TechnologyPhase

FORD MUSTANG SHELBY GT 500 Courtesy Ford Motor Co. Detroit automakers have recently been locked in a competition straight out of the 1960s: a race to create the fastest and most powerful muscle car. This summer, Ford takes the lead with the 650-horsepower Mustang Shelby GT 500. To break the 200mph mark, engineers departed from the muscle-car tradition of throwing a truck engine under the hood and calling it a day. Instead they redesigned the engine with lightweight materials, refined the car's aerodynamics, and installed driver-assistance systems that allow anyone to drive the Shelby as it's designed to be driven—aggressively. 650-HORSEPOWER ENGINE The Shelby's 5.8-liter engine is the most powerful V8 in production. It's also 102 pounds lighter than its 5.4-liter predecessor. Engineers switched to an aluminum engine block, ditched the two-piece iron driveshaft in favor of a one-piece carbon-fiber unit, and replaced the heavy sleeves that guard the ...

Stephen Hawking, who passed away at the age of 76 last week, was a world-renowned physicist. He will forever live inside our history books, synonymous with theories that helped us understand the universe’s beginnings and how black holes behave. But Hawking is not only noteworthy for his prolific physics work: For over 50 years he lived with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. The disease (which in the U.K. is called motor neuron disease, and in the U.S. commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease) typically runs its fatal course more swiftly. The condition makes its mark on the body by affecting the neurons that control muscles. The brain and spinal column contain cells known as motor neurons—upper motor neurons in the brain and lower motor neurons in the spine. To move a muscle, the brain sends messages from the upper motor neurons through to the lower ones, and then to the muscles we want to move. In patients with ALS, motor neurons degenerate and become weaker over time. ...

FROZEN BUBBLE In the wake of America’s recent snowpocalypse, it seems only fitting to remind you that some truly wondrous things can come out of bad weather. For photographer Chris Ratzlaff, it’s the opportunity to freeze soap bubbles. While it takes some practice, anyone can recreate the jaw-dropping effect at home—so long as “home” happens to be somewhere very, very cold. There’s some interesting science at play here. Every bubble is made up of three individual layers: a thin layer of water molecules squished between two layers of soap. It might look like the entire surface of the bubble is freezing, but what you’re actually seeing is the innermost layer of water—which freezes at warmer temperatures than soapy water—turning to ice within the film. FROZEN BUBBLE AS ICE FORMS You can see ice forming at the top and bottom of this bubble. Chris Ratzlaff Unfortunately, the frozen bubbles don’t last long. As ice crystals form in the bubble’s surface, something else forms alo...

BLUE MARBLE The 'Blue Marble' image of Earth captured in 2012. NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring It's nice to set aside a day out of the year to remember that, despite all of the imaginary borders we set up to define ourselves—our offices, neighborhoods, cities and, most importantly to many, countries—we're all spinning through space on the same blue sphere. After all, that's what will unite us when the aliens inevitably show up on the White House lawn one day. With all that in mind, for this year's Earth Day, let's check out some of the best images of our planet from space because there's nothing more sobering than the realization that all of human history is contained, as Carl Sagan would say, on a pale blue dot. THE EPIC EARTH Named after the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), this image of our home world was snapped from NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite from about one million miles away on July 6, 2...