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The amazing prop creation team over at Kropserkel created this fantastic set of armor and a variety of others as potential Nazgul armor. You could even commission them to custom make your own set of Lord of the Rings Armor, how cool is that?
What could possibly make the Predator alien more badass than he’s already proven himself to be? Make a full-sized likeness of him out of metal!
Standing 8 feet 2 inches tall and weighing over 11 hundred pounds, Steampunk Predator is custom made from various parts, automotive and otherwise, and recycled metal. Check out more from Kreatworks at their Etsy store link below, including a really cool Robocop and an awesome Alien.
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These cool metal sculptures, of celebrities like John Lennon and Andy Warhol, have such soft edges and fine detail that I was surprised to find out they’re made out of chicken wire. Kenyan artist Ivan Lovatt uses skills he learned from working in construction to create these metal masterpieces, and like a good builder he’s built sculptures which are durable enough to weather any storm!
Hit the link to see more of Ivan’s creations, including his amazing renditions of wildlife in wire.
These amazing metal sculptures, constructed out of old car and truck parts, are impressive in scale and design. Created by Tom Samui, these creations belong in a steampunk animal menagerie, or used as the coolest junkyard advertising ever.
These sculptures seem like a logistical nightmare, I mean how does he move this massive piece, with a crane? A gallery would have to be built around this piece, cause it ain’t coming in through the front door!
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We've previously reported that University of Glasgow scientist Lee Cronin (who must've never seen sci-fi movies - helloo! Terminator T-1000?) was trying to create all-metal life-like cells. New Scientist has now got a pic of his initial creation:
He has managed to build cell-like bubbles from giant metal-containing molecules and has given them some life-like properties. He now hopes to induce them to evolve into fully inorganic self-replicating entities.
"I am 100 per cent positive that we can get evolution to work outside organic biology," says Lee Cronin (see photo, right) at the University of Glasgow. His building blocks are large "polyoxometalates" made of a range of metal atoms – most recently tungsten – linked to oxygen and phosphorus. By simply mixing them in solution, he can get them to self-assemble into cell-like spheres.
Remember, it's never too early to welcome our metal cell overlords: Link - via DVICE
There’s something amazing that can happen when you combine animal body parts and metal pieces to create hybrid creations. WebUrbanist has a great collection of 36 mechanical creations from 11 different artists. The gallery is great, particularly in the variety of the creations from artist to artist.
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I Heart Heavy Metal Iron Man Mug – $6.95
They say you can tell a lot about a person by their favorite coffee mug. That’s why drink your non-fat soy lattes from the I Heart Heavy Metal Iron Man Mug from the NeatoShop. No one messes with a man who understands the true meaning of heavy metal. Iron Man rocks!
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fun-tastic Glassware & Drinkware.
Comments Off If you liked the heavy metal version of the Batman theme that Zeon posted earlier, you’ll probably dig this great Harry Potter theme converted to the same rocking genre.
Via Geeks Are Sexy
The Kings of Geek Metal, Powerglove, are back with another Batman related redux. This time around, they’re tackling the theme song to the animated series, and rocking it harder than it’s ever been rocked before! Check out the video, complete with classic video game graphics and the guys decked out in their most metal attire. It’s hilarious, and worthy of headbanging along to, but be warned-listening to Powerglove may lead to embarrassing moments in your own rock history!
I known a lot of you guys might not be big fans of heavy metal music, but even if you don’t appreciate the genre, you should at least enjoy the scientific organization of these bands. For those that do like heavy metal, rest assured that it does have some of the most classic bands in the genre including AC/DC, Girlschool, Judas Priest and Ministry.
Link Via Laughing Squid
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory announced today that they have observed a rare property in a special class of metals called multiferroics: they have both magnetic and electric properties, which normally don’t happen in the same material. Ferromagnets are, of course, magnetic metals, and ferroelectrics are materials that have a permanent electric polarization.
Now, scientists have found a new way that electric and magnetic properties can be coupled in a material. The group used extremely bright beams of x-rays at Brookhaven’s National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) to examine the electronic structure of a particular metal oxide made of yttrium, manganese, and oxygen. They determined that the magnetic-electric coupling is caused by the outer cloud of electrons surrounding the atom.
“Previously, this mechanism had only been predicted theoretically and its existence was hotly debated,” [Brookhaven physicist Stuart] Wilkins said.
In this particular material, the manganese and oxygen electrons mix atomic orbitals in a process that creates atomic bonds and keeps the material together. The researchers’ measurements show that this process is dependent upon the magnetic structure of the material, which in this case, causes the material to become ferroelectric, i.e. have an electric polarization. In other words, any change in the material’s magnetic structure will result in a change in direction of its ferroelectric state. By definition, that makes the material a multiferroic.
You’ll find more technical information at the Brookhaven National Laboratory site.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota have created a metal alloy composed of nickel, cobalt, manganese and tin. This “multiferroic composite” can convert heat into electricity!
In this case, the new alloy — Ni45Co5Mn40Sn10 — undergoes a reversible phase transformation, in which one type of solid turns into another type of solid when the temperature changes, according to a news release from the University of Minnesota. Specifically, the alloy goes from being non-magnetic to highly magnetized. The temperature only needs to be raised a small amount for this to happen.
When the warmed alloy is placed near a permanent magnet, like a rare-earth magnet, the alloy’s magnetic force increases suddenly and dramatically. This produces a current in a surrounding coil, according to the researchers, led by aerospace engineering professor Richard James.
One possible application for this alloy is in automobile exhaust pipes, which vent a lot of heat that could be recycled into electric power for the battery. Read more at Popsci. Link -via reddit
A look at alkali metals and how they react with air and water may seem like a dry science lesson at first. Despite the delivery, this presentation builds as it goes along, with a satisfying climax at the end. -via Buzzfeed
Physicists Alex Snezhko and Igor Aronson at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois have made an interesting discovery. They placed nickel particles in a beaker of liquid, and applied a magnet hooked up to an alternating current. This alternating current switches the magnetic field back and forth. At a certain frequency, the nickel particles grouped together and moved around in the liquid in a life-like manner similar to snakes.
The study of how these inorganic materials form shapes and move has many potential benefits, from studying how primordial soup first formed, to medical applications.
“You have a deliberately nonbiological system, but it’s behaving a bit like a biological system,” says Iain Couzin, who heads Princeton’s Collective Animal Behaviour Laboratory. “I just like the way that it spans across biology and physics in quite a beautiful way.”
And the research may one day have practical applications. Some day, the swimmers may be used to help scrub the surfaces of materials — or maybe they’ll hook up one of the snakes to a cell and drag it around. Wai Kwok, the head of the superconductivity and magnetism group at Argonne, calls attaching magnetic particles to living cells “feasible.”
“If you can do that, you can control an actual living organism,” Kwok says.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
(Links open in a new browser window/tab)
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Excessive Ping Pong Score Celebration |
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Metal Grandma |
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What Happens to Stuff Left in a Foreclosed House? |
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Is this the Face of the Young Leonardo da Vinci? |
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How many camels fit in a Subaru? Count for yourself: Link |
For more the web's most interesting videos, check out: VideoSift.
Have you every read about some new science experiment or research study that just seems… well, stupid? If you’ve ever gotten to the point where you’ve wondered what other bogus things they’ll pay people to learn about, you’re in luck. Here’s 7 of the most ridiculous studies ever:
If this first group of studies show us anything, it’s that scientists are as drugged up and crazy as the junkies up the street from me.
Elephants on Acid:
If you were going to see the effects of LSD on an elephant, wouldn’t you start with smaller doses and progressively increase the dosage until there was a noticeable change in their behavior? I sure would. But the researchers on this one aren’t like you and me.
Instead the researchers working on this one started off by injecting the poor beast with 3000 times the dosage needed for an average human, despite the fact that elephants weigh around 50 times what the average human weighs. Within two hours, the animal died. The scientists defended their actions by saying they had used LSD plenty of times and were sure it was safe. They then concluded, “elephants are highly sensitive to LSD.”
Apparently another scientist found their results to be suspicious, so he gave elephants LSD in their water. In his study, the elephants acted a little funny, but were totally fine.
Turkey Arousal:
We’ve all heard stories detailing how stupid turkeys are -like the one that says they’ll drown if you leave them in the rain. Well, some of those turkey stories may be bogus, but two Penn State researchers discovered that turkeys are so stupid they can be trained to be aroused by little more than sticks.
Their experiment consisted of creating a model female turkey that could be progressively deconstructed. The scientists would then gauge the turkey’s interest in the “female” and then remove some parts of her body and try again. They were expecting the birds would lose interest after is was stripped down enough. Surprisingly, the turkeys were aroused even when the model became little more than a stick with a head. I guess this not only shows how stupid turkeys are, but how perverse they are too.
Source | Photo Via Vicki’s Nature [Flickr]
Semen As an Anti-depressant?
I always thought scientists were supposed to be unbiased. I mean, if you’re hoping for certain results, might that affect your research? Obviously these researchers bypassed that concept, by attempting to prove that semen works as an antidepressant. They decided to study this theory by interviewing college women who were sexually active. Their conclusions proved that women who had sex without condoms were less depressed than women who used them.
Of course, their research was extremely preliminary and they didn’t even bother to take into account additional factors, like the fact that women not using condoms are more likely to be in serious
relationships. It doesn’t take a scientist to figure out that this might play into someone’s relative level of happiness. But like I said, this study was about as unbiased as all those tobacco company ones that couldn’t connect smoking with cancer.
Source | Photo Via Zen [Flickr]
The rest of these studies are amazing -in that someone actually bothered to research things so obvious:
Head Banging is Bad For You:
Who would have ever thought that aggressively and repeatedly throwing your head up and down would be bad for you? Gee, I never would have imagined that spinal damage and brain trauma could have resulted from head banging. Obviously, I’m being sarcastic. After years of dating a metal head, I can assure you that head banging can certainly make you retarded…or at least, it doesn’t help your intelligence at all.
The only good thing researchers found was that head banging is unlikely to leave you unconscious. What is really funny is the researcher’s suggestions for the metal genre. They suggest metal bands play more
mellow tunes and less “beat oriented” music. They also urged label to place anti-head banging warnings on their cds. Oh, and listeners were advised to start listening to “adult-oriented rock” instead of heavy metal. Yeah, that’s gonna happen real soon.
Source | Photo Via Cayusa [Flickr]
Male science nerds likely to be virgins:
Hmmm, who is most likely to be a virgin, a party-girl, a jock, or a nerd? Think about it. No surprise here; male science nerds between 16 and 25 are the most likely to not have had sex.
At least the study provided some legitimate reasons for this statistic, rather than the typical “nerds are pimply and boring” theories of popular media. The study reasoned that these nerds were the population segment least likely to be in situations where they would meet potential lovers. Apparently, doing homework and going to the library doesn’t help you meet chicks. Hey, at least they’re being productive. Interestingly, female art students were the most sexually active.
Source | Photo Via Miss604 [Flickr]
Bullies Like Seeing Pain:
If bullies were compassionate they would sit around crying whenever they picked on people. The fact that they don’t do so might just indicate that they are mean. Why did anyone need to set up a study to confirm that bullies enjoy seeing other people in pain?
An interesting thing about this study is that it was the first time anyone used fMRI to evaluate how respondents reacted to different emotions. Instead of being empathetic like the brain of a normal person, bullies mind’s activate their reward centers when they see videos of other people being picked on.
Source | Photo Via ZZClef [Flickr]
Television Viewers Are Unhappy:
It’s common knowledge that television and other forms of entertainment are a way for people to escape their problems. If you run home to watch tv instead rather than hanging out with friends, you might be unhappy. Did we really need a scientist to tell us that people who socialize are generally more happy than people who sit at home watching tv all day? What’s more crazy is that they needed over 30 years of data to back up their claims. The only unique thing the study discovered was that many viewers are actually addicted. (Marx was right about television, is this evidence that the scientists are commies?):
“Addictive activities produce momentary pleasure and long-term misery and regret,” said Steven Martin, co-author of the study. “People most vulnerable to addiction tend to be socially or personally disadvantaged. For this kind of person, TV can become a kind of opiate in a way. It’s habitual, and tuning in can be an easy way of tuning out.”
Funny, I’ve was using the audio/visual equivalent of heroin the whole time I was researching this. I swear I could quit any time.
Now that I’ve written this, I think I’ve got a couple of ideas I could get funded. For example, are people happier when they’re warm at home or cold in the middle of nowhere? Or maybe I could find out if donkeys really die when they take a bunch of cocaine and other drugs at a bachelor party. Do you guys have any ideas for awesome studies?
