Inhoudsopgave van July 2013 - Popular Science

Flight is freedom. The power to rise into the air and reach a destination unshackles us from gravity, distance, topography, and time. This is why we, as a publication, return to flight so often. It is humanity's greatest victory against the limitations of being human. It can also, at its fringe at least, seem a bit fantastical. For example, I recently shook hands with Bertrand Piccard, adventurer and pilot of the Solar Impulse, just before he set off from California on the first cross-country flight of a sun-powered plane. I pointed out that the craft seemed a bit rickety. In order to make it on today's meager batteries, it needs to be unbelievably light. Piccard smiled brilliantly. “When the Wright Brothers went up, no one could have imagined a plane…

How can the visible universe have a radius of 45 billion light-years if the universe is only about 14 billion years old [“Armed Telescope,” May 2013]? Dozens of readers wrote in with that question. Here's why that figure wasn't a typo: Two galaxies, A [red] and B [blue] are moving away from each other as the spacetime between them expands. Galaxy A emits a ray of light [black] that's headed toward galaxy B. By the time the light from galaxy A reaches galaxy B, A has moved far beyond its starting point. The farthest observable objects are 45 billion light-years away, after just 14 billion years. Because galaxies are carried apart by expanding spacetime—not by movement through space—the distance between them may grow at faster-than-light speeds.…

When the original Super Soaker debuted in 1989, it changed backyard water wars forever. With a pressurized reservoir system, it could hold more water and shoot farther and more accurately than its dime-store squirt-gun competition. As the rest of the field played catch-up, Super Soaker tanks grew larger—the biggest topping one gallon—which made for more soaking but also long refill times. With a recent Super Soaker refresh, which includes the Switch Shot, designers worked to speed things up, ditching the tank for water-filled magazines. The Switch Shot works like a syringe. Users snap a 20-ounce cartridge into the bottom of the gun and pull back the handle. This creates a vacuum that draws water from the cartridge. Pushing the handle forward closes a valve over the cartridge and sends water…

While Google's prototype self-driving car does a fine job commanding headlines, automakers have been rolling out the features that will ultimately lead to a road-ready autonomous vehicle. Cadillac Super Cruise is an important step in that process. Like current adaptive cruise-control systems, Super Cruise, which GM will likely debut by 2016, controls the throttle and brakes and adjusts the distance between the car and surrounding traffic. But Super Cruise adds another detail: It steers. A processor combines camera, radar, and GPS data to guide the car down the center of its lane. The driver initiates Super Cruise by pressing a button on the steering wheel. At that point, the system takes control of the wheel, accelerator, and brakes. A video camera in the rearview-mirror assembly scans for highway lane markers.…

At this moment, dozens of government satellites are taking high-resolution pictures of the planet. But citizens get only limited services such as Google Earth, which provides imagery that's sometimes 10 years old. This fall, however, the Canada-based company UrtheCast (in partnership with the Russian space agency) will install two cameras on the International Space Station (ISS) that will continuously capture still images and high-resolution video and upload them to a free public database online, where the curious can study their yards and the entrepreneurial can obtain needed data. Will I be able to find myself? No, but you could find your car or house. UrtheCast's video camera has a three-foot resolution and can distinguish groups of people, not individuals. It will shoot approximately 150 video clips a day. The still…

“DE-STAR is designed to vaporize or divert asteroids that threaten Earth. This isn't science fiction—I build things that have to work in practice. DE-STAR stands for Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids and exploRation. It looks like an open matchbook with lasers on one flap and a photovoltaic panel for power from sunlight on the other. By synchronizing the laser beams, we can create a phased array, which produces a steerable 70-gigawatt beam. An onboard system receives orders on what to target. Our laser beam would then produce a spot about 100 feet in diameter on an asteroid that's as far away from the satellite as we are from the sun. The laser would raise an asteroid's surface temperature to thousands of degrees Celsius—hot enough that all known substances evaporate.…

In July 1924, famed fighter pilot, racecar driver, and automotive designer Eddie Rickenbacker wrote the first story about flying cars in Popular Science. The headline read “Flying Autos in 20 Years.” Since then, readers have waited patiently—for generations. We've learned not to make promises, but in the next two years a few functioning, legal flying cars are set to reach the market or enter development. Call it a revolution. Call it about time. Just don't call it science fiction.…

Perhaps the most carlike of flying cars, the Terrafugia Transition is on the path to approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and has undergone multiple flight and simulated-crash tests. On the ground, it “drives” with its wings folded up and will likely top out around 65 mph. In flight mode, the wings fold out, and the craft can cruise at 105 mph. The $279,000 vehicle is due out in 2015. More than 100 people have put down deposits already.…

Airship development tends to come in waves, the most recent of which arrived in the mid-2000s. Facing two wars and a need for new surveillance and logistics craft, the Pentagon undertook a flurry of airship development. The Navy was first, with the MZ-3A, a technology testbed. The Air Force and Army followed, with their Blue Devil and Long-Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) programs. Both ships were about as long as a football field and capable of flying for weeks. But then the bottom fell out. The financial crisis hit (bad), the wars began to wind down (good), and a helium shortage struck (expensive). In June 2012, Blue Devil lost funding. Eight months later, the LEMV got the ax too. The MZ-3A is still flying, but its funding is on the chopping…

Aviation has always run on petroleum. In fact, jet fuel had been the same from the dawn of the jet age up until about three years ago. Then the airline industry changed international jet-fuel specifications to allow the use of renewable fuel sources. Airlines can now use renewables alongside jet fuel in a 50 percent blend. Already, as an industry, we've flown 1,500 flights with passengers—real revenue flights—with sustainable biofuels. With our current biofuels mix, we typically get an improvement in efficiency of 1 to 3 percent. We can design out some of the impurities that come in petroleum, and we can control properties like freeze point. For very-long-haul flights at high altitude across the polar caps, you might like a fuel that doesn't freeze when you're flying at 35,000…

This summer, the Navy's X-47B robotic combat jet will make aviation history. For the first time, an unmanned aircraft free from direct human control will guide itself onto the deck of a bucking aircraft carrier. Autonomous flight is coming, but that doesn't mean it will replace all human pilots. It might just replace some of them. Over the past few years, the Pentagon has been developing a concept of robotic flight operations called the “loyal wingman.” Under the supervision of a pilot or a remote operator, robotic wingmen could support human pilots. If so instructed, drones could do long-range reconnaissance or hold formation. The Navy is already a few years into development of a unmanned jet, which is slated for service around 2020. And engineers in the Air Force are…

There are two kinds of robots in Hollywood: innocuous servants that are one glitch away from murdering their masters, and the bots designed for wholesale slaughter from the start. Here's a look at the latter, a purpose-built class of killer machines—and the pioneering models that gave new shape to one of our oldest nightmares. MECHANICAL MONSTERS: The stars of the 1941 Superman animated short presented the most lasting and awkward archetype of deadly robotics—the dreaded humanoid. ED-209: While there's nothing particularly deadly about the two-legged design of ED-209, which first appeared in 1987's RoboCop, it was iconic enough to remain intact for the 2014 remake. SENTINELS:The Matrix (1999) provided the most alien take on killer bots: the horrific squid-legged, spider-headed Sentinels, which attack victims with multitudes of razor-sharp tentacles.…

The swift strike of a match on July 4 typically precedes sky-high spectacles. But matches themselves can be fireworks. When ignited, the bulb of fuel on a match's tip combusts into space-hogging gases. By containing the gas in aluminum foil and directing it downward, you can create a miniature missile. Follow these steps to become a rocket scientist in your own driveway. TIME 10 minutes COST About $3 DIFFICULTY WARNING: Kids, you need adult supervision. Launch only outside while wearing eye protection, and mind your aim (matches were designed to start fires). Matches Sewing pin or needle Paper clips Aluminum foil Bend a paper clip into a 45-degree angle. Presto! You have a launch pad. Lay a pin along a matchstick so that the sharp tip touches the match head.…

Summertime means rising temperatures—and, often, rising tempers. If your friends and family want to beat the heat without beating each other, there's a surefire option: squirt-gun fight! But shelling out for a few $20-or-more water weapons can rapidly thin a wallet. That's why you should take matters into your own hands, visit the hardware store, and exercise some garage ingenuity to build an inexpensive yet durable arsenal of Waterzookas. Popular Science likes this version from the website Instructables.com, but we tweaked it to stay current with the latest water-gun technology [see “Crossing the Streams,” page 16]. Follow these instructions to keep your cool. ACUT: Take the thinner 24-inch pipe [2], and saw off a 2-inch-long piece. Smooth the edges with sandpaper. BDRILL: This is the fun part. New water guns…

James Bond films would not be complete without plenty of elaborate—and largely fictitious—spyware. But in You Only Live Twice, Sean Connery's Bond dodged enemy aircraft in a real flying machine: the WA-116 autogyro, nicknamed Little Nellie. In June 1967, Popular Science profiled this “hummingbird among hawks” and its designer, Royal Air Force Wing Commander Ken Wallis—who stood in for Connery during flight scenes. In a dogfight with four helicopters, Little Nellie appeared to take a hit, but hidden detonators punched a line of bullet holes into a dummy rudder. Since then, special effects and aviation have advanced: Turn to page 70 to read about the science behind summer movies and to page 47 for new aircraft concepts.…

WHAT A WONDERFUL and insightful article by Brian Lam [“Apex Predator,” May 2013]. I know many people are terrified of sharks, but they truly are beautiful specimens. If this technology can save them from extinction, well, that would be truly remarkable. Jeff SwansonEverett, Wash. I'm 16 years old and right now, I'm working on a high school project to try to change the world. The subject my partner and I have selected is shark conservation. Your article “Apex Predator” is informative and has helped me with my research immensely. Maddie PrattMill Valley, Calif. Popular Science would do the world and its readership much more good with an in-depth piece exposing shark finning for what it really is. Put forth ideas on what the world can do to stop this, and…

In February, astrobiologist Gernot Grömer found himself on Mars in the midst of a desert storm. Well, he felt like he was on Mars. In reality, he was in the Sahara, participating in a monthlong simulation in eastern Morocco. While there, Grömer and his 10-person crew from the Austrian Space Forum (a volunteer organization of aerospace professionals) tested lasers, weather stations, and deployable shelters in the quasi-Martian environment. When communicating with their control center, they mimicked the delay between Earth and the red planet. They also wore spacesuits equipped with an air-ventilation system and contamination-proof compartments to preserve samples of possible extinct life. At right, Grömer monitors the mobility of the Hungarian Puli prototype: a rover whose four “whegs”—a cross between a wheel and a leg—allow it to trek through…

Custom-fitted shoes do more than increase comfort; they can improve performance and even reduce the risk of injury. But made-to-order shoes are also prohibitively expensive: A single foot mold, for example, can cost thousands of dollars. For those who can't spend like a professional athlete, manufacturers are starting to adopt 3-D printing. They're already using the process to make mass-produced sneakers that better contour to feet, but they're also working on methods that will allow them to personalize soles, uppers—even entire shoes—from a series of 3-D scans. One day soon, a pair of custom-made shoes could run hundreds, instead of thousands. Brooks Glycerin 11 ($150) The more panels on a shoe's upper, the more seams there are that can rub a foot raw. The Glycerin 11's upper has almost no…

Last year, American car buyers named fuel economy the most important consideration when shopping for a car, outranking even quality and safety. The change coincides nicely with the flood of hybrid and high-efficiency internal-combustion engines on the market. But as efficient as an engine may be—the best among them can get up to 50 miles per gallon—they can't compensate for one glaring inefficiency: us. Poor driving habits (floor it!) can slash fuel economy by as much as one-third. To maximize it, engineers need to not only remake the cars; they need to remake the drivers. As efficient as engines may be—the best get 50 mpg—they can't compensate for one glaring inefficiency: us. In his dissertation “Charismatic Computers,” B.J. Fogg, a psychologist at Stanford University, demonstrated how technology can influence behaviors.…

IN APRIL, President Obama announced, to much fanfare, that the government would spend $100 million on a detailed map of the human brain and how its neurons interact. The project is a waste of money. Brain mapping is well funded by public and private sources, and the feds should instead spend your dough on important things that business won't. The brain map was going to happen anyway. For example, IBM has a computer simulating 530 billion neurons; the Blue Brain Project is modeling the rat brain at the cellular level; the Allen Brain Atlas is mapping how genes in the brain turn on and off. Projects like these already have validity, and some have been funded by the government for years. To a certain extent, Obama's initiative is making a…

Earth's upper atmosphere—below freezing, nearly without oxygen, flooded by UV radiation—is no place to live. But last winter, scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology discovered that billions of bacteria actually thrive up there. Expecting only a smattering of microorganisms, the researchers flew six miles above Earth's surface in a NASA jet plane. There, they pumped outside air through a filter to collect particles. Back on the ground, they tallied the organisms, and the count was staggering: 20 percent of what they had assumed to be just dust or other particles was alive. Earth, it seems, is surrounded by a bubble of bacteria. Scientists don't yet know what the bacteria are doing up there, but they may be essential to how the atmosphere functions, says Kostas Konstantinidis, an environmental microbiologist…

Tilt-rotors like the V-22 rely on two huge turboprops—one at each wingtip—to provide vertical thrust during takeoff, landing, and hover. Once airborne, the propeller nacelles rotate forward, essentially converting the V-22 to a turboprop plane. Their dual function keeps aircraft weight down. One design that's drawn attention is a four-prop, heavy-lift tilt-rotor concept developed by the Bell team that created the V-22. These designs combine conventional vertical-lift propellers with forward-facing propellers that significantly increase cruising speeds. Eurocopter's X3 design incorporates small wings to provide additional lift during forward flight, while other concepts, such as the Piasecki PA61-4 Advanced Wing Compound, trade side-mounted propellers for huge rear-mounted, ducted propellers to increase forward thrust. VTOL fixed wings resemble airplanes more than they do helicopters. Most derive their vertical thrust from downward-facing jet…

A regular addition to cellphones and bank cards, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are creeping into airplane cabins. With tags in life vests, seats, medical kits, and other frequently inspected equipment, attendants can cut down inspection times tenfold, saving money and improving plane turnarounds. Carbon fiber is much stronger and stiffer than aluminum. Boeing's 787 Dreamliner was the first airliner to use a predominately carbon-fiber airframe. The Airbus A350 will join it this summer. The lighter frames allow increased fuel efficiency, and a stronger fuselage allows more comfortable cabin pressures. Batteries are little black boxes of chemistry, and when they fail, it can be hard to diagnose the problem. Scientists at PARC have embedded batteries with fiber-optic sensors. With internal data, engineers could optimize performance in real time or pinpoint…

MY CONTACT WAS A GRUFF, swarthy man, wearing a couple days' stubble, an immaculate black shirt, and a scowl. He looked me up and down sourly, then exhaled as if weary. He'd done this before. Too many times, perhaps. His name was Mario. And yes, he could sell me a surveillance drone—if I could meet his price. Could he interest me in a remote-control spy tank with a night-vision camera while I was at it? Mario led me across the room and nodded wordlessly at a compact machine with four propellers. The quadrocopter's body was about the size of half a Costco papaya. Four thin rotor arms jutted out at diagonal angles, each attached to a pair of sculpted black blades. With one forward-facing camera and one that looked down,…

AIRCRAFT DESIGN is often overlooked in discussions of the FAA's multibillion-dollar NextGen initiative, the elaborate mélange of satellite-based guidance, arrival, and departure technologies intended to modernize the outdated and much-criticized national airspace system by 2025. Yet a team led by researchers at California Polytechnic State University found that one of the easiest ways to improve system efficiency may be to reengineer the plane itself. As part of a five-year NASA research project, the team designed a 100-passenger Cruise Efficient, Short Take-Off and Landing (Cestol) airliner that could arrive and depart at steep angles to and from 3,000-foot-long runways. “This plane was designed with a circulation-control wing, which generates higher lift at lower speeds,” says David Marshall, an associate professor with Cal Poly's aerospace-engineering department. “We can reduce the field length…

VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTER SCOTT LYNCH'S NEXT BOOK, THE REPUBLIC OF THIEVES, WILL HIT SHELVES IN OCTOBER. PICKLE-JAR TECHNOLOGY hasn't moved an inch in nearly three hundred years, and the cap on the jar in my hands won't move either. The kids find it hilarious, and their fingers fly above the table as they sketch ghostly images for my benefit. My visual augments display their bright illusions in the air around me—there's the framework of an unlikely Rube Goldberg device, along with a caricature of me caught in the grip of a huge anthropomorphic pickle jar about to twist my head off. I grin and fire back with a double nod of my head, the signal for the house's backbone computer to upload the week's chore schedule to their visual augments. While…

Neil Blomkamp, the director of Elysium, once illustrated for Popular Science. He shares two secrets to making great sci-fi. CULTIVATE BELIEF: “When I design something, whether it's for a movie or Pop Sci, I need to believe it can work. If I don't believe it, the audience won't either. What leads to a unified vision is when the director has all those visuals in his head.” TELL REAL STORIES: “Science fiction is just a filter to look at real life. I'm not trying to tell a story that takes place in 2154. Elysium is a rich-and-poor film. A hundred fifty years from now, Earth will probably look a lot like the film: mass poverty, plagues, disease, too many people, and too few resources. And all the crazy life-changing technology will…

Need to weld in Wellington, New Zealand? Looking to master CNC milling in N.Y.C.? Use The Maker Map to find DIY havens such as fabrication shops, hackerspaces, and co-working offices. Entrepreneurs Renee DiResta and Nick Pinkston built the online map and asked DIY communities across the globe to plot the best locations. By March 2013, it included more than 800 spots, featuring hackerspaces as far as Singapore. Anyone can propose a resource, and volunteers validate each one before adding it to the map.…

SHORT ANSWER THEY WOULD GO OFF WITHOUT A BANG. LONG ANSWER Launching fireworks in a near-zero-oxygen environment is completely feasible, says Stefan Bossmann, a chemist and rocket enthusiast at Kansas State University: “That would be no problem at all. They have an oxidizer, and they have a reductant.” That chemistry is not reliant upon oxygen, and similar reactions are responsible for powering space-shuttle thrusters and other large space-borne rockets. The trouble would come after launch, when the bursting charge releases and ignites the colorant pellets. The reaction that imparts a rocket's metals and metal salts with enough energy to change pretty colors requires oxygen. Unless your fireworks were specially designed for bursting in space, their colors would quickly fizzle out. “There may be some color in the initial explosion,” says…

POINT: Who cares if someone knows my DNA sequence [“Don't Be Afraid of Your DNA,” May 2013]? Go ahead, look at it. Chances are that sometime in the near future, whatever embarrassing genetic defect I may have will be corrected. D13via popsci.com COUNTERPOINT: If DNA is unique to each individual, then we must own our DNA outright. We may spread it around everywhere we go, but that does not give anyone the right to gather and use it for financial gain. ssillettivia popsci.com…

WHEN MICROSOFT DEBUTED the Surface tabletop computer in 2007, the company envisioned groups of people sitting around a giant screen, sharing videos and playing games. But the Surface and the second-generation Samsung SUR40 are hugely impractical—too large for the typical living room, and too expensive for the average consumer. The engineers at Lenovo circumvented this problem by modifying a full-featured all-in-one PC to convert into a Surface-like game table, called the IdeaCentre Horizon. The base of the Horizon connects to a spring-supported hinge, which allows users to tilt the PC flat. When horizontal, the computer switches to Lenovo's Aura touch interface, which can capture 10 points of contact at once. Through Aura, users can browse photos and video or play games. The Horizon comes with four joysticks and four game…

Since the 1950s, the brain of any electronic device has been a printed circuit board (PCB), a piece of substrate that contains all—or most—of a device's electrical components, including wires, switches, and processors. Rather than using PCBs simply as a control center, engineers at Montana-based CORE Outdoor Power are using them as a power source. They've developed a PCB-based rotary motor that's as strong as a gas-powered one, but without the emissions and noise. The CORE motor consists of a circular multilayer PCB sandwiched between two ring-shaped magnets. Electricity from a lithium polymer battery passes through 10 layers of copper conductors in the PCB. The current causes the magnets to spin, which then turns the motor. CORE's motor is built into the Power Lok yard-tool system. A battery-equipped base unit…

GROWING UP in Pakistan in the 1980s, Muhammad Zaman and his family always knew which pharmacy to trust when they got sick. Today, even the pharmacists don't know whom to trust. Just last year, more than 200 people in Lahore died after contaminated cardiac medicines containing a toxic amount of an anti-malaria drug hit the city's supply. More than a thousand got sick. The crisis of poor quality drugs is worst in the developing world, where regulatory oversight is weak and patients are desperate for affordable medicine. Consider this: The World Health Organization says that at least 10 percent to 30 percent of the pharmaceutical market in these countries is compromised. “Everybody in the developing world knows about this problem, but nobody ever does anything about it,” says Zaman, now…

Adead pig is a good proxy for a dead person: It's roughly the size of a human torso, it has no fur, and its gut holds similar bacteria. These parallels mean that injury and decay are comparable in the two species, which can help forensic pathologists learn more about how corpses behave. On land, this dark research is easy—place the pig somewhere, and watch it rot. But what about bodies at sea? When a corpse turns up in a marine environment, whether as a result of murder, accident, or tsunami, coroners and pathologists don't have the information they need to determine even the time of death. In 2000, forensics researcher Gail Anderson, of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, was the first to simulate a marine grave; she sent divers…

IN THE WAKE OF the unsuccessful Iran hostage-rescue attempt in 1980, when three of eight helicopters failed and crippled the mission, military planners came to a realization: The U.S. fleet was in desperate need of an aircraft that could combine the speed and range of a jet with the vertical lift of a helicopter. In response, they designed the tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey. The V-22 can carry two dozen troops 1,000 nautical miles at speeds around 250 miles an hour. It is one of the most versatile craft in the U.S. Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) fleet, which includes helicopters and jump jets. It is also the youngest: The V-22 represents the last major addition to the VTOL arsenal in more than 20 years. As modern warfare evolves to include more…

LAST YEAR, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Grasp (General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception) Lab gathered a dozen or so quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), programmed them to work in concert, and set them loose on a roomful of improvised instruments. The hovering swarm dutifully reproduced the James Bond theme song. In biology, a swarm is a collection of individuals that manifest complex behavior without a leader calling the shots. Imagine birds spontaneously gathering on a single tree, only to lift off en masse moments later. Scientists have applied swarm intelligence to driving robots, but they now have the processing power and sensing capability to apply it to flying ones too. To achieve a swarm, scientists program each unit with a set of simple rules. For example: Maintain constant…

In 1883, Nobel laureate John Strutt, a physicist and the third Baron Rayleigh, put forward a radical idea. He had been studying the mechanics of pelican flight and proposed that the birds drew energy from differentials in wind speed, allowing them to remain aloft without beating a wing. By taking advantage of this technique (since named dynamic soaring), a craft could, in theory, fly with little or no fuel for weeks, months, or even years. For decades, work on dynamic soaring progressed slowly. Radio-control glider operators took advantage of the technique to extend their flights, but scientists didn't know if they could apply it to larger craft. Then in 2006, a team from the U.S. Air Force and NASA flew a modified L-23 Blanik sailplane over Edwards Air Force Base,…

LAST FALL, GE Aviation quietly purchased two small 3-D—printing companies, Morris Technology and Rapid Quality Manufacturing, and in doing so made a loud statement: 3-D printing will shape the future of aircraft. For the past decade, aerospace manufacturers have used additive printing to prototype select parts. The process is fast and affordable. “We can make the first batch of parts faster than any toolmaker can make the molds and jigs,” says Brett Lyons, a materials and process engineer at Boeing Research & Technology. But companies used only a few materials and printing techniques, such as Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), a process that uses lasers to bond thin layers of metals or thermoplastics. That's changing. Companies have an increasing number of printing techniques to choose from, such as electron-beam melting, which,…

In development for two decades, Paul Moller's M400X is perhaps the most famous—or infamous—flying-car R&D project. The craft uses four maneuverable, ducted fans for takeoff, flight, and landing. The tens of millions spent on R&D produced a series of tethered flights in 2002 and 2003. Nonetheless, Moller recently announced a $480 million deal with Athena Technologies, a developer of control and navigation systems for UAVs, to co-produce the VTOL aircraft in the U.S. and China.…

INSPIRED BY MAN OF STEEL THE PLOT In the latest remake of the 75-year-old comic franchise, Superman, an innocent farmer's son, discovers his powers and saves the planet from two deranged villains, General Zod and his henchman, Faora, who arrive from Krypton bent on destruction. Superman may be able to lift a bus or an oil platform, but humans come with pretty strict limits on strength, the first of which is the nature of muscle. The maximum force that humans produce depends on how our muscle fibers work. Over the years, scientists have extracted muscles from different vertebrates and tested their capacities. What emerged was a nifty rule of thumb: A muscle can produce about 30 newtons of force (or 6.75 pounds) for every square centimeter in cross-section. “By virtue…

Despite his devotion to Daleks—those cruel, armor-clad extraterrestrials from the TV show Doctor Who, now in its 50th year—Jim Rossiter has no interest in annihilating other civilizations. The 57-year-old Australian just likes how the aliens look. After decades of building radio-controlled vehicles, Rossiter made his own eerily accurate Dalek, right down its screeching battle cry: “Exterminate!” A typical Dalek resembles a giant saltshaker outfitted with a ray gun, a menacing eye on a long stalk, and a third appendage shaped like a sink plunger (which, on the show, can suck its foes to death). Beneath the exoskeletal armor lives a tentacled mutant soldier whose mission is to destroy all other life. Still, Daleks have an unusual B-movie charm that inspires fan adoration. Rossiter, a machinist by trade, found himself part…

Over 25 years, Danh Trinh had amassed thousands of screws, hinges, and other parts in his workshop. He filed them away in labeled drawers, but locating them still wasn't easy. To solve that problem, he built StorageBot: a robotic organizer that summons components at the sound of his voice. Trinh first crafted a wooden cabinet to stack nine plastic storage boxes—each holding 40 drawers—into a grid. Then he installed stepper motors and pulleys to move behind the shelf along two axes. They connect to a rack-and-pinion system that pushes the drawers open. When a laptop recognizes a voice command, it feeds the data to an Arduino microcontroller, which operates the drawer-opening system and a border of LEDs. “The LEDs indicate the row and column of the drawer that is about…

SHORT ANSWER WE'VE GOT A WHOLE BUNCH THAT WE DON'T REALLY NEED. LONG ANSWER There are two schools of thought when it comes to ranking organs in terms of their utility, or lack thereof. According to one theory, the least essential parts are those that come in pairs. Giving up an eye or ear wouldn't be too bad, the thinking goes, so long as you keep the other one. It's not life threatening to lose even a lung or a kidney. Still, there's probably a reason the body comes with backups. “It's a good thing to have reserves in case you get sick or have an injury,” says Robert Shmerling, a rheumatologist and professor at Harvard Medical School. When you lose a kidney, the one that's left behind must work…