CATEGORIES

Upgrade Your Living Room With This DIY - MID-CENTURY COFFEE TABLE

This project is easy to build and customize to fit your space.

The Existence of Wigner Crystals

PHYSICISTS FROM PRINCETON UNIVERSITY have confirmed that electrons don't even need atoms in order to party together.

SAVING THE SUGAR BUSH

A technological revolution has transformed the ancient tradition of sugar making-with big implications for local economies and ecosystems imperiled by climate change.

The Next Generation of RAM

YOUR COMPUTER WOULDN'T BE VERY useful without RAM, which is short for random access memory.

The End of the Maya Kingdom

A TEAM OF ARCHAEOLOGISTS DISCOVERED clues from between A.D. 733 and 881 that they say represent a key turning point in Maya rule-and a very public one at that.

MANIPULATION AND MEDICAL ETHICS

The taking of cervical samples wasn't the only medical procedure of dubious consent in Lacks's story.

SKINWALKER RANCH REVEALED

The 512-acre ranch has captivated real-estate tycoons, TV producers, and the U.S. government. What are they searching for?

HOW TO FIX A DEAD WALL OUTLET

An outlet can lose power for any number of reasons. Here are a few of them-plus solutions.

INDISPENSABLE LESSONS FROM A POP MECH LEGEND

With people moving around so much these days, it's perfectly natural to wonder how an editor can just come along and stick like a barnacle to the hull of Popular Mechanics, lasting for 35 years.

Sea Change- Mountains, oddly, are the reason most of us have learned to think of the level of the sea as a stable point, a baseline, an unmoving benchmark against which one might reasonably measure the height of great peaks.

In 2019, a plaque was erected to commemorate the first glacier in Iceland to shrink so much that it could no longer be considered a glacier. Like the tsunami stones of the past, the plaque carried a message for the future, a warning to believe in changes that might at first seem implausible. It also carried a recognition of responsibility. “In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path,” the plaque reads. “This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.”

Fantastic Plastic - a plastic bag might be the most overengineered object in history.

Stretchy seaweed. Reverse vending machines. QR-coded take-out boxes. To cure our addiction to disposable crap, we'll all need to get a little loony.

The Hole in the Map of the World - On the surface, there's nothing unusual about it. just a spot of ocean. but beneath the waves lurks something incredible: a massive waterfall. and in its mysterious depths, the fate of the world churns.

Tip of Iceland, you'll find what's often called a marginal body of water. This part of the Atlantic, the Irminger Sea, is one of the stormiest places in the northern hemisphere. On Google Maps it gets three stars: very windy, says one review. It's also where something rather strange is happening. As the rest of the planet has warmed since the 20th century-less in the tropics, more near the poles-temperatures in this patch of ocean have hardly budged. In some years they've even cooled. If you get a thrill from spooky maps, check out one that compares the average temperatures in the late 19th century with those of the 2010s. All of the planet is quilted in pink and red, the familiar colors of climate change. But in the North Atlantic, there's one freak splotch of blue. If global warming were a blanket, the Irminger Sea and its neighboring waters are where the moths ate through. Scientists call it the warming hole.

Piece of Mind - This diagram maps 1 cubic millimeter of the brain-but its unprecedented clarity deepens the mysteries of cognition.

This diagram maps 1 cubic millimeter of the brain-but its unprecedented clarity deepens the mysteries of cognition. Although this image wouldn't look out of place on a gallery wall alongside other splashy works of abstract art, it represents something very real: a 1-cubic-millimeter chunk of a woman's brain, removed during a procedure to treat her for epilepsy. Researchers at Harvard University stained the sample with heavy metals, embedded it in resin, cut it into slices approximately 34 nanometers thick

Spin Cycle - To study tornadoes, it helps to wear a skirt (and rocket launchers).

To study tornadoes, it helps to wear a skirt (and rocket launchers). When the Dominator is about to intercept a tornado, Timmer uses a two-prong system to anchor the vehicle. Air compressors lower the car so its thick rubber skirt nearly touches the ground, and spikes wedge 6 inches into the earth to firmly prevent the vehicle from liftoff. Timmer and ONeal have seen roughly 65 tornadoes in the past six months. It was a historic amount, ONeal says. A lot of meteorological setups are busts, but every day we drove out this year, we felt like we would see a tornado.

The Eternal Truth of Markdown -An exegesis of the most ubiquitous piece of code on the web.

Markdown is not just a piece of software. It's also a markup language it's used to format plaintext, which then appears the way you want it to on, say, the internet. Markdown the markup language was designed to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible, according to creator John Gruber's syntax guide. A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it's been marked up with tags or formatting instructions.

THE TECH WORLD'S GREATEST LIVING NOVELIST GOES META

In which Robin Sloan writes Moonbound-a science fiction book about science fiction-and our writer writes his way into total insanity.

I Am Laura Kipnis-Bot, and I Will Make Reading Sexy and Tragic Again

WHEN A FLATTERING EMAIL ARRIVED inviting me to participate in an AI venture called Rebind that I'd later come to think will radically transform the entire way booklovers read books, I felt pretty sure it was a scam.

DAMAGE CONTROL

According to Léna Lazare, the 26-year-old face of the radical climate movement, they're also acts of joy.

AN IMPERFECT STORM

CAN THE U.A.E. REALLY MAKE RAIN ON DEMAND OR IS IT SELLING VAPORWARE?

How to Antiage Your Dog- Could a new pill help dogs (and us) live longer?

Celine Halioua is a dog lover who studied neuroscience and nanobiotechnology. Her thesis is that the short lifespan of big dogs is like "an accelerated aging disorder, an unintended consequence of historical inbreeding for size." In an effort to correct genetic mistakes, Loyal's drug LOY-001 reduces insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), a biomarker hormone, also present in humans, that drives cell growth and is key to regulating the aging process. The hope is that it will slow down this process to a more sustainable rate, so that big dogs can have more healthy years. The injectable medication would be given by a vet every three to six months, starting at age seven, for dogs 40 pounds and up. Clinical trials are now underway for LOY-002, a daily pill for older dogs of nearly all but the smallest breeds. "Research is ongoing, but we think they will help dogs get at least one extra year of healthy living," Halioua says.

A LEGACY OF HEALING

Abbott's Neuromodulation Division: Revolutionizing Healthcare with Innovative Solutions

The Surprising Drama Behind the Decimal Point - When german mathematician Christopher Clavius introduced the world to the humble decimal point in 1593, he used it in one table, and never mentioned it or used it again.

When german mathematician Christopher Clavius introduced the world to the humble decimal point in 1593, he used it in one table, and never mentioned it or used it again.

The Obelisk– Lifeforms hiding in humans

Scientists have just discovered new "lifeforms" inside our bodies. Tiny bits of RNA, smaller than a virus, colonize bacteria inside our mouths and guts and have the power to transfer information that can be read by a cell.

After You Die, a Universe Eats Your Body

Scientists are unraveling the secrets of the necrobiome the ecosystem that takes over our corpses after death.

A Blistering Inferno. A Whirling Tornado. A Shocking Crash

Aerial firefighters have always been a critical line of defense against raging wildfires. But increasingly extreme blazes and a horrific accident have many wondering how we'll adapt to fires of the future.

SHARPENING YOUR TOOLS

TOOLS LOSE THEIR EDGE AND BECOME DULL. That's a fact of their existence.

CATALYTIC CONVERTER

THERE'S AN ARMY OF THIEVES COMING FOR YOUR

HOW TO GET STARTED SOLDERING

Soldering is rapidly becoming the skill of a bygone era. Much like the ability to drive a car with a manual transmission, read a map, or write a check, younger generations are learning less about how to work with their hands-and it's time for that to change.

Rapid Evolution

ON APRIL 26, 1986, THE No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukrainethen part of the Soviet Union-exploded, sending a massive plume of radiation into the sky. Nearly four decades later, the facility and much of the surrounding area remain uninhabited-by humans, at least.

Our New Moon Epoch

WHEN HUMANS GET INVOLVED IN places they weren't invited, things start to change. The Moon is no different.