Maddie Stone

Watching Goats Get Airlifted Is the Best Way to End Your Day

Airlifting wild animals is a time-honored tradition in the state of Idaho, where beavers were parachuting around in wooden boxes long before I was born. Nowadays, it’s mountain goats, which are possibly even worse suited for air travel. Since six individual goats were released in the 1960s, the number of mountain goats in the state…

There’s a Mystery Lurking in Curiosity’s Latest Drillholes

In its slow ascent up Mount Sharp, NASA’s Curiosity Rover has stumbled upon a mystery fit for the robot’s name: silica. Lots and lots of silica. And the discovery may shape our understanding of the Red Planet’s geologic past, including whether life could have lived there. Silicon is one of the most abundant elements on…

An Eruptive Star Proves Our Galaxy Is Magical Even Without the Force

You don’t need force magic to witness cosmic wonders—just a great telescope. Fortunately, the citizens of Earth have Hubble, which has been capturing the majesty of our celestial landscape for 25 years. Just in time for Star Wars week, you can now feast your eyes on Hubble’s latest astronomical portrait, which looks suspiciously like a…

Sorry Treasure Hunters, That Fabled Nazi Gold Train Probably Doesn’t Exist

Earlier this summer, amateur treasure hunters made quite a stir when they announced the discovery of a long-lost Nazi gold train, buried under a pile of rocks in a Polish rail tunnel. It was a controversial claim to begin with, and now, scientists are saying it’s just a load of malarkey. “There is no train,”…

This New Deep Learning Tool Shows You the Most Memorable Parts of Your Photos

Bummed that your latest cat pic didn’t get more traction on Instagram? Wondering how to make people remember your company’s logo first and foremost? A clever algorithm developed by MIT computer scientists may be able to help with a new online tool. Meet MemNet, a new program that uses techniques from the deep learning field…

The Most Overhyped Scientific Discoveries of 2015

2015 was an amazing year for science, but it was also a year for some amazingly overhyped science. We put our hearts ahead of our data when speculating about advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. We so wanted to believe that a looming ice age would save us from global warming. And we were horrified to learn that…

Here and There Is a Thrilling Quantum Mystery that the Reader Must Solve

It’s meant to be a simple demonstration. For years, quantum cryptographer Kerek Reidier has been developing teleportation technology in his top-secret, DARPA-funded lab, and he’s already performed dozens of successful trials. Some people see teleportation as the ultimate weapon; to others, it’s the gateway to immortality. But The Reidier Test changes everything. The last thing…

Meet Dulcinea, Poltergeist and 29 Other Planets Just Named By Popular Vote

Earlier this year, the International Astronomical Union asked us to vote on the names for 32 exoplanets orbiting 15 stars. This could have been a trainwreck, but the planet christening actually went pretty smoothly. Now, with half a million votes tallied from 182 countries, a handful of celestial bodies have shiny new appellations. The NameExoWorlds…

Astronauts On the ISS Will Soon Enjoy Authentic British Tea Time 

Mark Watney’s tea may have been nothing but spent rocket fuel, but on the ISS, astronauts are about to get a lesson in good ol’ fashioned English tea time. That’s thanks to British celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal, who’s working hard to figure out how to bring several of his country’s staples into zero-gee. Earlier this…

How the Star Wars Planets Stack Up Against Our Own

Galaxies far far away often seem much more exciting than this one: fascist Empires ruled by ancient sorcery cults, giant space slugs, endless disposable droids. But when you get down to it, many of the planets in the Star Wars universe aren’t so different from our own. Chris Jones wanted to see how the planets…

This Stunning Satellite Image Proves Science Can Be Art

It looks like something astronaut Van Gogh would paint from space, but the image above isn’t an impressionist’s creation—it’s a slice of the North Atlantic Ocean, with a bit of post-processing to accentuate the confluence of physics and biology. Captured on September 23rd, 2015 by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NASA’s Suomi…

This Stormy Star Is Unlike Anything We’ve Seen Before

Astronomers are comparing it to Jupiter’s red spot: a forever storm large enough to swallow three Earths. Except this monster tempest appears to be raging on a star. The object in question, W1906+40, belongs to a class of relatively cool celestial bodies known as L-dwarfs. Despite their low temperatures, some L-dwarfs fuse atoms and produce…

6,000 Year Old Death Pit Points to One Hell of a Brawl

Scattered hand bones, severed arms, cracked skulls: if one thing is clear from this Neolithic burial pit, it’s that some some serious shit went down 6,000 years ago. Circular burial pits like the one shown above were common during the Neolithic period in Central and Western Europe some 6,500 to 5,500 years ago. But rarely…

The Paris Climate Agreement Has Been Adopted

After two weeks of marathon negotiations, 195 countries approved an accord that would wean the world off fossil fuels this century, limiting global warming to 2ºC, with an aspirational target of 1.5ºC. It’s the first successful end to a global climate summit after two decades of failed negotiations. The final draft of the text that…

A vote on the accord that’s being hailed humanity’s best and perhaps last shot at preventing dangerous climate change is about to take place in Paris. Watch 195 countries try to make history here.

Watch Chewie Interview a Rocket Scientist About Advanced Propulsion Systems

Certain aspects of the Star Wars universe (FTL travel, force magic) are clearly impossible. But some technologies, like extremely high-powered thrusters and even lightsabers, may one day be feasible. This month, the University of Michigan released “Chillin’ with Chewie,” a 5-video series in which everyone’s favorite Wookie warrior interviews a range of experts about all…

Musk’s Plan to Save the World From Advanced AI: Develop Advanced AI

Noted killer robot-fearer Elon Musk has a plan to save humanity from the looming robopocalypse: developing advanced artificial intelligence systems. You know, the exact technologies that could lead to the robopocalypse. Let’s unpack that one a little bit. Yesterday, Tesla’s boss, along with a band of prominent tech executives including Linked in co-founder Reid Hoffman…

The Bizarre Reason Earth’s Rotation Will Slow Down This Century

If you’ve had your fill of depressing predictions for the future, here’s one that is both fascinating and as innocuous as they come: as ice caps melt, Earth’s rotation is slowing down, and that’s making our days ever so slightly longer. That’s the conclusion of a Harvard-led study published today in Science Advances. According to…

Motion Tracking Technology Will Help NASA Build Better Space Habitats

As we send humans deeper into space for longer periods of time, habitat design is going to become a crucial part of mission planning. A clever new technology could help NASA figure out how astronauts use their environments, so that we can build much better ones. In partnership with NASA, engineers at Draper are currently…

This Ancient Armored Mud Dragon Could Help Solve an Evolutionary Mystery

It looks like an alien parasite come to invade our brains, but the truly bizarre creature pictured above is a mud dragon—a tiny worm, roughly half the size of a grain of rice, that squirmed about the seafloor 530 million years ago. It’s one of the first fossils of a mud dragon ever discovered, and…