YouTube is a fun platform where you can find all kinds of videos. This one is one of them. Well, it’s also unusual. Would you actually cook a meal using Lego blocks? YouTuber I like home presents a reality where you can, through his videos. By the way, if you haven’t realized it: it’s not real-time cooking using actual Lego blocks! I like home combines the power of editing, stop-motion, and creativity to create these videos. 

A major scientific milestone, that’s what officials are calling the amount of materials the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa 2 retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu.The materials were dropped by the spacecraft back to Earth in a pan-shaped capsule, as AP News details:  

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said its staff initially spotted some black particles sitting on the bottom of the capsule’s sample catcher when they pulled out the container on Monday. By Tuesday, scientists found more of the soil and gas samples in a compartment that stored those from the first of Hayabusa’s two touchdowns on the asteroid last year.

“We have confirmed a good amount of sand apparently collected from the asteroid Ryugu, along with gases,” JAXA Hayabusa2 project manager Yuichi Tsuda said in a video message during an online news conference. “The samples from outside of our planet, which we have long dreamed of, are now in our hands.”

Tsuda called the successful return of the asteroid soil and gas samples “a major scientific milestone.”

Image via AP News 

You don’t have to go outside and plant saplings in your lingerie (please don’t). Have fun and help safe the Earth? Sounds like a win-win to me! Designer Bei Kuo’s lingerie line, The End is not only made with environmentally-friendly materials, but for every product sold from the line, they plant a tree: 

Having The End be environmentally friendly was also key to her ethos as a designer, and so not only is every garment made using organic cotton (with 95% of the brand’s packaging constructed from recyclable and biodegradable materials too) but they work with non-profit One Tree Planted in order to plant a tree for every product sold. After all, the threat of the climate crisis can be a real mood-killer.

Of course, sustainability is about wearability too: making pieces that will be long-loved and well-worn. “Most of all, I wanted them to be able to mix and match with your day-to-day outfits,” Bei says. “Even though they are undergarments, my designs are almost meant to be worn as outerwear.” 

With metal hoops and barbells that allude to intimate piercings, an abundance of industrial-style fastenings, and crotchless “easy exits” built in, it’s not your typical Victoria’s Secret-style fare and honestly, that’s exactly what we love about it. “Not gonna lie, I sometimes will go to those cheap fetish shops for inspiration,” says Bei. “The tackier the better.” 100% agreed.

Image via i-D 

Wow, this iPhone is sturdy as hell. Filmmaker Ernesto Galiotto dropped his iPhone 6 out of a plane from a 300-meter height. Fortunately, it wasn’t time for Galiotto to spend more money to buy a new phone, as his phone survived the fall. The phone was intact, with the screen’s protector the only thing damaged. That was already a wonderful miracle, but here’s the best part: his phone was able to film its descent! 

"It is something that, if you tell someone, they wouldn't believe you," Galiotto told G1. 

Since Galiotto was taking a video at the time the iPhone left his hand, the device continued shooting video during the fall. Unfortunately, the video isn't as beautiful as you might imagine; the phone was constantly spinning so the video it took is just one big blur until the phone hits the sand. Check out the video over at G1. 

This is not the first time an iPhone has survived a fall from an airplane. In 2015, a Texas man dropped his iPhone from 9,300 feet and found it scratched by working, though his external battery was missing. 

Image via Mashable 

Aquaporin A/S, a Danish company that designed a water-purification system for the International Space System, has designed a new system that could provide more drinking water for humans on Earth. This new system uses proteins called aquaporins that could remove microplastics and micropollutants from wastewater, as CNN details: 

Aquaporin's technology could help. The company is working with wastewater companies — including BIOFOS, Denmark's largest state-owned wastewater utility, and UTB Envirotec in Hungary — to remove micropollutants and microplastics from wastewater, preventing them from flowing into the sea.

A study conducted at BIOFOS showed that aquaporins remove over 95% of microplastics and micropollutants in wastewater, using much less energy than traditional systems.

"It has an enormous potential," says BIOFOS innovation manager Dines Thornberg, who led the study. "I think the Aquaporin system could lead the way in actually creating clean, affordable drinking water from wastewater in the future. I am really optimistic that we can meet the challenges of water scarcity in many parts of the world with technologies like this."

Image screenshot via CNN 

That’s creepy and invasive. Capella Space’s new satellite can peer right into any room in your house and snap a high-resolution photo at any time. The Capella-2 satellite has been launched in the atmosphere is a big leap in space technology, but also a big privacy risk, as Input Magazine details: 

The Capella-2’s system of cameras and sensors is nothing short of magnificent. The satellite uses something called Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), a technology used by NASA since the 1970s, to detect the Earth’s surface through even the densest of clouds. SAR sends a 9.65 GHz radio signal toward the Earth and interprets the signal as it returns, using that data to form a visual.

It could also fuel the type of surveillance that privacy experts have panic attacks about. The Capella-2’s signal system is so powerful it can truly see through walls in many circumstances. And anyone — average people, the government, malicious organizations — can request these images at any time, no questions asked.

Capella already has contracts with government agencies, including the National Reconnaissance Office and the U.S. Air Force. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine high-resolution SAR technology turning into a tool for national surveillance.

Once Capella’s full squadron of satellites is airborne, the company will have the ability to quickly snap photos of just about any place in the world. That power could quickly be abused if left unchecked.

Image via Input Magazine

Well, at least you get both options, right? With  GOAT STORY’s ARCO, convenience is now at your kitchen counter- and not only that, the 2-in-1 coffee grinder also looks aesthetically pleasing as well! The ARCO allows users to grind their precious coffee beans either automatically or by hand, as Hypebae details: 

 Arriving in a sleek, minimal design, ARCO maintains the quality of the coffee with aluminum casing. With a total of 120 settings, it produces different types of grinds for all kinds of drinks ranging from espresso and ibrik, to French press and cold brew.

Take a closer look at how ARCO works in the video down below. You can head over to Kickstarter to back the campaign and get your hands on the machine with pre-order prices starting at $299 USD.

Image via Hypebae 

With the amount of stress we’re experiencing, surely, some want to have skincare products that lessen the effects of stress on our faces, right? This Himalayan Salt Scrub has received over  7,600 five-star Amazon reviews for making skin silky soft and moisturized. The  M3 Naturals Himalayan Salt Scrub is one of the best-selling body scrubs on Amazon. With its skin-friendly ingredients has left a lot of people raving, as InStyle details: 

 It includes Himalayan salt, sweet almond oil, glycerin, grape seed oil, jojoba seed oil, and lychee fruit essential oil, rounded out by vitamin E, aloe vera leaf juice, collagen, and a fruit cell culture extract. This combination of exfoliating salt and moisturizing oils has left an army of people raving that it makes their skin feel like a baby’s bottom. Others compared their post-scrub skin to velvet, saying it leaves them free of dead skin and with feet that feel “brand new” (my elephant soles would like a word). 

If you have sensitive skin, it’s easy to think that rubbing chunks of salt onto your body wouldn’t bode well. Yet a chorus of people said that the M3 scrub doesn’t pose a problem. “It leaves your skin clean and glowing,” wrote one shopper, adding that they have sensitive skin but haven’t seen any irritation from the product. Another noted that their skin is dry, sensitive, and prone to chapping in cold weather, and they go on outdoor walks daily (I write … from bed), but that a little of the scrub on a washcloth “removes the dead skin and leaves my face feeling soft, smooth and moist.” They’ve even stopped getting zits underneath their face mask, they say — the elusive holy-grail result. 

Image via InStyle 

Yikes! SpaceX’s new Starship exploded after a test flight in a remote corner of Texas. The Starship SN8 is claimed to be the rocket ship that could carry people to Mars in as little as six years. Well, it seems that the spacecraft needs a lot more work after the test flight’s catastrophic end: 

The entire flight – as dramatic and flashy as it gets, even by SpaceX standards – lasted six minutes and 42 seconds and was broadcast live on its website. Repeated delays over the past week and a last-second engine abort Tuesday heightened the excitement among space fans.

Musk called it a “successful ascent” and said the body flaps precisely guided the rocket to the landing point. The fuel tank pressure was low, however, when the engines reignited for touchdown, which caused Starship to come down too fast.

“But we got all the data we needed!” he tweeted.

Image via The Guardian 

Now that’s wicked! The Morus, designed by Roy Yan and Axe Yi, is a tiny vacuum dryer that can completely dry and de-wrinkle your clothes in a few minutes! The dryer uses a combination of heat and vacuum to extract the water from laundered clothes, as Yanko Design details: 

The technology is a little new-fangled, but to uncomplicate how it works – the Morus uses heat to turn water into vapor (not steam), and generates a vacuum to reduce the pressure to just below the vapor pressure of water (0.0313 atm). This basically accelerates the drying process, extracting every bit of water from your clothes so that they’re 100% dry when they come out. A spinning drum on the Morus ensures that every corner of the clothes you put in is exposed to the heat and the vacuum for the highest efficiency, and a reverse-tumble feature makes sure your clothes don’t get crumpled or wrinkled in the process. To top everything off, the Morus even UV sterilizes your clothes before giving them to you, so not only are they perfectly dry, they’re safe and disinfected too!

Image via Yanko Design

Did you know that the simple game we played as kids is now officially a professional sport? I didn’t know until I saw this video! World Chase Tag was able to turn a classic kids game into a real professional sporting event, complete with a specific set of rules and mechanics. It’s pretty cool, too! Would you participate in this sport? 

A video of a woman getting revenge on another passenger for blocking her passenger seat television went viral on the Internet. Posted on TikTok, the video features a woman’s long blonde hair covering the screen on the back of her seat. The revenge involves chewing gum,  a pair of nail clippers, and a lollipop: 

Since it was posted two weeks ago, the video -- which was captioned “Whose side are you on?!” -- has been viewed more than 106.2 million times. 

Many viewers said they sided with the vengeful passenger, noting how the woman with her hair over the television kept flipping it back.

“I fully support their actions,” one person said. 

“They totally deserved that,” someone else said.

However, other viewers noted that the video was so absurd that it's unlikely to be real. 

“That HAS to be a wig and this is staged,” one commenter wrote. 

Another person added: “Come on that’s a wig!!! Totally staged!!! You think after she flipped it she didn’t feel all that stuff in her hair!”

Several other viewers also said the woman would have noticed the gum and lollipop in her hair. 

Do you think that the video was staged? 

Image screenshot via Fox News 

There’s something symbolic about it, if you think about it. Artist and sculptor Daniel Popper created a permanent public installation at Society Las Olas, a residential building in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The installation is a huge figure ripping open its chest. The work also features a fern-adorned archway that viewers can walk through, as My Modern Met details: 

Works of this scale are not new for Popper, who has spent years sculpting monumental public installations. In 2019, his Modem Swamp work towered over the Modem Festival in Croatia. For that installation, Popper collaborated with others to illuminate the work with projection mapping.

While music festivals are not possible at present, Popper says that he has already been focused on permanent public art installations. He hinted that more permanent works like Thrive are forthcoming. When asked how he hopes audiences will interact with Thrive, he tells My Modern Met, “I hope they will continue to interact with it and enjoy it and that the message and feeling continues for many years to come. In many ways it's a symbol of hope and transformation which have been central to many people's worlds during 2020.”

Image via My Modern Met 

Move over, mysterious monoliths, there’s a new conspiracy in town. Time to bring back your tinfoil hats on, as an unclassified image that was reportedly circulated among U.S. intelligence agencies has leaked online. The unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), the Pentagon’s term for unidentified flying objects, is silver and cube-shaped: 

The Debrief’s Tim McMillan, a contributor to Popular Mechanics, learned of the photo’s existence from a “defense official who has been verified as being in a position to have access to the UAPTF’s intelligence reports,” he writes. Three other government officials confirmed with McMillan that the photo, which was shared on a secure network used by the U.S. Intelligence Community, comes from a 2018 task force report.

A military pilot reportedly encountered the object while flying over the Atlantic Ocean on the East Coast of the U.S. in 2018 and captured it with their personal cell phone. It’s likely that a backseat weapons system operator on an F/A-18F Super Hornet took the photo of the object, which McMillan calls “inverted” and “bell-shaped,” and describes it having “ridges or other protrusions along its lateral edges, extending toward its base.”

It’s possible the object may be a GPS dropsonde, a sensor on a parachute that provides info on the vertical profile of a storm. But as McMillan points out (and confirms with an atmospheric researcher), the actual dropsonde doesn’t appear in the photo—just the potential square-cone parachute. And there would obviously have to be an aircraft above the object to drop it, and no such craft is visible in the image.

Image via Esquire 

Okay, I don’t know how much time you have on your hands, but there’s no harm in asking about  the unknown, right? Well, scientists are looking for a hidden message from the ‘creator’ of the cosmos at the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The CMB is space’s largest billboard, so to speak, as it is visible across all of space. Did physicists find something? Sadly, no: 

Michael Hippke, a self-described "gentleman scientist" affiliated with the Sonneberg Observatory in Germany, went looking for a sign from a creator in that background radiation. But, either way, he didn't find one.

Leaving aside all the hidden assumptions in the question — that there is a cosmic creator, that a cosmic creator wants people to know about them, that the cosmic creator has an insight into the minds of future intelligent creatures and can therefore predict the future — the CMB would be a good place to hide a message if you were a creator trying to target civilizations at our current level of development, said Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist who wasn't involved in Hippke's work published to the arXiv database on Nov. 29. (The paper has not been peer reviewed.) 

"There could be different media on which you'd encode the message," Loeb said. The CMB is a good option because we've been able to detect it since the first good microwave study of the sky in 1964, as opposed to, say, gravitational waves, which require more technical equipment and we only detected in February 2016. "It all depends on what level of intelligence you want to approach. It's almost like writing different sections of a newspaper for different audiences."

Image via Live Science