Weekly Roundup

Portrait of a star | Solar eclipse from space via NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. How will we dispose of spent nuclear fuel rods for centuries to come? https://gizmodo.com/how-will-we-dispose-of-spent-nuclear-fuel-rods-for-cent-5786857 How does humanity plan to permanently store high-level nuclear waste that can remain radioactive for several thousand years? The answer isn’t as simple as digging a hole…

Smallville TV Guide Scan

0000 creates the new facebook by hard-wiring right into your brain

Watch the stunning trailer for Eddie Alacazar’s heady film 0000 and witness one man’s dream of a collective consciousness (and the terrifying way he goes about realizing it). It’s gorgeous. 0000 We’ve been following Alcazar’s 0000 since the test footage and shocking poster (shown above) were released in 2010. Starring Aaron Behr, the film plays…

The Secret Rules of Terra Nova’s Time Travel

Steven Spielberg’s new TV show Terra Nova may look like Avatar, but actor Stephen Lang explained to us why his character is nothing like the hard-ass he played in James Cameron’s hit movie. And we learned exactly how the show’s time travel to 85 million years in the past will work, and saw a smidgen…

Watch the new ThunderCats footage from Wondercon now!

Watch the same footage of the rebooted ThunderCats series that was screened at WonderCon today. Cartoon Network has certainly given these space kitties a brand new set of claws. Let’s all say it together: Thunder, Thunder, Thunder, Thundercats Ho! Before this footage was screened, we were lucky enough to get a few minutes with the…

Backwards stars are the last refugees of destroyed galaxies

The universe can be a brutal place, as entire galaxies are ripped apart in cataclysmic collisions. No traces of the old galaxies are left behind, except for a few out-of-place stars, stubbornly orbiting the wrong way in their new galaxy. All stars orbit around the center of their galaxy, and normally all of them should…

First Thundercats footage features sexier Cheetara and a badder Thundertank

One of the most beloved 1980s cartoons is returning to television this year — but will the Cartoon Network’s Thundercats reboot satisfy the rabid fans of the original? We watched a trailer and heard from the creators. Spoilers ahead! So between the brief trailer and the tons of concept art and stills they showed at…

Meet “Old Gray Guy,” the interloper who saved the wolves of Lake Superior

The wolves that live on Lake Superior’s Isle Royale are completely isolated from all other wolves…or so we thought. One immigrant wolf injected some much-needed fresh genes into the mix, and we know because of the poop he left behind. We briefly touched on this story in our recent epic poop treatise, but this is…

How centuries of flooding turned the ancient Chinese into seafarers

About 9,000 years ago, the Fuzhou Basin in southeastern China fell victim to rising sea levels, pushing underwater the marshy lands needed for rice farming. The marooned people there became seafarers, which eventually led to the colonization of Taiwan. The long-term flooding of the Fuzhou Basin completely changed the topography of the region, turning what…

Learn why this season of Doctor Who changes everything

We saw awesome new footage and a behind-the-scenes featurette of the new Doctor Who season — and you can too! Plus writer Neil Gaiman, actor Mark Sheppard and director Toby Haynes told us what to expect. Minor spoilers ahead! So above is the new one-minute trailer that BBC America put out yesterday, which is actually…

To find intelligent life, look for asteroid belt mining operations

The search for alien intelligence has mostly centered on waiting to hear any interstellar radio signals, but we might now have a way to see aliens as well. We just need to look for mega-engineering projects on alien asteroid belts. The idea is the brainchild of Duncan Forgan of the University of Edinburgh and Harvard-Smithsonian…

Noise Pollution: Your life can get sucked out through your ears

The World Health Organization calculated deaths and disabilities caused by noise pollution. Turns out the numbers are second only to air pollution. Find out how noise kills. It turns out that, contrary to popular belief, you can talk someone to death. You can also honk, bark, bass line them to death. You just have to…

Why it’s a good thing that we read political meanings into Star Trek

Author Mark Dery recently published a review of coffee table book Star Trek: The Original Series 365, a gorgeous collection of stills from the series. He explains why it’s a good thing that people read political meanings into Star Trek. Dery discusses the race politics of the show and Gene Roddenberry’s commitment to “smuggling in”…

I Demand More Zombie-Killing Female Role Models

I’m concerned about the dearth of role models for young women. The sad truth is, in the event of a zombie apocalypse, they have no fictional leaders to inspire them. Luckily zombie fiction does offer a number of bad-ass Amazons. First and foremost, there’s Alice, of Resident Evil fame. She’s basically superhuman, she’s not afraid…

When oil runs out, chicken feathers will be the new plastic

We usually think of fossil fuels as an energy source, but petroleum is also the raw materials used in all the world’s plastics. Now leftover chicken feathers could allow us to keep using plastics in a world after oil. The latest breakthrough is the work of researchers at the University of Nebraska’s Institute of Agriculture…

When a viral video is more awesome than the movie it’s promoting

This short, stark video of a strange creature washed up on the beach at Bournemouth was released last month on YouTube. Just check it out. You will be consumed with curiosity and want to know more about WTF is happening. But then, when the makers of this viral video revealed more about their movie The…

The Twisted Imaginings of Aeron Alfrey

Inspired by the fiction of Thomas Ligotti and other dark masters of the horrific, Aeron Alfrey views the world as a strange and weird place, full of mysterious creatures. His monsters are abominable and his landscapes filled with creepy crawlies. We’ve got a gallery of some of his most mind-searing creations. From Thomas Ligotti’s Songs…

TiVo Customer Email List Hacked—Prepare Yourself for Spam (Updated)

Good morning, TiVo owners! I have some bad news, but you’ve no doubt heard about it by now, thanks to the email message partially pasted above. To everyone else: Tivo’s email database has been compromised! According to the TiVo service announcement mailed out yesterday, the breach was thankfully limited to name and email address only.…

Tarsem Singh’s Immortals is the lovechild of Zack Snyder’s 300 and The Cell

Want to see Mickey Rourke slit someone’s throat while wearing a metal bunny helmet? Director Tarsem Singh (The Cell, The Fall) showed some stunning, crazy, violence-packed footage from his Greek god melodrama The Immortals at WonderCon. Singh and the cast of the Immortals unveiled the teaser trailer for the new demigod vs. god vs. Titan…

We’ve seen THE ALIENS from Jon Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens

Jon Favreau and Roberto Orci were on hand to debut about nine minutes of brand new Cowboys and Aliens footage, including the big alien money shot. So what did they look like, read our description now! The first scene opens with Daniel Craig busting into a seemingly empty home. Craig is bleeding through his clothes…