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The sail-backed predator Spinosaurus is not only the biggest meat-eating dinosaur known, larger than T. rex. According to new research, it may also be the earliest known dinosaur to swim. A new study in Science says that Spinosaurus probably hunted in rivers with its sail rising from the water like the dorsal fin of the great white shark.“Every time I see the sail on Spinosaurus, I’m going to hear the Jaws theme in my head,” says lead study author Nizar Ibrahim, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Chicago....

New Horizons keeps on surprising with its images of the Pluto system, and the latest of the moon Charon, released on Thursday, is a real stunner. The enhanced color image of the icy moon shows some striking detail, including the intense ridge running through half the world. It also shows some coloration at the top, which has an interesting origin. That red cap on Charon may be from Pluto. The “gunk” you see may be a material called tholin, a mixture of organic compounds that are projected like an aerosol from planets and other solar system bodies....

View full post on YoutubeIf this robot shows up at your next house party to challenge you and your beer-swilling friends to a game of beer pong, just walk away. This isn’t going to end well.The bot built by Empire Robotics uses Versaball technology, which features a high-tech version of a sandbag to get a strong (yet delicate) grip on any object. When it removes air from the bag, the sand conforms tightly around the object....

This massive three-engine Dornier Do 24 is a frequent visitor to the Scalaria Air Challenge in Austria. This year’s participation was not without incident as the aircraft makes a high speed waterloop while landing on the brilliant waters of the Austrian Wolfgang Lake in the Salzkammergut valley.The aircraft was attempting to land after a recent downpour that left debris floating in the water. An unidentified object struck the hull as the pilot attempted to go around, dipping the left side of the aircraft and ultimately performing the crazy donut seen above....

Northrop Grumman didn’t get long to celebrate winning one of the most important defense contracts of the 21st century. The week after it secured a $55 billion-and-growing deal to build the Long-Range Strike Bomber (LSRB), the successor to the B-2, losing bidders Boeing and Lockheed filed a protest against the stealth bomber contract award. This may go nowhere—only about one-fifth of such protests succeed. But it’s one hint of just how dragged-out and difficult the process of bringing a new bomber into this world can be....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph by Donna Coveney/MIT) Two weeks ago, John Ochsendorf was just another one of the dozens of super-smart associate professors at MIT—a 34-year-old structural engineer minding his own super-smart business while synthesizing next-gen bridge and infrastructure tech with old-school archaeology. Then one day last week, he got a completely unexpected phone call from the folks at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The message, more or less: Congratulations, you’re officially a genius—here’s $500,000 for your troubles....

Media Platforms Design TeamA Toyota Prius is plugged in at the 2009 Washington Auto Show. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, D.C.—If you build it, will they come? That is the question for municipalities, employers and gambling entrepreneurs pondering the construction of a network of electrical outlets to recharge the promised wave of plug-in hybrid electric and pure electric cars. One of the many topics that automakers discussed at the Washington, D....

After he was burglarized, Australian Kang Liang watched the police dust his home for fingerprints and come up with nothing. He thought there had to be a better way, so he used his skills as a materials scientist to develop an entirely new method of collecting fingerprints—making them glow neon green.Liang teamed up with scientists from the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) to develop a liquid that glows under a black light when it is applied to fingerprints....

With only one episode left this season, we would be remiss to not mention that Halt and Catch Fire has still not been renewed—or cancelled. With that uncertainty in mind, it’s certainly enjoyable that the show has turned delightfully unpredictable.In episode nine, Joe (Lee Pace), Cameron (Mackenzie Davis), Gordon (Scoot McNairy) and Donna (Kerry Bishe) drive to the COMDEX trade show in Las Vegas, where they will demo the PC they’ve spent all season building....

Gary Souza is the show designer for the Macy’s Annual 4th of July Fireworks Display in New York. The 25-minute fireworks show is choreographed to music, involves five barges at different positions in the East River, and is watched by millions on the city’s shores and on television. In this edition of PM’s How Your World Works podcast, he explains to us just what goes in to the designing, planning, and executing of this year’s event—what it feels like like to fire off more than 54,000 explosives into the air....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf you’re looking for a project that enhances your outdoor environment, the easy answer is a deck or patio. If, however, you want something just a little more captivating–a subtle focal point for your garden or yard that accents your landscape rather than covering it up, we have a few ideas for you.Made of solid redwood, our garden gateway features four distinct designs–trellis, gate, fence and bench. Each element complements the others so that, taken together, they provide a cohesive assembly of form and function....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe abracadabra moment comes late on a winter afternoon, when Jay Thompson pulls a lever on the Jahns Structure Jacking System. As pressurized hydraulic fluid surges to carefully positioned jacks, the shingled cottage on New Jersey’s Long Beach Island parts ways with the brick foundation that has held it earthbound for the past 120 years. A barely perceptible gap grows until daylight is plainly visible under the house....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe sunroof in my Pontiac Sunfire has been getting fussy lately. Sometimes it initially won’t close but finally does after a few tries, and it’s making some bizarre popping and scraping sounds. With winter coming up, I want to get it fixed. Can I do this myself?You’d think sunroofs would be just as reliable as power windows, but turning a sliding panel on its side makes the mechanics far more difficult....

Q: Six years ago I purchased a new 25 hp 4-stroke carbureted Mercury outboard motor. The carb is now suffering the effects of ethanol—a clogged fuel port stalls the engine at mid-throttle. I understand there are additives that will prevent or minimize this in the future, but is there anything on the market that will clean the carb out without having to dismantle it?A: The only one I know of that claims to use enzymes to dissolve the organics left behind by ethanol is Starbrite’s Startron....

Media Platforms Design TeamMojave’s Air and Space Port stores and maintains dozens of airplanes, many of which are loaded with fuel and ready to fly. Officials are using Transportation Security Administration grants to increase security with infrared camera stands (not shown). RELATED STORIES* EXPERTS: How Big Business Will Spend Cash in Space* ANALYSIS: Space Tourist Biz Moves Beyond Early Adopters* PODCAST: Private-Space Race Experts Discuss Future* COMPLETE COVERAGE: News & Analysis on Private SpaceMedia Platforms Design TeamThe unused corners of Mojave’s airport serve as boneyards for abandoned airplanes....

On MythBusters, our Discovery Channel show, we conduct scientific experiments to determine the truth of tall tales and urban legends. Here’s one example: The story goes that an Air Force sergeant in Arizona attached a jet-assisted take off bottle–a military-grade auxiliary rocket used to generate extra thrust–to his ‘67 Impala, and got up to 300-plus mph before crashing. There’s no record of any such crash, but we couldn’t resist testing the premise....

UPDATE: The craft successfully reached Earth orbit. The four craft successfully separated at 12:40 a.m.View full post on TwitterThursday night at 10:44 p.m. EST, NASA will launch its Magnetospheric Multiscale mission from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The MMS is a fleet of four probes that will move in formation to study the interaction between the Earth’s protective magnetosphere and the particles from the sun that will bombard our planet....

For the first time, scientists know how long a day is on an exoplanet. In a new study of the alien world Beta Pictoris b, which spins much faster than any planet in our solar system, astronomers found that the exoplanet has a day only about eight hours long. Sure, this is just one fact about one faraway planet. But the findings, and the strategy used to discover them, could reveal new information about how planets form and even what clouds and storms might be like on distant worlds....

New research from the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute indicates that self-driving cars are more frequently involved in accidents than conventional vehicles. For every million miles driven, autonomous cars had an average of 9.1 crashes, compared to 4.1 for conventional vehicles according to data for Google, Delphi, and Audi autonomous vehicles between 2012 and 2015 and the total accident rate of conventional human-piloted vehicles in 2013.However, this data amounts to 11 total crashes for self-driving cars....

Media Platforms Design TeamOli Scarff/Getty ImagesNo more hunting for an outlet at Starbucks, or cursing yourself for forgetting your phone charger. The coffee retailer is teaming up with Duracell to provide a boost that is coming not from their coffee, but from wireless recharging. The device, the Duracell Powermat, is a pad that allows phones and tablets to charge inductively. It will be installed on Starbucks tables and countertops nationwide.Currently, the wireless charging market in the U....