Make no mistake: this is an intricate, delicate work of art no matter if it’s a commercial or not. A Japanese telco built a massive wooden gravity marimba operated by a single ball through a gorgeous woodland area.
The moral of the story? The woods are so boring you get ideas like this. Thanks to @Sandtiger on Twitter.
[YouTube]
Researchers mounted the Maritime Laser Demonstrator, a solid-state laser, aboard the USS Paul Foster, a decommissioned destroyer. Off the central California coast near San Nicholas Island on Wednesday, the laser fired a 15-kilowatt beam at an inflatable motorboat a mile away as both ships moved through the sea. As the above video shows, there was a flash on the boat’s outboard engines, igniting both of them in seconds, and leaving the ship dead in the choppy waters.
Note that this was only 15 kilowatts on their way to 100+ kilowatts needed for burning missiles from the sky.
[Wired]
Back in 2008 a stick-figure creature got busted creeping around Fresno backyards and was dubbed The Nightcrawler. Recently, new footage near Fresno shows two creatures that are very similar. Check out the videos below. The kind of look like marionettes, which is actually even more disturbing to me than unknown creatures. What do you guys think?
Another video with more information:
Physicists have just announced the discovery of something that falls outside the current understanding of particle physics. While zipping particles through Fermilab’s Tevatron collider they noticed that things were getting weird. While creating subatomic particles as a byproduct of these collisions, they can determine the various particles created in these collisions by looking at the energy of the jets. They can also use the Standard Model to predict the expected values created in these events, unless things get weird, and as stated before, things got weird.
“According to project spokesperson Giovanni Punzi, there were around 253 more electrons and muons created than expected compared to a background of about 10,000 such particles. Such jets could be created by a previously unknown particle about 160 times the mass of a proton, although we stress that’s only one possibility.”
So what are the other possibilities, if it isn’t a new previously unknown particle?
1. Fluke
2. Mistake
3. New, unknown feature of the Standard Model
4. A new fundamental force.
[io9]
It is very likely a combination of pre-2012 posturing by the White House and a fiscal hardline amongst the Republican party could cause our United States government to shut down this weekend. This is disappointing and annoying.
The silver lining? Conspiracy theorists can start spinning into overdrive. Break out the tin foil hats, check on your emergency seed garden and text your militia buddys. Here is a smattering of our favorites:
• China has ordered the shut down. They will use their opportunity to call in the debt we owe them and invade US soil [GodLikeProductions]
• Shut down means that non-essential entities like the EPA would cease opporation. That would mean radiation monitoring from Japan would be affected giving the Government leeway to fudge results [ConspiracyCom]
• Shutdown will only be avoided with assistance from Obama-friendly alien P’lod [Weekly World News]
The amazing music video for Alex Metric & Steve Angelo’s new tune Open Your Eyes finds us visiting a man who looks not unlike a young Rocky Balboa working over bums in the Philly underground boxing scene. However, instead of Apollo Creed looking for a new opponent, we find a fearsome boxing mech who has a habit of murdering his sparring partners while his sadistic creator laughs maniacally at the bloodshed.
Our rocky character is played by the hilarious Peter Serafinowicz from Shaun Of The Dead as well as the insanely funny UK TV sensations Look Around You and Spaced.
The song is ‘salright but the video is must see. SPOILER ALERT: not unlike the end of the Rocky, this story finds Balboa’s opponent wishing for no rematch, however, in this version our villain takes decisive action to reach his goal.
Thanks to Minion5051 for the tip via Twitter.
[YouTube]
Are computer viruses trying to take us over? Are they just the devolution of some kind of alien technology that’s trying to communicate with us through insipid mischief? Or are they evil alien viruses and trying to distract us from the impending invasion?
I don’t know necessarily about all these alien viruses I keep hearing about but if you have just regular earth viruses then you need ESET Antivirus and ESET are the world leaders in Anti-Threat technology.
There’s only one place you need to go to get it: http://www.willtech.com.au/delivers/Protection
And who know? Maybe they will just save us from all those alien viruses..
Before the big SpaceX announcement, the boys debate their relative excitement levels while Brian levies accusations of bigotry against NASA. Andrew questions the merit of a claim that the Chupacabra was inspired by the alien in Species and posits his own theory. Justin reads a listener scenario that eventually forces Hitler to try and kiss one of his high command right on the lips.
Your honors, it’s time for a new Weird Things Podcast!
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Elon Musk’s Space X promised a big announcement today and it was the unveiling of the Falcon Heavy. The short list of features: it can put 100,000 – 120,000 lbs. in orbit, has the thrust capacity of 15 Boeing 747s combined, is 30% the cost of previous rockets of this size, meets NASA requirements for human transport, can do the a trip to the ISS, moon or Mars(!!!) and back AND is ready to launch by the end of 2012.
Musk:
“Falcon Heavy would be capable of launching people as soon as we’ve proven it out with a few launches,” Musk said. “It opens up a wide range of possibilities, such as a mission to the moon or conceivably even Mars,” he said.
“First launch from our Cape Canaveral launch complex is planned for late 2013 or 2014,” Musk said.
M-A-R-S. Mars.
[Fox News]
How boring is it to live in Bridgewater, Ireland? So boring that when you see what you think might be a dead body, or a turtle, or (as it turned out ultimately) the head of a pig floating below a town bridge it becomes a communal event to observe the proceedings.
Workers leave their jobs mid shift, drivers immediately park their car on the shoulder of the road to join the bridge crowd and town traffic is brought to a stand still.
For a dead pig. Floating in a river.
Considering this became a town-wide curiosity, did anyone think about retrieving the object? Specifically considering early scuttlebutt argued it was a dead body?
Some people waited for around two hours and said they did not see the object removed and believe it is still in the river.
Oh, well maybe the local authorities were just too busy.
Police officers also attended the scene but left shortly after.
Never mind, Ireland is weird.
With apologies to John Coulton, there really isn’t much work being done in the niche genre of rock music from the perspective of a zombie. Enter Aaron Stoquert, an NYC folk singer/songwriter whose five-track EP Run For Your Life does just that with great effect.
If you are into melodic, creepy, haunting tunes heralding the cold inevitable reality of cannibalistic demons posing as family members tearing apart society one limb at a time, press play immediately.
Head to Aaron’s site for the rest and we encourage you purchasing.
Here is a flick you’ll probably hear a lot more about once it gets US distribution. Attack The Block is like Goonies if the Goonies kids lived in the projects and then aliens attacked. And were British.
It opens in the UK May 13th and played to rave reviews at the recently wrapped SXSW film festival.
While speaking to MTV’s The Hive, Sammy Hagar describes in detail how a band of aliens experimented on him while he slept:
How is that crazy? I wasn’t there, I don’t know what happened to you.
Remember the story in the book, where I have a dream about being contacted by aliens in the foothills above Fontana?
Yeah, yeah, I’ve got the page right here. “I saw a ship and two creatures inside of this ship… And they were connected to me, tapped into my mind through some kind of mysterious wireless connection.” You’re telling me that wasn’t a dream?
That’s right. It was real. [Aliens] were plugged into me. It was a download situation. This was long before computers or any kind of wireless. There weren’t even wireless telephones. Looking back now, it was like, “F-ck, they downloaded something into me!” Or they uploaded something from my brain, like an experiment. “See what this guy knows.”
And this actually happened?
That happened. That friggin’ happened, I’ll tell you right now. Another thing happened when I was about four that I didn’t put into the book. One time I saw what I considered to be, well, at the time I thought it was a car with no wheels. We lived out in the country and I saw this thing floating across a field, creating this big dust storm. I threw rocks at it and sh-t. And I don’t know what happened after that.
You blacked out?
I guess. I just have no memory of it. And that wasn’t a dream. It was during daylight.
Sammy is promoting his new autobiography Red. In the interview he also discusses boring stuff like drugs, booze and David Lee Roth.
What could aliens want with the brain of Sammy Hagar? Beyond an intergalactic fascination with his oft-discussed inability to drive 55, your guess is as good as mine.
[MTV Hive]
If one day, in a shiny future filled with hope and promise science and engineering finally succeeds in putting the feet of a human on Mars, we could just be returning home.
That is the theory of one MIT research team which aims to forensically test elements of the Martian ground to see if Earth humans were descended from the same genetic origin.
The MIT team led by Christopher Carr and Maria Zuber (head of MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences) and Gary Ruvkun, a molecular biologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, are proposing to build an instrument to send to Mars and test for extraterrestrial genomes.
Despite the numerous landers and rovers we’ve sent already, the only surface biology experiments were carried out in a bold but premature effort in 1976 aboard the trailblazing NASA Viking landers. The confusing results from these tests remain controversial and ambiguous today.
Even if we aren’t cosmic cousins with whatever critters skittered around The Red Planet once upon a time, the study has another benefit. It could greatly increase our understanding of microbes on Mars and if they would be hazardous to human settlers.
Because if they are, we might have to tent the planet for fumigation before moving in.
“The most important thing this discovery tells us is that there are quite likely to be other large fishes in the Amazon yet to be discovered and described.”