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On Sunday, Claudia Alexander, who helped lead the Galileo and Rosetta spacecraft missions, died at the age of 56. In addition to her work with NASA, she was a prolific writer, authoring scientific papers, children’s books and science fiction. Read her obituary over on the New York Times.

What exactly is a normal curve distribution, and how do you calculate it from the mean and standard distribution?

Yes, You Can Use Cortana in Windows 10 With Any Old Microphone

One of the coolest new Windows 10 features is talking to your computer. For many people, it’ll be the first time they’ve had a voice-activated personal assistant on tap. And yet, most computers won’t have Cortana turned on by default—allegedly because they don’t have certified high-quality microphones built-in. As far as I can tell, though,…

Hitch a Ride on New Horizons in Latest Flyover Animation from Pluto

That’s it. I’m packing my bags, hitching a ride on the next rocket, and finding a way to skate on the icy nitrogen glaciers of Pluto. The latest flover animation from New Horizons data takes us soaring in the skies over the aching expanses of Sputnik Planum and the jagged teeth of Hillary Montes. Check…

Under The Dome Shows The Worst Scenario For A Hillary Clinton Presidency

Hey, it’s me. The Dome. Sorry I haven’t been around much. I’ve been kind of busy. You know how it is. They wanted to bring me to San Diego Comic-Con and put all of Hall H under me, as a publicity stunt. But then people got all squirrely about my plan to put J.J. Abrams…

The Life and Untimely Death of Technology’s Weirdest Logo

In 1988 Timothy Wilkinson, a British designer at frog design in Silicon Valley, was tasked with creating a logo for the biggest peripheral maker in the world: Logitech. The company kept Wilkinson’s logo around for almost 30 years. And while it long seemed weird to me, it’s also completely brilliant. When he designed it, Wilkinson…

You Can Still Find Groundwater in California, But It’ll Cost You

So your taps have run dry in the drought and you desperately need more water for your family. Why not just dig another well? For starters, the cost of digging a well might be more than you paid for your house. And then there’s another issue: No matter how deep you dig, someone with more…

Watch a Hippo Poop Underwater

This is equal parts disgusting and hypnotic. We’ve seen hippos using their tails to spray their poop around, but we’ve only seen it on land—and the hippo wasn’t pressed right up against glass. Let’s get a look at these fluid dynamics up close. Ah, the majestic hippo. What we’re seeing up there is actually a…

The Best of Gizmodo This Week

We were busy playing with Windows 10 all week, and published some great science explainers and debunks, none of which fascinated the internet quite as much as Converse sneakers’ first redesign in nearly a century. Here are the highlights! I Installed Windows 10 and Now I’m Talking to My Computer Unless you’re one of the…

Is It Finally Time to Accept Fat as the Sixth Taste?

There are five acknowledged tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and (slightly more controversially) umami. For awhile now, researchers have suggested the existence of a sixth taste: fat. Now, a new study has researchers saying they may have finally isolated it—and they’ve given it a name: oleogustus. When we talk about a “taste” it’s generally accepted…

When Every County in America Goes to Work

In Humboldt County, Nevada, over a third of the population leaves for work in the middle of the night. Central and Mountain Time Americans tend to hit the road between 7:30 and 8 am, while East and West Coasters are all over the place. By 10 am, America’s roads have fallen silent. Designer Jody Sieradzki…

I Went Storm Chasing with NASA

It’s a dark and stormy night, 28,000 feet over the Midwest. Just after 10:30 PM, I’m standing aft of the cockpit of a NASA DC-8, while lightning flashes outside the cabin windows. A team of scientists recently took to the skies over Kansas and Nebraska to study how nighttime thunderstorms form over the Great Plains.…

How This Iconic Image of Pluto Came to Be

On July 14, this unprecedented image forever changed our view of Pluto. But New Horizons did not beam this photo to Earth as you see it here. It arrived unassembled: rough, lossy, colorless. Revealing Pluto’s true face would require some effort, and a specialized team of scientists with an… unconventional name. At Science, Eric Hand…

io9 Newsstand: Are the little men with knives real?

This week’s stories are about what happens to women who aren’t seen by the world around them as fully realized human beings. The Reluctant Author by Megan Patton | Luna Station Quarterly Alma died in her tidy New York home shortly after 5pm on October 17th, before the news came on but after the daytime…

Ursula K. Le Guin, Fyodor Dovstoevsky, and the Snuggly Comfort of Evil

Ursula K. Le Guin’s most famous short story is probably “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” It’s a modified version of a thought experiment from Fyodor Dovstoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and in turn it’s helped inspire a raft of similar stories. But “Omelas” isn’t just an interesting idea—it’s a provocation. In Karamazov, Dovstoevsky poses…

Video games are rapidly becoming an actual, professional sport. How can you tell? The prizes and prestige are now big enough that gaming leagues will test players for performance enhancing drug use. Our friends at Kotaku are busy discussing some of the potential loopholes.

China is Building an Absolutely Massive Radio Telescope

Construction is well underway on what will become the world’s largest radio telescope. Once complete, the half-kilometer-wide dish will explore the origins of the Universe and scour the skies for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. Located in southwest China’s Guizhou Province, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope—aka “FAST”—is being constructed on a naturally formed bowl-like valley. It’s…

Pluto Looks Dazzling in This New Exaggerated Color Image

Now that’s a planet, folks! Classification be damned, Pluto is an amazing little world, and this high-res, enhanced-color image is the latest awe-inspiring portrait of it. And it’s revealing all sorts of fascinating details about the dwarf planet’s active surface. This exquisite new global view of Pluto combines four images taken by New Horizons’ Long…

Let’s Talk About Whatever You Want Right Now

Would you look at that, it’s the weekend again! Okay so most of us have a few more hours before we’re out of work, but depending on your timezone you may already be in the pub. If you have to work this weekend, Sad Dawson cries with you. Today on Gizmodo we looked at selfie…

In Spidey, Spider-Man Is Going Back To His Teenage Years… Again

Everything old is new again—or, I guess, in the case of this new Spider-Man comic, everything young is new again. Yes, get ready to re-experience the origins and teenage life of Peter Parker for the 5 billionth time in Marvel Comics history, with a brand new series beginning later this year. As revealed by Comicbook.com…