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Eating The Wrong Shellfish Could Give You Temporary Amnesia

Believe it or not, there is such a thing known as “amnesic shellfish poisoning”. Eating the wrong piece of shellfish — or occasionally just the wrong anchovy — can make you lose your memory. When you’re an oyster, you can’t be picky about what you eat. So oysters and other shellfish crunch down diatoms regularly.…

A Portable Washing Machine That Doesn’t Need a Drop of Electricity

If camping seems like fun but you’d prefer if roughing it wasn’t so rough, the Drumi from Yirego is a compact portable washing machine that can clean around six or seven garments without the need for a power outlet, a generator, or even a sunny day to feed a solar panel. At just 22-inches tall…

Moving a two-ton elephant looks absolutely crazy

A small group of elephants who had been displaced have been butting heads with local villagers in a village in Daloa in the Ivorty Coast. The elephants have damaged crops, ruined homes, injured people and so forth. The villagers wanted to kill the elephants. Luckily for everyone though, the International Fund for Animal Welfare figured…

How Doctor Strange Could Make A Surprise Début Before His Own Movie

Oscar Isaac talks about working with the cast of the original trilogy for The Force Awakens. Learn how Agents of SHIELD will connect with Age of Ultron. Steven Moffat teases the Doctor and Missy’s relationship in the next season of Doctor Who. Plus, what’s to come on Hannibal, Gotham and The Flash. Spoilers Get! Top…

The Most Adorable Hulkbuster Toy Houses An Equally Adorable Iron Man

Thanks to Age of Ultron, we’ve had plenty of wonderful Hulkbuster toys to gawk at over the last few months. But outside of the buildable Lego figure, somehow hardly any of them actually fit a full Iron Man figure inside. Step forward and be counted among the few that do, adorable little baby Hulkbuster. Dubbed…

Google Glass 2.0, and Other News You May Have Missed

You’ve probably been engulfed in the Apple Watch media maelstrom. Wondering what else happened in tech this weekend? Like how the new Google Glass will be made by a fancy Italian eyewear brand? We’ve got you covered with BitStream, our cheat sheet for tech news and rumors that might’ve slipped past your radar. Rumors Is…

Researchers Can Create Scents that Smell Like Departed Loved Ones

We all have a smell—one that those closest to us grow to love (or at least tolerate). Now, a team of researchers is able to recreate the natural aroma of loved ones once they’ve passed away, allowing them to live on. In our noses. The Guardian reports that Katia Apalategui’s mother struggled to get over…

How the Tea Bag Was Invented

Legend says that brewing tea dates back to around 2737 BC, when tea leaves fell into water being boiled for Emperor Shennong of China. There does not appear to be any hard evidence of tea being discovered this way, but evidence we do have suggests that brewing tea did indeed likely start in China, first…

Why the Tiniest of Fossils Mean Big Things to Scientists

The latest video in the American Museum of Natural History’s “Shelf Life” explores foraminifera, tiny sea creatures also called “forams.” Read more about forams and ammonites, which forams were originally confused for, at AMNH’s website.

Watch an Embryo Turn Itself Inside Out

If you’ve ever felt like your life’s turned on its head, be thankful that you’re not this little embryo—which turns itself inside out. This is the first footage ever captured of a living algal embryo turning itself inside out. First it looks like a sphere, then sucks itself up and inside out to resemble a…

Five Deadly Parasites That Have Crossed the Globe

Global events such as climate change and an international trade have caused a number of dangerous parasites to emerge in countries where they haven’t been found before. The parasites, which can invade and damage vital body organs such as the brain, range from one-celled organisms to relatively large tape worms. Here are five that, though…

Last week, Robert Downey Jr. made an appearance at a charity screening of Avengers: Age of Ultron. See the video here.

This Tiny Robot Can Pull Weights 2,000 Times Heavier Than It

Scientists from Stanford have developed a series of super-small, super strong robots—including this one, that can haul up to 52 pounds, despite weighing less than half an ounce. That’s like you pulling a blue whale. New Scientist reports that the Stanford lab has been busy building a series of super-strong robots, all of which are…

An Art Project Turns Cracks in Cities Into Geodes

Artist Paige Smith (AKA “A Common Name”) started Urban Geodes by filling cracks in downtown Los Angeles with these geodesic shapes. They’re made from paper and spray paint or resin. The project has since spread to other cities and countries, and a map of the installations can be seen at the A Common Name website,…

SpaceX Prepares Falcon 9 For Launch—and Reminds Us How Big Rockets Are

This picture shows SpaceX preparing its Falcon 9 rocket for launch at Cape Canaveral later today. If all goes well—and currently there’s a 60 percent chance of favorable weather—the launch will take place during a 90-minute window which starts at 6:14 p.m. EDT. The picture’s also a nice reminder of the sense of scale of…

On Outlander, Jamie Can’t Go Home Again

In “Lallybroch,” we met Jamie’s sister, Jenny, and returned to his childhood home. Jenny is amazing. Jamie is less great. While Claire didn’t return home last week, Jamie did this week. And I don’t think it went exactly as he dreamed it would. Spoilers… Plotwise, it was a relatively light week: Jamie takes Claire to…

Watch The Birth Of A 17-Mile Iceberg

Most iceberg-forming videos show the violence of glaciers calving, the groaning as thousands of tonnes of ice tip into the sea. But this slow sequence of photos from NASA’s satellites reveal a far more stately process. The berg appears to have fractured from West Antarctica’s Getz Ice Shelf and moved out into in the Amundsen…

Buying Stuff With Smartwatches Is Dumb: Accidental Xbox Edition

There is a limited number of things that smartwatches are good for. As this tech blogger’s accidental purchase of an Xbox One shows, browsing Amazon is not one of those things. During a Periscope demo of the Apple Watch (now there’s a sentence I never thought I would type), CNET writer Scott Stein used the…

Nokia Says It Really Doesn’t Want To Make Smartphones Again

A report last week stated that Nokia was planning to return to the smartphone game when its non-compete with Microsoft ended on December 31st, 2015. But a statement released today by Nokia flat-out denies the report, describing it as false and inaccurate. The statement is blunt, and to the point: Nokia notes recent news reports…

The Trailer For The Descendants Gives Us Glorious Villain Children 

The first trailer for the Disney Channel Original Movie The Descendants has hit, and it looks… it looks exactly like we thought it was going to look. I don’t even know. It’s like High School Musical and Sky High had a child. And that child shops exclusively at Hot Topic. That said, you’ll have to…