A Harvard astronomer and his team have turned up something quite big while running publicly available data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and by big we mean both in scientific
Read more...
Keeping tabs on nuclear material is both increasingly important and increasingly difficult these days, but researchers at the University of Maryland have devised a mechanism that may make it a lot easier to ensure unchecked radioactive materials don't make it illicitly
Read more...
DARPA's Transformer - sometimes referred to as the flying Humvee - seems to be moving right along, even if only on paper at this point. The DoD's out-there tech incubator has awarded Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute $988,000 to develop an autonomous
Read more...
Pills that only contain medicine are so very 20th century. Swiss pharma house Novartis thinks pills needn't merely deliver medicine to the bloodstream, but could also monitor its effects and transmit data to physicians. As such, the firm plans to bring a chip-in-a-pill
Read more...
It's still hard to know just how big an Atlantic hurricane is going to get or where it might make landfall until just days before it strikes, but meteorologists have long been able to predict with fair certainty how many hurricanes will be spawned in the next hurricane
Read more...
Last night the normally hazy sunset off the southern California coast was interrupted by a missile streaking upward and across the sky, captured by a local CBS News affiliate's helicopter
Read more...
Environmental groups and wildlife conservation advocates have argued for years that Atlantic bluefin tuna populations are being devastated, but it was difficult to make a hard case. Why? The very people and authorities that should've been keeping track of fishing quotas
Read more...
In particular, "participants correctly identified the future position of erotic pictures"
It's long been regarded as pseudo-science or simple lore, but precognition - that is, the ability to not just predict but to actually perceive the future - is getting a fair
Read more...
In Afghanistan, perhaps more so than in a small Polish town, it's important to know exactly where you're going. So you can imagine the frustration felt by Polish troops serving in Afghanistan when faulty
Read more...
When hypothesizing about life that may exist elsewhere in the universe, the tendency is to visualize something far different from life here on earth. But here in our galactic neighborhood, a team of MIT researchers argues, life it just as likely related to us. Following
Read more...
Taking cues from slime molds, ants, and living biological cells, a team of University of Pittsburgh researchers has designed a system of artificial cells that can communicate with one another and cooperate to carry out tasks. The computer models they've devised could
Read more...
With shuttle launch postponed, our hearts go out to a passenger
NASA has just announced it will postpone the 39th and final launch of space shuttle Discovery until November 30 at the earliest, after a hydrogen gas leak stalled this afternoon's scheduled liftoff.
Meanwhile,
Read more...
Talk about cloud computing. Google wants to install "InterPlanetary internet protocols" (IP IP?) on spacecraft, using them as an interwoven network of new space-based communication nodes.
That's according Google's Chief Internet Evangelist, Vint Cerf, in an interview
Read more...
Cab drivers know their cities intimately, using shortcuts and side streets to bypass traffic jams and (hopefully) get you to your destination more quickly. Now Microsoft is hoping to tap into this talent and design
Read more...
The car rounds out the company's electrification plan
Ford has been talking for months about its plan to bring five electrified vehicles to market by 2013. The last remaining mystery about that lineup -- a plug-in hybrid whose name, shape, or size were long unknown
Read more...
Last week's launch of NanoSail-D - NASA's solar sailing nanosatellite that was reportedly launched from the Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology Satellite
Read more...
A new underwater kite being developed in Sweden could be a low-cost, low-impact method for harnessing ocean energy. Swedish start-up Minesto has obtained US$2.5 million to start testing the kite in Northern Ireland next year.
The kite, called Deep Green, is able to capture tidal energy at
Read more...
Of all the aviation tech emerging from the Farnborough International Airshow, Airbus' futurist visions are among the coolest.
The aviation firm unveiled its
Read more...
The vast amount of information at our fingertips these days can be as distracting as it is useful. Tracking something like the movement of an index on the stock market by feverishly checking a ticker all day is often more than you want to deal with. So this cube lets you display data it receives
Read more...
An ultralight kit plane designed in the 1970s has become the first four-engined electric plane to take to the skies. Weighing in around 175 kilograms -- including the pilot -- the
Read more...
It?s amazing no one thought of it before: nuclear fusion from a levitating tire-sized magnet
Read more...
Looking for new energy solutions, scientists are increasingly embracing the idea of cold fusion, once considered a junk science along the lines of alchemy. "Cold fusion" describes the nuclear fusion of atoms at close to room temperatures, as opposed to the epic temperatures
Read more...
RNAi, also known as "gene silencing," is a cellular mechanism that blocks the production of proteins, and has tantalised doctors as a potential medicine for a number of years now. However, by placing payloads of RNA in a polymer nanobot, scientists have finally shown
Read more...
With Avatar, the highest-grossing movie of all time, and the World Cup, the most-watched TV broadcast, both in 3-D, it was only a matter of time until Nintendo, the most popular video game maker in the world, jumped on the three-dimensional bandwagon. And last
Read more...
One squat multitasking robot can build semiconductors for solar cells on six-inch-square plates of glass, plastic or flexible metals in just over half an hour. Six of these tireless mechanical workers, chugging away at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado, will
Read more...
Stephen Conroy is the poster boy behind the push for a mandatory internet content filter in Australia. And while Google recently panned the effectiveness
Read more...
Northrop Grumman has released a new photo of their carrier-based attack drone, the X-47B. It's due to make its first flight later this year as part
Read more...
No-one loves that trash smell in the morning, and certainly not Beijing residents who have complained about a landfill at the city's edge. Chinese officials will respond to the Asuwei dump crisis by installing 100 deodorant guns that can literally cover up the problem temporarily with
Read more...
The future of community bike systems may not require much pedaling at all; Sanyo has just installed two "Solar Parking Lots" that serve as solar charging stations for 100 Eneloop electric hybrid
Read more...
It's the bane of Web designers everywhere, and it makes most modern Websites look broken and horrible. So why are 20% of web surfers still using it?
Today was supposed to be a great day for the Web. As of March 1, 2020, Google will no
Read more...
Popular Science has been a leading source of science, technology and gadget news since 1872. With up-to-the minute latest space news, insightful commentary on the new innovations and concept cars ...if it's new or future technology you'll find it at popsci.com.au.
WW Media - Popular Science © 2010
Gadgets - Cars - Science
