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Let's face it: It's only a matter of time until Mars comes after us. We've got lots of water. It doesn't. We've got life. It doesn't. All this might have been okay, but then we alerted Mars to our presence with our various satellites and rovers, and now it's just a matter of time. Here are some ways we might destroy the red menace before it comes after us. More »
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Bioengineers have figured out a new way to deliver cancer-killing drugs to your body. They hide the drugs inside the skins of red blood cells. Literally. More »
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Ever wonder how we're going to create humans who can breathe underwater? Of course you do. Now a study published this week about how algae insinuate themselves into salamander embryos (and DNA) could provide the beginnings of an answer. More »
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You're a nefarious supervillian and you want to transform this city into a hive of mind-controlled minions. But you also need the element of surprise. Two new scientific studies offer a possible solution. You can implant behavior-changing proteins in sperm, creating a sexually-transmitted form of mind control. More »
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In the rainforests of Papua, New Guinea, there have been reports for decades of giant birds resembling the prehistoric Pterosaur - they've been seen by locals and by visiting scientists. More »
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Earthquakes, asteroids, floods - these are ordinary disasters. Find out what horrors would beset the Earth if the moon disappeared, or the planet stopped turning. More »
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What will humans do in 2,000 years, when we've gained complete control over our environment via geoengineering? My guess is that they'll create historical reenactment planets, terraforming alien worlds to reenact great moments in Earth history. More »
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Due to their position in the Gliese system, hypothetical creatures on planet Zarmina might not be alone in their own solar system, the way humans seem to be. And those neighbors could reach Zarmina pretty quickly. More »
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Yesterday's discussion of the movie TiMER veered into the difficulties of knowing your fate. It got me wondering what people would want to know about their future. Take our poll and tell us. More »
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NASA's planet-finding Spitzer Telescope has picked up infrared light in a pattern that suggests a giant lump of material is forming in an otherwise smooth disk of debris around a star. Is somebody building an Orbital? More »
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Endocannabinoids are the body's natural form of THC, a chemical in marijuana that can ease pain. Now a new study shows this chemical is a double-edged sword, making people more sensitive to pain too. Could endocannabinoids be used for torture? More »
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The Pentagon is funding a company called Robotic Technology, whose main project is developing an autonomous robot called EATR that fuels itself on "biomass." This biomass could include vegetation, paper, and even corpses on the battlefield. More »
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Soon you may be able to buy a drug that can make you calm by mimicking the body's natural self-soothing process. But you wouldn't feel drugged. What would happen to people who suddenly became fearless without side-effects? More »
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A new form of gene therapy could make you insane, then set you right again. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5106688&view=rss&microfeed=true If you're like us, you spent a lot of time over the weekend goofing off with Google Sky, the cool new application from Google that lets you search the starry night sky the same way you search Google maps. You can move around, zoom in, and get popups with information on what you're seeing. But there's no helpful popup for this Star Wars battle that one io9 reader found in Google Sky right here. Sure it might just be an artifact or lens flare, but those streaks sure do look like giant laser blasters. (Thanks, Luke!) More »
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Spoilers ahead, dorks. So Josh writes in to say that he's deciphered the whisper at the end of Cloverfield by doing some sort of fancy backwards-unmasking thing. Here is an unmasked, de-backwardsized MP3 of the whisper — he claims it says "it's still alive," but all I could hear was "ppphhhh phhhh huuuuh." Other theories (without backwards masking) include the idea that the speaker is saying "help us," or "15 minutes to hammerdown." Director Matt Reeves told us earlier today that it's definitely decipherable and does mean something, so your guess could be right. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=346836&view=rss&microfeed=true Everybody is jabbering about whether there will be an ounce of goodness in Your Name Here, the upcoming movie about the life of dystopian scifi author Philip K. Dick (whose novels inspired movies Bladerunner, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly). It sounds promising — Bill Pullman plays the meth-snorting writer who becomes obsessed with a robot version of Victoria Principal after watching her in Earthquake. What few people realize, however, is that Your Name Here might have been inspired by a little-known industrial film satire of the same name, released in 1960. The original Your Name Here is a spot-on parody of movies that hype the scientific-industrial society as a utopia, and use cheesy marketing to convince Americans to buy more stuff. The best part? "Your Name Here" was actually made by a company that specialized in the very industrial films it makes fun of. Watch the movie above, via the Prelinger Archive. It's pure Dickish fun, a surreal blend of advertising and science propaganda. I love how "progress" and "the future" are represented by endless vistas of disgusting industrial buildings belching smoke. The original Your Name Here is probably a more truthful representation of Dick's sense of humor than the new movie will be. More »
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