Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
NASA engineers are currently hard at work developing Space Launch System 1—what will be the biggest, most powerful rocket ever built. The inaugural launch of this behemoth won’t happen any earlier than 2019, but NASA has released a spectacular simulation of the launch to whet our appetites. If we’re ever going to send humans and…
Unless we find a way to travel infinitely faster than the speed of light, there’s no way you’ll ever see the farthest reaches of the galaxy in person. But that harsh reality is made somewhat easier to digest thanks to this short film by Teun van der Zalm, featuring fly-bys of computer-generated nebulae that even…
Using a new stacking technique she calls soniverse, the eternally patient domino master Hevesh5 (or Lily Hevesh, as she’s known off YouTube) created this mind-melting domino fall that makes it look like the tiny blocks are falling in both directions as they collapse. The technique requires an extra heaping helping of patience during setup, as…
Cloudflare provides security and domain name services for millions of the most prominent sites on the web. The company has built a solid reputation for its secure encryption and one of the key factors in its system is a wall of 100 lava lamps in the lobby of its San Francisco headquarters. Prolific YouTuber Tom…
What you’re seeing is a valuable painting being partially dissolved on purpose. Fine art is often coated with varnish for the same reason furniture is: it provides a protective barrier to the elements. But varnish turns yellow over time, and an even less attractive color after a few centuries—which is why art restoration experts need…
Unless you’ve done the right thing and moved yourself into a secluded cave for the next four years, after spending each day enduring a constant stream of depressing news on social media, you can probably relate to the animated characters in Ari Weinkle’s short film, Moodles, who collapse into giant piles of limp, relaxed noodles.…
We wouldn’t blame you for thinking that Julius Horsthuis spent weeks designing and animating his sci-fi short, Fraktaal, using 3D software. But as the artist reveals, “It so happens that I’m a lazy animator.” So he instead relied on complex mathematical fractal patterns to automatically generate the alien worlds and cities visited in his film.…
Shot on location at the Rocky Mountain National Park, the latest timelapse from More Than Just Parks captures the beauty of the iconic mountain range through all four seasons. But the highlight is undoubtedly when the stunning colors of Fall arrive, turning the park into a living painting. The short film is also a good…
Here’s the thing about NASA’s rocket scientists: They’re smart. And maybe a little weird. When you get literal rocket scientists to channel their energy into something silly like a pumpkin carving contest, the results are bound to be incredible. Seriously: Two groups at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been running their pumpkin carving contest since…
It doesn’t matter what medium you choose, animation is a tedious process requiring you to painstakingly bring every frame to life. But it’s even more challenging when your brush is an LED flashlight, the air is your canvas, and you can’t actually see what you just drew. And yet, artist Darren Pearson managed to create…
This year’s Tuesday-night Halloween means that most of the nation’s serial killers, monsters, and various stabby creatures have to turn in early for a bright and early hump day. But in lieu of being chased around by a low-budget demon, it’s not too late to wrap up your night by dimming the lights and reading…
It doesn’t matter what seat you choose on an airplane, your view will never be as breathtaking as what the pilots get to see during your flight. But sometimes the high-altitude scenery is so stunning that pilots feel obliged to share it with the world, like this descent into Queenstown Airport in New Zealand. If…
I can’t even hop a curb on my bike without feeling like a Hollywood stuntperson risking their life for a shot, so watching biker Antoine Bizet careen down a mountain in the deserts of Utah leaves me sweaty, short of breath, and happy to be safely perched in my office chair. Instead of slowly and…
For a while now, Paweł Zadrożniak has been treating us to some classic tunes played on his Floppotron— a musical instrument built from 64 floppy disk drives Frankenstein-ed together. His latest work nails the Ghostbuster theme song just in time to update your trick-or-treat playlist. Some songs on the Floppotron work better than others. Of…
Water slides are best when they take you on a long meandering ride through curves and hills, but not every amusement park has room for a big installation. That’s why a German company has combined water slides with Ferris wheels to create this dizzying attraction that will have riders wondering which way is up. The…
The lead up to Halloween is one of the best times of the year, with spooky parties, scary movies, and copious amounts of cheap candy in stores. But Halloween night, when you’re constantly running to the door to give away your coveted candy stocks, is less enjoyable. So why not build a Lego robot to…
In 2015, Google released DeepDream, a bonkers, art-generating neural net users put to work rendering everything from disturbing dog collages to even more disturbing psychedelic porn. DeepDream may have just been the prelude to less aesthetically off-putting but much more significant applications of the slightly creepy technology—such as generating photorealistic, high-definition images of people who…
Have you ever fantasized about having a house completely and totally managed from the comfort of your desk chair? Or are you just too lazy to bother flipping switches, but inexplicably willing to devote hours and hours to figuring out a computer program that does it for you? Today’s smart home tech makes all of…
You know how you were planning to impress trick-or-treaters this Halloween by handing out full-sized Snickers bars? If you live in San Francisco, don’t bother, because nothing you can do on October 31st will ever best Tom BetGeorge’s incomprehensibly over-the-top Halloween light show. Not only is BetGeorge’s house saturated in thousands of lights, it only…
Do you lean more towards the “trick” side of trick-or-treating? Do you, like 98 percent of the world, wonder who actually eats candy corn? If you answered “yes” to both, then head over to DragonflyFabrication’s Thingiverse page where you can download the plans for this double-barreled, wrist-mounted candy corn blaster. In addition to a hatred…
