• Technology

    Darpa's New Goal: A Plane That Flies for Five Years

    By Posted on 3.6.2008 10 Comments

    The highest-endurance aircraft currently flying is Northrop Grummans Global Hawk UAV, which can stay aloft for up to 40 hours. Now Darpa—which, to its credit, is never short on outlandish ideas—wants to beat that endurance record more than 1,000 times. The goal of Darpa's recently launched Vulture Program is to build a kind of atmospheric satellite that can stay aloft for five years at a time with little or no maintenance.

    4.3.2008 at 01:26pm - Comment by Spaceheretic

    These aircraft could play a very important role in our military. We now know without a doubt that China could shoot down our satelites. If that were to happen, these aircraft could temporarily replace them and prevent the military from being blind in a time when we have become completely dependent on satelite images for everything.

  • Technology

    Hypersonic Revelation

    By Posted on 1.30.2008 11 Comments

    Astronomers have finally made sense of the mystery of a speeding star first discovered in 2005. The star, HE 0437-5439, is known as a hypervelocity star because, well, its fast.

    4.2.2008 at 02:22pm - Comment by Spaceheretic

    "Balckhole Nearby...another reason for NASA to spend billion of dollars tax money in space exploaration..." Funding hasn't change for Nasa since the seventies as far as inflation is concerned, the billions are spent keeping lazy people alive, trying to teach dumb kids, and policing the world. Maybe if we spent more on space exploration the lazy people would die, the dumb kids wouldn't be born, and we could stop policing the world and just focus on policing the planet or moon we decided to colonize.

  • Technology

    The Real-life Death Star

    By Posted on 3.7.2008 6 Comments

    Friends of the Dark Side, your time may soon be at hand. It seems we have a literal death star aiming in our general direction. The culprit is part of a binary star system—two stars which orbit each other—by the name of WR 104. Both are massive and very, very hot. One will eventually explode into a harmless supernova, providing us with a lovely astronomical light show. The other, however, might be deadly.

    4.2.2008 at 02:06pm - Comment by Spaceheretic

    If you want to see the death star in our solar system. It's called Lapetus and right now it's considered the eighth moon of Saturn. Look into it, it looks just like the deathstar, and displays a lot of traits that wouldn't be considered very moon like.

  • Technology

    Is that a Drone in Your Pocket?

    By Posted on 3.31.2008 7 Comments

    Two years ago we wrote about Norwegian engineer Petter Muren's effort to build a mini copter weighing only 3.3 grams. that radio-controlled craft, the Picoflyer, could take off from the palm of your hand. Now Muren has designed the larger but more capable Black Hornet.

    4.2.2008 at 01:43pm - Comment by Spaceheretic

    privacy? what privacy, even the bugs carry cameras



Download Our iPhone App

Stay up to date on the latest news of the future of science and technology from your iPhone with full articles, images and offline viewing



Follow Us On Twitter

Featuring every article from the magazine and website, plus links from around the Web. Also see our PopSci DIY feed



Become a Fan On Facebook

Share links with friends, comment on stories and more


December 2009: Best of What's New

In our December issue, Popular Science names the 100 best innovations of the year: bombproof wallpaper, self-parking cars, the fastest helicopter, and 97 more. Plus inventor profiles and videos.

Check out the best of what's new here.

Popular Science Photo Pool


Share your photos in the Pop Sci pool at www.flickr.com!
tags_sprite.png
POP_embeddedForm_cover_May09.jpg