a goal of the 2015 Paris agreement of capping temperatures well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) before the year 2100, according to the United Nations. Patricia Espinosa, head of the Executive Secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), invoked the slew of natural disasters that have hit the planet in 2018 as she spoke of trying to avoid “catastrophic events....

Media Platforms Design TeamOver the past few days, pro-Russia groups inside the Ukraine have invited Vladimir Putin to send troops to protect them. NATO is moving more warplanes into the Baltic to counter Russia, which continues to station masses of ground troops on the Ukrainian border. North and South Korea fired artillery into the ocean in each other’s direction. Japan threatened to shoot down North Korean test missiles.Chances are you’ve heard about these cauldrons of antagonism and tension....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen low-flush toilets were first federally mandated in 1992, the results were mixed. “People had a certain number of unpleasant experiences with them,” acknowledges Doug Bennett, the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s conservation manager. These days, rigorous testing ensures that 1.6-gal. toilets outperform the 5- to 7-gal. models of the 1980s. Dishwashers, shower heads and faucets have been similarly improved, and front-loading washing machines use less than 40 percent as much hot water as older models....

How do you prevent folks from going out, having a good time, and then accidentally stumbling around and getting hit by a train? In Japan, the answer is you watch for drunk behavior via cameras.That’s what Japanese railway company JR West is doing at Kyobashi station in Osaka, Japan. They installed a system composed of 46 cameras this week that will automatically monitor for signs of drunkenness, including sleeping and waiting aimlessly....

The United States military has been flying jets since 1946. Autoauctionmall.com has put together a morphing GIF that celebrates many of the major fighter designs, starting with the F-1 Fury and continuing to today’s F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II.Here’s the full list of the aircraft depicted:F-1 Fury F-2 Banshee F-3 DemonF-4 Phantom F-5 Freedom FighterF-6 SkyrayF-7 Sea Dart F-8 CrusaderF-9 Cougar F-10 SkyknightF-11 Tiger F-14 Tomcat F-15E Strike EagleF-16 Fighting Falcon F-17 Cobra F-18 Hornet F-20 TigersharkF-22 RaptorF-23 Black WidowF-35 Lightning IIDesign trends over the decades are easy to pick out....

July 20, 2019, marked the 50th anniversary of one of mankind’s most impressive achievements: landing on the moon. And we’ve been celebrating all week with stories about the historic landing as well as taking some time to build LEGO’s new lunar lander kit. The 1,087-piece building set was developed in cooperation with NASA and recreates even small details of the Eagle lunar lander, including separate ascent and descent stages. The descent stage features gold-colored landing pads and panels just like the original Eagle, opening camera and laser hatches, a ladder, and the ascent stage, which has a detailed interior....

Douglas DC-3 equipped with the AgilePod under the fuselage.USAF/David DixonIn 1944 Germany launched the V-1 “Buzzbomb” against England—the first practical use of what we now call armed drones. In the 73 years since, UAVs have evolved from surveillance tools to full-fledged battlefield weapons. By 2011, the U.S. Air Force was training more pilots for advanced UAVs than for any other weapons system, and there’s been a steady stream of sensor testing to make drones better and better....

Q: Why would long cracks be showing up in the drywall ceiling of our garage for the first time in 12 years?-BOB B., CARLISLE, PENNSYLVANIAA: Garages can be surprisingly vulnerable structures. The house gets all the attention, and the garage is where the builder cuts costs. Take fire-taping, for instance. This is the minimalist technique used in garages in which the builder finishes drywall with a single application of tape and drywall compound, helping the structure achieve its fire rating (a measurement of resistance to flame spread) while holding down costs....

Media Platforms Design TeamAs Russia’s first homegrown airliner since the Soviet era, the Sukhoi Superjet 100 has been touted by the nation’s industrial establishment as the cornerstone of the country’s commercial aviation future. That future was instantly thrown into uncertainty last week when a while performing a demonstration flight over Indonesia, killing 45 people.Superjet prototype crashedThe 100-seat aircraft disappeared from radar about 20 minutes after taking off from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta for an hour-long flight to show off the new Superjet to representatives of two Indonesian customer airlines and other prospective buyers and industry insiders....

On Mars, methane is a sign of potential biological activity. On Earth, it’s the signs of a disaster-in-waiting. So while JPL’s Open Path Laser Spectrometer may have initially been meant for a Mars mission, it’s being put to the test on Earth, where a massive methane leak went undetected for weeks. NASA-JPL is working alongside MESA Labs to create a quadcopter equipped with the methane detector. While the detector is a specialized NASA instrument, it can be paired with any old quadcopter and still return accurate, in-depth results of methane activity....

Somewhere in Latin America, a small community of 50 farmers and weavers will be getting new, 3D-printed homes. They’ll be built in a 24-hour period by the San Francisco-based design firm Fuseproject, which is working in conjunction with the housing non-profit New Story and ICON, a construction technologies company.The location is undisclosed at the moment and will be revealed when construction is finished.View full post on YoutubeView full post on Instagram“You can shape the walls to have different functionality; you can create a shower stall that doesn’t have sharp corners,” Fuseproject founder Yves Béhar tells the New York Times....

Earlier this week, Hyundai announced that the Sonata would become the first car on the market to sport Google’s Android Auto, a new connected-car experience that the company announced during last year’s I/O developer conference. Now, on the eve of Google I/O 2015, another car manufacturer, Chevrolet, is announcing the vehicles in its lineup that will support the service, And there are a ton of them.Chevy will be offering Android Auto as well as Apple CarPlay support in 14 models....

There was plenty of fussing, fighting and political grandstanding, but in the end, the $787 billion stimulus bill passed. One sliver of the pie—$7.2 billion to be exact—has been allocated for broadband expansion to and improvement in “underserved areas.” That money is further split between two government departments: $4.7 billion goes to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is run by the Commerce Department; and another $2.5 billion goes to the Rural Development division of the Department of Agriculture....

Having already reimagined what the living room of the future should include, IKEA is setting its sights on the kitchen. The blue and yellow company’s vision of 2025 includes a “digital hub” full of Internet-connected devices.Concept Kitchen 2025, which IKEA unveiled at Milan Design Week, intertwines tech and common kitchen items to make cooking easier. The centerpiece of the ambitious plan is the Table for Living, which puts a high-tech spin on the lazy kitchen island....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe 1964 New York World’s fair featured a very special car, the Chrysler Turbine. I made the trip from Massachusetts with my parents just to see it. At the fair, there was a long line of people around the block, waiting for a ride. The gas turbine engine made a jet-like wooooooshhhhh noise as the car went around and around in a little circle. But I didn’t get a ride....

While NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured raw images of clouds of Jupiter, citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran enhanced it to look like a stunning artwork. In this photo, the clouds of Jupiter appear to be a beautiful, marbled swirl of colors and textures. According to NASA, Juno took the photo on its 13th close flyby of Jupiter, 9,600 miles from the planet’s cloud tops, above a northern latitude of 56 degrees....

The Hawaiian volcano Kīlauea began erupting on May 4, 2018. It wouldn’t stop until four months later, in September. The lava flows closed national parks, created new islands, and changed Hawaii’s coastline. Now we’re learning something else about Kīlauea: Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are revealing their study of this year’s eruption, and have come to the conclusion that the four-month explosion was “unprecedented.” Here’s why.When looking at volcanoes, scientists often focus on what’s known as the caldera, a volcanic crater similar to a cauldron....

According to the World Health Organization, 10 percent of all medical products in developing countries are substandard or falsified. Engineers have developed a sensor to test for real medicine based on an unusual source: a musical instrument known as the mbira, also known as a thumb piano. The new low-tech sensor was built with a scientific principle in mind, that frequencies of sound created by a musical instrument are determined by the instrument’s physical properties....

Experts are pleading with Congress to get a firm age limit on plutonium cores of U.S. nuclear weapons.A specific plutonium isotope powers nuclear weapons, but others power nuclear plants and space travel. The Trump administration wants to begin replacing cores, but a more scientific time frame could save a lot of “rush” money.The U.S. has nearly 4,000 stockpiled nuclear weapons, and Scientific American wonders what will happen to all of their aging plutonium cores....