Esther Inglis-Arkell, Author at Gizmodo

The scientific feud that ended in an execution

There have been a few famous feuds in science history, but there’s only been one that left a scientist headless. Unfortunately for all of history, in this case, the better scientist lost. That’s politics for you. Antoine Lavoisier is considered, by some, to be the father of modern chemistry. He’s one of the scientists that…

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The first robot-on-human fatality was in 1979

Robots killing humans is an old science fiction concept, but it’s always associated with the future — something that awaits humanity sometime in the next few centuries. But it’s something that has already happened, specifically in a factory in 1979. This robot, unlike drones or Terminators, wasn’t designed to be a weapon. It was a…

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A quick way to make people feel bad about their whole lives

Want to find a way to psychologically crush your enemies? There’s an easy way to do it. All it takes is a quick question to make them think of the worst aspect of their life, and then asking them, directly, what they think of their life. Considering all the aspects of one’s life is a…

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The implications of the Moses Illusion

There’s a simple question that gets answered wrong so frequently that it’s acquired the name The Moses Illusion. It sounds like a minor trick, but it has the ability, under the right circumstances, to set you on a mental path toward major mistakes. Answer this question quick — How many animals of each kind did…

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The four-hundred-year mystery of the Ashen Light of Venus

There aren’t many four-hundred-year-old astronomical mysteries. A lot of the questions that early astronomers asked, modern astronomers have answered. And yet, on our astronomical neighbor, there’s a weird glow that after hundreds of years of research that we still can’t understand. In 1643, Giovanni Riccioli was observing Venus when he noticed a sort of glow…

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Futurama gets its snap and its heart back

After a couple of lackluster episodes starting off its final season, Futurama hits its stride. “T: The Terrestrial” features great lines, but more importantly, great tributes to classic science fiction. Remember “The Problem with Popplers,” that classic episode in season two when the Planet Express crew accidentally eat the babies of the Omicronians? It’s fitting…

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Solving the Mystery of Legionnaire’s Disease

In 1976, the Stratford Hotel in Pennsylvania held a convention for the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Legion. Just after the convention, 221 of the attendees got sick with a strange case of pneumonia. Seventy-two of them died. Photo via 36th Infantry Division They provided the name for a culprit that had been killing for…

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The “Blacky Pictures” are the scariest psychological test ever

How do you make rigorous Freudian evaluations of children without them knowing? Show them a series of pictures about Blacky. Then dose them with morphine and hope that they forget everything about it. Gerald Blum had a problem. As an academic, he wanted to observe children going through different stages of Freudian development. As a…

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What causes words to get stuck on the tip of our tongue?

Ever had a word linger, infuriatingly, right on the tip of your tongue? Of course you have. We all have. The question is, what process happens in all of our brains that can block a word that’s correct, while giving us a ton of options for words we know aren’t correct? The phenomenon of having…

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The guinea pig that proved we have an internal combustion engine

Technically, it was Antoine Lavoisier that proved we have an internal combustion engine, but let’s give the guinea pig credit. It nearly froze in Lavoisier’s special calorimeter to prove something new about biophysics. In 1774, Joseph Priestley managed to get a hold of a pure sample of the gas we now call oxygen. At last,…

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Spend your weekend teaching a computer to recognize art

The internet was originally used to help academics exchange information. It has been abused ever since. To honor that lasting achievement, here’s how you can misuse a site that was designed to help people identify written characters, to draw cat pictures instead. Shapecatcher is a site meant to help people identify unicode characters such as…

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Trapped stardust looks exactly how you think it would

This is a bit of comet dust trapped in aerogel. Capturing the stardust in this way reveals something new and fascinating about what’s inside of comets — but it also looks really cool. The thing about bits of comet is that they are going very, very fast. To get them to stop going fast takes…

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What psychologists can learn about you based on what you draw

Does what you draw, and how you draw it, reveal who you are? There are a whole battery of psychological tests that give people art projects, and interpret their results. Learn what people can figure out (or think they can figure out) from your drawing of a tree. I first heard of the House-Tree-Person, or…

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See MIT do the famous “Monkey and a Gun” demonstration

Every physics class is hit, at one point or another, with the famous Monkey and a Gun problem. The idea is simple: A biologist has decided to shoot a monkey — let’s say with a tranquilizer dart, The monkey is hanging on a vine when the biologist spots it. By reflex, it will release the…

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How science created the world’s most controversial puppet show

Ever heard of the Sally-Anne experiment? It’s a simple puppet show. It’s meant to demonstrate whether you understand what’s called the “theory of mind.” And it’s raised a lot of questions and a lot of ire. The Sally-Anne Experiment started out as a story, but was developed into a puppet show in the 1980s. It’s…

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Would you magically reset your country to only its native species?

Let’s say you get a device, or perhaps a biological agent, or maybe even a weirdly specific wizard-wand. It has one function. If you use it, all the non-native species in your country would be gone. Would you use it? And if you’re on the fence, what conditions would sway you either way? The first…

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Why is NASA studying these concentric stone rings?

These patterns are stromatolites. They can be flat layers, they can be puffy mushroomoids, they can be made of white limestone or they can be made from iron. And they can be clues about life on other planets. Stromatolites are the oldest fossils in existence. They’d have to be, since they’re remnants of the oldest…

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Behold a piece of art that could only be created in zero gravity

What do you do if you’re a physicist and want to get experiments done in microgravity, but can’t drum up the cash to go to space? You use magnets to both get results and make a picture that looks like it came out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. There’s a limited amount of room out…

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10 Classic Star Trek Plot Devices That Could Inspire The Next Movie

It’s already official: There’s going to be another Star Trek movie. But what elements of Trek lore should they put on the big screen next time? The first two Abrams films already mined Trek’s rich history for ideas, but they also left out some stuff. Here are 10 classic Star Trek elements that we’d like…

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Your willpower is finite

Can you turn over a new leaf, go on a diet, learn a new language, and get up every morning at dawn to meditate and clean your house? The idea of ego depletion says, “no.” And it has physical evidence to back that up. I hope you wanted to click on this post, because if…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Esther Inglis-Arkell

The scientific feud that ended in an execution

The first robot-on-human fatality was in 1979

A quick way to make people feel bad about their whole lives

The implications of the Moses Illusion

The four-hundred-year mystery of the Ashen Light of Venus

Futurama gets its snap and its heart back

Solving the Mystery of Legionnaire’s Disease

The “Blacky Pictures” are the scariest psychological test ever

What causes words to get stuck on the tip of our tongue?

The guinea pig that proved we have an internal combustion engine

Spend your weekend teaching a computer to recognize art

Trapped stardust looks exactly how you think it would

What psychologists can learn about you based on what you draw

See MIT do the famous “Monkey and a Gun” demonstration

How science created the world’s most controversial puppet show

Would you magically reset your country to only its native species?

Why is NASA studying these concentric stone rings?

Behold a piece of art that could only be created in zero gravity

10 Classic Star Trek Plot Devices That Could Inspire The Next Movie

Your willpower is finite

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