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These Photos Of Scientists With Their Machines Are Pure Excellence

Scientists love their toys. Monster machines, delicate precision devices, even those finicky electronic brats that spend more time sulking in a heap of malfunction than collecting data: we love the equipment that allows us to explore the world around us. Top image: Staff astronomer Juna Kollmeier with her 6.5 meter telescope. Credit: Carnegie Institution for…

The Next Apple Watch Already Sounds a Lot More Useful

The Apple Watch’s launch was a shaky one. Yeah, Apple sold a ton of them (as Apple is wont to do) but a few hardware and software snafus provided painful flashbacks of Apple’s troubled history with gen one devices. But 9to5Mac reports that at least some missing Watch OS features may be coming soon. According…

This Bridge Is Made From Nothing But 22,000 Sheets of Paper

No glue. No cables. No steel reinforcements. The only thing keeping this bridge intact is, well, physics. If you happened to be strolling across the Grisedale Valley—a ridiculously picturesque piece of land in Cumbria—over the past two weeks, you probably saw what looks like something out of a Monument Valley fever dream. A blindingly bright…

Jurassic World Already Cashing In On Terrible Product Placement

Do you want to see a sick, high res image of Jurassic World’s new dinosaur Indominous Rex? Do you like fine, German engineered cars and vile product placement? Well hold on to your fucking hat. Behold a massive look at the new bad guy in Jurassic World, and a car. Is there any part of…

Without This Protein, Part Of The Brain’s Sex System Would Die

Sometimes, bad luck leads to insights. A study published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation has added a new twist to our understanding of the way the system that controls puberty in mammals develops inside the brain – thanks to two brothers who both inherited the same rare disorder. Kallmann syndrome is a rare…

This Newly-Discovered Class of Galaxies Shouldn’t Exist

When you spot a galaxy in a telescope, you know it — galaxies are bright, dense collections of millions of stars, often in a spiral or orb shape, held tightly together by gravitational forces. But now scientists have discovered a new kind of galaxy, which they call “fluffy” and “wispy.” No one is sure how…

On a single day in 2011, Anders Breivik killed 77 people, most of them attendees at a youth camp organized by the Norwegian Labour Party. A thoughtful piece in the new New Yorker by Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard takes a look at the mass murderer from the inside out, examining his mind and his…

This Is What Made Your Cheese Yellow (For Way Longer Than You’d Think)

Studies have shown that most consumers taste with their eyes. We think a cheese tastes best when it’s a deep yellow or a vivid orange color. This plant influences what goes in your mouth, and it’s been doing that for longer than you’d imagine. The achiote tree grows in Central and South America. Its seeds…

Amazon Is Using the Subway For Deliveries Just Like the Rest of Us

As much as Amazon hypes its cutting-edge drone delivery dreams, Jeff Bezos’ convenience-fetishizing empire is relying on a much older transit system to make most of its quick deliveries around Manhattan: The subway. Amazon’s Prime Now service offers delivery within the hour for an extra $8 charge for Prime Members. “In Manhattan, our folks bike,…

Reminder: We Nearly Had A Justice League Movie Directed By George Miller

You probably already knew this, but in case you forgot — George Miller, the guy who exploded your eyeballs this past weekend with Mad Max: Fury Road, was directing a Justice League movie at one point. What the hell happened? Miller’s film would have been called Justice League: Mortal, and it was in production back…

Watch and listen to the fascinating process of making a steel pan drum

Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of banging and hammering and mashing and even torching involved in making a steel pan drum but watching it all come together and to see flat steel get shaped in the most irregular pounding way to create the most perfect sounding notes for each section is pretty damn awesome. I…

Fear The Walking Dead Will Be A “Family” Show With “Human Zombies.” Huh?

Creator Robert Kirkman has been dropping some details about Fear the Walking Dead, the goofily named spin-off to the hit zombie series The Walking Dead. It sure sounds like the show is going to be very different from the original, and not just because of the setting or the time period. As you may recall,…

This Week’s TV: In A Small Quarantined Town, Everyone Over Age 21 Dies

Netflix’s new series Between premieres this week, following a town full of kids who have no adults around and no way to escape to the outside world. Plus, we’ve got a clip of Wells revealing his motives to Barry on The Flash season finale and a look inside Supernatural’s season finale as well. Tonight StarTalk…

Anthony Bourdain’s Opening a Food Market Inspired by Blade Runner

Would you eat at a market inspired by the 1982 dystopian classic Blade Runner? Anthony Bourdain is hoping you will. He’s currently negotiating to open a market in the renovated 100,000 square foot SuperPier in New York. The floor plan is said to evoke “the set decor of Blade Runner and the vibrant back alleys…

This Image of Stars Forming Looks Just Like Van Gogh’s Starry Night

The European Space Agency brings us this new image based on data from the Planck satellite. My first reaction? It looks just like Van Gogh’s best-known masterpiece, The Starry Night. And you know what? Even Google agrees me. The ESA’s image is actually entitled Star formation and magnetic turbulence in the Orion Molecular Cloud. According…

Penny Dreadful Gives Us An Amazing Superhero Origin Story

So far, Penny Dreadful’s flashbacks exist to be as Gothic as possible. But while “The Nightcomers” is definitely that, it’s also one of the best superhero origin stories on TV this year. Sometimes you get to see an episode of a show that feels like it cuts right to the heart of the series. This…

The Six Most Terrifying Serial Killer Families In History

Couples who kill together — Fred and Rosemary West, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, David and Catherine Birnie — get plenty of ink. But what about siblings and larger family groups whose shared viciousness leads them into committing horrifying crimes? Read on for six especially nasty examples. 1) “The Bloody Benders” A gang of four…

Video: More recycled scenes from different Disney animation movies

Here are more recycled and reused scenes that Disney lifts from previous animation movies and then adds to its others movies. You can see how the same general movement and scene constructions are used but just with different characters across different movies. It’s both very revealing and endlessly interesting to compare how similar they are.…

I Lost All This Stuff In Vietnam

On March 27, while riding a $450 motorcycle through Vietnam, I lost my backpack. It contained my camera, computer, and two hard drives containing seven months of RAW photos and videos. This is what I learned from the ordeal. First, you’re probably wondering how I managed to lose $8,000 worth of equipment that’s essential to…

James Cameron Is Helping New Zealand to Fund Better Filmmaking Drones

Camera-equipped drones swoop and shoot aerial shots for TV and movies with gorgeous Planet Earth grandeur. Now, director James Cameron’s backing a new contest in New Zealand to find drone designs to make the flying cameras even better-suited to Hollywood. On the website for the C-Prize UAV Challenge in New Zealand, the director of scifi…