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Researchers have discovered a material that could break the record for the highest melting point of any substance. A team of Brown University engineers found that a combination of hafnium, nitrogen, and carbon, in just the right amounts, could withstand 4,400 kelvins, or around 7,460 degrees Fahrenheit. To give you an idea, that’s two-thirds the…
We’ve seen the Futurama intro done up in stunning photorealistic 3D before. And we’ve seen the normal animation sequence before the TV show so many times. Now here’s an old video of the intro being recreated with hand made cutouts. All the images were drawn and props were put together to re-make the original and…
NASA has just released a stunning new topographic map of Ceres, the other dwarf planet astronomers are getting to study up close and personal this summer. Unlike Pluto’s freakishly smooth and youthful surface, Ceres’s exterior is riddled with craters, creating a battered old landscape of peaks and valleys. The topo maps shown here, with low…
Every so often your faith in humanity is restored when the social world unites to excoriate an event deserving of its wrath. So it goes with Walter Palmer, the American dentist who killed a beloved, world-famous lion, Cecil, in Zimbabwe under cover of darkness and questionable legality. Palmer is not having a good day. Good.…
In 1956, Grace Metalious wrote Peyton Place, an immediate best-seller about the scandalous secrets of a small town in New England. One of its inspirations was the real-life case of 20-year-old Barbara Roberts, who shot her father in December 1946 while defending herself and her younger brother. Barbara and 17-year-old William had an unusually strong…
A shiny orb! A floating shiny orb! Water bubbles that pop out of the floating shiny orb! This is the magic that would happen when you pop an effervescent tablet (Alka-Seltzer!) into a water bubble in space. It’s cool to see the little bubbles form within the blob of water and then see things start…
Not one, not two, but four pelvic floor exercise devices are hitting the market to encourage women to do their Kegels. Rose Eleveth talks to their creators about their mission to help strengthen hidden (but important) muscles and asks whether the process really needs to be gamified. Check out the article at Refinery 29! Contact…
Motorola just released a hardware Kraken the likes of which we’ve never seen. The new Moto X Style! The battery-conscious Moto X Play! And then there’s the Moto G. Only a few years ago, no one would care about the lesser budget sibling alongside these two powerhouses—but the Moto G is Motorola’s real smartphone champion.…
You know all those campaigns to warn us against the horrors of frankenfood by putting GMO labels on cans? A new study shows that even when food has GMO labels, nobody cares. Groups who oppose GMOs have pushed governments to put warning labels on food that explain it has been genetically modified. The idea is…
Pluto has been puzzling us with its weirdly smooth surface, but if it’s the first Kuiper Belt Object we’ve visited, how did we know how many craters to expect in the first place? Here’s everything we’ve figured out about collisions in this chaotic area of our Solar System. When we got our first close-up look…
Despite the fact that you’re eating tiny fish eggs, caviar lends any meal a feeling of sophistication. So it only makes sense that you’d want to eat everything in the form of those tiny Jello-like spheres, right? That’s where this handheld contraption, currently raising funds on Kickstarter, comes in. The Imperial Spherificator doesn’t exactly roll…
Duck is delicious. Fatty and rich and more flavorful and tongue punchy than chicken in every single way that I’m drooling over this duck burger topped with duck confit, pickled red cabbage, gruyere cheese and drizzled in hoisin sauce. It’s like if America and Asia and France teamed up to make a burger without beef.…
An official investigation into the deadly crash of a Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo over California last October finds that a co-pilot unlocked the ship’s braking system too early. The incident, according to the National Transportation and Safety Board’s report, could have been prevented with better safety procedures. At 9:19 PDT on October 31st, 2014, a Virgin…
You can plan ahead all you want, but a vacation is often at the mercy of the weather wherever you’re traveling to. And that inspired designer Camilla Hempleman to create a special map, printed with thermochromatic ink, that changes color to reveal the best places to visit based on the local weather. The BATH °C…
Opening your oven to find a tray of burnt brownies isn’t quite as devastating as learning that your home planet was destroyed—but it’s pretty close. So instead of wiping out worlds, this Death Star kitchen timer counts down to when it’s time to yank something out of the oven. Simply twisting the Death Star’s top…
By 2020, visitors landing in Tokyo for the Summer Olympics could be greeted by a fleet of self-driving taxis. At least, that’s the dream of Japanese tech company DeNA, which hopes to have autonomous cars shuttling tourists around the crowded, maze-like streets of that megacity within five years. You probably haven’t heard of DeNA. But…
Gorgeous. Just gorgeous. There are few directors like Stanley Kubrick so we have to appreciate all that he’s left us with. This video montage by CutPrintFilm puts together various tracking shots (or shots meant to look like tracking shots) from Kubrick films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange And Eyes Wide…
On July 24th, goddess of beauty and science, Gillian Anderson (AKA Scully on The X-Files) announced on Twitter that “it’s time to start an X-Files Lego campaign.” I want to believe this will happen. Since this is 2015, Anderson took her campaign to twitter to rally the troops! As the world eagerly awaits the return…
The news that Boston no longer wants to host the 2024 Summer Olympics isn’t really a shock. Few cities these days do. But the Olympics don’t have to be bad for the host city—and done right, they can actually benefit it. Nowhere is that clearer than Los Angeles, the new frontrunner for 2024. The Olympics…
The older you get, the less excited you are to celebrate another birthday. But that all just changed with these new Star Wars helium balloons from Amscan. If you thought Stormtroopers were easy to kill before, now they can be taken out with just safety pins. Available in the coming months from your favorite party…
