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NASA's Star Trek-Inspired Ion Drive Works Fantastically Well
Every once in a while, science-fiction nerds come up with an idea so awesome that science nerds decide to build it. Like the NEXT ion engine—NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster—that the space agency's...
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Don't Worry, There Is No Torture in the Zero Dark Thirty Video Game
If you've been following the Zero Dark Thirty controversy, making a documentary-like movie about a history that remains secret and that includes scenes of "immoral violence" is one challenge, to say...
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The Internet Will Never Not Love UFO Videos
So this is pretty big on the internet right now, apparently, though it took a post of debunking at Discovery to enlighten me to that fact. It's a dude on an airliner at night shooting some or another...
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Meet Roboy, the First Service Android Born with Corporate Tattoos
I just sent a friend request to Roboy, even though he's not quite born yet. Swiss roboticists at the Artificial Lab of the University of Zurich are aiming to unveil the world's "most modern tendon...
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This Is Why We Can't Drill in the Arctic: Shell Lost Its Oil Rig at Sea
It looks like Shell is capping off its embarrassing, disaster-prone year of trying and failing to drill in the Arctic with yet another high-profile mishap: The Kulluk, one of two oil rigs sent north...
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A South African Rhino Farmer Is Trying to Buy U.S. Drones to Fight Poachers
Photo courtesy Carboafrica As the worst year on record for rhino poaching in South Africa comes to a close, one rhino reserve founder is pushing for authorities to step up their surveillance game as...
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Watch These Giraffes Duke It out on Film, and Other New Year Reflections
A new video currently making its way around the internet is making me rethink one of my favorite passages in 20th Century American literature. That passage, like the video, is about giraffes. It comes...
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"An In-Depth Analysis of a Piece of Shit" Is the Weirdest Title for Research...
Members of the Ivorian Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross test a well following a chlorination campaign, via the ICRC's Flickr. On the last day of the year, we've got a late...
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Watch a Drone Harass the French Police
Typically, our domestic drone-fueled fears revolve around the prospect of the expanding surveillance state. We're afraid, and justifiably so, of police using drones to peer into our personal space. As...
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Motherboard's Favorite Things of 2012
See? It wasn't so bad. Curiosity touches down Of all the things that happened this year in space, nothing made the world collectively stop and hold its breath like Curiosity's August landing on Mars....
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The Year in Hobby-Drone Crash Porn
I'd like to say that it was "a big year for drones," or some such sweepingly vague and recap-ready digestible, but that'd be an obvious understatement. Unmanned aerial vehicles are everywhere, now....
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Both Liberals and Conservatives Are Out-of-Control Exaggerators About How...
Why we think that Republicans are a bunch of racist poor people haters and Democrats will turn your church group into a drugged-out orgy. If you're a Republican, you're probably tired of hearing about...
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Future Sex: 2012 Was the Year of Fighting the Future
The phenomenon of nostalgia in the face of rapid change is well established. We sometimes cope with unfathomable progress by turning our sights backwards to seemingly more comforting and stable times...
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Skylab 4 Rang in the New Year with Mutiny in Orbit
Whatever you did on New Year’s Eve, it probably wasn’t as awesome as staring down at the Earth from orbit. Only a handful of people have rung in a New Year from 200 miles up, starting with the crew of...
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Federal Funds Can't Be Used for Gun Violence Research, But They Were Used to...
Following a year that saw some of the worst mass shootings in recent memory, not to mention the fact that murder rates in Detroit and Chicago both spiked, we're still looking for answers to what we...
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Why 'Breaking Bad' Should Be Set in China
It was in China that I was introduced to meth. I mean, it was thanks to Beijing's pirated DVD shops that I first saw Breaking Bad, or as my dealer knew it, 绝命毒师 jué mìng dú shī (“deadly drug master”)....
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Being Born American Used to Rule, Now It Doesn't
If you’re reading this, you're using the internet. And the fact that you have the internet means things may suck, but they could probably be worse. You also probably have things like food, some...
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The Next iPhones May Come in Different Colors
A random render of a pink iPhone, via You mean to tell me that it's the second day of 2013 and we're only on our first iPhone rumor? This year already sucks. But yes, Apple is rumored to be testing...
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This Year Will Be Huge for Wind Power
Congress built a rope bridge across the so-called "fiscal cliff" with a tax hike for rich people, thus ending the most recent ridiculous debacle that highlights the devastating dysfunction of the...
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U.S. Science Is Still Headed Off the Fiscal Cliff
Hey team, don't be fooled by yesterday's fiscal cliff "breakthrough." We just got played. That after-the-last-minute deal upped some tax rates on the super-wealthy--those making more than $400,000 a...
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