7. This Canadian island is being devoured by rising sea levels
A video by National Geographic shows the impact of or erosion and rising sea levels on low-lying Lennox Island, an aboriginal community in Prince Edward Island province in Canada (Motherboard). The island has been losing up to three feet of land per year, and its residents have also experienced washouts, flooding and damage to roadways linking the island to the mainland. Island resident David Haley observes that "when I first came to live here, we had the children out playing baseball in the front yard. They can’t do that anymore. That land is gone."
8. The Force Awakens breaks box office records around the world
Star Wars: The Force Awakens has taken an estimated $517m from global ticket sales up to Sunday, setting records in North America, where its opening weekend took $238 million, the UK, Australia, Russia and elsewhere (The Guardian). "I don't think ever in the history of movies has their been more hype leading up to release of a film," Jeff Bock, senior box office analyst at Exhibitor Relations Co. told The Guardian. The final verdict on The Force Awakens' international appeal will come on 9 January, when the film opens in China, the second-biggest movie market in the world.
9. Video: the science behind clickbait
WIRED takes a look at the science behind your urge to click, from dopamine released in anticipation of seeing a fluffy kitten to the curiosity and appeal to emotion generated by a carefully structured headline. There's more to those manipulative link titles than meets the eye, and it relies on your limbic system, the human tendency to gamble, and more.
10. Lab-grown snowflakes are singularly beautiful
While most of us aren't set to get any snow of our own over the holidays, we can still enjoy the crystalline beauty of Professor Ken Libbrecht's lab-grown designer snowflakes (Gizmodo). Libbrecht studies snowflakes by condensing crystals from water vapour onto a sapphire substrate, photographing them to discover the secrets behind their unique pattern formation. The physicist is an expert in the molecular dynamics of crystal growth and has gained a reputation as the world's first designer snowflake artist.
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Lizard Squad: 'wannabes' will target gamers this Christmas
Christmas 2014 was a bad one for gamers, after both PlayStation Network and Xbox Live were forced offline following a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack for which the hacking group Lizard Squad claimed responsibility. Legal repercussions for that attack are still playing out in the courts, but it seems as though history may be repeating itself. This week a similar, though currently obscure group called Phantom Squad has claimed that it will attempt to cause the same havoc this Christmas -- and a member of Lizard Squad thinks it's "more than likely" that the "wannabe" group will honour its word.
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