A newly unveiled quantum computer is now also Europe’s most powerful quantum computer. The machine was a collaborative effort between IBM and Europe’s largest application-oriented research organization, Fraunhofer. The creators of the device hope that its computational power will have applications across a varied range of industries and scientific disciplines. Learn more about the computer here! 

Image screenshot via Euronews

This photo is just way too cute! Nature photographer Joe Neely captured an adorable photo of two bees napping in a flower. The two bees are snuggled together in the center of an orange flower - the image is just too good to be true! Neely stumbled upon the slumbering bees when he and his wife went out in search of Mexican poppy wildflowers:  

Neely and his wife watched more bees climb into the flowers. “Soon after,” he recalls, “all the flowers on the plant had a motionless occupant in them. They were going to sleep. I've never seen this behavior before. Then as sunset grew darker, one last bee was trying hard to find his own flower but they were all taken so he crawled into petals with this other bee who shifted a little to give him room.”

Realizing that he had the perfect shot, Neely quickly got out his macro photography equipment and snapped a few pictures. “Their blue eyes and the orange flowers contrasted beautifully. It wasn't until we got home that we learned more about them and their unique behavior of sleeping in globe mallow blooms.” Some bees retire to their hives each night, but this species is often found sleeping in the flower that bears their name. And as Neely shows, sometimes it's with a buddy.

Image credit: Joe Neely

Geoglyphs are large designs on the ground that are formed from earth or stone. These are typically classified as a type of land art. Geoglyphs are usually found in deserts in Peru and Kazakhstan, and now they can also be found in India! Located in India’s Thar Desert, the recently-discovered geoglyph covers 51 acres (20.8 hectares): 

It's not clear why the lines were made, though they are situated near several rock cairns, or stacks, and memorial stones, the latter carved with images of the Hindu deities Krishna and Ganesha. The lines may have some sort of religious or ceremonial meaning, discoverers and independent French researchers Carlo Oetheimer, and Yohann Oetheimer, wrote for the upcoming September issue of the journal Archaeological Research in Asia. The overall pattern is not visible from the ground, as there is no high point nearby and the terrain is flat. Only by scouting the region on Google Earth were the Oetheimers able to discover the geoglyphs.

image credit: Carlo Oetheimer and Yohann Oetheimer / Archaeological Research in Asia

A herd of elephants can be seen passing between Piccadilly and Buckingham Palace in London’s Green Park. They seem to have come from somewhere, and are migrating towards another place. Unfortunately, they seem to be traveling at a very slow pace. In fact, they’re not moving at all, as they are just life-sized models.

The lumbering creatures are part of an ongoing collaboration between two nonprofits, CoExistence and Elephant Family, that explores how humans can better live alongside animals and the larger ecosystem through imaginative public art projects.

As its name suggests, CoExistence’s aim is to identify mutually beneficial modes of living considering that within the last century, the balance between world population and wilderness has shifted considerably: in 1937, 66 percent of global environments were intact with 2.3 billion people on Earth. Today, those numbers have undergone a dramatic change, with a world population of 7.8 billion and only 35 percent of wilderness remaining.

The herd in Green Park is only one out of the nine herds set up in London, the others being at other remarkable places in the city, like St. James’s Park, and Berkeley Square.

Thirty-seven endangered and extinct birds will join the herd in Green Park on July 6. Using steel, clay, and bronze, seven artists created the flock, which includes a three-meter-tall curlew by Simon Gudgeon that’s as large as some of the elephants. The avian additions are the product of a collaboration with WildEast, a group focused on restoring biodiversity in the U.K. and finding new methods of sustainable farming, and will be sold to raise money for conservation efforts.

Beautiful!

(Image Credit: CoExistence/ Colossal)

Say hello to Playdate, a handheld device where you can play 8-bit games. But don’t be fooled; while this might pay homage to the Game & Watch and the Game Boy, this is not old school. The device has both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and has a USB-C port.

“Panic saw an opportunity for something truly different in the world of video games,” comments the official release. “Something small-scale that could deliver a dose of fun and delight to video game players who have otherwise seen it all. Something that could fit nicely in-between regular gaming sessions. Something unexpected and beautiful, with a secret, surprise set of exclusive games written by amazing developers. Put simply: something that adds a little brightness to your life.”

The Playdate features the usual buttons that you’ll see in a retro handheld device, such as the D-Pad and the A and B buttons, but what makes it unique is the crank that you can also use to control certain games.

Unfortunately, the Playdate does not have a backlight, but you can play it by the reading lamp thanks to its very reflective screen, and the crisp image that it produces.

What we found most interesting about this device is what they call The Season, or a collection of secret games that are released to players over time — currently planned to be one game per week. It gets even better as the company says that once the season is over, the games you downloaded to your device will stay there, allowing users to play them any time.

The Playdate was created together with Swedish consumer electronic company Teenage Engineering who created the crank because they “want to break people off their touch psychosis.”

This is awesome.

(Image Credit: DesignBoom)

Immortalize your pet with the help of Petsies, a company that creates custom stuffed animals. With their superb skills, they are able to create a stuffed animal that looks just like your own pet, down to the smallest details. Of course, this kind of service costs a bit, priced at $249. The manufacturing process takes a bit of time, too, lasting for six weeks. But if you have the extra cash and the patience to wait, then maybe you can go for it, because why not?

Staff at The Dodo tried to avail of this service by picking one of their office pups to be the model, and they were not disappointed. Have a look at what they wrote about their experience over at the site.

(Image Credit: Matt P./ The Dodo)

Howard Farley Sr. always looked forward to seeing the four ghostly structures that make up Nomehenge when he returns after fishing for king crab. He says that he doesn’t feel like he’s really back until he sees them.

“They were always there, part of Nome.”

Colloquially, they’re known as “Nomehenge” or simply “the billboards,” though, given their concave shape, one could easily mistake them for unfinished skate ramps. Sitting on the summit of the otherwise-bald 1,200-foot mountain that looms behind the town, they’re useful wayfinding aids for aircraft pilots, boat captains, hikers, and snowmobilers—particularly in the winter, when it’s dark much of the day and the snow is deep enough to obscure most other landmarks.

But what really is Nomehenge, and what purpose did it serve? The answer goes back to the Cold War.

Learn more about this helpful structure over at Atlas Obscura.

(Image Credit: Casey Anderson/ Atlas Obscura)

A year ago, Kane Powell, a musician from Maryland, was at an Applebee’s with his friends, talking about the multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos. At some point in their conversation, Powell suggested that Bezos buy the Mona Lisa painting, and then eat it. It seems that he didn’t leave that idea where he was at the time, as he made a petition on Change.org about it.

“Nobody has eaten the mona lisa and we feel jeff bezos needs to take a stand and make this happen,” he wrote.

Now, a year later, the petition has gained thousands of signatures, meaning thousands of people are interested in seeing this happen. This might be one of the weirdest things that I have encountered. But apparently, in the art world, eating a painting is not that weird.

Amy Adler, an art law expert and professor at the New York University School of Law, told the New York Times that the hypothetical idea of Bezos buying and eating the painting would fall “within the tradition of destruction of art as a way of creating art.” Other artists have carried out this practice in recent decades, Adler noted, such as Robert Rauschenberg, who spent a month erasing a drawing by Willem de Kooning in 1953.

The Louvre Museum has already seen the petition, but the institution said that they will not comment on said petition.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

When Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, Clark Gable was at the height of his Hollywood fame. He called Franklin Delano Roosevelt to offer his services for the war effort, which FDR took him up on, but it was to be in a Hollywood role. Gable was 41 and in a position to publicize whatever the president needed -safely in California. But that was to change.

Gable had success, Gable had power, and for the first time in his four decades on this earth, Gable had something approaching peace thanks to his marriage to Carole Lombard, the firecracker screwball star. Yet in less than a year, all of those things turned to ash following Lombard’s violent death. When her plane went down in a fiery blaze, it was treated as a national tragedy around the country, and for her husband it was the beginning of the end.

The King became broken, despondent, and finally disillusioned enough to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps. To this day, some say he went to Europe with a death wish, and on at least one bombing raid, Capt. Gable almost had it granted as a Luftwaffe shell passed right between his feet.

Lombard was decorated after her death, since she had been on a mission to raise war funds. Despite Gable's fear of flying, he became an officer and a gunner with the 351st Bombardment Group. It was rumored that he did not care whether or not he survived the war. Read about Clark Gable's military service at Den of Geek.

Wooden carvings that are slightly elevated from the floor can be found at the Contemporary Art Foundation in Tokyo. The dumbbell-like carvings are part of Aki Inomata’s exhibition titled “How To Carve a Sculpture.” On the corner of the exhibition, however, was a similar carving, but this was placed sideways and is surrounded by wood chips. This gives us a clue as to how the carvings were made. These were not made by human hands. These were made by beavers.

“Beavers, like humans, are one of the few animals that actively modify their environment, reforming it to suit their own requirements,” says Aki Inomata, who previously created 3D-printed architectural shells for hermit crabs. A continuous theme throughout the artist’s practice is how the act of “making” is not exclusive to mankind, which leads her to collaborate with living creatures. Beavers chew on trees, sharpening their constantly-growing teeth, and then use the felled wood as building materials for dams or to create lodging.

However, Inomata’s exhibition leaves more questions than answers. Can this be considered art? And if that is the case, then who will take credit for these pieces? Will it be Inomata, or will it be the beavers?

And how, indeed, do we carve a sculpture? Inomata does not say.

(Image Credit: Takumi Gunji/ Spoon & Tamago)

Finland offers a unique ice cream treat: salty licorice ice cream infused with a hefty dose of ammonium chloride. Why this unusual combination? Gastro Obscura explains that it's likely that this dessert began in a pharmacy:

Ammonium chloride, as it happens, has been used in cough medicine. Licorice is also prized for its medicinal qualities, and in the early 20th century had its heyday as a popular flavoring. It’s likely the two ingredients met over the pharmacy counter. 

Photo: JIP

Namaqualand is an area that extends 600 miles along South Africa's western coast. It is a protected area, home to myriad species of flowers that draw visitors from around the world, despite the fact that there are no tourist accommodations. These flowers have evolved in unique ways because Namaqualand is quite arid, classified as a semidesert!  

There are more bulb flora here than in any other arid region on earth.  Over three and a half thousand plant species live here and it is thought that more than a thousand of those are found nowhere else on the planet. Little wonder that the insect life goes in to something of a breeding frenzy during the time of the daisies.

It certainly does not happen every year. The rains must not only fall but fall in the right way.  Soaking winter rains in early May and June are vital.  This must then be followed up with plenty of showers, at least one each week, through July and August. It is in the later part of that month that the explosion of life happens.

Namaqualand is in the Southern Hemisphere, so late August is at the end of winter. See more gorgeous photographs of the rare yet abundant blooms of Namaqualand at Kuriositas. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Flickr user Malcolm Manners)

Highway 65 in Minnesota has a ditch with its own ducks. These aren't the kinds of ducks that come and go, though. They are decoys, in a rainbow of colors. Is it a joke, an art installation, a local tradition, or a crowdsourced project? It's kind of all the above. The story of how they came to be there is pretty neat. These ducks even have their own Facebook page. -via TYWKIWDBI

As the US did, Canada also forced people of Japanese ancestry away from the west coast and put them in internment camps during World War II. These camps were isolated in the forests of British Columbia, where supply lines were few and unreliable, and the food rations were meager. Inmates in the know turned to a reliable plant called fuki, or Japanese butterbur. It wasn't easy to get, but once established, it's hard to kill.    

During the Second World War, it became crucial: In 1942, racist federal policies dispossessed thousands of Japanese Canadians of their homes, boats, and property and forced them into remote internment camps. Fuki seeds and roots were one of the few items sympathetic—and usually white—former neighbors could mail or deliver to the camps without government interception.

“A lot of [interned] Japanese Canadians wrote back to their [former] white neighbors and asked them: ‘Would you do us a huge favor and send fuki roots or fuki seeds?’ And neighbors or friends would [then] either drive up or ship out the fuki seeds,” says Ryan Ellan, curator at the Tashme Museum in Sunshine Valley, roughly 16 kilometers (about 10 miles) southeast of Hope, B.C., at the site of the former Tashme Internment Camp.

Almost 80 years later, the camps have crumbled, but fuki remains -and still grows as a testament to the history of the camps. The existence of the plant led to the founding of the Tashme Museum. Read that story at Atlas Obscura.

In 1492, the people of Spain completed La Reconquista--the seven centuries-long war of liberation of their land. This highly militarized society then launched wars of conquest in far away lands helpfully discovered by Christopher Columbus later that year. Within a century, Spain was a superpower with vast colonies across the world.

Now, what remains of the Spanish Empire is a few small islands and exclaves off the coast of north Africa. Pictured above is one of them: Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera. An international border between Spain and Morocco lies on the 250-foot sandy stretch of land between the rocky peninsula and the mainland.

-via Nag on the Lake | Photo: Ignacio Gavira