About 2.8 billion light years away, the brightest supernova ever seen by humanity has been spotted, gleaming at 500 billion times the luminescence of the sun. Spotted in June at the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae in Cerro Tololo, Chile, the object ASASSN-15lh is burning both unusually bright and just plain unusually.Even among superluminous supernova, this thing is bright: it outshines the next brightest spotted by a factor of two....
Media Platforms Design TeamImage: Solar ImpulseThe warmer months are coming to the United States, and with them comes a sun-powered plane. The Solar Impulse, an experimental solar-powered aircraft that has set flight records in Europe, arrived in California this spring to undertake a series of flights that will take it across America. Yesterday pilot Bertand Piccard for its first test flight above city of San Francisco, resulting in stunning images like this one of the rare bird coasting over the Golden Gate Bridge....
Media Platforms Design TeamTORRANCE, Calif. — Once every few years, the veil is lifted and automakers grant civilians (us) access to the inner sanctum: their design studios. Yesterday, Honda welcomed us to its brand-new, $15-million Acura Design Studio here. Even the PR guy joked, “Hey, this is probably the last time I’ll be allowed in here.” An automaker’s design center is where the ideas for concept and production cars are created, years before a tire hits the floor of any auto show (see below at right for a hot new concept)....
Media Platforms Design TeamSpring brings more than sunny days and blooming flowers. This is also the season of rapid snowmelt, swollen rivers, and frequent rainstorms that raise the groundwater table and floods basements and crawlspaces with alarming regularity. It takes only a couple of inches of standing water to ruin household items, cripple mechanical systems, rust metal fixtures, and rot wooden posts.Any home that regularly experiences even the slightest water penetration into the basement or crawlspace should be equipped with a sump pump....
Media Platforms Design TeamJay’s sleek EcoJet turbine supercar was inspired by the 2002 Cadillac Cien show car, as well as by GM’s 1950s Firebird jet cars designed by legend Harley Earl.When I was a kid, jet-powered cars seemed like the future. I watched The Jetsons on TV, and they’d get in their jet car, fire it up and zip away. I read about the Rover-BRM gas turbine car in the ’60s, and I went to the New York World’s Fair in 1964 to see Chrysler’s own spin around and around on the stand....
The F-35 Lightning II has run into a litany of technical delays and cost overruns since design on the first prototype began in the early 2000s. The long-range strike fighter promises to offer unparalleled evasion technologies and stealth capabilities, but it comes at a cost—$391.1 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office, up from $233 billion as originally projected.But there might be some good news for the costly fighter jet. Daniel Conroy, Lockheed Martin director of the Air Force F-35 program, said Monday that the program is finally back on schedule—at least, the revamped schedule from 2012....
Somehow Mazda seems to inject a soul into just about every car it makes. The new CX-9 is no exception. The CX-9 shares its mechanicals with the Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX. All three use the same 260-hp-plus 3.5-liter V6, but only the Mazda gets a sporty version of the six-speed transmission. So, the Mazda has its own personality. Careful suspension tuning makes the CX-9 more capable – and more fun....
Media Platforms Design TeamLate night has some big changes on the horizon, with Stephen Colbert taking over David Letterman’s spot, Larry Wilmore taking over Stephen Colbert’s spot, and some recurring character from Doctor Who grabbing Craig Ferguson’s spot. But a new late night show is emerging on the National Geographic Channel this coming April, and its host is one of the most popular scientists out there: Neil DeGrasse Tyson.Given his recent run hosting Cosmos, Tyson is no stranger to television hosting....
Media Platforms Design TeamCredit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images.One World Trade Center has ascended to its zenith. Crews today raised the new tower’s spire, bringing the building to its final height of 1776 feet. Now the debate begins: Is WTC One the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere? The answer comes down to semantics.Last spring, New York City celebrated as the skyscraper grew past 1250 feet tall, the height of the Empire State Building not including its antenna, to become the city’s tallest building....
Media Platforms Design TeamSelf-made billionaire and self-proclaimed energy guru T. Boone Pickens has been all over the media and the Web this summer, with his energy evangelism gaining added traction as we count down the last 50 days to the election. Pickens wants to reduce our dependence on foreign energy as rapidly as possible, and he’s willing to put his money where his mouth is. As part of his viral video-powered campaign, then, Pickens wants to put $160 million behind his case for natural gas-powered vehicles....
Media Platforms Design TeamSome messages just make our day. Recently PM got an email informing us of a major milestone for a PM legend: Ralph Streeter Wilkes, who wrote 36 articles for Popular Mechanics from 1944 to 1987, celebrated his centennial birthday yesterday. Born April 11, 1912, in Cato, N.Y., Wilkes currently lives in Canandaigua, N.Y.An accomplished carpenter, Wilkes designed, built, and wrote about making a wide variety of things: a stemware rack, rocking chair, grandfather clock, secretary, and more....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhat made you want to write about this particular story? When you think of NASA you’re always thinking of it in the 1960sall the Apollo stuff, and I wanted to write about what it’s like now. Coincidently, I got a call pretty much out of the blue from a friend of mine. Thad Roberts had just been released from prison, he was a fan of my books and he wanted to tell me his story....
John Waslenko, 63, is the owner of Thornridge Hardware Supply in Levittown, Pennsylvania.• This is a family-owned and -operated store. My dad bought it in 1967. It was an existing hardware store. • I was 16 years old. Our high school was right across the street, so I used to just cut across the field and come to work after school, stocking and cleaning shelves and organizing merchandise. • We pretty much ran it together....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe Mission: Impossible films, which follow the globe-trotting adventures of agent Ethan Hunt, are known for their high-tech gadgetry and insane action sequences. And —the fourth in the series, already showing in IMAX theatres and available everywhere else Dec. 21—doesn’t disappoint for that regard. Mission: Impossible—Ghost ProtocolIMF’s High-Tech GadgetsThe IMF team in Ghost Protocol is fully equipped with consumer technology available to us all, including iPads and iPhones....
Following its April restart, the Large Hadron Collider – the particle collider to end all particle colliders, at least until the next one – is getting back to doing some cold, hard science. It took two months for CERN to get the LHC ready, which is understandable considering the hefty work that needs to be done: Finding evidence of supersymmetry and dark energy, and maybe even other dimensions. That’s a big workload even for a facility that measures 17 miles in circumference....
Wired has a fantastic feature on some of the most intricate and unsettling maps we’ve ever seen. The Soviet military, or some other faction within the government of the USSR, made maps. Millions of them. Maps with the kind of detail just short of Google Street view, spanning the entire world, with cities broken down to the width of streets and the size of buildings.John Davies, a software developer, is working on cataloging and digitizing some of them....
You will never have to XYZ again, at least if MIT has any say about it. Their robotics lab has created the robot you didn’t know you needed: one that can open and close a zipper. Media Platforms Design TeamOkay, it’s not small enough to go on your jeans yet, nor is it quite ready to be untethered. But the design is already small enough to fit on a jacket and it can even go around curves, like a sleeve....
There’s ice on the moon, and we may need it someday to get to the stars. Luckily, there’s a shoebox-sized spacecraft ready to find it. Called Lunar IceCube, the mission would orbit the moon in search of water in various forms: liquid, vapor, or ice. It could help confirm and characterize the extent of ice on the moon, and help find the best place for a moon base.The small craft is being built by NASA and Morehead State University out of six CubeSatsCubeSats....
What are the odds of having a white Christmas anywhere in the United States today versus in 1942, when the song was written?Back when Bing Crosby first sang Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” his dreams came true about 33 percent of the time, which actually is a very respectable batting average, dreams-wise. Our own experience with dream realization has been considerably less satisfying. We are not bitcoin billionaires. We haven’t won an Oscar, Congressional Medal of Honor, Heisman Trophy, or the local Rotary Club drawing for a free car wash....
Media Platforms Design TeamOn Sale: September 2011Price: $45,000–$60,000 (est.)Competitors: Mercedes-Benz E-Class, BMW 5 Series, Lexus GS, Infiniti MPowertrains: 2.0-liter turbo I4, 211 hp, 258 lb-ft; 3.0-liter supercharged V6, 310 hp, 325 lb-ftFuel Economy (city/hwy): 19–25/28–33What’s New: With the exception of the two familiar forced-induction engines, the 2012 Audi A6 is a clean-sheet design. Re-engineering the front differential enabled the front axle to move way forward, reducing the front overhang to achieve a more contemporary design aesthetic....
