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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

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