We all know how astronauts train for microgravity by hanging out in swimming pools and taking rides in vomit comets, but those aren’t the only technological tricks NASA has to bring space to Earth. It’s also got a wild DIY virtual reality rig that turns a room into an ISS holodeck. Gizmodo took a trip to visit the rig at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and tried on NASA’s setup....
Media Platforms Design TeamAstronauts train for their spacewalks at the International Space Station while submerged in Houston in a six-million-gallon water tank, learning to better understand and cope with the free-fall environment of orbital flight. But they expect to leave all that water behind after launch.Today at the ISS, however, an unusual and serious water leak threatened to engulf European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, nearly blinding him inside his helmet and forcing NASA to cut short their maintenance spacewalk after just 1 hour and 32 minutes....
External DrivePrice: $70 to $500 The most affordable option, these drives link to one computer at a time using USB, FireWire, eSATA or all three. Most models (such as the Maxtor OneTouch 4 shown here) come with automated backup software. External drives are either desktop or portable models, some as small as a deck of cards.Media Platforms Design Team>Network-Attached Storage (NAS)Price: $200 to $900 Instead of connecting directly to an individual computer, NAS drives hook into your home network over an Ethernet line....
Media Platforms Design TeamCost: $99 (with contract and mail-in rebate)Carrier: Verizon WirelessThe first thing you learn about the Nokia Lumia 928 comes the moment you pick it up: It is a substantial and solid object. And it’s a testament to the way Nokia works with plastic that the Lumia 928 doesn’t have the cheap and fragile feel of a phone like the Samsung Galaxy S4. That said, the downside to the Lumia’s solid plastic body is a weighty chunkiness that makes it feel a bit, well, heavy at 5....
Media Platforms Design TeamThere have been many great friendships throughout the history of science. . Stephen Hawking has Cal Tech physicist Kip Thorne, with whom he has made a series of over topics such as the existence of black holes.Johannes Kepler had Tyco Brahepublic betsPerhaps the only thing better than a good BFF is a good adversary. Isaac Newton feuded with Royal Society president Robert Hooke over gravitation and German intellectual Gottfried Leibniz over calculus....
Marshall Schott is an avid homebrewer and head writer behind the popular Brülosophy experimentation website. Dubbed the ‘MythBusters of Homebrew’, Schott and his crew of brewers put the many practices behind homebrewing to the test, often with surprising results that challenge traditional convention. Schott talked to PM about his so-called ’exBEERiments’and his most surprising findings.PM: Why do you do weird experiments with homebrewing?MS: When I started homebrewing more than a decade ago, I got the inkling that a lot of what amateur homebrewers were told is “proper” procedure was either wrong, meant for commercial brewers, or was simply outdated....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe New York auto show isn’t over yet. In fact, it’s barely halfway through the very first press day. But if we had to pick one car from the show this year to put in our own personal garage, this would be it. We’re smitten.Okay, we were smitten when we saw (and heard) it last night:The limited edition CLK63 AMG Black Series is the bad boy of the Benz lineup....
The impossible is happening; space is about to get even cooler. NASA is about to send a pair of Hololens up to the International Space Station.The partnership is spawning a project called “Sidekick” that aims to use commercial technology to make life on the ISS easier for astronauts. Of course they’re starting with the Hololens. The goofy-yet-awesome headset already passed some tests on NASA’s vomit comet and worked just fine in low gravity, generating less vomit than a Oculus Rift DK 1 on the ground....
Anki, the makers of smartphone-controlled toy racecars, will unveil a new kit called the Anki Overdrive, giving users the ability to create their own track. It’s a feature long included in other RC car tracks but missing on the company’s first product, the Anki Drive.Set to be unveiled at the New York Toy Fair, the $149 set will allow players to lay out their own racetrack to zip past not only cars controlled by friends but also those controlled by an AI player, a feature that took two years to develop....
Researchers at Rice University have created nanosubmarines: submersibles that are less than 10 nanometers long. The single-molecule subs, each composed of 24 atoms, have motors powered by ultraviolet light that propel them forward 18 nanometers per revolution. This gives them a top speed of less than one inch per second, which Rice Chemistry and NanoEngineering professor James Tour described as a “breakneck pace on the molecular scale.““These are the fastest-moving molecules ever seen in solution,” he said....
It’s been a rough half century for SETI. It all began in 1960, when Frank Drake turned a 26-meter radio telescope to the stars, hoping to hear a broadcast from extraterrestrial life. In response, his team heard, well, nothing. And for 55 years since, that’s largely been the case. (The “Wow! signal” notwithstanding.)But part of the problem is SETI has been run on a shoestring budget for the majority of its life....
Media Platforms Design TeamREAL WOODNatural-wood decking products can be roughly divided into three categories: pressure-treated lumber, redwood and cedar, and tropical hardwoods. You’ll find most types of wood decking at your local lumberyard, although availability may vary depending on where you live. A growing number of decking options—tropical hardwoods in particular—are available only online. Pressure-Treated LumberThis ubiquitous green-tinted wood has been the best-selling decking material for several decades and still is today....
We spent the better part of Friday throttling around the Santa Monica Mountains with other journalists on Suzuki’s latest Boulevard cruiser—the M109R. The previous Boulevards were nice enough bikes but none of them had hairy chested brawn you need in a true muscle cruiser. Well, the new M109R certainly has the beef. Twist the right grip and hold on buddy. The power and torque from this injected, DOHC, water-cooled, 1783 cc V-Twin (whew that’s a mouthful) is ridiculous....
Science report cards are in, and the grades aren’t promising: According to a study released by the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), urban elementary and middle school students are falling below the national average.The Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) tested public school districts in 10 American cities, then compared those scores to the nation as a whole. Fourth graders in nine of the ten districts had lower average scores than public school students nationally; eighth grade students in all ten districts tested below the national average....
Media Platforms Design TeamIn the scientific community, it’s the age of the virtual map. Neurologists connections in the human brain, and environmental researchers routinely parse databases into maps to model climate change. But today, published in Nature presents arguably the most ambitious virtual map to date: a computer simulation, tracking the evolution of the entire universe.recently charteda paper"Our computer program accounts for the laws of nature—gravity, the formation of supernovae, black holes—and then evolves the universe until the present," says Shy Genel, a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and coauthor on the study....
Media Platforms Design TeamBreathtaking photos of the Earth are now commonplace, littering the Twitter feeds of astronauts. But it all started with this Hasselblad 500c, the first camera used to take photos in space. It just sold at auction for $281,250.Wally Schirra, a photography enthusiast, took the camera with him on a Mercury Atlas mission to orbit the Earth in 1962. His modifications to make the Hasselblad space-ready included painting it all black to reduce reflections and equipping it with a 100-exposure film container....
Three thousand feet, and the cloud ceiling keeps dropping. It’s been an hour since we last saw the snows crowning 10,000-ft. peaks to the west, and we’ve just lost the tops of the waterfalls crashing down to the Klinaklini River. All we can see in this flight corridor through the Coast Mountains of southwestern British Columbia are cliffs off our wingtips and evergreens on the valley floor. Soon storm clouds begin erasing entire mountains, one at a time....
A search of Neil Armstrong’s closet has revealed an awesome find: a cache of parts from the Apollo 11 flight, invaluable artifacts of the first moon landing. The objects in the bag were used on the moon, meaning they were all at one point at Tranquility Base.Neil’s widow, Carl Armstrong, just turned over the bag of history to the Smithsonian. It’s called the McDivitt Purse, named after Apollo 9 commander Jim McDivitt, and was placed in the Lunar Module on Apollo 11, intended to hold unused items during EVAs....
Media Platforms Design TeamLately my 1995 Accord is acting weird around corners. When I take left curves at higher speeds, I feel vibrations from the right rear tire. No such issue with right curves. I’m wondering if there’s something wrong with my suspension.The good news is you probably don’t have a suspension problem. The bad news is you probably need a new wheel bearing at the right rear corner. Wheel bearings are just like any other roller bearing you find in machinestwo rings of hardened and finely machined steel separated by a rolling element such as small metal spheres or cylindrical rods, all kept happy with a thick coating of grease....
style=“margin-bottom:5px;">1. Solar Lawn MowerMedia Platforms Design TeamSure, Husqvarna makes a solar-powered lawn mower (it’s robotic, like a Roomba). But it costs $3000. This is a DIY hack that you can do at home with a battery-powered lawnmower and some solar panels. style=“margin-bottom:5px;">2. Homemade JerkyMedia Platforms Design TeamDads love meat. What better way to show you care than by putting together some homemade beef jerky? You could do it in the oven, but for $9, you can make your own smoker and do it outside....
