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It’s awfully quiet in space, which is a problem if you’re trying to make a blockbuster movie. Some space flicks end up sparse and quiet, which is hard to pull off if you’re not Stanley Kubrick. Some ignore the laws of physics in favor of lots of unrealistic explosions. It’s hard to get it right.So space lovers has a reason to be nervous about The Martian, in which Matt Damon stars a marooned astronaut who must figure out how to survive alone on a hostile planet....

View full post on TwitterAs part of the intense, all-encompassing Star Wars: The Force Awakens marketing event known as Force Friday, Uber has partnered with Hot Wheels to offer rides around Manhattan in Stormtrooper cars.How does it work? Well, if you’re looking for a ride in one of these shiny buggies until 5 p.m. today in Manhattan (specifically below 59th Street), you need to open up Uber and enter in the special “HOTWHEELSFF” promotional code, select the HOT WHEELS option, and pray....

Media Platforms Design TeamDespite heavy rains this week, throughout much of the Midwest and Southern U.S., forcing residents to pump more water from deep underground. Now a new paper in points out that our nation’s groundwater reserves are also being depleted throughout large swaths of the U.S., partly because we’re not doing a good job of keeping track of how much groundwater we’re extracting versus how much gets replenished through precipitation....

With its gullwing doors and stainless steel skin, the DeLorean DMC-12 certainly looked the part of a hot sports car during its star turn in Back to the Future. But in reality, the guts couldn’t match the flashy exterior. It was wimpy. So wimpy, in fact, that a blogger at Jalopnik is questioning the event that sets the whole BTTF story in motion: Marty going 88 mph in the mall parking lot to go back in time in the first place....

Media Platforms Design Team In the wake of Russia’s physical and cyber invasions of Georgia, Westerners (and others the world over) are being reminded of Russia’s military might. Though today Americans may be more concerned about Russian hackers than about an Iron Curtain, during the 1970s Russia’s military—and naval—strength was very much on our minds. In September 1972, PM reported on the growing strength of the U.S.S.R.’s navy, and what the U....

Media Platforms Design TeamAs Sikorsky Aircraft rolled out its new CH-53K heavy-lift helicopter, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James F. Amos, introduced the name: King Stallion.Slated to be operational in 2019, the King Stallion is among the first digitally designed helicopters, presaging a new generation of rotorcraft that will emerge in the next decade and a half. They’ll be faster, more efficient, more lethal, and more capable.While wags immediately observed that King Stallion sounds vaguely pornographic, it’s actually a play on the CH-53K’s predecessors....

In a test last Wednesday in Houston, Continental became the first U.S. airline to test synthetic paraffinic kerosenes–otherwise known as jet biofuels. Engineers filled one of the Boeing 737-800’s twin engines (which required no modifications) with a 50/50 blend of oils from jatropha and algae and regular Jet A1 fuel. During the 90-minute flight, pilots turned the engine off and on and abruptly accelerated and slowed down the aircraft. The biofuel performed flawlessly–and even appeared to get better fuel economy than the engine running off traditional Jet A1....

Media Platforms Design TeamFrom a startup snagging headlines to DIYers posting plans, water-powered cars have been all over the Web recently–not to mention stuffing my email inbox.Yes, you can run your car on water. All it takes is to build a “water-burning hybrid” is the installation of a simple, often home-made electrolysis cell under the hood of your vehicle. The key is to take electricity from the car’s electrical system to electrolyze water into a gaseous mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, often referred to as Brown’s Gas or HHO or oxyhydrogen....

Media Platforms Design Team1. Invisibility Cloak (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)Why We Want It Besides the fact that it would be supercool—and supereasy—to scare people? There are endless spy applications.Can We Get It? Cloaking technology does exist—but it’s more like a shed than a cloak. A team of scientists from Duke University and Imperial Co]llege London created a “cloak” that deflects microwaves around an object and restores them on the other side....

Trash collection isn’t just a dirty business. It’s a noisy one, too, and having humans perform this function more or less guarantees this fact, as bins can be heavy, trucks are loud, and nothing about our system for picking up garbage was designed with quietness in mind.Volvo wants to change that.According to its press release, Volvo is “working on a joint venture” with several universities and a waste recycling company to create a robot that works together with a garbage truck and human driver to collect trash....

Media Platforms Design TeamComing up with war scenarios involving North Korea has become something of a cottage industry among journalists, think tankers and politicians. It’s even inspired a contest in Seoul. But there’s a reason for the enduring popularity of this type of scenario building: with a standing army of over a million people, a conflict with North Korea has the potential to morph into full-scale war the likes of which hasn’t been seen for decades....

Media Platforms Design TeamCSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope, which has been used to confirm a population of Fast Radio Bursts, is shown superimposed on an image showing the distribution of gas in our Galaxy. Credit: Swinburne Astronomy Production.A single, gleaming flash of radio waves zooms toward us from halfway across the universe. Where it came from, nobody was sure, and it was gone in an instant.The Lorimer burst, named after the astronomer who discovered it in a stack of half-a-decade old records, has stumped scientists for the last six years....

Media Platforms Design Team LOS ANGELES—Ducati’s 2009 Monster 1100 follows hard on the heels of the new, second-generation Ducati Monster 696 we rode recently—a machine that put everyone on notice about what Ducati can do when it has enough money and motivation. The first-generation Monster was developed (way back in 1993) in order to provide the company with an entry-level model that would increase overall sales as much as it might lend impetus to the European naked-bike fad....

Sure, you can use the wonders of web-based video calling to speak to the parents back east, but its potential goes way beyond that. How about using it to keep watch on your home while you’re at the office or out of town altogether?It’s not as difficult as you might think and as usual there are a number of alternative approaches to match your budget and current level of tech-savviness. As long as there’s Wi-Fi at your home, you can set up a camera to keep watch on what’s happening....

Media Platforms Design TeamFireflies could be slowly flickering out of existence. Serious bug watchers think they’ve observed a recent decline, but scientists aren’t certain—firefly populations go through natural booms and busts. Getting a read on them is difficult, says Don Salvatore, coordinator of the Firefly Watch project at the Museum of Science, Boston. “Fireflies are much more complex than people realize,” he says. “It’s not like counting birds or flowers or butterflies....

Bohemain Butterfly Bicycle BasketMedia Platforms Design TeamThis is a requirement for cruising knitting circles and hackey sack tourneys. Suggested uses: vinyl records, Polaroid camera.LED Images for Bike WheelsMedia Platforms Design TeamThis is how to pimp your wheels ’80s arcade style. And try a Space Invaders theme if PacMan is not your bag. Homemade Pedal CageMedia Platforms Design TeamPedal cages add power on the upstroke to improve pedaling efficiency. When they’re homemade they add an aura of handyman mystique....

Update, 4:22 p.m. This afternoon the U.S. and Afghanistan agreed to the terms of this deal. The final text is much the same as the draft version discussed below, but with some interesting additions, such as that the agreement asks the U.S. to “take appropriate measures to limit broadcasting, television programs, media, and entertainment services to authorized recipients and to agreed facilities and areas.” This week NBC News got its hands on the draft of a security agreement between Afghanistan and the United States outlining American postwar involvement in that nation....

Media Platforms Design TeamThermal imagers—once tools for building inspectors and police officers, who used them to locate insulation failures or track fleeing suspects—are fast becoming a consumer tech item. There’s even one for your iPhone now.FLIR Systems (FLIR is short for forward looking infrared) is launching the FLIR ONE at the end of this month. The company says this smartphone attachment will weigh less than 3 ounces and cost less than $350, where other entry-level systems cost around $1,000....

View full post on YoutubeYou’ve seen all six Star Wars movies and eagerly await the seventh. You’ve bought the merch and played the video games. Now, dear Padawan, you can train as a Jedi knight. If you live in Italy, that is.Established by three friends in 2005, the LudoSport Lightsaber Combat Academy (yes, it’s a real thing) aims to teach the seven lightsaber fighting styles elaborated in the extended Star Wars canon....

When James Moskito and his partners founded Great White Adventures 17 years ago, with the idea of giving tourists an extremely close look at the great white sharks that gathered around the Farallon Islands to feed on harbor seals, there wasn’t a huge body of technical knowledge about how to make an impenetrable shark cage. That’s why the company’s first cage was crudely constructed of steel, weighed 1500 pounds, and required a special crane just to get it into the boat....