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Why Do Vitamins Make Urine Bright Yellow?

If you’ve ever taken a daily multivitamin you too might have noticed your urine turning a bright yellow-ish color. Take your vitamins and eat some asparagus and you might just think you’re dying the next time you pee! What’s happening is that urine will turn a bright, sometimes neon, yellow in response to excess riboflavin.…

8 Ruined Cities That Remain a Mystery to This Day

The world is full of ruined cities, but some have such mysterious rises and falls that they haunt our imaginations. Even if we know who built them, certain aspects of the city may simply defy comprehension in the modern age. Here are 8 ancient cities that we may never fully understand. Photo via Franck Goddio…

The Mini+ Is HTC’s Solution to Carrying a Big Phone

Phones are getting bigger; some are even too big for pockets. So what’s the answer to your too-big-to-use-as-a-phone issues? A mini Bluetooth phone that connects to your real phone, of course. Or at least that’s what HTC thinks. Meet the HTC Mini+. Yeah, that just happened. How on Earth we’ve got to the point where…

Where are my damn nanotechnology and mind uploading?

Are you still annoyed that you don’t have your jet pack? That’s quaint. These days, futurists are impatiently demanding things that are a lot weirder than that. Image by Christopher Barnatt On Huffington Post, Betsy Isaacson interviews Lucas Dimoveo, who describes the “scrapheap transhumanism” philosophy espoused by members of Grindhouse Wetware, a group in Pittsburgh:…

First Under the Skin Teaser: Scarlett Johansson as a Seductive Alien

We’ve been obsessed with Jonathan Glazer’s film Under the Skin since we saw the first set photos a couple years ago. Now, at last, here’s the first footage from this movie where Scarlett Johansson plays Isserley, an alien who picks up male hitchhikers using her “voracious sexuality.” Hard to tell from just a one-minute teaser,…

Who’s the greatest movie director of all time?

Science fiction and fantasy movies depend on amazing visuals and canny storytelling to carry you along — and certain directors are just brilliant at pulling you into their strange worlds. But who’s the greatest director, living or dead, of fantastical movies? Please include a film still or clip that illustrates why your chosen director is…

Listen to Music Made from Concert-Goers’ Dance Moves

In our electronic music age, it’s sometimes easy to forget how music is basically just a bunch of well-organized noise. It seems like over-produced pop albums have more in common with computer software than performance, so when musicians break the mold, things get interesting. Musician Daniel Freitag recently teamed up with Ma-Ma, a Hamburg-based creative…

Verizon just shook off the part owners of Verizon Wireless, the UK-based Vodafone, by stumping up a cool $130 billion. That is one serious move—though it’s unclear what the newfound freedom means for the network.

Wax anatomical figures are the stuff of nightmares

Wax has the uncanny ability to mimic flesh — plus, organic materials such as hair, teeth and nails can even be embedded in it. That’s why some of the earliest realistic replicas of the human body were cast in wax. Wax body parts were originally used in Christian church services, where offerings often reproduced parts…

This Equation Can Tell You How Successful a Reddit Post Will Be

Scientists love developing equations that can accurately predict real-life events—so when researchers from Stanford looked at Reddit, they naturally wondered if they could predict how successful posts would be. This equation is theresult of their work. By analyzing the success of over 16,700 pictures posted on Reddit, the team worked out how content, title, timing…

How We Go Looking For Life on Other Planets

There are, as best we can estimate, hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. (There may be more.) Average galaxies carry the weight of hundreds of billions of stars. If a habitable planet whirls around just one star in every million, the number of worlds which could harbor life would number in the quadrillions.…

Scifi and fantasy ladies pose as Rosie the Riveter for Labor Day

Labor Day isn’t just an excuse to barbecue or squeeze in one last trip to the beach; it’s also the day we remember the contributions of workers to society. These scifi, fantasy, and superheroines pay tribute to the wartime labor icon Rosie the Riveter—and show off their guns. “Buffy the Riveter” by AJ Paglia “Leia…

This week’s DVDs is full of TV shows you wish you’d had this weekend

You don’t have to celebrate Labor Day to know marathoning a TV series is a pleasantly lazy way to spend the weekend. I don’t know why companies waited until after Labor Day to release this cornucopia of TV DVD sets, but oh well. Plus, there’s a new Ghibli flick, Sharknado and MST3K: The Movie! •…

A Sleeping Bag That Ditches Zippers So You Don’t Feel Like a Mummy

If the thought of drifting off in a sleeping bag, only to wake up in the middle of the night all twisted and constricted, leaves you feeling anxious and claustrophobic, Sierra Designs wants to help. With its new Backcountry Bed 800 sleeping bag it’s banished constricting zippers, instead opting for a double layered design that…

Marvel at the Brilliance and Creativity of Dragon Con Cosplay!

Nobody does amazing costumes like the 50,000 fans at Dragon Con in Atlanta. Check out some of our favorite cosplay photos from Dragon Con 2013 — including some Star Wars characters like you’ve never seen them before. Top image: deejayqueue/Flickr. Photo by deejayqueue/Flickr. Photo by deejayqueue/Flickr. Photo by deejayqueue/Flickr. Photo by deejayqueue/Flickr. Photo by deejayqueue/Flickr.…

This Dried-Up Salt Lake Lets Satellites Set Their White Balance

This image shows a great white expanse on the surface of Earth, but it’s not snow or super-fine sand: in fact, it’s a dried up salt lake in Turkey called Lake Tersakan—and satellites even use it as a calibration tool. The second biggest lake in Turkey and one of the largest saline lakes in the…

Squirrels are going to end civilization! No, really. They are a major cause of power outages, and are basically on a mission to wreck the grid. Learn more about the rodent menace to our way of life at the New York Times.

These Interactive Maps Compare 19th Century American Cities to Today

As mind-blowing as science is these days, it’s probably safe to say that we’re not going to invent a time machine within the next century. Through the magic of code, though, there is an entertaining alternative in the world of interactive maps. Obviously, The Smithsonian is on it. The magazine recently dipped into David Rumsey‘s…

How food can change the color of birds, fish, and even humans

The radiant plumage of flamingos wouldn’t be possible without their special diets. Neither would the color of salmon, or koi. The right food can even dye humans – especially babies. At a zoo I visited, I noticed the food trough for the flamingos looked like someone had poured fluorescent pink paint into it. It did…

Nexus 7 Touch Problems Persist Despite Google’s Fix

Complaints from early adopters of the new Nexus 7 claimed the device’s touchscreen was rather out of whack, with owners baffled by phantom extra presses registering while typing and making the tablet a bit of a nightmare to use. Google Issued a fix but… it doesn’t seem to have fixed anything. Users who’ve installed the…