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Curiosity Took Hundreds of Microbes to Mars—And Many May Still Be Alive

Despite the best efforts of NASA, it’s impossible to put craft into space that are entirely clean. Now, a study shows that Curiosity was sent up to Mars with 377 strains of microbes aboard—and up to 11 percent may have made it to the surface of the red planet. Swabs taken prior to launch show…

It’s Time For The Canine Medal Of Honor

Sasha, a yellow Labrador, has been posthumously awarded the Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of Britain’s highest military honor. In Afghanistan, she saved several lives by locating 15 caches of hidden bombs and weapons. Regrettably, while the UK honors its animals that serve in the military, the US does not. Sasha was killed along with…

The First Pics From Disney’s First Marvel Movie, Big Hero 6

Behold, Hiro Hamada and his robot Baymax from the little-known Marvel series Big Hero 6. That will assuredly change once this Pixar Disney movie comes out on November 7th, but for now, all we have are these few tantalizing pics. The movie summary is as follows: Set in a fictional metropolis called San Fransokyo (a…

An Incredibly Rare Glimpse of How Disneyland Was Supposed to Look

The Disneyland of today is one of the most well-known places in the world. But in 1953, it was just sketches on paper, the pipe dream of two brothers named Roy and Walt Disney. In an incredible exclusive today, Boing Boing published the pitch document for the project—which is so rare, even Disney doesn’t have…

Do We Already Know The Secret Bat-Villain In Batman Vs. Superman?

Check out a ton of behind-the-scenes “B-roll” footage from X-Men: Days of Future Past. Whether Pacific Rim 2 happens depends on the right story being written. And Dylan Bruce talks about what’s next for Paul and Rachel on Orphan Black. Spoilers now! Top image: Batman Vs. Superman X-Men: Days of Future Past Despite saying that…

12 Pieces of Tech That Turned the Tide At Normandy

The Allied Invasion of Normandy was one of the single most logistically and strategically complex maneuvers ever concocted by the US military. With a strike force numbering in the hundreds of thousands and the momentum of the entire counter-offensive hanging in the balance, there was simply no room for failure. In The Americans on D-Day,…

Gmail for Android can save now attachments directly to Google Drive, which is super useful.

Someone Get This Walk-Anywhere-Forever Treadmill an Oculus Rift ASAP

The Oculus Rift is so close to making our Star Trek holodeck dreams a reality. The only catch is that since you’re tethered with cables, you’re not really free to physically walk around while wearing it. So far the solutions to this problem have been less than impressive, but the Infinadeck—a treadmill that lets you…

Watch a guy climb a construction crane 997 feet above street level

Watch free climber Bryce Wilson getting atop the tallest construction crane in Australia, sitting on a skyscraper in Melbourne—without any tethering or safety, of course. That summit is 997 feet above street level, just 49 feet shy of the top of the Chrysler Building. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on…

Mosquito Researcher Offers Her Own Arm To Hungry Mosquitoes

When you’ve got a colony of mosquitoes in your lab, you’ve got to feed them…and that can become just a bit uncomfortable. Photographer Alex Wild explains what’s going on in this photo: Rockefeller University’s Emily Dennis feeds her study subjects, Aedes aegypti. In the wild this species transmits yellow fever, dengue, and chikungunya, but lab…

How You Transport a Baby Mammoth

This is Lyuba, the world’s most complete mammoth, in her most tender and comfortable resting place since she was separated from her mother some 42,000 years ago.* Lyuba was transported in this large, strengthened, padded case from the Shemanovsky Museum in Salechard, Siberia to the Natural History Museum in London, where the one month (plus…

Bitcoin Exchanges Are Being Investigated Over Silk Road Drug Money

Back in April, the Silk Road defence lawyer Joshua Dratel tried to save his client, Ross Ulbricht, by throwing Bitcoin under the bus. Now, the FBI is investigating Mt. Gox and a number of other bitcoin exchanges in connection with Silk Road. The Wall Street Journal reports that the FBI has issued subpoenas to exchanges—including…

These Folding Chairs Are Beautifully Practical

The folding chair is a very practical—if occasionally uncomfortable—piece of furniture, but, ironically, it can be hard to store with style. Not any longer, though, thanks to this Hanger Chair. Admittedly, this isn’t the first folding chair to hang, but the examples we’ve seen in the past have been towards the more… practical end of…

How Bell Labs Is Reinventing the Future All Over Again

In 1964, a pair of Bell Labs researchers in New Jersey pointed the world’s largest radio telescope to the skies and unwittingly stumbled upon one of the greatest discoveries of the 20th Century: cosmic background radiation. We talked with the legendary physicist behind that breakthrough to find out more—and with the president of Bell Labs…

Sprint has been fined $7.5 million for violating your ‘Do Not Call’ requests. Sweet, sweet justice.

How a Rare Medical Condition Could Help Extend All of Our Lives

A handful of girls seem to defy one of the biggest certainties in life: ageing. Virginia Hughes reports. Richard Walker has been trying to conquer ageing since he was a 26-year-old free-loving hippie. It was the 1960s, an era marked by youth: Vietnam War protests, psychedelic drugs, sexual revolutions. The young Walker relished the culture…

The only thing that can save us from Godzilla is the real Walter White

If Godzilla attacks the city, who you gonna call? Exactly, Walter White. Yeah, why not? Apparently the only way to defeat the giant Japanese beast is with a Methamphetamine overdose—and we all know Walter White makes the strongest shit in town yo! WARNING, spoilers ahead! SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us…

The real Scarface mansion is now for sale in California

The real mansion from Scarface—the iconic Brian de Palma movie starring Al Pacino as drug lord Tony Montana—has hit the property market and its location may be its biggest surprise after the $35m asking price: It is not in Miami at all but in California. Take this virtual tour of El Fureidis, as the property…

Venus By Day and Night in a Single Image

This is Venus as you’ve never seen it before: on the left, the planet during the day captured in visible light, and on the right, the night side, captured using infrared light, both at the same time. The images were captured by the Ultraviolet/Visible/Near-Infrared spectrometer (VIRTIS) on board ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft. The visible light…

The Cancer Gene That Lurks Inside All of Us

Inside every cell in every human body there’s a very special gene, called BRCA1, that regulates how fast cells can divide—and a simple mutation within it can be all that’s required for us to develop cancer. BRCA1—the short name for ‘breast cancer 1, early onset’—is essentially a tumor suppressor: when it functions correctly, it controls…