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Halloween Is Way Creepier In Zero Gravity

Most ghost costumes are half-assed at best: no matter how good your mask and bedsheet might be, ghosts are meant to float. So if you’re really committed to a good costume, you should take it into zero gravity—up on the International Space Station, for example. That’s exactly what Commander Scott Kelly did to try and…

The Earth Today, Seen from Space

It’s only fitting that the camera dedicated to sending home a steady stream of photos of what our planet looks like right now wears the name EPIC. Living in the future is awesome. The Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) is on the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR). The satellite was originally built in the 1990s…

Here’s How we Started Measuring the Oceans from Space

February 8, 1973: Biologist Ellen Weaver creates a sensor package to measure ocean temperature and detect chlorophyll levels. The sensors were loaded onto communications and weather satellites in NASA’s first foray into sea productivity monitoring. In the early 1970s, NASA put together a team of researchers including legendary explorer Jacques Cousteau, and associate professor at…

97% Is A Short Romance Film For The Smartphone Age

In Ben Brand’s film 97%, Bert gets an alert on his mobile phone: someone with a 97% match on a dating app is within meters. He just needs to find her. What results is comedic, and a little heartbreaking. It’s a really interesting short film that’s feels like it’s in the William Gibson / Person…

Not Even Hillary Clinton’s Secret Email Address Can Escape LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s email spam is notoriously impossible to escape: even if you’re a US Secretary of State using a secret email server, LinkedIn will hunt you down and endorse you to death. A new wave of Clinton’s emailshas just been released. Among the usual correspondence about matters of national and political importance, we have a befuddled…

Halo and XBox have long been synonymous: the former is credited with the blockbuster success of the latter. Now, with Xbox One struggling against competing devices, all eyes are Halo 5. Over on Bloomburg Magazine there’s a great profile of Bonnie Ross, 343 Industry’s CEO.

PayPal’s Two-Hour Outage Could Have Cost Tens of Millions of Dollars

Despite someslightly questionablepractices, PayPal continues to be the best (or only) way for millions of online businesses to take your money. So, an outage, even just a few hours long, can cost millions. PayPal’s services were down for about two hours on Thursday evening, caused by a problem in one of PayPal’s data centres. PayPal…

Crypto is For Everyone—and American History Proves It

Over the last year, law enforcement officials around the world have been pressing hard on the notion that without a magical “backdoor” to access the content of any and all encrypted communications by ordinary people, they’ll be totally incapable of fulfilling their duties to investigate crime and protect the public. EFF and many others have…

Here’s a Doctor Who Story Where I Honestly Have No Idea What a “Happy Ending” Is

There are basically two major types of Doctor Who stories: 1) The Doctor protects the status quo from some outside disruption. 2) The Doctor finds a terrible status quo, and overturns it. But then there are outliers, where the “status quo” is in itself a lot more complicated. Way back when io9 launched in early…

These Gorgeous Fiery Clouds Show Off the Wonders of Fluid Dynamics

They look like the wrath of Hades and Poseidon combined, but these beautiful, fiery clouds, captured by Breckenridge Resort in Colorado, have a simple physical explanation, and it’s rooted in fluid dynamics. The Kelvin-Helmholtz instability creates one of the most ubiquitous patterns in nature—a series of breaking ocean waves that curl over themselves again and…

Listen To C.L. Moore Read Her Space Horror Story, ‘Shambleau’

Here’s a perfect story for Halloween: Shambleau. Written by one of my favorite science fiction authors, C.L. Moore, you can now listen to the story as read by the author in a recently discovered recording. Shambleau was Moore’s first short story, written on her breaks while she worked at a bank. The editors of Weird…

Open Channel: What’s That One Costume You’ve Always Wanted To Do? 

Happy Halloween! It’s one of the points in the year when costumes are out in full force! Some people plan out for months what they’ll wear, and put something together over that time. I’ve got two costumes that are on my short list that I’d like to do at some point. The first is a…

If you’re looking for a healthy dose of spooky science before kicking off your Halloween festivities, Motherboard has a great article on sleep paralysis, a surprisingly common condition in which a dreamer is jolted awake, only to find himself unable to move or speak. Learn how sleep paralysis occurs and how our minds turn this…

What’s the Creepiest Thing Your Computer Has Ever Done?

Whether or not you believe in the supernatural, there’s almost certainly been a moment in your life when you were sure your computer was possessed. Mine came a few months back. I have a home office, but sometimes when I work late into the evening, I like to move my iMac into the bedroom. That…

The Slow Creep of Time Reveals a Skull Emerging from the Earth

Over millennia, wind and water have carved this 100-million-year-old granite into an eerie skull to glare at daring hikers in Joshua Tree National Park. The iconic Skull Rock is the perfect way to welcome the growing gloom of dusk on this All Hallows’ Eve. Top image: Skull Rock in Joshua Tree National Park. Credit: Thomas…

In 1977, Star Wars hit theaters, bringing with it a major merchandizing campaign. Later that year, Halloween costumes based on the films were so popular that suppliers ran out of stock. Starwars.com takes a look at what happened that fall.

4 Disturbing Hauntings That Had a Totally Logical Explanation

Widespread accounts of otherworldly visitations leave people convinced that ghost stories are real, but many are outright scams, hoaxes or accidents. Let’s debunk some famous supernatural scares, shall we? The Fox Sisters In 1848, the Fox Sisters of Hydesville, NY, helped kick off the Spiritualist craze that swept America. Two young girls named Margaret (15)…

The Closest Exoplanet to Earth Was Probably a Ghost

When the exoplanet Alpha Centauri Bb was announced in Nature in 2012, it was hailed a watershed moment in the search for Earth-like worlds beyond our solar system. But as eerie as it sounds, it now appears that Alpha Centauri Bb never existed. According to new research, the closest exoplanet to our own star was…

Check Out This Fantastic Poster For The Martian’s IMAX Release

Starting yesterday, The Martian is being screened in IMAX theaters across the country. To accompany the release, there’s a new poster, and it’s a beauty. Seriously, this is fantastic: The Martian will only be in IMAX theaters through next Friday, so if you’re near one, you’ve only got a limited amount of time. [Flickering Myth]

Go to Amazon.com right now, and you’ll probably find a book that you’re looking for for $.01. Even with shipping, that’s a steal. The New York Times takes a look into the industry of buying books in bulk (sometimes from the trash) and reselling them for a penny.