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The U.S. Navy has a ship-killing problem. The service has, over the past 25 years, neglected the basic mission to sink and destroy enemy ships. Now, with the Russian and Chinese navies on the horizon, the Navy is looking at ways of making its ships more lethal—by repurposing missiles as ship-killers. The problem started with the end of the Cold War. Defense budget cuts in the 1990s slashed the size of the navy, and pushed back a replacement for the venerable Harpoon missile....

Any kind of tire failure–even a simple flat–is a huge hassle. But this can be avoided with careful tire maintenance. If the recent tire recalls and reports of tread separation have alerted you to the importance of regular tire inspection and care, you’re ready to go beyond just a quick look to make sure the tires aren’t flat. Most failures are caused by underinflation, overloading your vehicle, or damage from debris, curbs and potholes....

Cowboys StadiumArlington, TexasMedia Platforms Design TeamYes, that gargantuan, 1.2 million-pound video screen—the world’s largest roof-hung hi-def display—was installed too low, hanging in the path of the occasional punt. And new stadiums, particularly ones that cost roughly $1.15 billion, are always controversial. But from an engineering perspective, Cowboys Stadium is an impressive feat, with the largest operable glass doors on the planet (each panel measures 290 x 220 feet), and a self-cleaning roof, thanks to one of the first installations of a photocatalytic titanium dioxide coating that uses sunlight to break down dirt....

Home runs have soared out of baseball parks at a historic rate in 2017, as MLB hitters have slugged more than 5,700 dingers to set the record for a single season. Those homers are flying awfully far, too. Perhaps no shot was more impressive than one from New York Yankees rookie Aaron Judge, who blasted a home run 495 feet in Yankee Stadium this summer. And fans who tuned into the Home Run Derby in July saw Judge send baseballs where no baseballs had gone before—including one homer that doinked off the roof of Marlins Park in Miami....

A new search engine launched yesterday, claiming to be the next, best alternative to Google. Cuil (pronounced “cool”) garnered a ton of buzz around the Web and from mainstream media, in part because some of its founders jumped ship from Google and in part because Cuil claims (and Google disputes) that it’s the world’s biggest search engine. But if you’ve spent any time on the site–and we’ve spent a lot–you probably noticed that it’s certainly not the most effective one....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamThe $7.4-billion Chrysler buyout by private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management may be an exciting business story, but it won’t necessarily bring new drama to the dealership. The first product introduction you can expect, according to analyst George Peterson, president of industry consulting firm AutoPacific, is a high-revving PR spin machine. The “new Chrysler” won’t involve new models so much as a message something along the lines of this, he says: “We’re the new American Chrysler—expect great things from us....

Media Platforms Design TeamOwning a classic bike is like dating a woman who’s out of your class—very high-maintenance and demanding of your time and money.I’m in with a tight group of enthusiasts who make up the Venice Vintage Motorcycle Club on the California coast. Bikes consume most of my time outside of my day job as an audio engineer making promos for Fox Broadcasting. I’m a really organized person. That’s essential in my work, and it’s also why the club relies on me to plan our events....

Slow HandQ: Is there a way to repair a seatbelt retractor? I have a relatively new SUV with seatbelts that are slow to retract. The belts require a little help so that they don’t get caught in the door when we get out. Can they be lubricated?A: I’ve fixed a bunch of seatbelt retractors. Usually, they are gummed up by lint, dog hair, and in one case what seemed to be the majority of a bottle of sticky soda....

LOS ANGELES — Here at Day One of the L.A. Auto Show, Ford lifted the veil on the Giugiaro Mustang Concept a full day before the official press conference. Now this isn’t a Mustang you’d mistake for one parked down at the local Tastee-Freeze. This one’s been heavily modified inside and out by the storied Giugiaro S.P.A. studios in Italy. With a severely chopped rear end on the Mustang chassis and the now seemingly ubiquitous supercharged 4....

Apple is finally unveiling its long-rumored music streaming service, presenting a pay model that targets Spotify and other premium services. Apple will offer unlimited streaming for $10. It won’t be like Spotify, where the free version allows users to stream from the entire catalog as long as they’re willing to sit through an ad now and then. Instead, the free tier of Apple will feature a Pandora-like ad-supported internet radio, plus channels staffed by human DJs (rather than programmed by an algorithm-based thumbs up / thumbs down model like Pandora’s....

The Battle of Takur Ghar, fought at 10,200 feet near a snowcapped mountain peak, started in the early morning hours of March 4, 2002. It was part of Operation Anaconda, a plan to block all escape routes from the Shah-i-Kot valley and destroy al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters who had massed in the frigid hills of eastern Afghanistan. Things did not go as planned.During the operation, U.S. Navy SEALs were pinned down on the ridge dividing the upper and lower parts of the valley....

Our planet’s trusty magnetic field—an invisible barrier created by the churning of molten-hot matter in Earth’s core—protects us from the lethal space radiation that engulfs most of the known universe. Without this field, Earth today would look as barren as Mars. Scientists have a hard time imagining how life anywhere could exist without one.According to a new study out today, magnetic fields like Earth’s may have been far more common in our early universe than scientists ever suspected....

View full post on YoutubeABC is developing a pilot for a sitcom based on An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, the memoir by astronaut/crooner/space poet/photographer/viral video creator Chris Hadfield. Although, if you’re looking for a multi-camera sitcom set in microgravity, I’ve got some bad news for you: According to Deadline, “The TV series is described as a family comedy about an astronaut who is back from space and finds that re-entering domestic life might be the hardest mission he’s ever faced....

Media Platforms Design TeamEditor’s Note: This article was originally published on February 17, 2014.Sept. 21, 2013, 11:28 p.m.27 minutes after launchIt’s a quiet night on Kwajalein Island. It’s always quiet here. The atoll, which the military calls “Kwaj,” lies in the deep Pacific, 2400 miles southwest of Honolulu. Only 1000 people live on the 6.6-square-mile island chain, and nearly all of them work at military installations. On the evening of September 21, most of those people are manning consoles and watching video screens, radar returns, or streams of telemetry data....

It was late 2005 when Alex Wuttke got the call: He had two years to rebuild the extinct. But it wasn’t the digital archaeology that forced Wuttke, computer-graphics supervisor at London F/X house Double Negative, into what he half-jokingly remembers as “sheer panic.” It was that damn saber-toothed tiger’s close-up–snarling, fur-bristling and, if notoriously over-the-top director Roland Emmerich had his way with the CG frenzy that would become 10,000 B.C., soaking wet....

We humans like to live near the water. In fact, half of the U.S. population lives within 50 miles of the coast, and 40 percent of the world’s population is within 60 miles of the ocean. That’s one reason sea level rise brought on by climate change would be so devastating.Today inScience Advances, an international team of physicists and climate researchers led by Ricarda Winkelmann at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany calculated what would happen if we humans finish burning through our estimated 10,000 gigatons of total carbon resources (including all our oil and natural gas) at full throttle....

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — In an earlier post, we said the most impressive game we had seen at E3 was Killzone 2, a PS3 shooter that was demonstrated at Sony’s press conference. Here’s an update: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is not only the best thing we’ve seen here, but it’s coming this fall to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. [Check out first-look video here; preview continues below…]This is the first title in the successful Call of Duty franchise that’s set in the present (the others were during WWII), with modern weapons, vehicles, and socio-political headaches....

Media Platforms Design TeamBetsy Crumrine decided to sell her house in a residential area near Washington, Pa., this year in large part because of a neighbor with an outdoor wood-burning furnace. Crumrine has asthma and says the smoke–which wasn’t always visible but had a constant odor–bothered her from October through May, when the furnace was in use. “The smoke permeated the air, depending on the weather conditions,” she says. “I am so sensitive to smoke....

Drones are slowly becoming increasingly sentient, and they’ll soon be just like us: in a neverending chase to find love. Indie band Pomplamoose (Remember them?) just released a new music video for a perky cover of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” It takes place in 2022, when a drone falls in love with a woman. Our protagonist, a DJI 450 quadcopter, mimics a human’s courtship ritual of buying pretty flowers and luring her with attention....

The Explorer may be shifting to a more car-like, fuel-efficient platform in the future. How do we know? As you can see from these first-look photos of the Explorer America Concept that Ford will show on the Detroit stand about a week from now, there’s a completely new configuration for that grand old nameplate.The Explorer America is downsized with highly sculpted sheetmetal, but the important stuff here is underneath. For the first time, we’re seeing an Explorer not built on a truck frame; there’s unibody construction here, like with the Edge and Flex crossovers, and it rides much closer to the ground than the current production Explorer....