Latest

How did dinosaurs fight? Brian Switek explains over at National Geographic, highlighting work by researchers who are recreating dinosaur battles — with science! No, Dinobots are not involved.

Things get creepy in the first real Penny Dreadful trailer

There have been plenty of teasers, but this new video — with nearly a minute of actual footage, including actual monsters, Timothy Dalton, and a contortionist — is the best look yet at Showtime’s somewhat literary, vaguely historical supernatural horror series Penny Dreadful. Thoughts? [Via Geeks of Doom]

The “bizarre experiment” that became a flying jellyfish robot

Small flying robots often take design cues from the flapping wings of insects and birds. But this robot prototype, pictured above, doesn’t move like any wind-loving creature here on Earth — instead, it flies like the jellyfish swims. And the story of its invention is pretty weird. https://gizmodo.com/watch-a-spherical-robot-drone-fly-around-the-room-5855803 https://gizmodo.com/roboticists-discover-the-secret-of-insect-flight-and-i-476242076 The “flying jellyfish” wasn’t actually designed…

The 11 Best American-Designed Buildings of The Year

Every year, the American Institute of Architects invites its members—some 83,000 licensed architects—to enter the buildings they’ve designed in the past five years for an award. It’s about as solid an award as an architect can receive, and this year’s winners were just made public. The projects range from museums to train stations to hotels;…

Watch President Obama Outline NSA Reforms Live

At 11 AM President Obama is set to announce his reforms to the NSA’s expansive surveillance programs. Leaked information suggests he might be curtailing the agency’s spy powers significantly. What’s he going to announce? Follow along with the stream embedded below. https://gizmodo.com/reuters-obama-to-stop-nsa-spying-on-phone-records-with-1503325216

New Survey Supports the Theory that the Universe Is Infinite

New measurements from the Baryonic Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) study have charted the shape and size of our universe to within 1% accuracy. Above, David Schlegl, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and research team member, describes the flat, and probably infinite, Universe that the findings suggest. https://gizmodo.com/what-shape-is-the-universe-949025028 https://gizmodo.com/what-do-we-mean-when-we-say-the-universe-is-curved-1293595079 Via Brookhaven National Laboratory: The…

Most ATMs Are Still Running Windows XP–Which Is About to Die Off

The last ATM you used probably didn’t feel very cutting-edge compared to your smartphone. That’s because it’s probably running Windows XP, an operating system so old, Microsoft will stop supporting it in April. How did the once-futuristic automatic teller machine get so far behind? Fragmentation, basically. There are over 400,000 ATMs in the U.S., many…

It’s so smoggy in Beijing, the only way to see the sunrise is on a screen. An LED screen that displays advertisements in Tiananmen Square broadcast the sunrise yesterday, treating residents to the only view of the sun they’d see all day. New York Times correspondent Edward Wong tweeted the scene: Update: Our sister blog…

Chaosmos board game keeps you on the edge of cosmic catastrophe

In the board game Chaosmos, the Chaos Clock counts down to the complete collapse of the universe. Hidden on some desolate planet protected by traps and trickery is an artifact that can save the cosmos — but you’re not the only one after it. Chaosmos is an original board game in which players play aliens…

Gorgeous underwater sand dunes (or how Earth never ceases to amaze me)

The underwater world is a strange and haunting one. This NASA Earth Observatory photograph captures the ethereal beauty of underwater sand dunes in the Bahamas. Tides and ocean currents shape the underwater sand much like wind on land, but the result is just different enough to be otherworldly. NASA first published this image thirteen years…

Fix Every Gmail Annoyance with This Awesome Chrome Extension

Spend too much time rooting around in your Gmail inbox but then somehow manage to miss that one important email when it actually comes in? It’s happened to all of us. But if you set up the awesome Chrome extension Checker Plus for Gmail it never has to happen again. Programmed by Jason Savard, Checker…

Come on in, GIFs! We’re having a party

It’s time for our weekly GIF Party, and you’re all invited, along with all your GIF friends! What did you do this week? Did you start a new project, finish something up, or maybe just found a new favorite GIF? Tell us about it, or just send out your favorite GIFs to mingle in the…

Student Rickrolls his teacher in this ingenious quantum physics essay

We’ve seen creative Rickrolls before, but this one takes the cake. Physics student Sairam Gudiseva Rickrolled his teacher by surreptitiously inserting every word of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” into — of all things — a quantum physics essay that still makes perfect sense. This had to have been tedious work. I can’t…

Mr. Potato Head Homer: Let’s Play D’oh

If you’re old enough to remember when The Simpsons was just a series of animated shorts on the The Tracey Ullman Show, you’ll probably feel even older when you realize that as of this year the show has been on the air for a quarter of a century. And what better way to celebrate its…

Tom Hiddleston is an extremely naked vampire in Only Lovers Left Alive

The sound you hear? It’s the internet exploding, thanks to the first trailer for Jim Jarmusch’s new horror film Only Lovers Left Alive. It’s about a centuries-long love affair between two gorgeous vampires, played by Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton, who connect when Hiddleston plans to commit suicide. Like folks didn’t carnally love Hiddleston enough without…

Leaked Images of New Olympus OM-D Show Smaller But Similar Body

Last year saw the release of the Olympus OM-D EM-1, a body built for pros with a huge grip and tons of bells and whistles. It looks like Olympus is starting out 2014 with another OM-D body, this time built for a slightly less advanced tier of buyers. These leaked images show the goods. https://gizmodo.com/olympus-om-d-e-m1-review-robust-utilitarian-and-wond-1379465592…

This Is the World’s First Working Cell Made From Plastic

Scientists have long been toiling to create artificial life, managing to produce man-made cell walls and even synthetic DNA. But now, a team of chemists has produced a functioning cell made from polymers. This is the first ever eukaryotic cell—that just means it contains a nucleus and other sub-units known as organelles within its membrane—to…

27 Amazing Images From the Depths of Scientific Labs

As an image-driven person, I often find myself deeply lost and buried in the vast online libraries of universities and research centers. Scientists just love to show off all the big and shiny machinery they work on. Even if I do not completely understand what they are doing, I love hanging on their newsfeed and…

Will the first Amazing Spider-Man spin-off star a semi-reformed baddie?

Max Landis wants to add a little Cthulhu to a Houdini biopic. True Blood has recast James. The movie based on Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life has a director. Learn how The Purge 2 will turn the first movie’s premise on its head. Plus watch brand new trailers for The CW’s The 100 and…

Rock mysteriously appears in front of the Mars Opportunity rover

Left: a photo taken 3528 days after the Opportunity rover arrival to Mars. Right: the exact same spot 12 Mars days later. Notice the difference? NASA JPL scientists did too: “It’s about the size of a jelly doughnut. It was a total surprise, we were like ‘wait a second, that wasn’t there before, it can’t…