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Did This Martian Volcano Once Host Life?

Extremophiles teach us that life is found in unlikely places, which is why scientists are trying to expand our definition of what a habitable environment is. This ancient Martian volcano could be a prime example. Above: A false-color view of Arsia Mons on Mars, including braided fluvial channels (seen in inset) from glacial deposits made…

Tor.Com Starts Its Own Book Imprint!

If you’ve been enjoying the stories and novellettes over at Tor.com, then you’ll be stoked to hear that Tor.com is starting its own book imprint, focusing on e-books and print-on-demand volumes. This means a lot more novellas and shorter novels in the same vein as those short stories. Top image: Stubby the Rocket in Space…

​Confessions Of A Former Young Earth Creationist

Young-Earth creationism is not only a form of faith, but also a set of beliefs that attempt to redefine scientific inquiry. David MacMillan, a former creationist blogger, has written an explainer to unravel these beliefs and highlight the challenges of debating creationist misconceptions. Over at the blog, Panda’s Thumb, MacMillan launches his series of explainers…

The Perfect Place To Put Futurama‘s “Shut Up And Take My Money” Picture

Okay, this may be the best use of the custom images on debit cards ever. You’ll always know if your cashier is a Futurama fan by their giggling. Redditor hth6565 shared the new design on their personal Visa card (with a banana for scale). Not all companies will let you pay with Fry, however. Several…

One Million Pounds of Plate Glass Went Into This Incredible Maze

What does 400 tons of pure glass look like? At the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art this month, you can find out—thanks to a new maze designed and built by the artist Robert Morris using 968,902 pounds of one-inch-thick glass. Last week, the Kansas City museum completed work on Morris’ Glass Labyrinth, which took two months…

Operation Avalanche Focuses On The CIA’s Role In The Space Race

Operation Avalanche is a quiet little film, but it just got a whole lot of our attention. The premise is being kept under wraps, but we do know that it’s allegedly about the CIA’s role in the 1960s Space Race with the Soviet Union. Go on… Coming Soon is reporting that Lionsgate Films has just…

A new Miami train station was unveiled today by All Aboard Florida, a privately financed passenger rail project that will connect Orlando to South Florida by refurbishing 235 miles of existing rail lines. This station designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is expected to open in 2016. [All Aboard Florida]

Lex Luthor’s Wealth Compared To The Real World’s Richest People

Everyone in Metropolis knows that Lex Luther is a very wealthy man, perhaps even the very wealthiest. But just where would he stand next to the real world’s richest people? After watching Neil Degrasse Tyson illustrate the size of Bill Gates’ fortune by calculating how much a second of his time was worth, some commenters…

With Defenders, Will McIntosh Goes Big

What do you do when telepathic aliens invade Earth? You can’t fight them: They know what you’re doing almost before you do. You can’t use robots against them, because they can’t improvise. You can’t surrender: They’re trying to take your place. To save themselves from the Lutyen invasion, humanity creates the Defenders. Based on a…

3D Printing an Entire Chair Is Easy When It’s One Big Puzzle

We’ve been promised that 3D printers will eventually be able to replicate almost anything we want. But how do you go about creating larger objects when your printer’s capacity is no larger than a toaster oven? The same way you can fit a Thomas Kinkade painting into a small cardboard box: You turn it into…

Even In The 1900s, Humans Were Obsessed With Photos Of Dogs In Clothes

Dogs have been our best friends for the last 15,000 years. So it shouldn’t be surprising that as soon as we invented the camera, we started taking wacky photos of dogs wearing glasses, hats, suits, ties and other gear. Here are the most adorable (and alarming) vintage photos of dogs wearing human clothing. https://gizmodo.com/brain-scans-show-that-dogs-are-as-conscious-as-human-ch-1442003302 A…

Amazing Reef Fish Glow in the Dark But Remain Invisible to Predators

Red light can’t penetrate far past the ocean’s surface, so researchers thought that most fish don’t perceive red light. But some reef fish have taken advantage of the absence of red light, using it to communicate without attracting the attention of their predators. Once you pass the first 10 to 20 meters of seawater, most…

THC May Help Protect Your Brain Against the Ravages of Meth

Turns out that smoking a bowl before going to town on some meth could keep your brains from scrambling themselves. Newly published research out of the University of Cagliari suggests that THC, the same cannabinoid compound that gets your stoned, could protect your brain from the inflammatory effects of methamphetamine use. Methamphetamine not only decimates…

Apple Just Hired the Two Smartest Music Moguls of Our Time

It’s official, Apple’s dropping $3 billion on a headphone empire. But more than a blockbuster headphone brand and a promising streaming music service, Apple is getting two of the smartest music and entertainment minds in the world. Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine work for Apple now, and that’s a potentially revolutionary combination. Beats by Dre…

These Are NASA’s (Ugly) New Astronaut Shoes

On Thursday, NASA is sending the astronauts on the International Space Station a new pair of shoes. These so-called ForceShoes are not for space walks. They’re actually a high tech measurement device that helps NASA scientists gain a better understanding of the effects that heavy loads have on astronauts’ bodies. ForceShoes sort of work like…

The Moment That Was Cut From The Temple Of Doom For Being Too Gruesome

If there’s one scene we all remember from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, it’s the priest Mola Ram pulling the beating heart from a man’s chest. But it turns out the filmmakers had something even gorier in store for that poor fellow—something too violent for the final film. Yahoo! Movies recently interviewed Nizwar…

“Even Though That Made No Sense Whatsoever, I Still Totally Loved It”

Sometimes the plot holes in a story are so egregious, you can’t help but get caught up in nit-picking it. But sometimes, a story makes no sense at all… and you just don’t care. It’s all good. You don’t really want to obsess over all the things that made no sense. What story gets (and…

Coral Creeps Up Island Slopes to Stay at the Surface

Volcanic islands can develop a fringing reef of coral that persists as the volcano submerges, transitioning first to a barrier reef and later to an atoll at the island sinks below the waves. But how does the coral manage to keep even with the sea surface? https://gizmodo.com/the-life-and-death-of-a-volcanic-island-1554228926 Moorea Island has a reef that is mostly…

A Tiny, Breathing Lung Made of Cancer Cells That Helps Test Chemo Drugs

One of the great tragedies of cancer medicine is when drugs work phenomenally in animal testing, but fail to deliver for human patients. As close as animal testing can get, it’s no substitute for the real thing—which makes this tiny, breathing artificial lung, grown from human lung cancer cells, so promising. Devised by a team…

Watch a Meteor Explode in Joshua Tree’s Night Sky

California’s desert parks provide some of the best opportunities to see the night sky as our distant ancestors did—a rich tapestry of stars, undiminished by the artificial light of civilization. Death Valley National Park, in fact, recently became the world’s largest certified International Dark Sky Park. Southern California’s Joshua Tree National Park hasn’t yet earned…