Monday’s total solar eclipse will provide some much-needed wholesome enjoyment for all of us here in the United States. To make things even sweeter, NASA—in collaboration with researchers at Montana State University—will be seizing the opportunity to launch some giant balloons during the event.
If a looming helium shortage isn’t enough to dissuade you from getting balloons for your next birthday party, consider the consequences if they escape from their ribbon moorings and end up brushing against some high-voltage power lines. You might be safer decorating for your kid’s party with hand grenades.
Initial reports indicated that it could possibly have just been a blown speaker, but it appears that an explosion has occurred at Manchester Arena in the UK this evening. Concertgoers fled what is being reported as an explosion that shook the building. Now, police have confirmed multiple fatalities and injuries…
Mark Verge makes balloon animals, but his creations aren’t limited to just tiny poodles and flowers like some yellow pages birthday clown. As YouTube’s Coolest Thing channel reveals, he instead builds mammoth creations using nothing but balloons, including a life-size version of a T-rex skeleton.
Non-Newtonian fluids are liquids that are also sort of solid but also sort of neither but also sort of both? They’re very thick liquids or very giving solids, depending on what you want to call it. That’s why they’re so fun to do science experiments with. The Backyard Scientist went and filled up balloons with…
The good minds at MIT have used a rubber-like polymer to predict how much light gets transmitted through a material, depending on its thinness and stretchiness. The material could lead to windows that automatically adjust the amount of light that’s let in.
The most threatening letter of the alphabet is now the new name of Google’s quasi-secret moonshot lab: Google X is now just “X.” Hear that? That’s the sound of paranoid civilians boarding up windows and prepping drone-downing cannons.
Inflatable furniture isn’t a new idea. College dorms are filled with blow-up sofas and air-filled mattresses. But none of them look like designer Seungjin Yang’s inflatable pieces, which are created using the same balloons a birthday party clown relies on to entertain screaming children.
When a balloon bursts, it doesn’t just simply burst. New high-speed camera footage shows that they either snap cleanly open or become covered in many cracks, depending on the stresses within the skin.
The older you get, the less excited you are to celebrate another birthday. But that all just changed with these new Star Wars helium balloons from Amscan. If you thought Stormtroopers were easy to kill before, now they can be taken out with just safety pins.
Looking for a faster way to call the cops to your neighborhood than 9-1-1? Just follow Grant Thompson, AKA the King of Random’s latest video that has him turning regular balloons into high-flying explosives that sound like a fireworks show but without all the eye candy.
When we last checked in on Project Loon—Google’s moonshot project to blanket the world with internet-packing weather balloons—one had just circumnavigated the globe in a very quick 22 days. I just attended a talk at Google I/O and got some more info about the challenges the team faces in making this wild-ass project…
A water balloon fight is no fun when kids have to keep running back to their parents to tie the balloons for them. Using tiny elastics the Bunch O Balloons came up with a slightly better way to automatically tie 37 water balloons at once, but these Zorbz appear to have the best solution yet, automatically sealing…
It's not as impressive as lifting a house into the air, but daredevil Erik Roner had a miniature Up moment when he was lifted 8,000 feet into the air with the help of 50 tanks of helium and 90 enormous balloons.
Every person who has seen the movie Up and also enjoys dreaming about fanciful things every now and again has thought about flying away in balloons like Carl Fredricksen. Professional daredevil and crazy person Erik Roner just did it. He bought tanks of helium to pump up giant balloons to make him fly.
Our annual day of helium excess is upon us. We speak, of course, of Thanksgiving and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. These giant floppy balloons, as tall as buildings and filled with 12,000 cubic feet of helium, are not graceful creatures. The average balloon requires 90 handlers just to get it down the street.
Ever heard of the Panopticon? It's a type of prison design that enables a single watchman to see everyone. Now, Ohio is experimenting with an interesting twist on that idea by putting the watchman in the sky with an infrared camera.
If you think about it, ball pits are gross cesspools that hide violent bits of static charges and virulent diseases that smell like melting plastic. They are not fun. But that's because adults are not fun. For kids, there are few places better. This 5000 balloon pit is like a ball pit for kids, but for skateboarders.
Hot-air balloons went from mode of transportation to relative novelty, but throughout their history, these floating vehicles have been very odd. From a balloon built for lifting a person on horseback to the hot-air balloon replica of Christ the Redeemer, here are some of the weirdest balloons ever.
Life isn't just dangerous for a person made entirely out of balloons; it's also lonely. Wandering the streets of a city, this balloon man tries to make connections with other people, even though every interaction risks popping a balloon.
