Posts

This week’s face-off between whalers and anti-whaling activists in the Antarctic Ocean was a deep-sea battle straight out of a comic book. As seen in video filmed by both sides, a 171-foot Japanese whaling vessel bore down on an enemy speedboat that resembled a stealth fighter crossed with Batman’s car. Only in this real-life fight, Batman lost. The whaler broadsided the strange-looking craft, slicing it in half. The crew of six anti-whaling activists survived....

Media Platforms Design TeamAll right, so it didn’t have quite the emotional drama of a politician coming clean for his sins, but today, Apple honcho Steve Jobs put on his game face for a sorta-kinda-maybe mea culpa for the iPhone 4’s now-famous reception issues. The solution to the “death claw”: free rubber bumpers for all (and, I suppose, just not holding it that way, as Jobs famously emailed when the crisis just began brewing)....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe MIT Self Assembly Lab is the place where the furniture of the future becomes real. Its newest project, a self-assembling table, is built of simply wood and tensile fabric, which folds into place to create a table with no more power than a little nudge from a human. A series of interlocking wood triangles help give the table both flexibility and durability, while the fabric is taut enough to help snap the whole thing into place....

Okay, we’ve only seen pictures of Ducati’s all-new 1098 superbike, but we’re already smitten with a capitol “S.” Not only is this bike visually striking (like most Ducatis), but it just happens to be the most powerful twin-cylinder motorcycle in the class. Ducati’s top sport bike generates a whopping 160-hp and 90.4 lb-ft. of torque from its 1098cc parallel twin. And when you consider the 1098 only weighs 381 lbs, you’d better be ready when you twist that right grip....

Popular Mechanics readers send us all kinds of stuff, and some are true oddballs—like the time a reader sent in a bag of mystery material and we had to tell him it was bat droppings. We’ve diagnosed paint failures, plumbing problems, and we can’t even count how many hand tools and old machines we’ve been asked to ID over the years.So it comes as no surprise that sooner or later we’d be stumped....

The world’s most riveting disaster tourism spectacle is about to shut down. After two and a half years and numerous setbacks and delays, the shipwrecked Costa Concordia cruise liner was partially refloated today, beginning a painstaking process that will not only right the ship, but also see it towed to a maritime scrapyard in Genoa, Italy. The supersize cruise ship, which carried 4,200 people on its final voyage, had rested in nearly 100 feet of water off the Tuscan isle of Giglio ever since it crashed onto a reef the night of January 13, 2012....

Standing upside down on the ceiling of the DC-9, I heard the command once again: “Feet down! Coming out!” John Yaniec, the test director of NASA’s Reduced Gravity Program, was warning our nose-diving, eight-person team of astronauts, surgeons and roboticists that we had about five seconds to float to the padded floor before gravity slammed us there in a heartbeat. With nary a push off my toe, I crossed the hollow cylindrical interior, aiming carefully because there would be no way to correct my course....

Media Platforms Design TeamNASA tried making inflatable space habitats during the 1990s with its TransHab program, but ultimately gave up on it. What makes you think Bigelow can succeed where NASA failed?NASA started down the path but they just never spent the money to develop it. They abandoned it based almost purely on politics. They had started going in that direction because they think that outside of low Earth orbit metallic structures arent really viable....

In 1930, Clyde Tombaugh spotted a moving object between a series of photographic plates taken at the Lowell Observatory. It wasn’t quite the Planet X that was first reported. But the world that came to be known as Pluto instead turned out to be one of the most fascinating objects found in our solar system. That tiny world, smaller than our own moon, was the first hint that a third region of the solar system existed, made up primarily of the debris from the formation of other planets....

During college, Michael Fuller guided canoe trips in Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park. He found himself spending more time planning meals than poring over maps and realized that his real avocation was cooking red meat over hot coals in the woods. “It’s all about the smoke, the primal feeling of being in the outdoors,” he says. Fuller, now an architect, continues to hone his grilling technique on long paddling trips. These are his tips—with commentary from chef Andrew Carmellini, co-creator of The Dutch, a Manhattan chophouse, and co-author with his wife Gwen Hyman of American Flavor, a road food—inspired cookbook....

Media Platforms Design TeamNASA hascompletely removed the protuberance air load (PAL) ramps from the shuttle’s external tank (ET)Discovery’s , the source of foam debris shed last year during launch. But some engineers are still concerned about potential debris damage that could occur if foam separates from one of the ET’s 34 ice/frost ramps. Nonetheless, NASA has decided to launch with the ramps intact because not enough is known about when this debris starts to fall—a crucial factor to determine how to successfully fix the problem, and something shuttle managers hope to learn by carefully observing this launch....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhat inspired you to write Safe Is Not An Option?I call it an accidental book. I’ve been concerned for many years by government policies and public attitudes toward safety in space that were relics from Apollo, and seemed to be counterproductive in the 21st century, at least in terms of viewing space as a new frontier for economic development and human settlement. If we had treated aviation in the 1920s and 1930s the way many want to treat spaceflight today, we’d have never had an aviation industry....

Snapped-Off Hacksaw BladeMedia Platforms Design TeamScores a ragged line into concrete, asphalt, rusted metal. But: The junkyard dog of marking tools, it’s not particularly precise.No. 2 Pencil Media Platforms Design TeamMarks fine lines on softwood and light-colored hardwood for building furniture, cutting trim. But: Tip breaks frequently on rough, heavy-duty jobs.Carpenter’s PencilMedia Platforms Design TeamMarks reasonably dry construction lumber. It’s rugged. But: Even when sharp, won’t mark fine lines for precise cuts....

“I make stuff,” Dean Kamen told a roomful of journalists this morning at the SEJ conference in Burlington, Vermont. He’s not kidding. His 440 patents include the first wearable insulin pump for diabetics, a portable peritoneal dialysis machine, and everyone’s favorite two-wheeled vehicle in the event of a traffic jam or transit strike—the Segway. Now, in the spirit of peanut-shelling humanitarian Jock Brandis, a 2006 PM Breakthrough Award winner, Kamen’s using his knack for invention to help solve a global problem....

Media Platforms Design TeamHigh-speed rail has long been a dream to those looking for an outside fix for airline and car congestion. With stimulus spending, some money to start building those lines—$9.3 billion so far—is now available. The Federal Railroad Administration has not yet announced what sorts of projects it will prioritize when it allocates the funds, but according to Rob Kulat, a representative for the administration, many of its choices will depend on what the states want....

Media Platforms Design TeamArmy officials today released a plan that lays out how the service will use unmanned aerial vehicles over the next 15 years, proposing a future where autonomous UAVs fly for days over battlefields or for scant minutes inside buildings. Maj. Gen. James Barclay III, the commanding general in charge of Army aviation, today released the “Unmanned Aircraft Systems [UAS] Roadmap 2010–2035” at an Army aviation conference in Fort Worth, Texas....

The world’s most powerful camera will spend a decade staring at the southern sky. Its survey will find near-Earth asteroids, faraway exoplanets, brightly exploding stars, and distant galaxies. Taking nightly pictures, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) and its 3.2-gigapixel camera will produce a volume of data that’s hard to comprehend.The project just got its official approval from the Department of Energy, meaning this ambitious mission is a step closer to getting under way....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe goal of the European Union’s LocoMorph project is to design and build efficient robots that can adapt to unexpected situations—and even continue to walk when they’ve lost a leg. Martin Grob and his colleagues looked to both humans and monkeys for ideas, but Grob’s ultimate inspiration came from one of his brother’s pooches. The dog, which only had three legs (and only one eye), was significantly faster than the other quadruped pups....

Media Platforms Design TeamSubmarine mishaps, like this month’s collision between nuclear-armed French and British subs, are hard to avoid or respond to. Nuclear submarines are made to stay hidden, and their locations are a necessary secret—posing a serious problem for any search-and-rescue team. “We face an extremely simple technological problem, which is that these submarines are not detectable,” France’s defense minister, Herve Morin, told a radio station today. “They make less noise than a shrimp....

Media Platforms Design TeamAnother day, and other global flashpoint for war. This time, Turkey and Syria are exchanging fire: Mortar shells lobbed from Syria killed five Turkish civilians and Turkey responded with an artillery barrage. This is not the first time mortars have been fired into Turkey, but this time the attack killed three children. Complicating the situation is the fact that no one is sure who in war-torn Syria actually shot at Turkey, and whether it was intentional or a stray shell....