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Media Platforms Design TeamTwo bombs lift up into the sky. They rise for precisely 6.5 seconds, streaming fire like comet tails. The explosions hit simultaneously, releasing bolts of white and then showers the hue of burning embers. More fireworks blink on—a series of orange and white flares strung together to outline a ship. Céline Dion’s voice steals over the crowd: “Every night in my dreams, I see you, I feel you....

Media Platforms Design Team HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — Dainese may be known for its luxe motorcycle helmets and leathers, but the Italian company recently displayed two pieces of decidedly futuristic apparel at the 2008 Legend of the Motorcycle Concours d’Elegance. In anticipation of NASA’s down-the-road Mars landing missions, Dainese has teamed up with MIT for an ambitious project that intends to pressurize an astronaut’s body without the usual bubble of air that creates bulky spacesuits....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt looks like a giant purple donut. But in fact the Ark Nova, or “New Ark,” is the world’s first inflatable music hall.British sculptor Anish Kapoor and japanese architect Arata Isozaki created the project in partnership with the Lucerne Festival, a Swiss international music festival traveling to Miyagi prefecture, Japan, the area most affected by the earthquake, tsunami, and resulting Fukushima nuclear disasters two years ago. On October 12, in Matsushima, the Ark Nova will hold its first event as part of the festival....

Pane TriageFew of us lead simple linear lives that let us take care of problems that come up when they come up. We’re always too busy doing this and that. Emergencies around the house, whether big or small, can’t always be dealt with immediately. A case in point is when your son’s baseball cracks the kitchen window just before you’re to leave for a dull weekend with your in-laws. You could cancel the trip and spend the weekend slowly fixing the window....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamA man harvests fruits of Jatropha in Taabo, Ivory Coast. The Jatropha seed produces an oil which can be used as a substitute for diesel fuel. (Photograph by Kambou Sia/AFP/Getty Images) We’ve seen researchers turning algae into oil, corn to ethanol and even waste streamsinto a variety of fuels. But so far, any “miracle” biomass is short on practicality and heavy on hype. Algae doesn’t yet create enough oil, corn ethanol is generally unsustainable and waste streams are not exactly renewable and are definitely not carbon neutral....

Media Platforms Design TeamMONTE CARLO–The automotive industry as a whole might be focused on EVs and plug-in hybrids, thanks to a relatively easy-to-adapt infrastructure and generous incentives from the U.S. government, but Mercedes-Benz remains bullish on hydrogen as our future fuel. Against the unabashedly luxurious Monaco backdrop of fancy yachts, fancy cars and fancy people, we piloted the three-pointed star’s latest fuel cell vehicle. The first lesson from our test drive?...

Media Platforms Design Team Information about next year’s hottest exotic, the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, continues its slow, dribbling release. Recently, we wrote about many of the technical details and now we’re here to show you the interior. That’s right, just the interior. In the now self-serving way that companies release information to keep a long-term buzz going, we now know what the insides look like but not the outside. We did, however, score a minor coup and actually sat in the thing....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe battle in Washington over NASA’s future budget has abated—but without resolution. There is currently no settled authorization bill for the space agency, though many think that the compromise hammered out in the Senate a couple of weeks ago will form the basis for next year, and that the House bill, with its draconian cuts to commercial space and its attempt to restore Constellation, is dead..though there will be attempts to revive it when Congress returns to town next month....

The ISS has its first real, honest to god coffee maker, letting astronauts leave the world of crystalized instant coffee for fresh espresso. And since scents tend to diffuse everywhere in microgravity, that means the station will smell like the fresh coffee after brewing. Hot, piping, delicious coffee is finally there indeed. All it needs is a little recycled pee and VOILA you can have a fresh espresso from orbit 250 miles above the Earth....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Fuel DVD debuts in the shadow of BP’s oil spill in the gulf. How does that affect you?Josh Tickell: Slowly, people are realizing that when we’re talking about economics and the environment, we’re really talking about the same thing; it’s really hard to have an economy without an environment. With regard to the gulf, we’re talking billions of dollars of damage. There has to be valuation. Society has to calculate the potential cost of these risks....

D-wave was asking for trouble. The Canadian company unveiled Orion, which it had hyped for weeks as the “world’s first commercially viable quantum computer,” this past February. But everything Orion accomplished, including solving a Sudoku puzzle, could have been done faster by a standard PC. Some scientists praised Orion, but at least as many sneered, and others still doubt that a useful quantum computer can ever be built. But what exactly are quantum computers, anyway?...

Media Platforms Design TeamVincent Carroll of the Rocky Mountain News reviews Debunking 9/11 Myths: “There is no time to waste. You must purchase Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts, a paperback just released by Hearst Books, and get it to the afflicted person in time for the fifth anniversary of the terrorists’ attack. The book provides a sober, concise review of the major allegations and the consensus rebuttal of experts and eyewitnesses....

For years, vertical video has been one of the internet’s many scourges. Rightly so! When carelessly filmed in a vertical aspect ratio, videos come out all tall and weird, flanked by awkward black bars when they appear on our generally horizontal screens. And so the all-knowing tech-savvy waged an eternal war on the vertical video and those thoughtless buffoons who filmed it. But after a subtle change to YouTube’s mobile app, it’s time to give up the fight....

NASA has its eyes on Mars, but there’s a lot of work left to do. There’s no shortage of imagination at the agency though, as seen in this guided tour of how the first colony on Mars might come together. The agency says it would come after “20 years of crewed and cargo” landings, meaning this is what it has its eyes on for the 2050s … if they can get a mission off the ground in the 2030s, at least....

There are many unanswered questions that came from the Star Wars prequels. For instance, was the Galactic Republic set up as a unicameral or bicameral system, and how did they balance the power between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches? Seems like some real missed opportunities in compelling story telling on George Lucas’s part. But perhaps the biggest unanswered question is that while the prequels are set about three decades before the events of the original trilogy, the tech seen in the prequels was much more advanced....

Getty Images1. The interior has developed a rattle.Likely Cause: A pothole or general wear has shaken parts loose.Can You Fix It? Yes. Remove the culprit panel and apply Dynamat adhesive sound-deadening material. It’ll add mass, changing the resonant frequency, stopping the rattle.2. Your garage smells like maple syrup.Likely Cause: There’s a leak somewhere in your coolant system.Can You Fix It? Maybe. See if it’s coming from a place you can fix yourself (i....

Doom mods are terrific. Porsche 911s are terrific. However: Please use this video as an example of what not do when modding Doom.View full post on Youtube Uploading Doom to a car’s computer via flash drive starts out perfectly fine. It requires setting your car to debug mode, and if you didn’t know your car’s computer even had a debug mode, then hey, you learned something. But this Porsche version of Doom calls on the driver/player to fire by honking your horn, swap guns by shifting gears, and change directors with the steering wheel....

The 2014 season of Formula 1 featured the most drastic rules changes in the sport’s history. And whether you’re talking about smaller engines, limits on the amount of fuel allowed in a race, or limits on the number of engines allowed per season, it’s all about making the cars, drivers, and teams do more with less.Daniel Jameison is one of the people tasked with the challenge. We met the fuels specialist inside a red box tucked away in the Ferrari garage at this weekend’s U....

Media Platforms Design TeamH2OAudio Amphibx Waterproof Armband ($59)H2OAudio Surge Bass Amplified Waterproof Headphones ($59) iPod Nano (from $149) not included. Vs. Freestyle Audio Soundwave 2 GB ($89)The Promise Multiple gadgets offer competing ways to bring music along while you swim, snorkel or shower. Pick your poison: Either a waterproof MP3 player, or a regular MP3 player shielded with a waterproof case and paired with underwater headphones.In Practice We tested both the MP3 player and the waterproof iPod case as part of our regular lap-swimming exercise routine....

On July 9 two specially instrumented C-17s took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California, heading to Hawaii. The pair of cargo airplanes carefully took their positions: one following the other just a few thousand feet behind, slightly off to the port side. The reason for the careful placement: The pair of C-17s was generating data for an experiment intended to figure out how to maximize the fuel savings that planes get by flying in formation....