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NASA plans a robotic mission to search for life on Europa

It looks like it’s finally going to happen, an actual mission to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa — one of the the solar system’s best candidates for hosting alien life. Yesterday, NASA announced an injection of $17.5 billion from the federal government (down by $1.2 billion from its 2010 peak). Of this, $15 million will be…

Major Hints for X-Men, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Orphan Black!

Hugh Jackman mulls an eventual Wolverine recast. How will ScarJo’s pregnancy affect Avengers 2? Check out new promos for Captain America 2 and Divergent, along with some Orphan Black teasers. Plus the first plot details for Continuum season 3. Spoilers now! X-Men Even though Hugh Jackman’s still mulling over doing another Wolverine movie, he’s aware…

Entire NBA Game Movements, Visualized

The NBA recently announced that the players of all 30 teams—and the balls they use!—would have tracking devices installed to analyze player movements during games. Now, the first dribles of the fascinating data are available. Fathom Information Design has taken a look at some of the early data from an Oklahoma City versus San Antonio…

Facebook Messenger is finally available on Windows Phone—a mere two years after it made its way to iOS and Android.

All the World’s Land Mammals Compared By Weight

Ever wondered how humans stack up to cows, pigs or elephants if you were to gather ’em all up and weigh them? Wonder no longer, because this chart shows exactly that. Created by XKCD’s Randall Munroe, this visualization shows how the total weight of various land mammals stack up against each other. Each square represents…

How Zuckerberg Courted and Won WhatsApp

How do you woo one of the world’s biggest messaging apps? Flirty emails, whisky and billions of dollars, as it turns out. Forbes has taken a look at the relationship between Mark Zuckerberg and WhatsApp’s Jan Koum on the run-up to the $19 billion takeover. You can read the whole thing over on Forbes, but…

John Gruber believes that iOS 7.1 should ship any day now—because the app required to stream Apple’s SXSW iTunes Festival, which starts in a week, requires the new OS. Let’s see!

Yahoo to Stop You Logging In With Google and Facebook IDs

Use your Google or Facebook account to log in to any Yahoo services? Not much longer you don’t: s0on, you’ll need a Yahoo sign-in to access any of Yahoo’s products. The method of simply using a Google or Facebook account to log in to Yahoo’s services has been available for years now—but not for much…

NASA: 100-foot asteroid will fly by Earth today closer than the Moon

Surprise! NASA just issued a last minute asteroid notice: Today, a 100-foot (30 meter) asteroid called 2014 DX110 is going to fly by Earth closer than the Moon. The closest point will be 217,000 miles (about 350,000 kilometers) at around 4PM Eastern Standard Time. I love how they rush to downplay these close encounters of…

The most hilarious True Detective montage yet stars Princess Leia

If you haven’t watched True Detective yet, go start watching it ASAP. If you haven’t watched the last episode, run and watch it now. But if you have seen it, then go ahead and watch the following video. It’s the most hilarious True Detective montage yet. The horror. The Yellow King is actually Carry Fisher.…

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: #PostModem

Good luck wrapping your brain around this one folks, it’s easily the weirdest thing we’ve seen on the Internet in recent memory. From the creators of The Adventures of Chris Bosch in the Multiverse, The Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke, and How to Hide from Cameras comes, “A comedic satirical sci-fi pop-musical based…

This chain smoking, gun loving guy built a nuclear reactor in his home

He chain smokes. He loves his guns. And he almost looks homeless. But he’s actually pretty damn awesome. Meet Doug Coulter. A gunsmith who’s also an amazing DIY engineer. So amazing that he’s built a nuclear fusion reactor in his basement. Yup. Motherboard visited Coulter to see his DIY fusion reactor and to see how…

Whoa, watch a street performer do mind-bending tricks from his POV

It’s like magic. A street performer defies gravity by contact juggling a sphere in front of a crowd and it’s absolutely mesmerizing to see from his point of view. You feel the pressure he has to perform, the focus he has in his movements and the art of it all. I’ll be giving you money…

Genius fish human solves three Rubik’s Cubes underwater in one minute

I don’t have the brain capacity or the finger dexterity or the lung capacity to do any of these things because I am not a genius fish human. Kevin Hays, on the other hand, is probably a fish human. Powered by the brain of a computer. With the fingers of robots. Oh and he’s a…

How to make a mini crossbow with just a bottle cap and popsicle sticks

Here’s some fun you can have at home with little to no effort: make a mini crossbow from a bottle cap, two popsicle sticks and a rubber band. You can fire off flaming arrows, toothpicks, skewers, Q-tips and more with just your thumb. Dave Hax shows us how and the process is rather easy. Just…

Human Centipede 3 will feature a “XXL Human Centipede”

A few thoughts about this first teaser image for Human Centipede 3: 1) They’re making Human Centipede 3, because of course they are. 2) Dieter Laser was fantastic in the first film and sorely missed in the second, so it’s good that he’s back. 3) I just like writing the name “Dieter Laser.” This image…

The horror of what Marty Hart saw on the last True Detective revealed

If you’ve been watching True Detective, you know that in this past Sunday’s episode, ex-detective Marty Hart (played by Woody Harrelson) saw a video so upsetting that he completely freaked out. Thanks to Rifftrax’s Conor Lastowka, we can now reveal the horrible truth of what Hart saw.

San Francisco, 1894 & 2014

Geomorphology is the process of how landforms get their shapes. It’s a lot easier to do with access to satellite imagery. No satellites in 1894, but pair this map with modern Landsat photos to track how San Francisco Bay Area has changed in the intervening 120 years. 1894 cadastral map. This cadastral map of the…

This Beyoncé Emoji Music Video Is Shockingly Well Done

The idea is simple. Take a hit song, make a music video using only emoji, wait for the lulz. In the case of the movie Jesse Hill recently uploaded to Vimeo, the hit song is Beyoncé, and the emoji are hilarious. This feels like it’s going to be a trend, if it isn’t already a…

US Government Says Time Capsule Coins Weren’t Stolen From Them In 1901

“There is nothing connecting these coins to any theft from the Mint,” U.S. Mint spokesman Adam Stump told SF Gate. “We’ve done quite a bit of research, and we’ve got a crack team of lawyers, and trust me, if this was U.S. government property we’d be going after it.” Well, so much for that theory.…