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The Smithsonian Museum Has An Early Draft Of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center recently received a treasure trove: 85 cubic feet of Arthur C. Clarke’s papers, shipped from his home in Sri Lanka. Including a high-school notebook, where the young Clarke rated the science fiction stories he read. And an early draft of Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Over…

This Is What Microsoft’s HoloLens Looks Like In Person

We’ve seen it demoed on stage. We used a janky (but amazing) prototype—but until today we’ve never actually seen Microsoft’s real holographic headset in person. Now, here it is: a weird, futuristic visor with four visible cameras, two speakers and what looks like six buttons. Let’s take a closer look at hardware behind Microsoft’s augmented,…

This week in outstanding, eye-catching headlines: “Ancient megadrought entombed dodos in poisonous fecal cocktail.” The science is pretty excellent, too; David Shultz has the details at Science. Contact the author at [email protected].

How Will You Celebrate Email Debt Forgiveness Day?

The folks over at the Reply All podcast had a brilliant idea: they’ve declared April 30th “Email Debt Forgiveness Day.” This is a chance to catch up on those emails you’ve meant to send or are anxiously avoiding. Holy crap, is this ever my holiday. What emails should you write? Email Debt Forgiveness day is…

Concept Art Writing Prompt: Guess Who’s Coming To The Diner?

In this week’s Concept Art Writing Prompt, by artist David Cousens, an unusual character is attracting quite a bit of attention at a sunlit diner. You tell us: What’s going on here? What’s this curious character’s story? And what happens when that kid starts pointing and staring? In the Concept Art Writing Prompt, we share…

26 Soviet Space Pins From the Heat of the Space Race

There was a time when people proudly wore pins and badges of notable space achievements on their clothes. Such pins were very popular in the Soviet Union—and anybody could buy almost any kind, choosing from a wide variety of these little decorative items. Here is a collection of space pins from the first decades of…

View A Trailer For A Doc On The Real-Life Heavenly Creatures Murderers

Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures dramatized one of New Zealand’s most shocking murders, in which a pair of teen girls brutally killed one of their mothers. Director Alexander Roman’s documentary, Reflections of the Past, uses interviews, vintage images, and reenactments to further explore the story. As a side note, one of the girls — Juliet Hulme,…

CSI Cyber and the Juice Jacking Airplane Wi-Fi White Whale 

I pride myself on being able to figure out twists on network procedurals, but I hope this is the first and last time I have to type these objectively humiliating lines: CSI:Cyber really pulled the rug out from under me in tonight’s episode! I was genuinely surprised by what I perceived to be an unexpected…

Why A Volcanic Eruption In Chile Is Turning Brazil’s Sky Purple

This is what a sunset in Rio de Janeiro looks like right now, and it’s all thanks to that volcano erupting in Chile last week. Calbuco spewed 7,420 million cubic feet of ash into the atmosphere, turning nearby regions into a “grey desert” and altering weather thousands of miles away. The massive clouds of of…

RIP Messenger: What the Spacecraft Taught Us About Mercury

Messenger’s fate was sealed from the beginning: When it ran out of fuel, the space probe would crash into Mercury, the planet it was sent to observe. What we didn’t expect is Messenger to last four years instead of one. After an unexpectedly long and fruitful mission, Messenger met its inevitable end today. It’s a…

Female Orgasm Explained With Fifth Grade Science Experiments

Talking about sex doesn’t have to be X-rated – and in some cases, it shouldn’t be. That’s why I love this video from Wired’s Data Attack team, which illustrates facts and statistics about women’s orgasms using classic elementary school experiments. You’ll never look at the egg-in-a-bottle experiment the same way again.

Shooting Challenge: Breakfast

From Captain Crunch to miso soup, we all eat differently each morning. It’s highly regional. It’s remarkably personal. It’s your breakfast. For this week’s Shooting Challenge, photograph your breakfast. The Challenge Take a photo of your breakfast. And take it from overhead, like our lead shot. The Technique Again, we want you to all photograph…

Fast and Furious 7 ending scene recreated in GTA V

Grand Theft Auto V is basically an alternate reality where people can play God and recreate fake real life situations in a digital setting because it’s always giggle inducing to see pixels act as humans. Here’s the ending Paul Walker tribute scene from Fast and Furious 7 re-done in GTA V. Vin Diesel doesn’t really…

These “Swamp Dogs” Might Be What America’s First Dogs Looked Like

These animals are officially called “Carolina Dogs.” A less poetic name would be “Carolina Swamp Dogs,” since until 1970s, the Carolina swamp is pretty much where they lived. Early tests of their DNA show that they might be what the first dogs in America looked like. Dogs have been here for thousands of years, but…

Yes, Windows 10 Is Coming This Summer—But Only For PCs

We already knew that the next version of Windows was slated to arrive sometime this summer (and for free!)—but it wasn’t completely clear what that meant. Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore describes the rollout at a “wave of benefit that starts in the summer and increases throughout the fall.” At first, only PCs will be able to…

Real Places On Earth So Surreal, They Look Like Alien Landscapes

If you want to see strange and exotic landscapes, you don’t have to travel the solar system; you just have to take a closer look at our own planet. From fiery pits to rock formations that seem to defy gravity, these views show us a side of the Earth that looks almost alien, but are…

Edgar Award-Winning Crime Book Takes On An Unsolved Hollywood Mystery

Fans of true crime books know the Edgar Awards offer great inspiration for one’s reading list, and this year’s crop of “Best Fact Crime” nominees was particularly robust. The winner, announced yesterday, takes on the still-unsolved 1922 murder of director William Desmond Taylor. The book is William Mann’s Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the…

Scientists Are Trying to Change All Blood Into Type O

If you know anything about blood types, then you know how they add an extra wrinkle to blood donations. Match donor and recipient blood types incorrectly, and you could even kill a patient. That’s why scientists are working on artificiallychanging donated blood into type O, the universal donor. In the simplest terms, blood types refer…

Thank God the FAA Is Switching to Satellites for Air Traffic Control

As unnerving as it is to hear, air traffic control has always been pretty piecemeal. Relying on a combination of instrumentation—namely, radar, radios, and GPS—as well as good old fashioned eyeballs, pilots do a pretty good job navigating the sky. But they’re about to get a lot better with a new satellite-based system. Appropriately named…

Our Favorite Android, iOS, and Windows Phone Apps of the Week

Thanks to Microsoft’s Build 2015 developers conference, the apps world is all shaken up. With news that Android and iOS apps will be easier than ever to port over to Windows 10, apps on Windows Phone just got a lot more interesting. But amidst all this chaos, new apps hit mobile stores this week with…