With thousands of cars passing through every day, blasting the walls with dirty exhaust, it only makes sense that every once in a while a tunnel needs to be cleaned. But I had no idea there are trucks built specifically for the task, with giant scrubbers attached to robotic arms that can reach every last nook and…
The USS Zumwalt, a Navy destroyer years in the making, is a floating piece of technological wonder. But the neatest feature is tricking nearby radar into thinking its massive 610-foot hull is actually just a 50-foot fishing boat. In fact the ship is so good at going undetected, it’s too stealthy.
I’ve always wondered exactly who is buying Train Simulator 2015, because driving around virtual heavy machinery without causing accidents isn’t really my idea of a good afternoon. But if that software is running in a fully immersive high-tech simulator, I start to understand the appeal.
As a fan of huge machineries I have watched this time lapse video at least five times in a row, and I am still speechless. It was produced by News On Request for Norwegian multinational oil and gas company Statoil, and you can watch how an amazingly huge section of the Aasta Hansteen offshore rig spar gets lifted and…
It’s a clash of gods, science, lava, stars, and the law for the Thirty-Meter Telescope in Hawaii. The would-be new largest telescope on the planet just had its construction permit yanked by the Hawaii Supreme Court.
April 10, 1990: This is what happens when you unfurl a massive parachute in the world’s largest wind tunnel.
Back in the day, humans chopped down forests the old-fashioned way: lumberjacks with axes. Obviously, a 20,000-pound monster with tank treads and massive saws mounted on a crane does the job harder, better, faster, stronger.
Normally, you wouldn’t think of a vehicle used to clean rivers as being particularly cool. But I challenge you to find one single thing wrong with this chainsaw-wielding boat/tank hybrid.
Construction equipment is cool as a rule. Comically-large contruction equipment? So much better. Get your fix with these YouTube channels devoted to these insane machines.
Water-bombing aircraft are pretty standard wildfire-fighting equipment. Helicopters that spew fire onto the forest? Not so much.
Like new cars, new telescopes come with their own unique smell. Unlike cars, telescopes are delicate enough that this smell can damage the high-precision instruments, killing them with their own outgassing. Here’s how NASA protects fragile space telescopes from themselves.
On the 1st of July, 1960 Avro pilot Tony Blackman climbed into the cockpit of a Hawker Siddeley Vulcan delta wing strategic bomber in order to deliver her from the aircraft manufacturer (A.V. Roe and Company, Avro) for Royal Air Force service. The British four-jet aircraft dressed in antiflash white–military serial…
Here comes yet another drone-zapping laser: A German missile manufacturer built this Death Star-like beam to protect world leaders. And it works, too: in a field test, it took down a mini-drone in three seconds flat.
Is this the Gordian knot of the 21st century? Or a high-tech Medusa? Or maybe both? Well, this photograph was taken inside the Very Large Telescope (VLT) operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal, Chile.
These enormous devices you can see in this fisheye photo are the main parts of remote manipulator arms at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s radiochemistry hot cell facility, where highly radioactive materials are used to produce isotopes for medical purposes. Just look at the worker below, you can see how massive…
Scientists love their toys. Monster machines, delicate precision devices, even those finicky electronic brats that spend more time sulking in a heap of malfunction than collecting data: we love the equipment that allows us to explore the world around us.
This simple animation shows you just how immense the European Extremely Large Telescope is going to be compared to the Pyramids of Giza, the Colosseum in Rome, and the Statue of Liberty. It’s going to be Extremely Large.
This breathtaking photo shows the intense orange beam of a new 22-watt laser pointed at the planet Saturn. Wait, isn’t this like the shocking scene in Star Wars where the Death Star’s superlaser completely annihilated planet Alderaan?
American aerospace engineers test rocket engines in large outdoor test stands far away from densely populated areas, and let the engines roar. In Russia, they built a soundproof and gas-tight indoor test chamber right in the middle of town.