in-the-lab
How Five Times Three Equals a Hacking Revolution
The thing used to protect most of your digital secrets -- credit card numbers, email accounts, bank account information, whatever -- is a peculiar sort of lock and key, a variety of encryption called public key cryptography. In this secrecy scheme, the...
Motherboard TV: Inside NASA's Spectacular Undersea Mission to Save Earth from an Asteroid
h4. A new episode of "Spaced Out":http://motherboard.vice.com/video/series/spaced-out, Motherboard's YouTube space show.The possibility that Earth will be hit by an asteroid in our lifetime isn't "huge":http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/5/17/nasa-s-most...
These Weird Little Bugs Are Using Sunlight for Food
Here's something that could solve a great deal of humanity's problems real quick: humans not having to eat so much, or at all. We could stop mowing down the Amazon to plant grains to feed cows, or maybe we could take our collective foot off the neck of...
Our First Communications Satellite Was a Giant Shiny Inflatable Death Star
Fifty one years ago this week, a microwave transmission from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California was received at Bell Laboratories in Homdel, New Jersey, after bouncing off a giant silver balloon floating in space. It was Echo calling...
Is This Cat Parasite Really Making People Kill Themselves?
The parasite _Toxoplasma gondii_ is already the stuff of _whoa crazy!_ internet lore to a fairly high degree as that thing that you can get from your cat's crap that might cause schizophrenia, via the disease Toxoplasmosis. Indeed, of you're reading...
Your 3D Printed Steak Is Served, But Is It Meat?
This is actually a thing on the horizon: meat created _in vitro_ by a 3D printer. "2,500 chicken breasts, please. I'll be back in an hour or so." Which is cool and all, but I think we're pretty much past the point of being shocked by the capabilities...
Science Is This Close To Making a Male Birth Control Pill To Kill Your Sperms
I don't have to tell _you_ about how great this could be. Lady birth control via pill is miserable for a whole lot of people, condoms are things that you actually have to use every goddamn time, and then there's all of that other stuff you can get if...
Want to Punch Harder? Be a Black Belt, and Use Your Brain
In "a study":http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_15-8-2012-12-15-31 that has nothing to do with the fact that a third _Kill Bill_ movie is being "made":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X86mswvoUAY , British...
Furry Animals Doing the Dry-Shake in Super-Slow Motion for Science and Entertainment
Researchers took this high-speed video for the sake of science, to unlock the mysteries of mammalian dryness. Which is actually a quite impressive feature of mammals, the ability to dry themselves really, really fast. For example, a large dog can rid...
What the Mars Rover Landing Looked Like To Someone Who Actually Built It
NASA's done a fine job of documenting its big Martian landing last week - that little YouTube "robot copyright hiccup":http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/8/6/nasa-s-mars-rover-crashed-into-a-dmca-takedown notwithstanding. But one of NASA JPL's engineers...
Music Has a Right To Your Brain Chemicals (Video)
Even _I_, one of the more dickheaded skeptics I know, sometimes likes to think metaphysically about music. Maybe that's because I'm someone that really, really likes music and has devoted a significant portion of their life to it, and there's something...
New Research: We Live in a Cosmic Cave Full of Dark Matter
Experimental results released last month from Italy's deep underground XENON100 detector revealed, sadly, "no dark matter":http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/7/18/space-is-only-noise-in-the-underground-dark-matter-detector, at least in its most commonly...