Ruling the Seven Kingdoms requires cunning, ruthlessness, and a keen sense of whom you shouldn’t trust. Most will lose the game of thrones at the cost of their lives. And even if you win, you’re miserable.Still, it’s better than golf.The folks at Direct Golf have united the two worlds in this golf club version of Westeros’ most coveted chair, building the Iron Throne out of more than 300 irons and other clubs....
Media Platforms Design Team(Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and L.C. Johnson (University of Washington), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler)NASA has just released the biggest picture ever. Seriously. It would take more than 600 HD screens to display the entire billion-and-a-half pixels in this Hubble Space Telescope picture.The image is an amazing view of more than 100 million stars in our galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy (or Messier 31....
Audi e-Tron ConceptMedia Platforms Design TeamThe SpecsAudi’s e-Tron concept proves that driving an electric car doesn’t have to equate to spending time in something that would look more in place in Lego-land than on actual, human streets. With proportions reminiscent of the Audi R8 supercar, the e-Tron concept is nothing short of gorgeous. And the concept isn’t just all-electric–it’s also got quattro all-wheel drive. This time, all four wheels are powered via four separate motors, allowing an entirely new level of electronically controlled torque vectoring, and brilliant handling....
The last time we caught up with Aptera was on the eve of the 2010 Automotive X Prize competition. Even then, while engineers showed us a car that looked nearly ready for production, rumors swirled about the company’s health. Gloom-and-doom reports about Aptera returned this week, saying that the company has returned deposits to waiting customers. Is this a sign that Aptera is about to go belly up?“Absolutely not,” Aptera Chief Marketing Officer Marques McCammon responds....
View full post on YoutubeAeroMobil’s latest flying car prototype, the AeroMobil 3.0, is ready for takeoff. The car-plane or (plane-car) has passed certification by the Slovak Federation of Ultra-Light Flying, and the company is ready to put it into regular flight testing next.The 3.0 draws its power from a Rotax 912 engine custom-designed for light aircraft and capable of no-power landings. At 19.6 feet long with a 27.3 foot wingspan, the new flying car prototype is larger than the AeroMobil 2....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhat Is It? 2009 GMC Terrain The Specs The new Terrain is GMC’s version of the Chevrolet Equinox crossover. Under the hood is a new 182 hp 2.4-liter four cylinder with direct fuel injection that GM says will deliver 21 mpg city and 30 mpg on the highway. To help quiet the four cylinder Terrain, GM has fitted the vehicle with new Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) system, which uses a microphones to detect booming sounds inside the vehicle, and sends counteracting sound waves through the audio system speakers....
I turned the old pickup’s key and knew instantly–it was dead. There was no juice left in the battery. Someone had rescued a garage-find dead battery, charged it and shoehorned it into the truck on the cheap. The bad battery fried the aging alternator, and it wound up in my shop for a charging-system transplant. Hours later, after a new battery and alternator had been installed and I’d chased a couple of parasitic drains, the engine still wouldn’t start....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe Aptera Typ-1 might look like something straight out of George Jetson’s garage, but it’s a real car. And it’s a real look at our possible future when it comes to emissions-free transportation. We recently sat down with Aptera CEO Steve Fambro to get a better idea of this all-electric three-wheeler’s production realities. According to Fambro, the two-speed Typ-1 will weigh in at less than 1500 pounds (even with solar panels and LEDs inside) and go 120 miles on a single 110-volt charge—and it’s coming to market next year (you can make your reservation now)....
Media Platforms Design TeamUsing a plastic chip, doctors may soon be able to detect a much wider range of cancer cells in their patients’ blood, according to a study published yesterday in . Their work focuses on a new version of the , a technology first developed in 2007 to detect , the cells that leave a tumor and travel through the bloodstream to metastasize in other parts of the body....
When I settled into a cab at Washington’s Union Station last night, the driver amiably asked why I’m visiting the capital. “I’m here for an astrobiology conference,” I said. “Astrology?” he pronounced in a thick Cambodian accent. “No, as-tro-biology. It’s the search for life in the universe.” “Ah,” he replied, “that’s my area of study! I wrote a book on the solar system.” John, it turns out, is a radio broadcaster for Voice of America by day, a cab driver by night, and has a masters in philosophy, which he taught before immigrating to the United States 30 years ago—a week before Communist forces captured Phnom Penh....
It was the weekend they’d been waiting for all year. After an early season marked by disappointing snowfall, friends Jason Crawford, 27, Brett Toney, 27, and Kris Rains, 26, awoke Feb. 17, 2007, to find the hills around Helena, Mont., buried in fresh powder. “It was the best snow we’d had all season,” Crawford says. “We were pretty anxious to get out.“The snowmobilers’ destination was a remote spot called the North Fork Bowl, deep within the Big Belt mountains....
With 15-foot-high piles of snow around Boston, biking to work became even more of a hassle. But Beantown’s intrepid bicycle commuters refused to let the winter from hell stand in their way, instead turning the city into a giant obstacle course, complete with tunnels.One such tunnel cut 40 feet through the snowdrift. We say “cut” in past tense because, sadly, someone has since destroyed their handywork. It may have been to prevent injuries, which is understandable watching people careen through it in this video, but they didn’t exactly leave a note to say their motives....
Media Platforms Design TeamJames Balog is peering out the window of an 8th Ave. tower in Manhattan when the proper comparison comes to his mind. “Imagine all the skyscrapers in New York falling over at once,” he tells PM over the phone. “It’s that sudden, and incredibly sad.“Balog’s apocalyptic choice of imagery is his way of describing a calving event, when a huge chunk of ice breaks free from a glacier, and Balog has seen footage of rapture from right where it happened....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhen Hefty and Glad plastic bags were introduced in the 1960s, people didn’t quite know what to do with them. In New York, people put trash straight into the can and out to the curb until 1969, when mayor John Lindsay asked residents to forgo the noisy, smelly metal can and start putting their garbage into disposable bags. The pilot project was a big success, and plastic garbage bags replaced metal trash cans all across the country....
Media Platforms Design TeamAutomotive companies keep shoving more high-tech monitoring devices and software into our vehicles with navigation systems, real-time fuel economy gauges, mp3 players, cell phone connectivity, satellite radio and ever more service and safety reminders making their way into all vehicles, not just your high-end sedans. With in-car WiFi just around the corner–and the ensuing apps and upgraded software capabilities–the problem then revolves around how the driver can control everything safely and simply....
Media Platforms Design TeamLAS VEGAS—GM has a lot of presence at CES, and they weren’t the only car company here (I also visited BMW, but more of that later). I have a big interest in alternative vehicles—I drive a Toyota hybrid SUV myself—and so I was happy when GM’s Angela Coletti arranged for me to take a spin in their fuel-cell electric Chevy Equinox. What was it like? It was cool, though I have some reservations about the whole hydrogen car scene....
It’s only the second time the world’s most prestigious award has been given to an environmentalist, but this is a big one: Former vice president turned activist Al Gore will share the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for their push to raise awareness of global warming.In its announcement this morning, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said Gore “is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted” to fight climate change—an issue it said should be “treated with the utmost seriousness....
Media Platforms Design TeamIf you tried to use your laptop or mobile phone on Venus, where the average temperature is 867 degrees Fahrenheit, frying the electronics would not be your main concern. Silicon, the building block of all modern computing, can actually withstand such intense temperatures. It’s the data itself, stored within the semiconductor material, that would suffer.Scientists at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio, have found a way to overcome high-temperature computing problems by using tiny mechanical parts called—wait for it—nano-electromechanical switches....
Media Platforms Design TeamI want to make a friends home guitar recording my ringtone, but when I load it onto my phone, it doesnt show up as a ring option. Is there a way to turn the file into something ringable? The key is getting the phone to recognize the file as not just an audio file, but specifically a ringtone audio file. To do that, you can either use a mobile app or do some file finagling on a computer....
The EquipmentMy first need was suitable boats. Conveniently, I already possessed the perfect scout boat, a fiberglass, center-console 21V-150XV specially built for a POPULAR MECHANICS outboard-motor test by Bill and Dale Kenner at Kenner Boats. Fitted with a 4-stroke Honda 115-hp outboard on a Power-Lift, this superb all-arounder could idle all day while we pick a channel up the Missouri, smash through surf in The Dalles of the Columbia, float in 8 in....
