Esther Inglis-Arkell, Author at Gizmodo

Congress Had a Crazy Plan for Nation-Wide On-Demand Rainstorms

You have to love the optimism of the 1800s. There was nothing people thought they couldn’t do, including irrigating the entire United States by strategically setting fire to parts of it. For three decades in the 1800s, the United States government tried to plant trees. They wanted to plant them in a wide swath, stretching…

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Anger a Skunk, And This is What Your Last Unstinky Moment Looks Like

Yep, this is what a skunk looks like the moment before it sprays you—all eyes and anus. However, if you’re lucky, before you get sprayed and run shrieking off into the night, this skunk will give you a dance and a handstand. Spotted skunks aren’t as well-known as their striped relatives. They’re not as chic,…

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This is Why a Fire Burns Everything But the Matches That Start It

California is in its fire season again, and drier than usual, so many of us have spent days watching the devastation that a fire can cause. Few things survive it, even in bits and pieces. Often, though, the matches that began the fire are the most recognizable things left behind. Why is that? Diatoms swim…

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Why This Rainbow-Colored Object Gets Put Into Your Drink

Something you put in your drinks has a special property that, along with special polarization, causes it to erupt into rainbows. Find out what it is, and what makes it so colorful. This is a thin section of an ordinary ice cube. Seen through a pair of polarized filters, it’s colored because ice has the…

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Check Out What Happens When a Water Droplet is Pierced by a Needle

Here’s a fluid dynamics video that shows us a water droplet falling onto a hydrophobic needle. It’s pretty cool! Instead of spreading into a puddle, the drop turns into a hollow crown of moving water. Here we see a fight between a droplet of water, full of molecules that attract each other, and a hydrophobic…

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How We Discovered Alzheimer’s Disease

Today we hear a great deal about Alzheimer’s disease, but relatively little about its discoverer. Its discoverer had little idea how famous his few case studies would become. Here’s how Alzheimer’s went from a medical anomaly to one of the most known and feared medical conditions in the world. Auguste Deter Auguste Deter was only…

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How Much Whale Oil Is There in Space? More Than You’d Think.

This is a real question. Whale oil is a wonderful industrial lubricant and remains liquid at extremely low temperatures. It was almost certainly used in some NASA technology over the decades. But how much whale oil have we sent out into the cosmos? While it’s more likely that NASA currently uses synthetic lubricants meant to…

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Why Do Ice Cubes Get Cloudy in the Middle?

If you want to get a visual on what’s in your water, just pour it into an ice cube container and freeze it. Here’s why all the stuff that’s in your water aggregates in the middle, and how you can make it not do that. Your water is filled with all kinds of things. Not…

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What Happens When You Strap Cameras to the Backs of Zoo Animals?

The Human Zoo is a short film, produced for Sony by Stinkdigital, that straps cameras to zoo animals. According to the filmmaker, that’s even harder than it looks. See a rhino’s ears twitch in annoyance, and learn what happened after that. Who can look at a penguin wearing a harness and not want more? We…

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Yellow Poop is Hereditary. Who Knew?

If your poop is much lighter colored than nearly everyone else’s, it could be a sign that you have an absolutely harmless medical condition. And your parents are to blame. Three to seven percent of Americans have Gilbert syndrome. The syndrome is caused by a mutation on the UGT1A1 gene—specifically a mutation on the promoter…

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This Bird Spends Over Six Straight Months in the Air

This is an alpine swift. You can tell by the name that it’s a fast bird, but its real talent has just recently been discovered. It spends over half of the year in the air. Then scientists from the Swiss Ornithological Institute put trackers on alpine swifts in Switzerland and observed the migrations that the…

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I’m About to Pour a Weak Acid on Your Face. Are You Safe?

Let’s say someone offers you a lot of money to pour a vial of acid on your face. They won’t tell you what kind, but they will reassure you that it’s a “weak acid.” Should you do it? The answer, of course, is no. Even if they show you the money up front, it’s going…

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What It’s Like to Have the Oldest Phone in San Francisco

I live in the world’s most famous tech city, surrounded by the most advanced personal electronic devices. None of them, however, grab quite as much attention as my own phone does. My phone was already old-fashioned when I bought it eight years ago, and by now, even a drug dealer would be embarrassed to own…

Tech News Esther Inglis-Arkell

Luke Howard Named All the Clouds You Learned About in Grade School

You know about cirrus, stratus, and cumulus clouds, but do you know about the man who gave them those names? The names are the result of one guy—a weather (and Latin) nerd named Luke Howard. Before the 1800s, people used any old words to describe the wind, rain, and clouds. This led to some surprisingly…

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The Kodkod is the Cutest Cat You Never Knew Existed

The kodkod is the smallest wildcat—smaller, even, than the average house cat. It’s a tiny, Andean pocket panther that takes tree-dwelling to a whole new level. Everything about this cat is small and high up. It is the smallest cat in Americas, and it has the smallest range of any cat in the Americas. The…

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These Baboons Eat Shark Eggs

These are Chacma baboons. For the most part, they scavenge on land, but once every two weeks in the spring, they head out to the edge of the ocean to eat the babies of the sea’s alpha predator. Papio ursinus, or Chacma baboons, live around the southern tip of Africa. They’re notable for their size—males…

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I Love This Study On Activated Charcoal’s Effect on Farts

Every day you learn something new, and that’s great. But some days are extra special. Some days, you learn things about the “fecal liberation of intestinal gases.” Those days are the best. I knew that activated charcoal water filters existed. These filters, alternately known as granular activated carbon filters, are made of grains of charcoal…

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Farmers Stumbled on Genetics That Stop Chickens Loving Their Offspring

Birds have a quality known as broodiness. It means that, after they lay their eggs, they stick around and take care of those eggs. Most commercial chickens don’t have that quality. And it looks like their complete disregard for their offspring results from one genetic mutation. Broodiness, in chickens, is not a trait that farmers…

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Watch This Brown Dwarf’s “Northern Lights”

Brown dwarfs are not quite stars. Some aspects of them resemble planets, like the fact that they have their own versions of “northern lights,” which can be seen from very far away. One of these distant auroras has been captured in the video above One of the major benefits to living on the Earth is…

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One Great Teacher May Have Turned Western Civilization Towards Science

We don’t know much about Strato of Lampsacus. None of his books survived to the present day. But he might have turned western civilization towards the sciences, by teaching just the right guy in just the right way. Strato of Lampsacus lived in the fourth and third century BC, and spent most of his time…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Esther Inglis-Arkell

Congress Had a Crazy Plan for Nation-Wide On-Demand Rainstorms

Anger a Skunk, And This is What Your Last Unstinky Moment Looks Like

This is Why a Fire Burns Everything But the Matches That Start It

Why This Rainbow-Colored Object Gets Put Into Your Drink

Check Out What Happens When a Water Droplet is Pierced by a Needle

How We Discovered Alzheimer’s Disease

How Much Whale Oil Is There in Space? More Than You’d Think.

Why Do Ice Cubes Get Cloudy in the Middle?

What Happens When You Strap Cameras to the Backs of Zoo Animals?

Yellow Poop is Hereditary. Who Knew?

This Bird Spends Over Six Straight Months in the Air

I’m About to Pour a Weak Acid on Your Face. Are You Safe?

What It’s Like to Have the Oldest Phone in San Francisco

Luke Howard Named All the Clouds You Learned About in Grade School

The Kodkod is the Cutest Cat You Never Knew Existed

These Baboons Eat Shark Eggs

I Love This Study On Activated Charcoal’s Effect on Farts

Farmers Stumbled on Genetics That Stop Chickens Loving Their Offspring

Watch This Brown Dwarf’s “Northern Lights”

One Great Teacher May Have Turned Western Civilization Towards Science

Marshall Emberton III Bluetooth Speaker Isn’t Supposed to Be This Cheap, Even the New Midnight Blue at an All-Time Low

2026 MacBook Pro (M5 Pro) Breaks Into Its First Sale on Amazon, While Apple Store Still Has None on the New Laptop

Don’t Hold Your Breath for a ‘Super Smash Bros.’ Movie

What’s Actually the Best Way to Get a Good Night’s Sleep? We Asked Scientists

Game to Lose Online Mode After Its Server Partner Pivots to You’ll Never Guess What

This $400 (Not) AI Keychain Is Pointless, Extravagant, and Weirdly Lovable

New Getaway Means Subaru Has an Electric SUV in Every Size

pCloud Easter Special: One Payment, Lifetime Storage for Entire Family (68% Off)

Getting Stuck Inside a Glitching Robotaxi Is a Whole New Thing to Be Scared of

Artemis 2 Live Updates: Humanity’s Epic Return to the Moon 🔴

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

AirPods Max 2 Review: Still Ridiculously Expensive and Ridiculously Nice

DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

Aqara Smart Lock U400 Review: Hands-free Unlocking at Its Best

MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Review: A Solid 2-in-1 Laptop With Some Glaring Flaws

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

Nothing Headphone A vs. Headphone 1: Which Pair of ANC Wireless Headphones Wins?