Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
The woman with the awesome hair is Dr. Angela Christiano—a dermatology researcher at Columbia University’s Medical Center. Together with her colleagues, she has discovered a way to cure baldness on mice, as described in a new research paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper—titled Microenvironmental reprogramming by three-dimensional…
It sounds like the beginning of Zombies on a plane—the movie starring Samuel L. Jackson that I want to see next year—but scientist have proven the existence of something called dark lightning, an invisible force that can expose unsuspecting airline passengers to sizable amounts of gamma ray radiation. “Passengers flying through a thunderstorm when a…
We think that, one day, with enough computational power and knowledge, we will be able to create an accurate model of weather or the human brain or any real world object or situation, thus gaining useful insight into the past, present or future. But as Esther Inglis-Arkell explains on io9, that’s impossible: All models break…
The Natural History Museum in London has published its worldwide 2013 Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards—always extraordinary and beautiful. I love this Japanese macaque by Dutch photographer Jasper Doest, suspended in a galaxy of snow and vapor in the hot springs of Jigokudani, central Japan. The winner, however, is this one: I love these…
Brace yourselves, for science has taken a step into a path from which there’s no way back: a group of researchers at Yale and Harvard have rewritten the entire genetic code of a living organism for the first in history. Not only that, but they have made it resistant to sickness in the process, Physorg…
Chinese scientists have created a revolutionary way to connect to the internet using LED-based lightbulbs, Xinhua reports. Coupled with special microprocessors embedded in the bulbs, four computers were capable of connecting to the internet at very high speeds: 150 megabits per second, the speed of a typical FiOS fiberoptics connection. They call if LiFi, for…
I look at these NSFW images of the Ureshino Sightseeing House of Hidden Treasures sex museum, in Japan, and I just can’t understand them. Literal what the flying fucks all around. https://kotaku.com/nsfw-japans-7-million-sex-museum-sure-is-silly-1446939458
This giant ball of fluff is not an anime character or an alien being for the next Star Trek. It’s a real animal—an Angora bunny. I’ve seen other Angora bunnies in my life, but never anything like this. That beast can’t be comfortable, but it must be so comfortable to use it as a pillow.…
The first time you see an American nuclear super-carrier in person, you can’t believe the size. It’s simply astonishing. It must be even more impressive if you see it like this, fully naked in a dry dock about to be flooded. Expand it to see it at full resolution. https://gizmodo.com/the-bow-size-of-the-navys-new-nuclear-supercarrier-defi-5913348 It happened on October 11,…
As of October 13, 2013, humans have discovered almost one thousand exo-planets, worlds outside our solar system. 998 planets in 759 planetary systems, most of them giant gas worlds. It seems like a lot, but it’s nothing. Just look at the tiny space we have covered so far. That space has a lot more planets…
I love CineFix retro game versions of movies. Their 1990s Maniac Mansion style remake of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is begging for a real version for iPad. I want to play it. Badly. https://kotaku.com/if-lucasarts-made-a-game-about-the-shining-1447095703
NBC News has a list of nine things that costs less than the final bill of the government shutdown, estimated at $24 billion. Two of them: the 2014 budget of NASA ($17.7 billion) and running the International Space Station for almost eight years (cost per year: $3 billion). High five, Washington clowns.
South Koreans call them ScreenX theaters, a new filming and projection technology that shows movies as 270-degree panoramas. The weird part: instead of using a curved IMAX-like screen, they use the walls of the movie theater. I anticipate those walls to be covered with explosive vomit, as people get motion sickness and epileptic fits. https://kotaku.com/imagine-playing-video-games-on-this-270-degree-screen-1446921567
Please excuse the double Saturn with cheese posting today but this stunning composite image of the ringed world—as seen from the top—is too good not to mention here. It was made with 36 photos taken by Cassini on October 10 and it shows the planet as you would see it from an orbiting spaceship. Jason…
The Mini Moke is like the French Bulldog of cars: the design is so ugly and weird that is stupidly cute. It’s the car you want to drive around all summer, from bistro to beach to bistro all along the Côte d’Azur or New England or Cádiz and the Alentejo. It died in 1992, when…
Enjoy the trailer for Wes Anderson’s next movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel. Like always, it looks quirky and beautiful and just fantastic and absurd. It stars Bill Murray and Willem Dafoe and F. Murray Abraham and Jeff Goldlum and Harvey Keitel and Edward Norton and Tilda Swinton.
Shutdown, Obamacare, Syria… who cares—while Humanity wastes time in political shitslinging and unnecessary wars, a team of Ukranian astronomers have discovered a massive asteroid that has a real chance of hitting Earth in 2032 with apocalyptical consequences. It’s the second time in history that an asteroid makes it to the top of NASA’s space danger…
This is the real color of Saturn’s mysterious hexagon storm—a rotating cloud system located on its north pole, so big that it could swallow two Earths—as you would see it if you were orbiting the planet. Check out the full resolution images received from the Cassini spacecraft on October 11 and assembled by Val Klavans…
It took more than four decades to complete, but New York City Water Tunnel No. 3 is finally fully armed and operational. It’s an impressive engineering work that will quench the thirst of millions of New Yorkers and serve as the future lair of Lex Luthor, Michael Bloomberg’s next identity after leaving City Hall. https://gizmodo.com/an-artificial-cave-200-beneath-central-park-with-micha-1446538828
Data visualization expert John Nelson has made a fascinating map of New York City. It portraits the gender flow of the city, showing where men (blue) and women (pink) live from birth to death. I had no idea that gender density changed so much as the population ages. Some of the reasons for these inner…
