In the starless void of intergalactic space, there are clouds of cosmic gas as old as the Milky Way. They produce no visible light, and they barely radiate heat. Now, for the first time, astronomers have determined their size. These shadowy structures are as big as galaxies.

That’s according to Jeffrey Cooke of Swinburne University of Technology and John O’Meara of St. Michael’s College, who presented a new technique for determining the size of giant gas clouds at the 227th meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week. Their discovery is a big deal for cosmologists, who believe these fascinating structures play a key role in the evolution of the universe. “We think these are the cradles—the giant clouds that form a galaxy,” Cooke told Gizmodo.

Now, we have our first hard evidence that the clouds are actually large enough to do so.

Called damped Lyman alpha systems (DLAs), Cooke’s cosmic clouds were first discovered in the 1970s. They’re incredibly cold, and emit very little radiation of any kind. Until now, the only way to “see” one has been to get lucky and find an extremely bright quasar right behind it. By capturing the distorted light of quasars filtering through DLAs, astronomers have learned a lot about the composition of the clouds, which matches closely to galaxies born in the early universe.

“We’ve known incredible detail about what they contain from quasar spectra,” Cooke said. They’ve got plenty of hydrogen, which makes stars, and some metals, which also hint at star formation. But we’ve learned next to nothing about their size.

“Quasars are very tiny, astronomically speaking,” Cooke continued. “When you have something galaxy-sized, they can only tell you that it’s there.”

Imagine you’re trying to study an elephant, but your only source of light is a laser pointer. You might learn a lot about a tiny patch of that elephant’s skin, but you’ll have no idea how large it is. To size your massive subject, you need a much bigger light source.

No, this isn’t Starkiller Base destroying the Earth. It’s an artist’s impression of the information obtained when imagining a distant object using two different light sources. A quasar (right center) produces a very narrow beam of light, while a spiral galaxy (right, surrounding the quasar) creates a much wider field of view. Image Credit: Adrian Malec and Marie Martig.

That’s the exact situation Cooke and O’Meara found themselves in. Lucky for them, there was another cosmic lightbulb that fit the bill: ancient galaxies. The astronomers selected a handful of previously-studied DLAs with bright galaxies in their backgrounds, and used one of the world’s largest telescopes—the KECK observatory at Mauna Kea, Hawaii—to image them in the ultraviolet. They validated their observations using another dataset on the same galaxies collected by the Very Large Telescope in Chile.

With big telescopes and big light sources, Cooke and O’Meara quickly confirmed something astronomers had long suspected: these clouds are freakkin’ huge. “The [DLAs] we first focused on were completely covering their background galaxies,” Cooke said. That means, we’re talking about structures “tens to hundreds of square kiloparsecs, almost the size of the Milky Way.”

Most of the DLAs we’ve found hail from the early universe, 10 to 11 billion years ago. Everything about them—their age, composition, density, frequency, and now, size, points to a single conclusion. We’re looking at galaxies that haven’t been born yet.

Now that their technique has worked, Cooke and O’Meara plan use the Hubble Space Telescope to get an even better look at a few of their cloudy subjects.n“With Hubble, we’ll be able to do deeper and higher resolution imaging of the background galaxy, which gives better constraint on the size of the cloud,” Cooke explained.

There’s a chance Hubble will even give us our first sharp images of the clouds themselves. Wonder what a hundred billion unborn stars look like? That’s what we’re hoping to find out.

Follow the author @themadstone

Top: The bright elliptical galaxy IC 2006. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Like, a lot of power. Scott Manley delves into the science of the planet destroying business and came up with the numbers that it would take to destroy a planet in Star Wars. To destroy an Earth-like planet which was like Alderaan, you’d need three trillion trillion trillion Joules of energy. There are five billion Joules of energy in a lightning bolt so yeah, you’d need a lot more energy.

Watch the science below. It’s so much more interesting than any other math or science class I’ve ever taken.

SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Hey, remember how DC and NBC were looking into making a workplace sitcom about regular people working at an insurance office inside the DC universe? Apparently they liked what they saw, because NBC has officially ordered the comedy, currently titled Powerless.

Despite the stunning success DC has had on TV over the years, I’m having a hard time imagining how this show’s humor would work for both nerds and general audiences. That said, this means DC/WB will again have shows on every single major network that isn’t owned by Disney, the company that owns their chief entertainment rival Marvel (i.e. ABC). That’s incredibly impressive, especially when your realize DC is doing it all without any real overarching plan like Marvel’s Cinematic Universe.They’re just making as much TV as possible, and more often than not it’s tended to be pretty good. Comedies are trickier than action dramas, I think, but given their track record so far I think I have to give DC the benefit of the doubt here.

[Via EW]

Contact the author at rob@io9.com.

Let me put this bluntly: Smart homes are pretty dumb. Or at least historically, connected devices for the everyman’s house have seemed gimmicky at best. This week at CES, however, we saw new technology that stands to reform our very conception of how homes work.

But the gamechanging device we saw isn’t really a device at all. It’s also not something that you install inside your house, though it could become the killer app that makes all of those seemingly gimmicky gadgets work together to make the dream of a smart home come true. That thing—wait for it—is a connected car that talks to all of your other devices. And you talk to the car.

It’s not just one car. In Las Vegas this year, pretty much every major car company announced innovations aimed at helping you feel like you’re never off the grid. But if you’re thinking about it from a domestic point of view, these new connected cars will work with other connected devices so effortlessly that it will almost be like you’re never truly away from home.

We’ve heard a lot about the so-called Internet of Things in the past couple years. The idea that all the objects in our lives ought to be internet-connected, slurping up data and beaming it to each other, intuiting our needs before we can, seems cool. The problem is that a lot of this tech has felt weirdly arbitrary, shoehorned into our foyers. Who cares if you can turn your living room lights on with your smartphone? If you need special apps that depend on buggy infrastructure, it’s hardly more convenient than a simple switch.

But things are changing. Instead of relying on unreliable sensors and arbitrary geofencing technology, the future of voice-activated smart homes and connected cars that integrate with the system means that you can not only control connected devices inside your house by talking to them, but also see what’s happening at home on your dashboard.

Image via Ford

Ford and Amazon recently announced plans to make your car and your home more connected than ever. Part of the new partnership involves Alexa, the Amazon digital assistant which, unlike Siri, was not designed to be confined to a smartphone. We first met Alexa when Amazon released the Echo, a wireless speaker designed to serve as a voice-activated home hub. Now, Alexa will integrate with Ford cars as well as hundreds of connected devices. So you can talk to your car, and your car will talk to all your smart home gadgets no matter where you are.

Mercedes-Benz is also looking to smudge the lines between your car, your connected home, and the rest of the internet. They’re working with Nest, the Google-owned makers of the intuitive thermostat as well as the popular Nestcam. Earlier this year, Nest announced a new program that would let its devices work as a hub for a whole host of other connected home devices like the Philips Hue lighting system and Yale smart locks. So it seems imminent that you’ll be able to unlock your door, switch on the kitchen lights, and even turn on your TV when you’re a block away from home.

So what does this car-powered connected lifestyle look like?

Picture this. It’s five o’clock and you’re leaving work. It was a long-ass day in the salt mines and you can’t wait to get home. Luckily, an evening’s worth of errands could soon be done from your car.

First things first, how are the kids? With any number of connected home cameras, you can keep an eye on who’s coming and going through an app. This capability’s been on smartphones for a while, but now that car companies are starting to build apps for your vehicle’s infotainment system, you could soon be able to take a peek on your dash. Facial recognition technology offered by several of these cameras will register when your kids walk in the door. So you could ask your car, “Did the kids get home?” as you’re pulling out of the office parking garage.

Now you’re on the way home and need to stop by the supermarket to quickly grab stuff for dinner. You park and suddenly realize you don’t remember what’s left in the fridge. That’s when you turn your gaze to the dashboard where you can check a live feed from the cameras inside your connected refrigerator. Boom, turns you you do need another six-pack after all. This much blogged-about smart fridge feature seems gimmicky. Or at least, it does until you’re sitting in that grocery store parking lot wondering what to buy.

GIF via Samsung YouTube

For now, the fridge-peeping tool works through a smartphone. Pretty much all smart home devices do. You can imagine saving time by asking your car to have a look in the fridge instead. “Hey car, am I out of IPA?” The car will tell you.

We saw these gadgets on display at CES this week. Samsung’s smart fridge is equipped with cameras inside that monitor your food supply. Whirlpool’s new washer and dryer works with Amazon technology to restock detergent automatically. The appliances also connect to smart thermostats, automatically switching to low energy during non-peak hours. Samsung also announced the integration of SmartThings, its smart home platform, and its new television sets. This means that your TV can work as a home hub and even talk to Alexa through an Amazon Echo. Heck, your car can even be an office too, thanks to some wild new technology that Harman introduced this week. These kinds of practical applications can be controlled from anywhere—in your car or from your phone, miles away.

Back to our hypothetical commute: You’re driving back from the store, and you want everything ready for your arrival. So if you’re driving a Ford of the Future, you can say, “Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights, open the garage door, heat the oven to 400-degrees, and turn on a baseball game.” Voila: Your palace is set for your return, and you didn’t even have to leave the car or buy new batteries for your garage door opener.

So you’re home, the oven is already hot and waiting for that frozen pizza you just bought. You crack open a beer and finally make it to your couch. It’s time to watch TV, and it’s already on because your car turned it on. But the baseball game sucks, and you want to watch a movie. Just as you did in your car, you can ask Alexa to turn on Netflix. Fifteen minutes later you’ve got a piping hot pie, and your smart oven remembers to turn itself off.

Digital assistants like Amazon Echo will become more common and start interfacing with your car. Credit: Amazon YouTube

The experience works because it’s effortless. Or at least the next generation of connected devices is designed to be effortless. We’ll need to live in these futuristic smart homes before we know exactly how the technology changes our lives. The connected car innovation is a no-brainer, though. Connected cars are especially exciting because it means we don’t have to depend on our smartphones for everything anymore. (You shouldn’t be looking at your smartphone when you’re driving anyways.) All of this innovation comes in preparation for the imminent, amazing future of autonomous cars, where you’ll soon have more time and freedom to get stuff done on the go.

No longer are your house and your car two separate worlds. The smart home is finally becoming a real thing, soon to be filled with devices that are actually useful, intuitive, and empowering. Connected cars will make you feel more in control of your home than ever, even from afar. Because in some ways, it’ll feel like you’ve never left.

Illustration by Tara Jacoby

Gizmodo’s on the ground in Las Vegas! Follow all of our 2016 CES coverage here.

When you say “Tales from the Crypt” most people immediately think of the Crypt Keeper. He didn’t have the most screen time but the gross, frightening, cheeky host of the 90s HBO anthology series was undoubtedly the star. And he probably won’t be back for the remake.

The story starts Thursday when it was revealed M. Night Shyamalan will produce a new version of the show for TNT sometime in the future as part of a weekly two-hour block of horror programming. Which was weird news unto itself.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/m-night-shyama...

Then, horror website Bloody Disgusting reported that the Crypt Keeper wouldn’t be part of the show because HBO still owned the rights to the character.

You see, Tales from the Crypt was based on a 1950s series of comic books that were hosted by multiple characters. There was a Crypt Keeper, but he didn’t look like the one we know from HBO. That Crypt Keeper was created for that show, hence the issue.

Instead, this new show “will be highlighted by an old man with a cane, wearing a hood, and keeping warm by a fireplace,” according to the report. A report that’s bolstered by this tweet by John Kassir, the voice of the HBO Crypt Keeper.

That’s disappointing for sure—and there’s more. The site also reports, unlike the HBO series, the current idea is for Tales from the Crypt to tell one single, season long story. (I guess TNT didn’t notice the plural of “Tale” in the title.) That story may be about voodoo in New Orleans, as written by the team behind Hemlock Grove.

If true, none of this is good news for fans who were hoping for a bit of that HBO nostalgia.

[Bloody Disgusting]

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

We’ve known since last year that BBC America were working on bringing a new version of Douglas Adam’s holistic detective to U.S. shores—but now it’s official: BBC America have announced that they’ve greenlit Dirk Gently for an order of eight episodes.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/douglas-adams-...

The series, penned by Chronicle and Superman: American Alien writer Max Landis, will bring Dirk Gently—star of Douglas Adam’s classic series of fantasy/sci-fi/detective novels—away from his traditional UK home and land him in America. But aside from that, we don’t really know much more about the show, other than a fleeting glimpse at its logo in the tweet BBC America announced the green light with:

It’s hard not to be excited at the prospect of more Dirk Gently—even if it’s twinged with remembering the sadness of the cut-down-before-its-time BBC adaptation in 2010—but without more to go on, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

And read the books again, because they’re pretty brilliant.

If you’re ever in Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge, keep an eye out for the ugliest bison alive. That’s not an insult. Taking a direct hit from a lightning bolt and staying alive is something to be proud of.

Sparky first caught the eye of Fish and Wildlife officials in 2013, when Karen Viste-Sparkman saw him standing with a huge bloodied burn wound on his shoulder. Sometimes FWS will intervene if it looks like an animal has been hurt or put in distress by human meddling. However there is no intervention protocol for—depending on your point of view—natural injuries, or bad luck, or angering a vengeful god. Viste-Sparkman figured the animal would die.

That was 2013, and about a week ago, Viste-Sparkman spotted him in a much better condition, physically if not aesthetically. She snapped a picture. Thin and battered-looking, with the healed wound still very visible on his shoulder, the bull was still alive and seemed healthy. FWS officials have taken to calling him “Sparky” and are monitoring him. Sparky was nine when he was hit, and had fathered three calves. Bison live twenty to twenty-five years, so everyone’s interested to see if he’ll keep chugging along, spreading his lightning-resistant genes to the rest of the herd.

[Sparky the Survivor: Lightning Won’t Stop This Bison]

Image: USFWSmidwest

Game of Thrones’ Natalie Dormer stars in The Forest, a decent horror movie that offers plenty of shriek-worthy moments. But its more interesting aspects are the repressed guilt and sorrow at its core, which provide unexpected emotional heft as the protagonist slowly starts losing touch with reality.

That’s not to say that The Forest—from first-time feature director Jason Zada, but co-produced by horror veteran David S. Goyer—lacks atmospheric thrills (the sound design offers layers of creepy animal noises, faintly singing children, and “who’s out there?” leaf-rustling) and angry apparitions. It has all of that and more. But at its heart, it’s mostly a film about a woman who doesn’t realize just how badly she needs to confront her own personal demons ... until it’s too late.

That woman is Sara (Dormer), who’s traveled to Japan in search of her twin sister, Jess (also Dormer). While Sara is blonde, married, and apparently quite secure in her life, Jess is an edgy brunette with poor decision-making skills who often relies on her sister to bail her out. This latest stunt—darting into Aokigahara, a real-life wilderness at the base of Mount Fuji that’s among the most popular suicide spots in the world, while leading her high-school students on a field trip—has triggered the twin psychic hotline between them. And Sara doesn’t hesitate: she needs to go into the forest and find Jess.

Sara’s rather narrow-sighted determination persists despite the fact that at every turn, people are like, “Ooh girl, don’t go in the forest.” Even seemingly level-headed people, like the sympathetic Japanese park ranger (Yukiyoshi Ozawa) she meets, believe Aokigahara is full of malevolent spirits of people who’ve suicided there, and who now roam around playing mind games on the sad, vulnerable people who dare step off the path and onto their turf.

Though we’re at first meant to believe that Sara is the sensible twin, that assumption is challenged even before she starts poking around in the forest. She has recurring nightmares about a family tragedy that happened when the sisters were small girls—one that Jess forced herself to confront head-on, but that Sara turned away from, afraid to look and face the truth. Sara’s always felt guilty about not sharing Jess’s burden. But whose burden was really worse?

A lot of The Forest consists of Dormer racing through gloomy, misty thickets of trees, screaming her head off. This is the first time I’ve seen her play a leading role (much less a contemporary character, and an American at that), and she definitely pulls it off. Even in scenes where Sara does blundering, horror-movie leading lady stuff—and there are several of those—you can sense that she’s acting rashly because she’s finally working through the survivor’s guilt that’s shaped her entire life. She’s finally free, and she’s finally sharing Jess’s ability to make her own bad choices. Unfortunately, she picked a hell of a place to do that.

And then there are those hallucinations the forest supposedly triggers. There are some wholesale horror cliches, like a teen in a schoolgirl outfit who is, duh, not what she seems, and some stealthy corpses who’re just designed to be as frightening (PG-13 frightening, but still) as possible. But the scariest moments in the script from Nick Antosca, Sarah Cornwell, and Ben Ketai come courtesy of Sara’s growing distrust of Aiden (Taylor Kinney), the seemingly friendly journalist who helps her gain access to the forest, saying he wants to write a story about her search (and because she’s hot, he later admits). Is he a good dude, or is he a total creeper ... or maybe worse? Sara’s uncertainty shifts back and forth, and the film has a devilishly good time playing with the audience’s perceptions, too.

If the ending’s a bit of a letdown—simply because of how obvious it is—The Forest has more or less earned it by that point by hammering home its tale-of-two-sisters theme. The movie wraps itself up in a tidy bow, and you know exactly where everything stands.

It’d be remiss not to mention that The Forest has gotten some blowback for its setting, since it takes advantage of a real-life location in Japan that’s known for its high suicide rate. And it’s yet another movie about Japanese culture with Western main characters. (That said, it’s not the first Western film to latch onto Aokigahara’s blend of natural beauty and haunting reputation.) It very noticeably takes place in a country that is foreign to its blonde protagonist—shades of the American remake of The Grudge—who doesn’t understand the language or culture. She also doesn’t respect anything she’s told about Aokigahara, which is described in solemn tones, but is also depicted as a ghoul-stuffed Very Bad Place for the sake of freaking out the audience as much as possible.

These are valid concerns, especially when you start to wonder why the scriptwriters didn’t just just invent their own haunted forest instead. The Forest definitely would have worked just as well—and probably better, given the controversy—within a fictional setting instead of a real one.

But it’s up to each viewer to decide if this is a deal-breaker for you. All I can say is that there are well-drawn Japanese characters in the film—the park ranger is definitely the smartest guy in the whole thing—and The Forest is an entertaining ride for other reasons.

Photos courtesy of Gramercy Pictures

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced yesterday that 2015 was the second hottest year ever recorded in the United States, with a major last-minute boost from our freakishly warm Christmas holiday season.

It was also a record-breaking year for fire, as the US Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday. For the first time in history, wildfires scorched over 10 million acres across the country. The Pacific Northwest and Alaska were hit hard, with over 20 massive fires burning through 100,000 acres of land.

Both NOAA and NASA are expected to announce that 2015 was the hottest year on record globally. That’ll be no surprise to anyone who has read our coverage of hottest month after month after month after month.

Image Credit: NASA, via Climate Central

El Niño is partially responsible for 2015's global heat wave—the US also saw record precipitation in December, another expected El Niño outcome—but with 14 of the 15 hottest years on record occurring in the 21st century, the logical argument is that Earth is sitting on a trend line. Hot, fiery years like 2015 are the future.

That’s a fact that many Americans still haven’t accepted, according to a study published in Global Environmental Change this week, which shows that climate science denial is alive and flourishing in the United States. “We find little support for the claim that ‘the era of science denial is over,’” the study concludes.

Indeed, a 2014 Gallup survey showed that one in four Americans still don’t believe human activity is causing Earth’s climate to heat up. How could public views be so at odds with the overwhelming consensus of science? Simple: the anti-climate propaganda machine is working harder than ever.

The new science denial study, which looks at over 16,000 documents published online between 1998 and 2013, found that conservative anti-climate groups like the Heartland Institute have exponentially ramped up their climate change misinformation campaign in recent years. The study also reveals a broad shift in the climate communication strategy of conservative thinktanks since the early 2000s. Rather than attacking climate policy, these groups are now far more concerned with undermining basic science.

It’s probably no surprise to hear that many of the 19 thinktanks profiled in the study receive funding from fossil fuel interests, including oil giant Exxon, which is currently in the midst of an embarrassing public investigation following revelations that the company covered up its own climate change research in the 1970s.

In spite of the well-funded effort to rewrite history and science in the United States, leaders from 190 countries did manage to come together in Paris this past December and strike a historic agreement to end the use of fossil fuels this century. As we embark on what’s widely expected to be another record-smashingly hot year, let’s hope that the momentum we gained in Paris doesn’t get trampled by the denial machine that would see the world burn before giving up oil.

[NOAA, USDA, The Guardian]

Top: Trees burning in a wildfire near Omak, Washington, on Aug. 27, 2015. Image Credit: Ted S. Warren/AP

If you’re a Star Trek fan, this $1 Kindle book should be an insta-buy. [The Autobiography of James T. Kirk (Kindle), $1]

http://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-...

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Ever since Sam Wilson took on the mantle of Captain America, his former superhero alter ego of the Falcon has lain dormant. That is, until next week, when The Falcon returns… as Joaquin Torres, a man who is literally part-falcon.

Torres has played a role throughout Nick Spencer and Daniel Acuña’s Sam Wilson: Captain America series since it relaunched as part of Marvel’s “All-New, All-Different” lineup, a Latin-American who attempted to help people emigrate to the U.S. before being captured by a gang of racist thugs that people got very angry at Sam for beating up, because America or something.

Anyway, long story short, said thugs captured Joaquin during the fight, got him experimented on by Marvel’s resident mad scientist Karl Malus (subtle), and was transformed into a genetically modified mashup of human and Falcon DNA. No wait, sorry, vampiric Falcon DNA, because comic boooooooooks. Ever since, Sam and his partner-in-crime Misty Knight have been trying to look after Joaquin while he deals with the fact that he now has wings and claws for hands and regenerative healing abilities.

But it looks like in next week’s Sam Wilson: Captain America #5, Joaquin is going to evolve from patient to superhero and take on Sam’s former mantle. Marvel have released a preview of the issue, featuring the above cover of Joaquin in a new Falcon suit, and a few pages that delve into his background as a Samaritan, growing up giving aid to people struggling to enter the U.S. and start their lives again:

It’s been obvious that Joaquin would follow in Sam’s footsteps ever since he became a vampire-bird-man-person, but still, it’s interesting to see him come into the role. Even more interesting is that seems like an acknowledgement that Sam will be staying on as Captain America in the comics for the foreseeable future.

With it being Cap’s 75th anniversary year,and with Captain America: Civil War on the way, many expected that at some point Steve Rogers—currently drained of super serum and an old man, because, say it with me, comic booooooks—would return to the role. But if we’re getting a new Falcon now, it seems like Sam will wield the star-spangled-shield for a good while yet.

[Marvel via The Mary Sue]

War. Racism. Global warming. Donald Trump. There are so many reasons to fear the future, but there are also a few reasons to continue getting out of bed in the morning for the next 12 months— they all just happen to be pop culture events. We’ve been discussing 2016’s best movies, TV shows and more in depth, but here are the best of the best of the year ahead.

1) The Age of Non-Traditional Heroes

We’re in the Golden Age of superhero movies. No one denies this. DC’s finally about to get its cinematic universe up and running, Marvel is churning out four movies a year… so it’s nice to see that both companies are experimenting a bit more with the genre. Obviously, the R-rated, hyper-violet, fourth-wall-breaking Deadpool movie will be the year’s biggest risk, but one that could pay off as superhero movie fans look for something new. DC’s Suicide Squad, where a variety of villains are forced to face off against an even worse foe might even fare better than Batman V. Superman. And while Marvel’s Dr. Strange might be the most traditional of the three, it’s still going to have to task of bringing magic, hell, and some seriously freaky alternate dimensions to the MCU.

2) Game of Thrones Goes Off-Book

We mentioned it in our 2016 TV Preview, but we’re extra excited about the upcoming six season of Game of Thrones because for the first time, the show is almost completely caught up to the books. It’s finally time to get answers to some of the questions we’ve had since George R.R. Martin first published A Game of Thrones back in 1996. But we’re equally looking forward to seeing long-promised events like Danaerys finally striking out for Westeros, or the Others finally attacking the Wall. Sure, these things might not necessarily happen in season six, but now that the show can finally strike out on its own, we know these events are coming. (Like winter.)

3) Incredibly Great Authors Are Writing Comics

Our complete guide to the biggest comics of 2016 is coming out next week, but there are two series that deserve special mention: Black Panther and Angel Catbird. Why? Well, mainly because they’re being written by acclaimed authors Ta-Nehisi Coates and Margaret Atwood, respectively. Coates is one of the preeminent socio-political writers of his day, and imagining what he’ll bring to Marvel’s King of Wakanda is mind-boggling. Meanwhile, Margaret Atwood is one of the most critically acclaimed fiction authors in the world, and she’s going to be writing about a superhero who’s half-cat and half-bird. Both of these comics are an essential read in 2016.

4) The X-Files Are Getting Reopened

Why are we so excited about the return of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully? Sure, The X-Files was great in its heyday, but the show went completely off the rails by the end, and it’s not like either of the two movies blew anyone away. Yet here we are, shivering with anticipation for our two favorite FBI agents to get back out there and start investigating aliens, monsters, and all the other supernatural phenomena again. Maybe it’s because The X-Files works better as a show. Maybe it’s because so much of the original TV staff is back, and we think they’ll be able to recapture the magic. Maybe it’s just because David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson seem really happy and excited to be back, and their enthusiasm is infectious. Or maybe it’s part of a terrifying government conspiracy. Who knows?

5) The Preacher Is On His Way

AMC hasn’t actually announced that the long, long-awaited TV adaptation of Garth Ennis’ cult favorite comic is coming out this year, but seeing as the show is solidly in production, we’d be very surprised if Jesse Custer, Tulip and Cassidy didn’t grace our TV screens before 2017. The fact that the show is finally happening—especially from genuine Preacher fan Seth Rogen (and his production company)—well, it’s likely that it will end up having been worth the wait.

6) We May Get the First Great Video Game Movie Ever

A good video game movie isn’t quite as well-known an oxymoron as “jumbo shrimp,” but it’s close. Still, we may have to retire it forever when the Warcraft movie comes out. If you’ve seen the trailers for the film based on the hit MMORPG, you know if looks plenty good, but lots of video game movies look good. The reason we’re so hopeful for Warcraft is that it’s directed by Duncan Jones of Moon fame. If there’s someone who can take a standard fantasy story of humans battling orcs and turn it into a compelling, thoughtful narrative, we’d put our money on Jones.

7) Ghostbusters Is Going to Rock

Remaking Ghostbusters always sounded like such a horrible, mercenary, unnecessary idea… until the day we learned it would star Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon, and be directed by Paul Feig. Now it’s a great idea, and we can’t wait to see these ladies don their proton packs and start cleaning up the town. Even if the movie is somehow bad—and with this cast and crew, that’s not particularly likely—we’d still rather have this than the inevitably sad Ghostbusters 3 that Dan Aykroyd has been trying to make for the last 25 years.

8) It’s a Year-Long Superhero Free-for-All

Why settle for one superhero when you can have a dozen? 2016 is focuses almost entirely on team efforts—and putting as many heroes together as possible (even if they’re getting together to fight each other). Captain America: Civil War is so packed with heroes it’s being referred to as Avengers 2.5. Batman V. Superman isn’t just introducing Wonder Woman and Aquaman, but setting up the eventual Justice League movie. X-Men Apocalypse looks to star practically every single major X-Man that hasn’t yet made it on-screen. And it’s not just the movies! The Legends of Tomorrow aren’t exactly the Justice League, but they’re still the first real super-team of the DC/CW/TV universe.

9) An Even Better Star Wars Movie Is Coming

As good as The Force Awakens looked leading up to its release, I think we were all still pretty nervous about whether it would be good or no; obviously, it was pretty darn good. Comparatively, Rogue One has always sounded awesome from the first day we heard about Disney’s first stand-alone film about the group of Rebel pilots tasked with getting their hands on the plans for the first Death Star. I don’t know that we’re even emotionally ready for another great Star Wars movie so soon after TFA, but at least we have 11 months to prepare.

Contact the author at rob@io9.com.

A team of ornithologists were working on a small Moroccan island when they observed some rather bizarre behavior in adult falcons. The raptors appeared to be imprisoning tiny birds in the crevasses of rocks in an effort to keep them fresh for a later meal.

As reported in New Scientist, University of Rabat ornithologist Abdeljebbar Qninba was doing field work on the barren Moroccan island of Mogador in 2014 when he noticed a number of small birds stuck in deep cavities. On closer inspection, he noticed that the helpless birds had their flight and tail feathers removed. They couldn’t move their wings or use their dangling legs. The birds appeared terrified, and sought any opportunity to escape.

In Qninba’s ensuing report, which can be found at the science journal Alauda, he theorizes that — in what is an apparent example of nonhuman animal husbandry — the falcons were deliberately storing the birds as a means of maintaining live, fresh prey. This behavior may allow falcon parents to stay near their nest, and still have a meal close by to nourish their offspring. It’s also possible that the falcons are giving their young chicks an opportunity to kill their own prey.

More observations are needed, but it appears that the falcons are storing their prey for at least a day or two. Qninba says that the birds were trapped before the falcons’ eggs had hatched, and that local fisherman have known about the practice for decades.

This is the first time that this mode of predation has ever been observed in Eleonora’s Falcons, or any raptor for that matter. But as the New Scientist article points out, some scientists aren’t buying Qninba’s explanation, arguing that there isn’t enough evidence to confirm that the birds are being held prisoner by the falcons:

Rob Simmons of the University of Cape Town in South Africa is skeptical. “I don’t believe a falcon has the cognitive ability to ‘store’ prey like this,” he says. “I think the birds’ prey may simply be escaping and finding refuge.” Raptors often start plucking their prey before they kill them, so the injured birds may simply be escapees.

Other species have been observed to engage in this type of behavior, including shikes who impale their living prey on thorns or barbed wire, and shrews who use their venom to paralyze mice, which are then devoured slowly.

[ New Scientist | Ornithomedia ]

Email the author at george@gizmodo.com and follow him at @dvorsky. Top image by Abdeljebbar Qninba

“So this is very, very stamina-intense,” said a commentator watching the Stepmania run at Awesome Games Done Quick 2016 yesterday. “On really hard songs... you actually become mentally tired as well. It’s not just your hands. You actually get tired.”

What followed was one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen someone do with a video game. This run of the open-source rhythm game Stepmania, performed by the superhuman speedrunner Staian, is a must-watch. Skip to around 18:00 if you just want to see the craziest parts.

You can reach the author of this post at jason@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @jasonschreier.

Eat your heart out, Anomalisa. Adventure Time is doing its first ever stop-motion-animated episode, as part of a whole week of episodes starting next Monday. PLUS there’s a new Ice King episode!

The stop-motion episode airs Thursday, Jan. 14, and “Bad Jubies” is created by stop-motion wizard Kristen Lepore. Here’s the first clip from it:

But we’re even more excited about a new episode starring the Ice King, since we haven’t seen enough of him lately. Here’s the complete guide to next week’s all-new episodes:

• Monday, January 11: “Angel Face”– BMO ropes his friends into a live action cowboy role-playing adventure!

• Tuesday, January 12: “President Porpoise Is Missing!” – Finn and Jake must find President Porpoise before Vice President Blowfish takes over! It’s chaos under the sea!
  
• Wednesday, January 13: “Blank Eyed Girl” – One very spooky night, Finn and Jake come face-to-face with an urban myth.
  
• Thursday, January 14: “Bad Jubies” – There’s a catastrophic storm headed for The Grasslands, so Finn, LSP and BMO decide to build a bunker for protection, but Jake has plans of his own…
  
• Friday, January 15: “A King’s Ransom”– Ice King suffers a heartbreaking loss and it’s up to Finn and Jake to find the culprit.

Chaos under the sea, and cowboy role-playing also sound quite promising.

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of All The Birds in the Sky, coming in January from Tor Books. Follow her on Twitter, and email her.

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Outlander returns to Starz in April, and “this season changes everything for Claire and Jamie,” according to the trailer above. The duo travels to France to try and change the course of history, and the entire look of the show changes to accommodate the new (way less muddy, way fancier) setting.

There’s also plenty of drama, per usual, as the couple grapples with the pressures of trying to stay happily married and prevent thousands of Scottish deaths in the process.

Ever since Peridot entered a tentative alliance with the Crystal Gems, the question of just what would happen to her has been on the lips of Steven Universe fans. Would she betray them? Join them? Well, whether she wanted to or not, Peridot made a decision in “Message Received” that changes Steven Universe in some huge ways.

Spoilers ahead, of course!

“Message Received” pretty much reruns the whole gamut of Peridot’s short emotional arc on the show—following on immediately from “It Could’ve Been Great” we get to see her back to her scheming ways behind the backs of the Crystal Gems and Steven, fully believing that they don’t stand a chance when aid from the Gem Homeworld (and Peridot’s boss, Yellow Diamond) against the Cluster would. She reverts even further back into her maniacally cackling villain role when she goes on the run, attempting to contact Homeworld.

All of this is little surprise to the Gems, except for Steven who is understandably hurt at his trust being used, but also because he thinks he failed in doing something good: convincing Peridot to change her mind and see the good in what the Crystal Gems do. It’s touching that his anger at Peridot quickly turns into regret rather than a desire for revenge.

It makes Peridot’s ultimate decision when she does contact Yellow Diamond all the more sweeter, because it turns out Steven did get through to her—not just because Peridot eventually defies Yellow Diamond (in her own spectacular way, right down to a righteous yell of “YOU CLOD!!”), but because Peridot only contacted Yellow Diamond to try and reason with her, not to betray Steven or attack her. It’s a huge new chapter for Peridot, and for the show; the Gems have now drawn the direct ire of Homeworld, and it’s a decision that’s going to have some big consequences sooner rather than later.

So yes, Peridot is a Crystal Gem now, whether she likes it or not, as Garnet says at the end. But it turns out that, thanks to Steven’s influence, she’s really been one for quite a bit longer.

People in the past were as interested in how the world worked as we are. Authors and illustrated produced works to cater to that interest—including an incredibly bizarre “flap book” that shows what human insides look like. Now you can look at the whole thing online.

In 1613 Johann Remmelin published a book, Catoptrum Microcosmicum, which became a best-seller for about a hundred and fifty years. Today, Columbia University published it online. The work, originally in Latin, was translated into several languages. It explained the human body, using movable flaps to take people down through successive layers. The first layer was the person delicately draped in a way that preserved their modesty. The layer of drapery came off first.

After that, Remmelin went under the skin.

This is a 1661 edition, which needed a little work before it could be scanned. The archivists at Columbia had to undo some damage to the book, as several pages had a dark stain that made it difficult to read, and also made the flaps brittle.

They lightened the stain by moistening the pages and applying a suction device to lift away some of the stain particles. Other damage they left alone. Clearly, they decided not to do anything about the female figure’s resplendent mustache. Steven Novak, the head of Archives and Special Collections, told Gizmodo that the mustache was probably the work of a “prankster” from about 200 years ago.

The book features a female figure and a male figure, both shown from the front and the back. Each figure is drawn with one foot standing on a skull. As you can see in the picture above, the book isn’t short on Bible allusions. The skull has a snake going through it and an apple branch next to it.

Get a little closer, though, and the dissected skull just looks like Krang. from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

In addition to the regular male and female figures, the book takes us inside a pregnant female torso. As you can see in the gif above, it’s the creepiest experience imaginable—made worse by the fact that for an unexplained reason, we get a shot of what can only be termed a crotch-demon before we delve deeper into the anatomy. Novak tells us that the word above the head, “invidia,” means “spite, or ill will.”

Check out the full text, if you dare, here.

At the movies, we’ve seen the world end almost every way imaginable: disease, zombies, meteors, natural disasters, and the list goes on. But author Joe Hill has a new one—and the idea is so hot, pun intended, that Hollywood scooped it up even before his book was published.

The title of the book is The Fireman; it’s about a worldwide plague of a mysterious disease that starts as small marks on the skin, but eventually grows and makes the person burst into flames. It’ll be out in May, but Deadline reports that 20th Century Fox has just purchased the film rights, with Louis Leterrier (Now You See Me, The Incredible Hulk) attached to direct.

If you aren’t familiar with Hill, he’s the son of Stephen King for starters. He’s also inherited his father’s gift for the written word, along with that creepy imagination. His book Horns became a movie, and he wrote the comic Locke & Key—so The Fireman is only his latest work. As for why it’s called that, one of the few people who seems to be able to fight this outbreak is a mysterious character known as, well, you guessed it. The Fireman.

Head to Amazon to read the full plot description.

http://www.amazon.com/Fireman-Novel-...

Leterrier is just about to release the spy comedy The Brothers Grimsby with Sacha Baron Cohen, but doesn’t have a set film after that yet.

[Deadline]

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.