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Nazis unleash their monster factory in the Frankenstein’s Army trailer

Frankenstein’s Army is a World War II-set horror flick about a group of Russian soldiers that stumbles upon a secret lab where the Nazis are making their own soldiers, without following all those silly rules about numbers of limbs, replacing hands with blades, or sticking large turbines in uncomfortable places. Man, WWII Soviets can never…

This animated lightshow is the most stunning thing we’ve seen all week

Carve out two minutes from your undoubtedly busy schedule and just watch this. It’s beautiful. This is Night Stroll, an animated short by Japanese artist Tao Tajima. It’s a phosphorescent vision, one where geometric shapes pop, slide and spin in and out of existence across a nighttime Tokyo, their flitting forms ricocheting light from the…

Ping Pong Only Gets Better When You Add Crazy AR Visuals

The problem with ping pong—as cool as it is—is its complete and utter lack of insane, borderline seizure-inducing visuals. We can all agree on that, right? Well you don’t have to worry anymore; the Pingtime augmented reality table has got that covered. The setup was developed by Sergiu Doroftei, Bogdan Susma, Ion Cotenescu, and Silviu…

Pacific Rim is the greatest fairy tale of the twenty-first century

In a summer of sequels, reboots, and misfires, Pacific Rim is a brilliant surprise. Its cheerful audaciousness will take you back to a time when blockbusters were original stories that filled you with glee and wonder. This movie works just like a fairy tale, but one whose inevitable moral won’t make you claw your face…

Here’s Google’s Eric Schmidt Using the Moto X Smartphone In the Wild

Information about Motorola’s forthcoming “Moto X” smartphone has been slowly trickling out over the last few months. Here’s our first look at the snazzy new Moto phone, courtesy of Mr. Eric Schmidt. The Google Chairman was photographed by several wire services using the forthcoming phone at a meeting of tech minds in Sun Valley, Idaho.…

This Stylish Watch Lets Blind People Feel Time

There are simple things we often take for granted, like the fact that we can flippantly glance at a clock to tell the time. But people who can’t see don’t have that autonomy, which is why designer Hyungsoo Kim of Eone Timepieces has created the Bradley, a watch that lets blind people feel the time.…

Solar-Powered Sun-Tracking Briefcase Battery Guarantees Perpetual Power

If you’ve got travels in the near future that will keep your gadgets away from the live-giving power outlets that keeps them charged, trade your briefcase full of ‘important’ files for this equally vital solar-powered battery-filled attaché. When the SunSocket’s set of solar panels are fully deployed, they automatically track the position of the sun…

Batman: The Ultimate Hoarder?

My friend Anna Maria Cool recently mentioned she suspected Batman was a hoarder. The seed was planted. I knew I wouldn’t stop thinking about it until I drew something about it. I can stop thinking about it now. Click to enlarge: Btw, the objects on the bottom of page 1 are all from actual Batman…

12 Cool Pools You Wish You Were Swimming In Now

It’s gone from warm and pleasant seersucker weather to hot as hell outside. It’s slogging through air so thick you need a machete and a shower every time you step outside hot. In times like these, you just want to laze in a pool. Specifically, in these positively perfect specimens. While you’re not picky, and…

This fantastic anthology was written entirely by io9 commenters!

A few years ago, a group of io9 commenters created the Thursday Tales forum on io9. Every week, they post short stories or continuations of longer stories on Thursdays. Eventually they had so many great stories that they decided to publish an anthology. It’s called We Had Stars Once, we’ve got an excerpt! We Had…

Our solar system has a tail and it’s shaped like a four-leaf clover

According to NASA, both the existence of our solar system’s tail and its general shape have now been confirmed, which… wait – our solar system has a tail? Yes. Let’s bring you up to speed. One: Our solar system has a tail – a loooong stream of solar particles that astronomers call, awesomely, a “heliotail.”…

Why are plants attracted to radium?

A 1909 issue of Popular Science Monthly contains a piece about how plants react to radium. Since radium emits gamma radiation, which kills cells and mutates DNA, they don’t generally respond well. So why are these plant roots curving towards it? We’ve already established that radium’s overall effect on the world is mixed at best,…

The latest Chrome update—version 28!—is now ready and waiting for you. Newly powered by Blink, not Webkit, it also has a sweet new rich notification system.

Hiccup soars in the first How to Train Your Dragon 2 trailer

Looks like the training is going pretty well! The first How to Train Your Dragon 2 trailer has finally arrived, and it contains nothing but a single scene of (the older, sexier) Hiccup and Toothless soaring through the air before Hiccup decides to jump dragon — and then continues soaring through the air. You’ll see.…

Meet the Pentagon’s latest robotic abomination: ATLAS

No, it’s not a souped-up version of Robby the Robot — it’s ATLAS, DARPA’s latest attempt at creating a humanoid robot. Unlike the super-realistic Petman, which was designed to test chemical protection clothing, this 330-pound monster is meant to assist in emergency situations. Riiiight… We’ve seen a proto-version of ATLAS before, but this updated unit…

How to make phosphorus by doing disgusting things with urine

Feel like doing a lot of horrible things with pee this weekend? If you did, you’d be following in the footsteps of the least dignified scientist ever. Oh, and you’d need about 1500 gallons of urine. Hennig Brand discovered the element of phosphorus in 1669. That sounds like quite an achievement, but Brand’s life wasn’t…

How Good Does Your Phone’s Camera Need To Be?

Yesterday, Nokia announced to some fanfare its new Lumia 1020: a 41-megapixel, Xenon-flashed, highly tweakable camera that, y’know, also makes phone calls. But how good does the camera on your phone really need to be? Of course, it depends on your usage. Only interested in posting pictures of sandwiches to Instagram? Your humble 5,6,7,8-megapixel camera…

Matt Damon and Jodie Foster take you inside the worlds of Elysium

If you’re as hungry for Elysium news as we are, you’ll appreciate this short featurette which includes a bit of new footage, but also features director Neil Blomkamp explaining what inspired him to make the movie, Matt Damon discussing how terrible Earth is and Jodie Foster revealing a rather important detail about her character. That…

Watch as the first-ever human-powered helicopter takes flight

What you’re about to see has never been done before in the history of aeronautics. A team of engineers from the University of Toronto have claimed a $250,000 prize after building and flying the first-ever human-powered hover bike. After remaining unclaimed for the past 33 years, the Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition (or…

Is This 5-Inch Phone BlackBerry’s New Hope?

Looks like BlackBerry’s might be interested in getting in on the enormo-phone scene, with the first leaked image of a phone destined to be known as the A10 seemingly confirming the existence of a 5-inch model—that could upgrade the Z10 with curvier lines and a newer version of BB’s mobile software. According to the image,…