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Egypt Sends Eight Museum Staff to Trial Over Botched King Tut Repair

Last year, it came to light that the blue and gold braided beard on King Tut’s burial mask was knocked off during a botched cleaning attempt then hastily glued back on using epoxy. Now, Egypt’s decided that more than just poor Tut’s head must roll over the debacle. First, a refresher about what happened. While…

Twitter Just Lost Four of Its Main Execs

Late Sunday night, Jack Dorsey confirmed that four of Twitter’s most senior executives were leaving the company, including vice presidents for media, product, engineering, and human resources. Ouch. In the announcement, posted to Twitter and shown below, Dorsey explained that VP of media Katie Stanton, VP of product Kevin Weil, VP of engineering Alex Roetter,…

This Site Lets You Search the Worldwide Netflix Library

Netflix might have declared its plan to crack down on unblockers and VPNs to avoid users country-hopping, but there are still ways to view the different Netflix libraries from other regions. If you’re after one movie in particular, this global Netflix search engine will tell you where to take up virtual residence. Thanks to different…

Climb Europe’s Highest Mountain From Your Bed With Google Street View

Google’s all-seeing cameras have seen a lot more than just the streets: scary mountains, underwater gardens, and Venetian canals have all been visited before, and with the help of an elite team of mountaineers, Google can take you all around Mont Blanc, the 15,777-ft high point of Europe. Unlike previous Street View outings, Google went…

This Robot Can Solve a Rubik’s Cube in One Second

Given a long plane ride and enough booze, I can just about solve a Rubik’s cube. The most talented humans can manage it in about five seconds; for a homemade robot, it takes 1.019 seconds. Hardware-wise, there’s not much complicated about the robot, built by two hobbyists: there’s webcams, a few stepper motors, and an…

We Met Uranus, Our Solar System’s Weirdest Planet, 30 Years Ago Today

On January 24th, 1986, Voyager 2 swept past our system’s seventh planet, Uranus, on its way through the solar system. It was the first and last time we visited the gas giant, and we found it’s one of the stranger locations in our solar system. Throughout classical times, scholars recognized only six planets: Mercury, Venus,…

Trying To Live Anywhere Outside Of Our Solar System Is Going To Be Harder Than We Can Imagine

Welcome to this week’s Reading List, where you’ll find the best popular technology, culture and science stories on the internet assembled in one delightful package. This week: science art, colonizing the solar system, international business, toys and CGI. Maria Sibylla Merian was a naturalist in the 1600s, drawing up fantastic images that helped to inform…

Erik Wernquist’s Video For OVERWERK’s Winter Is Mesmerizing

We really love Erik Wernquist’s trips out to Mars and the solar system, and when he has a new video out, we perk up. His latest, Winter, from the electronic musician OVERWERK is a beautiful music video. The music here is cool, but the visuals are even cooler: an maze leading to a strange, futuristic…

How Snowstorms Reveal the Wasted Space on Our Roads

During any of the several recent catastrophic blizzards that have draped the country with snow, you might have seen people tagging their photos #sneckdown. No, it’s not a protective garment you wear to keep your neck snow-free (although that could also come in handy!). It’s a word coined by transportation geeks. “Neckdown” is a somewhat…

War Is Coming In The First Warcraft TV Spot

Warcraft is hitting theaters six months from now, but the first TV spot for the film has just hit the web, showing off some new footage of the anticipated Duncan Jones movie. I’m a huge fan of Duncan Jones’ two films, Moon and Source Code, and I’m really interested to see what he does with…

An Astronaut Is Shrunken When He Lands On The Phantom Planet

Released in 1961 by William Marshall, The Phantom Planet follows an astronaut who’s captured by an invisible asteroid and shrunken down to six inches by the object’s strange atmosphere. Give the film a watch, and enjoy along with your fellow io9 commenters!

Watch Adam Savage Ecstatically Unbox A Martian Space Suit

Adam Savage, of Mythbusters and Tested, is a known space suit geek, and he’s expressed his love for the design of the suits on The Martian quite a bit on social media. Now, Fox has sent him a suit to look over. Witness the sheer joy: I suspect we’ll see him in one of these…

19 Science Fiction Shows And Movies To Binge On While The Blizzard Has Trapped You Inside

Winter Storm Jonas pretty much has the East Coast stuck inside this weekend, which means that you’re probably sitting in front of your television scrolling through Netflix. Allow us to help. Here’s some of our absolute favorite science fiction shows that we can watch over and over again (and the storm is just the perfect…

Level Up Your Writing By Applying For These 3 Writer’s Workshops

If you’re a speculative fiction writer who is looking to improve their writing skills, there’s three workshops out there that are now accepting applications. These Odyssey Writing Workshop Hosted in New Hampshire, this writer’s workshop will run from June 6th through July 15th: it’s an in depth program that focuses on students’ manuscripts. This year’s…

Darth Vader Delivered A 3D Printed Arm To Boy In Need

This is awesome. Alvin Garcia Flores had been born without an arm, and the folks at Limbitless Solutions printed up and provided him with one in a presentation before his entire school. Members of the 501st Legion’s Central Garrison (which serves Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota) were on hand to present Alvin…

Sundance’s VR Films Will Break Your Brain

If this year’s Sundance Film Festival is any indication, virtual reality is about to hit the mainstream. Under a program called New Frontier, the festival is promoting eleven independently produced VR films on a smartphone app. The finalists have been chosen from hundreds of entries, and among them are some short documentaries, horrifying acid trips,…

This Video Essay Looks At How Films Tell A Story By How They Arrange Their Scenes

I’m loving this recent trend in video essays that go behind the scenes of how films are made: it’s been giving me a new appreciation for the movies that I watch, and it gives me a better understanding of just what makes a movie brilliant. Channel Criswell takes an in depth look at how directors…

A Blizzard Can’t Dampen The Spirits Of The Nation’s Panda Bears

As Winter Storm Jonas pummels the East Coast this weekend, Washington DC’s Smithsonian National Zoo posted up this fantastic video of one of their Pandas, Tian Tian, enjoying the weather.

XKCD has always had best takes on astronomy, and took a fun look at the news that we might actually have a 9th planet in our solar system.

NASA Has Completed Welding Together The Orion Spacecraft’s Crew Module

The launch of NASA’s Orion Spacecraft isn’t slated for another two years, but preparations are well underway for the first mission into deep space: engineers have just completed welding together the Orion crew module. The Exploration Mission (EM-1) will take place in September 2018, with Orion perched on top of the Space Launch Systems rocket.…