But the team behind Cadillac’s new Lyriq battery-electric crossover insists that this time, the good guys won. That means that the designers got to keep most of the flavor of the Lyriq concept car. Meanwhile, the engineering team got to flex its own creative muscles by noodling out ways to let the designers’ dreams live within the real-world constricts that usually cause production models to be disappointingly dull in comparison to the concept car....

Landfall is a simple but misleading term. The proper definition, for a tropical or subtropical storm like our new friend Hurricane Sandy, is that when the eye of the storm passes over land, it is classified as “making landfall.” This is important not because the eye is dangerous–indeed, the eye of a hurricane has comparatively light winds and mild weather–but because of the feared eyewall. The eyewall is a ring of horrific thunderstorms surrounding the eye, and it’s the eyewall we have to be scared of....

But oil producers going bankrupt isn’t necessarily good news for the climate. In the past, low oil prices have led consumers to use it more, not less. Some economists say that for this situation to be any different, regulators need to step in and help steer our society away from fossil fuel reliance. Oil prices are influenced by the classic forces of supply and demand, as well as investor speculation and government regulation....

“My goal was to take an image with [Chile’s Very Large Telescope] to show that the star was as it is normally,” says Montargès, who currently works as an astronomer at the Observatory of Paris. “Of course, I was completely wrong.” Meanwhile, rumors spread like wildfire. Was the elderly Betelgeuse’s sputtering a sign of an impending and spectacular supernova? Such exploding stars are a rare sight, observed just five times in our galaxy—and never at such close range....

Part of the Himalyan chain, Everest took its current shape sometime in the last 2 million years, thrust upward by collisions between the Indian-Australian and Eurasian tectonic plates. Today, Everest’s summit soars 29,000 feet above sea level, and continues to grow about a quarter-inch each year. The mountain’s existence has long been a fact of life for Central Asians living in its shadow. But in the 1850s, the so-called “golden age of alpinism,” Everest came to the attention of Westerners, after an Indian mathematician working for the British colonial government identified it as the highest peak on the planet....

Environmental groups and activists, who have protested the development of the pipeline for more than a decade, are calling the official end of the pipeline a victory. “When this fight began, people thought Big Oil couldn’t be beat,’’ Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, told the Wall Street Journal. “But when enough people rise up, we’re stronger even than the richest fossil-fuel companies.” President Obama first rejected the pipeline in 2012, and later vetoed a bill approved by the Senate to build the pipeline in 2015....

Rubella made a brief appearance at an auto show in Detroit, and mumps has emerged in an ICE detention center in Houston. But those diseases aren’t spreading the way measles is, despite the fact that in the U.S. all three are combined into the MMR vaccine. In theory, immunity to these diseases should be equal. So why aren’t we seeing swaths of rubella in the news? More contagious diseases require higher thresholds for herd immunity If a person with measles sneezed in a room, then left, and you walked in an hour later with no vaccination or immunity, you’d likely catch the virus....

I’m not sure when we’re going to stop referring to electric motorcycles as the future of motorcycling because it seems to me that 2019’s crop of electric bikes suggests we’re already there. I’ll be the first to admit that I love internal combustion. I’m all for electric bikes as an alternative, but the thought that one day that’s all we’ll have to ride really bums me out. I mean, will a Yamaha electric powertrain feel any different than a Ducati’s or a Harley’s?...

The study authors collected information from 245 adult male narwhal skeletons from across the world, gathered over 35 years. Because the tusks were so large compared to the rest of their bodies, and the fact that the giant tooth-like appendages’ sizes varied considerably among the group, the scientists proposed that the tusks are sexually selected—and that their primary purpose is essentially narwhal sex appeal. Sexual selection is a key component of natural selection....

Details are scant about the experiment, but the Navy completed four flights and multiple “demonstration missions” with the setup, according to Boeing, which makes the planes. The exercises, the Navy said in a statement, saw the two aircraft fly in “multiple preset formations” and send “air-to-air sensor data back to the manned fighter.” It’s a compelling instance of the military thinking about using aircraft in a new and different way—something between a high-flying drone like a Global Hawk and a traditional fighter jet with a pilot on board....

Manufacturers such as Bollinger, General Motors, Ford, Lordstown, Rivian, and Tesla have all already announced EV pickups of their own. And while more are sure to come, the days when buying electric meant sacrificing performance or capability are over— that much has been made clear. Car companies are flexing their battery-powered muscles to prove it. Here is a look at three upcoming electric pickup trucks ready to make a mark on the world....

To address this and other issues during the pandemic, some cities—including LA, Lincoln, Nebraska, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Berlin, and Palma de Mallorca, Spain—are turning to on-demand programs called microtransit. They operate like Uber or Lyft, but the technology companies create the digital routing and ride-hailing platforms for transit agencies. According to Jerome Mayaud, lead data scientist with microtransit company Spare Labs, cities can use the platforms with public transit to fill specific niches and to offer rides that can be more affordable than solely private operations....

“It stays up for a long while and it can look a long way—those are two of the real key attributes for a surveillance platform,” notes Drew Steel, an aviation adviser for BAE Systems, the company that is developing the system after acquiring it from its initial designers at the British company, Prismatic. PHASA-35 stands for “Persistent High Altitude Solar Aircraft.” The number 35 is its wingspan in meters: that’s 115 feet, as wide as those of a Boeing 737....

Before delving into the scientific debate over eye black, let’s step through its illogical evolution. Athletes across the sports landscape have applied some form of dark goo under their eyes since 1942. What was once rumored as burnt cork ash became shoe polish and is now a mixture of beeswax, paraffin and carbon, nicely packaged in a roll-on stick (because football players do hate getting their hands dirty). Then, somewhere along the line, a ticked-off mother or an equipment manager probably got tired of the grease staining jerseys, despite detergents’ claims to “cut through the grease”....

This story originally featured on Undark. The night was settling from cool to downright cold as Holly Hicks drove out into the northern Arizona grasslands with an endangered black-footed ferret in her backseat. It rode in a pet carrier lined with paper shavings during the three-hour drive from Phoenix, where it had been recently treated for injuries. During a brief layover at a house that serves as headquarters for Arizona Game and Fish Department black-footed ferret recovery staff, the animal peered out through the grate and chattered....

After last year’s mockup concept model—as demonstrated by a human dressed in a robot costume meant to illustrate Tesla’s vision—audiences finally got a real glimpse at the robot promised to usher in “fundamental change in civilization as we know it.” Behold, Tesla’s “Bumble-C” Optimus working test mule prototype. You can also watch the robot in action here. It’s important to note that Bumble-C is more a proof-of-concept than anything else, and certainly far from the finished product Tesla hopes to achieve....

This fiery orb, typically seen above stagnant water, became personified in European folklore. Some historical accounts say it was considered a satanic sprite that wielded a fleeting wisp of fire, earning it the name “Will with the wisp,” or will-o’-the-wisp. In other tales, it was the lost soul of a man named Jack. After being denied entry to the underworld, he haunted the night with a homemade light—a burning piece of coal inside a carved turnip—and became known as “Jack with the lantern,” or jack-o’-lantern....

Through its Future Capabilities Group, part of the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Equipment and Support office, the United Kingdom is looking to find and field “nano Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” or nUAS. The Skydio X2D is small: It weighs about 3 pounds, and when folded up is about a foot long by 5.5 inches wide. But the UK fields even smaller drones, like the sparrow-sized Black Hornet. “The latest nUAS will offer a great deal more capability than seen previously in the nUAS weight class,” the office declared in its March 2021 magazine, “expanding on the reconnaissance and surveillance build of previously employed systems to also encompass night surveillance, weaponised, obscuration/distraction payloads and communications rebroadcasting....

FACT: There’s a disease called fatal insomnia—and it’s even worse than it sounds By Sara Chodosh In 1991, Michael Corke was a normal high school music teacher. By 1993, he was one of the few examples of what happens to a person when they simply cannot sleep. He was also, unfortunately, deceased. Corke died of a rare disease called fatal insomnia, which essentially breaks down the thalamus and prevents that brain region from sending the signal that it’s time for lights out....

Fortunately, a decent chunk of California is on the coast, meaning one solution to the drought is utilizing desalination technologies to turn seawater into fresh water. However, large desalination plants take years to become operational and are expensive to operate (nearly $3,000 per acre-foot of seawater). Additionally, many places experiencing drought in the West, such as Arizona and New Mexico, are not on the coast. But desalination isn’t just an option for freshening up seawater, says Brent Haddad, a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz....