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This Trailer for Gravity Will Make You FREAK. OUT.

That’s right. For the second day in a row, Warner Bros. has released another trailer for Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. Someone must be drunk at the wheel. But this one is especially scary and nearly made me pee my pants. Anyway, we now have a much better idea of what happens to Bullock and Clooney’s characters…

The next must-watch sci-fi & fantasy movies and TV shows

io9’s wrap up of San Diego Comic-Con 2013—the yearly Big Bang of sci-fi and fantasy news—has a selection of the best and shiniest movies, TV shows and comic books that will keep you entertained this year, the next and beyond. It’s packed with really good stuff.

Can You Find All The Scientific Mistakes In This Picture?

The September 1928 issue of Science and Invention magazine included an illustrated cover that dared readers to find all of the scientific errors they had planted. Forty-eight scientific errors, in all. And $500 in prizes to the winners who submitted the correct answers. “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” games were incredibly popular in magazines of…

Is your brain actually running a computer algorithm while you sleep?

It’s no surprise that computers function a little bit like human minds — after all, humans built them using ourselves as models. But recent research into neural networks suggests that there is an uncanny connection between computer learning algorithms, and what your brain does when you’re asleep. Over at Quanta magazine, Natalie Wolchover has a…

Giant Mirror Lakes Invade Beijing To Reflect China’s Water Crisis

At first glance, it looks like Beijing is being swallowed up by rising tides. But these aren’t giant bottomless puddles—they’re mirrors, installed throughout Beijing by the Chinese wing of advertising agency Grey Group. The point? To draw attention to the country’s rapidly-disappearing lakes. Pollution and climate change have caused more than 240 lakes to vanish…

Apple Tells You How to Stop Getting Electrocuted by Faulty Chargers

Although not technically Apple’s fault, the death of a Chinese flight attendant (who had purportedly been electrocuted by a third-party iPhone charger) has prompted Cupertino to create a site meant to help consumers recognize 100 percent genuine, actual Apple-approved chargers. The page only exists on their Chinese-language site, but thanks to a little help from…

This turtle smokes 10 cigarettes a day!

A pet turtle in China has developed an addiction to cigarettes so severe that it needs up to 10 smokes day. The tragic animal began its nicotine habit when its owner “pacified” the beast with a single cigarette. Now the shelled addict can’t live without its beloved tobacco.

Recently Steven Spielberg predicted Hollywood’s model of relying on huge blockbuster movies would collapse. Does the recent string of huge-budget flops mean it’s already happening? Slate thinks so.

Scientists Just Discovered a New Force That’s Stronger Than Gravity

Scientists have long known that blackbodies produce radiation and that radiation creates a repulsive effect. However, according to a new study there’s another force at play, one that acts a bit like gravity and attracts objects to the blackbody. They’re calling it “blackbody force.” Blackbodies, celestial objects that are perfectly non-reflective, shift the atomic energy…

Memory implantation is now officially real

The movie Inception is getting closer to reality. By planting false memories into the minds of mice, neuroscientists at MIT have created the first artificially implanted memories. And they’ve brought us closer to understanding the fallibility of human recollection. When we experience something, say a trip to the park, a memory of the event is…

Did the new RoboCop movie just replace robots with drones?

You’ve seen glimpses of (and read about) the new RoboCop movie, but we’ve yet to suss out exactly what this remake of Paul Verhoeven’s classic 1987 picture will retain from the original. What does the new RoboCop stand for? According to our interview with the director José Padilha, drone warfare. When RoboCop was made in…

Monopoly Is Getting Rid of Jail. That’s Some Bullshit. (Updated)

Say goodbye to one of the few remaining cornerstones of childhood. The Monopoly board as we know it is being supplemented with a new version Hasbro believes will appeal more to today’s swaggy youth. Time to welcome in the new age of chaos—because Monopoly Empire is about to be coming to you totally jail-free. Update…

Nutty cat owners forcing pets to wear “cat neckties”

Domestic cats, unlike other pets and most humans, generally have a strong sense of personal dignity. They do not want ribbons or party hats placed upon their heads. They do not want clothing of any kind. And they certainly don’t want neckties, even though crazy people are making these cat-ties for crazy cat owners.

What Does It Take to Sell the Most Expensive Photograph in History?

Art is expensive. Actually, no: High art is expensive. It’s one of the most unregulated, manipulated markets in the world, with an extreme minority of artists in the upper stratosphere and a vast majority of unknowns on the ground floor. We recently looked at the ten most expensive photographs ever sold, and three of them…

Nokia put a YouTube uploader app for the Lumia 1020 in the Windows Phone store today. The app lets users post videos directly, but for now it doesn’t seem to support Lumia 800 or 900 phones. [Cnet]

How Scientists Stopped Light Dead For a Whole Minute

Of all the things you might choose to halt in its tracks, the world’s fastest—light—might not be at the top your list. Clearly, you don’t have the ambition of the team of scientists who just managed to stop it dead—for a whole minute. In a vacuum, light usually travels at just under a bewildering 300…

Chris Evans brings pain to the train in a new Snowpiercer trailer

Chris Evans is using his brain to rain pain down on the fascist forces that control the train named Snowpiercer, but what does he have to gain? Will he attain freedom for his fellow passengers, or will the soldiers contain the revolution, making Evans’ hopes in vain? I’ll refrain from complaining, because I maintain the…

Thousands of Images of Saturn Make For One Amazing Stop Motion Film

It took two decades of brilliant engineering to get the Cassini probe to Saturn, and the images this little ‘bot has sent back are the stuff of science fiction. But in the hands of filmmaker Fabio di Donato, they look more like a silent film from the 1920s. Donato culled thousands of highlights from the…

How to survive being totally broke

You know you’re broke when even a lunch at the lousy chain restaurant at the mall is out of your financial reach. But there is a way out of this no-money nightmare, and you can begin your escape from crushing debt right now.

This red sticker can eradicate mosquitos bites forever

Scientists have developed a small sticker that emits non-toxic chemical compounds to confuse mosquitos’ CO2 detection mechanisms, making humans invisible as potential bloodsucking targets for 48 hours. The company wants to test it in Uganda, where about 100,000 die every year because of mosquito-transmitted malaria.