If only we could actually attempt this experiment, right? It’d be fun, I believe. Dr. James O’Donoghue created an animation showing how fast an object can fall on different planets. The planetary scientist demonstrated what would happen if an object fell on the Sun, Earth, Ceres, Jupiter, the Moon, and Pluto: 

The animation shows a ball dropping from 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) to the surface of each object, assuming no air resistance. You can compare, for example, that it takes 2.7 seconds for a ball to drop that distance on the Sun, while it takes 14.3 seconds Earth.

"This should give an idea for the pull you would feel on each object," O'Donoghue said.

But what about the pull of gravity on the big planets vs. Earth? Interestingly enough, it takes and 13.8 seconds for the ball to drop on Saturn, and 15 seconds on Uranus.

"It might be surprising to see large planets have a pull comparable to smaller ones at the surface," O'Donoghue explains on YouTube.

"For example Uranus pulls the ball down slower than at Earth! Why? Because the low average density of Uranus puts the surface far away from the majority of the mass. Similarly, Mars is nearly twice the mass of Mercury, but you can see the surface gravity is actually the same… this indicates that Mercury is much denser than Mars."

Ceres comes in at the pokiest place to play ball, with a ball dropping 1 km (0.6 miles) in 84.3 seconds.

Don’t worry, this story did not end with murder and despair. A group of school boys in 1965 stole a traditional whaling boat and recklessly set off for Fiji, without any navigational assistance or naval expertise. After a violent storm ripped the sails from the mast of the boat, they drifted aimlessly for over a week, and then ending up in a volcanic island, as the boys, now grownups, tell CBS News: 

For over a week their crippled boat drifted aimlessly. 17-year-old Sione Fataua, the oldest of the group, told us they were convinced they'd die.

Sione Fataua: No food, no water. We was just drifting around by the wind. And after eight days we saw the island. 

It was a volcanic island, jutting out from the sea. As the boat neared, a wave sent it crashing into the rocky shoreline, leaving it in pieces. The exhausted teenagers struggled ashore. 

Mano Totau: The only thing we do, grabbing each other together and say a prayer, "thank you, God."

The schoolboys later discovered they'd drifted a hundred miles from where they'd set off and had landed on the island of 'Ata—on maps, nothing more than an uninhabited speck.

It was a story so remarkable that later an Australian television crew brought the teenagers back to 'Ata to re-enact their experience. In the film, Sione, Mano and their friends show how they survived.

"The Castaways" film: They were able to salvage an oar and a piece of wire, and with this they set out to catch what they hoped would be their first meal in 8 days.

They demonstrate how they ate the fish they caught raw and quenched their thirst by raiding the nests of seabirds—drinking their blood and their raw eggs. 

Check out the full transcript of their interview, and the full tale of their survival here! 

Image credit: Jacob Buller (Unsplash)

Ever wondered why dogs loved licking people, even if they’re not their owners? While licking people is often seen as a sign of affection, there are some instances when other reasons come into play. Sydney Bartson Queen, a senior manager of the behavioral sciences team at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), explained that the meaning of a dog lick can depend on how the licks are offered: 

"Some small kisses at the mouth are sometimes appeasement behaviors, like the way some small puppies lick at the mouths of adult dogs," the ASPCA manager added.

Dr. Mary Burch, a certified applied animal behaviorist who is the director of the American Kennel Club (AKC)'s Family Dog program, says: "Licking can be a sign of affection. It might also give a dog a feeling of security and comfort, just as the dog had when licked by its mother in the litter."

Queen added that licks can also be a way for dogs to gather more information, such as small licks near the mouth. "The licking helps the scents get up to the dog's vomeronasal organ)."

Dogs may also offer a lick or two in order to appease the person so that they can be left alone. This tends to happen when a person puts their face too close to the dog's face before they are comfortable, Queen told Newsweek.

"Some dogs are even unintentionally taught to give kisses as a way to maybe create space between them and a person.

"A dog learns that you can get a person's face further away from them by licking it when the person moves away after receiving their "kisses," she explained.

Image credit: Honest Paws (Unsplash)

Urban explorer triangleofmass discovered a McDonald’s that was stuck in the 1980s. The YouTuber explored the abandoned McDonald’s, showcasing the aesthetic choices prevalent during its time. From the odd baby pink and blue color scheme (that is strikingly the opposite of the monochromatic and earthly colors restaurants employ these days) to the tiled walls and the bistro-style dining chairs, the fast food area looked like a retro diner instead of a fast food place: 

In terms of wall art, what you'll find are highly saturated nature scenes surrounded by a teal border. They are, of course, housed in a baby pink frame.

Lastly, you're going to want to see the computers. If you grew up in the '80s or '90s, they will bring you right back to those decades with their bulky, cream-colored exteriors.

You might be surprised to learn that this particular McDonald's location only closed down in 2007. However, according to YouTube commenter Dale Gibson, the location was last remodeled in 1986 to accommodate for salads being added to the menu.

Gibson adds that, according to the asset stickers in Triangle of Mass's video, it would appear that the McDonald's was abandoned because the sales volume was too low. Also, it would seem that the owner was not able to sell the store to another buyer.



Image credit: Triangle Of Mass /YouTube 

In a surprising turn of events, Pornhub announced “Classic Nudes,”  a series of interactive guides to different ...steamy artworks housed at different museums around the globe. From  the Met, Paris’ Louvre, Madrid’s Prado Museum, and London’s National Gallery, Pornhub has got it covered! But just how good are the guides anyway? Input’s Matt Wille reviews the Met’s Classic Nudes tour: 

This unintentional meandering did have one fortunate side effect. With nudes at the forefront of my mind, I ended up finding a bunch of scantily clad subjects that had been left out of the tour. French painter Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian Women Bathing (1892) ended up being right where I thought the Corot painting would be, for example. Finding these other gems got me thinking about how exactly Pornhub curated its tour. Why, for instance, had Gauguin’s nude been excluded?

Officer & Gentlemen, the design firm Pornhub worked with on this tour, had the answer: Gauguin is canceled. “The original long list of paintings was put together by ourselves and vetted by a team of art historians here in Spain, who gave us insight into each piece and helped us remove those with questionable backgrounds or subject matters,” Officer & Gentlemen co-founder Alex Katz tells Input via email. And when I took a few minutes to Google Gauguin on the subway home, I found out about his very problematic history with portrayals of Polynesian people.

Despite Pornhub’s insistence that it worked to feature “as many works by women and BIPOC artists as possible” and its inclusion of a section on the Classic Nudes site meant to highlight diversity in the world of naked art, every work but two on my tour were created by white men. It’s no wonder, then, that the vast majority of the stops on the tour are of nude women.

Image credit: Matthieu Joannon (Unsplash) 

Dutch company MX3D installed the world's first 3D-printed steel footbridge in Amsterdam! The project, which was unveiled by Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, was done to show how 3D printers can be used to create one-of-a-kind products, which would be difficult or impossible to achieve using mass production methods. The 12-meter novel bridge is a pedestrian footbridge that spans the Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal: 

This footbridge isn't only an artistic novelty; it is also a scientific instrument. MX3D and Imperial College London researchers outfitted the bridge with a network of sophisticated sensors. Those sensors will let them gather data on how the bridge holds up to the stress of being a part of real-world infrastructure. The research team created a "digital twin" of the bridge, with is a simulated duplicate. They can feed the real-world data into that simulation to refine their models. We have accurate physical simulations for cast and extruded steel, but 3D-printed steel is still something of an unknown.

With this data, they will be able to see how the real bridge holds up compared to their predictions. That data will be invaluable for developing reliable simulations, which will improve the design of future 3D-printed structures. In the interest of progress, the collected data will be made available to researchers around the world who want to help with analysis.

Image credit: Imperial College London

A new NASA study has concluded that evidence for ancient Martians may have been scrubbed from the planet. Thanks to the agency’s Curiosity rover, experts have found a former lake that was made when an asteroid struck the planet billions of years ago. The clay around the lake is excellent for storing microbial fossils! However, upon examination of the samples taken by the rover, researchers found that one patch contained only half the expected amount of clay minerals, but held a great amount of iron oxides (which give Mars its reddish hue): 

The team believes the culprit behind this geological disappearing act is brine: supersalty water that leaked into the mineral-rich clay layers and destabilized them, flushing them away and wiping patches of both the geological — and possibly even the biological — record clean.

"We used to think that once these layers of clay minerals formed at the bottom of the lake in Gale Crater, they stayed that way, preserving the moment in time they formed for billions of years," study lead author Tom Bristow, a researcher at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, said in a statement. "But later brines broke down these clay minerals in some places — essentially resetting the rock record."

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

Aquarium enthusiast Carly Thompson created a Star Wars-inspired tank using an AT-AT (All Terrain Armored Transport) aquarium decoration gifted to her by her brother. Thompson, in a stroke of creativity, designed the tank to envision a reality where the AT-AT was broken and abandoned, where its remains are sunk below the water: 

[...]“I knew that I wanted it to look as natural as possible,” Thompson tells My Modern Met. “I recalled the map Kashyyk in the video game Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order. That and the Moon of Endor from the Star Wars movies were my inspiration for this tank.”

It took Thompson around three days to design and put together the fish tank. She used a common aquarium wood called cholla to create the tall, burly tree trunks. She then used java moss and a three-leaf seed to create the mossy jungle appearance. Once the aquarium was finished, all that was left to do was decide on which fish will live inside the underwater world.

“The marine life that I chose to put into this tank was a very difficult decision,” Thompson reveals. “I wanted neon tetras because I felt the bright blue and red colors would not only represent a lightsaber appearance, but they would also give a good pop of color.” However, Thompson ended up falling in love with ember tetras and decided to put them in the tank instead. “Their fiery red color and the overall natural behavior of these fish are what made me want them. I purchased five of them at my local pet store and stocked my tank,” she says. “These fish were so curious and active in the tank.”

Image credit: Carly Thompson 

Did the man pick a good Pokemon, at least? Reddit user Blade Huraska confessed that he accidentally named his nephew after a Pokemon. His little sister wanted her baby’s name to start with a Z, and as he and his family were brainstorming for potential baby names, he was playing Pokemon Sword: 

"By pure coincidence, I was in the van playing Pokemon Sword on my Nintendo Switch in the back and I had just caught Zacian with a quick ball," said the Reddit user. So he jokingly suggested to name the baby Zacian. 

"It means 'sword' in Japanese," he told his sister. But of course, Zacian does not mean sword in Japanese. 

At the time the TIFU story was posted, only the Reddit user and his older sister knew the truth but planned to tell their little sister and their mom about it.

If you want to see how Blade Huraska confessed, and how his sister reacted, there are videos of his confession here! 

Farm owner Margaret Neville spotted an insect that looked like a work of art on a random bush. The pretty bug, which caught her eyes, was a type of praying mantis called a ‘flower mantis.’ With the insect’s small flower-like parts sprouting on its sides and having green and white swirls on its wings, the flower mantis does look like a figurine made by an artisan: 

Flower mantises are usually white. However, they can change their color to purple and pink to blend in with the flowers.

This survival instinct helps flower mantises to attract their prey and to protect themselves from predators. Neville was so fascinated with this mantis that she named it "Miss Frilly Pants" before returning it to her lavender bush. Also, she decided to share photos as well as a video of Miss Frilly Pants online.

Image credit: Margaret Neville 

The Endoceras was an oversized predator that preyed on early fish species and trilobites. Thanks to fossil remains of the creature, experts have determined that the sea creature’s home turf, so to speak, was in Australia. Senior curator of Earth Sciences for the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Dr. Adam Yates, believes that the Endoceras existed in a time before any dinosaurs or any animal with a backbone lived on land: 

"It is probably not widely recognised amongst our ordinary everyday people that Central Australia was home to these marine animals and their fossils can still be found in places like the MacDonnell Ranges."

Several years ago Dr Yates came across a section the Endoceras when the museum shifted premises.

"This particular fossil was found lurking in the basement of the old space where the collection was temporarily stored for many years before we finally moved into the new museum at Megafauna Central in the centre of Alice Springs.

At closer inspection Dr Yates realised that significance of the specimen.

"It came from an exceptionally large nautiloid," he said.

"It would have been about two-and-a-half metres long, which makes it one of the largest animals alive at the time.

"The segment of fossil that you see is only a part of the whole creature," he said.

Image credit: ABC Alice Springs: Emma Haskin

Dutch photographer Jeroen Nieuwhuis teamed up with the real life ‘ice man’, Wim Hof. Hof is a multiple Guinness world record holder for his cold weather endurance feats. Jeroen and his team spent time with the record holder during his daily endurance routines to capture his skills on camera. The Phoblographer gets in touch with the photographer to learn about his experience with the ‘ice man’: 

Jeroen’s work takes him all around the world, photographing commercial clients and personal projects in varying conditions. However, when Covid-19 regulations prevented him from traveling abroad, he decided to take a road trip with his team to photograph Wim Hof doing one of his endurance routines. Proper preparation and one-to-one discussions with Wim ensured that Jeroen captured the real essence of the endurance of the Ice Man and his superhuman abilities.

Despite shooting professionally for over 10 years, I still find myself getting nervous at times when I arrive at a site. There’s always the fear at the back of my head that something could go wrong, and in many cases it does. Preparation is key to any photoshoot. This doesn’t just involve prepping gear and sketching out a storyboard. A lot of times you also need to prepare your mindset to seamlessly execute a shoot on location. Sometimes you need to instantly come up with a plan B when plan A doesn’t work out. I can’t remember who it was, but a legendary photographer once said that even the most experienced photographers run into unexpected hurdles when they’re on shoots; the best among them know how to adapt and move on with the shoot as if nothing happened.

Image credit: Jeroen Nieuwhuis 

Thanks to an OpenAI model, a new art scene has exploded. Hackers have been modifying an OpenAi model to make image generation tools. To get an ‘artwork’ from these tools, all you have to do is prompt them with a description of the image you want to see, as Vice details: 

While the new CLIP-based systems are reminiscent of GPT-3 in their “promptability,” their inner workings are much different. CLIP was designed to be a narrow-scoped tool, albeit an extremely powerful one. It is a general purpose image classifier that can decide how well an image corresponds with a prompt, for example, matching an image of an apple with the word ‘apple.’ But that is all. “It wasn't obvious that it could be used for generating art,” University of California, Berkeley computer science student Charlie Snell, who has been following the new scene, said in an interview. 

But shortly after its release, hackers like Ryan Murdock, a machine learning artist and engineer, figured out how to connect other AIs up to CLIP, creating an image generator. “A couple of days after I started messing around with it, I realized that I could generate images,” Murdock said in an interview.

Image: Mordechai Rorvig

Richard Mosse made use of an unexpected color that made his photographs pop and more eye-catching towards its viewers. The Irish-born photographer used the color hot pink, which is not normally associated with the subject of his photography -- conflict. Mosse employed vibrant pink hues in Infra, a series where he portrayed conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The photos were hypnotic, beautiful, and jarring, even more so with the bright pink hues in the images: 

“Somehow the way he has done it both repels and attracts you – it gets you completely immersed in the subject matter,” Brett Rogers, director of the Photographers’ Gallery and chair of the panel that awarded Mosse the 2014 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, told the Guardian at the time. Mosse is one of a generation of artists behind the conceptual turn that a strand of documentary photography has undergone in recent years. These photographers strive to make their viewers conscious of photography’s limitations and its inherently flawed claims to objective truth by bringing in elements of fiction or by using, as Mosse does, a highly stylised visual language that forces us to look at familiar subjects in a different way.

Displaced, the first retrospective exhibition of Mosse’s work, is currently on show at Fondazione MAST in Bologna, Italy, showcasing 77 large-scale images, installations and videos made between 2010 and the present. It chronicles how his approach has developed over time. As well as Infra and its sister project, the multimedia installation The Enclave (2013), the exhibition features his 2017 Prix Pictet-winning stills and film Heat Maps and Incoming (2017). Like the earlier works, these were created using military imaging technology, this time a thermal heat camera that can detect body heat from 30m away and is illegal under international law.

Image credit: Richard Mosse Platon, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, 2012. Collection Jack Shainman

Anyone got a spare $1.5 million? A sealed copy of Super Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64 sold for a whopping  $1,560,000 at Heritage Auctions. This record-breaking sale beat the recently-established record held by the purchase of The Legend of Zelda for the NES, which sold for an eye-popping $870,000 at auction. The Verge has more details: 

Over the past 12 months, the record for the most expensive video game ever has risen dramatically. Here’s the timeline of the record, as far as I am aware:

July 10th, 2020: copy of Super Mario Bros. sells for $114,000

November 23rd, 2020: copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 sells for $156,000

April 2nd, 2021: copy of Super Mario Bros. sells for $660,000

July 9th, 2021: copy of The Legend of Zelda sells for $870,000

July 11th, 2021: copy of Super Mario 64 sells for $1,560,000

It’s not just video games that have skyrocketed. The value of Pokémon cards has been on a tear, too, and eBay even announced a feature for its app to make it easier to scan trading cards to sell on the auction site. The prices of NFTs, a form of digital collectibles, seems to be dropping, though.

Image credit: Heritage Auctions