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What Hidden Gems Would You Tell Visitors To Your Locale Not Miss?

Forget the guidebooks. Today, we want to know about the much lesser known attractions near you. Maybe you want to clue us in on an unlikely, but delightful, tour you can take. Or maybe you want to tell us about an unusual feature of nature that’s easily visible there. Perhaps you want to let the…

These Neat Animations Show How CMOS and CCD Sensors Work

Ever wondered how the CMOS and CCD image sensors inside cameras work? Well, these neat animations byRaymond Sirí do a great job of explaining it. The animations show the basics of how the two sensor types capture light, make sense of it, and then send it off to be stored as an image. They were,…

Which President Greenlit A Trip To The Center Of The Earth?

In the 1820s, the Hollow Earth Theory had two powerful advocates. They went to the United States Congress to lobby for a sponsored expedition to the center of the Earth. Congress turned them down, but one president said yes. John Cleves Symmes was an American army officer, born during the Revolutionary War, who spent his…

Another Marvel Movie Character Could Be Coming Back To Life

JJ Abrams discusses honoring Star Wars’ past in The Force Awakens. Clark Gregg looks to Agents of SHIELD’s future in the MCU. Plus, teases for the finales of Once Upon A Time and Arrow, and where a potential fifth season of Person of Interest could go. To me, my Spoilers! Top image: Avengers: Age of…

The Sun Celebrated Cinco de Mayo With This Beautiful Solar Flare

If you’re gonna celebrate, do it in style. Well, the Sun did to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, spewing out this gorgeous solar flare that’s captured here in a variety of different wavelengths. The images were obtained by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on May 5th at 6:11 p.m. EDT. Each one reveals a different wavelength of…

How Nature Can Mummify Your Brain

Brain tissue is very soft and full of water, and through autolysis it usually begins to decompose rapidly after death. Nevertheless, it can sometimes be preserved. In 1998, archaeologists excavated the fossilised remains of an 18-month-old infant from a burial site near Quimper in France. The child had died about 700 years previously, and its…

New Legal Case Supports 3D-Printed Gun Blueprints Under Free Speech

It’s three years since the files to 3D-print a gun were published online by Cody Wilson. Soon after he received a letter from the State Department demanding the files be removed from the internet—and now he’s fighting that under the argument of free speech. The letter, issued by a smaller Department agency known as the…

Gates Foundation Is Opening Six New Centers to Help End Child Mortality

The Gates Foundation has announced that it’s investing $75 million into six new research centers across Africa and south Asia, that will act as a disease surveillance network to help end child mortality in the developing world. Spurred by the recent Ebola epidemic in west Africa, the Gates Foundation is creating these centers in order…

Novel About an Exorcism Reality Show Will Be a Movie 

We’re once again entering the world of movie studios buying rights to a book before it even comes out. In this case, it’s Focus Features getting ahold of Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts, due out June 2nd. The premise is not only interesting, but seems well-suited for adaptation to a visual medium: a…

Why do horses need hooves? Here’s a short video from the BBC which shows how hooves play into the speed and efficiency of a horse’s run.

Stick Figures Go On Amazing Adventures In a Series of Photographs

Paris-based artist Yacine Ait Kaci has an alter-ego: Elyx, a stick figure who “lives in a little notebook” but “totally shares our reality.” On Instagram, Elyx can be seen reinventing mundane parts of our world into something amazing. Yacine told theInstagram Blog: “He has the vision of a child, discovering everything as if it was…

Swatch Wants To Fix The Biggest Problem With Smartwatches

Swatch is normally a company associated with duty-free shops and 12-year-old’s birthday presents. It’s not a leader in the smartwatch market. In fact, it’s not actually in the smartwatch market. But apparently, it’s months away from solving the biggest problem with wrist computers: the battery. According to a report in Swiss newspaper Handelszeitung, Swatch has…

These Augmented Reality Hands Are Giving Me Nightmares

Evolution decided that humans should have five digits on the end of each limb. Not four. Not six. Certainly not five little hands attached to one big hand. But thanks to this art/technology/torture installation, some people got to experience what would’ve happened if Darwin screwed up. Augmented Hand Series (v.2) was a project developed by…

IBM’s Watson Could Offer Customized Treatment To Every Cancer Patient

Rather than relying on carpet-bombing approaches like chemotherapy and radiation treatments, cutting-edge cancer cures are looking more towards a surgical strike, tailored to shutting down the mutations that are driving growth. And the secret weapon in that fight might just be a well-known Jeopardy contestant. IBM’s Watson supercomputer rose to fame when it trounced two…

iZombie Will Continue to Be Undead In a Second Season

The CW’s delightful iZombie has gotten a second season order! This is really great news for everyone who loves this offbeat dramedy. It’s not a huge surprise, since the show’s been doing decently well and the CW probably wants to keep Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas close. Thomas and co. have done a really great…

Google’s Denied HQ Plans Tried to Cockblock LinkedIn From Expanding

Much of the news in the “space race” for Silicon Valley dominance has focused on the Big Three: Google, Apple, and Facebook have all been competing to build Imperial Star Destroyer-size new HQs. But now we learn that LinkedIn also has big plans to grow its campus. And a failed land-grab by Google almost stopped…

What’s the Worst Thing About Virtual Assistants?

There’s a rumorthat Apple will be redesigning Siri to better resemble its colorful Watch version. Cool. But with Google Now and Microsoft’s Cortana getting a lot of development attention on their platforms, including a male version of Cortana, Siri probably needs more than just an interface overhaul. In fact, there’s annoying shit endemic to all…

South Korean Seaweed Farms, From Space

Zoom in on this satellite image of South Korea’s southern coast and you’ll notice the grid-like patterns in the water are made up of hundreds of little rectangles. These are seaweed fields, held by ropes and buoys that keep them close to the surface during high tide and off the seafloor during low tide. Photo…

Yet Another Dubious Argument For Not Building More Skyscrapers

The US is in the midst of a building boom that will dramatically change the skyline of most major American cities. Among the many concerns about sprinkling our cities with supertalls, there’s one issue that’s starting to crop up in legal battles: shadowy urban landscapes could stifle the potential for gathering solar energy. A great…

Station Eleven Wins This Year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award!

Emily St. John Mandel’s post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven was already a finalist for the National Book Awards, but now it’s won one of genre’s most coveted awards, the Arthur C. Clarke Award. (And we’re reading it as June’s io9 Book Clubbook!) According to the Guardian, Clarke jury chair Andrew M. Butler explained the choice: “While…