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There are more than 4,600 known or suspected planets beyond our solar system. Of those, about 1,700 range in size from a large Earth to a small Neptune, the range in which we’re most likely to find a world capable of supporting life. But with so many new planets coming into view, how do we determine which are the most promising?In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, a University of Washington team sets forth a way to find and rank the most Earth-like, in the hopes of finding the world that may well be another Earth....

Media Platforms Design TeamSmart TVs and connected consoles are great. Typing on them is not. While some TV remotes have a tiny keyboard hidden on them, that’s just not an option with most console controllers. But Valve may have just figured out a seamless, two-thumbed approach to the problem with its upcoming Steam Controller.The new controller promises to bring thousands of games that were previously playable only with a keyboard and mouse “to the comfort of your couch,” by translating things like a trackball....

If you’re a chronic procrastinator like me, you’re probably scratching your head right now and scrambling to figure out a Father’s Day gift for dear ol’ dad. Since it’s too late for shipping, here are two quick and easy solutions for car crazed fathers.Media Platforms Design TeamMost Los Angeles-based enthusiasts are familiar with the Petersen Automotive Museum, but not everyone knows that the museum’s underground “vault” features a not-so-secret stash of historical gems....

View full post on YoutubeA Michigan-based amateur rocketry club has launched a portable toilet 1,126 feet in the air.That’s probably all the information you need to fill the rest of your day with joy. But here’s a little more. Larry Kingman, a member of the Michiana Rocketry Club, told Motherboard that the group undertook the flying john project just to prove it could be done. The launch was even properly insured and permitted by the FAA....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/7BunIgmSrQA?version=3&hl=en_US[/youtube]The military’s mysterious X-37B is designed to stay in orbit 270 days. On its last mission, however, which ended with a touchdown on Saturday at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base, the 29-foot-long unmanned space plane stayed in space for 469 days. Its 15-month mission set a record for such unmanned craft.Now, if only we knew what it was up to.Observers have known for years that the Pentagon as been experimenting with the technology to send such an unmanned craft into orbit....

Media Platforms Design TeamWith the promise of the Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf hitting the production lines with increased fervor over the next few months, it’s time to start dealing with the big problem for electric cars: road trips. Americans may be on waiting lists to buy up these new EVs, but a nationwide network of charging stations to recharge their batteries is still a dream. In the Pacific Northwest, however, the first EV highway in the U....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: Now (first deliveries coming in early 2013)Price: $99,390Competitors: Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, Nissan GT-R, Ferrari 458 Italia, McLaren MP4-12C, Lamborghini Gallardo LP 560-4, Audi R8 V-10 Powertrains: 8.4-liter V-10; 640 hp, 600 lb-ftEstimated Fuel Economy (City/Hwy): 12/21What’s New: Just three short years ago, the Dodge Viper’s days were numbered. Production had ended, and only a sprinkling of cars remained on dealership lots. But thanks to the hard work of SRT president and CEO Ralph Gilles and his team, a new Viper now lives under the banner SRT....

Automotive companies keep adding more electronic tech to their dashboards: navigation systems, real-time fuel economy gauges, mp3 players, cell phone connectivity, satellite radio and ever-more service and safety reminders. Assuming that the tech genie isn’t going back in the bottle, the challenge becomes how to control everything safely and simply. The MyFord Touch tries to address this issue by packing more capability into a simpler-to-use system. The system uses two 4....

What Went Wrong?Essentially an unmanned blimp, the HALE-D helium airship is a 130-foot-long, lighter-than-air vehicle built by Lockheed Martin. It was launched early on Wednesday, July 27, from Akron, Ohio, to test its communication relay, but encountered a problem and had to be brought down. “There was an anomaly in the system,” Lockheed Martin spokesman Keith Little says. “We still haven’t determined what.” Once the craft reached 32,000 feet, it stopped climbing and couldn’t reach the 60,000-foot target threshold, so Lockheed decided to perform a controlled descent....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe tool world has seen a recent surge in unfamiliar brands of offbeat, exotic new products. Always in search for the , Popular Mechanics rounded up and tested several imported and domestic items that, for whatever reason, just don’t make it to hands of many DIYers in this part of the world. Our verdict: shop around. Online sources and niche distributors make it easy to look beyond big-box home-improvement stores for rare breeds of user-friendly, top-quality tools....

A DJI Phantom 2Media Platforms Design TeamPesky drones that zoom about overhead could soon be sniffing for ways into your computer. Sniffing for ways in, and finding ways to abuse them.That’s the basic idea behind a drone by Aerial Assault that uses a Raspberry Pi-based computer running Kali Linux penetration-testing software. The company was on the floor at DEFCON in Las Vegas promoting the drone, which will reportedly retail for $2,500 once they’ve got a website up to sell it....

Media Platforms Design TeamIn a first for autonomous helicopters, a Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Lab (CMU) and Piasecki Aircraft Corporation team has successfully flown a full-size helicopter past low-level obstacles to safe touchdowns in unimproved areas—completely autonomously.Medevac rescues represent some of the most dangerous flying for helicopter pilots. The new system could help lower the risk with completely autonomous helicopters and enhanced autopilots.Rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, are nothing new—Boeing’s A160 Hummingbird, for example, has been flying autonomously for years....

Media Platforms Design TeamLars Plougmann/FlickrI recently read an article on Lifehacker Australia about the process of downsizing your home—and how to do it without going nuts. The article listed five key areas of advice, including deciding what you love and what you don’t, selling off some stuff, and, of-course, getting organized.While all of those tips are perfectly good advice, I couldn’t help but think of my own downsizing experience, which is thankfully far enough in my past that I don’t feel the pain as acutely anymore....

Media Platforms Design TeamHere we were thinking that was kicking up the a notch from even the . But leave it to Dubai to build it way harder, faster and stronger–or, at least in the case of this newly approved design from New York’s Fxfowle architects, way cooler. Minnesota’s next-gen St. Anthony Falls Bridgenext generation of mega engineeringquake-proof Bay Bridge SkywayAs if the Burg Dubai tower wasn’t already taking the worldwide skyscraper race to new heights, this as-yet-unnamed span will be the world’s largest arch bridge, with 2000 vehicles set to cross its 12 lanes–per hour, in each direction–when it’s slated for completion in 2012....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhile auto engineers continue tweaking designs for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and squabbling over the battery technology to power them, researchers today confirmed that the cars can, indeed, significantly cut our contributions to global warming. By 2050, a new study says, broad acceptance of PHEVs could cut up to 6.12 billion tons of greenhouse gases each year—approximately 2.5 times the amount currently emitted by power plants. As detailed in our special report on the race for companies to develop a reliable battery for the electric car—one that will last eight to 10 years, produce sufficient range and not go up in flames–it may still be three years before concepts such as the Chevy Volt hit dealerships....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhile the high school teams in the 2012 FIRST Robotics competition built basketball-playing bots, their younger counterparts in the FIRST Lego League (FLL) faced off in the Food Factor Challenge—an educational initiative on food safety disguised as a three-part competition. The challenge began at the start of the school year, as FIRST developed a partnership with the Polytechnic Institute at New York University (NYU-Poly) to place graduate students in local classrooms to teach science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) principles through robotics....

Reversing decades of policy, Apple has announced that it will place proprietary screen repair machines in hundreds of third-party locations by the end of 2017. Reuters reports that 400 authorized third-party repair centers in 25 countries will get the devices, internally known known as “Horizon Machines.“The move comes as several states nationwide have pushed towards “right to repair” legislation, which promote the idea of greater access to third-party repairs for a number of machines, ranging from iPhones to John Deere tractors....

Media Platforms Design TeamNot even a month after GM’s second major recall of the year, the car giant is now recalling another 3.4 million cars because of an ignition defect. General Motors says that the problem could cause the ignition switch to move out of position it is carrying too much weight and if the vehicle experiences a jarring event, such as hitting a pothole. This can disable the engines, power steering, and even the airbags....

Potholes are hardly the worst effect of our nation’s crumbling infrastructure but they certainly are some of the most annoying. Google just patented a system that might help to solve the problem, or at the very least take the first step. As outlined in a patent awarded earlier this month, Google’s system is actually a fairly simple one at the top level. Basically, a car uses some manner of shock sensors that trigger when a pothole is hit, and then the car beams the GPS location of the hole up to servers that keep a catalogue of where the holes are....

Media Platforms Design Team The easiest thing about hanging a painting is doing it wrong. But for Toby Kamps, the senior curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, its his job to do it right, and he hangs more than 300 pieces of fine art every year. There are no formulas, no cheat sheets, no Golden Ratios when it comes to picture hanging. “You’ve got to trust your eye,” he says....