Awesome Science

Spitzer Science Center’s When Galaxies Collide may be cheesy, but Felicia Day rocks as she dismantles the brainless Hollywood-ization of science; bonus points if you catch the Whedon quip.

We felt shivers up our flesh-and-blood spines watching this PETMAN prototype for the US Army; it walks at 3.2 mph (the same speed as a human) and stays upright even when shoved.

Letting robots drive is still a touchy matter, but Stanford has developed a robotic Audi TTS able to hit speeds of 80 mph and drift; they aim to tackle Pikes Peak next year, rally style.

That’s one giant leap for iPhone/iPod users: the NASA app is a must for space travel enthusiasts, with mission updates, pictures via IOTD and APOD, videos and Twitter updates.

From the guy who brought us the first Carl Sagan Auto-Tune, We Are All Connected is a symphony of science: Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye get their groove on.

Kudos to VFS students Marcos Ceravolo and Ryan Uhrich for tackling an emotionally charged topic with wit and irony: Duelity puts creationism and evolution in each other’s shoes.

They grow up so fast: watch the International Space Station as it evolves, piece by piece, starting with a single module in 1998 to today’s multiple solar-paneled behemoth.

And it all started with clay and paper clips: LIFE Magazine gives us a peek at early spacecraft models and tests by both NASA and the Russian space programs in the 1960s and 70s.

Thanks to its recent tune-up, Hubble has unloaded a slew of new space pictures lately; Hubblecast shows how they use a freeware Photoshop plugin called FITS Liberator to process images.

It not only looks like Aliens’ exoskeleton, but the Power Loader suit works like one too: known as a dual-arm power amplification robot, it’s able to lift 220 lbs with ease. Thanks, Sonic!

Assuming power is provided by the Dark Side, this May The Mass x Acceleration t-shirt will fly over the heads of weak minds with the horizontal velocity of a fully operational battle station.

Break out the axioms, because Logicomix is a comic book for math geeks and philosophers; it’s based on Bertrand Russell’s life and features other logic-driven luminaries.

Auto-tuning is arguably played out, but this Carl Sagan music video (feat. Stephen Hawking) is the trippiest, space-time bendingest tour of the cosmos we’ve ever taken.

Think of it as Google Maps for your brain: thanks to a series of MRI scans, you can now take a 3D look inside Bill Moorier’s head from any point using a series of X, Y and Z sliders.

Wired goes off the deep end with 12 Shocking Ideas That Could Change The World, including emptying prisons and cheating death; truly heinous: a plan to bust up big league sports.

Using Microsoft’s Photosynth project (e.g., the Obama Inauguration), U. of Washington researchers are piecing together entire cities using Flickr images–but in hours instead of years.

Shot with a Nikon D3 and composed of 1,200 photos, the Gigagalaxy Zoom Project is an 800 million pixel image of our Milky Way; download a smaller 18 million pixel image here.

The Hubble telescope is 19 years old, but you wouldn’t know it from this new set of photos snapped after recent upgrades; it sports a new Wide Field camera and spectrograph.

Never has disease looked so delicate: Luke Jerram’s Deadly Virus Sculptures took five years of working with glass and include H1N1, SARS, HIV, and the obviously non-viral E. coli.

Moonbell isn’t quite a game–it uses topographical data from Japan’s Kaguya satellite that lets you play the Moon’s surface like a record; choose from Orbit Play and Free Scratch modes.

Get a rise (over run) out of math geeks: the Can’t Touch This Equation tee shows that even asymptotic musings can have an integral part in humor–even when at the limits of good taste.

Like a scary-fast robotic Allen Iverson, the University of Tokyo’s High-Speed Robot Hand makes dribbling, throwing, catching, and other human activities look like child’s play.

Math and mythology get married with Mythical Creatures: it’s a Venn diagram and how-to-hybrid guide for everything from Unicorns to Mermahuataurs. Thanks, Huntington!