Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
Today’s NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day is gorgeous:the Empire State Building against this morning’s partial lunar eclipse. Stunning photo by Chris Cook.
This is the first look of China’s new underwater assault rifle, now in the hands of their special forces. It has been under secret development for a long time. The weapons—which use the technology of this 800-rounds-per-minute Russian underwater rifle—were shown for the first time on Central China Television:
George Dvorsky explores some of the most plausible scenarios for alien civilizations based on what we know about life and the Universe—which is not a lot, but enough to make some educated guesses. https://gizmodo.com/some-of-the-most-plausible-scenarios-for-alien-civiliza-1458148674
It may be the always incredible aerial photography by our friend Jason Hawkes or the combination of The Shard, the glowing Tower Bridge, the City buildings, and the beautiful dusk, but London is starting to look like a proper city from the future. I just thought I could add a couple of spaceships taking to…
The guy who took this video was at his home in Lachine, Montreal, when he heard an increasingly buzzing noise outside. He looked out of the window and saw this giant electric fireball traveling fast through the street’s electrical cables until it hit his home.
Police has found what’s probably the biggest stash of stolen art ever: 1,500 paintings valued at roughly $1.35 billion hidden by 80-year-old Cornelius Gurlitt in his Munich apartment. Of course, the art was stolen by the damn Nazis during the 30s and 40s. Cornelius inherited the paintings—which include works from Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marc…
The only thing that could possibly be funnier than that recently discovered collection of Star Wars outtakes is if someone replaced all the clips in the original Star Wars trailer with blooper reel footage. So thankfully the folks at Slacktory did just that, and the results are amazing. https://gizmodo.com/hilarious-new-star-wars-bloopers-video-discovered-1453393702 If there was ever a way…
National Geographic made precise maps on how Earth would look in the case all the planet’s ice melted. The bad news: New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, London and other cool cities would be completely gone. The good news: the entire state of Florida would disappear. But that’s the only good news. The rest is…
Architizer showcases this awesome engineering and architectural project: a roaming city that would will actually work if someone builds it. In the past, some people have imagined roaming cities but nobody got to turn these pipe dreams into functional projects. This is the first one that actually makes sense. British architect Ron Herron first proposed…
Everybody knows that Siri still sucks—voice recognition is one of those technologies that has to work flawlessly for it not to suck. Like in Star Trek or 2001. Siri doesn’t, which is why The Simpsons slammed it this Sunday in an episode full of Apple references. Watch. This reminds me of Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury famous…
This machine by Arthur Ganson just blew my mind: its engine runs at 200 revolutions per minute but the last gear of its 12-gear mechanism is locked to a block of concrete. It looks still but, in reality, it is moving. You just can’t see it because it completes one revolution every two trillion years.…
In a planned mission, three ISS crew members took their Soyuz out for a ride around the ISS. Why? Did they want to show Sandra Bullock’s character in Gravity how it’s really done? Not exactly. Instead, it’s actually the astronaut equivalent of moving your car out of a parking space so your roommate can park…
Quick what does the United States have in common with Serbia and Yemen? No, not just that they all have the vowel E in them. No, not because they start with letters in the second half of the alphabet. And no, not nothing either. According to popular estimates, the US, Serbia and Yemen make up…
In the transaction of receiving real-time titillation via pixels over the Internet, it’s easy to forget how complicated some situations can be. Sure, there are gobs of money and endless credit card numbers being punched through but sometimes it’s just a prettier version of indentured servitude. https://gizmodo.com/indentured-servitude-money-laundering-and-piles-of-mo-5941976 The website brbxoxo reminds you of such sadness…
Sure slow motion is great for a lot of things but the effect is probably at its dramatic best when it captures explosions. Preferably building explosions. Preferably building explosions with a guy running away from said exploding building. The slow motion experts of the Slow Mo Guys laced a building with explosives and blew the…
Watch this, because it’s truly awesome. This masterful supercut of the Hoff’s greatest performance comes to us from the magnificent mind of Matthijs Vlot. The Vimeo failed a couple of times, so just in case:
I just can’t stop looking at how the drops carve the water, one after the other, making a hole in it. The experiment was captured by the Brigham Young University’s Splash Lab. Here’s their description of what’s happening: This stream of water is a simulated urine stream entering a body of water similar to a…
“The first 45 minutes or so are quite spectacularly executed,” says io9’s Lauren Davis but, ultimately, the new us-vs-them space war movie Ender’s Game is “not heart-breaking” and rushes the viewer to “its moral about compassion in times of war.” https://gizmodo.com/enders-game-is-thrilling-but-not-heart-breaking-1456600995
Hayden Planetarium Director and supreme astrophysics badass Neil deGrasse Tyson recently took to his podcast, Star Talk Radio, to answer a few questions from the audience as read by noted funnyman Eugene Mirman. And fortunately for us, Grand Moff Tyson decided to take the one about blowing up planets. Technically, the question only asked about…
Most black holes are deadly singularities that will crush everything inside, even stopping time. But there’s a special kind of black hole that will let you travel in time—or to another Universe. Esther Inglis-Arkell explains: https://gizmodo.com/finally-a-black-hole-that-you-can-visit-and-survive-1456402257
