Annalee Newitz

At MIT, engineers are taught that scifi is crucial to do good science

MIT is one of the premiere science and technology universities in the United States. And now students there are being asked to consider the consequences of their inventions — by reading science fiction in class. Over at The Atlantic, Rebecca Rosen has a terrific interview with the creators of this innovative course. Writes Rosen: This…

Here’s an incredible statistic that will give you hope for the future

Deforestation is causing some of the world’s worst environmental problems. So it may shock you to discover that deforestation in Brazil, one of the worst-hit regions, has dropped by 80% in the past 8 years. Photo via NASA This week, the Economist has a big package of stories devoted to how economic growth and environmental…

There are trace amounts of arsenic in the water supply, and it turns out that even this mild exposure can do lasting damage. In the New York Times today, Deborah Blum explores the dangers of arsenic poisoning in the U.S., and around the world. New evidence suggests it’s much worse than we thought.

The Unexpected Places Where Artificial Intelligence Will Emerge

We often imagine that artificial intelligence will be created by mad engineers who build a big box that starts thinking. But is that really how would AI develop in real life? Probably not. AI could emerge from computer systems that are part of our everyday lives right now. Here are some possibilities. Photo: Google/Connie Zhou…

Liquid Fuel, From the Sun

The future of solar energy could be a liquid fuel you put into your gas tank. The New Yorker just published an article I wrote about an incredible lab where scientists making that dream real. They’re building the prototype for a device that could convert water, sunlight and carbon into tomorrow’s gasoline. Here’s how the…

They are friends, not evil machines

There’s a lot of propaganda in the media about how walkers can be dangerous and dirty. But they are the most gentle friends in the world. I once saw a coil leg model carefully stepping over some tree frogs that were crossing the road. Just because they’re big and bulky doesn’t mean they’ll hurt you.…

SharkNATO is real!

Remember when Thunder Levin, the writer of Sharknado, said that when he was approached to write the film he misheard and thought they were pitching a movie called SharkNATO? About a daring international treaty organization battling a shark army? NOW IT IS A THING. https://gizmodo.com/we-asked-the-writer-of-sharknado-some-very-serious-ques-736131336 To be more specific, Jennell (AKA @mixmediologist on Twitter) has…

Burningly awesome Norwegian metal video channels Dune

Norwegian metal band Kvelertak has just released this fantastic animated video for their single “Evig Vandrar.” What is happening? I don’t know, but it’s full of evil laser robots on a desert planet, fighting Fremen-esque soldiers. Just watch it! The video was directed by Torjus Førre Erfjord, and the song comes from the band’s 2013…

The floating city was rebuilding itself with remarkable efficiency

Even as the columns and elevated floors cracked in the fury of the heat storm, the city’s microbiome was repairing everything. Shattered rock hung suspended from the city walls, held together only by a membrane. And as sunlight flooded the valley, houses filled in their own cracks with bacterial cement. Aikoo lives in Shenzen. You…

Ancient merchants are responsible for modern horse genetics

Thousands of years ago, a vast trade route called the Silk Road stretched from China all the way to Turkey and into Europe. Now it appears that modern horses are the result of trades and treks on this route. Cambridge University zoologist Vera Warmuth analyzed DNA from horses in a wide range of locations on…

How to measure the power of a science fiction story

Too often, we hear that a science fiction story has “succeeded” if it predicts the future accurately. But that’s the wrong measure of success. The most powerful works of SF don’t describe the future — they change it. It’s true that SF stories predicted things like satellites, smart phones, and gay marriage before they happened.…

In the coastal UK town of Dungeness, the extinct short-haired bumblebee has returned and is thriving. This is fantastic news, especially since bee extinctions are a serious concern. Without bees, it will be almost impossible to raise crops like apples, onions and broccoli that depend on bees for fertilization. Image by Nikki Gammans

Here’s how engineers salvaged Italy’s massive shipwreck

Yesterday, engineers successfully led one of the largest salvage operations in history on the shipwrecked Costa Concordia, which smashed into a small Italian island twenty months ago. Workers were able to right the ship in roughly 19 hours. This graphic shows how they did it, and how they’ll float it away. Don Foley created this…

In the abandoned human school, ravens were learning to read

They didn’t have elegant names, nor a brand-name college ahead of them. But after the Crash, even a humble raven might count herself luckier than a human. Now, something was changing the corvids. They were picking out human words on scraps of wilting paper in the hallways. With all the humans gone, the birds supposed,…

The Bizarre Evolution of the Word “Cyber”

Today, cyber means war. But back in the 1990s, it meant sex — at least, the kind of sex you can have in a chat room. Why did the word change, and where did it originally come from? It all started with “cybernetics,” an obscure term popularized by a mathematician named Norbert Wiener in the…

Was our universe created by a four-dimensional black hole?

Based on what we know of our universe, many cosmologists believe it all began when the Big Bang spat a bunch of matter into being. But a lot of questions remain. That’s why a Canadian astrophysicist has suggested that there’s another possibility. Maybe our universe began with a 4D black hole? Writing in Nature, Zeeya…

Meet io9’s first community editor, Ria Misra!

Please welcome Ria Misra, io9’s first community editor. She’ll be fighting for the users, which means if you have questions or problems with comments, you can ask her. Plus, she’ll be working on posts designed to showcase the brilliance and awesomeness of io9’s commenter community. Ria has written about farmers hacking agricultural equipment to deal…

With our tentacles we bravely fought

When the invaders breached our temples, we had to unbury the old weapon. It was our only hope. When its tentacles pierced the invading ship, everything inside would become food for its incubating young. Our final task, if we survived, would be to bury the remains before the next weapon was born. Aaron Limonick is…

Dogs basically don’t care if you are a robot or a human

Your dog is not going to miss you after the robot uprising. In a recent experiment with sociable robots — who are designed to emulate human social behavior — scientists found that dogs learned quickly how to interact with robots just as if they were human. The scientists designed two experiments — one with a…

The perfect t-shirts for ninjas and space travelers

It’s time for the weekend, and that means putting on your best party t-shirts to wow the world with your sophisticated tastes. And we’ve got two tees for you right here: one for you ninja bunnies and one for the tourists who are ready to visit Neptune’s moon Triton. Nobody will ever question your fashion…