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Star Wars: The Force Awakens is one of the most hotly anticipated movies of the year. If not THE most hotly anticipated. And it’s still seven months away. But fans at the Star Wars Celebration got a sneak peak at the new teaser trailer, which was thankfully also uploaded to YouTube for those of us who couldn’t make it. Some rumors are confirmed. Here’s what the trailer shows us:View full post on YoutubeMedia Platforms Design TeamA Star Destroyer crashed on a desert planet that has neither been confirmed nor denied to be Tattoine....

Media Platforms Design TeamNuStar, NASA’s newest x-ray telescope, has returned its first startling image of the sun.The telescope was built to spot black holes and other distant and dark stellar objects. This is the first time the spacecraft has trained its eyes on our own sun. It’s a kind of out-there idea hatched in the early days of the mission, when scientists realized NuStar’s powerful instruments might be able to see new details in our star....

Philip Friedman1. Most sprayers require the operator to remove a canister and fill the reservoir from the top, which often leads to paint dripping from the draw tube and making a mess. Black & Decker’s tool has a side-fill canister, which allows for quick, clean refilling.2. Set the flow knob to the desired intake—the higher the number, the greater the amount of paint sucked up and pushed out of the system—and switch on the machine; this kicks the solenoid motor into action....

FUTURE CAR WEEKTUESDAY: Rethinking Internal Combustion* –>* TECH WATCH: 6 New Engine DesignsWEDNESDAY: Plug-In Reality Check* PM NEWS: New Player in Chevy Volt Battery Race?* RAY WERT: Why Car Geeks Should Buy an Alt-Fuel RideTHURSDAY: The Automotive X Prize* PREVIEW: Top 10 Early Auto X Prize Contenders* PLUS: How to Build a 100-mpg Car Right NowFRIDAY: High-Performance Alternatives* GREEN POWERHOUSE: Jay Leno’s 600-hp E85 CorvetteTIME MACHINE: PM Praised Early Aerodynamic EfficiencyDRIVE GREEN: Alt-Fuel News, Videos & MoreAs fuel prices climb higher seemingly by the minute and the American carbon footprint continues to balloon, it’s becoming increasingly important for engineers to find a new way to propel our cars....

If you’ve got the means, building your own home can be a dream come true. Just make sure your new house can connect to all the basic necessities, or that dream could soon become a nightmare.Cole Marshall discovered this the hard way after building a house outside the city limits of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Despite the rural location where Marshall built, Ars Technica reports that he received promises from both Charter and Frontier that they could provide him with relatively fast Internet....

As Curiosity cruises around the surface of Mars, it must be careful. Although the Mars Science Laboratory rover is larger and tougher than previous rovers, its drivers still want to be sure they don’t get the bot’s wheels stuck in a deep sand dune. Imagine, though, if humans put a robot on another planet that didn’t drive on wheels but instead walked on legs, allowing it to step over and out of obstacles....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf you thought Rousseau was the frontrunner in the Craziest Island Lady contest, you should see Claire. Last night’s episode of Lost, “The Lighthouse,” made perfectly clear that the dearly-departed mad French woman has nothing on our favorite Island mommy, who is capturing and killing Others left and right because she believes they have her son. Unfortunately for Jin, he ran right into one of Claire’s steel jaw bear traps, which snapped around his ankle....

Imagine if you lost your keys and instead of fishing around in the couch cushions, and you could just pull out your phone and search for them. Just a quick, textual query with a quick response that they’re on your desk, you doofus. This is not only possible; it’s possible now, and it’s almost as intriguing as it is terrifying. Today at Microsoft Build, the software giant’s annual conference for developers, Microsoft showed off exactly this sort of tech....

In fireworks lingo, a mine is a device that shoots sparks out of a mortar tube. No dangerous explosives here; instead we utilized everyday party poppers to launch colorful trails of confetti. This project is a playful introduction to the world of pyrotechnics. Youngsters building the popper will wonder what exactly makes it pop (answer: compressed air) and how that energy forces the confetti out of the tube. But all that physics stuff aside, who are we fooling?...

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamFrom the street, the GMC Yukons customized by Dillon Aero look like standard-issue SUVs. But behind the tinted windows lurks a fire-spitting dragon: a Dillon Aero M134D Gatling minigun. Designed for VIP escort, the Yukons are outfitted with a roll cage, steel-plate armor and puncture-proof fuel cells and tires. And though weighing around 9000 pounds, the vehicles can exceed speeds of 100 mph (forthcoming supercharged models should be able to go even faster)....

Electronic Control Adaptation Q: I just purchased a 2007 Nissan Altima 3.5SE. It came standard with traction control and ABS. The one option I hadn’t previously considered until a recent Iowa snow storm was Vehicle Dynamic Control—Nissan language for stability control. Can new tech cars be retrofitted with stability control? Is it engine computer software separating my car from similar cars with stability control, or does my car lack the proper mechanical hardware to have stability control?...

Media Platforms Design TeamDiagnosing the problemThe truth of the matter is that most basement water problems are not basement problems at all, but exterior drainage problems. So before you consider a sump-pump installation, take a good look (in the rain, if you must) at the drainage around your home. Make sure that gutters aren’t clogged, that downspout extensions move roof runoff at least 4 ft. beyond the foundation and that the soil within 3 ft....

Table SawThese tools are dangerous enough to have their own specialized accident litigators: The Table Saw Attorney. With a 10-in. blade spinning at about 3500 rpm and an outside edge humming along near 108 mph, it’s not hard to imagine why. Table-saw attorney John Uustall says he’s seen technologies that can detect human tissue and immediately stop a saw blade. “It’s kind of amazing it’s not mandatory,” Uustall says. “They should put me out of business....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/NOImbv_xcT8?version=3&hl=en_US[/youtube]The air-powered car: It’s one of those elusive but irresistible ideas. PM highlighted one attempt at a pneumatic car as early as 1945, yet none has managed to come close to the internal combustion engine in terms of range.That hasn’t stopped modern companies from trying. Indian automaker Tata’s range of Air Cars, powered by 4350 psi of compressed air, were announced in 2007. But the technology, licensed from Luxembourg-based Motor Development International, never quite made it....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photo Credit: CERN)The Large Hadron Collider is going back online, and Europe’s colossal particle smasher is just about ready for some of its most audacious experiments yet. Scientists at CERN will spend the next few months warming up the components, preparing for a set of experiments that will see the world’s most powerful particle accelerator operating at twice the energy levels of its last set of experiments. It should be fully back online by March, ramping up to a full 13 TeV, which roughly translates to “a whole lot of energy....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen PM’s editors first hooked up our new PlayStation 3 to our Westinghouse HDTV,we were quite impressed by the beauty of the world’s first 1080p gaming system. But we soon discovered an annoying little technological tic that caused the sound to cut out and the screen to blink on and off when we would launch certain games. Was it the PS3 or the Westinghouse TV?From responses on our site, we realized we weren’t the only ones with this blinking image issue....

Black holes are one of the most powerful forces in the universe; they are dense gravity wells from which even light cannot escape. But a stellar cousin, the neutron star, may give black holes a run for their money in one arena: jets that blast matter out into space at breakneck speeds. Astronomers at the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico made observations on PSR J1023+0038, a pulsar locked in a binary system....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe world has been waiting ages for today’s asteroid flyby, but it turns out we were watching the wrong rock. While the small near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 is still set to make a , an even smaller rock went and injured over 1,000 people. close but uneventful flyby later todaycareening into central Russia this morningTraveling at a speed of 19 miles a second and weighing about 10 tons, the object broke apart around 20 miles above ground and caused a shockwave that blew out windows and set off car alarms....

It’s the middle of the night and you are sleeping soundly when suddenly, disaster strikes. An earthquake hits and suddenly, as you awake confused and in darkness, your life is in danger. But what if your bed could automatically protect you? Sure, it sounds great except for the part where it is horrifying. Dreamt up by Chinese inventor Wang Wenxi and patented in 2010, the basic idea is that if an earthquake happens, your bed will instantly swallow you up into a steel coffin to protect you from falling debris....

You may have heard that the iPhone 6S is actually sort of waterproof. Apple hasn’t said anything about it, but a video from YouTuber Zach Straley shows the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus functioning underwater for an hour and emerging pretty much unscathed.View full post on YoutubeYou wouldn’t want to try this trick yourself (obviously) and I wouldn’t blame you for suspecting that the video was somehow faked. Phones very rarely handle water this well, and when they do, it’s usually a big marketing bulletpoint....