Annalee Newitz

How many of your health supplements are actually snake oil?

Recent studies have shown that many vitamins and supplements do little for our health and are a waste of money. This chart will make it abundantly clear how true that is. In this brilliant chart by David McCandless from 2010, you can see a gorgeous visualization of how many supplements are actually helpful — based…

Watch as scientists levitate these objects with sound waves

Using ultrasound, a team of Japanese scientists has levitated small particles, and moved them around mid-air. It’s incredible to see. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen ultrasonic levitation, but it’s a small step toward being able to move objects around once they’re off the ground. Write the researchers in a paper just posted to…

Watch this video if you want to know how to eat light

Photosynthesis is the chemical process that allows plants to get their energy from carbon dioxide and light. It’s one of the most amazing adaptations in any life form. It’s also incredibly complicated. Start the new year right by learning how it works, in this video.

The true origin of “squee!”

Among fans, “squee” has become a word that sums up all our feelings of reckless abandon when we wholeheartedly fall in love with a story or character. New Firefly movie? Squee! Shirtless Benedict Cumberbatch photos revealed? Squee! The next Game of Thrones book is out? SQUEE!!! But squee was first used as comic book sound-effect…

9 Extraordinary Underground Cities

Humans like to build cities that reach for the sky, but sometimes they also build downward. Whether for protection, or just because they can, we’ve created many cities beneath the Earth’s crust – or dug deep into the rocky faces of mountains. Here are nine of the most awesome. Photograph by Martin Gray/National Geographic 1.…

New discovery reveals 2100 could be a “catastrophic” year

A new study on environmental changes suggests that our future may be warmer than we thought — 4 degrees C warmer, to be exact. That’s how much hotter the planet will be in 2100, as a result of changes in cloud cover. And this could prove catastrophic for human life. Over at the Guardian, Damian…

The most hopeful prediction yet for liberty in 2014

In the United States, the Fourth Amendment regulates citizens’ right to privacy from the government. Unfortunately it was written over 200 years ago, long before mass electronic surveillance. But now there are hopeful signs that interpretations of the Fourth Amendment may get much-needed updates in 2014. Cyberlaw expert and privacy advocate Jennifer Granick has a…

Have we been dramatically underestimating elephant intelligence?

We’ve long known that elephants are intelligent animals, who remember migration routes for decades and appear to mourn their dead. But a new study suggests we may have been underestimating them — because our methods of testing intelligence in animals are biased. In a fascinating National Geographic article, Karl Gruber describes new intelligence experiments on…

It’s time for the sparkly rainbow version of Game of Thrones

What if the famous Trapper Keeper artist Lisa Frank was living in Westros, designing all the house sigils? You’d be dying at the end of a glitter sword, and slain by pink dragon fire. Artist ArterialMotive has posted these awesome Lisa Frank sigils over on Tumblr. You should check out more of ArterialMotive’s work there!…

Less than half of U.S. Republicans now believe in evolution

US Republicans are a conservative party, but even just two decades ago they were pro-science, generously funding many of the nation’s greatest science programs like NASA. But not anymore. Now, a new Pew survey shows that only 43% of Republicans believe in evolution. https://gizmodo.com/what-is-public-science-and-why-do-you-need-it-5834462 According to Pew Research, we’re at a tipping point — belief…

Want to know why the sexy e-book Moan for Bigfoot has been downloaded over 100,000 times? Fandom expert Bonnie Burton explains monster erotica to you, over at C|Net.

Here’s why Google is building a robot army

For the past couple of weeks, we’ve all been wondering why Google bought Boston Dynamics, the company that makes those creepy Big Dog and PETMAN robots for the military. This comes after the company announced a project to eliminate death, and after building a secret installation out of cargo crates on a barge in San…

Heat maps reveal where you feel emotions in your body

Emotions are as much physical as they are mental, and it appears that people from a wide range of cultures feel their emotions in the same places on their bodies. This map shows where those places are — from the blush of shame, to that warm lower-belly feeling in love. According to Gemma Tarlach, writing…

Want to close the gender gap? Give men paternity leave.

One of the biggest problems for young families is dividing up childcare duties. Women still get saddled with the bulk of the work, which can cause stress and undermine their careers. But many countries have found a solution to the problem: paternity leave. More freedom for men has meant more for women too. Photo via…

How synthetic biology could save bats (and the world)

One of the most terrifying epidemics of the modern era isn’t among humans at all. It’s a deadly fungus that attacks bats in the Americas, and it has an almost 100 percent fatality rate. A bat extinction could destroy humanity, too — but some scientists think there’s an unusual solution on the horizon. Image via…

Help build a better future by majoring in English

We’re living in an era when jobs in finance, science and technology are valued far more than they should be, if we want to build a better world. The future needs English majors. Image via Luzinterruptus Writing in the New York Times over the weekend, book editor Gerald Howard says that we still need people…

Get ready for the banana pandemic to destroy your favorite fruit

A highly-contagious form of fungus sometimes called Panama disease has devastated crops in Asia, and has now been found in Mozambique. It sounds like a joke, but this pandemic is deadly serious and could affect the world’s fruit supply. Earlier this month, the scientific journal Nature published an article about Mozambique’s efforts to contain the…

The Best of io9’s Science and History Stories in 2013

This year, io9 brought you in-depth explainer stories on topics ranging from physics and history, to cognitive science and the politics of teaching evolution in schools. Here are 23 of the most exciting ones which you may have missed. These are our best features of the year. You can also check out our stories about…

First trailer for Transcendence shows Johnny Depp going full AI

It’s starting to look like 2014 is going to be the year of artificial intelligence movies. First Her, now Transcendence, look at what happens to humanity when AIs live among us. Yesterday we got some interesting teasers for this movie, and now we’ve got the complete trailer. It’s hard to tell from whether it’s going…

Possibly the most terrifying dinosaur-related movie I have ever seen

I know what I’ll be watching this weekend as a palate cleanser after Walking with Dinosaurs. It will be Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills (from Troma, of course). This gem is from 1997, and it’s awesomely terrible in every respect. According to IMDB: Pixie is cursed with turning into a Pterodactyl when her husband is…