The southern-fried supernatural soap operatics of True Blood may have ended last year, but the show’s groundbreaking special effects live on in this VFX reel that compiles the very best of Zoic Studios’ goriest contributions.

Here’s the official description:

HBO’s cult horror favorite “True Blood” took the vampire craze by storm, with 12 million viewers at its peak and a blood-hungry fan following, and Zoic Studios was along for the ride from the dawn. From gushing facial wounds, flying decapitated heads, massive explosions, fiery slow motion attacks, gruesome disintegrating bodies, and of course—an infinite bounty of blood in every fashion imaginable. Coming on board for the pilot and continuing through the series’ finale in 2014, the Zoic team delivered a scintillating supply of ghastly effects that will leave their mark long after the last vampire bite.

October 30, 1964: What’s the best way to practice lunar landings when you’ve never been to the moon? With the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, of course! Although decidedly inelegant in appearance, astronauts relied on these engineering marvels for their practice.

A Lunar Landing Research Vehicle approaches maximum altitude at Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Image credit: NASA

While preparing for the Apollo moon landings, astronauts needed to practice the final vertical descent on Earth. While NASA considered an electronic simulator or a tethered device, they ultimately built a free-flying vehicle instead.

January 11, 1967: The Lunar Landing Research Vehicle in flight. Image credit: NASA

The Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) required engineering magic to appropriately simulate 1/6th of the Earth’s gravity and transparent aerodynamic forces here at home. They did this with a single jet engine on a pair of gimbals to always point vertically. After boosting the simulator to its test-height, the engine would throttle back so that it cancelling out exactly 5/6th of the vehicle’s weight. Hydrogen peroxide rockets acted as the lander’s thrusters, run through computers that exactly countered any atmospheric impacts like wind while responding to the pilot’s commands so the craft maneuvered as it would on the moon. Even the vehicle’s restricted cockpit view helped astronauts train under similar constraints as the actual lunar modules.

October 30, 1964: Joe Walker pilots the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) number 1 on its first flight. Image credit: NASA

NASA research Joe Walker made the first test flight in Lunar Landing Research Vehicle number 1 on October 30, 1964 at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The three test flights finished under a minute, with the highest lifted to an altitude of only 3 meters (10 feet).

The odd silhouette of the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle earned it the nickname, “The Flying Bedstead” in popular media. Image credit: NASA

The two Lunar Landing Research Vehicles were eventually succeeded by a trio of Lunar Landing Vehicles (LLTVs) . Every Apollo astronaut who flew a lunar module first practiced the eight-minute descent with the vehicles.

Multiple exposure of the lunar lander touching down in 1967. Image credit: NASA

One of the original simulators and two of the upgraded simulators ultimately crashed, destroying them while the pilot ejected to safety. Neil Armstrong was the first to crash, ejecting from LLRV #1 when fuel for the attitude control thrusters ran out during a practice flight on a windy day. Armstrong famously returned to work that afternoon. The first LLTV crashed within months of delivery in 1968 when test pilot Joe Algranti pushed the vehicles speed envelope too hard. Algranti ejected just 3/5ths of a second before it crashed into the ground. LLTV #3 crashed years later in 1971 when test pilot Stuart “Stu” Present was testing a major modification to the computer system.

A Lunar Landing Vehicle at Langley Research Vehicle in California. Image credit: NASA

October 30, 1964: Lunar Landing Research Vehicle engine test firing on ramp. Image credit: NASA

[NASA]

Top image: April 26, 1965: A Bell 47 Helicopter provides chase support for Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) flight #1-16-61F. Credit: NASA

Contact the author at mika.mckinnon@io9.com or follow her at @MikaMcKinnon.

Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series is a truly great fantasy universe. It’s so perfect, I actually don’t want anybody to adapt it for TV or movies. Instead, everybody should hunt these books down and experience their greatness firsthand.

The series currently stands at nine books (a tenth is due out in February), plus a number of spinoff stories. It follows Nita and Kit, two young adult wizards who go from novices to experienced protectors of the universe over the course of the novels. The books are so rich and varied in their storytelling, they deserve a place among the all-time great book series.

There’s a lot to love about Duane’s series. The fact that the first book is called So You Want to Be a Wizard is one. The diversity of the characters is another. But, for my money, the sheer breadth of the world Duane’s created sets it apart.

http://www.amazon.com/So-You-Want-Be...

The Young Wizards series is so well-conceived and researched, it’s actually amazing that Duane has managed to fit it all into nine books. Wizardry, in this world, isn’t just powers that young people need training in—it’s a vital ability that slows the inevitable death of the universe. Wizardy is speech in this world. And perfectly and accurately describing what you want to happen, makes it happen. And that’s powered by belief, so the younger the wizard the more powerful they are. As they are more likely to believe in their own success.

The way Duane observes our world and incorporates those observations into the stories gives them weight. She gives the human obsession with naming and description an existential reason in her universe. And she explains why children would end up soldiers in this war.

And it is a war, in every single book. Wizards get their power from The Powers That Be—AKA every myth, legend, or Biblical angel in existence. Since one Power created the “gift” of death and then left, it’s the Lone Power. It goes around offering every single species in existence the “Choice” of accepting his gift. When he wins, the end of the universe gets closer. When he loses—usually because wizards manage to interfere—entropy slows down. Duane reverses the usual “scientific understanding replaces myth” trope, by giving entropy a face and a goal.

Duane doesn’t flinch at killing off major characters in these books. And these deaths are wrenching, every single time. From the merely tragic to the noble sacrifice—this isn’t a bloodless war.

The depth and breadth of Duane’s universe is reflected in that every species is offered a Choice part. Deep Wizardry deals with the rituals of whale wizards. Two of the spinoffs center on cat wizards, which should be ridiculous, but is just as richly thought out as the human wizard stories. Intergalactic wizards take center stage in High Wizardry, plus the first book has an sentient white hole named “Fred.” A Wizard Abroad weaves Irish folklore and time travel into a desperate battle. But then, A Wizard Alone is centered on a single’s boy’s mind. All of these stories exist seamlessly in the same universe. It’s an incredible feat Duane pulls off.

http://www.amazon.com/High-Wizardry-...

The banter’s great, too. It would have to be, to keep the heaviness of the rest of the material in check. Like this, from A Wizard Abroad:

“What I really need right now in terms of energy is a chocolate bar,” she said, “but the only thing I’ve got left in my pack is a cat. And I can’t eat that.” She made an amused face. “Too many bones.”

The books are also full of things just for nerds. You’ve got Star Wars as a major influence on one character. A Wizard of Mars absorbs science fiction tropes as easily as A Wizard Abroad did Irish folklore. And there’s even a cameo from the Doctor himself in one of the books, too.

http://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Mars-Ni...

The relationships between the characters are as deep and conflicted as they should be. Siblings fight. Best friends start growing apart. Parents have to let their kids go into danger. I love these characters.

And that’s why I hope nobody ever tries to film this material. There is a lot that Duane manages to convey with her language, and a movie could never capture it all. In her prose, all the cat wizards who maintain portals between worlds and space travel are unified. I don’t know if there are many filmmakers I’d trust to make it all work. It’s best to just go read the books.

I’ve been dancing around a lot of things trying not to spoil these books for anyone who hasn’t read them—but just trust me that they will break your heart and lift you up at the same time.

Contact the author at katharine@io9.com.

The tuatara isn’t actually a lizard. It’s the last survivor of a 250 million year old group of reptiles that mostly went extinct with the dinosaurs. It doesn’t have a penis, and ironically, that’s made it a linchpin for understanding how penises evolved in vertebrates.

The tuatara’s penis-less state stands out because the other descendants of the first scaly animals to evolve shelled eggs that require internal fertilization–called amniotes–do have penises, and those penises are wildly diverse.

Mammals use cylinders of inflatable erectile tissue. Turtles have a terrifyingly large organ that layers inflatable tissues on top of a stiff tongue-shaped shovel. Crocodilian penises are permanently stiff, pushed out by muscles and pulled back in by bungee-cord tendons. Snakes and lizards have two, which are stored inside-out in their bodies and inflated into females. And then there’s the high-speed flexible madness of waterfowl like ducks.

For years, those anatomical differences fed a debate about penis evolution. The tuatara has a lot of features biologists think were also found in the earliest amniotes. If “no penis” was one of those ancient characteristics, then the wildly different shapes of lizard, crocodile, and mammal penises could have evolved independently. But other biologists argued that penises had evolved once in early amniotes and changed in unique ways within each group over time. If that view were true, the tuatara would be one of the rare groups of animals that had lost their penis.

A study released in today’s Biology Letters adds a new piece to the puzzle, lending support to the idea that the amniote penis evolved only once.

The very best way to resolve the argument was to take a close look at some tuatara embryos. If the embryos never developed any of the early stages for growing a penis, it would support the idea that penises had evolved more than once. But if they started to grow a penis that was later reabsorbed, it would suggest that all living amniotes inherited a penis-building blueprint from an ancient ancestor. For Martin Cohn and his team of developmental biologists at the University of Florida, it was also one of the last remaining steps in a years-long project to track genital development across vertebrates.

There was just one problem: the tuatara is an endangered species that breeds incredibly slowly: it takes a tuatara about as long as a human to become sexually mature, and females only lay a clutch of eggs every 2 to 5 years. As a result, every one of their eggs is precious and tightly controlled by the New Zealand government.

100 Year Old Embryos

Getting fresh tuatara eggs was going to be impossible. But Thomas Sanger, a postdoctoral associate in Cohn’s lab, thought there might be another way to attack the problem.

Before he had moved to Florida, Sanger had worked at Harvard University. And he’d learned that Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology owned a historic collection of slides that included a few tuatara embryos.

The slides had belonged to Charles Minot, a comparative embryologist who’d amassed an enormous number of specimens from around the world before his death in 1914. In 1909, he had received four tuatara embryos, which he sliced thin and mounted on a series of 82 slides. “It was a great wealth of historical information that we could use for our modern questions,” said Sanger.

But first, he had to track down the right slides. A little detective work showed that one of the four embryos, specimen 1491, was collected at the same developmental stage where they saw the earliest hints of penis development in other amniotes. If the tuatara embryo had the same genital swellings as snakes or alligators at a similar stage, it would be evidence that the animal had the potential to grow a penis.

The swellings, if they existed, would be visible on the surface of the embryo. But this particular embryo had already been sliced up like a loaf of bread. If they were going to answer their question, they needed to reassemble the loaf. Working with Marissa Gredler, then a graduate student in the lab, Sanger photographed every undamaged section on each slide and used an imaging program to stack them, creating a three-dimensional model of the tuatara embryo.

“The slides had been in storage for most of the 20th century,” Sanger said. “so some slides had gone missing. They were also pretty dusty and beat up, and required some careful cleaning before I could photograph them. But for specimens that were over 100 years old, the histological quality was amazing.”

Tiny Genital Swellings in 3D

Some of the lost slides included the left half of specimen 1491. But out of the slides that were left, Sanger and Gredler were able to build a virtual 3D model of the embryo showing its tail, right leg, and underside. Clear as day, there were bumps on the tuatara that corresponded to the anal and genital swelling of other amniotes: structures that in animals like lizards and turtles grow and fuse to eventually form the rim of the cloaca and the penis.

Key for diagram: HL = hindlimb | TL = tail | AS = anal swelling | GS = genital swelling. From Sanger, Gredler and Cohn 2015

The implication is that male tuataras start to grow a penis as an embryo, but reabsorb it before they’re ready to hatch. That means every single amniote lineage has the wherewithal to make a penis. And that suggests a penis is an ancient amniote trait that has diversified in many amazing ways over time.

Penis diversification within the amniotes. From Sanger, Gredler and Cohn 2015

But since this project is based on observations of just one half of one embryo, it leaves a lot of questions about the tuatara’s reproductive development unanswered. “The fact that the penis shares a developmental pathway with the limbs might be a real constraint that keeps basic genital development in all amniotes,” said Patricia Brennan, who studies the effects of sexual conflict on genital anatomy at Mount Holyoke College. “It would be nice to see a follow up with a whole tuatara embryo.” Or ideally, multiple embryos at different stages of development.

That’s because one embryo represents just a single frame of the entire developmental drama. It can only tell us what’s happening at one moment in time. It cannot answer questions about how long a tuatara penis grows before it destroys itself, or whether it is built on the single-shaft model like most other amniotes or shares the split-shaft form of the snakes and lizards that are its closest cousins.

The Cohn lab has even seen this sort of penis disappearing act before: in birds like chickens, penis growth starts normally in the embryo, but the organ is eventually destroyed by an expanding wave of self-destructing cells. “It would be cool to test whether the regression of genital buds in the tuatara occurs the same way as it does in birds” said Gredler.

[Gillingham et al. 1995 | Nelson et al. 2010 | Jones and Cree 2012 | Herrera et al 2013 | Sanger, Gredler and Cohn 2015]

Top image of tuatara by A. Sparrow via Flickr | CC BY 2.0; other images from Sanger, Gredler and Cohn 2015

Contact the author at diane@io9.com.

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The next season of Game of Thrones will be unique—a show that’s been so heavily dependent on its book source material will suddenly be venturing out into unknown territory, with no more books to adapt. What’s going to happen next? Here’s everything we’ve been able to find out.

Suffice to say, going in, that this post will be jam packed with Spoilers and speculation for Game of Thrones season six—as well as tons of details from the A Song of Ice and Fire book series the show is based on. If you don’t want to know more about either, consider this your due warning. Turn back, before it’s too late!

So, About Jon Snow...

One of the biggest mysteries of the new season—and the source of many, many, many posts about the length of Kit Harington’s hair—has been whether or not Jon Snow would return after his seemingly fatal stabbing at the hands of his Night’s Watch brothers during the finale of season 5.

Despite what members of the cast and crew have said ever since, Jon Snow will be returning for the show: and kicking off a major new storyline for the character that has huge ramifications for the rest of the series. We first heard back in June that Kit Harington had been spotted in Belfast ahead of the start of filming for the sixth season, and there’s been much speculation since, but it’s only been more recently that we’ve seen solid proof that Jon is returning.

That solid proof also revealed a major twist—in that it appears Jon will no longer be part of the Night’s Watch, and is instead playing a part in a huge battle to wrestle control of the North of Westeros out of the hands of the Boltons. Kit Harington has been spotted filming scenes dressed in the leather armor of House Stark for a huge battle in Saintfield, Northern Irelend, which includes hundreds of extras dressed as Wildlings and soldiers representing the different houses of the North, Fans have speculated that the change of heart—and release from his oath to the Watch—may be thanks to a resurrection from the Red Priestess Melisandre. Maybe now that Jon has already died, he’s fulfilled his oath, and in his new life, is free to do as he pleases.

A newer rumor even posits that Jon will be joined in his quest by an unlikely ally: After Stannis perished in the last season, Ser Davos Seaworth apparently will choose to stand with Jon in the battle. Backing this up, actor Liam Cunningham was spotted at a wrap party with the crew following the completion of the battle. The battle is purportedly a major, major part of the season—Sophie Turner, a.k.a. Sansa Stark, has also been spotted in Saintfield for filming of the battle, and the scene will feature some big casualties, including two known characters being flayed and burned alive by Ramsay Bolton on massive crosses, and appearance by the Wildling giant Wun-Wun. Suffice to say, this is probably one of the most important scenes we know about in the season so far.

Over the course of the show, Jon has been shown wrestling with his duty to the realm as a Night’s Watchman and his duty to his family, so him turning his back on the Watch and throwing his lot in to the ongoing battle for control in Westeros seems like it’s going to be a major storyline in season six. But that’s not the only big rumor swirling around with ties to Jon...

Flashbacks

The Castillo de Zafra. Image by Wikimedia user Borjaanimal, shared under Creative Commons.

This year Game of Thrones has been doing plenty of filming in Spain, but one location has had fans talking more than any other: the Castillo de Zafra in Guadalajara. Ever since the striking location was announced for filming, fans have drawn comparisons between the tower and an infamous location in Westeros, the Tower of Joy in Dorne.

Before the events of A Game of Thrones, there was a great civil war in Westeros called Robert’s Rebellion—when Robert Baratheon rebelled against the ruling Targaryens and eventually took the throne. This was sparked by the Targaryen prince, Rhaegar, capturing Lyanna Stark, the sister of Ned Stark. Lyanna was kept in the Tower of Joy, until Ned and a band of Knights attempted to rescue her—only to find that she had died. But a prevailing fan theory also posits that as well as finding his dead sister at the Tower, Ned also discovered her newly born son—the product of a dalliance between Rhaegar and Lyanna—and took him home under the guise of a Bastard child of Ned’s: Jon Snow.

There’s never been confirmation of Jon’s true parentage in either the books or the show: it’s one of the biggest mysteries surrounding Game of Thrones as a whole. But filming at Castillo de Zafra for what appears to be a flashback sequence to Robert’s rebellion may end up confirming it—recent filming reports claimed a fight between swordsmen took place there, including what appeared to be a young Ned Stark, the legendary knight Ser Arthur Dayne (who’s been rumored to be joining the cast for a while now) and Howland Reed, the father of Jojen and Meera (those kids who were traveling with Bran and Hodor).

Interestingly, there’s recently been a further twist: Actor Isaac Hempstead-Wright, who plays Bran Stark, was also spotted near the Castillo, indicating he was filming there—so rather than a straight flashback, as the show did with Cersei Lannister’s youth, it seems this sequence will be a vision watched by Bran while he hangs out with the Three-Eyed Raven beyond the wall. Bran’s presence is also a hint that this is an important sequence related to the Starks, lending further credence to the notion that this is in fact the incident at the Tower of Joy.

Meanwhile, In King’s Landing

Although events in King’s Landing were a major part of the last season, we know surprisingly little about the ramifications of Cersei’s “walk of shame” and what happens after she’s freed from the clutches of the Sparrows—but we do know Season six will see the Sparrows relinquish their other royal captive: Margaery Tyrell.

A huge scene filmed in Girona involved hundreds of extras dressed up as the soldiers of House Tyrell—led by King Tommen, Mace Tyrell and, surprisingly, Jaime Lannister. The armed force apparently storms King’s Landing’s Sept to take Margaery from the High Sparrow by force, only to find her willingly set free by the Faith Militant—it’s rumored that Margaery is freed because she’s become a devout follower of the Faith, but it’s unknown if that’s true or just a trick on the part of Margaery to see herself free.

We don’t really know much more about King’s Landing, but we do know where Jaime Lannister will head next, presumably after this incident with the Tyrells...

Return to Riverrun

To book readers, this is actually an older plotline that many of us thought would be skipped over by the show—it appeared mainly in the fourth book, A Feast for Crows—but now Jaime will indeed head to the Riverlands to stamp out the last remnants of Robb Stark’s rebellion, in the form of the House Tully, holed up at Riverrun.

Both Clive Russell and Tobias Menzies will reprise their roles as Brynden and Edmure Tully respectively, taking part in the Lannister siege of Riverrun as it’s broken by Jaime. But the Kingslayer will be joined by two unlikely, but familiar faces. Jerome Flynn, who plays Bronn, has been sighted filming scenes in Corbet, Northern Ireland with Jaime actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, which is unsurprising given Jaime and Bronn’s Dornish escapades in Season 5. But another interesting sighting in Corbet was Gwendoline Christie filming in the area—leading to speculation that Brienne of Tarth could reunite with Jaime.

There’s also been much wilder speculation about two other characters who could show up in the Riverlands—an Irish-based Thrones twitter account recently alleged that the long-anticipated Lady Stoneheart (the magically revived and vengeful body of Catelyn Stark) would finally appear in the season, commanding an army seemingly larger than the Brotherhood without Banners she leads in the books:

It’s not been confirmed, but with the show shining a major spotlight on the Riverlands, Lady Stoneheart’s base of operations in the books, it could be possible.

The other potential character alleged to show up in the Riverlands is Arya Stark, seemingly abandoning her training at the House of Black and White to return to her homeland. There’s not been much about her appearance there other than a supposed meeting with Jaime Lannister, and no sightings of Maisie Williams on location (she has, however, been seen filming scenes that appear to come from released preview chapters of the much anticipated seventh book in the series, The Winds of Winter, which take place back in Braavos), it’s best to treat both this and Lady Stoneheart’s alleged appearances as unconfirmed for now.

The Greyjoys

Aside from Theon’s capture and transformation into Reek by Ramsay Bolton, House Greyjoy has largely been out of the picture in Game of Thrones for a few seasons. But in Season 6, they’re apparently returning in a big way, adaption a major storyline from the books known as the “Kingsmoot”—a gathering of Ironborn captains to decide the next King of the Iron Islands, following the death of Balon Greyjoy.

In the books, several characters threw in their hats at the Kingsmoot, including Theon’s sister Asha. known as Yara in the show—but ultimately Balon’s brother Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbæk has allegedly been cast in the role) is crowned king, after he appears at the Kingsmoot with a magical horn that can allegedly control dragons. A large scene filmed in Ballintoy, Northern Ireland, featured plenty of extras as Ironborn, as well as Euron and Victarion Greyjoy (another brother of Balon) earlier this year, aerial footage of which you can see below:

Interestingly, that footage was paired with reports that another Grejoy actor was spotted filming: Theon himself, Alfie Allen. Last seen jumping off the walls of Winterfell with Sansa Stark, it’s unknown what happens to Theon between Winterfell and the Iron Islands: but it seems like he’ll be reuniting with his sister and the rest of his family in season six.

Keeping Up With The Khalasar

It’s not just the characters based in Westeros that we’ve learned a lot about already—recently there’s been a lot of talk about what happened to Daenerys after she found herself surrounded by Dothraki at the end of Season five. It turns out that Daenerys might find herself in the command of an even mightier force than she’s ever had before.

There’s been much talk of the filming at Bardenas Real Natural Park in Navarre, Spain, which featured 1,200 extras as members of a Dothraki Khalasar being led by Daenerys (presumably, the same group that found her). But it’s what happens after that that is interesting—Daenerys, tailed by Jorah Mormont and Daario Nahaaris, is brought to a huge meeting of multiple Dothraki Khalasars at a vast Dothraki encampment... and proceeds to rally them to her cause.

How does she do that? Well, it involves Drogon, her pet dragon: the creature allegedly burns down a massive Dothraki temple, and Daenerys emerges out of the fire in a similar manner to the birth of the Dragons at the very end of the show’s first season. Daenerys will them seemingly take that army back to Mereen—Emilia Clarke has been spotted filming with extras wearing both Dothraki gear and the armor of the Unsullied.

She’ll need all the help she can get: Meereen is apparently in dire straits, with famine tearing through the city (leading to Tyrion apparently hallucinating an appearance of Shae in the face of a starving woman). At some point Tyrion is approached by a Red Priestess offering her help keeping the citizens of Mereen loyal to Daenerys—and the slavers of Yunkai and Meereen will apparently join forces to assault the city, a plot point prominent in A Dance with Dragons that the show had previously skipped.

And Much, Much More

Despite everything above, there’s still so much we don’t know about the Game of Thrones season 6—from major characters like Cersei Lannister, to events at big locations like the Wall and the lands beyond it. There’ll be secrets and details we don’t discover until the show actually airs: but rest assured, if you’re still hankering for Game of Thrones spoilers, you can stay tuned to io9 in the months leading up to Season 6’s arrival.

Post-apocalyptic and beautiful are words that I’ve never put in a sentence together until I saw this short film. It takes the exuberant beauty of the ancient temples of Myanmar and incorporates stunning futuristic spaceships to them. That combination creates such gorgeous landscapes that I wish they existed for real.

Strange Alloy is a wonderfully crafted animation short by Loïc Bramoullé. The film follows an alien tourist on his visit to the remains of an extinct civilization. Ours.

If you enjoyed the short film, vote for it in the Sploid Short Film Festival by giving it a like on YouTube.

The Sploid Short Film Festival is a celebration of great storytelling and awesome eye candy. Learn how to participate or even submit your own short film for consideration here.

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

You’ve heard it before: In space, no one can hear you scream. That’s because sound doesn’t move through a vacuum, and everyone knows that space is a vacuum. The thing is, that’s not completely true.

Space isn’t uniform nothingness. It’s full of stuff. In between the stars, there are clouds of gas and dust. These clouds are sometimes the remains of old stars that went out in a blaze of explosive glory, and they’re the regions where new stars form. And some of that interstellar gas is dense enough to carry sound waves, just not sound perceptible to humans.

Here’s How It Works

When an object moves — whether it’s a vibrating guitar string or an exploding firecracker — it pushes on the air molecules closest to it. Those displaced molecules bump into their neighbors, and then those displaced molecules bump into their neighbors. The motion travels through the air as a wave. When the wave reaches your ear, you perceive it as sound.

As a sound wave passes through the air, the air pressure in any given spot will oscillate up and down; picture the way water gets deeper and shallower as waves pass by. The time between those oscillations is called the sound’s frequency, and it’s measured in units called Hertz; one Hertz is one oscillation per second. The distance between “peaks” of high pressure is called the sound’s wavelength.

Sound waves can only travel through a medium if the length of the wave is longer than the average distance between the particles. Physicists call this the “mean free path” — the average distance a molecule can travel after colliding with one molecule and before colliding with the next. So a denser medium can carry sounds with shorter wavelengths, and vice versa.

Image: Anatomy of a sound wave via Aarkentechnologies/Wikimedia Commons

Sounds with longer wavelengths, of course, have lower frequencies, which we perceive as lower pitches. In any gas with a mean free path larger than 17 m (the wavelength of sounds with a frequency of 20 Hz), the waves that propagate will be too low-frequency for us to hear them. These sound waves are called infrasound. If you were an alien with ears that could pick up this very low notes, you’d hear really interesting things in some parts of space.

The Song of a Black Hole

Ripples in interstellar gas, produced by sound waves from a supermassive black hole. Image credit: NASA

About 250 million light years away, at the center of a cluster of thousands of galaxies, a supermassive black hole is humming to itself in the deepest note the universe has ever heard (as far as we know). The note is a B-flat, about 57 octaves below middle C, which is about a million billion times deeper than the lowest frequency sound we can hear (yes, that’s an actual number from actual scientists).

The deepest sound you’ve ever heard has a cycle of about one oscillation every twentieth of a second. The drone of Perseus’ black hole has a cycle of about one oscillation every 10 million years. That’s sound on a massive scale, played across deep time.

We know this because in 2003, NASA’s Chandra X-ray space telescope spotted a pattern in the gas that fills the Perseus Cluster: concentric rings of light and dark, like ripples in a pond. Astrophysicists say those ripples are the traces of incredibly low frequency sound waves; the brighter rings are the peaks of waves, where there’s the greatest pressure on the gas. The darker rings are the troughs of the sound waves, where the pressure is lower.

Hot, magnetized gas rotates around the black hole, more or less like water swirling around a drain. All that magnetized material in motion generates a powerful electromagnetic field. The field is strong enough to accelerate material away from the brink of the black hole at nearly the speed of light, in huge bursts called relativistic jets. These relativistic jets force gas in their path out of the way, and that disturbance produces deep cosmic sound waves.

That deep intergalactic sound carried through the Perseus Cluster for hundreds of thousands of light years from its source, but sound can only travel as far as there’s enough gas to carry them, so Perseus’ infrasound drone stops at the edge of the gas cloud that fills its cluster of galaxies. That means we can’t detect the sound here on Earth; we can only see its effects on the gas cloud. It’s like we’re staring across space into a soundproofed chamber.

A Groaning Planet

Video credit: ESA

Closer to home, our planet makes a deep groan every time its crust shifts, and sometimes those low-frequency sounds carry all the way into space. During an earthquake, the ground’s shaking can produce vibrations in the atmosphere, usually with a frequency between one and five Hz. If the earthquake is strong enough, it can send infrasound waves up through the atmosphere to the edge of space.

Of course, there’s no clear line where Earth’s atmosphere stops and space begins. The air just gradually gets thinner until eventually there’s none. From about 80 to about 550 kilometers above the surface, the mean free path of a molecule is about a kilometer. That means the air at this altitude is about 59 times too thin for audible sound waves to travel through, but it can carry the longer waves of infrasound.

When a magnitude 9.0 earthquake shook the northeastern coast of Japan in March 2011, seismographs around the world recorded how its waves passed through the Earth, and the earth’s vibrations also set off low-frequency vibrations in the atmosphere. Those vibrations traveled all the way up to where the European Space Agency’s Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite maps Earth’s gravity from low orbit, 270 kilometers above the surface. And the satellite recorded those sound waves - sort of.

GOCE has very sensitive accelerometers on board, which control the ion engine that helps keep the satellite in a stable orbit. On March 11, 2011, GOCE’s accelerometers detected vertical displacement in the very thin atmosphere around the satellite, along with wavelike shifts in air pressure, as the sound waves from the earthquake passed by. The satellite’s thrusters corrected for the displacement and saved the data, which became an indirect recording of the earthquake’s infrasound.

The indirect recording was buried in the satellite’s thruster data until a team of researchers led by Raphael F. Garcia happened across it and published a paper on their findings.

The First Sound in the Universe

And if you could somehow travel back in time to the first 760,000 years after the Big Bang (we’ve already turned you into an alien who can hear in infrasound, so of course you can also travel through time, right?), you could have heard the sound of the universe growing.

Until about 760,000 years after the Big Bang, the matter in the universe was still densely packed enough that sound waves could travel through it — and they did.

Around this time, the first photons were also beginning to travel through the universe as light. Things had finally cooled enough after the Big Bang to allow subatomic particles to condense into atoms. Before that cooling happened, the universe was full of charged particles - protons and electrons - that either absorbed or scattered photons, the particles (sort of) that make up light. When the protons and neutrons started to form neutrally charged atoms, light was free to shine all over the place.

Today, that light reaches us as a faint glow of microwave radiation, visible only to very sensitive radio telescopes. Physicists call it the cosmic microwave background. It’s the oldest light in the universe, and it contains a recording of the oldest sound in the universe.

Remember that sound waves travel through the air (or interstellar gas) as oscillations in pressure. When you compress a gas, it gets hotter; on a large scale, that’s actually how stars form. And when a gas expands, it cools. The sound waves traveling though the early universe caused faint variations in pressure in the gaseous medium, which in turn left faint variations in temperature etched into the cosmic microwave background.

Using those temperature variations, University of Washington physicist John G. Cramer managed to reconstruct the sounds of the expanding universe. He had to multiply the frequency by a factor of 10^26 just to make it audible to human ears. (Listen to it here or in the video above.)

So it’s still true that no one can hear you screaming in space, but there are sound waves moving through the clouds of gas between the stars or in the rarefied wisps of Earth’s outer atmosphere.

20kHz is a new blog exploring the technology and science behind music and sound. Follow us @20kHz.

Contact the author at k.smithstrickland@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter.

There’s a brutal competition being waged in Mario Maker right now, and it’s inspiring people to make the most hellish Mario Maker courses they can think of.

It all started with a course named “Pit of Panga: P-Break.” Uploaded last month by PangaeaPanga, Pit of Panga was so intentionally grueling, it made grown men cry tears of joy after beating it. At the time, Pit of Panga earned the title of “hardest Mario Maker level,” and the stats seemed to support that. Pit of Panga has been attempted by players around the world over 1.7 million times—but has only been cleared a measly 41 times, as of this writing. That gives Pit of Panga a clear rate of about 0.01%. Too high, if you ask its creator.

“In an ideal world, no more than 10 clears would satisfy me,” PangaeaPanga told me in an email. So over the last two weeks, PanpaeaPanga has spent his time trying to one-up P-Break with a new level. He’s calling it U-Break. While PangaeaPanga hasn’t managed to upload the course yet—Mario Maker requires players to actually beat levels before they can be shared online—he feels that U-Break’s creation is a necessary evil. P-Break started the proliferation of “impossible” type levels, meaning that it wasn’t long before other people created courses that were actually harder than P-Break. And when you’re purporting to be the creator of the hardest Mario Maker level out there, that’s no good.

“Looking back at when I made P-Break, I imagined it to be harder than it really was, which is why it has so many clears,” PangaeaPanga said. “With U-Break, I want to get rid of that partial viewpoint and actually make it as close to ‘impossible’ as I can.”

And so PangaeaPanga has spent a good chunk of October bashing his head against the wall that is U-Break. Sometimes, the attempts to beat his own level are so taxing, they can leave his hands in pain. But he’s positive he’ll beat it, eventually. In the mean time, other players are coming out of the woodwork with courses that people are calling the new hardest levels in Mario Maker.

There’s this course, developed by speedrunner Mitch Fowler, which is cleverly called “You Shell Not Pass:”

As well as this level, created by CarlSagan42—it’s titled Mr. Carl’s Wild Ride. Skip ahead to the 5:22 mark if you want to see the successful run—everything before that is very quick deaths!

[Course ID: 550D-0000-00BB-3B34]

The PangaeaPanga influence is probably obvious. Like his infamous “Item Abuse” level series back in Super Mario World, which produced a course so difficult, it took three entire years to beat, these new Mario Maker levels are intense courses that make the player use objects in new and surprising ways. Even players who do not like overly challenging courses (like me!) can, at the very least, appreciate the level of creativity and inspiration that goes into creating courses like these.

While the roots are familiar, these new courses are finding novel ways to set themselves apart. Curiously, Mr. Carl’s Wild Ride debuted with a $50 bounty that its creator promised to whoever could beat the level first. That’s the sort of confidence this level was created with—money was being put on the line. Not a ton of money, but still. Cash!

CarlSagan42, as you might have guessed, is not new to this sort of thing. Speaking to him over email, Carl shared a video with me where he beats the devilishly difficult “Kaizo Mario” levels in 18 minutes. You might know Kaizo Mario as “Asshole Mario,” the fan-tweaked version of Super Mario World that turns the game into an absolute nightmare of difficulty:

CarlSagan42 also happens to be among the elite Mario Maker players who has beaten P-Break. That’s what prompted him to make his own impossible level in the first place, as the YouTube description of Mr. Carl’s Wild Ride attests to:

Weeks of toiling in the Pit of Panga made Carl angry. Now it’s time for revenge 凸(｀⌒´メ)凸

“P-Break was created and uploaded in two days,” CarlSagan42 told me in an email. My new level, called Mr. Carl’s Wild Ride, took four weeks to make and upload, totaling well over 20,000 attempts of the completed level before finally beating it once.”

Carl, a graduate student working toward a PhD in microbiology, had a specific reason for building his course in the way that he did. “One of my favorite additions to Mario Maker is the ability to ride on top of moving shells, which you could not do in the original Mario games,” Carl explained. “There are actually some really cool ‘automatic’ levels people have made using this feature, where you just sit still and the shell ricochets around the level, beating it for you.

“But unless it’s set up perfectly for you like in an automatic level, it is very difficult to get on top of a moving shell, and they move REALLY fast once you’re on one. In other words, it is the perfect setup for a very hard level!”

The moving shell part of the level explains the title of the course—which is a hark back to the popular ‘Mr. Bones Wild Ride.’ That’s an old 4chan meme where someone built a Roller Coaster Tycoon course that forced passengers to perpetually stay on a single roller coaster that took 4 years of in-game time to ride once. Mr. Bones is a meme with the type of troll antics that perfectly captures the nature of impossible-type courses such as Mr. Carl’s Wild Ride. They are courses meant to challenge what you think is possible within their respective games, but they’re also meant to entertain players, too. To wit, Carl’s Wild Ride even has a joke secret exit that traps Mario in a dance party with giant enemies. Just for funsies.

The other big thing about Carl’s level is its ample usage of POW blocks—which, yes, can clear enemies with ease...but can also destroy the shell that Mario rides throughout the level. The POW block, normally a great tool for getting rid of any possible headaches, also makes it very easy for the player to completely screw themselves over in this level, if they’re not careful.

“I wanted to create an experience, for anyone daring enough to attempt it, that would be a rollercoaster from start to finish,” Carl said. “I actually almost named the level ‘No Break” as a pun on ‘P-Break.’”

Of course, just because it’s a close competition doesn’t mean Mario Maker is becoming a cutthroat, hostile place. Actually, the creators of these levels know each other already.

“It’s funny to see that I sort of started an ‘impossible level’ community now,” PangaeaPanga said. “I am actually good friends with the creator of [Mr. Carl’s Wild Ride] and have actually been very supportive of his goals with this level.”

Fittingly, Mr. Carl’s Wild Ride is decked out with a number of heart-shaped coins. These are a symbol of love. “At the end of the day, many of us playing these levels are good friends, and our attempts to create the hardest Mario Maker level is really all just a friendly competition,” Carl said.

Still, it’s fun to watch these world-class Mario Maker players duke it out. Just a couple of weeks ago, PangaeaPanga and Mitch Fowler held a competition where they raced to see who could beat Panga’s levels quicker. Mitch won.

PangaeaPanga hasn’t had time to try the other impossible levels that he’s inspired, but in our exchange he made sure to point out that he was already aware of a weakness present in one of his competitor’s courses. He also has things to say about the fact that someone has already beaten Mr. Carl’s Wild Ride:

CarlSagan42 is not resting on his laurels, though. Even though his course boasts a 0.01% completion rate—a single person has beaten it since its been uploaded—he’s already hard at work on his next “impossible” course. This one, he hopes, will be better than his last one. And so the cycle begins again.

“Many people ask why we do this, why make something that’s so difficult to beat, and why do you hate fun?,” CarlSagan42 said.
“In gaming and in life in general, I find that sometimes the most rewarding experiences are those that are difficult to accomplish.”

Halloween is just days away, but some people have spent months working on their costumes. And the results are absolutely worthwhile. Behold the most original, the most creative and the most eye-popping DIY costumes on the internet.

Star Wars costumes are gonna be huge this year. But none, perhaps, as huge as this Jabba the Hutt outfit worn in a Halloween parade held Oct. 25 in Kawasaki, Japan.

Last year, he was a foosball player; we’ve also seen Paralympic ski racer-turned-motivational-speaker Josh Sundquist dress as the leg lamp from A Christmas Story, a flamingo, and a nibbled-upon gingerbread man (see ’em all here). This year, Sundquist gets extra punny with his outfit, as you can see above.

(Image credit: Tollefson Designs/CC BY-NC-SA 2.5)

This T-Rex costume by Tollefson Designs on Instructables is made even more kick-ass by its accompanying background information:

Our oldest daughter dreams of being a paleontologist when she grows up. to celebrate that she asked to be a T-Rex skeleton for Halloween.

The creators also note that they visited a local science museum for research and further inspiration. Like all Instructables entries, the post offers step-by-step instructions on how to simplify the complex skeleton and transform it into wearable art.

The thought of President Trump is indeed scary, and costume variations on the Donald will no doubt fill the streets this Halloween. But there might only be one guy clever and creative enough to mount a costume that pays tribute to Trump’s most distinctive feature: his hair. Rob Cockerham, who details his creative process on Cockeyed.com, models his handcrafted costume in the above video. (“It’s kinda weird,” opines Cockerham’s young camera operator.)

Mo Khan’s Aladdin costume has already gone viral, thanks to his clever use of that “dope magic hover carpet board.”

This is the most chipper and cheerful video about Sadness (from Inside Out) ever, but this tutorial from YouTuber Ingrid Nilsen is also spot-on and totally do-able.

At Comic-Con, professionally executed superhero costumes are all over the place. We’re guessing at this woman’s office, she was the only Hawkgirl. No wonder she won the top prize. Kudos for making it professionally appropriate with the tasteful addition of sleeves—but for absolutely not compromising on the weaponry.

This might be the best meme-themed dog costume of our times.

Person Who Dressed As Snail Slug With Slime Trail for president 2k16.

SPIDER HORSE. Not quite as uncanny as spider dog, but still ... hoof bump.

Teeny tiny Ozzy!

What did we miss, and what costume are you working on? Tell us in the comments!

Top image: Paris Phi wears a costume during a Halloween event in Manila, Philippines on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2015. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Jabba the Hutt costume photo by (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Awaken is a tabletop RPG that puts players in the role of Vasalli—superpowered heroes who are destined to battle the monstrous Vargans. Dark times, epic deeds, and a handful of six-sided dice.

The first thing that caught my eye about Awaken is the art (credited to “Kristina, Bojan, Dalibor and Mihael” on the game’s Kickstarter page). These massive giants are the guardians of the cities in Awaken’s world, but they’re dying out just as the Vargans are rising up to destroy everything. More humans need to “Awaken” into Vasalli to help defend the world against the threat.

I like the way the designers have approached the mechanics of the system — task resolution involves rolling a pile of D6s, with 5s and 6s counting as successes. But creativity and storytelling are front and center, with a major mechanic letting the GM offer bonus dice to players who clearly and imaginatively describe the scene and action their character is taking, with an explicit option to forego the roll altogether.

It looks as though they’ve created a nice playground for the characters to run around in. It’s not your basic elves and dragons and wizards—there’s a strong science-fantasy element, with a strong dose of “Slavic and Mediterranean folklore,” as the designers describe it. It has a certain gothic grimness that a lot of European RPGs seem to have lately (which is not in any way a bad thing), but the setting and worldbuilding here feels pretty unique.

While Games Collective is a small, new game studio, the game is finished, so they’re just Kickstarting the print run. And they’ve hired an experienced line editor and publisher to make sure they can deliver. You can get a pretty thorough peek at the game by downloading the quickstart guide, which includes the core rules and a lot of info about the game world.

Meet Pliobates catalonia, an extinct species of ape that roamed the jungles of Catalonia some 11.5 million years ago. Because of this ancient creature’s many surprising physical characteristics, researchers are having to revise their conceptions of what the last common ancestor of all living apes—humans included—might have looked like.

Pliobates lived long after a time when great apes are believed to have split from small-bodied apes, about 17 million years ago. The discovery of this new fossil—which features characteristics of small-bodied apes, great apes, and even monkeys—is forcing a rethink of early ape evolution. The details of the study can be found in the latest issue of Science.

Virtual reconstruction of the skull based on CT scans (Credit: Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont)

“This fossil discovery is providing a missing chapter to the beginning of ape and human history,” noted Sergio Almécija, assistant professor of anthropology in the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology at GW’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, in a release.

Anthropologists used to believe, perhaps counterintuivitely, that small apes evolved from larger-bodied apes, mainly due to the lack of small apes and ancient gibbons in the fossil record. Some scientists went so far to suggest that small-bodied apes were actually a dwarfed version of great apes. But Almécija and colleagues say that the discovery of Pliobates—a new genus and species of small ape that existed before the evolutionary divergence of greater apes and lesser apes—shows that small and large apes may have co-existed around the time when hominoids first emerged.

An artist’s depiction of Pliobates’s environment some 12 million years ago (Credit: Oscar Sanisidro/Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont)

“These remains clearly belong to an ape, but they are so small,” says Almécija. “Then we realized, maybe we are looking at this the wrong way. Maybe some early ape ancestors were smaller than we thought.”

The new species was discovered in 11.6 million-year-old deposits at Hostalets de Pierola in the Valles-Penedes Basin. Analysis of the partial skull and bones by a team of researchers from the George Washington University and the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont shows it was a relatively small ape, weighing only 4-5 kg (9-11 pounds). It inhabited a forested environment and, like extant Gibbons, foraged on soft fruit.

The main cranial fragment of Pliobates. (Credit: Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont)

But it also featured very great ape-like characteristics. Though its teeth were quite primitive—with sharp and prominent cusps—Pliobates’s skull and brain-to-body ratio were more similar to that of a great ape. Its wrists allowed for sufficient rotation required for cautious climbing and clambering in trees, another characteristic of great apes. At the same time, however, its elbow lacked a critical stabilization feature for hanging in trees, which differentiates living apes from other primates. Surprisingly, it featured an external bony ear more primitive than those found on monkeys that lived millions of years earlier.

(Credit: Marta Palmero / Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont)

Taken together, these findings indicate that the last common ancestor of apes might have been a lot less ape-like than previously assumed. At the same time, the discovery could explain the origin of extant gibbons.

“The origin of gibbons is a mystery because of the lack of fossil record, but until now most scientists thought that their last common ancestor with hominids must have been large, because all of the undoubted fossil hominoids found so far were large-bodied”, explained study co-author David M. Alba in a release. Prior to the recent discovery, all small-bodied ape-like creatures discovered featured a body plan too primitive to be closely related to living hominoids.

“This find overturns everything”, says Alba.

Read the entire study at Science: “Miocene small-bodied ape from Eurasia sheds light on hominoid evolution”.

Email the author at george@gizmodo.com and follow him at @dvorsky. Top image by Marta Palmero / Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont

I’ve become obsessed with the movies that US presidents watched while they were in office. So much so that I recently compiled my own list of all the movies Jimmy Carter watched in the White House. And now I’ve pored over Nixon’s complete list, compiled by author Mark Feeney. Nixon watched some dark shit.

Feeney’s excellent book, Nixon at the Movies, doesn’t explore any of the films below, but his book is a fantastic read if you’re interested in how Nixon saw himself in relation to Hollywood and mainstream culture in general.

http://www.amazon.com/Nixon-Movies-B...

The list below ranges in quality from classic spooky films that I would highly recommend (like Wait Until Dark) to some not-so-classic movies that are somehow both salacious yet tedious (like What the Peeper Saw).

“I like a good lusty movie with some action... this and that,” Nixon reportedly said about What the Peeper Saw as he disgustedly told his staff the plot of the film. “But I would’ve loved to turn it off.”

Sure you would’ve, Dick. Sure you would’ve. The funny thing about White House movie screenings? As president, you’re fully capable of walking out of them. You’re in your own home and you’re the leader of the free world. But yes Tricky Dick, we believe you. You would’ve loved to turn off all the sex and violence.

Queue up one of the movies below and have a very Nixon Halloween!

1) Wait Until Dark (1967)

Of all the films on this list, Wait Until Dark is my personal favorite. Through a series of strange events, some shady guys come to believe that Audrey Hepburn’s character is hiding a doll filled with heroin somewhere inside her apartment. The twist? Hepburn has only recently become blind, and has been trying to adjust to navigating her new life without sight.

Naturally, the climax of the film involves Hepburn using the dark to her advantage as she’s terrorized by three men intent on finding that heroin. But it’s a genuinely gut-wrenching tale that utilizes both the absence of light and great sound design to make viewers empathize with Hepburn in a way that only movies can.

And all this is to say nothing of the terrific performances of not only Hepburn and Alan Arkin (the major baddie in the flick), but also the oddly sympathetic bad guys played by Richard Crenna and character actor Jack Weston.

As you can see from the trailer, light is its own character in this film:

Nixon watched Wait Until Dark on November 7, 1971—just two months after some of his cronies burglarized a psychiatrist’s office looking for incriminating info on Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers. So one can only imagine what Nixon was thinking while watching a movie about three guys trying to break into a woman’s apartment to steal valuable material.

The film is a must-see during the Halloween season, or anytime really. Terrifying, well written, and superbly acted all around, Wait Until Dark attempts to show us the world through the perspective of Hepburn’s character, first and foremost. Which is more than can be said of many horror and suspense films from this era featuring female characters.

You can watch Wait Until Dark on DVD, Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, and Google Play.

2) The Collector (1965)

From the opening scene of the 1965 British movie The Collector, we can tell that something’s not quite right. Frederick Clegg, played by the amazing Terrence Stamp, is collecting butterflies in a field. He looks carefree. He looks relaxed. But he also looks possessed. There’s something not quite right about this man. And we quickly come to learn to trust that instinct.

Stamp plays a delusional psychopath who kidnaps a young woman, played by Samantha Eggar, and keeps her locked in a dungeon just outside his home. As we see Stamp’s character stalking this woman at the beginning of the film, viewers are implicated in his crime, continually seeing the world from just over Stamp’s shoulder, and through a gaze slightly obscured by window blinds.

One of the most haunting shots in the entire film doesn’t take place after Stamp has Eggar in his dungeon—though almost every second of that is admittedly horrifying. No, the most disturbing shot occurs just after Stamp throws her into his van in an alleyway, and the camera pulls back to show him driving through London. We witness hundreds of people just going about their day, and nobody is aware that there’s a woman who’s just been kidnapped in their midst.

The trailer hints at the voyeuristic nature of the entire movie, but doesn’t really do any of the suspense justice. It does however include a preview (again, with a strangely inappropriate and almost upbeat tone) of one of the most violent scenes from the film, when Stamp’s character drags Eggar through the lawn in the pouring rain.

When Nixon watched The Collector in February of 1974, there had already been calls for him to resign as President over the Watergate break-in. And the House was exploring whether they should impeach Nixon.

He wouldn’t resign for another five months, but it’s interesting to picture Nixon watching such a terrifying movie in the middle of the biggest political crisis of his life.

You can watch The Collector on DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, and Google Play.

3) Twisted Nerve (1968)

The 1968 British film Twisted Nerve is the disturbing tale of a young man born into wealth, who pretends to be mentally disabled. Why would he do such a thing? He’s caught shoplifting for kicks and starts a ruse that he quickly realizes can be worked to his advantage with a young woman he meets in the store where he was shoplifting.

Georgie, played by Hywell Bennett, will clearly go to extraordinary lengths to be with the object of his affection, Susan, who’s played by Hayley Mills. His real name isn’t even Georgie, despite what he tells Susan and her mother, who kindly take him in when they think he’s been temporarily abandoned by his caretaker father. But will Georgie resort to murder to get what he wants?

Nixon watched Twisted Nerve in May of 1969, not that long after he moved into the White House in January of that year. But this particular film was screened at his Key Biscayne estate in Florida. He must really have wanted to see this one if he watched it on vacation.

The film is a disturbing psychological thriller, filled with outdated notions of mental illness, and a horrible stigmatization of the mentally disabled when viewed through the eyes of the 21st century. But all that aside, it’s a compelling horror flick, as you can see teased in the trailer below.

Interestingly, Twisted Nerve was written by Leo Marks, a cryptographer who served at Bletchley Park during World War II cracking Nazi codes.

If you’ve never seen Twisted Nerve but recognize the whistling theme used throughout the film, that might be because Quentin Tarantino would use it decades later in his Kill Bill series. I guarantee that if you watch Twisted Nerve you’ll be hearing that terrifying whistle in your sleep.

You can watch Twisted Nerve on DVD and streaming on Amazon Instant Video.

4) Man on a Swing (1974)

The 1974 film Man on a Swing was based on the real life story of a supposed psychic who tries to help police solve the case of a young woman who’s been recently murdered. The clairvoyant Franklin Wills, played by the perfectly cast Joel Grey, knows details about the murder that nobody could have known, unless they were either psychic... or at the scene of the crime.

Nixon watched Man on a Swing in July of 1974, less than a month before he would resign the presidency. His entire tenure was fraught with controversy, but it really does seem that in times of personal stress and frustration, Nixon turned to the darker elements of cinema.

Produced during a period when the American public were increasingly open to the idea of supernatural phenomena being real, 21st century audiences are left to question until the very end whether Wills is a real clairvoyant—or whether he knows too much for some other reason.

You can watch Man on a Swing on DVD, Blu-ray, streaming on Amazon Instant Video, YouTube, and Google Play.

5) What the Peeper Saw (1972)

Of all the movies on this list, the 1972 psycho-sexual thriller What the Peeper Saw is probably the most disturbing. Originally released in the UK as Night Child, the film revolves around a 12-year-old boy, his father, his new stepmom, and questions about whether the boy killed his biological mother.

Nixon watched this movie on December 7, 1972, and reportedly was disgusted by it. Or so we’re led to believe by Nixon’s own words.

“I had seen this most obscene, horrible goddamn movie the other night,” President Nixon told his staff, before lamenting the fact that wholesome movies were no longer in style with the American public. In fact, Nixon blamed the decline of cinema as writers writing for themselves, rather than for audiences.

Perhaps tame by today’s standards of violence, it’s the grittiness of the film’s 1970s washed out color palette and the taboo sexual relationship between a minor and his stepmother that make this movie so disturbing to audiences today.

The trailer for this hints at the fact that a disturbed boy, played by Mark Lester (who’s perhaps most famous for his role in 1968’s Oliver), probably killed his own mother without mercy. And he’s more than willing to do the same to anyone else.

We’re terrified for the new stepmother, played by Swedish actress Britt Ekland, but we’re also left to wonder why the hell she indulges the boy’s fantasies to get information out of him. In one infamous scene she strips in front of the boy, taking off a piece of clothing each time he gives her information about who killed his mother. Spoiler alert: By the end she’s completely nude—and the boy has confessed to not only killing his mother, but enjoying it.

In the UK the movie went by its original name, Night Child. And while you can watch What the Peeper saw on DVD with some small bits cut out, you can also find rare copies of Night Child in deep dark corners of the internet.

There were a couple other contenders for spookiest films that Nixon watched, including The Night Visitor (1972) and Pendulum (1969). But in the case of the former I have yet to watch it. And in the case of the latter, I simply can’t find a copy anywhere.

Relative to the total number of movies Nixon watched in office, he didn’t watch that many creepy ones. But there were certainly enough to keep his mind filled with thoughts about the darker elements of modern society.

Happy Halloween, and don’t let the Nixons bite!

Top image by Jim Cooke, source photo via AP

“Beyond Redemption” was an episode of Arrow that aired on television. That’s all anyone will ever have to say about it. Its primary feature was disappointment, but each of these storylines did have at least one highlight. Spoilers ahead...

Felicity Disappoints Curtis

Felicity’s secret cell phone message gets scrutinized by Curtis. Everyone who was thinking “Calculator/Felicity’s Father” can pay up, because it’s Ray Palmer’s old code. Felicity is in deep denial about Ray’s death—which seems irrational, but actually makes sense, since how many characters on this show are really permanently dead? She refuses to listen to the message, which disappoints Curtis, who would give anything for one last contact with his dead brother. So Felicity finally does listen to the message.

The One Highlight: Curtis has been guessing at who the Green Arrow is, and guesses “Neal Adams,” who in the show is an amateur archer at Palmer Tech and outside of the show is a famed comic book artist who worked on the Green Lantern/Green Arrow road trip books.

Everyone Is Disappointed That Ollie is Running for Mayor

Thea is specifically disappointed, because she assumed that Ollie and Felicity were getting engaged when Oliver said he had a big announcement. And they’re not wrong to be disappointed. When they ask him about his policies and campaign strategy his answers amount to, “Me like this city!” and “Me strong!”

Also, his primary financial backer is Felicity. How great would it be if this were an actual campaign. “Yes, the only person contributing to my campaign is that chick I’m banging. Why yes, she did used to be my personal assistant, why do you ask? I mean, after me she was Ray Palmer’s vice president . . . okay, yes, she banged him, too. And he died. And now she has his company. You know what, no more questions!”

Ollie, meanwhile, is disappointed with their disappointment, and begins to get ticked off when they all are so much happier with the new Arrowcave beneath his campaign office than they are with his political plans.

The One Highlight: When they finish giving everyone a tour of the cave, an alert goes off on one of the computers and Laurel, brilliant attorney, asks, “Did it break?” While Felicity, tech wizard, can’t work the chair.

Quentin is Disappointed With Laurel

Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Laurel is keeping her feral resurrected sister chained to the radiator in her basement! That is so screwed up I can’t even stand it! And Quentin really can’t stand it. He’s horrified, and goes to Damien Darhk for advice. The advice is “put her down,” because as we learned from his puppy speech a few episodes ago, that’s Darhk’s advice for everything. (Seriously, this guy is an embittered veterinarian.) Quentin tries to do this. Laurel stops him. Sara escapes.

The One Highlight: I just realized Laurel has become the Britta of this series. Used to be a sharp, together, if sometimes overly judgmental, woman and the primary love interest of the lead. Now she’s a total screeching mess of a screw-up who is Britta-ing everything. And that’s great. Because I love Britta.

Ollie is Disappointed With Lance

While Quentin Lance was getting advice from the guy who has been murdering his officers and wreaking havoc on his city about how to kill his feral daughter, he’s observed by Ollie. And with that, Ollie is done with Lance’s annoying self-righteous ranting forever—but he will use Lance to infiltrate Darhk’s organization.

The One Highlight: No more moralizing speeches from Quentin Lance!

Rutina Wesley is Disappointed in her Search for a Likable Role

The woman who suffered the fate no one deserves, playing Tara on True Blood, is back. She’s a special forces cop who is stealing drugs and, presumably, selling them, then moving the money to a bank account off shore. She actually does pretty well, and nearly Banes Ollie in the spine, but Quentin reminds her that she loves justice and this city and all the rest and she decides to stop. Which means she can’t even do evil right.

The One Highlight: Seeing Laurel finally break out the Canary Cry!

The Disappointing Wig-less Report

Another evil drug-farm slaver guard doesn’t believe that Oliver killed the lady. So Oliver fakes her death with magica special hand touch and shows the guard her body and now the guard believes he killed the lady. But then it’s all for nothing because Ollie can’t hide his backpack right and the guard finds his ARGUS communicator.

The One Highlight: I got nothin’.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital trilogy is revered as a classic of environmentalist science fiction, years ahead of its time. Now it’s being re-released as a single volume, called Green Earth. He explains how, and why, he cut three books down into one.

Peter Matthiessen, who died in 2014, was a great writer. His nonfiction is superb, and his novels are even better: At Play In the Fields of the Lord is an epic thing, and Far Tortuga is brilliant and moving, one of my favorite novels. You read those books, you’ve lived more lives.

His third great novel has an unusual publishing history. It first appeared as a trilogy, in volumes called Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man’s River, and Bone By Bone. Then about ten years later it reappeared in a single volume, considerably compressed by Matthiessen, titled Shadow Country. When I picked up that book in a bookstore and read Matthiessen’s foreword explaining what he had done, I immediately said to myself, “I want to do that with my climate trilogy.”

This reaction surprised me. I had not been aware that I harbored any longing to revise those books. When I finish a novel I generally move on without a lot of looking back. On completion I feel a glow, as when finishing any job, but it’s also a little sad, because the characters stop talking to me. It’s like being Calvin and watching Hobbes turn back into a stuffed doll. Could be tragic, but in my case there is a solution, which is simply to start another novel. That’s what I do, and on it goes.

http://www.amazon.com/Green-Earth-Ki...

But in the case of my climate trilogy, which was published between 2004 and 2007 under the titles Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, and Sixty Days and Counting, it appeared that I still had the urge to tinker. After some reflection it began to make sense. Almost fifteen years have passed since I started that project, and in that time our culture’s awareness of climate change has grown by magnitudes, the issue becoming one of the great problems of the age. In this changed context, I had the feeling that quite a few of my trilogy’s pages now spent time telling readers things they already knew. Some of that could surely be cut, leaving the rest of the story easier to see.

Also, my original idea had been to write a realist novel as if it were science fiction. This approach struck me as funny, and also appropriate, because these days we live in a big science fiction novel we are all writing together. If you want to write a novel about our world now, you’d better write science fiction, or you will be doing some kind of inadvertent nostalgia piece; you will lack depth, miss the point, and remain confused.

So I felt then and still feel that my plan was a good one; but there was a problem in it that I didn’t fully gauge while I was writing. Science fiction famously builds its fictional worlds by slipping in lots of details that help the reader to see things that don’t yet exist, like bubble cities under the ice of Europa. Just as famously, novels set in the present don’t have to do this. If I mention the National Mall in Washington D.C., you can conjure it up from your past exposure to it. I don’t have to describe the shallowness of the reflecting pools or the height of the Washington Monument, or identify the quarries where that monument’s stone came from. But the truth is I like those kinds of details, and describing Washington D.C. as if it were orbiting Aldebaran was part of my fun. So I did it, but afterward it seemed possible that occasionally I might have gone too far. Every novel is like a ship and has its own Plimsoll line, and if you load it past that line, a storm can sink it. Readers may be inclined to abandon ship, or refuse to get on in the first place.

So with those considerations in mind, I went through my text and cut various extraneous details, along with any excess verbiage I could find (and I could). Inspired by Matthiessen, who compared his middle volume to a dachshund’s belly, and shortened his original 1,500 pages to 900, I compressed about 1,100 pages to about 800. Nothing important was lost in this squishing, and the new version has a better flow, as far as I can tell. Also, crucially, it now fits into one volume, and is thereby better revealed for what it was all along, which is a single novel.

If anyone wants the longer version of this story, it will always exist in the original three books. That trilogy was sometimes called The Capital Code, but more often Science In the Capital, the title I preferred. Those titles can continue to designate the original trilogy. This shorter version is called Green Earth, I’m happy to say. It’s a chapter title in my Blue Mars, and I always wanted to put it on a book, as it’s a very nice description of what we can achieve in the coming centuries, if we succeed in building a sustainable civilization. We haven’t done that yet, but now’s the time to start. This novel is one version of what that start might look like.

Copyright © 2015 by Kim Stanley Robinson. Excerpted by permission of Del Rey, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Forgery is a science–and it’s getting better all the time, to the tune of trillions of dollars. Now, a group of researchers, lawyers, and insurers are banding together to beat it with a tool borrowed from science: synthetic encrypted DNA.

Let’s say you’re a wealthy businessperson. You want to get into collecting art (you know, wealthy businessperson stuff). So you go to an art gallery and spend millions of dollars on a painting by an iconic artist. A few years later, forensic tests reveal the painting was a fake–sold to the gallery by a talented scammer–and you’re out many millions of dollars. Since the gallery sold the forged painting, you sue it for the cost.

This isn’t a rare scenario. In fact, as The New York Times wrote earlier this month, it’s a little similar to what happened in the Knoedler forgery scandal, which resulted in the closure of the oldest gallery in Manhattan after it sold paintings by 20th century Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko that turned out to be fake.

If a previously-unknown piece of art by an artist can’t be authenticated using chemical analysis or another concrete piece of evidence, an expert like a historian or a museum’s board may judge it to be authentic based on their expertise. But that can mean they’re on the hook financially and legally if the painting turns out to be fake. That risk has meant fewer and fewer authenticated works, as forgers threaten to collapse a trillion-dollar industry.

Last year the Wall Street Journal called it a “deep freeze” in the art world. The risk of being sued is just too huge for anyone with the expertise to authenticate a particular piece. It’s just not worth it.

Out of the Lab, Onto the Canvas

A scientist named Martin Tenniswood has become an unlikely player in the movement to revolutionize the art world. Tenniswood is actually the director of the Cancer Research Center at the University at Albany and a working scientist. But his research studying cancer genomics meant he was the first to suggest a novel form of authentication: synthetic DNA.

“Everybody understands the rigor of DNA,” Tenniswood told Gizmodo, pointing out that the law has dealt with DNA evidence for decades. Even though it’s not always foolproof, “it’s something we can get through the court system.”

After being asked for a reliable method of tracking pieces of art or collectables over many decades, Tenniswood suggested creating a sticker that’s roughly the shape of a business card and sticking it to the back of a painting. On this card will be a number of micro-fluidic channels—not unlike those that have made chip-based organs possible, below—each containing a unique fingerprint in the form of DNA that can be extracted and tested for authenticity against a centralized encrypted database of markers held by insurers.

Microfluidic channels on a “lung on a chip,” built by Harvard and named “Best Design of the Year” for 2015.

This system has been named i2M, and it’s the first project of a research organization called the Global Center of Innovation on Standards and Solutions for Object Identification Technologies in the Global Art and Collectibles Industry, supported, in part, by a fine art insurance company called ARIS. Meanwhile, private companies—like Provenire Authentication, which is run by Tenniswood’s son Robert—are collaborating to develop and test the technology itself.

How To Hide a Message In DNA

This process of amplifying DNA has been very common for decades. It originated in the 1980s, and uses a process called the polymerase chain reaction to create millions of copies of a particular fragment of a piece of DNA. This is useful because it gives scientists a bigger sample of that little fragment, which might be too small to identify for study otherwise.

What Tenniswood and his collaborators are doing is adapting that existing process. By embedding each micro-fluidic “well” of DNA with a strand containing a unique sequence, they’re hiding a message to any future authenticators. A collector or gallery can test the painting’s authenticity by asking a technician to extract DNA from one of the wells. Then, they compare it against the encrypted database held by the insurer, looking for a particular “key” strand.

Each well can each only be used once, and the i2M standards assume authentication will only happen once every few years, or every decade. To prevent forgers peeling off the stickers and putting them on copies, they’re testing tampering inks that would change color if removed. The system would be purchased by artists on a case-by-case basis, for roughly $150, and affixed as soon as a piece was completed.

A painting at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, England, which hosted a “spot the fake” exhibition this year. Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images.

The project is interesting to art insurers and investors because it would stabilize the roiling art market and reduce the risk they take on when they insure or purchase a work. It’s interesting to collectors and galleries because it would mean being able to sell works without any threat of being sued. And of course, it’s interesting to the artists, who would opt-in to using it because it would give them final say on which pieces were truly authored by their own hands–long after their own deaths.

DNA Is the Next Data Format

More and more, DNA looks like our best bet for preserving data long-term. A single gram of DNA can contain as much as 700 terabytes of data. More importantly, perhaps, it can last for hundreds of thousands of years, making it more reliable than any storage tech we know of today. Bioengineers are already proposing writing the whole of human knowledge on DNA and storing it in the Svalbard Seed Vault for safekeeping.

What Tenniswood and his colleagues at Albany are suggesting isn’t all that far-fetched. But he still sees his proposal as temporary, predicting that it’s only the first stab at a technology in its infancy. The i2M project is testing the stability of the synthetic DNA using artificial aging technology, but only to 100 years.

“This won’t be a static field,” he says. “Somebody’s going to come up with a better technology in five to ten years time, I would suspect.” Rather, i2M is a first attempt at a more reliable way to track million-dollar pieces of art, not a finished product. “This is the starting point for what I think could become a very large industry,” he says.

For example, it’s one thing to encrypt a message beyond recognition–but could the ciphers themselves ever be kept truly secure? Provenire, one of the companies further developing i2M for private enterprise, said that the details of its security system remain proprietary, but was able to give a few details. “All data to and from Provenire’s platform runs on 256-bit encryption together with sophisticated multi-factor authentication,” Provenire’s CIO, Ram Salman, said over email. “Provenire’s proprietary platform will generate a private key for each implemented DNA tag, producing the digital layer where authenticated queries will initially be made.”

i2M’s encrypted DNA stickers are far from a finalized standard–they’re more like a prototype, a first shot at a more advanced method of authenticating art and collectables–the broader goal of Albany’s Center for Innovation, which already includes conservation scientists from MoMA and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, as well as a host of lawyers who specialized in art fraud. The center has gathered a list of a dozen working artists who have agreed to test the first iteration of the sticker system, including Chuck Close.

There are still plenty of challenges to the system, too, like how it would be affixed to fragile works, and again, the details of the encrypted database itself. But the point of the Center, as Tenniswood points out, isn’t really to develop the perfect technology: It’s to rigorously test all emerging anti-forgery technologies to ensure they can stand up in court.

Whether the i2M project will produce a truly uncrackable system is impossible to say right now—if history tells us anything, it’s that life, and counterfeiters, find a way.

Lead image: “The Protestant Barn,” a Van Gogh painting whose authenticity has been debated for years. Photo by Laura Lezza/Getty Images.

Released in 1986, Flight of the Navigator is one of those movies I watched again and again as a kid. Then, for probably twenty years or so, I forgot about it, largely because it wasn’t on DVD. But I recently revisited it—and I realized it’s a much, much different movie than I remember.

Directed by Randal Kleiser (Grease, Big Top Pee-Wee, The Blue Lagoon), Flight of the Navigator was one of Disney’s big summer releases in 1986. It didn’t do particularly well financially (the #48 movie of the year according to Box Office Mojo), but was quite well-reviewed, still sitting at over 80% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. That means it’s one of those movies that caught the imaginations of kids, once it hit the rising home video market.

The story is about a boy named David (Joey Cramer) who, in 1978, goes out into the woods, gets hurt, and wakes up eight years later, without having aged a day. Turns out, he was abducted by aliens and taken to their planet for tests. Everyone then tries to piece together the circumstances around his mysterious disappearance, while the alien craft that took David also looks for him because the alien need his help to get home.

Watching Flight of the Navigator now, almost thirty years after its release, the first thing that rings through is just how dated it is. Not in a bad way, but its age is incredibly noticeable. Everything from Alan Silvestri’s synth-heavy score to the yellow-font opening credits and Transformers and G.I Joe toys put the film in a specific time and place. There’s also the gratuitous use of the word “retarded,” a Slip-N-Slide and kids playing with fireworks. Very Eighties.

All that is trumped though by the voice of Max the alien, which is done by none other than Paul Reubens. As Max and David become better and better friends, Max goes from straightforward and robotic dialogue to 100% Pee-Wee Herman. By the end of the movie, you could have retitled it “Pee Wee is an Alien.” In 1986, that was probably novel, but now it actually feels a little grating.

That said, the movie feels kind of ballsy. It runs only 90 minutes but we don’t get to the spaceship stuff for over half the movie. Most of the narrative drive comes from this mystery of how did a young boy disappear for eight years without any time seeming to pass for him? Plus, that’s handled in a kind of scary way for a Disney movie. Scenes of David going into his former house and crying, seeing and being frightened by his aged parents, or meeting his younger, but now older, brother, come with some very complex emotions and questions, especially for younger kids. If we’re being honest, it’s kind of a mind fuck.

The mystery keeps the movie afloat though and, slowly, the awesome spaceship gets set up. Sarah Jessica Parker shows up, there’s a lot of NASA product placement and by the time you finally get to David’s “Flight of the Navigator,” the film has more than earned its big musical interludes and flying montages. This scene, in particular, is just the best.

Honestly, you couldn’t watch that scene under the age of 15, and not want to pump some Beach Boys and fly a ship across the mountains. It’s infectious—and because you know how much stuff this kid has gone through, his innocence in these scenes is a welcome relief.

Along the way there’s some great effects work, terrific creature work, and an ultra-trippy climax, leading to the requisite Disney ending. But still, for a tight little Disney movie, Flight of the Navigator is super fun and ahead of its time. It’s basically an alien abduction movie for kids. Fire in the Sky turned into a rousing adventure. The X-Files via Mickey Mouse. Not all of it holds up under a microscope, but it’s very much a window into its time. A window that’s still well worth opening.

http://www.amazon.com/Flight-Navigat...

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

Extraordinary X-Men, the new banner X-Men series in Marvel’s “All-New, All-Different” reboot, sees the X-Men facing some cataclysmic threats to mutant kind—and a potential new enemy in the Inhumans. But they’ll be getting some help: from a long dead X-Men... and maybe not the one you’re expecting.

http://io9.com/in-marvels-com...

And no, it’s not Wolverine, who was killed off last year in the drawn out Death of Wolverine saga—Laura Kinney, a.k.a X-23, is the new Wolverine in “All-New All Different.” Plus Extraordinary X-Men already has the help of Old Man Logan, from another universe, who was re-introduced during this year’s Secret Wars event (comic books, am I right?).

In a new preview debuted by Comicbook.com this morning Storm, the leader of this new team in the absence of Scott Summers, already faces the challenging task of Mutant persecution and the rise of the Inhumans—whose Terrigen mists are killing off and sterilizing Mutants—so she turns to the one person who knows how to lead the X-Men best...

Yup. Professor X is back, after a relatively lengthy absence of three years. Well, lengthy for a comic book, where death is rarely, rarely permanent.

Although Charles Xavier has had a minor presence in X-Men comics since his passing, he’s been largely gone since the 2012 crossover event Avengers vs X-Men, which saw a Phoenix-Force-infused Cyclops kill his mentor in a fit of rage:

Oh dear.

It’s perhaps not surprising to see Professor X back—after all, Marvel’s semi-reboot of their comics universe means they mostly have free reign to bring back characters as they please, and just say that they’re from an alternate universe that was smooshed together to create the new one. Maybe this Charles Xavier is an alternate that now occupies the Earth his predecessor left behind. But can he get the X-Men out of their sticky situation? Could it even be a vision or something Storm has?

We won’t have to wait that much longer to find out—Extraordinary X-Men #1, by Jeff Lemire and Humberto Ramos, is out next week on November 4th.

[Via Comicbook.com]

Header Image Credit: Kevin Wada variant cover for Extraordinary X-Men #2, via Comicbook.com.

Astronaut Dale Gardner was all for making a quick buck by reselling a pair of stray satellites he rescued from orbit, but the insurance companies insisted he returned them to Earth first.

Astronauts Dale A. Gardner and Joseph P. Allen IV (visible in visor reflection) were sent out on a second extravehicular activity (EVA) in just three days to retrieve a pair of satellites that didn’t successfully reach orbit . The Palapa B2 and Westar 6 were released from a space shuttle in February 1984, but after their Payload Assist Modules failed to fire and boost them into orbit they were retrieved in November of that year. Corners of each satellite are visible in the lower right corner of the photograph, with Westar 6 farther aft.

I know, I know: This looks like a meme just waiting to be debunked, but this is a real photograph from a real spacewalk. The creative classified ad was appropriate: after being returned to Earth for refurbishment, both satelites were resold by their insurance companies and relaunched in April 1990. Westar 6 was sold to Pan Am Pacific Satellite Corp., then resold to Asia Satellite as AsiaSat 1. Palapa B2 was resold to Perumtel and renamed as Palapa B2R.

Gardner died of a brain aneurysm in 2014.

Image credit: NASA

Contact the author at mika.mckinnon@io9.com or follow her at @MikaMcKinnon.

Even with a host of new comics coming from Marvel lately, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur sounds like one of the most interesting (and adorable). To find out more, we sat down with writers Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder to discuss how they and artist Natacha Bustos brought back a classic Jack Kirby creation—with a twist.

http://io9.com/moon-girl-and-...

Would you mind just telling us a little bit about the setup for Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur?

Brandon Montclare: Yeah, [Moon Girl]’s a new character. She’s kind of this precocious, 10-year old super-genius trying to find a place. She hasn’t made it into any of the special schools they have in the Marvel universe, or the regular New York City type of [schools]. But [she’s] an inventor, looking for information that could solve the problem of the mutant Terrigen bomb that’s mutating people. And [she] has a personal interest in that, because you find out that she has Inhuman DNA.

And just in investigating that, in kind of her young way, [she] accidentally transports Devil Dinosaur from the past, into the present. And they realize throughout the first series they’re kind of connected to each other. And that’s it in a clumsy nutshell! [Laughs]

Amy Reeder: Ultimate buddy comic. In my opinion!

That sounds pretty great! Was this an idea something Marvel came to you with? Or, was it that you had a relatively free slate and you thought “I want to create this team-up with Devil Dinosaur and this new character?”

Amy: It was a little bit of both. It was pretty open, and we were talking about different projects we could possibly work on. But, the suggestion did come from our editor, Mark Paniccia, who has been trying to bring Devil Dinosaur back for some time. I think it’s one of his favorite characters. So we could tell that it was really a baby of his.

And I mean, it sounded awesome on its own, anyway—but just seeing how excited about he was, it sounded in my head like, “Whenever there’s a good collaboration going on, it will make a good story.” And he suggested that Devil Dinosaur used to run around with a character named Moon Boy, and what would happen if maybe we brought Devil Dinosaur to the modern day? And he had a modern day friend who could be a girl and a kid—named Moon Girl—and so that’s when I got excited about it because it made it less about monsters on the surface, and more about people. It was very attractive to try and create a new character like that.

Brandon: Yeah, I think we wanted that meeting with Emily [Shaw, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur’s Editor] and Mark, and it was just to discuss what opportunity there might be. After working together on Rocket Girl we wanted to do something cool, and let Amy do covers and co-write. So, it started as an open conversation—there may have been a couple things before Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, but that was set pretty early in the conversation, and from there it was kind of locked in. There wasn’t anything else we were developing after that. We were all-in on reviving Devil Dinosaur.

Amy: I think during the meeting Brandon had to leave a little early, and I was still there and I did try to get more names out of them, but since I’m not very well-versed in the Marvel universe I couldn’t remember a lot of them! But it did just sound like it was something that—there was more than Devil Dinosaur if we wanted an “out,” to give us other options.

Brandon: And that being said, it’s such a—I don’t want to speak for Amy, but both of us feel it’s really cool to work on a more-obscure character, right? Because you get to do things with it, and you get put your own stamp on it. In a way that’s really tough, because ultimately you’re following Jack Kirby. [But] we were different enough, and knew we were going to do something different enough.

Like Amy said, it was a relationship between a girl and a dinosaur. That was kind of enough for Amy. But for me... it’s just very cool to be able to do something inside the Marvel universe, inside the world of superheroes—but at the same time it’s a completely different thing, because we had a young kid without superpowers and we had, obviously, a giant dinosaur. Which, again, let’s you do something very different than when you’re working with the regular cape-and-tights superhero.

Amy: So far, that she has no superpowers, that is.

You mentioned talking about Devil Dinosaur and how he used to be teamed up with Moon Boy—it’s very specific that Lunella isn’t just “female Moon Boy”, she’s her own character. Will the series ever touch up on what exactly happened to Moon Boy when Devil Dinosaur came to the future?

Amy: Yeah, actually we do it in the first issue! I guess that’s really as far as I want to go without spoiling anything. But yeah, he’s in the first issue.

Brandon: Again, without spoiling it—because Devil Dinosaur gets kind of taken away right from the Valley of Flames, Dinosaur World, into modern times. There’s been a lot of cool, small Devil Dinosaur stories since the Jack Kirby series ended. But in a lot of ways, this is a direct sequel to the Kirby stuff, because we’re pulling him from time, right from Kirby’s world into our world. And that does involve Moon Boy, and some of the other Kirby original characters, including the Killer-Folk—I don’t think that’s a secret, they’re on the cover to issue #2, so while that portal is open, these kind of savage cavemen that tormented Moon Boy and Devil Dinosaur, they make their way into modern times as well and are going to play a big role in the series.

You mentioned Lunella has this connection to researching the Terrigen Mist Bomb, and the Inhumans are playing this huge part in All New, All Different Marvel at the moment. Will Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur try to dig into as much as that Inhuman storyline as possible? Or is going to stand alone, and let series like Uncanny Inhumans or Karnak deal with that side of things?

Brandon: Yes and no—and probably leaning more towards “no”, just cause she’s an outsider. She doesn’t want to be an Inhuman, that’s something that she’s terrified of. So, her kind of experience with that potential transformation is going to be very different than the people raised on Attilan, who take it for granted. [In] Ms. Marvel, in issue one she encounters the bomb [and transforms], so in that sense it’s different. And we thought it be cool to do a different angle where the thrust of the story is avoiding the transformation to a super-powered Inhuman.

So that being said, we threw a little bit of it in, because you want to—obviously, she is going to be tangentially a part of that world, whether or not she ever transforms. There’s cool way to do it and the whole angle of Moon Girl and the Inhumans, who were so long on the moon, and Devil Dinosaur were Kirby creations that we sort of put into it. But, it’s its own story, you don’t have to follow Inhumans to read Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. And I think it’s safe to say Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur are going to have an impact on the very big Inhumans story going on in the Marvel universe. But it will have an impact on the small.

So she’ll be tangentially around the the edge of the Inhumans story—will Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur ever come up against any of the other Marvel superheroes during the early arcs? You mentioned Kamala Khan—will there be any crossovers with someone like Miles Morales, or her, or Sam Rider?

Brandon: There is a big crossover, but I don’t know if its too soon to develop it on? I don’t know.

Amy: Yeah, yeah, we’ve got a mystery, but team-ups are in our future.

Brandon: Definitely. Making her a part of the Marvel universe, is huge for Amy and I. It’s why we wanted to do a Marvel book, not just the kind of have her running around by her lonesome. She’s going to be, like I said, tangential to the Inhumans—only because that’s a big story, but [she’s] definitely 100% in the day-to-day Marvel universe. And all that entails, including crossovers with the good guys and bad guys and sharing the same Marvel New York, but without our own kind of angle on it, for sure.

Can you go through a little bit about the process of creating Lunella as a character herself? Where did the idea come from, what’s she like outside the connection to all the Inhuman stuff and her research there?

Amy: She kind of derived from a character that I had in my head, that I hadn’t really quite developed into a story. She was just a character on her own. That when they mentioned there being a Moon Girl, I though, “Oh, I can kind of put this into this story”, and it kind of actually works better.

So she was just, originally this character who was kind of like Inspector Gadget, but a little less campy—a little more knowing what she’s doing? You know, having gadgets come out of her backpack or whatever, and rollerskating around the city and solving crimes kind of things. And she was black. And then [Marvel] said a girl—the only difference was I made her younger, and that made her even cooler. She’s somebody who’s kind of awkward, a bit off the beaten path and people are not aware of her.

Like, the fact that she’s so outlandish—she’s relatively off people’s radar. I mean, Lunella off-hand, she’s this kid genius, but she’s trying to get into good schools, nobody seems to really know that she’s around and there’s this frustration she has about this sort of thing. She doesn’t have many friends at school—really any friends at school—and so she’s just kind of an oddball. I think it really plays up for a good mixture with Devil Dinosaur, because she needs a friend who is the type of person who she can identify with, while maybe, it could be somebody who’s the complete opposite?

Brandon: Yeah, Amy is really good. Not every artist can write—[and] not every creator can really nail the difference between an eight-year old and a ten-year old and a thirteen year-old, visually or in the story, but that’s a thing that we’re really careful about. Making it really cool and also as accurate as possible and that’s why Natacha [Bustos, artist on Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur] is so important, because for us to come up with it, and kind of set-up the design and the covers, and work together on the script, but to have Natasha kind of execute just right, the perfect age without them being interchangeable kid-stars. That was something that was really important. To make her a true character.

So, a lot of that goes in—without Natacha, I don’t know a lot of people who could actually pull it off. The girl and the dinosaur is just hard for anybody, because to have Devil Dinosaur interact with somebody who’s just four feet tall, that’s a big challenge. But if you have the right creative team that can pull that off there really is something special—a way to just tell comics as a form. that you’re not going to get in most other things.

You mentioned Natacha there—Brandon, you’ve worked with her before, and Amy, you’re known for your work as an artist in the comics industry, what was it like bringing her into the project? Did she come in at an early stage?

Amy: Not really. I think honestly, it was—the process was kind of interesting. We had been talking about it for months, and kind of developing bits of it, but didn’t really have the go-ahead until late summer. So at that point it was a whirlwhind of trying to go, “well, we still haven’t decided on an artist, here’s some possibilities...” Brandon had been mentioning Natacha for a while, but somehow, I don’t know what it was, in that moment we were just like, “Oh yes, we definitely, definitely need her”.

And we like, begged her, basically! We knew that she was a little busy, but we knew that she had done a little bit of Marvel work—she had done a single issue of Spider-Woman. We managed to get her, and she was really excited about it. It was really flattering. I knew she liked my work, I knew she enjoyed working with Brandon, but I also think she really loved the character Lunella, she even like—it was funny—one day she sent me a picture of her at her birthday party when she was kid, and it was pretty hilarious: she looked actually a lot like Lunella Lafayette! She had the ridiculous glasses.

So yeah, I think it really interests her, and like I said before, I feel like that’s such an important element to anything where you’re collaborating with people. It’s just that we’re doing something storywise, that really excites them. It’s been a joy to work with her, she’s so amazingly collaborative, and excited, and has this great storytelling sense. It’s weird to me, this is my first time writing for another artist, so it’s weird to dictate to somebody “Oh, this is what’s going to happen in the story” and I don’t even have to worry about drawing it. It feels kind of unfair! [Laugh] But I’m really enjoying just being able to say something and then have beautiful artwork thrown in my face.

Brandon: As an editor and a writer, I always got that experience of seeing pages come in—especially as a writer—so it’s interesting Amy got it for the first time. It was great working with [Natacha], and she’s such a great fit for Devil Dinosaur, but I’m ready to work with her on anything.

Like Amy said, Marvel already their eye on her—she had done an issue of Spider-Woman, but she was always on the list, right? But there was a few people on the list, and then it was getting down to, “Look at all these great artists, let’s hope we get Natacha before...” It just sort of worked out for us, and I hope for her as well—if the pages are any indication, they’re amazingly great stuff. And it’s always been neat writing for Amy, working with her on Rocket Girl.

And obviously, [with] Amy being an artist, we really do want it to be more Natacha’s book than our book. Even though Amy and I were kind of sitting with it for a long time—Amy had visual imput, she did some of the designs, and is doing the cover—it really is [Natacha’s book] now. Some of the later issues after number one, some of the excitement, is not just how great it is seeing the pages come in, but now being able to write for her and saying, “Oh, this is going to be something that she’s going to do a great job in”. And [her work] is blowing away any sort of prediction that we could have. She’s amazing.

The way you’ve been describing the comic, it’s almost like Ms. Marvel in the way it’s balancing Lunella’s personal life, with the moments you’ve got the insanity of a gigantic dinosaur running around that’s coming out of a portal in time. Did you prefer exploring the side of the comic that’s more about Lunella and her plight with the Terrigen mist, or getting the chance to let loose and have a bunch of fun with a character like Devil Dinosaur?

Amy: I see Devil Dinosaur as being this cool kind of challenge, because, you have to—there’s no way to avoid it—you have to do a lot of storytelling that doesn’t require words. And so that’s pretty fun. I feel like the things that I am most into writing is that developing relationship between her and Devil Dinosaur, because she’s pretty terrified of him at first.

So I really liked that sort of thing, where there’s character moments, and [you’re] slowly watching things develop and getting readers [excited for what’s coming.] They know what the inevitable conclusion is, but they’re dying to find out how you get there.

[Brandon and I are] slowly learning how we want to divide things. It’s been clear that that [the relationship] has been definitely my angle, that I want to do as much as possible. I think Brandon’s thing that he likes to do most—and Brandon, correct me if I’m wrong—[is this] element [that] we’ve brought in addition to Devil Dinosaur. We’ve brought the Killer-Folk into the modern day, and I feel like that’s definitely his baby. It’s like all sorts of hilarious and foreboding, and very clever stuff.

Brandon: Well I do really like the Killer-Folk, but, I’m a good enough writer to realize that on a book called Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur especially, there’s not a lot of room for Killer-Folk. They work well in small doses.

Circling back to the original question, I really think you can have both—I think you can have crazy action and really cool visual storytelling and really develop a character as well, if not better than, [if you’re] just focusing on character moments. And I would say that’s really Ms. Marvel. There’s been several artists, it’s amazingly, interestingly drawn. It’s not just kind of sitting around, talking—except when it is, and you know, when she is kind of sitting around, talking to her family, it’s so visually compelling that I really think you can have it all. And so we worked very hard to deliver that—it’s not [just] one or the other. It’s not just an action scene or a character moment. You get everything.

Because Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is part of Marvel’s big “All-New All-Different” initiative, what’s the one thing you’d want to say to a reader going into a comic book store, seeing this new shelf of new issues, and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is there? What’s the one thing that you’d say to them that you think would convince them to pick that issue up?

Amy: Whoa... [Laughs] Brandon?

Brandon: Are you throwing that to me?

Amy: Yeah, I’m throwing this to you!

Brandon: I don’t have a catchy enough answer, but it really is: It’s different. And everything is “all new, all different”, so maybe I would be shouting into the wind, but it’s a giant red dinosaur and a ten-year old girl teaming up, trying to make it in a world that doesn’t understand them. Know what I mean?

Amy: Yeah, that’s the thing—the premise is right on the cover there. It’s sort of the selling point. So far, people seem pretty excited about it, we’ll see how it goes, but yeah. I would have said: It opens as buddy comic and then start with that image of the two of them together—I feel it’s enough. It’s going to be a weird, fun ride.

Brandon: I’ll say—what’s been interesting to me is the evolution of the logo. It’s Devil Dinosaur—that was the original working title—from the get-go, was Devil Dinosaur and Moon Girl, right? So it would be cool of we could get that in the title. But when we saw the first draft, we were both surprised, because it was Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. Reversed! And I think a lot more people are interested in Moon Girl than we expected. To us, that’s very satisfying, and it’s not going to disappoint. So if you see Moon Girl and say, “What’s that? I want more of it,” I think you’re going to be happy reading the first issue of it.

Another thing to bring up that I really like about our story, is that there’s a fine line between taking yourself seriously on a story like this, or making it sort of slapstick. And it’s neither of those. It doesn’t cause offense, it doesn’t also think of itself as the most holy tale on the planet. I think people are really going to like how we did that angle on the story. I think it will be very loyal in that sense, too, to Kirby’s original vision.

Emily Shaw [Marvel Editor]: I will jump in and just say that the response that we’ve seen to Moon Girl, internally, as well as out-in-the-world, has been so overwhelming. This is the start of something really special, and the beginning of a character that I think is going to be part of the Marvel DNA for the foreseeable future, and I just want to speak to Marvel fans and say, “Jump on now”, because this is where it all starts. And you know, we’ll start seeing her pop up in other places, and other books and things that are going to be integral to the Marvel U. So, start with number one. Right here!

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #1 will be available November 25th.