You’re probably already overly-anxious about protecting your identity online, but researchers at the University College London don’t feel that’s enough to worry about. So they’ve developed new software that can perfectly replicate anyone’s handwriting—dead or alive—making it easy to forge signatures and notes.
How can you tell a real video from faked footage? You could analyze the footage itself, you could confirm it with a second source, or you could depend on something much harder to fake: Physics. Over at Dot Physics, there's an analysis of the major ways you can scientifically separate the real from the forged.
China is currently undergoing a huge boom in museums—299 new ones have opened in the last year alone. And just like the US's own 20th century museum boom, which inspired cascades of forgeries, China's is bringing out the fakes: The government has shuttered one museum where a third of the 8,000 artifacts were fake.
Vsauce, the master answerer of life's toughest questions and professional blower of minds, tackles something so philosophical in his latest video that you'll start to wonder what in the hell our purpose is on this Earth. And if it's any different than a purpose of a rock. It starts with the discussion of art and then…
The identification of fakes and forgeries is a basic issue that has always raised controversy. This is unsurprising, of course–the enormous sums garnered by top paintings would turn to dust as soon as a question as to their authenticity arose.
Back in 1908, a Norwegian collector was told that what he thought was a Van Gogh oil landscape was actually a forgery. So he tucked it away in his attic where it languished for six decades. Now, art experts have authenticated the piece — and it is indeed a Van Gogh.
Early last month, a ten-year-old German boy found a mummy in his grandmother's attic. Many considered it a hoax. But a radiological analysis shows that the mummy contains actual human bones, though probably not from an ancient Egyptian. The find could open a criminal case.
A Chinese zoo is under fire for trying to disguise a Tibetan mastiff dog for a lion. The twisted scheme began to unravel when the supposed "African Lion" started to bark.
During the 1930s, a woman claiming to be the widow of a British Royal Flying Corps pilot sold 34 photos featuring scenes from a dramatic WWI aerial battle to a publisher for U.S. $20,000. The pics were later published in a popular book — but it was all an elaborate hoax.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, this falsified Fortis watch is pure adulation. Bet you can't spot the fake.
