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The largest telescope in the world breaks ground today, the first step toward a giant observatory that will unlock parts of the universe not accessible to previous generations of astronomers. From its high perch in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the Giant Magellan Telescope will peer into the jets of material ejected from supermassive black holes, take crisp images of distant planets while characterizing their atmospheres, find the first generation of galaxies that formed after the big bang, and explore the objects at the boundary of our solar system that will give us clues as to how the planets as we know them were formed....

Media Platforms Design TeamToday Twitter announced on its blog a redesign that’s radically different and adds new features and capabilities—it also looks a lot like Facebook. Some of the highlights of the redesign are Best Tweets, Pinned Tweet, Filtered Tweets. Best Tweets catalog your most popular 140-characters (or less) musings and makes them more prominent by making the text larger and more prominent on your timeline. You can now pin a tweet at the top of your profile page as a welcome mat for others viewing your profile....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn Sunday the White House accidentally revealed the name of the CIA’s top intelligence official in Afghanistan to about 6000 journalists. During President Obama’s surprise visit to Bagram Airfield, the person’s name was on a list of people attending a military briefing and was listed as “Chief of Station,” the title given to the person who heads the CIA office in a foreign country to establish relations with its host intelligence service and monitor agency actions....

It’s the controversy of the century, pitting sibling against sibling, spouse against spouse, neighbor against neighbor: The white and gold dress that is actually blue and black. Here’s the science you need to know about viral phenomenon America will forget in a few hours: It’s actually an overexposed picture of a tiger:Media Platforms Design TeamAll right, all kidding aside: Wired goes to great lengths to break down the optics at play here....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe 2010 Santa Fe is a mild update to the second-generation crossover that Hyundai introduced in 2007. Hyundai has upgraded the new model’s interior with touch-screen navigation, a rearview camera and XM NavTraffic. An “Eco Indicator” also has been implemented into the automatic models, which should turn every driver into a hypermiler. Offering both the all-new 175 hp 2.4-liter four-cylinder and a new 276 hp 3.5-liter V6 engine, Hyundai has upgraded the 2010 the two powertrains with increased fuel economy too....

On-Sale Date: Late JunePrice: $76,895Competitors: Mercedes-Benz CLS, Audi A7, First Class Mediterranean CruisesPowertrain: 320-hp, twin-turbo, 3.0-liter inline-6, eight-speed automated manual, RWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 20/30What’s New: From the windshield forward, this new 6-Series is almost identical to its two-door 640i brother, the only difference being the shape of the plastic front bumper cover. But from the windshield back, the Gran Coupé is its own four-door thing and rides on a 4....

View full post on TwitterChris O’Leary got to live the dream. Almost. Yesterday the Brooklyn man found himself, ever so briefly, the only passenger on a Delta flight from Cleveland to LaGuardia.O’Leary ended up on the plane after a series of delays led to him rebooking from a 7:15 a.m. flight to a 9:39 a.m. plane, which then experienced further delays. As these delays added up, O’Leary chose to stay put at his hotel, getting the notifications on his phone....

A handful of air traffic controllers from Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus, MI, have blown the whistle on a dangerous flaw of currently flight confirmation systems that poses serious safety risks, like collisions in mid-air. According to the Associated Press, the flaw was explained in letters sent to letters sent to the White House and Congress by the Office of Special Counsel, and centers around current flight-tracking software’s general inability to handle multiple or updated flight plans for a single flight....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s a common question: Are expensive A/V cables really better than their cheaper, less hyped counterparts? While you can buy , they won’t ensure breathtaking sound, and they likely won’t even make a noticeable difference in audio quality.$16,400 speaker cablesHDMI: There can be only oneHDMI is the one cable that defines contemporary home-theater systems, and a host of companies claim to have the best HDMI cables out there....

Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas have developed two types of artificial muscles with cartoonishly futuristic implications, including the development of autonomous humanoid robots, artificial limbs that function like the real thing and real life Transformers—skins that allow aircraft and ships to change shape on demand.The main advantage of the new fuel-powered muscles is their versatility as compared to common battery-powered robots. Losing the battery means dropping weight and gaining mobility....

Media Platforms Design TeamUSS Bataan—After a couple of days working just under the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan you begin to recognize the signature sounds of various helicopters: The high-pitch rip of an HH-60 Knighthawk, the deep, rapid drum beat of the giant CH-53D Super Stallion or the rhythmic song of a UH-1 Huey. So the crew of the USS Bataan, outside Haiti, knows when something new lands onboard....

Q: I have tried to take exceptionally good care of my 2006 Jetta’s interior and exterior, but this winter a 1/4-inch crack appeared in my dash. It almost looks like it has been cut, and I have no idea where it came from. My greatest concern is the crack getting larger. What are my options?A: That dash consists of a vinyl fabric over a foam padding. Sunlight, excessive cleaning and incessant slathering with protectant can leach all the vinyl-chloride plasticizer out of the vinyl—which then gets brittle and cracks....

Despite its bankruptcy and the huge drop-off in its business, Kodak will keep making film for motion pictures—much to the delight of film-loving directors.In an agreement made with Eastman Kodak, the six major Hollywood studios—Sony, Paramount, NBC Universal, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, and Disney—will all make advance purchases of film from the company, effectively keeping its film manufacturing business afloat, and delaying the death of shooting movies on film.Since Fujifilm quit the motion-picture business in 2013, Kodak has been the only supplier of film for movies....

Old meets new with these 3D-printed Cool Bricks. And by old we mean very, very old. Call it what you will—evaporative cooling, Muscatese Evaporative systems, swamp coolers—but this is the way things used to be cooled down: by just evaporating plain old H2O to bring cooler air inside a building. The Cool Bricks, from Emerging Objects, use this technique by interspersing ceramic and wood to create a porous brick that absorbs water....

Media Platforms Design TeamForget about a FlashForward—Courtney B. Vance and Christine Woods, the stars of the hit ABC series, really need a flashback. During an interview touting the show’s March 18 return from a three-month hiatus, the two actors (who play FBI assistant director Stanford Wedeck and special agent Janice Hawk, respectively) couldn’t remember where their show left off. “It’s so funny because people—my mom especially—are bugging me to tell them what happens when we come back,” Woods says, “and I really have to think because it feels like 20 years since we worked on those episodes....

Media Platforms Design Team"In the blue square, we have RPM," the announcer intones, “and in the red square, we have Hot Stuff!” The spectators, leaning forward in their seats, cheer wildly for the fighters in the ring. It’s got all the requisite trappings—the packed bleachers, the overpriced concession hot dogs—but this is no typical one-on-one bout. For one thing, the competitors are machines made of plastic and hardened steel. And for another, this face-off is more violent than even the fiercest WWF match....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf Royal Dutch Shell gets permission to sink an exploratory well next summer in the Beaufort Sea, which lies north of Alaska and east along the curve of land that begins at Point Barrow, the company’s Noble Discoverer drillship will depart for the site from Unalaska Island in June. Unalaska, which is 800 miles southwest of Anchorage in the Aleutian Islands, is often short-handed as Dutch Harbor. It’s the home port for the fishing vessels featured on the television show Deadliest Catch and, remarkably, it is the closest deep water port to the North Slope of Alaska....

Media Platforms Design TeamStephen Hawking is truly an extraordinary man, and not only because he’s a genius theoretical physicist. Hawking is also one of the longest ALS survivors in history, and infamous for his ability to joke about his debilitating disease—and even think of ways to use it to his advantage. Take acting, for example.“My ideal role would be a baddie in James Bond,” he said in an interview with Wired....

View full post on VimeoTheir share price has nearly quintipled this year, but nearly as noteworthy as Tesla Motors’ stratospherically climbing market valuation is their aggressive expansion into the heart of where class-setting luxury cars are manufactured: Germany.Tesla already has showrooms in Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, and Munich (home of BMW), and their further expansion into Berlin and Stuttgart (where Mercedes-Benz is headquartered) suggests a serious offensive against the country where luxury and engineering are points of national pride....

View full post on IframeNext time you slam a hunk of cheese or random vegetable onto your wooden cutting board and start hacking away, take a second to actually look at the thing. Chances are a lot of work went into it, more than you might think.Thisvideo tour of Larch Wood Enterprises in Nova Scotia is a mesmerizing and enlightening look at the process. Specifically, it’s a look at the process of making end-grain cutting boards, which are a fair bit more involved—and prettier—than simpler alternatives....