A technical failure interrupted Kepler’s stargazing in 2013, but not before the telescope tracked down and confirmed 1,030 planets, as well as 2,740 unconfirmed candidates (according to the Kepler website). More may yet be found in the data that Kepler sent back before it broke. Now you can see how these alien solar systems stack up against our own. In a new animation, astronomy grad student Ethan Kruse compares the orbits of many exoplanets to those of the planets in our neighborhood....

Here’s a video showing how the buggy works. Looks like fun! And the song is fun until (spoiler alert) the robot gains sentience. Anyway, enjoy! The Guardian

Today’s infographic, by Envisioning Technology’s Michael Zappa, design studio Bold Futures, and Ann Vargas, takes a look at several real and imaginary challenges to humanity’s continuing survival, from a futurist’s perspective: [via Fast Co.EXIST]

pre-exercise weight – post-exercise weight + fluid intake in ML – urine volume in mL/exercise time in hours The final number represents how much sweat the body actually secretes during exercise. That helps athletes figure out how much they need to drink to maintain optimal hydration and avoid heat stroke. The average athlete loses about a liter of sweat an hour; Alberto Salazar, a beleaguered American marathoner, lost 3.7 liters per hour and 12 pounds of his total body weight during the 1984 Olympic marathon in Los Angeles....

1. Heights: 28.2% We’re not born acrophobic, but we learn to be early on. Even in our largely cliff-free lives, a fear of heights remains so fundamental that 9-month-old babies avoid drop-offs when crawling. 2. Reptiles: 23.6% Each year, 100,000 people die from snake bites, but it could be worse. Humans are especially good at spying slitherers: Even in our peripheral vision, we’re better at spotting snakes than other potential threats such as spiders, likely because the fanged reptiles pose a greater danger....

Before you print out this post just to have the pleasure of burning it, one quick programming note: Nobody here is suggesting you give up meat forever. But 31 measly days of not eating the animals that are burping our climate into oblivion? Easy. So let’s give it a go. Livestock are responsible for about 14.5 percent of the greenhouse gases that are helping warm our planet into a hot, hurricane-friendly globe of vicious predators who want to steal your baseball card collection....

At the same time, for several years a cabal of engineers within the company have come together to develop a slew of concept vehicles that debut at the event. On occasion these teasers give potential customers a taste of what the company is cooking up for future product unveils, or at least items that may be made available as factory accessories in the future. In 2021 the world was treated to the all-electric Jeep Wrangler Magneto concept....

The only problem: No one has ever seen a prototype from EEStor. The secretive company’s latest milestone, according to a press release, was “certification of the completeness of the powder crystallization …. [which] provides the path for the possibility of EEStor, Inc. providing the published energy storage for present products and major advancements in energy storage for future products.” Provides the path for the possibility? Not the most confidence-inspiring announcement....

This is the coolest thing Scott Kelly has seen aboard the space station: And Kelly’s dreams have become more space-based since he began living aboard the International Space Station. As he wrote: Although, he says he’s generally not a great sleeper, especially in space. If you’re curious as to whether burping in space is different, Kelly can’t tell you. He hasn’t burped in nearly a year! Living above the Earth has also given Kelly some new perspective on the planet, and where he’d like to go on it: He also gave a special Valentine’s Day message to the moon, on behalf of Tumblr user 324b2dun: Kelly is scheduled to return to Earth in March 2016 with Exp 46....

This idea makes my eyeballs hurt — what if the world we live in is a hologram, a projection of events on a far-away two-dimensional surface?Forget cloning. This is a much easier way to bring back an extinct species: scientists have determined through DNA testing that extinct Caspian tigers and existing Siberian tigers were one and the same group until early in the last century, when they split off into two groups....

Now Google has enhanced this functionality with a new feature called Journeys, which you’ll find in Chrome for Windows, macOS, and Chrome OS. With Journeys, you can access not just the sites you’ve previously visited, but details of how you got there too—hence the name. How Chrome Journeys works You’re probably familiar with the way that browsing history works in Chrome. As you make your way across the web, the program logs each of the pages you’ve visited so you can retrace your steps if needed....

However. as gorgeous as the PS5 itself is, the hardware can only live up to its massive potential with the right support. We’ve already gone over the best PS5 games for showing off what the console can do, but it’s missing a crucial element: connectivity. Enter the PS Now and PS Plus online subscriptions. Indeed, these stout, sturdy services, both straight from Sony HQ, can make your PS5 even more functional than it already is....

The Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle will be the “Army’s first new design vehicle fielded in over four decades,” the Army said in June. While the Army has developed, deployed, and iterated on many vehicle designs, these have largely been adaptations of existing models. The heavy M1 Abrams main battle tank, also by General Dynamics, has undergone five variations, with a Next Generation version underway. By contrast, the last light tank fielded by the Army was the M551 Sheridan, which saw action in Vietnam, Panama, and was also deployed to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Shield, and then saw combat in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm....

It’s unclear what compelled Lotito to do this, and whether he was aware of the many ways he was jeopardizing his health. First things first: No nutritionist, doctor, or even the trendiest of dieters would recommend or applaud eating a computer. But it begs a ridiculous yet perhaps equally intriguing question: Is consuming one really that dangerous? Many of the same metals that are found inside electronic devices—magnesium, iron, and sodium—are also found inside the human body....

Decades before Orville and Wilbur Wright propellered into the air, the dream of flying cars (or carriages) got an unexpected lift. In 1856, French sea captain Jean-Marie Le Bris sailed through the skies in a horse-drawn glider fashioned after an albatross. The aptly named L’Albatros artificiel, or the Artificial Albatross, carried Le Bris 300 feet off the ground—an impressive height for the mid-19th century when the first steam-powered automobiles were only just beginning to dot roadways....

Otter was used to hearing male white-throated sparrows, which are common across much of North America, whistling a tune that ends with a repeating set of three notes, known as a triplet. But when he and his colleague Scott Ramsay, now at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, listened carefully to recordings of the sparrows in Otter’s new home, they couldn’t identify the musical trio. They quickly realized that the birds were singing a different variant of the song that ended in a set of two notes called a doublet....

This week’s episode is all about the surprisingly weird world of play: Bog snorkeling, cheese rolling, baseball bat boning, and so much more. We’re celebrating our latest magazine issue, which is available as a digital-only edition for anyone who wants to read it. It’s all about the ways humans (and animals) have fun, and you can check it out for yourself right now. Here’s some more info on the weird facts we highlighted on this week’s episode:...

Between common colds, the flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and COVID-19, it’s that the sneezy time of year where people are getting sick left and right. Some of the factors that influence the spread and rise of upper respiratory infections are still puzzling scientists. In fact, it wasn’t too long ago that miasma theory, or the idea that “bad air” caused disease was much more popular. While some diseases are certainly spread through the air, it’s airborne viruses or bacteria, and not the air itself, that makes us sick....

If that occurs, the Sample Recovery Helicopters will be the second and third rotorcraft ever to take flight on another planet. And their inclusion in the Mars Sample Return mission, a joint effort by NASA and the European Space Agency, could signal the beginning of a new chapter in Mars exploration—one in which small, lightweight helicopters regularly zip around the Red Planet. The news of adding helicopters to the Mars Sample Return mission comes just over a year after the first aircraft in history took powered flight on another planet, when NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter ascended to the Martian skies in April 2021....

A rare blood clotting syndrome, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia, is more common than previously thought in people who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, according to new data the panel reviewed. The CDC has logged the condition in 54 recipients of the vaccine since it became available in 2020—all were hospitalized, and nine people have died. While that’s still only a few cases for every million people vaccinated, it is a higher rate than was thought when the CDC last assessed the risks of different vaccines....