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This Week in Science: Mind-Controlled Limbs, 3D Printed Paws, and Santa Math

Digging through the web this week, I uncovered all this geeky goodness. You can find the thousands of links from previous weeks here.


I have marked my favorite links with a ∞. Enjoy.


Science to Read, Watch

How to make an airbus

∞ You’re an astronaut reentering the atmosphere. You turn to look back. What do you see? This

Where are the most radioactive places on Earth?

Birds build snow tunnels for fun

The deepest-dwelling fish ever found looks like a fish/tadpole/angel/eel/dog thing

Take a virtual tour around Comet 67P!

∞ Les Baugh is the first amputee to simultaneously control two prosthetic limbs with his mind

Our best exoplanet hunter is alive and kickin’!

So fully articulated robot snake tubes are extremely unsettling

Will religion ever disappear?

The male praying mantis doesn’t want to get eaten, kind of

An astronaut needed a wrench, so we emailed him one

Assassin spiders are beautifully odd, deadly, and have face violins

Bacteria take advantage of fungal traps for killer nematodes, like single-celled Macaulay Culkins

Can a lizard clone of a clone of parents be a new species? Maybe. It’s complicated

This pearlfish uses oysters as amplifiers

∞ Why does this insect flash brilliant colors *after* it is attacked?

How many nuclear weapons would it take to make Earth uninhabitable?

What in the brain makes us see faces in *everything*?

Why are most of us right-handed?

So how are robot arm-controlling brain implants with wifi coming along?

Darwin was fantastically right about evolution, but he got parts of it fantastically wrong too

X-rays and gamma rays are blasting from the tops of thunderstorms

Why don’t people believe in climate science?

A tigerfish swallows a swallow mid-flight

Derby the dog can be the puppy he wants to be thanks to 3D printing

∞ This is what it looks like when a zebrafish *thinks*. Some of 2014’s best science photography

“Holy s***, it’s a shark!” A Greenland shark turns up in an unexpected place

California needs 42 cubic kilometers of water

We’ve found methane on Mars but we don’t know where it’s coming from

Another Northern White Rhino Dies, Only 5 Remain

Why is it so hard to drive backwards? Physics!

Humpback whales: The most majestic star stuff

When you look out a window during your atmospheric reentry

Making a hyper-sensitive sensor based on the lyres in spider legs

I had no idea how weird the peanut bug was

Spiked snail with purple blood named after The Clash’s frontman, Joe Strummer

∞ Why are waiting room magazines always old? Because people take the new ones

 

Extreme Nerdery

∞ Of the sampled adaptations, The Hobbit films are the only movies with more minutes than pages of source material

1950s-style Portal 2 tribute painting

All LOTR Mythology Explained in Four Minutes

Could you make a lava lamp with actual lava?

Gollum likely suffered from schizoid personality disorder

The amount of film used in all the LOTR movies could wrap around the Moon like a belt (*6 million feet*)

∞ Santa travels fast enough on Christmas Eve night to escape the surface gravity of the Sun

How to write a science feature

∞ How many horses (or dogs) can our rockets lift?

The Physics Girl is back with more pool vortex physics!

Watch some dudes build Link’s Fierce Deity Sword from Majora’s Mask

 

Sciencey GIFs and Images

A decent imgur gallery of some fantastic science images and GIFs from 2014

This lion is *not* cowardly

When you throw crumpled memory wire into a jar of hot water

There are only four circles here and they don’t touch. C’mon brain you can do this.

Physics class, a la Miley Cyrus

∞ Cat experiences snow for the first time

New favorite pie chart

Why shouldn’t you run from a bear? They are *fast*

Man working in seafood and gourmet distribution warehouse finds 1 in 30 million calico lobster

The incredible shockwave from an exploding mine

∞ This is how humans are made, in one lovely animated GIF

A real world kaiju is a hammerhead shark x-ray

Optical illusions: Minecraft edition

That Han Solo running towards you thing, but with a moose

We’re going to need a bigger dinghy

“A polar bear cub hitches a piggy-back ride on its mother”

∞ A swimming, transparent ribbon eel larva

Trees are no match for sinkholes

 

Pop Culture Happenings

The first uses of the filthiest words in the English language (NSFW?)

An ice-swept mountainside in Slovenia turns structures into frozen dragons

∞ “For slightly over 1/3 of the recommendations for The Dr Oz Show, no evidence could be found

Shadow of Mordor might be the first “open narrative” game

Flexible paper artist Li Hongbo is back with amazing silohuettes made from knives

Herzog Inspirationals

Designer Istvan Giordano’s randomly generated insects are stunning

∞ The year in social media outrage

Bots Now Outnumber Humans on the Web

The Big Lebowski to be placed on the Library of Congress National Film Registry

Does your cat want to poop like Bilbo Baggins perchance?

SeaWorld’s third-quarter earnings have fell nearly 30% since last year, CEO is stepping down

Kerby Rosanes doesn’t care if you have a Moleskine too, his doodles are *way* better

Drone Footage Shows Extent Of Greenpeace’s Damage To Peru’s Nazca Site

Tracking the 20 most popular web sites every year since 1996

∞ This is what we Googled in 2014

There are magic mushrooms in the gardens of Buckingham Palace

Would love to gawk at the portraits in this book full of beautiful undersea invertebrates: “Spineless

Bill Nye has over 400 bow ties, because you always wondered

Tyson Boop

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