Giant Freakin Robot

In space, no one can hear Earth scream. That is, unless you happen to have an extra Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science (EMFISIS) receiver. NASA has two, and they’ve recorded the Earth’s “chorus,” the sound of oscillating radio waves projected by the plasma radiation in the Van Allen Radiation Belt.

Take a listen here.

EMFISIS is actually one of two receivers strapped to Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP), sent into orbit to collect data on the physical dynamics of these radiation belts with hopes of finding patterns providing scientists the capability of making future predictions about said belts.

The sounds recorded, dubbed “Earth’s Song,” bear no resemblance to Michael Jackson. The noises are in 16-bit mono, similar to CD-quality audio out of one speaker, are less like a song, and more like a bunch of crickets with a ’50s science fiction sound effects program. Not that it wouldn’t be easy to sample it into a hip hop track, but that aspiring artist might want to wait until the higher resolution stereo recording is released when the RBSP mission is complete.

Here is a sentence that you never want to hear: “Son, we could make you disappear and your body will never be found.”

That’s reportedly what a BBC film crew heard while they were detained after breaching the perimeter at Nevada’s infamous Area 51.

This ominous quip was followed by the less oblique, but equally terrifying, “If any of you had kept going, we would have shot you.”

The gate of Area 51

So, if you happened to walk past a TV or computer screen yesterday, there’s a good chance that you saw a dude named Felix Baumgartner climbing out of a balloon capsule 24 miles above the Earth’s surface and then…jumping. The sight of Baumgartner standing at the edge of space, with the curvature of the Earth clearly visible in the background, and then diving downward is jaw dropping enough in and of itself. The only thing that might be a more impressive view of Baumgartner’s jump? This footage was reportedly taken from a camera mounted to Baumgartner himself, and it captures some of the most hair-raising moments from the jump: when the diver went into an uncontrollable spin that could very well have been the death of him if he hadn’t recovered. If you’ve got a fear of heights…you probably don’t want to watch this at all, but definitely don’t blow it up to full screen.

Astronomers have discovered a new planet that technically shouldn’t exist. The newly found world comes complete with four suns, the gravity of which should, in theory, rip it apart. Six times larger than Earth, this world is a “gas giant,” like Jupiter and Saturn, that is comparable to Neptune in size. While it orbits two stars, another two circle the planet itself.