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  With SpaceX declaring that they will land a Dragon capsule on Mars in 2018, and NASA pledging to send astronauts there in the 2030s, Martian colonies are seeming more and more like a reality with every passing day. Sure, there is still a mountain of hurdles for researchers to overcome before we're sipping our morning coffee on the red planet, but nowadays the idea of Mars coffee isn't all that foreign--it's the future. To celebrate that, here are some of our favorite pictures of Mars from over the years, which will hopefully provide us with a preview of what our backyards will look like one day (fingers crossed). READ MORE AT: https://www.popsci.com/best-images-mars-so-far#page-4

I. After Oil Dubai drops away behind us, its ­comic-book skyline replaced by khaki sand dunes and the occasional wild camel. The first sign of the technological ambition we are about to see is a billboard: a 20-foot-tall ­portrait of Dubai’s ruler, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid ­Al Maktoum, rendered in a mosaic of solar panels. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, rendered in a mosaic of solar panels. Andrew Blum At a cluster of buildings about a half-hour south of the city, a guard slides open a high steel gate for our white SUV, with Alhaz Rashid Khokhar at the wheel. A project manager for the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, Khokhar has, for the past several months, been working toward the opening here of a 200-megawatt expansion of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park. The dark panels stretch across the desert for more than 2 miles, a distance so far beyond the vanishing point that standing at one corner is like ­lookin...

It happens to the best of machines—after a few years of use, it just doesn't run as smoothly or quickly as it used to. Luckily, a few tweaks under the hood can rev up the performance of your MacBook, iMac, or Mac Mini. (Not an Apple aficionado? Check out the Popular Science guide to improving the performance of Windows machines.) These adjustments won't be immediately obvious, but they can give macOS a new spring in its step. Follow these steps to speed up your Mac machine like the experts do. 1. Tone down the visual effects There's no doubt macOS is a gorgeous-looking operating system. But all those fancy animations and transparency effects take up resources that could be going towards actual applications. If you want to make sure your machine runs as lean and as mean as possible, you can turn these extra visual flourishes off. This trick is especially useful for those who tend to leave a lot of applications and windows open at one time. To cut down on the e...

The Chinese military is bringing its drone and aircraft carrier programs together, pulling unmanned aerial systems onto carriers as robotic wingmen for pilots. Shi Wen, the chief engineer of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC)'s attack drone family, told the Global Times that China is working on drones capable of flying from aircraft carriers. This program would be China's response to the U.S. Navy's UCLASS program, which proved drones' ability to take off and land from aircraft carriers, and the U.S. MQ-25 Stingray program, which will deploy refueling tanker drones to carriers in the coming years. While China's two aircraft carriers, the Liaoning and the nearly completed CV-17, have ski ramps that would likely limit them to vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drones, the next Chinese carrier, CV-18, will likely have electromagnetic catapults. Those catapults would enable CV-18 and its nuclear-powered successors to launch heavier and f...

Web browsers keep track of your past activity for a reason. That history comes in handy if you want to find a funny article again, or return to your favorite photo of the kids, or if restore a tab that you accidentally closed. At the same time, some people find this constant tracking a little on the creepy side. Not to mention that, if you share a computer with others, you might not want them finding out about a gift you secretly bought them, your interest in 1970s folk rock, or your more private Google searches. Fortunately, all of today's web browsers make it very simple to erase your history and wipe away your online tracks. In this guide, you'll find out about the information your browser automatically logs, what that data does—and how to get rid of it. What your browser saves Before you roll up your sleeves and start blitzing all the data stored in your browser, you should know what that information is and what it does. After all, on some occasions, you mi...