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
∞ 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
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
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
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
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
—
