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This Week in Science: Real Hoverboards, Black Hole Physics, and Ghost Psychology

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

∞ Male Birds Poison Themselves to Appear Sexier

The problem with positive thinking is that it doesn’t work

This vampire frog flies

We get a nasty flu virus every year, and now how we assume Ebola works is biased

How does the current Ebola outbreak stack up against our virus-laden past?

“The Hot Zone” and the mythos of Ebola

How Did Nigeria Quash Its Ebola Outbreak So Quickly?

One Ebola patient treated in a U.S. hospital will generate eight 55-gallon barrels of medical waste a day

Artist Sita Navas turned Master Chief and The Arbiter into Aztec gods

In which Veritasium shows us that part of Panem is powered by Lord Kelvin’s Thunderstorm

∞ Why build a 10-trillion watt laser? To see what Star Wars blaster bolts would look like duh

Science for the cat-haters out there (even though felines have possibly brain-controlling parasites in them)

Every Single Flu Vaccine Myth, Debunked

Neuroscientists speak out: Brain training games don’t work

Chimps conduct nighttime crop raids

More Damning Evidence That Dr. Oz’s Green Coffee Bean Diet Is A Scam

“For 50 years, the dinosaur was just a pair of arms.” Until now!

We’re in the middle of the next great extinction. What fossils will be left?

Bees wage war against each other for months

Researchers have developed a smart skate that measures the crazy forces on figure skaters

∞ We used to be baffled about bird migrations. No seriously…we thought they went to the Moon

Facebook is the patient zero of spreading rumors online, and there’s little we can do to stop it

Your smooth jazz was missing nudibranchs and you didn’t even know it

Does the Internet ever actually go to sleep?

You can see time travel for about 30 bucks

Why it’s important to film orcas with a drone

There are about 117 million lakes on Earth bigger than an Olympic swimming pool

The biggest spider is only “puppy-sized” if you’re talking about a baby chihuahua before it’s a week old

How genes for antibiotics jumped around every branch on the tree of life

 

Extreme Nerdery

What It’d Look Like if Star Wars Spilled Into the Real World

What is the farthest from Earth that any Earth thing has died?

∞ I ain’t got no phasmophobia, and psychology is why

Prosthetic Iron Man Hand Can Make Kids Feel Like Heroes

1. Drone racing is a thing. 2. Do it in a forest and it looks like Endor

Redditor mocha820 says Commander Shepard’s kill count is 5,667 and has the details to prove it

We’ve put a combined 684,000 years into online Halo pwnage

∞ Incredibly impressed that the black hole physics we’ll see in Interstellar represent new scientific knowledge

Silence of the Lambs, in 8-bit creepiness

The best zombie weapon might be four-legged and furry. Bears. It’s bears.

∞ One company has finally made a prototype hoverboard, but how McFly is it?

 

Sciencey GIFs and Images

∞ Artist Eleanor Lutz is back with another gorgeous animated infographic about breathing

For the next time you worry about an object passing between the Earth and our moon

C’mon fellas. You don’t wear XXXXL

Play around with this delightful fluid mechanics simulator for hours

∞ Thermal imaging an F1 car spewing heat, rubber bits

This is what the surface of a comet looks like

∞ Paris-based photographer Bertrand Kulik finds a spider “fixing” a leaf

Your reminder that we train military dolphins

Base-jumping with a slingshot and a GoPro just because

The most frequent sites of “missed connections”

Redditor Noedel captures the simple joy of a floating island illusion

The evolutionary trap for polar bears that is the adorable seal pup hat

Dust, the other kind of malware

Imaging the giant solar flare that happened earlier this week

Long exposure shot from the ISS makes Earth a light highway

∞ Have you ever seen a waterfall flow upwards?

This. Is. Bird Seed!

Your reminder that giant anteater legs look like pandas

These illusions still break my brain

Dealing with infectious disease like a boss

The pressure wave of a fired RPG

Male butterfly wafting pheromones at a female in glorious slo-mo

I love watching the thermal profile of an F1 tire change as the brakes are slammed on

The winners of the Society of Biology‘s third annual photography contest

Shocking

The chameleon’s evolutionary trap is a stream of water

 

Pop Culture Happenings

Don’t shine a laser at any aircraft, but especially a police helicopter, as they can totally see you

If Picasso could only see the looping paintings of Drew Tyndell

Make-up artist Eva Senín Pernas has awesomely spooky lipstick designs

∞ You must watch this gorgeous short about harvesting marble. It’s like conducting a stone orchestra

Life and Death

Incredibly impressed by this auto-math app

You can make your own delightfully terrifying polygonal paper masks on the cheap

“Ratings creep” has made the distinction between PG-13 and R meaningless

What? We could have battled Prof. Oak as the final boss in Pokemon Red!?

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 60 seconds

∞ 2D games in the real world

Image: NASA/SDO/AIA

 

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