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You Have To See This French Animated Steampunk Movie

The French, steampunk anime April and the Extraordinary World is the rousing, science-based adventure you wanted Disney’s Tomorrowland to be. It’s simultaneously an exciting roller coaster ride, while also stimulating your intellect by presenting a fascinating alternate history. In April and the Extraordinary World, history didn’t quite turn out the way we remember it. Napoleon…

The Nile River is a Glowing River of Light Snaking Across a Darkened Planet

Our planet is truly gorgeous. The rich orange lights of cities marking the complex geography of humans scrabbling in the dust, the bright white clouds drifting with the winds, and the pale green airglow ringing our planet come together for this perfect moment from space. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly Contact the author at [email protected] or…

This Toy And Action Figure Museum Is Looking For A New Director 

The Toy and Action Figure Museum of Pauls Valley, Oklahoma is looking for a new Executive Director. Start working on your resume for what looks like the best job ever. The museum will be celebrating its tenth year in the middle of October, and holds over 13,000 individual action figures. The facility came together as…

Here’s NASA’s Animated Supermoon Eclipse Primer

If you’re wondering about the mechanics behind why the Moon looks bigger than usual tonight, or what that has to do with a lunar eclipse, this quick NASA animation will explain the basics of tonight’s astronomical event. We call this a “supermoon,” but it’s actually a pretty simple optical illusion. As you can see in…

This Video Highlights How Incredibly Slowly Philae Landed on its Comet

A new real-time video of Philae’s descent shows it took the probe longer to drift from Rosetta down to the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko than it would’ve taken you to walk the same distance. We knew the tiny lander Philae was incredibly gentle during its historic descent to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, but we didn’t really understand…

Doctor Who and the Deconstruction of the Daleks

Tonight’s Doctor Who episode continues the show’s recent trend of deconstructing the Daleks, his armored “space Nazi” adversaries. And just like with the recent “Asylum of the Daleks” and “Into the Dalek,” we discover that Dalek nature is both sadder and more complicated than we’d previously thought. Spoilers ahead… At the heart of “The Witch’s…

We Just Saw The Insanely Weird, Utterly Brilliant Films Everyone Will Be Raving About Soon

Two of the year’s best movies also happen to be among the weirdest movies we’ve seen in ages. Just insanely weird. The Lobster is about humans who must find a mate, or they’ll be turned to animals. Anomalisa is Charlie Kaufman’s latest movie, and it’s all about highly articulated puppets ruminating on family, life and…

Watch a Guy Use 90 Instruments to Play a Single Song

How many instruments can you name off the top of your head. Fifteen? Twenty? If you just got to 25 and you’re patting yourself on the back right now, slow down: The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix is home to over 6,000. Nobody’s ever played them all, but Mystery Guitar Man has come closer than…

You Can Now Rent H.P. Lovecraft’s Old Apartment

Are you an H.P. Lovecraft aficionado? Like weird horror? Don’t mind odd squeaks and *probably* a ghost or two? You can now rent the author’s former home in Providence, Rhode Island. The one-bedroom studio apartment was home to the author in April 1926 to May 1933, according to the ad, which helpfully includes a couple…

Zuckerberg Wants Everybody on Facebook by 2020

At the United Nations on Saturday, Mark Zuckerberg declared his intentions to get the entire world on Facebook online, arguing that internet access is the key to ending extreme poverty. “When people have access to the tools and knowledge of the internet, they have access to opportunities that make life better for all of us,”…

Philip Pullman’s fantasy novel The Golden Compass turned 20 in July, and over on NPR, Weekend Edition host Scott Simon interviewed Pullman about the book’s legacy in the last two decades.

In Comic Crits, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora Is All About Earth

I’m a big fan of John Bonner’s Comic Crits, and in his latest installment, he’s reviewed Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest novel, Aurora. As usual, he has some astute observations about the book. https://gizmodo.com/seveneves-is-an-engineers-wish-according-to-comic-crit-1716787875 Aurora is about a generation ship headed to Tau Ceti, but after reading through the book, Bonner comes to the conclusion that…

More Sad Remains Of The Soviet Buran Space Shuttle Program

Pictures of the Soviet Space Shuttle in its hanger have been making the rounds on the internet recently, but there’s another shuttle out there. Russian photographer Aleksander Markin came across the remains of the original wooden model, used for wind tunnel testing. https://gizmodo.com/these-are-the-sad-remains-of-the-soviet-space-shuttle-p-1710827956 The pictures were uploaded back in 2013, and show off the 1:3…

NASA Is Sending Bacteria to the Edge of Space to See if They Can Hitchhike to Mars

Discovering life on another planet, only to contaminate that world with our own pesky microbes, is one of NASA’s nightmare scenarios. To find out whether single-celled Earthlings can hitchhike to Mars and survive on the Red Planet’s surface, NASA is going to see how they like it 120,000 feet up. Today, weather permitting, a helium…

Fun Data Visualization Predicts When You’re Going to Die

It’s a morbid question but one that we humans tend to obsess over: When am I going to die? Only a highly trained Seer can give you a firm answer, but if you want cold hard statistics, we Muggles have that bit covered. Flowing Data recently produced an enlightening interactive graphic that pulls numbers from…

Duncan Jones Is Fighting To Film His Passion Project, Mute

Mute is one of those passion films that directors want to make. Duncan Jones has been talking about it ever since his fantastic film Moon came out, and it looks like he’s still fighting to make it happen. In a tweet yesterday, he indicated that he’s still working on it, and that there’s been some…

The patent trolls strike again! Minero Digital LLC, a shell company with ties to the patent-holding giant Intellectual Ventures, is taking Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and two dozen other companies to court over USB hubs. Minero demands the companies pay royalties on said hubs, based on a patent it acquired from IV in April, 2015. Learn…

NASA Will Unveil “Major Science Finding” On Monday

Time to start speculating: NASA announced a press conference that will take place on Monday that will “detail a major science finding” and that a major Mars mystery has been solved. The event will take place on 11:30 AM EDT, and will include the following: Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters Michael…

Jessica Jones Shows Off Her Strength In The Show’s Latest Teaser

We got our first glimpse of the upcoming Nexflix Marvel outing, Jessica Jones earlier this month, and now, a new short teaser shows off Jones’ strength. https://gizmodo.com/marvels-jessica-jones-tv-series-has-a-trippy-new-traile-1729802220 There’s not much here, but it does set a bit of the tone, doesn’t it? Jessica Jones will debut on Netflix on November 20.

There are Hints of Sunbeams and Fog Buried in Pluto’s Atmosphere

Earlier this month, New Horizons released a batch of absolutely breathtaking photos of Pluto at dusk, including the one above. In these images, particles in Pluto’s thin atmosphere are causing sunlight to scatter, revealing a complex, layered haze. Now, by studying that haze more closely, the New Horizons science team thinks it’s found yet another…