Toy Story 4, The Rock and More Highlights From Disney’s D23 Animation Panel

When the toy army men rappelled from the ceiling to mark the end of Disney’s D23 Expo Animation and Pixar panel, it looked like an invasion. It sort of had been. An invasion of clips, stars and news from the upcoming slate of the company’s bread and butter genre. Zootopia, Gigantic, Moana, Inside Out, The…

In the Andes Mountains, A Long-Quiet Volcano Blasts Ash and Vapor

Today, 30 miles south of Quito, Cotopaxi—a volcano that first erupted in 1534, but has been quiet since the early 1940s until a few recent months of unrest—spewed plumes of ash and vapor. Though the blasts spread gray powder across the area, scientists in Ecuador do not believe a major eruption is imminent. AP Photo…

This Tiny Princess Leia Rides a Rocking Speeder Bike

It’s been a long week. Enjoy a baby Princess Leia on her handmade rocking speeder bike. The bike is the creation of hero dad Tez_Gelmir, who documents the whole process on the maker site Instructables.

Moon burials now cheaper than ever. “This week, the company Elysium Space announced they can send a portion of your cremated remains to the moon for prices starting at $11,950,” Popular Science reports. “By comparison, Celestis, a rival space burial company, will make the moon your final resting place for $12,500 for one gram of…

Disney To Make Gigantic, the “Definitive” Jack and the Beanstalk Movie

When Disney takes on a fairy tale, its version tends to become the definitive version: Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, etc. At the D23 Expo, the company announced it is now working on what it hopes will be the definitive version of Jack and the Beanstalk, called Gigantic. Directed by Nathan Greno and…

How the Hell Did I Not Know About the Burrowing Owl?

It goes out during the day. It runs to catch its prey. And, as its name suggests, the burrowing owl lives in holes in the ground. And more and more of them are coming to America. The burrowing owl looks like your typical owl—maybe a bit longer in the leg than most. But while most…

Here’s a Chemistry Set You’ll Actually Want to Experiment With

Chemistry sets used to be awesome. Today, a lot of them suck. But the kit pictured here (which, with 49 days left in its campaign, has already been successfully funded on Kickstarter) comes fully stocked with chemicals, equipment, and experiments. It’s the kind of thing your kid (or—screw it—you, yourself) would actually want to experiment…

Here’s The Most Unintentionally Hilarious Scene From Last Night’s Under The Dome

So people often ask me, “Dome, what do you STAND for?” Like, they want to know what my core principle is. What are the foundations on which this Dome rests? And after last night’s Under the Dome, I have an answer: I’m all about polygamy, apparently. Or specifically, polygyny. Check out the hilarious clip above…

io9 Newsstand: What Would You Do If The Government Was Monitoring Your Thoughts?

This week’s stories are about the things people will and won’t do for love, the monsters embedded in our skin and under the crust of the Earth, and the even worse horror waiting out there in the void. Duller’s Peace by Jason Sanford | Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine September 2015 Serija knows what happens when…

Robot Simulations Show Mass Extinctions May Accelerate Evolution

By simulating a mass extinction on a population of virtual robots, researchers have shown that these cataclysmic events are an important contributor to an organism’s ability to evolve, a finding that has implications to evolutionary biology, the business sector—and even artificial intelligence. It’s no surprise that mass extinctions exert a tremendous influence on evolution. If…

Hobb Reveals His Master Plan In A New Clip From The Humans Finale

It’s not looking good for humanity’s A.I. creations in AMC’s Humans. They’ve been captured and at the mercy of Professor Hobb, and it’s up to the Hawkins family to come to their rescue. But just what does Hobb have planned for the Synths? Find out in this exclusive clip from the season finale. Set in…

Why is This Block of Plutonium Glowing Like an Ember?

This block of plutonium appears to be glowing like a hot coal. Not a good sign! The glow is due to a property called pyrophoricity. A pyrophoric material will burst into flames when it comes into contact with everyday materials like water and oxygen. Plutonium has a high level of pyrophoricity—so much that it has…

DC Is Planning a Sitcom That’s “The Office with Superheroes”

At this point the announcement of yet another comic-based TV series is barely news at all, but this one is a little different: DC and NBC are working on a pilot for Powerless, a proposed sitcom set in the DC universe that’s being pitched as “The Office, but with superheroes.” All we know so far…

Deadpool: Paws Proves Deadpool Can Really Work Outside A Comic Book

The idea of a Deadpool novel is exactly as strange as it sounds: how can one of comics’ most comic-booky heroes work in a medium that’s so completely different? But what’s even stranger is that Deadpool: Paws actually works … when it stops trying to be a comic book without the pictures. Paws is certainly…

We Should Not Dismiss the Dangers of “Killer Robots” So Quickly

Earlier this summer, more than a thousand prominent thinkers and specialists signed an open letter calling for a ban on autonomous killing machines. Since then, a number of critics have condemned the motion, citing it as both dangerous and useless. Optimization researcher Toby Walsh explains why we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the dangers.…

Those once-a-century food shortage events are about to get a whole lot more frequent. A new report from the US-UK Taskforce on Extreme Weather looks at what extreme weather events of the future are going to do our food supply and determines that by 2040, we’ll be getting up to three each century.

The Newly Proposed High Definition Space Telescope Makes Hubble Look Like a Toy

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which will be “in many ways a hundred times” more capable than Hubble, isn’t launching until 2018, but already astrophysicists are thinking about its successor. They’re calling it the High Definition Space Telescope (HDST). That’s it on the far right, towering over both its predecessors. Here’s Ramin Skibba reporting…

Now That Fables Is Over, Is There a Future for Vertigo Comics?

Last week, the best-selling Vertigo series Fables came to an end with a special book-length final issue, and so did Vertigo’s reign as a top publisher of creator-owned comics. The DC imprint is down to just seven titles, several of which are slated to end soon, leaving the long-running Astro City as the closest thing…

Can Music Really “Wake” Someone From a Coma?

Every now and again we get news stories about how someone in a coma “woke up” when their loved ones played or sang their favorite song. It sounds like sentimental exaggeration. According to at least a couple of studies, music really might help. Musicians from James Blunt to Green Day to Adele have been credited…

Evan Dorkin Describes How Fandom Has Become “Eltingville Uber Alles”

Evan Dorkin is ruthlessly funny, and sometimes just ruthless, in this interview with Paste magazine. The occasion is the release of the second and final issue of Dorkin’s The Eltingville Club, but it’s an opportunity for Dorkin to share his typically snarky thoughts about the state of the comics industry and the dark side of…