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Abandoned Warehouse From The Wire Is Now a Fantastic Design School

Recognize this Baltimore building? Today, it’s the gleaming Baltimore Design School. But not long ago, it was an abandoned warehouse used by HBO for scenes of urban decay in The Wire. Talk about a comeback story. As Co.Design explains, this public 6th-12th grade school offers architecture, graphic design and fashion design curricula, bringing new life…

Ask an astrophysicist anything you want about nearby asteroids!

Amy Mainzer is an astrophysicist at the Jet Propulsion Lab who builds instruments for space telescopes that allow us to study Earth’s nearest neighbors, including asteroids, comets, and stars. She’s here today to answer your questions about all the objects whizzing past Earth — and which ones we should be keeping our eyes on. Mainzer…

Ever wonder why Silicon Valley is funding the new space race?

Northern California public radio and TV station KQED has just produced a great documentary about how the rulers of Silicon Valley turned their attention from cyberspace to outer space. Watch it here! Learn more at KQED

This Starscream Hoodie Will Transform What Your Co-Workers Think of You

After delighting kids and toy collectors in the 1980s, it’s nice to see the Transformers still enjoying some modicum of popularity. And while the Hollywood blockbusters have been forgettable, this wonderful Starscream hoodie—complete with presumably non-working wings—is not. Following in the footsteps of Nike’s excellent Megatron sneakers, this hoodie pays tribute to the Decepticons’ second-in-command.…

The new SkyDrive app for iOS can automatically back up all your photos. Go grab it; you can never have too much redundancy.

America’s Largest Carbon Fiber Ship Is a Seafaring Speed Demon

The answer to designing ships that are both fast and stable has traditionally been to make the vessels as narrow as possible (to reduce drag) and sit them lower in the water (to reduce the buffeting effects of plowing through waves). But US Navy’s M80 Stiletto is not your typical ship. Combining cutting edge construction…

That Time Jules Verne Caused a UFO Scare

For a brief period during the late 1890s, a wave of UFO sightings swept across the United States. Dozens of strange objects were seen sailing through the skies from coast-to-coast. In November 1896 an object was reported in the night sky over Sacramento, California. It was described as a light with a dark body of…

Disney Selling Limited Edition Horizons T-Shirts — For 5 Days Only

Disney is now selling limited edition t-shirts celebrating the 30th birthday of the greatest theme park ride ever created: Horizons! https://gizmodo.com/happy-birthday-and-rip-to-disney-worlds-best-ride-ev-1429773180 The shirts come in three styles, all inspired by different sequences from the end of the ride: Mesa Verde, Brava Centauri, and Sea Castle Resort. One of the coolest things about Horizons was that…

Xbox One Teardown: Plenty of Room to Breathe

The Xbox One is (almost) here, and it’s a magical future machine—when it’s working. But inside that behemoth box iFixit found something there’s not so magical or futuristic: a bit of empty space. https://gizmodo.com/xbox-one-review-absolutely-amazing-when-it-works-1467466379 It should come as no surprise that the Xbox One is luxuriously spacious on the inside, considering it’s almost comically large,…

A spectacular shot of one of the densest star clusters ever discovered

Need a new desktop background? Look no further than this dazzling photo of Messier 15, an ancient globular cluster located about 35,000 light-years away. The image was compiled from observations made by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys in the ultraviolet, infrared, and optical parts of the spectrum. Here’s a glimpse…

This list of the dumbest NASA Instagram comments is embarrassing

NASA’s Instagram accounts are awesome. And since everyone can follow them, they’re places where science and space exploration inevitably collides with human stupidity and fatuity in the most entertaining way. Here’s a list of 52 embarrassingly dumb comments that I’ve picked for your pleasure: tony_smith45 Please explain why stars are not visible in the back…

Google’s Tour of Middle Earth: LOTR From a Great Eagle’s POV

Middle Earth is an amazing fictional world, but if you want to really get to know it, you’ve got to read a lot of words. So if you’re in the mood for a little Tolkien fantasy without hunkering down for a serious reading session, Google’s brand new tour of Middle Earth is a beautiful (and…

Giant cargo plane lands by mistake at airport too small for it

It seems that nothing is wrong with this Boeing Dreamlifter, standing by at Jabara Airport, in Wichita, Kansas. Except that’s not the airport this airplane was supposed to be and, worse, its runway may be too small for it to take off. The Dreamlifter—a cargo airplane designed to take Boeing parts from its factories around…

What Happens When You Drop a Red Hot Nickel Ball in E-Cig Liquid

E-cigs are all the rage with the coolest cyborg-wannabes, but even though there’s no real fire involved, the syrup inside those glowing nic-stix is still plenty flammable. And who better to show you than everyone’s favorite Red Hot Nickel Ball. In addition to the surprisingly serious flame on this sucker, there’s also a lot of…

The winners of 2013’s Dance Your PhD Competition have been announced!

Every year, Science’s Dance Your PhD Competition challenges PhD students past and present to convey their graduate work in the form of interpretive dance. This year’s finalists were especially excellent. Now, the winners have been announced! https://gizmodo.com/check-out-the-winners-of-this-years-dance-your-phd-comp-5851521 https://gizmodo.com/ph-d-students-explain-their-research-using-interpretiv-5951989 This year’s grand prize winner was non other than University of Oxford biologist Cedric Tan, whose thesis…

​MediaFire Can Finally Sync Files on Your Computer With the Cloud

MediaFire is the old guard of cloud storage, and today, the company’s services jump into the present tense with MediaFire Desktop, which allows you to sync your files from your computer to the cloud. How’s it going to beat pack-leaders like Dropbox? By building more robust support for people who want to exchange multimedia online.…

Auto Aerobics: Hyperrealistic Images of Outrageously Weird Cars

Sure, CGI is responsible for making us all visually cynical. But it’s also enabled projects like this one: a weird—and weirdly poetic—ode to the Pontiac by digital artist Chris LaBrooy. According to U.K.-based LaBrooy, the project was a meditation on a walk through Brooklyn in the late afternoon—though to me, the angle of the light…

The Framing Effect makes people accept deaths and pay fines

Perhaps you are an unscrupulous official. You want people to accept the unacceptable. You want people to pay more money than they have to. There’s an easy way to do that, and all it takes is no discernible moral values, and an ability to frame things just the right way. Top photo by Ben K.…

Listen to Da Vinci’s Genius Piano-Cello Played for the Very First Time

From the audience, this instrument looks like a typical grand piano. Then the maestro takes his seat and begins to play. It’s a sound nobody has heard before, because this instrument, designed by Leonardo Da Vinci five centuries ago, has just been built for the very first time. And it sounds heavenly. The viola organista…

Amazon’s Black Friday Starts This Sunday [Update: Sears Too]

Not to be outdone by Walmart, who recently announced that they’d be preemptively matching select competing Black Friday deals starting tomorrow, Amazon will be opening their vault of Black Friday discounts starting this Sunday the 24th. New deals will become available as frequently as every 10 minutes, and will include everything from a $29 Chromecast…