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A submarine’s periscope is a useful reconnaissance tool, but it puts the vessel at risk since it can only be used when the sub surfaces. As an alternative, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have created a waterproof drone that can float up from the murky depths and then take to the skies to provide an…
George Lucas is a toy-maker as much as he is a director, which explains why we know what to call half the things in the Star Wars universe. AT-ATs, the Sith, A-Wings, and Ewoks. We know what they are—through the prequels, the toys, and the extended universe—but they’re absolutely never called those things by name…
We all like pizza. We all like robots, most of the time. But we definitely, absolutely, undeniably love pizza-delivering robots. Fortunately, Domino’s has built one. Domino’s has been working with Marathon Robotics to build this pizza ‘bot, reports Lifehacker Australia. Weighing about 450 pounds and measuring 3 feet in height, the robot—known as DRU—has storage…
When it’s finally built, ITER will be the world’s biggest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor—and probably our best chance to date for making nuclear fusion work. But engineers are currently toiling with building the damn thing and its magnets are proving to be a challenge. A toroidal fusion reactor like the the smaller Experimental Advanced…
The Greek island of Lesbos, once known for its beautiful beaches and mediterranean landscape, has become the heartbreaking geographic symbol of the refugee crisis. Now, some of the scenes have been captured in painstaking detail using 3D laser scanning. About 450,000 asylum seekers arrived on the island’s shores over the past year and it seems…
Don’t know your adverbs from your adjectives? This little web app colors text so that each part of speech is a different hue—just like text editors that highlight the syntax of different coding languages. You can copy a tranche of text into the box, hit tab, and the secrets of our peculiar language are illuminated…
Bored? How about shooting a few hoops? Well, there’s a basketball game hidden in Facebook’s Messenger app. Here’s how to play. Starting a game is easy. First, make sure you have the latest version of Messenger (you can update for Android or iOS). Then, send a Facebook basketball emoji to a friend on Messenger. Finally,…
Remember that the secure and private email provider Lavabit shut down back in 2013 rather than comply with the feds? While people speculated it was because the government was chasing Edward Snowden, un-redacted files now show that to be the case. Wired reports that the files were published online to a federal court system called…
I know, Microsoft Edge is still haunted by ghosts of IE past, and for that reason alone most people stay a full barge-pole length away from Window’s default browser. But thanks to some upcoming changes, it might stop sucking so bad. The latest beta version of Edge, now available to Windows Insiders on the Fast…
President Obama became famous for his Blackberry addiction shortly after taking office, and it would appear this is one thing Clinton has in common with the sitting president. But according to State Department emails, the NSA was on hand to spoil the party. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Judicial Watch lay…
When listing all the ways humanity is going to ruin the future, one that doesn’t often come up is the sun being blocked out by a horde of drone advertising blimps. But that hasn’t stopped one Swiss firm from working hard to make it a reality. Skye Aero is a project to build 10-foot helium-filled…
Researchers just found an on-off switch for sperm movement. This has the potential to help men who are infertile, but it also has the potential to help all men. It could be an effective form of male birth control. A new study in Science details a new finding, which may be the first step towards…
The 17th century manuscript, which was handwritten by Isaac Newton, describes a procedure for making mercury—a substance that alchemists thought could turn lead into gold. As reported in Chemistry World, the US Chemical Heritage Foundation has purchased the document, which languished in a private collection for decades. The newly surfaced manuscript was authored by an…
It’s no secret that US cities need better transportation systems. The US Department of Transportation (USDOT) and Sidewalk Labs think they have an answer: A new platform that will collect and analyze transportation data using sensors similar to the LinkNYC kiosks that recently started operating in New York City. The platform, called Flow, will collect…
El Niño is almost ready to give way for the rise of its cold counterpart, La Niña. But before it goes, it has one more tough weather hit to throw at the US: a bizarre combination of flooding and an ever-intensifying drought. NOAA’s spring forecast was just released and, although El Niño will be wrapping…
Last night, the person in charge of the official San Francisco BART Twitter account lost it. In 57 tweets, the account espoused truth and honesty, and pretty much admitted what everyone in the Bay Area already knows: the crumbling institution kinda sucks. Now, running social media accounts for well-known public entities, be they people, organizations,…
The internet went into a tizzy this week when headlines proclaimed that the Uber driver in Kalamazoo, Michigan who’s accused of murdering six people was suing Uber for $10 million. But the lawsuit is a hoax. As MLive first reported, a handwritten lawsuit was indeed filed on Tuesday. But the killer, 45-year-old Jason Brian Dalton,…
Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous creation is undoubtedly the Mona Lisa, but the artist was also a brilliant engineer who concocted endless contraptions including some formidable machines of war. This tiny trebuchet he designed won’t take down a castle, but it can almost certainly protect your desk from office supply raiders. You might even learn…
It’s been a little over two years since Google (now Alphabet) decided to scoop up robotics lab Boston Dynamics. Now it’s putting the company that built terrifying robots like BigDog and Atlas up for grabs. Bloomberg reports unnamed sources who say that Google parent Alphabet is giving up on Boston Dynamics. Some speculate the move…
Astronomers have captured an image of a dense clump of dust orbiting around a young star—and they’re saying it could be our first glimpse of a planet in the very earliest stages of formation. Back in 2014, astronomers released an unprecedented image of a planet-forming disk around a young star called HL Tau. The image,…
