The world’s tallest Lego tower. Ever.

Gaze in amazement at this 112 foot-tall tower made from 500,000 individual bricks of Lego. The structure, which was built by students from Wilmington, Delaware, broke the Guinness World Record last night, thereby accomplishing the dream set by every kid who has ever clicked two pieces of Lego together. The new record eclipses the previous…

Why has a member of Game of Thrones‘ royal family been recast?

Star Wars: Episode VII could be released a bit later than anticipated. Vin Diesel and director David Twohy reveal what’s ahead for Riddick. Lily Collins explains her upcoming fantasy movie Mortal Instruments. Plus an update on the future of Fox’s Marvel movies, including Fantastic Four and X-Force. Spoilers now! Top image from X-Men: Days of…

Goodbye True Blood Season 6, and thanks for the Vampire Dong!

This was it: the very last episode of True Blood season six. And not a single moment of it made a lick of sense. However we did get to see that VAMPIRE DONG DA DONG DONG DONG. Spoilers ahead, plus this recap is NSFW for random, dancing vamp breasticles. The last PRO/CON of the year…

This is what it looks like when a building implodes

You hear the phrase “implode” all the time, but what does it really mean? Now you can find out, in this video of a Cal State Hayward building being neatly demolished over the weekend. This video from Adam Parmalee shows how quickly the whole thing happened. The building, called Warren Hall, had been deemed seismically…

Scientifically accurate Finding Nemo is a way more interesting movie

Let’s just say it involves child-parent relations that would make Oedipus blush. Patrick Cooney, a fisheries researcher at The Fisheries Blog, gives the real-world synopsis: Father and mother clownfish are tending to their clutch of eggs at their sea anemone when the mother is eaten by a barracuda. Nemo hatches as an undifferentiated hermaphrodite (as…

Read the zine that young Ray Bradbury started in 1939

In 1939, shortly after Ray Bradbury graduated from high school, he started a zine called Futuria Fantasia. It featured a lot of his early fiction and some essays, and you can read all first four issues online at Project Gutenberg. Bradbury started Futuria Fantasia by borrowing $90 from Forrest E. Ackerman, and used it as…

The Trading Cards that Defined Star Trek for a Generation

Before we had DVDs and Blu-rays of every Star Trek episode — before VHS tapes, even — there were trading cards that commemorated every adventure. A brand new book commemorates the lurid Topps trading-card adventures of the U.S.S. Enterprise, and we’ve got an exclusive peek. The images below come from the book Star Trek: The…

Archaeologists discover an Assyrian sea wall from a legendary battle

About 3,000 years ago during the Iron Age, the Assyrians were a major power in the Middle East and North Africa. Their military might was terrifying. And now, a new archaeological finding reveals more about this fierce but vanished empire’s defensive strategies. Tel Aviv University archaeologist Alexander Fantalkin led a team that found a massive…

Which character surprised you by dying and not coming back?

Nowadays, it’s not really a surprise any more when someone dies and then comes back to life. Death is a revolving door, in both science fiction and fantasy. But which dead character did you most expect to see come back — only to watch them surprisingly stay dead forever? Please include a picture or clip…

Astronomers discover an Earth-sized planet with an 8.5 hour year

Researchers from MIT have located a lava-filled world about 700 light-years away that’s 40 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun. It’s considered one of the shortest orbital periods known to science. Kepler 78b is a planet that spins around its sun every 8.5 hours. Its orbital radius is ridiculous —…

Why it took forever to allow public input on naming planets

Last week, the International Astronomical Union – the sanctioning body that oversees the naming of planets, among other things – reversed its official stance on 1) whether to bother naming extrasolar planets and 2) whether the public should be included in the naming process. XKCD’s take on the announcement is easily our favorite so far.…

This week’s DVDs are simply full of boobs

Sorry, but it’s true. There are countless series and movies and so forth being released this week that are essentially boob delivery devices. Hell, I didn’t even list them all (go check out The Big Bust Theory on your own time). Still, boobs notwithstanding, there are some gems to be found in this week’s DVD…

The military seeks help in developing an artificial human brain

The US military’s research wing, DARPA, is seeking help with a new project that would allow computers to imitate the human neocortex, the region of the brain we use for language, reasoning, and perception. What could go wrong? Though we already have machine learning algorithms that allow computers to make decisions based on constantly-shifting data,…

This map reveals how natural disasters affect the internet

If you want to know the internet is affected by natural disasters, here’s an amazing visualization. It shows all the places where internet service went down after Hurricane Sandy. In the future, disasters don’t just rob you of power and water — they rob you of information, too. Using a new internet research tool called…

Why shouldn’t Arrow cross over with the big-screen Justice League?

Warner Bros. is building on the success of Man of Steel by making a Batman/Superman movie. But how will Warners build the rest of its cinematic Justice League? One possible approach is to incorporate the successful universe that DC has already been building on the small(er) screen, with Arrow. https://gizmodo.com/theyre-doing-a-superman-batman-movie-but-thats-not-851711013 Whatever DC does after the…

In the first trailer for How I Live Now, the Apocalypse is a turn-on

Like a more romantic version of Red Dawn, behold the trailer for How I Live Now. This sexy young-adult apocalypse novel is translated onto the big screen with nuclear fall-out, and lots of cuddling in big comfy sweaters. Based on Meg Rosoff’s novel, this film stars Saoirse Ronan, who plays Daisy. She’s an angry girl…

This Fall’s Must-Read Science Fiction and Fantasy Books

If you want to read your eyeballs out this fall, you are in luck. Here are some of the science fiction and fantasy books we’re most excited about this season. Top image: Beyond the Rift by Peter Watts Remember, these are only a fraction of the books arriving this fall to fill your bookshelves with…

What’s happening to your brain right before you develop Alzheimer’s? Now we have a better idea. In a new paper, researchers describe how connectivity between brain networks begins to decay before Alzheimer’s symptoms appear. The regions most affected by the decay are associated with memory.

Fox is starting its own Marvel cinematic universe with X-Men and FF

Fox’s Head of Marvel Movies, Mark Millar, has announced that the X-Men movies and the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot will in fact share the same cinematic universe. Now, he’s quick to point out that there are no actual crossovers planned… so what does this actually mean? Hilariously, not much. Claiming that Fantastic Four and X-Men…

A guide to the ravenous hellbeast that is the carnivorous caterpillar

It’s been said that the path to overcoming fear is paved with understanding. Normally I’d agree – but when it comes to Hawaii’s carnivorous caterpillars, I find myself second-guessing the maxim. Because THESE CATERPILLARS EAT LIVING FLESH. Here’s how evolution played this cruel joke on us all. Note: All animations feature in this post were…