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This Spacecraft Fairytale Will Make Anyone Excited About Outer Space

Rosetta is traveling to unknown lands. Her voyage has gone on nearly a decade. With her lander Philae, she’s mankind’s most intrepid explorer, headed for a mysterious destination called Churyumov–Gerasimenko. It’s not a fictitious fairytale. It’s science. https://gizmodo.com/the-rosetta-spacecraft-is-humanitys-first-asteroid-land-1443930270 The European Space Agency’s Rosetta orbiter, launched in 2004, will be the first man-made object to land…

Watch Today’s ISS Spacewalk Live, Right Here, Right Now

It’s no lazy Saturday on the International Space Station: astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Michael Hopkins have just begun the first of three spacewalks to fix a faulty cooling loop on the outside of the ISS. And you can watch it live. Head on over to NASA TV for live video, including radio communication from the…

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: Beat It Tonight (NSFW)

No see, the three supa-hawt party girls getting naked and drunk represents the itch of his addiction—that itch, that unyielding, nagging itch—the Molotov cocktail, his determination to conquer it.

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Several Random Things You Didn’t Know About Walking With Dinosaurs 3D

They took an educational BBC series about dinosaurs and turned it into a goofy kids’ movie. To be honest, I expected Walking With Dinosaurs to be a lot worse than it actually was. The actual movie is lovely to look at, but dumb as bricks. And full of surprises — including Saved by the Bell-style…

Gorgeous Space Wallpapers to Fill Your Holidays with Stars

I picked half a dozen or so of my favorite illustrations and made them wallpaper-sized for all of my io9 friends. I hope you enjoy…and Happy Holidays!

Most Beautiful Items: December 13 – 20, 2013

It’s nearly Christmas so everything is beautiful, from the lights decking every inch of your neighborhood to the fact that you’re about to get a little vacation. But we also had plenty of things to show you this week, from our favorite Instagram accounts to a tunnel to the sky in a Manhattan train station,…

Super fun holiday Rube Goldberg machine is a Christmas miracle

Happy holidays everyone. Enjoy the time with your family and friends and the days off you might get. Here’s a holiday Rube Goldberg machine from Quirkology, it starts a little slow but then grows bigger and basically becomes a wonderful Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) miracle. Have fun! Stay safe! SPLOID is a new…

First trailer for Transcendence shows Johnny Depp going full AI

It’s starting to look like 2014 is going to be the year of artificial intelligence movies. First Her, now Transcendence, look at what happens to humanity when AIs live among us. Yesterday we got some interesting teasers for this movie, and now we’ve got the complete trailer. It’s hard to tell from whether it’s going…

Watch a nuclear bomb create a lake

This is the Chagan nuclear test. It was part of a larger effort to both test nuclear weapons and to use those weapons for peaceful purposes. The result is a lake it is barely safe to swim in and a severely polluted river nearby. An often-overlooked aspect of nuclear proliferation was the effort to use…

Why wine and tea taste so good

Wine and tea are both delicious, this we know and have always known. But, new research has finally given us the precise locus of just where their deliciousness comes from. Today, we took a look at the most amazing scientific breakthroughs that this year has seen in a pretty incredible year in science. And commenter…

Yes, electrons are perfectly round — and that’s a problem

Bad news, everyone! New measurements show that electrons are perfectly round. This is a problem because it means something’s still seriously wrong with a critical theory that’s supposed to tell us why the universe exists. Last year, Harvard and Yale physicists conducted an experiment to measure the “lumpiness” of electrons. The researchers were hoping to…

Movies are pretty corny when you only hear their punchline

You might not want to admit it but your favorite action movie is pretty corny. But it’s okay! Because they’re fun and they’re ridiculous and there are explosions and they’re quite wonderful at wasting two hours. But when you only see little bits of the movie? Especially just the punchline? It gets quite embarrassing. Just…

Designer Mods a Pioneer a DJ Deck to Look Like the Millennium Falcon

Designer Jesse Dean has made a career out of modding out DJ equipment like turntables in all kinds of nerdy ways. His latest, though, might be the most profound geek mod he’s ever done. Dean will mod anything. Want your Native Instruments workstation loaded with Lego? You got it. Want your Technics turntable welded together…

This Week in Time Capsules: We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Capsule

This week’s top time capsule stories from around the world include an abundance of riches in Florida, a surprise capsule found by some rather patient people Down Under, and the old question of tech obsolescence at a school in California. Florida County Gets So Many Donations They Have To Buy A Second Capsule Sarasota County,…

Now Available: Bamboo Back for Moto X

Moto X‘s customizability was a big selling feature when the phone rolled out. But arguably the most recognizable feature, the bamboo back plate, wasn’t available at launch. It finally arrived this week, to the joy of people who want their phones to resemble a Chris Craft boat. https://gizmodo.com/moto-x-review-the-android-phone-for-everybody-1034784286 The natural fiber option is only available…

How do you wash your clothes in zero gravity? It’s a bigger problem than you’d think at first, and there are some very complicated solutions for what you could do on a long interplanetary voyage.

Crazy Hacker Wants to Save Bitcoin by Blasting a CubeSat into Space

Jeff Garzik is a dreamer. You know, the kind of guy who probably thought that he could fly with his red cape when he was younger. (Note: As a toddler, I unsuccessfully tried to fly several times.) But now Jeff Garzik is looking higher. He’s looking to space, and he wants Bitcoin to live there.…

The Doctor finally meets a problem the Sonic Screwdriver can’t solve

Check out the first clip from the Doctor Who Christmas special, “Time of the Doctor.” In which the Doctor finally faces a problem too big for the sonic screwdriver. It’s just a short snippet, but it showcases one of the main features of this special: We’re rebooting Clara’s home life, getting rid of the “nanny…

Birds offer insight into the evolution of extended families

Humans often rear their children with help from family and friends. But why would such a strategy evolve? What could we possibly get out of rearing somebody else’s child? Now, scientists believe that they’ve unraveled this mystery — at least when it comes to birds. In some species, birds temporarily forgo having chicks so that…