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How Do You Study Nuclear Bombs When You Can’t Use Them Anymore?

Welcome to this week’s Reading List, your Sunday guide to some of the most interesting science and technology stories on the internet this week. This week, we’ll examine the response to the Ebola Outbreak, climate change, transportation and nuclear bombs. During the height of the Ebola crisis, medical professionals were subjected to mandatory quarantines upon…

Spice-Filled Sandworm Bread Is Totally What’s For Dinner Tonight

This is pretty awesome: a huge fan of Dune, Chris-Rachael Oseland went and made a bread shaped like one of the novel’s iconic sand worms, and provided the recipe! This looks absolutely delicious, and the next time I have anything that remotely resembles a geek gathering, I’m serving it to my guests. Take a look…

The Crew Of The ISS Has A Message For Climate Conference Delegates

As delegates at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference deliberate the next steps for how to approach climate change, a group of astronauts have recorded a message for them to urge action. Eighteen astronauts recounted how their vantage point above the Earth have given them a unique view of the planet: they can see…

Cross-Stitched Planets Are the Perfect Handmade Gift For Space Nerds

Looking for the perfect gift for the space nerd in your life? That’s easy, if you’re willing to pick up cross-stitching like Redditor navidj did. His hand-stitched planets require nothing but colored thread, black Aida cloth and patience. They’re the perfect hallway decor for anyone who’d rather be out surfing Saturn’s rings. I’m already wondering…

Without Unity, Astronauts Couldn’t Get Anywhere on the Space Station

The Unity Module is the core of the International Space Station, the hub connecting all the specialized modules into a functional structure. When joined with the Zarya module, the pair turned an isolated module floating in space into a a space station. The American-made Unity module was carried into orbit as the primary cargo of…

Since 2001, people have been declaring their religion as ‘Jedi’ on official census campaigns. The upside to this is that it’s been encouraging more people to take part in official census campaigns. Barnes and Noble takes a look.

Ethan Hawke Has Joined Luc Besson’s Science Fiction Film Valerian

This is intriguing news: Ethan Hawke has joined Luc Besson’s next film, an adaptation of the 1967 graphic novel Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Besson made the announcement via his Instagram feed: The French comic is from Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières, and ran from 1967 to 2010, and follows two…

Solar Panel is a Glittering Blue Mosaic Against the Blackness of Space

The shiny blue mosaic of solar cells set against the clean bronzed lines of the solar panel support structure make this photograph of the solar array panels outside the Zarya Functional Cargo Block on the International Space Station into a true piece of art. The solar panel was photographed by a member of the Expedition…

The Doctor Who Finale Had Such a Great Ending, I Forgive Everything

I had some mixed feelings about tonight’s episode of Doctor Who. The plot of the episode (and the season) felt severely half-baked, to say the least, and great moments intermingled freely with a certain amount of WTF. But that ending? Was the greatest. That ending retroactively made the whole thing great. Spoilers ahead… I’m just…

Jeff Vandermeer On Why Leena Krohn’s Fiction Is So Important To Read

Next week, Cheeky Frawg Publishing will release a collection of stories and novels from Finnish author Leena Krohn. The collection is a major translation for the author, and we’ve interviewed editor Jeff Vandermeer about the project. Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction is a collection that introduces a wide range of English-language readers to the author for…

Photographing Zoo Creatures is Adorably Difficult

It’s a wildlife photographer’s dream job: for the past several years, Joel Sartore has been collaborating with National Geographic on Photo Ark, an ambitious effort to shoot portraits of the world’s 12,000 captive animal species to raise awareness of the current extinction crisis. But when work entails trying to convince boas and bald eagles to…

The Seriously Wacky Way Cosmologists Say We Could Encrypt Data

The Big Bang that created the Universe left traces of itself everywhere—an afterglow known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB). You’ve probably never thought to ask whether there’s a practical use for the CMB, but lo and behold, cosmologists found it: data encryption. Many computer algorithms have been written to generate the large, random encryption…

Star Wars Smashed Up With Biggie’s Life After Death Is Awesome

Notorious B.I.G. and Star Wars aren’t exactly two things that you’d think would work well together, but Solar Slim and Richie Branson have proven that wrong with Life After Death Star. Solar Slim and Richie Branson mashed up music from the Notorious B.I.G. and the music of Star Wars, using the soundtrack to underscore the…

These Dogs are Honorary Geologists for Their Early Exploration of Alaska

Every geologist needs a field hat to protect them from scorching sun and drenching rain, but a really lucky geologist will have a trusty dog. Meet the adventurous dogs who trekked across north Alaska, and the geologists who explored with them. In 1924 and 1925, United States Geological Survey (USGS) field teams trekked across northern…

In my regular ‘So You Want To Join The Empire’ column, I’ve gotten the question a bit: why dress up as the bad guys of Star Wars, given the iconography? The LA Times goes into how the 501st Legion went from a Geocities site for Stormtrooper enthusiasts to a world-wide charitable costuming group.

The return-to-flight launch of the Cygnus spacecraft today was preemptively scrubbed due to high winds. The next attempt is Sunday at 4:44 p.m. EST. Join us then to watch live! [NASA]

Behold the Closest Ever Image of a Kuiper Belt Object

Whoosh! Did you see that? It may look a bit scrappy, but the tiny white projectile at the center of the animation below—officially called 1994 JR1— is a cosmic time capsule, brought to you by a piano-sized spacecraft over 3 billion miles away. You’re looking at the closest picture yet of a Kuiper Belt Object…

New Force Awakens Featurette Introduces A New Cast To The Star Wars Legacy

There’s a new featurette for The Force Awakens on the web, featuring Daisy Ridley, J.J. Abrams, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac ruminating on the legacy that they’ve inherited. It’s a neat behind the scenes look at the upcoming film, and it only reinforces how everyone working on the film were huge fans of the original…

We Still Don’t Know What Causes That Knuckle Cracking Sound

Snap, crackle, pop: the sound of cracking knuckles is familiar to everyone, but scientists are having a hell of a time figuring out what causes it. A new ultrasound imaging study offers additional clues, but no definitive answers. The GIF above was created from ultrasound footage collected in a first-of-its-kind knuckle cracking study led by…

Earth’s Tropical Rainforests Could Look Completely Different By the End of the Century

In 2005, an intense heatwave struck a mountaintop rainforest in northeast Australia. Accounts of the event were rather apocalyptic: birds dropping dead out of the sky; entire patches of forest withering to a crisp. But the biggest casualty of all was a snow-white furball that scampered amongst the branches at the highest elevations. The white…