So before summer storm season starts in earnest, take a moment to learn about lightning safety so you can protect yourself when the clouds roll in. What is lightning Lightning isn’t cast down by Zeus or summoned by Thor—it happens when positive and negative electrostatic charges build up in the atmosphere. When those opposing charges equalize, there’s a rapid discharge of powerful electricity (up to 300 million volts) in a visible explosion: lightning....
So you’re ready to stop stealing your neighbor’s internet and set-up your home WiFi network. Congratulations! You’ll just need three things to get yourself started: The modem Before you plug in any cables, placement is key. You want your modem high up, away from things like microwaves that can disrupt its signal, but still within reach of your cables and an outlet. Find a port on your wall for either a coaxial cable or a phone cord....
Use in-app features Instagram, for example, plays well with multiple accounts and lets you manage up to five from the same device. To add a new account, open the profile tab, tap the profile name in the top left, hit Add account, and select Create new account to start fresh or Log into existing account to link one that’s already out there. It’s much less likely that you carry two phones with you, so it’s good to know how to manage multiple accounts within one app from a single device....
“When people see what I do for the first time, they say it must be magic,” Revell says. Magic doesn’t seem like a stretch when hundreds of earthworms are suddenly charmed out of the soft north Floridian dirt. Gary and his wife Audrey are Wakulla County’s most famous, and now only, professional worm grunters. At five in the morning, the Revells trek to Apalachicola National Forest every day, ready to catch buckets of bait....
Hurricane Isaias is now the fifth named storm of the year to make landfall in the continental US, continuing what has been an incredibly early hurricane season. The last time that five named storms had hit this soon was in August 1916. We’ve now beaten that record by about two weeks. It’s the ninth named storm of 2020 (not every storm has made landfall in the US), and the earliest one on record....
The original bazooka was developed to stop tanks during the early stages of World War II. In late 1940, the military had created a new type of grenade that focused its blast into a narrow point of energy capable of penetrating tank armor. But it had a relatively short range. So 2nd Lt. Edward Uhl decided to build a device to keep foot soldiers away from the tanks they were targeting....
Arguments may turn fierce when the workshop starts today as to which of the more than 50 sites under analysis might be the best real estate for life on the distant world — say, an underground home in the subterranean caves of Hebrus Valles, or a base near one-time hot springs in Gusev Crater that might have possessed life. And a number of scientists going to the meeting hope to go to Mars someday themselves....
This week’s episode features special guest Dallas Taylor—he’s a sound engineer and the host of Twenty Thousand Hertz. Make sure to check it out! FACT: At least one very unlucky astronaut claims he had an allergic reaction to lunar dust By Sara Chodosh Lunar dust is, at least according to some NASA experts, the number one challenge facing missions to the moon. That may be hard to believe, but only if you know nothing about moon dust....
The large red and white Coast Guard chopper featured a crane-like hoist outside and above its big side door. With the hook from its dangling metal cable attached to him, the duck moved into the open doorway, his legs and flippers hanging off the side. Then the hoist pulled him up and out, and—after a thumbs-up from the duck—lowered him out of sight and into the sea. Not long later, the hoist returned, its hook empty....
By the end of May, the students expected her. And many among them were used to her technique: They’d been swabbed every two weeks that spring as part of a district-wide program. She brought the kids into the hallway one at a time, sampling each small nose. “They come up and they just tell the kid, ‘I’m gonna do a little tickle-tickle in your nose!’ … The kids don’t even know that it’s happening,” Upperman says, praising Watson and her team....
A new website launching today lets you explore all of the evolutionary tree of life, zooming in and out like you would use an online map. It’s called OneZoom and it’s built on a fractal pattern that repeats the same branching form, no matter how expanded or collapsed your view. James Rosindell, a professor in the department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, conceived the idea and programmed OneZoom in collaboration with Luke Harmon, a biologist at the University of Idaho....
What causes eye strain The Vision Council says that more than 60 percent of people report symptoms of digital eye strain, including headaches, neck and shoulder pain, dry eyes, and blurred vision. But what is it about those screens that causes strain in the first place? “Your eyes are relaxed when viewing object that are over 3 meters away,” says Michael J. Duerr, an optometrist in Rochester Hills, Michigan. “Anything closer than that, the eyes are working....
Features The Helmet Wars Athletes in the U.S. suffer 3.8 million sports-related concussions each year. While helmet makers dither with small improvements, Swedish scientists have built something that could protect us all. By Tom Foster Plus: What’s Behind The NFL Suicides? Inside China’s Secret Arsenal ** The Chinese government is rapidly building a bigger, more sophisticated military. Here’s what they have, what they want, and what it means for the U....
If you’re in the market for an entirely new bag, the Belkin Active Pro messenger bag is a solid choice. It has room for a 15.6-inch laptop, a water-resistant coating for protection during rainy weather, and reflective areas make it visible in the dark. The messenger bag has padded shoulder straps and keeps you organized with special pockets for your devices. $50. Cables and dongles are a big pain even when they aren’t lost....
The LHC also has the potential, though, to give birth to microscopic black holes–which some have worried could destroy Earth by accreting its matter–as well as other objects such as magnetic monopoles, vacuum bubbles, and strangelets. A study group concluded in 2003 that these entities would pose no danger, and this month a reappraisal of the known facts re-substantiated that assurance. Microscopic black holes, because of their tinyness, are not expected to live long enough to pose a threat; they should decay very rapidly....
It also goes without saying that languages are your gateway to new cultures, so if you’re keen on exploring other countries and communities, learning their mother tongue is the way to go. Luckily, immersing yourself in foreign languages is as easy as picking up your phone and firing up an app, which the Language Learner Lifetime Subscription Bundle ft. uTalk can help you with. For a limited time during our Best of Digital Sale, it’s on sale for $27....
Originally theorized by Albert Einstein in 1916, gravitational waves have long been seen as a bedrock of modern physics and astronomy, but it wasn’t until today’s blockbuster announcement that we had proof they really existed. Now scientists have confirmed that the twin LIGO stations in Louisiana and Washington State had detected the signal of two black holes merging 1.3 billion light years away from Earth last September, and that this signal came in the form of an audible “chirp....
Creationists seize upon the phrase in its most rigid form, pointing to species that have apparently not evolved for a great deal of time as evidence that evolution does not exist. This, of course, is where the very literal definition of a living fossil gets us into trouble—no species alive today has followed a flat line of evolution since it first appeared however many millions of years ago. Not even the famed coelacanth is the same now as it was when it arrived in the fossil record 410 million years ago....
This story originally featured on Outdoor Life. Today, a host of conservation and news organizations received via the U.S. Postal Service the final Environmental Impact Statement from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska. This paves the way for the federal permit the controversial mine needs in order to proceed, which will likely be issued within 30 days now that the final Environmental Impact Statement has been released....
If something inside you screams in frustration every time a site asks you to create an account, you’ve probably shut it up by using your Google, Facebook, or Apple account instead. It’s an easy solution—so easy, in fact, that we can forget just how many random accounts are linked to our major ones. These big platforms allow you to check what apps and sites are connected to them, and from the comfort of their settings menus, you can decide to keep them or revoke access with a single click....
