Month: April 2020

Enlarge / On the left, the Acura NSX GT3 Evo. On the right, the Acura ARX-05. (credit: Acura)

Thanks to COVID-19, the 2020 Rolex 24 at Daytona could be the only International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) race of the year to take place outside of iRacing. Like many other professions, "race car driver" is not considered an essential occupation, so young hot shoes like Ricky Taylor (who races for Acura Team Penske) and Trent Hindman (who competes with Meyer Shank Racing) are stuck at home.

One of the last opportunities for track time for either of them was in early February at a test session at Florida's Sebring Raceway, a bumpy WWII bomber base turned race course that hosts a difficult 12-hour race each March. Unusually for drivers who race for different teams and in quite different classes, they were fortunate enough to get a little time in each other's cars—an Acura ARX-05, and an Acura NSX GT3 Evo. We caught up with them a few days ago to learn more, and we got some interesting insights into what it's like to be behind the wheel of each of these race cars.

About those cars

And they are two very different race cars. The ARX-05 is a lightweight (2,050lb/930kg) carbon-fiber prototype, purpose-built to race in IMSA's DPi category. Its wings produce a ton of downforce—actually, about a ton and a half, or 3,000lbs (1,360kg) at 150mph (241km/h). And it tops out at about 175mph (281km/h) thanks to a 600hp (447kW) 3.5L twin-turbo 60-degree V6 that's a modified version of the engine you might find in an Acura SUV.

Enlarge / At these sorts of distances, images of quasars don't have many details. (credit: NASA, ESA and X. Fan (University of Arizona))

One of the most exciting prospects in physics has been discovering that fundamental constants are not actually constant at all. When I first started writing, physicists and astronomers were just figuring out how to build instruments and statistical tools that would allow highly accurate measurements of fundamental constants from the distant Universe. The results have been consistently disappointing: the constants appeared to remain constant over time.

But that still leaves open the possibility that the fundamental constants may be subtly different in space rather than time. Now, new observations examine this possibility back to just about 750 million years after the Big Bang.

Frustrating constants

The fundamental constants are one of the mysteries of modern physics. These constants are not predicted by theory; instead, their values are measured and put into the equations. Our physical theories will accept pretty much any value for the fundamental constants, but if the values were even the tiniest bit different, our Universe would be unrecognizably different—to the extent that we would not exist. This is often referred to as the "fine tuning problem."

Enlarge / Amazon employees protest over conditions at the company's Staten Island distribution facility on March 30, 2020. (credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

New York Attorney General Letitia James hasn't been impressed with Amazon's response to the coronavirus crisis.

"While we continue to investigate, the information so far available to us raises concerns that Amazon's health and safety measures taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are so inadequate that they may violate several provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act," James' staff wrote in an April 22 letter first obtained by National Public Radio.

The crisis has produced surging demand for Amazon's delivery services. But as Amazon has hired an extra 175,000 people to help fill orders, it has also faced criticism about its safety practices. Last month, a number of workers (Amazon counted 15, organizers claimed 60) protested outside a massive Amazon fulfillment center on Staten Island. Amazon has also seen sporadic online protests in recent weeks.

When Joe Russo (of Russo brothers fame) was casting about for just the right person to direct his action thriller Extraction, he opted for a nontraditional choice: Sam Hargrave, a stunt coordinator who had been itching to try his hand at directing.

Granted, it's not the first time a stunt coordinator has made the transition to behind the camera. Chad Stahelski, director of the John Wick franchise, was a former stunt choreographer who worked with Keanu Reeves on The Matrix movies. Hargrave's stunt work has been featured in Avengers: End Game and Captain America: Civil War, for example, as well as The Hunger Games franchise and Atomic Blonde. And like Stahelski, he brought that stuntman's sensibility to the challenge of directing the action-packed Extraction.

"For me, action is a way to tell a story in a dynamic way," says Hargrave. "And if you're not able to see what's happening, if you're not able to experience it as the characters do, then you're missing a lot of the impact of the moment."