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Airbus’s notable patents from the last few years reads like a list of failed aerospace Kickstarters: standing-room-only aircraft, bicycle saddles instead of real seats, or VR headsets to escape the awful reality of coach. Is it possible to go more ambitious? Airbus’s R&D department says yes. A patent filed in 2013 but approved yesterday (and…
Logging into apps on the new Apple TV currently involves entering a password with an onscreen keyboard, a process that makes the TSA look organized and efficient. It’s Apple’s screwup, but Facebook might have just come to the rescue. https://gizmodo.com/new-apple-tv-review-is-this-it-1740643958 Facebook’s new Login SDK has support for a login method that doesn’t require you to…
Fleeing violence and starvation in their native country, the refugees arrived in their new home only to be ridiculed in the press, subject to overt racism, and faced with persecution in their places of worship. Sound like recent headlines? This was actually the reality for the first Irish refugees to come to the US. It…
Being an astronaut is cool as hell for 364 days of the year. The one day that it kind of sucks when you’re an astronaut? Thanksgiving. Astronauts can’t enjoy all the food of Thanksgiving because of that damned zero gravity and those dehydrated food things. But at least they get to have some turkey. Here’s…
Over at Bird and Moon, naturalist Rosemary Mosco has created a small booklist of field guides that will never exist. But we wish they did! Mosco has worked with the National Parks Service and Audobon Society, and shares her love of science with the world via comics, workshops, and nature walks. Be sure to check…
Light pollution. It really screws up the view. It would be so great if the stars in the sky could still be seen over big metropolitan areas. But it doesn’t work like that. You have to go far away from civilization into deserts and nature to see the stars and cosmos the way they are…
Murder and mayhem can happen any time of year—even during the holidays (for some, especially during the holidays). For one Florida family, Thanksgiving joy turned to the ultimate horror. And it didn’t end there. “I have been waiting 20 years to do this,” 35-year-old Paul Merhige was overheard muttering amid a shooting rampage that killed…
Centuries ago, humans didn’t eat turkeys—we revered them. But around the mid-1000s, Puebloan peoples of the American Southwest started roasting the sacred bird. What happened? It’s a mystery North American archaeologists have puzzled over for years. As a fascinating Science News article explains, the turkey was held in high esteem by the people inhabiting the…
It’s rather simple if you have the first move. Put your mark in one corner and depending on your opponent’s next move, put your mark on another corner and you’ll be perfectly set up for a win. So for example, if you put your first mark on the bottom left hand corner and they put…
Are you flying through LGA, ATL, or ORD today? It turns out each of these airports has a bizarre and little-known backstory. As far as land use goes, airports are a massive pain in the butt to build: They’re big. They’re loud. They’re heavily regulated. They must be close enough to cities, while still planning…
By now almost everyone knows (I hope!) that Los Angeles has a subway. But did you know that this is not the first subway that LA has ever had? Ninety years ago today, the Pacific Electric Subway opened in Los Angeles, connecting the city’s growing transit network with a 1.9-mile tunnel. The Pacific Electric system—nicknamed…
This is the least dense gold nugget in the entire world. It can be held up with a feather. And it’s supported by a space-age material often dubbed “frozen smoke.” Scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have created a gold aerogel: a porous material that is 98% air. The rest is…
God bless the ultra nerds at Coren Puzzle. These Rubik’s Cube enthusiasts built a supermassive 22-by-22-by-22 and made a 90-minute YouTube video about it. In the end, it’s a very sad story. Watch the full video at your own risk. I’ve queued up the embed below to the moments before the builder tries to turn…
Walking into a spiderweb just got creepy. Those sticky strands clinging to your hair and face? They’re smeared with traces of the spider’s last meal, according to a fascinating new analysis of spiderweb DNA. In fact, anything that comes in contact with a web’s sticky fibers might leave bits of itself behind for a long…
SpaceX just got its first crewed spaceship contract from NASA for the Crew Dragon spacecraft and it’s set to bring us back to space on American spaceships after so many years without. Along with the Boeing Starliner, the Crew Dragon will start making crewed space flights in 2017. For reference, the last flight of the…
A team of researchers did a teardown of Google’s Nest Cam and discovered that even when the user turns it off, the camera continues to function. ABI researchers examined the security cam’s power consumption, concluding that when the Nest Cam is “turned off” via its app, the LED light indeed goes away—but the device itself…
When construction crews began digging to construct a new building at MIT they had no idea they’d find a time capsule. Which is why they inadvertently cracked the large glass capsule when it was first uncovered. But now the folks at MIT plan to restore the 1957 time-traveling tube, and since the directions clearly state…
Phone booths are disappearing. Kids nowadays don’t even know what it is when they are looking at one. But this booth in Prairie Grove, Arkansas is one of the last remaining specimens of a passing era, and just has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. When’s the last time you’ve used one…
Cooking Thanksgiving dinner is already hard. There are so many dishes and only one kitchen to cook it all in, so many guests to serve and only so much time to prepare everything. Andy George and crew at How to Make Everything wanted to make it harder by finding out what it takes to make…
Few people have heard of Eliza Fenning today, but in 1815 she was the most famous wronged woman in England. Executed for a crime on flimsy evidence, she inspired a new age of scientific inquiry—and a character in Frankenstein. When Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1816, she included a character based on the defendant in…
