Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
Gizmodo’s Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan has a selection of 12 radical and sadly unbuilt airports from 100 years of air travel. Some of them are really crazy and impractical, but others could are the stuff of your sci-fi dreams. https://gizmodo.com/12-radical-unbuilt-airport-designs-from-100-years-of-a-1472198637
NASA has just published this true color photograph of the United States taken from space by the Suomi satellite. It’s going to be a rough Thanksgiving, folks: A large winter system is moving across the United States and is combining with cold air moving down from Canada, bringing snow to some areas. Major travel impacts…
While you endure the long wait for the next season of Game of Thrones, expand this image by Studio Incandescence and get lost exploring all the killings* in the series. But beware, if you’re only watching the TV series, it contains spoilers from the books. * Plus all the attempted assassinations, relations and people falsely…
I’ve seen Earth compared to all its water before, but this image really gives you a perfect idea on how fragile our planet is by adding all the air in another sphere. The density of the air pictured here corresponds to its density at sea level (one atmosphere.) https://gizmodo.com/all-the-water-on-earth-5909889 Here’s the high resolution image made…
Tomorrow and Thursday, an estimated 43.4 million Americans will travel to celebrate Thanksgiving with their loved, hated and annoyed ones. According to NASA, 90 percent will travel by road, and the rest will use airplanes and trains. Here are the roads, train tracks and flight paths they will take. The photo above shows the road…
The United States has officially announced that it flew two B-52 strategic bombers over Chinese defense airspace in direct challenge to Beijing. China unilaterally declared the area as “restricted space” last Saturday, following a long territorial dispute over its islands, now administered by Japan. Good luck, everyone! In an unprecedented move, the bombers flew from…
When you’re raising an expensive luxury sedan onto a lift—especially one that costs more than your annual salary—it’s probably a good idea to make sure the handbrake is on. But if you forget, just try and remember that no amount of adrenaline or panic will make you strong enough to stop the car from rolling…
I’ve seen many of these spherical panorama photos in the past, but I love this one because it looks like a tiny Little Prince forest planet happily traveling across the Milky Way. Photographer Thomas o’Brien explains how this classic panorama technique is done: I shot 32 vertical images with the camera mounted to a panoramic…
Australian researcher Leonardo Guida found a two-headed ray on April, and he has now documented it as “one of only a few examples worldwide of this rare birth defect found in sharks and rays” for the advancement of science and the ruining of your Tuesday.
If you thought that only landings were hard on aircraft carriers, David Cenciotti at the Avioationist found this photo an E-2 Hawkeye launching through a wave, just as “the ship’s bow lowered.” I’d imagine that they time the launch so the bow goes back up at the precise moment when the plane leaves the carrier,…
A new study published in the journal Psychological Science says that humans exposed to awesome natural phenomenon—like the aurora borealis or stunning landscapes like the Grand Canyon—may be more likely to believe in God and the supernatural. The researches exposed one group of participants to some awesome scenes from Planet Earth, the epic nature documentaries…
Cursing Candy—this ingenious stop-motion video by Lee Hardcastle shows how to curse using traditional candy bars like Sneakers, Mars or KitKat. It’s a lot of fun—unless you get easily offended by this kind of language.
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reports on the discovery of a “reverse shock wave racing inward at Mach 1000” in the Tycho’s supernova remnant, making its particles glow as you can see in the photograph above. If you think the idea of a shockwave traveling inward is counterintuitive, you aren’t alone. This is what’s happening:…
Maybe you saw photographer Thomas Senf’s work with a bunch of crazy ice climbers in the Frost Giants, Norway. I never saw the video showing the true extend of their insanity. Just watching them jumping upside down onto ice curtains that can break makes my heartbeat rise. https://gizmodo.com/climbing-frozen-waterfalls-at-night-by-the-light-of-a-d-1459406383
The answer is no right now, but soon it will be yes: “Within a few decades, small groups—and even single individuals—will be able to get their hands on any number of extinction-inducing technologies.” George Dvorsky explains how in this bone-chilling article. https://gizmodo.com/could-a-single-individual-really-destroy-the-world-1471212186
Space exploration and research helps humanity, not only as a way to advance science and technology to better the world we live in, but also at the purely existential level. I know that’s a fact—but to see the effects as told by normal people on Earth with real problems… that feels pretty good.
If you don’t go awwww with these photos of wet dogs by Striking Paws’ photographer Sophie Gamand, I don’t want to be your friend. Sophie, everyone who goes awwww and I love you.
I’ve seen pilots ejecting from fighter planes in extreme situations. It looks scary, but it’s nothing compared to listening to the minutes prior to the ejection. That’s when you start to hyperventilate just by watching them. https://gizmodo.com/combat-pilots-ejecting-after-aircraft-crash-5177025 The video on top shows a pilot landing an F-15 aircraft with a burning engine—only to discover that…
The situation in Sumatra is getting worse: Mount Sinabung erupted eight times in just a few hours on Sunday. The volcano’s continuing eruptions cover everything with ash and now officials have reported rocks raining down over a large area, forcing thousands to flee their homes. These new images show the ongoing drama. https://gizmodo.com/this-insanely-gigantic-volcano-explosion-just-happened-1465189438 The Indonesian…
The first Eye of God is the Helix Nebula—NGC 7293—just 650 light-years from Earth. The second Eye of God—NGC 4921, pictured above—is much farther away: 310 million light-years from our planet. It’s an espiral galaxy like our own Milky Way, seen right from the top. https://gizmodo.com/the-eye-of-satan-is-watching-you-from-space-5871531 Don’t zoom in and look at the hundred galaxies…
