NASA, in a covert attempt to mine Martian cheese , wants to send scientists to the moon in the form of avatars, just like in the movie by the same! ( Avatar , not Martian cheese — although that shit has blockbuster written all over it too). NASA can put humanoids on the Moon in just 1000 days. They would be controlled by scientists on Earth using motion capture suits, giving them the feeling of being on the lunar surface. The 1000-day mark is quite plausible, since the mission would be a lot simpler than a human-based one. It will also be quite cheaper than the real thing. First, you don’t have to care about life support systems, which will make spacecraft manufacturing a lot less complex. The whole system would also weight a lot less, reducing the need for the development of a huge rocket, and again reducing the costs. Ha, I love how in the robot in the video stares at his fingers for a full minute like, “holy shit, what the f*** are these?!” Great programming, NASA. And, hypothetically, if my avatar decided to get drunk on moon juice and chase some alien snizz, would I single-handedly restore interest in outerspace and save NASA from the brink of funding collapse? Yes, I would. AND YOU BETTER RENAME A PLANET AFTER ME. NASA Project M Puts Scientists’ Avatars On the Moon [gizmodo]

Finally scientists have proven that, despite what popular kid’s programs would have you believe, dinosaurs were not all purple and sing-songy and allowed near children. Nope, some has feathers . Red ones. The researchers removed 29 chips, each the size of a poppy seed, from across the dinosaur’s body. Mr. Vinther put the chips under a microscope and discovered melanosomes. To figure out the colors of Anchiornis feathers, Mr. Vinther and his colleagues turned to Matthew Shawkey, a University of Akron biologist who has made detailed studies of melanosome patterns in living birds. Dr. Shawkey can accurately predict the color of feathers from melanosomes alone. The scientists used the same method to decipher Anchiornis’s color pattern. Anchiornis had a crown of reddish feathers surrounding dark gray ones, and its face was mottled with reddish and black spots. Its body was dark gray, but its limb feathers were white with black tips. Given the full detail of the findings, Dr. Prum said, “it was like writing the first entry in a Jurassic field guide to feathered dinosaurs.” “….like writing the first entry in a Jurassic field guide to feathered dinosaurs.” Where the hell do these people come up with this stuff? Because I want their power of similes. Could you imagine? A word wizard of my caliber mastering the art of similes? I’d be like an unstoppable tornado of raw power and supple skin that you just want to feel against your cheek so badly but can’t BECAUSE I’M A F***ING RAGING TORNADO AND WILL TEAR YOUR GOTDAMN HOUSE DOWN. Suck it, wolf. Evidence Builds on Color of Dinosaurs [nytimes] and True-Color Dinosaur Revealed: First Full-Body Rendering [nationalgeographic] Thanks to Ryan, littlezan, big jerm, Shea, Divo, Da, Meow vs Meow, lauren!, Foxx, Anonymous_Rex, ellen, Amanda, Alan, Gabriel, Jujufruit, Griffin, Gavin, Sydney, Jennifer, Mike, Max, Brent, danundertheice, Chupacabra, Jonathan, Dustin, graf zeppelin, The Coffee Mugger, Aleisha and anybody else whose email I couldn’t find because the mail sorter at the internet post office is a jerk, I love dinos and so should you.

Finally scientists have proven that, despite what popular kid’s programs would have you believe, dinosaurs were not all purple and sing-songy and allowed near children. Nope, some has feathers . Red ones. The researchers removed 29 chips, each the size of a poppy seed, from across the dinosaur’s body. Mr. Vinther put the chips under a microscope and discovered melanosomes. To figure out the colors of Anchiornis feathers, Mr. Vinther and his colleagues turned to Matthew Shawkey, a University of Akron biologist who has made detailed studies of melanosome patterns in living birds. Dr. Shawkey can accurately predict the color of feathers from melanosomes alone. The scientists used the same method to decipher Anchiornis’s color pattern. Anchiornis had a crown of reddish feathers surrounding dark gray ones, and its face was mottled with reddish and black spots. Its body was dark gray, but its limb feathers were white with black tips. Given the full detail of the findings, Dr. Prum said, “it was like writing the first entry in a Jurassic field guide to feathered dinosaurs.” “….like writing the first entry in a Jurassic field guide to feathered dinosaurs.” Where the hell do these people come up with this stuff? Because I want their power of similes. Could you imagine? A word wizard of my caliber mastering the art of similes? I’d be like an unstoppable tornado of raw power and supple skin that you just want to feel against your cheek so badly but can’t BECAUSE I’M A F***ING RAGING TORNADO AND WILL TEAR YOUR GOTDAMN HOUSE DOWN. Suck it, wolf. Evidence Builds on Color of Dinosaurs [nytimes] and True-Color Dinosaur Revealed: First Full-Body Rendering [nationalgeographic] Thanks to Ryan, littlezan, big jerm, Shea, Divo, Da, Meow vs Meow, lauren!, Foxx, Anonymous_Rex, ellen, Amanda, Alan, Gabriel, Jujufruit, Griffin, Gavin, Sydney, Jennifer, Mike, Max, Brent, danundertheice, Chupacabra, Jonathan, Dustin, graf zeppelin, The Coffee Mugger, Aleisha and anybody else whose email I couldn’t find because the mail sorter at the internet post office is a jerk, I love dinos and so should you.

New research suggests that sitting for extended periods may lead to future health risks . Wow, scientists, wow (what did you really do with all the grant money?). Research is preliminary, but several studies suggest people who spend most of their days sitting are more likely to be fat, have a heart attack or even die. “After four hours of sitting, the body starts to send harmful signals,” Ekblom-Bak said. She explained that genes regulating the amount of glucose and fat in the body start to shut down. …in a study published last year that tracked more than 17,000 Canadians for about a dozen years, researchers found people who sat more had a higher death risk, independently of whether or not they exercised. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? At least for a minute until you study the informational graphic a little closer and discover the actual purpose behind this “research”. Spot it? Nice try, Nintendo. We’re onto you. You sitting down? Experts say it’ll kill you [msnbc] Thanks to High Tide, who’s pissed he’s gonna have to start wearing pants to work.

And they said it wasn’t possible to cut a bagel into a Möbius strip ! Didn’t they? I’m sure somebody did. But boy were they wrong! You think it works for donuts too? What about Hot Pockets ?! Professor and artist George Hart figures out how to cut a bagel into two congruent halves–they “pass through each other’s holes, like two links of a chain.” One bagel. Two halves. Unbroken. Interlocking. Impossible, you say? Not when “the motion of the knife follows the surface of a two-twist Möbius strip.” Yes, in a single long knife cut, you can transform an everyday bagel into two linked halves. And the best part? “It is much more fun to put cream cheese on these bagels than on an ordinary bagel. In additional to the intellectual stimulation, you get more cream cheese, because there is slightly more surface area.” More surface area for cream cheese? Count me in! I can’t get enough of that stuff — it’s both creamy AND cheesy. Whoever invented that shit deserves a Nobel Prize in MAKING MY MOUTH HAPPY! God does too. For nipples. Coolest Thing We’ve Ever Seen: Mobius Strip Bagel [newyork.seriouseats] Thanks to Jessi and Ellie, who know how to cut pizza slides into Möbius strips.

This is the world’s smallest snowman (at 0.01mm), not including the one I just made to beat it. Mine is a tenth the size and has more detail including a real carrot nose . Pfft, science — science ain’t got shit on magic! Back me up, Frosty. …this minuscule model — about a fifth the width of a human hair — is not made out of snow. It’s constructed of two tiny tin beads that are usually used to calibrate an electron microscope, and welded together with platinum. It’s built by David Cox, a nanotech expert at the Quantum Detection Group of Britain’s National Physical Laboratory. The remarkable flourish of his smiling snowman is its little happy face, carved into the top orb using a focused ion beam. Focused ion beam? What is this, the future? Regardless, a focus ion beam doesn’t even COMPARE to a beam of focused, um, magic particles. Which I can create from a single flourish of my wand penis. You know how many urinals I’ve exploded just shaking myself dry. Tens. World record: 0.01mm nano-snowman [dvice]

PORK CHOP SANDWICHES! Test tube pork . Like babies, it’s the way of the future (which, true story — I was the first test-tube baby IN SPACE). And apparently scientists in the Netherlands are close to clenching PETA’s $1 million prize for lab-grown meat . The research team, funded by a major sausage maker and the Dutch government, used cells from a live pig to grow pork muscle tissue in a Petri dish. After extracting cells called myoblasts from the muscle of a live pig, the scientists then incubated the myoblasts in a nutrient solution, which allowed the cells to multiply and create muscle. “We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it, but we will get there,” Post told reporters. “This product will be good for the environment and will reduce animal suffering. If it feels and tastes like meat, people will buy it.” .nd even the scientists had to admit to reporters that they don’t know if their creation is flavorsome, because laboratory regulations forbid them from tasting anything they create. What do you mean laboratory regulations forbid you from tasting anything? That’s BUUUUULLSHIT. You made it, you deserve to eat it. Same goes for macaroni necklaces. Scientists Create Lab-Grown Pork; Bacon Industry Unmoved [sphere] Thanks to Nathan, who has his own brand of tube sausage if you’re interested.

Because life is progressively becoming a series of nightmares , scientists want to develop a robot that mimics the movement of a cheetah so they can chase us down and maul us to death. Why did I even get out of bed this morning? Oh, right. Well why did I even wake up this morning? Professor Sangbae Kim designer of the Stickybot and a Robotic designer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Is trying to understand how he can replicate natural animal mechanisms by creating a robot inspired by the cheetah. The idea is to build a prototype robot from a construction of lightweight carbon-fiber-foam that will then be able to match the cheetah’s speed of 70 miles per hour. Over the next 18 months, Kim and four other MIT graduate students are going to start constructing the prototypes. Starting with a computer model of the robotic cheetah to establish the optimal limb length, weight, gait and torque of the hip and knee joints. It’s an ambitious project. Current wheeled robots are efficient, but can be slow in rough terrains. For instance, iRobot’s PackBot, which is used by the U.S. military, can only travel at speeds of up to 5.8 miles per hour. I’m sure this seemed like a good idea to somebody at some point, but it’s not. Like I don’t have enough to worry about without a 70 MPH cheetah-bot running around. Also, like four children. And you wonder why daddy drinks in bed all day! Cheetah Inspired Robot [geekygadgets] Thanks to Excaliber, who I will use to slice through these bastards like room temperature butter.

Doctor Elena Bodner won this year’s Ig Noble Prize for Public Health with a bra designed to turn into two functional gas masks should the need arise (and why wouldn’t it?). The aim of the awards is to honour achievements that “first make people laugh and then make them think”. The Ig Nobel Prizes were presented to the winners by genuine Nobel laureates. Past winners also returned to take part in the celebrations. They included Kees Moeliker, the discoverer of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck, and Dr Francis Fesmire, who devised the digital rectal massage as cure for intractable hiccups. Wow, what an elite group. You’ve got to admit though, a gas mask bra is pretty clever. Granted, not as clever as the gas mask underwear I just invented, but you act like you’ve never seen a guy with worn panties on his face before. THIS IS NORMAL IN JAPAN! Hit the jump for the worthwhile complete list of winners.

This is a bunch of scenes from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series (miss you, Carl!) remixed to make a song . It is awesome. Plus, Stephen Hawking laid down some phat vocals , so it’s double sweet. Like eating a scoop of birthday cake ice cream and a scoop of birthday cake batter ice cream AT THE SAME TIME. Except not that good because there’s nothing better than that. Youtube (more info, lyrics and a link to downloads available there) Thanks to Paul, who has traveled to the far ends of the cosmos and verified that Geekologie is, in fact, the best website in the universe. Also, the man’s seen alien snatch.