Popular Science

I recently wrote about the terrible sleep habits of the characters in House of Cards. I disapproved of Frank Underwood’s late-night computer work in the Oval Office, his…

To meet the most stringent building energy use standards in the world, SURE HOUSE has teamed up with the air-sealing experts at 475 High Performance Building Supply.

In 2001, a doctor in New York completed what may seem like a routine surgery to remove a patient’s gallbladder. But in fact that procedure wasn’t routine at all, because…

A team of Rice University engineering students has developed a haptic glove that uses air pockets to let gamers feel like they're interacting with objects.

People have brewed beer for thousands of years, but there are some things that brewers still don't have down to a science. Despite the best efforts of brewers everywhere,…

Update: In a new blog post on its website, NASA details a little more clearly what is known about this morning’s malfunction. Just after launching atop a Soyuz rocket and separating from the booster’s third stage, the Progress 59 cargo failed to send back data confirming whether or not it had deployed its navigational antennas. Flight controllers also couldn’t confirm if its fuel intake system had pressurized, which is necessary for getting the Progress all the way to the International Space Station. When Roscosmos couldn’t confirm this info, the agency opted for a different ISS rendezvous…

The Air Force’s secret robot space plane is going to try out a new engine. The X-37B has so far spent a total of 1367 days tooling around in Earth’s orbit, doing classified…

The real reason to buy an Apple Watch has finally come along: You can now download the Tamagotchi app on your techy timepiece. If you’ve never heard of Tamagotchi, first…

As NASA moves forward with its highly anticipated mission to Mars, the space agency is thinking about every single aspect of the journey to the red planet--as well as life…

The death toll of the earthquake that shook Nepal over the weekend just topped 5,000. Aid is slowly getting to people who badly need it, but frustration at the slow pace of…

Full-length trailers for the latest Star Wars film aren’t even out yet, but a new character is already fast become a fan favorite. BB-8, an orange droid that looks like a…

This Friday, Europe's largest freight carrier, Cargolux, will ban bulk shipments of lithium-ion batteries from its freight planes. Last month, an international group of…

Oh, alcohol. It can be so much fun, until it makes you do something stupid. But even without doing anything embarrassing, booze makes us blush. Now it turns out those rosy…

California isn't the only one having a water crisis. Yesterday, Lake Mead sank to its lowest level yet. The watery behemoth created by the construction of the Hoover Dam in…

DARPA’s self-steering bullet is, if acronyms are enough to go by, supposed to have razor-fine precision. Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance, or EXACTO, is a bullet that…

3D aficionados have been printing everything from candy to guns, and the technique has been making its way into the biomedical realm, generating everything from functional…

The lava lake at the Halema'uma'u Crater of Kilauea volcano has finally overflowed--an event that has been anticipated for days. The lake of molten rock formed in 2010, and…

In late 2012, a man raped six women in the south of France. DNA evidence led officials to two suspects, a pair of twins. The victims recognized the men, but couldn’t tell…

The center of our galaxy is filled with a dense and eclectic mix of stellar objects. From burnt-out white dwarfs and supernova remnants, to numerous massive stars clinging…

Dwarf planet Pluto is coming into view. And we’re already discovering a few exciting things about this mysterious little space rock. NASA’s New Horizons space probe has…

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