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Europe’s New Satellite Narrowly Avoided A Collision with Space Junk

Just 34 hours after the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1A spacecraft separated from its carrier rocket, it nearly smashed into a dead NASA satellite. Costing $380 million, the Sentinel-1A is the first of a fleet of satellites that Europe is sending into space for its multibillion-dollar Copernicus project, which the ESA describes as “a new era…

This Could Be the First Animal to Live Entirely Inside a Computer

Animals are exceptionally complicated things. So complicated, in fact, that we’ve never actually built one ourselves. But the day is fast approaching when we’ll be able to create digital versions of organisms on a computer — from the way they move right through to their behaviors. Here’s how we’ll do it. I spoke to neuroscientist…

Scientists: Ancient papyrus that says Jesus was married is authentic

Three teams of scientists at Harvard University, Columbia University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have concluded that the ancient coptic papyrus that talks about Jesus’ wife is authentic and not a forgery. The Vatican claimed the latter when it was discovered. The papyrus is called the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife because it contains phrases…

Meet Your Fellow io9ers Tonight, 4/10, in Cambridge, MA!

io9 editors Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders are hosting a cocktail hour meetup tonight in Cambridge, Mass. This will be followed by Annalee’s appearance at Harvard Book Store. Details below! io9 Meetup! 5:30-6:30 PM, at Charlie’s Kitchen, 10 Eliot St, near Harvard Square. Charlie Jane and Annaee will be the ones with pink and…

Adorable Justice League Watches Grant You the Power of Punctuality

Unless being late to a dinner date is a felony, Nooka’s new line of DC Comics-themed watches won’t give you any crime-fighting powers. What they will give you is the ability to show off your allegiance to one of five different DC universe characters including Superman, The Flash, Batman, The Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman.…

What Happens to Bacteria in Space?

In the otherwise barren space 220 miles above Earth’s surface, a capsule of life-sustaining oxygen and water orbits at 17,000 miles per hour. You might know this capsule as the International Space Station (ISS), currently home to six humans—and untold billions of bacteria. Microbes have always followed us to the frontiers, but it’s only now…

The Pacific Northwest at Night

An astronaut on the International Space Station took this picture in 2012 over Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia of city lights and green airglow.

Science And Religion Battle For A Man’s Beliefs In I Origins Trailer

Given the ever-expanding battle between those who trust science and those who believe in a supreme deity, I expect Mike Cahill’s follow-up to Another Earth to raise quite a stir. In I Origins, a scientist experiences a phenomenon he can’t explain with science — a crisis of faithlessness, if you will. It doesn’t appear that…

Taking this Simple “Wug Test” Reveals a Lot About Your Brain

This is a wug. I thought it was lonely, and so I got it a cute companion. So, I had one wug, and now I have two […] Please fill in the last word of that sentence. Go ahead and say it out loud. What you just pronounced reveals a lot about how the brain…

You Can Actually Solve This Working Rubik’s Cube Lamp

If you’ve reconciled your childhood frustrations and animosities towards the Rubik’s Cube, you might be happy to hear there’s now yet another way to make the iconic puzzle a part of a room’s decor. Believe it or not this Rubik’s Cube LED lamp is actually solvable, although you probably won’t want someone to ever mess…

Should Copyright Law Also Cover Hyperlinks?

The U.S. Copyright Office recently proposed a seemingly small addition to copyright law that bears some huge implications. It wants to enable copyright holders to protect unauthorized versions of their work from hyperlinks. You read that right: it could soon be illegal simply to link to certain content. Think about that for a second. Let’s…

Atomic eggs Benedict burger is the stuff that my dreams are made of

There are no words to express the lust and gluttony I feel about this breakfast: Pornburger calls it the Cali-corn-ication burger, but it’s actually eggs Benedict with a chorizo-based hollandaise, a beef patty with huitlacoche (Mexican corn smut), avocado, ancho rubbed corn, and salty pork rind crumble as crunchy seasoning. All on an English muffin.…

Scientists Manipulate Genes to Make Old Organs Young Again (in Mice)

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh showed this week that they could teach an old mouse’s thymus to bounce back to a healthy, youthful state, simply by manipulating a single protein that controls gene expression. It’s the first time scientists have been able to regenerate a living organ by gene manipulation, and it could have…

The Invention of the Slurpee

They stain tongues green, red, and blue; they send blood sugar levels on Odyssean voyages; they induce brain-freezes that crumble even the most stoic men. Every year, 7,290,000 gallons of Slurpee are consumed worldwide — enough to fill 12 Olympic-size pools. The beverage — essentially frozen, flavored sugar water blasted with carbon dioxide — comes…

Twenty years ago, only 1–2% of women with cancer in one breast opted for a double mastectomy. Today, that number can approach 25%. Why? According to surgical oncologist Todd Tuttle, the spike is largely explained by an inconsistency between real and perceived risk of developing cancer in the second breast.

Pioneer Exclusive Poster Debut Reveals The Dark Danger of the Sea

Based on a true story, Pioneer follows about a team of Norwegian divers who were subjected to risky experiments at the birth of the Norwegian oil-drilling industry in the early 1980s. We have an exclusive look at the new poster from Magnolia Pictures. Pioneer is set in the early 1980’s, at the beginning of the…

The craziest NASA test ever is this giant supersonic Goldberg machine

NASA is sending new and bigger spaceships to Mars, which means they need bigger supersonic parachutes. So big, in fact, that they don’t fit in any wind tunnel anymore, so their engineers had to find new ways to test them. New crazy ways. Really crazy. In fact, it’s the craziest test they got so far.…

The Gritty Timecop Reboot Will Be Like Looper

The Timecop remake has hired a writer for their gritty reboot. But who will they hire for the all-important splits move? THR is reporting that the Timecop remake is still in the works, and will probably be a lot more like Looper than Timecop. Also, the movie has found a pair of writers to pen…

For the first time ever, biologists have regenerated an organ in a living animal. They did so by manipulating a single protein in elderly mice that makes their bodies rebuild their thymuses, an organ of the immune system. It’s the first time an organ has been repaired with a chemical trigger and not via stem…

Pocket-Sized Wonder-Printer Would Work Its Own Way Across a Page

With what has to be one of the most ambitious Kickstarter projects to come along in a while, the folks behind this Mini Mobile Robotic Printer want to revolutionize the mobile office. Because of instead of carrying a page-wide device that has to pull paper through it, this little marvel will instead print directly on…