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“Let Them Fight”: Five New Godzilla Clips Will Make You Scream

We are very, very, very, very, very excited about the new Godzilla movie from Gareth Edwards. Very excited. And now we have five clips we can geek out over—full of plot details and Ken Watanabe saying, “LET THEM FIGHT!” Excellent. Watch. Godzilla hits theaters on May 16th.

New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority has signed a deal that means passengers will be able to buy tickets and present them to conductors using only their phones. There’s currently no word on quite when it will roll out.

Resurrection Delivered a Gut-Punching Season Finale

And it’s all Sheriff Fred’s fault. Turns out this whole season’s really been about him — and while it wasn’t anything you saw coming, his actions all made a surprising amount of sense. The finale was by far the best episode of the season. It was legitimately an excellent hour of television, and such an…

What Do You Do With Your Obsolete Technology?

The advancement of technology comes with a downside: What should we do with all of yesterday’s gear? For some things (the ones that still work fairly well) the answer is simple: You pass it along to someone else. But with the old tech that no one uses (8-tracks, for instance), the answer is not as…

Saturn’s Rings as a Cosmic Rainbow

You’ve never seen Saturn’s rings like this before. Captured using Cassini’s Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph detector, it shows the rings in the ultraviolet spectrum—and the result is incredibly colorful. The image shows the portion of the C-ring closest to Saturn on the left, with the B-ring beginning just right of center. Incidentally, the rings were named…

These shops sell Walking Dead merchandise in exchange for your blood

Working with blood banks in the US as well as countries in South America and Europe, a series of official Walking Dead pop-up stores will offer merchandise in exchange for donations of the red stuff. The more blood you give them to chill, the better the goodies you will be able to walk out with.…

A rare goblin shark was recently caught in the Gulf of Mexico. Measuring an astounding 18-feet long, this rare species of shark has only been seen in this region once before. The Florida Keys shrimp fisherman who caught it, Carl Moore, released it back into the ocean after snapping some photos. All images: Carl Moore/NOAA.…

DNA Sequences Can Trace Your Ancestors to Within 30 Miles

DNA sequencing can already tell us a lot about our ancestors—but now, a new technique developed by an international team of scientists allows them to pinpoint a person’s geographical origin—going back 1,000 years. The Geographic Population Structure (GPS) tool—slightly confusing, admittedly—beats previous best attempts to tie location to DNA. It can track populations back to…

Is Lupita Nyong’o Playing Asajj Ventress in Star Wars: Episode VII?

And there are a whole lot more wild rumors for Star Wars Episode VII where that came from. Marvel could be making another Incredible Hulk movie after Avengers 2. There are contradictory rumors about the fate of Superman in Superman Vs. Batman. And Eve Myles talks the return of Torchwood. Spoilers now! Top image: Star…

Giant New Zealand carnivorous snails are anything but slow

I’ve never seen a snail moving this fast in my life, but then I’ve never been to New Zealand where these creatures come from. The snails had to adapt to their isolation and became bigger and carnivorous. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

Why Toenails Turn Yellow

Have you ever seen the toenails of your grandfather and thought he might be a troll? Those yellow, misshapen and brittle nails tend to make small children cringe, and in response, he wears knee high black socks with sandals. Known as Onychomycosis, this unshapely blemish effects about 10% of the total population. 20% of people…

These Beautiful Martian Dunes Are Constantly Changing

The dunes of Mars are in a complete state of flux, and none more so that Nili Patera. The most active dune field on Mars is always changing—and so it’s constantly photographed by NASA’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. That instrument is aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and it allows an image to the captured…

Why Do Chinese URLs Use Numbers, Not Letters?

If, for whatever reason, you’ve ever spent much time on Chinese websites, you’ll know that they often use numbers over letters or other characters. So, 4399.com is a gaming site, 92.com deals with car trading, and 12306.cn sells train tickets. Why is that? New Republic explains why in this weirdly compelling article. Turns out, it’s…

Simulation of Saturn passing by Earth on a collision course to the Sun

The always cool Yeti Dynamics has released another brilliant scientific simulation: What would Earth’s sky look like if Saturn went off its orbit to race into the inner solar system on its way to the Sun and our planet was on its path? I just love these impossible but visually arresting scenarios. Of course, aside…

Extremely rare image shows bee and butterfly drinking crocodile tears

This image is so weird and rare that you may think it’s a bizarre photoshop. It’s not—it was taken by aquatic ecologist Carlos de la Rosa,who says it’s a extremely rare and unique photo. The butterfly and the bee drank the tears from a Caiman crocodilus for 15 minutes. There’s video too: According to De…

Young blood transfusions may be source of eternal youth

Two separate teams of scientists have announced that blood transfusions from young individuals make older individuals younger, fixing their hearts and curing aging brains. Speaking to the New York Times, Harvard Medical School’s professor of neurology Rudolph Tanzi, “these findings could be a game changer.” Tanzi, who is not associated to the studies, also said…

Are These Star Wars-esque Rental Homes Yub Nub or Bantha Poodoo?

What better day than Star Wars Day to start planning your next Star Wars-themed getaway? The vacation rental site HomeAway.com has selected several properties that they think serve as earthbound stand-ins for famous Star Wars sites. What do you think, Jedi Council of readers? Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s House, Tatooine To fulfill your fantasies…

This Is What Happens When You Turn a Street Into a Slip ‘n Slide

Closing streets to cars is one thing—how about flooding them with water and letting people slide down head first? Hundreds of Brits got to do just that when a busy street in Bristol was transformed into a fully operational water slide today. As expected, the photos are absolutely incredible. The slide was the idea of…

For These Tiny Frogs, a Pencil is a Log

A few very special frogs just hatched at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. They’re fairly unique among frogs, because they break out of their eggs as fully-formed tiny frogs, not as tadpoles. The Solomon Island leaf frogs, Ceratobatrachus guentheri, which are also known as triangle frogs, complete their tadpole stage fully inside the egg,…

NYC Cyclist Arrested for Trying to Film a Cop with His Phone

When 24-year-old Brooklyn resident Will Paybarah was stopped by police for running a red light on his bike on March 20, he was expecting a ticket or possibly just a warning—until he took out his phone. “When I tried to record my interaction with the officer I was arrested… in 10 seconds flat,” he tells…