Jonás Cuarón filmed a short to tell the other half of a Gravity scene

While Gravity’s astronauts are in peril out in space, life marches on down below. Gravity co-writer Jonás Cuarón filmed a companion short set during the events of Sandra Bullock’s harrowing space journey that shows a meditative moment back on Earth. Image above from Warner Bros. Gravity spoilers below. During one scene in Gravity, Bullock’s character…

How physics ended the nighttime radio war between the US and Mexico

The 1930s witnessed a technological war between the US and Mexico. Radio channels overlapped with each other, turning the nighttime radio world into bilingual chaos. How did it end? Physics! And diplomacy. In the early 1900s, as radio stations gained popularity, the world became a different place. National stations rose up, letting people hear voices…

The Very Best Halloween Costumes on the Internet

Tonight is the night! It’s Halloween, at last — so paint on your best Grumpy-Cat face, and ride that skeleton pony into the dark night. Here are the most jaw-dropping Halloween costumes we’ve found posted on the Internet this year. The White Walker via James Stark. CinderLeia via Kat Curtis This adorable little girl named…

New Mexico kids wait for the bus inside “kid cages” because… wolves?

In Reserve, New Mexico, children huddle together inside “kid cages” while waiting for the school bus. The wood and mesh structures, pictured below, were ostensibly built to protect young ones from being preyed upon by local wolf populations. Sound ridiculous? That’s because it is. Above: A captive Mexican wolf at New Mexico’s Sevilleta National Wildlife…

Watch people around the world being born and dying in real time

Brad Lyon made this amazing statistical simulation of all the births and deaths of the entire world, as they occur in real time. It’s fascinating to see how many lives begin and end at any given second. It’s also available as a Google Chrome app which allows you to focus on specific countries, too, if…

14 Common Words That Didn’t Exist 20 Years Ago

If you want proof of how fast our world is changing, you only have to look at our language. Our everyday vocabulary is full of neologisms, expressing ideas that we wouldn’t even have understood not long ago. Here are 14 commonly used words that didn’t even exist a generation ago. 1) Blog Everyone has a…

Bundle of Tentacles gives your gaming group a dose of eldritch horror

Obviously, you need some creepy horror RPGs to play this week. The Bundle of Tentacles lets you get entangled by a ropy, squirming mass of them, including Trail of Cthulhu and several Call of Cthulhu supplements. Bundle of Tentacles is a pay what you want ($7 minimum) collection of RPG PDFs. The base set includes…

Babies can actually learn lullabies before they’re born

A new study has proven that infants can recognize a lullaby heard in the womb — and they can remember it for several months after they’re born. But more than that, fetuses exposed to music during the final trimester may experience neurological benefits as a result, including boosts to memory and language. It’s well-documented that…

Will somebody please buy me this gorgeous, $1,650 anatomy text?

16th Century anatomist Andreas Vesalius’s seven-volume opus on the human form, De Humani Corporis Fabrica, secured his status as the founder of modern human anatomy. Now, the foundational text has been translated and annotated in a beautiful (and exorbitantly priced) two-volume set. The world’s first annotated English translation of Fabrica will set you back $1,650…

Scientists are hiding under your bed

Do you hear a scritch-scritch-scritch sound coming from under your bed? Don’t worry. It’s just a scientists down there, recording your uninteresting, “egocentric” chatter and preserving it forever. Ah, the 1930s were an invigorating time for science! They combined the beginnings of modern equipment and methodology with a complete lack of anything resembling ethics. For…

Check out the world’s first bitcoin ATM

If there was any doubt that bitcoin — a distributed peer-to-peer digital currency — is seriously on the way in, this new ATM at a Vancouver cafe should put those reservations to rest. The new machine, which converts bitcoins to Canadian dollars and vice versa, is the first of four ATMs to be opened across…

What is the Best Halloween Movie Ever Made?

Happy Halloween! Whether you fall more on the treat (break out the bowl of candy!) or the trick (break out the bowl of assorted dental floss!) side of the holiday, we want to know your pick for the perfect movie to watch on Halloween. Tell us in the comments what your favorite Halloween movie is…

Orson Scott Card will not be seeing any profits from the Ender’s Game movie. According to The Wrap, his deal was a straight payment for the movie rights, and that’s it. So seeing or boycotting Ender’s Game doesn’t affect him or his money at all. Just FYI.

Arrow makes each character do a 180. Twice.

Yep, the characters get twisted right round, baby, right round. And since the episode is all about learning to focus on what you like, instead living in what you hate, I’ll follow its advice and recount what I like. (Okay. And a little bit of what I hate.) I can’t decide if the plot of…

How Many Horror Movie References Can You Spot On Bing’s Homepage?

Bing’s still the underdog in the search engine wars; remaining in perpetual second place to Google. And while it’s doubtful that Microsoft will ever win the overall search engine war, today Bing totally wins the Halloween makeover battle with a homepage that pays homage to countless horror movies. https://gizmodo.com/forget-it-this-toddler-just-won-halloween-1450979752 That’s not to say that the…

New Hints on the Terminator, Highlander and Fantastic Four Reboots!

Is Marvel really backtracking on the “Mandarin twist” in Iron Man 3? Also, Alan Taylor, director of Thor: The Dark World, seems to be inching toward a deal to direct Terminator. The first choice for Reed Richards in the Fantastic Four movie may be out due to scheduling conflicts. Spoilers now! Top image: Once Upon…

The sequel to the Evil Dead remake may be (evil) dead. Director Fede Alvarez and his co-writer Rodo Sayagues have confirmed they won’t be back for the sequel— which seems extra weird, given that a chummy Alvarez was very recently confirming that Sam Raimi would direct Army of Darkness 2. Hmm.

“Dark Matter Experiment Has Detected Nothing, Researchers Say Proudly” sounds like something you’d see at the top of an Onion article. But it’s not. It’s from The New York Times’s coverage of the Large Underground Xenon dark matter experiment (a.k.a. “LUX”). Which, unless you’re familiar with null signals, reads like the most trollish headline ever.

Best team-up ever, on Person of Interest

Last night’s episode of Person of Interest was holy crap amazing, bringing together three subplots in an extravaganza of crypto-libertarian homicidal corruption. Plus, Root and Shaw team up at last! Spoilers ahead! The group formerly known as Anonymous is back, now known as Vigilance, and still headed by the privacy-loving revolutionary Collier. If you’ll recall,…

Possibly one of the weirdest geological formations in the world

How did this happen? In Norway, there is a bizarre rock formation known as Kjeragbolten, which is a huge block of stone that has become lodged in a 984-meter-deep crevice over a gorgeous lake. It’s so sturdy that sheep like to stand on it — and so do humans. Photo by Deeds Photo by 7ty9…