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The Manual

A nonvolatile fuel cell promises to soothe your battery woes

Yesterday's computer hackers are today's "security professionals". But when the world's top geeks descend on vegas for a 34-hour battle of the brains, the black hats come out

A compendium of the fastest things the world has to offer, and a celebration of the technological breakthroughs that feed the rush

These high-performance machines will run you as much as $15,000. Here's why a custom-built racer is a bargain

Dot-com millionaire Elon Musk put his profits into orbit.

Scuba-trained investigators are learning protocols for examining watery graves. Rule #1 is not so high-tech: Watch out for 'gators.

Technology may be ushering in a golden age of stalking, in which predators use GPS, cellphones and other devices to track and terrorize.

Burt Rutan's test pilots have pushed the envelope all the way into space. Meet America's new astronaut corps--highly skilled, gutsy and ready for takeoff.

Thuraya Hughes 7101

Radar, lasers, wireless radio networks and other embedded tech will enable our cars to sense faraway traffic and stop accidents before they happen. But who will be in the driver's seat?

What is BitTorrent, and how does it work?

In the early 1900s, radioactive water was all the rage. Hard to believe smart people could fall for such twaddle--right?

The 2004 Popsci Design Competition

Could sudden climate change wreak independence day-level havoc? The director of The Day After Tomorrow let us run his new disaster flick by the experts. Uh-oh.

It's called body packing, it's dangerous and gross, and new technology makes gut-based drug smuggling harder to spot.

Police sketches from eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable. The question is, Will "DNA sketches" be any better?

In the dark and chatty world of avatars and assumed identities, this cybercop is a virtual Sybil, trolling for creeps and thieves.

The killing of a young child led investigators to this problem: Can the single-celled life in water tell where the water is from?

Blood flies, and leaves a tale. But it takes an expert like Paulette Sutton to sort truth from fiction in spatter language.