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In two separate press conferences early this morning, the Australian Defense Minister and the CEO of Malaysia Airlines reiterated that flight MH370 is lost with no survivors, mirroring the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razik’s announcement not 24 hours earlier. But both added one troubling addition: They’ve come to this conclusion because there’s no evidence to…
Another track from the same poetry-into-sound series that yielded Saturday’s Downstream entry (Vernal Drone” by Larry Johnson): Mike J Dayton’s “The Crumbling Ice Temple” takes as its subject a haiku, part of the Naviar Haiku Project. The poem is by Kristjaan Panneman. Dayton’s rendering is all gentle clatter and echoing resonance. Deep Silence In this…
The pilot in this twisting and turning plane must be ridiculously disciplined, have palms that never sweat, a personality that never stresses and big brass ones because that’s what it takes to land a plane in such shit weather. The propeller plane landed on the island of Flores in the Azores. Seeing things like this…
Photos of lightning taken from space may be a dime a dozen, but sometimes there are images that are truly extraordinary. Like this one, taken by the Expedition 26 crew with a Nikon D3S digital camera using a 180 millimeter lens. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook
SugarSweet Ax‘s Ice Cream Crush is equally confounding to both the eyes and the ears. Like Rebecca Black’s Friday but without any discernable form of melodic structure or progression.
Brace yourselves. This newly-uploaded video shows two people walking to the edge of the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere—One World Trade—and jumping off. And here we were, thinking that a 16-year-old was all that for sneaking past a guard or two. https://gizmodo.com/teen-climbs-to-the-top-of-1-wtc-after-sneaking-past-sle-1547968068 Though the jump took place on September 30, 2013, it was just…
At one kilometer, Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Tower will be the tallest skyscraper in the world. A new construction date has been announced, but there’s still a lot of questions around this structure. https://gizmodo.com/theyre-finally-building-the-worlds-new-tallest-tower-1550515846
A super volcano that creates a toxic ash cloud covering Earth. Gamma ray explosions. Shifting of magnetic fields. The robots. The bees. And even ourselves. If you want to give yourself a little scare, watch this video on the 10 things that could wipe out life on Earth. The idea of mass extinctions is riveting…
You can have your iPhones and iPads and Androids and laptops and smart watches and Google Glass and fitness trackers and wearables. Have it. Take it all away. I only want this magic pancake stacking robot in my life. It’s the only reason we invented technology. The coolest tech is always the stuff that builds…
Last night was an exploration of how knowledge conquers fear, and the power of scientific prediction over superstition. NASA pulled together stories of how their missions overlapped with this week’s theme. Read on for the episode recap. https://gizmodo.com/when-knowledge-conquered-fear-the-nasa-version-1550106469 https://gizmodo.com/cosmos-chronicles-how-knowledge-conquers-fear-1550158286
Badminton is silly and soft and dainty and not tennis, right? I don’t know anymore! This impossibly fast rally makes it seem like an impossibly fast sport played by humans who have impossibly fast reaction times. Even robots couldn’t see the ball and hit the ball so fast. It’s incredible. SPLOID is a new blog…
Climb into a sinkhole of bureaucracy in Pennsylvania (no, really, it’s a cave), explore San Francisco’s most storied structure (not the Golden Gate bridge), and jet off to to Myanmar (or is it Burma?). Plus, SCARY CLOWNS! In this week’s Urban Reads. “The employees here pass thousands of case files from cavern to cavern and…
I spent two nights last week wearing 3D glasses in a dark theater, watching four German men in reflective Spandex bodysuits sing about computers, transit, and architecture. The electro-pop godfathers Kraftwerk played an incredible sold-out residency at Disney Concert Hall here in L.A. with eight shows across four nights as part of their Catalogue 12345678…
Twenty-Five years ago the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spilled its guts across Alaska’s shoreline. It was a massive ecological disaster of great importance for many reasons, but mostly because it’s seared in our memories by horrifying photos. Here’s a collection of the striking images that informed a generation of dialog about environmentalism. https://gizmodo.com/25-years-after-exxon-valdez-were-not-ready-for-the-ne-1550353498 A local…
In the future, the glass that coats our skyscrapers could also serve as the power plant that keeps the lights on. This is not news. However, with an amazing new material being developed in Singapore, that same glass could also turn your city’s windows into skyscraper-sized displays. https://gizmodo.com/color-solar-panels-let-stained-glass-windows-produce-ch-1535412144 Researchers from the Nanyang Technological University just…
Undulating through the air, the winning design for China’s pavilion at Expo Milan 2015 resembles a field of wind-swept wheat. The wave-like roof of bamboo panels is both a play on the expo’s theme, “Feeding the Planet – Energy for Life,” and a reimagining of China’s traditional shingled roofs. [Studio Link-Arc viaMy Modern Met]
Earlier in the year, FLIR got us all hot and bothered by revealing a thermal vision smartphone case that could actually see our excitement. Unfortunately it’s only for iPhone users, and won’t be available until the early summer. But Android fans will have the last laugh with their own thermal imaging add-on—the Therm-App—that’s already available.…
Another thing that I didn’t know was a thing. People who like to drop through big waterfalls, like Dane Jackson does in this video on the 60-foot La Tomata waterfall in central Veracruz, Mexico. And there’s more, like the 189-foot drop a reader posted below. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us…
With spring finally in the air, it’s time to grab your phone and go outside. No, not so that you can check your email on a hike, but because there are plenty of other ways that the little computer in you palm can actually make the outdoors more fun. We’ve rounded up some of the…
Armed with a shovel and a camera with a super-high shutter speed, photographer Claire Droppert made her way around a series of Dutch beaches and created these crazy Sand Creatures. The airborne formations look like the Sandman‘s brethren caught in the act of transformation. The pics are the first part of a larger series exploring…
