Science

It may look like the scene in "Star Wars" when Luke Skywalker and his comrades are flying through the channel in the Death Star, hoping to blow it up and strike a victory for the Rebellion. But it's not. It may be even cooler than that.

NASA has released a simulation video showing the results of what's called "Operation IceBridge," an attempt by the space agency to do an up-close-and-personal investigation of a mammoth crack in Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier.… Read more

Want to play god much?

With Nukemap, a new tool that lets anyone test out--on a Google Map--the effects of some of history's most famous nuclear explosions on cities around the world, you can.

Say you're inclined to see just how bad the destruction would be in London if "Fat Man," the second A-bomb dropped on Japan by the Americans during World War II, detonated there. Nukemap lays it all out for you.

Nukemap lets you choose from a long list of cities to experiment with--or drag the map's marker wherever you want--and then choose either a custom yield in kilotons, or one of a list of famous bombs. When you click the "detonate" button, you quickly see a map with a series of colored circles that show the radii of the fireball, the air blast, the spread of radiation, and the spread of thermal radiation. … Read more

If you're a fan of America's long and storied history of great engineering, the National Park Service has got something for you.

On Monday, the park service's Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) Autodesk and kubit will announce the technological process of documenting these structures, a process that resulted in a broad collection of 3D imagery of projects like the Space Shuttle Discovery, as well as NASA launching pads, famous bridges, and more. The imagery was used to generate what are known as "point clouds" of data that, together, show a 3D version of the object. … Read more

A new design for a self-guiding bullet could allow sharpshooters to accurately fire at targets a full mile away.

The bullet, which is still in a prototype phase, is the brainchild of Sandia National Laboratories researchers Red Jones and Brian Kast. It is designed with built-in actuators and tiny fins that should allow it to rapidly adjust its path in flight.

Designed with the military, law enforcement, and recreational shooters as potential customers, the bullet is four inches long and has an optical sensor embedded in its nose for the detection of a laser on its target, Sandia said in … Read more

Imagine a Naval gun so powerful it can shoot a 5-inch projectile up to 220 miles, yet requires no explosives to fire.

That's the Navy's futuristic electromagnetic railgun, a project that could be deployed on the service's ships by 2025, and which is now a little bit closer to reality with the signing of a deal with Raytheon for the development of what's known as the pulse-forming network.

Rather than using explosives to fire projectiles as do conventional naval weapons, the railgun depends on an electromagnetic system that uses the ship's onboard electrical power grid … Read more

John Doerr has been called the "world's wealthiest and most well-connected venture capitalist" by Forbes. The Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner has been an early-stage investor in some of the best-known companies in the tech industry, including Google, Amazon, Sun, and Zynga, and he has 109,000 Twitter followers.

I'm a fairly prolific professional journalist writing for a national publication and covering a wide range of topics from startups to Lego to aviation to NASA and more. I have 6,250 followers on Twitter.

I'm happy with my place in life and how my … Read more

You have to admit there's at least a little resemblance between the ring-lined cross-section of a tree and an LP. So why shouldn't a tree's rings elicit beautiful music the way a record's can?

That might well have been the inspiration for Bartholomaus Traubeck's Years project, a record player that can read the rings of a tree and translate them into lovely piano melodies.

According to the Years Web site, "A tree's year rings are analyzed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process … Read more

The MythBusters are at it again.

In a tweet this morning, Adam Savage, co-host of the hit Discovery Channel show, said that he and his co-conspirator, Jamie Hyneman, have gotten the green light to produce their new "sooper secret project," "Unchained Reaction."

According to Deadline Hollywood, Savage and Hyneman will executive produce the new Discovery Channel show and serve as judges on what will be a six-part series. The show will pit "two teams of varying backgrounds--artists, rocket scientists, animatronic specialists, engineers, and even your average Joes--against each other to build an elaborate chain reaction … Read more

CUPERTINO, Calif.--As Adam Savage walked onto the stage alongside a battered old water heater, the crowd of several thousand people erupted in a loud ovation. They weren't cheering for the famous co-host of "MythBusters."

"Only at a MythBusters show will a busted water heater get a round of applause," Savage said, grinning.

If you're reading this, there's a good chance you know why the audience was revved up by the appearance of something as prosaic as a water heater. But for the uninitiated, during a 2007 episode of Discovery Channel's hit … Read more