We’ve got a great crop of images this week. There are animals! Near space objects! Urban beehives! Bulletproof clipboards! And even the world’s new most expensive photograph, which, as it turns out, is also high in the running for world’s most boring photograph!
Click to see the week in photos.
Cat Input
Do not, under any circumstances, underestimate the desire of cats to stomp all over computer keyboards. In the PopSci chat room, we couldn’t stop giggling over this report of “kernel panic” caused by that very issue.
Urban Beehive
Our own Rebecca Boyle expressed her desire to have her own personal beehive/source of delicious honey (which, now that I mention it, did you guys read that story about how supermarket honey isn’t really honey? We have been DUPED.), but as urban dwellers, that kind of thing isn’t really possible. At least, not without seriously endangering our apartment security deposits. But this gorgeous urban beehive concept might be a solution.
This Is the World’s Most Expensive Photograph
If you’re wondering why this picture, taken by Andreas Gursky of a secluded stretch of the Rhine River, fetched more than four million dollars at auction this week, well, join the club.
Tablets for All
This week, Barnes & Noble unveiled their newest tablet, to be called the Nook Tablet. It’s the next version of the Nook Color, going head-to-head this fall with the Kindle Fire.
Hello, Mr. Fox
The best wild animal photographs of the year were collected–check them out at National Geographic–and this picture of a female red fox in Germany’s Black Forest is one of our favorites.
Automotive Demons
We stumbled across this cover this week, from Popular Science’s October 1922 issue. Our immediate thought: we don’t have enough devils on our covers these days. Our second thought: what is going on with that one demon sitting on the back of the roof? What is he planning? Want to see more? Check out our Archive Explorer–we love playing around with this thing.
Bulletproof Clipboard
Cleveland, Ohio’s IMPACT Armor Technologies lived up to its name this week, showing off a clipboard capable of withstanding multiple gunshots at point-blank range, up to a .44 mag, as well as both blunt and sharp (like knives) weapons. Organized and security-conscious!
Military Marine Mammals
We put together a gallery this week of instances in which the best tool for the job is an animal. Our favorite photo? This one, of a dolphin working with the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program in San Diego, CA. Dolphins help as undersea mine detectors and sentries all over the world.
2-D to 3-D
Researchers at North Carolina State University have managed to create a surprisingly simple method for converting 2-D patterns into 3-D printed objects. A plastic sheet is printed with bold black lines and then placed under an infrared lamp. The black lines absorb more heat than the rest of the sheet, causing those parts to become pliable. Those parts are then able to become hinges and fold, creating, for example, the cube seen here.
Whew!
Asteroid YU55 passed very close to Earth this week–inside the moon’s orbit, even, at a distance of 201,700 miles from the Earth’s core. But, as we all know, because we’re, you know, still alive and everything, it missed.
