China is now a fossil fuel guzzling machine we helped create, a golem powered by petroleum who is busy searching for fossil fuels to keep their engines running while we're trying to set the petrol aside.
And now China's National Space Science Centre and the European Space Agency have joined on a quest to see what happens to crude oil on a molecular level when it's exposed to the extreme conditions of outer space.
The Sorriet Coefficient in Crude Oil study involves launching titanium cylinders full of crude oil under 500 times standard atmospheric pressure into orbit to see how it reacts to intense pressure and uneven temperatures.
This study is meant to help scientists understand how crude oil behaves underneath the Earth's crust, so they can figure out more efficient ways to harvest the massive quantity of heavy crude underground.
Teens have always participated in the latest trends in order to fit in with their peers, and whether it's the latest style of clothing, music or food product, teens will always follow the trends no matter how stupid.
The latest stupid trend sweeping through the teenage world is the banana peel challenge, where kids make like cartoons and literally slip on a banana peel.
yall I tried to see if banana peels were rlly slipper like in cartoons & I slipped & tried 2 catch myself w/ a cup.. pic.twitter.com/6dvg5BlnHB
The only difference is- teens aren't made of paint and ink, so they don't bounce back from a spill like a Looney Tunes character, and any trend that results in injuries becomes the subject of parental opposition.
As these videos show the #bananapeelchallenge usually isn't all that dangerous, but some teens won't stop until they've broken something for the sake of staying trendy.
Religious extremists make great ranters, ravers, rabble rousers and rotten human beings, but they don't make very good rappers because they have a very limited vocabulary.
At the same time their hate filled lyrics make the most hardcore gangsta rappers cringe and cry uncle, their "holy" message making them more thuggish ruggish than the rest.
Have you ever found yourself drifting off to sleep only to be rudely awakened by your body jerking violently?
You may have felt like you were falling or having a particularly aggressive dream, but it was just your brain causing your body to react to the fact that it moved through the first stage of sleep too quickly.
The hypnic jerk is thought to be caused by a battle between the brain systems concerned with sleep and those that try to help you stay awake:
During this transitional state, the sleeping mechanism usually wins, but the wakeful one sometimes puts up a fight. “One of the things that happens as you fall asleep is your muscles relax, but the awake part may still be stimulating enough that it will temporarily overreact and you get this jerk of muscle activity,” he says. And for reasons that are unclear, it’s sometimes accompanied by an image.
Relationships are full of hard parts, and if your mind just went to something dirty then yes they're full of those hard parts too.
His mom asked us if we were "dipping winkies" (please bear in mind I'm a female) and said if he ever needed condoms for us to tell her we're "hungry for Hardee's" and she'd know what we meant and wouldn't have to explain further, and that she would either give us money for or go out and buy us condoms. I was fourteen at the time. Found out years later that she became pregnant and had an abortion at thirteen, she didn't want us to have to make that decision, so she really was just trying to be helpful. But it was a little much the very first time meeting her.
But the hard parts of relationships are mostly those stress inducing moments that start on the first date, continue straight through to that awkward first kiss and keep coming when you're married and having children.
But well before you walk down the aisle you have to deal with one major hard part that's chock full of awkwardness- meeting your partner's parents for the first time.
My girlfriend had me over for dinner at her parent house for the first time. Steak dinner with all of the fixins'. I take my first bite, swallow, immediately start choking. I'm so scared that I'm going to make a bad impression, so I took a drink of water to try to wash it down. Didn't work, so after about fifteen seconds without a single breath my face turns red, so I start freaking out an point at my throat. So my girlfriends mom does the Heimlich maneuver and I throw up all over the floor. Her two miniature schnauzers start licking up the aftermath, girlfriend's dad puts his napkin down and leaves the room.
Redditors aren't afraid to share intimate details of their lives, so when AskReddit threads come up concerning this topic you know the tales told will be equal parts bawdy, bloodcurdling and utterly batty:
Brought my first college boyfriend home for Thanksgiving - we were greeted by my parents in full Star Trek uniforms, dad was wearing spock ears, both giving the "live long and prosper" salute. They ordered pizza and the delivery guy asks my dad why he didn't just have the pizza beamed over.
When you're a warm-hearted person you grow up trying to be as nice to your fellow human beings as possible, but somewhere around puberty the rules change and sweet suddenly becomes creepy.
These changes to the niceness rulebook don't always involve things of a hormonal nature, but when hormones are involved it's pretty darn obvious...and totally creepy.
People who find it hard to tell sweet sentiments and actions apart from shiver inducing creepiness should take a note from illustrator Shea Strauss and learn to keep their creepy comments in their minds where they belong!
Love is a very unique feeling, and it can make even the most stoic and cold-hearted person turn into a gibbering maniac when they're under the effect of that powerful emotional drug.
People started manipulating images just a few decades after Niépce gave the world photography, and soon these altered images would change the face of history.
Image manipulation was a good way for people to control the messages their photos were sending to the world, as Mussolini proved when he had the horse handler removed from a 1942 photo so he would look more heroic.
And speaking of using image manipulation to shape a person's image, this infamous TV Guide cover featuring Oprah's head stuck on Ann-Margret's body caused quite a stir because it was such an obvious fake.
Both Oprah's and Ann-Margret's people claim this cover was created without their permission, but are we really supposed to believe "the richest woman on TV" let this one slip by under her nose?
Problems need solutions or they become disasters, so when problems arise the solution minded leap into action and make the tough calls necessary to nip those problems in the bud.
Worried about a skyrocketing suicide rate in your country? Problem solvers in South Korea handle it by throwing funerals for the living, letting them lie in the coffin and attend their own funeral to better appreciate life.
Female workers too stressed out in the office? Japanese problem solvers came up with a suitably Japanese solution- hire hunks to wipe away their tears and make them feel better after work.
Both of those strange solutions seem to actually work, but thinking outside the box doesn't always lead to an innovative solution, as performance artist Mark McGowan learned the hard way.
He heard Prince Philip beat a fox to death during a hunt and decided to protest this royal act of animal cruelty by eating meatballs made from a Corgi that died of natural causes, Corgis being the Queen's favorite breed.
The stunt was largely ignored by the public, and Prince Philip was declared innocent of animal abuse, so it seems all Mark's stunt had succeeded in proving is Corgis are not a very tasty breed.
The palm tree has become a symbol of California and, more specifically, Los Angeles, but at the beginning of the 20th century pepper trees far outnumbered palms in L.A.
So how did this exotic tree become the symbol of LaLa Land?
It turns out L.A.'s association with palm trees wasn't an accident, it was an advertising gimmick crafted by Hollywood to make Los Angeles seem like a more exotic and fantastic place.
Combine the use of palm trees in advertising with all the old movies set in the Middle East and you've got the makings of Hollywoodland mystique.
"the rise of Hollywood ushered in the city's aura of glamour and luxury. Many Hollywood films featured Middle Eastern locales, further imbuing Los Angeles with an exotic, 'dangerous' appeal. Just as the Victorians had allowed themselves to be seduced by their own constructions of Orientalism, so too did more modern Los Angeles residents fall under the embellished foreign allure of the palm tree."
Curious minds love to see how things are made, and watching machines crank out massive quantities of hockey pucks, beer, threaded bolts and crayons can be a lot of fun for both our eyeballs and our brains.
These production processes can take hours to complete, but thanks to cutting edge Graphic Interchange Format technology you can take a peek at the key parts of the process in a flash.
These production GIFs are also perfect for winning arguments via email, improving your knowledge of modern production techniques and crushing haters during a heated chat online.
We must assume that anyone who asks the internet for "help” with their photo is looking to be roasted by Photoshop trolls, but is that actually what English diver Tom Daley had in mind when he posted this pic?
He claimed to be running a contest designated #COVERDALEY, but could he possibly have been so naive he thought posting such a request online wouldn't end in image manipulation mayhem?
While #COVERDALEY drew lots of Photoshop pranksters to the party it also attracted the attention of some pretty important people, and suddenly Tom was taking a ride through the countryside with Putin.
Tom couldn't have known the contest would make his wildest dreams come true, nor could he have foreseen about all the fun new places he would go thanks to #COVERDALEY.
And even though he settled on a boring cover photo after all was said and done, Tom's contest got him in touch with the most important person of all- Tom Daley.
He Took His Skin Off For Me is a surreal short film by Ben Aston which is based on the surreal short story by Maria Hummer. Ben's "pearl of wisdom" about this piece:
if you take off your skin just to be with somebody? That’s only ever going to end messy…
Skyrim is chock full of quests for eager adventurers, and there are so many things to do in the game players usually don't catch them all on their first playthrough.
But animal lovers were disappointed to find Skyrim sorely lacking in quests to find canine companionship, because players can't directly adopt a stray dog in game.
worst part of Skyrim was when I found that dog whose owner died in a cabin, and then I of course had to adopt the dog bc i'm not a monster
The lack of dog adoption options made most gamers shrug their shoulders and Fus Ro Dah on, but dedicated dog lover Patrick Lenton wasn't going to let the game squash his dream of adopting a virtual dog.
@PatrickLenton and i have to fight like 300% harder to save my dog from being eaten by a dragon and i've honestly never been so anxious
Rich kids don't have to worry about much in life, and this lack of care is exactly what makes them become careless.
Carelessness may lead to accidents or messes to clean up, but careless criminals end up doing hard time or worse, so it's best anyone involved in illegal activity stay on their toes.
But what's a wealthy criminal to do when their kids are the ones who end up incriminating them via social media?
Posting to social media sites is a great way for rich kids to ruin their parents' lives by inadvertantly exposing their fraud schemes with flashy photos, as seen on the Instagram account richkidsofinstagram.
Investigators are using photos posted by rich kids to social media sites like Instagram to uncover hidden assets, shady business dealings and all the other criminal ways their parents are raking in the dough then lying about it.
Nowadays leading cybersecurity firms use posts and pics from social media in "75% of their litigation cases", because those little snobs are handing investigators all the evidence they need:
Another cybersecurity expert explained to The Guardian his firm recently was able to seize a "newly acquired private jet" by a fraudster because his son posted a picture of him and his father in front of the jet to Instagram. Similarly, K2 Intelligence in London solved a recovery asset case when a man who claimed to have no significant valuables let his children post pictures on their $25 million yacht in the Bahamas.
