Awe-inspiring science reporting, technology news, and DIY projects. Skunks to space robots, primates

[ad_1] The on-board diagnostics (OBD) port isn't just for your mechanic. (Deposit Photos/) If your car is less than 24 years old, it has a small white diagnostics port that mechanics use to analyze problems and gather data about your vehicle. But by simply pairing your smartphone with a cheap Bluetooth adapter, you can harness that power for yourself and turn your regular car into a smart car. The plug, known as an on-board diagnostics (OBD) port, lets external devices talk to and gather data about your car. You can use it for mundane stuff like diagnosing check engine lights or gauging your fuel efficiency, but you can also do fun, fancy stuff, like tracking your car with GPS or automatically turning on the smart lights inside your house when you park at home. What OBD is and how it works Every car manufactured since Jan. 1, 1996, must have an OBD-II port—a more advanced version of the original—installed somewhere on the vehicle and accessible from the driver’s seat. ...

[ad_1] A new laptop is nice, but it's even nicer when you know you didn't spend too much for no reason. (Anete Lūsiņa via Unsplash/) Experts agree that the average lifespan of a laptop is somewhere in the neighborhood of three to four years. A desktop should last about five. Computer Hope, a long-running computer help website, concluded—based on multiple studies of the total cost of owning a computer—that most laptops begin to run into performance or reliability issues inside of four years. These problems are mostly due to the breakdown of internal components or the progression of ever-more demanding software. If you’re due for an upgrade, you’ll find no shortage of excellent options. Many people, though, spend too much time focusing on things like display resolution, random access memory (RAM), and hard drive capacity, ultimately spending too much money. And while there’s something to be said for buying the best PC you can afford, smart laptop bu...

[ad_1] Our appetite for cod has had disastrous results. (Deposit Photos/) Human eating habits tend to have devastating consequences. No species embodies the ravages of our appetite like the Atlantic cod. In the early 1990s Atlantic cod populations that had sustained maritime cities on either side of the ocean for centuries crashed. Numbers fell to 3 percent of what they had been in the 1970s, and in 1992 a moratorium was issued as a last ditch effort to preserve what cod was left off the coast of Newfoundland. Atlantic cod have only in the last decade begun to recuperate from the devastation that happened 30 years ago. And new evidence published in Science Advances on the cod population genetics provides suggests one reason why it might have been slow going: It turns out the crash of the early 90s didn't just wipe out their numbers, it also stripped away their resiliency and left a population that was genetically vulnerable. Charting the cod crash. (Philippe Rekacewicz, Emmanuelle...

[ad_1] BMW's electric motorcycle concept would communicate with electronic ride wear that could have built-in lights. (BMW/) You don't need to be the kind of gadget enthusiast who scours obscure websites for product info to appreciate Jony Ive's influence on the gadget world. Apple's chief design officer is largely responsible for a handful of iconic products, including the iPhone, the iPad, and the MacBook. Now, Ive is leaving Apple after decades of service to start his own design firm with his pal, Marc Newson. Apple will be the firm's biggest client, at least to start, so it seems safe to assume Jony will still spend a fair bit of his time designing Apple products and wearing sweaters that shouldn't look cool, but somehow they do. However, no one is sure how much influence Ive will have any more, or really how hands-on he was in recent years anyway, so take all of those “end of an era” blog posts about Ive’s new gig with a pinch of beautifully-rendered salt. ...

[ad_1] The sensor only activates when ammonia is absent, indicating that food is fresh. (Pixabay/) Firat Güder admits it, albeit a bit chagrined. He often leaves unopened yogurt in his office at room temperature for several weeks before he eats it. So far, he’s escaped any ill effects. “They’re still good to eat,” he said. “I have not gotten sick from them yet. Of course, I don’t suggest other people do this.” Güder, assistant professor in the department of bioengineering at Imperial College London, knows maybe he’s just been lucky. Like many consumers, he thinks about food safety, but tries to keep his perspective about the risks. “I do throw away items myself, but usually just use the ‘use-by’ dates as a reference point,” he said. “I do not solely rely on them.” He's referring to the often baffling dates stamped on food labels, which, in reality, have little to do with safety —...

[ad_1] The journey from hospital to club to bedside table. (DepositPhotos/) The first time I encountered poppers, I watched a nun do them. I was in fifth grade. It was the final scene of Act 1 of “Nunsense,” a riotous Off-Broadway musical detailing the fundraising antics of an ill-fated but endearing group of convent sisters. One nun had found a suspicious-looking bag in a high school bathroom and presented it to Mother Superior Mary Regina. Once alone, Reverend Mother rummaged around in the bag and pulled out a small, brightly-colored glass bottle. She gave it the once-over, quizzically reading its name aloud: “Rush.” Unscrewing the bottle, Mary Regina immediately revulsed at the harsh chemical smell contained within, but not before taking an unintentional whiff of the potent fumes. Soon the straight-edge sister experienced a sensual head rush of biblical proportions. The rest of the nuns found her writhing on the floor, higher than a church steeple, moaning and...

[ad_1] Nothin' better than fresh butter on fresh bread. (Deposit Photos/) It's pretty basic of me to say that I have been obsessed with The Great British Bake Off for the past few years. But I, like many other amateur bakers and millennials, love to lose myself in that white tent, where the only thing that matters is whether meringue will hold the shape of a hot air balloon in the British summer heat. I recently watched an episode where the contestants had to make rum butter, and I wondered how easy it would be to make regular butter at home. My mind flashed back to the 1800s, and I pictured myself having to purchase a wooden butter churn, clogs, and a bonnet in order to make my own spread. Newsflash : It's actually a simple process. No churn required; clogs and bonnet: optional. And now that I've learned how to stick it to Big Butter, I've decided to become more than just an amateur baker. I've decided to become an amateur pioneer. What you'll need: Tools:...

[ad_1] Many products featured on this site were editorially chosen. Popular Science may receive financial compensation for products purchased through this site. Copyright © 2019 Popular Science. A Bonnier Corporation Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. [ad_2] Written By Nicole Wetsman

[ad_1] Taking advantage of Titan’s dense atmosphere and low gravity, Dragonfly will explore dozens of locations across the icy world. (NASA/JHU-APL/) The next few decades could bring a cascade of discoveries on extraterrestrial life. NASA announced on Thursday its decision to green-light Dragonfly, a octocopter drone designed to sniff out signs of life-giving chemistry on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Combined with the Europa Clipper mission, which should start orbiting Jupiter's moon several years before Dragonfly touches down, the space agency is giving us our best shot by far at finding alien organisms. If life exists in our solar system outside of Earth, it's probably on a wet moon such as these two. But while Europa tempts us with a subsurface ocean—perhaps not so different from our deepest Antarctic reservoirs, which we know harbor microbial life—it's an icy world with a habitat quite unlike our own. Titan, with the thickest atmosphere of any moon studied, is one...

[ad_1] It's getting tougher to tell what's inside lightbulbs. (Philips/) The Philips Hue smart light bulbs are a truly quintessential smart home gadgets. And light bulbs are actually one of the simplest examples of how a smart home really does come in handy. However, the Hue bulbs have, until now, relied on a stand-alone hub—a piece of hardware that connects to your network and relays commands out to the connected lights. The hub was a middle man, and if it glitched or lost its connection, all your light bulbs went back to their dumb old, switch-flipping days. The new Hue bulbs, however, don’t require a hub. There are three new options, including a $15 white model, a $25 bulb that lets you choose different kinds of white light, and a $50 flagship that can recreate all kinds of colors. They will connect to a hub if you want to use them the traditional way, but you can skip it completely and rely on a new built-in Bluetooth connection. While the Bluetooth feature saves you fro...

[ad_1] A view from CSIRO’s Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope antenna 29, with the phased array feed receiver in the center, Southern Cross on the left and the Moon on the right. (CSIRO/Alex Cherney/) What comes to mind when you try to picture the most powerful object in the universe? Maybe an atomic bomb, or an ultra-powerful sun, right? Well, let me introduce you to the Fast Radio Burst: a strange phenomenon that stretches for just a few thousandths of a second, but can emit more energy than the sun does in 80 years. Thousands of FRBs flash throughout space at any given moment, yet for something so ubiquitous and so powerful, we know almost bupkis about how and why they’re formed. Much of that has to do with the fact that, since first discovering them in 2007, scientists have never been completely sure where they’re coming from. Are they expelled by black holes? Are they extensions of erratic stars running amok? Are they signs of intelligent extraterre...

[ad_1] Celebrations after setting up the world’s highest weather station. (Mark Fisher, National Geographic/) Perched at almost 28,000 feet on Everest, we paced back-and-forth, attempting to stave off frostbite as temperatures hovered close to -22 Fahrenheit and our drill batteries became too cold to work. Our ambition to install the highest automatic weather station in history looked destined for failure. We were at the end of an almost two-month expedition to conduct a hugely ambitious scientific survey of the 29,000 foot Mount Everest. I am a climate scientist who specializes in extreme environments, and together with Baker Perry (a geographer at Appalachian State University), I was trying to install the highest weather station in the world. Weeks of sickness had plagued the expedition (from diarrhea to full-on Influenza-A), but we had so far succeeded. Four stations were under our belt, including at Everest Basecamp (17,000 feet), and Camp II (21,00 feet)—perched high ab...

[ad_1] For more deals and product chatter, check out our exclusive Facebook group. Anker (Amazon/) Get Anker's newly released Soundcore Wakey clock for 20 percent off when you use the code NEWSPK3300 at checkout. The device is perfect for a bedside table because of its built-in wireless charger for your smartphone, white-noise features, and a speaker that can be used via Bluetooth, FM radio, or using an AUX cable. The clock features 10 alarm tones; you can schedule up to 15 separate alarms. It has a digital LED clock face on the front. Get it today for $80. eufy (Amazon/) Today, you save $80 on Eufy's RoboVac 11S. This model was featured in our best robot vacuums article. It is only about 3 inches tall and runs for more than an hour and a half on a single charge. Not only does it recognizes the type of floor it's trying to clean so it can adjust its suction level, but it also uses an infrared sensor to avoid obstacles like furniture (or your pet). Today, you can get it for...

[ad_1] Many products featured on this site were editorially chosen. Popular Science may receive financial compensation for products purchased through this site. Copyright © 2019 Popular Science. A Bonnier Corporation Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. [ad_2] Written By Sara Chodosh

[ad_1] YouTube Music: sunglasses not included. (Luke Dahlgren via Unsplash/) As far as Google-owned music streaming services go, Google Play Music is the past and YouTube Music is the future, even if the company hasn't completely merged the older service into the newer one yet. Whether you've already switched to the latter or are thinking about investing the $10 a month you need to gain unlimited access, these tips and tricks will help you get the most out of the service. Before we get into it, here's a bonus tip: consider getting YouTube Premium for $12 a month, instead of YouTube Music. It costs a little more, but it includes the music streaming service and some useful extras for YouTube in general, including ad-free watching and the ability to download videos (music or otherwise) to your mobile devices. 1. Search by lyric Find a song, even if you only know the chorus. (David Nield/) YouTube Music is smart enough to work out what you're after even if you only know a f...