Innholdsfortegnelse for July - August 2016 i Popular Science

For our “Virtualandia” feature, the staff donned VR goggles and posed for photographer Peter Rad. What on earth were we thinking? Chris Mueller Acting Design Director “ I see the future. It’s a sidewalk in my face.” Elizabeth Catalano OK, so walking and Minecrafting isn’t the best idea.” Molly Battles Public Relations Manager “ I wonder if this can delete the Kardashians.” Grennen Milliken Editorial Assistant “ How creepy could I possibly look in this?” Thomas Payne Photo Director “ When do I tell my dog that I chose the red pill?” Jill Shomer Managing Editor “ Did I leave the oven on?” Sophie Bushwick Senior Editor “ Don’t trip, don’t trip, don’t trip, don’t...” Xavier Harding Technology Editor * Internally screaming* Hilary Langlois “ Umm... that upcoming curb isn’t…

Three miles from Apple’s Cupertino, California, headquarters, the tech giant is building something as massive as its own global reach: a new campus dubbed “the Spaceship.” With a nearly 1-mile circumference, the campus will be wider than the Pentagon when completed later this year and will house 13,000 employees—including design grandmaster Jony Ive, who helped sculpt the iPhone, and CEO Tim Cook, who helps keep profits in the billions-with-a-B territory. Apple’s Campus 2 (estimated cost: $5 billion) will run entirely on clean energy, powered mostly by solar. But what’s really grabbed our attention are the 3,000 panels of curved glass—the largest pieces of structural glass ever made—that will encase Apple’s mothership. That and the hollow concrete that lets this building breathe. We asked nicely, so Apple gave us an exclusive…

STARRING SIMON PEGG AS SCOTTY, CHIEF ENGINEER OF THE ENTERPRISE PLUS Rockets That Foil Comets, Facial Transplants, a Russian Billionaire’s Space Bots, Artificial Wombs, AND EVEN MORE... THIS SUMMER, THE CREW of the Enterprise finds themselves in yet another interstellar pickle. Who will hit the warp drive on the funny? Our cover lad, Simon Pegg, of course. The Englandborn actor returns as chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in this year’s franchise reboot, Star Trek Beyond. And it happens to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Gene Roddenberry’s iconic (and campy) TV show. Yeah, Pegg has heard all the “Beam me up, Scotty” catcalls he can take. Even his mother won’t stop. Still, the man is a comedian. He’s also (per his Twitter bio) a zombie killer, supercop, alien buster, diesel…

NATHAN ADRIAN THREE GOLD MEDALS The Tech Video software, developed by BMW, picks up LEDs on the swimmer's body, tracking his every move down to the angle of his toes, and renders it in 2-D images. How It Helps The images let the athlete study his form in minute detail and perfect even the tiniest inconsistencies, which can shave crucial seconds off his lap time. SWIMMING HIGH-SPEED MOTION CAPTURE In swimming, form is just as crucial as force. Getting the smallest detail—even the angle of your ankle—just right is an obsession for the elite because it can mean the difference between podium and punching water. To help the pros, video analysis is now an indispensable training tool. “Before, we literally just used the coach’s eyeball,” to fix alignment, strokes, and…

Uninvited guests at your summer cookout can be real pests. You can get rid of your annoying insect visitors with a DIY bug trap. But bear in mind that not all the traps you find on the Internet work. A sonic mosquito repellent is one failure. “There is no scientific basis for bug-repellent traps that claim to use a high-pitched frequency to drive away pests,” says Roxanne Connelly, an entomologist at the University of Florida. Traps claiming to attract bugs with yeast are equally dubious. Connelly and Ty Ashcraft, an exterminator at Holistic Pet Solutions in Charlotte, North Carolina, offer three traps that actually get the job done, and explain why they work. 1 STINK BUGS Omnipresent stink bugs, with their pungent corianderlike odor (used to defend against predators), can…

Gary Hug has worked as a food scientist and a machinist, but his passion is amateur astronomy. Gary Hug received his first telescope at Christmas when he was 12. Though he became a machinist rather than an astronomer, the stars have always fascinated him. He used to drive 25 miles to peer through the 27-inch telescope at the Farpoint Observatory outside Topeka, Kansas, for eight hours at a time. Then, nearly 10 years ago, he tired of the commute and decided to build his own spyglass. Hug’s “Sandlot Observatory” is a wood-frame shed in his backyard that houses a 7-foot-long 1,500-pound telescope. Hug built everything himself, except the 22-inch mirror and the motors that move the scope. A camera feeds views of the cosmos into his “Observatory Control Center and…

Have a burning question? Email it to askanything@popsci.com or tweet it to @PopSci #AskAnything. Q DO SKUNKS HATE THE SMELL OF THEIR OWN SPRAY? Short answer Not as much as humans do. A: While no one has polled skunks on the topic, experts have made some keen observations… from a distance. “When a skunk gets sprayed in the face, it will react much like a dog does,” says Jerry Dragoo, a biology professor at the University of New Mexico, who heads up what he calls the Dragoo Institute for the Betterment of Skunks and Skunk Reputations. “It will rub its face along the ground, trying to wipe it off. I suspect the skunk is coping with the burning sensation of high-concentration liquid in its eyes and the mucous membranes of…

Rescue workers trying to reach a fallen climber in a 100-foot crevasse face perilous conditions. Elios, a rescue drone made by the Swiss flying-robotics company Flyability, tries to minimize these threats. Roughly a 15-inch sphere, Elios draws inspiration from houseflies, which bounce off a surface and keep flying; it is equipped with a freely rotating carbon-fiber exoskeleton that spins on a separate axis from the drone avionics inside it. When Elios hits a wall, the cage continues spinning and absorbs the energy of the collision, while the propellers inside keep spinning and the HD camera and lighting system remain stabilized. It can navigate such extreme environments as collapsed buildings, chemical spill sites, and even glaciers—just about any “break in case of emergency” scenarios. 20 the amount of time, in minutes,…

123,355 Number of ER injuries linked to high heels from 2002-2012 As SpaceX’s former director of recruiting, Dolly Singh had a problem: “My high heels f***ing sucked.” She would walk up to 4 miles a day in the unforgiving shoes, and couldn’t find a fashionable alternative. “There’s been no innovation within the high-heel market in almost a century,” says Singh. She founded Thesis Couture— staffing it with a rocket scientist, an astronaut, and a mechanical engineer—and set out to design a stiletto that was not only comfortable, but would also better absorb shock, offer extra arch support, and distribute body weight more evenly across the foot. “In a standard pair of heels, 80 percent of your weight is on the balls of your feet. Our goal is to shift that…

Really big space rocks (a mile or wider across) crash into Earth about once every 500,000 years. That’s rare, but we might not spot the next one until it’s too late for existing technology to stop it—especially if it’s a comet. Because comets can travel twice as fast as an asteroid, we’d need something 20 times more powerful than anything in our arsenal to fend it off. What’s humanity to do? One scientist has an answer: fusion rockets. Glen Wurden, a plasma physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory by day and an amateur astronomer by night, has conceived a comet-buster that would work like this: Harnessing the tremendous energy of fusion, the process in which two atomic nuclei collide to form a new nucleus, could propel a rocket to more…

THE FIRST 13 days following human conception have mostly remained a mystery to science. It is all but impossible to observe: Since pregnancy hormones are too low to register a positive test, it’s hard to know if a woman is pregnant, and without looking into the womb, we can’t watch fertilized eggs grow. We broadly understand the process—the embryo (a mass of cells known as a blastocyst) sheds its outer layer and implants in the uterine lining. In May, though, researchers from Rockefeller University were the first to watch—and raise— human embryos in the laboratory for 13 days (the maximum ethically allowable amount). The Rockefeller researchers grew one in a lab by giving it insulin and other nutrients—no lining necessary. This demonstrated an embryo itself contains the genetic instruction manual…

A full third of patients never follow through with their doctors’ requests to get blood drawn for important tests. What if, instead of schlepping to the lab, the lab came to you? That’s the idea behind Richmond, Virginia-based Iggbo, a startup that aims to make drawing blood for medical tests as easy as ordering car service. Like an “Uber for blood,” Iggbo lets doctors order blood draws at the touch of a smartphone app. A patient then schedules a convenient at-home appointment online, and a phlebotomist gets dispatched. With Iggbo, compliance rates skyrocket to 98.2 percent. That means millions could receive better long-term care. But it also means something big for the future of healthcare: Thousands of samples could be used to gain insights into the identification and treatment of…

Traffic jams and overcrowded highways don’t fit with any Utopian vision of the future. So Derrick Xiong, cofounder of Chinabased consumer and commercial drone company EHang, had an insight: “The only way out is the sky.” Xiong’s four-armed, single-passenger EHang 184 is the world’s first drone capable of transporting humans. It has many of the comforts of a commercial plane, such as air conditioning and lighting, but with the autonomy of a drone. Passengers use a Microsoft Surface tablet to regulate the amenities, while a command center remotely monitors flights and handles the logistics of air-traffic control. While it isn’t meant to be a replacement for other methods of air travel, it is intended to relieve the stress on the U.S.’s increasingly problematic transportation infrastructure—a system that could cost as…

I’M STANDING INSIDE a moving subway car. It’s dimly lit, but I can make out the layer of grime on the doors and windows. A man’s disembodied voice tells me to pick up a silver handgun sitting on a seat to my right. “You better be ready to shoot,” he says. My stomach tightens as the station platform comes into view. The doors open. I pick up the gun and start firing. Torsos explode. Strangers run at me. I squeeze rounds. More blood. When I run out of bullets, I grab a rifle. Shadows hit the platform. Then, from out of nowhere, rockets fly my way. Overwhelmed—and a little nauseous—I throw my hands in front of my face, terrified, and tear off my virtual-reality goggles. For five minutes, I’ve been…

Sitting at a desk day after day compresses your spine, degenerates your muscles, and generally wreaks havoc on your health. But the standing desk, a popular solution, makes your feet ache. The fix: Walk while you work, by turning a bass-drum carrier into a wearable desk. This easy-to-make workstation gets you exercising, and is perfect for mobile computing jobs such as live blogging, managing inventory, and data collection. Walk this way! TIME 1 hour COST $80 DIFFICULTY TOOLS+MATERIALS • Screwdriver • T-bar bass-drum carrier • 2 5/16-18-by-1-inch carriage bolts with matching wing nuts, flat washers, and lock washers • 4 ¼-20 wing nuts with matching flat and lock washers • Bench vise • Rubber mallet • Drill and bits • Wooden cutting board, 1 inch larger than laptop footprint…

The prop team outfitted each proton pack with a synchrotron (a ring-shaped particle accelerator), cryogen tanks, and a hydrogen plasma source. Corwin also added a magnetic system to easily reholster the wands. If you need to bust a ghost, who you gonna call? A physicist, naturally. For this summer’s reboot of the 1984 comedy Ghostbusters, director Paul Feig asked particle physicist James Maxwell to help design proton packs—the iconic gear that the team uses to splatter specters. Maxwell, who has worked at MIT and is now at the Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Virginia, already had futuristic-looking equipment to draw from, including a helium-3 polarizing apparatus that produces high-pressure vapor. “I wanted to add real-life physics to a fantastical device,” he says. “I had to consider, ‘If a proton pack…

Few of us face death by choice, and we’ve become comfortable relying on firefighters, cops, and others to do the death-facing for us. That, argues Soon-Min Hong, has bred in us a cavalier attitude toward these vocations. The collective lack of understanding inspired Hong, a student architect at London’s Royal College of Art, to design the Risk Theme Park, a conceptual high-rise that lets us tap into our inner Bruce Willis. Firefighters guide groups of 20 through nine death-defying disaster scenarios. The goal of the exercise, which is meant to be located in Daegu, South Korea, is to “teach people to value and appreciate through experience,” and the park offers visitors both perspective and adrenaline spikes. Safely, of course. RISK THEME PARK Height: 262 feet Death-defying scenes: 9 Proposed site:…

On a family vacation to the California Space Center in Los Angeles a few years ago, medicinal chemist Clay Wang had a disturbing thought: As we explore space, and travel farther and farther away from Earth, a lot could go wrong. Systems could fail. Hardware could break down. And what about the crew? What happens if they get sick and run out of medication a year or so into a three-year trip to Mars? Drugs have an expiration date, and both radiation and the vibrations of space travel might degrade them more quickly. Wang thinks future Mars explorers might rely on a revolutionary solution: growing their own medicine en route. It’s a tactic that has been theorized but never tested in space. Wang, conveniently, runs a lab at the University…

Hosting the Olympics can put serious strain on a country’s infrastructure and finances. In preparation for the 2016 games, Rio de Janeiro has dealt with issues ranging from sewage-filled lakes to an uncompleted subway line. In Sochi in 2014, hotels went unfinished after the Winter Olympics began— the whole affair cost Russia a record $51 billion. But Japan, home of the 2020 games, wants to make the event good for their country and society. The nation has done it before. To host the 1964 Olympics, Japan launched the Tokaido Shinkansen bullet train, which revolutionized national transportation. Drawing on the Japanese sustainability concept of mottainai (“don’t waste”), Tokyo will use robot cars, holographic displays, and driverless taxis to enhance society, which should make the 2020 games a global winner. HYDROGENPOWERED VILLAGE…

TESTED UNDER PRESSURE Orion is the first manned spacecraft NASA has built in a generation. Its aim is to take humans farther than they’ve ever gone, beginning a new era of deep-space exploration. This Orion capsule at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will be part of the first mission in 2018. To ensure it’s airtight, engineers will pump in more air than it’s meant to handle, checking for weak points in its structural integrity that could endanger a crew. SOLAR PANEL CHOREOGRAPHY An X-shaped array of four 24-foot solar panels will generate 11 kilowatts of energy to power Orion’s computers, life support, and other onboard equipment. Folded during blastoff, they will unfurl like accordions in space. Here, at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Sandusky, Ohio, engineers test mock versions of…

In 2010, Andy Cavatorta was a master’s student at the MIT Media Lab when Björk visited. The Icelandic musician was seeking a collaborator to make music using the forces of nature. Cavatorta was eager to help: For years, the software engineer spent his evenings tinkering with noisemaking robotic sculptures. Together, he and Björk dreamed up “gravity harps,” enormous pendulums 20 feet high that played notes by swinging columns of strings past stationary picks. Björk used them on her 2011 album Biophilia and for a subsequent tour. More commissions followed, allowing Cavatorta to charge as much as $250,000 per project. Stella Artois hired him to build an entire orchestra incorporating its signature chalice, and most recently, Danish ensemble Between Music ordered instruments for an underwater concert. Cavatorta talked to Popular Science…

Living in the future—as we do—pens and 3-D printers are no longer separate items. You can now create plastic masterpieces on the go with 3-D-printing pens. Simply place the pen on a surface, draw a line up into the air, and then start adding details to this anchor. The pens are still new. 3Doodler, which launched its $2 million Kickstarter campaign in 2013, was the first. Now there are several upstarts to choose from, so we tested three popular models. 1 3DOODLER START 3Doodler sells two models: the flagship 3Doodler 2.0 and, for novices like us, the Start. The latter practically screams “user-friendly” with its single button and chunky, graspable body. Insert plastic filament into the hole at the top, press the orange button, and wait about 60 seconds for…

Two years ago, industrial designer Clement Zheng attended a workshop on soft electronics. He was learning how to put blinking LEDs into the eyes of a stuffed animal when a light went on in his own head: Why not use soft electronics to build a functioning circuit board on a T-shirt? So Zheng and fellow designer Manasvi Lalwani created Shirt Circuit—an educational electronics tool kit that lets you do just that. HOW IT’S MADE Zheng and Lalwani sewed a soft grid of felt and conductive thread onto a plain T-shirt. At each intersection on the grid, they added small metal snapfits where interchangeable circuit components could attach. To create each component, they embedded a snap and an electronic piece—such as a battery or an LED—in brightly colored felt. An electrical…