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This Incredible Technical Drawing Is Actually an Oil Painting

While this may look like something spat straight out of AutoCAD, you’re actually looking at a mind-bogglingly sophisticated oil painting. Created by Japanese artist Atsushi Koyama, this is one of a series of pieces that explore the interaction of man and machine. All of them are painted using oils on canvas. You can see more…

A Laser-Powered Nanosensor Could Spot Extra-Terrestrial Life

This may look look like an incredibly simple little device—because, well, it is—but don’t be fooled. This laser-powered nanosensor can spot the movement of the tiniest of objects, and it could help us identify extra-terrestrial life. In fact, it’s a simple cantilever which contains a laser motion sensor. As bacteria pass through it, they cause…

How ILM made you believe this painting was a real hangar in Star Wars

When I saw Return of the Jedi in the movie theater back in 1983 I and everyone else thought this matte painting of a Rebel hangar was a real thing—that, somehow, they managed to build a full size set with giant models. It was all a magic trick that used distraction to fool your brain.…

Fantastic landscape photography makes Earth look like a magic dimension 

Greg Boratyn captures landscapes with absolute perfection. The photo above, taken in Patagonia, Argentina, using multiple exposures while the rising moon was hitting at the right angle, is a perfect example. This gallery has a lot more. Greg Boratyn is a renowned, award-winning landscape and nature photographer based in Orange County, California. His photographs have…

Sticky Sensors Could Monitor the Health of Your Organs

Keeping track of your insides is difficult without large-scale imaging devices or relatively invasive sensors. These sticky, flexible sensors, however, could soon be applied to organs and left there—measuring what’s happening whilst also conforming to your body’s internal structure. Developed by a team of Japanese researchers, these patches are made of stretchy, sticky flexible material…

The Evolution of the Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver in One Image

This print by David Wildish is available at Society 6, and is a very nice retrospective of one of the most iconic objects in science fiction. Even though these are presented in order of show continuity, if you move the War Doctor’s to the end — where it belongs if it’s in order of appearance…

A Mesmerizing Pixel-Littered Performance Blends Technology and Dance

Imagine layering a world of interactive digital pixels over the athletic, poised movements of dancers—and, actually, you get this. Put together by French dance company Adrien M / Claire B, this performance uses light projection technology to create an interactive world that doesn’t get in the way of dancers yet enhances their performance. Called Pixel,…

Live in Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco or Seattle? Then it may pay to ditch Uber in favor of its rival Flywheel for New Year’s Eve: rides between 8PM and 3AM that night, which would usually cost up to $50, will be charged at a flat rate of $10 in the four cities.

AirAsia Debris Identified Off the Coast of Borneo

The ongoing search attempt to discover AirAsia Flight 8501 is edging closer to a discovery. Indonesian officials have announced that they’ve discovered airplane debris in waters near the island of Borneo—and officials are “95% certain” it’s from the missing plane. Update: Indonesian authorities have now confirmed that the debris is from AirAsia Flight 8501. Reports…

The Walking Dead is the show with the most tweets and readers of tweets in 2015. A Nielsen report revealed that the show had an average of 576,000 tweets per episode and 4.93 million people reading at least one tweet before the next morning. This reflects the show’s popularity and the high value viewers place…

Superfan edited all the Marvel superhero movies into chronological order

A dedicated comic book superhero super fan just did God’s work: he stitched together all the Marvel Phase 1 and Phase 2 movies into chronological order. Which means you could theoretically watch the entire story unfold in one consistent timeline that makes sense. Since movies that were released later sometimes occurred before other movies and…

Did Venus Once Have Oceans of Liquid Carbon Dioxide?

A new study suggests that it is possible that the planet’s past included strange bodies of liquid carbon dioxide. Image: Pioneering Venus/NASA Venus is a hot hellscape that make it difficult to imagine it ever being covered in the water that may have been in its atmosphere — the water probably could not have cooled…

Watch a Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet land without one of its landing gears

A Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747-400 had to make an emergency landing earlier today at Gatwick Airport, London, when its right landing gear got stuck. Amazingly enough, the pilots managed to keep control with only three of the four gears in place. That means that one of the plane’s wings wouldn’t have any cushion when it…

Our Best Photography Posts of 2014

As 2014 chugged along, photographers of all inclinations did their best to fill the world with awesome pictures of every kind. Here on Reframe, we tracked the best new gear as mirrorless cameras came into their own, showcased the most intriguing bodies of work beyond the repetitive internet fare, and spewed our two-cents about topics…

Watch Rats Own a Cat and a Dog in a Trick Competition

The cat Kaiser and the dog Nana once went head to head in a competition to see who was the best trained animal around. And now, years later, they’ve teamed up to show a pair of rats named Raven and Famous who’s boss. But, for sheer number of tricks, the rats win. They also win…

Samsung’s New Speakers Are Basically Portal Guns

Samsung says these fancy wireless speakers were created at a “state-of-the-art audio lab in Valencia, California.” We know better. They’re clearly the product of Aperture Science, the secret think tank responsible for a hilarious murderous artificial intelligence, not to mention one hell of a teleportation tool. Unless Aperture is in Valencia, I mean. I guess…

The mesmerizing beauty of a thousand hand dance

These types of dances are an old tradition but they’re always so mind tickling to see. The choreography is perfect and it’s like seeing art in motion. This particular Thousand-Hand Guan Yin dance was performed by deaf dancers which makes the timing of it all even more incredible. SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us…

This Table Protects You From Burning Hot Beverages

What if your dining room table could show you when your coffee or cocoa is too hot to drink? That could be a reality today: hacker Ken Kawamoto shows us how with a technique called thermal projection mapping. Basically, it’s just a combination of two things we already love: 1.) the FLIR ONE case that…

The Village Was Built on the Eroded Pillars of an Ancient Canyon

Who knows how it first started? Maybe the village was once on solid ground that washed out from under our ancient homes. Or maybe our ancestors knew how to climb and build in ways that we have forgotten. Now we just weave more rope for the bridges and ladders, and hope the floods never come…

Our deepest darkest fears turned into terrifying cartoons

We all have deep dark fears that are almost always irrational and probably rooted from our childhood and most likely festered when we were alone and trapped in our thoughts. Deep Dark Fears illustrates those fears in a comic form and they’re funny to see but also exposes us to a whole new set of…