George Dvorsky, Author at Gizmodo

9 species of animals that are having more fun than you

As humans, we like to think that we have a monopoly on living the good life. But we shouldn’t assume that other animals don’t also enjoy their lives and revel in their extraordinary abilities. Here are 9 animals that are probably having more fun than you right now. Before we get started, it’s important to…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 16

This is what China’s record-level air pollution looks like from space

A number of Chinese cities, including Beijing, are currently experiencing the worst episode of air quality in recent memory. Residents have been told to stay inside, and the Chinese government ordered factories to scale back on their emissions. Hospitals have been busy, experiencing a 20 to 30 percent increase in patients complaining of respiratory issues.…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 16

Watch this stunning lunar flyby taken shortly before GRAIL’s planned impact

On December 17 of last year, the NASA GRAIL mission came to a close when the Ebb spacecraft that had been orbiting the moon crashed into a mountain near its north pole. Three days prior to this planned impact, two cameras aboard the spacecraft took a series of images — now, NASA has stitched together…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 16

Breakthrough technique for cutting and pasting genes into DNA works with human cells

Last year, geneticists developed a new techniquethat allows them directly insert genes into bacterial DNA — or remove them. It was a powerful discovery, one that finally offered researchers a cheap and easy way to remove precise sections of a bacterial genome. And now, MIT researchers led by George Church have proven that the technique…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 15

A chip that turns your body into a battery

In what sounds uncomfortably like a scenario from The Matrix, a startup in Corvallis, Oregon, has developed a small chip that can turn body heat into electric energy. The chip, which absorbs heat directly from the skin, channels energy through a thermoelectric generator that converts it into electric power. In future, the chip will enable…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 15

How 19-year-old activist Zack Kopplin is making life hell for Louisiana’s creationists

For Zack Kopplin, it all started back in 2008 with the passing of the Louisiana Science Education Act. The bill made it considerably easier for teachers to introduce creationist textbooks into the classroom. Outraged, he wrote a research paper about it for a high school English class. Nearly five years later, the 19-year-old Kopplin has…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 15

This is what it would really look like to travel at near-lightspeed

It’s one of the most iconic images in all of science fiction: the stretching of stars as a ship makes the jump to lightspeed. But as a group of physics students at the University of Leicester has revealed, it wouldn’t actually look like this. Instead, and assuming a ship could travel at nearly the speed…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 15

Watch this new animation of the Huygens probe as it lands on Titan

It’s been eight years since the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe landed on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Now, to celebrate this anniversary, and to make sense of the data sent back to Earth, a new rendering has been put together by the ESA to show the landing in exquisitely precise detail. As you watch the…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 15

Poll shows that quantum physicists agree to disagree about the nature of reality

Quantum mechanics is real. It’s spooky as hell, but it’s real. Without its microscopically small probabilistic effects, we wouldn’t have superconductors, lasers, and many forms of computing and cryptography. But despite our laboratory certainty, what’s less clear is the role it plays in the fundamental nature of reality. And as a recent survey published by…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 14

A spiky spherical robot that will roll, tumble, and bounce its away across Phobos

A team of researchers from Stanford University, along with scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have proposed a new class of robots that could someday roll and hop across the surface of the Martian moon, Phobos. Called ‘hedgehogs,’ they would be launched from a mothership and then autonomously explore…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 14

Scientific evidence that you probably don’t have free will

Humans have debated the issue of free will for millennia. But over the past several years, while the philosophers continue to argue about the metaphysical underpinnings of human choice, an increasing number of neuroscientists have started to tackle the issue head on — quite literally. And some of them believe that their experiments reveal that…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 14

Rare ground-level photo of Hiroshima bombing found in former Japanese elementary school

One can only imagine what was going through the mind of the person who took this photo. Taken a mere two to five minutes after its detonation, it’s a ground-level perspective of the atomic explosion that decimated Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The original print of the photograph recently surfaced in the archives at Honkawa…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 14

Watch how this robotic-like T7 virus infects a cell

If there was any doubt that viruses are basically microscopic machines, let this recreation of a T7 bacteriophage infecting an ecoli cell put those reservations to rest. In this animated video, the virus can be seen unfolding its six phage tail fibers as it latches on to an unsuspecting bacterium. Once stable and secure, it…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 11

IBM’s Watson computer has parts of its memory cleared after developing an acute case of potty mouth

It all started a couple of years ago when IBM’s Watson, the computer voted most likely to destroy us when the technological Singularity strikes, was given access to the Urban Dictionary. In an attempt to help Watson learn slang — and thus be more amenable to conversational language — the machine subsequently picked up such…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 11

Ancient Roman Vestal Virgin hairstyle re-created for very first time

Janet Stephens, a Baltimore hairdresser and amateur archaeologist, has recreated the hairstyle of the Roman Vestal Virgins on a modern head — but it wasn’t easy. After becoming inspired by an ancient portrait bust she saw at a local museum, Stephens tried to recreate the hairstyle at home, failing miserably. She spent the next seven…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 11

NASA says NGC 6872 is the largest spiral galaxy ever discovered

Located about 212 million light-years from Earth, the massive spiral galaxy NGC 6872 has been known to astronomers for decades. But it wasn’t until a recent survey of nearby star-forming regions that NASA scientists realized just how big it truly is. New data shows that, from tip-to-tip across its two outsized spiral arms, this galaxy…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 11

Is it time to move past the idea that our brain is like a computer?

Ever since the days of Alan Turing, neuroscientists have, in increasing numbers, compared the human brain to a computer. It’s an analogy that makes a hell of a lot of sense, and it’s done much to help us understand this remarkable grey blob that sits between our ears. But as a recent essay by philosopher…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 10

Collector buys a camera at an antique shop — and it’s filled with undeveloped pics from World War I

Anton Orlov, a San Diego based collector of vintage photography equipment, recently visited an antique shop where he purchased a unique French stereoscopic camera called a Jumelle Bellieni. While he was cleaning the device — and much to his surprise and delight — it contained eight undeveloped photographs taken in France during the First World…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 10

A drug that restores hearing in deaf mice

Advances in regenerative medicine are coming in fast and furious these days, and a remarkable new breakthrough can be added to the list. Scientists at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School have restored partial hearing in mice suffering from sensorineural hearing loss — a condition that happens after prolonged exposure to noise. Given…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 10

Why did the Vikings abandon Greenland?

For nearly 500 years, the Vikings lived and thrived in Greenland. Taking advantage of the Medieval Warm Period, they established outposts in the North Atlantic where they farmed and ranched. But quite suddenly, at the mid-point of the 15th century, they abandoned their settlements and ventured back to Scandinavia. Anthropologists have theorized that they were…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 10

George Dvorsky

9 species of animals that are having more fun than you

This is what China’s record-level air pollution looks like from space

Watch this stunning lunar flyby taken shortly before GRAIL’s planned impact

Breakthrough technique for cutting and pasting genes into DNA works with human cells

A chip that turns your body into a battery

How 19-year-old activist Zack Kopplin is making life hell for Louisiana’s creationists

This is what it would really look like to travel at near-lightspeed

Watch this new animation of the Huygens probe as it lands on Titan

Poll shows that quantum physicists agree to disagree about the nature of reality

A spiky spherical robot that will roll, tumble, and bounce its away across Phobos

Scientific evidence that you probably don’t have free will

Rare ground-level photo of Hiroshima bombing found in former Japanese elementary school

Watch how this robotic-like T7 virus infects a cell

IBM’s Watson computer has parts of its memory cleared after developing an acute case of potty mouth

Ancient Roman Vestal Virgin hairstyle re-created for very first time

NASA says NGC 6872 is the largest spiral galaxy ever discovered

Is it time to move past the idea that our brain is like a computer?

Collector buys a camera at an antique shop — and it’s filled with undeveloped pics from World War I

A drug that restores hearing in deaf mice

Why did the Vikings abandon Greenland?

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