Ever since Marty McFly hopped aboard his pink hoverboard in 1989's Back to the Future Part II, the world has been waiting for real scientists and engineers to catch up. Now, finally, it appears that you can get your hands on one - if you have $10,000

As the sun was setting on a stormy Georgia day, Brooke Melton was 30 miles outside of Atlanta in her Chevy Cobalt. It was March 10, 2010, her birthday, and the 29-year-old pediatric nurse was on her way to her boyfriend’s to celebrate.

The Maersk Triple E is the largest ship ever built, the pride and joy of the largest shipping company in the world. The ship was a huge hit with the public last year when it docked in Copenhagen for a week, 50,000 people visited, tours were given and an exhibition about the boat was made. It towered above the Copenhagen skyline, and like most of the rest of the population of Copenhagen I went down for a look at this monumental machine.

Two Audi RS7 performance sedans raced around a track in northern Germany. The car without a driver won this matchup by five seconds.

FedEx runs such a massive operation—it uses more than 47,000 vehicles and nearly 700 aircraft to deliver about 4 million packages every day—that any systemic change it makes to cut down its carbon footprint can have major consequences. That’s why news that it’s using technology developed by a founder of Tesla Motors to make its trucks way more fuel efficient is so exciting, both for its investors and those who want the planet to breathe easy.

Fast-charging batteries are all nice and good, but the lifespan matters, too -- why should you have to replace power packs (or entire devices) every couple of years ? You may not have to give up performance or longevity if researchers at Nanyang Technology University have their way.

The world’s first amputee to receive a prosthetic arm directly connected to his bone, nerves and muscles has managed to perform highly complicated tasks, all with the power of his mind, a recent study has revealed.

Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas emissions, no long-lived radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply. Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy is that the economics haven’t penciled out. Fusion power designs aren’t cheap enough to outperform systems that use fossil fuels such as coal and...

A new design for a piston-free linear engine generator has just been released by Toyota. With remarkable efficiency, the device might be scaled up to compete with electric power plants used in cars today.

The controversial inventor behind the 3D printed gun has revealed his latest project – a $1200 milling machine to make untraceable rifles. Called the Ghost Gunner, the CNC mill can produce metal parts to built a rifle. The rifle does not have a serial number, and is therefore known as a ‘ghost’ gun. Defense Distributed’s previous creations have included 3-D printable plastic magazines and the Defender gun wrong brought it worldwide attention earlier this year.

Forget buying a stairway to heaven. Serious people are trying to build an elevator to space.

The one down side? No room for attaching playing cards to make those annoying clicking sounds.

National Geographic Emerging Explorer Robert Wood says that medicine and agriculture can be transformed by micro and "soft" robots.

Phil Ross may have discovered the building material of the future. It's sturdy, resilient, and environmentally sustainable—practically inexhaustible, in fact. It can withstand everything from extreme temperature to a hail of bullets, and once it’s no longer useful, it can be easily composted. There's only one problem: Some people might not be ready to live in houses built from fungus.

Wolverine, Ghost Rider, the Incredible Hulk — all of these characters have at least one awesome trait in common: the ability to heal themselves. And now, the Pentagon wants to give ordinary people this superhuman capability. A new military-sponsored program aims to develop a tiny device that can be implanted in the body, where it will use electrical impulses to monitor the body's organs, healing these crucial parts when they become infected or injured.

Researchers from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Technological Institute for Superhard and Novel Carbon Materials in Troitsk, MISiS, and MSU have developed anew method for the synthesis of an ultrahard material that exceeds diamond in hardness. An article recently published in the journal...

The handwriting has been on the wall since the 1980s, according to former Bell Labs scientist, now co-founder and chief scientist at POET, Geoff Taylor. According to Taylor, GaAs, as opposed to silicon, will boost electrical transistor performance while integrating optical circuitry capabilities. These qualities enable both higher performance and novel IC architectures, thereby extending Moore's Law indefinitely.

What makes the Prius so fuel efficient? The hybrid drivetrain is a big part of it, yes, but put that into a box on wheels like the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen or even a Kia Soul and it’s not nearly so helpful. The Prius can deliver 51 mpg in no small part because Toyota engineers toiled tirelessly at their computers and in the wind tunnel to ensure it slices through the air as effortlessly as possible.

This is the promise of the near future: all of your gadgets — from your smartphone to your fridge — will be able to talk to each other, wirelessly communicating whether you're around or not. We're almost there, but a new device from Stanford and University of California, Berkeley, professors may speed things along. Engineers from the schools have designed a radio the size of an ant.

One of architecture’s great challenges is building structures that have the ability to adapt. Our buildings consume huge amounts of energy – both to heat them when it’s cold outside, and to cool them when it’s sunny. But what if these static structures were able to transform themselves so that they retain heat in winter and stay cool when it’s hot?