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This week, the internet worked itself into a frenzy over the possibility that we’ve found an alien megastructure. But whether or not there’s a Dyson sphere buried in the Kepler data, the discovery of a strange, flickering star is very interesting. Indeed, it points to an entirely new use for the spectral data on 150,000-odd…
Your router might look like an impenetrable black box of internet mystery, but tweaking a few settings under the hood is easier than you might think. Here are some of the options you can reconfigure to get a faster wireless connection and keep unwelcome visitors off your network. We haven’t gone into much detail about…
If you’re looking for some Saturday morning inspiration, simply text an emoji to the number listed below. You’ll receive an adorable corgi or two in return. It’s totally worth ten seconds of your time, I promise.
1962: This isn’t a demented experiment from some wacky fictional mad scientist. Instead, it’s actual serious research by NASA that led to pressurized spacesuits. Robert St. John is the lucky victim, er, “test subject” in this completely legitimate and necessary experiment on pilot restraint and closed loop breathing systems at NASA’s Ames Research Center. The…
When a team of Dutch scientists unveiled the world’s first stem cell beef burger in 2013, it carried a $300,000 price tag. Worse, it was dry and tasteless. But since the initial lackluster reviews, Mark Post and his colleagues have been hard at work. Now, they say they hope to have a commercially saleable cow-less…
Hobby drones have come under heavy criticism recently for interfering with firefighting efforts and flying too close to airports. According to NBC News, the Department of Transportation plans to have all drones in the country registered by Christmas. On Monday, the US DOT will supposedly announce the program, working with manufacturers to create a national…
Google’s been embroiled in a battle with writers and the Authors Guild over whether or not the company’s book scanning project infringed on their copyright. Today the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals held that it’s fair use. In case you’ve never used Google Books before, it’s a searchable database of millions of books that Google…
NASA has spent the past few years asking architects, engineers, and designers outside of the space industry to think about habitat-building on the Red Planet–in part through competitions like the 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge. The competition, which wrapped up this fall, asked designers to imagine how found materials on the surface of Mars could be used…
Here’s a really cool video showing the daily routine of Chelsea Miller, a knife maker. It’s fun because it’s filmed from her perspective so you get to see what it really takes. Fiercely Curious, who made the video, writes, “Chelsea Miller hand makes stunning knives out of old horse rasp files. She often uses maple…
Get your weekend started right by watching how sperm sometimes form power-swimming blocks to get ahead. And learn why these particular sperm get together. We all heard the talk, in sex ed classes, about how each of us is a lottery winner. Out of every spermatozoon in a typical, ah, emission, we were the one…
Dystopian visions of the future always portray scenarios where humans have destroyed Earth and turned it into a desolated and almost uninhabitable place. But our planet probably doesn’t really care. It will just wait us silly humans out until we disappear and then flourish again just as beautiful and full of life as before. Sumer…
“Did someone send you a fancy crack pipe?” It was Friday, it was not a reasonable drinking hour, and I was opening a package in the office containing an oblong object that looked like a dandy narcotic catheter. It’s Friday afternoon, you’ve made it through the long week, and it’s time for Happy Hour, Gizmodo’s…
Ah. When life gives you a mess, just use this curb roller to smooth things out. It packs and flattens and smoothes any thing it meets. Just look at how kludges of cement transform into a perfectly shaped curb after the roller gets its roll on. It’s like the world’s strongest rolling pin but for…
Claw marks rip open tree bark, oozing sap like a botanical blood. Scratches like this scream a single message loud and clear: a bear was here. They aren’t subtle creatures. As part of efforts to track bears without trapping them, US Geological Survey scientists find places frequented by bears to set up non-invasive hair traps.…
One of the great early civilizations collapsed in a mere fifty years, with 75% of the population disappearing a century later. What the hell happened to ancient Greece? Ancient Greece typically brings to mind robes and columns and people inventing democracy. That’s fine, but it arguably involves people who weren’t originally Greek. The classical age…
Today in “is it too late to just get back in bed?” news, the body of an Ohio murder victim that was left dangling from a chain-link fence was initially ignored by passers-by, who mistook it for a ghoulish Halloween decoration. CBS News reports: Law enforcement officials in the southern Ohio town of Chillicothe said…
Did you see that video of a fish “coming back to life” as a woman was eating it? It’s half-bullshit, much like half the viral videos on the internet. Despite its clickbaity headline, The Daily Dot acknowledges that this fish isn’t actually coming back to life. In fact, they spoke with an expert who explained…
There’s something mysterious afoot on the world’s farms: For 50 years, the amount of food we’re growing has steadily risen, and with it so has the amount of farmland used—until two decades ago, when food production started rising independently of new land. But how? There are a couple different ways you can increase a farm’s…
Whether or not you’re directly in the path of the impending monster El Niño, if you live in the United States you’re probably going to feel its effects this winter. Yesterday, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center issued the US Winter Outlook, and the long and short of it is we’re all in for some serious weather…
“The modern man cries…often,” reads Brian Lombardi’s puzzling, unintentionally satirical profile of what’s become of many male adults these days. A bunch of people told me I should write a response, so here you go. For all you girls out there, something you may not be aware of (but probably are) is that us guys…
