Get Rid of the Built-in Google Search Bar on Almost Any Launcher

Almost every Android device comes with a Google search bar embedded directly into its stock home screen app. But Google search is available in so many different places on Android that having this bar in your launcher is almost overkill. On top of that, Google recently changed the logo overlay to a more colorful one that may clash with your home screen theme, so there's plenty of reasons to dislike this feature.

Unfortunately, most stock home screen apps don't allow you to get rid of this search bar, so in the past, your only option to remove it has been to switch to a custom launcher. But now, thanks to a new Xposed module from developer jeboo, you can give the Google search bar the ax in one simple step—and to top that off, it will work with almost any stock launcher out there.

South Africa may be the epicenter of a geomagnetic pole reversal in progress

Don’t start running around like your hair’s on fire, but this might actually matter. The Earth’s magnetic field is so discombobulated over South Africa that some scientists believe we’re seeing the opening strains of a planet-wide polarity change.

What have scientists observed?

We already knew that the poles of the Earth’s magnetic field sometimes reverse, which is to say their direction flips from herding particles in to shooing them out, or vice versa. And the Earth’s magnetic field isn’t perfectly even, either. It’s sort of lumpy and thin in places. This is because the innards of our planet aren’t perfectly evenly distributed. There’s one particular region of the planet, toward the South Pole, where the liquid iron core meets with a hot, dense patch of the mantle. Studies of the planet’s magnetic field show that its poles are reversed over that patch.

6 upcoming space missions worth keeping an eye on

Having pretty thoroughly explored the Earth, humanity has since turned its attention to the stars. There are a myriad of missions already in the history books, and many more underway. We’re at a pivotal time in our exploration of space. With a bit of luck and science, we may soon be able to explore more freely and understand the nature of the universe — it’s a bright future. These are six of the most important upcoming missions that will get us there.

Extreme science: the biggest, fastest and hottest breakthroughs of 2016

This year we pushed the boundaries of science to new extremes. We saw new levels of supercomputer performance, peeled the plastic off the biggest telescope and solar plant on earth, did the first-ever spectroscopy on antimatter, and even made liquid light.

To start with, we put spinners on the world’s most powerful X-ray laser. The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is a linear electron accelerator at Stanford. The X-ray laser is created by forcing electrons through a gauntlet of carefully spaced magnets, which provokes the emission of a beam of X-rays so powerful that it can even image a single molecule, without needing to produce a crystal first. This means that it can be used to capture chemical reactions in progress.

The current XFEL laser, no slouch by any means, is still limited by its copper linac line. So, Stanford teamed up with Cornell, Berkeley, Fermilab, Jefferson Lab, and Argonne to install a niobium superconductor, because it’ll let the linac run ten thousand times faster and brighter than ever before. LCLS-II, as the new accelerator will be called, will be capable of producing bursts of electrons at rates of up to a million pulses per second.

Rumor: Apple may add wireless charging to iPhone 8, but top-end model could cost $1,000

There are rumors swirling around the iPhone 8 suggesting Apple could be planning to offer a major technology leap forward with its 10th Anniversary iPhone, but the highest-end devices may not be cheap.

Business Insider has published a pair of rumors on various aspects of the upcoming iPhone 8. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo Apple will move back to all-glass construction with the iPhone 8 for all three models. The use of glass could make it more difficult to implement the wireless charging support Kuo expects the new device to offer, and overheating could be a problem due to the difference in thermal dissipation between glass and metal. Kuo writes:

Adoption of glass casing & wireless charging unfavorable to thermal system operation for three new 2017F iPhone models; bigger impact on OLED model. The thermal system becomes less efficient with glass casing, as compared to metal casing used previously. Furthermore, wireless charging increases handset temperature. While we don’t expect general users to notice any difference, lamination of an additional graphite sheet is needed for better thermal control and, thus, steady operation; this is because FPCB is replaced with film, which is more sensitive to temperature change of the 3D touch sensor in OLED iPhone.