Robbie Gonzalez

What can you actually learn from those dialect maps?

Odds are you’ve noticed the spate of eerily accurate American-dialect quizzes making the rounds online. The questionnaires, which draw on data from the Harvard Dialect Survey to pinpoint the regionality of your particular way of speaking, are endlessly entertaining – but what findings can we, and linguists, actually glean from them? https://gizmodo.com/this-quiz-pinpoints-your-american-dialect-down-to-the-t-1441692591 https://gizmodo.com/this-video-of-people-taking-the-american-dialect-survey-1473987054 Over on…

Eating peanuts while pregnant won’t give your kid a nut allergy

It’s been said that a good way to keep children from developing nut allergies is for moms to avoid peanuts, tree nuts, and related products during pregnancy. Turns out that’s nonsense. A long-running health investigation involving over 8,000 kids now suggests you can scarf as many nuts while you’re pregnant as you damn well please.…

How did humans evolve such complex brains? Scientists have a new theory: As our brains got bigger, explains Carl Zimmer in today’s New York Times, our neurons became untethered from their old constraints.

The first picture of the Earth and its moon in a single frame

Earlier this month, NASA released this unprecedented clip of the Moon orbiting Earth. The footage reminded me of another image captured more than thirty years ago by Voyager 1 when it was still just 7.25-million miles from Earth: the first photo to feature Earth and its moon, in their entirety, in the same frame. https://gizmodo.com/nasa-captures-unprecedented-view-of-moon-orbiting-earth-1482154703…

Did you know vampire squid are actually vegetarians?

Terrifying though it certainly appears, the scarlet-bodied, cloudy-eyed Vampyroteuthis infernalis (aka “vampire squid from hell”) isn’t the least bit scary from a dietary standpoint. Via Deep Sea News’ R.R. Helm: The decisive clue to the vampire’s kinder nature came in the form of long, stringy tentacles. For decades scientists puzzled over the mystery of these…

Nature’s 2013 Quiz challenges you to recall as much as you can about the year in science. I scored 7 out of 9. How did you fare? [365 days: Nature’s 2013 quiz]

Scientists finally know what created these mysterious structures!

After six months of waiting – followed by nine more days of waiting – we finally have an answer to one of the most baffling Internet mysteries of 2013: The mystery architect behind these beautifully complex Amazonian web-towers is…. https://gizmodo.com/we-have-absolutely-no-clue-what-built-this-crazy-comple-1243871592 https://gizmodo.com/scientists-are-close-to-solving-one-of-2013s-greatest-1481082180 Top Photo Credit: Troy Alexander A spider! A research team led by entomologist Phil…

Meet Cubli, a motorized box that balances perfectly on ONE CORNER

Cubli is a clever little cube that uses reaction wheels to jump, balance and “walk” across stationary and dynamic surfaces alike. It reminds us a lot of MIT’s M-Blocks, only bigger, and… well… more balance-y. https://gizmodo.com/incredible-self-assembling-swarmbots-can-take-on-almost-1441222085 Designed by a team at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, Cubli is surprisingly maneuverable,…

In the December issue of New Space, planetary scientist Christopher McKay rallies for a permanent, inhabited NASA research base on the Moon. National Geographic has distilled McKay’s argument into a six-point list. Complement with io9’s 185-point argument for a NASA lunar base.

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs of 2013

From intergalactic neutrinos and invisible brains, to the creation of miniature human “organoids,” 2013 was a remarkable year for scientific discovery. Here are 17 of the biggest scientific breakthroughs, innovations and advances of 2013. Voyager I Leaves the Solar System Escaping the solar system is no mean feat. For 36 years, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft…

Rare “Snownado” Filmed Over Lake Superior

Winter waterspouts (aka “snownados”) are pretty uncommon, requiring a very specific set of meteorological conditions to form. Footage of the spiraling slush-columns is rarer, still (as in, there are six photos of them in existence) – a fact we like to think makes this snownado-video worth 90 seconds of your time. https://gizmodo.com/holy-crap-this-waterspout-is-enormous-743287385 The snowspout was…

San Diego traffic, organized by color, is surprisingly hypnotic

Filmmaker Cy Kuckenbaker is back to delight our eyeballs with a meticulously edited 4-minute video of traffic footage shot from San Diego’s Washington Street bridge – which doesn’t sound something you’d want to spend four minutes watching, but then maybe you don’t know who Kuckenbaker is, or the time-(col)lapse wizardry he’s capable of. https://gizmodo.com/five-hours-of-planes-landing-at-san-diego-international-5965233 Writes…

Researchers at York University have devised a way to send text messages via vodka. The trick, they say, is to vaporize it, regulating concentration levels to represent bits 1 and 0, then waft it to a receiving unit ~12 feet away. The method is slow, and limited to short distances, but it’s an… interesting proof…

Virgin Birth: NOT SO RARE, AFTER ALL

Nearly 1 percent of young women who became pregnant in a recent U.S. study claimed to have done so as virgins, according to findings published in the Christmas edition of the British Medial Journal. Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk via flickr Writes Amy Herring, a professor of biostatistics at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health…

This is not a glitch. It’s Mars.

Light and shadow play on the ridges of sand dunes that lie cloistered in an impact crater in Mars’ Noachis Terra region. “Sand dunes are among the most widespread aeolian (wind-formed) features present on Mars,” write HiRISE researchers Alfred McEwen and Ginny Gulick in their description of the planet’s continually morphing features. ” Their spatial…

This is the only piece of art we’ve left on the Moon

This tiny sculpture is called Fallen Astronaut, and was placed on the lunar surface by the crew of Apollo 15 on August 1, 1971. The figurine, which was crafted in the likeness of an astronaut-in-spacesuit, measures just more than three inches tall, but the “Smallest Memorial in the Universe,” as Walter Cronkite called it in…

The Most Amazing Science Images of 2013

From slow-mo footage on YouTube to deep-space satellite imagery to weird washcloths on the International Space Station, this was a big year for beautiful science. Here for your visceral viewing pleasure are thirty-three of our favorite photos and videos from 2013. Above: Cdr. Chris Hadfield shows what happens when you wring a washcloth out in…

Here’s why winter has the best full moons

Winter makes for longer nights and shorter days. It also boasts the year’s greatest lunar displays – but there’s more to this fact than an increase in daily hours of darkness. In the latest installation of Minute Physics, Henry Reich explains why the arc of a full moon in winter is like that of the…

Scientists invent the perfect coffee mug

Scientists love coffee. More than anyone else, by some surveys. So in a way, it makes perfect sense that they would be responsible for what could be the greatest coffee-related invention since coffee-alcohol: a mug that keeps coffee hot – but not too hot – for hours on end. https://gizmodo.com/here-are-the-fifteen-professions-that-drink-the-most-co-5948206 https://gizmodo.com/researchers-make-alcohol-from-coffee-change-everything-1053355598 Above: A 3-D printed…

Chinese rover diorama shows Europe being nuked

China deserves all the congratulations in the world for landing its first spacecraft on the Moon. It’s a big deal – both for China and humanity at large. But can somebody please explain why the background image at this exhibit for China’s recently deployed Yutu Rover depicts a massive mushroom cloud over Europe? https://gizmodo.com/watch-chinas-change-3-land-on-the-moon-1484147236 https://gizmodo.com/heres-what-chinas-yutu-rover-is-doing-on-the-moon-1483746967…