Science

IBM’s Watson Supercomputer Is About to Start Helping Actual People With Their Medical Problems

Last year, Watson beat humans in a battle of wits. Starting this fall, IBM’s insanely intelligent supercomputer will begin diagnosing patients at New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. https://io9.gizmodo.com/preview/ibm-jeopardy-challenge-finale-watson-is-victorious-5762784 For the past six months, Watson has been working on a virtual residency of sorts, learning how to practice medicine through simulations carried out using an…

When To Watch This Year’s Amazing Halley’s Comet Meteor Shower

Sunday morning you’ll be able to see the Orionid meteor shower spawned from Halley’s Comet a few hours before dawn. And it should be absolutely stunning. The Orionids are one of the two Halley’s Comet showers that happen every year. Eta Aquarids, the other one, usually peaks in early May. Sky watchers say that for…

Smart Shocking Shorts Stop Sleeptime Sores

Racy undewear can often be described as shocking, but rarely has that statement been literally true. Neuroscientists have designed a pair of pants that look a bit like cycling shorts and which send tiny electric currents to the wearer’s bottom. The undergarment has the potential to prevent pressure ulcers in people with mobility problems. This…

Water on the Moon Came From… the Sun?

Water on the moon is nothing particularly revelatory. But a new study suggests that H20 on the surface of the Earth’s nearest neighbor comes from a most unlikely place: the Sun. The research, which is published in Nature Geoscience, suggests that hydrogen ejected from the Sun’s atmosphere is carried towards the moon in solar winds.…

Whoa, Water Drops Floating on Top of Water Makes No Sense but It’s Awesome

In the comics, the Flash can vibrate his body so fast that he can walk through walls. With water, though, vibration can keep water droplets from being absorbed into a larger surface of water. Instead of coalescing into the larger body, they just gather on top as long as the surface is kept vibrating. It’s…

Evolving Bigger Brains May Have Made Us Prone to Cancer

If it’s not one thing, it’s another: a new hypothesis floating around the scientific community suggests that evolving bigger brains and superior intellect may have led to a dramatically elevated risk of cancer in humans. Thanks, brain. The theory runs like this. Usually cells die off in a controlled fashion—called apoptosis—which allows fresh cells to…

How Quantum Mechanics Was Born From the Need For a Better Lightbulb

Some of mankind’s most remarkable scientific discoveries came to light as a result of research that had nothing to do with the breakthrough itself. And such was the case with quantum mechanics. Back in the early 1890s the German Bureau of Standards asked Max Planck to design a lightbulb that produced the maximum amount of…

NASA Is Working on a Nasal Spray to Keep Astronauts From Throwing Up in Space

Red Bull may be sending dudes to jump from the stratosphere, but NASA’s still out there doing stuff too. It’s not quite as flashy as livestreamed sky-diving, by NASA is currently working on a fast-acting, anti-nausea nasal spray. Talk about technology we could all benefit from. It turns out that over half of astronauts develop…

Supersonic Space Jump: Full Coverage

Total success. After many delays, Felix did it. He reached the highest altitude ever reached by any man in a balloon, more than 127,000 feet. He then jumped and fell faster than any man, breaking Mach 1 (it’s unofficial for now, they have to confirm it). Update: Watch the first head cam footage from the…

NASA’s Inventing In Style with Awesome Robot Pants

You already have NASA to thank in part for everyday, Earthly wonders like memory foam and water filters, but a new one is coming to the list: powered exoskeletons. The Xi Robotic Exoskeletion is a device—and in some ways almost a vehicle—currently in development by NASA and the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition.…

Watching This Polar Bear Smash a $2,000 Camera Lens Is Surprisingly Cute

This polar bear is probably a really big Nikon fan that just loves to destroy expensive things because he was caught chomping, throwing and smashing a $2,100 Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 IS telephoto lens. It’s pretty hilarious to see a giant polar bear play around with a camera lens, it looks like he tries to smoke…

Animal-Shaped Office Supplies Come With a Bite

We thought Office supplies were just about the blandest thing we could talk about. And that statement held true until we laid eyes on these ferocious staple removers from JacZagoory. Lions and tigers and bears, join big pewter models of sharks and gorillas and gators—all the best animals, in desk tool form for $78 each.…

Using Your iPhone To Detect Ear Infections Also Keeps the Doctor Away

Forget that daily apple. Researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory University have developed the Remotoscope, an accessory that turns the iPhone into an ear-inspecting otoscope so doctors can diagnose and treat kids remotely in the event of an ear infection. It’s a simple clip-on attachment that puts a scope over the iPhone’s camera lens and…

Faster-Than-Light Travel May Be Possible

According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, light traveling in a vacuum is the universal speed limit. But scientists love to try and break rules—and now a tweaked version of Einstein’s equations suggests that faster-than-light travel might just be possible. Out with the old… Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity was first published way back…

The Supersonic Space Jump Balloon Compared to the Statue of Liberty (Update 2)

The Red Bull Stratos mission control has announced that, after Tuesday’s aborted supersonic space jump, the next launch is scheduled for Sunday, October 14 at 8:30am EDT. We will cover the Roswell event live. https://gizmodo.com/first-human-supersonic-space-jump-aborted-updated-with-5950136 In the meantime, I made this simulation using Red Bull Stratos mission’s data and schematics. It shows how big the…

How to Tell if the Universe Is a Computer Simulation

It’s a famous question among academic philosophers and drunken college students alike: how can we be sure we’re not living in a gigantic computer simulation? Fortunately, researchers from the University of Bonn in Germany think they’ve cracked it. Their reasoning is pretty straightforward, according to Technology Review: if the cosmos is just a numerical simulation,…

Is This the Last Thing the Human Race Will Ever See?

Astronomers at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observatory have observed something very surprising for the very first time: a weird tridimensional spiral structure inside of a dying star, one that is just like our very own Sun. Is this the last thing that the human race will ever see (if we manage to survive…

That piece of shiny metal spotted by Mars Curiosity? It’s likely just a benign piece of plastic, says NASA. All is OK.

Are You a Super Taster? You’re Almost Exempt From Sinus Infections

Does your ability to taste certain flavors give you better defense against sinus infections? Probably, according to a new study from the University of Pennsylvania. Humans can detect five different flavors—sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and savory. About a quarter of the population can’t taste the bitter, whereas another quarter are hyper-sensitive to even the smallest…

What Is This Shiny Metallic Thing Found On Mars?

While grabbing its first scoop of Martian soil, the Mars Curiosity Rover team noticed a weird thing, something that was not supposed to be there: a bright object on the ground. What is it? NASA’s scientists don’t know yet. The image—taken by the right Mast Camera during the mission’s 61st Martian day—shows Curiosity’s robotic arm’s…