Media Platforms Design TeamThe morning of March 11th was cold and gray for residents of Honshu, the main island of Japan. That afternoon, Masako Unoura Tanaka and her 70-year-old aunt drove through downtown Kesennuma. Nine miles up the coast, Monty Dickson, a 26-year-old English teacher from Alaska, stood in the city hall of Ofunato. Tayeko Chiba, 70, was tucked in her house, perched high above the sea in the fishing village of Oshiro....
Media Platforms Design TeamDon’t feel bad if you’re a car enthusiast unfamiliar with Voisin.Peter Mullin, one the world’s foremost collectors of French cars, admits that he “… didn’t know anything about Voisins” when he got interested in the genre some 35 years ago. The marque, he tells Popular Mechanics, “wasn’t on the short list of Bugatti, Delahaye, Delage, Talbot Lago, or Hispano Suiza.” But the brand’s backstory quickly sucked him in....
LittleBits is getting into the booming smart home business. The company, which makes small electronic modules that DIYers can use to build their own electronic hardware, today announced its new Smart Home Kit. The largest littleBits kit yet, the 14-module set will help people retrofit existing home products to join the Internet of Things.“The major players in smart home right now are major companies like Apple or GE or Google that are prescribing and designing these devices they think you need and they think you should put in your home,” says Krystal Persaud, product design lead for the Smart Home Kit....
According to Moore’s Law, the speed of computer chips grows at an exponential rate. Sadly, there is no such rule regarding battery capacity. So while computer chips trip over themselves getting faster, the batteries that power them–in laptops, cell phones and other chip-driven devices–lag behind, constrained by chemistry. However, thanks to a breakthrough by Stanford researcher Yi Cui, the lithium-ion batteries that power most of these devices may soon be able to hold 10 times as much power as the ones powering today’s gadgets....
Media Platforms Design TeamA proud technophile—that’s how I’d describe myself. I’ve built a 3D printer from mail-order parts. I once tracked down an iPhone thief using sneaky digital tools. My smartphone, at last count, has 303 apps. But testing seemingly every digital product released has a downside: It means I have bigger privacy vulnerabilities than most people. And for all the attention I pay to technology, I’ve never worked particularly hard at protecting my data—I always used default privacy settings and the same, sloppy online tools most people choose....
Senior Editor Mike Allen answers readers’ car questions.Q: I own a 2001 GMC Safari van, and I tow a folding trailer that weighs about 3600lbs. When hitched, the back end of the van sits much too low and the front tires look like they are about to come off the ground. I keep getting conflicting opinions: air shocks, air bags, leaf springs, hitches. What is your best advice to allow me to 1) get there safely, 2) not break our bank, and 3) not ruin our ride when we are not towing?...
Media Platforms Design TeamNew Orleans, more than three months later. In December, Popular Mechanics editor-in-chief Jim Meigs, executive editor David Dunbar and research editor Benjamin Chertoff toured New Orleans, southern Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast during an intensive examination of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.67-foot sheet piles form a temporary repair to the London Ave. Canal breach.Flooded homes and businesses in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. High water marks called “bathtub rings” mark the depth of flooding....
Stephen Colbert, nerd at heart, brought on America’s boldest nerd, Elon Musk, to his brand new late night show on Wednesday. Starting out the segment, Colbert described Musk’s endeavors—Tesla, SpaceX, Solar City—and said he was either “a super hero or super villain.“View full post on YoutubeBut it wasn’t until Musk described his “fast plan” for terraforming Mars—a “fixer-upper of a planet,” as Musk puts it—by dropping thermonuclear weapon on Martian polar ice caps that Colbert made his decision: “You’re a super villain....
View full post on YoutubeTry to picture a flyover at a sporting event and you’ll probably imagine a blimp delivering aerial footage or fighter jets buzzing the crowd at the crescendo of the national anthem. Now drones are coming to the stadium, and it’s yet another place where they’re making people go crazy.Yesterday Serbia and Albania were playing a qualifying match for the Euro 2016 soccer tournament when a small drone flew over the pitch carrying the Albanian flag....
Media Platforms Design TeamThree years ago, Yokohama introduced a tire called the dB Super E-Spec, which offered a 20 percent reduction in rolling resistance without the usual corresponding drop in traction. The key: new technology using oil derived from orange peels to displace some of the petroleum that’s typically used in tires.Tires, like any manufactured product, are a compromise. In this case, the compromise is between traction, tread life, and rolling resistance....
For some time now, futurists have been talking about a concept called the Singularity, a technological jump so big that society will be transformed. If they’re right, the Industrial Revolution–or even the development of agriculture or harnessing of fire–might seem like minor historical hiccups by comparison. The possibility is now seeming realistic enough that scientists and engineers are grappling with the implications–for good and ill.When I spoke to technology pioneer and futurist Ray Kurzweil (who popularized the idea in his book The Singularity Is Near), he put it this way: “Within a quarter-century, nonbiological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence....
Media Platforms Design TeamFor a little more than a decade, the food industry has been using nanotechnology to change the way we grow and maintain our food. The grocery chain Albertsons currently has a in its home brand, ranging from cookies to cheese blends.list of nanotech-touched foodsNanotechnology use in food has real advantages: The technology gives producers the power to control how food looks, tastes, and even how long it lasts....
Last fall, a multivehicle pileup on I-5 north of Los Angeles claimed the lives of six people. Sadly enough, this type of tragic accident isn’t at all unique. In 2006, 42,642 people died on United States highways and byways, and nearly 2.6 million were injured. These numbers get even more disturbing on a global scale: According to the World Health Organization, nearly 1.2 million people die in auto accidents each year, and the number of injured could be as high as 50 million....
Media Platforms Design Team PARIS — A standard-issue hybrid might be the weapon of choice for stop-and-go commuting in the United States, but clean diesel is coming soon. And it’s hard to beat diesel’s efficiency for longer, high-speed hauls—especially in Europe, where some of the limits are well north of even our speediest 75-mph interstates. So we decided to see what a modern clean diesel could do on its home turf, landing here in France and grabbing the keys to a Euro-spec 2008 Mercedes-Benz C220 CDI....
Media Platforms Design TeamTHE ULTIMATE BURNHow HCCI compares to today’s leading types of internal combustion.>Media Platforms Design TeamTODAY’S EFFICIENCY FIXESCurrent technologies will continue to boost performance as they are more widely used.>Media Platforms Design TeamVIDEO: INSIDE THE LABThe intimidating cautionary signs and tall fire doors that front the Combustion Test Cell inside the General Motors Powertrain Research Center in Warren, Mich., serve as a warning: This is a laboratory where anything can happen....
Media Platforms Design TeamGreat racers start young. Seven-time Formula 1 world champion Michael Schumacher won his first kart championship at age 6. Four-time Nascar Sprint Cup champ Jeff Gordon’s parents moved from California to Indiana when he was 14 so he could drive 650-hp sprint cars. By conventional wisdom, if you’re not on a track by 12 or 13, you’re already too old. But a new breed of drivers who spent their formative years playing racing video games instead of behind the wheel are challenging these traditional notions....
LAS VEGAS—Gaming consoles have never been a robust marketplace. Since the first couch-friendly 8-bit machines in the early 1980s, gamers’ choices have remained remarkably limited. Many consoles have come and gone (RIP Dreamcast), and Ouya and Nvidia Shield have offered entertaining distractions, but for consoles that can do some heavy lifting, we’ve been left with only three options: Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony. Choose your horse wisely.But Valve Corporation wants to change all that, but not necessarily in ways you expect....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe Large Hadron Collider, the 17-mile ring that led to the discovery of the Higgs Boson, is a massive and impressive piece of technology. Yet the enormity and cost of these colliders means they are slow to build, which holds up physics research. A collection of researchers from Stanford and UCLA have successfully developed and tested a particle accelerator that is relatively cheaper and easier to build than its predecessors....
Media Platforms Design TeamLast week,Bigelow AerospaceLockheed Martin announced an agreement with defense giant that explores the possibility of launching ordinary people into space. It’s the latest development in the highly competitive race to privatize space flight - and, if Bigelow has its way, could lead to extended stays in orbit via a space complex.As Bigelow Aerospace founder and president Robert Bigelow discussed on our Popular Mechanics Show podcast this summer, the company plans to build a low-cost, low-Earth-orbit facility (from 200 to 500 miles above Earth’s surface) that will be safe for humans and available for commercial use....
Media Platforms Design TeamMagnets are great for keeping the messy musings of kids’ art posted on your refrigerator doors, but they can hold so much more. Magnetic discs and tapes are used to store information in hard drives and portable devices, but by tinkering with a different kind of magnetism, a team of researchers says, they’ve discovered how to store data in the space of just a few atoms.“We have answered the question, how small can we make a magnetic structure and still be able to use it?...
