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Everything you need to know to catch the Curiosity rover landing

On August 5th, at 10:31 pm PDT, NASA will attempt to land Curiosity — a one-ton, six-wheel-drive, nuclear-powered super-laboratory — on the surface of Mars. It is the most scientifically advanced rover ever built. It will be the most technically impressive landing procedure ever attempted. You do not want to miss this. Remember: the landing…

How to Keep One Ear Open When Using Headphones

We often think of listening to music with headphones as creating “a soundtrack for our lives.” But when you think about it, the music in films usually plays in the background to enhance the setting, not drown it out. Unless you live in a persistent montage scene (where the music comes to the fore) or…

Behind-the-scenes RoboCop photos show off the goofier side of dystopian Detroit

The RoboCop trilogy contained some of the most unflinchingly violent scenes ever committed to science fiction cinema, so it’s pretty hilarious to see photos of these characters hanging out as if they’re waiting for the bus. The RoboCop Archive has a wealth of photos from all three films. My favorite photographs are Emil sitting about…

Microsoft helps to sponsor the creation of a superstitious robot

Data designer Shing Tat Chung has embarked on a strange project to create a superstitious robot who makes stock market investments. Sponsored in part by Microsoft Research, as well as GDP Capital, the project is intended to reveal what patterns emerge when an entity invests based on astrological and numerological information. Click the image above…

Precision Partitioner Produces Perfectly Portioned Pastries

If you’re incredibly anal when it comes to evenly slicing up a cake, pie, or pastry for your dinner guests, prepare to have your mind blown by Animi Causa’s new precision divider. You just jam it into the center of a dessert, make an initial cut, and then line up the guides depending on if…

The Hobbit 3D Glasses You’d Pay Extra Not To Wear

Peter Jackson’s decision to shoot The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at 48 fps and in 3D raised a lot of eyebrows among Lord Of the Rings fans. But not the Tolkien marketing machine who saw an opportunity to cook up these tacky Hobbit-themed 3D glasses for the film’s release. https://gizmodo.com/will-the-hobbit-look-like-a-70s-soap-opera-at-48-fps-5904990 But while most moviegoers will…

An awesome behind-the-scenes look at the baby alien from Alien 3

We live in an era in which spectacular movie monsters tend to live on hard drives, so it’s always heartening to see footage of practical effect artists just building the damn creatures. This video comes to us from the production of Alien 3 twenty years ago — watch as the film’s crew makes sculptor Steve…

This Canon Rebel T3i Is Your Grab-It-Quick Deal of the Day

I’ve never been all that great at photography. I understand the basics. I can get a figure “technically correct,” but the really awesome photographers with the images you want to see over and over again have something special when it comes to capturing the perfect moment. It helps that technology just seems to be making…

The Pentagon has created a database of every bomb they’ve dropped since the First World War

For the past six years, the U.S. Air Force has been compiling an exhaustive list of every bomb their planes have dropped since World War I. The database, which is part of a project called THOR (Theater History of Operations Reports), was put together by Lieutenant Colonel Jenns Robertson using thousands of historical documents. And…

DryCASE Waterproof Backpack Review: Moisture Ain’t a Thing

You want to run around like some wilderness badass. Climbing in the Rockies. Surfing in the Rockaways. Whatever. You can do it all if you’ve got some warm, dry gear to slip into when the adventure is over. Can this waterproof backpack make it happen? What Is It? It’s a medium-sized waterproof backpack. Who’s it…

Lighting the Future: 7 Elegant and Innovative LED Lamps

Simply put, LEDs are the future. As the technology matures, it’s now being embraced in a way unlike ever before. The diodes last longer and draw less power than other light sources. And, technical benefits aside, LEDs can also be implemented into unconventional forms much more easily than incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. Get ready for…

The Future Is Unevenly Distributed

One of the big questions of futurism is what kind of world we want to live in tomorrow. But as attendees at a recent conference on futurism discovered, “tomorrow” is relative. People in Egypt look at the future very differently than people in Canada do. This was a heated topic of discussion at the recently…

Shooting Challenge: Blink

A blink goes by in just 1/10 of a second. What could have happened in this sub-moment that you missed? For this week’s Shooting Challenge, show us what occurred in the 100 milliseconds that our eyes were closed. The Challenge Take a photo that lasts 1/10th of a second. Big bonus points for playing off…

For $1,230, you too can own a 3D-printed model of your unborn fetus

This is how you impress your horrified progeny’s date during prom photographs. The Japanese engineering firm Fasotec is teaming up with Tokyo’s Parkside Hiroo Ladies Clinic to offer expecting mothers 3D-printed models of their gestating bundles of joy. A mere ¥100,000 will get you a 90x60x40 millimeter “Shape of an Angel,” an MRI-scanned keepsake that…

Netflix just added ESPN’s critically acclaimed 30 for 30 series to its streaming lineup. Sports fans, rejoice! [Twitter]

Why we should look for extraterrestrial ‘bubbles’ in neighboring galaxies

There’s been an exciting shift in scientific thinking about life beyond Earth recently. Extraterrestrial-seeking group SETI has started to recognize the importance of detecting alien artifacts along with radio signals. The most viable target for these searches is the Dyson sphere, a massive shell that envelops an entire star. But as Discovery’s Ray Villard rightly…

Twitter Has an Official Election Tracker and November’s Still So Far Away

In case you’re not already sick of the election cycle, Twitter has launched the Political Index, a new election tracker which measures a candidate’s performance based on what every regular citizen is saying about them in 140-character form. It takes every tweet that mentions Obama or Romney and decides whether they’re positive or negative, then…

Children’s chemistry sets used to contain cyanide

Do you ever long for the good ol’ days? When a rickety school desk was enough to protect you from a nuclear blast, and chemistry sets contained real (read: deadly) chemicals? The first half of the 20th century was the golden age of children’s chemistry sets. “By the 1920s and 30s,” writes BBC’s Alex Hudsen…

These Are the Oldest Stars In Our Galaxy

Like NASA says, these stars look like the thousand bright flashes of people taking photos just before a big rock concert. In reality, they are the oldest stars in our very own Milky Way, captured by Hubble. This beautiful group of stars is the last globular cluster in the Messier Catalogue, discovered by French astronomer…

Deep-sea squid can break off all its arms to fight enemies

If you grew up on a diet of 1980s cartoons, as I did, you will have seen many a giant robot shoot many a rocket-propelled fist into many a big monster. Sadly, there are no rocket punches in the real world, but I can give you the next best thing: a squid that can grab…