Esther Inglis-Arkell, Author at Gizmodo

Hydrogen explosion vs. oxygen explosion — which one wins for biggest?

What’s the difference between a hydrogen explosion and an oxygen explosion? Quite a lot. Take a look at this succession of exploded balloons, and compare the booms. Oxygen, being present at many explosions, has gained a rather bad reputation. Some people think that oxygen is explosive. As we can see in this experiment, oxygen, while…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Why don’t you die after you have sex?

Did you or do you or will you enjoy your long stretch of reproductive years? According to Cole’s Paradox, you shouldn’t. Many species need just a tiny increase of fecundity in order to justify one shot at sex, followed by death. Find out why you “should” die after you copulate, and why you don’t. Semelparity…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

The principle of “near enough” proves anyone is psychic

So you’ve completed a psychic test. The test has turned up exactly zero psychics. How can you get a psychic data with no psychics? Use the law of “near enough” to expand the parameters of the test! It’s all about things that are almost coincidences — the sort of thing that inspire conspiracy theories the…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Why Hipsters Are All the Same

Are you sick of so many bearded, flannel-shirted, thick-rimmed-eyeglass wearers slowing down the lines in your coffee shop before they crowd up your sidewalk as they scoot their way to their artisan butchery class? Are you tired of that quirkily homogeneous mass of humanity? We’ll tell you why it exists. There’s a reason why there’s…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

7 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Clinical Trials

The clinical trial process is what every drug or medical device goes through before it comes to market. And it’s difficult for the public to understand for many reasons, including proprietary claims on information, complicated scientific jargon, bureaucracy, and good, old-fashioned corruption. We asked Molly Maloof, a doctor and a medical technology consultant, to help…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell and Dr. Molly Maloof

How to be a winner by being a nontransitive loser!

There are a set of special dice, called Efron’s Dice. Each die will win over the last. And it will keep going until there’s an ultimate winner – which will lose to the original loser. There’s a lesson, there, that frustrates many sports fans. Here’s how to snatch victory from the jaws (or even the…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

An experiment that might let us control events millions of years ago

Most of us have heard of the famous double-slit experiment. Usually it’s played out in a lab in seconds. But there’s one version, dreamt up by physicist John Archibald Wheeler, that can be played out over much of the galaxy, over millions of years. His thought experiment suggests that we could retroactively determine the fate…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

You are suffering from womb envy

Growing up in the modern world it’s impossible not to have knowledge of the famous Freudian concept of penis envy. Less well-known is the concept of womb envy, and even less well-known than that is the woman who came up with it. Karen Horney (pronounced horn-nigh) was born in Germany in 1885, a little less…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Why rhyming phrases are more persuasive

Want to convince someone of something? Make up a rhyme. They may think it’s cutesy, but they’ll still believe it more readily than if it were stated plainly. At least until they are asked to think about it a little. Rhymes are easy to remember because they contain their conclusion in their premise. “Red sky…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Prescription drugs can make you believe your partner is cheating on you

Othello Syndrome manifests itself as an irrational certainty that one’s spouse is sleeping around. Sometimes it comes out of nowhere, and usually it’s the result of an existing neurological problem. Occasionally, though, it’s the result of certain prescribed drugs. Here’s how a pill can make you think you’re being cheated on. Othello Syndrome Patients with…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

The genius who led the doomed fight for decimal time

Henri Poincaré was the brilliant mind who gave us the beginnings of chaos theory and Poincaré conjecture. He was also the doggedly persistent nut who was the last member of resistance to a twenty-four hour day and a sixty-minute hour. Let’s look at his doomed quest to decimate our day. Decimal, or metric, time has…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

This fizzy reaction could run your car — or make it explode

A little aluminum, a little lye, a little water, and quite a bit of fizz. That bubbling looks sedate, but it’s blown up a couple of trucks. And someday, who knows? It might be powering cars. We use aluminum too often in our daily lives to be much impressed by it. For us it’s just…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Why strange loops could be an argument for artificial intelligence

Strange loops can be many things, including musical tones, mathematical problems, and linguistic riddles. They also can be biological fact, and this fact might be translated into computer code or silicon chips. Here’s why a philosophical theory might show true artificial intelligence is possible. What Are Strange Loops? When following a simple loop, you know…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Don’t worry, you’re not as below average as you think you are

People, no offense to those who might be reading, are conceited nitwits who think they’re far better at things than they actually are. But it also turns out there are certain situations in which they are convinced they’re way worse than they actually are. Here’s how low self-esteem strikes a blow against accuracy. In general,…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

The Ant on a Rubber Rope Paradox

An ant is inching along a rope at one centimeter per second. The rope is made of rubber, and being stretched at a rate of kilometer per second. Will the ant ever reach the end? Here’s a paradox for people working on long, arduous projects. One of the more puzzling paradoxes out there is the…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Use the ventriloquism effect to find out if that dummy is possessed

The ventriloquism effect is what makes us think the ventriloquist’s dummy is talking, even though our ears should be able to hear that they aren’t. We can train ourselves out of it using a simple trick (but then we’d have to find out which dummies really are talking). Although it’s “the ventriloquism effect,” it could…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Why speed cameras don’t work as well as we think they do

Speed cameras have been put in at various intersections across the globe. Depending on who you ask, they were put in to bring in money or to reduce accidents. But here’s one reason why they don’t reduce accidents as much as we think they do. In the past we’ve talked about how extraordinary results cause…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

This illusion shows that you can’t keep track of where your hands go

If you have recently put your hand in something disgusting, take comfort. You haven’t been slimed as thoroughly as you had previously assumed. Your brain is making things worse (and longer) than they truly are. To be fair, the brain has a tough job. Every part of you is taking in information, and that information…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

The hospital that put people into a coma as a treatment

Doctor Harry Bailey promised people that he could cure them of drug addiction, depression, schizophrenia, anorexia, and nearly anything else. Then he sedated them for weeks. And he kept this up for 17 years. Chelmsford Hospital’s deep sleep ward was a quiet place to work. Aside from the staff, and the occasional visitor, everyone at…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Have you ever gotten high on Derbisol?

If you have, you are either living in South Korea, or lying, or possibly both. Derbisol is rarely discussed now, but at one point it was supposed to be the drug that caught out the kind of people who lie about taking drugs. Derbisol is a debatable urban legend. Exactly what it is, and how…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Esther Inglis-Arkell

Hydrogen explosion vs. oxygen explosion — which one wins for biggest?

Why don’t you die after you have sex?

The principle of “near enough” proves anyone is psychic

Why Hipsters Are All the Same

7 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Clinical Trials

How to be a winner by being a nontransitive loser!

An experiment that might let us control events millions of years ago

You are suffering from womb envy

Why rhyming phrases are more persuasive

Prescription drugs can make you believe your partner is cheating on you

The genius who led the doomed fight for decimal time

This fizzy reaction could run your car — or make it explode

Why strange loops could be an argument for artificial intelligence

Don’t worry, you’re not as below average as you think you are

The Ant on a Rubber Rope Paradox

Use the ventriloquism effect to find out if that dummy is possessed

Why speed cameras don’t work as well as we think they do

This illusion shows that you can’t keep track of where your hands go

The hospital that put people into a coma as a treatment

Have you ever gotten high on Derbisol?

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