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We’ve Discovered the First Asteroid with Rings

Gas giant planets like Saturn and Jupiter have rings — and now, we’vediscovered a tiny, distant rock that has its own two rings. Chariklo is a centaur — half-asteroid, half-comet — and the way it got its rings is a fascinating story. https://gizmodo.com/double-ring-around-the-asteroid-1552531752

Max Brooks On Why We Love Zombies — And Why We Might Stop

Zombies are having an epically long cultural moment, but why? Author Max Books explains just what’s behind that fascination — and when we might expect it to end. In a AMA with reddit yesterday, Brooks explained his thoughts on the apocalyptic anxieties that were fueling the surge of interest in zombie stories, both now and…

Area 51 Black Jets uncovers the history of America’s most secret airbase

It’s a place steeped in mythology, where the most astonishing machines on Earth were tested — an area so secret that the government didn’t officially acknowledge its existence until 2013. Now, Bill Yenne’s book Area 51 Black Jets lifts the veil on top secret projects from the 1950s to today. Bill Yenne has written numerous…

Guy With Phony Twitter Tricks Entire Town Into Thinking He’s Mayor

Recently, the residents of Stafford received a bit of a shock when they realized that their amiable, beloved mayor was actually—not. As it turns out, their devout leader was just some dude with a fake Twitter account and a fancy-looking mayoral chain. God bless the internet. Discovered by The Daily Mail, James Billington, the faux-mayor…

A Rugged Touchscreen Watch That Looks To the Sun For Charging

Long before Samsung’s Galaxy Gear entered the picture with its colorful LCD display, Tissot introduced a touchscreen watch to help alleviate button clutter. It was far from what we would now consider ‘smart’, but it made accessing the T-Touch’s various functions a lot easier. And while the latest version still doesn’t connect to your smartphone,…

Icebridge & the Polar Bear

The NASA IceBridge mission has been going on for 4 years, measuring ice thickness using LiDAR. Along with the usual assortment of stunning ice-photography, last week had a delightful surprise: a giant inflatable polar bear. The inflatable mascot took shelter in the mission’s hangar to dry out on the morning of March 19th. How large…

A Car Charger For Everyone, Air Purifiers, BOGO Jamba Juice [Deals]

This particular car charger has a built-in MicroUSB cord, in addition to a 2.4A USB port, making it perfect for couples and families with a mix of iOS and Android devices. Anker 24W Car Charger | $9 | Promo Code ANK24WCC $200 Toys R Us Gift Card | $180 You don’t have to break into…

I Want To Believe In X-Files Creator Chris Carter’s New Area 51 Series

Is Chris Carter returning to his alien conspiracy roots? His long-in-development series, based on Annie Jacobsen’s best-selling book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base, is finally in official development thanks to AMC. It’s not hard to see why AMC would find a show about Area 51 from the guy who…

This Backyard Hideaway For a Pianist Will Make Every Musician Drool

The backyard shack is a fantasy of every hobbyist. If you are a hobbyist with some scrilla, however, you can make your dream a reality—which is exactly what these homeowners/pianists in Japan did, by building an awesome sound-proof shack for their pianos. Designed by Ni&Co Architects, Piano House is home to an upright and a…

The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles look really gritty and huge now

The official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie trailer is out. You can see how the new turtles look—gritty and gigantic—in detail, as well as Megan Fox and Will Arnett. Will Michael Bay destroy your childhood dreams once again, like he did with Transformers? SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

A Build-It-Yourself Modular Jetski That Fits in Your Car’s Trunk

As fun as a jetski be when you get on the water, they can also be a bit of a pain to haul around if you don’t pay for a permanent dock. So a bunch of designers in Wisconsin created the BomBoard, a lightweight and highly portable personal watercraft that can be easily disassembled and…

Arrow Turns Me to Villainy

“Birds of Prey” brings Arrow’s resident doe-eyed nutcase back to town. This starts a cascade of shady ethical decisions, all of which I thought could be resolved by going evil. The island flashback revolves mostly around Sara’s decisions. Slade wants to get going, but the ship is disabled. There’s a moment when he stares thoughtfully…

Microsoft Office Finally Comes to the iPad Today, And It’s Free(mium)

It’s coming up on a year since the original release of Microsoft Office for iOS, but in all that time there’s been no iPad-specific version to be found. And now it’s here (for free, to try) as of two o’clock this afternoon, as a gift from Microsoft’s new cloud-guru CEO Satya Nadella. https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-office-for-ios-complete-video-walkthrough-an-513400475 Just like…

10 Movies That Were Made Worse By Reshoots

Movie-making is a bizarre and chaotic process. Sometimes, the flurry of rewrites and added footage can result in an unlikely masterpiece. But sometimes, test audiences randomly dislike a film, and this leads to ill-advised reshoots. Here are 10 science fiction and fantasy movies that had new footage added, which made them worse. 1) I Am…

The Man Who Collects the World’s Rarest Architectural Artifacts

For Evan Blum, it started as a hobby when he was young. His father, an architect specializing in reuse, exposed him to the world of architectural antiques—and it wasn’t long before Evan’s own collection had outgrown the space he lived in. Today, 41 years later, it’s how he makes his living. I walked into The…

The Latest Mining Boom? Plants That Eat Metal And Scrub The Soil Clean

Plants that eat metal sound like a biological impossibility. But these hungry little guys exist, sucking tiny bits of toxic metal from the soil. They don’t just clean the Earth, either—they can actually mine bits of gold and nickel for use by humans. It’s called phytomining, and it’s the subject of a fascinating story in…

Are You An Endurance Athlete? Prepare To Have Your Day Ruined.

To everyone who thinks that training for a marathon means being able to cram your face with any and as much food you damn well please – we have some unfortunate news for you. Above: Runners indulge in pizza during the 2011 NYC Pizza Run. The Wall Street Journal has published a disquieting piece about…

Western Digital Crams Two-Disk RAID Into Portable Thunderbolt Drive

The new MyPassport Pro from Western Digital is the world’s first bus-powered portable hard drive to offer two disks with RAID capability for blazing fast, grab-and-go storage. Available in a 2-terabyte model for $300, or a 4-terabyte model for $430, the MyPassport Pro offers speeds up to 233 MB/s. That should be a boon to…

Can pay-to-play mind games like those offered by Lumosity really boost your brain power? According to Quartz’s Ilia Blinderman, the scientific evidence is scant. “The prospect of honing your mental acuity aside,” he writes, “scientists have yet to find conclusive evidence that brain training works.”

A Closer Look At The Evil Virus That Kills Humanity In The Last Ship

In Michael Bay’s new TV show The Last Ship, a deadly virus threatens to wipe out the entire human race — except for Eric Dane, Adam Baldwin, and the other people on a single Navy ship. Here’s an exclusive new promo which shows the oozy nastiness of this virus, up close. Here’s the details about…