Awe-inspiring science reporting, technology news, and DIY projects. Skunks to space robots, primates

[ad_1] Scientists around the world are spending New Year's Eve waiting to hear news of a historic space event. NASA's New Horizons, famous for visiting Pluto for the first time ever back in 2015, is making a second splash with a flyby of 2014 MU69, an object a billion miles beyond Pluto and 4.1 billion from Earth itself. If New Horizons is successful, this encounter will represent the most distant object ever explored by a visiting spacecraft. Unofficially known as Ultima Thule, the rock—which may actually be two rocks moving together in tandem—sits in a distant region of cosmic cold-storage called the Kuiper Belt. Because of the temperature and lack of direct sunlight, the objects therein are much unchanged from their makeup in the earliest days of the solar system. Researchers hope that studying these distant bodies can help us better understand what building blocks were present when our Sun was brand new, and how and why these pieces came together to form planets. A bette...

[ad_1] ↑ Jennifer Day, biologist at the University of Washington at Seattle Each year, poachers traffic thousands of tons of illegal wildlife products through the world’s biggest ports. Detector dogs like the ones I work with are among the most effective means of finding that contraband. Trained canines can sniff out minuscule amounts of ivory, rhino horn, tiger bone, and other illegal products with greater than 90 percent accuracy. But these amazing canine workers will push themselves too hard if you let them. In searching cargo containers, trained animals can encounter toxic substances, dangerous machinery, and extreme heat. Some have even died on the job. There is a way to make things safer (and more efficient): drawing air from shipping containers, running it through scent-trapping filters, and then giving that odor to sniffer dogs in a controlled environment. That way, customs officials can search inside a container without anyone actually opening it up. South African m...

[ad_1] A vial of blood is a key diagnostic tool in modern medicine. But for about 1 in 25 people, a blood draw isn’t just uncomfortable—it poses a potential threat, prompting a temporary lapse in consciousness. Christopher France, a psychologist at Ohio University, says this phenomena is known as blood-injection-injury phobia. The gory visual of dripping fluid triggers a significant drop in both heart rate and blood pressure, reducing the amount of oxygenated blood flow to the brain. This leads to fainting—a dramatic measure but one that guarantees more blood to the noggin. Why some folks faint and others don’t isn’t clear, but prior fear of blood and needles often increases the chance of passing out, France says. Other theories exist, but none are proven. Perhaps the blood-pressure drop minimizes blood loss after injury. Or, maybe we’re primed to pass out to fool predators into thinking we’re dead. None of these scenarios apply when seeing a fr...

[ad_1] Adorn yourself in precious gemstones, and you’re sure to attract some attention. It’s true not just for people, but for planets as well. In the latest issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , a group of European scientists discuss the discovery of a new exoplanet rich in rubies and sapphires, leading to some exciting new questions about the kind of chemistry and conditions that give rise to such an exotic class of celestial worlds. The new investigation comes out of a larger quest to understand how planets are formed. According to Amy Bonsor, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and a coauthor of the new paper, the goal was to “study the composition of rocky bodies outside our solar system that have been swallowed by the remnants of stars like our sun, called white dwarfs.” These sorts of studies have shown just how prevalent materials like calcium and aluminum are in rocky exoplanets, and the team wanted to know what sorts of c...

[ad_1] ↑ Jane E. Joseph, neuroscience professor at Medical University of South Carolina As a cognitive neuroscientist, I study how the brain processes thoughts and emotions. I used to focus on sensation-seeking behavior, which involves people pursuing risky activities to get a thrilling reward. In 2015, a journalist heard about my work with daredevils and suggested I test the brain of free-solo climber Alex Honnold, who scales cliffs—such as Yosemite National Park’s 3,000-foot-high El Capitan—without ropes. I would describe him as a super-sensation seeker, but he’s also conscientious; he climbs with intention and thought, as opposed to an impulsive adrenaline junkie. Like our other subjects, he had to take personality questionnaires and then undergo an fMRI scan while viewing emotional pictures. Negative ones showed unflushed toilets or natural disasters, while positive images included mild erotica and people hang gliding. Anatomically, Honnold’s brai...

[ad_1] Every year the Royal Statistical Society chooses an International Statistic of the Year. Like all the other end-of-year listicles and roundups you've seen, it's meant to capture some of the zeitgeist in a convenient, clickable package. In 2017, the panel voted for the number 69: the number of Americans killed by lawnmowers every year (they compared it to two, the number of Americans killed by immigrant terrorists). This year's take is a bit less whimsical. The winning stat for 2018 is 90.5: the percent of all plastic waste that's never been recycled. It comes from a 2017 study in the journal Science called "Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made." It is a wild read. The authors estimate that as of 2015, there had been 6.9 billion tons of plastic waste generated around the world, 79 percent of which ended up in a landfill or in nature and 12 percent of which got incinerated. The sheer scale of that number is hard to fathom. One statistician...

[ad_1] One of the year’s biggest space stories just gets weirder and weirder. Earlier this week, a Russian cosmonaut who investigated the mysterious hole in the Soyuz capsule docked to the International Space Station revealed that the hole was definitely drilled from the inside, according to authorities, underscoring previous suggestions that the hole was not created by any collisions with meteorites or small debris in space—and further deepening the mystery about exactly who or what created the hole. To recap: NASA was first put on alert in late August, when flight controllers at Johnson Space Center noticed dropping air pressure in the space station (although the crew was never in any real danger). Astronauts quickly found the leak was coming from a two-millimeter-wide hole in a Russian Soyuz capsule docked to the ISS, which had just brought three astronauts to the space station in June. The crew plugged the hole with epoxy and gauze, which effectively solved the leak, but...

[ad_1] By all measures, 2018 was an extreme year for Alaska’s Bering Sea. For the first time since 1850, the body of water in the northern Pacific remained virtually free of sea ice. Scientists traced the impact of this lack of ice on water temperature and fish populations throughout the year to try to figure out what happens when an ecosystem built around ice suddenly has none. “Last year, or last winter, we had by far the lowest sea ice extent by any measure in the Bering Sea,” says Rick Thoman, who recently retired from studying weather and climate for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and currently works for the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. From when reconstructed sea ice records begin in 1850 until now, this year was the lowest of the low in terms of sea ice, and “not by a little bit, by a tremendous amount.” The Bering Sea sits in the northern Pacific ocean, just below the Arc...

[ad_1] By now, I thought my super-smart AI butler would be able to write this year-end tech news roundup while I chill out and play Fortnite in the back seat of a self-driving car on its way to the sparkling new Amazon City, USA. That didn’t pan out, however, so we went and did it the hard way. Here’s a look at the year’s big tech stories. Facebook had a very bad year Most of us first heard about Cambridge Analytica in March of 2018, which is when Facebook’s biggest troubles began for the year. The political data firm had collected information on tens of millions of users by exploiting the old rules of the network’s app platform. Since then, Mark Zuckerberg starred in a very tedious Congressional testimony and several more substantial data privacy issues have popped up. With all of that going on, the company also released its new Portal devices, which have a microphone and a camera and sit in your house. Lots of companies gave away your personal information...

[ad_1] NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made a big splash in 2015, when the little piano-sized spacecraft finally finished a nine-year journey that took it all the way to Pluto—the first time a human-made object encountered the dwarf planet. But New Horizons’ mission was far from over. Hurtling through space at well over 30,000 miles per hour, the spacecraft has continued on toward the outer reaches of the solar system’s Kuiper belt, and it’s about to deliver a wonderful New Years gift to us. Get ready to meet 2014 MU69 (unofficially known as Ultima Thule), an object a billion miles beyond Pluto and 4.1 billion from Earth itself. On January 1, at around 12:33 a.m. Eastern Time, New Horizons will make get to within 2,200 miles away fromMU69—which sounds like quite a distance, but is actually three times closer than how far the spacecraft was from Pluto during its 2015 flyby (when it managed to capture many stunning images). New Horizons will be able to s...

[ad_1] This season is full of stories about stars guiding travelers to far-off destinations, but imagery from NASA's archive shows off a stellar guide of a different sort. The central point of this holiday "wreath" is a bright star known as RS Puppis, or RS Pup for short. RS Pup is what's called a Cepheid variable: a star that periodically dims and gets brighter. The change in luminosity is due to instability—these are large, short-lived stars that are already nearing the end of their chemical fuel reserves, and don't maintain steady transfers of temperature from layer to layer. Astrophysicists can use the variability of these stars' light to calculate how far away they are (6,500 light-years, in this case), allowing them to serve as a sort of cosmic yardstick. RS Pup cycles through one of these pulsations every 41.5 days, with a rapid rise in brightness followed by a much slower descent back into its dimmest state. It's 200 times larger than our sun and 1...

[ad_1] ↑ Jessica Johnson, Geophysics researcher at the University of East Anglia Most of a volcano’s activity happens below the surface—but we can still learn so much by collecting samples from the lava that emerges. It comes out at around 1800°F; you might stand a yard away and feel fine, but inch any closer, and the heat overwhelms you. Once, as I stood at the edge of a crater at Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano, my camera started melting. As soon as I took a few steps back, everything cooled off—the camera still worked! When I took samples, I’d always wear Kevlar gloves, and often a protective suit. First, I‘d scoop up a glob of lava—it’s surprisingly sticky, like thick toffee—with a steel tool called a rock hammer. Then I’d drop the sample into a bucket of water, cooling it to prevent gas from escaping and changing its chemical makeup. Because different gases seep from the ground at different depths, lava’s composi...

[ad_1] When most people experience a cold snap, they huddle indoors. But you, dear Popular Science readers—you venture out for a little DIY. During the winter, Canadian photographer Chris Ratzlaff ventures into the great outdoors to photograph soap bubbles as they freeze. Naturally, we had to talk to him about how to make our own frozen bubbles. In our original story, we provided DIY instructions and invited you to try the same project, then to share your photos and videos with us at manual@popsci.com. So, when temperatures plunged recently, a few readers braved the cold. The results are breathtaking. Although Ratzlaff recommended waiting for temperatures below -13°F in our original article, wildlife biologist and amateur photographer Frank T. Muth got the project to work in the warmer clime of Inwood, WV. Muth found that ice crystals would form at temperatures as toasty as 16°F. To make his crystal-clear images, Muth asked his wife Jenn to place the bubbles on a mirror...

[ad_1] The Google Home and Amazon Echo speakers make dumb homes smart in an instant, and for a relatively low price point—you can pick up the smallest members of the Home and Echo lines for $50 (or even less during sales season). While both smart speakers can do an impressive number of tricks right out of the box, they're even more powerful if you sync them with third-party devices. To control a smart lightbulb or thermostat through voice commands to your Google Home or Amazon Echo, you simply need to add it as a device. With Google Home, that requires the free Google Home app (for Android and iOS). Use the app to set up your smart speaker, then visit its Home Control Section and add the smart device you want to speak to. For the Amazon Echo, you'll need the Alexa app (for Android and iOSiOS). Head into the app's Skills section and search for the device's name, then pick the option to enable it. With that done, you'll be able to control your music, lights, televisio...

[ad_1] Getting a new TV is exciting, especially when you had to battle the Black Friday crowds to get it. But, if you want the best out of your new display, you’ll need to make sure you’re setting it up properly. Here are some tips to help you avoid crucial television mistakes. Make sure your media source supports 4K playback A fancy TV is only as good as the content you push into it, which means that Roku box you bought back in Obama’s first term isn’t going to cut it for your new Ultra-HD setup. If you bought a smart TV, its native apps should stream at high quality, but here are some stand-alone boxes that can take full advantages of your new 4K set: Apple TV 4K ($179): It’s a pricey box with no Amazon content playback at the moment, but it offers extremely high quality audio and video, as well as UHD movies in the iTunes store for $5.99 to rent or $19.99 to buy. Roku Ultra ($99) or Streaming Stick+ ($49): Not every Roku supports UHD, but these two wil...

[ad_1] Every year, we gleefully give ourselves permission to sit around gorging our belts off over the Christmas break. Sadly, this is not the best way to ring in the New Year. Yes, it’s only a week. But. A lot of buzz-killing science indicates that the pounds we put on over the holidays seldom come entirely back off. While that extra weight is usually no more than a pound or so, it adds up over time. One study published in the New England Journal of Medicine even suggested that the cumulative effect of holiday weight gain is one of the principle causes of mid-life obesity. Look, we all deserve to let off some steam as we hide from the cold, cocooned in the love of our families and friends (and bourbon-y egg nog). And it’s not realistic to sequester yourself from the festivities just so that sugary temptations never enter your field of view. The compromise is exercise. Evidence shows that engaging in a relatively intense workout before heading to a meal, rather than spiking...

[ad_1] When you set up a Christmas tree, you bring a little bit of nature into your home. Real or fake, your spot of green creates warm holiday cheer at a time when the forests outside have grown cold and brown. But once you’ve unwrapped the presents, scarfed down the leftovers, and safely stowed away the ornaments, your glorious display piece instantly transforms into waste—specifically, one of the biggest pieces of trash you’ll have to deal with all year. How we collectively disperse the carbon, metal, and plastic that went into our trees makes a real difference for the environment that provided those resources in the first place. Take artificial trees: Producing one of these contributes about 40 pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The key to making it sustainable is to reuse it. By spreading that 40 pounds out over a certain number of years—estimates range from five years to twenty—it eventually will break even with the smaller impact you would s...

[ad_1] What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s newest podcast. Season one of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, PocketCasts, and basically everywhere else you listen to podcasts. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. You've got just enough time to binge the whole bunch before our second season arrives early next year. Check out our surprise holiday episode below: Fact: The treadmill was originally designed as a way to occupy and employ prisoners. By Claire Maldarelli January is a rough time for staying in shape. In at least half the world, the days are as short as they are cold. But, at least for me, working out indoors can be even worse. Case in point: The treadmill. Some gym rats swear by the device, but...

[ad_1] When you unwrap a shiny new gadget, you want to start using it as quickly as possible. But first—in order to keep your data safe, ensure your hardware lives a long life, and reduce the chance of mishaps later on—you'll want to follow our guide to setting up your device. These seven steps will back up your vital files, protect your security, and make sure you keep only the apps you really want. Here's our advice on what to do as soon as you've unboxed your new piece of tech. 1. Apply any available updates When you unwrap a new toy, you want to start playing with it as soon as possible, not twiddle your thumbs waiting for updates to install. But there are a couple reasons why you should swallow your anticipation and take this vital step. First of all, the latest updates for your iOS, Android, macOS, or Windows device will include the most up-to-date security patches. Until you've worked your way through all the waiting updates, you'll leave your new hardware vu...