Latest

Create an Apocalypse in Your Hometown, Using Google Maps

Oh, no! Has San Francisco’s fashionable Mission neighborhood been destroyed by plague and taken over by wildlife? That’s the fantasy you can have by using the awesome Urban Jungle Street View, which converts Google Street View scenes into post-apocalyptic landscapes. Here’s New York: Created by Swedish developer Einar Oberg, the app gives you a lovely…

If You Watch Only One Video About A Detachable Penis, Make It This One

Is sex as simple as “insert part A into slot B”? Probably not, at least when you consider the entire animal kingdom. The differing motivations of the sexes – at least from an evolutionary perspective – leads to tremendous diversity both in sexual behavior and in anatomy. In her talk at TED Global, Dr. Carin…

American Horror Story is Headed to the Carnival for its Fourth Season

We’ve known for a while that the fourth season of American Horror Story would be set at least partially in the 1950s, and now we know the theme. Cue the sword-swallowers and the tattooed ladies, because AHS is going to the carnival. https://gizmodo.com/american-horror-story-season-four-will-take-place-in-1502240720 During a recent installment of the Nerdist Writers Panel Podcast with Moira…

How Delivery Drones Could Save Lives in Africa

What the first thing you think of when you hear the word “drone?” It might be killing machines. Or reconnaissance quadcopters. Or maybe a honey bee. But for a countless number of people in Africa, it could be a flying packmule with life-saving cargo. https://gizmodo.com/this-is-where-drone-operators-kill-people-by-remote-con-1501895208 On Monday, the organizers of the Flying Donkey Challenge announced…

Are zombies drawn to fire like moths to a flame?

Zombies and moths may not seem terribly similar (fortunately! on both fronts), but a new Walking Dead fan-theory suggests that, when it comes to fire they might have more in common than we thought. Spoilers ahead, Walking Dead fans. In response to this week’s recap, commenters discussed the peculiar behavior of zombies when faced with…

Bracing for the Next Big Quake With L.A.’s New City Seismologist

The 4.4 jolt that shook Angelenos awake this morning was the latest reminder of our complicated relationship with the ground below us. But I had a different perspective of what was happening under my feet this time: Just before this latest earthquake, I took a walk along Hollywood’s fault lines with Dr. Lucy Jones, Los…

On Resurrection, The Best “Pastor Plays Video Games” Scene EVER

Last night was more of a bunch of loosely connected vignettes than an episode, but Pastor Tom had the best one of the bunch. Spoilers ahead. . . I’ll freely admit that it could just be that the other show I recap is Intelligence, but I’m actually enjoying Resurrection. There’s a deliberateness that’s very refreshing…

How Europeans Imagined Exotic Animals Centuries Ago, Based on Hearsay

People have been drawn to stories about exotic animals throughout our history. The further you go back in that history, the less likely those stories were accurate. Here is a gorgeous compendium of illustrations showing how people imagined real animals they had only heard about. Crocodiles from Liber Floridus (Book of Flowers), an encyclopedia by…

The Ecto-1, Mach V, KITT and More, Drawn as Transformers

Can we decree that every vehicle in pop fiction has to turn into a giant robot, please? Because artist Darren Rawlings has reimagined the greatest vehicles of TV, cinema, anime and more as Transformers, and the results are phenomenal. Here are just a few: Make sure to head to Rawlings’ DeviantArt page for more! [Via…

Wes Anderson Is Obsessed With Symmetry: A Supercut

Whether it’s Richie Tennenbaum’s face or the Fantastic Mr. Fox’s tree home, Wes Anderson is obsessed with symmetry. Don’t believe it? Just watch this supercut. That’s some very, very impressive attention to detail. [FastCo]

BBC America’s New Show Looks at “The Real History of Science Fiction”

BBC America has a new show debuting next month called “The History of Science Fiction.” And it looks pretty neat. The first episode airs on Saturday, April 19th at 10pm EST. From BBC America: From Star Wars to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and from Jurassic Park to Doctor Who, each program is packed with contributors…

Scientists resurrect the world’s oldest plant, a 1,500 year-old moss

A patch of moss that lay buried beneath the antarctic ice for over 1,500 years has been successfully revived by scientists, who say that it is now the oldest living plant ever recorded. Scientists have revived very old living organisms before (like this 30,000 year old virus that scientists recently thawed out from the permafrosts…

Happy birthday, Hubble! Time to watch starbirth

The Hubble Space Telescope is always a good source for astronomical eyecandy. Today is it’s 24th birthday, and to celebrate, NASA has released images of stars being born in the Monkey Head Nebula. https://gizmodo.com/watch-a-mass-of-stars-being-born-through-the-eyes-of-t-1545589620

Read Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity for yourself

Although the major excitement today is focused on Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, his Special Theory of Relatively is a quick and fascinating read that changed the way we think about the universe.. https://gizmodo.com/do-yourself-a-favor-and-read-einsteins-paper-on-special-1545377104

Japanese architect Shigeru Ban is taking a very, uh, literal approach to his $23.5 million Mount Fuji World Heritage Center. The building’s wooden lattice is designed to look like the volcano’s inverse—reflecting its silhouette in pool that will surround the building when it’s finished in 2016. [DesignBoom]

Is The “Young Adult” Boom Dwindling In Books As Well As Movies?

There’s a lot riding on Divergent, which comes out this Friday. Studios are hoping it’ll show there are still audiences for young-adult films other than Hunger Games, after the dismal performance of several other films. But also, says the Wall Street Journal, there’s hope it’ll rescue the struggling young-adult book market. For the past several…

This Electric Motorcycle Has Storage Space Instead of a Gas Tank

Unless you’re on some giant Harley designed for a long cruise across the country, a backpack is probably the most storage room you’ve got on a motorcycle. But besides the savings on fuel, an electric motorcycle has other advantages, like a giant hole where the gas tank and engine used to be—which this bike, the…

Physicist rejoices as he learns his Big Bang theory is correct

Today is a great day for science, humanity and Andrei Dmitriyevich Linde—one of the main authors of the inflationary universe theory that was confirmed today. Watch his emotions as assistant Professor Chao-Lin Kuo surprises him with the news of the evidence that supports a whole life of theoretical work. https://gizmodo.com/scientists-capture-first-ever-signal-from-the-beginning-1545578133 Kuo and his colleagues were…

Those Mesmerizing Robot Arms Are Back and Playing With Trains Now

It seems the best way to impress someone on the market for a set of industrial robotic arms is to demo them playing with kid’s toys. First DENSO Robotics did it with slot cars, and now ABB gets in on the action with this mesmerizing model train demo. https://gizmodo.com/i-cant-stop-staring-at-these-mesmerizing-robot-arms-1222648079 You’d think that demoing these IRB140…

900 Megapixel Portraits Turn the Human Face Into a Crazy Landscape

We’ve seen stitched together “gigapixel” photos made of a billion pixels before, but they tend to be reserved for huge landscapes. Photographer Daniel Boschung has taken absurdly high resolution methodology and applied it to a much smaller area: The human face. https://gizmodo.com/can-you-spot-the-hidden-easter-eggs-in-this-20-gigapixe-1509297350 Boschung’s “Face Cartographies” are captured by a robot that’s been programmed specifically for…