Giant Freakin Robot

Now that I’m fully an adult — which is what being 30 and having only one pair of jeans that fits is, I guess — I have little use for candy that doesn’t include some combination of chocolate, peanut butter, and caramel. (Crispy rice is caramel’s understudy.) So most hard candies like Gobstoppers and lollipops aren’t visible to my radar, though I still go to town on cakes and cookies like nobody’s business.

But when it comes to Salt Lake City’s Priscilla, who runs the Etsy shop DesignerLollipop, my taste buds are intrigued. Though not as much as my eyes are, because these are the most beautiful pieces of candy I’ve ever seen in my life. And if it wasn’t for chef Masaharu Morimoto, I’d almost go so far as to say it’s the most beautiful food I’ve ever seen. Although Pricilla’s site doesn’t specifically say it, we’ll assume no real dinosaur eyes were used in the creation of the lollipops above.

While some of her talents go toward creating lollipop versions of things like sports balls, zodiac signs, and fireworks, the best of Priscilla’s work is inspired by our favorite subject. Everything from nebulas to solar winds to meteor showers get their own pops. And yeah, I know she’s not designing the pictures herself, but why would she need to when nature gives us these images for free? Just look at these starry night suckers and tell me you wouldn’t like to put the universe in your mouth right now.

To cross the language barrier, just head to 1:20 on the timeline to see the device in action. Otherwise, it’s not too hard to get the most basic idea of what’s happening.

It’s almost as if YouTuber IodureMetallique was a spokesman for Pacific Rim‘s recent marketing, but instead of giant freakin’ robots made to destroy monsters, he built a small theivin’ robot to quench his thirst. For entertainment purposes only, of course.

Though I’m not sure what area of the world he’s from, our young hacker/inventor/machinist is of the French-speaking variety, and his soda-stealing robot video is all in French. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that a good accent makes something as simple as stealing soft drinks that much more tantalizing and attractive.

I don’t know about where you guys live, but the weather here in Louisiana has already started reaching mild summer temperatures, and though things aren’t unbearable in the least, it’s going to get that way at some point, and summer is when everything happens outside. And by “everything,” I mean things that happen in places where people get beer drunk all day long. Sports games, music fests, pool parties, and things of that nature. Well, science is helping the more clueless day-drinkers to have a better day once and for all.

University of Washington professor of atmospheric sciences and associate professor Dargan Frierson co-authored a study for Physics Today that proves beyond all doubt that a beer koozie will keep your beer cold. While that seems like a rather obvious solution in the first place, I rarely use one, and it’s for no good reason, honestly. It’s one of those things that just bypasses my common sense, like changing my car’s oil or not putting my head in a paper bag to fall asleep at night.

The researchers performed the study on a small scale at first, using a salty ice bath to cool the beer down to near-freezing, and then adjusting the heat and humidity of the room — a small, unused bathroom. They found that, on average, the condensation that forms on the outside of the beer will raise the temperature by six degrees in just five minutes. Assuming it follows that pattern, you’re looking at a warm beer in no time at all. And not even war is worse than warm beer.

Most coincidences that happen during your average day are admittedly trite, such as singing a fairly popular song at the same time that song comes on a popular radio station. But this is probably the greatest coincidence ever. At least on this planet.

Two meteorites found in Antarctica have similar grain material that researchers believe connects them as having been part of the same supernova — a supernova that happened over 4.6 billion years ago. But not only that…

(Dramatic music)

…they believe this supernova’s explosion is the same one that led to the formation of our solar system. I mean, I can’t even find my license in my wallet sometimes, and these guys are finding pieces of the post-Big Bang universe. These “guys” are Pierre Haenecour of Washington University in St. Louis and Xuchao Zhao, now a scientist at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics in Beijing. Both rocks’ silica grains — which are invisible to the naked eye and had to be magnified 20,000 times for the investigation — contained oxygen-18, unlike other grains found that only contained the lighter oxygen-17, which is thought to be created only by living stars. Haenecour and his team then tried to figure out how exactly these grains could have been made.