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We're lucky to live in a world that also contains the folks over at Hack A Day, for whom "Gee, that sounds dangerous" is not a sentence to give pause, but a rallying cry to see how far one can push a strange, and quite possibly bad, idea. And that, folks, is how an 80,000-volt Tesla coil got inside a homemade replica of Thor's hammer.

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck Space Telescope has laid it's super-powerful eye in the sky on a never before seen cosmic phenomenon. The above photo is Planck's first image of a pair of galaxy clusters connected by a cloud of superheated gasses that spans a mind-boggling distance of 10 million lightyears. No word yet on if this actually represents the Asgardian Rainbow Bridge of Thor fame, so in the absence of good evidence, we're just going to really, really hope so.

Believe it or not, it's possible for the mere presence of 3D movies in theaters to make the more numerous 2D offerings look worse. According to a very good investigative report from The Boston Globe, it's relatively common practice for theaters that use Sony's 4K digital projectors, which need an additional 3D lens in front of the regular lens when 3D movies are playing to allow for the polarization effect that makes the 3D image possible, to simply leave the 3D lenses in place when playing 2D fare through the same projector.The result, which the article says affects Regal, AMC, and National Amusements theaters: A dramatically darker picture, sapped of color.

So why aren’t theater personnel simply removing the 3-D lenses? The answer is that it takes time, it costs money, and it requires technical know-how above the level of the average multiplex employee. James Bond, a Chicago-based projection guru who serves as technical expert for Roger Ebert’s Ebertfest, said issues with the Sonys are more than mechanical. Opening the projector alone involves security clearances and Internet passwords, “and if you don’t do it right, the machine will shut down on you.’’ The result, in his view, is that often the lens change isn’t made and “audiences are getting shortchanged.’’

Even more insidiously, some movie theater employees say that this isn't just a matter of oppressive DRM stumping projectionists, but that it's official, albeit unspoken, policy to leave the dimming 3D lenses in place for 2D films: Said one, "If we knew a house would be opening ‘Harry Potter’ and it wasn’t going to be 3-D ... I would ask them to swap the lens out and it would either go nowhere or come back with a negative from the regional technician, usually with the impression that it came from above.’’ (Boston.com via Boing Boing)

The problem with Norse mythology is that no one really knows that much about it. Most of what we do know was written down by Christian scholars hundreds of years after Wotan’s faith was a functioning religion, and so we’ve got a long time of hearsay and the biases of a bunch of monks standing between us and what actually went on back then. Which is probably what makes Norse mythology such fertile ground for things like the Marvel universe. The plot holes are so big you could drive a goat-drawn chariot through, and so nobody will get real mad if you leave out some stories that aren’t quite kid (or sanity) friendly. But that doesn’t mean those stories aren’t super entertaining, so here are ten aspects of Norse mythology that we’re not likely to see in Thor this weekend. And if we do… well, that’s going to super awesome to watch. >>>Check out the list.

(via Yahoo! Movies.)

All hail the Thunderer, wielder of the Mighty Mjolnir, Lord of Asgard, Son of the One-Eyed Gallows God, and Inventor of Trash Talk. (via Kotaku.)

Reminder: The Earth Is Falling Away From the Sun (Discover) Hideous Gaming Disasters of 2010s (GamesRadar) A Panoramic View of Mars (Fotoausflug.de) Verily, Thor Spoilers Doth Abound in Great Number (Comic Book Movie) This Toaster is An Xbox, Your Argument is Invalid (Destructoid) A Clarification on Discussing Geek Sexism (Geek Feminism) What We Might Have Had This Year, if Not For Copyright Law (Gizmodo) (pic by smapte, via Geeks Are Sexy.)

Hawkeye to Cameo in Thor (Bleeding Cool) Samuel L. Jackson Saying M*th*erf*ck*r (NSFW) (Abaurre3) 8 Hard Lessons 2010 Taught The Entertainment Industry (Wired) World's Smallest Periodic Table Etched on Hair of Worlds Adorablest British Scientist (Periodic Videos) Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer Restage Labyrinth; Gaiman is Bowie (Amanda Palmer) Nintendo Warns Against 3DS Graphics for Young Kids (Ars Technica) Gallery of Original Background Art from Masters of the Universe (Robert Lamb) (Dougtrio pic via Reddit.)

The Bible MMO Will Have Arena PvP in Sodom and Gomorrah ಠ_ಠ (Ars Marginal) This Is What Flash Paper Looks Like Inside A Balloon (WorldScott) Marvel's Third Announced TV Series is Jessica Jones (io9) How to Make Cthulhu Pot Pie (Creative Noms) Regretsy Selling Awesome Star Trek Christmas Dioramas (Regretsy) All the Edits of the First Six Weeks of Wikipedia (Joseph Reagle) Beautiful Alternate Thor Poster (Blastr) (pic by Demiurgic, via Kotaku.)

Batman: Arkham City Trailer (GameTrailers) Mortal Kombat Trailer (GameTrailers) Thor: God of Thunder Trailer (GameTrailers) Guillermo Del Toro's Insane Trailer (GameTrailers) Resistance 3 Trailer (GameTrailers) Mass Effect 3 Trailer (GameTrailers) Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Trailer (GameTrailers)

After a fun but discordantly plotted Iron Man II, we're hoping that Thor can get lightning to strike at least once. We're hoping it'll hammer it's competition at the box office. We'd like it if it's release couldn't be considered low key.

When the Marvel/Disney merger was made official, a lot of people immediately plundered the wide ranging crossover potential, from Spider-Man in Kingdom Hearts to a Beast buddy movie. Today we see the first shamelessly tied in fruit of that union, in the form of a series of variant covers for Marvel's November titles, where ten of Marvel's biggest characters get reinterpreted Tron-style.

Well-connected entertainment industry blog Deadline reports on an emerging trend in Hollywood which is meant to cut down on leaks, but which forces many actors to jump into movies they don't know much about: Refusing to let actors read scripts for movies they're auditioning for, instead giving them vague descriptions. The culprit? Geeks obsessed with picking apart leaked scripts from their favorite franchise films.

Last night, the five minutes of Thor footage that Marvel teased at Comic-Con leaked online. Marvel has been aggressive in its efforts to get the leak taken down, with many of the videos uploaded to third-party players last night broken and displaying copyright claim messages and with YouTube uploads of the footage disappearing as quickly as Whack-a-Moles. All of which is a little surprising -- not just because this is the Internet, but because this footage will wipe away the doubts of many fans and make them genuinely excited about the film, which is scheduled for release on May 6, 2011.s Nevertheless, io9 of the daring Gawker Media empire (you know, the people who own Gizmodo) is hosting the footage and by all appearances refusing to budge, and we've got their copy below.

Marvel's Judith Stephens snapped this picture of an adorable young thunder god sitting on the throne of Odin at Comic-Con 2010.

(via Marvel.com)