As far as resumes for droids go, the skills and experience section on R2-D2’s must be at least 100 holograms long by now. This latest Star Wars tie-in sees Artoo back in the kitchen as a simple $20 timer, counting off anywhere from one to sixty minutes with a quick twist of his rotating dome. When the time’s up a simple bell rings for five seconds (what, no lightsaber sound effects?) at which point R2-D2 quietly waits until his services are needed again. [ThinkGeek]
The Hadean and Eoarchean epochs were the real hell on Earth. For millions of years, our planet was heavily bombarded by millions of asteroids with “existing oceans repeatedly boiled away into steam atmospheres”until its crust finally solidified. These two new visualizations will help you comprehend this violence.
Emily Richmond has been mistaken for Christ, had close shaves with pirates, speared her dinner and made water from a solar still to survive. We caught up with her in Borneo.
You’ve heard all about the wonder properties of graphene, so come meet its one dimensional cousin, carbyne. A chain of single carbon atoms to graphene’s two-dimensional layer of atoms, carbyne has some pretty amazing properties of its own. By one measure, it’s the strongest material in the world (over graphene!), and a new study finds it has the strange ability to go from conductor to insulator with a small stretch.
Cool image of “pilots and plane captains make preparations for flight on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington” by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Everett Allen. The F-18s here reminds me of the Vipers MkVII because of the photo angle and color.
A plastic water bottle can survive the rigors of an active lifestyle, but over time it will collect odd smells and flavors that eventually can’t be scrubbed out. A glass bottle is a better option, naturally eschewing mold and odors, but one wrong move and suddenly it’s a pile of shards. These Squeezable Glass bottles claim to offer the best of both worlds—but have a bit of a misleading claim to fame.
Sometimes you want a room with a view. Sometimes you want a bunker that’s walled-off to the world. Why not have both? The Sharifi-ha House can shape-shift based on the amount of sun or level of privacy that its residents need at that particular moment.
I thought this was some kind of joke but no, it’s actually the results for the German Lotto—called Lotto 6 as 49—for today’s draw: 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 37 (notice the extra nerd bonus: 1337!) What are the chances of this happening? 1 in 15,537,573.
The bluefin tuna is a magnificent creature. A silvery torpedo, it grows as big as 1,000 pounds, swims as fast as cars, and survives the cold waters of the ocean, weirdly enough, as warm-blooded fish. Oh, it also happens to be pretty tasty as sushi. Thanks to our growing sushi appetites, the bluefin tuna seems likely to be obliterated off the face of the Earth unless we do something drastic—like stop eating it or, what the hell, use science to start spawning them in tanks on land.
When an alien from the distant planet Hondo comes to Earth with a plan to destroy all civilization, he does what any Earth-invading alien would do: He joins a bluegrass band. That’s the plot of the 2013 film The History of Future Folk, and it’s every bit as delightfully campy as it sounds.
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