Humans have not been able to make themselves seem invisible yet, but our species just got closer — at least in a petri dish.

SpinLaunch may face a major obstacle up in the air because it does the opposite of a standard rocket, says Julián Rimoli, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of California, Irvine …. “I would expect this to get really hot,” Rimoli says, similar to how space capsules create mini-fireballs upon reentering the Earth’s atmosphere. That heat could prove disastrous for SpinLaunch’s precious cargo. … One of the biggest current unknowns: how SpinLaunch payloads will fare at much higher speeds, Rimoli says.

Design teams from all over the globe gathered near Los Angeles over the weekend for an unusual competition. The prize was a claim to nerd fame: Who can design the fastest Hyperloop pod in the world?

Some homeowners will have one more option during a blackout: using their car to charge their house.

"It's getting hotter, and of course more heat waves are going to kill more people," said climatologist Omid Mazdiyasni of the University of California, Irvine, who led an international team of scientists in analyzing a half century of data from the Indian Meteorological Department on temperature, heat waves and heat-related mortality.