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Angel Le and his six-year-old son Brandon were visiting a memorial in Paris when a reporter for Le Petit Journal stopped to ask a few questions. The resulting clip was shared more than 11 million times on Facebook, generated a tearful stream of tweets, and millions of views from around the world. It’s not hard…
A mouse’s sperm is much, much larger than an elephant’s sperm. A fruit fly produces the longest sperm known to science. Why do tiny animals make big swimmers, but large animals make small ones? There are competing ideas about why sperm size differs among animals. One idea holds that small animals and large animals have…
Law enforcement officials are using the Paris attacks to argue that the government needs special access to crack encryption. It’s a bad argument, and it’s looking worse as more information comes out about how the attacks went down. News outlets from Paris are reporting that a phone with an unencrypted text message was found at…
Everybody knows and loves the U-2: the mighty US spyplane. But they may not be as familiar with Lockheed’s matte black ultra-high altitude reconnaissance jet aircraft–nicknamed Dragon Lady–has a beautiful sister: NASA’s ER-2 that I think of as Snow White. Snow White’s recent mission–based upon her high altitude radar system–is more peaceful than her dark…
Well, OK, it’s not the kind of dongle you’d expect. The paperback sticky note is a pad of paper that sticks to the back of your iPhone 6, allowing you to (gasp) use your phone as an actual, real notepad as well as a computer. If you’re still a fan of jotting things down using…
NASA recently released a two-minute video that shows an average year of plant life on Earth. Jason Kottke calls it “The Breathing Earth,” and he’s right. It’s undeniably beautiful to see our little blue marble bloom with life and exhale as the sun retreats. [NASA, Kottke] GIF by Andrew Liszewski Contact the author at [email protected].…
The history of inoculation may sound a little dry, but it’s really an epic tale of human trafficking, semi-illicit experimentation, and high explosives. It’s a globe-hopping story that stars harem girls, noblewomen, prisoners, princesses, slaves, and even a witch hunter. In the Shadow of Smallpox Smallpox has troubled humanity for thousands of years. Wherever we’ve…
I gasped. And then cursed. And then just shook my head throughout this entire video. Théo Sanson set a new record by walking 1,640 feet across a slackline in the Utah desert. He crossed between The Rectory and Castleton Tower at Castle Valley, Utah and is so impossibly high off the ground that it’s absolutely…
Four and a half billion years ago, a whirling cloud of cosmic dust condensed into the lump of rock we call home. For the first time, astronomers are now watching that same planet-forming process playing out around a distant star. The star in question, LkCa15, sits 450 light years from Earth, at the center of…
As usual, traffic was apocalyptic on the 10 Freeway. So I cued up the Master of None episode I didn’t finish the night before, pulled out the Greek yogurt I hadn’t had time to eat for breakfast, reclined my seat way back, and relaxed. I may have even dozed off as my vehicle steered its…
In 1944 and 1945, the Allies were attacking the last supporter of Nazi Germany. Tens of thousands of tons of bombs were dropped on Hungarian ground targets, mostly by the Consolidated B-24 Liberator and Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers of the 15th Air Force. By the end of the World War II, the rain of…
Windows 10 has Cortana, iOS has Siri, Android has Google Now, but what about Mac owners who want to bark orders at their computers? By using the new features OS X El Capitan adds to the Dictation tool and the Spotlight search interface, you can get a close approximation of Siri on your iMac or…
Do you like those tiny automatic musical instruments you can wind up and listen to their adorable jingling tunes? Or your grandma’s dancing ballerina music box? Or the wooden cable car model you have got from your uncle, playing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”? If so, this overgrown hybrid of a music box…
We already knew the Godzilla Cthulhu Sauron El Niño of 2015 was gonna be bad. But exactly how bad are we talking? According to the World Meteorological Organization, this year’s El Niño ranks among the three strongest of the past 70 years, and it may become the most powerful El Niño ever recorded. One sign…
Astronauts work incredibly hard, putting in long hours in unnatural, difficult conditions. But sometimes they get pushed too hard, and reach a breaking point. This is the story of Skylab 4, the astronaut crew that kicked off the holidays with a mutiny. November 16, 1973: A time exposure photograph transforms a mundane pre-launch task into…
A few years ago the Volta Racer—a solar-powered electric toy car—helped educate kids about the virtues of harnessing the sun’s energy. The Volta Flyer does the same thing, except that it’s able to take to the skies after just 90 seconds of soaking up the sun’s rays. Arriving as an easy-to-build kit (even kids can…
What the hell does it mean for a person to be white? Historically, it’s a question that has been difficult to answer. But it’s also a question that has defined where a person is allowed to live, eat, and work. Race is a social construct, but when it comes to countries like the United States…
The 26th Precinct of the NYPD is here to crap on your futurist dreams and promote safe streets. British police issued a similar declaration last month. Nevertheless, some armchair legal research suggests that the code cited by 26th Precincts social media officer does allow these mini-Segways to surf through the city. NYC Administrative code does…
It’s time you stepped up your camera gaming, ditching your smartphone lens for something with more photographic muscle. If you’re just starting out, check out this selection of cameras that are great throwing you (or a friend) into the world of high-end photography. Sony RX100 Mark II Buying a bag’s worth of lenses is expensive…
Panasonic’s futuristic new gizmo may make airport employees’ lives a lot easier. It’s called the “Megahonyaku” (a portmanteau of “megaphone” and “translation” in Japanese), and it automatically spits out Japanese sentences into English, Chinese, or Korean. Tokyo Narita International Airport, one of the busiest airports in Japan, is going to test the new product out.…
