This is how Discovery approached and landed safely on Runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center, after successfully completing mission STS-133. Everyone loves the Space Shuttle launches, but the landings are quite exciting too—and terrifying, after the Columbia disaster. More »
You already saw the photos of the real life Up! house, but here’s the video. It truly looks amazing and unreal. A strangely magical moment. More »
This mountain of shredded paper taking over several rooms was found inside the Egyptian Secret Police’s headquarters in Cairo last Saturday. About 2,500 angry demonstrators invaded the building in what Egyptians are now calling their Bastille Day, finding documents and tapes that may soon send shockwaves around the world. More »
This is really nuts. The people from National Geographic have built a house inspired by the Pixar movie Up! Yes, a house tied to gas balloons that actually flies. I’m so giddy I can barely type. More »
According to recently unearthed—and completely fake—scientific papers posted in Russian forum Stepashka, the Soviets took over where the Nazis and Dr. Frankenstein left it: During the 1950s, a team of communist scientists from Moscow University and the Soviet Academy of Sciences led by Dr. Vladimir Demikhov worked on the creation of a giant robot controlled by a dog head in secret facilities created by Joseph Stalin. More »
NASA has released this beautiful, crystal-clear video of Discovery’s launch. It was taken from an HD camera mounted on the left solid rocket booster, during liftoff of the shuttle for mission STS-133. More »
Artist Liu Bolin must have slain a lot of dragons and evil ninja skeletons in magic Chinese catacombs, because his invisibility powers keep getting better and better. His last batch of camouflage photos are simply awesome. Images via Bored Panda More »
Today, Discovery reached for the stars for the last time in history. The launch almost got canceled because of a last-minute range computer system display problem, but the engineers saved the day a couple of seconds before the launch window deadline. Here’s the video of the launch. More »
After going down in a spiral of paranoid stupidity—called out for saving body scan images, ridiculed for patting down an almost-naked woman or nailed for harrassing a kid at airport security—the TSA has reached a new low. It’s surreal. More »
“The Power of Decision” may be the first (and perhaps the only) U.S. government film dramatizing nuclear war decision-making. Commissioned by the Strategic Air Command in 1956, the film has the look of a 1950s TV drama, but the subject is the ultimate Cold War nightmare. By the end of the film, after the U.S. Air Force has implemented war plan “Quick Strike” following a Soviet surprise attack, millions of Americans, Russians, Europeans, and Japanese are dead. The narrator, a Colonel Dodd, asserts that “nobody wins a nuclear war because both sides are sure to suffer terrible damage.” Despite the “catastrophic” damage, one of the film’s operating assumptions is that defeat is avoidable as long as the adversary cannot impose its “will” on the United States. The film’s last few minutes suggest that the United States would prevail because of the “success” of its nuclear air offensive. Moscow, not the United States, is sending out pleas for a cease-fire. More »
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