Bangalore may contain some of India’s most luxurious mansions, but this one could top them all, literally. Vijay Mallya, chairman of United Breweries Group, wanted his very own White House replica, and by 2016, his penthouse atop Kingfisher Tower in the heart of Bangalore City was nearly finished. Unfortunately, financial woes and money laundering charges made him flee to the UK, leaving his mansion unfinished. Read more for a video and additional information.
Photo credit: XTU Architects
Technically speaking, an offshore oil rig or platform is a large structure with facilities for well drilling to explore, extract, store, and process petroleum as well as natural gas that lies in rock formations beneath the seabed. These also contain facilities to accommodate their workforce, with most engaging in activities on the continental shelf, though they can also be used in lakes, inshore waters, and inland seas. Read more to see what they would look like as homes and hotels.
At first glance, the Rube Goldberg Machine you’re about to see appears to be just some clever video editing, but it’s actually just a real optical illusion. Put simply, a thick piece of glass sits next to a mixture of two clear, colorless oils, which is adjusted to match the glass’ refractive index. When this glass is submerged in the oil, it seemingly disappears. Read more for the video and additional information.
Inventor Colin Furze is back at it again, and this time, he’s built a fully-functional screw tank. It’s exactly as it sounds, a screw-driven tank powered by a Honda engine, complete with drive boxes that turn the cylinders. This may not be the fastest vehicle around, but it’s most certainly a sight to be hold when out and about. Read more for a video and additional information.
Spain-based NovaMeat has created the world’s first 3D-printed plant based beef steak, and it looks just like the real thing. This was made possible by “finely tuning” the structure of plant-based proteins at a microscopic level, thus matching the unique texture and color of beef steak. The startup plans on selling its steaks later this year and will start installing machines commercially next year. Read more for a video and additional information.
Aerogel Technologies partnered with Derek Muller, also known as Veritasium on YouTube, for some interesting experiments. They range from aerogel basics, a simple waterproof swim to a demonstration of the material being bombarded by a Boring Company not-a-flamethrower. Aerogel has earned the nicknames frozen smoke, solid smoke, solid air, solid cloud, and blue smoke, thanks to its translucent nature and the way light scatters in the material. Read more for two videos and additional information.
A computer enthusiast from Japan who goes by “Samurai Channel” on YouTube posts various videos of daily life, but the ones that really went viral involved cooking real foods on various computer processors. Most modern CPUs are kept cool with computer fans as well as heatsink fans by actively exhausting hot air, but when this doesn’t happen, the temperatures get hot enough to fry an egg, literally. Read more for two videos and additional information.
Bauhutte is a Japanese retailer who has a line of furniture designed for gamers, and their latest is a piece that combines bed, desk and chair into one. It’s officially called the “ultimate gaming bed” and features an elevated headboard, desk, snack holder, tablet arm, and of course a comfortable mattress to keep you rested when you’re in need of a gamer nap. Read more for additional pictures and information.
Glow-in-the-dark amphibians may be far more prevalent than once thought, according to scientists,as they suggest that the ability may help them locate each other in low light. Jennifer Lamb and Matthew Davis of St. Cloud State University in Minnesota exposed 32 species of the frogs, salamanders, newts and eels to blue or ultraviolet light, and discovered that the creatures emitted colorful patterns in a process known as “biofluorescence.” Read more for two videos and additional information.
Jimmie Luecke was a Texas state trooper who left the highway patrol in 1980 to try his hand at oil drilling, and fortunately, the Austin chalk oil boom made him a millionaire. His next move was acquiring land outside Smithville, Texas before settling down to raise cattle. In the late ’90s, while clearing new grazing land on his ranch, he bulldozed the brush, but left behind the word LUECKE, making it the biggest signature in human history. Read more for a video to show why NASA uses it to analyze satellite imagery.