Science

This New “Pure” Laser Makes Fiber Optic Networks 20x Better

Whether you’re a huge geek or a total luddite, you’ve got to be excited when scientists invent a new kind of laser, especially one that stands to replace the one we’ve been using for fiber optic communications for the last 40 years. A team of CalTech researchers did just that. Be excited. This new laser…

An Amazing Village Designed Just For People With Dementia

Centuries after Shakespeare wrote about King Lear’s symptoms, there’s still no perfect way to care for sufferers of dementia and Alzheimer’s. In the Netherlands, however, a radical idea is being tested: Self-contained “villages” where people with dementia shop, cook, and live together—safely. We, as a population, are aging rapidly. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, one…

Valeri Kubasov, Apollo-Soyuz Crewmember, Passed Away

Valeri Nikolayevich Kubasov, a retired Soviet cosmonaut, died on Wednesday, 19 February 2014, in Moscow at age 79. He was the second crew member of the legendary joint U.S.-USSR Apollo-Soyuz Test Project to pass away, after Deke Slayton died in 1993. Kubasov flew two missions in the Soyuz program as a flight engineer: Soyuz–6 and…

Higgs Boson Bubbles Filled the Early Universe With Thunder

When the Universe came into being, it was a kind of hot soup of elementary particles—and now scientists believe it could have been rumbling with thunder caused by Higgs boson bubbles. This video, created by researchers at the University of Helsinki in Finland, shows a visualization of how the early Universe could have formed. New…

Landmines Warmed By Chickens and Other Tales of Animal Warfare

During the Cold War, the British military proposed placing nuclear land mines throughout the North German Plain to ensnare Soviet troops if they invaded. But how could they keep the bombs at the right temperature underground? Enter the idea of live chickens, which, if supplied with feed, could warm mines for about a week at…

The Best Proposed Warning Systems Miss Half of Earth-Bound Meteors

Nobody expected the giant meteor which exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia last year—and according to new research, that might not change much in the coming years. https://gizmodo.com/meteorite-explodes-over-russia-panic-spreads-5984476 A new study of the efficacy of future early warning systems reveals that even the best of them would miss about half of all potential meteor strikes the…

Why Herders in Finland Spray Reindeers’ Horns with Reflective Coating

Finland is a dangerous place for reindeer to be in the winter. In a place where it’s dark most of the day, these beasts blend in with their surroundings, making it hard for drivers to see them. So Finnish herders are getting creative. Members of the Finnish Reinder Herders’ Association are spraying the reindeers with…

The Higgs Boson Particle Explained in 120 Seconds, By Peter Higgs

The discovery of the Higgs Boson is perhaps science’s biggest recent success—but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to understand. Who better to explain just what it is, though, than Peter Higgs himself? https://gizmodo.com/five-things-you-must-know-about-the-nobel-prize-winner-1442401152 In this video, Higgs describes the particle and what it does in under 120 seconds. But without doubt the best bit is…

Did a Cat Destroy the Ceiling at a Sochi Olympic Arena?

By now it’s hard to tell what’s true when it comes to reports about the infrastructural failings at the Olympics in Sochi. But what we’ve got here, folks, appears to be security footage of a cat falling through the ceiling of the Adler Arena Skating Center. Oh my. https://gizmodo.com/can-sochi-get-its-shit-together-1514828222 This unverified video shows a cat…

This Miniature Fishing Rod Catches and Kills Brain Cancer

You won’t be able to catch your supper with this fishing rod—because at just 6 millimetres long, it’s designed to catch and kill cancers before they aggressively attack the brain. Created from a length of polymer lined with 10 micrometer-thick film that mimics the shape of nerves and blood vessels, the rods trick glioblastoma cancer…

Report: Apple Is Working on Medical Devices, Mulling Cars

A report from the San Francisco Chronicle suggests that Apple is working to develop new product lines—including medical devices and cars The newspaper is light on detail, but does describe how , according to their sources, Cook & Co. are working with with audio engineer Tomlinson Holman—who invented THX and 10.2 surround sound—to develop a…

Dear Superman: Don’t Spin Earth Backwards, You’ll Break Everything

Remember how Christopher Reeve’s Superman spun the earth backward to go back in time and save Lois? Turns out, he probably shouldn’t have done that, because slowing the earth’s rotation to a stop would seriously mess up everything on our planet, as Earth Unplugged explains. Not cool, Superman. And before you lecture me on comic…

Why It’s So Hard to Find Alien LIfe

A big reason why the Fermi paradox has punch is the matter of time. Max Tegmark gets into this in his excellent new book Our Mathematical Universe (Knopf, 2014), where he runs through what many thinkers on the subject have noted: Our Sun is young enough that countless stars and the planets that orbit them…

Clever New Clothes To Protect You From Germs On The Subway

The news that measles might be spreading through San Francisco’s BART network not only triggered a warning from the transit authority itself, it is also a particularly alarming reminder that public transportation can be, well, disgusting. Winter’s runny noses, summer’s sweat, spring’s sneezing allergies—it doesn’t really matter the season. When you ride the bus or…

This Graphene Nanoribbon Conducts Electricity Insanely Fast

You’re looking a ribbon of graphene that’s just one atom thick and fifteen atoms wide—and it could help shift data thousands of times faster than anything else currently can. The nanoribbons, produced Felix Fischer, a chemist at Berkeley, are narrow—10,000 of them placed side by side would be about as wide as a human hair—and…

Why Do We Get Headaches?

From dull tension headaches to crippling migraines, sometimes your cranium can feel crippled. But what causes all those headaches? You might not know that the brain itself can’t actually feel pain. Instead, headaches are usually the result of muscle tension or blood flow in the head—and this video explains how and why those both happen.…

The Ultimate Whale Watching Vessel Isn’t a Boat—It’s a Satellite

Whale watching: you’re out there on the water with salt spray in your face and wind in your hair, waiting for a gigantic sea mammal to surface and do something splashy. It seems like a touristy thing to do, but scientists actually track whale populations from that very same vantage point. Sea level’s cool and…

Need a Fecal Transplant? There’s a Poop Bank For That

By now, you’ve probably heard of the miracle that is the fecal transplant. When antibiotics become useless against infections by the nasty bacterium Clostrium difficile, a slurry of human feces—full of “good” bacteria—piped into the gut can fix things up quick and cheap. The problem has always been a reliable source of poop. Enter OpenBiome,…

A Map of Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede, Where We Might Be Able to Live

One day, poor planet Earth will succumb to the centuries of abuse we’ve dealt her, shrivel up, and cease to support life. Then, if we’re not already living in some Elysium-like habitat in space, we’ll have to find a new home. Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede, might just be it. Ganymede with its underground ocean and rocky…

Snapped from the International Space Station 230 miles above all the events, this photo of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, clearly reveals the massive new facilities including Fisht Stadium where the opening ceremonies were held. And if you look closely at the full-res image, you can even see the Olympic flame burning. [NASA]