he Art of Penguin Science Fiction examines the history and cover art of science fiction published by Penguin Books. Penguin Books was launched in 1935 as a paperback imprint of The Bodley Head and became a separate company early the following year. The books were extremely popular and instantly recognisable by their eye-catching covers, which [...]
The Space Food Systems Laboratory (SFSL), which is the sector of NASA responsible for preparing and concocting the food for astronauts, has a very clear mission: provide high-quality flight food systems that are convenient, compatible with each crew member’s physiological and psychological requirements, meet spacecraft stowage and galley interface requirements, and are easy to prepare [...]
It’s the world’s quietest room. This room, the ‘Anechoric Chamber’ at Orfield Laboratories in the US is 99.99% sound absorbent. The Guinness Book of World Records says it’s the quietest room on the planet. Apparently it’s so quiet, staying in there for a time will drive you insane. Nobody has been able to be in [...]
Several careful owners. Full service history, approximately 30 million miles on the clock. NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who has spent almost a year in space, gives us a 25-minute tour of the International Space Station. AKA the nerdiest episode of MTV Cribs ever. In her final days as Commander of the International Space Station, Sunita [...]
In May of 1961, President John F. Kennedy made a promise to put a man on the Moon–and return him back safely–by the end of the decade. Somehow, it worked. Fast CoDesign assembled a gallery of our favorite 50 photos from the Apollo missions. Many you will recognize, but just as many will surely be [...]
There are many carefully documented accounts in the medical literature of intense, life-altering religious experience in epileptic seizures. Hallucinations of overwhelming intensity, sometimes accompanied by a sense of bliss and a strong feeling of the numinous, can occur especially with the so-called “ecstatic” seizures that may occur in temporal lobe epilepsy. Though such seizures may [...]
Albert Einstein is widely regarded as a genius, but how did he get that way? Einstein always said he was never smarter than anyone else, it was just he stayed with problems for longer. But, a study of 14 newly discovered photographs of Einstein’s brain, which was preserved for study after his death, concludes that [...]
A collection of 4,500 photographs including documentary pictures of astronauts and technicians is to be sold at auction at the Westlicht Auction House in Vienna on 23 November. The collection features gems like the one above of an early space suit prototype being tested in the 1950s as well as many other previously unseen images. [...]
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet pilot who just happened to be the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961. Shortly after his historic mission he went on an international tour talking about his journey, as well as the Soviet Union’s [...]
If you’re eating while reading this, we thought it might be wise to warn you that the following video on how a hot dog is made, might not be conducive to proper digestion. Taken from the show, ‘How it’s Made’ on the Discovery Channel, the show rather reluctantly lifts the lid on how those homogenous [...]
