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Enjoy This Gorgeous Image of the Lagoon Nebula

At this very instant, five thousand light years from Earth, near the center of our galaxy, new stars are forming in a region of interstellar gas and dust called the Lagoon Nebula. Bright, hot young stars blaze amid dark clouds of dust and bright streaks of glowing gas. Remember that some of those stars are…

Russia Wants People to Road Trip from New York to London (via Moscow)

Between the western shores of Alaska and the northeastern tip of Russia, the Bering Strait is so narrow that you could drive across it in an hour, if only there were a tunnel beneath the sea. And Russian Railways wants to build one, as part of a massive road and rail project that would stretch…

Open Channel: That Similarity Between Ant-Man And Interstellar

I finally got to see Ant-Man recently, and something that happened in it made me sit back and think while I was driving home. Why did Ant-Man largely get a pass for this, while Interstellar was ridiculed for it? Some spoilers ahead. Seriously, some spoilers for both Ant-Man and Interstellar. Okay: so Scott Lang has…

Music in the Operating Room Could Improve Surgery

When surgeons listen to music they like, they’re more efficient at closing incisions, and their technique improves, according to a new study. Researchers asked 15 plastic surgery residents at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) to close incisions in pigs’ feet. In the first trial, half the residents worked in a silent operating room,…

Ebola Vaccine Shows 100% Effectiveness In Latest Trial

There’s a new tool in the fight against Ebola in West Africa: rVSV-ZEBOV, a vaccine that has recently concluded a study phase, with researchers finding that it was incredibly effective against the deadly disease. While it’s still in trial stages, the drug appears to be a promising tool moving forward. In a study published in…

The New Ghostbusters Visit Boston Hospital In Full Costume

Celebrities visiting a hospital has been a cool thing to do for a while now: Christian Bale and Chris Pratt have been known to stop by to cheer up kids. The latest feel-good story comes with the new cast of Ghostbusters, who stopped by Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center in Boston yesterday.…

So You Want To Join The Empire: The Finer Details

Last week in this series, I took a look at how you take a rough kit of plastic and bring it down to a workable pile of plastic. Rough cutting brings the vacuuformed parts into recognizable shapes, and gets you closer to the part where you begin to assemble the suit as a whole. Before…

Mission Impossible 5’s Tech is More Like “Mission Implausible”

Last night I took a trip to see Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, which has just opened in British cinemas. You might not have heard of it. It’s an obscure, art-house production that takes an avant-garde approach to futurology and asks profound questions about the human condition. For example: “What weirdly specific inventions need to exist…

Caitlín R. Kiernan’s Drowning Girl and The Red Tree Optioned For Film

Caitlín R. Kiernan has earned considerable acclaim for her works, including a pair of World Fantasy Awards last year, and now, two of her best-known works have been optioned for film. According to Kiernan, Josh Boone’s production company Mid-World Productions has optioned The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl. Boone recently directed The Fault In…

Star Trek And Shania Twain Work Surprisingly Well

There’s no reason why this should work, but somehow, it does. Spock and McCoy shippers, take note: this sums up the pair’s relationship perfectly.

This Is How to Find the Spiders That Are Staring At You in the Dark

Have you ever looked out into your backyard at night and wondered how many spiders are lurking out there? If you have a flashlight, you can spot them by the creepy green glow of their eyes. Most spiders have eight eyes. In some species — mostly those that hunt for their prey, like wolf spiders…

Watch Glass Explode at 130,000 Frames Per Second

If you drop molten glass into a bucket of cold water, it cools into a weird tadpole shape: a round head with a long, thin tail. It’s called a Prince Rupert’s Drop, and no matter how hard you hit the head with a hammer, it won’t break. But if you nick the tail even slightly,…

Here’s The Trailer For The Final Season Of Continuum

Syfy is wrapping up Continuum this year with a final, 6 episode fourth season. It’ll start in Canada on September 4th, and will air in the United States on Syfy on September 11th. There’s a lot that needs to be covered in just six hours: Kiera and Brad will have fight off the future soldiers…

On Dark Matter, Why Not Seek Revenge For Things You Can’t Remember?

Why even give these people amnesia if they’re going to go ahead and find out everything they can and get revenge for things they can’t remember? Spoilers… Episode eight was a lot better executed than last week’s. There was only one major plot going on, so development wasn’t rushed. All we had was Six using…

Buzz Aldrin Proves the Federal Government Has A Form for Everything

This may be the only exciting piece of government paperwork you’ll ever read. Buzz Aldrin conquered Throwback Thursday forever last week when he shared his travel voucher from the Apollo 11 mission on Facebook and Twitter. It’s an unassuming document: a travel voucher for Col. Edwin E. Aldrin for a round trip originating in Houston,…

Sunday Puzzle is on holiday this weekend! In its place, try your hand at this week’s collection of puzzles from NPR’s Will Shortz. “Every answer this week is a six-letter word that contains two consecutive F’s. Use each anagram of the other four letters to find the full six-letter word.” Contact the author at [email protected].

The Lunar Rover was Almost as Badass as the Astronauts Who Drove it

These astronauts bopped around Cape Canaveral in a phalanx of distinctive red, white, and blue corvettes while training for Apollo 15, but their true pride and joy was the very first lunar rover. The crew of the Apollo 15 moon landing were a distinctive group, working patriotic colours into everything from their personal vehicles to…

Watch The Original Fantastic Four Recut Into A Modern Trailer

The upcoming adaptation of Fantastic Four is coming later this week, and it’s getting a bit of a cool reception. The folks over at New York Magazine wanted to look back at the original Roger Corman adaptation and recut it into a modern-ish trailer. What do you think? Does it make you want to see…

Compare All The Objects Of The Solar System

Yesterday, we looked at an interactive infographic on the relative orbits of everything in the solar system. Today, let’s compare the planets to one another. This site shows us how all of the solar system’s planets (and Pluto) stack up. This is another really neat tool that drives home just how diverse or solar system…

With a career spanning over half a century, Samuel R. Delany has seen many changes within the science fiction landscape. The New Yorker has an essay about Delany and his life, with a particular look at his experiences within the science fiction community as a person of color.