In 2011-12, the VFX company Rhythm & Hues created the astounding effects for Ang Lee’s gorgeous movie The Life of Pi . Then they went bankrupt, fired their staff, and went out of business. Two weeks later they won an Oscar. The new documentary Life After Pi shows how this insanity was made possible. Read more…
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Learn how Hollywood screwed over the VFX industry in Life After Pi
Why sleep listening to white noise or ocean sounds, when you could hear the Starship Enterprise in flight? Or the interior of the TARDIS? Read more…
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Go to sleep while listening to comforting starship engine sounds
Scientists from Penn State University have just taken us a major step closer to a Fantastic Voyage future. For the first time ever, researchers have controlled the movements of living cells by inserting tiny synthetic motors directly inside them. Read more…
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Researchers control nanomotors inside living cells for the first time
People who live with pets notice that some animals moult in the spring and fall. Losing feathers or fur is unattractive, but it leads to a beautiful new coat in which to survive the winter or to attract a mate. It turns out humans also moult and grow attractive new coats of hair. Read more…
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Humans go through moult and grow new pelts
For the first time in half a decade, the ice atop Lake Superior has frozen thick enough to provide visitors safe passage to the “Sea Caves” of Wisconsin’s Apostle Islands , where centuries of erosive, wave-on-sandstone action have hewn arches, chambers and passageways into the region’s various cliffsides. Read more…
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Did you know Lake Superior has ice caves?
A team of physicists has proposed a way of teleporting energy over long distances. The technique, which is purely theoretical at this point, takes advantage of the strange quantum phenomenon of entanglement where two particles share the same existence. Read more…
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Physicists say energy can be teleported ‘without a limit of distance’
Back in the late 19th century, impressionist artist Claude Monet captured this striking sunset on the Normandy Coast. Now, thanks to the work of forensic astronomers, we known the precise moment it happened: February 5th, 1883 — at exactly 4:53 PM. Read more…
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Astronomers know when Monet made this painting — to the very minute
J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion opens with the Ainulindalë , the story of how the universe of Middle Earth came into existence. Artist Evan Palmer has painted his own adaptation of tale, imagining the radiant forms of Tolkien’s universe taking shape. Read more…
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Luminous watercolor comic brings Middle Earth’s creation story to life
This amazing chart follows the rise and fall — and in some cases, rise and fall and rise — of American cities. Peak Bagger has charted the rank of 20 metropolitan areas every decade from 1790 to 2010. Poor Detroit. Read more…
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Fascinating Chart: Top 20 Metropolitan Areas in the U.S.A., 1790-2010
In 1988, two fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation broke onto the Paramount lot and wandered through the Enterprise sets, filming a homemade documentary as they went along. They also caused a little accidental mayhem along the way. Read more…
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Two fans broke onto Star Trek: TNG sets to film their own documentary