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The new television season is off to a geek-tastic start, with the Family Guy premiere mimicking Star Wars and The Bionic Woman pilot delivering sci-fi back to the prime-time masses (click here for our reality check). With shows pressing on, Hollywood and Silicon Valley are developing more and more ways to deliver them off the tube and on the Web. We’re not just talking about downloading CSI a la carte on Apple’s iTunes Store or streaming Lost on your browser the day after it airs....

Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on YoutubeOne year after Google announced Project Loon, a shorthand for “Balloon” and possibly the adjective that describes far-fetched ideas, Wired’s Steven Levy spoke with Google about its plan to bring internet to two-thirds of the world’s population—the total number of internet deficient as of 2014. “On Loon’s two-year birthday, I would hope, instead of running experiments, we’ll have a more or less permanent set of balloons,” says Google X’s Astro Teller....

It’s a crisp morning as you carefully back your car down the driveway. A quick turn of the wheel as the front tire clears the curb will swing your car up the street. But the steering wheel is strangely stiff. Instead of swinging the car’s nose around, you run straight back, knocking over a trash can across the street. Fortunately, the damage is small: a crunched $14.95 rubbish barrel and a slimy mess to pick up in your second-best suit....

Just before 1 p.m. on Saturday April 25, a Saturn V rocket carried one more man into history. Steve Eves broke two world records Saturday, when his 1/10th scale model of the historic rocket—built in his garage near Akron, Ohio—lifted off from a field on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The 36-ft.-tall rocket was the largest amateur rocket ever launched and recovered successfully—and at 1648 pounds, also the heaviest. Eves’ single-stage behemoth was powered by nine motors—eight 13,000 Newton-second N-Class motors and a 77,000 Newton-second P-Class motor....

Media Platforms Design TeamNobel Prize in Chemistry winners Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien. (Photo credits: Shimomura and Chalfie by J. Henriksson/SCANPIX. Tsien by UCSD) Biologists studying nerve development and the spread of cancer need to be able to see tiny proteins in action and, more importantly, to be able to tag and differentiate them. Three scientists—Osamu Shimomura from Japan and Americans Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien—made tracking individual proteins and genes possible using jellyfish as their starting point....

Media Platforms Design TeamSeagate is winning the storage wars. Today it shipped its first 8 terabyte external hard drives to earlybird customers. It’s the largest total anybody has ever crammed onto a 3.5-inch drive, TechCrunch says, double the 4 TB that had been the record up until last year.Later in the year the 8 TB drive will go on the open market, probably for a few hundred dollars apiece. But let’s be real: If you’re going to buy one of these things, you should buy at least two....

The guy across the intersection flicks his high beams at me, just like the oncoming Buick did a half-mile ago, just like a pickup will do a few minutes later. They’re telling me that I’ve spaced out and left my high beams on, that I’m a negligent dummy with his brights ablaze. Except my high beams aren’t on. I’m driving a 2015 Kia K900 with LED headlights, and everyone thinks they’re too bright....

The Department of Justice has begun an investigation into domestic airlines for collusion, the AP reports this afternoon. According to the report, the feds want to know whether the airlines worked together to slow growth across the industry so they could keep flights full and ticket prices high.The AP says consolidation within the industry has raised some red flags with the federal government’s investigators:As a result of a series of mergers starting in 2008, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines now control more than 80 percent of the seats in US skies....

I’m not a pilot. I’m a writer. I was commissioned by Popular Mechanics to write about learning to fly, a commission I agreed to after a few days of deliberation, mainly, and perversely, because I’m terrified of flying and I figured I’d have something to say. I had expressed a desire to fly solo, as the culminating event of my flying -lessons with Tom Fischer of Fischer Aviation, but from the first moment of my first lesson, when I was quite out of my mind with disbelief and anxiety and regretting soulfully this awful decision, I did not think a solo flight likely at all....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe International Space Station isn’t scheduled to be completed for two more years, but a growing chorus of engineers and executives is already brainstorming about what to do with the ISS after its life span ends in 2015. Given how long it has taken to put together the actual pieces in space–the Japanese experiment module Kibo was finally installed just a few weeks ago–and the tens of billions of dollars sunk into the station, it’s understandable that many would like to see the working power of the ISS extended to 2020 or beyond....

Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on YoutubeIf you make it to 175, then you might as well celebrate. Especially if your entire business is time.Patek Philippe, maker of complex, gorgeous wristwatches, is marking its anniversary by, of course, making the most complex watch the world has ever seen. The Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime 5175R is made of more than 1,300 parts, lives in an 18-karat gold case, and costs a cool $2....

Media Platforms Design TeamWant to drink beer all day without getting hammered? Sure, you could drink Coors Light or Bud Light, but those are the sad Velveetas of the beer world, more beer in name than in taste1. A much better option is session beer, an old but recently revived style that has the flavor of craft beer without the high alcohol content.There’s no set definition of session beer, but most brewers say that it’s a flavorful yet “drinkable” brew with an ABV of 5 percent or less....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf you were caught in the jaws of a great white shark and were being thrashed around in the water, would you be able to poke the shark in its eye—distracting it long enough for you to escape and save yourself from certain death? If you’re Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of television’s MythBusters, (check out all their PM columns right here) there is only one way to find out: Turn a 17-ft....

LONDON–The Chrysler-Fiat alliance, should it get finalized in the next few months, would result in at least a half-dozen sharp Fiat designs hitting the U.S. shore. So which Fiats are going to get the Chrysler treatment first? The trade paper Automotive News has reported that the Fiat 500 may come over as a Fiat, not a Chrysler, and be built in Mexico too. Let’s hope the boys in charge would include the more powerful version of the 500 Abarth we test drove last year....

On-Sale Date: NowPrice: $41,545Competitors: Jeep Grand Cherokee V-8, Dodge Durango R/TPowertrains: 3.5-liter twin-turbo V-6, 365 hp, 350 lb-ftEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 16/22 What’s New: The Ford Explorer has never been a nameplate you might associate with an athletic driving experience. Yes, when this generation of Explorer came out for the 2011 model year, it came with a more car-like chassis. That, along with its modern styling, helped the new Explorer become a hit and win the North American Truck of the Year award....

On-Sale Date: NowBase Price: $19,990 to $20,980Competitors: Ford Transit ConnectPowertrains: 2.0-liter DOHC four-cylinder, 131 hp, 139 lb-ft; CVT automatic, FWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 24/25What’s New: With the release of the new 2013 Nissan NV200 Compact Cargo, the small cargo van segment isn’t a party of one (the Ford Transit Connect) anymore. The production version of the vehicle that will become the new taxicab of New York City, the 2013 NV200 features an impressive turning radius of 36....

Media Platforms Design TeamSequester Carbon in LimestoneMedia Platforms Design TeamGeologist Peter Kelemen, photographed for Popular Mechanics on April 1, 2009, holding a chunk of peridotite, a rock that could hold the key to mineral carbon sequestration.More than a decade ago, when geologist Peter Kelemen first saw bleached-white rock formations in Oman, he wasn’t happy. The normally dark-hued rocks were peridotite whose composition he was trying to investigate. But every time Kelemen found an exposed surface, it had reacted with carbon dioxide in the air to form a carbonate similar to limestone....

Two days after Christmas. We’re still in family mode; my brother-in-law and his family are visiting from Massachusetts. We had a brown Christmas, the first I can remember. I’m sure there have been others, but this was by far the most Spring-like holiday season I’ve lived through. Even the promised post-Christmas storm failed to deliver, and I look out my office window to a landscape covered by 2-inches of crunchy snow....

The only thing that is constant is change, and that’s especially true for the New York City skyline. Within the next 15 years, current architectural marvels like 1 World Trade Center and the glistening blue One57 will look tiny compared to the upcoming slate of skyscrapers that will tower over them.In a rendering posted on real estate blog New York Yimby, the city’s landscape will be dotted with even taller skyscrapers that will forever change how it looks....

Two-door coupes may look rakish and sleek. But practical? Not so much. To fit, rear-seat passengers must nearly fold themselves into human origami. Once back there, legroom is practically nonexistent. The awkward ingress/egress issues are solved by creating four-door sedans with a coupe’s profile.To some, the notion of a four-door coupe is an oxymoron. After all, “coupes” by definition have two doors. But with automakers adopting the term for their slickest sedans, the notion of a “four-door coupe” is apparently here to stay....