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This Experiment Suggests a Small Amount of Radiation Could Be Good For You

What happens when you trap 2000 fruit flies and expose them to a dose of 0.05 to 0.4 grays of radiation? You add another week to their lives—an,d considering they only live for two months, that’s saying something. The experiment on fruit flies was carried out at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, as…

This Author Sold a Kale Joke to Asimov’s (and You Can Too)

Since he vowed to become a professional SF author two years ago, Sunil Patel has published nine stories. In a two-part essay (Part One here, Part Two here), Patel explains how he wrote each of those stories and made each of those sales. For anyone who’s ever dreamed of being a science-fiction writer, Patel breaks…

The Very First Wormhole Device — For Magnets!

Physicists have created a wormhole device that can tunnel a magnetic field through space. It sounds like Star Trek, but we won’t be zapping humans across the universe anytime soon. Still, the breakthrough could revolutionize certain magnet-based technologies, including MRIs. Wormholes are wrinkles in the fabric of space and time that can connect two different…

Marvel’s Secret Love Is The Strangest—And Sweetest—Secret Wars Spinoff

Marvel have put out a ridiculous number of tie-ins for their ongoing, universe-rebooting mega event Secret Wars. But one of their latest spinoffs, Secret Wars: Secret Love, is surprisingly unique. Not only is it a superheroic romance anthology that works—it might just end up being one of the best Secret Wars comics out there. Secret…

Hydrophobic sand turns to goo in water and magically turns back to sand when dry

Hydrophobic sand aka magic fairy dust isn’t something new. But seeing the effects of in action is always impressive. Just watch it go from sand into this metallic goo once it sinks into a cup of water. And even cooler, watch it transform back from goo into grains of sand once it exits the water.…

In This Week’s Star Wars Comic, Princess Leia Gets To Kick Butt—Literally

After taking a break from its ongoing story last month to give us a badass Ben Kenobi side story, this week’s issue of Marvel’s Star Wars series gets ready to deal with the fallout from that insane twist that sent ripples through the new Star Wars canon. It also gives us Princess Leia being awesome.…

Scientists Measure Spooky Drops in Air Pollution Over the Middle East

Air pollution is decreasing over parts of the Middle East. But researchers say that for most Middle Eastern cities, the clearer air is actually a symptom of conflict, not a sign of progress. A team of atmospheric scientists led by Jos Lelieveld discovered that in most of the Middle East, nitrogen oxide emissions had been…

Kid Gets Awesome New Bionic Hand, Reminds Us Not Everything is Garbage

The stock market is tanking, North and South Korea are on the brink of war, and a cartoon character from a dystopian future is the most popular candidate for US President at the moment. But don’t despair. While most things are garbage, there are some things in the world that aren’t. Like this adorable kid…

A Whole Bunch of People Named Their Babies After Anakin Skywalker Last Year

We have officially hit peak Star Wars. The Social Security Administration just published its annual tally of the most popular baby names in the U.S., and “Anakin” made the top 1,000. Squeaking in at #957 on the list, Darth Vader’s birth name was bestowed on 218 baby boys last year. Why would people name their…

This Trailer Makes Final Girls Look Like the Most Meta Horror Movie Yet

Horror films are at their best either when they’re really scary, or really self-aware. The Final Girls looks like a bit of both. It’s a new, ultra-meta take on the genre, where a girl meets her dead mom—after she finds herself inside the mom’s popular slasher movie. Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson (A Very Harold &…

Ashley Madison Hackers Break Their Silence

The hackers who stole countless gigabytes of Ashley Madison user data finally spoke up. In an interview with Motherboard, the Impact Team said that “Nobody was watching” when they broke into Ashley Madison’s servers repeatedly over the past few years. “[We] got in and found nothing to bypass,” said one of the hackers. This is…

Press the Space Bar for a Puppy Gif

It’s a site called Open Puppies. Gawk at your own risk please!

So You Want To Launch Your Own Outerwear Brand

10 years ago, Alan Yiu watched as clients of his family’s Vancouver garment factory sent their business to China. So, he launched his own outerwear brand — Westcomb. This is how he did it and what he learned along the way. Unless you’re a serious outdoor athlete, you probably haven’t heard of Westcomb. I hadn’t,…

Let’s Talk About Whatever You Want Right Now

It’s ON, Gizmodo. The weekend approacheth. Currently on As The Internet Churns, our most popular stories are about the bugs at Burning Man, what would happen if a massive solar storm hit Earth, how deep space cryonic sleep might work, and our misadventures with Google’s Project Fi. My favorite news this week was writing up…

The Thermians Are at Worldcon Looking For Their Next Space Hero. Is It You?

We’ve seen some pretty great costumes thus far at Worldcon 2015—but our favorite thing thus far was this group of Thermians from the movie Galaxy Quest. They were doing the voices and the mannerisms and everything. But what if they’re real and that movie is a documentary? What then? Contact the author at [email protected] and…

Humans Have Definitely Made the California Drought Worse

The California drought is by all measures “exceptional.” But humans have made it even more so. A new scientific study offers definitive evidence that anthropogenic climate change has amplified the drought out West, making it 15 to 20% worse than it would have been otherwise. “This would be a drought no matter what,” climate scientist…

A bomb of matchstick heads exploding in slow motion is like fire rain

What happens when you light 6,000 matchstick heads (that is only the tip of the match)? Basically a huge fire bomb explosion that looks like it’s raining fire. The match heads all ignite and burst a super tall flame in the air and then the match heads start flying everywhere and when it falls to…

Acid Rain Was Discovered Way Earlier Than You Probably Think

When did people first know about the phenomenon now known as “acid rain”? Think of a date. Odds are, you’re off by at least a century. Robert Angus Smith was born in the early 1800s, and had two major interests: religion and chemistry. He spent his early school years studying to make a career as…

Meet Immortan Joanna. This gender-swapped Mad Max: Fury Road cosplay is another one of our favorite things we’ve seen at Worldcon so far!

On Getting Drunk at Starbucks

This week, Starbucks started testing alcohol service at two New York City locations. “Wouldn’t it be funny to get drunk at Starbucks?” I thought. It didn’t take long to figure out that I should stick to drinking at bars. Going to the new Starbucks in Williamsburg is weird. The Brooklyn neighborhood smugly eschewed chains of…