While the bread and butter of Gizmodo UK is in the bits and bytes of technology, we have a lot of fun in the off-topic areas, with many of the stories being filed in the WTF category. Bookmark this page for the sillier stories, from ridiculous examples of body-art, to... sausages made of skittles?
The Pixie Dust display uses sound waves to create images and animations from real particles that appear to float in mid-air. It probably sounds implausible, but there's video of it in action. And yes, what you're seeing is actually happening, no gimmicks or special effects.
There are three primary sources of smells that commonly occur after rain. The first, the "clean" smell, in particular after a heavy thunderstorm, is caused by ozone. Ozone (scientifically known as trioxygen due to the fact that it is comprised of three oxygen atoms) is notably pungent and has a very sharp smell that is often described as similar to that of chlorine.
No, this enormous diesel powered beast is not a discarded movie prop from James Cameron's Aliens. He is Otto, one of the two huge transporters of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array radio telescope field, at the high site of Chajnantor Plateau, Atacama Desert, Chile.
A new set of visualisation of x-ray data allow scientists—and the public—to undress ancient Egyptian mummies, peel back their skins and see (virtually) inside. The results looks as terrifying as you might expect.
With Soylent to eat (or I guess drink) and Palcohol to drink (or maybe eat), it seems the kitchen of the future will just be a blender. But don't haul your stove to the curb just yet: an admittedly small study says that mice who ate nothing but powdered nutrient ended up more sickly than their friends who had to chew.
Oh gluten, the least trendy protein of our time. As gluten-free has transcended science and exploded into diet fad, scientists increasingly suspect that gluten intolerance—apart from actual celiac disease—doesn't exist at all. The true culprit could be a group of carbohydrates, including one in wheat called fructan.
Everyone feels something when they're in a really good starry place on a really good starry night and they look up and see this:
Humans aren't the only mammals to make friends: elephants, horses, whales and plenty more form strong social bonds that aren't connected to reproduction, but it's only the smartest that do. Why is that?
A committee made up of high-profile US scientists has a bold plan afoot. It wants to build a billion-dollar particle beam to blast neutrinos 800 miles underground, from Chicago to South Dakota.
Saccharin is noted as being the first artificial sweetener, outside of the toxic Lead(II) acetate, and the first product to offer a cheap alternative to cane sugar. Interestingly enough, like the Chocolate Chip Cookie, it was also discovered entirely by accident.
It's been ingrained in us since childhood. Don't want to get sick? Wash your hands with antibacterial soap. But the same compound we entrust to fend off the sniffles could actually be harming us—and creating an army of superbugs in the process. It's time to ban antibacterial soap.
Colin Furze, the guy who built fully automatic Wolverine claws, has now turned his attention to Magneto's power and made a pair of magnetic shoes. I was hoping that he found some way to make metal things levitate waving his hand, but this is still really cool.
At some point in physics class, your teacher probably rubbed a balloon against his hair and explained static electricity. But what your teacher didn't tell you is that scientists are just now realising it is a lot more complicated than thought.
Shark skin is sleek and dragless, the envy of swimsuit designers. Perhaps less famous is what shark skin's oddly rough surface looks like up close: an eerie matrix of microscopic tooth-like scales. Now, scientists are 3D printing artificial shark skin in hopes of unlocking its swimming secrets.
If caught soon enough many of cancer's 200 iterations offer better-than-even survival rates, as far as five years down the line from diagnosis. It's by no means a clean bill of health, mind you, but there several forms of cancer that modern science has beaten back.
A quick internet search will yield countless claims of ways to remove the unwanted fat from around your mid-section. From over-hyped diet pills promising to reduce levels of cortisol to cutting-edge workouts. The truth is that there is no scientifically proven diet pill or exercise that will specifically target your stomachs fat vs the fat providing a nice bone blanket for other parts of your body.
