Science

Amazing Views of Last Night’s UK Aurora Show

A combination of rare, high geomagnetic activity and cloud-free night skies treated many parts of the UK to an amazing aurora demonstration last night. Here are some of the finest photos that got snapped and posted to Twitter. Gizmodo UK is gobbling up the news in a different timezone—so check them out if you need…

Animals in Unbelievable Detail Drawn Entirely in Pancake Batter

We’ve probably all made a few pancakes in amusingly shaped blobs, but Nathan Shields takes pancake to a whole new level of art. The illustrator, former math teacher, and stay-at-home dad makes pancakes with his kids that range from Star Wars tributes to portraits of Isaac Newton to animals painted in stunning species-level detail. There’s…

Ecuador’s Mountains Sure Look Beautiful From Space

It may look more like modern art, but you’re actually looking at a the highlands of Ecuador seen from the European Space Agency’s Envisat. Near the top of the images you can see the outskirts of Quito—one of the highest capital cities in the world—as a series of white dots. Elsewhere, what looks like white…

Moov Might Be the Most Advanced Fitness Wearable Yet

As you may have noticed, there are a million activity trackers out there right now. Most of them are glorified pedometers. The upper tier add altimeters, heart rate monitors, and sleep-tracking to the equation. But what if you don’t just want to be reminded to work out—you want to work out better, safer, and more…

The FDA’s New Nutrition Labels Might Actually Help You Eat Right

The FDA has proposed a new design for the Nutrition Facts labels that come on all the food we eat—and they’re way, way better than before. It’s the first time in 20 years that the labels have received a refresh, and they’re designed to align better with the way Americans eat today. The result is…

This Sheet of Space-Bound Silicon Contains 1.75 Billion Transistors

This single 8 inch-diameter sheet of silicon is etched with 35 replicas of five different chips, each one destined to be sent into space. Those brave hands in the picture are holding around 1.75 billion transistors in total, with each of the circuits being made up of around 10 million transistors or basic circuit switches.…

The Truth About Aspartame and Your Health

A quick online search of Aspartame will provide you with numerous opinions about this artificial sweetener. Some claim it causes things like cancer, seizures, multiple sclerosis, lupus, memory problems and brain tumors. Just about every governmental organization in the world, regulating food products, have deemed it safe for human consumption. (But, you know, just about…

This Crazy Contraption Weighed a Single Electron 13x More Accurately

Last week, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics published the most exact value ever observed for the weight of a single electron—a value 13 times more accurate than the previous estimate. And the Penning trap, the kooky looking device shown above, was crucial in obtaining this measurement. To get this super-accurate weight…

The World’s First Beekeeping Donkey Is Sort of Adorable

Meet Boneco, the world’s first beekeeping donkey. He lives in Brazil and helps his owner, Manuel Juraci, make honey. Boneco also does not appear to like his beekeeping suit. But boy does he look adorable while wearing it. This isn’t just a funny hobby for Juraci and Boneco, though. Beekeeping is their livelihood. In their…

The Number of Known Planets in the Universe Just Doubled

While you were hiding from the last bitter breezes of winter, NASA’s $600 million Kepler Space Telescope discovered a few new planets. Actually, Kepler data revealed 715 new exoplanets. That’s astonishing. It’s actually twice as many as we previously thought existed. The number of known Earth-sized planets also just quadrupled. This is pretty great news…

What Four Months on Mars Taught Me About Boredom

The scene: I’m in my closet-sized cabin, inside a white dome built to house a crew of six for four months as part of an isolation experiment. As a crew, we are working and living as ‘explorers’ stationed on the surface of ‘Mars’. Our colony is lifelike and NASA-funded, but it is situated in a…

Astronomersjust discoveredwater vapor on a moon of a nearby exoplanet, known as Tau Boötis b. It’s long been known that there’s water beyond Earth, like Jupiter’s moon Europa, so this new discovery suggests this might be a trend. [Space.com]

Here’s What a Solar Flare Looks Like In Different Wavelengths of Light

Yesterday, the sun spewed out an X-class solar flare. It hit its angriest peak just before 8pm last night, and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory—which is on sun watch 24/7—caught it on camera through six different wavelengths. Here’s a little explanation from NASA on the series of rainbow-hued shots you’re looking at: These SDO images from…

22 Amazing Observatories Where Our Radio Eyes Watch the Universe

Humans can only see visible light—the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye. That’s why so hard to study celestial objects hidden behind cosmic dust. But radio astronomy reveals those parts of the Universe that can’t be seen in visible light—and the secrets of dust-shrouded galaxies like our lovely Milky…

Selfies Have Led to a Head Lice Epidemic

Selfies are so fun. You’ve got your cool background—ideally, a sun-soaked beach or a compelling urban environment—and you’ve got your cool friends. Ideally lots of them. Just flip that phone around, put your heads together, smile, and watch those Instagram likes roll in for hours. But it’s too good to be true, folks. Selfies are…

A Landfill Park Is Leaking Toxic Waste Thanks to Burrowing Gophers

Let this be your cautionary tale against building a pretty waterfront park on a landfill. At Cesar Chavez Park on the Berkeley Marina, squirrels and gophers are burrowing through old trash, turning the ground into toxin-leaching swiss cheese. Poison from the estimated 1.9 million tons of residential, commercial, and industrial waste is now leaching into…

Why the Same Side of the Moon Always Faces the Earth

One Moon “day” is approximately 29 1/2 Earth days. This rotation coincides with its orbit around the Earth so that we only see about 59% of the surface of the Moon from Earth. When the Moon first formed, its rotational speed and orbit were very different than they are now. Over time, the Earth’s gravitational…

The Great Lakes Are Even More Beautiful When They’re Nearly Frozen Over

For the first time since 1994 the Great Lakes are almost completely covered in ice, with only 12 percent remaining unfrozen. And now, thanks to NASA satellites, we can look upon this icy plain and despair—except that it’s actually quite beautiful. The average amount of ice cover for the Great Lakes is roughly 50 percent,…

Soviet and American Space Suits For Sale at This Other-Worldly Auction

On April 8th, the New York City branch of Bonhams will be hosting a “Space History” auction, and Gizmodo has been given a preview of the some of the historically unique, space age artifacts that will be for sale. From full-body Soviet space suits to a control panel once used on the space station Mir,…

Scientists Turn Off Pain Using Nothing But Light

Pain is a hard problem. Sure, we can throw a little morphine at pain in the short term, but researchers continue to struggle with solutions for chronic pain. New research from Stanford’s futuristic Bio-X lab looks like a light at the end of the tunnel—literally! Put simply, a team of scientists has developed a way…