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Comet ISON Approaches

Last night, potential “Comet of the Century” ISON brightened by an order of magnitude or more as it continued on its dive toward the Sun. That means it is now visible to the naked eye. This photograph, captured by astrophotographer Mike Hankey, shows the comet as it appeared this morning, in outburst, with multiple streamers.…

NSA Admits That Edward Snowden Stole Up to 200,000 Documents

It’s been nearly half a year since the first revelations from Edward Snowden’s leak made it into the press, but until now, we’ve been in the dark about exactly how big that leak was. Well, ladies and gentlemen, NSA Director General Keith Alexander is finally shining a light in that direction. On Halloween of all…

Which classic novel did you quit reading halfway through?

The greatest science fiction or fantasy novel is the one that speaks to you at the time you read it. So there’s nothing wrong with giving up on a book halfway through, even if it’s considered one of the genre’s all-time classics. Which acclaimed science fiction or fantasy book could you not manage to finish?…

This Double Decker Glass Table Moves Desktop Clutter One Level Down

There are those of us who prefer working at a desk that’s clean, free of clutter, and devoid of anything but the work we’re focusing on. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re ready for a monastic lifestyle where we have to give up all of our wordly possessions. Instead, this double decker Pili Table designed…

How a car mechanic’s invention could save thousands of women’s lives

An Argentine car mechanic named Jorge Odón has used a plastic bag as the centerpiece of a simple device that has the potential to save the lives of women whose babies have gotten stuck in the birth canal during labor. What’s incredible is that it’s taken this long for doctors to move beyond using often-deadly…

Did you know that the smelloscope from Futurama actually exists?

It may not reach other planets, but the smelloscope from Futurama exists and it’s called the Nasal Ranger Field Olfactometer. And it seems Denver is using it to hunt down pot plantations. https://gizmodo.com/nasal-ranger-smelloscope-will-save-denver-from-stinky-1464506344

What the hell is that strange blue shape coming out of this galaxy?

You are looking at the edge view of UGC 10288—a spiral galaxy located 100 million light-years away from Earth. UGC 10288 has been puzzling astronomers for a long time because of that weird thing coming out of it. Now, the mystery has been solved at last. New detailed radio data from the NRAO’s Jansky Very…

Now there’s another bird flu we have to be worried about

A woman in Taiwan has just contracted the H6N1 bird flu — a strain that scientists thought could not infect people. It now joins H5N1 and H7H9 on the list of viruses most likely to make life miserable for humanity. https://gizmodo.com/scientists-no-longer-banned-from-researching-deadly-mut-5978631 https://gizmodo.com/why-the-experts-are-so-worried-about-the-new-bird-flu-473500926 So here’s what we know: Back in May, a 20-year-old woman, who was…

Life scientists now have a preprint server all their own! Like the similarly named arXiv, the newly launched bioRχiv is a place where scientists can upload their research papers the minute they’re ready to share them with the world (that could be days, weeks or even months before their formal publication). But as the name…

“Nasal Ranger” Smelloscope Will Save Denver From Stinky Pot

Colorado’s newly legalized marijuana industry has had an unforeseen dark side: pungent dankness running wild on the noses of innocent citizens. Only a mechanical hero could save them. Call in the Nasal Ranger. Yes, in order to better investigate odor complaints, Denver Police are using a bizarre-looking nose telescope that quantifies the stinkiness of stinky…

A Rechargeable Sous Chef Whose Only Job Is To Stir

When you’re racing to get dinner on the table, the last thing you need is to get stuck at the stove stirring the gravy. And while few of us can afford our own dedicated sous chef, the $80 Stirio makes for a far more affordable kitchen assistant. With adjustable arms that clamp on to the…

A Dramatic Glimpse of Mars as it Appeared Billions of Years Ago

To illustrate how radically the face of Mars has evolved over the past several billion years, researchers from NASA’s MAVEN mission have put together a revealing new video showing a Red Planet that was once anything but. MAVEN, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN project, is a research mission and planned space probe primarily concerned…

Ultra is the weakest secret organization ever, on The Tomorrow People

Last week’s Tomorrow People saw Ultra raising its game. The organization dedicated to hunting down super-mutants actually showed some teeth — but this week, Ultra is weaker than ever. To the point where I’m starting to wonder if the boastful name is a case of overcompensation. Spoilers ahead… Seriously, there are moments in last night’s…

This animated history of the English language is wonderful

I didn’t mean to watch this entire thing, but dammit if I didn’t sit through all ten minutes (alright, technically 11 minutes and 20 seconds) of this fantastically witty, animated history of the English language. Created by the good folks at The Open University’s OpenLab, the animation is presented in ten “chapters,” beginning with an…

These Beautifully Realistic Flowers Are Actually Pure Code

Digital artist and interaction designer Daniel Brown continues to tweak and evolve his eye-popping series of computer-generated flowers, this time around commissioned by the Art Fund’s RENEW program for exhibition at the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum in Dundee, Scotland. The efflorescing clusters of code are, in effect, non-repeating mathematical models, just 1s and 0s colorfully…

The Most Exciting Stories About Worlds Ruled by One Gender

If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, then it would be several decades before someone created the space travel technology for men and women to finally meet. Perhaps that’s why so many writers, moviemakers and artists have imagined places where only one gender run their worlds. These stories illustrate that although men…

Syfy is prepping a Beowulf TV series

Does anyone want to see a Beowulf show without a naked Angelina Jolie? Syfy is banking on yes, and readying a fantasy series about everyone’s favorite 3,000-line poem. Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Syfy is currently in the process of adapting the great epic poem into a TV series. Matt Greenberg, of 1408 and Reign…

The chief science officer for the Allen Institute for Brain Science says that consciousness arises within any sufficiently complex information-processing system, whether it be worms or the Internet. It’s a modern take on an ancient concept: panpsychism. Wired’s Brandon Keim recently caught up with Christof Koch to learn more. Image: Bruce Rolff/Shutterstock.

Student Finds Way to Boost Conductivity 400x Totally by Accident

Like a modern Henri Becquerel, Washington State University doctoral student Marianne Tarun’s discovery came quite by accident. Her simple lab error has uncovered a new way to boost electrical conductivity of a crystal by 40,000 percent, simply by exposing it to light. Tarun had accidentally left a sample of strontium titanate out on a counter…

An iceberg the size of Singapore is now leaving Antarctica

New images by NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites last week show an insanely huge iceberg now leaving the continent of Antarctica after cracking from the Pine Island Glacier in July. Its size is “estimated to be 21 miles by 12 miles (35 km by 20 km) in size, roughly the size of Singapore.” The according…