Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2015 i Popular Science

“OF ALL THE VARIABLES THAT COME TOGETHER TO FUEL A FIRE, WEATHER IS THE LEAST PREDICTABLE, AND THEREFORE THE MOST DANGEROUS. As our November issue went to press, the American West was on track to suffer its worst fire season in recorded history. At publication, about 8.9 million acres had burned, and the worst of California’s fire season still lay ahead. It will be months more before we understand the season’s true cost in terms of lives lost and dollars spent. With the deepening drought in the West, we at Popular Science had expected a bad fire season, and before it began, we got in touch with writer Kyle Dickman. Kyle knows wildfires. He is a former member of the Tahoe Hotshots, a wildfire-fighting crew. He also wrote On the…

Biologists on Twitter had a #Cuteoff to determine the most adorable creatures known to science. We couldn’t resist contributing this nominee, called “unknown cute bee” in a book on global bee diversity featured on popsci.com. HEY, SIRI For the tech editors here at Popular Science, the Fall Apple Event is sort of like the Super Bowl: heavy with anticipation and subject to lots of morning-after commentary. To check out our thoughts on the big reveal—including upgrades to Apple TV and Siri, Apple Watch, iPhone 6S, and the iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil—go to popsci.com/tags/apple-fall-2015-event. Q: WHAT VEHICLE WOULD YOU RACE IN A GRAND PRIX? 1 I might not win, but give me an old Mustang or Camaro, and I’d be happy. 2 As long as we’re dreaming, I’d like…

RED WEAPON DRAGON 6K 6K Sensor 19 megapixels 8K Sensor Upgrade 35 megapixels Frame Rate 100 fps @ 6K Frame Rate on Upgrade 60 fps @ 8K capture Monitor Output HD-SDI and HDMI Weight About 3.3 lb. (brain only) Price Starts at $20,000 What does a Hollywood legend like James Cameron have in common with a bunch of scientists on the International Space Station? They all use Red cameras to capture otherworldly landscapes. Ever since Jim Jannard created the Red One, the company’s first 4K cinema camera, in 2007, it has become a go-to shooter for serious filmmakers. Up until then, HD cameras couldn’t match the resolution, dynamic range, and color of film. But the Red One could, and at a price of $17,500, it could do it for far…

The buzz of a band saw shrieks from Jonathan Wilker’s lab at Purdue University. The chemist cuts a cow femur in two and then glues it back together. A colleague does the same with metal plates—underwater. Unlike Gorilla Glue and Super Glue, which become useless when wet, Wilker’s formulas are based on the super-sticking power of mussels. And they’re some of the strongest glues ever made. INSPIRATION Wilker drew inspiration from mollusks that cling to rocks in stormy seas. The secret to their adhesion is the cross-linking of special proteins, which he tweaked for even greater effectiveness. “In biomimicry, you don’t usually beat out nature,” Wilker says, “but we made some stuff that’s crazy strong.” APPLICATION Wilker thinks his glues could eliminate the need for surgical screws, plates, sutures, or…

It’s a sunny morning at Sonoma Raceway, north of San Francisco—a great day for a race. My driver, Robby, pulls up to greet me. Robby is not a person. It’s a car—an autonomous racecar, to be precise—and it’s ready for a fight. Outwardly, Robby is an Audi RS7 sport sedan, bright red and tarted up with black racing stripes and a giant logo. On the inside, however, it contains some of the most sophisticated autonomous-driving equipment—cameras, laser scanners, accelerometers, precision GPS receivers, microprocessors—on the planet. As I stand there, helmet in hand, admiring the machine idling in the pit lane, Klaus Verweyen, head of Audi’s piloted-driving development program, explains how the ride will go. First Robby will take me on a few hot laps around Sonoma’s 2.5-mile circuit, home to…

“Neuromyths have gotten folded into popular culture,” says Nicholas Spitzer, codirector of the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind at the University of California at San Diego. “It’s been an uphill battle to dispel them.” Here are three culprits from TV and the movies. Myth: Alcohol kills brain cells. Before taking his remedial high school science exam, Homer says in The Simpsons (1993), “All right, brain. You don’t like me and I don’t like you, but let’s just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer.” Myth: ESP is a scientific certainty. The premise of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002) rests on the ability of a psychic police force to stop murders before they happen (and gives rise to a slew of ESP-centric crime shows, such…

In May 1951, racecar driver Wilbur Shaw tested a batch of cars that— in contrast to the veritable barges trendy at the time—were billed as “little.” They were cheap to purchase and drive. “You get what you pay for, and no more,” was Shaw’s assessment of the Henry J (in blue), which cost $1,360—about $12,500 in today’s dollars. It lacked such amenities as a trunk door (penny-pinching owners would need to fold down the rear seats to retrieve their luggage). The pioneering compact car didn’t sell, and Kaiser-Frazier manufactured it for only a few years. Though smaller cars did start finding favor in the 1970s, few of today’s models are so light: At 2,300 pounds, the Henry J weighed about as much as a Fiat 500. But with U.S. fuel-efficiency…

Jeremy Hsu Tech writer Jeremy Hsu admits he’s not a car guy. But the Bloodhound SSC, he says, “is guaranteed to quicken anybody’s pulse.” The jet-and-rocketpowered car will vie for the land-speed record of 763 mph next year. Hsu says he usually reserves his admiration for aircraft pilots, but after writing “A Fighter Jet on Wheels” (page 30), he says now he’s amazed by “the pioneers who push the envelope here on Earth.” Liz Kruesi Writer Liz Kruesi loves when art and science intersect. And so when we asked her to use origami in an engineering project for Manual (“Fold a Paper Robot,” page 59), she relished the task. Her border collie mix, however, was less than thrilled with the end product. “She jumped on the bed, then crawled under…

PLEN Price $1,000 CPU 32 bit ARM7 chip Ports USB Battery Life 30 minutes Robots continue to show up in homes, factories, and hotels. So why not your desk? The 9-inch-tall Plen desktop bot is small enough to hang out next to your coffee mug and smart enough (thanks to a microprocessor and 18 tiny motors) to perform complex movements. It can disco dance, high-five, kick a small soccer ball, lift itself up when it falls over, and even hug another robot. You control Plen by way of a smartphone app. It comes programmed with hundreds of moves. If you get bored with Plen’s preset routines, you can drive it with a joystick on the smartphone screen. Because its software is open-source, coders can invent new moves. For those who…

NIKE ZOOM LEBRON SOLDIER 8 FLYEASE Price $130 PROBLEM All Matthew Walzer wanted to do was tie his shoes. As a high school junior with cerebral palsy, he could dress himself but still had to ask his parents to lace up his Nikes: His hand tremors made it nearly impossible —and sort of embarrassing. So in 2012, Walzer wrote an open letter to Nike asking for help. His letter went viral and eventually made its way to designer Tobie Hatfield, who had worked with Special Olympians and Paralympians on similar challenges. It was now time to develop a prototype for Walzer. SOLUTION For three years, Hatfield and Walzer collaborated by phone and email. Hatfield experimented with no-lace solutions such as Velcro, zippers, and cable dials. Eventually, he decided on a…

For 80 years, researchers theorized that hydrogen could transform into a metal. This year, scientists at Sandia National Laboratories finally proved it. They took deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, and applied 3 million times the atmospheric pressure using the Z machine, shown here. After 200 nanoseconds, the liquid turned reflective, indicating it had become metallic. “The moment we got our first look at the data, we were very excited,” says Mike Desjarlais, the team’s lead theoretical physicist. “After the first several experiments, we had begun to wonder if we would ever see it.” The findings change scientists’ understanding of how planets evolve. Because planets cool over time, temperature has long been used to calculate their age. But hydrogen metallization causes surface temps to rise, which could explain, for example, why…

After getting caught in a blizzard while mountain climbing at age 17, Hugh Herr lost both his legs to severe frostbite. That hasn’t slowed his pace. Now at 51, the inventor and engineer is the co-director of MIT’s Center for Extreme Bionics, where he designs prosthetic legs (including his own), along with feet, ankles, knees, and hips which push the limits of human capabilities. Herr’s prosthetics have helped him to climb even more treacherous icefalls, and to continue clearing hurdles in the field of bionics. “Reality so often tracks science fiction because what humans imagine actually can come to pass.” Shortly after my amputation in 1982, I was fitted with prosthetic limbs. Their lack of technology shocked me, so I decided to design my own—ones that would enable me to…

In 1913, Albert Einstein had stalled in his efforts to construct his general theory of relativity. He pleaded with his friend Marcel Grossmann for a mathematical boost: “Grossmann, you’ve got to help me, otherwise I’ll go mad!” Four years later, as Einstein was finishing a paper on the cosmic implications of his (finally) completed theory, the malady had migrated to other parts of the body. He had a stomach ulcer; he suffered from liver disease. Worn out by his mental exertions, Einstein thought he was dying. He wrote to fellow physicist Arnold Sommerfeld: “In the last month I had one of the most stimulating, exhausting times of my life, indeed also one of the most successful.” That sensation eluded most of his colleagues back then, and it still does. They…

RELATIVITY OR CALCULUS? On page 54, we honor the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. We now ask you the same question we put to Neil deGrasse Tyson: Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton? Tweet your answer to @PopSci with #NewtonOrEinstein. See Tyson’s answer in the videos section of our Facebook page. TWEET OUT OF CONTEXT Can it snapchat? @SchulerJohnny UBER EXPENSIVE, OR CHEAP? In “Uber Powerful” [September 2015], we outlined the car service’s plan to one day launch a fleet of robotic taxis, thereby freeing people from the need to own cars. Some readers saw benefits; some did not: MICHAEL RYAN Autonomous cars will take years to fully implement. Roads have to be redesigned so the cars can read them. HENDRIK BERVOETS Maybe Uber is not the…

1 COIN 2.0 Few people enjoy storing a stack of credit cards in their wallet. Coin 2.0 trims the fat. It reprograms its magnetic strip during each purchase, allowing you to put different cards to use. Up to eight cards can be stored in the device at once. Plus it has NFC for tap-to-pay. $100 2 THING EXPLAINER The creator of famed Web comic xkcd is once again venturing into the physical world with his art. Randall Munroe’s newest book, Thing Explainer, tells how everything works— from ballpoint pens to the solar system. Required reading for the curious. $25 3 OAXIS INDUCTIVE SPEAKER Moments of silence while pairing friends’ phones to wireless speakers can kill a party’s buzz. Oaxis hopes to make the process smoother: Just lay your device on…

In 2002, Colin Angle sent his army of Roombas into our homes. For years they’ve done a great job sucking up dirt. His newest model, the 980, does a heck of a lot more. It maps your home so a future model might one day navigate it as your personal butler. Angle sat down with Popular Science to tell us how technology will do even more of our dirty work. Popular Science: How does a Roomba create a map? Colin Angle: Because it’s a vacuum, its mission in life is to get everywhere it can get to. As it moves around your home, it uses optical sensors and software to document its journey. It says, “There’s nothing here, there’s something here,” etc. That’s how it builds a map, how it…

If you’re up on your Hollywood gossip, you’ve probably heard the term “dad bod”—a once-athletic build that gets extra padding after a man has kids. In June, scientists proved it’s a thing. (As if we needed proof.) BODY OF DATA Researchers at Northwestern University analyzed data on the body mass index (a weight-to-height ratio) of more than 10,000 American men over the course of 20 years. After controlling for factors such as age, race, and income, they figured out who put on the pounds. BODY OF PROOF Dads who live with their children showed a BMI boost of 2.6 percent. For someone 6 feet tall, that’s a gain of 4.4 pounds. Dads who live under a different roof saw an increase of about 2 percent (or 3.3 pounds). The BMIs…

While crossword puzzles and classical music aren’t going to make you smarter, here are three proven strategies to keep your brain at peak performance for your entire life. GET THE BLOOD FLOWING In a 2014 study at the University of British Columbia in Canada, women who walked briskly for an hour twice weekly for six months—but not those who strength-trained or did no exercise—increased brain volume in the areas that control thinking and memory. EAT YOUR GREENS A team of researchers with the federally funded Nurses’ Health Study tracked 13,388 women over decades and discovered the more leafy vegetables they ate, the better they performed on learning and memory tests. That might be due in part to folic acid in veggies: A long-term study of 60 Roman Catholic nuns in…

A world-class table-tennis player can smash the ball at almost 70 miles per hour. From my experience, it is darn difficult to return the ball at such speeds. Imagine a shot delivered more than four times faster—could even the best player hit it? To find out, I designed a pingpong cannon that shoots balls at nearly half the speed of sound. The cannon’s power comes from Boyle’s Law, which (simplified) says that pressure is inversely related to volume. For example, if you put the air in a small reservoir under a lot of pressure and then release it into a larger one—such as the barrel of a gun—the pressure will drop. This causes the air’s volume to expand instantly, shooting out any objects, like bullets, sharing that space. Boyle’s Law…