Weird

This illustration shows an intermediate polar system, a type of two-star system that the research team thinks V1674 Hercules belongs to. A flow of gas from the large companion star impacts an accretion disk before flowing along magnetic field lines onto the white dwarf. Credit: Illustration by Mark GarlickMost people are familiar with supernovas, the spectacular stellar explosions that occur at the end of a massive star’s life and often result in a <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt"…

| With names like the Eagle, featuring a scientist with anti-gravity wings; Dynamo, master of electricity; and Marga the Panther Woman, the product of a "mad physio-biologist"; the characters of Science Comics were true to the title of their original series.  But all three of these characters hit the Weird Comics series after the demise of the Science Comics title, and among the characters in that series, Marga the Panther woman is undoubtedly the weirdest character of them all.  The result of a mad physio-biologist…

A newly discovered source of repeating fast radio bursts has deepened the mystery of what, precisely, could be producing these powerful outbursts.The source, first detected in 2019 and named FRB 190520B, seems to be frequently spitting out millisecond bursts of powerful radio waves.  This has allowed astronomers to perform analyses that reveal information about where it comes from in the Universe, and the space around it. Those analyses suggest that there is probably more than one mechanism in the big wide cosmos capable…

Quantum computing is weirdNo, I am not referring to the strange phenomena of quantum mechanics that govern the operation of quantum computers.I am referring to the discrepancies in media coverage. In the popular media, quantum computing is touted as a magic device that will solve all our problems. In contrast, critical literature doubts that quantum computing will ever do anything useful.If we believed everything the media wrote about quantum computing, it would be like having a personality disorder where you vacillate…

Credit: Wikimedia Why did people think cannibalism was good for their health? The answer offers a glimpse into the zaniest crannies of European history, at a time when Europeans were obsessed with Egyptian mummies. …

Diablo Immortal apparently has some wild visual glitches on some Samsung devices with Exynos chips, which in some cases render the game largely unplayable. It’s hard to explain just how weird some of the issues are, so I recommend you look for yourself in these two videos from users on Reddit. Blizzard released Diablo Immortal, the latest game in the popular dungeon-crawling franchise, on iOS, Android, and PC last week. Unlike previous entries, Diablo Immortal is free to play, and in addition to these strange…

| On March 6, 1942, the notorious Golden Age publisher of Blue Beetle and much more, Victor Fox was forced into bankruptcy by creditors.  Fascinatingly, one of those creditors, printer Holyoke Press took over the title, and with Fox's Blue Beetle and other titles the publisher acquired under similar circumstances from Frank Z. Temerson, Holyoke decided to get into the comic book publishing business.  Holyoke published the series from Blue Beetle #12-30, and after a one-issue transition, Temerson's staff led by Charles…

When it comes to electric cars on China’s largest online shopping site Alibaba, you can find just about anything. And that variety has kept me in business, so to speak, by finding the weirdest and most fun ones out there for my weekly Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column. That often means funny-shaped electric vehicles or sometimes odd mashups that take to the sea or even the sky. But sometimes it’s not what is added to a vehicle that makes it special, but rather what is suubtracted. And…

What the heck are those?Spike TreeNASA's Curiosity Mars rover has been capturing some amazing shots of the Red Planet lately.There was that thing that looked a bit like a "doorway" on Mars last month, for instance — but which later turned out to be a tiny gap in ancient sandstone.Now, we get to see Curiosity's next fascinating discovery: two ancient "spikes" of cemented rock that almost look like the petrified remains of ancient trees."Here is another cool rock at Gale crater on Mars!" the SETI Institute wrote last week.…

Stranger Things actors Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard and Gaten Matarazzo vividly remember the moment when the show turned their lives “upside down” by making them overnight stars. Stranger Things, created by Matt and Ross Duffer, is set in the 1980s and takes a look at the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, where a secret government lab accidentally opens a door to a parallel dimension referred to as the ‘upside down’. A group of friends try to make sense of the strange…