Fierce Old Warplane Has a New Mission: Flying Into the Hearts of Thunderstorms
03.27.2012 Equipped with heavy armor and an impressively powerful cannon, the A-10 Thunderbolt was built to survive.
by Adam Hadhazy
The Giant Crusher That Can Destroy NASA Rockets
A massive metal compactor puts tough new rocket materials to the test. 08.21.2011
The Hardcore Nuclear-Waste Containers That Can Stand up to Airplane Crashes
When it comes to spent nuclear fuel, no solution is perfect—but the U.S's dry casks are pretty tough. 08.02.2011
Alvin Gets a $40 Million, 21st-Century Makeover
The esteemed deep-sea submersible will soon be able to go four miles under the ocean's surface, allowing it to explore 98 of the ocean. 06.24.2011
Head-Mounted Laser Microscope Peers Inside Rats' Brains
The ingenious rig shows animals making real-world decisions in real time. 06.20.2011
Brand-New Eye in the Sky Will Look at the Very "Foundations of the Universe"
The powerful AMS detector has a gauntlet of experiments to analyze the thousands of super-energetic particles that plow into it every second. 05.20.2011
Gravity-Wave Detector Takes a Break; Will Return Bigger & Badder
Once LIGO is reborn as Advanced LIGO, spotting the remnants of black-hole collisions should be a routine affair. 02.01.2011
Giant Magnifier Reaches 5,000 Degrees Using Only Sunlight
It was created to research our most powerful weapons, but it's also used to try to protect Earth from cataclysmic destruction. 12.17.2010
