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

[ad_1] Self-driving cars are known for driving conservatively. After all, automakers and tech companies design autonomous vehicles to be textbook safe drivers, not aggressive speed demons. But mechanical engineers at Stanford University have been working on a research vehicle that can drive autonomously right at the edge of the tires’ grip on the surface below them, pushing the limits of friction. The goal isn’t to create a self-driving car that can drift around a race track. Instead, the researchers want to help autonomous cars actually drive more safely by allowing them to know their own limits and even operate at the edge of those limits. It’s a useful skill for any driver to have if a deer dashes in front of the car—you want to be able to swerve if needed, but not so hard that the tires lose all purchase on the asphalt and the car skids off the road. “Our lab is really interested in working on self-driving cars at the limits of handling,” says Nat...

[ad_1] DIY The Internet of Things is cool, but it can be risky. Here’s how to protect yourself. Smart home gadgets are undeniably cool, but these internet-connected devices are still just computers and come with similar security risks. [ad_2] Written By Dan Seitz

[ad_1] What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you'll love the show. Fact: You can mummify yourself to death By Rachel Feltman A recent trip to Northern Germany—and the bog bodies at Schleswig-Holstein Landesmuseum—got me thinking about mummification in general. I knew how Ancient Egyptians did it, and I knew that bodies could wind up mummified without outside help, but how exactly does the whole process work? Well, it turns out I had a lot to learn even about Ancient Egyptian mummification, which may have been quite ...

[ad_1] In 2018, Qantas introduced the first nonstop link between ­Europe and Australia. Clocking in at 17 hours, an extended flight like this is possible only because airplane makers such as Boeing and Airbus have spent decades on innovations, including fuel-friendly wing shapes and stronger, lighter materials. But keeping a plane in the air all day is useless if you can’t keep customers happy in cramped, sterile cabins for the duration. Plans include wider seats, lights that reprogram circadian rhythms, and cabin air that’s more pleasant to breathe. Also, they might finally speed up the ­Wi-Fi. But they’d better hurry: Qantas plans to schedule 22-hour flights by 2022. 1. Easing the squeeze The most coveted inches on any plane are the ones we sit on—the economics of air travel forces most of us to cram into seats averaging just 17 inches across. But slightly wider seats might have to make a comeback for drawn-out journeys. Research from the London ...

[ad_1] The first-ever all-women spacewalk originally scheduled for Friday will no longer be all women. Late Monday afternoon, NASA announced a change in its spacewalk scheduling, revealing that astronaut Anne McClain would be replaced by Nick Hague for Friday’s operation. Originally, McClain and Christina Koch were set to follow-up on an earlier spacewalk that took place March 22. They planned to continue work behind the installation of lithium-ion batteries for a pair of the International Space Station’s solar arrays. This would have been the first time a crew of only women conducted a spacewalk. So what happened? NASA’s statement, along with comments given to Popular Science by a NASA spokesperson, noted that there were issues involved in the availability of spacesuits on the ISS. Spacesuits are reconfigurable in different ways, being that each is comprised of a top and a bottom. McClain had trained in both the medium and large torso parts, but learned during her Ma...

[ad_1] Modern smartphones have increasingly large collections of cameras strewn across their backs. The Nokia9 PureView, for instance, has five separate cameras, all with their own explicit purpose. This morning Huawei announced its new P30 smartphone, and while it doesn’t have the most cameras—just four rear-facing imaging devices here—it does boast some interesting photographic tricks. The most compelling change comes in the form of the main camera’s sensor, which has 40 total megapixels, but combines them into groups to eventually create 10-megapixel final photos. Almost all modern digital cameras are built on the same basic premise. A field of light-sensitive pixels sit underneath an array of colored filters. Each pixel gets a red, blue, or green filter and the whole array is arranged into a specific pattern. When you take a picture, each pixel captures light through its colored filter, then the image processor in the camera looks at that data and turns it in...

[ad_1] Smart homes can make coffee, but do they know how to party? Yes, and no. You can set up a system like this one, which starts a barnburner at the cry “Alexa, let’s party,” but making the connections among bulbs, speakers, and virtual assistants takes some doing. Banding your gadgets together into a raucous gang of party animals requires using the app If This Then That (IFTTT) as glue. Once that’s done, you’re ready to rage on. 1. The host Amazon’s Alexa-enabled Echo Dot hears your rallying cry and sends the signal to the rest of its party people—er, gadgets. Using IFTTT, your initial voice command can also tweet out the invite to friends and order pizza to keep ‘em fed. 2. The party planner Alexa relays the shindig-starting message to the Logitech Harmony Hub, which connects to all your devices—from appliances to home theaters—via Wi-Fi. The console is what gets your lights in sync with your speakers, and so on. 3. T...