Experiment

Eat Bacteria to Boost Brain Power

Could playing in the dirt make you smarter? Mice given peanut butter laced with a common, harmless soil bacterium ran through mazes twice as fast and enjoyed doing so. So says Dorothy Matthews of the Sage Colleges in Troy, New York state, who presented her results at the annual meeting of the American Society for…

Tech News New Scientist May 27

DARPA’s Giant Red Balloons Officially at Large

Remember that DARPA balloon challenge, where the first team to find ten weather balloons wins $40,000? Well, the balloons are up in the air. If you don’t have a team yet, here are some places to report a sighting. UPDATED: https://gizmodo.com/darpa-network-challenge-win-40-000-by-finding-10-red-5393457 Update: Well, that went fast. Took the MIT team 9 hours to find all…

Tech News Chris Jacob Dec 5

New High-Def Home Video From The Edge of Space

This amazing video was shot by a Canon Vixio-HF camcorder attached to a hydrogen balloon launched by a small group of Edmonton radio enthusiasts on August 24. It’s believed to be the first amateur video taken at 107,145 feet. https://gizmodo.com/canon-vixia-hf-s11-camcorder-can-film-an-entire-day-of-5340725 The mission was dubbed BEAR-4 (Balloon Experiments with Amateur Radio), and used an 1800g balloon…

Space & Spaceflight Danny Allen Sep 24

MIT Students Explain How to Photograph Space for $150

On September 2, Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh successfully took these images of Earth’s curvature and the blackness of space using only a weather balloon and off-the-shelf components—without complicated hacks. Total cost: $148. Here’s how they did it. First up, their rig used a Canon A470 camera with 8GB SD card that they bought used…

Space & Spaceflight Danny Allen Sep 14

When a 13-year-old From 2009 Uses a Walkman For a Week

Here’s what happens when you give a 13-year-old from 2009 a Sony Walkman—the tape kind—and ask him to figure it out without any outside help: incredible confusion. To the kid’s credit, he was able to deduce that the tape had two sides (took him three days) and that you could switch between two kinds of…

Tech News Jason Chen Jun 29

NYU Student Conducts Most Adorable Robot Experiment Ever

The tweenbot, a cardboard-bodied, cheerful little bugger, is equipped with a flag stating its intended destination. Since it can only move forward, it depends on the kindness of strangers to guide it and remove obstacles. Tisch School of the Arts student Kacie Kinzer created the tweenbot as a kind of art experiment. In her words:…

Tech News Dan Nosowitz Apr 11

Chemist Discovers the Origins of Life in a Cardboard Box

In 1953, chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey created life. They filled flasks with water and gases from Earth’s primordial atmosphere and, with a jolt of electricity, created amino acids, the building blocks of all life on this planet. Last year, a former student of Miller’s discovered the remnants of the Miller-Urey experiment in a…

io9 Lauren Davis Oct 17

Homemade Experiments with Aerogel, the World’s Lightest Solid

Jason Wells got to toy around with a few blocks of Aerogel, the fantastically light (and fantastically expensive) material made famous by its use as insulation in NASA spacecraft like the Mars Rover. Using just everyday materials from his house, he managed to test the futuristic product’s strength, optical properties, reaction to different liquids and…

Tech News Dan Nosowitz Aug 26

Micro-Camera Implanted in Mouse’s Brain Watches for Parkinson Tremors

Scientists have injected a mouse with a chemical that makes its brain glow where there’s activity, and implanted a tiny camera directly inside the hippocampus to watch what’s going on. The team at Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan are using the 0.1-inch-long camera to look for information on brain activity that causes…

Gadgets Kit Eaton Jan 31

Wrong-Way Balloon Behaves in Unexpected Ways

We don’t normally go driving around with helium balloons in our cars, so we weren’t aware of this strange phenomenon: The dang things go the wrong way when you accelerate and turn! Besides that, we find something likable about the explainer, Robert Krampf, the friendly scientist who seems like the kind of guy from whom…

Tech News Charlie White Dec 28

Joel Schumacher Dabbles In Vampire Nazi Experiments

The yawn-inducing still photo seen here was released yesterday as the first image from Joel Schumacher’s new film Town Creek, about a brother who seeks revenge on a family who has been hiding the result of some of the Third Reich’s experiments with the occult: a vampire. Not just any vampire, mind you, but a…

io9 Kevin Kelly Dec 19

Mist Mutations Are the Latest Fashion in Hollywood

Stephen King’s The Mist is vaporizing from theaters left and right, but there’s already another fog-shrouded mutant mist movie heading to your multiplex. Night & Fog, which is in production with Myriad Pictures, has a very familiar-sounding plot: military experiment on a remote island results in monsters in the mist. Got your lawyer on speed…

io9 Kevin Kelly Dec 6

Japan’s Weather Experiment Goes Swimmingly

Remember last week when I told you about Japan’s atmosphere experiment that would send a rocket into the ionosphere and create three, huge red glowing orbs in the sky for a minute and a half? Well, they did it and while the lights don’t seem to look quite as cool as I imagined they would,…

Space & Spaceflight Ybaranovsky Sep 3

Japan’s Weather Experiment to Shame the Moon

In its never-ending quest to out-sci-fi the world, Japan is treating its citizens to what they’re calling a “space fireworks show”—resulting from an experiment to study the atmosphere. On Sunday night at 7:26 p.m. (in Japan) an S-520 rocket will be launched into the sky and release lithium vapor into the ionosphere, creating three huge…

Space & Spaceflight Ybaranovsky Aug 30

Ditch Your Computer for One Day? Really?

Could you stand to be without your computer, just for one day? Experimenters Denis Bystrov and Michael Taylor want to know. The 24-hour period in question is March 24, which happens to fall on a Saturday. Maybe we’ll try it. Be a part of one of the biggest global experiments ever to take place on…

Tech News Charlie White Feb 21

Tornado Simulator Kit

Want to make your own tornado machine but you’re too lazy to hunt down all the parts? $120 buys you this neat Tornado Simulator Kit, which comes with building instructions, experiment ideas, and all the parts you’ll need to get going except an ultrasonic humidifier. If you don’t have one already the site will sell…

Gadgets Gizmodo.com Apr 25

Eat Bacteria to Boost Brain Power

DARPA’s Giant Red Balloons Officially at Large

New High-Def Home Video From The Edge of Space

MIT Students Explain How to Photograph Space for $150

When a 13-year-old From 2009 Uses a Walkman For a Week

NYU Student Conducts Most Adorable Robot Experiment Ever

Chemist Discovers the Origins of Life in a Cardboard Box

Homemade Experiments with Aerogel, the World’s Lightest Solid

Micro-Camera Implanted in Mouse’s Brain Watches for Parkinson Tremors

Wrong-Way Balloon Behaves in Unexpected Ways

Joel Schumacher Dabbles In Vampire Nazi Experiments

Mist Mutations Are the Latest Fashion in Hollywood

Japan’s Weather Experiment Goes Swimmingly

Japan’s Weather Experiment to Shame the Moon

Ditch Your Computer for One Day? Really?

Tornado Simulator Kit

Artemis 2 Day 8: Follow the Mission With Our Live Updates 🔴

‘Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End’ Is a Sublime Fantasy That Finds Beauty in the Mundane

OnePlus Should Abandon Phones and Go All In on Gaming

Meta’s First AI Model From Its Superintelligence Lab Doesn’t Exactly Spark Joy

Iran Demands Bitcoin and Crypto for Strait of Hormuz Toll Payments

Stephen Colbert Adds Yet Another Genre Voiceover Cameo to His Belt

Turns Out Home Taping Wasn’t Killing Music After All

Wild Experiment Suggests Lasers and Graphene Could Propel Future Spacecraft

Asus Zenbook A16 Review: Start Considering Snapdragon on PC, for Real

Aqara Thermostat Hub W200 Review: Almost Better than My Ecobee

HP Omen Max 45L Review: 4K60 Gaming Has Never Been So Easy

Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni Review: Window Cleaning Robots Have a Long Way to Go

AirPods Max 2 vs. Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen): Which ANC Headphones Win?

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

AirPods Max 2 Review: Still Ridiculously Expensive and Ridiculously Nice

DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

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