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  • Wired Space Photo of the Day: Dunes of Titan
    Data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft show that the sizes and patterns of dunes on Saturn's moon Titan vary as a function of altitude and latitude. The dunes in areas that are more elevated or are higher in latitude, such as in the Fensal region pictured at bottom left, tend to be thinner and more widely separated, with gaps that have a thinner covering of sand. Dunes in the Belet region, pictured at top left, are at a lower altitude and latitude. The dunes in Belet are wider, with thicker blankets of sand between them. The Kalahari dunes in South Africa and Namibia, located in a region with limited sediment available and pictured at bottom right, show effects similar to the Fensal dunes. The Belet dunes on Titan resemble Earth's Oman dunes in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, where there is abundant sediment available. The Oman dunes are shown at top right.

  • Autodesk Purchases, Revives 3-D Design App Tinkercad
    On Saturday, Autodesk announced it is purchasing Tinkercad and reinstating the service. The move comes in time to prevent the previously announced shutdown of any accounts or services, and users can start creating new accounts immediately.

  • Penguin Bets Big That The 5th Wave Will Be the Next Hunger Games
    In the latest Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast author Rick Yancey talks about his new young adult survival novel The 5th Wave.

  • The Schticky Is the Dark Knight Rises of Infomercials
    When you?re an insomniac freelance writer who works from home, you end up seeing a lot of infomercials, and eventually, those things will wear you down. No matter how skeptical you might start off, you will eventually get to a point where you?ll start to wonder if there actually is somebody out there with a better way to fry eggs, chop tomatoes and make milkshakes in the comfort of your own home. I mean, television?s never lied to us before, has it? That?s why I wanted to actually check out a few of these things to see if they really were the life-changing innovations they purported to be. Today?s experiment: The Schticky.

  • Dropping Jaws (And Slowpokes) on Cervelo's $10,000 Racing Bike
    As one of just a few hundred limited-edition bikes produced by Cerv?lo's Project California division, the RCA is a neatly packaged compendium of its creator's two-decades-deep body of engineering knowledge.

  • Wired Space Photo of the Day: Galactic Wheels
    How many rings do you see in this new image of the galaxy Messier 94, also known as NGC 4736? While at first glance one might see a number of them, astronomers believe there is just one. This image was captured in infrared light by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

  • From S.H.I.E.L.D. to Downton's Dracula: 10 New TV Shows to Check Out This Fall
    This week, the broadcast TV networks announced their new shows for the 2013/2014 TV season. If you're overwhelmed by the choice, here are ten to watch.

  • After $200 Million, Darpa Gives Up on Formation-Flying Satellites
    Darpa is ending its experiment with small, close-flying spacecraft, but that doesn't mean the concept is dead.

  • Slowly, Military Opens the Door to Outside Prosecutions for Sexual Assault
    The military doesn't want to take sexual assault cases out of the chain of command. But as scandals compile and Congress prepares to act, it may have to.

  • Game|Life Podcast: EA Ditches Online Passes and Wii U, But Mostly Wii U
    Wired senior editor Peter Rubin joins me to explore two Electronic Arts announcements that might prove quite telling of gaming's future.

  • Trailer Face-Off: The New Pacific Rim vs. the Atlantic Rim Knockoff
    So, there's a new trailer for director Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim. However, on another YouTube channel not so far away, there's also a new, not as sleek but equally entertaining trailer for Atlantic Rim ? the mockbuster by The Asylum. How do they stack up? Let's find out.

  • Star Trek Into Darkness Updates Federation Fashion by Returning to the '60s
    Star Trek Into Darkness costume designer Michael Kaplan readily admits that he wasn?t a Star Trek fan prior to being hired for the 2009 reboot. Still, with iconic sci-fi movies like Blade Runner and Armageddon under his belt, he was confident he could capture and improve the look of Starfleet, updating the occasionally clunky aesthetic of the original series into something long-time fans would still recognize and appreciate: ?I certainly want to please Trekkies.?

  • Watch the Biggest Explosion Ever Seen on the Moon
    NASA scientists recorded the biggest explosion from a meteorite impact on the moon that they have seen in eight years of monitoring.

  • New Efforts to Overhaul Psychiatric Diagnoses Spurred by DSM Turmoil
    Tomorrow marks the official release of the DSM-5, a hugely influential diagnostic guide that defines disorders of the mind. Many experts say it's fundamentally flawed, and efforts to develop a better alternative have begun.

  • How a Massive Glass Casino Represents Traditional Native American Forms
    Each week, Wired Design brings you a photo of one of our favorite buildings, showcasing boundary-pushing architecture and design involved in the unique structures that make the world's cityscapes interesting. Check back Fridays for the continuing series, and feel free to make recommendations in the comments, by Twitter, or by e-mail.

  • What We Supposedly Learned About Technology From 1995's Evolver
    Today's dubious lesson in technology as explained by movies: 1995's Evolver in which a teenage videogame fan wins an indestructible military robot in a contest and it works out pretty much exactly as you expect.

  • The Strangest Ways Wild Animals Crossed Paths With Humans This Week
    A roundup of odd ways humans and wild animals crossed paths this week compiled by Jon Mooallem, author of the upcoming book Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America.

  • The Fiftieth Anniversary of Chaos
    Edward Lorenz wasn't planning to spark a scientific revolution when he published his famous paper on weather models in 1963. But the unexpected behavior of his equations opened the door to an entirely new field: chaos theory. Fifty years later, Samuel Arbesman takes a look at what this new way of scientific thinking has wrought.

  • The Strange Story of Marie Antoinette's Watch
    [HTML1] It was a watch so beautiful, so elegant, so precise, that it could only have been meant for royalty. Then it vanished without a trace.    |    Photo: David Silberman/Getty Images The tiny Simca 1000 Sedan puttered through the winding streets of a tony enclave near Israel's presidential residence. The spring evening ...

  • Let's Fight Big Pharma's Crusade to Turn Eccentricity Into Illness
    We are homogenizing our crops and homogenizing our people. And Big Pharma seems intent on pursuing a parallel attempt to create its own brand of human monoculture. With an assist from an overly ambitious psychiatry -- given tomorrow's impending release of the DSM-5 -- all human difference is being transmuted into chemical imbalance meant to be treated with a handy pill. Turning difference into illness was among the great strokes of marketing genius accomplished in our time.

  • What Star Trek Into Darkness Could Tell Us About J.J. Abrams' Star Wars
    The biggest question that comes up in Star Trek Into Darkness: What does this mean for Star Wars?

  • Hangouts Feature Emerges as a Big Bright Spot for Google+
    In many ways, Google+ is still struggling to define itself. But there's been one clear success story inside the Google social network: Video "Hangouts," which have proven popular in group communications, from academia to large corporations to startups.

  • A Watchmaking Renaissance Is Yielding the Most Complicated Timepieces Ever
    New materials. Outlandish technologies. Insane movements. Today?s watchmakers are engineering the most complicated mechanical timepieces ever.

  • Welcome to Google Island
    I awoke aboard a boat, just before daybreak, which was weird. The last thing I remembered was being in San Francisco?s Moscone Center, wrapping up a four-hour Google I/O keynote liveblogging session. My last recollection was of Google CEO Larry Page taking questions from the audience and promoting a vision of a utopia where society could be free to innovate and experiment, unencumbered by government regulations or social norms.

  • Photos of Mangled Cars Find Beauty in the Wreckage
    It's hard to resist rubbernecking when we pass an accident on the freeway. What's happening is none of our business, but we do it anyway. This voyeuristic urge is what Danish photographer Nicolai Howalt wants to explore in his series, Car Crash Studies.

  • In Tomorrow's Wars, Battles Will Be Fought With a 3-D Printer
    Printable drones, limbs and ammunition. It's a far-out vision, but more and more military officers are starting to think that future troops will rely on 3-D printers to manufacture the tools of war.

  • Push Back Against the Elements With New Flexible, Super-Strong Umbrella
    Anyone who has spent time in blustery, rainy climates knows the frustration of an umbrella defeated by the elements. In 2009, designer Federico Venturi experienced this frustration firsthand and, instead of throwing away the broken umbrella like everyone else does, decided to use it as inspiration for everything an umbrella should not be.

  • Specialized Aims to Make Bicycling Less of a Drag With New Wind Tunnel
    For years, bicycle makers have squeezed more speed and efficiency out of their products by shaving weight to the minimums set by cycling's ruling bodies. But to really improve a bike, whether it's for riding in the peloton or the park, you have to reduce aerodynamic drag.

  • Charted: Extraterrestrial Driving Records
    NASA has just released this cute chart depicting the various distances traveled by wheeled machines on other worlds.

  • Terrorist Entered Witness Protection, Then Fled the United States
    The Justice Department's internal watchdog found "significant problems" in how the feds handle terrorists who snitch and get new identities. They can evade no-fly lists. Some actually have.