Sommaire pour February 2015 de Popular Science

ALIENS IN OUR ARCHIVES MARCH 1967 Conspiracy theorists tout a government plot to conceal the truth about flying saucers. Popular Science finds the evidence secondhand and slim. JUNE 1994 Astronautics engineer Robert Zubrin proposes that radiation emitted by interstellar spacecraft could be the key to finding aliens as they zip by. JUNE 1997 Fifty years after a UFO supposedly crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico, the city turns the infamous event into a draw for global tourism. JANUARY 2007 The French beam a TV show called Cosmic Connexion toward a star system 45 light-years away. The target audience? Aliens, of course. A 3-D–PRINTED COMET XYZprinting was kind enough to let us borrow a da Vinci 1.0 AiO 3-D printer and scanner, and we took it for a spin. We promptly printed…

“PEOPLE WANT CONVENIENCE AND HIGH-END CONTROLS. THE INSPIRE 1 HAS BOTH RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX.” The use of recreational drones has exploded in the past few years—and so has the use of drones in Hollywood (cue the chase scenes in Skyfall). But amateur filmmakers still face a hurdle: Many consumer-grade drones don’t come with a camera, and if they do, the equipment isn’t very good. If you’re just filming around the neighborhood, chances are you don’t need the same setup as the one used to make a James Bond movie—but with the new DJI Inspire 1, you can get awfully close. The Inspire 1 is the first consumergrade drone that comes ready to shoot 4K video. Largely derived from the Phantom 2, its best of class predecessor, the Inspire…

“HACKING IS JUST A LEARNING STYLE OR METHODOLOGY. RATHER THAN RELYING ON THE INSTRUCTIONS, WE’LL TRY EVERYTHING.” Popular Science: You’ve worked on spaceships with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, 3-D printers at Makerbot, and now at IV, you’re working on a vaccine storage device. What’s the common thread? Pablos Holman: Everything I’ve done in my career has been about taking computers and putting them to use in places they weren’t used before. In my mind, I’ve always had a grand vision of that. I’ve always thought it was important to use computers to solve big problems. PS: What exactly do you mean? PH: Pretty simply, more people should be focused on finding new applications for computers. Adding a computer to something is the easiest way to give it features and make…

PROBLEM If you live in or near a city, it’s hard to imagine not finding a cell signal. Telecommunication companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on cell towers and bulky base stations. The trouble is, they’ll only install them in places where the network will get ample use. Sparsely populated areas usually don’t qualify, and that means more than an estimated one billion people worldwide lack access to reliable phone and Internet service. SOLUTION Kurtis Heimerl enables entrepreneurs to build their own wireless net works. A postdoctoral student at the University of California at Berkeley, Heimerl packed a Linux computer, a 900 MHz power amplifier, and a 2G cellular-network antenna into a microwave-size box called Endaga CCN1. It costs a relatively modest sum of $6,000 and is simple to…

What was a niche prototyping tool 25 years ago is fast becoming a globally competitive manufacturing method. Today’s 3-D–printing industry is worth well over $2 billion, and experts estimate it’ll climb to five times that by 2021. A staggering variety of items now populate the printed landscape: Many are bizarre oneoff experiments, but some are poised to reshape the world we live in, one layer at a time. INKS OF THE FUTURE METAL Advanced lasers that fuse metallic powders enable printers to make parts more durable than cast metal and comparable in strength to forged. GE now plans to 3-D print tens of thousands of fuel nozzles for its new, lower-emission jet engines. HUMAN CELLS Scientists can now print with living human stem cells. They can also use printing to…

Aspiring space tourists placed high hopes on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2), many of whom plunked down upwards of $200,000 for a future ticket into suborbit. But on October 31st, the rocketpropelled vehicle broke apart during a test flight above the Mojave Desert. One pilot parachuted to safety; the other didn’t survive. As footage of the wreckage and speculation about the cause flooded the news, many wondered if we were witnessing not just the smoking remains of a single experimental vessel, but of the nascent space tourism industry as well. At this point, it’s unclear how the crash might affect Virgin Galactic (VG)—already behind schedule and over budget—but it will almost assuredly alter how we approach sending civilians to the thermosphere. Upstart space-tech firms like VG, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and XCOR…

1 TEST FOR METABOLIC ACTIVITY The first serious attempt to find alien life took place in 1976, when the twin Viking probes sought out organisms by mixing Martian soil with nutrients and radioactive carbon. The results were negative (you probably knew that), but clouded by the complex soil chemistry. 2 FOLLOW THE WATER NASA’s current Mars research, led by the $2.5 billion Curiosity rover, focuses on learning whether the planet once had a warm, wet environment. Studies of Gale Crater look encouraging; unfortunately, these efforts show only that Mars could have sustained life, not that it actually did. 3 SCAN FOR ORGANICS Taking lessons from Viking and Curiosity, NASA’s upcoming Mars2020 rover will include two instruments that scan the environment for signs of organic compounds. This technique can cover a…

FISH GUTTER Crisp sea air isn’t a match for the stink of stomach juices and half-digested squid, but marine biologist Michelle Staudinger doesn’t mind. When boats come in from fishing tournaments up and down the East Coast, she’s waiting on the docks, asking anglers to let her clean their catch for free in exchange for the stomach contents. On any given weekend, she says, “I’m usually elbow-deep into one or another of the East Coast’s pelagic fishes. I get a lot of compliments on how fast I can gut a tuna.” “I GET A LOT OF COMPLIMENTS ON HOW FAST I CAN GUT A TUNA.” At University of Massachusetts Amherst, Staudinger surveys coastal fish and marine mammals to evaluate the predator-prey relationship over time. Besides relying on fishermen to deliver…

STATS Time 30 minutes Cost $45 Difficulty WARNING: This project is not intended for medical use. If your heart skips a beat, go see your doctor!For help building the heart monitor, check out the wiring diagram atpopsci.com/heartonasleeve. This Valentine’s Day, scrap the overrated roses and chocolate for a more personal token of love. By combining a cardiac monitor with LEDs, you can flash a symbol of affection with each heartbeat. To contract the heart muscle and pump blood, waves of electricity spread through the organ. Two electrodes on the chest, one on either side of the heart, can pick up these electrical impulses. (A third—often placed on the right leg—increases accuracy.) Heart rate monitors typically feed this data to a screen that shows the signal like an EKG. Instead, you…

When Micah Toll moved to Tel Aviv after college, the electric bike enthusiast got a job repairing his favorite form of transportation—in the process, learning all the ways e-bikes break. Now he uses that knowledge to build better models, electrifying regular bicycles at a fraction of a new one’s price. Why did you start powering bikes with electricity? I went to college in Pittsburgh, which is very hilly, and I needed a good way to get around. I tried a gas motor– powered bike, but it was dirty and noisy. An electric motor was better: quieter and without the smell. Will e-bikes become more popular? Definitely. Commuters in Tel Aviv have really embraced e-bikes as an alternative form of transportation, an option for getting out of cars. People in the…

WhenPopular Science published its November 1925 cover story, New York City was just beginning to develop its iconic skyline. For the workers who built the steel behemoths, the job was “no pleasure jaunt, but a thrilling, soul-trying man’s calling, crammed to the brim with adventure.” According to one veteran ironworker at the time, slick rain, a strong gust of wind, or an errant loose screw could spell death for the unlucky. We’re grateful the crews persevered: The Art Deco landmark building we work in was built in 1927. Since then, the difficult jobs in science and engineering have arguably gotten safer, but they are no less grueling—and no less important. To learn more about them, turn to page 44. 10 Height, in stories, of Chicago’s Home Insurance Building. Completed in…

For scientists, few questions inspire as heated a debate as, What is life? You’d think we’d have that one down by now. But it turns out that defining life is really difficult. Go too narrow and it’s arbitrary, like you’re drawing a line in the sand. Go too broad and it’s meaningless, like there’s no line at all. A lot of scientists say they would prefer to leave the business of a precise defi nition up to philosophers. scientists say they would prefer to leave the business of a precise defi nition up to philosophers. Instead, researchers tend to focus on a few characteristics indicative of life, namely metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction. Among those, metabolism is often viewed as the fi rst among equals. After all, without…

LINDSEY KRATOCHWILL 1 MOLESKINE SMART NOTEBOOK Moleskine and Adobe made a Creative Cloud-connected notebook that syncs digital and hand-drawn art. Scrawl your masterpiece on the page, and capture it with an app that renders it into vectors. $33 2 PAWSCOUT PET FINDER Pet tags can only help reunite you with your missing pet if someone takes the time to read them. Pawscout Pet Finder tags actively help fi nd wayward pets with an embedded Bluetooth antenna. The tag sends a smartphone alert if Fido wanders too far— and helps home in on his location when he runs away. $30 3 QUIRKY OUTLINK When paired with a Quirky Wink hub, this smart outlet lets users monitor the electricity fl owing to devices, turn the outlet on or off , and program…

SCALE: For artificial intelligence— just as with people—knowing the answer to a question (the “book smart” end of our spectrum) is only half the equation; a little bit of contextual awareness (or “street smarts”) goes a long way. APPLE SIRI By accessing information on an iPhone, in apps, and online (think Wikipedia), Siri handles simple tasks and can answer straightforward questions. It can look up the weather, direct you to a meeting—or even help settle a bar bet. MICROSOFT CORTANA Prior questions (and answers) help this Windows Phone assistant establish context. It also learns the nuances of a user’s speech. For instance, if you refer to your home as a “pad,” Cortana will learn to identify your intended meaning. GOOGLE’S VOICE SEARCH Google’s voice search can answer followup questions, and…

A month after snapping this selfie with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the Rosetta spacecraft achieved a historic first: Its Philae lander touched down on the comet’s surface. Philae confirmed the presence of organic molecules— possible building blocks of life—before its sun-starved batteries died. Rosetta will continue to orbit 67P as it hurtles toward our home star, providing an unprecedented look into comet anatomy as dust and frozen gas heat up, escape the nucleus, and stream into space.…

In the quest to get drivers to swap their gas-guzzlers for electric vehicles (EV), the greatest barrier is not, surprisingly, the cost. It’s range anxiety: the fear that a batterypowered EV might go kaput mid-trip. Some of that skittishness stems from a lack of clarity into how EVs work. But manufacturers are to blame too. Existing range-estimation systems are, actually, somewhat unreliable, since they depend on limited data sets. To remedy the problem, engineers at North Carolina State University developed an algorithm that’s up to 20 percent more accurate at calculating range. It uses driving habits, weather, terrain, and the battery’s age and condition. Now they’re hoping car companies come knocking: The more drivers know, the more alluring EVs will seem. “FEW BUYERS WANT A FIRST-GENERATION ANYTHING, BUT DRIVERS ARE…

Kenneth Nealson is looking awfully sane for a man who’s basically just told me that he has a colony of aliens incubating in his laboratory. We’re huddled in his modest office at the University of Southern California (USC), on the fifth floor of Stauffer Hall. Nealson is wearing a rumpled shortsleeve shirt, a pair of old suede loafers, white socks—your standard relaxed academic attire—and leaning back comfortably in his chair. An encouraging collection of academic awards hangs on one wall. Propped behind him is a wellworn guitar, which he sometimes breaks out to accompany his wife’s singing. And across the hall is the explanation for his quiet confidence: beakers and bottles full of bacteria that are busily breaking the long-accepted rules of biology. Life, Nealson is explaining, all comes down…

Dead Sea Bacteria The Dead Sea is so saline that it’s nearly devoid of life—but not completely. Researchers found microbial mats living near the lake’s freshwater vents. Unlike other salt-loving organisms, they live in a constant state of flux between salty and freshwater. “Now we understand there could be organisms not restricted to a single extreme environment,” says Danny Ionescu, a marine microbiologist for the Leibniz Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Germany. Blobfish The blobfish is best known for being voted “the world’s ugliest animal” by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, but its gelatinous form is notable for another reason: It enables the fish to inhabit waters thousands of feet deep off the coast of Australia, where pressure is several dozen times higher than at sea level.…

STORY AND CHARTS BY Katie PeekILLUSTRATION BY Trevor Johnston After it was narrowly defeated in the Senate last November, the proposal to build Keystone XL will likely come before Congress again early in the 2015 session. The 1,200-mile, 36-inch-wide steel pipeline would transport both heavy oil and bitumen—low-grade crudes that need extra refi ning before they can be made into products such as gasoline— from Alberta’s oil sands to refi neries on the Gulf Coast. The pipeline has become a fl ash point, both for environmentalists and landowners along the proposed route, who have lobbied hard to stop it, and oil companies who have lobbied equally hard to push it through. With each side of the debate so entrenched in its own rhetoric, fact seems inextricable from fi ction. But…

WARNING: Extreme body mods can have serious side effects. Until we engineer new bodies, take care of the one you’ve got ONE SMELL BETTER Humans don’t stink—it’s the bacteria eating our sweat and stomach contents that cause body odor. Avoiding meat and staying hydrated can tamp down some malodorous strains. But a more drastic measure is in the works. Personalized Probiotics is working with Cambrian Genomics to develop genetically modified bacteria that colonize the gut. Following the orders of specialized genes, the bacteria would produce pleasant-smelling compounds to mask the reek of their brethren. “All life is code,” says Austen Heinz, CEO of Cambrian Genomics. “Everything is editable.” 2 Maximum current, in milliamps, that transcranial direct stimulation usually applies to the brain TWO SEE BETTER Jeffrey Tibbetts and a group…

On the ground floor of Pioneer Works Center for Arts and Innovation in Brooklyn, New York, a bearded and flanneled trio played gloomy arrhythmic music one Wednesday night. Upstairs, director of education David Sheinkopf taught a class on the science of sound, including how to build a core technology behind the performance below: the electronic speaker. Popular Science sat in to learn about harnessing sound with a little DIY. THE LESSON PLAN In a speaker, an audio signal sends current through a coil, creating a magnetic field that yanks on a second magnet. This vibrates a diaphragm, sending sound waves through the air. Students build stripped-down speakers from magnet wire, which coils up to form the electromagnet; a Post-It note, which acts as the diaphragm; and a rare-earth magnet taped…

DIFFERENT BUILDING BLOCKS Q: “How Habitable Is That Exoplanet?” [December 2014] was interesting, but I am curious why it seems to assume that extraterrestrial life must be similar to ours. Even on Earth there is biologically surprising life. Russ Brown, Savannah, Ga. A: Astronomers recognize that life could come in forms unlike ours, so they’ve expanded the definition of habitable to include planets very uninviting to humans (no coffee!). We describe some that might harbor microbes that eat and breathe rock in “Have We Found Alien Life?” (page 32). HAVE A COMMENT? Write to us at letters@popsci.com or to Popular Science 2 Park Ave. 9th floor NYC 10016 TWEET OUT OF CONTEXT Unless they’re really confident that it won’t get loose, a liquid metal ball floating in a space station…

2003 The year the first commercial gesture-control device, a PlayStation 2 accessory called the EyeToy, was released. In 2010, Microsoft popularized gesture controls with the release of the Kinect. In its fi rst 60 days on sale, the device sold 133,000 units per day, a Guinness World Record. Three years later, Leap Motion brought the same capabilities to personal computers. But both devices required stationary sensors to perceive movements, so users couldn’t stray too far. Now, a new set of devices— outfi tted with ultrasound, electromyography (EMG) sensors, and inertial sensors—are allowing the use of touchless interfaces anywhere. Nod Labs Polite or no, pointing is a universal human gesture, so Nod Labs decided to leverage it. The Nod ring includes inertial sensors, such as accelerometers and gyroscopes, that enable pixel-level…

Fifteen years ago, Michelin set out to build a tire that would never go flat. While the prototypes gained worldwide attention, and the military has been using the technology since 2013, consumers and businesses have been locked out. No longer. In November, Michelin began making its long-awaited airless tire and wheel combo, dubbed the X Tweel, available for use on select commercial vehicles. Unlike pneumatic tires, which cushion rides using a bed of pressurized air, the X Tweel uses a combination of deformable polyure-thane spokes, a steel-and-rubber outer rim, and rigid metal hub. The outer rim—called a shear beam— carries most of the load. The spokes and hub distribute the load across different parts of the shear beam as the tire rolls over objects. John Deere is one of the…

600 Percentage increase in one’s risk of death when diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, which can develop from a dangerous fixation with healthy eating Americans today have a complicated relationship with food, to put it kindly. Sure, mega-portioned processed meals and spiking rates of diabetes still dominate headlines. But in a climate that now includes $70-a-day juice cleanses, four gluten-free lifestyle magazines, and a “superfoods” industry set to hit $130 billion in 2015, we’re also a culture fascinated with achieving some perceived pinnacle of well-being. As a growing number of people dramatically retool their diets in the pursuit of health, some are cutting out half the categories on the food pyramid altogether. In certain cases, this hyper-controlled eating becomes a compulsion, and the anxiety of consuming something deemed “bad for you,”…

BRAIN Initiative: Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Arguably more ambitious than the Human Genome Project or the Apollo program, the BRAIN Initiative endeavors to demystify our least understood organ—and the one that makes us most human. Announced by President Obama in 2013, the 12-year, $4.5-billion undertaking aims to establish links between brain function and behavior, and to develop tools that will help us fi nally get to the bottom of conditions such as Alzheimer’s, autism, and depression. As the project’s planning co-chair, Rockefeller University neurobiologist Cori Bargmann spent the past year assembling expert teams and vetting research ideas. Now, she says, the real work begins 200 Estimated cost, in billions of dollars, that the U.S. spends annually to care for dementia patients “The brain is the most complicated object…

Jupiter’s moon Europa (in true and enhanced color) Mars Sure, we’ve been hunting life here for decades, but we may have been going about it the wrong way. Anything alive today probably lives deep underground, protected from radiation and temperature extremes; it might resemble deep, electrically active microbes on Earth. To look for Mars life: Drill, baby, drill! Enceladus Saturn’s 300-mile-wide moon Enceladus is stretched and squeezed by gravitational interaction with its neighbors. The resulting friction heats its interior, and may power a system of hydrothermal vents below its south pole; such vents would be natural homes to rock-breathing microbes. Mimas Like its cousin Enceladus, this small Saturnian moon is an iceball that is heated by a tug-of-war with other, nearby satellites. Recent studies indicate that Mimas could be partly…

In the late 17th century, the printer Joseph Moxon published Mechanick Exercises, the fi rst guide to printing in any language. It had been nearly 240 years since the debut of Gutenberg’s press, and books had proliferated. There were Bibles, of course, along with lots of schlocky literature, some porn, and guides to everyday topics—how to polish jewels, how to cast a spell against your enemy. But Moxon’s manual was subtly different. It rang with a decidedly DIY tone and suggested that readers could learn a new trade, at home, in their spare time. To someone in 17th-century Europe, this was a deeply subversive notion. From the fall of the Roman Empire to the dawn of the Renaissance, age-old social hierarchies held fi rm. You were born into a station,…

THE AIR MAN needs a fresh hit. It’s a beautiful summer morning. Dew shines on the grass. Birds chirp. What a glorious day to contemplate the air. I had contacted the air man—he has a name: Steven Welty—because of a faint, bizarrely sweet odor in our new house that had been annoying me for weeks. Nobody else in my family smelled it, not my wife or our kids. They just thought I was crazy, so I called Welty, thinking he could testify on my behalf. He designs airflow systems that prevent the spread of infectious diseases and potential acts of airborne terrorism in hospitals, office buildings, and high-target government buildings. Though he doesn’t make many house calls, my problem piqued his curiosity, so here he is standing on my front…

One in 1,500 children is born with a partially formed upper limb. But for every child who receives a prosthetic device, hundreds go without. Many families cannot afford a hand replacement, which often costs thousands of dollars, while others find that, after shelling out for a fancy new prosthetic, it performs poorly or the child outgrows it. Now, a volunteer-driven movement is striving to solve that problem by creating cheap, durable 3-D–printed hands. Coordinated by an organization called e-NABLE, the effort has so far distributed more than 400 plastic hands, which can be printed in a range of colors and go by names such as the Raptor Hand and the Cyborg Beast. Through the group, volunteers who own 3-D printers and people in need of hands can connect. Recipients enter…

Have a burning question? Email it to askanything @popsci.com or tweet it to @PopSci #AskAnything. Can body fat protect you like a built-in cushion? Short answer It prevents some injuries but causes others. A Fat can indeed act as a shock absorber in violent collisions. A 2003 study of carcrash victims found that those with more subcutaneous fat were less likely to suffer abdominal injuries. But the fat-as-airbag principle only goes so far. When a driver is flung forward, the heavier his or her body, the greater the force required to stop it. “Changing demographics create challenges to seat-belt fit,” says Richard Kent of the University of Virginia Center for Applied Biomechanics. Restraints have long been designed using crash-test dummies, whose size—about 168 lbs. and 5’7” tall— doesn’t correspond to…