Some of Team Titanoboa, from left to right: Charlie Brinson, Markus Hager, Michelle La Haye, Jordan Cowan, Mark Eijsermans, Hugh Patterson, James Simard, Kelly Metzger, Polly Tan, Julian Fong, and Jonathan Faille (Photo: Michael J.P. Hall)

The original Titanoboa was a species of snake that lived 60 million years ago, reaching a length of 50 feet (15 meters) and an estimated weight of one ton (907 kg). When artist Charlie Brinson first heard about the … Read More → "Titanoboa is 50 feet of slithering electromechanical art"

More xkcd here

The BBC hid a series of puzzles and clues throughout The Code, a three-part program on the naturally occurring mathematical patterns that shape our lives. Avid puzzlers in the UK used these clues to tackle 84 pages of puzzles before three dedicated players took a trip down to Bletchley Park to tackle a final set of challenges inspired by the historic site. via Read More → "Cracking the BBC’s Code at Bletchley Park"

The team which found that neutrinos may travel faster than light has carried out an improved version of their experiment – and confirmed the result.

If confirmed by other experiments, the find could undermine one of the basic principles of modern physics.

Critics of the first report in September had said that the long bunches of neutrinos (tiny particles) used could introduce an error into the test. via BBC

Read More → "Neutrino experiment repeat at Cern finds same result"

If ever you’ve left your desk a little messy, a tad disorganized and disheveled, if ever your piles of paper have grown so dense that they’ve begun to shift like the Hayward Fault, terrifying your workplace neighbors, you owe Jim Williams a deep debt of gratitude.

No one, you see, topped Williams in topping his work space. Williams, a superstar analog chip engineer who died in June, had a workbench right out of some techno sci-fi thriller. It was a cacophony of chaos — resistors piled upon capacitors, piled upon copper sheets holding … Read More → "Jim Williams’ workbench captures his life and Silicon Valley"

In late 2008, a few onlookers believed that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) would bring the end of the world. Three years later, our planet remains intact, but the European particle smasher may have made its first crack in modern physics.

If this crack turns out to be real, it might help explain an enduring mystery of the universe: why there’s lots of normal matter, but hardly any of the opposite—antimatter. “If … Read More → "LHC may have found crack in modern physics"

How much damage can one man cause the National Aeronautics and Space Administration? If the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism’s charges against the newly arrested Robert Butyka are to be believed, the answer to that is “somewhere over half a million dollars’ worth.”

The 26-year-old Butyka, described as “an unemployed self-taught hacker” by Romanian authorities, is being charged … Read More → "Hacker arrested for causing $500,000 worth of damage to NASA"

If there’s one thing most people know about silica gel, the unseen substance that inhabits those little white packets inserted in new shoe boxes, purses, and Asian snack foods, it’s that you’re not supposed to eat it. Invariably, the ominous warning “do not eat” is emblazoned across the packet. Often it is accompanied by the edict, “throw away.” In case that’s not clear enough, a few varieties depict a skull and crossbones. … Read More → "What happens if you eat silica gel?"

NASA has announced the release of the GLD 100, also known as the most accurate, highest resolution map of the Moon ever created. The map was made using instruments aboard theLunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The image above is a piece of the map, showing the far side of the moon at one pixel per 100 meter (328 foot) scale. via Geekosystem

Read More → "NASA releases highest resolution map of the Moon ever made"

Yesterday, a group of nine of the biggest online companies took out a full page ad in the New York Times to voice their concern over two pieces of legislation in congress that could greatly affect the way America uses the Internet. In the letter, Google, Facebook, Mozilla, Zynga, eBay, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and AOL ask that their point of view be heard regarding the Protect IP and the Stop Online Piracy Act. via Geekosystem

Read More → "Biggest names online take out full page ad in NYTimes speaking against SOPA"