Why is it so hard for us humans to let go? We're obsessed with preserving the things we love—even when logic tells us it's time to move on. One large scale example of this irrational behavior: The billions of dollars spent to move entire towns out of harm's way.
In this infinite universe of ours, every event that occurs and every choice that we make continually split away into countless individual timelines—alternate realities, if you will. So who's to say that Bigfoot, Kraken, Martians, even Cthulu himself aren't perfectly real but simply residents of a now divergent reality? Matthew Buchholz, author of Alternate Histories of the World illustrates just a few major alternate historical events of the last 6,000 years.
It's hard not to feel a sense of simultaneous discomfort and awe while watching the fascinatingly bizarre YouTube channel of Koryo Tours, a Beijing-based travel agency specializing in trips to North Korea.
Though NASA sadly spent its recent 55th birthday furloughing employees
The internet is a wondrous place, but for every fantastic website out there, it seems like there are two weird ones. We asked you, dear readers, what some of the strangest sites you’ve ever seen were
In a film packed with great costume and set design (Leia's buns! The AT-ATs! Tauntaun guts!), the Stormtroopers' glistening white exoskeletons are among the most memorable details from Star Wars. Which is what makes Art Wars a lot of fun: As part of a show at London mega-gallery Saatchi, 19 artists were given a trooper helmet and told to go wild.
The colossal wind tunnels at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, have been used for decades not only to test the aerodynamism of planes, but also to subject submarines to simulations of turbulence and drag in aquatic environments.
The Enlightenment gave us many foundational ideas: Gravity! Democracy! Infographics! Wait, what? Yep. One of the age's lesser-known byproducts was the niche field of "graphical statistics," aka data visualization. And it's made more of an impact on our world that you might imagine.
Hovercrafts are truly amazing vehicles: Whether on land, water, mud or ice, these air-cushioned craft rule the unpaved wilderness. And they were born from a wildly optimistic and experimental era of engineering—as reflected by these incredible early prototypes and designs.
Even if you've lived in New York for decades, gaining access to a rooftop you've never explored can still be surprisingly fun: The burst of wind, the sound of traffic, and an entirely new vantage point on a city you'd think you'd be sick of after so many years. That's the basic concept behind Stories Above New York, a visual archive of New York's rooftop views that's three years in the making.
The phenomenon of the multiplex cinema goes back decades in America, but in Russia, the verdict is still out. Some residents aren't happy about watching the grand—though often decaying—movie theaters of their youth traded for bland 32-screen mega theaters.
At first glance, The Beautiful Future—a series of paintings made in Pyongyang, North Korea—looks like standard propaganda fare: Happy citizens, lush farmlands, and bustling industry. Except something's amiss: In the background of each painting stands an iconic piece of Beijing architecture—from the CCTV building to the Olympic Water Cube.
New York City was a different place in the 1940s. It was a time before video billboards and LED lights
The electron microscope is a fascinating scientific device—it uses an electron beam to illuminate a specimen, magnifying it up to 10 million times. With it, scientists can look deep into the substance of the world that surrounds us—and find another world, very similar to ours.
We're used to hearing about military camouflage, which has been used to hide everything from ships to whole towns
A few weeks ago, Russian divers extracted a 1,250-pound chunk of the infamous Chelyabinsk meteorite from a lake where it landed on February 15. The massive space stone ended up cracking into three pieces—and though scientists may have cursed the clumsy divers, I was interested in something else: What was inside the rock?
A few days ago, we admired the cosmic beauty hidden inside of dull-looking meteorites
When the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceased to exist in 1991, propaganda art began to disappear, and once-grand social realist murals, reliefs and all manner of mosaics have dwindled. But in the Republic of Kazakhstan, locals still walk the streets under the watchful eyes of five-story tall cosmonauts, workers, engineers, scientists.
When US-Soviet relationships were at their frostiest in the 1980s, there was no telling what sort of exotic threat was about to come roaring through Russia's Iron Curtain. That's where the Defense Intelligence Agency came in.
Have you ever found yourself watching a cartoon and noticing the illustrations behind the characters? Those backgrounds can often be prettier than the action in the foreground. If only those pesky mice and long-nosed boys would get out of the way! If so, the upcoming Beverly Hills Animation Art Signature Auction is for you.