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Read a chapter from Mira Grant’s intense new novel Parasite

Mira Grant, author of the Newsflesh series that began with Feed, is back with a new biotech horror series. Parasite, the first novel, comes out this month — and it’s an incredible, disturbingly plausible tale of what happens to a world where medical treatments have minds of their own. Here’s the blurb: A decade in…

Garmin’s D2 GPS Watch Puts an Entire Cockpit on a Pilot’s Wrist

A lot of watches claim to be designed for use by pilots, but just because they have an orange backlight to preserve night vision doesn’t mean they’re truly useful for aviation. That’s not the case with Garmin’s new D2 GPS watch, though. It seemingly puts an entire cockpit’s worth of instrumentation and data on a…

Earth’s Fastest Electric Car Just Keeps Getting Quicker

While cars like the Nissan Leaf and Tesla S are bringing electric vehicle technology mainstream, a team of student researchers are driving that technology to its very limit. The result: a record-shattering 300 mph bullet car that runs without a sip of gasoline. The Buckeye Bullet is a series of alternate-fuel vehicles designed and built…

We were getting Star Wars sequels even before Lucas sold it to Disney

Apparently Star Wars: Episode VII was not Disney’s idea. According to his son Jett, George Lucas was outlining future installments to the Star Wars saga a full year before Lucasfilm was sold to Disney — and Jett had more sequel secrets to reveal, too. Jett talked a lot about his father’s involvement with the sequels…

Breakthrough: The world’s first net-positive nuclear fusion reaction

In order for fusion power plants to be feasible, they have to produce more energy than they consume. It’s a challenge that’s confounded scientists for years. But researchers at the National Ignition Facility just made it happen. Nuclear fusion is the process of making a single heavy nucleus from two lighter nuclei. The change in…

Scientists reveal chicken nuggets are less than 50% chicken meat

A recently published study reveals that striated muscle is “not the predominate component” in the nuggets from two national fast food chains. In other words: chicken nuggets are less than 50% chicken meat. But… then… what “components” make up the other 50+ percent? Top photo by Stéfan via flickr “Fat was present in equal or…

Behold: Adorable Hand-Drawn GIFs That Explain Higgs-Boson

You hear about the Higgs-Boson all the time, but do you know what it is? If the answer is no, fear not: It’s complex and confusing. Luckily, the New York Times has a beautiful, animated explainer to break it down for you in layman’s terms. [New York Times]

Google’s Chromecast wonder-dongle is now available outside the US! Order through Amazon, and you can have it shipped internationally, even though Google still isn’t formally offering it outside the States. [Amazon via DroidForums]

Hunger Games: Catching Fire director promises NO SHAKY CAM

Francis Lawrence, director of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire revealed that he’s ditching the much-dreaded shaky cam from the first movie. Thank goodness. In an interview New York Magazine Lawrence admitted that he nixed the bouncy filming (and also said he’d be focusing more on the love triangle): Will you be using the shaky cam,…

BitTorrent’s Taking Out Pro-Torrenting Billboards and They’re Awesome

“Torrenting” is kind of a dirty word. It makes you think piracy, doesn’t it? Well it shouldn’t. Torrenting isn’t illegal. It’s not even morally ambiguous. It’s just a way to send data, and it’s awesome. Those are the points BitTorrent’s trying to drive home with its rad new ad campaign. Mysterious, anonymous billboards started going…

Beauty and the Beast Season 2: Reset, Reboot, Rinse, Repeat

Beauty and the Beast leaned on the reset button pretty hard in last night’s episode, choosing a whole new mythology to drive the show forward. As a result, Cat (Kristin Kreuk) is now the world’s worst cop… and we’ve doubled down on government conspiracies. Spoilers below… The new season begins with a time jump from…

Uh Oh, Silk Road Users Are Starting to Get Arrested

Welp, that settles that. Anybody who was wondering if authorities were going to keep going after the arrest of Silk Road kingpin Ross Ulbricht and start targeting users don’t need to wonder anymore. Multiple arrests have now been made worldwide, and it looks like more are on the way. This new wave of arrests knows…

Can turbulence actually shake your plane out of the sky?

When your plane feels like it’s being thrown around the sky by an angry thunder god, should you be nervous? Actually, yes. But not for the reasons you might think. Let’s take a look at what turbulence is, and the real reasons why it can be dangerous. Some scientific stories are reassuring compared to the…

Must Watch: The BBC’s hard-hitting interview with Cookie Monster

Cookie Monster has been getting around lately. First he engaged in a battle of wits with Loki, and now he’s gone on the BBC’s Newsnight as their “last word,” discussing his decision to come appear on a new show on CBBC. Watch as Cookie Monster has the perfect answer to everything. [Thanks, Tony!]

Watch pill-popping prodigies every week? Relativity Television is developing Limitless, the Bradley Cooper film about a smart drug with a major downside, into a weekly TV series.

The Queer Comics Anthology We’ve Been Waiting For!

LGBT characters have made great strides in comics lately — we even had a same-sex wedding in the X-Men — but it’s about time there were more stories focusing on queer protagoninsts. Enter Beyond, a brand new anthology of comics about LBGT heroes who save the day. With an amazing set of contributors… possibly including…

Medieval armor goes high fashion — and looks fantastic

It’s a dream come true for anyone who has ever spent an evening at the Renaissance Faire wishing that they could wear the pretty dresses AND the awesome armor. We utterly love this fashion spread from designer Pinkabsinthe. Whether you’re a Society for Creative Anachronism crafter or a Game of Thrones fan, these outfits are…

Sleepy Hollow Thanks You For Calling NorthStar

This week, Sleepy Hollow got a Viewer Discretion Advised: big talk for a show with exploding sand eyeballs. But besides some modern-dance goop full of demons, “The Lesser Key of Solomon” barely had time for monsters, because it was too busy with sisterly love, a cult, and a car-assistance request for the ages. Ichabod’s biggest…

The New Yahoo Mail Could Not Look More Like Gmail

Marissa Meyer’s parade of progress is continuing at Yahoo with a very sparkly redesign of Yahoo Mail. It’s got all things that are good, including more storage and cleaner navigation and threaded conversations. Frankly, this redesign does pretty much anything to make Yahoo Mail look more like Gmail. The similarity smacks you in the forehead.…

A Doctor’s-Office-in-a-Chair Measures All Your Vitals At Once

It’s not designed to replace your family doctor, but this sensor-laden chair concept from Sharp could definitely reduce the number of times you need to stop by their clinic every year. The chair looks like it could actually be capable of time travel, but its capabilities are limited to measuring your blood pressure, pulse, temperature,…