South Pole Amundsen-Scott Research Station
This gleaming aluminum "beer can" links the above-ground part of the South Pole station to the subterranean complex. The building sits on 36 columns, and can be raised by two full stories when snowdrifts threaten to overtake it. A tapered edge . [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
Why Did The Arctic Turn From A Greenhouse Into An Icehouse?
Alligators prowl beneath palms and lush fruit trees that chatter with colorful birds. Warm ocean waters lap against the shore, the humid 80-degree F air stirred by a zephyr. Geologists have known for years that something threw Earth's thermostat ... [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
How it works: Generation II and III Reactors
Leaning over the rail of the metal catwalk, I peer down through 16 ft. of crystal-clear water at the cool, blue glow coming from the shapes at the bottom: partially spent uranium fuel rods. "Blue," says Joel Duling, my guide to America's most .. [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
Robo-Husky: Teaching A Robotic Dog To Walk
Legs pose a notoriously complex challenge for roboticists. Yet Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert and the rest of the team that developed the BigDog robot are sticking with them. "Legs can go places that wheels and tracks can't go, and there ... [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
Stem-Cell Fast Food: From NASA to Nourish
It sounds like a sci-fi nightmare: giant sheets of grayish meat grown on factory racks for human consumption. But it's for real. Using pig stem cells, scientists have been growing lab meat for years, and it could be hitting deli counters sooner ... [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
VIDEO: Breakthrough Leadership Award Winner Burt Rutan
By PM Staff Published on: October 6, 2006 [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
They break new ground - and force the competition to ...
AUDIO Samsung Helix XM2GO The portable Helix ($399) marks a milestone by linking satellite radio to your earthbound MP3 collections. It receives and records live XM programs, and plays MP3 and WMA files downloaded via USB. ENGINES DaimlerChrysler ... [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
Cheap Hydrogen: GE's Low-Cost Electrolyzer
Futurists promise that hydrogen will replace fossil fuels someday. There's just one problem: Today, 95 percent of the world's available hydrogen is extracted from natural gas. Getting hydrogen from water, the greener alternative, is too expensive ... [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
Viral Manufacturing: Building Nanomachines With Viruses
MIT scientists reached a major nanotech milestone: re-engineering a virus to create a self-assembling product. The goal of nanofabrication is to make tiny machines build themselves using molecules they grab from their surroundings. It's easy to ... [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
The Charger: Tesla Motors' Revolutionary Electric Car
"Driving range has been the Achilles' heel of electric cars," says Martin Eberhard, CEO of Tesla Motors. So the Silicon Valley engineer-and creator of the Rocket eBook-built a $100,000 electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, using the ultimate [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
Bulb Slayer: Lighting the World with LEDs
Light bulbs are old-school energy hogs. Adoption of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) might be able to halve lighting energy consumption and cut CO2 emissions by 258 million metric tons a year. Today, LEDs are found in accent lighting and flashlights, ... [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
Peanut Power: Building A Better Sheller
Jock Brandis's $75 machine strips the shells from peanuts using two nesting concrete drums. On a visit to Mali to help a friend in the Peace Corps repair some village machinery, Jock Brandis, a Wilmington, N.C., TV and movie engineer, saw women ... [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
