- Tech NewsSploid
Travel through the Monkey Head Nebula in this new Hubble visualization
A belated happy birthday to the Hubble Space Telescope: Our favorite source of wonder and joy was 24 years old on April 24, and the Hubble site celebrated it with this spectacular visualization of the Monkey Head Nebula. NGC 2174 is “a star-forming region in which bright, newborn stars near the center of the nebula … Continued
By Jesus Diaz - io9Movies
Aren’t You Sick of Possession Movies That Always Look Like This?
It’s got a creepy old house, a possessed teenage girl, a scary doll, a mad paranormal researcher, hot babes in hot pants, and a semi-religious young man documenting everything with his charming 1970s camera. Is there anything that the latest Hammer film The Quiet Ones hasn’t got? I’d have to say it’s missing a sense … Continued
- io9Television
Both Vampire Diaries TV Series Have Descended Into Tribal Warfare
Originally, The Vampire Diaries was a show about going to high school with vampires — and about both vampires and humans trying to keep their humanity and compassion, in the face of huge challenges. But now TVD and its spinoff, The Originals, are about tribal warfare where everybody is a casualty eventually. Spoilers ahead… This … Continued
- Tech News
A Tale of Three Cocktails: How Booze and Cities Helped Each Other Boom
You might order a Manhattan—or a Berlin, or a London Buck—at your corner dive without giving it a second thought. But what you might not realize is how closely related urbanity and cocktails really are. The modern cocktail owes a lot to cities—and, in fact, cities owe a lot to booze. Archaeologists have long suggested … Continued
- io9
Nighttime Images From Space As You’ve Never Seen Them Before
London-based artist Marc Khachfe was “blown away” by the images taken of cities at night by the astronauts on the International Space Station. But when he tried to print out poster-sized versions, he found them too blurry. So, he developed a technique to replicate them on Earth. As designboom magazine explains: [Using] open map data, … Continued
By Mark Strauss - Tech NewsApple
An iPhone App Knows How You Feel By Checking Your Pulse
The Morpholio Project‘s latest development uses an iPhone’s camera and flash as an impromptu pulse monitor, measuring your visceral reaction to the things you’re seeing. It’s like a lie detector for your aesthetic taste, and Morpholio’s Toru Hasegawa let me play with it. The Morpholio Project is a collaboration of architects and academics focused on … Continued
- io9Books
Major Landmarks In The History Of Dark Fantasy
Dark fantasy is more popular than ever. Game of Thrones is rocking our TV sets. Tons of authors have moved to the genre. We’re obsessed with bloody tales of morally gray people and supernatural forces. But where does dark fantasy come from? And how did it become so huge? Here’s a brief history of dark … Continued
Ryan Plummer and Charlie Jane Anders - Tech News
The Perfect Selfie Is a Half-Selfie
Now that we all take photos of ourselves constantly, we need to evolve the way we think about our faces in photos. Specifically, we need to abandon the notion that photos of ourselves should include the entirety of our faces when those photos are actually much better with only half a face. Or to be … Continued
- io9Books
First Look At The Star Wars Books Of The Post-Expanded Universe
Now that Disney is well and truly ditching the Star Wars Expanded Universe to start with a clean slate, it’s time for the Lucasfilm Story Group to start building again. And its first order of business (well, after working on Episode VII, presumably) will be four books, and we have an exclusive look! First up … Continued
By Rob Bricken - io9Trailer Frenzy
Watch The First Spooky Trailer For Horror Flick Jessabelle
In Jessabelle, a woman loses her fiance and the use of her legs in a car accident, and we watch as she tries to piece together what’s left of her life. But things go terribly, horribly wrong. For some reason we’re all kind of enchanted by the movie Jessabelle, perhaps because it feels fairly original … Continued
- Tech NewsDesign
These Abstract Wallpaper Rolls Let You Mix and Match Like a Madman
Painting walls is a pain, but wallpapering seems like it would be way, way worse; mostly just because of the prep, and the annoying process of making sure every panel matches up. Which is what makes Cut & Paste from All the Fruits seem so cool; each roll is a mix-and-match of patterns designed to … Continued
- io9
Spring Is Now Coming Three Weeks Earlier than It Did 150 Years Ago
One way to distinguish “climate change” from “weather” is to consider how our seasons have been changing. Several independent studies, based on over 150 years worth of records, reveal that spring is coming much earlier now than it did in centuries past. Photo of Walden Pond by ptwo Over at the New York Times, Carl … Continued
- Tech News
How Cold War Spy Satellites Revealed 10,000 Lost Cities and Ruins
CORONA was the codename for the United States’ first photographic spy satellite mission. For 12 years, it brought back intel on the USSR, China, and the Middle East. But that wasn’t all its grainy, black and white images captured—it turns out it also caught an incredible number of undiscovered ancient settlements. In a fantastic story … Continued
- Tech News
Denmark Built a Complete Copy of Itself in Minecraft
Denmark is a beautiful country. You really should check it out. And now, thanks to the Danish government, you can just that without leaving the comfort of you own home. Just open up Minecraft, and go exploring. It’s all there. No seriously, all of Denmark is now in Minecraft, and it’s there to send the … Continued
- ScienceAnimals
This Newborn Seal Pup Was Kidnapped Before Even Exiting The Birth Canal
In this slightly uncomfortable video captured by Earth Touch, watch a female fur seal give birth near Capetown, South Africa. And then watch another female kidnap the infant pup before it’s even left the birth canal. Fair warning: the video is fascinating but not for the squeamish. So, let me get this straight: first the … Continued
- Tech NewsDesign
Student-Designed Space Colonies
High school students from around the world enter NASA’s annual design contest to dream of large-scale orbital space settlements. This year, each station also features a method to capture lucrative asteroids for in-space resource mining. The Grand Prize winners are totally awesome. Octopus asteroid-grapple on the Greenspace station. Image credit: Popov/Kovachev/Laskov. This year’s Grand Prize … Continued
- io9Television
Are You Ready For A Lost Reboot?
It’s only been four years since the Lost finale, but co-creator Carlton Cuse already thinks ABC will likely reboot the series. “We have to go back to the island!” an ABC executive will presumably scream. As show Cuse told Entertainment Weekly: I think it’s likely that at some point, ABC will want to reboot Lost … Continued
By Rob Bricken - io9
24, Spectacular Spider-Man, Transformers Armada, R.L. Stine
Eight seasons and the feature film all in one serious set. $130. Today only. [Amazon] Spectacular Spider-Man complete series blu-ray | $25 Pre-orders have opened up for Dragon Age: Inquisition Deluxe Edition. We can’t tell you how limited these versions will be, but we can tell you that Amazon has pre-order price guarantee, and you … Continued
- io9
Well, Now We Want A Brown Bear Sleeping Bag
Inspired by the sad story of Bruno the Bear, artist Eiko Ishizawa created this “Great Sleeping Bear” sculpture/sleeping bear. It’s stunning — and now it can be yours, because the artist is selling a limited amount of her handmade work. In 2006 Bruno the Brown Bear stumbled into Germany. Thus making him the first wild … Continued
- Tech News
There’s a Disney World For Disasters That Trains Emergency Responders
The main attraction in Kansas’s Crisis City, a disaster simulation zone, is a giant pile of rubble. It isn’t easy, you know, to make rubble that is 1) structurally sound enough for trainees to crawl over safely and 2) structurally unsound enough to simulate a real disaster. In the heart of Tornado Alley, emergency responders … Continued
By Sarah Zhang