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This Bluetooth Star Trek Communicator Is Bad News for My Friends

I grew up watching Star Trek. In many cases, I speak in starship captain quotes and other Final Frontier sayings: “Make it so,”“he’s dead, Jim,” “Khan!” You name it. But this $150, bluetooth-equipped Star Trek communicator is going to enable my bad habits even further—and my friends will hate me for it. Created by The…

The world’s oldest man has died at the age of 112. Japan’s Sakari Momoi was born on February 5, 1903, just months before the Wright Brothers made their inaugural flight. The title of oldest living man now goes to Japan’s Yasutaro Koide, who was born a month after Momoi. Susannah M. Jones of the U.S.…

The Truth Is “In There” in the First, Brief New X-Files Footage

Shockingly, the headline is not one of my patented typos! According to none other than Agent Mulder, the truth has moved from out there to in there—specifically, in the X-Files themselves. Check out this first footage from the new series—tucked at the end of this “201 Days of The X-Files” promo—and see for yourself. Incidentally,…

There Will Never Be Anything More Relaxing Than a Hot Tub Hammock

Think of the most comfortable, most relaxing place you’ve ever been. No matter where on earth that might have been, it can’t even begin to compare to how relaxing the Hydro Hammock must be. People love lounging in hammocks, and people love soaking in hot tubs, and finally the two have become one. Available in…

America Is Overproducing So Much Milk Farmers Have Started Burying It

Unable to figure out how to offload the small ocean of milk they’ve produced, dairy farmers have landed on an unorthodox solution: They’re burying it by the truckload. Bloomberg shared this taleof what dairy farmers are doing to deal with the huge surplus of milk they’ve made: Agri-Mark, a 1,200-dairy cooperative in New England that…

The Evolution of Game of Thrones‘ Effects With VFX Boss Joe Bauer

When you get a chance to talk to Game of Thrones’ VFX supervisor Joe Bauer, you don’t ask him about the weather. So we didn’t—instead, we asked him to discuss the greatest FX scenes over the show’s five seasons in this exclusive io9 video, and the show’s ever-evolving with practical effects and digital wizardry. Contact…

The Rio 2016 Olympic Torch Expands As Though It’s Floating When Lit 

The biggest question on everyone’s lips about the 2016 Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro is whether or not they’ll be a huge disaster like Sochi. But at least we now know that the torch will be pretty neat, automatically expanding to reveal a series of colored sections as soon as it’s lit. The animated…

How We’ll Live on Mars: A Manifesto for Colonizing the Red Planet

For more than century, humans have imagined building colonies on Mars, and now settling the Red Planet is no longer a pipe dream—it’s something we might achieve in little over a decade. And many people, including the author of the new book How We’ll Live on Mars, believe our very survival as a species hinges…

Shake Shack’s first ever fried chicken sandwich looks like perfection

Shake Shack, perhaps the best burger chain in the world and if you disagree you probably need to see if you can get a new tongue, just announced their first ever chicken sandwich, a fried chicken sandwich that looks like the Platonic ideal of what a fried chicken sandwich should look like (if you like…

8 Antidotes to the Stupidity of “Shark Week”

This year, Discovery Channel promises Shark Week will feature fewer fake documentaries and more actual science. But with shows like “Return of the Great White Serial Killer” on the docket, it’s clear Discovery still has a lot to learn. For critically minded viewers, here are eight alternatives to those episodes of Shark Week still tainted…

This “Ghost Chicken” Story Is One of Science’s Strangest Urban Legends

Today, we remember Francis Bacon mostly for his political and scientific contributions, but the people of Highgate remember him for something else: a scientific urban legend about a food safety experiment that may (or, more likely, may not) have created a ghost chicken. This is the legend: Francis Bacon, renowned politician and early elucidator of…

Producer Regrets “That’s Good Enough” Attitude on Cowboys & Aliens

You’d like to think people spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a movie would care. Lots of times they do. However, on some movies studios think “That’s good enough” and producer Brian Grazer regrets that sentiment on the 2011 film Cowboys and Aliens. Grazer, the legendary producer behind films and shows like Real Genius,…

Leaked Images Show Off What Might Be Samsung’s Galaxy Note 5

Samsung’s Galaxy S and Galaxy Note smartphones have always been two peas in a pod, always mimicking each others’s design and/or software. And if these leaked schematics are any indication of what to expect from Samsung this September, it looks like the tradition will continue. Technology is filled with all kinds of rumors and speculation…

Seeing fog trickle down a cliff is like watching a waterfall of ghosts

I can’t decide what I think this stream of fog looks like more. Is it a waterfall of ghosts diving off a cliff? A river of angels crossing dimensions? A giant snake made of clouds creeping on the Earth? Because the simple explanation of fog trickling down a waterfall isn’t supernatural enough for me. It’s…

Maria Fernanda Cardoso’seight-year quest to create The Museum of Copulatory Organs, an amazing art installation of invertebrate sexual anatomy, is told in comic book form by Andy Warner. Check it out at Popular Science. Contact the author at [email protected].

A Moss Man Chia Pet Is the Best Comic-Con Exclusive So Far

As Comic-Con gets under way in San Diego this week, there are countless exclusives that make the annual pilgrimage to the convention totally worth it for fans. And if you grew up in the ‘80s playing with Masters of the Universe toys, this Chia Pet version of Moss Man might singlehandedly justify your entire trip.…

Misandry Rules as New Ghostbusters Movie Casts a Man as Its Villain

Feminists scored another bitter blow today against penis-Americans after it was announced that Saturday Night Life writer, Other Space star and comedian Neil Casey has been cast as the new Ghostbusters movie’s antagonist. A man? Being evil? In a movie where women are the heroes?! Why, this tests my tosterone! Actually, since two people lost…

How to Transform the Look of Your Gmail

Unless you’re the rare breed that uses Outlook, or have switched to Inbox, you’re no doubt familiar with the look of Gmail’s web interface. Now, through Gmail’s settings, themes and some selected add-ons, you can easily transform that look to better suit your tastes. Settings and Layout Click on the cog icon on the right…

Gaze Into the Cold, Dead Eyes of This Tiny Batman

Oh god. Just look at them. The tiny little eyes of tiny chibi-Christian Bale. If this guy asked you to swear to him, you’d be crossing a very fine line between laughing in his face and wanting to soil yourself because oh god the eyes. Herocross’ latest chibi figure features the Christian Bale Batman circa…

What to Expect in the Leadup to New Horizons’ Historic Flyby of Pluto

After a nerve-wracking hiccup this weekend, NASA’s New Horizons mission is all systems go: We are now just a week away from the space probe’s long-awaited encounter with Pluto. Here’s what to expect over the course of the next seven days. After 3,455 days and nearly 3-billion miles, New Horizons is now less than a…