There was movement in the “AM Radio in Every Vehicle Act” last week, with the bill advancing out of the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee and heading to a full floor vote. For those not playing along at home, auto manufacturers have been making moves toward deleting AM radios from cars because […]
NASA’s ACS3 (Advanced Composite Solar Sail System) is currently fully deployed in low Earth orbit, and stargazers can spot it if they know what to look for. It’s actually one of the brightest things in the night sky. When the conditions are right, anyway. ACS3’s sail is as thin as it is big. What conditions […]
OK, sit down, everyone — we don’t want you falling over and hurting yourself when you learn the news that actually yes, your phone has been listening to your conversations all along. Shocking, we know, but that certainly seems to be what an outfit called Cox Media Group (CMG) does with its “Active Listening” software, […]
We’re guessing most readers can cite things from their youth which gave them an interest in technology, and spurred on something which became a career or had a profound impact on their life. Public engagement activities for technology or science have a crucial role in bringing forth the next generations of curious people into those […]
When you were five, you probably spotted your best friend running at “a million miles an hour” when they beat everybody at the local athletics meet. You probably haven’t seen anything that fast snice. According to NASA, though, a group of citizen scientists spotted a celestial object doing just that! The group of citizen scientists […]
Good news, bad news for Sun watchers this week, as our star launched a solar flare even bigger than the one back in May that gave us an amazing display of aurora that dipped down into pretty low latitudes. This was a big one; where the earlier outburst was only an X8.9 class, the one […]
Considering that it’s only existed for around a decade, the commercial desktop 3D printing market has seen an exceptional amount of turnover. But then, who could resist investing in an industry that just might change the world? It certainly didn’t hurt that the MakerBot Cupcake, arguably the first “mass market” desktop 3D printer, was released […]
Your job might be tough, but spare a thought for any of the engineers involved in the Mars InSight lander mission when they learned that one of the flagship instruments aboard the lander, indeed the very instrument for which the entire mission was named, appeared to be a dud. That’s a bad day at work […]
Hackers from all over Europe descended upon Rome last weekend for the Maker Faire that calls itself the “European Edition”. This three-day event is one of the largest Maker Faires in the world — they had 27,000 school students from all over Italy and Europe attend on Friday alone. This was held at Fiera Roma, […]
Here on Earth, the ability to generate electricity is something we take for granted. We can count on the sun to illuminate solar panels, and the movement of air and water to spin turbines. Fossil fuels, for all their downsides, have provided cheap and reliable power for centuries. No matter where you may find yourself […]