Annalee Newitz, Author at Gizmodo

This is what it looks like when a bullet shatters a strawberry

Every once in a while, especially on a Monday, you have to visit Alan Sailer’s Flickr stream. He’s the master of using high speed photography to capture images of pellets from a pellet gun hitting everything from frozen strawberries to Christmas ornaments (actually, he has a special section devoted to “the war against Christmas”), candy…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 23

Your next tupperware set could be made with bacteria

Want to make some plastic? Take a vat of the common bacteria E. coli and feed it a bunch of sugar. Over a few days, it will secrete a non-natural chemical used to make everything from tupperware to spandex. All it takes is a little genetic engineering, and the E. coli bacteria who live in…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 23

2011 Nebula Winners Announced

And the 2011 Nebula Award Winners are: NOVEL: Connie Willis: BLACKOUT/ALL CLEAR NOVELLA: Rachel Swirsky: “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window” NOVELLETTE: Eric James Stone: “That Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made” SHORT STORY: Tied between Kij Johnson’s “Ponies” and Harlan Ellison’s “How Interesting: A Tiny Man” BRADBURY: Christopher Nolan: INCEPTION NORTON:…

Books & Comics Annalee Newitz May 22

Watch a comet crash into the sun over and over

If you’re hungry for apocalyptic images (and who isn’t?) I recommend this video, of a comet spotted by an amateur astronomer earlier this month as it smashed dramatically into the sun. That’s right, even a wee comet made of nothing but ice and rock can cause a giant flame to leap from the sun’s surface…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 21

On the Supernatural season finale, there cannot be democracy in heaven

Many of us are probably still reeling from last night’s two-hour season finale of Supernatural, in which all the bad things we expected came to pass – but in a much more deeply disturbing way than one might imagine. But this is Supernatural, so there was also quite a bit of fun, and clever tweaks…

Television Annalee Newitz May 21

The hidden posthuman messages in Pixar movies

Futurist Kyle Munkittrick has an interesting essay about Pixar movies over at Discover’s Science Not Fiction blog, where he argues that most of the studio’s films are offering a message about how non-human creatures (like robots or rats) are just as sentient as humans are, and deserve to be treated like people. He sees this…

Movies Annalee Newitz May 20

X-Men goes Duran Duran

You gotta get down on Friday, and what better way to do it than with these Nagel-inspired tees featuring some our favorite X-Men, looking like they were torn from the cover of a 1980s Duran Duran album. These lovely bits of original 80s cheese come from Mighty Fine, which is selling them in multiple colors…

Books & Comics Annalee Newitz May 20

Deep inside the biggest storm we’ve ever seen on Saturn

Last year, Saturn’s ordinarily serene surface was torn apart by a storm that grew within a month to cover an entire hemisphere with howling winds, enormous “beacons” of infrared light, and even icier cold than usual. Now scientists take us inside that storm for the first time, using satellite images. The storm affected several layers…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 20

The history of bedwetting

This is the best title for any scholarly paper published in the year 2011: “Urine trouble: a social history of bedwetting and its regulation.” Snort! Here’s historian Chris Hurl’s abstract, published in the prestigious journal History of the Human Sciences: Bedwetting has confounded the presumed boundaries of the human body, existing in a fluid space,…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 20

The smell that caused ancient mammals’ brains to double in size

190 million years ago, there were no mammals on Earth. Instead, there were furry, mouse-like creatures no bigger than a paperclip. And they suddenly began to grow brains 10 times larger than their relative body size. What happened? The story of the mammalian brain’s rapid growth is well-known to paleontologists. The question is, which parts…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 19

More amazing technological improvements to io9

Great news for anyone who reads io9 from a mobile, iPad, or biological implant device! Our kickass tech team created spiffy new designs for io9 mobile. Yes, check it right now on your smart nipple! Doesn’t it look great? Also, the great commenter overlords have seen fit to restore heart functionality to comments. No, that…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 19

Voluntary amputees opt for bionic hands over real ones

After being electrocuted at work, a young Austrian man named Patrick found that he could no longer move one of his hands. He lived with the injury for a few years, but then decided he’d rather amputate the hand and replace it with something bionic – a synthetic hand controlled by nerve signals from his…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 19

It was an ordinary day, until a giant bird stole the skyscraper next door

Had the building sprouted massive wings and uprooted itself? They wondered, and pointed. Perhaps it was the kind of anomaly that researchers would classify as “other” in charts devoted to probable natural disasters for the region. https://gizmodo.com/chart-reveals-what-natural-disaster-is-most-likely-to-k-5803268 Sometimes the artists over at ConceptArt.org organize a truly inspired challenge, and the call to create a “Winged…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 19

A dark magic web series starring Supernatural’s Misha Collins

If you need more supernatural horror in your life – and who doesn’t? – you’ll want to get in on the ground floor for new web series Divine. It’s about fighting evil, and stars Supernatural’s greatest angel, Misha Collins. The series creators have filmed the first two episodes, and are raising money via Kickstarter to…

Television Annalee Newitz May 18

Chart reveals what natural disaster is most likely to kill you in America

A couple of years ago, two geographers created one of the most chilling maps you’ll ever see – it shows what kinds of natural hazards are most likely to kill you in America. And which regions are the most deadly. After poring over statistics compiled between 1970 and 2004, University of South Carolina geographers Kevin…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 18

The food riots have started. What do you do now?

We live with the constant threat of famine. Many parts of the world, like Ethiopia, have seen their populations starve repeatedly over the past decades. What’s the best way to deal with it? Now, you can decide. Here’s your scenario. A terrible famine has broken out in a geographical region of the world that’s bigger…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 18

Massive study offers more evidence that environment causes asthma

Though asthma is caused by many things, there are no mistaking the symptoms: your airways are swollen shut, and you can barely breathe. Now a new study of thousands of people reveals how asthma starts. Often, it’s with second-hand smoke. That smoke could come from people around you, or smoke-like environmental toxins. The bad news…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 17

In serialized musical novella “Linda,” a hollow Earth story told with ukeleles

I’ll just say it up front: I’m a fan of hollow Earth stories like Journey to the Center of the Earth, and I am also (unrelatedly) a fan of ukelele music. Which is why I was flabbergasted to discover that somebody is writing a musical novella that’s a hollow Earth story. To get a taste…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 17

Last flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavor begins with a ring of fire

It’s the penultimate flight of NASA’s Space Shuttle program, and it began yesterday with an amazing launch that took Endeavor dramatically through a layer of cloud, leaving behind a ring of fire that looked as if the vessel had zoomed into a wormhole. You can get this incredible photograph in several sizes over at Stuck…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 17

Your next ocean vacation could be on an abandoned oil platform

What do you do with an oil platform after it has outlived its usefulness? You’ve got this giant structure, set up for people to live and work on it, and it’s solidly sunk into the ocean floor. Now designers are saying that the best way to deal with these leftovers of the oil economy is…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 17

Annalee Newitz

This is what it looks like when a bullet shatters a strawberry

Your next tupperware set could be made with bacteria

2011 Nebula Winners Announced

Watch a comet crash into the sun over and over

On the Supernatural season finale, there cannot be democracy in heaven

The hidden posthuman messages in Pixar movies

X-Men goes Duran Duran

Deep inside the biggest storm we’ve ever seen on Saturn

The history of bedwetting

The smell that caused ancient mammals’ brains to double in size

More amazing technological improvements to io9

Voluntary amputees opt for bionic hands over real ones

It was an ordinary day, until a giant bird stole the skyscraper next door

A dark magic web series starring Supernatural’s Misha Collins

Chart reveals what natural disaster is most likely to kill you in America

The food riots have started. What do you do now?

Massive study offers more evidence that environment causes asthma

In serialized musical novella “Linda,” a hollow Earth story told with ukeleles

Last flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavor begins with a ring of fire

Your next ocean vacation could be on an abandoned oil platform

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