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This Telescope Is Shooting a Laser Right at the ISS

Who gave this telescope a light saber? Just kidding: this is, of course, the ESA’s Optical Ground Station telescope in Tenerife—in the process of laser tagging the ISS to establish a data connection. The experiment, which actually took place last October, was a proof-of-concept to show how laser links between Earth and space might work…

Dropbox is finally availablefor Windows Phones and tablets. You can download the app, which will work with Windows Phone 8.0 and 8.1, from today.

U.S. Senate Agrees Climate Change Is Real, 98 Votes to 1

The U.S. Senate has voted overwhelmingly in agreement that climate change is real, with a staggering 98 votes to 1. All that remains is for them to agree on the cause. The vote, Circa reports, was a non-binding amendment, to the controversial Keystone XL pipeline bill, which declares that climate change is “not a hoax.”…

You Can Try the So-Called YouTube Killer, Vessel, Right Now

Last week, former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar soft-launched his new subscription-based video website to content creators. Now, anyone can go and poke around and watch some video. https://gizmodo.com/hulus-former-ceo-just-launched-a-youtube-rival-1672229985 For now, you can get a single month of free access to explore what the site offers—just sign up for an invite here. Thereafter, it’ll cost you…

Twitter’s newWhile You Were Away feature, which updates you with top tweets since you last logged in, is now a feature on iOS.

See Comet Lovejoy’s Path In This Amazing Composite Photo

This photo combines a series of November 2013 observations by NASA’s NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer) mission, spanning half a degree. The red color, which makes Lovejoy stand out so clearly, is due to gas and dust in the comet’s coma. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech At the time the images were taken, Lovejoy was 1.7…

Bask In The Beauty Of New Stars Bursting Into Life

For 3 million years, this beautiful smudge of gas has been bursting with new stars. Just under 10,000 light years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia, NGC 281 is busy with everything from brand-new baby stars to active X-ray sources to the lingering traces of a supernova. Top image: A busy star formation region about…

Simon Pegg Will Co-Write the Next Star Trek Movie

The clip above is from Spaced. Seeing Pegg say that odd-numbered Star Trek movies suck is an immutable law of the universe is just a smidge ironic given the news that he’ll be one of the writers on the third reboot movie. Pegg’ll cowrite the script with Doug Jung, creator of TNT’s Dark Blue and…

Terrifying Photos of Ships Battling the Elements

Through the millennia, humans have battled typhoons and waves as high as buildings. https://gizmodo.com/18-terrifying-nautical-photos-of-merciless-seas-1680894858

A Dramatic Swirling Vortex At Venus’s South Pole

There’s a mass of swirling gas and cloud located some 37 miles (60 km) above Venus’s south pole. This image was captured by the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) aboard ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft. Astronomers have actually known about this vortex for quite some time. And in fact, it was one of the…

Yet Another Reason To Pay Attention During Physics Class

Here now is a practical demonstration on impulsive tension, and why a large force applied for a very short period of time is bad for tow hooks. “Well that’s what you do with these straps, you just go.” “No.” Remember, when towing with a tow strap, to always pull very slowly; a little force can…

Farmer’s Doorstop Revealed To Be Rare, Important Bronze Age Artifact

Go on, say it with us: “It belongs in a museum!” That’s exactly what a farmer realized 12 years after he discovered a strange object in one of his fields. Turns out the hunk of bent bronze he’d been using as a doorstop was actually … an extremely significant 3,500 year old artifact. The Smithsonian…

The City Had Finally Perfected Aerial Public Transit

The main station was city central but still accessible by air and the landing bays had been calibrated so that there was minimal noise upon touchdown. The biggest challenge, actually, was developing two-dimensional maps that conveyed routes set in three-dimensional space. “Platform 9” is by artist Emilis Baltrusaitis. Baltrusaitis tells us that this was actually…

Man Who Claimed to Be The Inventor of the Jetpack Dies

Justin Capra, a Romanian inventor who claimed to have invented the first functional jetpack, died on Monday at the age of 81. Capra used to say that he built his jetpack in 1956, well before Bell Aerosystems’ 1961 untethered flights with their rocket belt. The only problem? He was never able to produce any credible…

A Simple Experiment That (Finally) Explains Just What Gravity Is

What is gravity? It’s one of the easiest scientific concepts to understand the effects of, and one of the hardest concepts to understand by itself. Here — using a large sheet of spandex, some marbles, and a couple weights — is a demonstration that makes the entire concept remarkably graspable. Commenter EtruscanRaider pointed us to…

Japanese craftsman creates perfect sci-fi ship replicas using just paper

This is one of the most amazing craftsmen I have ever seen. He doesn’t only make the exterior of his sci-fi ships using just paper but also the guts! The level of detail is amazing—some look like perfect resin models but it’s only paper. Behold the X-Wing, TIE Interceptor, Viper Mk2, 2001’s Orion and many…

Why Is Everyone Being Such A Dick To This Robot?

Story of R32 is a great little film if you want to feel like a bag of hell for the rest of the day. Spoiler warning, everyone is an insufferable prick to this robot and it makes me angry. Created and directed by Vladimir Vlasenko, who apparently hates robots.

How Is A Mathematical Proof Like Frodo’s Journey In Lord Of The Rings?

When people describe a story as being told in a “by the numbers” fashion, that’s usually regarded as bad. But in a talk at Oxford University the other day, scientist Marcus du Sautoy argued that a great mathematical proof is a lot like a story. In fact, a really great proof is like Frodo’s journey…

The Weeknd’s Music Video for Fifty Shades of Grey Is Very Sultry

I didn’t read Fifty Shades of Grey. I probably won’t see the movie. In fact, I don’t even really know what the damn thing is about outside of the sensational BDSM scenes that drove suburban moms so wild. But hot damn, the soundtrack is steamy, as is the new video for The Weeknd’s single “Earned…

Windows 10’s Big Step Back Is Actually a Huge Step Forward 

Microsoft has made mistakes. It knows this. But as the company proved today at its Windows 10 HOLOGRAPHIC GOGGLES launch event, it’s also not going to stop pushing user interface design into the future. It’s just getting smarter about it. It’s been a long road for Windows users. Microsoft’s flawed product releases often conform to…