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Use sound waves to make personalized jewelry

Go to this website, pick a material, send in an audio file. Get back jewelry in shape of the sound wave you gave them. It’s simple, and oddly beautiful. Bza.biz offers all sorts of materials and sizes for you to choose from. The shapes are made from the arrangement of differently diametered disks to recreate…

This Week’s Top Comedy Video: Spielberg Missed The Mark With E.T.

The Onion’s Peter K. Rosenthal takes a look back at Steven Spielberg’s 1982 classic E.T., and comes away with a less-than-glowing review. The movie, Rosenthal maintains, did viewers a great disservice, and missed a crucial opportunity, in never once showing the creature that gave the movie its title. Confused? Just watch and all will be…

Microsoft’s Having a Rough Day Thanks to the Syrian Electronic Army

Today, Microsoft’s official blog and the @XBoxSupport and @MSFTnews Twitter accounts were hacked, the latter sending out anti-Microsoft messages which have since been deleted. The Syrian Electronic Army is taking credit for the attack, but Microsoft says the situation is under control and no customer data was compromised. The first hacked tweets went out early…

Do Regular People Actually Care About CES?

The past week at the 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show, we saw a ton of cool, crazy, and downright unbelievable technology. Inevitably, in this orgy of tech nerdliness, some of what we saw will have a huge impact, while some will be doomed to vaporware status. But for the normal, non-tech-blogger consumer, does CES really…

No but really, why do we all burp and fart so much?

What makes humans so damn gassy? In a recent installment of SciShow, Hank Green explores the science behind our bodies’ various “gaseous emissions.” Complement with: Why does coffee make you poop? When people explode during colonoscopies Why can farts be set alight?

Helix will definitely freak you out — but will it stay gold?

Helix is the new Fringe-style thriller series from Syfy, featuring an unregulated Arctic research facility, a black goo zombie virus, and menacing scientists with glowing eyes. Which sounds great. But it also suffers from some clunky, old fashioned scifi clichés. Let’s ponder this show’s possible fate. Spoilers ahead! It’s always hard to judge whether a…

Why does Popular Science have to be so… science-y?

The latest issue of Popular Science features some counterintuitive commentary from one Bob “Words-Are-Hard” Quackenbush. I think what Bob is saying is that the print edition of PopSci could do with way more GIFs. At least one or two per page. Who needs words when you have, say, looping animations of carnivorous caterpillars? https://gizmodo.com/a-guide-to-the-ravenous-hellbeast-that-is-the-carnivoro-1032957256 https://observationdeck.kinja.com/the-big-problem-with-popular-science-magazine-1499388725

I could watch this time-lapse of Jupiter (and Io) all day long

A redditor by the name of bubbleweed shot this time-lapse of Jupiter moving in relation to its moon, Io, over the course of five and a half hours, and boy howdy is it beautiful. https://gizmodo.com/10-moons-every-person-should-know-5892559 https://gizmodo.com/behold-the-first-ever-geologic-map-of-volcanic-moon-io-5895256 The looping animation is captivating in its simplicity – not that there isn’t a lot to observe in the…

This Electronic Sleep Apnea Cure Is Like Auto-Pilot for Breathing

Sleep apnea increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. But the treatment, wearing a CPAP mask to bed, is so uncomfortable that many patients abandon it. Now, research in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine shows that a pacemaker-like electronic implant could reduce symptoms by nearly 70%, by directly stimulating the muscles in…

Chewbacca Actor Peter Mayhew Unloads Stockpile of Star Wars Set Photos

Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca in the original Star Wars, took to Twitter Thursday night and unleashed a veritable troveof annotated behind-the-scenes photos from the original trilogy. Some of these shots you’ll no doubt recognize, but many of them were new to us – like this ridiculously adorable photo of 11-year-old Warwick Davis! Many, MANY…

Disquiet: 15, 10 & 5 Years Ago This Week (2014.02)

Post-cellphone raves, Monolake interview, “The Headphonist.” This would be roughly the week of January 6 through January 12. 5 Years Ago (2009): I wrote about the 246 and Counting exhbit, which had closed the previous Sunday at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. By my rough estimate, exactly one of those 246 pieces had…

Star Wars toys photos look more realistic than the real Star Wars

I love the work of Finnish artist Vesa Lehtimäki aka Avanaut, a brilliant illustrator and photographer who likes to take pictures of his kids’ toys in his spare time. Check out these series of Star Wars toys set in the real world. Some of them look so real that you may think he actually build…

Scientists at work: stuck in the Antarctic ice we set out to study

Physical Oceanographer Erik van Sebille recounts his experience aboard the recently rescued Australasian Antarctic Expedition. Top Photo via Intrepid Science Antarctica is a desolate place. That much we know, but nothing prepares you for it until you actually get there. It’s cold, windy and lonely. Everything about it is the exact opposite of my normal…

Beautiful footage of SpaceShipTwo’s latest supersonic test flight

Virgin Galactic’s space plane, SpaceShipTwo, finished its third rocket-powered test flight yesterday, breaking the sound barrier and reaching an altitude of 71,000 feet – the loftiest in a spate of recent test-runs. Here for your enjoyment is a highlight reel of yesterday’s flight. https://gizmodo.com/watch-the-virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-test-flight-f-1265129729 https://gizmodo.com/this-unbelievable-image-of-virgin-galactics-spaceshipt-471817306 Via the Virgin Galactic news brief: In command on the…

14 Absurd Ads From Before We Knew Cigarettes Could Kill You

Fifty years ago today, in 1964, the US Surgeon General released one of the most progressive documents on smoking of its time, stating definitively that, yes, smoking tobacco can indeed be fatal. And with it, the Untied States’ cigarette culture began its (often frustratingly, grudgingly slow) overhaul from one of hipness and health to shame…

Watch this fish snag a bird OUT OF MIDAIR

Bird eats fish? No big deal. Fish eats bird by jumping from a lake to grab it, mid-flight, and drag it back into the water? YES. That is amazing. For decades, African tigerfish have been rumored to leap from the water in active, predatory pursuit of low-flying birds. Now, for the first time ever, scientists…

This week was all about CES 2014, the annual show where we get wowed by the hottest, newest, craziest tech products, and hope that we’ll actually be able to buy them someday. Still, it wasn’t all glitz and gadgets this week — there were plenty of smart tech reads to get us thinking beyond the…

Rumor has it Windows 9 (codenamed “Threshold”) will be revealed at BUILD 2014, with a target delivery date in April 2015. [WinSuperSite via TechMeme]

Video Gaming’s Future, This Week’s Ice Age, Michael Bay Freakout, More

CES 2014 is in the history books, and this week’s tech extravaganza brought us tons of cool stuff to drool over. But the week wasn’t solely about new tech — there was some cold weather, did you hear? That, and so much more, makes up the best stories we wrote this week. Check ’em out!…

This is how map projections warp your understanding of geography

How distorting are map projections? Here’s what four commonly used systems of projection do to a human head. From the 1921 publication Elements in Map Projection comes this striking demonstration of “the distortion and exaggeration inherent in various systems of projection.” Preserving the relative size and shape of the globe’s assorted land masses on a…