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Back in 2015, the U.S. Army partnered with with Mallory Aeronautics with the hope of building a hoverbike, a rectangular prop-powered flying device that could someday theoretically carry both supplies and troops. The project has been coming along nicely, with successful tests of the device completed early this year. But it seems the role of the “hoverbike” might be changing, with a shift away from manned operation to an emphasis on resupply and delivery....

There have been all sorts of theories explaining how the moon formed—some legitimate, some crackpot. The most prevalent and accepted idea has been a collision between Earth and an ancient object called Theia, with the resulting debris coalescing into the moon. But there’s a problem with this explanation. On a chemical level, the Earth and our moon are very similar—much more so than Earth and Mars, for example. If pieces of Theia coalesced into the moon, then why does it look so much like the Earth?...

Amit Gefen of Maastricht University in the Netherlands is working on a way for poultry lovers to (ethically) get their wings. He wants to grow chicken meat in a test tube.You might have heard of the experiments that created the first lab-grown meat over the past few years. That was beef, and it was a crude mixture of muscle fiber and stem cells that tasted … not great, according to those who ate it....

Media Platforms Design TeamFrom left: Alan Turing, Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephen Hawking, and Eddie Redmayne.Alan TuringBorn June 23, 1912, London / Died June 7, 1954Stephen HawkingBorn Jan. 8, 1942, Oxford, EnglandRank on the BBC’S Top 100 Great BritonsTuring: 21Hawking: 25Greatest AccomplishmentTuring: Helped crack the encryption of the German Enigma machine, which sent encoded military messages during World War II. Winston Churchill considered Turing’s work to be crucial in winning the war.Hawking: Explained black holes and the beginning of the universe in language we can almost understand in A Brief History of Time....

Media Platforms Design Team ENSENADA, MEXICO — The Volkswagen Touareg was a latecomer to the SUV game, debuting as a 2004 model in a booming sport-ute market that was encouraged by relatively cheap fuel. A handful of V10 TDI Touaregs became available in the U.S., but the car’s monster torque was accompanied by a high price tag and less than stellar emissions—not exactly the best of both worlds. Four years later, things have changed....

Media Platforms Design TeamApril may be a fickle month, as the weather swings between warm and chilly, but there’s no mistaking the fact that it’s time to get moving on some big interior and exterior jobs. —Roy BerendsohnOUTDOORS1. Lawns in temperate areas will see the season’s first cut. If you’ve stored your mower properly, it’ll start after a couple of pulls. If not, head to the hardware store to get at least a fresh spark plug and air filter for it (once you’ve taken a lesson in Mower Tuneup 101—or even compared the best new lawnmowers around)....

You want it all. You want the full wave-cresting experience. You want to ride the tube. You want to pop out of the curls and fly. You want to effortlessly carve right and left atop the big waves as they whisk you toward sandy shore. You want it all.But you can’t swim.South African inventor Gary Barsdorf wants you to know that you don’t have to trade in your wet suit for a surf movie collection just yet....

In the home –as in life–it’s often the little things that matter. And it’s amazing how many small structural things can go wrong around your house. Whether it’s the front-door lock that won’t let you into your own home, or the cracked window that won’t keep the cold out, small household problems can have a big effect. For most of these, there’s no need to call for a repairman– the solution lies in tapping your ingenuity and using a few common household materials in innovative ways....

Media Platforms Design TeamIn 2008, Ian Barry’s first Falcon motorcycle, dubbed the Bullet and built for actor Jason Lee, turned the custom-motorcycle world on its head. Receiving international acclaim, it is credited with helping kick-start the British track-racer movement. After two years Barry has now unveiled his followup effort, the Kestrel, to heightened anticipation. And while rave reviews in the Los Angeles TimesCycle World and have placed it far beyond the Bullet, to understand the true achievement of the Kestrel one needs to dig a little deeper than the 80-hour paint and pinstripe job and stainless steel exhaust pipe....

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Gerolamo Umberto Volta, whose exceedingly long name is now remembered in the volt, a measure of the electric charge transmitted between two points. Volta and colleague Luigi Galvani first noted the phenomenon while dissecting a frog. When they touched the metal scalpel to the brass mounts connected to the frog, the leg twitched. Galvani and Volta argued over the cause, with Galvani claiming the animal was generating the electricity and Volta saying the frog was simply conducting it....

I’m really an ordinary guy who gets to do extraordinary things–like get in somebody else’s car and try to go 200 mph. You see, the Porsche people had been to my garage and I took them for a ride in my Stanley Steamer. The next thing you know, they’re asking me to take a Carrera GT to Talladega and set some records. I guess they thought if an average pinhead like Jay Leno could drive one of these cars at 200 mph, it would show how safe and reliable the car is....

Media Platforms Design TeamAre cops allowed to snoop through your cellphone during an ordinary traffic stop? According to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) letter to the director of the Michigan State Police on April 13, that department has several forensic cellphone analyzers deployed in the field. Forensic analyzers are routinely used in police investigations to recover data from computers and other digital devices. Lately, cellphones have become valuable sources of evidence for police, since one phone can include almost all of an individual’s private communications (SMS, recently dialed numbers, email, Facebook and Twitter posts) as well as location data from the device’s GPS unit....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe flattened-out flier you see here is the X-48C Blended Wing Body, an x-plane in development by NASA and Boeing. NASA snapped this photo yesterday as the unmanned plane took off from Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., where it completed its first successful test flight.“Blended Wing Body” refers to the X-48C’s somewhat triangular shape. It’s an old idea in aeronautics—building an aircraft that gets its lift from the fuselage rather than just the wings....

For all the attention they get, humanoid robots tend to be a pretty shallow bunch. Honda’s Asimo dances, shakes hands, and occasionally serves tea. Toyota’s series of Partner Robots can play musical instruments and guide visitors around one of the carmaker’s facilities in Japan. A range of less famous models in labs around the world grab headlines by gripping objects without destroying them, or walking a few steps without tipping onto their extremely expensive heads....

As if the technical delays and budget overloads Popular Mechanics outlined in our recent feature on the Airbus A380 jumbo jet weren’t enough, new concerns about the mega-plane’s exemption from fuel-tank conflagration rules popped up the same day that the A380 received approval for lift-off. In other airline-industry news, United and Continental could be headed for a merger, just a month after US Airways’ bid to take over Delta.Though astronauts are back working on a tricky maneuver today, NASA’s just-launched Discovery crew and the International Space Station team had to take cover last night from the dangerous radiation in a solar flare—a common “burp” from the sun that can block your GPS unit down here on Earth....

In the 1971 movie Dirty Harry, actor Clint Eastwood introduced the world to the double-action Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44-cal. Magnum revolver—“the most powerful handgun in the world.“It was a crown S&W wore proudly, albeit briefly.The rising popularity of handgun hunting for big game (spurred largely by the .44 Magnum itself) prompted the introduction of newer and significantly more powerful revolver cartridges. Many powerful enough that they had to be chambered in single-action handguns because existing double-action designs could not contain the recoil forces and pressures they produced....

We all know the Back to the Future hoverboard. It’s iconic in its pink-and-green minimalism. But before ILM designer John Bell settled on that design, he toyed with some variations that were much more mechanical. It’s hard to imagine them ever fitting in the movie, but these steampunk-y alternatives are a wonder to behold.The journey to the hoverboard’s final design is chronicled in a great piece over at Co.Design, which details Bell’s original vision for a world where hoverboards were more hot rod than skateboard, tricked out and customized by their owners, even if the results came out a little bulky....

When it comes right down to it, we still want to “play Star Wars.” Many of us grew up orchestrating huge, complex Star Wars adventures with our Kenner action figures. We swung wiffleball bats wildly, making the “whuam, whuam” lightsaber sound as we traipsed through our parents’ gardens. We debated endlessly about whether Luke Skywalker would ever “go evil.” So it should come as no surprise the new Star Wars Roleplaying Game by Fantasy Flight Games is pretty close to a dream come true....

MercuryMedia Platforms Design TeamTHENMariner 10’s three flybys of Mercury in 1974 and 1975 produced much of what we know about the smallest rocky planet in the system. The densely packed, lightweight spacecraft contained a variety of instruments, including TV cameras that took shots of more than half of Mercury’s surface and sent back thousands of images. Mariner 10 was the first spacecraft to visit Mercury as well as the first spacecraft to send back 100-meter-resolution images from another planet....

Traditional washing machines suck up a lot of water. An old-school top-loader can chug down 40 gallons of water for a full load, newer models still run through use 27 gallons per load, and even Energy Star washers can use up to 14 gallons per wash.But there’s a new washing machine that cleans clothes with 80 percent less water than most washers. It uses less detergent. And in the end, the clothes come out cleaner....