Alasdair Wilkins

Man of Steel finds its Perry White. Plus Total Recall will bring back the original’s most memorable character!

Green Lantern 2 is happening…but Warner Bros. is making some changes. We’ve got set photos for The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers. A beloved Torchwood actor is headed to next week’s Warehouse 13. Is the Devil returning to Supernatural? Spoilers from this point forward! Top image from The Darkest Hour concept art. Man of…

io9 Roundup: August 2, 2011

THE ISLAND UNIVERSE | The isolated galaxy NGC 2403 appears inside the constellation Camelopardalis. Image via NASA. Jane Eyre director could be making the next Moon Here’s an interesting premise for a film: a space assassin wakes up floating aimlessly through space. Unaware of how he got there, his only company is a robot voice…

Eureka turns up the comedy with the ultimate bank robbery

Last night’s Eureka was one of the funniest episodes in a while — Carter is forced to endure disappearing banks, floating jeeps, obnoxious geniuses, and, most terrifyingly, out-of-shape physicists. And somewhere, amid all the hijinks, an evil plot is brewing. Spoilers ahead… For one wonderful, glorious moment, Carter thinks it’s his lucky day – he…

How the Female Moose Uses Cunning to Get Rid of Unwanted Suitors

Moose are one of a number of species where males fight for the right to mate with their preferred female. As such, you might think female moose don’t have much say in the matter. That’s where you’d be wrong. Moose societies are polygynous, which means that males mate with lots of different females but females…

20 million year old primate skull discovered in Uganda

This is our first, somewhat blurry look at Ugandapithecus major, a primate that lived in ancient Uganda 20 million years ago. It’s one of the oldest primate fossils ever found, and it could hold crucial information about our evolutionary past. The skull was discovered by a joint team of French and Uganda paleontologists in the…

Oxygen molecules discovered in space for the very first time

We’ve discovered evidence of just about every gas imaginable out in space, but one we’d never seen was molecular oxygen, the stuff we breathe everyday. Now, thanks to powerful infrared telescopes, we’ve found the very first traces of space oxygen. While individual oxygen atoms are found throughout space, that’s not what we breathe. Instead, we…

Why did The Amazing Spider-Man go back to mechanical web-shooters? Plus more Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel set photos!

James Franco explains why apes are great for scifi, while Emile Hirsch discusses the Moscow-set alien invasion flick The Darkest Hour. A Star Trek captain previews her Warehouse 13 guest stint. The Fright Night screenwriter explains David Tennant’s career switch. Spoilers from here on out! The Dark Knight Rises Here are some awesome set photos…

The Dark Knight Rises Set Videos

The physics of crop circles are deeply weird…and entirely human

There’s no reason to think that crop circles are the work of aliens – particularly when human pranksters have already admitted to making them – but they’re still mysterious… not to mention a fascinating junction point between physics and art. Part of the reason we don’t fully understand the science that goes into making crop…

The first weather forecast was made 150 years ago today

People have been talking about the weather since time immemorial, but it wasn’t until August 1, 1861 that someone finally decided to put his daily predictions into writing. And here’s the really crazy thing: the first report was actually correct. Weather prediction goes back well over two thousand years, with the ancient Chinese and Babylonians…

Plants survive animal attacks by creating lots of new DNA

Most of us wouldn’t welcome getting partially eaten by a wild animal — but it could be the best thing that can happen to a plant. Half-eaten plants grow back bigger and faster than they would have if they’d never been attacked — it’s all about doubling down on DNA. Not only can plants grow…

In the quantum world, you only need to have half the information to know it all

Even by the normal standards of quantum weirdness, this one is really out there. You can take a piece of quantum information and only teach half to another person…but you’ll never be able to figure out which half they learned. To understand just what this phenomenon entails, let’s imagine a book with two pages. In…

Who will be the villain of the Star Trek sequel?

Star Trek co-writer Damon Lindelof reveals which iconic villain definitely won’t appear in the sequel, and that one classic bad guy dominated their discussions more than any other. But do we even know the villain will be a bad guy? Plus a bunch more set photos from The Dark Knight Rises and filming plans for…

io9 Roundup: July 31, 2011

WEEKEND ROUNDUP: 7/30 – 7/31 | Mark James Yamamoto’s organic Voltron, which you can see in full here. (Via Super Punch) Clarissa Explains It All prophesied the movie Cowboys & Aliens https://gizmodo.com/clarissa-explains-it-all-prophesied-the-movie-cowboys-5826141 Way back in the early 1990s, before Cowboys & Aliens was a graphic novel/film pitch, Clarissa Explains It All predicted the existence of…

Tree DNA tests prove that Benjamin Franklin isn’t ruining the Gulf Coast

Much of the southeastern US is struggling with Chinese tallow trees, an invasive species that is overrunning the Gulf Coast and wreaking havoc on the natural habitat. And, until now, people figured it was that big jerk Benjamin Franklin’s fault. While Franklin was living in Europe, he arranged to have some of these tallow trees…

There were just too many humans for Neanderthals to survive

The extinction of the Neanderthals remains a matter of intense debate. Were we smarter than them? More warlike? Or perhaps we simply sexed them into extinction? The real answer might have more to do with our quantity than our qualities. https://gizmodo.com/confirmed-all-non-african-people-are-part-neanderthal-5822357 For about 300,000 years, Europe was pretty much the undisputed domain of the Neanderthals.…

Ancient Brits were carving reindeer art 15,000 years ago

This carving may not look like much, but it’s possibly the oldest art ever found in Britain. The rock art appears to depict a reindeer with a spear sticking out of it. Hunter-gathers did tend to carve what they knew. Although its precise location is currently being kept secret, we know that the carving was…

Awesome image gives you two night skies for the price of one

This breathtaking panorama combines the two hemispheres of the Milky Way galaxy into one. On top, we can see the northern stars from the Canary Islands, while on bottom we can see the southern sky from Chile’s Atacama desert. A NASA astronomer explains further: The photographers’ choice of locations offered locally dark skies enjoyed by…

Saying swear words actually stresses your brain

While there’s nothing quite like reeling off a string of profanities to blow off some steam, our brains might not agree with that sentiment. Saying swear words out loud actually triggers reactions deep in the emotion centers of the brain. That’s the finding of Professor Jeffrey Bowers and Dr. Christopher Pleydell-Pearce, both of the University…

Futurama gives the most twisted presidential history lesson ever

Yesterday’s Futurama took us on a psychedelic, president-licking journey through time, space, and disturbingly British alternate futures, complete with a rope-dealing Thomas Jefferson, vomiting Ulysses S. Grant, elbow-fetishizing James Madison, and badger-wielding Benjamin Franklin. Now that’s what I call history! “All the President’s Heads” finds Professor Farnsworth sprucing up his family tree, eager to show…