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A new project is creating digital reproductions of the instruments used in key chemistry experiments, in hopes of fostering appreciation for the craftsmanship involved in a new generation of science acolytes. The photograph above is part of the Beautiful Chemistry outreach project, a collaboration between the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and…
We all use dystopian movies and books to make sense of our world. Whether it’s Brave New World, 1984, or The Hunger Games, dystopian fiction serves as a common touchpoint to talk about our fears. But what happens when companies knowingly embrace the dark side of futurism and start naming products after the things we…
Wow, this is beyond incredible. Here’s footage of an F-16 launching itself 15,000 into the air in less than 45 seconds. It’s basically a vertical straight shot and you get to see how high—the fighter jet looks like its suspended in air for a moment there—the airplane goes and how small the rest of the…
Each year, Edge.org editor John Brockman poses a provocative question to a select group of thinkers. For this year’s installment, nearly 200 brainy contributors were asked: “What do you consider the most recent scientific news?” Here’s what they had to say. As Brockman notes, “We now live in a world in which the rate of…
So your mom bought you a copy of Mad Max: Fury Road on Ultra HD Blu-ray for Christmas and you want to play it on your old ass non-4K TV? A line of devices from HDfury makes it possible. Or at least, it used to. On New Year’s Eve, Warner Brothers filed a complaint against…
Desserts don’t need to be particularly fancy because even the simplest ones are delicious. But I do love it when desserts play some sort of trick or hide something from plain sight. Take this chocolate ball by Byron Talbott. When you pour warm caramel over the ball, the chocolate melts away and reveals that there’s…
It’s CES time, you know what that means. It’s time to groan at another swarm of disappointing wireless earbuds littering the CES showroom floor. First in line are these supposedly un-losable monsters from Altec Lansing. Recognizing that earbuds would be even easier to misplace without the wires, Altec Lansing imbued the new Freedom True Wireless…
A new archaeological find in Turkey may have just answered a question about our ancestors that has persisted for thousands of years. Ancient farming may look a little less like what we imagined it as, and a little more like what we see today. A paper from Stockholm University coming out in Current Biology on…
A group of researchers noticed something strange in certain scientific papers involving small rodents (like rats or mice): the number of animals reported at the start of an experiment often did not match the number of animals at the end. This can have a significant impact on experimental results, and yet it turns out to…
The question of whether or not human beings possess free will is a source of much contention, particularly between neuroscientists and philosophers. A new study pitted humans against a computer to test whether our conscious decisions are actually determined by unconscious processes. Perhaps, the premise suggests, we only think we have free will when making…
It’s all the rockets we sent to space! Well, all that had video, at least. According to the video, there were 87 orbital launches in 2015 but they couldn’t find footage for 4 of the launches from China so it “only” shows 83 launches. Which is still pretty damn awesome to think about. SPLOID is…
For the first time ever, scientists have used the CRISPR gene-editing tool to successfully treat a genetic muscle disorder in a living adult mammal. It’s a promising medical breakthrough that could soon lead to human therapies. Scientists have struggled to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy for decades. To date, their efforts have been focused on treating…
Mark Zuckerberg just announced that his “personal challenge” for the new year is to build an artificial intelligence to help him around the house. Sound familiar? It’s basically the (horrifying) premise of Ex Machina. There are some spoilers below, if you haven’t seen the movie. Imagine Zuck as the film’s antagonist, a mad billionaire named…
The wait is over: Starting 11am EST Wednesday morning, you can preorder an Oculus Rift of your own. The company just made the announcement on its blog. No word yet on pricing or expected delivery date. Industry analysts—even Oculus founder Palmer Luckey himself—know that most of the folks willing to spend the money on VR…
Getting up in the mornings can sometimes feel like a daunting task—sometimes preparing yourself breakfast, even just a simple bowl of cereal, even more so. Wouldn’t all be better off if we could just build a machine out of Lego to do it all for us instead? Probably. I look forward to our Lego vending…
Bacteria have been swimming before anything else in the world was walking, but we know relatively little about their method of locomotion. New research shows how bacteria use their flagella to run and tumble their way through a gooey medium. What you see in the above video at first looks like disorganized, random behavior. But…
If you love the USB Type-C port on Apple’s 12-inch MacBook but miss the quick release MagSafe power connector that probably saved your old MacBook’s life on many occasions, Griffin now has a simple way to get it back. The functionality behind the company’s new six-foot BreakSafe Magnetic USB-C Power Cable, available come April for…
Apple’s smartwatch is supposed to have a battery life of 18 hours—and while that is a full day of activity, wearers do forget to charge the thing overnight. Thus begins the race to bring us gadgets for charging on the go, like this contender by Dutch wireless charging company Zens. This puppy, announced at CES…
When first revealed at CES last year, Samsung boasted that its Portable SSD T1, which put a full terabyte of speedy flash-based storage inside a credit card-sized housing, could eventually see capacities of up to 16GB in a few years. That’s not too hard to believe, because exactly one year later, it’s already grown to…
Cars, blenders, fitness trackers, doggie bowls—there’s a connected version of basically any object you can name. It’s like the new Rule 34. There’s even a “smart” menstrual cup. Many of these objects rely on Bluetooth connections, but someday, they may run on a juiced-up version of Wi-Fi. Your standard Wi-Fi wasn’t built for this obsessively…
