Sarah Zhang

The Tallest Wind Turbine Ever Will Float Above Alaska

A thousand feet off the ground, the wind blows brisk and uninterrupted. But how do you build such a tall, thin beam to support a turbine’s blades? You don’t—you float the generator in a giant helium balloon. The world’s first floating commercial wind turbine will soon be hovering over Fairbanks, Alaska. Gizmodo first wrote about…

What Sunsets Painted Centuries Ago Reveal About Global Air Pollution

Dramatic sunsets are undeniably gorgeous, but they portend something ominous: millions of fine particles polluting the air. Researchers are now studying sunsets painted over the past 500 years to find clues to how our air got dirtier after the Industrial Revolution. Particulate matter in the air—pollution, essentially—scatters sunlight to create those deep red sunsets. The…

Get Lost Inside This Seriously Hypnotic Spinning Clay Art

I cannot stop watching intricate patterns emerge like magic from the hands of Russian potter Mikhail Sadovnikov. How does he draw such incredible things over and over again from just a little bit of clay and a potter’s wheel? Watch the whole mesmerizing 15 minutes. You can also check out more of Sadovnikov’s work. [Colossal]

A toxic and deadly week in landscape reads. We learn how, remarkably, tourist poop is flown by helicopter out of national parks, how Silicon Valley exports toxic waste all over the country, how poison lurks in our old televisions, and how the land can just fall away in the form of Washington’s deadly mudslide. A…

Undulating through the air, the winning design for China’s pavilion at Expo Milan 2015 resembles a field of wind-swept wheat. The wave-like roof of bamboo panels is both a play on the expo’s theme, “Feeding the Planet – Energy for Life,” and a reimagining of China’s traditional shingled roofs. [Studio Link-Arc viaMy Modern Met]

The Best Nature Apps For Springtime Adventures Outdoors

With spring finally in the air, it’s time to grab your phone and go outside. No, not so that you can check your email on a hike, but because there are plenty of other ways that the little computer in you palm can actually make the outdoors more fun. We’ve rounded up some of the…

Why Do Drug Stores Put Soap Under Lock and Key?

The last time I bought body wash at a downtown CVS, I had to call over an employee just to unlock the glass case. What? Why would anyone want to steal plastic bottles of soap worth a few bucks at best? The answer might surprise you. Alex Mayyasi, writing for Priceonomic’s blog, has dug up…

How The Corvette Museum Rescued Its Cars From A Giant Sinkhole

In a story that united geologists with rare car enthusiasts last month, a massive sinkhole opened up beneath the National Corvette Museums’s Skydome, swallowing eight rare cars into its cavernous depths. Since then, the museum has worked tirelessly to recover the cars and fill in the sinkhole so that the Skydome can open anew. But…

A Glitch in the Hubble Telescope Makes Beautiful Modern Art

You’ve seen all the mind-boggling space images from the Hubble telescope, so this might seem… bizarre. What looks like a light painting or a computer rendering is an actual image sent back during the Hubble’s observing session. This is what happens when the telescope locks onto a bad guide star. The European Space Agency explains:…

How To Donate Your Voice To Someone Who Can’t Speak

Here’s a good deed you can do without parting with a single thing. Synthetic voices for people who have lost the ability to speak only come in generic types—think of Stephen Hawking’s voice—but one fascinating project wants to build custom voices for each person. To do that they need your help: specifically, a recording of…

Chocolate Is Good For You Thanks to Gut Bacteria

On the heels of great news that dark chocolate really is good for you, researchers have found out some new crap. A study about why chocolate is good for you points to the bacteria that lurk inside your colon. https://gizmodo.com/new-study-confirms-that-dark-chocolate-is-very-good-for-1532869871 “It’s a rather disgusting process,” food science professor John Finley apologizes in advance. (Maybe save…

An Inside Tour of San Francisco’s Sewage Treatment Plant

If you have ever been to San Francisco, then some part of you—or some former part of you—has almost certainly passed through the city’s Southeast Wastewater Treatment Plant. But, considering how utterly vital it is to the city, the wastewater plant is also very much invisible, tucked away in a neighborhood no tourist would have…

A Gigantic Walking City That Farms the Desert As It Moves

Living in the desert is no piece of cake. So to imagine a glittering city in the desert is to imagine something awesome and fantastical—and maybe a touch of crazy. Like architect Stephane Malka’s, “The Green Machine,” a mobile city on caterpillar treads that farms the desert as it walks. A Walking City is not…

5 Big New Projects Remaking Cities into Havens for Pedestrians

Driving in the city sucks. There are other cars and buses and bikes and people—god, so many people. And cars—being heavy metal machines capable of moving at great speed—are also highly dangerous. Instead of trying to accommodate everyone in an unhappy medium, cities are increasingly designing streets for pedestrians over cars. Check these ambitious projects…

This Pretty Gel Is a Smart Tag That Changes Color When Food Spoils

Thanks to what looks like a little square of jello, you could tell your milk has gone bad without even opening the (gross-smelling) container. The gel is actually a nanorod-embedded smart tag that changes from red to green, mimicking the growth of bacteria in milk without touching it. https://gizmodo.com/edible-sensors-let-you-know-if-your-food-is-spoiled-5888943 Chinese scientists made the gel with…

Every City Should Have This Ingenious “Library of Things”

It’s happened to us all. You’re planning for some big project and suddenly you’re in need of a power drill… Or kitchen stand mixer… Or hiking gear. Now, you could just shell out for it, but when are you going to use it again? Enter Leila, a genius little “borrowing shop” in Berlin that saves…

Neon Lights Make These NYC Water Towers Into Inter-Dimensional Portals

Have you ever stuck your head up a water tower? Wait, what? You haven’t? Well, here’s your chance. On display at Madison Square Park in New York right now are three water towers, each illuminated with neon lights and mirrors. Even if you’re not in New York, you can take a look at these trippy…

Why are the colors in this (not photoshopped!) image so weird? Why did the CIA recruit Howard Hughes for deep-sea mining? Why are bikers up in arms about an obscure Wyoming land dispute? What is the new car smell? Answers to this and more in this week’s landscapes reads! The CIA Origins of Deep-Sea Mining…

This Digital Sundial Tracks the Sun Through a Laser-Cut Cube

Sure, sundials are totally impractical in the age of precise atomic clocks, but this digital sundial cube is still the coolest. Made out of 59 plates of metal cut to match the angle of the sun at different times of the day, the Sun Cube casts a dot-matrix number to mark each hour. Toronto-based artist…

The Story Behind Syracuse’s Upside-Down Traffic Light

Unlike nearly every other traffic light in the U.S., the traffic light up on Tipperary Hill in Syracuse, New York displays green above red. Why this bizarre reversal? Well, St. Patrick’s Day is an appropriate time to tell this story. Perhaps more urban legend than history by now, the origin of Tipperary Hill’s upside-down traffic…