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Media Platforms Design TeamTiming belts last 60,000 to 100,000 miles. check your owner’s manual for the manufacturer’s replacement interval.Your six-year-old econobox is starting to show a bit of wear and tear, but everything mechanical still works fine. Until it doesn’t. Specifically, the engine suddenly goes dead silent one fine day. Your mechanic says your timing belt failed, then he chuckles into his shirt pocket. Now he gets to charge you for the tow, the belt replacement and a valve job, because there’s no compression on two cylinders....

October 17, 2018: Rocket Lab, the New Zealand-based launch startup, just announced Wallops Island, Virginia as its choice for a site to launch rockets from the U.S. Wallops won out over finalists Vandenberg Air Force Base (California), the Pacific Spaceport Complex (Alaska), and Cape Canaveral (Florida). The company cited the relatively quiet nature of Wallops as an appealing fact, whereas SpaceX and others are busy upping their launch schedules at some of those other sites....

Media Platforms Design Team1) America’s Army on the MoonIt’s always interesting to drop by the America’s Army development folks. They earned a niche for video games among professionals in the worlds of military recruitment, training and, of all things, entertainment. Their latest ventures involve coordinating soldiers’ use of unmanned robots in the air and on ground, a driving game used by soldiers surviving trauma who need to relearn how to operate vehicles and a simulation to train troops the procedures to operate handheld detectors in nuclea , biological or chemical environments....

Media Platforms Design Team"Gentlemen will find using my machine an amusing … healthful exercise." — BRITISH MECHANIC EDWIN BUDDING’S PATENT APPLICATION FOR THE FIRST LAWNMOWER, 18301868: The reel-type spiral-bladed cutter makes its stateside debut via manufacturer Amariah Hills, who receives the first U.S. patent for the machine.1921: Knud and Oscar Jacobsen introduce a mower with a purpose-built gas engine. The reel-mowing machine cuts a blistering 4 acres a day—perfect for the golf courses, parks, and cemeteries it’s intended to maintain....

It’s a grim anniversary today. Seventy years ago today, the Enola Gay dropped the uranium atomic bomb “Little Boy” on the city of Hiroshima, killing at least 90,000 people immediately, poisoning hundreds of thousands more with radiation, and forever altering the essential nature of warfare.View full post on YoutubeJapanese artist Isao Hashimoto created this beautiful and terrifying timeline, showing each of the 2,053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998....

Media Platforms Design TeamRQ-170 Stealth UAV. (Photograph courtesy of Secret Défense)A few months ago, I interviewed Col. Pete Gersten, wing commander of the 432nd Wing Nevada, about the future of Air Force unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Mid-interview, he paused and dropped a wink. “If you can imagine it, we’re doing it,” he said cryptically. We spoke of stealth designs, unique airframes that deviated from the current MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper and new missions....

Media Platforms Design TeamToday, the automaker Aptera announced that it is ceasing operations, effective immediately. Essentially, the company ran out of money, which isn’t a huge surprise: It has yet to sell a product even though it’s been four years since we first took a spin in the company’s futuristic three-wheeled EV.President and CEO Paul Wilbur explained in a statement that the company couldn’t find private investors to match a proposed $150 million loan from the Department of Energy....

Media Platforms Design TeamCredit: NASA / Goddard Spaceflight CenterLast month, the extent of Arctic sea ice cover dropped below 1.6 million square miles, which was the record low set in the summer of 2007. But we knew the level would continue to drop into September. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), the Arctic set its minimum for 2012: 1.32 million square miles, which blows away the old record....

Media Platforms Design TeamHumans and gadgets haven’t entirely fused, but the tech companies at CES are working to improve the relationship between people and the electronics they love. The more ways for you to interact “naturally” with your appliances and screens, the better (and the more ways for those devices to interact with us). And so gestures now control TVs, computers respond to voice commands as if in stunted conversations and smartphones link to pretty much everything....

Lots of great comments on Wednesday’s post. Lets dig in. Actually, first let me provide a link to one of the more thoughtful ethanol/biofuel discussions I’ve seen of late: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2199#more Comment: We should be running all those tractors, combines and trucks on ethanol, not diesel. Using non-renewable petroleum to produce another form of energy–renewable or not–is just plain silly. For that matter, burning oil to produce hydrogen is a questionable idea too....

The Geminid meteor shower peaks this weekend on the night of Sunday, December 13, and into the next morning. The optimal viewing hour is 2 a.m. on Monday morning, December 14, but you should be able to catch a show Saturday night/Sunday morning as well. The waxing crescent moon will set in the early evening, leaving the skies dark for Geminid meteors, which are some of the brightest of the year....

Media Platforms Design TeamBefore I matured into a grown-up technophile, perpetually glued to one of several LCD screens, I reveled in mornings spent with a pile of plastic Lego bricks at my feet—a world of possibilities strewn out in front of me, with those sharp, stubby blocks just waiting to fell barefoot adults who dared tread near my masterpieces.So naturally I have spent much of today playing with Build with Chrome, Google’s latest attempt to draw me away from work and into a nostalgic Lego wonderland....

Media Platforms Design TeamAdding a pound of sand to a gallon of floor paint creates a slip-resistant coating.Q: My garage floor is slippery when slush melts off the cars, which is bad news because I back the cars out and use the garage as a shop. Will painting the floor make it less slippery? The step on my garden tractor is also slick, especially when wet. I’m used to it, but my wife skinned her shin when she slipped on it....

I awoke with the dreadful, familiar thirst, headache, and a total unwillingness to do anything but lie in bed and stare deep into my pillow. The night before I had been watching my football team play—poorly. The craft beers had been going down easy, up until the time when the game mercifully ended. At that point I switched to whiskey—not because I was sad, but because I planned to get deathly hung over....

Media Platforms Design TeamIn short, why do this? Why dive to the Mariana Trench?Two of the deepest places in the worlds oceans exist in the Mariana Trench system. But also of interest are the Kermadec Trench and the Tonga Trench, which has possibly the second deepest spot in the worlds oceansclose to 36,000 feet. So there are a number of targets around the Southwestern Pacific that need to be explored. And there are other deep trenches in the world as well....

Media Platforms Design Team Today at DEMO, a technology showcase in Palm Desert, Calif., a company named Livescribe unveiled its new Pulse Smartpen. The Pulse is a fully functioning 1.3-ounce writing instrument with computing power built in and up to 2 GB of flash memory onboard. If the idea seems familiar to the LeapFrog Fly pen, that’s no coincidence. Jim Marggraff, who developed the Fly pen, is the founder and CEO of Livescribe (he left LeapFrog on amicable terms)....

Media Platforms Design TeamA day ahead of the expected release of the new iPhone, which for the first time , Google has released its own version of the app. will not come with a native YouTube appUnlike the old app, this new one is clearly made by Google. There are Google-style buttons, and, more notably, there are ads. Upon launching YouTube, you’re prompted to sign into your Google account right away....

View full post on YoutubeThose body checks and fights during NHL games might be about to look a whole lot cooler on your TV. The league is mounting GoPros on players and will air some of the footage during games.GoPros have been the go-to device for extreme sports enthusiasts for years now. For what may be the action camera’s first foray into major sports broadcasting, perhaps there’s no better fit than hockey, which can offer players flying down the ice and getting punched in the face with regularity....

Welcome to PM/AM, Popular Mechanics’ morning briefing on the top science and tech stories for today.Media Platforms Design TeamIran’s government is not a fan of Facebook.An Iranian court has called Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to answer privacy complaints regarding Instagram and newly acquired WhatsApp. Such a measure is counter to Iran’s president’s call to embrace the internet instead of treating it like an enemy. These services are just new additions to Iran’s already sprawling banned list, which includes Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Hubble needs service–again. The space telescope has beamed gorgeous images of the universe down to Earth for 17 years and has undergone four servicing missions by space shuttles. A September 27 failure in the Science Data Formatter pushed back a planned fifth and final servicing mission aboard the space shuttle Atlantis from this month until February 2009. While trying to switch over some of the telescope’s electrical systems to redundant backup versions remotely, the team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland hit two anomalies that caused the telescope to enter “safe mode” and stop most science operations....