Photo of the Week - brain-eating amoeba

A microscopic view of the brain-eating amoeba known as Naegleria fowleri reveals a trio of feeding structures, twisted into a macabre clown-face. The parasitic organism – which lives in warm bodies of fresh water – has infected 128 people since 1962. Only one has survived.

full story - io9.com

Boozy Snapshots of American Life Under Prohibition (io9)

From 1919 to 1933, the United States was a dry nation. It was illegal to make, sell, or consumealcohol. In this collection of images, you'll see what daily life was like in a country where police poured millions of gallons of booze into the gutters — and everyone else surreptitiously drank it in bizarre, hidden places.

full photo gallery - io9.com

The Strangest Alcoholic Beverages Ever to Touch a Human Tongue

"You may pride yourself on your ability to hold your alcohol, but would you sip on vino infused with snakes and scorpions? How about a tonic of three-day-old mice? Here are some of the weirdest alcoholic drinks we've come across. Some sound delicious, while others you'd have to be drunk to down."

FULL GALLERY and info - io9.com

Photos of Famous Landmarks While They Were Still Under Construction (io9.com)

We're used to seeing modern landmarks in their completed glory, but we gain a new appreciation for those familiar monuments when we see them in progress, and remember all the labor that went into bringing them to life.

FULL GALLERY - io9.com - Sydney Opera House, Golden Gate Bridge, Tower Bridge, Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, Atomium and some more

Photo of the Week - German Action Toys from 1940s

Figures are made by the real people. I´m sure you can name at least two of them.

details and more figures - io9.com

Summer Movie Preview: 34 Movies To Watch Out For (io9)

Well, it seems that it´s going to be a long and great summer for movies. But - as we know it from the past - it  may be just big movies with no real values. I really hope to see some extraordinery and uniqe films. There are many candidates - Star Trek, Iron Man, Monster´s U... So check them all out:

Full list - io9.com

NASA has discovered the most Earth-like planets yet (io9.com)

"NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a trio of distant planets that look remarkably like our own. Belonging to solar systems located 1,200 and 2,700 light years from Earth, the three Earth-sized worlds have been spotted orbiting in the so-called Goldilocks Zone of their parent stars – the "just-right" range at which liquid water, and life, can exist on a planet's surface. 

NASA's Kepler mission has been hunting for worlds beyond our solar system for a little over four years now, and it's been enormously successful. In that time, it's spotted literally thousands of planetary candidates. Today, three distant worlds –dubbed Kepler-62f, Kepler-62e, and Kepler-69c –have achieved planetary confirmation, while joining an elite cadre of so-called habitable planets. 

Kepler-62f (an artist's depiction of which appears above) and 62e possess radii just 1.4- and 1.6-times that of Earth's, respectively, and orbit a star some 1,200 light years away, along with three other newly discovered planets. Kepler-69c, on the other hand, has a radius 1.7-times that of Earth, and orbits a star around 2,700 light years distant from our own. Together, the three newly discovered worlds have become the second,third, and fourth known bodies to wear the badge of "Earth-like, habitable zone planet."

more info - io9.com

Caption this comic for a chance to win a copy of Vader's Little Princess! (io9)

I love these books!

"In Darth Vader and Son, cartoonist Jeffrey Brown asked the question, "What if Darth Vader raised Luke Skywalker?" Now he's giving Leia the same treatment with Vader's Little Princess. Want to get your hands the book for free? Write a caption for this Vader/Leia moment for a chance to win a copy.

Vader's Little Princess comes out April 23, 2013, but if you want a chance to win an early copy of the book, leave your caption here (io9.com)"

This is a picture of the lightest substance on Earth (io9)

"Scientists have just unveiled the lightest human-made substance on Earth. How light are we talking? Let's put it this way: it's less dense than helium.

The battle for rights to the title of world's lightest material (technically world's lowest density material) has played out like a brutally rapid series of monarchal overthrows. For years, NASA's aerogel (density 1 milligram per cubic centimeter) held the title of lightest material on Earth. In November 2011, it was dethroned by a gorgeous, ultralight metallic microlattice (density 0.9 mg/cm3). Months later, a substance called "Aerographite" with a density of just 0.2 mg/cm3 blew both of these ultralight materials out of the water. Now, a new material has assumed the throne."

more - here (io9.com)

Could you drink beer instead of water and still survive? (io9)

Beer. 

"It is one of the most awesome things in life. This leads to a couple of important questions. One: how long can you survive on beer alone? Two: to what extent is beer a suitable replacement for water? 

A couple years ago, Slate's Jeremy Singer-Vine had a go at the first question. His answer? You'd live long enough to develop scurvy, but probably not much longer: 

"Not more than a few months, probably. That's when the worst effects of scurvy [resulting from vitamin c deficiency] and protein deficiency would kick in... If you kept to a strict beer diet—and swore off plain water altogether—you'd likely die of dehydration in a matter of days or weeks, depending on the strength and volume of beer consumed. There's plenty of water in beer, of course, but the alcohol's diuretic effect makes it a net negative in terms of hydration under most conditions." 

One experiment, in particular, lends credence to the first half of Singer-Vine's hypothesis: in the 1920s, researchers fed two Rhesus macaque monkeys with 200 milliliters of India pale ale per day, and some other foods lacking in vitamin C — within 2 months the monkeys were exhibiting symptoms of scurvy. But what about the second half? The part about dying of dehydration?"

Full story and conclusion - io9.com