This is the happiest noise you’ll hear today

Hear that? It’s the sound of 16 itty bitty goat hooves skittering across a hardwood floor. Incidentally, it’s also the sound of sheer, unadulterated joy. Louisiana farmer Nadia Jarreau posted this video of her “quad squad” of four baby goats to Facebook a few days ago. We’ve only known about it for a few hours,…

Here’s the first look at Arrow‘s Suicide Squad

We’ve known they were coming, but here’s your first look at the Suicide Squad of the Arrow-verse. From left to right: Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White), Shrapnel (Sean Maher), Amanda Waller (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) and Deadshot (Michael Rowe). Based on the DC team of captured supervillains working for the government agency ARGUS as their sentences, they’ll…

The Most Beautiful Transformers Concept Art You’ll Ever See

Floro Dery was the design supervisor for the original Transformers cartoon, back in the 1980s, and he’s selling some of his art as signed prints on Etsy. And it’s just absolutely beautiful. Check out this concept art for the “Mechano-beast.” And below, there’s a great illustration of Cybertron — and its robot mode. This concept…

There are six kinds of Twitter conversations, and here they are

Twitter: it’s our source for everything from breaking news updates to amazing pictures of other people’s sandwiches (never stop doing this, America!). Now researchers say they’ve found six distinct shapes that Twitter conversations take. These six rings to rule all Twitter are the work of Pew Research’s Internet Project, which generated the maps by poring…

This weekend is Ragnarok. But it isn’t the end of the world.

You may have read that this weekend is supposed to mark the coming of Ragnarok, the violent “Viking Apocalypse” prophesied in Old Norse poetry. But the mythical apocalypse that inspired Game of Thrones’ long winter isn’t actually on the books—and may refer to events that happened centuries ago. It was just a little over a…

7 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Clinical Trials

The clinical trial process is what every drug or medical device goes through before it comes to market. And it’s difficult for the public to understand for many reasons, including proprietary claims on information, complicated scientific jargon, bureaucracy, and good, old-fashioned corruption. We asked Molly Maloof, a doctor and a medical technology consultant, to help…

Will Smith to star in terrorist-fighting superhero movie Brilliance

Will Smith is set to star in a movie about superheroes with slightly interesting superpowers, like one girl who can read your mind by the way you fold your arms. Unless you unfold them (we guess). The Wrap is reporting that Will Smith will star in the adaptation of Marcus Sakey’s novel Brilliance, with the…

After 400 years, mathematicians have found a new class of solid shapes

The work of the Greek polymath Plato has kept millions of people busy for millennia. A few among them have been mathematicians who have obsessed about Platonic solids, a class of geometric forms that are highly regular and are commonly found in nature. Photo Credit: fdecomite. Since Plato’s work, two other classes of equilateral convex…

In Pompeii, [insert your pun about volcanoes here]

Ah, Pompeii. It’s become a cliché for unwitting, inescapable doom, the fragility of life in the shadow of uncaring nature. And in Pompeii, opening today, Paul W. S. Anderson turns this tale of an ill-fated city into an accidental comedy that happens to have a volcano in it to absolutely no one’s surprise. The thumbnail…

You have to see this stellar VFX breakdown for Gravity

Hey, remember how Gravity blew your mind? Well, how they made Gravity is pretty much exactly as incredible. [Via First Showing]

Why Hollywood Hacking Is So Hilariously Horrible

The hacking scenes in House of Cards are wildly unrealistic. They’re everything from infuriating to hilarious, but they are definitely not surprising. It turns out, though, that this long tradition of portraying hacking horribly, horribly wrong in TV and film is often intentional. https://gizmodo.com/the-house-of-cards-hacker-is-the-best-worst-thing-about-1524460159 In fact, in a lot of ways it’s necessary. Real hacking…

The Kepler telescope has changed how we see ourselves in the Universe

Twenty years ago, we didn’t know if there were any planets orbiting stars other than our own. Today, it’s estimated that each of the roughly 100-billion stars in our galaxy has, on average, 1.6 planets orbiting around it, as this video from astronomers and science-communicators Tony Darnell and Scott Lewis explains. https://gizmodo.com/here-are-160-billion-reasons-to-be-excited-about-the-se-5875640 Did we mention…

The best internet ideas for True Detective season 2’s new cast

When the second season of True Detective starts, there won’t just be a new case, there’ll be a new cast as well. What if the internet was allowed to cast the two new partners of True Detective season 2? And thus the meme #truedetectiveseason2 was born. Here are a few of our favorite pairings. And…

Why the Brains of Dogs and Humans Are More Similar Than You Think

As any dedicated dog owner will tell you, canines often appear to grasp the emotional content of what’s being said to them. An unprecedented brain scanning study now shows this is likely true — and that this capability pre-dates domestication. This is not the first time dogs have been studied in an MRI scanner. Last…

This pulsar got slammed by a billion-ton asteroid

You know when you’re having a bad day when you get hit by a billion-ton asteroid. But for a pulsar 37,000 light-years away, it’s just a another day at the office. And besides, PSR J0738-4042 has an uber-powerful X-ray blaster to deal with errant space rocks. Image: An artistic impression of an asteroid getting blasted…

It’s our party and we can GIF if we want to

It’s the end of the week, you know what to do. What were you up to this week? Do you have news to share, things to talk about, or just GIFs that demand to be displayed? Tell us about it, and send in your GIFs — because the party begins now.

Science fiction and fantasy are now officially part of American literature. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s famous “Best American” series, which features annual anthologies of the best fiction, essays, and more, is starting up a “Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy” series in 2015, presided over by award-winning editor John Joseph Adams. In 2015, his guest editor…

Numenera Bestiary unleashes the bizarre beasts of the Ninth World

Far-future science fantasy RPG Numenera got a lot weirder with the release of the Numenera Bestiary, a collection of mutants, other-dimensional intruders, aliens and even stranger things. Check out the weirdness in this incredible art gallery. Top image: Nibovian Companion by Kieran Yanner Creature catalogs are usually my favorite part of any RPG, and Numenera…

Meet the four directors being tapped to direct the Dr. Strange movie

Looks like the Dr. Strange movie has gone a future possibility to a definite addition to Marvel’s cinematic slate. THR is reporting that Marvelis considering four potential directors for the film, all of whom seemingly have nothing in common with each other. The four directors are: • Mark Andrews, who co-directed and co-wrote Brave •…

Why We May Never Meet the Skrulls in the Marvel Films. Plus Arrow News!

Are prop-makers in London being locked in for Indiana Jones 5? Find out who played Rocket Raccoon on the Guardians of the Galaxy set. Emma Watson describes the hazardous conditions on the Noah set. And Hugh Jackman talks fighting X-Men: Days of Future Past’s Sentinels. Plus casting news from Supernatural: Tribes, Agents of SHIELD, Vampire…