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Although plenty of people have looked into the physics of explosions, there have been some basic questions left unanswered. One of them is why some fires suddenly go supersonic. Now there's a new theory about DDT explosions. More »
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Here at io9, we never miss a chance to make things that normally don't turn hot and glowy into things that are hot and glowy. In the spirit of this, it's time to give you a chance to set fire to steel wool. More »
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Modern humans spend significantly less time feeding than non-human primates. You spend an average of 5% of your waking hours consuming food, while your typical chimpanzee spends upwards of 33%. And it's all because of cooking. Now, newly published research suggests that our ancestors' abilities to whip up a hot meal may have played crucial role in driving our evolutionary development. More »
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You, yes you, can make fireballs that you can hold, throw, and juggle. The secret comes from low temperature fuel, the right medium, and a reckless disregard for any kind of safety. More »
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This trick only works at night, in cities with old sodium streetlights, but it looks very badass. With just a small torch and a spray bottle, you can make the dread 'dark fire.' That's right - you will see black flame, just like in this picture. Here's how. More »
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We've seen many a fiery automaton in our day, but this flame-belching robo-pony seen at this weekend's Detroit Maker Faire deserves a some sort of prize most sinister. Are his mohawked companions walking him...or vice versa? More »
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To be fair, this will be a very tiny flamethrower. You would only be able to burn an elf or one of those things from Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. But it's still cool. More »
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Paper burns. Especially if it has some incriminating evidence on it and it's in a dramatic film about corrupt lawyers. But even in everyday life, paper reaches a certain temperature, and bursts into flame. And yet sometimes it doesn't. More »
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A little bit of science is brought into everyone's life on that fateful day they try to blow out birthday candles while making a wish, only to see the candles do the impossible and reignite. More »
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Fire takes a different form away from the force of gravity. Now a kaleidoscopic shot of heptane combustion from the International Space Station shows the unusual way fuels burn in weak gravity. More »
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In some respects, firefighting technology has come a long way over the past several decades—we now have flame suppressing foams and powders for instance, as well as new ways of delivering them to the fire. More »
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Humans first gained control of fire somewhere between 200,000 and 1.7 million years ago. But whenever they harnessed fire, they didn't take it with them to frigid northern Europe, where they shivered without fire for over 600,000 years. More »
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We all know about how fire behaves in outer space: It doesn't. All those action movies were wrong. Fire needs oxygen and oxygen isn't abundant outside of Earth's atmosphere. Fires can happen inside a contained, oxygenated environment in space, but they don't behave the way they do on Earth. The Earth's gravity imposes a lot of conditions on fire that wouldn't happen in microgravity or zero g. Here's why astronauts can't burn a candle at both ends. More »
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Sometimes your unfriendly neighborhood juvenile delinquents will use your petunias as a mosh pit and your birdbath as a commode. Should this be the case, it may be wise to invest in these fiery lawn ornaments. More »
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Over at Treehugger, they have a clip of a BBC show, in which they use a solar oven made out of mirrors to melt a rock. More »
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Some of the world's most terrifying disasters are also breathtaking to behold. In this gallery are awe-inducing photographs of some of the worst disasters of the last hundred years. More »
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Where does creativity come from? Mary Shelley supplies one possible answer. More »
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What I like about this montage of clips from Supervolcano - a BBC show about the Yellowstone megavolcano exploding - is that there is no messing around. We get all the crucial pillars of fire and no distracting plot. More »
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Why does smoke from cigarettes, smokestacks, and volcanoes rise in a straight line before spreading out into a billowing cloud? And how does this help Forest Service workers spot wildfires early? More »
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Zac Efron has two new movies in the works, one that sets him up as the next time-traveling teen heartthrob. The other: A flick where everyone is out to kill him, we can get behind one of these premises. More »
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Researchers put a bit of old folk wisdom to the test by investigating whether water droplets on the top of leaves actually can focus the sun's rays and burn them. The result? Score one for folk wisdom. More »
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This photograph from 1916 is of a fire at the Treasury Dept.'s "Bureau of Engraving and Printing," presumably in Washington, D.C. Mysteriously, however, whomever labeled it described the fire as "spontaneous combustion." More »
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Over the past few days, hundreds of wildfires in Laos, Burma and Thailand have grown so large that their smoke can be seen from space. More »
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So the thought police are on their way to your underground control chamber, and you need to erase your hard drives fast. They can break the crypto on your secret docs, and even if you overwrite them with a bunch of junk data, they've got forensic techniques that could pull an erased file out of a shark's ass. What do you do? Take Hackaday's advice, and use a little thermite. More »
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Here is the outer edge of Hurricane Ike, as seen from the International Space Station. The hurricane hit Texas yesterday, and news stories are claiming a fairly low death toll compared to the disastrous Hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans in 2005. There have been just over 100 deaths reported so far. We hope it stays that way. But just to remind you that not all great disasters come from water and wind, we've got an amazing vintage photo for you below that looks like the post-hurricane apocalypse but is actually the result of the 1904 Baltimore fire. More »
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What do you get when you mix a frizzy-haired, grandfatherly chemist with his younger, cackling, explosion-loving sidekick? The Periodic Table of Videos! Put together by a team at the University of Nottingham in the UK, this gargantuan effort of 118 short vids chronicled everything from Hydrogen (very explosive) to Oxygen (also very explosive) to Sodium (not explosive...until you add water!) on down the list all the way to Ununoctium, element 118, of which only three atoms have ever been observed. Check out the oxygen pyrotechnics below. More »
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Sometimes a fire just won't go out. Uzbekistan is home to a place called Darvaz, nicknamed by locals "the door to hell." It's a semi-underground gas fire that's been burning nonstop for 35 years. Find out why, and see some close-up pictures of this hellmouth after the jump, plus another fire in Pennsylvania that has also been burning underground for over 30 years. More »
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SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! ROBOSAURUS LIVE! Ever felt like yelling that in a crowd? Now you can if you just purchase this real-life Robosaurus and a simple PA system. The 42-foot tall, car-eating, Transform-tastic, fire-breathing, automobile-automaton can be parked in your very own backyard. Find out how you can get the keys to the behemoth who was parodied as Truckasaurus on The Simpsons. More »
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Now this is a fire engine that kids from 5 to 105 would like to see under the Christmas tree next year. How sleek and shiny does this thing look? Instead of the boxy fire fighting vehicles of the past, this baby looks streamlined enough to win a race or two as well as do some good. More »
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