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Picture of the Day: November 2, 2011

Rhapsody in Velvet | One of Maurice Sendak’s rare illustrations from The Velveteen Rabbit, circa 1960. Check out the rest over at Brainpickings. Want to read today’s io9 stories a different way? Check out our blog view. Or visit Observation Deck, our general discussion forum.

This Is Not an X-Ray

What looks like a collection of retro gear that’s passed through the TSA’s penetrating scanners is actually a unique photo exhibit created without the use of a single X-ray. For his most recent photographic exhibition—Proposition One: Only The Ephemeral—Max de Esteban started by painstakingly deconstructing a collection of older electronics like 35mm film cameras, VCRs…

The Victorian Hugos: 1886

The Hugo Awards are given to the best science fiction or fantasy works of the previous year. Unfortunately, they’ve only been awarded since 1953. That’s where this column comes in — Jess Nevins will be awarding some honorary Hugo Awards to the best novels of the Victorian era… and beyond. Top image: Jekyll and Hyde…

There Is Hope for Your Craggy Face and Limp Muscles

Some lucky old mice at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota have been given the gift of youth. Researchers reversed their age-related wrinkles, muscle wasting and cataracts, and it could lead to a fountain of youth for humans, too. It sounds too wonderful to be true, but it’s not science fiction. The researchers, who published their…

Stephen King explains the rules of time travel. Debate over.

Stephen King’s new novel 11/22/63 involves a tunnel to the past, and a guy who tries to tamper with the Kennedy assassination. Talking to Wired, King explains something about the rules of time travel as he sees them: 1) “The more potential a given event has to change the future, the more difficult that event…

Japanese legislators consider building a back-up Tokyo (in case the original’s destroyed)

During World War I, Paris built a fake Paris to confuse German bombardiers. More recently, China has seen a spate of towns reproducing a little slice of Germany and Austria. Now, Japan is considering constructing a second Tokyo in case an earthquake destroys the one we have today. https://gizmodo.com/during-world-war-i-france-began-building-a-fake-paris-5843670 https://gizmodo.com/welcome-to-the-deserted-german-city-outside-of-shanghai-5850214 https://gizmodo.com/chinese-architecture-firm-duplicates-austrian-village-5813227 Explains World Architecture News:…

These Pictures of People with Half-Faced Illusions Are Twisting My Brain

This photography illusion, made with a Samsung L100 camera and Photoshop, turns half of a person’s face into a picture of their profile too. Are they looking straight at you? Or looking to the side? I can’t freaking tell and it’s giving me brain sores. The project, titled 1/2, was created by Venezuelan student Jesús…

Psychologist admits to faking dozens of scientific studies

Every branch of science has its share of “sexy” studies—so called for their supposed tendency to provoke media attention, even in the absence of strong or conclusive findings—but investigations in the field of social psychology are often especially popular targets of the “sexy” label. Now, prominent social psychologist Diederik Stapel has been outed as one…

Underworld: now with baby vampires, silver whips and super-Lycans!

This new trailer for Underworld Awakening exposes a lot more of the story line. Which may or may not be a good thing, depending on how you feel about adding small children to revive a dead franchise. But hey, Kate Beckinsale…in rubber! Let the Lycan whipping begin! As you can see in this trailer, Selene…

The secret of ancient Viking navigation was transparent crystals

Before the invention of modern navigational equipment, ancient sailors crossed the seas largely through their knowledge of the positions of the Sun and stars. So how did Vikings cross from Europe to America in the often foggy, cloudy northern Atlantic? There’s no real way that Vikings could have crossed such tremendous distances – they were…

How To Never Bust Through Your Smartphone’s Data Cap Again

Unless you’re a Sprint customer—or you’re grandfathered into an unlimited data plan—you’ve only got 2GB of mobile data to play with before you go broke or get throttled. Here’s how to keep from going over your cap. The consequences of using more data than your carrier wants can be scary—and expensive. AT&T and Verizon start…

This wall-climbing robot is half tank, half gecko

The ranks of wall-climbing robots are increasing in number. A team of Canadian engineers from Simon Fraser University have combined what they describe as gecko-inspired “fibrillar dry adhesives” with track wheels, to create a modular, tank-like robot that can scale walls and even transfer from horizontal to vertical surfaces with ease. https://gizmodo.com/come-the-robot-uprising-paraswift-will-climb-the-walls-5838415 Whether it’s glass,…

Immortals Pictures

Gizmodo Loves Knives

So Top Chef’s coming back tonight, and that means food drama, food crying, and food cutting—with knives. We like knives, and we figure you’re probably not strongly anti-knife yourself. So here are some great knives that we’d like to slice stuff with. Shun Classic: Chef’s Knife 6″ Your basic 6″ chef’s knife, but with 33…

New Immortals clips are so vivid, you can almost taste the oiled torsos

Holy sepiatoned nipples! We’ve got six new clips from new Tarsem Singh’s mythological epic Immortals — plus one exclusive behind-the-scenes look at how they built the massive sets our waxed-Adonises heroes would wrestle in. Above is an interesting look at the world Tarsem and company built for our Greek Gods, plus we’ve got a collection…

Wi-Fi Home Radiation Detector Reports Dangerous Levels Even While You’re Away

As a complement to their portable RDTX detector which provides radiation warnings through your iPhone, Scosche’s HRDTX is designed to monitor the homefront, providing audible warnings and email alerts when radiation levels become too dangerous. https://gizmodo.com/you-can-detect-radiation-with-a-freaking-iphone-now-5848255 Using “fast photo sensor technology” the $330 detector accurately measures gamma radiation without the need for calibration, and provides…

Watch a spherical robot drone fly around the room!

We’ve talked before about this floating robot from the Japanese Ministry of Defense, but now there’s new video of this floating, gyroscopic drone. And, against all odds, this video is even more awesome than the last one. The video up top shows a recent demonstration by Japan’s Ministry of Defense. To the delight (and probably…

This Future Iceberg Would Be Able to Sink a Thousand Titanics

You’re looking at Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica. It pushes more ice to the sea than any other glacier in the world. See that gigantic 18-mile-long canyon? That’s the birth point of a new gargantuan iceberg, larger than New York City. The huge crack has been discovered by NASA’s Operation IceBridge team, who took this…

A Doctor Claims That He Can Magically Transform Brown Eyes to Blue with Lasers

There is something about blue eyes that can pierce another person’s soul while also acting as a revealing window into your own. Brown eyes? Not so much. What if you wanted blue eyes, though? Color contacts? Meh. Try this new laser surgery that’ll permanently transform your brown eyes to blue. Brown to blue, permanently. That’s…

Apple Admits Battery Problems: It’s iOS 5’s Fault

All those problems with evaporating iPhone batteries? Looks like it’s not the hardware’s fault—Apple’s ‘fessing up to a buggy iOS 5 release that’s sucking more juice than it should, The Loop reports. https://gizmodo.com/whats-going-on-with-the-iphone-4s-battery-5854510 Apple confirmed the problem in a message to The Loop, stating “A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery…