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The Most Beautiful Landscapes From 10 Years of Google Earth

Google Earth celebrated its tenth birthday yesterday, and to celebrate, the engineering team added 1,500 new images to its great Earth View project, where it collects the most compelling images recorded by its source satellites. The project, which apparently started out as a “20 percent” project of some Earth engineers, not has its own web…

How a museum restores a beautiful painting from hundreds of years ago

Charles Le Brun’s painting of Everhard Jabach and His Family was finished in 1660. Now that it’s 2015 and hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, my favorite museum in New York, it was in need of a little bit of, um, reviving. The Met guides us through as it restores the giant piece of…

This Is The One Thing That People Never Understand About Cats

You probably don’t know your cat as well as you think you do. According to a recent survey of cat owners in the UK, most people are pretty clueless about their cats’ lives. Ecologist Jennifer McDonald and her team of researchers conducted a small survey of cat owners in the UK. They asked people how…

Spoilers and Rumors for Ant-Man, Civil War, Doctor Strange, and More!

It’s an MCU blowout as Kevin Feige discusses Black Panther’s origins, the tone of Spider-Man, and the potential for the Wasp in future movies. Plus, Guillermo Del Toro leaves Justice League Dark, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 gets an official title, Wayward Pines could get a second season, and more. To Me, My Spoilers! Vertigo…

New Leak Shows Off the New and Redesigned Moto G

It’s rare that many people can be excited about rumors and hearsay surrounding a cheap-o smartphone, but the budget-conscious Moto G is an exception. Because it is one of the very best cheap smartphones you can buy, and Motorola is gearing up to release the third-generation of its low-end flagship. Technology is filled with all…

The Solar Cells of the Future Look Very Pretty Up Close

You’re looking at a perovskite. Not an Eastern European bird of prey, nor an exotic toy to play with in the wind, but a potential future of solar power. The materials, first discovered in 1839 but only recently used in solar applications, are defiined not by the elements they contain but their crystalline structure. And…

These Cancer Cells Are Being Levitated Using Magnets

Magnetic levitation isn’t anything new: you’ve probably seen frogs made to float and maybe even trains hovering above their rails. But now scientists have gained enough subtle control over such forces that they can be used to levitate single cells, too. A team at Stanford University has developed a new way of levitating cells, which…

Why Don’t Humans Have as Much Hair as Other Primates?

Although there is no definitive account of why we lost our body hair when every other primate is covered with the stuff, there are a handful of compelling theories that may explain our hairless condition. One early explanation for why we, alone, are the only relatively “naked” apes was the aquatic ape hypothesis. First floated…

Who would be the Inside Out-style voices in your head? Salon asked thirteen comedians that question, including Inside Out star Amy Poehler, who says she calls Phyllis Smith (Fear) all the time just to hear her voice.

Can You Fool This Nudity-Spotting Algorithm?

Identifying nudity online is a notoriously thorny issue. Is it a butt or a bent elbow? Renaissance art or porn? Well, now one company that builds algorithms to identify such differences has built a website that you can challenge with your own, um, material. IsItNude.com is the brainchild of Algorithmia and it provides much the…

The Code For This Pleasingly Simple Game Fits in a Single Tweet

If you’ve got a few spare minutes, you might enjoy a quick game of Tiny-Twitch. But then you’ll no doubt end up amazed by the fact that the source code for the whole thing can fit inside a single tweet. Developed by Alex Yoder, the game—which requires you to try and click the X that…

Claire Denis’ First English Film Will Be a Space Tale With Zadie Smith

Well this is exciting: director Claire Denis (I Can’t Sleep) and author Zadie Smith (White Teeth) are teaming up to make a science fiction movie. Keep on eye on this one, it’s going to be fascinating. All we know about the plot is that it’s a science fiction film, set in space “beyond the solar…

Blowing in the Wind: The Mysterious Kawasaki Disease

Hard to diagnose, with an unknown cause, Kawasaki disease has been puzzling doctors for 150 years. Jeremy Hsu explores what we know, and still don’t know, about this troubling childhood heart condition. A child’s death from scarlet fever wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows during the devastating epidemics that swept Europe and North America in the…

This Simple Video Celebration of Everyday Color Will Brighten Your Day

The world around you is a rainbow, if only you stop and notice it. This video is a charming celebration of color in our everyday lives—and a bewilderingly pleasant way to spend two minutes. [Vimeo] Image by laffy4k under Creative Commons license.

The latest preview build of Windows 10 for PCs comes complete with a version of Microsoft’s new Edge web browser so you can try it out before the official launch on July 29th.

There Will Be Another Back to the Future Over Robert Zemeckis’ Dead Body

Robert Zemeckis is taking a stand for all of us: No remake, reboot, retool, re-anythinging of Back to the Future. Not while he’s alive. And, he hopes, not after, either. Luckily for a world currently drowning in remakes and reboots, the original contracts for Back to the Future give Zemeckis and co-writer Bob Gale final…

AppleCare Now Covers Worn-Out Batteries

Built-in batteries mean a built-in expiry date for gadgets: lithium-ion batteries slowly lose their ability to hold charge over time, eventually dying an ignominious death, and rendering your expensive gizmo useless — unless, that is, you’ve got AppleCare. In a small change to the policy for AppleCare for Mac spotted by MacRumors, Apple will now…

Advantageous Is An Insanely Good Movie That Everyone Should Watch

Sometimes, you see a haunting short film that just cries out to become a full-length movie. Case in point: Advantageous, a short film by Jennifer Phang released in 2013. She’s expanded it to full length, and the added time and budget have turned a beautiful short into an eerily intense feature. Some minor plot spoilers…

The Key to Longer-Lasting Smartwatches Might Be Stupidly Simple

Smartwatches are not endowed with the greatest battery life, thanks to the limited space available. But for the increasingly large number of circular smartwatches on the market, there’s one simple change that could yield a quarter more power: stop trying to fit rectangular batteries into round bodies. LG Chem, the battery-making division of Korean manufacturer…

Video: MiG-29 flies impossibly close to an airplane’s open rear door

This is just plain cool. Imagine opening the rear door of a paratrooper plane and seeing a MiG-29 right in front of you, dancing in the air mere feet away from the aircraft’s opening. This stunt was obviously planned for the photographs but it’s not unlike opening your house’s front door and seeing a giant…