Science

NASA Engineers Prep for Phoenix Lander Rendezvous with Martian Arctic

The Phoenix Mars Lander will touch down on the Martian surface on May 25, where it will probe the soil for signs of past life and touch Martian water (in the form of subsurface ice) for the first time in human history. At a press conference I attended this morning, NASA’s engineers explained how they…

io9 Ed Grabianowski May 13

A Gorgeous Monument to Radioactive Decay

What do you do when you have a barn-sized pile of nuclear waste materials that you have to store for 100 years while it loses its toxicity? In the Netherlands, the answer was to stick it inside a giant art project: specifically, this orange building called the Habog Facility, covered in physics formulas by Einstein…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 13

More French Prints of the Year 2000 (1900)

Hunting and Destroying Microbes The website Television History has five more French prints which imagine the year 2000. The site claims that 50 such cards, each illustrating different wonders of a hundred years hence, were produced for the 1900 Paris Exposition. Flying Tennis Projecting Telescope Underwater Croquet Flying Buses See also: French Prints Show Year…

Tech News Matt Novak May 13

No, Bitches, It’s Not a Designer Baby

It’s inevitable: the media has not only confused human reproductive cloning with “designer babies,” but in fact they have confused a stem cell experiment with designer babies too. I love my sensationalist science as much as the next person, but the London Times has gone batshit with its reports that a GM human embryo could…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 12

Pollution Levels Going Down in U.S. Coastal Waters

Although it’s tempting to turn every piece of news about environmental science into a dystopian scenario, dire predictions are not always warranted. Today the U.S. government released the results of a 20-year study of contaminants in the coastal regions of that country, and found that environmental laws enacted in the 1970s had significantly reduced the…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 12

Zero-G Metals Will Put a Flying Car In Every Garage

Get ready for the first gadgets to be stamped with the words, “Made In Space.” The European Space Agency has plans to manufacture lightweight metal compounds under zero-gravity conditions on the International Space Station. The new materials could boost the efficiency of hydrogen engines and make aircraft faster, more powerful and less expensive to build.…

io9 Ed Grabianowski May 12

Nanotech Precisely Measures Spiciness So Your Tongue Doesn’t Have To

The Scoville Units you see on the side of chili sauce bottles are measured subjectively by taste testers, who determine how hot a given hot sauce really is. But now a new nanotechnology will allow food scientists to quickly and cheaply measure the exact amount of capsaicinoids — the active component in chili peppers —…

io9 Ed Grabianowski May 9

First-Ever Example of a Computer Hack Attacking People’s Brains

Neal Stephenson speculated about computer viruses that could crash human brains in his classic novel Snow Crash, but the technology to do something like that has always seemed (luckily) far in the future. Now, however, computer hackers have created a loophole that lets them do it today. Over a month ago, a group of anonymous…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 8

Mouse Jacket Grown, Euthanized In Museum Lab

In one of the odder stories we’ve spotted in some time, an installation called “Victimless Leather” was on display at NY’s MoMA. The piece was actually a living jacket crafted from mouse embryonic stem cells, fed nutrients through tubes. But after five weeks, it grew too large for its containment flask and had to be…

Tech News Mark Wilson May 8

Scientist Studies Cars That Speak and Listen Like KITT

I used to want a car just like KITT when I was a kid, though perhaps without that slightly annoying nasal voice. And now a Stanford scientist is looking at whether nattering to your vehicle may be good for you, the car, other road users and even (darnit) your insurers or advertising execs. “Your car…

Gadgets Kit Eaton May 8

Robot Mouth, Because Chewing Is for Luddites

In the face of a global food crisis, it’s good to know that we have newly-developed robotic mouths around. Composed of teeth-like protrusions, variable speed motors, artificial saliva and a helium flow to quarantine-released compounds, this artificial mouth can masticate with the best of ’em. Used to test the chemicals released by chewing (apples, in…

Gadgets Mark Wilson May 7

Fast Food Joints Add Hormone to Food That Makes You Want to Eat More

When you ingest a stomach hormone called ghrelin it causes your brain to respond to food the way junkies respond to drugs. You are filled with an intense desire for it, and eating it becomes far more memorable. Researchers at Montreal’s McGill University studied people’s reactions to food after they had ingested ghrelin, and discovered…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 7

Killer Robots Can Now Eat Us and Enjoy the Flavor

A new artificial mouth will allow robots to snack on our tasty human flesh. French scientists have developed a way for robots to simulate the act of eating and tasting, using pointy artificial teeth combined with the proper chemical and environmental conditions found inside a mouth, including fake saliva. What’s the use of such a…

io9 Ed Grabianowski May 7

Blocked Enzyme Curbs Appetite, Promotes Weight Loss, Probably Causes Cancer or Something

Good news, America! Your faithful scientific elite have isolated a brain enzyme that, when blocked, decreases appetite, promotes weight loss and improves the body’s ability to handle blood sugar levels. You’ll be fat and diabetic no longer! There’ll be no need to exercise when you’ll have easy access to a drug that makes trans-fat-laden fast…

Gadgets Adam Frucci May 6

Quantum Internet Could Protect Batman’s Secret Identity

With countries like China, Pakistan, and even the US spying on their citizens, it’s nice to know a remedy might be on its way in the form of the Quantum Internet. As researchers like Seth Lloyd of MIT make progress toward the goal of quantum computing, they’ve found that the same architecture used to build…

io9 Michael Reilly May 6

Meteorite vs. Dinosaur Poop — Who Wins?

On the auction block at Bonham’s last week were two strange items: a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite from the dawn of the universe (left), and two chunks of fossilized dinosaur poop (right). Which do you think sold for the most money? Weirdly, it was the dinosaur poop, a relatively common item among fossil hounds that normally…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 6

The Best Way To Cook Hot Dogs: by Tesla Coil

The most exiting way to cook hot dogs: connect a chain of 12 of them up and send bolts of multi-thousand-volt electricity through them. Awesome, and all thanks to the Nevada Lightning Lab and their 10-foot Tesla coil at Maker Faire ’08. And amazingly, the coil they used is just a prototype for a 122-foot…

Gadgets Kit Eaton May 6

Curator Forced to Kill Out-of-Control Bio-Art Exhibit

Click to view The problem with bio-art is that it’s often made of living tissue — and sometimes living tissue gets out of control. That’s what happened late last week at a New York MoMA exhibit called “Design and the Elastic Mind,” where a tiny living jacket made out of stem cells had to be…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 5

Air Force Study Shows How to Boil Eyeballs with Lasers

We may not be using lasers on the battlefield yet, but when we do we’ll know exactly how to use them to make our enemies’ eyeballs explode. And how to create heat-induced bubbles inside “biological substances” (i.e., bodies). A researcher funded by the Air Force to study laser safety has inadvertently also produced a lot…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 2

Meet McSleepy, the World’s First Robot Anesthesiologist

Anesthesiologists are required to participate in every surgery, standing by to administer drugs and monitor the patient’s vital signs while surgeons do their jobs. But now a group of researchers at Montreal’s McGill University have invented a device that could replace human anesthesiologists with robots in the next five years. An anesthesia bot called McSleepy…

io9 Annalee Newitz May 2

NASA Engineers Prep for Phoenix Lander Rendezvous with Martian Arctic

A Gorgeous Monument to Radioactive Decay

More French Prints of the Year 2000 (1900)

No, Bitches, It’s Not a Designer Baby

Pollution Levels Going Down in U.S. Coastal Waters

Zero-G Metals Will Put a Flying Car In Every Garage

Nanotech Precisely Measures Spiciness So Your Tongue Doesn’t Have To

First-Ever Example of a Computer Hack Attacking People’s Brains

Mouse Jacket Grown, Euthanized In Museum Lab

Scientist Studies Cars That Speak and Listen Like KITT

Robot Mouth, Because Chewing Is for Luddites

Fast Food Joints Add Hormone to Food That Makes You Want to Eat More

Killer Robots Can Now Eat Us and Enjoy the Flavor

Blocked Enzyme Curbs Appetite, Promotes Weight Loss, Probably Causes Cancer or Something

Quantum Internet Could Protect Batman’s Secret Identity

Meteorite vs. Dinosaur Poop — Who Wins?

The Best Way To Cook Hot Dogs: by Tesla Coil

Curator Forced to Kill Out-of-Control Bio-Art Exhibit

Air Force Study Shows How to Boil Eyeballs with Lasers

Meet McSleepy, the World’s First Robot Anesthesiologist

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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