Robbie Gonzalez, Author at Gizmodo

What Finger-Counting Says About You And Your Brain

Here’s a fun experiment: stop what you’re doing and use your hands to count to ten. Done? Good. Now remember how you did it, because we’re about to analyze your technique; as it turns out, how you count with your hands may say a lot more about you than you think. So, how do you…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 27 '12

Beautiful Sketches That Turn into 3-D Illusions on the Page

Some of the most compelling optical illusions are often the simplest. Case in point: the drawings of Japanese artist Nagai Hideyuki. With little more than a couple of sketchbooks, some pencils, and a little perspective, Hideyuki’s 2D drawings turn into a series of surreal, three-dimensional weirdfests. We’ve included a handful of our favorites from Hikeyuki’s…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 26 '12

Ever wonder what would happen if you jumped into a lake of lava?

Violently gushing lava bubbles, that’s what. Word around the internet is that unless you’re sporting a hyperalloy endoskeleton, chances are you’re not dense enough to actually sink into a pool of roiling magma. http://gawker.com/5866004/movies-show-death-by-lava-all-wrong This has to do with the fact that lava is more than three times as dense as water, and well over…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 26 '12

If this video doesn’t make your heart swell, there’s a decent chance you don’t have a heart

Here comes your daily dose of optimism. Filmmaker Michael Marantz has just released The Future is Ours, a rousing two-minute tribute to the people and companies pushing humanity forward. Full screen, HD, headphones if you’ve got ’em. Fair warning: this will, at a minimum, give you chills — but don’t be surprised if you feel…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 26 '12

First Ever MRI Video Shows Childbirth from the Inside

An international team of doctors and scientists announced in 2010 that it had recorded the world’s first video of childbirth using magnetic resonance imaging. Now, that footage has been released to the public. You have never seen childbirth like this. https://jezebel.com/groundbreaking-mri-shows-childbirth-from-the-inside-5708217 According to New Scientist, the team relied on a technique known as cinematic MRI…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 26 '12

These remarkable clouds look even more incredible from the ISS

Fifty miles overhead, higher than any other formation in our planet’s atmosphere, is where you’ll find one of the most enigmatic classes of cloud ever observed. They’re called noctilucent clouds, and they’re some of the most poorly understood meteorological phenomena on Earth. Noctilucent clouds (aka polar mesospheric clouds) are notoriously difficult to view from the…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 26 '12

What causes brain freeze?

Pretty much everyone has experienced brain freeze (also known as ice cream headache) at one point or another. And while scientists have learned a fair bit about what might cause brain freeze, there’s still much we don’t understand about what gives rise to this painful phenomenon. In this installment of SciAm’s Instant Egghead, Ferris Jabr…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 25 '12

With all these exoplanets, where the hell is the alien life?

If there’s one thing the Kepler mission has taught us, it’s that planets are everywhere. Lately, it seems like if we’re not discovering new exoplanets, we’re finding evidence that there are hundreds of billions of them out there (many of them probably even Earthlike), and we just haven’t found them yet. https://gizmodo.com/kepler-scientists-find-freaky-solar-system-thats-unlike-5920596 https://gizmodo.com/a-game-changer-in-the-search-for-alien-life-all-stars-5918518 On one…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 25 '12

Watch Manhattan turn into the TRON Game Arena from hell

How do you turn your pizza delivery bike into a TRON light cycle? Simple: slap a GPS tracker on the back, run your delivery routes, then add the light ribbons in later. Do that with enough bicycles, and you get the beautiful view of nighttime delivery routes featured here. These luminescent GPS trails show the…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 25 '12

10 Ways the Human Microbiome Project Could Change the Future of Science and Medicine

When astronomers talk about the number of planets in the Milky Way Galaxy, they talk in terms of hundreds of billions. When microbiologists talk about the Human Microbiome — the bacteria, viruses and fungi living in and on each of our bodies — they talk in terms of hundreds of trillions. Earlier this month, the…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 25 '12

High-speed video reveals the bizarre physics of Slinkys

And now, for your Monday morning moment of zen, Slinkys in slow motion. Whether it’s dropped from eye level, or from the roof of a building, the bottom of a fully extended slinky will appear to hover in midair when released. What lets the Slinky’s bottom hover like that? It all boils down to the…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 25 '12

Remembering Alan Turing

This Saturday, June 23rd, would have marked the 100th birthday of Alan Turing. A visionary mathematician, logician and codebreaker, Turing was a pioneer in the fields of computer science and artificial intelligence. A linchpin member of Ultra, Britain’s World War II counterintelligence team, Turing created the electro-mechanical, code-decrypting “bombe” that deciphered countless intercepted Nazi communications.…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 22 '12

How do plants know which way is up?

Try turning a growing plant on end, and a funny thing happens. It will right itself, twisting and contorting so its leaves project skyward and its roots extend down toward the center of the Earth. Logic would dictate that plants solve the problem of which way to grow by sensing gravity — but how did…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 22 '12

Find out why NASA engineers call the upcoming Mars landing “Seven Minutes of Terror”

Stop what you’re doing and watch this. Invite whoever you’re with to watch it, too. In just 44 days, NASA will attempt the most amazing planetary landing in the history of space exploration. It’s a plan so remarkable, so technically impressive, so very different from anything ever attempted, that even the Agency’s engineers have been…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 22 '12

This “women in science” outreach video is so godawful it hurts

This video, released yesterday by the European Commission, is supposed to promote women in science… so why does it feel like a cosmetics commercial? (Seriously. Watch it. The male gaze is strong with this one.) European Commission spokesman Michael Jennings chalks it up to its appeal in focus groups, telling Radio Free Europe: We know…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 22 '12

Korean scientists push to keep evolution in schools

A small cohort of Korean scientists is fighting to reintroduce some sanity to the country, after creationist group Society for Textbook Revise successfully campaigned to see examples of evolution removed from high school bio textbooks. https://gizmodo.com/south-korea-will-remove-evolution-from-its-high-school-5915908 According to Nature News Blog: The group say the textbook publishers were wrong to remove examples of the evolution…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 22 '12

Descriptions of the first picture of mating humpback whales are priceless

An Australian photographer claims to have snapped the world’s first photograph of humpback whales making love. We can call it that now — love making, that is — based on the detailed description provided by Jason Edwards, who captured the moment off the coast of Tonga. We can’t show you the image here for copyright…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 21 '12

The statues of Easter Island could have “walked” into place

Using nothing but rope, how many people does it take to move a 10-foot tall, 5-ton statue a distance of one hundred yards? It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it’s a serious question for archaeologists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo, who are studying how prehistoric inhabitants of Easter Island transported the region’s…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 21 '12

How Science is Helping You Find the Word on the Tip of Your Tongue

You stop short in the middle of a sentence. Your eyes shift. You can practically feel your mind twisting, as it tries to wring out the word resting just behind your lips — but nothing springs to mind. While this tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon happens to just about everyone from time to time, rarely does it become…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 21 '12

Behold the rings of Jupiter

Not Saturn. Jupiter. Yes, Jupiter has rings. Did we just blow your mind? It’s surprising how few people know about the ring system of our solar system’s largest planet. Then again, spotting the Jovian ring system from Earth is next to impossible; in fact, it wasn’t until 1979, when Voyager I returned some of its…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 21 '12

Robbie Gonzalez

What Finger-Counting Says About You And Your Brain

Beautiful Sketches That Turn into 3-D Illusions on the Page

Ever wonder what would happen if you jumped into a lake of lava?

If this video doesn’t make your heart swell, there’s a decent chance you don’t have a heart

First Ever MRI Video Shows Childbirth from the Inside

These remarkable clouds look even more incredible from the ISS

What causes brain freeze?

With all these exoplanets, where the hell is the alien life?

Watch Manhattan turn into the TRON Game Arena from hell

10 Ways the Human Microbiome Project Could Change the Future of Science and Medicine

High-speed video reveals the bizarre physics of Slinkys

Remembering Alan Turing

How do plants know which way is up?

Find out why NASA engineers call the upcoming Mars landing “Seven Minutes of Terror”

This “women in science” outreach video is so godawful it hurts

Korean scientists push to keep evolution in schools

Descriptions of the first picture of mating humpback whales are priceless

The statues of Easter Island could have “walked” into place

How Science is Helping You Find the Word on the Tip of Your Tongue

Behold the rings of Jupiter

Watch the Lego ‘Project Hail Mary’ Set (Almost) Go to Space

Shark Glam Ceramic Multi-Styler Is Nearly Half the Price of Dyson Airwrap at an All-Time Low on Amazon

OpenAI Unveils New Image Generator to Usher in an AI Slop ‘Renaissance’

Xbox Game Pass Now Costs Less, but That Doesn’t Mean It’s a Good Deal

The Trailer for ‘Affection’ Teases a Medical Mystery From Hell

So How Did Artemis 2’s Heat Shield Hold Up? The First Results Are In

Watch a Guy Fabricate Functioning Micron-Scale RAM Cells in His Garden Shed

Scientists Probed the Rings Around Uranus to Find Out How They Got There

I Fear What Baby Rotta Could Mean For ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’

Framework’s New Ultra-Repairable ‘Pro’ Laptop Lets You Ditch Windows Entirely

I’ve Tested a Lot of Bad Smart Glasses and These Are the Worst Yet

Roborock’s Qrevo Curv 2 Flow Is the Ultimate Robot Mop—If You Don’t Have Corners or Walls

Alienware’s $350 QD-OLED Gaming Monitor Nixes Everything for a Pretty Screen

Sony Inzone H6 Air Review: A Perfect Case for Open-Back Gaming Headsets

Anker’s EufyMake E1 Finally Brings Printers Out of the Dark Ages

The Soundboks Mix Is Going to Make You the Most Popular Guy at the Park

Asus Zenbook A16 Review: Start Considering Snapdragon on PC, for Real

Aqara Thermostat Hub W200 Review: Almost Better than My Ecobee

HP Omen Max 45L Review: 4K60 Gaming Has Never Been So Easy

Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni Review: Window Cleaning Robots Have a Long Way to Go