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It’s a well-known fact that some of our favorite seafoods come with an unsavory dose of heavy metals like mercury. But there’s another group of chemicals that sometimes lace our tuna steaks, and the latest findings on them are anything but appetizing. They’re called persistent organic pollutants (POPs), and they do a bang-up job obstructing…
The whirlwind of colors comes in waves. The giant mixing bowl takes in all the colors of sprinkles and then starts spinning like a laundry machine to combine them. You can see the layers slowly merge together, blue crashes into white, pink merges with orange and yellow, until everything is evenly mixed and ready to…
You’re supposed to use them for lazily floating around a pool on a hot summer’s day, but in no time at all those long foam noodles quickly become a sword you can safely swing around like a samurai, ninja, and now a Jedi, thanks to Swim Ways. These Star Wars Noodle Lightsabers are nothing more…
The University of Science and Technology of China just revealed a new realistic-looking robot named “Jiajia.” Although the robot itself isn’t a huge leap technologically, it does come with one troubling feature. It’s programmed to say pretty sexist stuff. In a meeting with Chinese journalists on Friday, Jiajia referred to her male creators as “lords”…
The last time I owned a Dell computer was back in high school. It was an XPS M1330, which was—for the time—a powerful computer, and not cheap either. But after some wear and tear, the case started to break in interesting (see: unfixable) ways, the battery life tanked, and the fan got unreasonably noisy. I…
Not too many people saw Hardcore Henry, that action movie shot in a first person view. It’s probably because though that gimmick looks cool as hell in trailers and short clips, an entire movie’s worth of seeing out from the character’s perspective can get tiring. But! It sure looks fun in this super crude animation.…
Each year, the migratory monarch butterfly embarks on an extraordinary journey from eastern North America to central Mexico. A multidisciplinary team of scientists has now created a model circuit that finally explains how these insects are able to navigate across such vast distances. Migrating eastern North American monarchs have an internal compass that taps into…
An unknown breakthrough in consumer levitation technology has led to an influx of floating speakers that don’t sound any different, but look kinda cool—were this the mid-’80s. Before you write them off completely, someone has managed to find a way to make these novelties genuinely worthy of your desk space, as a tiny Death Star…
You can pretend you’re there to marvel at the Egyptian antiquities, but deep down the only reason anyone visits a museum is to check out its dinosaurs. And while a towering T-rex skeleton is impressive, the Melbourne Museum just opened a new exhibit featuring shockingly life-like animatronic dinos. You won’t find any skeletons at Jurassic…
Marine archaeologists working off the coast of Holland have recovered a remarkable trove of well-preserved artifacts from a ship that sank nearly 400 years ago. Among the items is a beautiful silken gown that likely belonged to royalty. Back in August 2014, divers from the Texel Diving Club discovered an unassuming bundle at the site…
Trees, is there anything they can’t do? Doubtful. Let’s see: producing half the world’s oxygen, providing habitat for millions of species, creating the soil and timber resources we depend on. Not bad. But all that’s just scratching the surface. As new research shows, there’s a lot more going on beneath the forest floor than we…
The early days of first person shooters like Quake and Unreal Tournament gave birth to one of the most unique types of video game AIs: the FPS bot. Within a few years time these mindless enemies became an institution. Then just as quickly as they arrived, they disappeared. For many in the late 90s and…
Before crashes could be simulated in a computer, aircraft builders would shoot chickens at planes to determine the damage from a mid-air bird strike. This rig, built at Aalborg University in Denmark, sort of does the same thing, but instead tests the damage a drone could inflict on a human. Aalborg University actually built an…
The iPhone SE is maybe not Apple’s best idea, but Best Buy are being very judgmental towards those of us who want to buy the 64GB version in rose gold. Strangely the “Apple Dummy” is only available in this configuration, as any other size or color will yield the less spectacularly named “iPhone SE.” That…
Last night, the band Muse was jamming though the song “The Globalist,” when a concert drone known affectionately by fans as “dildrone,” crashed into the crowd. Clearly, this drone isn’t taking any of your shit. Muse has recently shown a particular interest in drones, despite the dangers the aircraft often present. Although the spectacle of…
To help Saab Defence and Security capture some spectacular footage of its Gripen fighter jet, a Swedish-based company called Blue Sky used a custom-built gyro-stabilized camera system that can ride along at speeds of over 345 miles per hour. When paired with a 6K Red Dragon digital cinema camera and a $40,000 Canon camera lens,…
Wi-fi is great, but it doesn’t pass through the human body very well. Now a team of researchers has shown that it can use ultrasound to send data through chunks of flesh at up to 30 megabits per second. Medical devices in the human body that have to send or receive data usually rely on…
Navigating Apple’s App Store is… frustrating. Now, a new report suggests that plans are afoot to make it a little easier. Bloomberg reports that Apple has “a secret team” working on an overhaul for the Store. Those ever-useful “people familiar with the plans” have told it that one of the main changes could be a…
Over a year ago, the solar-powered airplane Solar Impulse 2 started its audacious round-the-world trip—but it became so damaged that it had to pull up short in Hawaii. Now, it’s ready to fly again. The airplane suffered the set-back during its long flight from Japan to Hawaii—breaking the record for longest non-stop solo flight, at…
If you’re with Verizon, some good news: Use Google Pay and you can earn yourself 2GB of delicious mobile data for free. You don’t have to do anything but buy stuff to earn the reward. Make one transaction using Google Pay and you get 1GB; make two more purchases and you’ll get another 1GB. But,…
