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Over on reddit, an awesome AMA between readers and NASA Mars scientists plumbs deeper into today’s flowing water announcement. Here’re the highlights. The reddit AMA included participants from NASA’s Mars Reconnoissance Orbiter (MRO) as well as their Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL): Rich Zurek, Chief Scientist, NASA Mars Program Office; Project Scientist, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Leslie…
The creators of a new, massive emergency flotation device called the Centifloat were inspired to action by the horrifying images of drowned Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi. Centifloat is a tube that measures 52 feet long, can be inflated in 3 minutes, and has enough grab handles to support 60 people. Inventor Ben Board and his…
The wild minds of ChefSteps got 8 vats of oil and then deep fried the hell out of basically every food under the Sun. Cupcakes? Yep. Cauliflower? Peaches? Avocados? Why not. Steak and Potatoes? Mmhmm. A Sausage Egg McMuffin from McDonald’s? Absolutely. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Of course. There is so much crispy oily…
The National Security Agency has created a line of shareable digital love note e-cards to send to your friends and family. Very normal, very cool, very NSA. People who like fake holidays all over the world celebrated Love Notes Day this weekend, and it appears some of those people are NSA employees. It’s like a…
Products like thermal imaging, weapon-mounted range finders and even a new handgun integrally built around its silencer sound like dreams come true to firearms enthusiasts, but to-date such technology has remained military-focussed and too expensive. No more. Six-year old Silencerco has quickly grown into the largest maker of gun suppressors in America. Not only do…
Folks have been fantasizing for years about the possibility of an Ikea-savvy robot. If Ikea uses robots to flat pack its furniture, surely we humans could use robots to assemble it! But despite at least a decade of attempts, one thing remains clear: Robots are terrible at building Ikea furniture. The latest attempt at the…
A new kind of concrete from the UK building materials company Tarmac instantly soaks up gallons and gallons of H20–simultaneously preventing flood conditions while also conserving water by cycling it directly back into the ground. It’s called Tarmac Topmix Permeable, and it’s a super-porous concrete pavement designed to remove storm and floodwater from parking lots,…
How bad can one day of work at Masters and Johnson’s Reproductive Biology Research Foundation be? At this point in the season, bad enough to convince Virginia Johnson to park her kids with her dad, and pack her bags to flee for parts unknown. And that’s before she even leaves for work in the morning.…
We opened Throb’s sex education survey two weeks ago: it’s our attempt to collect data that can help us make sense of the United States’ district-by-district patchwork of coursework and requirements. So far, nearly 14,000 of you have told us what your high schools did for sex ed. If you want to help out, but…
Which ultralight backpacking quilt is right for you? Why are sea turtles glowing the dark? Which new mountain bike should you be saving up for? It’s What’s New Outside. Ultralight Sleep Insulation Guide: Section Hiker has put together a great, interactive guide to quilts, hoodless sleeping bags and such weighing 2lbs or less. It’s the…
Here’s an interesting argument from MinuteEarth saying that we should stop fighting wildfires so vigilantly because we’re actually making wildfires even worse and harder to stop. Why? Because by stopping fires it allows trees to grow closer to each other which makes the forest denser and more flammable and the next fire hotter, faster, and…
In Norway, doctors are clinging to older MS DOS-based electronic journals. As a result there’s a system in place that still employs floppy disks—and it works extremely well. But a blog post on Gundersen.net says the Norwegian government might be retiring the floppy disk option as soon as next year. Using floppy disks isn’t completely…
In 1984, 24-year-old Petra Pazsitka was living in Braunschweig, Germany, studying computer science—until the day she was reported as missing after failing to return from the dentist. At one point, the main suspect in an unrelated rape and murder confessed to killing her, but later recanted. Her body was never found, and in 1989, she…
As the air turns crisp and iPhone lines wrap around Apple Stores, it’s time for another annual fall tradition: Google’s official unveiling of its newest flagship Android phone, the Nexus. Google sent out invitations to an event in San Francisco on September 29, adding, “Join us for some tasty new treats and much s’more.” That…
The controlled demolition of old buildings is always a fun thing to watch, especially when demolition experts do extremely accurate math in order to bring down huge structures. Just like in the case of the coal-fired Cockenzie power station in East Lothian, Scotland. Cockenzie’s 487 feet (149 meters) tall iconic chimneys were demolished on Saturday…
The world we currently live in loves the old world we used to live in. To a point. Everyone gets lovesick with nostalgia and pines for the good ol’ days but no one will ever really go back in time because it means our iPhones will be older and Facebook won’t load as fast. So…
After a weekend of rampant speculation, NASA has confirmed our suspicions: There’s probably liquid water on Mars today. The landmark finding makes the notion of life on the Red Planet all the more plausible. “Water is essential to life as we know it,” the researchers behind a study published today in Nature Geoscience today write.…
Worried about your smartphone privacy? Creating a truly snoop-proof phone is impossible, but Blackphone 2 is trying to get as close as possible. The newest version of Silent Circle’s security-focused smartphone is available today. Blackphone 2 uses a special operating system designed to safeguard data. It’s encrypted, of course—Silent Circle was founded by Phil Zimmerman,…
Amazon Dash buttons are equal parts amazing technology and useless gimmick. A single button that will deliver specific products to your doorstep is like shopping in the Jetsons’ era. But it would be even better if that product was hot, cheesy pizza, as one hacker imagined. Brody Berson recently reprogrammed an Amazon Dash button so…
Every year, the inevitable release of Apple’s new iPhone, usually sometime in September, is always a big event. Equally as inevitable are the rash of boring reviews stating the same thing over and over. “The best iPhone yet,” “Like the old iPhone but better!” So on and so on. Since we’ve never really been Apple’s…
