Science

Space Object Plays Chicken with the ISS – Astronauts Forced to Hunker Down in Capsule

Early this morning the ISS and a piece of debris from an old Russian weather satellite almost gave one another a bro-like chest bump. Astronauts had an hour and a half to secure as many of the ISS’s individual modules and get themselves...

Researcher Wires Four Rats’ Brains Together – Creates Bizarre Organic “Brainet”

At Duke University a researcher who’s pioneering brain-computer interfaces has circuited four rats’ together via their brains and created a gooey and organic “Brainet”. Miguel Nicolelis, the neurobiologist pioneering this neuroengineering...

Edison’s Talking Dolls Speak Again After 125 Years – Continue Terrifying Everyone Who Hears Them

Thomas Edison once took a break from electrocuting animals to turn his attention to making dolls for little girls. Because he was the go-to guy at the time for recording voices, he thought it might be cool to make those dolls speak. And...

Weird Sounds Recorded in the Sky by Grad Student

On August 9th of 2014 graduate student Daniel Bowman sent infrasound microphones into the 19 miles into the sky above Earth just out of reach of planes but well below actually being in space. For 9 hours and for over 400 miles the...

Russian Man Volunteers for First – Probably Last – Head Transplant by Controverisal Neuroscientist

Ripped right out of hundreds of science fiction, comic book and horror stories comes news that a Russian man has decided to be a medical guinea pig or possibly a pioneer…. By having his head removed and attached to another body. Suffering...

Experience the McGurk Effect: Like Weird Magic

The McGurk effect is something that you’ll just have to hit play on the video above to experience. It’s like some weird magic trick and the secret is that your brain, eyes and ears have to work together to make things understandable. But...

MARS ONE: Mars-Bound Candidate Walks Away – Pulls Back the Curtain Revealing a Mess or is it?

Since the first announcement of the Mars One program, people have either picked up the story and hailed it with headlines trumpeting our colonization of the red planet or they’ve been standing there with confused looks slapped on their...

Predator Might Be Hiding on Rosetta’s Comet – Based on the weird sound we’re hearing

The jury’s out on what’s causing the sound (which is far, far below the level of human hearing) and a whole lot of theories are being tossed around about it. Everything from magnetic fields to ionization of particles shearing themselves...

Scientists Create Material That Absorbs All the Light

Using nanotubes, British scientists have created a material called VantaBlack that acts like a bunch of very, very tiny blackhole when it comes to light. The material is so black that our eyes can’t discern any type of edges or features an...

Scientists Grow a Baby Zebra Fish From Stem Cells

Scientists have been trying to find the elusive combination of instructions that would cause stems cells to become an actual living thing. That elusive secret just ran out of places to hide. University researchers were able to cause cells...

13-Year-Old Creates Fusion Reactor – At School

The video pretty much tells you everything you need to know about this awesome kid who’s decided to become a tween man of science instead of chasing skirts or worrying about pimples. We’re putting this little bit of text down here to let...

Toe Cheese – It’s What’s For Dinner

Nope. We know what you’re wishing and your hopes are wrong. That’s not an old rice cake that someone dropped under the couch six months ago. It’s not a urinal cake either…because even that wouldn’t be as bad. It’s exactly what your brain...

NASA Developing Printed Food for Astronauts!

3D printng is the ‘it’ thing right now. It seems like nothing can’t be printed. We can print plastic toys, metal parts and even cell tissues using additive manufacturing. So what’s next? Food…3D-printed food. A Texas company is partnering...

Your Monitor Smells – Because Science Is Creating Monitors that Produce Scents!

Recently a group of Japanese scientists at the IEEE Virtual Reality Conference in Orlando, Florida have unveiled the latest incarnation of… (sad, loungy drumroll please) Smell-O-Vision! That’s right. Scientists have been working hard at...

Lo! The Ancient One Cthulhu Walks Among Us!

Researchers have found the tentacled god Cthulhu at last he shall walk the earth and consume us all. By earth we mean the gut of termites and by consume we mean engage in a symbiotic relationship. Oh, and this Cthulhu as described in the...

An Armband That Gives You Superhuman Abilities!

For a LOT of the more nerdy kids out there, we’re placing bets that many of you pretended you had the ability to throw fireballs, move objects by waving your hands and occasionally even tried in vain to channel the Force. That was all fun,...

Researchers Record the Moment of Inception…in a Hungry Zebrafish. We’re Next!

‘Squirrel!’ Ever wonder what it looked like at the inception point of a thought? Like when your watching ‘fail videos’ online and you do that mental cringe at the exact moment that you’re watching someone sledding down a hill on an oil-pan...

18 Severed Heads Discovered at O’ Hare International Airport!

Ever leave the house knowing you forgot…something? We’re wondering what it was like when the guy who was supposed to file paperwork for 18 human heads for medical study realized that he’d forgotten to file paperwork for 18 human heads for...

Teenager Builds Solar Panel – Using Human Hair!

While everyone sits around and debates the cost of solar power and that anything that could effectively power your home right now would cost more than feeding your family for about a year, a teenager in Nepal has come up with a solution...

NYU Scientists Create Microscopic Tractor Beam!

Star Wars uses tractor beams as frequently as newly graduated college kids use U-Haul trailers. Imagine if, just like in the movies, you could hook up those U-Hauls with a tractor beam instead of trying to get one of those ball-and-cup...

Woman Grows Ear on Her Arm to Replace Her Missing Ear!

We’ve seen tissues and body parts grown in petri dishes before. Nothing new, right? Now we’ve seen a human being’s own body used as a petri dish to grow a body part for her own body! Sherrie Walters, a woman from Baltimore, has become that...

Dean Kamen and Coca-Cola Team to Solve the Biggest Environmental Problem of Our Time

Clean water. For first worlders who have it on tap, access may not seem like a big deal. For 1 out of 6 people on the planet, clean water, free of parasites and pollution is an expensive luxury. Diarrhea from tainted water is the second...

Illusion Makes You Believe You Have a Third Arm

Researchers in Sweden have successfully created the illusion of people feeling sensations in three arms at the same time. In five separate laboratory experiments, 154 volunteers were seated with their hands on a table and a rubber arm was...

You See Red, I See Blue: New Study Says Color Perception Not Set, Can Be Changed

Our perception of the world around us could be very different than the person next to you. In extreme cases it could mean the luscious red strawberry could look like a bulbous blueberry to someone else. Even more mind altering, results of...

HYSTERIA ALERT: Human Blood Still Has More Alcohol than Soda

The UK’s Daily Mail is breathlessly reporting that leading soft drinks including Coca-Cola and Pepsi contain trace amounts of alcohol. What ramifications should this have for teetotallers and people who abstain for drinking for religious...

Japanese Scientists Grow Crude Liver in a Dish!

Something straight out of a science fiction story is becoming a reality in Yokohama, Japan right now: regenerative organs. There have been tons of attempts, theories and even a small handful of groundbreaking work concerning regenerating...

This Ugly Blob is the Future of New Materials

That thing pictured over there to the right? That thing that looks like hair from your shower drain or a Giger-inspired coffee mug? It’s a living organism that just might be the future of how we harvest material for all of our tech needs....

Gaydar Confirmed By Science

Gaydar, it’s not just a one liner from sassy friends in romantic comedies anymore. It’s science fact. A University of Washington study flashed faces for less than a blink of an eye and asked respondents to determine if the person was gay...

Revolutionary New Theory Suggest Supernovae Radically Affect Life on Earth

Are exploding supernovae guiding life on Earth? If a new ground breaking theory is to be believed, the answer is yes. According to the study by Henrik Svensmark published by the Royal Astronomy Society in London the explosions of stars...

The Optical Illusion that Explains Bloody Mary

The whiz kids at io9 have put together a compilation of research that explains why we see imaginary, monstrous faces when we look in the mirror for an elongated period of time. This is the very basis for sleepover games like Bloody Mary,...

Silicon Valley Billionaire Starts Fund for Development of 6 Insane Projects

Peter Thiel has long been a heavy hitter in Silicon Valley. He was a co-founder and CEO of PayPal and made an early stage development in Facebook, even earning himself the “honor” of being portrayed in The Social Network film about the...

Asteroid that Killed Dinosaurs Also Seeded the Universe with Life

The big rock from the sky that crashed into Earth and proved an extinction level event for our dinosaur pals could also seed life on a far off planet. The meteorites launched into space by the impact carrying the ingredients for life...

Don’t Panic, But You Are Currently Awash in Dark Matter

You just got pelted with dark matter. Don’t worry, it’ll happen again in a couple of seconds. Should you be worried? Probably not, it’s been happening your whole life, at least according to a new study by a few theoretical physicists. A...

Actually No, Your Pee is NOT Sterile

A new study debunks the long held myth that urine is sterile. The results, which appear in the April issue of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology was conducted at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. If found evidence of...

By the Time You Read This, James Cameron Could Be at the Bottom of the Ocean

It’s go time. The man who directed the most successful film in movie history twice is about to embark on his greatest adventure yet. James Cameron will begin his descent into the Pacific Ocean, weather permitting, sometime this weekend....

Nokia Wants to Give You a Vibrating Tattoo So You Don’t Miss Calls

Nokia has applied for a patent which amounts to tattoo which would accommodate customizable buzzing for your phone. Here is how it would work: The patent application describes “a material attachable to skin, the material capable of...

Great News For People Who Hate Fun! Error Found in Neutrino Results

Much was made over the last few months about the apparent discovery of faster than light neutrinos at the CERN laboratories. The neutrinos appeared to travel at 60 seconds faster than the speed of light. Of course, this would stand in...

First Test-Tube Hamburger to be Produced in 2012

It’s a revolution best served with pickles and onions on a sesame seed bun. The first test-tube grown hamburger will be produced this fall. Although still in the laboratory phase as of now, the experiment will eventually produces thousands...

No Heart, No Pulse, No Problem: Surgeons Save Dying Man By Replacing Heart With Turbine

In this remarkable video, we see two Texas heart surgeons who replace a dying man’s failing heart with a turbine. This does a few remarkable things. 1) Saves the dude’s life 2) Removes his pulse, since the turbine creates a continuous flow...

Your Brain Shuts Off When Tripping Balls on Acid & Why it Could Cure OCD

Researchers have long thought that hallucinogenic stimulated parts of your brain, which created insane visuals like that one time Gary down the street saw the poster melt in his hands and then was all like “Did you see that?” but you were...

Scientists Call for Fair, Open Discussion of Global Plague They Created

The laboratory that mutated a deadly bird flu into something humans can spread are now called for a 60 day suspension of research so they can open a dialogue with the scientific community. Since their announcement, much Sturm and Drang has...

Macarena to Goose Stepping: Synchronized Movement Controls Your Brain

A new study proves that organizing activities where a group of people move in unison can create more concrete leader-follower relationships and be used as a tool for helpful cooperation or evil deeds. In the experiment, participants were...

Scientists Recreate Spider Silk (50 Years After Teenager in Queens)

Listen kids. If you are reading this and you only know of Peter Parker and Spider-man because of the Sam Raimi films, let me break something to you. Peter Parker didn’t start shooting webs out of his wrists as part of an overnight...

The Future of Wheelchairs? Awesome Exoskeletons

The future is now. Amazing exoskeletons will be sold to consumers with spinal cord injuries for training, under doctor supervision for now, how to walk upright with the help of the device. Your job is to balance your upper body, shifting...

Are Pigeons as Smart as Primates?

Oft-maligned as disease stuffed flying rats, pigeons tend to get a bad rap. But it looks like the city birds could be much smarter than we initially thought, or at the very least able to keep track of all the people calling them disease...

Ice Shelf Gets Wired for Transcontinental Phone Calls

The Ross Ice Shelf is about as desolate as desolate can get. All you can hope to do is complete your research of the warming arctic water, survive and hope that one of your colleagues doesn’t turn into The Thing. Now, the first of those...

Study: Sexually Transmitted Disease Makes Your Armpits Stink Worse

Follow your nose! To a sexual partner not beset by disease! A Russian study found that men dealing with gonorrhea has less attractive smelling armpit sweat than those without, therefore deterring potential mates. In the study, armpit sweat...

New Illusion Demonstrates How Our Brains Construct A 3D Illusion From 2D Image

New research has shown the there are specific, consistent patterns that create the illusion of 3D images in our brains. It is created by stimulating specific nerve cells. Researchers created a 2D image designed to excite those nerves...

The Cure For Male Pattern Baldness: Bears

Are you suffering from male pattern baldness? Would you like to feel younger, more confident and regain your youthful swagger? Why not take a note from the majestic bear! Yes, instead of turning to stem cell treatments one Dr. Cheng-Ming...

Do Our Brain Hemispheres Communicate With Electromagnetic Fields?

Are we moving closer to proving that electromagnetic fields help our brain hemispheres communicate? Neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have made a puzzling finding: people born without a corpus callosum...

Parasite Empowers Nebbish Wasps To Be Zombie Queens

The social hierarchy of a wasp is pretty rigid. But what if a snide little parasite made you a deal. You could live the life of a queen, no foraging for anyone but yourself, living off the fat of the land. All you have to do is become...

SPICE World: Artificial Volcanos Could Help Cool The Planet

Without delving into the debate on how it’s happening, most reasonable people can agree the world is getting warmer. If we want it cooler, we are going to have to do something about it. Sure, we could all drive electric cars to our...

Splish-Splash! Largest Water Reservoir In Universe Discovered

Thirsty? Astronomers have discovered a reservoir containing 140 trillion times the amount of water in all the Earth’s oceans, making it the largest mass of water ever detected in the universe. “The environment around this quasar is unique...

Scientists Create Memory Expansion for Brain

Well this is certainly a step in the right direction for downloading instructions on how to fly a helicopter right into your brain. Researchers have stuffed chips into rat brains that enabled them to instantly know things. They can also...

World’s First Living Laser

Scientists at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have genetically engineered the world’s first living laser. This is a living cell that can emit laser light. Based on previous Nobel winning work on Green...

Backwards Planets: Reverse Orbits Explained

They call them hot Jupiters. A series of gas giant planets in far off solar systems that appear to circle their star in two very peculiar ways. First, it swings perilously close. Second, a quarter of them seemingly do it backwards compared...

By The Hammer Of Thor! Anti-Matter Found Streaming From Thunderstorms

Positrons. They are all around us. Specifically if you are standing naked in the middle of the thunderstorm taunting the Old God’s to strike you down if they indeed still hold sway over this earthly realm. “Take your sacrifice or wallow in...

Man Named “Iceman” Could Be Scientific Proof We Control Our Immune Responses With Our Brain

Wim Hof is called the Iceman. He runs up mountains like Kilimanjaro in only shorts, he sits in buckets of ice for record amounts of time and is genuinely a worldwide, five-star badass. Now, you might be able to add scientific proof that...

Physicists Discover New Subatomic Particle? Maybe.

Physicists have just announced the discovery of something that falls outside the current understanding of particle physics. While zipping particles through Fermilab’s Tevatron collider they noticed that things were getting weird. While...

The Strange Case of Life Violating Copyright

As many of you may remember, last year J. Craig Venter and his team created the first synthetic life form by replacing the genetic code of the bacterium Mycoplasma capricolum with DNA that they created themselves. In order to create and...

How Do Humans Respond To Being Touched By A Robot?

Spoiler Alert: Yeah they don’t really seem to like it that much. They like it even less when the robot warns them it is about to touch them ahead of time. [Geekologie]

Scientists Test Electric “Thinking Cap”

Australian researchers claim that initial results of a “thinking cap” that promotes creativity by passing low levels of electricity through the brain has shown promising results. The thinking cap consists of two conductors fastened to the...

Are human brains too complex to replicate?

Over at his Bottom-up blog (safe for work) Cato scholar and CS PhD candidate Timothy B. Lee makes a case that we’ll *never* be able to copy the human brain in software. He argues that the human brain is too complex and living systems...

Futurism: Why Atom Lasers are Awesome

Technological advancement moves in strange ways. It’s often the technologies that come from just outside our mainstream field of vision that change things the most radically. The properties of semiconductors were well known decades before...

Australian Birds Use Fear To Attract Mates

Male splendid fairy-wrens flirt using fear and sing a special song each time they hear the call of one of their predators, the butcherbirds. Although this behaviour exposes their position and puts them in danger, it has been determined...

Scientists crackle the code

I don’t know how this got by us in 2006, but apparently scientists have finally figured out what makes Rice Krispies snap, crackle and pop. It turns out that the fact that they’re made by frightening little Lebensborn demon elves has...

Does surviving swine flu super-charge your immunity?

Researchers studying nine patients who survived swine flu during the H1N1 pandemic have noticed that they produced a wide range of antibodies that could be used to fight off other strains. Currently they’re looking to see if they can use...

Minecraft, Tron and the Singularity

One of the fascinating premises of movies like Tron and the Matrix is the idea of a computer powerful enough to simulate life itself. Although some process (like protein functions) are way beyond our current capabilities, replicating them...

Contact Lenses That Project Images Onto Your Eyes

“Researchers at the University of Washington have been working on extremely tiny and semi-transparent LEDs designed to be integrated into contact lenses. So far, they’ve managed to create red pixels and blue pixels, and when they can...

Who Needs A Deloreon? Time Travel In Your Brain Instead

Want to visit the real or imagined past and future without having a pack of wild Lybians trying to shoot you with a GD bazooka? Scientists have found evidence that you can travel through time where you comically meets a horny, teenage...

Look Who Showed Up In Time For Christmas? New Humanoids!

A new finger bone fossil in Southern Siberia belonged to a young lady of an unknown human ancestor. She ain’t Neanderthal and she ain’t early human. Yes, this means we have to set an extra place at Christmas dinner. No, you don’t have to...

Dude, A New Form Of Light Invented

Seriously though… dude… Just like solids, liquids and gases, this recently discovered condition represents a state of matter. Called a Bose-Einstein condensate, it was created in 1995 with super-cold atoms of a gas, but scientists had...

Gotcha! Antimatter Created, Captured

We’ve finally demonstrated the ability to create and sustain antimatter. In a new study, physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva were able to create 38 antihydrogen atoms and preserve each for more...

Cyborg Moths Used to Track Smells

Japanese scientists have created a cyborg moth that can track odors by plugging a robot into the moth’s nervous system. The robot’s actions were controlled by electrodes plugged into the moth and the brain signals were rerouted to the...

Space-Time Cloaking with Metamaterials

Scientists in London claim that new materials with the ability to control the speed of light would not only be capable of bending light around the object, but also creating an invisibility cloak capable of hiding in both time and space....

Proof For Extra Dimensions Possible By Next Year

CERN research scientists have stated that their Big Bang project is going along so swimmingly that, by the end of 2011, they may be able to offer the first proof of extra dimensions beyond the known four. Guido Tonelli, spokesman for one...

The Science Behind The Repositioning Of Male Nipples

Did you know that male nipples need to be surgically detached and repositioned sometimes? Then you probably didn’t know that the same Golden Ratio used in modern architecture is employed to make sure a gentlemen’s chest nubs look A-OK....

Primates Can Innately Repair Spinal Damage

Researchers have discovered that all primates have an innate ability to repair spinal damage, including humans. They have never noticed this before because scientists usually use rodents in neurology experiments and rodents simply don’t...

Ozzy Osbourne Redefines Genome Science

When legendary horse Secretariat died, the veterinary doctors performing the necropsy made a startling realization. There was a reason Big Red destroyed other horses en route to the most convincing Triple Crown win of all time, his heart...

Scientists Learn How To Erase Memory

Researchers have discovered that they can permanently delete traumatic memories simply by removing a protein from the region of the brain responsible for recalling fear. The research focused on the nerve circuits in the amygdala where they...

Bees Shame Computers, Travelling Salesmen

A complex mathematical problem known as the Travelling Salesman Problem, and which is known to take a supercomputer days to solve, is effectively being solved by bees in real time. Researchers at Queen Mary, University of London and Royal...

Study: Oceans Won’t Singe Our Pathetic Earth With Vile Acid

According to our most recent studies, fears that we are the last generation to see coral reef due to the rising acidification of our waters is unfounded. This has been a fear raised by climate change studies which suggest CO2 concentration...

Fermilab Builds “Holometer” To Prove Your Eyes Are Really 3D Glasses

Is our reality really 2D? Is our concept of third dimensional space really an optical illusion? Are our eyes deceiving us to believe we are anything other than Super Mario sidescrolling through life? Is the above commercial featuring...

Breakthrough Could Lead To Printable Body Armor Tougher Than Kevlar

Israeli researchers have discovered a way to assemble transparent nanospheres that unite to form the stiffest biological material the world has ever seen. This could lead to printable body armor, tougher steel and more bullet-proof...

Were Hobbits Actually Humans?

There has been a long simmering debate in the scientific community over “the Hobbit” or Homo floresiensis by it’s fancy name. On one side is a cadre of folks who claim that the Hobbits (whose remains were first found inside a Indonesian...

The Ape That Taught The World To Sing

A new species of buffed-cheeked gibbon with a very distinctive call was identified by German researchers. Not only does this have implications on the heavily endangered gibbon in general, but the ape song could be the precursor to human...

By The Way, The Parting Of The Red Sea Could Have Really Happened

Okay, there is still no evidence that it actually happened but now science can explain a scenario in which the biblical parting of the Red Sea could have gone down. You know, without the power of a all-knowing God and stuff: A strong east...

Spider Thread Milked From Goats Could Fuse Your Bones

Hell yeah. Spider silk milked from goats may be used to replace body’s strained tendons, ligaments and bones in the future. In a new experiment, Professor Lewis and his team at the University of Wyoming successfully implanted the...

Unconscious Human Actions Transferred To Computer Characters

All of your unconscious reactions can now be transferred to Sims like computer characters. The Singularity will arrive with a green crystal over its head. [Science Daily]

Scientists Succeed In Creating Quantum Cats

Apparently “quantum cats” are “photons (particles of light), boosting prospects for manipulating light in new ways to enhance precision measurements as well as computing and communications based on quantum physics” and not a new Saturday...

The Pesky Psychopath Problem: Could Science Identify & Possibly Cure Them?

Who hasn’t dealt with a psychopath? You offer to help them put a sofa in the back of a van one moment, badda bing badda boom you’re putting the lotion on your skin or else you get the hose again… A new report by Scientific American’s MIND...

Experimental Limb Regeneration That WILL Turn You Into A Lizard

We told you last week about a possible new therapy hoping to regrow body parts. Unlike the ill-fated research of Dr. Curt Connors, it does not use the DNA of an animal that naturally regrows limbs so the likelihood of the recipient turning...

Experimental Limb Regeneration That Won’t Turn You Into A Lizard

Paging Dr. Connors… Dr. Curt Connors… Researchers at the Tufts Center for Regenerative & Developmental Biology at Tufts University are testing whether a replicated amniotic (womb fluid) environment can promote limb regeneration in adult...

What To Get The Corpse Hunter Who Has Everything…

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Cadillac of dead body retrieval technology… The system involves a small aluminum pipette that can detect trace amounts of a chemical called ninhydrin-reactive nitrogen, which collects in air...

Podcast: Gay for science

Kidnapped by scientists who dress like Nazis, but aren’t actually Nazis, the trio is pushed to try a radical new procedure that would make them temporarily gay. With the life of a young child on the line, they have to confront their own...

Can Plants Think?

A Polish plant biologist is suggesting that plants are capable of thought. Plants “remember” information about light, and a certain type of cell transmits that information, much like nerves do in animals. In the study, which has not yet...

Chinese Scientists Want To Shoot A Diamond In Crystal Methane To Create Nuclear Power, Awesomeness

Shooting a diamond bullet at anything might be the most Bowie badass thing ever conceived of, but if, as Chinese scientists are now theorizing it can also create nuclear power then we have a new favorite source of alternative energy....

Proof Of The Wildmen Who Fought Griffins For Gold

Russian legends tell of a breed of homonids who were excellent herders, tough as (the yet to be invented) nails and most importantly made a sport of fighting Griffins for caches of gold. It now appears that we have biological proof of...

Shape Shifting Matter No Longer Just A Beautiful Dream

Sick of using all sorts of different shapes of things only for the purpose they were initially designed for? Step right up to the bold new future named programmable matter! To make them self-folding, computer scientist Daniela Rus at MIT...

Want To Be Taken More Serious? Get Heavier, Harder

Our primate brains seem to equate seriousness with touching heavier or harder objects. For example, a resume on thick stock will be taken more serious than something printed off on fax paper. Think I’m kidding? Would someone with a...

Real Time Brain Scans Accurately Predict Your Decisions Before You Act On Them

New, real-time brain scan accurately predicted 2/3rds of study respondents would make a decision even if they told the administrator they would do the opposite. Could revolutionize advertising, education and determining if bartender at...

Roaches Prefer To Eat Together, Like A Family

Add communal to the list of adjectives used to describe roaches. New studies show that the disgusting insects will choose to eat together even if other options present themselves. Cockroaches prefer dining as a group it seems. New research...

Spanish Researchers Have Video Proof Of Elves, Sprites

Sure, it’s a weather phenomenon and not mystical mischief makers of lore. Still, pretty cool. [Science Daily]

Scientists Defy John Carpenter, Drill Deep Into Antarctic Ice

Scientists want to drill deep into Antarctic ice to find life forms that haven’t been exposed to the environment in millions of years. Kurt Russell is not amused. [Science Daily]

Science Tells Us When Shark Attacks Will Happen

We now know when sharks are most likely to tear us apart. Shark attacks are most likely to occur on Sunday in less than 6 feet of water during a new moon, a new study finds. And there’s good reason: That’s when a lot of surfers are in the...

Scientists Solve 40-Year Old Martian Ice Cap Mystery

If you had “strange but undeniable resulting pattern caused by a million years of whipping from Martian wind” in the What With The Bizarre Shape Of The Mars Ice Cap pool, please collect your winnings. According to a new NASA study, the...

Just In Time For The Stanley Cup Finals, Grow A New Tooth In Your Mouth In Only 9 Weeks!

A new breakthrough in dental technology could revolutionize tooth implants for those who happen to take a puck to the mouth in game 4 of the Western Conference final and sprinkle the ice with seven adult teeth. Dr. Jeremy Mao, the Edward...

Sharks Harness Power Of Invisibility, Plot Final Takeover

What’s worse than a brutal killing machine with no remorse? An invisible brutal killing machine with no remorse. A new study claims that ten percent off all sharks are “luminous,” meaning they produce a light which combined with normal...

Scientist Writes Software Upgrade For Cells, Still No Flash Support

A team led Dr. Craig Venter has successfully created a synthetic organism that dictates action to living cells. This opens the doors to altering cells to produce medicines, fuels and absorb greenhouse gases. “I think they’re going to...

Man Rescues Yeti, Heart Restarted, Too Gross For Mars, Dan Aykroyd’s Alien Advice [WeirdThingsTV]

We are proud to introduce our new YouTube series, WeirdThingsTV. If you dig this, please feel free to subscribe on YouTube so you don’t miss an episode. Next clips will come out Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Science Meets Freak Show: Pinocchio Frog, Gargoyle Gecko, World’s Smallest Wallaby Found

A team of scientists visited a lush wilderness once dubbed “The Lost World” and guess what they found? No, not a disappointing sequel starring Vince Vaughn for no reason… three species that might be totally new to science! The array of new...

Do Rainbows Foretell Earthquakes?

No. Spoiler Alert. [Bad Astronomer]

Podcast: Super-Awesome Juice

Primate’s Janky Teeth Defy Classification

A newly discovered African primate who lived 37 million years ago, is baffling researchers who can’t seem to classify it among any known family tree. The biggest mystery? The primate’s weird teeth. “It comes as a bit of a shock to find a...

Magnetically Induced Hallucinations, And You

What is Transcranial magnetic stimulation? Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is an extraordinary technique pioneered by neuroscientists to explore the workings of the brain. The idea is to place a human in a rapidly changing magnetic...

The Center Of The Earth Is Crystal

Science may now confirm what the dude screaming on Venice Beach has theorized for years. The center of the Earth is made of crystal. The outer core is composed mostly of liquid iron. The inner core is solid ball about 750 miles in...

Penn State Using Acoustic Scientists To Optimize Drunken Screaming For Their Benefit

College football is a loud sport and in a game as verbally-dependent as football if a visiting team can’t relay their plays effectively or make last minute adjustments, it can be huge advantage for a home team. So it is no surprise that...

Video Proof Of Restarted Heart

We told you about this yesterday… but be prepared to witness the heart that was restarted 24 hours after it died in a Harvard laboratory. [Singularity Hub]

Breakthrough Solution Keeps Heart Alive Outside Of Body For 10 Days

Behold, the heart that lived outside a human for 10 days but WOULD NOT DIE! (thunder clap!) It could revolutionize those who are relying on organ donations! (organ music!) It hopes to be on the open market soon! (maniacal laughter!) [Pop...

Newly Discovered Microbe Super Small, Bizarre, Works In Copper Mine

Could this microbe be discovered under any less awesome conditions? Researchers have discovered some of the tiniest and weirdest microbes ever seen growing in a copper mine sludge that is as acidic as battery acid. Theses ultra-small...

Science Quantifies Why Flies Are So Annoying To Swat

Autopilot! As it turns out, flies aren’t just super apt daredevils buzzing around your mighty hand as try to crush the winged pest. Nope, they just have a built in sense of autopilot that adjusts to changing wind currents faster than it...

Indian Military Investigating Holy Man Claiming 70 Years Fast

In an effort to make a super soldier, the Indian military has turned to a holy man who claims to have not eaten in over 70 years since he was blessed by a goddess. India’s Defense Research Development Organization thinks it may have found...

Study: Facial Hair Creates Less Intelligible Speech

Study gave test subjects fake mustaches and wicked amish beards to see how much visual speech recognition was affected. Investigating the interference of facial hair with visual speech intelligibility poses the problem of accurately...

Despite Best Efforts, Exposed Breasts Fail To Trigger Massive Earthquake

Cleric said boobs cause earthquake. Boobs tried to do just that. Boobs failed. Hooray science!

Sadly, Your Brain Is Going To Remain Lazy No Matter How Hard You Train It

From Scientific American. The largest trial to date of “brain-training” computer games suggests that people who use the software to boost their mental skills are likely to be disappointed. The study, a collaboration between British...

Sheep + Meth + Taser = Science!

Here on Weird Things, we’ve talked quite a bit about the strange history of animal (and human) experimentation for the benefit of medical science. But it would be silly to suggest that there aren’t strange trails that persist to this day....

How Do You Hide A 6-Foot, Colored Lizard From Modern Science For 150 Years?

Western scientists have officially catalogued animals on the islands of the Phillipines for over a century and a half and yet, a 6-foot-long, gold flecked, colored lizard just happened to escape their attention. Until last summer. Rumors...

Experts figure out how much time left before robot uprising

The always provocative h+ magazine surveyed the experts at the Artificial General Intelligence Conference to get a grasp of when they though machines would get really smart. The results are very interesting: While the median guess is the...

Are We Missing the Point of Avatar?

Prolific Weird Things scribe Matt just posted his criticism of Avatar’s bioelectric network premise. Basically he feels that director James Cameron is trying to make it a parable of earth and our resource use – and that it’s an unfair...

Can You Have an Ice Age in the Middle of Global Warming?

According to some scientists at the Daily Mail, the answer is yes. A long term global warming trend due to CO2 emissions doesn’t preclude the possibility of nature deciding to flip the bit at least for a few decades and make things cooler....

Military to make flying cars a reality (we hope)

Sphere.com reports that the Pentagon has launched a program called Transformer X with the intent of developing flying cars for the battlefield. Awesome. The objective of the Transformer (TX) program is to demonstrate a one- to four-person...

Podcast: Attack of the Sexy Clones

A tangent becomes a tangent when the hosts try to stretch their feeble minds around the global warming, the energy crisis and the singularity (again) after discussing clone sex. Link: Craig Venter at TED on creating synthetic life Link:...

Vegetarianism IS MURDER!

Natalie Angier at the New York Times has an interesting article that suggest if your goal in life is to avoid eating other sensitive, feeling communal creatures, going vegan isn’t enough. According to plant biologists, our leafy friends...

A Crowded Multiverse?

In the latest Scientific American theoretical physicists Alejandro Jenkins and Gilad Perez speculate that there might be a greater chance of life developing in other universes with different physical laws and that our own may not be as...

Science, Philosophy & Tiny Naked Men Who Live In Your Eyeballs

This week, Weird Thing Culture Reporter Matt Finley takes a look at the Homunculus, a strange idea that survived against reason and logic. Monday we looked at how long the idea has been around. Wednesday we found out how science got past...

MIT finally figures out how to build our robot overlords

Gizmodo reports that the brains at MIT have decided to take a new direction for creating Artificial Intelligence. They’ve thrown out some age old assumptions and are considering new alternatives to concepts line the Turing Test. We’re glad...

Earth the Ice Planet

LiveScience is reporting that the latest core sample data gives more credibility to the scientifically challenged sci-fi movie The Day After Tomorrow‘s rapid freezing scenario. Except we suspect they didn’t actually see the movie because...

Singularity 101

So what is the Singularity? Check out Ray Kurzweil’s TED talks to get a jump start. Ray Kurzweil on how technology will transform us Inventor, entrepreneur and visionary Ray Kurzweil explains in abundant, grounded detail why, by the 2020s,...

Antimatter in Lightning

According to ScienceNews, lightning isn’t just for powering your time traveling Delorean. Using the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, scientists were able to detect the signature of the production of anti-matter particles in gamma ray...

Invisibility Ray or Magic Trick?

According to an article from the October 1936 issue of Modern Mechanix, invisibility wasn’t just a possibility, it was a reality. The author credulously reports a description of an invisibility ray, but states emphatically that, “This is...

The Terrible Adventure of an Aeronaut

Does this sound kind of familiar? From the Detroit Tribune in 1858: We have learned the full particulars of the balloon ascension…on Thursday, its subsequent descent, and its second ascension and runaway with the aeronaut while beyond his...

Total Recall A Fact! (For Flies)

Listen up Philip K. Dick fans, Total Recall (We Can Remember it For You Wholesale) is now a reality – at least for flies. According to ScienceDaily: By directly manipulating the activity of individual neurons, scientists have given flies...

Advancements in Suspended Animation

A staple of science fiction is the suspended animation chamber. It’s how we send astronauts to faraway places, punish criminals (we’re not quite clear on how sending bad guys into the future where they can expect longer, healthier lives...

Why are Six of the 10 Oldest People on the Planet Americans?

With the current debate over nationalized health care a lot of facts and figures are flying fast and loose. It seems like for every point of view there’s a data set to support it. In the discussion of what the ideal system should be two...

Have German Scientists Found the “X” Gene?

German researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development have discovered a gene mutation in certain individuals that seems to give them enhanced mental abilities. …people graced with this genotype showed more activity in the...

Scientists Discover the Lair of the World’s Largest Snake (extinct)

Science Daily reports that a Smithsonian research team has uncovered the first megafossils of a neotropical rainforest. Titanoboa, the world’s biggest snake, lived in this forest 58 million years ago at temperatures 3-5 C warmer than in...

US Funds $10 Million for Quantum Levitation

The US Defense department has green-lit a two-year $10 million dollar program to look for practical applications of the Casimir Effect. This is a quantum of effect with potential in everything from energy to levitation. It’s the quantum...

Experimental Evidence Supports Hypnosis

According to Science News, hypnosis is gaining new found respect in the laboratory as experiments indicate that hypnotic suggestions actually have a measurable effect on parts of the brain. In one experiment, suggestion of a paralyzed hand...

Video of Mystery UFO Spotted over Moscow

Check out this video that’s eerily remiscent of the 1980’s TV series V and District 9 (if the aliens spaceships were made from vaporous ice crystals and not actual technology…). The Sun has an article here on it: Mystery UFO halo in clouds...

Drive Fast for Science

According to ScienceDaily it turns out those ugly yellow splotches of bug guts on your car can serve science. They use the bug guts to to do DNA sequencing to determine species distribution and other information. To gather genetic...

President’s Science Advisor: Beware the Coming Ice Age!

Technically John P. Holdren wasn’t the science advisor when he made his dire predictions of an Ice Age and Ice Age powered super tidal waves bringing destruction upon us all in 1971. He was just trying to make sense of the data at hand...

Welcome to the Twilight Zone of sleep

From New Scientist comes research that sleep is even weirder than we thought. Microsleep, hallucinations and sleepwalking murder are just some of the symptoms… EARLIER this year, a puzzling report appeared in the journal Sleep Medicine. It...

Reason.com: Will the Singularity Kill Us?

Ron Bailey at Reason.com attended the Singularity Summit on NYC and was presented with several scenarios of the future. Many of them were quite frightening. As the Singularity Institute’s Anna Salamon explained in her opening presentation...

NASA to blow up the Moon

Mr. Show had it first… Real story.

Ghosts Say The Dardest Things

Recordings reportedly capturing the voices of the dead are nothing new, but we couldn’t help but wonder what some of the oddest things ever uttered via EVP were. We contacted Chris Page, the founder of Ohio Researchers of Banded Spirits to...

Microbe Awakens From 120,000 Year Slumber

Down, down, two miles below the surface of a Greenland glacier, in sub-zero temperatures inhospitable to most existing life, a new form of bacteria was discovered frozen in time. A team of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania...

Typhoons Cause Earthquakes In Taiwan

photo credit: trodel_wiki You thought that one natural disaster was bad enough, scientists have now concluded from a five year study on the island of Taiwan, that the typhoons wreaking havoc from the sky, are also responsible for...

Making Star Trek Possible: Warp speed without the warp drive

A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real… Probably the most fascinating idea that Star Trek popularized was the idea of a warp drive. This was a concept from golden age sci-fi that went mainstream...

Making Star Trek Possible: The Humanoid Problem

A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real… In an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation called the “The Chase” a long running problem in Star Trek was finally solved – Why do all the aliens in...

Making Star Trek Possible: Practical Time Travel

A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real… Time Travel stories generally suck. There are some noteworthy exceptions – specifically stories that deal with the problems of time travel and not just...

Making Star Trek Possible: Mind melding and ESP

A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real… An important part of the Star Trek mythos is the idea of mind-to-mind contact. Spock uses this to probe other people’s minds and even transplant his entire...

Making Star Trek Possible: 5 methods for non-quantum teleportation

A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real… The transporters in Star Trek are an exciting concept. Recent developments in quantum physics have made the possibility of teleporting matter a theoretical...

Brain to Twitter Interface = Unspeakable Evil

The depraved Neural Interface Technology researchers at University of Wisconsin Madison have unleashed a device of unspeakable evil. Just to clarify: We think direct brain/computer interfaces are nifty and are important science. But with...