Innholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2016 i Popular Science

Beginning this issue, Popular Science will be bigger and better than ever. Starting now, you can look forward to more editorial pages each issue, more original photography, more bold design and data visualization, and more in-depth feature articles. It’s still the Popular Science you know and love—just more of it. To create this new Popular Science, we are changing our frequency. Instead of publishing monthly, we will publish a larger, thicker issue bimonthly, so subscribers will get one expanded issue every other month. Each expanded issue will be like getting two issues in one. In the future, an annual subscription will contain six bimonthly issues. For more about the exciting changes, read the letter from Editor-in-Chief Cliff Ransom in this issue. As always, our Customer Care Center is available to…

Download the iTunes app today for instant access. How to Get Your Free Digital Subscription 1 If you don’t have the app already downloaded onto your iPad® or iPhone®, download the free app from the iTunes app store. 2 Tap “My Account”. Then tap “Current Print Subscribers - Digital Access” and follow the instructions to activate your digital subscription. 3 After creating your Digital Access account, you must sign in: On an iPad, tap “Sign In”, then enter your newly created username (email address) and password. On the iPhone, tap the gear icon in the upper right portion of the screen, then tap “Sign In”—then enter your newly created username (email address) and password.…

1 GOOGLE ONHUB $200 The best house parties mean a lot of people posting updates to Twitter and uploading pictures. That can cause a traffic jam on your Wi-Fi. With Google OnHub, you can set one high-speed 5 GHz network for just your devices, and a 2.4 GHz password-protected network for your Instagramming friends. It’s like having two digital highways running through your living room. 2 SLINGBOX M2 $200 There’s the big TV in the living room, but what happens when you’re making wings in the backyard? The Slingbox M2 lets you take the game to the grill, on an iPad in the basement, another TV in the bedroom, or even on your phone in the bathroom. 3 XBOX ELITE WIRELESS CONTROLLER $150 Serious gamers are known to abuse their…

When a ship sinks at sea and you’re thrown into the water, hypothermia sets in quickly, so every second counts. An immersion suit is designed to buy you time. Constructed like a surfer’s wetsuit, it keeps you warm for up to three to six hours, until help (hopefully) arrives. Smart sailors and fishermen carry them and, when on a boat, so should you: Even a plunge into 50-degree water will induce hypothermia within 60 minutes. But what if help is a long time coming? The Stearns I950 ThermaShield 24+ bills itself as the most advanced immersion suit made, one that can extend that crucial in-the-water survival window up to 24 hours, and keep you alive even in freezing (32°F) water. How good is this suit? I couldn’t leap from an…

(featuring MKBHD) A lot of 22-year-olds have opinions about gadgets. Not many have 3 million fans who will listen. Marques Brownlee—best known as MKBHD—is an Internet celebrity who’s attracted hordes to his YouTube channel since launching seven years ago. Brilliant and funny smartphone reviews, unboxings, and meditations on all things tech have set him apart as one of the most influential tech vloggers out there. Here, we unbox his tools of the trade. 1 YAMAHA HS8 Engineers trust Yamaha’s studio monitors to deliver precise sound across all frequencies. Never underestimate good audio. $499 2 ASUS PA328Q This newer model of MKBHD’s monitor offers better ergonomics, a 4K pixel count, and precise color accuracy to easily spot errors. $1,299 3 APPLE MAC PRO YouTube supports up to 4K video, but Apple’s…

A new construction material could make the concrete jungle function a bit more like a natural one. Palazzo Italia, which debuted at the 2015 World’s Fair in Milan, is the first building made of concrete that’s designed to clear the air. The facade, a mixture of cement and titanium dioxide, captures nitrogen-oxide pollution and converts it into a harmless salt that easily rinses off the walls when it rains. Palazzo Italia also consumes 40 percent less energy than a conventional building of its size, and emits zero air pollution. “We wanted the building to be an osmotic organism,” says lead architect Michele Molè—like a tree that breathes in carbon dioxide and exhales oxygen. 140 Energy, in kilowatts, generated by the building’s photovoltaic glass roof, enough to power nearly 11,000 CFL…

New York City is now expected to experience a flood on par with that of Hurricane Sandy every 130 years. That’s up from once every 3,000 years. To better understand and prepare for these kinds of cataclysmic storms, the University of Miami just opened a $45 million lab, and at its heart sits a hurricane-simulator called SUSTAIN (SUrge-STructure-Atmosphere INteraction—a tortured acronym, to be sure). The 75-foot, 30,000-gallon acrylic tank can be filled with salt or fresh water. Using a 1,700-horsepower fan and a 12-paddle wave generator, scientists can stir up an infinite variety of waves. “We can create the equivalent of a hurricane with winds over 200 miles per hour,” says oceanographer Brian Haus, SUSTAIN’s director. “That’s an off-the-charts Category 5.” STORM INTENSITY The SUSTAIN lab re-creates historic storms and…

A neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School, Beth Stevens knows how your brain is wired—quite literally. Because of her discovery that certain cells sculpt brain circuitry, making it more efficient, the Mac-Arthur Foundation awarded her a 2015 “genius grant.” She suspects those cells, called microglia, have other secret abilities—and she plans to uncover them too. I’VE BEEN INTERESTED in glial cells— which make up more than half the cells of the brain—since I was a research assistant at the National Institutes of Health. Of the three types of glial cells, microglia are my favorite. There is so little known about them, which is crazy because they make up 10 percent of our brains. For years, scientists essentially ignored microglia. One of the things they do is prune synapses. There are trillions…

SNOWBOARD Entrepreneur Jude Gomila was tired of having to push his snowboard across the flats by foot. To propel himself, he mounted a battery-powered jet engine to his board. First, he 3-D-printed six separate parts and assembled them into the mount. Then he attached a ducted fan engine. “It sounds like 100 vacuum cleaners going off at the same time,” Gomila says. “But outdoors, it’s actually not that bad.” By connecting a handheld controller to the motor, he can gradually increase his speed up to 15 miles per hour. RC ICE CAR When Mason Ferlic was a high school senior, his parents gave him a welder. He and his youngest brother, Evan, immediately began using the new tool to build valveless pulse jets. The Ferlics put the engines to good…

WARNING: Check your local laws and regulations before firing off a bottle bazooka— and don’t aim at innocent bystanders. I’ve always wanted my own bazooka, but my neighbors might not look upon that too favorably. So instead, I satisfied my craving with a bazookalike contraption capable of launching plastic bottles clear across my backyard. While it might not be quite on the level of a U.S. Army M72 rocket launcher, my beverage-bottle bazooka sure does shoot with authority. The original bazooka was developed to stop tanks during the early stages of World War II. In late 1940, the military had created a new type of grenade that focused its blast into a narrow point of energy capable of penetrating tank armor. But it had a relatively short range. So 2nd…

Q: My truck’s been broken into twice. I need help building a security system! —HOPEFUL TRUCKER A: You might consider building a circuit with our motion trigger and buzzer modules to make a noise when someone moves nearby. If you have an Internet connection in your truck, you can program our cloud module to send you a text message when the motion trigger goes off. You can also include an MP3 module to play the intruder a prerecorded sound or message. —ALLISON VANNATTA LITTLEBITS REPRESENTATIVE…

As a college freshman, David J. Peterson became fascinated with languages. He then began inventing his own words and grammar. “It was kind of like crocheting,” he says. “Except you can make money with crocheting.” Peterson finally hit payday in 2009, when he won a competition to design the Dothraki language for Game of Thrones. Soon, he was crafting fictional tongues for TV shows like Defiance and The 100. 4,000 Number of words in Dothraki , the language of Game of Thrones’ nomadic warrior tribe “Hash yer astoe ki Dothraki?”* How do you start inventing a language? I separate the process into three distinct branches: sounds, word meanings, and grammar. I usually start with the sound system, which affects grammar, and also with nouns. Then I base the language on…

In a profoundly urbanized vision of the future, science-fiction artist John Harris imagines a city navigated by foot, with skyscrapers connected by viaduct. Harris says he was inspired by Canadian cities that planned to enclose walkways between their buildings to avoid the winter weather. The dense cityscape is an enduring vision, he thinks, “because there’s a presumption that we’ll become such an overcrowded planet that there won’t be any room for greenery.” A committed ruralist who lives in the English countryside, Harris also explores the idea of adapting organic structures for human habitation in his work—such as his mushroom city, which we featured in our August 2015 issue.…

For nearly 144 years, Popular Science has arrived at your doorstep, in your mailbox, or on your newsstand just about the middle of each month. Starting with this issue, we’ll be doing things a bit differently. Instead of monthly delivery, Popular Science will begin offering bigger, richer magazines every other month. This is, obviously, a big change— like once every 144 years—and it bears some explanation. When making a product, two of the most important questions you can ask are, “How are people using my widget, and have I optimized for that case?” The engineers, entrepreneurs, and designers we cover ask these questions regularly. We thought it only right to ask them ourselves. What we found is that over the past few years, the way people use Popular Science has…

7 WAYS TO HACK YOUR NEXT HOUSE PARTY 2016 LG TV EG9600 $5,000 If you’ve ever set eyes on an organic lightemitting diode television, the benefits are obvious: They’re thinner, brighter, and have sharper contrasts than any other TVs on the market. LG’s newest version—the EG9600— is the pinnacle of this display technology: It offers a near-perfect picture quality because OLED pixels don’t leak light, meaning blacks are blacker and colors don’t wash out. In addition, the picture holds up even when viewed from the sharpest angle, so even latecomers to the party will have a view of the on-screen action.…

When NASA’s Sojourner rover landed on Mars in 1997, Cynthia Breazeal remembers thinking, “We can send robots to space, but we still don’t have ones that can ‘live’ beside us.” What’s up with that? She set out to find the answer, and in the process, pioneered the field of social robotics. This spring, Breazeal will begin shipping Jibo, the world’s first companion bot for the home, and the pinnacle of her 18-year endeavor. Breazeal recently spoke to Popular Science about how robots will become family members, guarding the home, and reading us bedtime stories. How did you get into robotics? The first time I really became aware of robots was when I saw Star Wars. I was 10 years old, and I was in the theater. Seeing R2-D2 and C-3PO—that…

1 TELESIN UNDERWATER GOPRO DOME PORT Underwater photography is cool. Telesin makes it cooler. This GoPro case uses a dome made of acrylic to create space between your lens and the water —allowing for a more visible waterline when simultaneously shooting below and above surface level. $85 2 AERELIGHT A1 Fluorescent desk lamps are harsh on the eyes. This one uses organic light emitting diodes (OLED) to provide a warm glow. The lamp can be turned on and off with a tap anywhere on its body and offers three brightness levels. Qi inductive charging built into the base lets you easily charge some phones. $300 3 RIF6 CUBE MOBILE PROJECTOR Cube isn’t much bigger than a smartphone. But the pocket projector produces a big picture. Its battery recharges over micro-USB,…

When astronaut Mark Kelly says, “I’ve spent a lot of time on Earth,” it’s relative. He’s been to the International Space Station four times for short missions. His twin brother, Scott, is about to wrap up a full year in space, the longest stint of any U.S. astronaut. To understand how life in space affects humans, scientists are investigating how the twins’ bodies now differ—information that might influence the future of longterm space exploration. I ALWAYS THOUGHT scientists needed a large sample size. It turns out when you don’t have that opportunity, a small sample can still lead to really useful science. In our case, it’s just one sample: Scott as subject, me as control. I’ve spent only 50-something days in space. When Scott gets back in March, I think…

After stints running Google Books and heading up the team tasked with giving Mars rovers autonomy, James Crawford launched Orbital Insight—a startup that applies artificial intelligence and data analysis to satellite imagery. MOST PEOPLE KNOW that humans can’t see really small things. That’s why we invented the microscope. On the flip side, humans also struggle to see really big things. If you want to view the whole Earth, for example, you have to look from space and you lose a lot of detail. Every pixel your eye sees is 10,000 square miles. Using artificial intelligence and cloud computing, we can simultaneously see the whole Earth and see the detail. We can look at trillions of features within millions of satellite images all at once. We call this a macroscope. Our…

What is it? In 2008, a programmer issued a white paper in which he argued that we need an Internet currency not subject to the fees and permissions of third-party intermediaries. So he came up with the digital equivalent of cash online, a system that lets participants send value to anyone else with a Bitcoin address the same way they might send an email. “Like the Internet flattened global speech, Bitcoin can flatten global money,” says computer scientist Nick Szabo, who is suspected as Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. How do you make it? That’s the weird thing about Bitcoin—it’s still being created. Every 10 minutes, new Bitcoin enter the system. “Miners” donate spare or dedicated processing power to help validate transactions around the globe. Bitcoin come as rewards for…

In 2012, DARPA announced the most ambitious robotics competition in history. To kick-start the development of robotic first responders— machines capable of deploying to natural or man-made disasters—the Pentagon’s research agency proposed a series of challenges. Robots would be tasked with navigating and interacting with a mock disaster site. They would open doors, traverse rubble, climb stairs, and turn valves. At times, they would have to act with almost complete autonomy in order to simulate communications breakdowns in a real-life crisis. Teams from around the world entered the two-year competition. The Pentagon gave some of them multimillion-dollar robots to program, while others received funding to develop their own machines. But despite the generous alotted time and resources, the DARPA Robotics Competition (DRC) would be extremely difficult. Legged robots, by far…

Ditch your Post-it notes for reminders built right into a mirror. Software engineer Hannah Mittelstaedt programmed an old Android tablet to show time, weather, and other information in bright letters on a dark background. Place the device behind a two-way mirror, and only the text will shine through. “Something about brushing your teeth in front of it makes it feel more like the future,” she says. Use her opensource program to make your own smart mirror, or modify it to do more—Mittelstaedt’s can analyze her face to detect her mood. TIME 2 hours COST $30 DIFFICULTY Use an old Android device as the brains for a smart mirror. MATERIALS • Android smartphone or tablet • Acrylic two-way mirror • Pencil • Scissors • Black construction paper • Glue stick…

This past July, Steele Davis walked onto Sacramento’s Bonney Field and prepared to steer a drone around a flag-marked track. First he donned a pair of goggles. Then he launched his H-shaped quadcopter and sent it into his signature trick, an inverted yaw spin. “You flip upside down and then rotate,” says Davis, a 25-year-old from Atlanta. “So you’re inverted, but you’re being forced toward the ground because the props are still spinning.” Davis is one of the pioneers in the sport of first-person-view drone racing. Pilots competing in the races wear goggles that give them a drone’s-eye aerial view, streamed from cameras on their machines. The effect is as if they had been miniaturized and placed in tiny drone cockpits. The sport began as casual races among friends. French…

JULY 1950 Sixty-six years ago, World War II was in the rearview mirror, and the economy was doing well. But the rise of the auto industry brought with it a new concern: traffic deaths. Safety engineers referred to the passenger seat as the “death seat”—a metaphor we took even further. “Death never takes a holiday,” we wrote. “He rides in every car, every day, with his bony finger on the right front seat.” Fortunately, we also had a positive spin: technologies being developed to protect car passengers, including “the Thin Man”—an early 2-D version of the test dummy— and seat belts, which did not automatically come in cars at the time. Um, excuse me. Winter inevitably means one thing to commuters: more people cramming onto trains and buses to travel…

1 MARANTZ AV8802A AND MM8077 $4,000 PREAMP $2,400 AMPLIFIER This combination Marantz preamp and amplifier can drive up to 150 watts to seven speakers at a time. It’s among the first systems to process ultra-high-definition 4K through HDMI. It also supports Dolby Atmos—theater-quality audio that places you in the middle of a three-dimensional soundscape. You can also stream your favorite Pandora, Spotify, and SiriusXM satellite radio channels directly to the units. 2 B&W 803 D3 SPEAKERS $17,000 Bowers & Wilkins spent eight years perfecting the 803 D3 Diamond series design, and it paid off. The 803’s birch casing is specially configured to minimize unwanted vibration and deliver high-fidelity audio. They might appear bulky at 4 feet tall and almost 2 feet deep, but each 144-pound speaker packs a mean punch.…

Time’s up, real world. The long-predicted virtualreality boom has finally arrived. Now anyone with some cardboard and a few lenses can turn an iPhone into a passable VR headset. By 2020, an estimated 38 million more-sophisticated devices—such as the Oculus Rift, which hits shelves this year—will be out in the wild. Over the past five decades, VR has advanced from its science-fiction roots to a future that, well, sounds pretty sci-fitoo.…

ON A DUSTY TARMAC, about 20 miles from downtown Phoenix, Capt. Joseph Stenger stands in 109-degree heat, barely sweating. A 32-year-old fighter pilot with the slicked-back hair, steady eyes, and ropey forearms you see on movie posters, he is admiring an equally impressive piece of flying machinery: the F-35 Lightning II fighter. In his green flight suit, and standing a little over 6 feet tall, Stenger is nearly face to snout with this menacing jet. It’s his job to figure out what it can do in combat, and to teach that to hundreds of other fighter pilots. The F-35 started arriving here at Luke Air Force Base this past winter. It is the most sophisticated fighter ever built. It is stealth, so it can appear the size of a golf…

Best known as the maligned twins in the Facebook origin story, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are hoping to gain attention for being involved in another possible Internet giant: Bitcoin. They adopted it early, back in 2012, when cryptocurrency was still a fringe concept. In October, they got approval from financial regulators to launch their own U.S.-based exchange: Gemini. Here’s why they have bet that Bitcoin will go big. T: We are fascinated with Bitcoin because it is the first iteration of money that’s actually built for the Internet, by the same type of engineers who built the Internet itself. C: It sends payments over protocols, the same way we send data and voice today. T: With just a cellphone and a Bitcoin address, you now have a bank account. You…

Today, more and more devices come with a Web connection. Jamie Bailey created the website Initial State to store and visualize the incredible amount of data these machines can produce. Makers can use the site for simple projects, like graphing the daily change in temperature, or more-complex ones. For example, Bailey’s smart kitchen trash can tells the site how full it’s getting, and his fridge conveys how many beverages it holds (so he always knows when his nephew steals a beer). “When you start capturing all this data, you realize how alive your house or your apartment really is,” he says. DIYers can find tutorials for projects like these on the site—or dream up their own data-based ideas.…