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This Is Outrageous: The Jem Movie Is Filming In Three Weeks?

We’ve waited 29 years for a live action Jem movie. But now every piece of news we hear about this project makes us want to rip out our pink hair and weep. The new Jem movie announced last month is now filming in three weeks! How is this possible? What is going on? Where are…

One Map Showing Where the Water Shortages Will Hit

When we talk about a future of drought and water shortages, we’re not just talking about the amount of water. We’re also talking about how it’s distributed — a feature that this world map of the per capita renewable water resources in each country illustrates nicely. The map, which is the work of the UN’s…

150 Years Ago, People Watched Competitive Walking Instead of Baseball

If it was 1874, instead of hitting your local baseball diamond tonight, you’d be grabbing a few friends and heading to a competitive walking match. Yes, walking was a national pastime, according to author Matthew Algeo: “Watching people walk was America’s favorite spectator sport.” The sport was known as “pedestrianism,” and Algeo has written an…

Adorable 5-Year-Old Discovers Bonehead Xbox Vulnerability

Five-year-old Kristoffer Von Hassel’s parents didn’t want him getting into the grown-up games on the family’s Xbox, so they put the gory stuff behind a password. But Kristoffer’s an inquisitive little guy, and he blew right past the parental safeguard—and discovered a pretty silly Xbox security flaw in the process. San Diego’s 10News explains how…

Watch the City of Los Angeles Metastasize into Sprawl

Over the past hundred years, Los Angeles has grown from a tiny desert city to a sprawl of suburbs that stretch deep inland and down the southern coastline of California. In this quietly disturbing video, you can watch the city creeping outward over time. This is just one of three visualizations from NYU’s Stern Urbanization…

Erosion in a Martian Crater

This well-preserved crater on Mars features evidence of mass wasting — reoccurring slope linea formation. Material is being eroded from the high-elevation crater lip, forming shifting gullies into the basin below. Two photographs from HiRISE on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are blended together to produce this high-resolution digital terrain model (DTM). The rainbow colours indicate…

Amazon Fire TV Review: A Fast Ride That’ll Cost You

Take your pick of streaming devices—there are already plenty out there. Amazon says its new Fire TV can best every Roku, Chromecast, and Apple TV in the land on speed, ease of use, and a treasure box of extras. In most cases, Fire TV delivers on those promises. But it comes at a price. What…

Astronomers Publish Study On Extraterrestrial Zombies

While some scientists fritter away their time searching for extraterrestrial life, two astronomers have performed a genuine public service for Earth by calculating the likely number of nearby planets inhabited by the undead. The study—written by Stephen Kane (who divides his time between San Francisco State University and the Center for Global Extinction Pandemic Control)…

The Gorgeous Tics And Errors of Laser Scanning Gone Wrong

Matthew Shaw and William Trossell, the London-based duo known as ScanLAB Projects, continue to push the envelope of laser-scanning technology, producing visually stunning and conceptually intricate work that falls somewhere between art and practical surveying. Their work also often has an unexpected political dimension, as they have scanned concentration camp sites, designed insurgent objects for…

10 Shocking Ways the Second World War Could Have Ended Differently

Decisions during wartime are monumental things. Each move and countermove has the potential to change the course of history. Here are ten shocking ways the Second World War could have unfolded differently than it did. Listed in rough chronological order. 1. Germany Invades Britain Instead of the Soviet Union Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union…

The Eye-Watering Science Packed in a Can of Tear Gas

Tear gas is a relatively modern invention—a non-lethal repellant developed from the killer chemical weapons of World War I. But each canister relies on the fascinating chemistry of some ancient compounds and reactions. Wired gives us a look inside, without all the coughing and choking. Turns out there’s a tricky balance in the equation. If…

This Is Why You Should Always Use the Parking Brake

Thank god for security cameras. Otherwise, we might never have been able to bear witness to this incredible scene of a FedEx delivery gone horribly wrong. Hopefully there wasn’t anything fragile on that truck (unlikely), but lucky for this guy, that tree saved him from any real damage. And he can at least take solace…

Researchers Found a New, Easy Way to Turn Graphite Into Diamond

Since graphite—the dark material used in regular old pencils—and diamonds are both made from carbon, it’s technically feasible to turn the former into the latter. You just need to apply a little pressure—about 150,000 times what the atmosphere on Earth’s surface is like. But researchers at Stanford University claim to have found a shortcut. After…

Scientists been warning about human-caused climate change for at least 36 years. One of the earliest articles appeared in the February 1978 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and is now available online with contemporary commentary.

Watch L.A., Paris and São Paulo Grow In These Pretty Visualizations

Paris is a bloodshot eyeball, São Paulo spreads out like a watercolor, and L.A. is a glorious mess. You can see how three very different metropolises expand and sprawl in these gorgeous animations produced as part of NYU’s Stern Urbanization Project, examining the growth of cities. Paris The quintessential Old World city, Paris is a…

Captain America 2 Is One Of The Best Action Movies I’ve Ever Seen

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a brilliant action movie, that serves up a huge dose of wish fulfillment along with its bravura fight scenes. The wish fulfillment isn’t just being a face-kicking badass and blowing shit up, but the notion that we could all live in Steve Rogers’ world, where political conundrums are simple.…

9 Ingenious Urban Hacks To Make the City Smarter

Did you know a bike rack can become a fold-down seat? Or that you can charge your phone at sign posts? Or that a barricade is easily repurposed as a bench? These are just some of the small but imaginative hacks that make the concrete jungle a slightly more delightful and welcoming place. Rotten Apple…

Amazon Fire TV Teardown: Rock Solid Guts But Expect Some Heat

So, you have your eye on Amazon’s shiny new $100 streaming box, which may just be the fastest smart TV you’ve ever met. But what lurks beneath its sleek exterior? Thanks to iFixit, you don’t need to wonder any longer. The guys have gotten hold of the new Fire TV streaming box and torn it…

New “Unbreakable” Encryption Is Inspired By Your Insides

A new form of encryption promising to be “highly resistant to conventional methods of attack” could make our digital lives more secure—and it’s all inspired by the way our heart and lungs coordinate their rhythms by passing information between each other. Researchers from the University of Lancaster, UK, were working to understand the complex interactions…

This Ridiculously Accurate Clock is the New U.S. Time Standard

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has unveiled a new atomic clock, and boy howdy is it accurate. Dubbed NIST-F2, the clock uses a fountain of cesium atoms to determine the length of a second, and will neither gain nor lose a second in 300 million years of operation, making it three times as…