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Radar Scans Beamed to Earth via Laser Can See Ships in Almost Real-Time

This grainy black-and-white image may not look like much, but it’s a record-breaker. A radar scan acquired by satellite and beamed back to Earth by laser, it allowed the European Space Agency (ESA) to identify ships off the coast of Brazil in less than 18 minutes—without any satellite ground stations nearby. That may sound like…

The Pentagon Wants You to Hack It

Fancy a challenge? The Pentagon has announced that it’s seeking “vetted outside hackers” to test the security of US Defense Department websites. Reuters reports that the project—called Hack the Pentagon— is the first time the federal government will have tried to test its defenses in this way. While the exact details are yet to be…

Scientists Have Discovered the First Gene Responsible for Gray Hair

You can blame your parents for some of those gray hairs. A new study has identified the first gene known to be responsible for causing your hair to lose its color. Surprisingly,according to the researchers, this is the first time a gene has been found to be responsible for the graying of hair. While scientists…

Creators of Public Key Encryption Honored With This Year’s Turing Award

In 1976, Martin E. Hellman and Whitfield Diffie created public-key cryptography—and with it transformed the world of digital security. Now, they’ve been honored with the 2016 Turing Award, often considered to be the computing equivalent of the Nobel Prize. The announcement was made at the RSA Conference, an international gathering of computing experts currently taking…

Every Frame of This Van Gogh Movie Is an Oil Painting

Two years ago, a group of artists started a Kickstarter to make an animated movie about Vincent Van Gogh’s life, using artists to hand-paint every frame. Our more pessimistic commenters reckoned it would take 100 artists two to four years to make this a reality. Well, check the date, and watch this trailer. Loving Vincent…

Astronaut Scott Kelly Made It Safely Back to Earth

After almost a year in space aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly last night began his descent back to Earth along with cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov. You’ll be pleased to hear they made it back to Earth safe and sound. NASA has announced that the trio landed in Kazakhstan at…

Kanye, Champion of Paid Streaming Music, Got Caught Trying to Torrent Software

Kanye has tried repeatedly and often to make artist-friendly streaming service Tidal happen. The premise is that Tidal is a “fair” way to stream music, an artist-friendly experience that gives back money to the creators. Which is great, but it appears Kanye can’t be bothered to pay $200 for music software. A tweet earlier in…

Windows 10 Is Trying Really Hard to Kill Extra Antivirus

Windows 10 might be the “most secure Windows ever,” but the unfortunate reality is that companies and hospitals far and wide are getting hacked faster than ever. As a result, Microsoft is bulking up its enterprise-level defenses. Windows already ships with some built-in antivirus called Windows Defender. Currently, it’s a defensive program that looks at…

Jurassic Park Without Any Dinosaurs Still Manages to Be Creepy

The first things people are supposed to notice in Jurassic Park are, obviously, the dinosaurs. But what would you be left with if you took the T-Rex out? Some sweeping vistas and people getting very emotional about trees. William Hirsch, the man behind the Vidsplode YouTube channel, used a little VFX trickeryto take the dinosaurs…

HTC Sold 1,000 Vive Headsets Per Minute When Pre-Orders Opened

With the Oculus Rift andHTC Vivenow up for pre-order, anxious analysts worldwide are finally starting to get a handle on how much the general public cares about virtual reality. If the HTC Vive pre-sale is anything to go by, the answer is quite a lot. According to a tweet from an HTC VR employee, the…

Manhattan Just Quietly Decriminalized Public Drinking, And That’s a Good Thing

It’s summer. You’re hot. You’re thirsty. You surreptitiously crack open a Miller High Life tall boy in Central Park—right in front of a cop. Don’t worry. Thanks to new borough-wide policy, you probably won’t get arrested. Cheers! Welcome to Gizmodo’s Happy Hour. Substance abuse for nerds. Today, Manhattan’s district attorney announced that the borough won’t…

The 9 Most Unforgettable Moments in Last Night’s Supergirl

Last night’s episode of Supergirl was a weird mixture of hacker hijinks that even CSI: Cyber would have been ashamed of, with actual great character drama. This show is often incredibly silly, but it’s always a fun time. We rounded up the nine most unforgettable moments. 1) Here’s the episode’s setup, where an alien supercomputer…

Transparent Fabric Traps Dust, Lets Air Flow Freely

Physicists have used an old technique to make a new kind of material: a fabric that looks like glass. This material is clear enough to see through, incredibly thin, and snatches dust out of the air—all while seemingly evading the laws of classical physics to let the air flow unimpeded. Scientists at the Institute of…

Watch These Two Rattlesnakes Battle It Out in Elaborate ‘Combat Dance’

A Phoenix woman hiking along a trail stumbled across a couple of male rattlesnakes locked in an elaborately orchestrated “combat dance.” Frankly, it looks a lot like a mating ritual, especially when you consider that this behavior is usually only seen during breeding season. But apparently they really are fighting. “I noticed something across the…

Watch Astronauts Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko Plummet to Earth

If the thought of turning your gaze to a TV screen for election news this evening makes you want to vomit, then you might have some empathy for what two men will feel as they plummet toward the ground from 250 miles on high in a fiery metal can at a rip-roaring 17,000 miles per…

Ms. Marvel Is Going To Be Educating Your Kids About Bullying and Discrimination

Even though Kamala Khan has only been around for a few years, it feels like she’s been Ms. Marvel for ages—inspiring kids all over the world with her amazing comic book. So really, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Kamala will star in a new kids-focused reading book that tackles issues surrounding bullying and…

El Niño Opens Up a Bridge for Bacteria to Travel Between Continents

Major climate events have opened up land bridges during prehistory, along which animals and humans traveled to new continents. A new study proposes that major weather events, like El Niño, open up “water bridges” that allow bacteria to do the same. An international team of researchers has been working with the National Institute of Health…

FBI Director James Comey Is a Clown 

Bipartisanship, baby! Congress finally found something to agree on this Super Tuesday—how slippery the FBI’s stance on encryption is. At a House Judiciary hearing on Capitol Hill, representatives grilled FBI Director James Comey and Apple’s lawyers over their ongoing battle. The key to the dispute is whether the FBI can compel Apple to create software…

Well, it looks like that season-ending cliffhanger was not in vain: Zoo is returning for a second season. NBC’s James Patterson-adapted thriller about a global animal uprising will be back this summer, with at least two new characters, one of which is a “mysterious stranger” with a “dangerous secret.” Contact the author at [email protected].

The Fourth Wall Gets Demolished in This Amazing Supercut

What’s better than characters acknowledging the audience directly? Not much. Maybe spit-takes, but that arguable. Still, since no one has made a supercut of 400 movies in which characters doing spit takes, this video compilation of movies breaking the fourth wall over (and over… and over…) currently has the advantage. Warning: This video lasts over…