Science

Iain M. Banks: Humans Could Join the Culture via Genetic Engineering

Apparently scifi author Iain M. Banks (Matter, Consider Phlebas) believes that future humans could conceivably reach the advanced techno-political state of the Culture, a vast, intragalactic society he describes in several of his novels. And we’ll get there via designer babies. Over at Biology in Science Fiction, Peggy quotes the author saying we’ll become like…

io9 Annalee Newitz Jul 30

Drug Lords Hire Professional Chemists in Afghanistan

It’s a science job of the future: Primary researcher in the lab of a drug lord. Aspiring chemists from Iran, Turkey and Pakistan are immigrating to Afghanistan, where there are jobs for highly-educated scientists willing to oversee heroin production. According to the Financial Times, “Christina Orguz, Afghanistan country director of the UN Office on Drugs…

io9 Annalee Newitz Jul 30

They’re Putting Anti-Aging Enzymes in the Water

Click to viewWithin about 10 years, you might be drinking anti-aging enzymes with your bottled water. California biochemists have a plan to keep the world younger and healthier by using nanotech to deliver an enzyme called CoQ10 to our drinking water. This coenzyme is naturally produced by the body, but in smaller and smaller amounts…

io9 Annalee Newitz Jul 29

Prosthetic Limbs that Fuse with Your Skeleton

Your next prosthetic arm will be almost as good as the one you were born with: It will fuse with your existing skeleton. Veterinarians at North Carolina State University have developed a technique for attaching prosthetic limbs directly to the underlying bone structure in the remaining limb portion. Called “osseointegrated prosthetics,” these limbs knit themselves…

io9 Ed Grabianowski Jul 29

Scientists Develop Micro Microscope: Fits on a Chip, Costs $10

There’s been a bit of a rush of pocket/USB digital microscopes recently, but none can hold a candle to this development from the clever chaps at Caltech. They’ve done a neat bit of thinking and redesigned how microscopes work: their new optofluidic microscope combines microfluidics and standard chip design, and floats samples over a pinhole-camera-like…

Gadgets Kit Eaton Jul 29

This Beautiful Galaxy Is Shrouded In Death

Click to viewThe Pinwheel galaxy shimmers with life, but it’s surrounded by death. Those red and blue areas surrounding the galaxy are devoid of organics, otherwise known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which scientists believe are the building blocks of life, this new photo from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows. These “organics” diminish towards the outer…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders Jul 28

Five Reasons You Don’t Have a Personal Jet Pack Yet

Flying around with your own personal jet engine, strapped to your back, has been one of the hallmarks of futurism for decades. Which sucks, because futuristic stuff is supposed to eventually happen. So why the hell aren’t we all flying to work via rocket power? Because you’re about as aerodynamic as a potato, my friend.…

io9 Ed Grabianowski Jul 28

Innovative Microwave Material Helps Cook Food Twice As Fast So You Can Get Back To Being Lonely

Researchers in Japan and at Penn State have come up with a ceramic material that allows people to heat up their food twice as fast, allowing them to spend less time staring at the microwave and more time living their (read: our) rich, fulfilling lives. The new cookers are made up of 20% magnetite and…

Tech News Jason Chen Jul 28

Birthplace of Modern Computers Is “a National Disgrace”

During World War II, the best mathematical minds in Britain gathered at a place called Bletchley Park to decipher the secret codes used by the Axis. To aid the process, they developed the Colossus Mk 1 and Mk 2, some of the first machines recognizable as programmable computers. And now UK computer scientists are up…

io9 Ed Grabianowski Jul 25

Moore’s Law Revitalized by 12-Nanometer Chip-Fabbing Invention

A year ago we reported on Intel’s nifty technique for 22nm chip fabrication, which may extend the life of Moore’s Law. Now MIT is reporting a new technique for optical lithography which should make 12nm chip manufacture possible, making for smaller, denser future chip tech.By combining laser interference technology with a new “scanning beam” wafer…

Gadgets Kit Eaton Jul 25

Team Doubles Efficiency of Thermoelectric Material: Good News for Car Electrics

Scientists at Ohio State University have taken a thermoelectric material that’s been used for decades to power deep-space probes, and worked out how to double its efficiency. That’s good news: thermoelectrics convert heat directly into electrical energy. By catching exhaust heat, the new material may allow car alternators to be replaced… and that’ll push up…

Gadgets Kit Eaton Jul 25

THEMIS Satellites Discover Northern Lights Are Powered By Magnetic Fields Snapping Like Rubber Bands

Five NASA satellites from the THEMIS mission were recently able to closely witness the chain of events that occurs to create the northern lights for the first time. Complex stuff going on here, but it involves the Earth’s massive electromagnetic fields being stretched to their limits by magnetic bombardment from the sun, and then snapping…

Space & Spaceflight John Mahoney Jul 24

Soy Beans and Sperm Do Not Mix Well

If you like to produce mass quantities of sperm, you might do best to avoid tofu and other soy-based foods. No, that’s not the first sentence of a spam e-mail, it’s from a real scientific study done at Harvard that examined the relationship between sperm count and diets that are high in soy. The little…

io9 Annalee Newitz Jul 24

You’ll Never Get Lost on the Moon Again

If the featureless wasteland of the lunar surface made your last trip there a navigation nightmare, don’t feel bad. You’re not the only one. With no landmarks to give them perspective or to help estimate distance, astronauts in years past had a hard time finding their way around too. But when NASA establishes a semi-permanent…

io9 Ed Grabianowski Jul 24

Photos of Labs at Night Show a Spooky, Soulful Side to Science

Science lab night-time routine goes like this: the experiment concludes, equipment winds slowly down. You rub bleary eyes, stretch your stiff neck, hit “save” on the data for analysis tomorrow. Then you deal with the forest of coffee mugs, flick the light switch and bumble out of the door. But the lab’s still there: racks…

Gadgets Kit Eaton Jul 24

Sensopac Neural-Net Robot Hand May Be What Droids Will Shake Hands With

Robotic hands and arms may be getting more sophisticated, but they don’t really rival what we think C3-PO would have poking out of his torso. That is until now: an European science team have been busy creating the Sensopac robotic limb, and it’s arguably the most human-like robotic limb yet. And partly that’s because its…

Gadgets Kit Eaton Jul 24

Volcanoes in Alaska Are “Hopping,” Says Scientist

Witness the glory of one of the two massive volcanoes erupting today in Alaska. Here you can see a satellite’s-eye-view of the plumes from Okmok Caldera, floating out between the clouds over the coast. Though Okmok has been erupting for several days, it was joined recently by Mount Cleveland, off the coast in the Aleutian…

io9 Annalee Newitz Jul 23

Now You Have an Even Better Excuse to Snarf Ritalin

It turns out that there’s a valid medical reason for your burning urge to eat huge piles of Ritalin in order to feel speedy, erm I mean, increase your powers of concentration. According to a new study, doctors have increasingly been diagnosing ADHD in young adults over the age of 12, despite the fact that…

io9 Annalee Newitz Jul 23

Mad Science Contest: Build a Lifeform and We’ll Send You to Hong Kong or Give You $1000

You still have over a month to enter io9’s mad science contest to build a lifeform. Synthetic biology is the science of the future! You can never have too many garage laboratories and mad scientists devoted to it. That’s why io9 is sponsoring a contest to find two of the best synthetic life forms you…

io9 Annalee Newitz Jul 23

Periodic Coffee Table With Embedded Element Samples

If there was a contest for the nerdiest piece of furniture ever made, my money would be on this Periodic coffee table. It has everything a science fanatic could ask for, including the actual elements (even the toxic ones) encased in a thick layer of resin to ensure safety. As a whole, the table is…

Tech News Sean Fallon Jul 23

Iain M. Banks: Humans Could Join the Culture via Genetic Engineering

Drug Lords Hire Professional Chemists in Afghanistan

They’re Putting Anti-Aging Enzymes in the Water

Prosthetic Limbs that Fuse with Your Skeleton

Scientists Develop Micro Microscope: Fits on a Chip, Costs $10

This Beautiful Galaxy Is Shrouded In Death

Five Reasons You Don’t Have a Personal Jet Pack Yet

Innovative Microwave Material Helps Cook Food Twice As Fast So You Can Get Back To Being Lonely

Birthplace of Modern Computers Is “a National Disgrace”

Moore’s Law Revitalized by 12-Nanometer Chip-Fabbing Invention

Team Doubles Efficiency of Thermoelectric Material: Good News for Car Electrics

THEMIS Satellites Discover Northern Lights Are Powered By Magnetic Fields Snapping Like Rubber Bands

Soy Beans and Sperm Do Not Mix Well

You’ll Never Get Lost on the Moon Again

Photos of Labs at Night Show a Spooky, Soulful Side to Science

Sensopac Neural-Net Robot Hand May Be What Droids Will Shake Hands With

Volcanoes in Alaska Are “Hopping,” Says Scientist

Now You Have an Even Better Excuse to Snarf Ritalin

Mad Science Contest: Build a Lifeform and We’ll Send You to Hong Kong or Give You $1000

Periodic Coffee Table With Embedded Element Samples

Southwest Is About to Limit Power Banks on Flights

Damn, the ‘Power Rangers’ Reboot Could’ve Had Four Movies

The Live-Action ‘One Piece’ Team Wants to Go the Distance

‘Lee Cronin’s The Mummy’ Will Please Gross Horror Fans

Somehow Paramount’s ‘Avatar’ Movie Has Leaked, Too

The World Is Basically Begging for Another iPod

Anker’s EufyMake E1 Finally Brings Printers Out of the Dark Ages

OpenAI Says Elon Musk Is ‘Injecting Chaos’ with Recent Legal Maneuver

This Loud-Ass Party Speaker Almost Got Me High AF

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

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