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How Cicadas, Squirrels, and Bees React to Solar Eclipses
Cross your fingers for clear skies, space fans: A partial solar eclipse will grace the skies on Thursday afternoon over most of North America. According to NASA's predictions, the moon will pass...
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Today's Mid-Air Collision Outside Washington
There was a tragic mid-air collision this afternoon near Frederick airport, KFDK in aviation talk, about 40 miles north of Washington DC. A helicopter, initially reported as a four-seat Robinson R44,...
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How Retirement Was Invented
In 1881 Otto von Bismarck, the conservative minister president of Prussia, presented a radical idea to the Reichstag: government-run financial support for older members of society. In other words,...
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Heartbleed, 28 Weeks Later
Six months ago, when the Heartbleed bug threatened your bank account, your passwords, and your online life, people suddenly cared about OpenSSL, the open source version of crucial security standards...
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A New Tool in Humanitarian Relief: Texting
Pandemics, like war, have a higher cost than their death toll. On top of the 5,000 lives that Ebola has claimed, there are other sorts of victims in the six West African countries the virus has...
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Roombas Do the Viennese Waltz
DezeenBallerina, meet the Balle-Roomba. (A close cousin of the DJ Roomba.) The musically-inclined robot vacuum cleaner took center stage at this year's Biennale Interieur, an international design...
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No More Tweets From Your Google Glass
Twitter has ceased development of its Google Glass application, reports 9to5Google. The app first hit the Glass market in May 2013, but disappeared last week, as discovered by Reddit user Pete716:...
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The Granddaddy of Today's Drones
In 1927 George de Bothezat told Popular Science that helicopters were "exactly where the airplane stood after the first few flights of the Wright Brothers." What he means is that helicopters had,...
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Earth, as Seen by Chris Hadfield
On Christmas Eve in 1968, the astronauts of Apollo 8 saw a sight hitherto unseen by human eyes: the Earth rising over the horizon of the moon. The photo that lunar module pilot William Anders took that...
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Unmanned U.S. Rocket Explodes During Liftoff
Updated 10/29/14, 12:55 a.m. Just seconds after liftoff today, at 6:22 p.m. Eastern, an unmanned Orbital Sciences Antares rocket contracted by NASA failed and exploded feet above the launch pad. The...
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When It Goes Down, Facebook Loses $24,420 Per Minute
At 6:52 p.m. Eastern, Facebook went down. (It began working again at 7:27 p.m.) This is the third such outage in the last several months, and it happens to coincide with the company’s announcement of...
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What the Earth Looks Like From the Far Side of the Moon
Some estimate that no image has been reproduced as often as “the Blue Marble.” Captured in December 1972 by the astronauts of Apollo 17, it showed a home world without national borders, floating in the...
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Moving Meat Was Once a Messy Business
When American railroads debuted cold cars in the mid-1800s, they moved milk and butter only: They weren't nearly cold enough to safely carry raw meat from place to place. In 1867, when J.B. Sutherland...
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I Can Never Have Too Many Mechanical Pencils
People who write notes in ink must be very sure of their thoughts. I write notes in pencil: It seems more polite. Penciled notes are always provisional and erasable. But the apparent humility—or,...
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The First Characters Sent Through the Internet Were L-O-L
The Internet, like most world-changing inventions, came to life in a series of fits and starts. The thing that allows you to read these words, on this screen, right at this moment, is the result of...
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Megan Smith Thinks Every Child Should Be Able to Code
Speaking at the Washington Ideas Forum Wednesday, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith kept coming back to one idea: talent. On the Department of Defense's role as a research-and-development...
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Battery Life
Esther Takeuchi has over 150 patents. She’s actually not exactly sure how many there are (some have continued being issued while others have expired), but it’s somewhere between 150 and 160. Regardless...
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Rape Is Not a Data Problem
Sexual violence is having a moment in American culture. From Florida State to Columbia, colleges across the nation are struggling with how to address campus rape. Last month, the theft of nude photos...
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How to Be Eco-Friendly When You're Dead
When Phil Olson was 20, he earned money in the family business by draining the blood from corpses. Using a long metal instrument, he sucked the fluid out of the organs, and pumped the empty space and...
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Reminders of a Bygone Internet
It’s garish. It’s twisted. It’s, as Engadget calls it, “your childhood on acid.” It’s the Windows 93 operating system, in website form. No, Windows 93 never existed. The site is simply an art project,...
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