Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2015 i Popular Science

On a recent afternoon, I found myself standing with Neil deGrasse Tyson, staring at a model of DNA. Tyson is one of the world’s best-known scientists. He is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History and the host of StarTalk, the first science-themed, late-night TV talk show. But on this particular afternoon, he was playing the role of educator. “DNA has a chirality to it,” he said. In all known life, DNA’s double helix winds, by and large, only one direction—to the right. “This model winds to the left. That means it’s either wrong or,” he paused to give a broad smile, “from an unknown life-form.” We had asked Tyson over that day to photograph him for this month’s cover story, “How to Be…

JULY 2015 RETRO-FITTED I’d love to see more of Tavis Coburn’s artwork [July 2015] adorning the cover of Pop Sci. The bright colors and vintage texture seemed like a throwback to the optimism of the old days, when it was inevitable that science could solve everything. It got my heart pounding! BJ Hill, Leicester, Massachusetts A BETTER COMMUTE Instead of the hyperloop [“Hyped Up,” July 2015], a better/faster/cheaper transportation method would be a highway for driverless cars. Rarely mentioned in high-speed-transportation discussions is the time it takes to get to the terminal and make it through security. Is there anyone who doesn’t want to go 120 mph on a driverless highway? The only thing missing is a fancy name! Jeff Kotowski, Nevada City, California ETHICS OF COMBAT I loved the…

Audiophiles speak in reverent tones about the Grado family and their headphones—even though Grado Labs, which makes them, hasn’t spent a dime on advertising since 1964. The warm and fullbodied sound of Grado’s handmade headphones have been enough to keep them consistently stocked in high-end audio boutiques. Sadly, earlier this year the company founder and family patriarch, Joseph Grado, died. The Grado kin have now decided to pay homage to him and their Brooklyn legacy with a limited-run headphone— made from a local maple tree once destined for the wood chipper. Their new Heritage Series GH1 headphones are carved from a tree that stood near the company’s original headquarters in industrial Sunset Park, Brooklyn. “These trees were about to fall down,” says 24-year-old apprentice, and great-nephew, Jonathan Grado. “We bought…

1 TOSHIBA SATELLITE RADIUS 15 This laptop-tablet hybrid is the first of its kind. With a 4K screen, you can edit your ultra-high-definition footage and then flip the screen to show off your dazzling creation. $1,200 2 HYDROFOIL DRONE Parrot’s Rolling Spider drone is pretty fantastic, but it’s not made for water. The company has fixed that shortfall with the Hydrofoil. The flying drone can now attach to a pair of skids that can glide across water at speeds of about 6 mph. $179 3 TORQUE T402V Can’t decide what kind of headphones to buy? Torque makes it easy. With a quick adjustment, users can pop off the ear pad and turn it to change the amount of bass to their liking. $400 4 VARIA SMART BIKE LIGHTS Thanks to…

1 MACHINE ERA TITANIUM MULTITOOL Machined, as its name implies, from a block of titanium, this multitool has a Phillips-head and fat-head driver, a pry wedge and both a 1-inch and a 2.5-centimeter rule. A hand-blasted matte fnish defes scratching. $32 2 METAL DREAMER PINCH It’s hard to imagine this titanium chunk encompasses 11 tools— including a wire stripper, nail puller, hex-bit holder, and bottle opener. Despite the sparse look, the company designed it with function in mind—there’s plenty of space to hold it. $22 3 PANGEA DESIGNS PICO This extremely minimalist item by Pangea is crafted to be a bottle opener. You’ll hardly notice PiCO in your pocket—it weighs about as much as two paperclips, and keeps a low profle because the key ring it dangles from doubles as…

Aerospace engineer Dava Newman has devoted her career to figuring out how we might live in space— suspending subjects from the rafters of her MIT lab to study reduced gravity and designing a flexible, self-mending space suit. As NASA’s new deputy director, she is now tasked with the planning and policy that will make greater human space exploration possible. That means leading the agency’s 18,000 employees and 40,000 contractors toward a successful crewed mission to Mars by the 2030s. “If everyone isn’t talking about our journey to Mars at the dinner table, I want to change that.” 21 Number of Mars missions NASA has launched since 1960—of which 15 were successful Right now, we have five rovers and orbiters exploring Mars. A human mission is a different ballgame. You have…

When I was about 7 or 8, I saw a bunch of balloons stuck to the ceiling at a local mall. No one could reach them, so I went home and constructed a mechanical arm. It was then, after going back and retrieving all the balloons, that I realized engineering was for me. I decided early on that it’s only work if you’d rather be doing something else. I really didn’t want to wake up early and go to an office with a bunch of people telling me what to do. So I started selling the kits I made with a simple PayPal button on a website I built. You can create a good business and a good cause, but only if you’re willing and able to contribute something. For…

I work in an emergency room in New York City, and every day during the outbreak, we’d debrief about what to do if someone came in with Ebola. You could select if you wanted to work those patients. So I started thinking about it, and it became so obvious to me that help was needed in West Africa. So I decided to go. I never second-guessed myself. I try to deal with fear in the most rational way possible. With the fear of getting sick, I made an educated decision that it was a risk worth taking. In the hot zone, there was a young guy hooked up to an IV, and I had a short conversation with him through an interpreter. When we went back three hours later, I…

Where there’s water, there’s the possibility of life. And a surprising amount of water can be found throughout the solar system. Scientists have now identified at least nine worlds other than ours that likely harbor warm inner oceans. CERES Nearly 25 percent of the dwarf planet is made up of water ice, and a fraction of that could be liquid. CALLISTO Under a 60-milethick crust, this Jovian moon may have an ocean deeper than any on Earth. MIMAS Another moon of Saturn, Mimas hides either a subsurface ocean or a footballshaped core. EUROPA There is strong evidence of a salty, circulating ocean just beneath this Jovian moon’s ice shell. ENCELADUS Jets of water seen on Saturn’s moon Enceladus seem to be fed by an ocean under its south pole. TRITON…

Seattle artist Peregrine Church uses rain as his medium. By stenciling images and words on the sidewalk in water-repellent spray, he creates Rainworks—art pieces that appear only when it’s wet outside. Instead of shelling out $45 for the paint Church uses, you can follow the lead of DIYer Dan Rojas to make your own. Rojas discovered that spray antiperspirant contains a commonly used hydrophobic chemical. Clear spray paint binds it in place, creating a cheap water repellent that can last for months. “A lot of the stuff you see,” Rojas says, “was made when people put two or three products together and came up with something new.” STATS Time 1.5 hours Cost $15 Difficulty MATERIALS •Cardstock •Clear spray paint •Aerosol antiperspirant INSTRUCTIONS 1 Cut a stencil out of cardstock and…

In October 1984, Popular Science wrote about one of the more promising chapters in the search for intelligent life. NASA was set to embark on a 15-year mission: An 85-foot-tall radio telescope would filter out the torrent of chaotic radio signals it received while it scanned the universe, “seeking the one unambiguous pattern that would signify something totally extraordinary,” we wrote. Sadly, those efforts didn’t yield much, and today NASA is focused on finding any life—intelligent or no. In the decade to come, the agency plans to send a spacecraft to Jupiter’s moon Europa, which could possibly harbor life beneath its icy surface. To learn more, turn to page 54. 06 Number of users, in millions, who have participated in SETI@Home, which allows people to monitor for alien radio signals…

Bob Parks For “Go Hack Yourself” (page 60), writer Bob Parks reported on people who implant devices in their flesh that allow them to do things like hear colors and see in the dark, and that led him to want a few superpowers of his own. He plans to implant a magnet in his fingertip so he can feel electric fields and dangle pins from his finger (a great party trick). Parks says, “My kids think it’s a stupid idea.” Erik Sofge Contributing editor Erik Sofge loves robots. His Twitter bio reads: “I am weak, and they are strong.” So when he heard that the car-service startup Uber had hired away dozens of roboticists from Carnegie Mellon— home to one of the nation’s top robotics programs—for a secret project (“Uber…

MECCANOID G15 KS Height About 4 feet Parts More than 1,200 Servos 8 Motors 2 Price $400 MECCANOID G15 Height About 2 feet Parts More than 600 Servos 4 Motors 2 Price $180 Tinker Toys. Legos. Lincoln Logs. They’re all great. But none them can compare to the snap-it, screwit, city-building brilliance of the Erector set, which has inspired tiny tinkerers for more than a century. The latest kit from parent company Meccano is the Meccanoid—the smartest DIY bot to ever spill out of a box. The kit contains hundreds of parts that you can reassemble into countless forms—from scorpions and spiders and kid-size raptors to these lovable humanoids. (Awww.) Once assembled, Meccanoid can crack jokes, act on voice command, and be programmed with custom moves. You can do this…

Soon hotels will be teeming with robots. At least that’s the hope at Savioke, a startup that develops robots for the service industry. The company’s room-service helpers have made more than 4,000 deliveries so far. Its newest robot, Relay, has been deployed in about 10 early-adopter locations, delighting most guests but committing the occasional faux pas. To find out what it will be like when there’s a robot in every hotel, we spoke with Tessa Lau, Savioke’s co-founder and chief robot whisperer. Popular Science: How exactly does a robot work in a hotel? Tessa Lau: It’s a delivery robot. When the front desk needs to send an item up to a guest room—an amenity like a toothbrush or a towel, or a sandwich or a snack—they go over to the…

+ NVIDIA SHIELD Inputs Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.0, USB 3.0x2, Micro-USB and MicroSD ports Audio 7.1 and 5.1 surround sound audio output via HDMI Storage 16GB and 500GB Operating System Android TV Connections 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1 Price $200 for 16GB, $300 for 500GB version There’s a universal truth about home entertainment: Slow speeds kill your buzz. Everyone hates buffering (when streaming movies) and image stuttering (when playing video games). Nvidia has solved both problems in one device. It’s a 4K videostreaming set-top box that doubles as a gaming console. The Nvidia Shield uses a mighty Tegra X1 processor, the fastest mobile chip on the planet; it has 256 CPU cores that can run at 1 teraflop. What does that mean? For gamers, it’s no more lag when questing for…

Jeans fade. The sun breaks down the dye’s chemical bonds, or the Laundromat washes it away. The same cannot be said for a parrot’s feathers. Those striking blues and greens come from “structural color.” Nanoscopic balls of pigment reflect certain wavelengths of light but not others, creating colors purer than any dye. And since there are no chemical bonds to break, the colors can’t fade. For the first time, in May, researchers created structural color in the lab. They say it could lead to longerlasting paints or even color-changing camouflage. 08 Percentage of men of Northern European descent who can’t tell red from green, according to the National Eye Institute…

WILLIAM BORUCKI Former head of the Kepler exoplanet-finding mission; as of July, Kepler had identified 4,661 candidate exoplanets I applied to just one place out of college, and that was NASA. I had always been interested in space exploration from reading science fiction when I was young. Many scientists and engineers at NASA read science fiction as kids, and that sort of opened up their imaginations to all sorts of possibilities. I knew that finding habitable planets would be an important first step in exploration. So I built an instrument that would allow us to search for them. Then I convinced NASA that we should fly a space mission with it on board. Funding for the research came through in 1983, but Kepler didn’t launch until 2009. That’s, I…

Gamers often perform repetitive tasks to improve their character’s skill set, gain rewards, and advance to new levels. The process is known as grinding: Now, an underground movement has taken up that expression, calling themselves grinders, and they’re trying to gain some of those same superskills— only in real life by hacking their bodies. To cynics, the upgraded-self movement—aka body hacking—can seem a reckless and narcissistic pursuit. After all, treating your body like a home science kit can have serious consequences (scarring, bleeding, pain on the scale of passing out). Yet tinkering with human hardware is a centuries-old pursuit. Bolting titanium plates onto problem spines has become downright common. Today’s transhumanists take it further. They seek to extend the senses and co-mingle them, allowing themselves to do things like detect…

105.1 Miles per hour of the fastest pitch recorded, thrown by Aroldis Chapman in 2010 About 300 years ago, English scientist Benjamin Robins decided to measure the speed of a bullet, a task that led him to invent the ballistic pendulum. This device tracks the momentum of a projectile, allowing users to calculate the speed and energy as well. Although the chronograph later replaced that method, the ballistic pendulum has a great advantage: It relies on very simple mathematics. Basically, the user fires a projectile— in Robins’ day, a cannonball or musket shot—at the pendulum. The faster it’s moving, the farther the pendulum will swing, pulling measuring tape along behind it. Robins determined that the distance the pendulum swings, along with its weight and that of the projectile, can be…

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PROBLEM Waterproof jackets aren’t good multitaskers. Sure, vinyl or PVC slickers are impenetrable, but while they keep rain out, they lock sweat in—making you feel clammy. One fix is the waterproof breathable jacket. The key to its success is a delicate membrane sandwiched between two layers of fabric. Unfortunately, during downpours, the outer layer soaks through, making you feel damp. And adding to the discomfort, the glue that holds the fabric layers together ends up trapping perspiration inside. SOLUTION The Columbia OutDry EX Diamond Shell ($400) puts its waterproof breathable membrane on the outside. A grid pattern of abrasionresistant polymer protects it from the elements. Because the membrane is heat-fused with the polymer and the inner fabric layer, it does away with sweat-trapping glue. If you do work up a…

An Airstream offers retro appeal, but it can’t compare to the sustainable, high-tech glamping you could do in an Ecocapsule. Developed by Slovakian firm Nice Architects, the portable living space runs on sun, wind, and rain alone. Throw in a cache of canned food, and you’ll be set to hunker down indefinitely. The 14.5-foot, 1.7-ton pod can serve as a research station, disaster-relief shelter, or remote Airbnb almost anywhere. The second-generation version—which is expected to debut this fall and go on sale in 2016— includes sleeping quarters for two, a kitchenette, a shower, climate control, and even electrical outlets. Plus, it comes equipped with a custom-designed H20-free toilet that incinerates your waste out of existence. CONTOURED SHELL The Ecocapsule’s egg shape reduces surface area (and therefore heat loss) without sacrificing…

Science and religion usually make uneasy bedfellows. That’s why Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change, published in June, made headlines. The papal essay is the Vatican’s first authoritative word on climate policy, and it takes an unequivocal stance: The world needs to act. Atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, says the Pope’s message might prove more effective than 30 years of scientists’ efforts to communicate the urgency of climate change. “Scientists used to operate under the assumption that if people don’t agree with you, it’s because they don’t understand,” Hayhoe says. “So they thought, ‘Oh, we just have to explain it better.’ ” But social scientists have learned that a simple lack of information doesn’t explain disbelief or indifference. “Science can tell…

JENNIFER DOUDNA Co-creator of gene-editing technique CRISPR, which allows scientists to repair disease-causing genetic mutations I grew up in Hawaii and I had a great chemistry teacher in 10th grade, Ms. Wong. And Ms. Wong was very good at showing kids that science is not about memorizing facts in a textbook. It’s about figuring stuff out. If you you have a question, you can design an experiment to answer it. I found that really exciting. Experimental science is 90 percent about the things that don’t work the way you think they will. It’s being persistent in the face of facts. It’s looking for connections others don’t see. It’s important to foster these skills in yourself if you want to do this job. You also need to work with fun,…

JAMES GOSLING Father of the Java programming language POPULAR SCIENCE: When did you start writing code? JAMES GOSLING: When I was 13, we lived about 2 miles from a university, and my dad’s friend brought me to see the computerscience department. I was entranced. I just had to go back. But I was a long way from going to college. So instead, I got good at watching people punch the keys to the security doors. I literally started breaking in. PS: What did you do there? JG: I was big enough that I was plausibly a university student, and I befriended a fellow who was working for the physics department. The department needed somebody to write software for PDP-8. I had already been teaching myself to program on it.…

People used to say to me, I can’t believe you quit school and risked everything to start a company. And I answer them: I risked everything I had because I had nothing. Very early in my teens I decided to educate myself. I realized I was never going to be a very good student because I didn’t like teachers judging me by what I thought were arbitrary standards. I decided I’d let the world judge me by whether I could do something of value—solve a problem or build something. And if people wanted it, they’d pay for it. And that’s when I decided I’d be an inventor and entrepreneur. I’d rather fail at trying to do something really big than succeed at being mediocre. Start inventing as early as you…