Director Denis Villeneuve's stunning two-part film adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune has received many well-deserved accoladesβwith Dune: Part 2 being crowned Ars Technica's top movie of 2024. The films also spawned a lavish HBO spinoff TV series, Dune: Prophecy, just renewed for a second season right before a momentous season finale.
(Some spoilers below for S1 of Dune: Prophecy, but no major plot reveals.)
Dune: Prophecy is a prequel series inspired by the novel Sisterhood of Dune, written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, exploring the origins of the Bene Gesserit. It's set 10,000 years before the ascension of Paul Atreides and follows two Harkonnen sisters as they combat forces that threaten the future of humankind, establishing the fabled sect that will become the Bene Gesserit in the process.
Editor's note: Warning: Although weβve done our best to avoid spoiling anything too major, please note this list does include a few specific references to several of the listed films that some might consider spoiler-y.
This was the year that Marvel Studios hit the pause button on its deluge of blockbuster superhero movies, after rather saturating the market in recent years. It proved to be a smart move: the only Marvel theatrical release was the R-rated Deadpool & Wolverine, a refreshingly irreverent, very meta take on the genre that delighted audiences and lit up the global box office. Perhaps audiences aren't so much bored with superhero movies as becoming more discriminating in their choices. Give us a fun, fresh take and we'll flock back to theaters.
Fewer superhero franchise entries meant there was more breathing room for other fare. Horror in particular had a stellar year, with numerous noteworthy offerings, touching on body horror (The Substance), Satanic Panic (Late Night with the Devil), psychological horror (Heretic), hauntings (The Oddity), a rom-com/revenge mashup (Your Monster), an inventive reimagining of a classic silent film (Nosferatu), and one very bloodthirsty child vampire with a wicked sense of humor (Abigail). Throw in a smattering of especially strong sequels (Inside Out 2, Dune: Part 2), a solid prequel (Furiosa), and a few hidden gems, and we had one of the better years for film in recent memory.
David Corenswet stars in James Gunn's Superman reboot.
The Internet has been buzzing the last few days about James Gunn's Superman reboot slated for release next year. The studio released a "motion poster" earlier this week set to a moody cover of John Williams' "Superman March," as well as a teaser for a teaser for the film. That teaser just dropped.
Clearly, given all the buildup, what director James Gunn wants for Christmas is for everyone to get excited over his Superman movie. And you know what? It kinda worked, especially since Superman's dog Krypto makes an adorably welcome appearance.
Gunn describes his take as less of an origin story and more of a journey, with Superman struggling to reconcile his Kryptonian heritage and aristocratic origins with his small-town, adoptive human family. Gunn tapped David Corenswet to play Clark Kent/Superman, at 25 a bit more established than the young cub reporter of Smallville, for instance. Rachel Brosnahan plays Lois Lane, Skyler Gisondo plays Jimmy Olsen, and Nicholas Holt is arch-nemesis Lex Luther. (Holt's son shaved his head for the role.) Luther's sidekicks are played by Sara Sampaio as Eve Teschmacher and Terence Rosemore as Otis.
They seem so sweet and innocent but these squirrels are also opportunistic killers.
We think of squirrels as adorably harmless creatures, admiring their bushy tails and twitchy little noses and the way they cram their cheeks with nuts or seeds to bring back to their nests for later. But the rodents turn out to be a bit more bloodthirsty than we thought. According to a new paper published in the Journal of Ethology, California ground squirrels have been caught in the actβmany times overβof chasing, killing, and eating voles.
Co-author Jennifer Smith, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, described the behavior as "shocking," given the sheer number of times they watched squirrels do this. βWe had never seen this behavior before," she said. "Squirrels are one of the most familiar animals to people. We see them right outside our windows; we interact with them regularly. Yet hereβs this never-before-encountered-in-science behavior that sheds light on the fact that thereβs so much more to learn about the natural history of the world around us.β
Squirrels mainly consume acorns, seeds, nuts, and fruits, but they have been known to supplement that diet with insects and, occasionally, by stealing eggs or young hatchlings from nests. And back in 1993, biologist J.R Callahan caused a stir by reporting that as many as 30 species of squirrel could be preying on smaller creatures: namely, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and the occasional small mammal.
Werner Herzog has made more than 60 films over his illustrious career. His documentaries alone span an impressive topical range, from the life and death of bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell (Grizzly Man) to people who choose to live and work in Antarctica (the Oscar-nominated Encounters at the End of the World) or a haunting exploration of the oldest human paintings in France's Chauvet Cave (Cave of Forgotten Dreams). His latest offering, Theater of Thought, tackles what might be his most ambitious subject yet: the mysterious inner workings of the brain.
Theater of Thought premiered in 2022 at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado and is now getting a theatrical release. Herzog's inspiration grew out of his conversations with Rafael Yuste, a Columbia University neurobiologist who also served as scientific advisor on the film. "How can we read thoughts?" he writes in his director's statement. "Can you implant a chip in your brain and in my brain, and see my new film without a camera? Why is it that some young people immerse themselves in video games and become addicted to completely artificial worlds? Sometimes mice even prefer invented cartoon worlds, so who is the ghost writer of our mind, of our reality?"
The topic might be scientific in nature, but Theater of Thought is not really a science documentary, despite Herzog's use of the classic talking head format. It's more of a personal, almost quixotic quest, with plenty of random branching digressions along the way. "It was like a road movie, one Monument Valley and one Grand Canyon, then one Mount Everest after the other," Herzog told Ars. "You just couldn't stop wondering and enjoying." For the viewer, it's as much a journey through the eccentric workings of Herzog's endlessly curious, nimble mind.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was a seminal moment in 20th century history, paving the way for German reunification. Many segments, both large and small, were preserved for posterityβincluding portions covered in graffiti or murals. A team of Italian scientists used a combination of spectroscopic analysis and machine learning to study paint chips from wall fragments to learn more about the chemistry of the paints and pigments used, according to a new paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
There has been increased attention in recent years to preserving street art, which is vulnerable both to degradation over time as well as deliberate vandalism. For instance, in 2021, Italian chemists figured out how to use hydrogels to remove added graffiti from vandalized murals in Florence. (Over-painting by vandals is so chemically similar to the original painting underneath that it is difficult to selectively remove just the over-painting without damaging the original.) Unlike most classic masterpieces of the past, created with paints designed to last centuries, street art is more ephemeral in nature, using materials that lack such longevity.
In many cases, like the Berlin Wall, the painters didn't bother to document the specific materials they used, their application techniques, or other useful information that conservators could use to restore or conserve street art. Modern painting materials are also much more complex, and manufacturers typically do not report specific information on the composition of those materials.
We've got a shiny new trailer for Star Trek: Section 31, the long-awaited spinoff film that brings back Michelle Yeoh's magnificent Phillipa Georgiou from Star Trek: Discovery. The film will give us the backstory for Georgiou's evil Mirror Universe counterpart, where she was a despotic emperor who murdered millions of her own people.
As previously reported, Yeoh's stylishly acerbic Georgiou was eventually written out of Discovery, but fans took hope from rumors of a spinoff series featuring the character. That turned into a spinoff film, and we'll take it. Miku Martineau plays a young Phillipa Georgiou in the film. Meanwhile, Yeoh's older Georgiou is tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets as part of a black ops group called Section 31, while dealing with all the blood she's spilled in her past.
Any hardcore Star Trek fan will tell you that Section 31 was first introduced as an urban legend of sorts in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Apparently Ira Steven Behrβwho came up with the idea of a secret rogue organization within Starfleet doing shady things to protect the Federationβtook inspiration from Commander Sisko's comment in one episode about how "It's easy to be a saint in paradise." The name is taken from Starfleet Charter Article 14, Section 31, which allows Starfleet to take extraordinary measures in the face of extreme threatsβincluding sabotage, assassination, and even biological warfare.
Archaeologists excavating a paleolithic cave site in Galilee, Israel, have found evidence that a deep-cave compound at the site may have been used for ritualistic gatherings, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). That evidence includes the presence of a symbolically carved boulder in a prominent placement, and well as the remains of what may have been torches used to light the interior. And the acoustics would have been conducive to communal gatherings.
Dating back to the Early Upper Paleolithic period, Manot Cave was found accidentally when a bulldozer broke open its roof during construction in 2008. Archaeologists soon swooped in and recovered such artifacts as stone tools, bits of charcoal, remains of various animals, and a nearly complete human skull.
The latter proved to be especially significant, as subsequent analysis showed that the skull (dubbed Manot 1) had both Neanderthal and modern features and was estimated to be about 54,700 years old. That lent support to the hypothesis that modern humans co-existed and possibly interbred with Neanderthals during a crucial transition period in the region, further bolstered by genome sequencing.
Physicists have been puzzling over conflicting observational results pertaining to the accelerating expansion rate of our Universeβa major discovery recognized by the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. New observational data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has confirmed that prior measurements of distances between nearby stars and galaxies made by the Hubble Space Telescope are not in error, according to a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal. That means the discrepancy between observation and our current theoretical model of the Universe is more likely to be due to new physics.
As previously reported, the Hubble Constant is a measure of the Universe's expansion expressed in units of kilometers per second per megaparsec (Mpc). So, each second, every megaparsec of the Universe expands by a certain number of kilometers. Another way to think of this is in terms of a relatively stationary object a megaparsec away: Each second, it gets a number of kilometers more distant.
How many kilometers? That's the problem here. There are basically three methods scientists use to measure the Hubble Constant: looking at nearby objects to see how fast they are moving, gravitational waves produced by colliding black holes or neutron stars, and measuring tiny deviations in the afterglow of the Big Bang known as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). However, the various methods have come up with different values. For instance, tracking distant supernovae produced a value of 73 km/s Mpc, while measurements of the CMB using the Planck satellite produced a value of 67 km/s Mpc.
The Wheel of Time returns to Prime Video in March.
Prime Video released a one-minute teaser for its fantasy series The Wheel of Time at CCXP24 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The series is adapted from the late Robert Jordan's bestselling 14-book series of epic fantasy novels, and Ars has been following it closely with regular recaps through the first two seasons. Judging from the new teaser, the battle between light and dark is heating up as the Dragon Reborn comes into his power.
(Spoilers for first two seasons below.)
As previously reported, the series centers on Moiraine (played by Oscar-nominee Rosamund Pike), a member of a powerful, all-woman organization called the Aes Sedai. Magic, known as the One Power, is divided into male (saidin) and female (saidar)Β flavors. The latter is the province of the Aes Sedai. Long ago, a great evil, called the Dark One, caused the saidin to become tainted, such that most men who show an ability to channel that magic go mad. It's the job of the Aes Sedai to track down such men and strip them of their abilitiesβa process known as "gentling" that, unfortunately, is often anything but. There is also an ancient prophecy concerning the Dragon Reborn: the reincarnation of a person who will save or destroy humanity.
Severance returns to Apple TV+ in January for its sophomore season.
Severance was one of the most talked-about TV series of 2022, receiving widespread critical acclaim. We loved the series so much that Ars staffers actually wrote a group review so that everyone could weigh in with their thoughts on the first season, pronouncing it "one of the best shows on TV." Needless to say, we have been eagerly awaiting the second season next month. Apple TV+ just released the official trailer at CCXP24 in SΓ£o Paulo, Brazil, and it does not disappoint.
(Spoilers for first season below.)
In the world of Severance, people can completely disconnect their work and personal lives. Thanks to a new procedure developed by Lumon Industries, workers can bifurcate themselves into "innies" (work selves) and "outies" (personal selves)βwith no sharing of memories between them. This appeals to people like Mark (Adam Scott), who lost his wife in a car crash and has struggled to work through the grief. Why not forget all that pain for eight hours a day?
A 3D-printable EEG electrode e-tattoo. Credit: University of Texas at Austin.
Epidermal electronics attached to the skin via temporary tattoos (e-tattoos) have been around for more than a decade, but they have their limitations, most notably that they don't function well on curved and/or hairy surfaces. Scientists have now developed special conductive inks that can be printed right onto a person's scalp to measure brain waves, even if they have hair. According to a new paper published in the journal Cell Biomaterials, this could one day enable mobile EEG monitoring outside a clinical setting, among other potential applications.
EEGs are a well-established, non-invasive method for recording the electrical activity of the brain, a crucial diagnostic tool for monitoring such conditions as epilepsy, sleep disorders, and brain injuries. It's also an important tool in many aspects of neuroscience research, including the ongoing development of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). But there are issues. Subjects must wear uncomfortable caps that aren't designed to handle the variation in people's' head shapes, so a clinician must painstakingly map out the electrode positions on a given patient's headβa time-consuming process. And the gel used to apply the electrodes dries out and loses conductivity within a couple of hours, limiting how long one can make recordings.
By contrast, e-tattoos connect to skin without adhesives, are practically unnoticeable, and are typically attached via temporary tattoo, allowing electrical measurements (and other measurements, such as temperature and strain) using ultra-thin polymers with embedded circuit elements. They can measure heartbeats on the chest (ECG), muscle contractions in the leg (EMG), stress levels, and alpha waves through the forehead (EEG), for example.
A tethered mosquito approaches the web in the path of release of the cone, and triggers web release response. Credit: S.I. Han and T.A. Blackledge, 2024.
Ray spiders deploy an unusual strategy to capture prey in their webs. They essentially pull it back into a cone shape and release it when prey approaches, trapping said prey in the sticky silken threads. A few years ago, scientists noticed that they could get the spiders to release their webs just by snapping their fingers nearby, suggesting that the spiders relied at least in part on sound vibrations to know when to strike. Evidence for that hypothesis has now been confirmed in a new paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Most spider orb webs are static: the spiders weave them and fix them in place and then wait for prey to fly into the webs. That causes the silk threads to vibrate, alerting the spider that dinner is served. There are some species that actively actuate their webs, however, per the authors.
For instance, the triangle weaver spring-loads its triangular web once an insect has made contact so that the threads wrap around the prey in fractions of a second. Bolas spiders seem to detect prey in their vicinity through auditory cues, throwing a line of silk with a sticky end at passing moths to catch them. Ogre-faced spiders also seem to be able to hear potential prey, striking backward with a small silk net held in their front legs. It's a more proactive hunting strategy than merely waiting for prey to fly into a web.
On April 15, 2019, the world watched in transfixed horror as a fire ravaged the famed Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, collapsing the spire and melting the lead roof. After years of painstaking restoration costing around $740 million, the cathedral reopens to the public this weekend. The December issue of National Geographic features an exclusive look inside the restored cathedral, accompanied by striking photographs by Paris-based photographer and visual artist Tomas van Houtryve.
For several hours, it seemed as if the flames would utterly destroy the 800-year-old cathedral. But after a long night of work by more than 400 Paris firefighters, the fire finally began to cool and attention began to shift to what could be salvaged and rebuilt. French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to restore Notre Dame to its former glory and set a five-year deadline. The COVID-19 pandemic caused some delays, but France nearly met that deadline regardless.
Those reconstruction efforts were helped by the fact that, a few years before the fire, scientist Andrew Tallon had used laser scanning to create precisely detailed maps of the interior and exterior of the cathedralβan invaluable aid as Paris rebuilds this landmark structure. French acousticians had also made detailed measurements of Notre Dame's "soundscape" that were instrumental in helping architects factor acoustics into their reconstruction plans. The resulting model even enabled Brian FG Katz, research director of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) at Sorbonne University, to create a virtual reality version of Notre Dame with all the acoustical parameters in place.
There's a common popular science demonstration involving "soap boats," in which liquid soap poured onto the surface of water creates a propulsive flow driven by gradients in surface tension. But it doesn't last very long since the soapy surfactants rapidly saturate the water surface, eliminating that surface tension. Using ethanol to create similar "cocktail boats" can significantly extend the effect because the alcohol evaporates rather than saturating the water.
That simple classroom demonstration could also be used to propel tiny robotic devices across liquid surfaces to carry out various environmental or industrial tasks, according to a preprint posted to the physics arXiv. The authors also exploited the so-called "Cheerios effect" as a means of self-assembly to create clusters of tiny ethanol-powered robots.
As previously reported, those who love their Cheerios for breakfast are well acquainted with how those last few tasty little "O"s tend to clump together in the bowl: either drifting to the center or to the outer edges. The "Cheerios effect is found throughout nature, such as in grains of pollen (or, alternatively, mosquito eggs or beetles) floating on top of a pond; small coins floating in a bowl of water; or fire ants clumping together to form life-saving rafts during floods. A 2005 paper in the American Journal of Physics outlined the underlying physics, identifying the culprit as a combination of buoyancy, surface tension, and the so-called "meniscus effect."
Sony Picture's Kraven the Hunter explores origins of titular villain.
Hollywood is coming off a record-breaking Thanksgiving weekend, thanks to the winning trifecta of Moana 2, Gladiator II, and Wicked Part 1. Can other upcoming releases ride that wave? Perhaps that's why Sony Pictures just released the first eight minutes of its much-delayed Kraven the Hunter. which opens in 10 days.
Comic book fans are well acquainted with Kraven as one of Spider-Man's most formidable foes, a founding member of the Sinister Six. He's a Russian immigrant with an aristocratic background who fled his home country when Tsar Nicholas II's reign collapsed in 1917. He's a big-game hunter with enhanced abilities thanks to ingesting a mysterious potion made from jungle herbs. He's very hard to injure and has super-human strength and enhanced sight, hearing, and smell, and he's a good tactician with excellent hand-to-hand combat skills.
The film version appears to be an origin story. Per the official premise:
Paleontologists have long puzzled over how the dinosaursβoriginally relatively small and of minor importance to the broader ecosystemβevolved to become the dominant species some 30 million years later. Fossilized feces and vomit from dinosaurs might hold important clues to how and why this evolutionary milestone came about, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature.
Co-author Martin QvarnstroΜm, an evolutionary biologist with Uppsala University in Sweden, and his collaborators studied trace fossils known as bromalites, a designation that includes coprolites as well as vomit or other fossilized matter from an organism's digestive tract. As previously reported, coprolites aren't quite the same as paleofeces, which retain a lot of organic components that can be reconstituted and analyzed for chemical properties. Coprolites are fossils, so most organic components have been replaced by mineral deposits like silicate and calcium carbonates.
For archaeologists keen on learning more about the health and diet of past populationsβas well as how certain parasites evolved in the evolutionary history of the microbiomeβcoprolites and paleofeces can be a veritable goldmine of information. For instance, in 2021 we reportedΒ on an analysis of preserved paleo-poop revealing that ancient Iron Age miners in what is now Austria were fond of beer and blue cheese.
Lee Jung-Jae returns as Player 456 in the second season of Squid Game.
The 2021 Korean series Squid Game was a massive hit for Netflix, racking up 1.65 billion viewing hours in its first four weeks and snagging 14 Emmy nominations. Fans have been longing for a second season ever since, and we're finally getting it this year for Christmas. Netflix just released the official trailer.
(Spoilers for S1 below.)
The first season followed Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-Jae, seen earlier this year in The Acolyte), a down-on-his-luck gambler who has little left to lose when he agrees to play children's playground games against 455 other players for money. The twist? If you lose a game, you die. If you cheat, you die. And if you win, you might also die.
Demonstrating lollipop user interface to simulate taste in virtual and augmented reality environments. Credit: Lu et al, 2024/PNAS
Virtual reality (VR) technology has long sought to incorporate the human senses into virtual and mixed-reality environments. In addition to sight and sound, researchers have been trying to add the sensation of human touch and smell via various user interfaces, as well as taste. But the latter has proved to be quite challenging. A team of Hong Kong scientists has now developed a handheld user interface shaped like a lollipop capable of re-creating several different flavors in a virtual environment, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
It's well established that human taste consists of sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umamiβfive basic flavors induced by chemical stimulation of the tongue and, to a lesser extent, in parts of the pharynx, larynx, and epiglottis. Recreating those sensations in VR has resulted in a handful of attempts at a flavor user interface, relying on such mechanisms as chemical, thermal, and electrical stimulation, as well as iontophoresis.
The chemical approach usually involves applying flavoring chemicals directly onto the tongue, but this requires room for bulk storage of said chemicals, and there is a long delay time that is not ideal for VR applications. Thermal variations applied directly to the tongue can stimulate taste sensations but require a complicated system incorporating a cooling subsystem and temperature sensors, among other components.
Ben Schwartz voices the titular character in Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
Some lucky folks got a heads-up last week that a trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was about to drop when Paramount Pictures released a playable Sega Genesis gaming cartridge to select individuals. Hidden among a mini-game and character posters and accessible by entering a cheat code was the trailer release date. True to its word, Paramount just dropped the final trailer for the third film in the successful franchise. All our favorite characters are back, as well as a couple of new ones, most notably a new villain familiar to fans of the games: Shadow, voiced by Keanu Reeves.
(Spoilers for the first two films below.)
As previously reported, in the first film, Sonic (Ben Schwartz) teamed up with local town sheriff Tom Wachowski (James Marsden) to stop the sinister mad scientist Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey). Robotnik wanted to catch and experiment on the hedgehog, and if he could also frame Tom as a domestic terrorist, even better.
