Using IBM computers, Dr. Henry Markram is building a model of the human brain that he hopes will take about 10 years to complete. Filmmaker Noah Hutton is chronicling the endeavor in an ongoing documentary that will be finished once the brain model exists. This is one of the most fascinating and important [...]

Hack n Mod has a fascinating DIY instruction manual for building a Star Trek phaser that shoots Blue Ray laser light. I’m not interested in actually building a Star Trek phaser that shoots real laser light at all. But I’m interested in the whole idea of posting about how one would do such [...]

If you’re planning on heading to the moon any time soon, you’ll at least be able to get a drink.  NASA announced today that the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite has discovered water on the moon.  The mission intentionally crashed a rocket stage onto the moon’s surface, creating an enormous plume of ejecta.  When [...]

There’s a huge blue whale swimming the internet.  It’s monstrous.  Life-size.  This is no laughing matter.  You should see this thing.  It’s gigantic and blue.  The mouth alone could swallow you whole.  You could probably live inside this creature for a few weeks at least.
Want to see it?  The ginormous blue whale is right here.
The [...]

Two French photographers, Serge Brunier and Frédéric Tapissier, spent weeks in the desert highlands of Chile, and a week in the Canary Islands, taking photos of the stars. Using a Nikon D3 digital camera, they took thousands of photos of the night sky and then stitched the photos together to make a panoramic view [...]

Forty years ago today, on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed humans on the moon. Amazing. We should really go back… if we still know how.

Whether this video news report is real or fake, whether the story is made up or not, it is sheer genius.  It is a remarkable modern day fairy tale that expresses almost everything you need to know about our questionable human condition. While repairing an old house somewhere in Pakistan recently, some children found a [...]

These are incredible, huge, and crystal clear photographs of the May 2009 shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.  The telescope is the greatest astronomical instrument ever devised and this is its last repair.  The mission was very dangerous because the Hubble orbits in an area with a high density of space junk.  A [...]

Bill Flanagan at Times Online has an interview with Bob Dylan.  They talk about Dylan’s impressions of Barack Obama’s writing in Dreams of My Father.  It seems that Dylan considers the president to be a pretty good writer, capable of making readers think and feel at the same time.  He thinks Obama says some ‘profoundly [...]

In Düsseldorf, Germany, a film crew equipped a homeless street vendor with a camera and projector outfit that made him nearly invisible to the passers by.  It’s a really nice little film and the effect is much more effective than I thought it would be.

Here’s a video taken from Space Shuttle mission 119 as it flew around the International Space Station.  The video has been sped up.  It’s an incredible view of the earth turning below the space station which can be seen in great detail.

Well, if this isn’t the most insane thing I’ve seen in several years!  This is a simply unbelievable video of the Miniatur Wunderland model railroad in Hamburg, Germany.  It is the largest in the world at 16,146 square feet with 10,000 railroad cars running on 6.8 miles of miniature track.  Construction of the railroad is [...]