Proving that you can make anything interesting by time lapsing it and slapping some cliche dramatic music on top, Matthew Hoyos’ video of a tortoise eating fruits and veggies is a real treat. At this speed, that tortoise is a terrifying eating machine with a vegetarian diet. As fun as the video is, I ache to know how long it took the tortoise to get through his meal in regular time.

For those unaware, the Very Large Array is a collection of radio telescopes out in the desert near Socorro, New Mexico. With it, scientists are able to probe the edges of the universe, and witness amazing sites invisible to the eye. It was also a critical set piece in the film Contact, and what’s more, the sight of all those radio antennas pointing skyward is more than a little iconic. Using time lapse photography and motion graphics, film maker Douglas Koke lets the amazing telescopes take center stage in his short film Signal to Noise. It’s a pretty amazing look at an astounding piece of human ingenuity.

You’ve probably heard about how gorgeous Yosemite National Park is, but you probably have never seen it filmed so beautifully as it is here by Sheldon Neill and Colin Delehanty. In this time lapse video, filmed over the course of several days, you’ll see roiling clouds, the Milky Way, and tiny people skittering about the enormity of nature. Simply beautiful.

This all too brief time lapse video from the International Space Station shows our home planet with storms sparking over Africa. It’s a breathtaking, if humbling, view, made all the more so by the enormous Milky Way galaxy rising behind Earth. Just a little reminder of how staggeringly huge and beautiful the universe is and how small we are.

The Chinese construction company Broad Group have one-upped their previous record of building 15 stories in one week with this 30 story hotel built in just 15 days. Erected near Dongting lake, in Hunan Province, the hotel was assembled from pre-fabricated sections shipped to the work site. The finished product has all the comforts you’d expect from a modern hotel, and is also expected to be extremely earthquake resistant thanks to its unique design. Of course, one wonders how “complete” the building is with that crane still standing in the middle of it. Read on after the break for a longer, more in-depth look at this lightning fast construction project. 

Japan is rebuilding a life-size RX-78-2 Gundam that stood in the artificial island of Odaiba back in 2009. Relocating the Gundam to Tokyo, the series of videos seen below the break cover the construction of the Gundam, in a convenient, time-lapse format. Luckily for the human population of the world, the Gundam doesn’t function as a real one, and is simply an intricate statue.

Josh Owens’ time lapse video of New York has confirmed that I will never, ever, get sick of time lapse videos. This one is particularly fun, since it captures the little details: Buildings blink like 1950s computer mainframes, an office party blunders onward, and elevators bounce like pogo sticks. Watch and enjoy.

(via Laughing Squid)

Byron Louie and Aaron Adiego teamed up to tell the story of Byron’s pet German Shepherd Dunder’s growth from puppyhood to dogdom in 40 seconds. “A photo a day of Dunder the German shepherd. 8 weeks old to 1 year in 40 seconds. It really does feel like he grew up this fast.”

(via BuzzFeed)

MOCpages user Julia Morley decided to build a LEGO ship in a bottle, mainly because how cool is that. She bought a $7 jug of wine (which she poured down the sink due to it supposedly being awful to drink), filled the bottom of the bottle with glass beads and floral resin in order to create a flat surface on which to work, and made some tools to aid in the ship-imprisoning process. She used LEGO design program Bricksmith to design the ship, then devised a plan to build the ship back-to-front with LEGOs that would fit into the bottle. Being fully aware of the kind of digital voyeur world in which she lives, Morley documented the process with a time-lapse video and posted it for all to see. As the beginning of the video states, the “project took a week of planning, three days of building, a large number of expletives, and some interesting use of very long tools.” Head on past the break to see the custom tools Morley made in order to build encase a LEGO ship in a bottle.

Terje Sorgjerd, a Norwegian photographer, obtained this footage of the Aurora Borealis in the regions of Kirkenes and Pas National Park over the course of a week, then slapped it together to make the above gorgeous time-lapse video.

(LikeCOOL via Geeks are Sexy)