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After placing no less than 225 camera traps, a group of researchers has collected a massive database of 1.2 million photos documenting the secret live of the animals that roam Tanzania's Serengeti National Park. The shots offer a raw, unedited glimpse that wouldn't had been possible otherwise; genuinely up close and personal. So personal that some of the lions and other beasrs in the park went a step too far and tried to eat the cameras. At time, the only thing that was left of the camera was plastic shreds, but luckily some memory cards survived. How often do you get to see the last shot made by a camera? With a lion with a fully open jaws staring right at you, no less.
We tend to associate the word “office” with other words like “boring” or “work” – but it doesn’t have to be like that. Here are some gifts which you can give to your pals (or buy for yourself) to lighten up that hard day at the office. Zombie Pencil Holder What better way to […]
They call it "Tree 76", because it stands 76 meters tall (249 feet) above the Muir Woods floor in California. Researchers wanted to see how old Tree 76 is, and they were surprised to see how young it is - at only 777 years old, it's much younger than the oldest known trees of its kind.
Portuguese artist Artur Bordalo’s (aka Bordalo II) creates artwork from junk, but that doesn’t make it any less cute! He uses only junk to bring these animals to life, each of them a larger-than-life version of their biological versions. Each statue carries with it a powerful message, because each animal is built from materials responsible for its […]
Created by John B. Sparks and first printed by Rand McNally, the Histomap started selling in 1931 for the price of US$1. Folded in a green cover that advertised it as “clear, vivid, and shorn of elaboration,” and promising to “hold you enthralled”, the 5-foot-long work of historic awesomeness aims to deliver big.
As part of a recent TED Talk (presented at the bottom of this article) photographer Anand Varma captured the incredible 21 day transformation from bee egg to larvae to pupae to adult, all in a breathtaking one-minute time-lapse video: In order to construct this time-lapse, Varma raised bees in his backyard, in front of a […]
The 27th annual National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest kicked off in April, but is accepting entries until June 30. If you want to sign up for the contest, you can do so by clicking here. There are quite some hefty prizes, including: 1st prize: An eight-day National Geographic Photo Expedition: Costa Rica and the Panama Canal […]
Artist Daniel Rozin has designed a surprising mirror-like device from… fur. Dubbed the PomPom Mirror, it relies on motion sensors and 928 faux fur pom poms manipulated by 464 motors to create a mirror reflection of the viewer in real-time. Sure, the mirror only works in black and white, but the effect is surprising and spectacular. This […]
A stunning round solar halo caused a social media frenzy - people were out in the streets, taking photos, sharing them, while scientists were also excited to see such a rare phenomenon. But what are solar halos, and why did this one appear in Mexico?
The future is here – bring me my jetpack. Yves “the Jetman” Rossy and his protege, Vince Reffet do a fantastic job at illustrating that, pushing the limits of jetpack technology; and what better place to do it than Dubai? Warning – this video isn’t for the faint of heart, nor for those afraid of heights. […]
Social media was ecstatic - just look at this video of an orangutan bottle-feeding a tiger cub. Tens of millions of people tuned in to watch this "cuteness overload"... but the truth behind this is not cute at all. It's actually quite saddening. We'll discuss why, after the video.
It's raining... spiders. Countless baby spiders are falling from the ski in the Australian city Goulburn, South Australia, covering the entire landscape in spider webs.
That's the sun setting over the rim of Gale Crater on Mars, as shot by the Curiosity Rover. Notice some differences? Well, first of all, the sun looks a lot smaller. Of course, it should look smaller considering Mars is farther away from the sun than Earth is. This way, the sun looks approximately two-thirds as big as from our own planet. Next, that's a blue-tinted sunset, fading out in a pinkish tinge. In terms of colors, that's more or less the exact opposite of what happens here on Earth where sunsets tend to fade from warm, ruddy colors like orange-red. This can be explained by the differences between airborne particles in the two atmospheres.
Next Thing Co, a fledgling company started by three budding hardware enthusiasts, just released a KickStarter campaign in which they promise to release a computer worth nine USD. The computer, called CHIP, can do everything 90% of all people usually use computers for: office apps, surf the web and play games. The team hoped to raise $50,000 to supplement their own budget and start rolling orders at an assembly line in China. Right now, $1,040,006 were donated as I'm writing this and the numbers are swelling with 24 days still to go. Are we finally seeing the fruits of liberalizing computing and economics of scale?
Using its Mast Camera, the Curiosity Rover has snapped stunning images of a blue sunset on the Red Planet. The blue-tinted images show the Sun dipping into the horizon as blue streaks shroud the sky across the evening light.
This "drawing" might look like it was made by a kid in grade school, but make no mistake it symbolizes one of the biggest achievements in 21st century biology. This San Diego beach scene was actually drawn in an eight color palette of bacterial colonies expressing fluorescent proteins derived from GFP and the red-fluorescent coral protein dsRed. Effectively, this is a picture literally drawn with life.
Archaeologists working in Madagascar have uncovered the treasure hidden by the notorious pirate Captain Kidd – and they have the loot to prove it: a 50 kg silver bar they presented to the president of Madagascar. US explorer Barry Clifford discovered the shipwreck and recovered the silver bar, but he believes that many more still […]
When you drive a car you should be able to react quickly in the event that someone in front of you makes a sudden shift or change. For example, if the car up ahead slams on its brakes to avoid hitting something, you must also be able to hit your brakes and steer the car […]
Salar de Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flat at 10,582 square kilometers (4,086 sq mi). It is located in the Daniel Campos Province in Potosí in southwest Bolivia, close to the crests of the Andes, at 3,656 meters (11,995 ft) above sea level. It was captured in all its splendor in the above timelapse, by Enrique Pacheco. […]
A crater wall collapse in a Hawaiian volcano has triggered a powerful lava explosion. The Kilauea explosion spread lava and debris around it, in a spectacular display which was caught on camera by the USGS. Material was thrown 280 feet (85 meters) up into the air. Janet Babb, a geologist with the USGS, compared the […]
They say that one man’s trash is another man’s gold, but artist Alejandro Duran gave a whole new meaning to that saying. Walking along the coastline in Sian Ka’an, Mexico’s largest federally-protected reserve, he collects many bits of trash that wash up on the coast from all over the world and uses them for site site-specific installations for an ongoing […]
For most smokers, the message that cigarettes are fatally bad for their health often doesn't come across. But if that message came written in ink made from pitch black lungs? It's a morbid concept, one that was actually followed through by BBDO Proximity Thailand, an agency which commissioned the charcoal ink, part of an anti-smoking effort for the Thai Health Promotion Foundation.
Sandblasting is a type of abrasive blasting which involves propelling a stream of abrasive material against a surface under high pressure to smooth a rough surface, roughen a smooth surface, shape a surface, or remove surface contaminants. But while it is most often used to clean pipes and smooth rough surfaces, it can also have other […]
I just love it when stuff that’s thrown away becomes a part of something new and valuable – upcycling, as many people call it. For UK-based artist Julie Alice Chappell (Facebook), it’s about turning technology into art. She takes thrown away computer and video game parts and assembles them into pieces of art, which she then sells […]
It’s that time of the year again! The 27th annual National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest opened on April 7, and we already have some awesome entries; before we dive into them and admire their magnificence, you should know that you too can enter the contest using this link. Official categories include:Travel Portraits; Outdoor Scenes; Sense of Place; […]
A coast guard patrol reported that Lake Michigan’s shallow waters are so clear that you can actually see the shipwrecks on the bottom of the lake, until sediments stir up the water and algae blooms develop. Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America, and the only one that’s completely on […]
If you happened to wander in the right areas in L.A. recently, you may have noticed a rather peculiar and unique style of art: apparent geodes appearing in the cracks and crevices around the city. Here’s what I’m talking about: Naturally, these aren’t actually geodes – geodes are geological structures in which numerous crystals from in […]
Researchers from Cambridge have, for the first time, captured a 3D video of a living algal embryo turning itself inside out: from a sphere into a mushroom and into a sphere again. The results could help us better understand the process of gastrulation in animal embryos -- which biologist Lewis Wolpert called "the most important event in your life."
If you ever stared into the blue sky or even a blank computer screen, you might have noticed there are some strange blobs floating through the field of vision. These might look like black or gray specks, strings or cobwebs that drift about when you move your eyes, but kind of disappear when you try to concentrate your vision directly onto them. So, what are we actually seeing? Time to dispel another childhood superpower. No, these aren't aliens trying to make contact or microbes. Nor are they hallucinations, for make no mistake the spots are completely real and there. These spots in your vision are called by doctors eye floaters and are caused by the blue field entoptic phenomenon.
Magnets – they come in all sizes, they fascinate everyone, and they’re extremely useful in modern society. I won’t go into a Wiki-type of article here, explaining how they work – there’s plenty of good articles online, like this one and this one – here, we’ll just show magnets in their pure awesomeness. […]
The Seven Sisters are a series of chalk cliffs by the English Channel, in Sussex (doh!). In case you didn’t know, chalk is actually a porous sedimentary rock, a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite forming in somewhat deep underwater conditions from the gradual accumulation of minute calcite plates (coccoliths) shed from micro-organisms called […]
It’s the favorite hash tag we’ve had since #OverlyHonestMethods: scientists are flooding Twitter with their own revelations and reasons why they feel they’re scientists. It’s awesome because it highlights how special and unique being a scientist really is. #IAmAScientistBecause I want to explain to people how much we all NEED nature. http://t.co/LaX9G8jAkx pic.twitter.com/5AVVPBwD6f — Mark Spalding […]
It’s one of the most amazing creatures you’ve never heard about: the pyrosome. It often looks like a giant inflatable underwater balloon, or a tube-like worm, but it’s actually made of hundreds or thousands of individuals known as zooids. “One long pyrosome is actually a collection of thousands of clones, with each individual capable of […]
Some might argue that 7 billion people, while a lot in itself, isn’t necessarily a cause of concern, not even when this is expected to sour to 10 billion by 2100. After all, 7 billion people can be squeezed in an area the size of Texas, but I think that’s besides the point. Yes, the […]
Repeat photography (or rephotography) is a technique in which photographs are taken repeatedly at a site to see how it evolves. It’s especially useful for glaciers, particularly because other remote ways of estimating glacial mass, depth, and rate of retreat are imperfect. These photos depict how this technique was used at a number of locations […]
There's good news, and bad news. The good news is that an extremely rare bunny has been observed for the first time in 20 years, but the bad news is that their numbers seem to have dwindled more than ever, and we may never see them again.
Time to get a bit geeky with Dmitriy Morozov latest contraption: an 8 bit camera that prints photos on a receipt. How's that for recycling tech? As you can notice, the display is handled by none another than the Game Boy, while the hardware is controlled via the ever trusty Arduino. Morozov is a Moscow-based artist whose 'thing' is mixing art with diy electronics.
The Stork’s Bill (Erodium circutarium) is a incredible plant which evolved its own seed drilling mechanism. The vitamin K rich seeds have little tails that coil and uncoil with changes in humidity, burying the seed. When there's high humidity, the seeds turn clockwise. When it's dry, they turn counter-clockwise. This makes it particularly brilliant since no matter how wet it is outside, the seeds will still drill in the ground like a screw, thereby increasing the chance of sprouting.
A shocking image went viral a few days ago, with an 11th-century French abbey completely surrounded by water following a super tide. Naturally, many similar photos followed, and many "explanations" emerged, most vaguely referencing the solar eclipse, something about gravitational cycles, and some even stated it was caused by the "tide of the century", although the "tide of the century" comes by every 18 years. So let's take a look at what actually happened.
In December 1994, three explorers made a surprising discovery in southern France - a rumble of stones blocking the entrance to a spectacular cave, over 400 meters long and covered with archaeological and palaeontological remains, including the skulls and bones of cave bears, which hibernated there, along with the skulls of an ibex and two wolves. But it was the human traces that were most interesting...
Even as a geologist, I can’t help myself from looking at lava with an almost childish fascination — it’s something from the depths of the Earth (literally), with the potential to destroy anything in its path, and also to create new landscapes, drastically changing the surface of the Earth. In the short film above, Lance Page managed […]
Syngenta Photography Award aims to draw attention on pressing social and environmental issues, stimulating dialogue around a number of global challenges. The competition invited both professional and amateur photographers, under two separate categories, to share their views on the theme of Scarcity–Waste and examine one of the greatest challenges facing a world with increasingly limited […]
For her MA degree project at the University of West Hungary, Budapest-based graphic designer Barbara Bernát came up with these beautiful versions of the Hungarian Euro. The project involved five denominations of increasing scale – there’s a 5, a 10, a 20, 50 and 100. She even made the copper plates for printing the bancnotes; there’s even […]
Fahrenheit may be the best way to measure temperature after all. Why? Because most of us only care about air temperature, not water temperature.
Ijad Madisch a Harvard trained virologist and computer scientist was on his way to becoming a medical professor, but in 2008 he put a halt to his career as a medical researcher to embark on an even greater challenge: changing the way scientists connect.
Scientists, in the lab at least, see marijuana differently from growers or users. Like other plants, once you dive into the microworld cannabis looks immensely different from the buds you see online. These amazing pictures which size up the planet’s crystals, trichomes or leafs were taken by Ford McCann and compiled in a book called Cannabis […]
Designer Thomas Heatherwick just completed construction on a cluster of 12 parsnip tornado-shaped towers for the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. The building, called the Learning Hub, is part of a larger project to help redesign educational architecture and make the university a more attractive place. I have to say, it seems to be working – it’s one of […]
As we go around our daily lives with wireless internet and satellite smartphones, it's easy to forget that at the core of modern internet, there are hundreds of thousands of submarine cables lying on the ocean floor - sometimes at depths nearing 8,000 metres. Those cables help transmit 99 percent of all international data and without them, the world as we know it wouldn't exist - so let's give them a bit of credit.
When the University of Amsterdam decided to close down several language studies, students reacted; but they didn't protest or used violence, they simply occupied one of the University's buildings, demanding a more democratic approach to education and more student participation.
Deep inside the Earth, in the gigantic Hang Son Doong cave in Vietnam, there lies a completely unique and mostly unknown ecosystem. Using a GoPro-carrying drone, Beijing-based traveler Ryan Deboodt provides a unique insight into this cave, showing a pristine, forgotten world. The cave was only discovered in 1991, but even then, scientists had to wait until 2009 […]
