Esther Inglis-Arkell, Author at Gizmodo

Finally! A black hole that you can visit and survive!

Want a trip through a black hole without having to experience that pesky death? You’re in luck. There’s a special kind of black hole that’s not just survivable, but might get you to another time, or another universe. Black holes are, traditionally, the scariest things in the universe. Huge, mysterious, inescapable, they wander through the…

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How physics ended the nighttime radio war between the US and Mexico

The 1930s witnessed a technological war between the US and Mexico. Radio channels overlapped with each other, turning the nighttime radio world into bilingual chaos. How did it end? Physics! And diplomacy. In the early 1900s, as radio stations gained popularity, the world became a different place. National stations rose up, letting people hear voices…

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Scientists are hiding under your bed

Do you hear a scritch-scritch-scritch sound coming from under your bed? Don’t worry. It’s just a scientists down there, recording your uninteresting, “egocentric” chatter and preserving it forever. Ah, the 1930s were an invigorating time for science! They combined the beginnings of modern equipment and methodology with a complete lack of anything resembling ethics. For…

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Arrow makes each character do a 180. Twice.

Yep, the characters get twisted right round, baby, right round. And since the episode is all about learning to focus on what you like, instead living in what you hate, I’ll follow its advice and recount what I like. (Okay. And a little bit of what I hate.) I can’t decide if the plot of…

Television Esther Inglis-Arkell

How a cognitive bias made people think their neighbors were spies

We all have cognitive biases. Most often, these biases stick us with nothing more than bad cellphone service or a little gambling debt. Occasionally, though, they cause us to accuse our neighbors of espionage. The reason why is called the Clustering Illusion. Randomness isn’t obvious, and there’s a way to demonstrate that. An interesting exercise,…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

How to make rainbow fire pumpkins!

Now is the time to gather the materials to make rainbow fire pumpkins. They’re both creepy and festive. So you’ve decided against nuts as your primary light source for this Halloween. That’s fair. Maybe instead, you could try something different with your jack-o-lantern. Get some drugstore materials and turn it into a rainbow flaming pumpkin…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

That time when Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat helped a gambler

Blaise Pascal was 17th century genius who invented the mechanical calculator. Pierre de Fermat is famous for a theorem that took three hundred years to prove. What could bring these two minds together? A washed up gambler, down on his luck. Once upon a time there was a French nobleman named Antoine Gombaud. He lived…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Use Giffen goods to exploit the poor in your dystopian society

So you’ve taken over the world. Good for you! But how are you going to make the most of your newfound kingdom? By wringing all the money you can out of the oppressed poor using Giffen goods. Welcome! First of all, let me salute you in your newfound status as supreme overlord of Earth. And…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

You can make nuts glow, people! Glowing nuts!

A week ago I urged you to light your house by setting nuts on fire. I was a fool! All you need to do is hit those nuts with a laser, and they’ll glow all by themselves. https://gizmodo.com/light-your-house-with-your-nuts-1432597685 I, personally, happen to like the scent of burning pumpkin so much that in years when I…

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The KGB conspiracy that attributed AIDS to the CIA

The Cold War contained a lot of ignominious events for all how participated in it. One of them lingers in conspiracy theories to this day. There was a conspiracy involved — just not the ones the theorist generally believe in. During the Cold War, the USSR started a disinformation campaign that blamed the creation of…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Condemn the innocent in two ways with Morton’s Fork

It’s nearly Halloween, so let’s learn the rhetorical rules of a good old-fashioned witch hunt. One of the most notorious of these rules is called Morton’s Fork, a paradox which has been used in everything from legal cases to strategy games. There are all kinds of paradoxes. Some arise from the kinks in philosophy. Some…

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The Semmelweis Reflex explains why people reject the new

Do people reflexively fear the new? They seem to reject it often enough that there’s a psychological syndrome to explain it. The Semmelweis Reflex is named after a guy who came up with a radical idea that could have saved thousands of lives — only to see everyone reject it and continue with the killing.…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Yes, there is such a thing as a “unit” of death

Back in 1970, when risk assessment became widely-known, people needed to understand risk — but without getting panicked. Assessors wanted to invent a non-scary term to communicate a very small risk of death. And thus the “micromort” was born. Often, people are confused by the fact that everything, even the most innocuous stuff, is risky.…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

All the ways to screw up a cat’s eyesight using science

After last week’s blind kittens in carousels, I thought I was done with creepy kitten vision experiments. It turns out, there’s a whole genre of them, and most of them deal in stripes. https://gizmodo.com/the-seriously-creepy-two-kitten-experiment-1442107174 Exactly how much the brain is preprogrammed, and how much can be reprogrammed, has always been a matter of debate. Insight…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

The best lines from last night’s Arrow

The last episode of Arrow left me mostly cold. This one, “Broken Dolls,” kicks it up considerably. Not only do we get a ton of twists — and hints of twists — we get a lot of priceless lines. Find out who said what. “We shouldn’t split up.” – Oliver Queen Who knew that Ollie…

Television Esther Inglis-Arkell

Corpse Wax: When Dead Bodies Don’t Decay

It’s a natural phenomenon that has puzzled people for thousands of years. Why do some corpses decay, while others extrude a thick wax, preserving the body inside for centuries? Pro tip for all you aspiring psycho killers – body disposal is very important. If you’re trying to hide your brilliant murder, you’ll be chilled by…

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That time doctors tried to make the pope into a vampire

Medical history is full of horror stories, but few could give rise to a horror movie. This one can. Over half a millennium ago, a misunderstanding about how blood circulation works nearly made the pope into nosferatu. In the late 1400s, medicine and manslaughter were pretty much indistinguishable from each other. While there were some…

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The bizarre theory that predicted a new state of matter

You may have heard of the Bose-Einstein Condensate because it is one of the states of matter. Like gas, liquid, or solid, it has its own properties. Predicted by a maverick physicist back in the early twentieth century, it was only proven to exist in 1995. And it’s pretty damn weird. You undoubtedly know one…

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How the Alphon became an outdated physics concept

What’s an alphon? Nothing whatsoever. But at one time, they might have been the thing that provide the basic building block of all chemistry. Let’s look at the science that might have been. It’s the first half of the twentieth century. Mendeleev has just come out with a basic table of elements that looks like…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Bonini’s Paradox proves that you can’t make a useful AND accurate model

Charles Bonini was a business professor who noticed a problem with the way people understand complex situations. When he investigated, he found that it wasn’t a problem so much as an unresolvable paradox. These days, it’s popular to compare the brain to a computer. After all, a brain and a computer both work via a…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Esther Inglis-Arkell

Finally! A black hole that you can visit and survive!

How physics ended the nighttime radio war between the US and Mexico

Scientists are hiding under your bed

Arrow makes each character do a 180. Twice.

How a cognitive bias made people think their neighbors were spies

How to make rainbow fire pumpkins!

That time when Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat helped a gambler

Use Giffen goods to exploit the poor in your dystopian society

You can make nuts glow, people! Glowing nuts!

The KGB conspiracy that attributed AIDS to the CIA

Condemn the innocent in two ways with Morton’s Fork

The Semmelweis Reflex explains why people reject the new

Yes, there is such a thing as a “unit” of death

All the ways to screw up a cat’s eyesight using science

The best lines from last night’s Arrow

Corpse Wax: When Dead Bodies Don’t Decay

That time doctors tried to make the pope into a vampire

The bizarre theory that predicted a new state of matter

How the Alphon became an outdated physics concept

Bonini’s Paradox proves that you can’t make a useful AND accurate model

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