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The Famous “Eye of God” Nebula May Actually Be Weeping Tears Of Water

It’s one of the most iconic celestial images in astronomy — the eye-like Helix Nebula. Ironically, the incredibly harsh conditions within this dying Sun-like star are producing a molecule integral for the formation of water, a process that could be repeated across the cosmos. Planetary nebulas consist of an expanding glowing shell of ionized gas…

Light transforms trees into floating geometric structures

Artist Javier Riera—from Avilés, Spain—creates these Luminance Interventions, where geometric patterns are projected on trees, transforming them from organic matter into magical geometric structures that seem to float above the landscape. “I think that geometry is the best language to describe the pulse of nature’s depths. What happens in landscape can be explained with mathematics,…

Take An Exclusive Peek At The Most Anticipated Scifi Imprint In Years

SAGA, the new science fiction and fantasy imprint from Simon & Schuster, debuts next spring with an exciting slate of books—including the first novel from Hugo, Nebula, and many other awards-winning writer Ken Liu. Here’s our exclusive reveal of the covers for SAGA’s first set of books. City of Savages by Lee Kelly It’s been…

Should You Go to Jail For Making Threats on Facebook?

The Supreme Court announced that it will hear the appeal of Anthony Elonis, a man convicted and sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison for making threats over Facebook—threats that were often in the form of rap lyrics—according to The Morning Call, the local newspaper covering the case. Elonis claims his threats to kill…

Wyoming Says Teaching Climate Change Would Wreck The State’s Economy

Earlier this year, the Wyoming legislature became the first in the U.S. to reject new science standards for schools. Lessons on climate change, lawmakers said, would brainwash kids against the state’s coal and oil industries. Now, parents, scientists and even churches are fighting the decision. Aerial view of a Wyoming mine by Christopher Boyer The…

Incredible video of wild Alaskan brown bear chilling out with a camper

Drew Hamilton, a tech worker at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, was chilling out with a friend, admiring the majestic landscape at the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary, when a cool Alaskan brown bear walked into the scene, sat down, and just chilled out for a while contemplating the river. It’s amazing that…

Google’s About to Ruin YouTube by Squeezing Indie Labels

It’s official: Google is about to ruin YouTube. A company exec told the Financial Times it will start blocking videos from record labels that refuse to sign licensing deals for its forthcoming premium service, YouTube Music Pass. This is the dumbest thing Google could do, and it threatens the very heart of what has always…

Woman Records Her Own Stroke To Help Doctors Make Diagnosis

A 49-year-old Toronto-area woman was recently turned away by physicians after complaining of stroke-like symptoms, telling her she was just stressed-out. But when it happened again, she took a selfie video to offer definitive proof. Back in April, Stacey Yepe’s face froze and she had trouble speaking. Fearing a stroke, she went to a local…

Raytheon’s Modular Missile Defense Snaps Together Like Lego Bricks

As the number and variety of air, space, and surface-based threats to our naval fleets continue to proliferate, defending against them all is getting harder and harder. But equipped with this new unified threat detection system from Raytheon, our Arleigh Burke-class destroyers will know what’s coming from 30 times farther away. Dubbed the Air and…

We Could Watch This Graceful Dragon Animation For Hours

Todd Lockwood‘s animated dragon would surely eat us, because we’d be too busy watching the perfect ripple of its wings to fight it. Lockwood originally created two dragon animations that would serve as flip animations for the Dungeons & Dragons Draconomicon, but they didn’t make it into the final version of the book. Fortunately, he…

ISIS has become quite adept at employing social-media strategies that spread and control its message. One of its more successful ventures is an Arabic-language Twitter app called The Dawn of Glad Tidings, designed to inflate its online reach without triggering Twitter’s spam-detection algorithms.

Danger Mouse Returns To Television With A Brand New Series!

He’s the greatest, he’s fantastic, and wherever there is danger he’ll be there. And now Danger Mouse is coming BACK to television! According to The Guardian, the Danger Mouse series is gearing up for a full-fledged comeback, complete with new shiny new secret agent gadgets and gizmos. For example, the postal box HQ will be…

Building the Part of Facebook No One Ever Sees

Ever since we humans gave up the nomadic life and started building homes, architecture had one goal: To make life better for humans. But now, a new architecture is taking shape in remote, frozen corners of the world. And it’s not designed for humans. It’s for machines. In this case, for the remote machines that…

How Bell Labs Almost Put a Videophone in Every Home

From the 1950s until the 1970s Bell Labs spent over $500 million developing the videophone. But the technology failed to achieve mainstream success. Why? Bill Hammack from the University of Illinois has a great video explaining the tremendous promise and eventual demise of the videophone as a standalone appliance in the mid-20th century. Below is…

New Guardians of the Galaxy’s trailer reveals new cool scenes

After this new trailer, it’s clear that the amount of eye candy in the new Marvel space opera Guardians of the Galaxy is going to be so high that I think we should all take a Xanax before watching it—to avoid having seizures. Or, my favorite option, pop an Ambien and enjoy the hallucinatory ride.…

The Astounding And Horrific World As Seen Under A Microscope

There’s a stunning new photo gallery called Life: Magnified that’s currently on display at Washington’s Dulles International Airport’s Gateway Gallery. Here’s a sampling of the gallery’s best images — from the hairs on a gecko’s feet to the viruses that make our lives miserable. All captions via National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Photo credits…

“Radiophonic Satie”

This is a recording of fake, Radiophonic space-age Satie that I attempted with a combination of my ukulele and the modular synthesis kit I’ve been slowly experimenting with. The short version is I’m trying to use the modular synth as a realtime processing unit, taking in the sound of the ukulele and making something of…

Steaklocker Could Let You Dry-Age Delicious Beef Chunks at Home

Dry-aged beef. It’s a phrase that gets fancy steak-lovers’ mouths all drooly. The magic dance of enzymes and moisture reduction creates out-of-this-world flavor and tenderness that, unless you’ve got restaurant-grade equipment, you can’t recreate at home. Steaklocker wants to change that, with a device on Kickstarter that promises to bring that meaty magic to your…

What Is The Best Song About Science?

Ah, music! The rhythm, the melody, the quality of the lyrics, as judged by their overall scientific accuracy. What is the best (both in the musical and scientific sense) song about science? Tell us about your favorite song that not only gets the music right, but the science right as well in the comments now.…

A Bestiary Of Largely Forgotten Medieval Creatures

While dragons and unicorns have long topped the A-list of mythical animals, medieval bestiaries are filled with an assortment of bizarre creatures that are scarcely remembered today. Ever heard of a bonnacon, which attacks its opponents with poisonous dung? Then read on. Curators at the British Library’s Department of History and Classics have compiled a…