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It’s dubbed the Bloodhound Project, a three-year effort headed by ThrustSSC developer Richard Noble. Noble will again tap commander Green, who reached 763 mph in the Thrust car, powered by twin Rolls-Royce Spey turbofan engines from the British F-4 Phantom II jet fighter. The Bloodhound SSC vehicle is expected to reach Mach 1.4, marking the greatest incremental increase in the history of the World Land Speed Record. A press release claims it will also exceed the low altitude speed record for aircraft of 994 mph....

The unprecedented heat is smashing temperatures records from the San Francisco Bay area further east to Idaho and Montana, with more broken records expected tomorrow. Further south towards Death Valley, California, forecasters expect the region to break its September heat record of 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Salt Lake City, Utah has broken its previous September record of 100 degrees three times during this past week. The heatwave began on August 30 and is expected to peak today or tomorrow, with temperatures gradually falling....

In a tweet, Episode VIII director Rian Johnson (previously of Brothers Bloom, Brick, and that great Breaking Bad episode “Ozymandias”) appeared to confirm the news. Either that, or he has weirdly out-of-season preferences for novelty Star Wars songs. Never fear, fans of that long ago and far, far away universe: there’s still a wealth of official Star Wars content to fill the extra half-year of waiting. Tonight, the Star Wars: Rebels TV show returns, continuing its tale of a plucky band of young insurgents fighting against the Empire in the years between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope....

Don Pettit and his crewmates flew into space three times, capturing about 600,000 photos from their shuttle missions and long-term stays on the International Space Station. In his new book, Spaceborne, the astronaut/photographer highlights some of the best of the collection, leading to page after page of mind-blowingly beautiful space imagery. This is a good one for the coffee table. Popular Science‘s photo director, Thom Payne, chose 10 of his favorite Spaceborne images....

Ice cream is a miracle. You start with milk, one of the most chemically complex foods we eat. Add sugars to reduce its freezing point, and egg proteins and emulsifiers to obstruct ice crystals. Then you stick this gloppy stuff in a portable freezer and pump it full of air until spinning butterfat globules coalesce to give it form. That’s bananas, but somehow it works. Weirdest of all: Making it yourself is actually very easy....

If you want to be a true outdoorsman or woman, and a true survivor, you’ve got to become a plant person. I know, I know—it’s not as cool to walk around with your nose in a book as it is to sling lead or light stuff on fire. But at the end of the day, plants give us so much that we’d be crazy not to pay attention to them....

With his second term secured, President Barack Obama can now turn his full attention to advancing the priorities that will help define his legacy. On the stump, Obama championed science and technology. Under his administration, those fields, particularly renewable energy and medical research, should continue to enjoy significant federal support over the next four years. John Holdren, Obama’s science and technology adviser, told Popular Science: “We are committed to continuing our focus on ensuring that science, technology, innovation, and education have the support they deserve in order to fuel America’s economy, prepare the tech-savvy workforce and science-savvy citizenry of tomorrow, and meet the manifold challenges of health and biomedicine, energy, environment, and national security....

Using stepper motors that move a paint nozzle across two horizontal axes, Boock’s fabricator streams seismological data from GeoNet to paint the topographical model as earthquakes happen. When an earthquake happens, Quakescape moves the nozzle to the corresponding geographic location on the model. It then deposits a drizzle of paint to the epicenter corresponding to the magnitude of the tremor. See it in action below. Quakescape 3D Fabricator from Oliver Ellmers on Vimeo....

To own a smartphone is to know the frustration of having its battery die right when you need it most—whether you’re approaching your next high score or need to call Mom. Modern-day displays and phone tech put a lot of strain on the battery inside your handset, but you can eke out as much life as possible by tweaking your mobile habits and taking advantage of features built right into Android and iOS....

The items on this list require big spending limits and endless cravings for luxury. So, crack open a can of original 4Loko (the rare kind before they had to take out all the caffeine), sit back in your chair that looks like some weird egg, and check out these expensive Cyber Monday deals. Kanlanth 1 to 2 Person Infrared Sauna, Hemlock Wood Low EMF FAR Infrared Sauna $1,799 (was $2,199) Have you ever wished you could sweat all the bad thoughts and Dorito preservatives out of your body?...

With millions of places to pick from in the Airbnb catalog—not to mention hoards of other travelers running the same searches as you—finding the perfect place to stay can be a challenge. Still, there are ways to stay ahead of the crowd. 1. Start outside Airbnb You don’t have to use Airbnb to pick both a destination and a place to stay. There’s nothing wrong with the company’s search options, but it can be difficult to know what to focus on....

The new 504-foot bridge is a feat of engineering. It has 323 sensors embedded in the concrete that constantly monitor bridge behavior, and the gateway sculptures at each end of the bridge use TX Active, a new kind of cement that creates a photocatalytic reaction to remove pollution. Nighttime bridge lighting is provided by LEDs, which require less maintenance and consume less energy; they are the first of their kind on any US bridge....

For decades, engineers have made solar panels more and more efficient by using ever-purer silicon to capture a greater share of the sun’s energy. But that quest for perfection may be coming to an end, as scientists discover they can generate more solar power — not by eliminating flaws in the raw materials, but by embracing them. A new study published in the journal Science says the future of solar lies in hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites — an imperfect material that could outperform pure silicon....

Paleo Diet Flowchart infographic Keeping up with the eating habits of our cave-dwelling ancestors can be tough. Luckily someone has slapped together a handy flowchart for you to reference if you’ve hopped on the latest diet-craze bandwagon, the Paleo diet. Based on the idea that our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn’t suffer from the pains of obesity, cancer, gout and other modern woes, the diet prohibits anything that didn’t make up the human diet prior to the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago....

At about 12:20 PM, Maryland residents could look up and see a surprising sight: a 243-foot-long blimp-like aircraft that broke loose from its moorings. It’s the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, or JLENS for short, and contains radar and other tracking equipment to detect and transmit information any enemy boats, vehicles, or planes below it. Though the craft took 17 years and $2.7 billion to build, critics say it has not lived up to expectations....

In a study published in Geology, researchers discussed their recent discovery of a vast chasm–a deep hole or fissure in the Earth–under the ice, encompassing an area of 1,081 square miles with over 683 miles of canyon. Parts of the canyon may be 0.6 miles (1 km) deep. That’s longer than the Grand Canyon, but not quite as deep. In order to get a look at the underlying structure, researchers first examined the surface of the ice sheet, checking for anything that might indicate a landscape feature....

Now, the global COVID vaccination rollout is shifting as several countries turn their attention to immunizing children. In October 2021, the US Food and Drug Administration authorized the Pfizer and Moderna shots for Americans between the ages of 5 and 1; it then green-lit vaccines for kids younger than 5 after considering new clinical trial results this June. About 862,000 individuals in that last category got at least one dose of a COVID vaccine this summer....

Historians and scientists had previously suspected that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption may have been responsible for these miserable conditions. Now, an international team of researchers has identified when and where this event likely took place. After examining six ice cores taken from sites across the Arctic, the researchers concluded that Alaska’s Okmok volcano blew its top in 43 BCE and the fallout from the event lasted for two years. This would have altered the climate across the Northern Hemisphere and resulted in chilly, wet conditions that match descriptions in the historical record, the team reported on June 22 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

Alleman calculated the turning of the gears so that the movement of the miniatures is just about accurate. The Earth spins on it’s axis, mimicking each day. The moon orbits the Earth once every 28 “days”, and the Earth-Moon system makes a full rotation around the sun once every 375 days, slightly more than the 365 (or 366) day years we normally have, but still really impressive for a model made out of Legos....

Aquatic animals generally just follow currents to open waters, but aromatic awareness comes in handy when it’s time to reverse course to reproduce. Lake sturgeon, for one, hatch in the pebbled depths of Wisconsin’s Kewaunee River and wend up to 100 miles to the Great Lakes, where they mature for a decade or two before the big paddle back. Less than 4 percent settle somewhere new. “They imprint on the river they’re born in,” explains Jessica Collier, a biologist at the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Green Bay....