Annalee Newitz

This City Grew from a Seed

I know it doesn’t say this on the box, but sometimes a few things go wrong when you plant a city. That’s why it’s a good idea to use your garden shears early in the process rather than later. 신욱 위 is a concept artist in Seoul, who has done a lot of art for…

Here Is What Real Online Civil Disobedience Looks Like

Internet politics aren’t just about trolling and doxxing. In new book The Coming Swarm, internet researcher Molly Sauter takes us into the secret history of civil disobedience online, and reveals a world where people fight for justice, without hashtags or personal glory. These activists do it because they believe in something bigger than themselves. Excerpt…

A new study suggests that Americans live in a “culture of miserliness.” Why do Americans give away so little of their money and time, compared to people in other cultures? And is it making people in the U.S. more unhappy? The authors of an analysis of the study say it is.

It’s Looking More and More Likely That We Live in a Multiverse

Could our massive universe be just one of many, like a bubble in a frothy stream of cosmos-spawning stuff? It sounds like something out of a 1970s British scifi novel, but it’s become a popular explanation for the origin of our universe. But how can we test this hypothesis, when we’re stuck in just one…

This Bizarre, Glittering Cloud Just Appeared in the Sky over Australia

The ABC is reporting an incredible sight in the skies over east Victoria, in the Gippsland area. It looks like a UFO, but it’s entirely natural. Photo by Peter Fell via ABC News No, it’s not chemtrails. Instead, it’s a type of cloud called a Fallstreak Hole. You may recognize that it glimmers in a…

A Drug that Turns Radioactive Elements into Harmless Chemicals

After the nuclear power plant accident at Fukushima, scientists around the world went into high gear, trying to figure out how we could respond next time. And for chemists at Berkeley Lab, that means trying to develop a pill that people could take to neutralize radioactive elements in the environment. As chemist Rebecca Abergel explains…

A Fascinating Documentary on Crows, One of the World’s Smartest Animals

There’s no better way to celebrate Halloween than by snuggling up with this mesmerizing PBS documentary, A Murder of Crows, first aired in 2010 and now available free online. We actually get to see some of the experiments that offered solid evidence that crows are breathtakingly smart tool users. Spend an hour getting to know…

Lockheed Scientist Gives Deathbed Interview About UFOs at Area 51

Boyd Bushman says he was a senior scientist at Lockheed Martin, and before he died he wanted the world to know about all the classified data he’d gathered about aliens from top-secret sources at Area 51. So he did this final interview, complete with pictures. Bushman has some weirdly detailed descriptions of where the aliens…

The One Basic Fact About History That Time Travelers Always Forget

One of the staples of time travel stories is the idea that our heroes will visit earlier geological periods in Earth’s history. Of course — because they’ll want to see dinosaurs with ostrich feathers and giant millipedes. But they generally forget something very important about Earth’s past. If you’re going back more than 30 million…

Arsenic in drinking water is causing health problems — but not the ones you might expect. In fact, new research into arsenic ingestion has led doctors to believe that it’s a possible cause of cardiovascular disease. Over at the New York Times, Deborah Blum reports on the connection between pollution and heart disease.

If You Really Want to See the Future of City Life, Watch This Video

Assuming we don’t destroy ourselves in a mountain of toxic garbage, humans are going to start building more sustainable, environmentally-friendly cities. And that means a lot more animals will be sharing our cities with us. Here’s a glimpse of what that might mean. https://gizmodo.com/is-this-the-city-of-the-future-5988021 In the New Jersey suburb of Rockaway, two bears decided to…

At Last, It’s Time to Light the Sun

Once we’d completed geoengineering on the inside of the habitat, it was time to build a permanent light source. The tower’s illumination would generate enough energy to keep the plants and animals growing for millennia. We couldn’t wait to watch the ignition ceremony. There’s nothing like seeing first light. Andrey Maximov is a senior environmental…

Fan Service and Failed States on Person of Interest

Even though last night’s Person of Interest was a slightly goofy meta episode, with one character clearly intended to be a stand-in for fans of the show, it was also pretty intense. We now understand what the stakes are for the crime bosses of New York. Plus, Finch did something seriously out of character. This…

How the United States Looked to the Civilized World in 1803

In 1803, the United States was still struggling to be taken seriously as a nation. Still, it seemed promising enough that the great civilization known as the Ottoman Empire began to take notice of it. This gorgeous map is one of the earliest and most detailed that Ottoman geographers produced of the region. Over at…

How Ada Lovelace Became Famous Again

The career of computer science pioneer Ada Lovelace has been shrouded in mystery since her death in 1852. Even today her contributions to science are often overshadowed by the Victorian equivalent of Twitter gossip about her life. And yet that gossip is part of what made her life so futuristic. I’ve just been reading Ada’s…

io9 Book Club Is In Session! Let’s Talk About Karl Schroeder’s Lockstep

Welcome to the monthly meeting of the io9 Book Club. In October, we read Lockstep, by Karl Schroeder. Jump into comments to get started talking about it! For those unfamiliar with the io9 book club, here’s how it works: You read the book. We create a special book club post on io9 when the meeting…

From Primus, the Most Disturbing Interpretation of Willy Wonka Ever

Primus’ new album is devoted to creepy, incredible covers of songs from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. And we’ve got an exclusive debut of this lyric video for the single, “Pure Imagination.” The album is called Primus and the Chocolate Factory (of course) and there are even 5 golden tickets that go along with…

Actually, THIS Is the Most Batshit Insane Apocalypse Story

There are a lot of contenders for utterly crazy, nonsensical stories about the end of the world. But I’ll bet there’s one that you find the most mesmerizingly inexplicable. Which one is it? My pick, of course, is the movie Roller Blade, which isn’t even about rollerblades — it’s about rollerskating nuns who carry switchblades.…

Incredible Photographs of the Hungarian Internet Tax Protests

Thousands of people in Budapest, Hungary, protested an “internet tax” proposed by the country’s right-wing ruling party Fidesz. The tax would force Hungarians to pay 150 forints ($0.60) per gigabyte of data traffic. In these photographs taken by Cink‘s Attila Nagy, you can see the massive protest firsthand. https://cink.hu/demszky-gabor-is-ott-volt-a-fidesz-szekhaz-ostromanal-1651055036

Just in Time for Election Day, a Post-Apocalyptic Toronto in Pictures

Lo-fi scifi auteur Jim Munroe worked with three artists, Mathew Borrett, Terry Lau and Sanford Kong, to create these gorgeous images of a fallen Toronto. It’s just in time for the Canadian election, where notorious politician Rob Ford’s older brother Doug is currently polling pretty well in the Toronto mayoral race. Arachnid warning sign by…