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How Your New Favorite Star Wars Character, BB-8, Went From Concept To Set

From the moment we saw it rolling across the sand in the first teaser trailer, we’ve all been fascinated by BB-8. The new droid who’ll be palling around with the characters in Star Wars The Force Awakens is unique, adorable, and now we know its story. The official Star Wars website has posted a long,…

Engineering Students at Purdue Can Take a Class In Hyperloop Design This Fall

The Hyperloop is not real. But that won’t prevent it from being taught at institutions of higher learning. Now Purdue University is offering a Hyperloop Design course through its three engineering programs. The first class was yesterday and apparently 54 students showed up. The course is being offered at an interesting time in Hyperloop’s development.…

Almost None of the Women in the Ashley Madison Database Ever Used the Site [Updated]

When hacker group Impact Team released the Ashley Madison data, they asserted that “thousands” of the women’s profiles were fake. Later, this number got blown up in news stories that asserted “90-95%” of them were fake, though nobody put forth any evidence for such an enormous number. So I downloaded the data and analyzed it…

Twin Jet Nebula is a Marvelous Cosmic Butterfly

Deep space is a wonderland of strange and awe-inspiring sights, but few astronomical curiosities match the exquisite beauty of the Twin Jet Nebula, a dying, binary star that looks like a pair of iridescent butterfly wings. The image above, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and released to the public today, shows off the remarkable…

In 1979, An Entire Science Class Went ‘Berserk’ After Being Hypnotized

The bizarre case has gotten new attention thanks to a new Discovery+ documentary, The Devil's Academy .

A Startup With No Website Just Announced a Major Fusion Breakthrough

A small startup has announced a major advance toward fusion power, the Holy Grail of energy that could rid us of fossil fuels forever. Tri Alpha Energy says it’s built a machine that can hold a hot blob of plasma steady at 10 million degrees Celsius for five whole milliseconds. Fusion power, the ever-science fictional…

Rival Archaeologists Find Space Rocks at Opposite Ends of the World

Wonders Never Cease is a fashion film that takes full advantage of its setting: London’s Museum of Natural History. When two archaeologists engaged in a game of oneupmanship make the same discovery at opposite ends of the world, it ignites a lot of moody wandering through the museum halls. Wonders Never Cease was made by…

A “Cocktail Boat” Can Propel Itself Around Your Drink Using the Marangoni Effect

Yesterday we saw bugs using fluid dynamics to propel themselves around. It turns out that one scientist is turning that into a fun way to add alcohol to a drink. Here’s how to make a moving boat using the Marangoni Effect. You can observe the Marangoni Effect very easily if you have a dish, a…

James Spader’s Ultron Motion-Capture Is As Goofy As It Is Awesome

No matter what you thought of Avengers: Age of Ultron, there’s no arguing the perfect casting of James Spader as Ultron. Even though he’s playing a 9-foot-tall robot, the character still had that perfect, Spader smugness to him and it worked incredibly well. Marvel has now released a new behind the scenes featurette for Avengers:…

Soviet Bombers and Scythian Mummies: The Archaeology Uncovered By Climate Change

In Poland, severe drought has revealed the remains of a Soviet fighter plane that went down in 1945. It’s far from the first (or last) archaeological site that climate change is revealing, in some cases for the first time in millennia. Melting glaciers, thawing permafrost, and historic droughts are all playing a part in some…

It’s Impossible to Watch This Profile of AeroPress-Inventor Alan Adler and not Fall in Love With Him

Inventor-engineer Alan Adler is the man behind the record-setting Aerobie Flying Ring and the widely beloved AeroPress coffee maker. In this profile by filmmaker David Friedman, Adler tells the stories behind his superior designs— and man, is he ever charming*. I defy you to watch this and not fall in love with the guy. Some…

Video: This dancing drone is a beautiful painter of light

To show off the world’s most precise drone system, PRENAV made this video demonstrating how exact their drones can be. The drone basically plots points in the air and then becomes a dancing array of light that’s oh so fun to watch. The PRENAV system supposedly lets drones write letters and draw shapes in the…

Ashley Madison Built an App Called “What’s Your Wife Worth”

Another day, another revolting revelation from the Ashley Madison hack. This time, the Daily Dot reports that Ashley Madison executives were excited about an app their team built. It was called “What’s Your Wife Worth,” and it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Based on a 2013 email exchange between Ashley Madison CEO Noel…

Which Science Fiction or Fantasy Book Was So Much Fun You Couldn’t Stand It?

Some books keep you turning pages with suspense. Others keep the pages flipping with their deep character studies. But then there are those books that are just so much damn fun, you can’t do anything but keep reading and laughing out loud. But which science fiction or fantasy book is just the most fun ever?…

Lettuce Is the Bottled Water of Produce

Another day, another story about what we should consume when confronted with a water-scarce future. On today’s chopping block: Lettuce, should you eat it? Let us begin with this provocative statement: A head of iceberg contains the same amount of water as a bottle of Evian, it’s wrapped in lots of plastic, and shipping it…

Seeing Japanese handmade paper get made is completely soothing

I don’t know exactly what’s going on but you see trees get chopped down and stripped and cooked and boiled and drained and dried and flattened and then transformed into pieces of paper that were all delicately made by hand. It’s a lovely process to watch, especially since it’s so damn soothing. Kuroyanagi Takashi made…

USA Postpones Mr. Robot Finale Due to Similarities to WDBJ Shooting

The finale of USA’s buzzed about hacker show Mr. Robot will not be seen Wednesday evening because of a scene that shared similarities with the tragic shooting in Virginia earlier today. In a statement, USA said the following: “The previously filmed season finale of Mr. Robot contains a graphic scene similar in nature to today’s…

The season one finale of Mr. Robot has been postponed until next week: Wednesday, September 2 at 10 p.m. EST on USA. In a statement, the network said the episode contained “a graphic scene similar in nature to today’s tragic events in Virginia,” and is being delayed out of respect to the victims. USA will…

Birds Are Way More Lethal Than Bullets on This Week’s Zoo

After last week’s rat-pocalypse, the team gets back to facing enemies of a more human sort: the villainous puppet masters at Reiden Global and the vengeful FBI. But this wouldn’t be Zoo without some animal insanity, and the episode’s title, “Murmuration,” offers a big ol’ hint to keep watching the skies. Spoilerzzzz… As you’ll recall…