Science
Popular Mechanics US
FOREVER
Two Tornadoes Struck the Same Military Base Five Days Apart in 1948. It Changed the Way We Forecast Weather
10+ min |
March - April 2025
Popular Mechanics US
HOW TO BUILD A DIY ROUTER SLED
Flatten wood slabs at home with the precision of a professional.
6 min |
March - April 2025
Popular Mechanics US
Fastest Submarines
IMAGINE A SUBMARINE SO FAST THAT IT CAN outrun a torpedo. That could soon be a possibility, thanks to a breakthrough propulsion method that Chinese scientists claim could produce the fastest submarines in the world.
2 min |
March - April 2025
Popular Mechanics US
Betelbuddy
BETELGEUSE (NOT BEETLEJUICE, THE slimy character of movie fame) is one of the most celebrated celestial objects in the night sky and has been at the heart of several mysteries over the years.
1 min |
March - April 2025
Popular Mechanics US
Biggest Prime
A COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF prime numbers-if we were to compile and write it out-would make this an absolutely insufferable article to read through. And, technically, we couldn't do it anyway. Theoretically, there are infinite prime numbers, but they become fewer and farther between as you count higher and higher.
2 min |
March - April 2025
Popular Mechanics US
POPULAR MECHANICS TOOL AWARDS 2025
Tools are the cornerstone of civilization. Our use and creation of them sets us apart from every other creature on earth. The best tools not only make work go faster, they make it easier, better, and more efficient. The tools here are the latest and greatest for both common and tricky tasks.
6 min |
March - April 2025
Popular Mechanics US
5th Force
ACCORDING TO THE CURrent Standard Model, four fundamental forces underpin all known physics: electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. However, since the mid-1980s, physicists have wondered if a fifth fundamental force could exist, which would help to explain some observational anomalies. And since then, many studies have boldly claimed discovery of this elusive force.
1 min |
March - April 2025
Popular Mechanics US
ONE OF THE 'GREATEST THREATS' TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST ISN'T WHAT YOU THINK.
EXPERTS ARE PREPARING THE REGION AGAINST THE THREAT OF DANGEROUS VOLCANIC MUDFLOWS, KNOWN AS LAHARS, WHICH COULD INUNDATE THE COMMUNITIES SURROUNDING MT. RAINIER IN AS LITTLE AS 30 MINUTES.
10+ min |
January - February 2025
Popular Mechanics US
THE WORLD'S TOUGHEST ROW
They rowed 3,000 miles across the Atlantic, battling unpredictable weather, chaotic seas, and finicky equipment. But what they discovered gave them profound new insights into the power of the ocean.
10+ min |
January - February 2025
Popular Mechanics US
HOW TO DIY OFF-GRID SOLAR
SPEND THE TIME UP FRONT AND PLAN IT CAREFULLY TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT
9 min |
January - February 2025
Popular Mechanics US
Are We on the Verge of an ARMS RACE in SPACE?
RUMORS OF A RUSSIAN SPACE NUKE, ALONG WITH OTHER SATELLITE-TARGETING WEAPONS, HAVE MADE GEOPOLITICAL TENSIONS EXTEND INTO ORBIT.
10+ min |
January - February 2025
Popular Mechanics US
Fresh Fingerprints on an Ancient Statue
A CLAY FIGURINE HAS SPENT MILLENNIA incomplete, waiting at the bottom of a lake for its long-dead craftsman to finish the Iron Age-era statuette.
2 min |
January - February 2025
Popular Mechanics US
Quantum Entanglement in Our Brains
IT HAS LONG BEEN ARGUED THAT THE human brain is similar to a computer. But in reality, that's selling the brain pretty short.
2 min |
January - February 2025
Popular Mechanics US
The Tools of Copernicus
WAY BACK IN 1508, WITH ONLY LIMited tools at his disposal, Nicolaus Copernicus developed a celestial model of a heliocentric planetary system, which he described in hist landmark work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. It was a complete overhaul of our conception of the universe-one that, unfortunately, earned him the ire of the Catholic church for decades after his death-and forever changed the way we look at the stars.
2 min |
January - February 2025
Popular Mechanics US
Building a Sixth-Generation Bomber Raptor
THE GLOBAL COMBAT AIR Programme (GCAP)-a project by the U.K., Italy, and Japan to develop a sixth-generation stealth fighter-has been busy at the drawing board reshaping its vision of the future of air warfare. And judging by the new concept model unveiled at this year's Farnborough air show, that future has big triangular wings.
3 min |
January - February 2025
Popular Mechanics US
The Electroweak Force of the Early Universe
TODAY, THE UNIVERSE AS WE KNOW IT IS governed by four fundamental forces: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity.
1 min |
January - February 2025
Popular Mechanics US
This Ancient Fossil With a Brain and Guts
WE KNOW WHAT FOSSILS LOOK like. For example, typical dinosaur fossils are bones turned to stone and preserved from the passage of time, located, if we're particularly lucky, in large collections that can be reassembled to represent the beast they used to prop up in their entirety.
1 min |
January - February 2025
Popular Mechanics US
A Cuneiform Shopping List
MOST OF US CAN DO ALL OF OUR shopping with the click of a few buttons, and while that's certainly convenient, it can make it difficult to keep track of when exactly that new armoire or bookshelf will show up at your doorstep.
1 min |
January - February 2025
Popular Mechanics US
SNOWBALL EARTH
IMAGINE A PLANET WHERE THE AVERAGE temperature is a delightful -58° Fahrenheit every day. Not a place you'd want to visit, right? Lucky for you, then, that you weren't around several hundred million years ago, because these brutal conditions were the unfortunate reality of the \"Snowball Earth.\"
1 min |
January - February 2025
Popular Mechanics US
Henrietta Lacks - It's not surprising that Henrietta Lacks-whose
It's not surprising that Henrietta Lacks-whose "immortal" HeLa cells were pivotal in developing treatments for diseases such as polio, HIV/AIDS, and COVID19-is referred to as "the mother of modern medicine." But Lacks's legacy is complicated due to the ethical concerns surrounding the use of her special cells. Lacks, who died of cancer at age 31 in 1951, was never aware that her cells led to significant medical advancements or that they had been taken without her consent. And even now, her strange case raises questions about the morally dubious methods through which we achieved unquestionably positive breakthroughs in medicine.
3 min |
September - October 2024
Popular Mechanics US
Chasing an Asteroid - How NASA defied incredible odds to get its asteroid-hunting osiris-rex mission off the ground and in the process upended what we know about our solar system.
Dante Lauretta sat in the backseat of a helicopter hovering high above a remote patch of Utah desert, waiting for a small, twinkling speck in the sky to plunge toward earth.If you didn't know better, you might think what was beginning to burn through the skies above the American southwest in the early hours of September 24, 2023, was a shooting star. But it wasn't a shooting star. Or a meteor. It was a dishwasher-size capsule filled with bits of ancient asteroid-priceless matter from the dawn of the solar system. In other words, it was a treasure chest moving at 27,000 miles per hour and sizzling at a temperature half that of the sun's surface.
10+ min |
September - October 2024
Popular Mechanics US
Whether We Live in a Simulation - scientist Melvin Vopson, PhD, studies this exact thing- the possibility that the universe might indeed be a digital facsimile. And he claims to have evidence.
In the 1999 film the Matrix, Neo discovers A truth to end all truths-the universe is a simulation. While this premise provides fantastic sci-fi fodder, the idea isn't quite as relegated to the fiction section as one might expect. . In fact, University of Portsmouth scientist Melvin Vopson, PhD, studies this exact thing- the possibility that the universe might indeed be a digital facsimile. And he claims to have evidence.
1 min |
September - October 2024
Popular Mechanics US
The Ancient Language of Easter Island - Today, humans inhabit- or have, at the very least, explored- pretty much every corner of the planet. But that immense proliferation of Homo sapiens across the globe was a slow process.
With the first humans leaving Africa between 60,000 and 120,000 years ago, the species slowly spread across the Earth over many millennia. And one of the last places these ancient humans made their way to was the southeastern Pacific island of Rapa Nui, known more broadly as Easter Island.Located 2,360 miles off the coast of Chile, Rapa Nui is one of the most isolated places in the world. Its native people, who are also named the Rapa Nui, first arrived on the island's shores between A.D. 1150 and 1280, and lived in isolation until the arrival of Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen in 1722.
2 min |
September - October 2024
Popular Mechanics US
Underwater UFOs - A retired U.S. Navy admiral believes that the government should look to the oceans to help solve a mystery in the skies.
A retired U.S. Navy admiral believes that the government should look to the oceans to help solve a mystery in the skies. Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet, former Oceanographer of the U.S. Navy, recently published a paper arguing that unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP, more commonly referred to as UFO) and unidentified submersible objects (USO) are linked, and should be studied further.
2 min |
September - October 2024
Popular Mechanics US
Synching Up Our Circadian Rhythms - If you've ever done any kind of long-distance travel, or just woken up feeling under-rested thanks to daylight saving time, you know how important your circadian clock is.
If you've ever done any kind of long-distance travel, or just woken up feeling under-rested thanks to daylight saving time, you know how important your circadian clock is. Like many things in your body, your circadian rhythm is more complicated than it might seem on the surface. Rather than being entirely brain-based, it's actually controlled by a collection of several circadian clocks (central and peripheral) that all work together to keep your gears turning like a well-oiled machine.
2 min |
September - October 2024
Popular Mechanics US
SKINWALKER RANCH REVEALED
The 512-acre ranch has captivated real-estate tycoons, TV producers, and the U.S. government. What are they searching for?
10+ min |
September - October 2024
Popular Mechanics US
Upgrade Your Living Room With This DIY - MID-CENTURY COFFEE TABLE
This project is easy to build and customize to fit your space.
5 min |
September - October 2024
Popular Mechanics US
INDISPENSABLE LESSONS FROM A POP MECH LEGEND
With people moving around so much these days, it's perfectly natural to wonder how an editor can just come along and stick like a barnacle to the hull of Popular Mechanics, lasting for 35 years.
9 min |
September - October 2024
Popular Mechanics US
SAVING THE SUGAR BUSH
A technological revolution has transformed the ancient tradition of sugar making-with big implications for local economies and ecosystems imperiled by climate change.
10+ min |
September - October 2024
Popular Mechanics US
MANIPULATION AND MEDICAL ETHICS
The taking of cervical samples wasn't the only medical procedure of dubious consent in Lacks's story.
1 min |