Grist List
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50-million-year-old turtles having sex
Scientists in Germany have found fossils of turtles mating that are nearly 50 million years old. That makes them the oldest fossils of vertebrates going at it that we’ve found so far. I think this sort of thing needs more exposure in schools. Hey, kids: go into paleontology, and your big discovery could be ancient […]
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Look at this picture of the Arctic now, because it’s probably your last chance
This image (click to embiggen, click here to embiggen A LOT) was stitched together from photos taken by NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite. It shows the Arctic in all its glory — or anyway, all its remaining glory. The ice cover there has been decreasing fast enough that within 20 years, a photo of the Arctic […]
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The Christmas lights of the future will run on firefly juice
Fireflies make light without electricity, and by copying them, scientists have figured out how to do the same thing. Only instead of the yellowish light of fireflies in the night, a team at Syracuse University has figured out how to make green and orange and red light — all out of firefly juice.
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Here’s how McDonald’s makes its food look good enough to eat
Ever wonder why McDonald’s food in commercials looks like food, but in real life looks barftacular? Watch this video to find out.
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Domino’s thinks pizza is too complicated for calorie counts
Domino’s doesn’t want to tell you how many calories are in that Bacon Cheeseburger Feast pizza, so they’re pulling out the Teen Talk Barbie defense: “Math is hard!” According to the company, there are 34 million ways to customize a Domino’s pizza, all of which result in a meal that tastes like wet cardboard. With […]
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Scientists create Facebook for great tits
We know that more people than like to admit it troll Facebook to check out ladies, but scientists have actually created a social network that they use for nothing but looking at tits. Our more astute and wildlife-oriented readers will have guessed that the tits scientists are ogling are wild great tits — a type […]
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10 forgotten natural wonders you should see before you die
If you need to flesh out your bucket list, here are 10 natural wonders that usually get left off lists of old faithfuls like the Grand Canyon and the Great Barrier Reef.
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Amazing illuminated art installations call attention to urban blight
Madrid’s Luzinterruptus collective’s large-scale light installations aren’t just haunting and beautiful — they’re also activist. Each piece is designed to call attention to some social or urban ill, from light pollution to nuclear radiation. Sometimes the targets are almost impossibly silly (sanitary napkins?), and sometimes the justification seems to have been reverse-engineered (are Madrid’s public […]
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Here’s a fuel cell that runs on brain juice
Whatever, Google Glasses; I’m holding out for the Google brain implant. And that just got a little more plausible, thanks to new technology for fuel cells that run off of blood sugar. In theory, if you popped one of these babies in your brain, it could get all its power from your own cerebrospinal fluid (the […]
