Wired

How difficult would it be to just guess at a launch angle and speed to hit the Sun? Here is a quick program for you to try.

What happens when you put an inductor and a capacitor in a circuit? Something kind of cool—and actually important.

AT 10:03 AM Wednesday, a red Tesla Model S P85D with the license plate “UBER QIK” arrived at a parking garage on East 31st Street in Manhattan. This is noteworthy only because that very car was at the Portofino Hotel in Redondo Beach, California, just two and a half days earlier.

WHEN I WAS kid, I had Star Wars toys—but they weren’t “smart” and most of them weren’t even battery powered. But kids these days have access to awesome toys like this remote controlled BB-8 (by Sphero) from the Star Wars VII movie. It looks pretty cool. Gizmodo has lots of details if you are looking…

YOU GO TO sleep with a cool, fresh glass of tap water by your bed and wake up to it tasting decidedly…off. Ever so slightly more dirt-like, I’d say. Musty, heavy, or oily, others have said. The taste difference is subtle and hard to describe, in a way that leads people who haven’t noticed to…

Cheese is one of the bedrocks on which the Western diet is founded—a long‑term storage method for excess milk, especially when cool storerooms and caves were available. But the food didn’t fare so well during summer or in hot climates. With heat, animal fat softens or even liquefies, oozing out and creating an oily and…

We don’t know much about Pluto. We know its orbital path and we have an estimate for its mass. But what about surface features? What does it look like? It turns out that it’s just damn difficult to see Pluto.

So let’s talk about 21st century trust fund babies with privilege notarized onto their DNA, medical mutants with genetic mistakes that will be passed on for generations, and armies of super soldiers with genetically engineered immunity to arsenals of chemical and biological weapons. But—here’s the important bit—let’s not leave out the hope of eradicating thousands of…

The scientists, technologists, and engineers who populate Silicon Valley and the California Bay Area deserve their reputation as innovators, building entire new economies on the strength of brains and imagination. But some of these people don’t seem to be vaccinating their children.