Popular Science

SD: Yeah. Bad news. Maybe a little bit?

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LB: Yeah. Kind of back to the drawing board, I guess.

The c4 is the simplest way into the ecosystem at a reasonable price. It’s thinner than the pricier lines, so you get less of that deep sink-in cushioning—but if you like a cleaner, more straightforward feel, this is the practical starting point.

SD: Yeah, but you know, don’t give yourself too hard a time. It’s worth remembering that humans have been trying to figure out the “right” way to handle a body for a very long time.

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LB: Yeah, totally. And a lot of those methods would probably surprise some people today. Take for instance, sky burials. In some parts of Tibet, Mongolia and Bhutan, bodies are placed on mountaintops and left for vultures,

Sleep Numb

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SD: Which sounds so magical—to become a bird.

The iLE is half-off half off in multiple sizes, which is rare territory for a mattress that’s basically designed to be endlessly configurable. If you’re upgrading from a normal foam or hybrid mattress and worry an air system will feel too bouncy, this is the line that’s trying hardest to feel like a mattress first—and a gadget second.

LB: Right? It’s a sacred ritual in Buddhism, but it’s also practical.

In these areas, the ground is often too hard or rocky to dig into and fuel for cremation is scarce. So there’s a belief in returning the body to other living creatures as a final act of altruism.

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Sleep Numb

I spent a night on a $7,000 smart mattress and here’s what I learned

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SD: Hmm. I love that.

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LB: And then you’ve got ossuaries where bodies are buried temporarily and later the bones are moved into communal, resting places to make room for the living.

The Climate360 goes well beyond typical cooling foam. It’s an investment, even on sale, but it’s also one of the few sleep systems that’s trying to manage your bed’s microclimate instead of just hoping breathable fabric will save the day.

SD: Oh yeah. I always think of those bone walls in Europe. They’re beautiful and a little metal.

How Sleep Number’s mattress lines differ (without the brochure voice)

LB: I’d say very metal, but again, super space efficient. But unfortunately, sky burials are actually illegal in the United States, and ossuaries, aka those bone walls, aren’t really an option either. So Sarah, how did today’s burial options stack up? What’s the most eco-friendly option?

Classic (c4): The simplest build and the lowest price. Thinner mattress, fewer comfort layers, still does the adjustable-firmness thing.

SD: Yeah, well, let’s start with conventional burial because that’s still what many people picture. You’ve got embalming chemicals, hardware. They’re metal caskets. Often a concrete vault, deep hole in the ground. You kind of get the picture. Each of those materials requires mining, manufacturing, and transportation.

Performance (p5, p6): More foam up top and more focus on pressure relief + cooling than the Classic line. The p6 is a step plusher/thicker than the p5.

And once they’re stored, they’re basically permanent. So it’s a very resource intensive and carbon heavy process. And those chemical preservatives don’t really return anything to the ecosystem.

Innovation (i8, i10, iLE): This is where Sleep Number really leans into thicker comfort layers and a more “traditional mattress” feel. The i8 is cushy; the i10 is the cushiest; the iLE is the limited-edition value play that’s often priced like a flagship when it’s not on sale.

LB: So that means cremation must be somewhat better, right?

Memory foam (m7): It’s for people who want the slow, contouring foam hug, but also want adjustability.

SD: Yeah. Cremation has the reputation of being the simpler, cleaner choice, but it requires a lot of heat, usually between 1400 and 1900 degrees Fahrenheit and that’s typically powered by fossil fuels.

Climate (ClimateCool, Climate360): Active temperature control. ClimateCool is about cooling; Climate360 does cooling and warming (separately on each side) and is the top-of-the-heap system.

LB: Oh, toasty.

Size jargon you’ll see in the deals

SD: Yeah. Extremely toasty. Cremation also releases a fair bit of carbon dioxide and mercury vapor from dental fillings. Lee Webster, one of the sources for this story, told us that roughly 14 percent of all mercury in U.S. waterways is attributed to flame cremation.

Split King / Split California King: Two separate halves (think: two Twin XL-sized mattresses side-by-side). Great for couples who want truly independent adjustability—also means making the bed is slightly more of a lifestyle.

LB: That is way higher than I expected!

FlexTop King / FlexTop California King: One mattress that’s split only at the head, so you can independently raise your heads without the full “crack down the middle” situation.

SD: I know, right? It’s one of those out of sight processes that feels small because you don’t see the smokestack, but it’s there.

Note: Sleep Number sells Split and FlexTop options only with compatible adjustable bases.

LB: And even traditional cremation pyres come with trade-offs, right?

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SD: Yeah. One study in India found open-air cremations can use 880 to 1,100 pounds of wood per body releasing 500 to 600 kilograms of carbon dioxide, which is a lot.

Classic Series: c4

Researchers there basically said, of course, these ancient rituals matter, but it would be great to find greener options.

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LB: Okay, so then there are these newer technologies such as aquamation and human composting, which we actually did a whole episode on, and we’ll link in the show notes. But are these new methods actually better for the planet?

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SD: Yeah, it’s complicated. They can definitely reduce some impacts, but they’re not impact free.

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LB: Okay, let’s start with aquamation. What is it exactly?

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SD: Aquamation, or alkaline hydrolysis, uses heated water and lye to break down soft tissue over about 12 hours. The bones then are left behind.

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LB: And is it better than cremation?

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SD: Definitely. Carbon emissions may be around 20 percent lower than flame cremation. But then you’re left with about 100 to 300 gallons of liquid waste that has to go into wastewater systems.

Performance Series: p5 and p6

LB: Yikes. That’s a lot of waste. So what about human composting? I mean, it sounds like it could be good?

If you want a more padded, pressure-relieving feel than the c4, this is the “middle class” of the lineup. The p5 is the entry point; the p6 adds thickness and typically feels a bit more substantial.

SD: Yeah, so human composting, also called natural organic reduction, which again if you want to learn more, check out our episode about it. This method happens in a vessel filled with materials like straw, wood chips, and alfalfa.

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Microbes break down the body over about 60 days. But bones don’t fully reduce, so they’re refined and then mixed back in. The families end up with roughly 250 pounds of material that usually looks a lot more like wood chips than garden soil.

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LB: That is a lot of you.

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SD: Yeah. It’s basically a panda sized amount of soil. And often that material gets transported elsewhere for spreading. Plus some of the inputs like alfalfa are grown in water stress regions and shipped long distances.

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LB: I kind of think all things should be measured in units of panda.

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SD: Definitely.

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LB: Just saying, so pandas are not the through line here is: even new options have issues.

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SD: Lee Webster in our story compared it to grocery shopping. You can’t just trust the word organic. You have to know what went into it.

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LB: Okay, so drum roll. After all of this analysis, what’s the winner? What’s the most eco-friendly way to go?

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SD: Natural burial. No embalming, no vaults, no metal, just a biodegradable shroud or simple wooden box placed directly into the soil.

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LB: Back to the basics.

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SD: Exactly. Webster describes it as a body to Earth burial with no impediments to decomposition. Typically, the body is placed about three to four feet down where microbes and insects take it from there.

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There’s no leftover material, no chemical runoff, and no machinery driven emissions. A 2017 lifecycle assessment found this method consistently has the lowest overall environmental cost of any burial method.

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LB: So yeah, like with a lot of things, the most advanced climate solution is just doing less.

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SD: Yeah.

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LB: You know, there’s kind of something comforting about that.

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SD: I think so too. And many natural burial sites double as conservation land, which means instead of depleting space, you’re actually helping to protect it.

Innovation Series: i8, i10, and the iLE Limited Edition

LB: Right. So your final act could actually be habitat preservation.

This is the lineup for people who want their adjustable bed to feel less “air system” and more “plush, normal mattress”… until you remember you can still change the firmness. The trade-off is simple: more comfort layers generally means a softer, more cushioned feel—and a higher price.

SD: Right.

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LB: So should we all just get buried in these simple biodegradable boxes?

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SD: Maybe. But Webster did note that there might be a promising new approach on the horizon. This method would break down both soft tissue and bone into nutrient-rich material. It was developed by innovator Bob Jenkins and uses a proprietary mixture to transform remains into nutrient-rich material in an “accelerated manner.”

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LB: Oh, interesting. So it’s kind of like super human composting.

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SD: Yeah, I think so. But it’s not currently available, unfortunately.

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LB: Honestly, after working on this, I almost feel a little skeptical of any new innovation here.

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SD: Yeah, it’s very fair. It’ll be very hard to displace natural burials as the most eco-friendly option I think.

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LB: I mean, simple and eco-friendly? Kind of hard to beat.

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SD: Yeah, you know, I think I’m sold. Find me a box.

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LB: And with that we’ll be right back to wrap up this episode with some of our own experiences with funerals.

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SD: So we’ve spoken a lot today about burials and types of burials, but not as much about the funeral traditions that have helped humans mourn for centuries.

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LB: Yeah. I think that those early days of the COVID-19 pandemic really made most of us realize how important being together is when a loved one dies.

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SD: Yeah, definitely. It’s so hard when there’s no moment to mourn together.

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LB: Yeah, exactly. So have you had any surprising moments or experiences come up at a funeral?

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SD: You know, I did have a really unique experience when I studied abroad in New Delhi, India. My homestay sister’s grandmother passed away while I was there, and I actually attended her Hindu funeral, which I hadn’t had any prior experience.

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LB: Right, right.

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SD: Yeah. I remember how the family decorated her body with flowers in her apartment, which was just downstairs from where I stayed.

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And then on the day of the funeral, there was an event under this open air tent where a Hindu priest recited some prayers in Sanskrit.

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LB: So did the family and friends attending understand what was being said?

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SD: No, they didn’t understand. It was kind of like the equivalent of going to like a Latin Mass in Catholicism

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LB: That I understand.

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But again, I imagine that was still really beautiful and moving even with that language barrier.

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SD: Yeah, it was. And then after that we went to a separate place where the actual cremation happened. The body was placed on a funeral pyre just 10 feet in front of us. And that experience was, yeah, especially moving because it made me think how cremation happens in the States where it’s oftentimes removed from family and friends. So to be a part of that process felt much more, I guess, impactful. It involved you in the process much more directly.

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LB: Right. That’s beautiful.

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SD: Yeah. How about you?

Climate Collection: ClimateCool and Climate360

LB: So I grew up Catholic, and was a church cantor for several years.

Think of these as “Sleep Number, but the bed also tries to manage temperature like it’s a thermostat.” ClimateCool is focused on active cooling. Climate360 adds warming too, and lets each side run its own program—useful if one of you is sweating and the other is asking for a blanket in July.

SD: Aw.

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LB: Yeah. Cantering is when you lead all of the songs at a Mass. And thanks to that special set of skills, I’ve actually cantered at several family members’ funerals.

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SD: Hmm.

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LB: One was for my great aunt Alice, who actually lived with my immediate family growing up. She happened to love the Christmas song Silver Bells and would just kind of randomly sing it no matter what time of the year.

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SD: Aw, that’s so sweet. I love that.

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LB: Yeah, this woman was an absolute hoot. She died rather suddenly in November 2010, and so I was cantering and to honor her at the funeral, I asked the organist to play an instrumental of Silver Bells right after I sang one verse of the communion hymn, and I didn’t tell my family.

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SD: Oh, were they surprised?

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LB: Yeah, completely. It was just really nice to see them smile. And then my mom actually explained during her eulogy why everyone just heard a Christmas song in early November.

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SD: Oh, helpful. But aw, so nice.

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LB: Yeah, it was just one of those nice little reminders that she’s still with us and those types of things really helped during gatherings that are, you know, incredibly sad.

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SD: Yeah, for sure.

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And that’s it for this episode, but don’t worry, we’ve got more awesome Ask Us Anythings live in our feed right now. Follow or subscribe to ask us anything by Popular Science wherever you enjoy your podcast. And if you like our show, please leave a rating and review.

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LB: We care what you think

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SD: We do!

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LB: Our theme music is from Kenneth Michael Regan, and our producer is Alan Haburchak. This week’s episode was based on an article written for Popular Science by Jennifer Byrne.

Memory Foam Series: m7

SD: Thank you team, and thanks everyone for listening.

Only one m7 configuration showed a sale price during this pull, but the “regular price” wasn’t displayed on-page—so I’m listing it separately rather than inventing a discount.

LB: And one more time. If you have something you’ve always wondered about and wanted explained on a future episode, go to popsci.com/ask, and click the “Ask Us” link.

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Until next time, keep the questions coming.

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SD: Yay.

How to fix your sleep schedule without pulling an all-nighter

Annie Colbert: An excellent episode, if I do say so myself.

Why white noise helps people sleep

Interestingly, our second-most popular episode was a detailed explanation of human composting, so definitely go listen to that one too. As for me, I say feed me to the worms. And now that you’ve learned so much about what can happen to your body after you die, drop us a line and let us know what plans you’ve considered for your own mortal remains.

Skip the wearables and track your sleep with these apps

Send an email or a voice memo to feedback@popsci.com and we’ll include some of the responses in a future episode. Thank you in advance for sending your thoughts, and catch you in two weeks when we’ll be back with a brand new episode. And as always, if you have a question for us, go to popsci.com/ask.

The post What do you want to happen to your body after you die? appeared first on Popular Science.

Turning on these smartphone safety features could literally save your life

Stan Horaczek — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 15:06:00 -0400

While you might never have thought about it, your phone can save your life. Both Android and iOS offer a selection of essential safety features that you need to make yourself aware of, just in case you’re ever in the unfortunate situation of needing one of them. Oh, and tell your friends and family too.

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The post Sleep Number just dropped prices on pretty much all of its beds during this surprise early Presidents’ Day sale appeared first on Popular Science.

The toddler who survived a 54-degree body temperature

David Nield — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:01:00 -0500

Winter is not for the faint of heart. In Moscow, January temperatures hover in the low teens. In New York City, skyscrapers turn Manhattan into a series of freezing wind tunnels. In Sapporo, Japan, the average snowfall is almost 200 inches each winter.

Here’s what’s available on your phone and where to find it. We’re going to cover the latest Pixel handsets running Android 17 and the latest iPhones running iOS 27 here. If you’re using a different or older handset, or older software, you might see some variations in the features offered to you and where they’re located.

Even so, humans have developed plenty of clever ways to wait out the cold. But what would happen if instead of bundling up inside with a hot chocolate, you were left in the frigid cold—just how cold can humans get and recover? Well in a new episode of Popular Science’s Ask Us Anything podcast, we explore just that.

Android safety features

Android lets you opt to share important medical information on your phone’s lock screen, including blood type, allergies, and medications. The idea is that if you’re incapacitated, someone else can find those details without unlocking your phone, and you can add emergency contacts to the list of information too. From Settings, go to Safety and emergency, then tap Medical information and Emergency contacts to add your details.

Ask Us Anything answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions—from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. So, yes, turbulence is like jello and no, cracking your knuckles won’t cause arthritis. If you have a question, send us a note. Nothing is too silly or simple.

On the same Safety and emergency screen, you’ll also find Car Crash Detection. This works exactly as you might guess from the name. If your phone’s sensors detect that you may have been in a driving accident, you’ll see a loud, flashing alert on screen asking if you’re okay. If you don’t clear the alert promptly, your phone can get in touch with emergency services and your emergency contacts on your behalf, automatically.

This episode is based on the Popular Science article “The coldest body temperatures humans have survived.”

Your phone can detect if you’ve been in a collision. David Nield David Nield

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Further down the screen there are three more features worth turning on. Crisis alerts sends a notification whenever there are “natural disasters or public emergencies affecting your area,” while Wireless emergency alerts is similar but is run by the government and its agencies, not Google. There’s also Earthquake alerts, which can warn you in the seconds before shaking reaches you (Google uses its network of Android phones as a giant seismometer).

Listen and follow Ask Us Anything on your favorite podcast platform:

In the same Safety and emergency menu, there’s a Pixel Satellite SOS option, which you should make sure to configure. On the Pixel 9 phones and later (excluding the Pixel 9a), if you don’t have Wi-Fi or cell coverage when you’re trying to call 911, you’ll see an option to connect via satellite instead. You can then follow the instructions to share key details with emergency services and your emergency contacts. A similar feature is available on other Android phones, including Samsung’s Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S26 handsets, though support there depends on your carrier.

Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Or wherever you get your podcasts.

Use Safety Check for extra peace of mind. David Nield David Nield

Full Episode Transcript

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Open the Personal Safety app that comes preinstalled on newer handsets and you’ll see a Safety Check feature. This lets you set an activity (like walking alone or taking public transportation) and a time period, and if you don’t confirm you’re okay after the time period expires, your phone will automatically get in touch with contacts you’ve specified, suggesting they try checking in on you.

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Lastly, it’s important to know about the alternative option for calling 911 if you’re not able to do it the normal way. Press the power button five or more times in quick succession, then tap the confirmation message on screen or wait for the timer to finish, and emergency services will be contacted. You can opt to share some information automatically, like your location or even a live video feed. To configure the feature, open Settings and choose Safety and emergency > Emergency SOS.

Sarah Durn: We’ve all been there. You get all bundled up in a long winter coat and scarf, throw on a hat and gloves, and brace yourself to go outside into the frigid winter weather. But then the moment you step outside, the air stings your face because it’s fricking cold.

iOS safety features

Immediately your body gets to work. Blood vessels constrict to keep blood around your core.

iPhone owners have their own suite of safety features that are worth knowing about, and there are plenty of similarities with what’s on Android too. Government emergency alerts can come through to iOS as well as Android, for example, alerting you to floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other threats. To make sure they’re enabled, open Settings and choose Notifications, then scroll to the bottom to find Government Alerts.

You start to shiver and your muscles get really tense. Then you finally make it to your destination and blissfully step inside. The air is like a warm bath. And you think, “just three more months of this.”

As on Android, it’s possible to put important medical information and emergency contact details on your phone’s lock screen, so they can be accessed by other people if needed after an accident. Open up the Health app, then tap your profile picture (top right) and Medical ID to choose what you want to share and to enter the relevant details.

But what would happen if you had stayed outside? Just how long can the human body survive in the extreme cold?

There’s more than one way to call 911. David Nield David Nield

Welcome to Ask Us Anything from the editors of Popular Science, where we answer your questions about our weird world. From “Why cats lick you,” to “How pilots avoid thunderstorms,” no question is too outlandish or mundane.

If you’re partly incapacitated or under duress, you may not be able to pick up your iPhone and call 911 in the normal way, but your iPhone gives you an alternative. Press and hold the side button and either volume button until the Emergency SOS slider appears, then keep holding. A countdown starts and an alert sounds, and when you let go at the end of it, a call is placed to emergency services with key information about your location shared too. The same process can also alert your emergency contacts. Head to Emergency SOS from Settings to configure the feature.

I’m Sarah Durn, features editor at PopSci.

Apple has its own car crash detection feature too, which you’ll find under the same Emergency SOS screen in Settings. It’s the Call After Severe Crash toggle switch, and it works on the iPhone 14 and later. If your iPhone gets jolted in a way that makes it think you’ve been in a crash, an alert shows up on screen, and if you don’t dismiss the alert quickly enough, a call is placed to 911 and your emergency contacts are notified.

AC: And I’m editor-in-chief, Annie Colbert.

If you’re out of range of Wi-Fi and cellular networks, an iPhone 14 or later is still able to send a message to emergency services and your designated emergency contacts if it can get a satellite lock. You’ll see the option pop up automatically if you’re trying to call 911 with no signal. There’s nothing to configure here, so it will just show up when you need it.

SD: Here at Popular Science, we love obsessing over strange, weird questions.

You can choose what information to share during a Check In. David Nield David Nield

AC: And this week our curiosity has led us to the chilling question: just how cold can humans get and still survive? Sarah, you recently edited a story about the lowest survivable body temps, so how cold can us humans go?

iOS also has a feature called Check In, which works through Messages and lets people know you’re safe. From a Messages chat, tap the + (plus) button on the text input box, then pick Check In (you may need to tap More first). You’re then able to set the parameters for the feature, including the check-in period. To set what’s shared, go to Settings, tap Apps, then Messages, then Check In Data. Note that both you and your contact need to be running iOS 17 or later for this to work.

The post Turning on these smartphone safety features could literally save your life appeared first on Popular Science.

Sea turtle struck by boat is recovering in a 3D-printed harness

Margherita Bassi — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 10:00:00 -0400

It seems like 3D printers can produce just about anything, from assault rifles to homes made of dirt and even cookies made from plastic. Now, a team from the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Georgia’s Jekyll Island has turned to 3D printing to help a seriously injured green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) during its physical therapy.

SD: So in some wild cases, people have survived a core temperature as low as 53 degrees Fahrenheit.

The juvenile turtle, named Cebu, appeared in rough shape upon arriving at the sea turtle center. A boat had struck the turtle, causing spinal cord trauma, which impacted its ability to swim.

AC: Ugh.

The team doesn’t know the sex of Cebu because the turtle isn’t displaying visible physical characteristics that can reveal if it’s male or female. This is normal for sea turtles at this stage, and the sex wouldn’t affect their treatment or rehabilitation plan, Jaynie L. Gaskin, Georgia Sea Turtle Center director, tells Popular Science.

SD: I know! That’s 45 degrees colder than our normal body temperature of 98.6.

“Cebu was initially so weak that they could not safely swim in a tank at a normal water depth and spent an extended period in very shallow water. Or at the beginning, no water at all,” Gaskin explains. “As Cebu began to recover, our veterinary team wanted to provide opportunities for physical therapy in deeper water, where normal flipper movements could help rebuild strength and mobility.”

AC: Ugh. Bur. When we were talking about this episode, I was thinking about the coldest I’ve ever been, and I think it was in Poland in January many years ago.

The team 3D-printed a custom harness for Cebu. Image: Georgia Sea Turtle Center

I had stepped into a slushy puddle at the beginning of this two-hour, outside-only tour in Gdansk, and I should have just stepped into a coffee shop or something to warm up, but I was very, very cold.

Cebu’s early sessions required physical support either through flotation devices or a human helper. But that only worked short-term—continuously being held can be stressful and flotation devices used extensively might damage the fragile shell. The team looked for a new strategy, and decided on a 3D-printed floating harness.

SD: Oh, no, that sounds awful. Especially for something you’re like choosing to put yourself through.

“We’ve created harnesses for other cases in the past, but Cebu needed something completely customized,” says Gaskin. “Our conservation team has 3D-printing capabilities, so our veterinary and conservation teams worked together to develop a solution specifically for Cebu.”

AC: Yes.

But the harness only covers one side of Cebu’s care. The young sea turtle is also being treated with stem cell therapy, which helps repair diseased, dysfunctional, or injured tissue. It’s been about a month since Cebu’s second stem cell treatment, and the team is starting to see encouraging changes, according to Gaskin. In fact, Cebu just experienced its best physical therapy session yet.

SD: Yeah. I think for me, I just remember getting so fricking cold skiing growing up.

Cebu receiving stem cell treatment. Image: Georgia Sea Turtle Center

My dad would always say, “one more run, guys, come on!” And we’d just be so cold and shivering. Especially going up the lift and just getting pummeled with wind and snow.

“There is still a long way to go before we know whether release will be possible,” says Gaskin. “At this point, Cebu’s prognosis remains guarded, but we are encouraged by the progress we are beginning to see.”

AC: Yeah. Sometimes dads, they’re pushing you to push through and it’s too cold.

The post Sea turtle struck by boat is recovering in a 3D-printed harness appeared first on Popular Science.

Why International Red Panda Day is a big deal at the National Zoo this year

Laura Baisas — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400

On this International Red Panda Day, the team at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington D.C. really has something to celebrate. Well, technically three somethings.

+ +

One female and one male cub were born on May 29. Image: Brooke McDonough/Smithsonian.

SD: It’s too cold.

Three red panda cubs were born earlier this summer at the zoo’s Front Royal, Virginia, conservation campus. On May 29, a 3-year-old female named Sequoia and 12-year-old male named Mow Mow welcomed one female and one male cub. On June 11, a 3-year-old female Keahi gave birth to a single female cub, sired by a 7-year-old male named Rocket.

AC: So cold. And so these cases we’re gonna talk about where people survived core temps in the fifties are rare, right?

“The new cubs are ensuring the population overall. Honestly, we can’t conserve the species and continue to breed them if we don’t have the animals,” Jessica Kordell, the assistant curator of carnivores at the Front Royal conservation campus tells Popular Science. “They are ensuring that their parents’ genetic material basically gets passed on to the next generation.”

SD: Oh yeah, definitely. Many people have died from hypothermia after their internal body temperature has dropped, even just below 90 degrees.

One female cub was born on June 11. Image: Roshan Patel/Smithsonian

AC: Oh, wow.

The cubs have spent the summer safely tucked away in their nest boxes with their parents, eating milk, sleeping, and adjusting to life on the outside. According to Kordell, all three cubs are doing well. The staff has begun placing some bamboo in their nest boxes, but they have not seen them eat it just yet. The cubs primarily depend on their mothers (called dams) for everything, but they are becoming more mobile. And their individual temperaments are starting to show.

SD: Yeah. And crazier still the person who actually survived a 53 degree body temp was only a toddler.

“The singleton seems to leave [the nest boxes] more and more. Maybe because she wants to be with mom or maybe she’s a bit more precocious (likely some of both). She’s definitely feisty and huff-quacks at us every chance she gets,” Kordell says. “The twins are a bit more quiet and shy. They have each other and they rely on that, and they aren’t found apart often. They do spend time playing and appear to love to cuddle with each other. “

AC: Oh my God. As the parent of a toddler, I feel terrible for those poor parents. How on earth did this child survive?

Keahi the 3-year-old female is often cautious, but keepers say she has come out of her shell since her arrival. Image: Brett Kuxhausen/Smithsonian

SD: I’ll tell you all about it after a short break.

“Some of the fun physical characteristics that I like about red pandas is one that I think that people don’t know,” Kordell says. “They are red because they actually have a lichen that grows in the trees that is that red color, and so they blend in really well with that. And then that black belly just kind of fades them into the shadows and disguises them.”

AC: Aw man, cliffhanger.

SD: I know! Sorry.

Red pandas are endangered mammals found in the treetops of Nepal, India, Bhutan, Myanmar (Burma), and China and are most closely related to raccoons. They primarily eat bamboo leaves–and a lot of them. They can digest only about 24 percent of the bamboo they eat, so they must eat 20 to 30 percent of their body weight each day. That comes out to about two to four pounds of bamboo shoots and leaves. Red pandas will also eat grass and fruit and occasionally an egg, insect, small animal, or bird.

AC: But before we take that break, we wanna know: what questions are keeping you curious? If there’s something you’ve always wanted to understand better submit your questions by clicking the “Ask Us” link at popsci.com/ask.

Sequoia is 3 years old and is described as being outgoing and quick to learn new training behaviors. Image: Brooke McDonough/Smithsonian.

Again, that’s popsci.com/ask and click that “Ask Us” link.

Cubs usually come in twos, but a litter can have as few as one or as many as four babies. The cubs will typically come out of their nest at 3months old, but stay with their mother until the next breeding season begins.

SD: We can’t wait to hear your questions!

At 12-years-old, Mow Mow is the oldest and most timid of the group. However, his confidence has grown as a result of spending time with Sequoia. Image: Jessica Kordell/Smithsonian.

AC: And with that, we’ll be right back after a short break.

Less than 10,000 red pandas remain in the wild and habitat loss is their primary threat. In Nepal, their habitat has already fragmented into 400 small forest patches.

Welcome back. Okay. Before we get into the science of just how cold humans can get, I wanna zoom out for a second because hypothermia might seem like a modern medical term, but humans have been dealing with extreme cold for basically forever.

A red panda living at Zoom Torino in Italy. Image: Paolo Picciotto/REDA/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.

SD: Yeah, this is not a new problem.

During cold mountain weather, red pandas go into “torpor.” They will wrap their fluffy tails around themselves and go into a deep sleep. This reduces their metabolic demands, while lowering their core temperature and respiration rate.

AC: Not at all. Ancient writers describe soldiers freezing sailors perishing, quote “by reason of cold,” armies collapsing during winter campaigns, but there wasn’t a diagnosis.

A red panda at the Wolong Panda Reserve in China’s Sichuan Province. Image: Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images.

There wasn’t even a word for hypothermia until the late 1800s.

Since 2007, the Red Panda Network (RPN) has protected red pandas and their habitat through community-based conservation programs in Nepal. The Smithsonian also partners with RPN through the American Associations of Zoos & Aquariums SAFE Red Panda Program to spread awareness to zoo visitors, who may have never seen a red panda in real life.

SD: Yeah. And even then, doctors didn’t always recognize it, right?

“We like to say [to visitors], ‘We’re getting you excited about them, but also you should learn more about it and how they’re working to conserve land and redistribute the forest, and working on land corridors.’ It relates back to just getting people to care,” Kordell explains.

AC: Correct. During Antarctic exploration in the early 1900s, think Sir Ernest Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott, hypothermia wasn’t even mentioned, but descriptions of hypothermia symptoms are there: confusion, poor judgment, people wandering off in storms, what one explorer called “a half thawed brain.”

A red panda in its enclosure at Madrid Zoo in Spain. Image: Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images.

SD: Huh. Why did it take so long for the condition to be defined?

While the Smithsonian’s new pups grow, the families will remain at the Front Royal facility, which is closed to the public. However, visitors to the zoo’s main campus in Washington D.C. can catch a glimpse of an adult red panda named Asa on the Asia Trail.

AC: One big reason is thermometers.

Happy International Red Panda Day!

The post Why International Red Panda Day is a big deal at the National Zoo this year appeared first on Popular Science.

The Fat Bear Week 2026 bracket is here and chunkier than ever

Laura Baisas — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 15:51:59 -0400

It’s almost time! The official Fat Bear Week 2026 bracket has landed, and this year’s competition will see 16 adult brown bears (Ursus arctos) in Alaska go head-to-head in the bracket-style online competition.

SD: Okay, tell me more.

In group one are the mother bears, including:

AC: So thermometers weren’t really used in medicine until the late 1800s, and even then doctors were much more focused on fevers than dangerously low temps.

Bear #132, a first-timer, and her three spring cubs

That starts to change around the 1900s.

Bear #284 (Electra) and her two cubs, a bear with a long lineage at Katmai

SD: So once we could accurately measure body temperature, we started understanding just how low the human body can get.

Bear #806 and her mixed age cubs

AC: Precisely. So Sarah, can you tell us what exactly is hypothermia?

Bear #901 and her spring cub

SD: Yeah. Hypothermia is a condition that occurs when your body loses heat faster than it can produce it, causing your core body temperature to drop below 95 degrees Fahrenheit.

In group two are the single adult females, including:

AC: So just a bit below normal body temperature of 98.6.

Bear #909, a resilient mama bear who lost two of her cubs this season

SD: Right. Humans are considered homeotherms, which just means we’re built to keep our core body temperature steady, right at that 98.6 degree mark.

Bear #428, the descendant of a former Fat Bear Week champion Bear #128 Grazer

AC: So how exactly does hypothermia affect the body?

Bear #131, a 9-year-old bear who was once nicknamed Marshmallow for her light-brown appearance

SD: Yeah, so mild hypothermia can make people confused, clumsy, and (this one surprised me a bit) hungry. Because your body is using so many calories to try and stay warm.

Bear #910, a member of a history-making blended bear family who has drawn the attention and affections of fellow Fat Bear Week contenders Bucky and Walker

AC: Mm-hmm.

In group 3, we have the sub-adult bears:

SD: Usually at that point, if you just move inside and start to warm up, you’ll be okay. But if your body temperature continues to drop further, heart rate and breathing slow, and in some severe cases, below an 82 degree body temp, the body starts shutting systems down.

Bear #694, a first-timer born in 2022

AC: Which makes it all the more unbelievable that anyone survives below that.

Bear #620, a sub-adult on the cusp of adulthood and a member of Katmai’s Brady Bunch crew

SD: Right. And yet there are a few extraordinary cases where people did.

The resilient Bear #610

AC: Hmm. All right. Let’s talk first about the adult record holder for surviving low body temperatures.

Bear #89 (Backpack), a crowd-favorite who is the son of Bear #435 Holly, the 2019 Fat Bear Week champion

SD: Yeah, let’s do it. So that would be Anna Bågenholm. In 1999 she was skiing in Norway, fell through the ice, and became trapped in near freezing water for about 90 minutes.

And finally, in group four, the behemoth adult male bears:

AC: Huh.

Bear #32 (Chunk), the 2025 Fat Bear Week Champion

SD: I know. By the time rescuers reached her, she was clinically dead. No heartbeat, no breathing.

Bear #164 (Bucky Dent), a young upstart and ace fisher-bear

AC: Oh, that’s terrifying.

Bear #151 (Walker), a regular at Brooks River

SD: Her core body temperature had dropped to about 56 degrees Fahrenheit, the lowest ever survived by an adult outside a hospital.

Bear #903 (Gully), another offspring of two-time champion Grazer who got his nickname because he likes to snack on gulls in addition to salmon

AC: Ah, so how did she survive that?

In addition to being digital competitors in this online tournament, Bear #151 and Bear #903 have proven to be real-life competitors, often going after the same salmon.

SD: Yeah. Well, a few things just lined up perfectly.

The 2026 Fat Bear Week Bracket. Image: explore.org.

She was trapped in an air pocket so she could still breathe as her body cooled. And as her temperature dropped, her brain’s need for oxygen dropped too. Doctors hooked her up to a heart lung machine, and warmed her very slowly over several hours. She spent weeks in intensive care, but made a full recovery.

According to Katmai National Park and Preserve naturalist Mike Fitz, the brown bears have reached “peak fat” and are ready to handle the long salmon-less winter ahead. Over 100 different bears were identified at Katmai’s Brooks River this summer, and not all of them could be included in the competition. The team at Katmai selected from bears who showed up at the river early in the summer and re-appeared again later in the season. This allowed the team to take good before-and-after photos that show off how much weight they packed on while feasting on salmon over the summer.

AC: Oh, I can’t believe that really happened.

Fat Bear Week begins on Tuesday, September 22, and a winner will be crowned on Tuesday, September 29. Voters can continue to get to know Katmai’s iconic bears via explore.org’s livestream and highlight reels.

SD: I know, me neither.

AC: But then there’s a case that beats even that record.

SD: Yeah, so this toddler.

Here is everything you need to know to prepare for this year’s celebration of Alaska’s chunky predators:

AC: Oh no.

SD: I know. In 2014, there was a 2-year-old boy in Poland who wandered outside, wearing only a pajama top and socks. He was missing for several hours in temperatures around 19 degrees Fahrenheit.

What is Fat Bear Week?

When rescuers found him, his body temperature was just over 53 degrees Fahrenheit.

Think March Madness, just without the basketball and significantly more bears. Fat Bear Week is a single-elimination tournament, where bear enthusiasts from around the world can vote online for their favorite chunky bear. After each round, the bear with the most votes advances until the winner is announced. According to the Katmai Conservancy, the event began as a one-day event in 2014 with 1,700 votes cast. Only 10 years later, 1.2 million votes were cast from over 100 countries.

AC: That number is still so shocking to me.

The brown bears return to Brooks Falls for the salmon migration every year in late June, where viewers can watch them on explore.org’s livestream. There, they will feast to fatten up for the long winter ahead. By late summer, the nutritious fish will spawn and then begin to die. The bears will then move to the lower Brooks River in September and October to eat the dead and dying salmon near the river’s mouth.

SD: Yeah, same. His body was so stiff, they couldn’t even intubate him at first. Like Anna, he was connected to life support and rewarmed very gradually. And after two months in the hospital, he survived with no lasting physical damage.

Eating all of this salmon is important because the heftier the bear, the better chance they will survive their long winter hibernation. Despite being the poster species for winter hibernation, bears are not “deep hibernators,” they way that squirrels, bats, and bees are. Bears enter a state called torpor, which is an involuntary state primarily triggered by lack of food. During this time, the bears rely on stored fat reserves for energy. A torpid bear’s eating, drinking, and waste functions will cease, as its body metabolizes these stores it put on over the summer.

AC: So intense. So what’s actually happening inside the body at these extreme temperatures? Why doesn’t everything just kind of stop forever?

When is Fat Bear Week 2026?

SD: Yeah. The key thing is that cold slows everything in your body. This includes harmful processes like inflammation and cell death. Also at normal temperatures, the brain needs a constant supply of oxygen.

This year, Fat Bear Week begins on Tuesday, September 22, and a winner will be crowned on Tuesday, September 29.

But as the body cools, that demand drops dramatically. So in very specific situations, especially cold water or rapid cooling, the brain can survive much longer without oxygen than it normally could.

How can I vote?

AC: Hmm, fascinating. So do doctors ever use hypothermia on purpose?

Votes may be cast from 12 p.m. to 9 p.m. EDT (9 a.m. to 6 p.m. PDT and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ADT) from September 22 and 29 at fatbearweek.org.

SD: Yeah, they do. By the mid 20th century, surgeons realized they could cool patients during heart or brain surgery to protect vital organs.

Photographs comparing the bears from earlier in the summer and later in the summer will be shown, so voters can get an idea of just how much weight the bears put on during their salmon fest. An adult male bear can go from roughly 700 pounds in the early summer to over 1,200 pounds by fall. Voters are also encouraged to get familiar with each bear’s life history and the unique challenges they face to survive.

Today induced hypothermia is sometimes used after cardiac arrest to reduce brain damage.

Which bears are competing this year?

AC: Ah, so cold went from being the enemy to a medical tool.

This year’s competition includes 16 adult brown bears separated into four main groups—mother bears, single females (those who do not have cubs), sub-adults, and adult males.

SD: Yeah. Though a very carefully controlled one.

In 2025, Bear #32 (Chunk) took the crown, despite beginning the salmon run with a freshly broken jaw. He was likely injured while fighting with another bear for a mate, but he still managed to catch plenty of fish. Chunk is known for his dominance and size, but also narrow-set eyes, dark fur, a prominent brow ridge, and a distinctive scar across his muzzle.

AC: Yes. Of course.

Chunk wasn’t always a fan favorite though. In 2024, he lost the Fat Bear Week crown for the second year in a row to mama bear Grazer. The two bears had been involved in an incident in which two of Grazer’s 2024 cubs were attacked by Chunk after falling over a waterfall. Grazer put up a fight against Chunk to defend her cubs, but one cub died after the encounter.

SD: Hypothermia is still very bad, very dangerous.

What happened to Fat Bear Week Junior?

AC: Yes.

In past years, Fat Bear Week Junior has pitted cubs against each other in a similar, single-elimination bracket. For 2026, the competition will not happen. Instead, young cubs are competing as part of family units in the adult bracket.

SD: Outside of a hospital, most people don’t survive these conditions. The takeaway is not humans are secretly freeze-proof.

How can I support Katmai’s bears?

AC: Yes. It’s more like under extremely rare circumstances, cold can buy the body a little bit more time.

Donations can be made to Katmai Conservancy’s Otis Fund. The Otis Fund is named after Bear #480 (Otis), who won four Fat Bear Week titles before his death around 2024. All donations made between September 22 and October 3 will be matched by explore.org.

SD: Exactly.

What happened with the bears this summer?

AC: This has made me feel even colder and even more paranoid about forgetting my mittens at home.

This year’s livestream featured an example of how wild (and upsetting to humans) nature can be. On Tuesday, July 28, the live-cams captured a young brown bear cub being killed and eaten by an unrelated mother bear (Bear #806). The deceased cub was born this spring and the child of Bear #909, a 10-year-old brown bear. Bear #909 started the season with two cubs, but now lost both.

SD: Me too. And all this got me thinking, you know, “what are the coldest places humans choose to live on earth?”

On Sunday, August 2, one of Bear #335’s (Jolly) cubs died, after following three unrelated cubs up a tree. The mother of the cubs already in the tree attacked Bear #335’s cub, who did not survive the encounter. The identity of the mother bear who killed the spring cub was not confirmed.

AC: Hmm. Oh man. I might need more than mittens for this.

Following the first cub’s death, naturalist Mike Fitz and park rangers Christine Loberg and Sarah Bruce said this likely the first documented case occurring at Brooks River. While there is no one answer as to why mother bears are killing cubs, some experts suspect bear adoption, food scarcity, and fights for dominance all play a role.

SD: I think you might. That’s coming up after this quick break.

Additionally, this year also saw a cub with silver-hued fur, one cub who hopefully learned important lesson about porcupine quill safety, the unique fishing stylings of Bear #164 (Bucky Dent), Bear #284’s (Electra) family who can “walk on water,” and even a few cubs take a tumble over a waterfall.

The post The Fat Bear Week 2026 bracket is here and chunkier than ever appeared first on Popular Science.

Autonomous airplane completes first cross-country flight

Andrew Paul — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:56:01 -0400

A single-engine prop Cessna Caravan has reportedly become the first airplane to autonomously complete a cross-continental flight across the United States. Overseen by the aeronautics company Joby, the retrofitted aircraft began its challenge in Concord, California, on September 7, ultimately traveling 3,199 miles with no assistance from its onboard human safety pilot. However, the plane didn’t only fly itself once airborne. Autonomous programming directed every stage of its multi-stop journey, including taxiing, takeoffs, and landings.

Welcome back! To wrap up, let’s shift gears a bit and take a look at some of the planet’s coldest places.

“Autonomy has an important role to play in the future of flight,” Joby founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt said in a statement on September 18. Bevird added that the technology could soon help “connect remote communities, deliver critical supplies, respond faster to disasters, support military operations, and keep pilots out of harm’s way.”

AC: Okay, I’m already cold just thinking about this. Hit me.

The endeavor couldn’t always follow a preset course. Instead, the autonomous plane needed to navigate numerous common air travel challenges in real-time. These included piloting through one of the nation’s busiest regions above Phoenix, Arizona, as well as rerouting around thunderstorms and severe weather fronts. During its trip, the experimental plane also made demonstration stops at Alliance Airport in Fort Worth, Texas, and at South Carolina’s Shaw Air Force Base.

SD: Yeah. So the coldest, inhabited place on Earth is generally considered Oymyakon in Eastern Siberia. Hopefully I’m saying that right. It’s a village where people live year round and winter temperatures regularly drop below minus 60 degrees fahrenheit.

After completed its cross-continental flight, the Cessna made a low pass near the First Flight Monument in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Credit: Joby Aviation

AC: Nope. No thank you. That’s not for me. I will say I genuinely enjoy winter, but nope, that’s definitely not for me.

The Cessna completed the journey on September 14, but Joby tasked it with one more symbolic excursion. Soon after its cross-continental flight, the plane performed a low pass near the First Flight Monument in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, not far from the site of Orville and Wilbur Wright’s historic aviation feat in 1903.

SD: Yeah, me neither. When it’s that cold, cars can’t be turned off or they won’t start. Kids still go to school unless it’s colder than about minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit. And people almost entirely rely on meat and fish because nothing grows there in winter.

Next up is the return flight back to California. As it self-pilots back home to California, the plane will make additional stops at airports in Washington, D.C., Kentucky, Kansas, Oklahoma, Utah, and Oregon.

AC: Oof. I thought taking my kid on the New York City bus to school in single digits was hard, but you know what? Good on them.

Multiple companies and governments around the world have also pursued autonomous aviation technology for years. In 2010, a collaboration between the Piasecki Aircraft Corporation and Carnegie Mellon University resulted in the first fully self-piloted helicopter. Today, many commercial aircraft also rely on an array of autopilot capabilities for specific tasks including landing and maintaining stability during flight.

The post Autonomous airplane completes first cross-country flight appeared first on Popular Science.

Lost WWI trench lives on in immersive VR installation

Popular Science Team — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 13:00:00 -0400

The rolling, green hills of West Flanders, Belgium, were once the bitter, brutal staging ground for some of the bloodiest fighting of World War I. An estimated 600,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, or went missing in that region between 1914 and 1918, often fighting along intricate but claustrophobically cramped trench lines that were perpetually bombarded by artillery fire and sinking into thick, waterlogged mud. However, a visitor walking across many of those old battlegrounds today might never know they were treading across a graveyard.

SD: I know it’s pretty badass. And then if we’re talking uninhabited places, Antarctica takes the crown, obviously.

One of those sites (now called Dig Hill 80) was first uncovered in 2015, when archaeologists conducting routine tests stumbled onto what looked like a remarkably well-preserved German stronghold. But that same plot of land was also being scouted out by real estate developers. The find set off an emergency excavation that had to be completed on a tight deadline. Today, that site belongs to a row of unassuming single-family suburban homes. The physical space may have lost its battle with residential construction, but archivists are working to immortalize the site digitally. The Applied Research in Immersive Experiences and Simulations (ARIES) team at Virginia Tech has been working with valuable archival material from the excavation site, transforming thousands of photographs and other documentation into an accessible, virtual world.

AC: Mm-hmm.

When the project is complete, history enthusiasts and professional archaeologists alike will be able to click through the web-based experience, move from site to site, and interact with highly detailed digital representations of artifacts as if they were actually there, down in the muck. It’s a painstaking task, one that requires balancing academic rigor and respect for the dead against the demands of telling a story that resonates with a modern digital audience.

SD: The coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was minus 128 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Digital tools give us the chance to preserve not only the artifacts but also the spatial relationships, context, and stories that make archaeology meaningful,” manager for immersive learning and research with ARIES, manager for immersive learning and research Sarah Tucker said in a statement.

AC: Brr!

Recently, Tucker walked Popular Science through an early build of the project, showing examples of the digital artifacts on display and explaining how moving through the 3D space can help reveal what she calls “layers of history.”

SD: I know. That was measured in 1983 at the Vostok Russian research station.

“If we can help someone better understand the human experiences behind World War I or inspire someone who otherwise would never engage with archaeology, that’s incredibly rewarding,” she says.

AC: That number doesn’t even feel real, and it’s making my soul feel cold.

A digital model shows the excavation site for Hill 80, a German stronghold and trench fortress near Wijtschate, Belgium, captured during the 1917 Battle of Messines. Image: Sarah Tucker.

SD: I know, mine too. Ugh, at that kind of temperature, exposed skin can freeze in seconds. And the human body cannot survive without serious protection.

A bloody battlefield, hidden in plain sight

AC: Which really puts all these survival stories we talked about today into perspective.

The area of British-German trenches now known as Dig Hill 80 may never have been fully uncovered without the swift actions of lead archaeologist Simon Verdegem. Rather than wait for lengthy approval from an academic institution, Verdegem took his case directly to the public, launching a campaign on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter. The campaign drew 2,679 backers and raised roughly €178,000 or roughly $200,000). That funding allowed a team to inspect the site, remove the topsoil, search through its maze of trenches and bomb craters, and map, photograph, and catalog everything within. Remarkably, that entire process wrapped up in just about two months.

SD: Yeah, totally. Our earth is wonderful, but it can also be terrifying, and humans are surprisingly resilient and innovative when it comes to surviving the planet’s extremes.

“Given the importance and unique character of this site, it requires a full-scale excavation,” Verdegem wrote at the time. “There should be no half measures.”

AC: That feels like a good note to wrap up on today.

And that’s it for this episode, but don’t worry, we’ve got more fabulous Ask Us Anythings live in our feed right now. Follow or subscribe to Ask Us Anything by Popular Science, wherever you enjoy your podcasts. And if you like our show, leave a rating or review.

SD: We care what you think. Our theme music is from Kenneth Michael Reagan, and our producer is Alan Haburchak.

The excavation area was reportedly the size of a soccer field, and included remains dating from the initial German capture of the position in 1914 through its recapture at the Battle of Messines in 1917. In total, remains from 125 soldiers, some as young as 15 years old, were recovered. But it wasn’t just hallowed ground. The research team also uncovered scores of personal belongings, each helping provide a bit more context into what life was like holed up in the wet trenches. Helmets, rifles, toothbrushes, bottles of HP sauce (a popular condiment among British troops), rosary beads, and crucifixes were all there among the discarded relics.

This week’s episode was based on an article written for Popular Science by RJ Mackenzie.

The ARIES team spent a bit over a week on-site during the excavation. They already knew they wanted to archive the findings, so they went about recording just about everything possible. That process involved aerial drone photos, high-resolution orthophotos, photogrammetric models (essentially a 3D digital representation of an object captured by taking many photos of it from different angles), and structured-light scans of each artifact. All told, Tucker says the students collected over three terabytes of data (roughly the equivalent of 12 full iPhones) from the site. The students working on the project essentially used tools and skill sets normally used to build virtual reality worlds in gaming or entertainment and redirected them towards historical preservation.

AC: Thank you team, and thank you to everyone for listening.

“The same skills that students use to develop simulations and entertainment are used in preservation projects like this one,” ARIES Executive Director Todd Ogle said in a statement. “Portfolio material students gained from this project helped them get jobs in engineering simulation, game development, and more.”

SD: And one more time. If you want something you’ve always wondered about, explained on a future episode, go to popsci.com/ask, and click the “Ask Us” link. Until next time, keep the questions coming.

Curating history in a digital world

AC: Stay warm out there, everyone.

But documenting the finds is only part of the process. Without proper curation, all of that data is devoid of context and meaningless to the average observer. That’s where Tucker comes in. She says she set out to frame the material somewhat like how a museum director would orient an exhibition space. The goal was to accurately represent a core selection of material from the site while also instilling a sense of narrative.

SD: Yeah. Bundle up.

“I was initially drawn to this project due to the amount and variety of data collected by Todd Ogle and the Virginia Tech team, which presented a significant curatorial challenge for me,” Tucker tells Popular Science. “I also liked the idea of making digital cultural heritage accessible to the public.

AC: Woo. Bundle up so you don’t freeze.

The post The toddler who survived a 54-degree body temperature appeared first on Popular Science.

Synthetic skin reveals hidden ‘Mona Lisa’ when exposed to heat

Mack DeGeurin — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 15:04:00 -0500

Octopuses and their cephalopod cousins have long fascinated biologists with their seemingly supernatural shapeshifting. The cephalopods rapidly change color and texture, blending into their surroundings and evading predators. This natural camouflage is a remarkable bit of biology that engineers have tried to replicate, albeit with limited success. But that may be changing.

Users who click through the web-based platform will first see an overhead aerial view of the site, with five main areas they can click on to walk through. The primary points of interest she settled on were the Millers House, a mass grave, a 1914 German trench, a 1918 British trench, and a 1914-1916 German trench. Clicking on any one of those sends the user to another page where there are 360-degree views of the photos captured from the excavation. Once there, online visitors can also click on specific artifacts from those areas, which are mapped to the locations where they were found in the real world. A brief text description appears beside the selected artifact, adding context much like at a museum. The entire digital world is being created using the software platform 3DVista.

Researchers at Penn State say they’ve developed a new hydrogel material inspired by octopus skin that can encode images directly into its structure. The imprinted images then disappear and reappear when the skin is exposed to subtle changes in temperature or a surrounding solvent. The result is a “4D” synthetic smart skin capable of revealing hidden images and shifting surface patterns.

Tucker says picking and choosing which of those many artifacts to include was also a key component in creating a sense of narrative. Though ammo cartridges and cigarette containers are a dime a dozen in these types of environments, Tucker was particularly drawn to a handful of other, more personal objects. For example, the project includes full 3D visualizations of German buttons. But since Germany was still a relatively newly unified country at the time of the war, some of those buttons have a lion on them (for soldiers hailing from Bavaria) and others a crown (for those from Prussia).

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To demonstrate the technology, the team encoded a black-and-white image of Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” into the material. At room temperature, the image is essentially invisible. However, when heat is applied the hidden contrast sharpens until the image becomes clear. Though still early in development, the material could lay the foundation for synthetic adaptive camouflage, with potential military applications and beyond. The findings were published this week in the journal Nature Communications.

Tucker also chose to include a harmonica found at the site. By clicking the instrument and spinning it on the digital screen, users might gain a more vivid understanding of the juxtaposed realities of trench life. Soldiers were simultaneously terrified, worried that any breath could be their last, but were also willing to play music despite that fear to instill some sense of normality.

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“I’m passionate about making research accessible without oversimplifying it,” Tucker added in a statement. “Archaeological excavations often disappear once they’re completed, and unless you’re part of the excavation team, you can never experience the site.”

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Tucker expects the project should be fully viewable to the public sometime early next year.

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Ancient hidden graffiti discovered in Bronze Age temple

Andrew Paul — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 11:30:00 -0400

Thanks to some powerful lasers, a fleet of ancient ships hidden in plain sight for over 40 years has resurfaced inside a Bronze Age temple in Cyprus. However, it’s understandable why archaeologists overlooked them for decades. As researchers explain in a recent study published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, high-resolution laser scans revealed as many as 23 vessels etched into the walls of Kition Kahthari. But the more than 3,000-year-old images weren’t created by a single artist. Instead, contextual evidence indicates that the ships were etched into stone over a period of 300 years.

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Established by Phoenicians around the beginning of the 10th century BCE, Kition was a city-kingdom located on the southern coast of Cyprus, later annexed by Rome in 58 BCE. The city endured for nearly another 400 years before successive earthquakes in 322 and 342 CE ultimately destroyed the settlement.

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In 1959, archaeologists began excavating a complex of five stonework temples now known as Kition Kathari. The work has since spanned decades, including the discovery of 21 ships engraved on a temple wall and nearby altar in the early 1980s. While already eroded by time, excavations unfortunately exposed the stonework to further deterioration.

It’s an impressive engineering feat that also highlights the elegant complexity nature has refined through millions of years of evolution. Even with all our resources and combined brian power, humans still can’t best nature’s innate artistry.

Illustration of the ship carvings on a single temple block with different laser scans. Credit: Braun et al. 2026

How octopuses hide

This eventually led archaeologists to return to Kition Kathari in 2024 to survey what remained of the Bronze Age architecture. Researchers utilized high-resolution lasers to scan the stone surfaces, which they later reconstructed in 3D. They initially intended to gain a better understanding of Late Bronze age masonry, but what they saw in the scans took them completely by surprise.

Scientists are starting to really understand the complexity of octopus brains and their unique capacity for problem-solving. When it comes to shapeshifting though, the process appears to be more instinctual than deliberate.

“When we noticed all the ships, I felt tremendously excited. We had not expected to find them,” Caroline Barnes, an archaeologist at the University of British Columbia and study co-author, recalled in a statement to Phys.

Biologically, cephalopods rely on specialized neuromuscular organs called chromatophores to perform their evolutionary magic trick. The chromatophores expand and contract in response to neural signals triggered by environmental cues. They also use muscular hydrostats to rapidly alter the texture of their skin. Together, these features give octopuses an extraordinary dynamic range of appearance, allowing them to seamlessly blend into their surroundings.

Barnes and her colleagues ultimately tallied 23 ship illustrations that are practically invisible to the naked eye. In one case, a repair stone added 150 years after the initial wall’s construction also showcased a boat, suggesting the artwork was created in phases over centuries. The study authors believe they can group the ships into six categories that align with contemporary eastern Mediterranean vessel imagery. These included designs from the Levant, Minoa, and even hybrid galleys potentially from the Carmel Coast. Like the repair stone’s art, these all are traceable to various centuries both before and after the Bronze Age collapse.

“This intricate system of nerves and muscles grants soft-bodied organisms the remarkable ability to simultaneously alter their optical appearance, surface texture, and shape,” the team on this new study writes.

The exact purpose behind the etchings remain unclear, but researchers said they underscore a common misunderstanding of the Late Bronze Age. Although the era did precede a cultural “dark age” collapse, knowledge preservation didn’t disappear entirely.

Printing a ‘newspaper’ on skin

“The conclusions presented here support the idea that there was a high degree of continuity that both persisted through and accompanied the important changes that occurred at the end of the Bronze Age,” the study’s authors wrote.

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Buying an iPhone is easy now, but people were sleeping on sidewalks for the first model

Mack DeGeurin — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 10:00:00 -0400

The iPhone 18 Pro officially hits store shelves today (September 18). You could likely pop into an Apple store or other retailer and grab one on your way home from work if you didn’t already pre-order it online. But, it wasn’t always this easy to get an iPhone. In fact, the first release back in 2007 was so competitive that it took a handful of PopSci editors battling long lines across the country just to get one we could write about.

To try and replicate how octopuses camouflage and shape shift in a lab, the Penn State team needed a way to alter both appearance and shape using a single, soft synthetic material. They started by 3D-printing a hydrogel that would serve as their canvas. Using a process called halftone-encoded printing, the researchers first translated an image into a binary grid of pixels, where different patterns of 1s and 0s corresponded to regions of the material with distinct physical properties. Much like newspaper printing, the density and distribution of these pixels create the illusion of light and dark areas.

John Mahoney

Once the image was converted into a binary pattern, the team encoded it directly into the hydrogel using controlled UV light during the printing process. In other words, the image was “seared” directly onto the hydrogel canvas. Rather than adding ink or pigment like a tattoo, the UV exposure programmed subtle differences into the material’s internal structure. Under normal conditions, these differences are invisible to the naked eye.

Nobody, including Apple, knew whether the country was going to riot for this phone or shrug at it, and on June 29 you could find both answers within a few hundred miles of each other.

A common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) in the waters of San Giovanni di Sinis, Sardinia, Italy. Image: Emmanuele Contini/NurPhoto via Getty Images.

Three days before the phones went on sale, Reuters found shoppers talking themselves out of it. A Northwestern graduate student who said she really, really wanted one called the purchase a $600 gamble and decided to wait. Todd Dagres, a partner at Spark Capital, compared it to buying the first model year of a car. Meanwhile, people who couldn’t skip work on Friday were posting on Craigslist to hire someone to stand in line for them. Both instincts were live at once.

But when the material is heated up, the areas corresponding to the 0 and 1 patterns respond differently, gradually increasing their visual contrast. The previously hidden image then emerges as the material reacts to its environment. The process is somewhat similar to how invisible ink is exposed when a revealing solution or special light is applied. The researchers describe this as a form of 4D printing because it takes a three dimensional object and alters its appearance over time via exposure to external stimuli. They were also able to demonstrate the same effect by changing the surrounding solvent, which caused the hidden image to reappear.

The press wasn’t sure either. PCMag’s Sascha Segan took delivery of his review unit in a quiet handoff at the FAO Schwarz toy store, carried it straight back to the lab, and worked on it until he nearly collapsed. He filed a review that called the iPhone a revolution for the few, on the reasoning that it cost too much, worked on one carrier, and ran no outside software. CNET’s Kent German picked his up in downtown San Francisco, where the crowd had spilled off the sidewalk into traffic, and had the review live by 2 a.m. on pizza and beer.

“We’re printing instructions into the material,” Penn State industrial engineer and study co-author Hongtao Sun said in a Penn State blog post. “Those instructions tell the skin how to react when something changes around it.”

To demonstrate this effect, they first encoded the letters “PSU” into the hydrogel film. After altering the film’s temperature, the letters revealed themselves. Upping the difficulty, they then repeated the process with a grayscale image of the “Mona Lisa.” In theory, they say the same approach could work with any image. It simply needs to be converted into a binary pattern and encoded onto the hydrogel.

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Their skepticism was not unreasonable, because the spec sheet was thin. The 4GB iPhone cost $499 and the 8GB cost $599, both on a two-year AT&T contract. It ran on EDGE, so loading a web page took long enough to put the phone down. The camera shot 2 megapixels and could not record video at all. There was no copy and paste, no picture messaging, no GPS, and no App Store until July 2008, which meant the phone did what Apple said it did and nothing else. The battery was sealed inside. Oh, and that whole business about the lack of a physical keyboard. That was the biggest talking point.

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Apple let each customer buy two; AT&T allowed one.

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People slept on the sidewalk anyway. Greg Packer camped outside the Fifth Avenue store for five days to be first. In Dallas, a 19-year-old named Marc Rebillet stood in line for about 12 hours and sold his spot at the front for $800 to a woman who planned to buy the store’s stock and resell it on eBay. The one-per-customer rule wrecked her math, she left with a single phone, and Rebillet got back in line and bought one too. He is better known now as a musician, and the local news clip is still the origin story.

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The hype was real, and the numbers were confusing. Tim Cook told analysts that Apple and AT&T moved 270,000 iPhones in the first 30 hours. Then AT&T reported 146,000 activations over the first two days, Wall Street read the gap as unsold inventory, and Apple stock fell. Apple sold its millionth iPhone 74 days after launch. The iPod had taken almost two years to reach the same mark.

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Everyone who bought on day one realized the extent of their early adopter tax just 68 days later. On September 5, Apple cut the 8GB model to $399 and let the 4GB sell out for good. The backlash was loud enough that Steve Jobs posted an open letter the next day offering every early buyer a $100 store credit, with the observation that the technology road is bumpy.

This isn’t the first time scientists have taken inspiration from octopus anatomy. In 2021, engineers at Rutgers University created a 3D printed synthetic muscle that subtly changed its shape when exposed to light. More recently, researchers at Stanford developed a flexible, synthetic material that would swell and change size when targeted with a beam of electrons. Elsewhere, roboticists have even developed octopus-like, slightly terrifying “Tentacle Bot” outfitted with mechanical armies and suckers that helps it move around and grab objects.

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$13 thrift store camera hid 70-year-old undeveloped film

Stan Horaczek — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 13:05:00 -0500

An offhand purchase at a secondhand shop has revealed itself to be an unexpected time capsule—and is steeped in its own mystery. Recently, a customer near Salisbury, England paid around $10 for an antique film camera that was manufactured during the 1930s called a Zeiss Ikon Baby Ikonta. But when he got home, the man (who wished to remain anonymous) discovered a bonus inside the camera itself: an undeveloped roll of film dating back to 1956.

That short production run is why the cheap model became the expensive one. A factory-sealed 4GB iPhone sold for $190,372.80 at LCG Auctions in July 2023, roughly 380 times its $499 sticker. Two earlier sealed units went for $63,356 and $39,339. The people who tore the plastic off in a parking lot in 2007 got the better end of it anyway, since they got to use the thing.

The racing bibs indicate the skiers were in the Cow & Gate Sky Trophy event. Credit: Salisbury Photo Centre

Nobody lines up like that now. Preorders and delivery windows took the sidewalk out of the equation, which is a fair trade for not sleeping outside a mall, and also the end of a specific kind of night. THE FOOTBALL is presumably in a drawer in Indiana. If the box survived the dog, it’s worth more than the car that drove out to get it.

The new owner hoped the photos were salvageable, but didn’t want to risk damaging them himself. Instead, he contacted a camera specialist at the Salisbury Photo Centre named Ian Scott to examine the find. Speaking with PetaPixel, Scott explained that he spent 60 minutes carefully developing the delicate film. The results were a collection of black and white photographs taken about 70 years ago showing skiers in the Swiss Alps. While some were action shots of people speeding down the slopes, others showcased a family outside Badrutt’s Palace Hotel in St. Moritz. One photo also showcases what appears to be a garden tea party at a home in the United Kingdom.

If you’re still reading this far, you may be interested to know that I didn’t buy the first iPhone. I had a Palm Treo at the time (with a missing stylus, of course) and I was planning to get an iPhone from the AT&T store in midtown Manhattan. Once I saw the line outside the store, I decided to stick with my Palm and spend my time and money at the Outback Steakhouse on Third Ave. Considering that price hike, I’d say I made the prudent (and more delicious) decision.

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Help name the Bronx River’s first otter in 100 years

Andrew Paul — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:25:14 -0400

A North American river otter (Lontra canadensis) was recently spotted along New York City’s Bronx River for the first time in roughly 100 years. Now, the Bronx River Alliance and Bronx Zoo would like the public’s help to choose a name for this symbol of conservation success.

Surviving relatives may be able to recognize and identify the photo subjects. Credit: Salisbury Photo Centre

Voters can choose from three names—Nessie, Ruthie, and Morgan. The names honor Nessie Panton, Ruth Armstrong, and Morgan Powell, three community leaders connected to the river.

Although the subjects’ names remain unknown, certain details in the pictures help fill in the story’s gaps. Several skiers in the pictures are wearing numbered racing bibs sponsored by a baby milk brand called Cow & Gate, which sponsored a Cow & Gate Ski Trophy event during the 1950s. Given that the specific type of film (Verichrome Pan 127) was released in 1956, Scott believes the images were likely taken towards the end of the decade.

You can vote by commenting on Instagram. Voting closes on Tuesday, September 29, at 11:59 p.m. EST and the winner will be announced at the live at the Bronx River Alliance’s Upstream Soiree fundraiser on October 1.⁠

“It’s so incredible that history was literally sitting there on a charity shop shelf,” Scott recently told The Daily Express.

View this post on Instagram

While the family and skiers in images remain unidentified, Scott hopes someone may recognize some of the faces. Scott encourages anyone who spots a familiar face to reach out to Salisbury Photo Centre. Although most, if not all, of the people in the pictures are deceased by now, their children or grandchildren may soon have new additions to their family’s scrapbook.

On August 19, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Bronx Zoo announced that the river otter had been spotted in the Bronx section of the river for the first time in approximately a century. Bronx Zoo scientist RJ Hawkins captured the image while conducting long-term camera trap monitoring for wildlife along the river overseen by the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Education Department based at the Bronx Zoo

The film itself was manufactured in 1956. Credit: Salisbury Photo Centre

“When I first reviewed the images, I could hardly believe what I was seeing,” Hawkins said in a statement when the photo was released. “Knowing this may be the first documented river otter in the Bronx in generations was an incredible moment. It shows why long-term wildlife monitoring and environmental restoration efforts matter.”

Some of the photos show the Badrutt’s Palace Hotel in St. Moritz. Credit: Salisbury Photo Centre.

The 23-mile-long Bronx River is sourced from the Kensico Reservoir north of New York City, and winds through Westchester County into the Bronx. It is also the only major watercourse within the city limits that is not entirely tidal. River otters once ranged throughout New York’s waterways, but disappeared from many places due to pollution, habitat degradation, and unregulated trapping. The Bronx River itself was once heavily polluted and regarded as one of the most neglected urban rivers in the United States.

Most of the pictures were taken on a ski trip, but at least one showed what appears to be a garden party in the UK. Credit: Salisbury Photo Centre

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The lobstermen teaming up with scientists to save endangered whales

Laura Baisas — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

It was a cold and windy week last January, when a group of Maine lobstermen couldn’t haul in their traps from Jeffrey’s Ledge. The reason why surprised everyone. Over 90 critically endangered North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) had gathered at the ledge, a 62-mile-long underwater ridge about 25 miles off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Over the past 25 years, restoration work led by public agencies, nonprofit organizations, community volunteers, and conservation partners has helped clean up the river. In 2007, beavers returned to the river for the first time in over 200 years. Hawkins also spotted a mink this summer.

“This was the first time we’ve known of an aggregation showing up there, I assume they were following their feed pattern,” lobsterman Chris Welch tells Popular Science.

River otters are considered indicators of a healthy freshwater ecosystem because they depend on clean water, plenty of fish, and intact river habitats. The WCS says it offers evidence that decades of conservation and restoration work are transforming the Bronx River.

After following all state and federal regulations, using breakaway ropes, setting longer trawls to reduce the number of endlines, and adding purple tracers so any entangled gear could be traced back to Maine, the lobstermen called an emergency meeting.

“There are moments in conservation that remind us why this work matters, and this is one of them,” added Craig Piper, Wildlife Conservation Society’s Interim Executive Vice President of Zoos & Aquarium and Director of the Bronx Zoo. “Thanks to a broad coalition of public and private partners, we can celebrate the return of an otter as a result of decades of restoration work to provide cleaner water and healthier habitat. It’s a win for both wildlife and people.”

“We had to do something more to lower the risk. No fisherman wants to harm a right whale, so we’re willing to bend over backwards to make this work,” Welch explains

While researchers caution that one single observation does mean that a resident population has moved in, the sighting shows that the Bronx River is increasingly capable of supporting native wildlife.

And that’s what they did.

“This otter’s return is a gift, not just to the Bronx River but to the communities that have fought for 50 years to bring this river back to life,” said Javier Lopez, Interim Executive Director of the Bronx River Alliance. “For too long, the Bronx River was treated as a neglected afterthought, and our communities bore the burden of that neglect. Today, this otter reminds us that when we invest in nature, nature responds, and when communities lead, change is possible.”

The post Help name the Bronx River’s first otter in 100 years appeared first on Popular Science.

In 1924, the Montreal Canadiens left the Stanley Cup on the side of the road

Valerie Shively — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:03:00 -0400

The Stanley Cup—hockey’s biggest prize—has survived champagne showers, championship parades, accidental drops, and even a trip to the bottom of a canal. But one of its strangest adventures happened before it became the towering icon known around the world.

The lobstermen went against fishing protocol by dropping their northeast endlines to reduce the number of ropes in the water. Whales can get tangled in the endlines that connect trawls—a series of traps tied together by rope and linked by two buoys on either end—of their lobster traps.

Originally a short, week-long tournament requiring as few as four wins in the 1920s, the Stanley Cup Playoffs have expanded alongside the league over the past century. Today, it’s a grueling, two-month marathon where 16 teams must survive four sequential best-of-seven rounds to capture the trophy.

This choice ensured the whales’ safety, and it was a voluntary act by the fishermen. Had they known the whales were going to be there ahead of time, they could have made other arrangements.

In 1924, after the Montreal Canadiens won the cup, several players were driving to a celebration when they got a flat tire. To reach the spare, they had to remove the Stanley Cup from the car and place it on the side of the snowy road. They changed the tire, climbed back in, and drove away. It was only after arriving at the party that someone realized the trophy was missing. Panicked, the players rushed back, relieved to find hockey’s holy grail sitting untouched on the road’s shoulder.

Illustration of how North Atlantic right whales get entangled in fishing gear. Entangled whales sometimes tow fishing gear for hundreds of miles. Image: WHOI Graphic Services, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution via NOAA.

Today, the Stanley Cup is one of the most recognizable trophies in the world. It is photographed, protected, and carefully maintained. Yet it has always lived an unusual life. Unlike most historic objects that spend decades behind glass, the Cup travels from city to city and passes from champion to champion. From being left on the side of the road in a snowbank to being dropped in swimming pools, the Stanley Cup has survived many wild misadventures. And somehow, it keeps surviving.

In search of plankton

From a silver bowl to a hockey icon

It’s hard to protect what you can’t find. That’s why research scientist Camille Ross and her team from the New England Aquarium, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science, Duke University, and University of Maine are working to improve the predictive models used to find elusive North Atlantic right whales.

When Canada’s Governor General, Lord Stanley of Preston, donated the trophy in 1892, he couldn’t have imagined it would become professional hockey’s most iconic trophy. The original Cup was a modest silver bowl, about seven inches tall—far smaller than the nearly three-foot trophy that champions hoist up today. Silver was a radiant choice, resisting corrosion and polishing to a brilliant shine.

“It’s possible that we could have predicted that aggregation out on Jeffreys Ledge in advance,” says Ross.

Canada’s Governor General, Lord Stanley of Preston, donated the so-called Stanley Cup trophy in 1892, just a decade before this photograph was taken. Image: Hulton Archive / Staff / Getty Images Hulton Archive

The team’s study, published in the journal Endangered Species Research, used prey location data to track down these whales. And with a population hovering around 380 and with only 70 reproductively active females, the stakes are high.

However, silver is also relatively soft. That physical property presented a major problem as the Stanley Cup grew even more famous and additional names required engraving. Craftsmen engineered a brilliant solution. Instead of replacing the trophy, they added engraved rings beneath the original bowl, transforming it into a living record of hockey history.

“What we did was incorporate right whale food directly into right whale habitat models to help improve the prediction, and it appears it did, which is really exciting,” shares Ross.

Today’s Stanley Cup continues in that original spirit, but metallurgists have strengthened the cup using a silver and nickel alloy that can withstand constant travel, handling, and celebration. It is not a trophy frozen in the past; it is an object adapting to the future.

Essentially, they found the whales by finding their favorite food first: a krill-like zooplankton in the genus Calanus that are smaller-than-a-grain-of-rice. Calanus’ location and livelihood is dramatically affected by small changes in ocean temperature.

The engineering problem of too many champions

“As the ocean has been warming, and the system has been changing, it has become increasingly harder to know where the bulk of the population is at any given time,” Ross explains. “When observers saw about 25 percent of the right whale population on Jeffrey’s Ledge in January [of 2025], that was just not at all something we would have expected.”

The barrel section of the Cup consists of five tiered bands, often referred to as rings. Each ring is built to hold the names of 13 winning teams. The precision seen today is a modern creation. Before official engraving started in 1948, the process was unorganized and inconsistent, requiring winning teams to hire their own independent silversmiths to find open space on the metal.

While the right whales themselves may not be thrown off course by a degree or two change in ocean temperature, the tiny critters they eat are dramatically affected by small temperature changes. As the food, which Ross says resembles the character Plankton from Spongebob Squarepants, adapts and moves around, so must the whales. And the tools scientists use to track them.

Today, Louise St. Jacques is the person who does the engraving. She works out of Boffey Promotions in Montreal and is only the fourth official engraver in the history of the trophy. She has been the sole person responsible for painstakingly hand-stamping every single name onto the Stanley Cup since 1988.

“This study was proof that prey does improve the right whale models and does increase or decrease predicted densities in areas that we might not have expected.”

When the bottom ring fills up after 13 seasons, the topmost ring, which contains the oldest batch of champions on the main barrel, is carefully removed. To make room for the future, these older bands are retired. They are hammered flat for easier reading and storage and permanently displayed in Lord Stanley’s Vault at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

Lobstermen’s game of telephone

The remaining four bands slide up one position, and a new blank band attaches at the bottom to record the next era of champions. Because of this 65-year lifespan on the trophy itself, names are never simply erased; they retire with honor.

So,what could have been different out on Jeffreys Ledge in January of 2025 if these better predictive models were up and running? Ross says that after prey was included in the predictive model, they found that Jeffreys Ledge had “increased right whale density from November through January,” critical data that could have been relayed to the fishermen.

In 1924, after the Montreal Canadiens (shown here) won the cup, several players left the trophy on the side of the road. Image: Public Domain

That kind of information sharing is what makes collaboration possible and the cornerstone of successful outcomes. It was the Maine lobstermen, for whom fishing is a way of life, who called the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) out of concern for the whales’ safety.

No one originally knew how much the game would grow. “Every 13 years we alter a ring—remove one and add another to the bottom—maintaining the look, size, and the history of the cup,” explains Phil Pritchard, vice president and curator of the Hockey Hall of Fame and colloquially known as the Keeper of the Cup.

“We would not have known about it had those fishermen not brought back that information,” Ross says. “So many of them are such stewards of the ocean, and they care so deeply about these animals.”

Hall of Fame staff members take extra care in preserving the sport’s greatest trophy. “Daily cleaning, care, and preservation goes into it, so it looks as good today as it did years ago.” Their meticulous work ensures every era gets its turn on the Cup, while keeping the trophy at approximately 35 pounds.

As a result, zero entanglements were reported on Jeffrey’s Ledge in January 2025 because of concern, communication, and cooperation from all sides. Yet without efficient systems, that concern can be lost. And keeping lobstermen informed about right whale locations isn’t always simple.

Every scratch tells a story

A North Atlantic right whale mother and calf as seen from a research drone called a hexacopter. Hexacopters allow researchers to conduct right whale photo identification and photogrammetry studies. Photogrammetry techniques allow scientists to get body measurements from aerial photographs. Image: NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center/Lisa Conger and Elizabeth Josephson.

The Stanley Cup’s greatest stories often come from the moments when things went wrong. It’s been dropped during celebrations and dented during enthusiastic victories. In 1905, after celebrating their championship victory, players from the Ottawa Silver Seven tried to drop-kick the Stanley Cup across the frozen Rideau Canal. The kick fell short, and the Cup was stranded on the ice while the intoxicated team went home for the night. Realizing their mistake the next morning, the players returned to recover it. Surprisingly, it survived unscathed.

“The problem with communication with the state is they don’t have a way to text a group of lobstermen,” Welch explains. “Basically, we just went into a phone chain.”

Players have filled it with champagne and pasta, let their dogs eat out of it, and a baby even used it as a personal diaper! Those moments might sound like mistreatment, but they are the exact reason the Cup matters so much. It is an active participant in the celebration.

The process is similar to parents texting about their kids, but these lobstermen are alerting each other when they see right whales—not snowflakes. While the seafood industry and conservationists have been at odds in the past, these fishermen are now voluntarily going out of their way to care for these endangered mammals.

Pritchard believes this shared connection with the players is what sets the prize apart. “In hockey you don’t just win the trophy, you become a member of the greatest union in sport, a Stanley Cup Champion,” Pritchard notes. “It is the only sport where the trophy is the same one every year, meaning your heroes won it, their heroes won it, etcetera.”

“We want to do everything we can to coexist with these whales in harmony,” says Welch. “And we’re doing our best to stay current with information and fish as our livelihood, as well as keep these whales safe, and everything else in the ocean safe.”

That’s what makes the forgotten Cup on the side of the road such a fitting chapter in its history. It was never meant to be a fragile decoration. It’s become something rare: a historic object that still actively lives its purpose. Every repaired dent, every shifted band, and every new champion added to its surface tells the same story.

Other programs have already shown that science and the fishing community really can go hand in hand. Programs such as NOAA’s Cooperative Research in the Northeast have enabled several collaborations between scientists and fishermen. Fishermen from Maine to North Carolina partner with NOAA in the Study Fleet program by collecting detailed data for scientific research, including environmental conditions, fishery footprints, and developing models.

The trophy truly belongs to the communities that welcome it across the world. “The amazing part about it is the smile and memories people have of it when they see it for the first time,” says Pritchard.

In terms of what’s next for Ross and her team, she’d like to focus on using more recent data in their predictive models. “What happened the previous year will give us a lot of power in predicting where the right whales might show up the following year, that will give us a lot of really interesting insights, especially as the ocean continues to change.”

The Stanley Cup has survived not because it was built to be untouched, but because generations of people have cared enough to keep it going. “Remember, every June when we hand it out to the winner, it is a new chapter in the life of the Stanley Cup.”

One certainty is that many of those who make their living off of the ocean will continue to play a role in protecting those who call the ocean home.

The post The lobstermen teaming up with scientists to save endangered whales appeared first on Popular Science.

Sennheiser’s New Year, New Gear premium headphones sale lets you elevate your listening for less

Allison Futterman — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 10:00:00 -0500

If you’re looking to upgrade your listening habits without upping your budget, 2026 could be your year, thanks to Sennheiser’s current sale. We’re fans of the brand, from its audiophile wonderland to more everyday wear, so we have no problem recommending you tap that pedigree for less. Whether you’re in the mood for some sit here and hear everything open-back headphones, some pocket precision IEMs, or something ANC for quiet focus on the go, you can save big on picking out the little details. There are also soundbars and hearing enhancement deals. But only if you grab these limited-time offers of up to 33% off before they end, and they end soon.

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Amazon is clearing out DEWALT tools during its early Prime Big Deal Days clearance sale

Stan Horaczek — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 20:35:47 -0400

Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days event doesn’t officially start until October 6, but your fall project list isn’t waiting that long. The deck needs a few new boards, the garage shelves still aren’t hung, and the saw you borrowed from your neighbor in June should probably go back eventually. A batch of early DEWALT deals is already live on Amazon ahead of the event, and a few of them are sitting at their lowest prices of the past year. Plenty of the percent-off tags in DEWALT’s Amazon store are hanging on prices that haven’t moved in weeks or were lower a month ago, though, so I checked Amazon’s own price history on everything below and cut the ones that weren’t actually cheaper. If you already own a couple of 20V MAX batteries, this is a good time to add a tool to the rotation before the holiday rush.

MOMENTUM 4 Wireless headphones — $299.95 (was $449.95)

DEWALT 20V MAX XR Hammer Drill and Impact Driver Combo Kit (DCK250QQ2) $299.00 (was $349.00)

Two brushless tools and two 4Ah batteries at their lowest price in a year

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Want noise cancellation that doesn’t flinch, battery life (up to 60 hrs) that doesn’t fail, and tuning that keeps the vibes flowing? The MOMENTUM 4 Wireless ANC headphones (available in multiple colorways) feel plush and sound lush, but still respect the recording thanks to a high-fidelity 42mm transducer system. And EQ, plus other Sound Personalization features, let you further tailor these headphones to your taste wherever you may travel.

Most home projects come down to drilling a hole and driving a screw into it, and the DEWALT DCK250QQ2 combo kit handles both for $299. That’s the lowest price on Amazon’s 12-month chart for this kit, which sold for as much as $369 last November. The kit pairs the DCD806 hammer drill, which DEWALT bills as its most powerful two-speed 20V MAX hammer drill, with the DCF845 impact driver. DEWALT rates that driver at 1,825 inch-pounds of torque. Two 4Ah POWERPACK batteries and a charger come in the box, so it works as a first serious kit or as a way to double your battery count. It stacks up well against the picks in our guide to the best tool combo kits.

HD 660 S2 wired headphones — $479.95 (was $679.95)

DEWALT 20V MAX XR Brushless Oscillating Multi-Tool Kit (DCS356C1) $99.00 (was $131.51)

The tool that cuts where a saw won’t fit, with a battery in the box

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If listen with purpose is on your bingo card, the HD 660 S2 should be on your list. Built in the same factory as Sennheiser’s $70,000 obsession, the HE 1 headphone system, these immersive open-back wired headphones offer a locked-in center image, lifelike mids, and more extended sub bass than you’d expect from such an airy design. With a 300-ohm appetite, they really come alive with a real amp. And the velour comfort makes them a perfect sit-down solution for when you need a way just to be present with your favorite albums.

An oscillating multi-tool is what you grab when nothing else fits, like undercutting a door jamb for new flooring or notching drywall that’s already on the wall. The DEWALT DCS356C1 kit costs $99, which is the lowest it has been in the past 30 days after running as high as $152.99 during that stretch. A battery and charger are included, so it’s a reasonable way into the 20V MAX platform on its own. The brushless motor has three speed settings, and blades swap without a wrench. DEWALT says the accessory mount accepts most other brands’ oscillating blades, too, so you aren’t stuck buying DEWALT blades forever.

IE 600 wired earphones — $799.95 (was $899.95)

DEWALT 20V MAX 18V-to-20V Battery Adapter Kit (DCA2203C) $147.99 (was $212.15)

Put your old 18V DEWALT tools back to work on modern batteries

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The IE 600 may be pint-sized, but it delivers ample energy. Using a 7mm TrueResponse Dynamic Driver with custom resonator chambers in its 3D-printed zirconium alloy body, this audiophile in-ear monitor is as high engagement as it is low profile. There’s plenty of fast, accurate bass, but also thoroughly cohesive mids and complementary highs. They also provide enough passive isolation that you can enjoy them on an airplane with few complaints (assuming you’ve got a DAP or phone dongle, since they are wired).

If your garage has a shelf of older 18V DEWALT tools with batteries that died years ago, the DEWALT DCA2203C adapter kit can bring them back for $147.99. Amazon marks that as its lowest price in the past 365 days. The kit includes an adapter that lets 20V MAX batteries run most 18V DEWALT tools, along with two 2Ah 20V MAX batteries and a charger. DEWALT lists a few exceptions, including FLEXVOLT batteries and certain 18V compact drill setups, so read the compatibility notes on the product page before you order. Once you’re on 20V packs, the cordless tools in this post all run on the same batteries.

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DEWALT 20V MAX XR Brushless Cordless Band Saw (DCS378B) $249.99 (was $336.55)

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A metal-cutting saw at its lowest price of the past year

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DEWALT

TV Clear Set II earbuds for $250 off

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MOMENTUM 4 Wireless for $150 off

Once your projects move from wood to metal, a portable band saw makes cutting pipe, conduit, and threaded rod feel almost civilized. The DEWALT DCS378B band saw costs $249.99, which Amazon flags as its lowest price in the past 365 days. It sold for as much as $359.99 during that same stretch. DEWALT rates the cut capacity at 3-3/8 inches, and the brushless motor gets both a variable-speed trigger and a speed dial. It’s a bare tool, so plan on pulling a battery from another tool or grabbing one of the battery deals below.

MOMENTUM True Wireless 4 for $70 off

DEWALT 20V MAX Cordless Grease Gun (DCGG571B) $134.99 (was $229.00)
Anyone who has worked a manual grease gun under a trailer or a tractor understands why the cordless version exists. The DCGG571B is $134.99, which is within $2 of its lowest price of the past month, and it cost as much as $199 during that same period. DEWALT rates it at up to 10,000 psi, and the 42-inch hose helps with fittings tucked behind a wheel or under a deck. It’s a bare tool, so it needs a 20V MAX battery.

ACCENTUM Wireless Black for $60 off

Best DEWALT drill deals from $108

ACCENTUM Wireless White for $90 off

Most shops end up with more than one drill, because swapping between drill bits and driver bits 40 times in one afternoon gets old. The DEWALT DCD740B right-angle drill is the specialist in this group at $107.99, which Amazon marks as its lowest price in 90 days. Its head measures 4 inches front to back, so it fits between studs and joists where a regular drill won’t. The DEWALT DCD801H1 drill kit is $199 with a 5Ah POWERSTACK battery, and DEWALT’s anti-rotation system shuts it down if it senses the drill twisting too hard in your hands. For more options, see our guide to the best cordless drills.

ACCENTUM True Wireless for $100 off

DEWALT 20V MAX XR Brushless Drill Driver Kit with 5Ah POWERSTACK Battery (DCD801H1) $199.00 (was $249.00)

Wired Headphones

DEWALT 20V MAX Drill Driver and Oscillating Multi-Tool Combo Kit (DCK251D2) $249.00

HD 550 for $70 off
DEWALT 20V MAX Right Angle Drill, Tool Only (DCD740B) $107.99 (was $125.75)

HD 569 for $50 off

Best DEWALT battery deals from $179

HD 560 S for $80 off

Batteries are the real cost of any cordless tool platform, so a battery deal can be worth more than a tool deal. The DEWALT 20V MAX XR 6Ah two-pack is $179, a price it has held since late July, and the bigger packs make sense for saws and grinders. The DEWALT 20V MAX four-pack gives you two 3.5Ah XR batteries and two compact 1.7Ah POWERSTACK batteries for $349, which ties the lowest price on its Amazon chart.

HD 599 for $50 off

DEWALT 20V MAX XR 6Ah Battery, 2-Pack (DCB206-2) $179.00 (was $279.00)
DEWALT 20V MAX Battery 4-Pack with 3.5Ah XR and 1.7Ah POWERSTACK Batteries (DCBP334-4) $349.00 (was $469.00)

HD 600 for $200 off

Best DEWALT saw, sander, and polisher deals from $79

HD 620 S for $100 off

The DEWALT DCS785B cordless 12-inch sliding miter saw is the splurge here at $499. It has held that price for the past month after a stretch at $699 earlier in the summer, and it takes the cord out of the one tool that usually anchors you to an outlet. On the cheap end, the DEWALT DWE6423 random orbit sander is $79 with a “Deal selling fast” badge on it. That’s also where its price has sat since midsummer, so there’s no need to panic-buy it before October.

HD 650 for $180 off

DEWALT 20V MAX XR 12-Inch Double Bevel Sliding Miter Saw, Tool Only (DCS785B) $499.00 (was $699.00)
HD 660 S2 for $200 off
DEWALT 10-Inch Single Bevel Compound Miter Saw (DWS713) $262.99 (was $279.00)
IE 200 for $30 off
DEWALT 7-to-9-Inch Variable Speed Buffer Polisher (DWP849X) $157.99 (was $249.00)
IE 600 for $100 off
DEWALT 5-Inch Variable Speed Random Orbit Sander (DWE6423) $79.00 (was $99.00)

The post Amazon is clearing out DEWALT tools during its early Prime Big Deal Days clearance sale appeared first on Popular Science.

The moon’s new crater is 728 feet wide and a once-in-a-century find

Andrew Paul — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:19:44 -0400

The moon may look desolate and calm, but a lot happens on that dusty landscape. With zero atmosphere, space rocks of all sizes regularly bombard the lunar surface. Most of the debris is microscopic, but astronomers estimate around 140 coffee table-sized asteroids and comets also slam into our moon every year. When they do, the impact is powerful enough to produce a 30-foot-wide crater.

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Every so often, however, a monstrous visitor arrives. And based on observations from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), one of those much rarer rocks gave the moon an impressive new battlescar. As researchers recently reported in Science Advances, an asteroid or comet the size of a three-story building has generated a crater measuring the length of two football fields on the moon’s eastern edge. As the largest newly formed crater ever spotted in the solar system, it presents astronomers with a once-in-a-century opportunity to study the immediate aftermath of such a sizable impact.

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A zoomed-in view of McGetchin crater, circled on the left with an arrow pointing to it, next to a “before” image on the right. The area shown in the images is 38 miles wide. Credit: NASA Goddard / Intuitive Machines / Robert Wagner

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The discovery occurred during a standard data-quality review of images collected by the LRO between April 11 and May 22, 2024. Since launching in 2009, the LRO has helped astronomers pinpoint at least 1,000 newer craters, as well as 100,000 lunar surface changes formed by either direct impacts or secondary strikes from flying debris. But when image-processing specialist Robert Wagner noticed a huge bright circle encased by a darker halo on October 24, 2025, he immediately knew it was unlike anything he’d previously seen.

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“I just stopped, dropped everything, and started looking into what that spot was,” Wagner recalled.

AMBEO Sub for $350 off

Assessing a new crater isn’t as simple as flipping between before and after photos. Specialized software is designed to highlight tiny changes in shadows or lighting, which results in hundreds of false leads. To ensure this was the real deal, Wagner examined images by individual pixels to pinpoint signs of small regolith smatterings around the crater. The sleuthing still confirmed his suspicions—the moon had been hit by a very large space rock.

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“It was by far the most obvious impact debris pattern I’ve ever seen in one of these images,” said Wagner.

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Named McGetchin after the renowned lunar scientist Tom McGetchin, the crater is 728 feet wide and extends 141 feet deep. Follow-up scans from the LRO’s thermal instrument, Diviner, also showed a four-mile-wide region around the crater measuring around 16 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than its surroundings at night. This temperature dropoff occurs when an impact disturbs nearby surface layers of regolith, loosening the dirt so much that it retains less heat.

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Researchers are still determining the space rock’s size as well as its impact force, but the LRO is well-equipped to assist in this next phase. Imagining using its Narrow-Angle Camera will allow astronomers to examine the crater at a resolution of three feet-per-pixel. Those results on their once-in-a-lifetime discovery are set to publish in a forthcoming study.

The post The moon’s new crater is 728 feet wide and a once-in-a-century find appeared first on Popular Science.

Garbage trucks analyze thousands of homes with AI-powered cameras

Tony Ware — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 14:34:13 -0400

Garbage trucks now do more than just pick up tossed-out food scraps and junk. They also snitch on people with unkempt lawns.

In at least four states (California, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas), some city-run sanitation vehicles are being outfitted with AI-equipped cameras from a company called City Detect. The cameras quietly snap photos of residents’ yards and run the images through software that flags tall grass, litter, graffiti, or other more serious code violations like collapsing roofs. Properties found in violation then get assigned a “Blight Score” from 1 to 4, reflecting the severity of the mess. If left unresolved, human reviewers can use information gleaned from those snapshots to issue fines. In Dallas, Texas, the system has reportedly flagged at least one possible code violation in more than 21,000 properties analyzed since the city began testing the service last April. City Detect claims its camera system has already detected 6,000,000 violations issued nationwide.

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A City Detect camera. Image: City Detect

The post Sennheiser’s New Year, New Gear premium headphones sale lets you elevate your listening for less appeared first on Popular Science.

Yes, eating carrots can help your eyesight. But it’s not a cure-all.

Mack DeGeurin — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 09:01:00 -0500

In a British propaganda poster from World War II, an illustration in shadowy tones captures a dramatic nighttime scene: a woman and young girl peer around a black automobile, as if looking for a quick escape. In the woman’s hand is…a basket with carrots?

The garbage truck tattletales are just the latest example of how increasingly connected AI infrastructure and so-called smart-city technology are being used to ramp up local enforcement. This expansion of cameras is happening even as vigilantes, local communities, and some lawmakers across the country push back against automated license plate readers and other AI-assisted technologies viewed as vectors for surveillance.

“CARROTS,” the poster blares, “keep you healthy and help you to see in the blackout.”

Full-time garbage truck, part-time code inspector

The poster, a creation of Britain’s Ministry of Food, was one part of a wartime nutritional propaganda campaign that had all kinds of goals during the war. Amid rations and food shortages, one aim was to encourage the consumption of an oversupply of carrots.

City Detect was founded in 2021 and is based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The underlying idea behind that service is relatively simple: City Detect provides the cameras and AI software, which cities mount on local fleet vehicles as they go about their normal routes. The examples reported so far involve attaching these cameras to garbage trucks, but in theory they could also work on other government vehicles. In the case of garbage trucks, two cameras get mounted, one facing each side of the street. The cameras snap photos while the truck operates on public roads, capturing the front of each residence. A software City Detect calls PASS AI then processes the image and looks for signs of possible code violations relevant to that jurisdiction.

Another was to trumpet the success of John Cunnigham, an ace Royal Air Force fighter pilot nicknamed “Cat’s Eyes” who was known for his nighttime prowess, according to the Battle of Britain London Monument. News stories credited his success with his carrot consumption. In reality, he was using a new radar technology.

“It would have been easier had the carrots worked,” Cunningham later said. “In fact, it was a long, hard grind and very frustrating. It was a struggle to continue flying on instruments at night.”

Once the image is processed, the AI assigns the supposed code violation a score based on its severity. It’s not immediately clear exactly how the software delineates those scores. Regardless, once blight scores are assigned, they get sent to a human reviewer, who can look over areas and quickly see which residences supposedly have higher-severity or more urgent issues, at least according to the AI. Homeowners then receive a “courtesy notice” telling them they could get a fine if they don’t voluntarily address the issue.

But even if carrots didn’t help Cunningham, the idea that carrots help your eyes persists nearly a century later—perhaps because there is some level of truth to it. Carrots do support eye health and even our nighttime vision, tells Popular Science Dr. Jonathan Rubenstein, chair of the ophthalmology department at Rush University Medical Center. But there’s a limit to what carrots can do for our eyes.

It’s worth noting that City Detect says any actual fines must be issued by a city reviewer. The company claims it’s simply giving cities information to help them make a decision. The goal, City Detect says, is to free up staff to address more serious structural issues and spend less time combing through smaller, less urgent ones.

“People shouldn’t think, ‘I’m going to load up on carrots and I’ll see better,’” Rubenstein says. “That’s not true.”

“Manual inspections, vague 311 complaints, and limited staff slow everything down. Cases pile up. Residents get frustrated,” City Detect writes on its website. “PASS AI® shifts your team from reactive to proactive with mapped detections, rapid reporting, and smart filtering of recurring complaints.”

During World War II, carrots were touted for their ability to improve your eyesight, but the reality is more complicated. Image: Public Domain

Who pays the price for imperfect lawns?

How do carrots help our eyes?

Critics worry the supposedly time-saving technology will also lead to an uptick in fines and citations, especially in lower-income neighborhoods that may have less time or fewer resources to keep their lawns in tip-top shape.

Carrots are a rich source of beta-carotene, a pigment that gives carrots and other orange colored produce their color. Leafy greens like spinach and kale also are rich sources of beta-carotene, but the green chlorophyll that they contain hides that orange color.

Details of Dallas’ partnership with City Detect emerged this week in a report from local news outlet NBC 5. A public records request filed with the city revealed that City Detect has captured images of tens of thousands of residences since testing began earlier this year. Those records show the date and time each photo was taken, as well as a brief summary of the supposed code violation and its severity. Labels like “grass height,” “lawn debris,” “branches,” and “litter” were all considered a 2 out of 4, according to an image of the document published in the report.

Our bodies are designed to turn beta-carotene into vitamin A. When we eat food rich in beta-carotene, the pigment travels to our intestines where an enzyme breaks it down and converts it into vitamin A.

“Vitamin A is a useful vitamin to have in the body for overall health, but specifically for retina health,” Rubenstein says. Our retinas are thin layers of tissue in the back of our eyeballs that turn light into electrical signals, which travel through the optic nerve to our brains where they’re interpreted as vision.

Retinas include two kinds of cells that detect light—rods and cones. Cones help us to read and see colors, while rods help with night and peripheral vision.

Those Blight Scores aren’t necessarily evenly distributed. NBC 5 took the address of the more than 21,000 supposed violations from the city data and created a heat map showing where detections were most common. The outlet found that some of the areas with the most detections were areas with lower average incomes. One resident living in one of those neighborhoods told NBC 5 he felt the program was unfair and “trying to flush us out.”

He’s not alone. Last year, the city of Huntsville, Alabama, reportedly shelved a proposed contract with City Detect following backlash from residents over worries of surveillance and the potential economic impact on poor communities. Just this week, Dallas City Council member Chad West proposed a budget amendment that would cut funding for the cameras, citing privacy concerns and worries of “unintended consequences” for low-income residents who can’t afford to immediately fix issues like peeling paint. West has since withdrawn the budget amendment, but says there are still issues that need addressing.

Both rods and cones need vitamin A to function normally, but rods, in particular, are more affected by a vitamin A deficiency, Rubenstein says. Without vitamin A, the rods can’t produce enough rhodopsin, a light-sensitive protein that requires vitamin A as a key component. Without enough rhodopsin, rods can’t work as well. If the rods don’t work well, then your night and peripheral vision suffers.

“I have serious concerns about the Code AI cameras on City sanitation trucks, due to privacy issues and the unintentional burden this might place on our most vulnerable residents,” Councilmember Chad West to Popular Science. “I support technology, but we need to ensure that the benefits outweigh concerns.”

“The metabolism of how the rods in the retina work can be altered by a lack of vitamin A,” he says.

City Detect did not immediately respond to Popular Science’s request for comment. On its website, the company says it takes steps to preserve privacy by automatically blurring faces or license plates that appear in its photos. The system also requires human review before any monetary fines or other enforcement measures are taken. They also say their system doesn’t connect to law enforcement or federal databases, and that it doesn’t collect revenue based on the number of citations a local government issues. In other words, it isn’t working on a commission.

In fact, night blindness can be a first sign of a vitamin A deficiency, according to the NIH. And a lack of the nutrient is an issue globally. A vitamin A deficiency is a leading cause of preventable blindness, impacting as many as 30 percent of children under age five, research shows.

Public backlash to surveillance cameras grows

A vitamin A deficiency also can lead to other issues, including severe dry eyes and scarring of the eye, Rubenstein says. “But we only tend to see a true vitamin A deficiency in underdeveloped countries or in people that are on some sort of very unorthodox fad diet that’s not monitored by healthcare professionals.”

Camera-equipped garbage trucks exist in a broader, growing ecosystem of AI services attempting to bring more automation to local law enforcement. In 2024, Los Angeles began implementing automated on-bus cameras to snap photos of cars illegally parked in bus lanes and then use those photos to issue tickets. Austin, Texas, recently did something similar, placing AI-enabled cameras on its city school buses to automatically detect when cars (or even robotaxis) fail to properly stop around them. Albuquerque, New Mexico, meanwhile, reportedly installed over 60 solar-powered photo-snapping “SafetySticks” around the city to catch drivers blocking bike lanes, bus lanes, and crosswalks. Each of these efforts attempts to boost enforcement (and local revenues from citations) by automating detection.

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DeFlock privacy advocacy sticker warns of a nearby Flock Safety AI-enabled automated license plate reader tracking vehicles, San Francisco, California. Image: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Smith Collection/Gado

What should we eat to improve our eyes?

But a growing number of communities around the country are experiencing a renewed anti-surveillance fervor. According to Oakland-based advocacy group Secure Justice, at least 214 cities and counties have dropped their contracts with controversial automated license plate reader firm Flock since 2021, including 90 in August 2026 alone. The surge in cancellations follows privacy concerns and a number of reports detailing how law enforcement can misuse the technology. Likewise, cities and even some states have issued moratoriums on AI data center buildouts, as public perception of technology sours. Forty percent of US adults polled in a recent Pew Research survey said they thought AI’s impact on society would be more negative than positive, compared with just 16 percent who said they thought it would be more positive than negative.

For most of us, a typical balanced diet that includes foods rich in beta-carotene is sufficient to protect our retinas’ rods and cones. “In a normal American population, we get enough vitamin A in our diet that we probably don’t have to eat extra carrots,” Rubenstein says.

The post Garbage trucks analyze thousands of homes with AI-powered cameras appeared first on Popular Science.

Mathematician debunks the Parthenon’s famous optical illusions

Sarah Lindenfeld Hall — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 12:01:00 -0400

The Parthenon is undeniably one of history’s most renowned architectural feats,but one detail of its structural genius is a total hoax. For over 2,000 years, scholars and admirers have alleged that the ancient Greek building’s nearly imperceptible curves were specifically crafted to compensate for optical illusions that would otherwise ruin the structure’s clean lines.

In fact, increasing your carrot intake to “super levels,” he says, doesn’t help either. It can lead to carotenemia, a reversible and harmless condition that turns your skin a yellow-orange color after you’ve consumed too much beta-carotene.

But recent analysis says otherwise. After a detailed investigation and complex computational modeling, University of Oxford mathematician Alain Goriely says the illusions are just that—illusions.

What’s more, if you’re focused on eye health, vitamin A isn’t the only nutrient your eyes need. Omega-3 fatty acids from fatty fish, such as salmon, and vitamin E, such as from nuts, could provide some preventative effect for macular degeneration, a common eye disease for older adults, Rubenstein says.

“The Parthenon is more than a building standing on the Athenian Acropolis; it has become over the ages the very paradigm of antiquity, a vessel into which successive generations have poured their ideals of perfection,” Goriely wrote in his study recently published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. “As such, it is the mother of all myths.”

Cataracts is another age-related eye condition that can cause vision loss. There’s some evidence that vitamin C from oranges and other fruits could provide some protection against them, along with not smoking, and, for those who spend a lot of time in the sun, wearing sunglasses that protect against ultraviolet light, Rubenstein says.

The Parthenon was first conceived and built as a temple dedicated to Athens’ namesake goddess Athena during the city’s Golden Age. Construction took 15 years to complete, and it remains one the most recognizable examples of classical Doric architecture. The Parthenon occupied many roles in the ensuing centuries, including a treasury, mosque, church, and even a gunpowder depot—the latter era leading to extensive damage during a bombardment by Venetian forces in 1687.

In other words, Rubenstein says, the best diet for eye health is a balanced one. He recommends the Mediterranean diet because it’s rich in all kinds of vegetables, fruit, fish and nuts and provides a range of nutrients that can support good eye health. Carrots play just one role.

Claims regarding the Parthenon’s optical illusion-defying aspects began circulating about 400 years after its construction. The first assertions are likely attributable to the 1st century BCE Roman architect Vitruvius, who described subtle column curvatures and scale corrections crafted to counteract the appearance of concavity. Vitruvius particularly focused on the temple’s stylobate, or base, whose sides feature a slight arc towards the center to offset the illusion of sagging. Later theorists built on this allegation by citing various light tricks as causes for the appearance of any deformities.

“Eating carrots doesn’t cure anything. It doesn’t make your eyesight better,” Rubenstein says. “It’s one of the food sources that adds to eye health.”

Goriely conceded in his study that he “fell into a bit of a rabbit hole,” but ultimately examined four primary myths about various Parthenon architectural adjustments. Extensive computer modeling further strengthened his calculations that none of the claims are actually visible within the Parthenon. While factors like column bulging do exist, the barely 0.7 inch warps are almost undetectable at average viewing distances. Instead, Goriely theorizes these and other curvatures were intentionally included for much more mundane issues. The base arcs possibly helped prevent rain puddles, or they may simply have been more visually pleasing in ancient Greek society.

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post Yes, eating carrots can help your eyesight. But it’s not a cure-all. appeared first on Popular Science.

MIT professor designs 2026 Winter Olympics torch

Andrew Paul — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 20:08:00 -0500

Every Olympic Games has a torch. Every torch has a designer. For the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, that designer is MIT engineer and architect Carlo Ratti.

Although no single explanation likely accounts for the endurance of these Parthenon myths, Goriely argued at least some of it stems from the over-veneration of Greek history that began during the Enlightenment.

A winter sports enthusiast, Ratti owns the architectural firm Carlo Ratti Associati and is originally from Turin, Italy—which hosted the Winter Games in 2006. His firm’s work has been featured at numerous international expositions, including the French Pavilion at the Osaka Expo (World’s Fair) in 2025. The Cloud, a 400-foot tall spherical structure, was also a finalist for a special observation deck at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

“Based on this romantic vision, the Parthenon is assumed to have been designed and executed with a perfect awareness…as though the builders possessed the combined knowledge of twentieth-century modern sciences and more,” he wrote.

Olympic organizers invited Ratti to design this year’s torch, and he used several of his teaching principles when approaching the project.

Instead, Goriely offered an alternative approach: “Trust your own eyes, question what you see and decide for yourself whether the theory of optical corrections holds up.”

The post Mathematician debunks the Parthenon’s famous optical illusions appeared first on Popular Science.

Dog brains act surprisingly human when told ‘no’

Laura Baisas — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 11:03:00 -0400

Sit, stay, roll over, come, fetch, and no. All common commands that responsible dog owners use to train and communicate with their pets. When a dog hears the word “no” there is potentially much more going on inside their minds than just stopping an unwanted (and sometimes dangerous) behavior. When dogs restrain their behavior, their brains show a pattern that looks remarkably like human self-control. These new findings are detailed in a study published in the journal Animal Cognition.

“It is about what the object or the design is to convey,” Ratti said in a statement. “How it can touch people, how it can relate to people, how it can transmit emotions. That’s the most important thing.”

Stopping our actions at a moment’s notice can be the difference between life and death. A rabbit that stops moving when it hears a coyote or other predator in the distance or a human who gives up smoking or drinking alcohol are ways that saying “no” and controlling actions can save lives.

“Essential” was designed to perform regardless of the weather, wind, or altitude it would encounter on its journey from Olympia to Milan. The torch “aims to combine both past and future,” says designer Carlo Ratti, a professor of the practice at MIT who hails from Turin, Italy.
Image: Photo courtesy of Milano Cortina 2026.

Different biological mechanisms control these behaviors. A rabbit stopping when it hears a predator is automatic and rooted in a deep evolutionary fear of being eaten and comes from a more primal part of the brain, while humans giving up smoking is a conscious effort and takes willpower. Self-control relies on the frontal lobes, which are the youngest part of the brain’s self-control system and only evolved about 310 million years ago in mammals. When scientists measure neural activity in the frontal lobes, increased frontal theta waves are the telltale sign that self-control is happening.

The official name for the 2026 Winter Olympic torch is “Essential.” Importantly, it was built to work no matter the weather, wind, or altitude the torch would encounter on its over 7,000-mile-long journey from Olympia, Greece to Milan, Italy. In total, the design process took three years to complete with collaboration from several researchers and engineers.

“Dogs live and age faster than humans but move in the same environments and adapt to the same social and physical challenges,” Márta Gácsii, a study co-author and ethologist who specializes in dog cognition at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, said in a statement. “This means that developmental and age-related factors associated with pathological conditions can be examined more time-efficiently than in human populations.”

“Each design pushed the boundaries in different directions, but all of them with the key principle to put the flame at the center,” said Ratti, adding that he wanted the torch to embody “an ethos of frugality.”

To see what is going on when a dog hears “no,” Gácsii and two other researchers measured their activity using non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) scans. They measured 226 EEG recordings, each about 30 seconds long, from 14 dogs. During the recordings, they were either obeying a command or sitting still. They then analyzed the data to see if the theta waves seen when humans are exhibiting self-control are more pronounced when the animals are obeying a command.

The team took 226 EEG recordings of awake dogs. Image: Gáti Oszkár Dániel.

Credit: Milano Cortina 2026

“During self-control situations, we [sic] observed EEG activity that resembles human theta in both frequency and localization,” added study co-author and ethologist Ivaylo Borislavov Iotchev.

As for the ever important flame, a high-performance burner powered by bio-GPL produced from 100 percent renewable feedstocks by energy company ENI is at the core of the torch. Previously, the torches were only used once, but “Essential” can be recharged 10 times so fewer torches needed to be built.

According to the team, studying dogs can help us better understand human conditions, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obesity.

“Essential” also boasts a unique internal mechanism that can be seen through a vertical opening along its side. This means that audiences can peek inside and see the burner in action. From a design perspective, that reinforces Ratti’s desire to keep the emphasis on the flame itself and not the object.

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“In humans, failures in the function of the frontal lobes play a role in both ADHD and abnormal weight gain,” added Hungarian Academy of Sciences ethologist Anna Kis. “The ability to measure the EEG correlates of frontal lobe involvement in dogs will allow us to investigate just how close these conditions in dogs resemble their human counterparts and allow us to extrapolate better predictions for humans, too.”

The post Dog brains act surprisingly human when told ‘no’ appeared first on Popular Science.

In 1963, a plane flew to space. Why couldn’t we go farther?

Laura Baisas — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:03:00 -0400

In 1926, when Albert Scott Crossfield was five years old, a priest came to his home to administer the last rites. Suffering from an advanced case of pneumonia that had scarred his lungs and attacked his heart, the young Crossfield was drifting in and out of a coma when his parents summoned Father Skiperelli. They feared their son would not make it through the night.

At just under 2.5 pounds, “Essential” is the lightest torch created for the Olympics and is primarily made from recycled aluminum. The body is finished with a PVD coating that is heat resistant. This special finish allows the torch to shift colors by reflecting the environments it is carried through, whether that be Milan’s bright city lights or the peaks of the Dolomites.

Despite his delirium, Crossfield distinctly remembered Father “Skip” noting how the pictures of airplanes plastered across his bedroom walls were crowding out a symbol of the Sacred Heart. Crossfield survived but struggled with his health for years, which often confined him to bed rest. A doctor told him he would likely never pass a flight physical exam.

The Olympic torch is a blue-green shade, and the Paralympic torch is gold. It also won an honorable mention in Italy’s most prestigious industrial design award, the Compasso d’Oro.

When he was nine years old, Crossfield outfitted a wicker chair in the family’s backyard with a cockpit-like control stick and rudder pedals, practicing for hours at a time. He would follow the instructions of a flight book propped on the chair’s arm, imagining himself soaring across oceans and over mountains, setting world records.

Professor of the practice Carlo Ratti with his design: the 2026 Winter Olympic Torch. Image: Photo courtesy of Milano Cortina 2026.

In 1953, Crossfield realized those childhood dreams when he steered a research plane, the Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket, to Mach 2, twice the speed of sound, making him the fastest person alive to date. Six years later, he was the first to pilot the X-15, a new experimental aircraft that was the world’s first plane to fly into space. But reaching space and staying there are different problems.

Throughout the process, the flame was the most fundamental aspect of the torch. The flame was considered sacred in ancient Greece and it will stay lit throughout the entire 16 days of competition.

We’ve spent more than half a century since trying to take that next step—flying planes from a runway into orbit. After decades of disappointment, spaceplanes have found their place. On the edge.

A recurring symbol in both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, the torch gets attention long before the first puck drop or downhill run. Its journey for the 2026 Olympics began in late November and will have covered all 110 Italian provinces before it arrives in Milan in time for the opening ceremony on February 6. Ratti carried the torch for a portion of its journey through Turin in January. He hopes that the torch and games showcase the Italy of today and of the future.

The edge of space—defined

Ratti carried the torch he designed through the streets of Turin, Italy in January. Image: Photo courtesy of Milano Cortina 2026.

In February 1963, an 81-year-old Hungarian émigré paused before making his way down the steps of the White House to receive the first National Medal of Science from President Kennedy. Kennedy reached to offer a hand. Theodore von Kármán waved him off with a witty remark: “Mr. President, one does not need help going down, only going up.”

“When people think about Italy, they often think about the past, from ancient Romans to the Renaissance or Baroque period,” he said. “Italy does indeed have a significant past. But the reality is that it is also the second-largest industrial powerhouse in Europe and is leading in innovation and tech in many fields. So, the 2026 torch aims to combine both past and future. It draws on Italian design from the past, but also on future-forward technologies.”

The post MIT professor designs 2026 Winter Olympics torch appeared first on Popular Science.

2026 Valentine’s Day Gift Guide: 26 perfect presents for your partner

Stan Horaczek — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 17:37:12 -0500

By then, von Kármán had become the 20th century’s preeminent aerodynamicist, an expert in going up. Von Kármán came to the U.S. in the 1920s to help expand the California Institute of Technology’s aviation research. At Caltech, he took charge of a band of student rocket experimenters known as the Suicide Squad for the hazards of their research. During World War II, their workshop became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, eventually funded by NASA.

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Pilot A. Scott Crossfield stands next to the D-558-2 after first Mach 2 flight. Image: Public Domain NASA

You care about the person you have chosen as your valentine. That doesn’t mean they’re easy to shop for. Sometimes you just need a little inspiration. Well, consider this gift guide Cupid’s error. Let it pierce your soul and inspire you with great gift ideas that just about anyone would love. This year, ditch the flowers and the drug store chocolate and get your partner something they actually want. That way, they get to enjoy their gift, and we get to pick up all the heavily discounted candy leftover on February 15. Everybody wins.

While von Kármán’s students were experimenting with rockets in California’s arroyos, a European contemporary, Eugen Sänger, was testing rocket engines at the University of Technology in Vienna. During WWII, Sänger teamed up with German physicist Irene Bredt to design a spaceplane bomber for German High Command. Based on concepts from Raketenflugtechnik (Rocket Flight Engineering), Sänger’s 1933 treatise and the first theoretical study of spaceplanes, the bomber would be capable of skipping across the edge of space like a stone on a lake. Their unfulfilled goal was to drop bombs on America.

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Blueair Mini Restful Sunrise Clock & Air Purifier

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Blueair

After WWII ended, Sänger and Bredt’s work prompted the U.S. and other nations to explore skip-glide spaceplanes. Meanwhile, von Kármán sought to answer a very simple question: How high can an airplane fly before it stops being an airplane?

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Because Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t have an abrupt end—it just thins until traces of it drift past the moon—von Kármán offered a practical demarcation point. A wing works by pushing air down; the thinner the atmosphere, the faster the wing must move to push enough of it. Climb high enough, von Kármán reasoned, and a wing would have to fly so fast to hold its own weight up that it would already be traveling at orbital speed—roughly 17,500 miles per hour at the bottom of low Earth orbit, or 100 miles above the surface. At that velocity, a wing becomes moot. The object isn’t being held aloft by air pressure at all; it’s continuously falling, tugged by Earth’s gravity, but moving sideways fast enough to keep missing Earth. Too slow and it spirals back down; too fast and it sails off into space.

This bedside device has two simple jobs: clean the air and wake you up gently. It’s a nice fit for anyone who takes sleep seriously, has allergies, or just wants their nightstand to feel less chaotic. I have been using one for the past few weeks, and the alarm is a welcome departure from the grating chime and glow of my phone’s alarm. The air purification system can clear 140 ft² in 12.5 minutes and up to 607 ft² in one hour. Even with that much filtering power, it still checks in around 18 dB on low, with a spec range of 21–48 dB. A USB-C port on the back of the unit is a nice touch, so you can get rid of your phone charging brick and streamline your nightstand even more.

Von Kármán calculated that crossover at around 50 miles up, though the number drifts with fluctuations in atmospheric density. In the 1960s, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale rounded it to 100 kilometers, or 62 miles. NASA and the Air Force still use 50 miles. Regardless of the precise figure, it has become known as the edge of space, a turbulent shoreline where the physics of flying shift dramatically. Although no treaty has ever made it official, the Kármán line serves as the conventional divide between aviation law and space law, where wings serve no purpose in keeping an object aloft—only speed matters.

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Arzopa D14 digital picture frame

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For some gifts, unwrapping them is the most fun part. A digital frame does the opposite: It keeps paying rent every time it cycles to a photo they forgot existed (and every time you sneak in a new one from your phone).

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The Arzopa D14 offers a large 14-inch touchscreen frame with a 1920×1200 IPS panel in a 16:10 aspect ratio, so it’s not cramped like the tiny countertop frames or smart screens. It’s rated at 300 cd/m² brightness and employs an anti-glare surface, which helps it stay readable in a real room—not just in perfect product-photo lighting. Wi-Fi uploads through Arzopa’s app allow for multi-user sharing, so you can keep feeding it new pictures (or short videos) without asking them to find an SD card adapter from 2009. Storage-wise, it has 32GB built in, plus the company offers free cloud storage and microSD expansion up to 128GB, so you’re not forced to curate like it’s a museum exhibit. And if you do want to load a bunch at once, it supports USB-C transfers, so you can upload your entire relationship in just a few minutes.

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Utilize promo code ARZOPA15 for 15% off

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Ozlo Sleepbuds

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Ozlo

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Some people can fall asleep next to a death metal concert. Others wake up because the fridge motor kicked on three rooms away. Sleepbuds are for that second group. These small earbuds are designed to mask noise and (optionally) stream audio without turning bedtime into a bulky headphone operation. Specs-wise, Ozlo lists up to 10 hours of playback in the buds, with the Smart Case holding an additional 32 hours. Connection includes Bluetooth 5.3, with support noted for both classic Bluetooth and Low Energy Audio–enabled streaming. They’re so good, they made our 2025 Best of What’s New awards list.

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GUNNAR Enigma eye protection glasses

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If someone spends long hours on a monitor—work, games, creative tools, doomscrolling, all of it—this is a practical upgrade that doesn’t feel like giving them a chore. The Enigma frames look normal enough to wear in public, but the lens options are where the nerdy details live. GUNNAR offers a mild “Focus” lens power option of +0.20 designed to reduce ocular muscle strain at close range. Clear Pro is positioned for color-critical work and is listed as blocking 20 percent of blue light at 450nm; the standard Clear option blocks 35 percent at 450nm. We like specifics when it comes to explaining exactly what “blue light” really means.

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biOrb AIR 30 Terrarium

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biOrb’s AIR line is basically a controlled little habitat that makes it easier to keep a terrarium looking intentional instead of a toxic waste site. The AIR 30 is a 30-liter terrarium that stands 15.75 inches wide and 18 inches tall, with integrated LED lighting and an automatic misting system. Internal fans provide sufficient airflow to keep things alive and stink-free. The point is that it’s not just a glass bowl—it’s a managed environment that reduces the odds of accidental plant homicide.

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Freewrite Traveler distraction-free writing device

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- - I could have used one of these while writing this gift guide. - -

Freewrite

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Distractions are the enemy of creativity and our phones and computers are loaded with them. Do you know how many times I’ve checked social media while writing this gift guide? Too many. Traveler isn’t trying to be a laptop. It’s a single-purpose machine that makes starting (and finishing) writing projects easier. The e-ink display is just big enough to read clearly (about 4.76 × 2.76 inches), plus a separate status window (about 4.76 × 0.59 inches) keeps track of essentials. The whole device is about 1.6 pounds, and the company claims battery life up to four weeks, depending on use. It basically removes every obstacle from the writing process.

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BrüMate Rise 35oz insulated water bottle

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Brumate

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This stainless vessel solves the small daily annoyances that make people abandon bottles: awkward handles, gross straws, and lids that leak at the worst possible time. BrüMate promises 24+ hours cold retention, a leakproof MagFlip lid, and a ColdKey metal straw with a soft-touch tip. The comfortably shaped handle makes it easy to lug around or even clip onto a bag with a carabiner. This is the company’s newest design, so it stands out visually from the familiar bottles that are already everywhere.

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Anker Prime 26K 300W Power Bank

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- - They can’t text you about how much they love you if their device batteries are dead. - -

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Your valentine can’t text you lovely messages if their battery is always dead. This powerful portable charger has enough juice inside to resurrect a phone, laptop, drone, or pretty much anything else you can top off with a USB-C cable. Yes, it’s a practical gift, but it’s gadget-y enough that it doesn’t seem boring. Anker equipped it with a 26,250mAh capacity and 99.75Wh (notably under the common 100Wh airline threshold), total output up to 300W, and two USB-C ports that can each output up to 140W. They will want to keep this with them always (just like they will your love). We tested the slightly less powerful version earlier this year, and now we don’t leave the house without it in a bag.

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TUSHY Cloud+ Bidet Seat

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- - Is it an intimate gift? Yes. Will they love it? Also yes. - -

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If you love someone, you want to improve their quality of life. Few things do that as efficiently as a bidet, especially when warm water is involved. TUSHY positions Cloud+ as a bidet seat with instant warm water and a warm air dryer. Four water temperature levels, a heated seat, and a dryer allow users to dial in their favorite settings. The remote remembers exactly how they like it. Plus, the whole setup is easy to install, so the project won’t turn into an unnecessary argument.

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Fitbit Charge 6

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- - You can literally see their heart rate rise when they see you (hopefully because of love). - -

Google

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The Charge 6 isn’t purely a fitness gift. It has built-in GPS (so pace/distance don’t require a phone), 50m water resistance, and a 7-day battery life for infrequent charging. It also pulls in genuinely practical Google integrations: Google Maps turn-by-turn directions and Google Wallet tap-to-pay. And if your person likes data, Google promises improved heart-rate accuracy for vigorous workouts like HIIT.

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Immortal Perfumes

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Immortale Perfumes

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If your valentine is a one-for-the-ages type enamored with erudite eras, skip the flowers and gift them a fragrant footnote (or is that base note). Immortal Perfumes is a Seattle micro-perfumery by JT Siems, making small-batch, vegan, historically and literary-inspired scents that roll on effortlessly and wear like a gothic short story. For instance, signature Dead Writers is all smoky, tea-stained pages and typewriter swagger. Or pick one of many romantic scents that capture timeless characters and reveal magnetism and mischief as they warm on skin. Start with a sample set of petite mood portals if you’re unsure, and let them navigate pungent plot twists till they underline their perfect passage.

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Bushnell Golf Pro X3+ LINK Laser Rangefinder

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Bushnell Golf

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Obviously, your sweetheart only has eyes for you. But in the event they use them elsewhere, and in the event that elsewhere is on a golf course, they’re going to want to see precisely measured distances. Bushnell Golf’s $599 Pro X3+LINK laser rangefinder is the “built like a tank” gift that keeps on giving: a rubber-armored, metal-bodied brick with 7x glass that feels steady in the hand, features a satisfying PinSeeker visual jolt when it locks on the flag, and makes a reassuring snap when the BITE magnet meets the cart post. It layers Slope with Elements (temperature, pressure, altitude, wind speed/direction) and offers LINK club recommendations, then serves the number up fast through a crisp display that can swap from crisp black to bright red. Leave guesswork out of it when they’re out on the green.

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We Are Rewind GB-001 Curtis Boombox

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Brushed aluminum. Glowing amber VU meters. A real Type I/II cassette deck made for mixtape romance. A handle that demands to be hoisted. You don’t have to go full-on LL Cool J or Lloyd Dobler to know this $579 boombox is the perfect gift for someone who loves aesthetic with attitude. With the Curtis Boombox, you can time-travel wherever you travel. But it’s not all retro; this is timeless energy with contemporary technology. Under that swagger is Bluetooth 5.4, 104 watts pushing dual woofers and soft-dome tweeters for full-range room-filling sound, plus a rechargeable, replaceable battery. This portable party speaker is like sonic streetwear. Bonus beats: plug in a mic and turn the living room into a stage. Jam on it.

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JBL L100 Classic 80 Anniversary Edition Speakers

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If you’ve found your 1 of 1, give them something equally rare to cherish. Pre-ordering JBL’s L100 Classic 80 is the audio equivalent of a handwritten love letter: a limited run of an icon. With just 800 matched pairs available worldwide, this commemorative special-edition loudspeaker is pure retro romance with natural oak, brown Quadrex foam grille, and its gold-and-brown numbered plaque. Just because it draws from mid-century hi-fi heritage doesn’t mean it’s lacking modern muscle, however. There’s a front-firing bass-reflex 12-inch pulp woofer, 5.25-inch mid, and 1-inch titanium dome tweeter inside an acoustic lens waveguide, as well as front-panel level controls so you can flirt with your frequency crush. Each pair arrives with JS-150 stands in a specially crafted crate. Sure, they’re $7,499, but if you love someone the way they love music, it’s an expression of emotion you can play loud together forever.

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Magnetar UDP900 MKII 4K Blu-ray Universal Disc Player

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Looking for the perfect gift for a valentine that hoards 4K SteelBooks, has a stash of SACDs, and is outspoken on the right kind of graininess? Magnetar’s UDP900 MK II is the universal disc player for your Criterion edition of a person. At $3,299, it’s exquisite overkill in the right way, capable of reference-grade playback from any physical media collection (UHD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, SACD, DVD-A, Redbook CD, etc.). It features Dolby Vision/HDR10+, dual ESS9038PRO DACs with balanced XLR outs, and an XMOS USB path that’ll chew through PCM 768kHz/DSD512 like it’s nothing. An optimized signal path in a tank-like chassis. Whether their focus is on pristine images or two-channel imaging, Technicolor or Atmos, it’s a love poem to the power of movie nights and soundtracking your days that has been milled in aluminum.

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AKG C114 Large-diaphragm Condenser Microphone

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You think your special someone has the most beautiful voice in the world. So help them share it with the AKG C114 large-diaphragm condenser microphone. With this new $229 mic, they can track airy vocals, cut balanced podcasts and voiceovers, and even capture some acoustic guitar shimmer to accompany them. And they can do it all without turning the room into a séance of switching positions till they conjure the right spirit. This affordable all-rounder’s 26mm dual-diaphragm edge-terminated capsule borrows richly textured DNA from the C12/C414 lineage, adds three patterns (cardioid/omni/figure-8), and stays clean at loud moments with a transformerless FET circuit, 145 dB max SPL, 12 dB(A) self-noise, and an included suspension cradle. It’s plug-in, phantom-powered, and the matte metal look flatters every frame if they’re the on-camera type, too. It’s a mic for minimal fuss, maximum “wow, that’s you,” even when the take gets emotional.

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SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite Wireless Gaming Headset System

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If you’re in love with someone who is in love with gaming, they would love the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite—especially if they bounce between consoles and couches. This ANC, LC3+ Hi-Res wireless headset pairs 40mm carbon-fiber drivers (featuring brass surrounds) with a GameHub “OmniPlay” dock that can mix up to four sources at once—PC, console, Bluetooth, line-in. All without cable juggle (or jumble). This $599 system (available in Obsidian, shown, or Sage & Gold) satisfies whether they’re completing a campaign at a custom battle station or killing time playing on a handheld while traveling. And it’s not just punchy explosions, tidy dialogue, and pinpoint positioning that they’ll appreciate. Music is rich, clean, and nuanced with resolution up to 96kHz/24-bit. Add in AI noise-rejecting comms, plush pads, plus “Infinity Power” hot-swappable batteries so the headphones won’t die mid-raid (or mid-playlist).

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ASUS ROG Kithara Open-back Wired Audiophile Gaming Headphones

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Got a valentine that sweats a ranked match and melts listening to their favorite album? Gift them the new ASUS ROG Kithara gaming headphones. It’s the rare headset that also fits the audiophile mindset, thanks to its 100mm planar-magnetic drivers tuned by HiFiMAN. With these $299 wired headphones, they don’t have to choose between precise spatial awareness and expressive staging. Footsteps arrive as clean, crisp coordinates, while veil-free vocals and vibes stay textured. There’s space around bullets and air around cymbals, plus nimble bass that’s got pleasing nuance for an open-back thanks to a Neo Supernano Diaphragm Gen. 2 packed between Stealth Magnets. The tactile feel is equally dialed in, with plush drop-shaped pads (sonically warmer velour and more neutral leatherette), a reasonable 420g weight for marathon campaigns and/or playlists, and a cable kit that includes an on-cable full-band MEMS boom microphone, USB-C dongle, as well as a 4.4mm balanced termination to get the most out of the 16Ω 8Hz–55kHz specs. Sure, they require a quiet room, but goosebumps are guaranteed.

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Hypershell X Exoskeleton

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- - Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all. So tell me, why should it be true that I get a kick out of you … - -

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This gift is a little off the beaten path, but it can appeal to people who like to choose the road less taken, so … If you have an adventurous soul in your life who wants to stay active but may need some assistance, the Hypershell X exoskeleton can put some pep back in their step while hiking, climbing, running, cycling, or simply commuting. In January, we tested the $1,999 Ultra X model on an excursion through a Nevada canyon (variants are available across various ranges and materials, starting at $999). And the 1000 W of adaptive power packed into this carbon fiber and titanium alloy frame successfully lowered our heart rate while making us feel capable of more effortless output as we stomped and scrambled through the Calico Hills. For anyone who feels they’ve lost a step—whether because they’re older, recovering from an injury, facing other mobility issues, or just tasked with logistical demands—we feel this hip-assisted exoskeleton can ease physical toll. It also has a mode to provide resistance for physical therapy/fitness.

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Timbuk2 Mode Weekender Bag

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If you’re inviting someone on a spur-of-the-moment romantic getaway, packing light is packing right. And the Timbuk2 Mode Weekender Bag is perfect for the essentials. This $239 33L duffel (available in three colorways) is grown-up travel done durable, with heavy nylon twill, water-resistant YKK zips, and leather-wrapped touch points. The wide mouth gives easy outfit access (and makes late check-out repacking less chaotic), while a padded lower compartment keeps shoes from mingling with unmentionables. There’s a PU-zip external tech pocket lined in brushed microfleece, plus an internal organizer and key clip for small stuff. And if someone needed to bring more, the trolley sleeve slides easily over a roller bag. They’ll look organized, even if they’re not.

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And when packing for vacation, one of the most essential accessories is a travel-ready charger that fits on an airplane tray and a hotel side table alike. Get the one you love the new foldable Anker Prime Wireless 3-in-1 25W MagGo Charging Station so they won’t have to worry about their iPhone, AirPods, and/or Apple Watch powering down during a long day of catching connections or sightseeing.

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Getting to space requires altitude, but staying there requires speed. The gap between them is where the dream of the spaceplane has always faltered, beginning with the novel machine Crossfield helped design in the 1950s.

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The Incredible X-15

If your valentine has ever celebrated finding a dress with pockets like winning an Olympic gold medal, Stio’s Hometown Down Scarf will be an instant win. This sleek pull-through scarf hides a zippered pocket perfectly sized for cards, cash, or lip balm, keeping essentials close whether they’re strolling icy sidewalks or navigating a snow-dusted trailhead. Made from 100% recycled HTD nylon ripstop and insulated with HyperDry 800-fill goose down, it shrugs off snow and damp conditions while keeping necks toasty warm. At $79, it distills the best of a favorite puffer into a smaller, more packable silhouette. The coziness is real, but the pocket is the star.

“Starting a flight in the X-15 is like starting your car while falling off a cliff,” wrote Popular Science editor Wesley S. Griswold in 1963. The plane would take off from a runway, hanging from a pylon under the wing of a B-52 bomber until it reached an altitude of 45,000 feet. There, it would detach and its engine would ignite, hurling it upward “as though shot out of a cannon.”

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The X-15 aerospace research plane falls away from the wind pylon of a B-52 mother plane over the Nevada desert. Image: Popular Science, June 1963 issue

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A cross between a rocket and a plane, the engineers building the X-15 called it a “missile with a cockpit,” Griswold reported in a 1958 preview for Popular Science. Like a rocket, the plane was mostly a fuel tank. Like a plane, its stubby wings and tail fins enabled it to negotiate Earth’s atmosphere. The vessel’s most telling feature, however, was its twin sets of flight controls: one for navigating air, the other for space. As the plane approached the Kármán line, the pilot switched from traditional airplane controls to jets of superheated steam in the nose and wings, pointing the airplane with thrusters, just like a spacecraft.

Frosty conditions don’t scare off all athletes, and valentines who choose sweat over stillness need a layer that warms without turning workouts swampy. Stio’s Dawner Jacket, available in men’s and women’s versions, hits that sweet spot with lightweight insulation that breathes as hard as they do. The stretch nylon shell features a DWR finish to fend off light snow and moisture, while the Octa knit insulation uses a gridded structure to promote airflow and speed evaporation, whether it’s worn next to skin or layered over a base.

When Scott Crossfield learned of the X-15 program around 1955, he left his government post at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA’s predecessor, to work for North American Aviation, the X-15’s builder. There, Crossfield helped design the machine and became its first test pilot. He survived an engine explosion on the ground, which required the machine to undergo extensive repairs, and a landing that snapped the fuselage in two. By the time the plane was handed over to the joint U.S. Air Force-Navy-NASA program, he’d topped out at 88,116 feet, about 17 miles up. The plane had flown well short of space, but it was ready. Crossfield’s part was done.

We put the Dawner through its paces in Wyoming, wearing it as an outer layer on a multi-mile cross-country trek in zero-degree temperatures (and during some après Mountain Shots). We started chilly, but finished comfortably warm, even as our hair froze into some crazy anime curls. The next day, it slipped neatly under a shell for downhill runs without ever feeling clammy. It’s the kind of adaptable cold-weather piece that earns repeat use, equally reliable as a standalone jacket or a hardworking midlayer.

Air Force pilot Bob White took the X-15 to space first, reaching 314,750 feet in July 1962, earning the first astronaut wings ever awarded to a winged aircraft pilot. NASA pilot Joe Walker flew the X-15 to 354,200 feet in August 1963—67 miles up, an altitude no winged aircraft has beaten, and one of only two X-15 flights to clear the Kármán line. Air Force pilot Pete Knight pushed the X-15 to Mach 6.7 in October 1967, still the fastest a piloted airplane has ever flown. In all, 13 flights crossed 50 miles—space’s threshold by NASA’s standards. Eight pilots earned astronaut wings, among them a NASA research pilot named Neil Armstrong.

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Theodore von Kármán did not live to see Walker cross his eponymous line, the official edge of space. He died ten weeks earlier, in May 1963.

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Amidst the X-15’s remarkable flights, in September 1965, Wernher von Braun, the director of NASA’s George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, penned a feature for Popular Science that predicted the coming era of spaceplanes. “Re-usable launch vehicles, looking more like airplanes than rockets, will boost manned and unmanned craft into orbit,” he wrote. But von Braun also hedged his prediction, claiming that such planes might not take off from a runway; they would be launched vertically on a booster.

Shopping for someone who prefers outdoor adventures over candlelit dinners? Smith’s Venture sunglasses blend alpine utility with a touch of Mad Max swagger, delivering true performance sports eyewear for bright conditions that don’t stay consistent. The ChromaPop Glacier Photochromic lenses adapt to changing UV and light, darkening in full sun or snow glare and lightening when clouds roll in, all while preserving sharp contrast and true-to-life color. Grippy Megol nose and temple pads keep them firmly in place, with an included goggle-style elastic strap for extra security when things get rowdy. Removable side shields and a nose piece provide protection against glare, wind, and dust, though face sweaters may consider them optional rather than essential. Leave them on for full coverage or pop them off for a cleaner everyday look. Either way, they’re cool.

The spaceplane graveyard

In his 1986 State of the Union address, Ronald Reagan promised a “new Orient Express,” a spaceplane capable of reaching low Earth orbit. It would also take off from Washington, D.C., and reach Tokyo in two hours. The Rockwell X-30, the hypersonic aircraft designed to fulfill Reagan’s vision, would be powered by a scramjet engine, which captures oxygen from the air rather than carrying it in a tank. It was never built.

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Britain pursued its own spaceplane program, dubbed HOTOL for Horizontal Take-Off and Landing. It never left the drawing board. West Germany designed Sänger II, named for the man whose 1930s skip-glide concept helped inspire spaceplane technology. It was cancelled before production.

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A recent and promising winged attempt to reach orbit was Reaction Engines, a British company that took up where HOTOL left off and succeeded in getting the hardest part of a hypersonic engine working. But it failed to raise enough funding to build its spaceplane.

Delight the skiers in your life with something equal parts adorable and unnecessary in the best way. Stoke Tracks makes ski pole baskets that stamp animal tracks into the snow. Choose from bear (shown), fox, mountain lion, or wolf paws, or outfit the whole crew so your group leaves a coterie of cuteness between runs. At just $32 a pair, they’re an easy yes, and they’re made from bio-based, fully biodegradable materials. And in lines, they’re an excellent conversation starter.

After Reagan’s X-30 program failed, NASA tried again, hiring Lockheed Martin to build the X-33, a test vehicle part of NASA’s Venture Star program. The X-ee would launch like a rocket, using its own engines, and fly like an airplane when descending. The program was canceled in 2001.

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In 1999, Popular Science writer Bill Sweetman profiled Space Access, a Palmdale, California, startup founded by Rockwell engineer Steven Wurst, who had come out of the defunct X-30 program.

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In 1999, Popular Science writer Bill Sweetman profiled Space Access, a Palmdale, California, startup founded by Rockwell engineer Steven Wurst, who had come out of the defunct X-30 program. Image: Popular Science, June 1999 issue

Time to perk up the espresso lover in your life with teeny, tiny insulated drinkware made for serious sips. Yeti’s six-ounce espresso mugs are perfectly sized for macchiatos and cappuccinos, pairing durable stainless steel with a DuraSip ceramic lining that preserves the true flavor of the beans instead of adding a metallic note. They’re sturdy enough for daily use, cute enough to live on the counter, and smartly stackable for easy storage. Best of all, they’re dishwasher safe, so the next shot won’t be delayed by waiting on someone to finally hand-wash the mugs.

“It’s the flight rate, stupid,” Wurst told Sweetman. Unless a spacecraft flies often, it will never be cheap enough to be competitive. Wurst was right about the economics but wrong about the shape. An airplane light enough to fly well can’t carry enough propellant to reach orbit, and a vehicle carrying enough propellant to reach orbit is no longer much of an airplane. Two decades later, Space X proved the point with a reusable rocket that lands on its tail.

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Shuttles—part plane, part payload

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The term “spaceplane” has relaxed from its mid-20th century meaning to include shuttles—aircraft that are launched into space on the backs of rockets but have wings that enable them to return to runways.

If your valentine lives in a fleece from first frost to final thaw, Ridge Merino’s Cloudripper Grid Fleece Hoodie—available for men and women—is an upgrade worth gifting. It’s impressively warm and soft enough for couch cuddling, yet built to be a hard-working midlayer for cold days outside without the lingering funk that plagues synthetic layers.

From 1981 to 2011, the U.S. Space Shuttle flew 135 missions to space, landed on runways, and looked like a plane. But it never took off like one. It went up vertically, riding on a disposable tank and recoverable rocket boosters, just as von Braun predicted, because the shuttle’s own engines could never have lifted it into space or achieved orbital velocity. As a payload fitted with wings and roughly 24,000 finicky thermal tiles that required manual inspection after every mission, it was too elaborate and expensive to continue operating.

The magic is on the inside: a 100% Merino wool interior means only natural fibers touch the skin. A clever grid pattern creates little pockets of heat, while strategically placed lighter panels help regulate temperature as activity levels rise. We wore it for days on a recent ski trip without washing it and never once worried about being called out for it. Bonus points for thumbholes, because cold hands are a romance killer.

But a new generation of shuttles has improved the economics. Smaller, uncrewed, and equipped with a more reliable heat shield, the X-37B looks like a mini Space Shuttle. It has completed seven missions since 2010. Its eighth was launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 in August 2025. Using a similar design, Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser shuttle is scheduled to debut in late 2026.

Spaceplanes find their place

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Before the moon race, explorers wanted to conquer the ocean

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Despite decades of failed programs, true spaceplanes have begun to carve out an important niche, traveling at hypersonic speeds to extreme altitudes and the edge of space but not into orbit.

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Dawn Aerospace’s Aurora is a tiny rocket-powered suborbital spaceplane that takes off from and lands on conventional runways, which is the whole point. Operating under remote control—it’s too small for a crew—it has flown 64 times since 2016, occasionally twice in one day. In November 2024, it became the first civilian aircraft to fly supersonic since Concorde. It has carried research payloads for Johns Hopkins, Arizona State, and the Royal New Zealand Navy. Future versions are designed to exceed Mach 3.5 and cross the Kármán line—twice a day.

Cyclists, hikers, climbers, they’ll happily invest in top-tier gear, then toss it all into a chaotic pile when the day’s done. That’s where gear haulers come in, and the RUX Essentials Set is one of the best ways to bring order to the madness. Think “Home Edit” for the outdoors. The system starts with a 70-liter RUX Gear Box, a collapsible, weather-proof container with a clear window so you can see what’s inside. Add the RUX Bag, a 25-liter divider bag that clips neatly into place to create containers within the container, and the RUX Pocket, a slim, folder-style organizer that attaches inside or out for smaller essentials. The result is a modular setup that lets your special someone lift out exactly what they need when it’s time to roll. Whether storing gear long-term or loading up the truck for a quick escape, it turns packing into a pleasure instead of a scramble. At nearly $400, it’s a splurge, but it’s also guaranteed for life.

The post 2026 Valentine’s Day Gift Guide: 26 perfect presents for your partner appeared first on Popular Science.

Termites are swarming Florida even faster than predicted

Andrew Paul — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 13:46:02 -0500

Termites have plagued southern states like Florida for decades, but a new study indicates that the problem is even worse than researchers previously believed. After reviewing over 30 years of monitoring data, entomologists at the University of Florida (UF) now say both the Formosan and Asian subterranean termites (Coptotermes formosanus and Coptotermes gestroi) are expanding their range of destruction. And it gets worse. They’ve already traveled farther north than scientists initially predicted.

Just like the X-15 nearly 70 years ago, California-based Stratolaunch drops its Talon-A hypersonic research spaceplane from beneath the wing of the world’s largest airplane. Similarly, Virgin Galactic’s suborbital aircraft is dropped from a plane, firing its own rocket engine to transport sightseeing customers to the edge of space, before landing on a runway in New Mexico.

Formosan and Asian termites are almost entirely restricted to tropical climates, but the invasive insects have consistently arrived to newly habitable regions due to warming temperatures caused by climate change. Since its accidental introduction into the United States around the mid-20th century, Formosan termites have spread to at least 11 states. While biologists only identified the presence of its Asian subterranean relative in Florida in 1996, the species is making up for lost time. Today, termites in the U.S. annually cause an estimated $1–7 billion in structural damages.

Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo in flight during captive carry test flight at Mojave on July 15, 2010 in California. Image: Virgin Galactic / Contributor / Getty Images Virgin Galactic

Tracking them is also a difficult job. The insects spend the majority of their lives hidden away inside their colonies, and generally only emerge to mate and migrate during swarming seasons in the spring and early summer. This means it requires a concerted effort to keep an eye on their spread across communities. Often, they’re only confirmed after significant damage is done to homes and other buildings.

A rich shoreline

“Subterranean termites have a cryptic lifestyle, where early detection of their activity is challenging,” Thomas Chouvenc, a UF urban entomologist, explained in a university profile. “Not only are they hard to detect without regular professional inspections, but they are also rarely reported, making the tracking of their spread much more difficult.”

The edge of space offers more than just sightseeing. Since it requires traveling at multiple Mach speeds to remain aloft, spaceplanes are on the cutting edge of hypersonic research, experiencing conditions that can’t be replicated in terrestrial wind tunnels. The edge of space also offers microgravity conditions, which are vital for research.

Chouvenc and his colleagues recently analyzed all available data amassed between 1990 and 2025 by the University of Florida Termite Collection to more clearly understand their continued spread.

The thermosphere, where the Kármán line falls, is among the least studied layers of our atmosphere—too high for research aircraft, too low for satellites—yet it matters for climate models and for the safety of spacecraft passing through. And, while an “Orient Express” from Washington, D.C., to Tokyo in two hours remains a dream, plumbing the shoreline of space may teach us enough about hypersonics and Earth’s upper atmosphere to someday make it real.

“Because the spread of these invasive termite species was underestimated for decades due to inconsistent reporting across the state, it has been unclear which communities are currently experiencing damage from these species and which communities are about to experience them,” said Chouvenc.

X-15 redux—from runway to the edge of space and back

The news isn’t great, judging by the conclusions of their study recently published in the Journal of Economic Entomology. They can confirm that Formosan termites are no longer only living in a few locations in Florida. By now, the insects are well established throughout most of the state’s coast and most of its largest urban centers. Trends also indicate that Formosan termites will be found everywhere in Florida by 2050.

On April 19, 2006, Scott Crossfield took off from Prattville, Alabama, flying his own Cessna 210A, heading home to Virginia. He was 84 years old and still flying himself to speaking engagements, evangelizing for aerospace education. He was killed over northern Georgia when his airplane came apart in a line of thunderstorms.

As for the Asian termites—they’re doing even better than entomologists feared. Researchers have long assumed the bugs were mostly relegated to South Florida due to their need for particularly warm climates. Instead, the study’s data shows the termites are now found well into central Florida, including Brevard County along the Atlantic Ocean coast and Hillsborough County, which includes the Tampa metropolitan area. By the year 2040, Asian termites will likely reside in all of the state’s 24 southernmost counties.

Having nearly succumbed to pneumonia as a boy, Crossfield had survived a rocket engine detonating behind him on a test stand and walked away from a landing that broke his airplane in half. He had flown the most dangerous aircraft ever built, flying faster than any human at the time. What finally killed him was Earth’s own atmosphere, the place of his childhood dreams, and the medium wings were made for.

If there’s any silver lining, it’s that some past projections remain accurate. For example, a 2016 analysis estimated half of all structures in the South Florida metropolitan area will be at risk from at least one or both species by 2040. This still seems to be the case, which at least makes it easier for urban planners to anticipate. The study’s co-authors hope increasing use of Florida’s open-source termite distribution map will generate stronger, more accurate datasets that both researchers and conservationists can utilize. Their work is also being integrated into a recently created North American Termite Survey, which helps with detection and identification projects far beyond the state.

For more than half a century after Crossfield’s X-15 debut, engineers have kept trying to build planes that could bridge the physics of atmosphere and space, not only taking off and landing on conventional runways but also orbiting Earth. Yet our propulsion technology does not support coupling atmospheric lift with extreme orbital speed. If it did, we’d likely be flying in saucers, not planes. In the end, the X-15 had the spaceplane’s destination right all along: surfing the atmospheric shoreline along the edge of space.

“With increasing participation of [pest control] companies, we have improved our understanding of where and when these invasive species are establishing in new localities,” said Chouvenc.

In A Century in Motion, Popular Science revisits fascinating transportation stories from our archives, from hybrid cars to moving sidewalks, and explores how these inventions are re-emerging today in surprising ways.

In the meantime, the North American Termite Survey offers plenty of tips for identifying, managing, and documenting the invasive insects. The Environmental Protection Agency also has an entire website dedicated to the issue, as well as information on safely handling the bugs.

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Fire may have altered human DNA

Bill Gourgey — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 11:30:00 -0500

Humanity’s relationship with fire is unique across all of evolutionary history. Learning to harness the power of flame is arguably our most monumental technological breakthrough as a species—one that allowed Homo sapiens to flourish across the planet.

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+ Related 'A Century in Motion' Stories

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In 1934, Chrysler bet big on teardrop-shaped cars

Robotaxis almost happened in 1964—with help from the U.S. government

In 1871, cities almost got moving sidewalks. Why are we still waiting?

During WWI, a daredevil pilot helped invent the first ‘drones’

In 1916, hybrid cars could’ve changed history. But Ford wouldn’t allow it.

A century ago, suspended monorails were serious mass-transit contenders

The post In 1963, a plane flew to space. Why couldn’t we go farther? appeared first on Popular Science.

Sunken WWI sub is leaking TNT into the North Sea

Andrew Paul — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 16:06:12 -0400

A World War I submarine that sank nearly 110 years ago has been leaking explosive pollutants into the North Sea for decades. What’s more, ocean researchers say the problem may worsen over time—not only near the German vessel itself, but at thousands of similar shipwrecks.

But fire is not without its inherent dangers. A team of evolutionary biologists and medical experts now suggests its most painful consequences are so powerful that they actually reshaped our genetic makeup. In a study recently published in the journal BioEssays, researchers at Imperial College London argue that increased exposure to burns influenced our DNA enough to separate us from all other mammals and primates. While many of these adaptations help humans heal from many burns, they also make it harder to survive more serious encounters with fire.

On April 19, 1917, Germany’s UC-30 submarine was attempting to return home due to engine problems when it struck a British mine near the Danish island of Rømø. All 27 crew members perished, and the sub remained missing until its rediscovery almost a century later in 2016. As part of the North Sea Wrecks research project, marine ecologists recently collaborated with Danish navy divers to visit the UC-30’s remains. There, they collected water and sediment samples as well as mussels and starfish specimens that lived near the vessel’s remains.

“Burns are a uniquely human injury. No other species lives alongside high temperatures and the regular risk of burning in the way humans do,” study co-author Joshua Cuddihy of Imperial’s Department of Surgery and Cancer said in a statement.

One of the few known photos of the UC-30. Credit: Deutsches U-Boot Museum Cuxhaven-Altenbruch

Humanity’s chances of burns has only increased over time. Credit: Imperial College London

Subsequent laboratory analysis showed that traces of TNT are filtering into the surroundings from at least some of the submarine’s six torpedoes and 18 mines. The residual toxins aren’t concentrated in one specific area, either.

Burns are classified as first, second, and third degree based on a wide range of severity. Lighter damage often heals easily on its own, but deeper burns destroy both surface and deeper tissues. Prolonged skin damage greatly increases risks of bacterial infections that can quickly turn lethal. According to the American Burn Association, there is an almost 18 percent mortality rate for hospital burn patients who require surgery and prolonged ventilation.

“We found traces of TNT in the wildlife, the seabed, and the water column,” study co-author and Aarhus University geoscientist Katrine Juul Andresen said in a recent profile. “The question is how significant the effect is and how far from the wreck the pollution impacts the marine environment.”

But while nearly every other animal on Earth works to avoid encountering fires, humans actively seek it out.

Andresen and her colleagues suspect the pollutants remain “relatively localized,” but that will change as the wreck continues to deteriorate from the North Sea’s corrosive conditions. UC-30 is only one of likely thousands of similar historic wrecks that litter Denmark’s waters. Andresen cited a Danish Environmental Protection Agency report focused on the ongoing problem that she co-authored in 2024.

“The control of fire is deeply embedded in human life—from a preference for hot food and boiled liquids to the technologies that shape the modern world,” explained Cuddihy. “As a result, unlike any other species, most humans will burn themselves repeatedly over their lifetime, a pattern that likely extends back over a million years to our earliest use of fire.”

“I found that there are 10,127 wrecks in Danish waters,” she said, adding that around 15 percent likely date back to both World Wars. “That is quite a high number.”

Cuddihy and his colleagues theorized that these regular encounters with fire—and their unwanted consequences—would inevitably have a profound effect on any species over tens of thousands of years. To investigate, the team compared genomic data across primates , and their findings appear to support their suspicions. Compared to our relatives, humans have genes that are linked to an enhanced evolution towards burn injury recovery. Specifically, these genes are tied to inflammation and immune system responses, as well as wound closure. These abilities would have been especially lifesaving prior to the development of antibiotics.

Addressing the issue isn’t simply a matter of towing wrecks to the surface. Many of the unexploded munitions remain volatile, and detonating them underwater frequently risks worsening the surrounding pollution.

“Our research suggests that natural selection favoured traits that improved survival after smaller, more frequent burn injuries,” said Cuddihy.

Andresen conceded options are currently slim, but they are working with European Union officials on a way forward. One potential strategy may employ underwater robots to survey the seafloor for particularly dangerous or eroded shipwrecks. In the future, similar machines could potentially retrieve explosives themselves and neutralize them in a safe location.

At the same time, these developments offered certain trade-offs. The same healing processes that ensure recovery from lighter burns also can cause intense scarring, inflammation, and even organ failure in more severe cases. Cuddihy said this might explain why humans are still “particularly vulnerable” to worse burns.

“We are trying to identify the most gentle solutions to the problem, as there is unfortunately no easy way to clean it up,” said Andresen.

The post Sunken WWI sub is leaking TNT into the North Sea appeared first on Popular Science.

Tyrannosaurus rex was warm-blooded, new study confirms

Andrew Paul — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:00:00 -0400

Contrary to the assumptions of early paleontologists, most dinosaurs weren’t lumbering slowpokes. Centuries of evolutionary reevaluation now indicates the ancestors of present-day birds didn’t simply keep a steady pace—many of them boasted impressive speed. These active lifestyles also forced scientists to reconsider another anatomical detail. Once thought universally cold-blooded, a lot of dinosaurs eventually evolved warmer blood.

Beyond a better understanding of humanity’s origins, the study could help direct our species’ future. Additional research may lead to new treatment approaches for burns as well as novel ways to deal with their complications. This evolutionary background may also explain why it has remained so difficult to translate burn studies involving animal models to humans.

Thanks to recent technological breakthroughs, paleontologists have finally settled a longtime dinosaur debate: Was Tyrannosaurus rex warm blooded or cold blooded? A study published today in the journal Science Advances settles the debate: The famous “Tyrant king” had an internal temperature surprisingly similar to today’s warm-blooded humans—around 97 degrees Fahrenheit.

“What makes this theory of burn selection so exciting to an evolutionary biologist is that it presents a new form of natural selection—one, moreover, that depends on culture,” added study co-author and evolutionary biologist Armand Leroi. “It is part of the story of what makes us human, and a part that we really did not have any inkling of before.”

The post Fire may have altered human DNA appeared first on Popular Science.

Australia mints colorful $1 coins to honor Olympians and Paralympians

Laura Baisas — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 10:16:00 -0500

When it comes to physical currency, it’s tough to beat Australia’s brightly colored paper bills. Those hues are also extending to special edition $1 coins commemorating the Australian winter athletes and parathletes competing in the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics in Italy.

“No one’s been able to make a temperature measurement like this before,” Robert Eagle, a study co-author and geobiologist at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), said in a statement.

Royal Australian Mint chief executive officer Emily Martin told Yahoo Finance Australia that these limited-edition coins honor the skill and perseverance of the nation’s athletes.

This places T. rex’s internal temperature ahead of today’s cold-blooded reptiles and even sloths, but short of their avian descendents, which range between 104 and 109 degrees Fahrenheit. Eagle’s team offers the first conclusive chemical proof, but their findings built on years of mounting evidence in support of the warm-blood T. rex theory.

“Each coin beautifully captures the passion and resilience of both Australian teams, and we’re excited for collectors and fans to share in this journey with us,” Martin said.

“The temperature is about what I would have guessed,” added Eagle.

This is not the first time that the Royal Australian Mint has struck colorful coins. In 2020, they struck a bright blue, pink, and yellow coin featuring a woman swinging a cricket bat in honor of the Women’s T20WorldCup. The blank coins are all struck with the design first and then the color is added after an inspector makes sure that the design is correct. The color is added by a UV printer.

The revised technique only required a few milligrams of fossilized tooth. Credit: UCLA

Seated para alpine skiers have inspired this design, the depicted figure’s fast movement a great example of determination and athleticism. In their speed, snow is seen splashing across the coin’s field and even extends into the printed segments. Sculpted snowflakes decorate the background, strengthening this coin’s connection to the winter aspect of the games. Image: Royal Australian Mint.

About 10 years ago, paleontologists developed a way to learn an extinct species’ blood temperature by examining certain rare carbon–oxygen bonds that form in fossilized bone. As Eagle explained, tooth enamel offers the best medium for samples because its large crystalline composition remains extremely resilient to deterioration for millions of years. It’s this method that allowed his team to previously confirm that warm blood flowed inside megalodon (Otodus megalodon).

Freestyle skiers have inspired this design, the figure depicted seen mid-pose, their striking position showcasing the agility and athleticism during a freestyle performance. Sculpted snowflakes decorate the background. Surrounding the figure, coloured print features the Australian Olympic Team logo and the aesthetics of the Australian 2026 Winter Olympics branding.Image: Royal Australian Mint.

But while paleontologists have long suspected these carbon-oxygen chemical bonds could pinpoint a T. rex’s blood temperature, earlier iterations of the process required a large fossil sample. Drilling so much material from a bone also damages it. So while there were plenty of megalodon teeth in museum archives, institutions weren’t willing to donate a much rarer T. rex chomper.

The Royal Australian Mint produced 25,000 of each coin and they are available today. However, they won’t be put into circulation. They can be purchased for $20 directly through the Royal Australian Mint and its authorized distributors. Some have already appeared on eBay for over $150.

Researchers have since refined the technique to reduce the necessary sample size to about 90 percent smaller than the original requirement. This convinced curators at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum to finally part with sections of two teeth from their own Thomas the T. rex. Using a dental drill, Eagle and his team extracted fossilized enamel that they then dissolved in phosphoric acid. This released carbon dioxide gas filled with the coveted isotopic bonds. From there, they employed a mass spectrometer to determine the chemical ratios after pressurizing the CO2. Subsequent analysis led them to conclude the T. rex’s blood temperature was about 97 degrees Fahrenheit.

Australia is sending 53 athletes to the 2026 Winter Olympics. Reigning moguls champion Jakara Anthony and four-time Olympian and snowboarder Matt Graham will be the nation’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony on February 6. Fifteen paralympians will represent Australia at the Winter Paralympics beginning on March 6, including two-time gold medal para-snowboarder Amanda Reid and six-time gold medal para-alpine skier Michael Milton. Flag bearers for the Winter Paralympics have not been announced.

The post Australia mints colorful $1 coins to honor Olympians and Paralympians appeared first on Popular Science.

In 1916, hybrid cars could’ve changed history. But Ford wouldn’t allow it.

Andrew Paul — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 09:01:00 -0500

In October 1914, as gas cars were tightening their grip on America’s roads, Frank W. Smith, president of the Electric Vehicle Association of America, stood before a convention in Philadelphia and declared victory. Electric cars, he said, were “absolutely and unquestionably the automobile of the future, both for business and pleasure.” With mass production and a wider network of charging stations just around the corner, “it is only a matter of time,” he promised, “when the electrically propelled automobile will predominate.”

A warm-blooded T. rex makes sense for the apex predator’s active hunting lifestyle and fast metabolism. It also helps explain how the dinosaur roamed such a large territory encompassing wide temperature shifts. It’s a big reason why paleontologists have found T. rex fossils in places like present-day Alaska that are otherwise devoid of cold-blooded ancient reptiles.

The future Smith imagined would not show signs of life for nearly 100 years, but it might have come far sooner had America’s industrial leaders stopped treating automotive power as a binary choice between gasoline and electricity. A compelling alternative lay in between. Hybrid power was cleaner and capable of guiding transportation through a more climate-friendly century while batteries and charging infrastructure matured. But by the time a suitable hybrid arrived—just two years after Smith’s proclamation—the world had already committed itself to gas.

“The teeth tell us T. rex was warmer than the environment around it,” said UCLA geochemist and study co-author Aradhna Tripati. “A warm-blooded T. rex [could] go almost anywhere on the continent, including the Arctic.”

Henry Ford and Thomas Edison tried to electrify America’s cars

The groundbreaking discovery was a long time coming, but the findings were unthinkable until the recent methodological breakthroughs dramatically reduced the fossil sample’s minimum size.

In 1914, Smith’s optimism seemed justified. All year, E. G. Liebold, Henry Ford’s influential private secretary, had been signaling to the press that Ford and Thomas Edison were teaming up to build a cheap electric car. Ford’s son, Edsel, was overseeing production and the car was set to be released in 1915.

“Nobody hands you a T. rex tooth unless you can show them you only need a few milligrams,” said Tripati.

The post Tyrannosaurus rex was warm-blooded, new study confirms appeared first on Popular Science.

Medieval Russian talisman depicts Christian warrior saint and Medusa

Andrew Paul — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:01:00 -0400

Archaeologists recently discovered a rare Russian medallion that depicts a dramatic cultural clash between medieval Christianity and ancient Greek mythology. Excavated about 400 miles southeast of St. Petersburg near the town of Staraya, the 11th century pendant appears to showcase a warrior saint on its face with the snake-topped head of Medusa on the back. According to archaeologists, the copper-alloy medallion stems from an era in Russia that often straddled the line between regional medieval theology and pre-Christian superstition.

With the two most famous industrialists in America—the leading automobile manufacturer and the nation’s most celebrated inventor—joining forces to mass produce electric automobiles, how could electric cars fail? Earlier that year, Ford and Edison, who had been friends for more than a decade, had even purchased their own electric cars from leading car manufacturer Detroit Electric to publicly affirm their faith in electric power.

The small pendant was recovered from inside the remnants of an ancient urban estate, and is an example of Zmeeviki or coil image. These double-sided pieces traditionally paired a canonical Christian figure on the front with a “pagan” serpent form on the back. While the religious subjects commonly included Jesus, the Archangel Michael, and the Virgin Mary, some variants highlight other saints.

In the case of the recent discovery, archaeologists at Novgorod State University theorize the medallion’s saint may be Theodore Stratelates. Born into the Roman empire around 281 CE, Stratelates is a martyr in the Eastern Orthodox Church renowned for slaying a giant serpent, and is frequently depicted wielding a spear and shield. Although the reverse image appears to feature Medusa herself, researchers believe the gorgon served as a stand-in for broader evil forces.

-The image shows a split composition: -On the left: Henry Ford stands beside a dark, high-roofed Detroit Electric vehicle. -On the right: Thomas Edison poses with one foot on the running board of a matching car. +

“Most likely, this is not a specific mythological creature, but a collective image of dark forces,” Novogorod State University archaeologist Sergei Toropov said in a profile translated from Russian. “Together with other finds, this pendant indicates that already in the 11th century there was a Christian community in [early Russia], and cultural ties with Byzantium were also developed.”

-In the center: The stylized cursive logo for "The Detroit Electric" is displayed above the slogan, "SOCIETY'S TOWN CAR." -Both men are dressed in early 20th-century formal attire, emphasizing the vehicle's branding as a sophisticated and reliable choice for the era's elite." class="wp-image-732574" />

Henry Ford (left) and Thomas Edison (right) pose with their newly purchase electric cars from Detroit Electric. Image: Public Domain

Archaeologists previously only recovered four similar serpent artifacts from Staraya, but each one dates between the 12th and 14th centuries. This makes the Stratelates–Medusa example potentially the oldest ever discovered in the area, and a poignant representation of the region’s crosscultural influences. While Christianity was already establishing itself in this portion of Russia during the 1000s CE, it had yet to entirely supplant local beliefs, customs, and superstitions. Because of this, it’s possible the Zmeeviki artifact simultaneously served as a ward against evil forces and a pre-Christian supernatural protective invocation from disease.

The early 20th century heyday of electric cars

Regardless of its wearer’s intentions, the pendant’s owner was likely a comparatively wealthy estate resident who belonged to the town’s middle class. Richer residents would have worn jewelry made from pricier materials like gold and silver, while poorer locals couldn’t have afforded either. Prior evidence of a nearby artisanal workshop also indicates the fascinating talisman may have been made on the estate grounds itself. In any case, the latest example of Zmeeviki illustrates that local beliefs rarely present as a monoculture—more often, people want to blend both tradition and newer ideas.

At the turn of the 20th century, electric cars were symbols of refinement and technological progress, popular in wealthy urban neighborhoods. Companies like Rauch & Lang, Columbia, Detroit Electric, and Studebaker built electric cars that were meticulously engineered. They started at the flip of a switch. They were quiet and offered a smooth ride through busy city streets.

“The main feature of the coil [is a] combination of images that are incompatible, from the point of view of strict dogma,” added Toropov.

The post Medieval Russian talisman depicts Christian warrior saint and Medusa appeared first on Popular Science.

Bald eagles Shadow and Kaydee share sticks and ‘beaky kisses’

Annie Colbert — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 10:44:32 -0400

The bald eagle nest in Big Bear Valley is seeing a flurry of activity lately. Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBBV) cameras have captured Shadow and Kaydee tending to the nest with stick deliveries and even spotted a few ‘beaky kisses’ exchanged in recent weeks.

Charging stations appeared in carriage houses, public garages, and even outside department stores. Popular Science featured such innovations, including a three-wheeled electric car designed to “glide through the shopping district” and a “flivverette”—a miniature electric car, small enough to be parked in a “dog-house.” Electric taxis competed with horse-drawn carriages to ferry passengers through dense urban cores. In an era when roads were still rough and driving was still novel, electric automobiles seemed civilized.

Late summer is typically a quieter time on the nest with parent eagles spending “vacation time” elsewhere in the valley after their chicks have fledged. This summer, we’ve seen Shadow repeatedly visit the nest he once shared with his partner, Jackie. Jackie passed away on August 10 at the Ojai Raptor Center after battling unexplained anemia. She arrived at the rehabilitation facility in July after being found injured after a fight with two sub-adult eagles near Dana Point Park, California. Jackie and Shadow had nested together since the summer 2018 after Shadow edged out her former mate, Mr. B.

Gasoline cars, by contrast, were noisy and temperamental. To get them started required muscle to turn a stiff crank. They rattled, stalled, and belched exhaust. Early motorists often carried tools and spare parts, expecting breakdowns as part of the journey.

Following Jackie’s death, a 4-year-old eagle named KD1 (later renamed Kaydee by FOBBV) began hanging out near the nest. Shadow has appeared open to socializing Kaydee, as cameras have spotted the pair singing together and spending time on the nest. It’s still not clear if Shadow and Kaydee will advance their relationship beyond friendship (eggs are typically laid in January), but the duo have been sharing an increased amount of time together.

A photo taken sometime between 1897 and 1900 of an electric motor cab and driver in London. Cars of any kind would have been a rare site at the time. The cab shown may be a Bersey electric cab, introduced to London in 1897. They weighed two tons and had a range of 30 miles before they needed recharging. They suffered from various faults and were taken off the road in 1900. Image: Heritage Images / Contributor / Getty Images Heritage Images

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Thomas Edison, like many, believed electric cars would ultimately prevail over gas. Obsessed with improving battery technology, Edison saw the electric automobile as a natural extension of his life’s work in electricity. Even though he was friends with Henry Ford, and encouraged Ford to develop internal combustion engines, Edison reportedly dismissed gas cars as noisy and foul-smelling, praising electricity as cleaner and simpler. In the early years of the automobile age, the quiet hum of electric motors, not the explosion of gasoline, seemed inevitable.

“As we continue to see Shadow and Kaydee interacting socially with one another, one thing we can count on is that Kaydee’s visits bring us a quiet peacefulness,” FOBBV wrote on Facebook. “We will always miss our beloved Jackie, but this eagle friendship is a comfort to witness, from the moment the sun sets to when it rises in the morning and sets again when the day is over.”

The Ford-Edison electric car that never was

While excited viewers refer to beak-to-beak contact as “kisses,” it’s more often called billing by wildlife experts. A 2024 study published by the Journal of Raptor Research noted that mutual billing was observed as a common exchange in coupled eagles. Observers watching Shadow and Kaydee have reported Kaydee delivering beaky kisses frequently to Shadow, but this week was one of the first times he was observed returning the gesture.

But by 1916, the Ford-Edison electric car still hadn’t materialized. There was some speculation—never proven—that oil tycoons, like John D. Rockefeller, had persuaded Ford to kill the project, but even without such pressure, electric car technology just wasn’t competitive with gas.

Sticks are serious business for bald eagles. Here, Kaydee was spotted delivering her first of the season. Image: FOBBV

Batteries, which were predominantly lead-acid or nickel-iron, were too inefficient, too heavy, and too slow to recharge for the kind of fast-paced, mass-market automotive world consumers were beginning to demand. Plus, in 1916, electricity was scant outside cities.

The pair’s collaborative nest maintenance has also been a sign of their budding socialization together. In his time with Jackie, Shadow earned a reputation for his enthusiastic stick deliveries to the nest (with Jackie often accidentally on the receiving end of a stick to the head). Earlier this week, on September 12, Kaydee delivered her first stick of the season—a major milestone. Before bringing her own stick, she had spent her time on the nest rearranging sticks. The Raptor Research Project explains that “bonded [eagle] pairs start working on their nests by bringing in sticks, large branches, and soft materials to replenish and rebuild [their nest].” For eagles, sticks are a way to bond.

Clinton Edgar Woods, the forgotten automobile inventor behind the first hybrid cars

Stay tuned to FOBBV’s live cams to see nesting season unfold. The non-profit also posts updates on its official Facebook page.

But even as gas cars surged, an engineer named Clinton Edgar Woods offered a different solution. Instead of choosing between electricity and gas, he combined them, creating the first commercially viable hybrid vehicle.

Today, Woods has largely vanished from popular automotive history, but he was an important innovator in the early days of cars. Before he released his hybrid in 1916, Woods had already been at the forefront of electric vehicle design for nearly two decades. In 1899, he launched one of the first electric car companies, the Woods Motor Vehicle Company.

The post Bald eagles Shadow and Kaydee share sticks and ‘beaky kisses’ appeared first on Popular Science.

Amazon’s early Prime Day deals are live and these 146 are the best

Bill Gourgey — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:52:06 -0400

It feels like Amazon’s summer Prime Day sale was just a few days ago, but it’s already time for another round. The fall Big Deal Days sale runs October 6th and 7th, but you can save right now. Prime members get first crack at part of this wave, so a free 30-day Prime trial will carry you through the sale itself if you are not signed up. We rechecked every price on this page against the live listing this morning, and a handful of the openers have already rolled back to full price, so we cut those and added what is still worth buying.

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Roborock Q7 M5 Robot Vacuum and Mop $149.98 (was $229.99)

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A LiDAR-mapping robot vacuum for the price of a decent stick vac

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roborock

-They are positioned against a white ship railing, with the blurred industrial structures of a harbor and rigging visible in the background." class="wp-image-732578" />

Clinton Edgar Woods and his wife pose for a photograph taken between 1915 and 1920. Image: Library of Congress / LC-B2- 4845-8 / Public Domain

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In 1900, before the Ford Motor Company even existed and more than a decade before Smith’s speech, Woods published The Electric Automobile: Its Construction, Care, and Operation. It was a user manual grounded in electric-car operational basics, approaching the subject as if electricity were a foregone conclusion. He explained how to maintain batteries, how to drive efficiently, and how to care for motors. It was not a do-it-yourself guide for a fringe technology; it was a seminal handbook for the automotive future.

The Q7 M5 robot vacuum maps with LiDAR rather than bumping its way around, it vacuums and mops in one pass, and the anti-tangle brush design is the feature that decides whether a robot vacuum survives a house with long hair or a shedding dog. At $150, it undercuts nearly every robot vacuum that maps a floor plan instead of bumping its way around one.

The 1916 debut of Clinton Edgar Woods’s first hybrid car

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Citizen Promaster Dive Eco-Drive Watch $225.00 (was $450.00)

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Half off a real dive watch that never needs a battery

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Popular Science announced Woods’s new hybrid car with fascination in 1916. “The power plan of this unique vehicle,” the magazine explained, “consists of a small gasoline motor and an electric-motor generator combined in one unit under the hood forward of the dash, and a storage battery beneath the rear seats.” Woods named the car the Dual Power, referring to its twin power sources. Today, we call it a hybrid.

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Citizen

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Woods’s car did not threaten gasoline’s emergence; it promised to leverage it. Where Ford, Edison, and Smith were focused on pure electric, Woods offered a compromise. His hybrid was designed to preserve the elegance and smooth operation of electric motors while conceding the practical power and range that fuel offered. His car offered dynamic braking with regenerative capabilities, using the motor to slow the car and recharge its battery, a feature that would not be seen in cars for another century. It also eliminated the need for a clutch, simplifying operation of the gas engine, just like an automatic transmission. And his design used gas power to recharge the batteries, a must where electricity was unavailable.

The Promaster is ISO-certified for diving and rated to 200 meters, and the rotating bezel and luminous markers are there for timing an actual dive rather than for looks. The part worth paying attention to is Eco-Drive, which charges the movement from light. You never open the case, and you never replace a battery.

In 1916, the Woods Motor Vehicle Company debuted the first commercially viable hybrid automobile, the Dual Power (shown here). Image: Buch-t / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Woods’s hybrid was not the first dual-powered car—that claim likely goes to Ferdinand Porsche, who developed a hybrid in 1900, the Lohner-Porsche Semper Vivus—but it was the first attempt to build a mass-producible hybrid. By the time it arrived, however, the market had already made its choice.

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Chefman Indoor Pizza Oven $199.99 (was $499.99)

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The steepest discount on this page, at 60 percent off

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Chefman

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In 1916, Ford alone sold more than 700,000 gas cars, while electric car sales collapsed to less than one percent of all cars sold, sliding from the leader in 1900 to a mere niche. Woods’s Dual Power car was one of the last serious efforts to salvage an electric future that was slipping away.

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Oil, gas, and our love affair with internal combustion

This is the deepest cut anywhere on this page. The oven runs up to 800 degrees, which is the temperature that produces a blistered, leopard-spotted crust in a couple of minutes rather than a pale twelve-minute bake in a home oven. It takes 12-inch pizzas and sits on a countertop, so there is no patio, propane, or wood pellet involved.

The world did not abandon electric cars because they weren’t reliable or well-engineered; it abandoned them because gasoline solved immediate problems electricity could not, chiefly speed, range, and fuel distribution. At a time when the competition between electricity and gas was at an inflection point, infrastructure sealed the outcome. It wasn’t until the 1930s that electricity began to spread reliably into rural areas.

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Fluke 117/323 Multimeter and Clamp Meter Combo Kit $319.00 (was $471.99)

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The meters electricians actually carry, down by a third

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Fluke

100 years ago, ‘ghost ship’ sails baffled Einstein—now they’re making a comeback

By contrast, even in the early 1900s gasoline could be transported in barrels and cans. A gasoline car owner could find gas anywhere from a general store to one of the new fueling stations. Electric cars, on the other hand, were bound to their urban grids, and charging them took much longer than topping off a gas tank.

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Woods’s hybrid addressed the recharging limitation, and it offered much greater fuel efficiency than gas-only cars, but it was nearly four times the price of a Ford Model T: $2,600 in 1916 (about $79,000 today) whereas a Model T cost $700 (about $21,000 today). Plus, the Dual Power’s top speed was 35 mph compared to the Model T’s 45 mph.

Fluke makes the test gear that working electricians carry. The 117 is a true-RMS multimeter with non-contact voltage detection built in, so you can tell whether a wire is live before you touch it. The 323 clamp meter reads AC current up to 400 amps without breaking the circuit, which is the one measurement a plain multimeter cannot take. Test leads, the TPAK magnetic hanger, and a carrying case come in the box.

Had Woods possessed Ford’s mass-production capability, the price gap might have narrowed. Even so, the hybrid’s inherent complexity would have added cost and compromised speed. And yet, such disadvantages might have been overcome, especially in urban settings, had there been the vision and will among America’s industrialists.

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Why aren’t we driving hydrogen powered cars yet? There’s a reason EVs won.

400 years of telescopes: A window into our study of the cosmos

100 years ago, the battle for television raged

Aiper Seagull Pro Cordless Robotic Pool Cleaner $399.99 (was $699.99)

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Buy the pool robot now, use it next June

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The road not taken

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AIPER Seagull Pro Cordless Robotic Pool Cleaner

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If we had chosen hybrid designs in the formative years of automotive power, would we have long ago solved the limitations of electric vehicle technology and significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions? It’s impossible to know, but even today the outlook remains mixed.

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In the U.S., electric vehicles accounted for less than eight percent of the passenger car market in 2025, while gas-only vehicles still made up more than 75 percent of the roughly 16.2 million cars sold. Hybrids, meanwhile, have gained steadily—sales surged 36 percent in the second half of 2025, reaching nearly 15 percent of all passenger car purchases. Globally, electric vehicle sales continue to rise, with more than 20 million electrified cars in 2025, mostly in China and Europe. But electric vehicles still represent less than a quarter of all cars sold, a figure that shows signs of plateauing.

Pool gear gets cleared out as the season closes, which is how a $700 cleaner ends up at $400 in a week when nobody is thinking about swimming. The Seagull Pro is cordless, climbs walls instead of only scrubbing the floor, and Aiper rates it at 150 minutes per charge across pools up to 1,600 square feet. Put it in the garage now and it is ready when you open the cover.

As America’s politics swing between looking forward to sustainable power and falling back on our century-long love affair with oil and gas, the hybrid may yet have a role to play in transitioning automotive technology back to electricity—where it started.

Smart home and security deals

Just as Clinton Edgar Woods saw the wisdom of combining the advantages of gasoline and electric power, so today’s hybrids could serve as a bridge while battery technology and charging infrastructure continue to mature. In that sense, Woods’s hybrid is more than a historical footnote; it is a compass pointing us toward the road not taken.

Cameras, doorbells, plugs, and switches are the deepest part of this early wave, and the bundles are where the math gets interesting. Ring and Blink pair a doorbell with a second camera for roughly what the doorbell costs alone, and TP-Link’s Kasa and Tapo lines cover the cheap end if you want to automate lights without committing to an ecosystem.

The post In 1916, hybrid cars could’ve changed history. But Ford wouldn’t allow it. appeared first on Popular Science.

Scientists want you to smell ancient Egyptian mummies

Laura Baisas — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Visiting a museum could soon be a truly multisensory experience—smells included. Thanks to recent advances in the field of biomolecular archeology, scientists can now detect traces of molecular fingerprints on ancient artifacts. From these tiny particles, scientists can determine how the objects may have smelled. And smell can lead to better understanding of medicine, rituals, and daily lives in general from thousands of years ago.

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A new paper published today in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology shows how museums can harness the power of molecular evidence and tap into the sensory world of the past. Based on actual molecular findings from ancient artifacts, the team built portable scent cards and scent diffusers to accompany Egyptian mummification exhibits.

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“This research represents a significant shift in how scientific results can be shared beyond academic publications,” Barbara Huber, a study co-author and an archaeo-chemist from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology and the University of Tübingen in Germany, said in a statement.

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Huber worked with Sofia Collette Ehrich, an art historian and expert in scent-based storytelling to bring together the worlds of ancient chemistry and the study of how perfume can communicate through smells.

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Visitors sniffing the Scent of the Afterlife card during a guided tour at the Museum August Kestner, in Hannover, Germany. Image: Photo by Ulrike Dubiel, Museum August Kestner. Copyright: Ehrich SC, Calvez C, Loeben CE, Dubiel U, Terp Laursen S and Huber B (QRQS) From biomolecular traces to multisensory experiences: bringing scent reproductions to museums and cultural heritage. Front. Environ. Archaeol. V:WXYSZX[. doi:WR.YYZ\/fearc.QRQ[.WXYSZX[

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Perfumer and pharmacist Carole Calvez then used ancient chemical signatures from Huber’s research to create a scent for a potential exhibit. Importantly, Calvez says that this process is not a simple act of replication.

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“The real challenge lies in imagining the scent as a whole,” Calvez explained in a statement. “Biomolecular data provide essential clues, but the perfumer must translate chemical information into a complete and coherent olfactory experience that evokes the complexity of the original material, rather than just its individual components.”

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The team then developed two ways to present ancient scents to the public. Alongside the artifacts that inspired this project, the team recreated the aromas of mummification in ancient Egypt. A portable scented card and a fixed scent diffusion station were worked into an exhibition at the Museum August Kestner in Hanover, Germany.

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The Scent of the Afterlife scented card. The essence of the reproduced scent is inserted into the paper via scent printing. Image: Ehrich SC, Calvez C, Loeben CE, Dubiel U, Terp Laursen S and Huber B (2026) From biomolecular traces to multisensory experiences: bringing scent reproductions to museums and cultural heritage. Front. Environ. Archaeol. 4:1736875. doi: 10.3389/fearc.2025.1736875.

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“Scent provides a new approach to mummification, moving away from the scare factor and horror movie clichés towards an appreciation of the motivations behind the actions and the desired results,” curators Christian E. Loeben and Ulrike Dubiel reported.

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The fixed scent station format was also installed in the exhibition at the Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus, Denmark.

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“The scent station transformed how visitors understood embalming,” said curator Steffen Terp Laursen. “Smell added an emotional and sensory depth that text labels alone could never provide.”

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According to the team, this shows how molecular traces of the past can be made into meaningful cultural experiences in the present.

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“We hope to offer museums compelling new tools for bringing visitors closer to past environments and practices via sensory interpretation and engagement,” Ehrich concluded.

The post Scientists want you to smell ancient Egyptian mummies appeared first on Popular Science.

Man solves ceiling fans’ most annoying problem

Mack DeGeurin — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 20:02:00 -0500

Anyone who’s used an overhead ceiling fan knows it can be a pain to work. Yanking its chain gets the motor running, but there’s no easy visual indication of what speed setting the fan is on. The blades can also take a frustratingly long time to reach their full speed. The result is many annoyed fan owners tugging vigorously on the chain, only to have their fan suddenly turn into an in-home airplane propeller. Most people would simply accept the ceiling fan’s inefficiencies as a headache and one of life’s unavoidable realities. But DIY makers armed with 3D printers aren’t like most people.

Kitchen deals

In this case, a maker and content creator going by the handle Super Valid Designs decided to tackle the “ceiling fan guessing game” head-on. Using a commercially available 3D printer, he designed and fabricated a custom mounting device that attaches to the fan and provides a clear visual indicator for each speed setting. Once installed, every pull of the chain rotates a circular drum displaying the numbers zero through three. The maker (whose name is Jeff) says his motivation for spending more than 10 hours designing the over-engineered part stemmed from his own personal annoyance.

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“Frankly, I just don’t want to have to think about it anymore,” Jeff says in a YouTube video detailing the process.

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And while he acknowledges there are other, much more straightforward ways to solve this pesky problem, he seems to relish the inconvenience.

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“Yes, I could have got a remote, or installed a wall dial,” Jeff wrote in a post on Reddit. “Yes I could use the setting 2 only hack or the ‘feel the vibration through the chain’ method, but this was way more fun!”

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Studying balls and yanking chains

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Jeff began to build his contraption after closely inspecting the fan’s pull chain. After measuring the spacing of its ball bearings, he noticed that a single pull of the chain corresponded to a movement of three balls. Using those measurements, he printed a small plastic mount with divots sized to capture the balls. He then turned his attention to designing a mechanism that would hold the balls securely in place.

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Next, he scanned the fan’s irregularly shaped base in 3D—a step completed entirely using a smartphone app. With the digital scan as a reference, Jeff created partial gears that sit on either side of the pull chain. But he quickly ran into a problem. While the gears rotated in the correct direction when the chain was pulled, they would inevitably spin back in the opposite direction once it was released. For the mechanism to work, he needed to design a way to hold the partial gears in place as they returned to their starting position.

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To keep those gears in place, he modeled a set of plastic teeth that work like a ratchet mechanism. He also designed a spring-loaded piece to hold the numbered drum in place while the gears rotated back.

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The gears are held in place by a set of plastic teeth that work similarly to a ratchet mechanism. Image: Super Valid Designs via YouTube.

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All of this is much easier said than done. Jeff printed iteration after iteration of his design, with some parts coming out slightly too large and others too tight. That fine-tuning required countless trips up and down a ladder to test each revision on the fan itself. Eventually, sick of constant climbing, he took an extra section of the fan’s pull chain, removed it, and incorporated it into a smaller test rig that mimicked the fan’s movement on his workbench. No ladder needed.

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After hours of trial and error, Jeff eventually settled on a three-tooth design that provides enough force to advance the numbered drum, while still using a minimal number of teeth to allow the gears to rotate back with little resistance. For the drum itself, he opted for a stepped design, with a larger outer section displaying the numbers and a smaller inner section containing the groove where the chain wraps around. He says he did this in an effort to prevent the chain from rubbing against the numbers and gradually wearing them down or making them difficult to see.

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“Coming from a background as a musician, I’m used to experimenting just for the sake of it,” Jeff says in the video. “I like approaching engineering in the same way. For me, engineering isn’t always about finding the quickest fix, it’s about the joy of problem solving and discovering a different path to the same destination.”

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Designing a better ceiling fan is not for the weak. Image: Super Valid Designs via YouTube.

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He isn’t the only one with that tinkerer’s mindset. Makers using 3D printers to solve seemingly mundane problems are all over the internet, from custom desk clamp bins and DIY webcam risers to replacement parts for broken deodorant stick bottoms. Jeff, meanwhile, says there’s never been a better time for people without an engineering background to get into making.

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“With tools like 3D printers and modeling software becoming so readily available, I’d love to see more people getting into experimenting with building and inventing things just for the fun of it,” he said. “When you can finally hold something functional that only previously existed in your head, that is the best feeling in the world.”

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In The Workshop, Popular Science highlights the ingenious, delightful, and often surprising projects people build in their spare time. If you or someone you know is working on a hobbyist project that fits the bill, we’d love to hear about it—fill out this form to tell us more.

The post Man solves ceiling fans’ most annoying problem appeared first on Popular Science.

Sonos is blowing out its most popular soundbars, speakers, and headphones during this flash sale

Tony Ware — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:54:31 -0500

Worried your big-game watch party sounds like it’s coming from a cardboard box? Want to make sure the winter games sound as riveting as they look? This Sonos sale is your sign to catch every call, every quip, every last-second audible. And with savings up to 20 percent off select home theater components, it doesn’t matter who lifts the trophy or stands on the podium, because you win. A Sonos immersive setup ensures you get commentary you can understand, atmosphere that wraps around the room, and bass that adds drama. When the whistle blows, the title sequence kicks off, or the playlist starts, a Sonos system makes everything hit harder … everything but the price, that is, if you act now.

Vacuum and air purifier deals

Editor’s Picks

Floor care is the most crowded category in the sale, and this is the rare moment when Miele takes part. Both of its canister vacuums are 30 percent off, which is not a discount that brand runs often. Below that, Roborock and Shark have the biggest dollar drops, and Ecovacs will sell you a robot that does your windows.

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Arc Ultra premium smart soundbar $899 (was $1,099)

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Miele Blizzard CX1 Cat and Dog Canister Vacuum $699.30 (was $999.00)

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Miele Boost CX1 Canister Vacuum $412.30 (was $589.00)

It’s the time of year for can’t-miss games, and a Sonos soundbar ensures you catch every can’t-miss moment. From opening ceremonies to halftime to last-second goal horns, the Arc Ultra offers up crisp, front-and-centered vocals and gives the crowd noise big cinematic width. Plus, it delivers surprising low-end, even without a Sub 4. Tight on space? The Beam Gen. 2 smart soundbar still boosts speech and adds to the impact, but with a smaller footprint.

Roborock F25 Steam Cordless Wet Dry Vacuum Mop $399.99 (was $649.99)

Tineco Floor One Switch S6 Wet Dry Vacuum $329.00 (was $449.00)

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Era 300 premium smart speaker $379 (was $479)

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Shark AI Ultra Robot Vacuum $299.99 (was $599.00)

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Dyson V8 Plus Cordless Vacuum $299.99 (was $412.50)

Looking to invest in some where-did-that-come-from magic? The multichannel Era 300 is overengineered in the best way. Made for Dolby Atmos spatial audio, the Era 300 adds height and legit home-cinema feel to a Sonos soundbar. Or, since it’s connected to Wi-Fi, you can move an Era 300 anywhere in your house to stream room-filling music. Going for that less sizeable setup? The Era 100 smart stereo speaker can fill in wraparound details while requiring less rearranging.

Roborock Q10 S5+ Robot Vacuum and Mop $279.98 (was $549.99)

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Ace headphones $319 (was $399)

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Should you eat invasive species? We asked an ecologist.

Shark PowerDetect Corded Stick Vacuum $229.94 (was $329.99)

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Shark Rotator Lift-Away Upright Vacuum $199.00 (was $329.99)

Need a more private viewing or listening party? Pair the Sonos Ace headphones with an Arc Ultra, and you can stay hype while making sure other people in the house stay asleep. The Ace offers plush earpads, strong ANC, and Spatial Audio in a fold-flat form factor, making it a great travel companion. Or settle into your Sonos system at home and hit TV Audio Swap, and an Arc Ultra or Beam Gen. 2 can stream your TV soundtrack directly to the headphones for early kickoffs, late-night movies, and those only-person-still-awake marathons. As a bonus, an Arc Ultra supports up to two Ace headphones, in case it’s a just-one-more-party for two.

Ecovacs Winbot Mini2 Window Cleaning Robot $189.00 (was $239.99)

Sonos Beam (Gen 2) $369 (was $499)

Shark NeverChange Air Purifier $179.00 (was $249.99)

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Hoover PowerScrub Deluxe Carpet Cleaner $169.99 (was $239.99)

Soundbars

Roborock Q7 M5 Robot Vacuum and Mop $149.98 (was $229.99)

Sonos Beam (Gen 2) $369 (was $499)
Levoit Cordless Vacuum for Pet Hair $139.95 (was $199.99)
Sonos Arc Ultra $899 (was $1,099)

Shark Rocket Pet Corded Stick Vacuum $129.99 (was $199.99)

Subwoofers

Bissell Little Green Max Pet Portable Carpet Cleaner $109.99 (was $149.99)

Sonos Sub Mini $399 (was $499)
Shark UltraCyclone Pet Pro Plus Handheld Vacuum $69.99 (was $99.99)
Sonos Sub 4 $759 (was $899)
Levoit Core Mini Air Purifier $43.98 (was $49.99)

Soundbar Bundles

TV, projector, and streaming deals

Beam Bundles

Televisions are the thinnest category in this early wave, which tells you something about what Amazon is holding back for October. What is here skews to the two ends of the price range: Fire TV sticks under $50, and big TCL and Hisense panels where the dollar savings are largest.

Sonos Beam Mount Set $418 (was $548)
Sony 65-Inch BRAVIA 8 II QD-OLED 4K Google TV $2,498.00 (was $3,299.99)
Sonos Personal Entertainment Set with Beam $688 (was $898)
TCL 85-Inch QM8L Mini-LED QLED Smart TV $2,497.99 (was $3,999.99)
Sonos Surround Set with Beam $727 (was $937)
TCL 65-Inch QM7L Mini-LED QLED Smart TV $897.99 (was $1,197.99)
Sonos Entertainment Set with Beam $768 (was $998)
Hisense 75-Inch E7 Mini-LED 4K Fire TV $697.97 (was $799.99)
Sonos Immersive Set with Beam $1,126 (was $1,436)
Roku Pro Series 55-Inch 4K QLED Smart TV $499.99 (was $599.99)
Sonos Premium Entertainment Set with Beam $1,128 (was $1,398)
TCL Q65H 5.1 Soundbar with Wireless Subwoofer $297.99 (was $349.99)
Sonos Premium Immersive Set with Beam $1,486 (was $1,836)

Amazon Ember 40-Inch 2-Series Fire TV $209.99 (was $249.99)

Ray Bundles

Hisense 40-Inch QD4 Hi-QLED Fire TV $167.97 (was $249.99)

Sonos Surround Set with Ray $577 (was $657)
Aurzen Roku TV D1R Portable Outdoor Projector $139.99 (was $199.99)
Sonos Entertainment Set with Ray $618 (was $718)
Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max $49.99 (was $59.99)
Sonos Immersive Set with Ray $976 (was $1,156)
Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus $39.99 (was $49.99)

Arc Ultra Bundles

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Sonos Arc Ultra Mount Set $978 (was $1,178)
Sonos Personal Entertainment Set with Arc Ultra $1,218 (was $1,498)

Headphone and speaker deals

Sonos Surround Set with Arc Ultra $1,357 (was $1,537)

Beats and Shokz account for most of the audio worth buying right now. We went through the full early deals list and did not turn up a single Apple, Bose, or Sonos discount, so if one of those is what you want, it is worth waiting for October rather than settling for something adjacent.

Sonos Premium Entertainment Set with Arc Ultra $1,599 (was $1,998)

Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 Wireless Earbuds $199.95 (was $249.99)
Sonos Premium Surround Set with Arc Ultra $1,657 (was $2,057)
Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 Wireless Earbuds $189.00 (was $229.00)
Sonos Premium Immersive Set with Arc Ultra $1,957 (was $2,436)
Beats Studio Pro Wireless Headphones $169.95 (was $349.99)
Sonos Ultimate Immersive Set with Arc Ultra $2,357 (was $2,956)
Shokz OpenFit 2 Open-Ear Earbuds $139.95 (was $179.95)
Sonos Premium Personal Entertainment Set with Arc Ultra $2,735 (was $3,355)

Beats Solo 4 On-Ear Wireless Headphones $129.95 (was $199.95)

Home Theater Completion Sets

Shokz OpenRun Pro Bone Conduction Headphones $109.95 (was $179.95)

Sonos Home Theater Completion Set $757 (was $937)
Beats Pill Portable Bluetooth Speaker $99.95 (was $149.95)
Sonos Premium Home Theater Completion Set $1,117 (was $1,337)
Philips SHP9500 Over-Ear Headphones $84.98 (was $99.99)
Sonos Ultimate Home Theater Completion Set $1,717 (was $1,857)
JBL Tune 730BT Wireless Over-Ear Headphones $59.95 (was $89.95)

Individual Speakers

Laptop, tablet, and monitor deals

Sonos Era 100 $179 (was $219)

No MacBook or iPad discounts turned up in this wave, so the computing deals worth your time are Android tablets, monitors, and Amazon’s own Fire slates. The LG and Samsung monitor cuts are the standouts, and the Fire HD 10 at half off is the cheapest way to put a screen in a kitchen or a kid’s hands.

Sonos Era 300 $379 (was $479)

Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 128GB Android Tablet $699.99 (was $899.99)

Headphones

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE 128GB Android Tablet $419.99 (was $549.99)

Sonos Ace $319 (was $399)

Samsung ViewFinity S65UA 34-Inch Ultrawide QHD Monitor $379.99 (was $539.99)

Two-Speaker Sets

LG 27UP850K-W 27-Inch 4K UHD Monitor $299.99 (was $349.99)

Sonos 2 Room Set with Era 100 $358 (was $438)
Huion Kamvas 22 Drawing Tablet with Screen $299.99 (was $449.00)
Sonos Indoor/Outdoor Set with Move 2 $678 (was $718)
Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i 15.6-Inch Laptop $289.43 (was $429.99)
Sonos Immersive Music Set $758 (was $958)
LG 34U530A-W 34-Inch UltraWide Monitor $229.99 (was $269.99)
Sonos 2 Room Set with Arc Ultra $1,398 (was $1,598)

The post Sonos is blowing out its most popular soundbars, speakers, and headphones during this flash sale appeared first on Popular Science.

Fungi help turn old mattresses into insulation

Andrew Paul — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:28:00 -0500

Shopping for a new mattress can be stressful—this is something you plan to sleep on for years to come, after all. But your old one can be its own problem for the environment.

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Despite containing upwards of 75 percent recyclable material, an estimated 50,000 mattresses are still discarded every day in the United States. Once in a landfill, the bulky trash can take as long as 120 years to decompose. It’s such a huge problem that there’s now even a Mattress Recycling Council dedicated to addressing the issue.

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Luckily, its council members may soon have a new cause for celebration. According to a recently published study in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers at Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology have developed a process that converts retired mattresses into safe, eco-friendly building insulation. Their secret weapon for making it happen? A fungal relative of penicillin.

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“Mattresses are durable, bulky, and often end up in landfill,” study co-author and chemical engineer The Nguyen said in a statement. “Through natural biological processes, we can give this waste a second life.”

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Photographic and microscopic analysis of mattress waste before and after treatment. (a) Shredded mattress waste, (b) Optical image of mycelium-based bio-composites derived from recycled mattress waste, (c) Scanning electron micrograph of the mycelium-based bio-composites. Credit: Scientific Reports

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In this case, Nguyen’s team relied on Penicillium chrysogenum to get the job done. P. chrysogenum isn’t the same species of fungi famously repurposed by Alexander Fleming (that would be Penicillium rubens), it is in the same genus as that lifesaving antibiotic. After cultivating the spores, the researchers then combined them with shredded polyurethane foam harvested from old mattresses. As the fungal roots began binding to the trash, they formed naturally occurring calcium carbonate deposits. These mineral compounds then meshed with the foam to create a lightweight solid that is also incredibly heat resistant. In stress tests, the material easily withstood exposure to temperatures nearing 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit.

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“The material performed well as an insulator, with heat-blocking ability very close to commercial insulation products already used in homes and buildings,” explained Nguyen.

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The team believes that with further development, their new recycling strategy could create a new generation of materials used for fire-resistant insulation, building panels, and possibly even 3D-printed construction components.

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“Our work shows how combining biology with waste materials, while leveraging deep manufacturing science, can lead to smart, low-impact solutions that better the environment and the lives of everyone,” said Nguyen.

The post Fungi help turn old mattresses into insulation appeared first on Popular Science.

Marine biologists discover 28 new deep sea species—and an old VHS tape

Andrew Paul — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 15:03:00 -0500

The marine biologists of the Schmidt Ocean Institute are a busy bunch. Over the last few years, scientists aboard the research vessel Falkor (too) have spotted rare Antarctic squid, discovered multiple octopus near Costa Rica, and even cataloged over 100 potential new species off the coast of Chile.

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To kick off 2026, the Institute released a trove of new images and videos highlighting some of their latest observations from the south Atlantic Ocean. Researchers initially set out to investigate cold seeps, deep-sea areas where methane and other chemical emissions from the ocean floor sustain microbial life. These microscopic organisms then feed a range of animals like tube worms, clams, and mussels. Although they only located one active seep zone, the team was particularly struck by just how many species are living across the entire region.

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“We were not expecting to see this level of biodiversity in the Argentine deep sea, and are so excited to see it teeming with life,” expedition chief scientist María Emilia Bravo said in a statement. “Seeing all the biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and connectivity unfolding together was incredible. We opened a window into our country’s biodiversity only to find there are so many more windows left to be opened.”

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Bravo and colleagues estimate that they identified 28 possible new species that include sea snails, urchins, anemones, and worms. Many of these reside within the largest known Bathelia candida coral reef in the world—a colony nearly the size of Vatican City. The team also documented an extremely rare phantom jellyfish (Stygiomedusa gigantea), which is known to grow as long as a school bus. Other firsts included locating Argentina’s first deep-sea whale fall. At roughly 2.4 miles below the ocean surface, the cetacean’s bones are currently a temporary habitat for nearby sharks, crabs, and other marine life.

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“With every expedition to the deep sea, we find the ocean is full of life—as much as we see on land, and perhaps more because the ocean contains 98 percent of the living space on this planet,” added Schmidt Ocean Institute executive director Jyotika Virmani.

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With their three-dimensional structure, deep-sea corals provide shelter, nursery grounds, spawning areas, and feeding habitats for many other species, such as this charismatic octopus. ROV pilots collected this footage at 1,010 meters along the Argentine Continental Slope. Credit: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute

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ROV pilots filmed this tripod fish (belonging to the Family Ipnopidae) at 2,700 meters on an escarpment in the Argentine Basin. Credit: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute

Garmin is discounting more of its catalog than anyone else in this wave, from the beginner-friendly vívoactive line up through the rugged Instinct 3. The Citizen dive watch up top is the outlier here, and it is the only piece in this section that will still be running in thirty years without a charger.

As unfortunate as it is predictable, the expedition also noted just how far human pollution has traveled around the world. Surveys recorded items like garbage bags, fishing nets, and even a “near-pristine” VHS tape thanks to the longevity of plastic.

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“We collected an unprecedented number of chemical, physical, and biological samples that will be used to understand connections in our waters for years to come,” said Institute Argentino de Oceanografía marine biologist Melisa Fernández Severini. “These samples represent a unique opportunity to understand not only how extraordinary these extreme ecosystems are, but also how vulnerable they can be.”

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Check out more of these exciting discoveries below. (Click to expand images to full screen.)

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ROV pilots filmed the remains of a deceased whale that had dropped to the seafloor, called a whalefall, at about 3,890 meters deep during a dive on the Salado-Colorado Kilometer scarp in the Argentine Basin. Whale falls offer up thousands of years of nourishment to a place accustomed to scarcity. From large scavengers to invisible microbes and bone-eating Osedax worms, there is something for all creatures that happen upon a whale fall. Once organic matter has been consumed, the succession stage is named ‘reef phase’ and it is mostly used by the animals as a hard-substrate, as in the case of this whale carcass which presumably has spent decades in the seafloor. Credit: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute

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Scientists observed this squat lobster in a bed of chemosynthetic clam shells of the genus Archivesica sp. and Calyptogena sp. at 619 meters while exploring chemosynthetic habitat patches associated with a methane-derived carbonate mound. In Argentine waters, the biodiversity and environmental context of these chemosynthetic ecosystems remain poorly understood. Credit: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute

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Juvenile fish (Centrolophus sp.) swim around the bell of a Stygiomedusa gigantea, commonly known as the giant phantom jelly, which ROV pilots filmed at 250 meters. Their bell can grow up to 1 m (3.3 ft) in diameter, and their four arms can reach up to 10 m (33 ft) long. They do not have any stinging tentacles, but use their arms to catch prey, including plankton and small fish. Credit: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute

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Research Vessel Falkor (too) with its ROV SuBastian deployed in the South Atlantic Ocean during the “Life In Extremes – Cold Seeps Of Argentina” expedition. CREDIT: Misha Vallejo Prut / Schmidt Ocean Institute Misha Vallejo Prut

The post Marine biologists discover 28 new deep sea species—and an old VHS tape appeared first on Popular Science.

Cortisol could impact your dog’s behavior

Laura Baisas — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 14:00:00 -0500

For dogs, good training and responsible ownership impact their behavior, but their life experiences and genetics can also affect temperament. Hormones may also play a role and could offer a new way to assess our canine companions. In a small study published today in the journal PLOS One, more well-behaved dogs generally had lower levels of cortisol—an important stress hormone—and higher levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter associated with happiness.

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A team at Kyungpook National University in Degu, South Korea, studied 24 dogs of various breeds, including beagles, border collies, and mixed breed dogs. They used a version of the Wesen test, an assessment that generally helps determine if an animal is more suitable as a pet or working dog. In this particular study, a human observer watched the dog’s reaction to several situations and interactions with people and other dogs. For example, the observer focused on how relaxed or anxious a dog appeared when they were alone and then around a total stranger. In another situation, the team assessed the dog’s attention, confidence, fear, interest, and relaxation during the Wesen test.

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Some concerns exist that the Wesen test is too subjective, since it is based on an observer’s opinion. To look for more physical evidence, the team took saliva samples and measured the cortisol and serotonin levels. In animals, cortisol is released after “fight-or-flight” hormones like adrenaline to help keep the body on alert. It also helps regulate the metabolism and blood sugar levels. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that carries chemical messages between the nerve cells in the brain and the rest of the body. It helps support several bodily functions including mood, sleep, digestion, and bone health. Earlier dog studies linked lower levels of cortisol and higher levels of serotonin with less aggressive behavior.

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For these dogs, the salivary cortisol samples were taken both before and after the Wesen test. Those that scored higher for good behaviors tended to have lower levels of cortisol. These higher-scoring dogs also had a less marked spike in stress hormone levels after they were given the tests.

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One of the canine temperament assessment procedures in the study. Image: Youngtae Heo and Yujin Song.

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Sixteen of the 24 dogs had their salivary serotonin levels measured, but the results were not significant. However, the dogs with higher test scores did have higher serotonin levels before a test was given than dogs with lower scores.

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Since it is such a small sample size of dogs, the team cautions that it does not show that hormone levels necessarily cause good or bad behaviors in dogs. It does provide some possible evidence that examining hormones and neurotransmitters could be a more objective way to measure a dog’s temperament than assessments like the Wesen test alone.

The outdoor category is smaller than it will be in October, but the pieces that are discounted are the ones that last. Anker’s SOLIX power stations cover camp power, Nikon’s binoculars are real optics rather than gas-station glass, and the Monarch M7 is at its lowest price in a month.

“Our study shows that physiological concentrations of hormones and neurotransmitters can serve as biomarkers of canine temperament,” the team writes. “These results could help identify dogs suited for specific working roles—such as military, police, guide, or therapy dogs—and assist in making better-informed companion dog adoption decisions.”

The post Cortisol could impact your dog’s behavior appeared first on Popular Science.

Death Valley National Park needs help ID’ing joyriding vandals

Andrew Paul — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 12:01:00 -0500

Death Valley National Park officials are searching for a couple of brazen blockheads, and they could use your help finding them. Specifically, they’re looking for at least two people last spotted in Eureka Dunes. The region located about 120 miles east of Fresno, California features what are likely the tallest sand dunes in North America.

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“Most importantly, OFF ROAD VEHICLE TRAVEL IS NOT PERMITTED ON THE DUNES, or anywhere else in Death Valley National Park for that matter,” the park explains on its website.

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Unfortunately, the clearly stated rules didn’t stop these visitors in what appears to be a 2021 Toyota Tacoma from plowing through at least five miles of restricted land on December 17th, 2025.

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At least eight species of plants and insects are endemic to Eureka Dunes. Credit: NPS

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Many people mistakenly assume a place like Death Valley is just sand, scraggly bushes, and a few cacti. But although its scorching days and freezing nights certainly live up to the name, Death Valley is still home to an array of plants and wildlife—and the trespassers reportedly made a mess of things.

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“Illegal off-road driving…left more than five miles of vehicle tracks and damaged rare, sensitive desert plants, including species that exist nowhere else on Earth,” park officials said in a social media post on February 3rd.

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Eureka Dunes has remained isolated from other sand fields for around 10,000 years. The area also receives more annual precipitation than similar formations despite its arid appearance. Thanks to this extra moisture, conservationists know of at least five beetle and three plant species that are endemic to the region. Eureka dunegrass (Swallenia alexandrae) is federally classified as threatened, while shining milkvetch (Astragalus lentiginosus micans) is a candidate for Endangered Species List. Visitors have also reported many instances of “singing sand,” a poorly understood phenomenon in which sand avalanches create a tone similar to a pipe organ bass note or distant airplane engine.

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In a photo released to the public, the white truck had a (sadly obscured) California license plate, an equipment rack mounted in the bed, as well as a black Fox Racing tailgate cover. Anyone with possible information on the suspects are encouraged to report tips (anonymously, if preferred) through one of the following channels:

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Website: go.nps.gov/SubmitATip

Late September is when outdoor equipment gets marked down to clear room for winter stock, and the pool robots are the clearest example. Aiper has cut both of its cordless cleaners by more than 40 percent, months before anyone will use one. The Fluke meters are the other thing to look at here, because test gear at this level rarely shows up in a consumer sale at all.

Email: nps_isb@nps.gov

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Phone: 888-653-0009

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“Eureka Dunes are a special place meant to be enjoyed on foot,” Death Valley National Park Superintendent Mike Reynolds said in a statement. “They are protected as wilderness. Please help us identify those responsible for damaging these fragile resources.”
Whatever the outcome of the search, it’s always good to remember the standard park visitor guidelines: take only photographs, leave only footprints.

The post Death Valley National Park needs help ID’ing joyriding vandals appeared first on Popular Science.

How do you check a hummingbird for broken bones? Very carefully.

Sarah Kuta — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 11:00:00 -0500

Like clockwork, ruby-throated hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) start showing up at wildlife hospitals throughout the eastern United States every spring. The jewel-toned birds are often brought in after crashing into windows or being attacked by domestic cats.

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But when an animal measures just a few inches from beak to tail and weighs about as much as a penny, even basic veterinary care is a challenge. Traditional hands-on exams and imaging tools meant for larger animals often aren’t sensitive enough to detect bone fractures in these diminutive creatures.

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Micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scanning offers a promising solution to this problem, according to a new study recently published in the journal Animals. A team of researchers at Louisiana State University (LSU) put several commonly used imaging techniques to the test and determined that three-dimensional images created from micro-CT scans are the most useful for detecting fractured bones in these petite patients.

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Female ruby-throated hummingbird drinking nectar from a pink flower. Image: Mike Carlo/USFWS

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What is micro-CT scanning?

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Micro-CT scanning is a non-destructive, non-invasive method used to “see inside” dense objects. It’s most often used on humans or animals, but can also peer inside fossils, rocks, and archaeological artifacts. The machine uses X-rays to capture hundreds of images from different angles, which can then be combined into a highly detailed 3D model. Users can rotate and manipulate these models to examine miniscule, internal structures without harming the item.

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While this method is far from perfect, micro-CT scanners may also help get injured hummingbirds on the road to recovery and, ideally, back into the wild.

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“This is just an example of how we can use the tools that are available to us to better improve the way we manage wildlife,” Mark Mitchell, a study co-author and a veterinarian at LSU, tells Popular Science. “These animals play such an important role in our ecosystems—every species does—and it’s important for us to protect them… It doesn’t matter to me if I’m dealing with a mallard duck or a bald eagle or a hummingbird, I want to do all that I can do to rescue them.”

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A beloved seasonal visitor

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Ruby-throated hummingbirds are beloved seasonal visitors to backyard feeders and flower gardens. After wintering in Central America, they typically return to the eastern U.S. to breed in late February and early March. As with other hummingbird species, males sport flashier plumage than females. When the light hits just right, their throat feathers blaze iridescent red. Both sexes have emerald-green feathers on the back and head.

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Above all else, ruby-throated hummingbirds are tiny. Their wingspans measure between three and four inches, and they weigh just a fraction of an ounce. “These animals are smaller than my thumb, so getting exams done sometimes can be a challenge,” Mitchell explains.

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A ruby-throated hummingbird sips nectar from a common milkweed flower. Image: Debbie Koenigs/USFWS.

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But when veterinarians can confidently detect fractures, it means they can stabilize the bones using tools like splints. According to Mitchell, hummingbird bone fractures can heal as fast as one to two weeks, due to the birds’ high metabolism. With this in mind, it’s important for veterinarians to ensure the bone is set properly.

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“If it heals incorrectly, unfortunately, our options are limited to euthanizing the animal,” says Mitchell. “We want to minimize the likelihood that we have to make those decisions. We really want to try to get every one of these animals back to where they belong.”

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Bird meets scanner

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In this new study, Mitchell and his colleagues set out to investigate which imaging methods are best for detecting bone breaks in the birds’ delicate skeletons. They imaged the bodies of 16 hummingbirds that had died in the hospital using four techniques: standard X-rays, dental X-rays, micro-CT scans, and three-dimensional images created from micro-CT scans. Then, they asked six veterinarians with different specialties and varying levels of experience to review the images and report any fractures they spotted.

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For comparison, the team used dermestid beetles to remove the birds’ soft tissues, and then directly examined each skeleton to make a final diagnosis. More than half of the birds had fractures somewhere in their wings or bodies, and four had fractures in multiple locations.

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A micro-CT scan of the hummingbird’s profile. Image: Louisiana State University.

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The advanced imaging methods—especially the 3D reconstructions created from micro-CT scans—produced the most accurate diagnoses and the strongest agreement among the veterinarians. However, even with these more sophisticated tools, the veterinarians still missed some very small fractures, which suggests micro-CT scans have limitations.

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Even so, the findings suggest a clear path forward for veterinarians who treat hummingbirds and small pet birds: If they have access to and can afford to use one, a micro-CT scanner is the way to go.

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No matter which imaging technique veterinarians choose, the findings suggest they should proceed with caution. If they don’t see any fractures initially, but they suspect their miniature, winged patient might have a broken bone or two, they should probably take a second look, ideally using more advanced imaging tools.

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“This research provides the vital clinical reality and the scientific basis for why we cannot rely on a single radiograph, and why repeated examinations or alternative diagnostic approaches are needed,” Haerin Rhim, lead author and a postdoctoral fellow at LSU, said in a statement.

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A sedated hummingbird going inside a CT scanner. Image: Louisiana State University

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What to do if you find an injured hummingbird

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Ruby-throated hummingbirds will soon be returning to the eastern U.S. If you find an injured hummingbird, first give the creature a few moments to regain its bearings before springing into action. “What happens in most of these cases is somebody will hear what sounds like a knock on a window and go find a hummingbird that has stunned itself,” Mitchell says. “Sometimes, those birds just need a little time to regain their bearings, because they basically develop a moderate to significant concussion.”

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If the bird does not try to fly away after a few minutes, then you should contact your state wildlife agency or a local licensed rehabilitator. In the meantime, pick up the bird using a small towel, place it in a box with airholes, and keep it in a dark place at an appropriate temperature until the creature can be transported, Mitchell says.

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Resist the urge to try to treat the bird yourself—leave that job to the professionals. Ruby-throated hummingbirds are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, so it’s illegal for unlicensed individuals to rehabilitate them, Mitchell notes. Additionally, you may end up doing more harm than good.

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“A lot of people are acting out of the kindness of their heart, but we routinely get animals that people have tried to treat and we end up having to euthanize them because the injury healed in a way that makes them not releasable,” he says.

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The post How do you check a hummingbird for broken bones? Very carefully. appeared first on Popular Science.

Why our ancestors had straight teeth without braces

Sara Kiley Watson — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 09:01:00 -0500

Every year, millions of children and teens undergo a common ritual of growing up: getting braces. And it’s not just young folks who turn to metal brackets to handle some common dental issues—the Cleveland Clinic estimates that some 20% of new orthodontic patients are over the age of 18.

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Braces, be it the classic metal brackets, the slightly less noticeable ceramic editions, or even a clear aligner, solve a multitude of problems that many people face, from crowding, to gaps, to crooked teeth. For the 93% of children and adolescents with a crossbite, underbite, or overbite, braces may be just the fix.

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The technology behind braces first came on the scene in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, says Roger Forshaw, dental health expert at the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester. In early iterations, metal bands, wires, and rudimentary braces were used to solve severe teeth crowding and misalignments to improve chewing function and relieve pain—hardly the common cosmetic fix we think of today.

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But what did people do before braces were invented? Well, it turns out, for a lot of human history, braces weren’t necessary. And it wasn’t because people were less worried about the way they looked or bore painful chewing better than their modern cousins. It’s a classic case of evolutionary mismatch, a sign of just how much our lifestyle has changed in recent times while the basic hardware of human existence simply hasn’t caught up.

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Big jaws, little jaws

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Let’s start with a metaphor. Take an old house, says Peter Ungar, a biological anthropologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Arkansas. Door frames used to be much smaller and lower than would be comfortable for today’s humans, and it’s not because humans were any genetically shorter than today. Instead, people didn’t have the nutrients available to reach their tallest potential, Ungar explains. For our jaws, the story kind of goes in reverse.

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Back in the day, before agriculture and processing food became commonplace, humans had to chew really hard to turn their food into useful calories for their bodies. When you put that kind of chewing stress on the lower jaw (mandible) and upper jaw (maxilla), “it stimulates the cells that produce bone, [known as] osteoblasts, to grow the jaw in both thickness and height and length,” says Ungar. In other words, hearty chewing makes for a strong, full-sized jaw.

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On the other hand, there’s not a workout that will make your teeth grow. Those little pearls of enamel, dentine, and blood vessels have their size predetermined by genetics, he adds.

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Splatoon 3, Switch Digital Code $41.97 (was $59.99) -The exhibit features a large, light-green wall graphic illustrating a human evolutionary timeline and family tree. Four replica hominid skulls are mounted on transparent acrylic shelves at different heights, corresponding to their chronological appearance in the fossil record. -Bottom Left: A primitive skull with a heavy brow ridge and prominent jaw (Australopithecus). -Center: A slightly more rounded skull sitting higher on the timeline (Homo erectus). +

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-Top Right: Two skulls represent later species, including Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens at the highest point. -The background includes a vertical axis measuring time in millions of years, ranging from 3.5 million years ago to the present, divided into the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs. Lines connect the various species names printed on the wall to show evolutionary relationships." class="wp-image-732408" />

Ancient humans, as well as our Homo sapien ancestors, had bigger jaws that better accommodated our teeth. Image: Geography Photos / Contributor / Getty Images Ian Murray

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Nobody gave teeth the update that modern jaws are chewing less on wild game and more on applesauce, especially in their youth. When teeth grow in, they are expecting a full-grown jaw from a hard-chewing hunter-gatherer.

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So when your teeth finally arrive on the scene, there simply isn’t enough space for them. For many of us, the top row of teeth juts out in front of the lower set, and that lowered set turns into a jumbled pile of cramped teeth. Our third molars, also known as our wisdom teeth, either don’t develop, don’t erupt, or need to be yanked out. Our comparatively small jaws opened the floodgates to all sorts of other issues, Ungar adds, including the sleep apnea epidemic, which occurs when our tongues don’t have enough room to wiggle around in our mouths.

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Embracing braces

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Our ancestors had room for every tooth in their larger mouths. Their teeth also lined up more neatly on top of each other. But that doesn’t mean our ancestors had smiles fit for a Colgate commercial.

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“Early humans used chewing sticks, twigs, bird feathers, animal bones, and plant fibers to remove debris from their teeth,” Forshaw adds. “The earliest known example of possible operative dental work dates to approximately 14,000 years ago in northern Italy.”

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While there are some references to misaligned teeth, and the likely painful solutions that ensued, in Greco-Roman times, it wasn’t until recently that orthodontics really took off. “Early orthodontic treatments were slow, uncomfortable, and often unpredictable because dentists didn’t fully understand how teeth moved,” Forshaw says.

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The first tool to move teeth around via force was Pierre Fouchard’s Bandeau, a horseshoe-shaped metal strip that slowly expanded, straightening teeth as it went. Then came the metal brackets, thanks to E. H. Angle, who first introduced them around 1910. Braces were then tweaked over the following decades as scientists figured out how teeth moved, grew, and best reacted to smile-correcting technology.

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Today, things are a little different, and a great deal less painful, thanks to digital imaging, advanced materials, and less invasive (and less obvious-looking) techniques and tools. From an evolutionary and a modern perspective, the solution to our small-jawed problem starts in childhood. Nonetheless, you probably don’t want your kids gnawing on giant hunks of meat just to save their jaws, which invites a risk of choking. Instead, maybe just get an orthodontist appointment on the calendar around their seventh birthday.

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The post Why our ancestors had straight teeth without braces appeared first on Popular Science.

Adorama is blowing out camera bags during this limited winter clearance sale

Stan Horaczek — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 17:32:53 -0500

If you’re a photographer, you love your camera gear and it deserves to be treated well. A good camera bag can make gear last longer and shooting more enjoyable. They can also be pretty pricy. Right now, Adorama has deals on a ton of camera bags, from large backpacks to small slings. You can even get hard-sided Pelican-style cases for serious trekking. Some of these deals have limited stock, though, so grab the one you want while it’s still available.

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Editor’s picks

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The post Amazon’s early Prime Day deals are live and these 146 are the best appeared first on Popular Science.

Bamboo skewer safely removed from a bird’s cloaca in New York

Laura Baisas — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:52:00 -0400

Take a closer look at this great black-backed gull (Larus marinus) and you’ll soon notice something that does not belong there. The female bird has a bamboo skewer lodged in her cloaca, the rear openings birds use to excrete and reproduce.

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The bird was found with a piece of trash stuck in her cloaca. Image: Sweetbriar Nature Center

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She was spotted in August on Cedar Beach on Long Island New York’s southern shore, and trying to catch her proved to be a bit of a wild seagull chase.

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“The problem was that this gull was fully flighted, so catching her was going to be extremely difficult,” Janine Bendicksen, the Director of Wildlife Rehabilitation at Sweetbriar Nature Center in nearby Smithtown, tells Popular Science.

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About one week after the first sighting, they asked volunteer wildlife rescuer Nancy Prior to try and capture this “seemingly uncatchable gull.” She set up a drop trap at Cedar Beach and was successful after three days of patiently waiting and gaining the gull’s trust. She was immediately brought back to Sweetbriar Nature Center, where the skewer was removed from the cloaca “slowly and very carefully.”

“The skewer was removed gradually to minimize any additional trauma,” Bendicksen explains. “Given the nature and location of the injury, we were extremely concerned about possible internal damage, so we were prepared to stop if there was any sign of resistance or injury. Fortunately, the skewer came out successfully, and amazingly, she had no internal injuries.”

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After she was recovered, the team brought her back into the wild, where they were in for an even bigger surprise. The team had no idea she was a mother, having only observed her with other large groups of gulls. They got to watch this very lucky mother gull reunite with her baby.

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“Watching the two of them find each other and reunite was priceless,” says Bendicksen. “After everything this bird had been through, seeing her return home and immediately reconnect with her baby was an incredibly emotional moment for all of us.”

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The great black-backed gull is the world’s largest gull species. It has a wing span over five feet, and the adults of the species are easy to identify by their black backs and pink-hued legs. They are powerful birds and adaptable scavengers and hunters. And as this gull proved, pretty tough.

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This rescue is another reminder of how much our garbage can impact wildlife. Reducing the amount of single-use items we use and ensuring proper disposal can help prevent animals from getting hurt or killed.

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According to the team, it is also important for all of us to report an injured bird as soon as possible, and not just assume that someone else has called it in. Resources like your state’s department of agriculture website can help you find a licensed rescue organization in your area.

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“A simple phone call, a photo, or reaching out to a licensed wildlife rehabilitator can make the difference between life and death,” says Bendicksen.

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Wildlife rescues also take a whole team, and the public can be part of the team by speaking up, sharing photos, or with donations. “Every successful rescue is often the result of many people working together to give an animal a second chance,” says Bendicksen.

The post Bamboo skewer safely removed from a bird’s cloaca in New York appeared first on Popular Science.

Lewis and Clark’s mercury-laced poop helped archaeologists trace their expedition

Anna Goldfield — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 08:58:00 -0400

The Corps of Discovery Expedition set out in 1804, directed by President Thomas Jefferson to survey the United States’ newly acquired Louisiana Purchase. The exploration forms a core piece of early U.S. history. Picture a scene from the journey: It’s a cool morning, the silence punctuated by birdsong and the rustle of the breeze through the cottonwood trees. To one side, Commander William Clark, his rifle leaning against a plum tree and his rucksack nearby, squats over a latrine pit, unceremoniously heeding the call of nature.

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The Louisiana Purchase constituted a territory of around 828,000 square miles, which the U.S. had bought from France in 1803. This was, it is worth noting, largely without the consent of the Indigenous groups who had lived there for millennia. The purpose of the expedition was threefold: to find a practical trade route westward to the Pacific coast, to explore and document the territory, and to stake a claim to the area before any other European powers butted in. Led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, the 40-man team, plus their guide Sacagawea, spent more than two years trekking westward.

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Believe it or not, the holes that were used as toilets along the march to the Pacific have been invaluable for archaeologists and historians. This is thanks especially to a type of treatment included in the expedition’s medical kit.

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How Lewis and Clark went to the bathroom

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Everybody poops—it’s a universal human need. But most accounts of the Corps of Discovery’s journey leave out the details of how the Corps members dealt with bathroom business.

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Each of the campsites where the expedition spent time had an accompanying latrine pit, situated well away from camp for sanitary (and privacy) reasons. The latrines would have seen a lot of use, because the Corps of Discovery’s diet wasn’t the best for gut health.

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American artist Charles Marion Russell painted this piece entitled “Lewis and Clark on the Lower Columbia” in 1905. Image: Public Domain

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While the expedition members relied heavily on foraged and hunted food, they also carried backup rations. These included nearly 14,000 pounds of dry goods, including flour, salt, coffee, dried pork, and lard. All told, each member of the Corps ate around nine pounds of meat per day. All of that protein without lots and lots of fiber added up to frequent constipation. The untreated water they drank from rivers and creeks they encountered probably didn’t help their circumstances. Enter…Dr. Rush’s Bilious Pills.

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The mercury constipation pills known as “thunderclappers”

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In 1803, as preparation for the upcoming expedition, William Clark traveled to Philadelphia for a two-week medical crash course with Dr. Benjamin Rush. Rush was a prominent physician in his day, and a Founding Father of the United States. His signature is one of the 56 on the Declaration of Independence.

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Rush taught Clark some basic field skills, such as bone-setting and wound treatment. Clark left Philadelphia with new skills and a well-stocked medical kit that included 50 dozen of Doctor Rush’s Bilious Pills. These were compounded tablets about the size of a raisin, composed of powerful laxative ingredients. The pills were nicknamed “thunderclappers” because of the speed with which they took effect. The main ingredient of the thunderclappers was calomel, or mercury chloride.

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Mercury, historically also called quicksilver, has been thought to have curative effects for centuries. It’s a metal that is liquid at room temperature, which seems miraculous in and of itself.

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It was also a popular treatment for syphilis. This is not to say it was an effective treatment for syphilis. When it was administered for that disease, slowly in low doses, patients were more likely to die from mercury poisoning than from the STI.

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This drug jar for mercury pills was made in Italy sometime between 1731 and 1770, several decades before Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out on their historic expedition. Image: Science & Society Picture Library / Contributor / Getty Images Jaron Chubb

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When taken in larger doses, though, as in the thunderclapper pills, it prompted a quick evacuation, the body’s way of ejecting poison. The men of the Lewis and Clark expedition used these pills freely as a way to compensate for their high-protein and low-fiber diet. As a result, all the latrine pits they used between the Midwest and the Pacific coast were laced with high concentrations of mercury.

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Lewis and Clark pooped mercury. Today archaeologists use it to map their route.

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As many an environmentalist will caution, mercury does not decompose when it’s in the ground. It stays put, and is detectable through modern soil testing techniques. The 600-plus latrines dug and used by the Corps of Discovery form a trail of their own, marked by mercury.

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The expedition was a government-sanctioned military expedition, so Lewis and Clark both kept copious notes on every aspect of their travels. Historians have tried to pinpoint the locations of these camps based on the expedition journals, with minimal success.

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The only campsite that archaeologists have been able to confirm so far is the Traveler’s Rest camp, just outside of Missoula, Montana. This is all thanks to the remains of Dr. Rush’s Bilious Pills, which left enough mercury in the ground to differentiate the remains of a latrine pit (or “sink” as they were called in the 1800s) from animal burrows or agricultural ditches.

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Archaeology is all about reconstructing the lives of people in the past, and it’s worth remembering that this means all aspects of life. Our own bodily functions remind us that we all share complex and interwoven histories, and that even the most mundane parts of our lives can be important in the future.

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In That Time When, Popular Science tells the weirdest, surprising, and little-known stories that shaped science, engineering, and innovation.

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In 1926, a Russian biologist tried to create a human-chimpanzee hybrid

During WWII, Great Britain poisoned sheep with anthrax on an idyllic Scottish island

After WWII, flying saucer-shaped houses almost filled American suburbs

The CIA once trained cats to be Cold War spies

When the U.S. almost nuked Alaska—on purpose

During WWII, a dress-wearing squirrel sold war bonds alongside FDR

BOOM! That time Oregon blew up a whale with dynamite.

During WWII, the U.S. government censored the weather

The post Lewis and Clark’s mercury-laced poop helped archaeologists trace their expedition appeared first on Popular Science.

Big boy Chunk returns ahead of Fat Bear Week 2026

Annie Colbert — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:27:37 -0400

The 2025 Fat Bear Week champion is back and ready to rumble (or at least eat a lot of fish). Bear #32, better known as Chunk, returned to view this week on the explore.org live cameras stationed throughout Katmai National Park in Alaska. With the kickoff of Fat Bear Week 2026 slated for Friday, his timing couldn’t be better.

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Chunk reigned supreme in 2025, racking up 96,350 votes—30,000 more than second place finisher, Bear 856. Chunk is a fan favorite for his hefty size (estimated at more than 1,200 pounds) and distinct look. In addition to his narrow-set eyes, dark brown fur, large muzzle scar, and prominent brow ridge, Chunk also has misaligned the jaw. In 2025, he emerged from slumber and made an appearance at Brooks River with a noticeably broken jaw that rangers guessed was a result of a fight with another bear.

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“Chunk proved immediately adaptable,” explore.org explained. “He adjusted his behavior to avoid most direct confrontations with other large male bears. He quickly learned to eat salmon without the full use of his mandible. Additionally, his large body size still gave him easy access to many productive fishing spots. He remains one of the largest bears at Brooks River.”

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Despite the potential challenges of chomping on salmon with a broken jaw, Chunk persevered. Cameras first spotted him this season all the way back in April. Bears are not seen as frequently during the spring, so the early glimpse of Chunk walking across a patch of ice was exciting. Typically, Katmai bears emerge in June when the salmon run begins at Brooks River.

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Chunk, a large boar brown bear in Katmai National Park, attacks one of Grazer’s spring cubs at Brooks falls in 2024. Image: Getty Images Annalise Kaylor

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Leica camera protection

Tune in Friday, September 18, for the Fat Bear Week 2026 bracket reveal to see if Chunk will have the chance to defend his title. And you can always tune in to explore.org live cameras to see what our favorite chunky bears are up to.

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Straps and carrying accessories

When is Fat Bear Week 2026?

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This year, Fat Bear Week begins on Tuesday, September 22, and a winner will be crowned on Tuesday, September 29.

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How can I vote?

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Votes may be cast from noon to 9 p.m. EDT (9 a.m. to 6 p.m. PDT and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ADT)

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from September 22 and 29 at fatbearweek.org.

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Voters are also encouraged to get familiar with each bear’s life history and the unique challenges they face to survive.

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Which bears are competing this year?

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The 2026 Fat Bear Week Bracket will be released on Friday, September 18.

Pouches, dividers, and small add-ons

Fat Bear Week 2023 and 2024 champion Grazer. Image: NPS Photo/F. Jimenez

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How can I support Katmai’s bears?

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What happened with the bears this summer?

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This year’s livestream featured an example of how wild (and upsetting to humans) nature can be. On Tuesday, July 28, cameras captured a young brown bear cub being killed and eaten by an unrelated mother bear (Bear #806).

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Additionally, this year also saw the cub with silver-hued fur, a cub who hopefully learned important lesson about porcupine quill safety, the unique fishing stylings of Bear #164 (Bucky Dent), and Bear #284’s (Electra) family who can “walk on water.”

The post Big boy Chunk returns ahead of Fat Bear Week 2026 appeared first on Popular Science.

68% of physicists don’t think the time started at the big bang

Stan Horazek — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 14:37:09 -0400

Many of the world’s greatest scientific minds remain in startling disagreement with one another about the nature of reality itself. After conducting what is likely the largest survey of its kind, researchers reported that a vast majority of physicists suspect the big bang doesn’t necessarily mark the beginning of time. And as their additional responses indicate, scientists diverge even more when it comes to other hot-button cosmological topics.

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In 2025, researchers put out an international open call for their Big Mysteries in Physics survey. Anyone could partake in the questionnaire, but responses from self-identifying physicists were later separated and reviewed to identify any particularly striking areas of agreement or disagreement. After reviewing answers from over 1,600 physicists, the questionnaire’s authors published their key takeaways earlier this year in Physics Magazine.

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The results? Physicists are very divided on explanations for some of the universe’s fundamental operations.

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Pipe organ plays single song for 639 years

Andrew Paul — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:20:40 -0500

On September 5, 2001, a concert started inside a medieval church–and it continues to this day. If all goes as planned, the performance won’t finish for another 616 years.

The most dramatic relates to the big-bang theory (technically known as the Lambda Cold Dark Matter theory). About 68 percent of respondents said they don’t think the famous moment necessarily marks the beginning of time. Some of this has to do with how the big bang is presented in popular culture—contrary to many depictions, the theory specifically explains how the universe expanded from a single extremely hot, dense prior state of existence. This means it technically may have very little to do with the beginning of time.

One may expect a composition like John Cage’s ORGAN²/ASLSP to encompass thousands, if not millions of pages of musical notation—but as its name implies, it’s the exact opposite. “ASLSP” is Cage’s shortening of “As Slow As Possible,” and so far, the custom-built, electric pipe organ has only issued nine chords. The current one started in February 2024, while the next chord won’t play until August 5, 2026. At that point, an A₄ chord will ring out for 911 more days.

The only other majority opinion pertains to the immediate moments following the big bang. Only 51 percent of physicists agreed that the immediate moments following the big bang involved an incomprehensibly fast period of expansion commonly known as inflation.

John Cage died in 1992 at the age of 79, but both fans and detractors have continued discussing and performing his work. After discovering the I Ching in 1951, Cage incorporated the Chinese divination system’s philosophy into his art for the rest of his life, particularly on topics like sound, time, and chance.

Subjects got far more contentious from there, although some of it was understandable. Given how much remains to still learn about dark matter, 17 percent of survey takers think the mysterious material is composed of an undiscovered particle or particles. Around 12 percent argued it could be explained by tweaking the theory of gravity. At best, barely 21 percent of physicists hypothesized it may be some combination of these and other answers.

Cage’s most famous piece, 4’33”, is in some ways the exact opposite of ORGAN²/ASLSP. Instead of a flurry of melodies, it’s actually four minutes and 33 seconds of pure silence (ironically, the public and critical response wasn’t as serene). But while 4’33” is regularly performed around the world, it’s rarer to see a rendition of ORGAN²/ASLSP. The ongoing version in Germany is one of a kind.

Quantum physics continues the chaos. Nearly 19 percent of scientists think string theory is likely the best way to integrate gravity into quantum physics, while only 12 percent offered loop quantum gravity as an alternative. Meanwhile, 18 percent lean towards the suspicion that gravity can’t be integrated in any way.

If the survey presents one clear takeaway, it’s that these diverse theories are in no way an indictment of the present-day state of physics. These aren’t amateurs—they’re researchers who base their arguments on volumes’ worth of data, calculations, and scientific testing.

Cage was fascinated by the consequences of chance, but the experiment’s organizers had very precise ideas in mind when they mapped out the multigenerational concert. It officially started on the composer’s birthday (September 5), and its 639-year duration is the same length of time as the stretch between the debut of the world’s first 12-tone Gothic organ in 1361 and the year 2000. Each chord and pause of the music notation was then scaled to fit the centuries-long timeframe.

“Consensus, or its absence, tells us where the evidence feels settled and where researchers still see room for radically different ideas,” Niayesh Afshordi, a University of Waterloo physicist and study co-author, explained in a statement. “In this sense, lack of consensus can be a clue. It marks places where better data, sharper theory, or new connections between subfields may be needed”

Although a musician can play ORGAN²/ASLSP on a variety of instruments, the organ is arguably the only one up to the challenge. Unlike a traditional piano, the organ is designed to maintain sound for indefinite periods of time. The piano produces sound from a key hammer striking a string that then resonates. Those vibrations diminish over time, causing the sound to fade and end. In comparison, an organ creates sound from bellows pumping air through metal pipes tuned to certain pitches. As long as there’s air in an organ, there’s sound.

Afshordi noted that unlike other polls, scientific reality isn’t settled by a majority vote. It’s supported by clear, demonstrable evidence.

But how is a 639-year performance even possible? No one living today will be around to see the ORGAN²/ASLSP’s finale, of course, and nobody is expected to constantly play the church’s organ. The workaround is a specially designed instrument that relies on sandbags to depress wood keys while electrically powered, backup generator-supported bellows supply continuous airflow. Only when it’s finally time to change chords does a human arrive to swap out the necessary pipes.

“The interesting point is not that physicists are confused. It is that the frontier is genuinely alive,” he added.

The post 68% of physicists don’t think the time started at the big bang appeared first on Popular Science.

It’s almost time to airdrop rabies vaccines again

Andrew Paul — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 12:34:00 -0400

Despite major strides in education and conservation efforts, rabies remains a serious public health issue. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates around 90 percent of cases occur in wildlife, but their consequences still reverberate across ecosystems and routinely endanger humans. Combating the viral disease costs the United States over $300 million every year, but the hefty price tag is justified. Contracting one of the oldest known diseases invariably causes severe symptoms like abnormal sensations, violent movements, hydrophobia, and loss of consciousness. Rabies is fatal in virtually every documented case, and still kills around 59,000 people around the world each year.

Assuming no unintended concert interruptions occur, the longest-running musical performance has centuries left to go. That said, it’s unclear if it will have any fans by the time of its finale. In 2011, the bespoke organ was encased in an acrylic case in an effort to allegedly reduce noise complaints.

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Watch an albatross give its brand-new chick a very careful cleanup

Andrew Paul — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 12:30:00 -0500

As thousands of birds nest in the warm sun of Midway Atoll, some tend to their new chicks. In a video posted by Friends of Midway Atoll (FOMA), one of the newest Mōlī (Laysan albatross) chicks gets a careful “beak preen” from its parent.

Once primarily associated with dogs, rabies has since spread to wildlife such as raccoons, skunks, bats, and foxes—making the issue much more difficult to track and control. Since 1995, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has overseen a National Rabies Management Program in cooperation with state and federal departments, university researchers, and other organizations. After over 30 years of work, one of the most preferred mitigation methods is regularly placing oral rabies vaccine (ORV) bait in strategically selected wildlife areas. The easiest way to spread millions of bait blocks across thousands of square miles? Airdrops.

The bait isn’t toxic, but the USDA recommends using gloves to handle it. Credit: USDA

CREDIT: Friends of Midway Atoll.

Next month, the USDA will once again begin tossing fishmeal-coated ORV packets from planes throughout the Southeastern states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. These tiny edibles are specifically crafted to target the most prominent rabies variants seen in raccoons, coyotes, and gray foxes.

According to FOMA, their beaks are essential survival tools, but can also be used with “precision and gentleness, applying only the pressure needed to tend to a fragile chick.” When first born, a chick will receive some yummy regurgitated fish oil as one of its earliest meals. Chicks this young are fed a nutritious oily mix of partially digested squid and fish eggs.

“The goal is to prevent westward spread of raccoon rabies by creating a continuous vaccine barrier that stays in front of rabies occurrence on the landscape,” a USDA spokesperson recently told FOX Carolina News. The representative added that although the distribution’s scope doesn’t currently include South Carolina, they are “very close to establishing an ORV area in South Carolina counties bordering North Carolina and Georgia in the next few years.”

Every year, Laysan albatross return to this wildlife refuge on the northeastern edge of the Hawaiian Archipelago and reunite with their mates. If all goes well—as it has for this pair—the female birds will lay one egg and stay on the atoll to nest.

If all goes as planned, the National Rabies Management Program’s geographic scope will shrink over time as the disease is regionally eliminated. Until then, anyone who accidentally comes into contact with an ORV bait brick shouldn’t worry about contracting the disease. The vaccine inside each brick is proven safe for over 60 animal species, including cats and dogs. If you happen to locate one in a residential area, the USDA recommends to either simply leave it alone, or use gloves to move it to a more remote location for its intended recipients. Always wash your hands thoroughly after handling ORV bait—and try to ignore the pungent odor of fishmeal.

The post It’s almost time to airdrop rabies vaccines again appeared first on Popular Science.

World War II shell detonated on British Coast

Margherita Bassi — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 10:48:06 -0400

It’s common to find things among the sand while strolling along a beach: shells, seaglass, bits of and seaweed. But in Essex, England, a beachgoer found something quite different on the coast of Southend-On-Sea: a World War II explosive.

To count how many birds are coming back to the atoll, hearty volunteers conduct an annual nest census. The 2025/2026 census found:

Southend-On-Sea’s HM Coastguard intervened over the weekend after someone reported a “shell-shaped object” less than half a mile south of a local monument called “The Crowstone.” The team first showed up early in the morning to locate the object and send pictures to the Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams.

28,246 Ka’upu (Black-footed albatross) nests

The Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams decided that disposal officers should remain on the scene, but that everyone should go back at low tide to identify the object and execute a plan. When they returned that evening, Southend Coastguard Rescue Officers accompanied Explosive Ordnance Disposal officers to the suspected explosive.

589,623 Mōlī (Laysan albatross) nests

“It was confirmed to be an old WWII shell that was approximately six inches in diameter,” HM Coastguard Southend On Sea explained in the social media post. “The decision was made to detonate it in situ, where it posed no risk to passing members of [the] public.”

A total of 617,869 nests

CREDIT: Friends of Midway Atoll.

The video in the Facebook post showcases a significant explosion in the distance, shooting a cloud of debris into the air. It’s not the first time this year that the violence of World War II makes itself known again. In the spring, experts safely detonated a 250 kilogram German explosive in Plymouth, UK. But possibly another World War II find in Indonesia had a drastically less fortunate outcome. A suspected shell killed five people when it detonated in a fishing village.

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“As these items can be so dangerous, if you ever see something suspicious or out of place on the beach or in the sea, do not touch it, move it or take it home,” the post continued. “Let the experts decide if it is safe.”

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First Diplodocus fossils found outside of United States

Laura Baisas — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 04:00:00 -0400

Diplodocus is a famous genus of giant sauropod dinosaurs with small heads and long, whip-like tails that lived in the Late Jurassic period (155 to 145 million years ago). Since its discovery in 1878, all confirmed Diplodocus remains have been unearthed from the Morrison Formation fossil hotspot in the western United States. Now, however, paleontologists have identified Diplodocus remains in Spain.

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The remains came to light in the El Castellar municipality of the Spanish city of Teruel, and represent the first evidence of Diplodocus beyond the borders of North America. They consist of 14 well-preserved tail vertebrae and several chevron bones (bony arches in the tail). Through traditional anatomical comparisons and advanced phylogenetic analyses, the researchers confidently categorized them as Diplodocus and a close cousin of Diplodocus hallorum.

The nesting birds also include a record-breaker named Wisdom, a roughly 75-year-old albatross known as the world’s oldest breeding bird. Wisdom was spotted on the atoll in November 2025, but it is still unclear if she has laid another egg. She was first identified and banded in 1956 and has since produced 50 to 60 eggs and as many as 30 chicks have fledged in her lifetime. In 2024, Wisdom became the world’s oldest known wild bird to successfully lay an egg at the estimated age of 74.

“As we looked more closely at the anatomy, we began to identify a combination of features characteristic of Diplodocus species. Then, as we carried out different evolutionary analyses, they kept pointing in the same direction,” Sergio Sánchez Fenollosa, lead author of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology study and a graduate student in biodiversity and evolutionary biology at the Joint Paleontology Foundation Teruel-Dinópolis research foundation, said in a statement. “With each new result, the picture became clearer: we were looking at a Diplodocus.” Dinópolis is a huge paleontological museum and theme park in Teruel, about 200 miles east of Madrid.

You can watch the birds from the comfort of your own home thanks to the 24/7 livestream positioned on the island. However, the video won’t be quite as close up as this special beak preen.

The post Watch an albatross give its brand-new chick a very careful cleanup appeared first on Popular Science.

Metal detectorist finds medieval pendant with a Roman ‘secret’

Margherita Bassi — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 11:45:00 -0500

A discovery on a farm in Essex, England, is a bit of an archaeological version of the 2010 film Inception. In September 2024, a metal detectorist scouring a farm about 45 miles northeast of London found a silver, oval pendant measuring about one-inch-long. The piece included an inscribed frame of mirrored Latin text that allowed for wax impressions. Once pressed onto the malleable material, the phrase “SECRETVM.RICARDI” (“Richard’s secret” or “Richard’s secret seal”) would appear next to a tiny cross symbol commonly seen across medieval Christian art. Based on its location, appearance, and condition, experts believe that the jewelry dates somewhere between 1200–1400 CE.

This particular individual dates back to around 150 million years ago. Its place of death indicates that during the Late Jurassic, dinosaurs could migrate from between North America and Europe, probably making use of temporary land bridges that sometimes emerged in the proto-North Atlantic Ocean. During the Jurassic (201.4 to 145 million years ago), the ancient supercontinent Pangea started pulling apart into the Laurasia and Gondwana landmasses, and the Atlantic Ocean also started forming.

The pendant’s red gemstone centerpiece was already an antique itself at the time of the jewelry’s creation, however. Etched similarly to its silver enclosure, a gem depicted a racing chariot that would also appear as a raised scene in wax seals. According to archaeologists, the inset was previously crafted during the Augustan era of the Roman Empire as far back as the late first century BCE. Although extremely rare, it’s not the first example of its kind.

Diplodocus are a subgroup of sauropods, which were among the longest land animals to ever walk the Earth. The recent finding sheds light on Iberian Mesozoic (252 to 66 million years ago) ecosystems and sauropod dinosaur diversity in the European Jurassic, Fenollosa explained.

“Gem-set seal matrices were used by both citizens and the nobility, to indicate social status,” reads the artifact’s official record in the United Kingdom antiquities database.

“The Diplodocus from El Castellar was approximately 25 meters long [82 feet] (comparable in size to its North American relatives), making it another of the giant sauropods of the Spanish Jurassic,” said Alberto Cobos, co-author of the study and managing director of the Joint Paleontology Foundation Teruel-Dinópolis. Its remains are now on display at the Aragones Museum of Paleontology at Dinópolis.

The entry notes that while English nobles during the 11th–13th centuries imported “better executed” gemwork examples, commoners and farmers often repurposed poorer examples after rediscovering them while plowing fields.

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Yellowstone National Park retrieved 280 hats from hydrothermal vents this summer

Andrew Paul — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 16:00:00 -0400

Yellowstone National Park attracts more than 4.5 million visitors from around the world every year. Many sightseers arrive well prepared to admire the hotsprings, geysers, scenic lookouts, and wildlife, but there is only so much anyone can do about life’s little unexpected accidents. Each season, Yellowstone’s gusty winds are responsible for blowing away hundreds of hats, maps, and even sunglasses from the heads and hands of onlookers. And every season, park workers scour the grounds to gather up any lost items that landed far from the walkways and trails.

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As Archaeology News explained, objects fusing components from vastly different time periods is rarely documented in the historical record. Such a striking example also illustrates the Roman Empire’s lasting influence on the British Isles. Rome’s forces first landed in Britain during the Gallic Wars under the direction of Julius Caesar in 55-54 BCE. Within a century, the empire officially occupied the region and would remain the dominating presence until 410 CE.

While the tally so far isn’t quite as large as last year’s haul, Yellowstone officials still impressively retrieved more than 280 hats from the hydrothermal areas. Workers cited standouts including a FIFA 2026 Men’s World Cup souvenir and a baseball cap ironically emblazoned with “Cowboy Hat.” But just because they aren’t suited for floating around roiling geysers doesn’t mean they’re destined for a landfill. Once the 2026 season draws to a close, all of the collected hats will be cleaned and donated to local clothing organizations.

Given its rarity, U.K. assessors officially deemed the pendant “treasure,” meaning it likely won’t remain the property of its discoverer. The nearby Braintree Museum is now in talks to acquire the antique, which it hopes to eventually place in a permanent public display.

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Poop DNA tests and AI dog surveillance: The tech changing pet care.

Andrew Paul — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 11:00:00 -0500

It is every pet owner’s worst nightmare: their beloved furry friend going missing. In 2025, a dog named Ziggy made a break for it and bolted during a road trip with his human, a California woman named Surely. Previously, the odds of Surely ever seeing her four-legged friend again wouldn’t be in her favor. The search effort would have likely hinged on fliers, phone calls, and a decent amount of luck.

Yellowstone officials recommend storing items deep in your pockets and always throwing litter into trash bins. Credit: Yellowstone National Park

Thankfully, Ziggy was eventually reunited with Surely, though not because of those analogue outreach efforts. The success story was made possible by a rapidly growing national database of dog photos and a powerful AI search tool maintained by the nonprofit Petco Love Lost. In building out its dog database, the organization is utilizing image-recognition technology often associated with more controversial forms of human surveillance and reorienting it to help pets.

Caps are only one type of lost item located amid the hunts. Workers scooped up more than $18 in coins from around the world during the summer search. Canadian dollars, euros, pesos, and yen were scattered among the U.S. change, many apparently tossed into hot springs and geysers as if they were wishing wells. Yellowstone officials took the occasion to remind everyone that hydrothermal formations are not made to receive wished-upon coins. Not only will your dream remain unfulfilled—the foreign additions often introduce destructive algae and bacteria into the delicate ecosystems.

“We need to plug into all the places where people report lost and found pets to make sure that we are connecting the dots,” PetCo Love Lost Chief Product Officer Aaron Klein tells Popular Science.

Other common detritus in the haul included plenty of paper and plastic trash, hair ties, hotel key cards, children’s toys, eyewear, and camera lens caps. Standout oddities such as AirPods, an inhaler, and even a single Uno card also made the list of finds.

They aren’t the only ones applying high tech to pet care. Across the country, landlords and property managers are shipping samples of unscooped dog poop to a company called PooPrints, which extracts DNA in order to identify the canine culprit and its owner. Other pet parents are investing in facial recognition (and even snout recognition) technology to identify missing pets.

A single Uno card was also among the fines. Credit: Yellowstone National Park

It all amounts to a kind of Orwellian-style overwatch, but one built for pets, and for mostly noble purposes.

As always, Yellowstone workers reminded everyone that the seasonal roundup also serves as an excellent reminder to “stash your trash.” Visitors are encouraged to place any litter or lightweight items deep in their pockets or bags until they reach a trash can. And although headwear is always important protection from the sun, people may want to consider temporarily removing their hats while trekking through especially windy areas of the park.

The post Yellowstone National Park retrieved 280 hats from hydrothermal vents this summer appeared first on Popular Science.

Backcountry’s fall hoodie sale has hundreds of sweatshirts and jackets at clearance prices

Mack DeGeurin — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:42:25 -0400

I stepped outside this morning into the Upstate New York air and it had a distinctly fall feel. Those warm summer mornings are over and hoodie weather is finally here. Right now, Backcountry has a massive hoodie sale happening right now with hundreds of hoodies and jackets up to 40 percent off. But, not all deals are created equal. I read the size run off all 110 product pages worth checking, and 79 hoodies still have four or more sizes in stock at the sale price. Every pick below names the colorway that carries the discount, because the color on sale is frequently not the color in the photo, and where a run has a hole in it I have flagged it.

Ziggy with his humans. After running away during a road trip, the trio was reunited thanks to a national database of dog photos and an AI search tool maintained by the nonprofit Petco Love Lost. Image: Petco Love Lost.

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Columbia Super Terminal Tackle Vent Hoodie $31.50 (was $70)

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Four colorways at $31.50 and 18 color and size combinations in stock at that price, the most of any hoodie I checked

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An massive database of pet pics is helping reunite families

Columbia

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Several years ago, Petco Love Lost evolved from a company called Finding Rover, with the goal of simplifying the chaotic process of finding lost pets. Anyone who’s experienced it knows how complicated it can be. With more than 5,000 animal shelters in the United States alone (and no guarantee a lost pet will even reach one of them), reunification is far from assured. As a result, distressed pet parents often resort to hanging flyers, frantically posting on social media, and calling numerous shelters.

The Columbia Super Terminal Tackle Vent Hoodie at $31.50 is meant for fishing (PFG stands for Pro Fishing Gear), but it’s a great all-around outdoor garment. Four colorways sit at that same $31.50, and Dark Stone Currents Fade covers XS through XXL with three to 12 units in every size. Columbia builds it as a fishing shirt, with mesh back and side panels for ventilation, Omni-Wick fabric and UPF 50 sun protection, so it works as a hot-weather shirt now and a light layer once the mornings turn.

And whether they realize it or not, pet owners are in a race against the clock. If lost animals do end up at shelters, they may not stay long. Depending on the municipality, overcrowded shelters may hold missing pets for as little as 48 hours or just a few days before putting them up for adoption—or, in some cases, euthanizing.

“There’s some tough choices that these organizations have to make,” Klein says.

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GOREWEAR Fernflow Hooded Windbreaker (Women's) $45.50 (was $130)

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The deepest discount in the sale that still has a full XS through XL run behind it

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GOREWEAR

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What those shelters lack in streamlined organization, they make up for in data, particularly images of animals. Klein says most shelters rely on a handful of software systems to manage intake. With permission, Petco Love Lost integrates with those photo platforms that shelters use to collect photos of missing pets. Those images are fed into a centralized database and used to train an AI image-recognition model, similar to how large language models are trained on vast text datasets.

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That database and the AI, gives pet owners a crucial head start. When a dog or cat goes missing, owners can download the Love Lost app and upload photos of their pet. The system then immediately cross-references the picture against its database. But the process isn’t as simple as grouping together similar-looking golden retrievers or black cats. Instead, Klein says the model analyzes the animal’s entire body across 512 data points, including eye and fur color, size, and even the distance between its ears. The result is a system that can distinguish between strikingly similar animals with greater accuracy than many humans.

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“You would be surprised by the uniqueness of animals,” Klein says. “The naked eye, perhaps can’t discern between these two black cats, but we’re talking about a very powerful computer who can discern these micro differences.”

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Once processed, the AI spots a list of potential matches and gives each one a confidence score. The number of results depends on the animal: a black cat or golden retriever (both common pets) in a dense city like Los Angeles may generate several matches, while a distinctive Siamese cat in a rural town may yield far fewer.

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But partnerships with shelters only go so far. Research from the American Veterinary Medical Association shows that only about a quarter of missing pets ever end up in shelters. To bridge that gap, Petco also partners with neighborhood-based social platforms like Nextdoor and Ring. When a user posts a photo of a stray pet who winds up sitting on their front porch, the image is sent directly to Petco for analysis.

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Pet owners interact with the system through a mobile app with an anonymous chat. While Petco says user data is kept secure, the company also uses automated systems to monitor conversations for scams. Klein says some opportunists falsely claim they’ve found a lost pet and then demand money for its return. In one case, someone even offered to locate missing animals using “psychic powers”—for a fee, of course.

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The surveillance system seems to be working. Since its inception, Petco Love Lost says it has reunited more than 100,000 lost animals with their families. And that’s only counting the cases it can directly confirm were resolved through its database. The company estimates the true number could be closer to 300,000.

Cotopaxi

Is cracking your knuckles really bad for them?

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Fliers and phone calls were often the only way to find a lost pet. Image: Vstock LLC via Getty Images.

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CSI: Dog Poop

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Modern tech more commonly associated with surveillance is also affecting less responsible pet owners. Across the U.S. and in a few other countries, apartment complexes are increasingly using DNA analysis to identify which owners leave behind unscooped dog waste. The leading company in this space is PooPrints, part of Tennessee-based BioPet Laboratories. Using a process similar to FBI forensics, PooPrints can match a sample to the responsible dog down to the molecular level.

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“We love shit here,” BioPet Laboratories CEO J Retinger tells Popular Science.

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Properties that partner with PooPrints require all tenants to register their animals by swabbing their mouths to collect their unique DNA signature. The samples are sent to PooPrints’ Tennessee lab, which extracts the DNA and creates a reference profile using 16 genetic markers for every dog on the property. Groundskeepers and property managers can then submit a small sample of unscooped, abandoned dog waste for analysis. PooPrints limits its analyses to dog feces—more for practical reasons than technical limitations.

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Ensuring all of that dog poop could make it through the mail to their Tennessee lab was a research-and-development challenge, BioPet Laboratories Lab Director Chesleigh Winfree tells Popular Science. Past competitors tried collecting an entire pile of waste, freezing it, and shipping it overnight, an approach that was both impractical and costly. Instead, PooPrints integrated a stabilizing solution into their collection device. The solution ensures that even a small scoop can remain viable at room temperature for extended periods of time. Winfree says they have successfully extracted DNA from samples as old as two years, though fresher poop is still preferable.

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The lab analyzes the DNA from the sample and checks for a match against dogs on file. If a match is found, the property owner is alerted and can issue a fine to the responsible dog’s owner.

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Those fines have sparked backlash from some tenants online, who recoil at having to hand over their pet’s DNA as part of a lease agreement. However, the reality is that pets and animals in general don’t have the same privacy rights or expectations as humans. In the eyes of the law, they are simply considered property. As a result, tenants trying to skirt PooPrints’ DNA registry requirements are on shaky legal ground. And until French bulldogs learn to speak, that’s unlikely to change.

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The PooPrints’ lab in Tennessee uses 16 genetic markers to create a dog poop profile. Image: BioPet Laboratories.

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Some pet owners understandably get heated when they receive a message accusing their animal of illegally relieving itself. Critics, including several who recently spoke with The New York Post, worry about being wrongly accused.

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“They’re the poop police. Now I have to be even more cautious,” New Jersey resident and Shih Tzu owner Angelina Budija told The Post. “I think it’s a little over the top.”

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In those contested cases, PooPrints offers a DNA verification test, allowing unconvinced tenants to submit a new swab of their pet to compare against the poop sample in question. Winfree says she has seen only two incorrect matches in 18 years. Overall, the service has a nine to 10 percent failure rate, but that is almost always due to collection issues. Some supposed dog samples actually turn out to be cat feces, dirt, or mulch.

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PooPrints doesn’t exactly love being called the “Poo Police.” While enforcement and the threat of fines are essential to the process (Winfree herself says she has had to testify in eviction court) they don’t relish it. In fact, they claim that their forensic system has actually helped more apartment complexes allow pets, since property managers feel confident their grounds won’t be overrun by poo.

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Snout and pet facial recognition

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Beyond fecal matters, scientists and startups are also experimenting with applying other techniques often associated with surveillance to petcare. Korean-based PetNow is developing a system that uses snout recognition to identify missing dogs. They claim that every dog’s nose is as uniquely identifiable as a finger print, or a human face can. Ring, who also partnered with Petco, meanwhile recently announced a feature called Search Party, which uses AI software in its smart doorbell camera to detect missing animals. Ring uses a similar, more controversial facial recognition system to identify humans, and has come under fire in the past for its handling of private information.

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Dog facial recognition has applications beyond reunification. In Tanzania, researchers from Washington State University developed a mobile app that uses facial recognition to identify dogs that had been vaccinated for rabies. During vaccination, each dog’s face was scanned and uploaded to a centralized database, allowing anyone who encounters a dog to scan its face and instantly check its vaccination status. Using the app, operators in nearby villages correctly identified 76.2 percent of vaccinated dogs and 98.9 percent of unvaccinated dogs.

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These new pet recognition start ups combined with rapid advances in biotech and AI mean tools like these will likely become more common in pet care. PooPrints says it looks forward to expanding beyond waste enforcement, using DNA analysis to help pet owners understand genetic predispositions in their animals which could potentially influence how people approach pet healthcare.

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Meanwhile, Petco Love Lost is optimistic that its ever-improving AI will boost confidence when showing lost pet owners images of potential matches. In the meantime, they say owners can help themselves by registering their pets and submitting photos before they go missing. Massive databases and powerful AI help, but responsible pet owners still ultimately make the biggest difference.

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“It’s hard to find [unique markings] when you’re anxious and you lost your animal and you’re going through the thousands of images that you have on your phone to find the ones that meet that criteria,” Klein says. “It would be great if people were willing to be more prepared for the unexpected situation and understand that you can be a good pet parent and your pet may go missing in the future.”

The post Poop DNA tests and AI dog surveillance: The tech changing pet care. appeared first on Popular Science.

Why do your joints hurt when it’s cold? We asked a doctor.

Laura Kiniry — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 09:01:00 -0500

Each winter, over a million “snowbirds” descend on places like Florida and Arizona to avoid the season’s freezing temperatures and instead, ride it out in warmth. For many, it’s simply because they prefer the weather. For others, it’s a necessity for their health and well-being.

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It’s well-known that cold weather can exacerbate joint pain, but why? What is it about plunging digits that often causes endless aches and pains? And more importantly, what can we do about it, other than hop a flight to Tahiti? We asked Dr. Aravind Athiviraham, an orthopedic surgeon at UChicago Medicine, to find out.

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Why does cold weather lead to joint pain?

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“One thought is that that change in atmospheric pressure during cold weather can expand bodily tissues slightly, irritating the nerve endings,” says Athiviraham.

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Barometric pressure is the measurement of air pressure in the atmosphere. Prior to cold, rainy, or stormy weather, the atmosphere experiences a drop in barometric pressure.

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As the surrounding air pressure decreases, body tissues such as muscles, tendons, and joint fluids inflate, almost like a balloon. In turn, this can compress nerves and increase pain, particularly for those with existing injuries, arthritis, or chronic pain.

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This pain increase can happen even more so when the change in pressure is rapid. For example, during the recent Winter Storm Ezra, which pummeled the Midwest U.S. in late December 2025, temperatures dropped as much as 50 degrees Fahrenheit in a single day. This swift decrease in temperature compressed nerves and escalated joint pain for many Midwesterners.

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“Another thought is that in general, when there’s a significant dip in temperatures, the body’s synovial fluid can become a little more thick and viscous,” says Athiviraham. Synovial fluid is a sticky substance that lubricates cartilage and joints. “If it’s thicker, it can be less effective.”

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Our joints are composed of two bones capped with cartilage. The bones and cartilage are enclosed in a membrane that’s filled with an oily liquid called synovial fluid. Image: DepositPhotos

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There’s also the body’s need for comfort. According to Athiviraham, “cold temperatures can also cause muscles and connective tissues to become tighter and contract,” as the body tries to stay warm. These contracted muscles can pull on the joints, causing increased stiffness and pain.

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What role does exercise play in joint pain during cold weather?

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“In general, when it’s really cold outside, people tend to be a little bit less active,” says Athiviraham. Regular movement circulates synovial fluid, helping reduce stiffness and increase our range of motion.

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“If someone’s less active, they have less strength and flexibility, which can set up a chain reaction that can lead to more pain and stiffness.” Tighter muscles create extra tension on joints, something that can be especially uncomfortable after sitting for long periods.

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How do our minds affect how we experience joint pain?

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The role that our minds play in experiencing pain is also a very real thing, says Athiviraham.

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“For example,” he says, “if I’ve been told that when it’s cold outside my joints are going to act up, I may experience a kind of psychological pain amplification.” This is a condition where the body’s nervous system, often triggered by stress and/or injury, magnifies pain, which can actually increase its severity.

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It’s what Athiviraham refers to as the nocebo effect, “the opposite of placebo.” While the placebo effect equates beneficial results with positive expectations, the nocebo effect is just the opposite.

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“Say you’ve just torn your rotator cuff,” says Athiviraham, which makes raising and moving your arm difficult. “How you think of physical therapy is really predictive in how you’re going to do. If you think that PT is going to work, there’s a good chance that it will. But if you go into it thinking that you already have a tear and nothing will help, you’ve answered your question long before doing therapy. If there’s an expectation of increased pain, it’s a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Meaning, if you believe your joints will hurt when the weather turns, there’s a high chance that they will.

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- Related 'Ask Us Anything' Stories

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The coldest body temperatures humans have survived

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Why do we have five fingers and toes?

Do you need more sleep in fall and winter? Probably.

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Are arthritis and joint pain the same?

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The general answer is no. While joint pain is often a symptom of injuries and can be temporary, arthritis is a chronic condition that involves inflammation. However, the two are sometimes intertwined.

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Arthritis is basically the wearing down of cartilage in the joint. “And so, if there’s already a baseline level of increased pain and loss of cartilage,” says Athiviraham, “a person is primed for increased pain” once the weather turns.

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If joint pain is accompanied by swelling and redness and is persistent, it may actually be arthritis.

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What are some ways to keep joint pain at bay during cold weather?

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“The more you move your joints, the better lubrication your joints are going to have, and the better blood flow,” says Athiviraham. “Obviously you can’t change the weather. But you can pick an indoor activity.” Head to the gym or purchase a home exercise bike or elliptical machine. Do jumping jacks. Try yoga. “Be more diligent about being intentional, and seek out activities that may happen a little more naturally in the summer.”

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Dressing for the weather is also important. Don layers and pay special attention to covering specific joint areas with gloves, scarves, and thermal leggings and shirts for protecting knees and elbows. Heating pads and warm baths both help to improve blood circulation and relax muscles, decreasing pain in your joints.

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Riding out the cold

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Of course, you can always relocate to a warmer climate to avoid any cold weather aches and pains. But with a little forethought you can also stay put and make the best of it, by minimizing pain and riding out cold weather comfortably.

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The post Why do your joints hurt when it’s cold? We asked a doctor. appeared first on Popular Science.

Weird bird mouths go all the way back to the first avian dinosaur

Andrew Paul — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 16:15:00 -0500

The Archaeopteryx is one of evolution’s most infamous species—but it’s also a very confusing creature. All present-day birds are technically dinosaurs, but the 150-million-year-old, raven-sized hunter is the earliest known example of an avian animal. At the same time, Archaeopteryx lived during the Jurassic Period among multiple other feathered dinosaurs that were not birds in the true sense of the term. But if it’s any consolation, it’s often still difficult for paleontologists to tell them apart, too.

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“For a long time, there have been very few things that we could say really characterize the transition from terrestrial dinosaurs to flying bird dinosaurs,” explained Jingmai O’Connor, the associate curator of fossil reptiles at Chicago’s Field Museum.

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O’Connor and her team spent over a year carefully preparing and examining the museum’s own Archaeopteryx specimen after its arrival in 2022. In a study published on February 2nd in the journal The Innovation, the team described a set of newly analyzed anatomical features that help set the iconic bird dinosaur apart from its fellow winged (but nonflying) relatives. As it turns out, some of the strangest attributes of today’s birds are traceable all the way back to the very first bird.

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“These weird little features in the mouth of Archaeopteryx, that are also found in living birds, are giving us new criteria that we can use to tell whether a dinosaur fossil is a bird or not,” said O’Connor.

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Led by chief fossil preparator Akiko Shinya, the paleontologists slowly alternated between removing the topmost layer of limestone from the fossils and checking the integrity of any exposed features. Fossilized soft tissues like feathers and skin will glow under UV light in certain rocks, allowing Shinya’s group to constantly assess the preserved details. These fragments are extremely small and easy to overlook given Archaeopteryx’s size, but the scientists still managed to identify strange, never-before-seen details.

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“They showed me these tiny, glowing dots, and I had no idea what we were looking at,” remembered O’Connor.

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After consulting avian anatomy references, she noticed a striking similarity between the fossil dots and what are known as oral papillae. These small, fleshy conical structures are located on the roof of mouths in present-day birds. They function similarly to teeth in humans, helping guide food down the animal’s throat while keeping it away from their windpipe. O’Connor and her colleagues now believe these are the first documented examples of oral papillae in the fossil record—all within evolution’s first true bird.

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Other discoveries included other telltale features seen in today’s birds, including what appears to be the splinter of a tongue bone. Humans don’t have any bones in their tongues, but they do occur in most avian species and help them grab and manipulate food.

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“This teeny-tiny bone is one of the smallest bones in the body, and it indicates that Archaeopteryx had a highly mobile tongue, like many birds today,” said O’Connor.

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CT scans also indicate Archaeopteryx had nerve endings in the end of its beak—part of what’s known as a bill-tip organ. Again, many existing birds have also evolved this system, which helps them nuzzle around the ground for food.

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These latest discoveries make a great deal of sense when considered in a wider evolutionary timeline. Flying is very energy intensive, so birds possess some of the most efficient digestive systems on the planet. The development of oral papillae, tongue bones, and bill-tip organs would have all benefited the Archaeopteryx’s new caloric requirements—so much so that the traits appear to have remained in avian dinosaurs for millions of years.

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“These discoveries show this really clear shift in how dinosaurs were feeding when they started flying and had to meet the enormous energetic demands of flight,” said O’Connor.

The post Weird bird mouths go all the way back to the first avian dinosaur appeared first on Popular Science.

Hair samples reveal the benefits of lead regulation

Andrew Paul — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:00:00 -0500

The evidence is clear—and in your hair. Americans were exposed to as much as 100 times more lead in their daily lives than they are today before the Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970. In an effort to examine the dramatic reduction in toxic heavy metal exposure, researchers turned to human hair samples dating back a century. Their findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide a startling and dramatic example of the lifesaving benefits of robust, comprehensive, and reliably enforced industrial regulations.

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Human history is full of lead poisoning. Paleobiological records indicate that the naturally occurring neurotoxin has affected Homo sapien’s evolutionary development for at least two million years. While no amount of lead exposure is healthy, even comparatively moderate levels of ingestion are directly linked to brain development issues, behavioral shifts, heart and organ damage, pregnancy complications, and immunosuppression problems. These hazards are also particularly dangerous for infants and children.

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Our species only faced more danger from lead as our technology advanced. Common items including cookware and plumbing components likely affected cognition and physical health in ancient Rome—and these issues became exponentially more dangerous amid the modern manufacturing era. Mounting scientific evidence and sustained public health advocacy finally resulted in the EPA issuing strict rollbacks on lead usage during the 1970s. But even as recently as 1978, the poison could regularly be found in everyday products like paint, pipes, and gasoline.

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The U.S. Mining and Smelting Co. plant in Midvale, Utah, 1906. Credit: Utah Historical Society

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While lead contamination is still a major issue, its overall reduction is apparent only a few decades after EPA policy regulations were implemented. To understand how much, a team from the University of Utah and the National Institutes of Health recently used mass spectrometry to measure lead levels in human hair. While blood is considered a better biomaterial to assess, hair is still incredibly helpful to study because it’s easier to collect and preserve.

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“The surface of the hair is special. We can tell that some elements get concentrated and accumulated in the surface,” explained University of Utah geologist and study co-author Diego Fernandez. “Lead is one of those. That makes it easier because lead is not lost over time.”

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Fernandez and his team previously studied blood samples and family health histories of Utahns. This time, the team recruited volunteers from the Wasatch Front region in northern Utah to provide hair samples. These participants were especially interesting to the researchers because they lived in a region of the state known for its history of industrial runoff—as well as its significant Mormon population and their extensive genealogical records.

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“The Utah part of this is so interesting because of the way people keep track of their family history. I don’t know that you could do this in New York or Florida,” said study co-author Ken Smith, a family and consumer study researcher.

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In total, the authors received the hair samples of 48 individuals from various stages of their lives, as well as from some of their distant relatives dating back to 1916 from archival sources like family scrapbooks. The mass spectrometry data illustrated dramatic changes over 100 years. Prior to the closure of regional smelting facilities and EPA regulations, Utah residents ingested around 100 times as much lead as they do today. The dramatic decrease also directly aligned with the reduction and eventual removal of lead from gasoline. Before 1970, gas typically included around two grams of lead per gallon, tallying up to about two pounds of lead released into the atmosphere per person every year.

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“‘It’s an enormous amount of lead that [was] being put into the environment and quite locally,” said study co-author Thure Cerling, who works in both geology and biological research. “It’s just coming out of the tailpipe, goes up in the air and then it comes down. It’s in the air for a number of days, especially during the inversions that we have and it absorbs into your hair, you breathe it and it goes into your lungs.”

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While gas consumption continued to rise in the ensuing decades, lead samples in hair dropped sharply. Samples from the 1970s measured as high as 100 parts per million (ppm), but by 1990 they lowered to 10 ppm. In 2024, the amount averaged only 1 ppm.

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Recent Trump administration announcements have severely carved away EPA regulatory powers, worrying scientists, environmentalists, and everyday Americans. The study’s authors stress that their latest findings provide some of the clearest objective evidence of the benefits of sensible ecological oversight.

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“We should not forget the lessons of history. And the lesson is those regulations have been very important,” said Cerling. “Sometimes they seem onerous and mean that [an] industry can’t do exactly what they’d like to do…But it’s had really, really positive effects.”

The post Hair samples reveal the benefits of lead regulation appeared first on Popular Science.

Teen discovers Australia’s oldest dinosaur fossil—almost 70 years ago

Stan Horaczek — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 14:37:55 -0500

In 1958, an Australian teenager named Bruce Runnegar uncovered a mysterious dinosaur footprint during a visit to a quarry with school friends. He kept the fossil for years, eventually becoming a paleontologist himself. Over six decades later, the prehistoric print is now ready for its close-up.

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Runnegar gave the fossil to a team at the University of Queensland’s Dinosaur Lab, where they believe that the roughly 7-inch, fossilized footprint was made by a small, two-legged dinosaur, most likely an early sauropodomorph. These primitive relatives of later long-neck dinosaurs lived during the Late Triassic to Late Cretaceous.

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Importantly, the footprint is also the oldest dinosaur fossil in Australia. It dates back about 230 million years to the earliest part of the Late Triassic period when Australia was part of the supercontinent Gondwana. The print is detailed in a study published in the journal Alcheringa and shows that dinosaurs were Down Under much earlier than paleontologists previously believed.

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“This is the only dinosaur fossil to be found in an Australia capital city and shows how globally significant discoveries can remain hidden in plain sight,” study co-author and paleontologist Dr. Anthony Romilio said in a statement. “Subsequent urban development has made the original site inaccessible, leaving this footprint as the only surviving dinosaur evidence from the area.”

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Dr. Anthony Romilio used software to recreate a cast of what the dinosaur footprint would have looked like. Image: The University of Queensland.

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The team believes that the dinosaur was likely walking alongside a waterway when it left its footprint behind. The print was then preserved in sandstone for millions of years, before the stone was cut to build buildings across the city of Brisbane.

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The post Backcountry’s fall hoodie sale has hundreds of sweatshirts and jackets at clearance prices appeared first on Popular Science.

Arborists use supersonic air to save 300-year-old tree that survived American Revolution

Laura Baisas — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 14:58:22 -0400

A centuries’ old “witness tree” that survived not only the Revolutionary War but a direct hit from lightning is facing yet another existential threat. Ironically, the famous oak in Eutaw Springs, South Carolina, is struggling to survive due to the strategies conservationists first used when attempting to preserve it decades ago.

“Without the foresight to preserve this material, Brisbane’s dinosaur history would still be completely unknown,” said Romilio.

The nearly 300-year-old tree was already nearing its semicentennial on September 8, 1781, when around 2,000 British and 2,500 American troops met at the Battle of Eutaw Springs. Believed to be the American Revolution’s last open-field engagement, the vicious combat was later remembered by colonial Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene as “by far, the hottest action I ever saw, and the most bloody for the numbers engaged.” Records indicate 1,461 troops were killed, wounded, captured, or missing by the end of the conflict—although both sides claimed victory.

Based on the size, the sauropodomorph stood roughly 2.4 to 2.6 feet tall at the hip and weighed just over 300 pounds.

“That tree probably took a few lead balls itself,” arborist Aron Landsaw recently said in an Associated Press profile.

Runnegar is now an honorary professor at the University of Queensland after teaching at University of New England at Armidale and UCLA. While in the United States, he showed the fossil footprint he discovered as a teen in Brisbane to his students.

The original support chains had begun to suffocate the tree itself. Credit: SavATree KRIS MEADE

“At the time, we suspected the marks might be dinosaur tracks, but we couldn’t have imagined their national significance,” added Runnegar. “It was a great example of a special kind of trace fossil because the footprint was made in sediment by a heavy animal. When I saw Dr. Romilio’s ability to reconstruct, analyse and map dinosaur footprints, I decided to reach out to have the fossil formally documented.”

Landsaw and other conservationists are working to preserve the 45-foot-tall tree from succumbing to lingering injuries. About 50 years ago, lightning struck its base and almost split the oak in half. In an attempt to save the tree, workers at the time wrapped its splintered branches in a series of steel chains and cables. Although the strategy successfully granted the oak a reprieve, it grew so much over the last five decades that those metal lashes are cutting into the tree itself. In some areas, the cabling is now completely encased in bark.

The fossil is now at the Queensland Museum where it will be available for ongoing research.

The post Teen discovers Australia’s oldest dinosaur fossil—almost 70 years ago appeared first on Popular Science.

The Green River flows ‘uphill.’ Geologists think they finally know why.

Andrew Paul — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 11:37:46 -0500

The Green River doesn’t make a lot of sense at first glance. The Colorado River’s largest tributary flows through a nearly 2,300-foot-deep canyon inside of northeastern Utah’s Uinta mountain range. But at almost 2.5 miles high, the massive, 50-million-year-old rock formation hypothetically shouldn’t have even yielded to the nearby Green River, which itself began to form less than eight million years ago. After examining a combination of seismic imaging and data modeling scenarios, an international research team now believes they can explain this longtime mystery behind one of North America’s most prominent river systems.

“The chains and cables are actually choking it out. It can’t nutrients up from the soil,” explained Landsaw.

Water typically follows the path of least resistance. If a stream encounters an immovable object such as a large rock, fluid physics dictates that it simply follows both gravity and inertia towards an easier route forward. This isn’t to say that water isn’t powerful in its own ways. Some of the world’s largest canyons were carved by comparatively small currents over millions of years—but even then, their winding trails typically follow a uniform logic.

As part of the nation’s 250th anniversary, South Carolina partnered with the American Battlefield Trust and New York state-based arborists to once again bring the oak tree back from the brink of death. This time, the strategy is more high-tech than metal chains. Using specialized equipment to generate supersonic air, workers have essentially loosened all the heavily compacted earth around the tree’s roots. From there, they added a nutrient-rich kelp concoction into the dirt to further bolster the oak’s health.

This makes the story of how the Green and Colorado Rivers met so perplexing to geologists like Adam Smith at Scotland’s University of Glasgow. According to the coauthor of his team’s study published on February 2nd in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, the region is “enormously significant” to the overall landmass.

The new accessories will divert any future lightning strikes away from the tree. Credit: SavATree KRIS MEADE

“The merging of the Green and Colorado Rivers millions of years ago altered the continental divide of North America,” he explained in a statement. “It created the line that separates the rivers that flow into the Pacific from those that flow into the Atlantic, and created new habitat boundaries for wildlife that influenced their evolution.”

Other additions were tapped directly into the tree’s primary branches. These small, strategically placed lightning rods embedded into the oak are strung together with copper cables that all connect to a primary grounded copper rod located about 10 feet away from the tree. The odd-looking accessories are intended to prevent a repeat of the incident from 50 years ago.

Geologists like Smith have already debated about the river merger for around 150 years. It’s a particularly vexing subject given the area’s tectonic inactivity and lack of major geological events. However, researchers have recently begun analyzing a novel concept known as lithospheric drip. This phenomenon begins when a dense layer of mineral-rich substances forms at the base of the crust. Over time, the layer grows heavy enough to sink into the mantle. When this happens, the descent can also tug on the land above it and even lower a mountain range like Uinta. Eventually, the mineral layer breaks away and continues to sink further into the mantle. The mountains then appear to bounce back in its wake, and in the process forms a bullseye-like region in the landscape.

“If lightning does hit it, it’ll run down the copper cables and dissipate into the ground,” said Landsaw.

Smith and collaborators relied on seismic imaging to locate evidence of lithospheric drip in Utah. This technique works like a CT scan of the Earth to analyze the seismic waves created during earthquakes. While reviewing previously published seismic image studies of the Uinta Mountains, the team spotted a comparatively cold, round space about 125 miles below the Earth’s surface with a diameter measuring 31 to 22 miles across. They now believe this discovery is an ancient, broken fragment of a drip.

The last phase will involve connecting a new set of reinforcement cables into the branches before carefully getting rid of the old chainwork. The replacement cables will all connect in the center so that the tree will remain flexible during wind gusts. No tree lives forever, but with the extra TLC and a little luck, the historic oak could easily bear witness to another 100 years of history.

The post Arborists use supersonic air to save 300-year-old tree that survived American Revolution appeared first on Popular Science.

What makes ‘The Pitt’ so horrifyingly realistic? We asked the show’s makeup and prosthetic pros.

Andrew Paul — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 13:58:31 -0400

Just two seasons into its run, The Pitt has fast become one of the most celebrated television shows of the 21st century, combining the hour-to-hour intensity of 24, the procedural probity of ER, and an IV drip of Scrubs to take the edge off the constant chaos and carnage in the emergency department at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.

“We think that we’ve gathered enough evidence to show that lithospheric drip…is responsible for pulling the land down enough to enable the rivers to link and merge,” Smith said.

The series has won Emmys for Outstanding Drama, Lead Actor, and Supporting Actor and Actress, but The Pitt may be best known for its hyper-realistic portrayals of degloved flesh, dismemberment, electrocution, priapism, impalement, botched cosmetic injection, fecal disimpaction, cutaneous maggot infestation, and childbirth.

Given the likely speed of descent and its current depth, the study’s authors estimate the drip broke away two to five million years ago. This timeline corresponds to previous work suggesting the Green River carved into the mountains and joined with the larger Colorado system. Geological modeling further confirmed their hypothesis. After measuring the Uinta Mountains’ lithographic drip bullseye pattern, they discovered the underlying crust is many miles thinner than it should be given the range’s height. A final calculation of surface rebounding for these drip parameters aligned with their estimate of the river network’s more than 1,312-foot fluctuation in elevation.

Even anatomical pros marvel at the show’s veritable snuff-film visuals.

“The evidence we’ve collected strongly contradicts the idea that the river predated the mountains, or that sediment deposits might have built up enough for the river to overtop the range, or that erosion from the south of the mountains captured the Green River,” said Smith.

“It’s kind of like shadowing in the ER for a day,” says Josh Johnson, Ph.D, director of the Doctor of Anatomical Sciences Program at the University of Idaho, on watching an episode. “Like, oh, my god—this is what you’re doing here? You’re literally cutting this person’s chest open and squeezing their heart for them.”

The study’s authors believe their theory doesn’t only answer a multigenerational mystery—it provides a template for applying lithographic drip analysis to many other lingering tectonic debates around the world.

The post The Green River flows ‘uphill.’ Geologists think they finally know why. appeared first on Popular Science.

Get a powerful TP-Link Deco WiFi 7 mesh router for just $89 during Amazon’s flash clearance sale

Stan Horaczek — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 11:35:18 -0500

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It’s a level of realism not previously seen on screen. Thanks to a unit of in-house and external effects and makeup practitioners who have advanced the craft light years with the help of new techniques and technologies that they are, in many cases, pioneering. We asked The Pitt’s pros as well as the heads of anatomy at two major medical schools to explain advances in the hospital horrors from which we are powerless to look away.

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Right now, you can grab a single TP-Link Deco 7 BE25 Wi-Fi 7 mesh router (1-pack) for $89.99. For that price, you get a modern mesh node that can work as a standalone router in a smaller place or act as an add-on access point to fill in a dead zone. The BE25 is dual-band (2.4GHz + 5GHz) with a fat 240MHz channel option on 5GHz, plus Wi-Fi 7 features like Multi-Link Operation (MLO). That’s going to result in a noticeable difference in performance if you regularly have multiple devices gobbling down data at the same time.

How the prosthetic sausage is made

From a wired standpoint, you get two 2.5GbE ports on this unit. That matters if you have multi-gig internet now (or might later), and if you ever decide to run wired backhaul between mesh nodes, i.e., letting Ethernet do the heavy lifting so your Wi-Fi bandwidth is reserved for actual devices instead of node-to-node relays. Bonus: if you’re already in the Deco ecosystem, dropping this into the mix is usually the cleanest path to improved coverage without reinventing your entire network.

The order of operations on The Pitt is unlike almost any other production, according to head of makeup Myriam Arougheti, who says patients are often cast before a story is even plotted.

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1. The cases

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It all starts with writer and executive producer Dr. Joe Sachs, who sends Arougheti all of the medical interventions that will appear in an episode so she can get them modeled.

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“Depending on the procedure, it can vary between two and nine weeks to build,” Arougheti says. “This is why it’s so important for Dr. Joe to give me in advance as much as possible, because they have to cast these actors ASAP to get their body lifecast so we can start building.”

It’s also the setup that makes features like seamless roaming actually matter: one network name, and your phone/laptop can hop to the strongest node without you playing “toggle Wi-Fi off/on” like it’s 2012. And if you can wire any of the nodes with Ethernet, you can make the whole mesh feel dramatically more consistent under load.

2. Casting (actor and body)

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A lifecast is a three-dimensional mold of an actor’s body from which the effects houses create scrupulous, lifelike arms, legs, chests… collapsible faces—Dr. Joe hasn’t been able to stump ’em yet. Once the actor playing the patient is chosen, they’re immediately sent in for cloning.

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3. Prosthetic prognosis

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Meanwhile, Arougheti and her team strategize how the procedures will be recreated. Once they think they have a plan for portraying an American flag protruding from a thorax, a lung being hand-rotated in an open chest cavity, or something as simple as a severed trachea getting mended, they place their orders with one of several special effects houses.

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4. Sculpting

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Taking the scalpel from here, the craftsfolk at studios like LA’s Autonomous F/X hammer out the methods and materials that will make the most convincing organs, appendages, and anatomical functions.

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A post shared by Autonomous F/X (@autonomousfx2005)

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“It’s a whole new trick you have to figure out that you’re like, ‘What we did last time isn’t going to work this time,’” says Autonomous F/X CEO Jason Collins, who has worked previously on medical dramas like House, M.D., Resident, and Grey’s Anatomy. “So we have to reinvent the wheel each time.”

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5. Follow-up

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Even with a vigorous ongoing back-and-forth between the teams, it would be expecting a lot to get the wheel right on the first try. So, once the builds are complete, Arougheti presents them to Dr. Joe for final approval in the rare case that something’s amiss.

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“We’re in prep and I misunderstood one little element that the doctor told me,” Arougheti says of one such review. “And the way the sculpture was built, he was like, ‘Yeah, if the bone is like that, the patient’s dead,’ That’s why there’s constant communication between the effects houses, myself, and Dr. Joe.”

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Dr. Joe Sachs on the importance of prosthetic bodies on TV.

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The 5 active ingredients that make The Pitt so (too?!) realistic

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For decades, wound simulation—or moulage—relied on heavy layers of spirit gum, cotton, collodion, and rigid modeling waxes. Much later came foam latex, but it all melted easily under hot studio lights and was shot for standard definition TVs that wouldn’t meet “standard” today.

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But what modern technology disrupts, modern technology can un-rupt, so when high-definition imaging exposed the limitations of pre-millennial moulage, new practices and materials—some developed for entertainment, others for education—emerged to close the realism gap.

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“We look at things more like magic tricks than as technological advances,” Collins says. “You’ve got your science and you’ve got your art [that] you have to combine together to fool the eye. Once we lose the art to the technology, I don’t know if we’re storytelling anymore.”

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Silicone’s supremacy

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It wasn’t that long ago that moulage meant raiding the produce aisle, at least academically.

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“When I was a kid, we learned in diabetes class how to give insulin injections by doing it into the skin of an orange, because that approximately was the feeling of human skin,” says James Lipshaw, assistant director, instructional design and media center for medical simulation at Harvard Medical School. “That was simulation in 1996.”

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Today, silicone lies, plies, stretches, and jiggles like real flesh thanks to breakthroughs in just the last few years:

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In the late aughts, chemists began mixing in plasticizers, or “deadeners,” oily liquids that weaken silicone’s elasticity. This made it less rubbery and bouncy, allowing for more accurate emulation of loose skin.

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Around a decade ago, fabricators began layering that deadened silicone on materials like liquidized PVC and paraffin to match composite human structures of skin over fat over muscle. Everything on the bone now looked and behaved more true to life.

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In just the last couple of years, researchers refined manufacturing techniques that engrave microscopic lines onto silicone to mimic collagen geometry, enhancing the texture and directional stretching of sim skin.

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The result is “flesh” that gapes, lacerates, stitches, and amputates just like the real thing.

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Fake blood mats are more realistic and less messy than regular fake blood.

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3D scanning & printing

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Historically, artists sculpted prosthetics entirely by hand using oil-based clay. It was time consuming, one-of-one, and while convincing for its time, imprecise.

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3D scanning and digital sculpting software in the last decade has revolutionized this workflow, allowing artists to accurately reproduce anatomy, tweak with impunity, and print multiple molds from digital files all in a fraction of the time.

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“Looking at how things have changed since the days of House M.D., where all of those things were a guess on our part,” Collins posits, “let’s say it’s a gasket in a heart. Now we can 3D-print that, know that it’s going to fit exactly into our heart, and it’s 99.9% accurate to what would be produced in the real world… That technology is within the last five years.”

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The lifecast they take of each “patient” immediately after they’re chosen for the role is the same process writ human. They’ll scan the actor, print an anatomical clone, and then sculpt on that to create custom appliances like a hematoma or heart nail.

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Drone technology

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Drones aren’t just for imperiling commercial aircraft anymore. Adopting technology that powered the boom in whirring quadcopters the last decade, special effects pros have developed tiny, unobtrusive animatronics to mimic complex phenomena like aliens, dinosaurs, and… childbirth.

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“We can now pack a lot into one or two remote controls and actually be pushing the baby out via mechanics behind the monitor or three doors down,” Collins says. “And I don’t believe the drone technology really got going until about 10 years ago. It used to be big controls that people would be flying remote control helicopters or airplanes, now it’s all condensed down essentially to the size of an iPhone.”

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Don’t tell Harvard’s Lipshaw.

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“Back in the old days when we ran a clinical labor and delivery course, I used to be the person who had to lube up and then reload our rocket spring–propelled baby that would come out of the delivery model,” he recalls. “You have to grease it back up, put it back in its blood sac, and get it back inside of the mannequin.”

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The relatively recent crossover between aerospace robotics (UAVs) and animatronics allows SFX operators to maintain a lag-free wireless connection without interrupting the actors or cluttering the set with spring-loaded babies.

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A house of MDs

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The Pitt’s secret sauce is a cadre of clinicians versed in trauma care who approve every procedure, implement, and anatomical outcome before cameras roll.

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“They’re assigned a certain amount of episodes, so anytime we do anything—any cut, any bruise, any stitching—they are there at all times,” Arougheti says. They’re unyielding, but rather than feeling burdened by that exactitude, the crew feel a collective commitment to authenticity.

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“[The consultants] really are the mothers and fathers of that authenticity,” Collins says. “With The Pitt, it’s not like they’re going to slather a bunch of blood on it and say, ‘Bob’s your uncle.’ It’s going to be very, very down to a science.”

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Time & money

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Warner Bros. Discovery shareholder value be damned, Arougheti and her team get what they need when they need it from their HBO Max benefactors. That includes the budget and sometimes the months necessary to perfect a sculpt or build.

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The post Get a powerful TP-Link Deco WiFi 7 mesh router for just $89 during Amazon’s flash clearance sale appeared first on Popular Science.

Locust swarms may meet their match in protein-enriched crops

Jordan Burchette — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 10:45:00 -0500

Swarms of locusts devouring a farmer’s livelihood might sound apocalyptic, but major locust infestations are a regular problem in agricultural communities around the world. These locust swarms—dense, droning packs of certain grasshopper species—can cover hundreds of square miles, and the insects consume vast amounts of vegetation and threaten global agriculture. In the western United States, a hotspot for grasshopper and cricket outbreaks, rangelands critical for livestock grazing suffer an estimated $1.2 billion in annual losses.

“They really give us what we need as far as time and budget. Things are not rushed,” says Arougheti, who is Emmy-nominated for the second year in a row, and previously won for HBO’s Westworld. “It all starts in the sculpture and in the amount of detail—skin lines, pores, all that happens in the sculpture. And so when you have the time to do that, you can really create something magical.”

In a study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports, scientists with Gaston Berger University in Senegal, the Global Locust Initiative at Arizona State University (ASU), and real farmers experiencing repeated outbreaks of Senegalese grasshoppers (Oedaleus senegalensis), identified a surprisingly simple strategy. Enriching soil with nitrogen, the main building block in protein, could help control the pests using their diets.

The post What makes ‘The Pitt’ so horrifyingly realistic? We asked the show’s makeup and prosthetic pros. appeared first on Popular Science.

Physicist proves famous ‘Star Trek’ combat strategy works

Andrew Paul — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 11:43:05 -0400

The most impressive science fiction stories emphasize “science” over spectacle. The Star Trek franchise has featured plenty of examples since the original series premiered 60 years ago this month, but one of its most famous sci-fi moments may prove even more fascinating than fans realized. At Brazil’s Federal University of ABC, physicist Níckolas de Aguiar Alves determined that an early episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation demonstrates an aspect to the theory of relativity even better than its creators likely anticipated.

Hacking the locust diet

Season One’s ninth episode, “The Battle,” introduces a bit of backstory to Jean-Luc Picard’s illustrious career in the Federation. Years before he became captain of the USS Enterprise, Picard oversaw a ship called the Stargazer when it came under fire from an unknown assailant. Picard needed to navigate closer to the mystery attacker before responding, but the Enterprise’s shields were down.

In parts of the Horn of Africa, the Arabian peninsula, and across southwest Asia, desert locusts have plagued farmers in numbers not seen in decades. In response, communities have treated farmland with chemical insecticides and biopesticides. The 2019-2021 locust plague in this region cost an estimated $300 million to control. Scientists are also studying Central American locust swarms in Mexico that could spread into U.S. borders, where locust swarms have largely disappeared since the early 1900s. And as climate change creates warmer and wetter conditions, some researchers warn that certain locust species may expand their range.

In Senegal, the potential new solution lies in how the Senegalese grasshopper fuels its swarming behavior. Protein is at the bottom of the locust food pyramid, and incorporating it could help stem swarming. In field tests, crop plots treated with nitrogen-based fertilizer yielded high-protein, low-carb crops. These are a far less tasty meal for the species, since it relies on a high-carb diet to create fat stores that power population growth and long-distance migration.

An ASU and international research team partnered with 100 farmers from two villages in Senegal for the study. Farmers grew two plots of millet—one treated with nitrogen fertilizer and one untreated. Here, a Senegalese farmer works in the field during the experiment. Image: courtesy Arianne Cease.

The captain then quickly improvised what later became known as the “Picard Maneuver.” He ordered his crew to rush their foe at warp speed (faster than the speed of light) then quickly halt and begin firing. Relativistic physics dictated that if Stargazer traveled faster than visible light, it would technically generate two images of the ship from their attacker’s point of view—one Stargazer at the location just prior to warp speed, then a Stargazer where it halted. The operation was risky, but it gave Picard and his crew a 50/50 chance that the enemy would continue firing on an afterimage of Stargazer.

Over several months, in central Senegal, the ASU and Gaston Berger team worked with 100 farmers from two village areas. Each farmer grew a grain called millet in two plots: one treated with commercial nitrogen fertilizer-treated plot and one untreated plot. The scientists then surveyed the field for pest abundance and damage three times throughout the growing season. They found that the fertilizer treatment significantly decreased pest abundance and crop damage, while increasing millet yield.

Traveling faster than lightspeed is widely considered impossible, but the underlying principles of Picard’s Maneuver don’t only hold up to expert scrutiny—its depiction in Star Trek is hypothetically less accurate than it should be. According to de Aguiar Alves, Picard’s odds technically would be even higher in such a scenario. But while a fan of the series, the physicist wasn’t intentionally trying to stress test the episode’s logic. Instead, de Aguiar Alves was working on an actual particle physics problem that involved a slower light speed. At one point, he began sketching out the scenario to double check his work.

The researchers are among the first to demonstrate this type of outbreak management strategy with the Senegalese grasshopper, which is just one type of grasshopper that has locust swarming tendencies. While all locusts are grasshoppers, not all grasshoppers are locusts—and only a handful among thousands of grasshopper species are considered true locusts.

“And after I drew one or two diagrams, I started noticing, ‘Hey, I think I’ve thought about something like this before,’” de Aguiar Alves said in a recent interview with Ars Technica.

Arianne Cease, the director of ASU’s Global Initiative, tells Popular Science that she hopes this research will help farmers around the world manage grasshopper and locust outbreaks originating in agricultural fields, using soil-based strategies.

In actuality, Picard’s Maneuver wouldn’t result in two Stargazer ships; it would make three of them. This is because Picard’s crew didn’t travel at a constant speed during the gambit–they first sped up, then stopped closer to their opponent. That means Stargazer technically accelerated not once, but twice. This makes all the difference.

“Locust outbreaks are a highly complex, highly impactful global challenge,” Cease says. “When these upsurges happen, they dramatically affect people’s livelihoods. It’s important for us to recognize how dangerous locust outbreaks can be for food security and economic security. And we need to have a diverse set of strategies to sustainably manage them.”

The physicist doesn’t hold it against the episode’s writers. If anything, the overall conceit is an excellent scenario to ponder while studying theoretical physics.

Desert locusts covering the tree branches in Meru, Kenya on February 9, 2021. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation works with a variety of Kenyan security, logistics and charter companies who have expanded their operations to closely track swarms of locusts in East Africa, before dispatching teams to targeted areas to spray the insects with pesticides to prevent damage to crops and grazing areas. Image: Photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images.

“The main thing they got perfectly, and I think it is a great illustration,” he said.

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Katmai bear cubs tumble over waterfall

Popular Science Team — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 10:59:23 -0400

A brown bear cub learns a lot in its first year of life—how to fish, how to steer clear of trouble. Two curious cubs recently learned a valuable (and wet) lesson about the strength of currents.

A scalable solution?

At Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve, home to Fat Bear Week, Bear #224 took her cubs on a journey near Brooks Falls. Early in summer, Brooks Falls is a hot spot for salmon munching by the park’s resident brown bears. By September, most bears move to the lower Brooks River to eat the dead and dying salmon near the river’s mouth.

According to biologists, locusts swarm under specific, often complex environmental conditions, such as above-average rainfall that creates moist soil ideal for breeding, along with periods of drought that brings resource scarcity and forces density. Close quarters and suitable breeding conditions among locusts can activate sudden and rapid breeding and collective behavior, leading to outbreaks.

Daniel Gebregiorgis, a climate scientist with the Department of Geosciences at Georgia State University, says that while the nitrogen fertilizer-based method for locust management is a promising solution, scaling presents a possible challenge because outbreaks often occur in remote areas. Many locust management strategies also face hurdles with widespread application in places with limited connectivity.

As Bear #224 navigated the upper part of the falls with her two spring cubs, the young bears toddled up a rock and each hopped off. The strength of the current pulled the bears over the waterfall, despite their best efforts to paddle upstream. No other bears were present at the falls during the incident and mama bear eventually made her way down to join her cubs and move down river to calmer waters.

A Senegalese farmer and study participant inspects ripening millet in a field. Image: Photo courtesy Marion Le Gall.

Brown bears are strong swimmers, moving up to 5mph in the water, according to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. They use all four legs to paddle and their body fat helps provide buoyancy. They also shake like dogs to remove excess water after a swim.

Gebregiorgis emphasizes that this new research is particularly significant since human-caused climate change is driving an uptick in locust outbreaks. Notably, he says an increase in cyclonic activity that brought heavy rain across primary desert breeding areas in the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa fueled massive locust plagues in the region in 2020.

Fat Bear Week kicks off September 22. Votes may be cast from noon to 9 p.m. EDT (9 a.m. to 6 p.m. PDT and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ADT) from September 22 and 29 at fatbearweek.org.

“Because of global warming, many regions are receiving above-average rainfall, and coupled with increasing temperature and soil moisture, conditions that sustain locust breeding are increasingly being met,” Gebregiorgis tells Popular Science. “With increasing cyclonic activity as well, this fundamental shift in climate acts as the most important trigger for locusts. I would call locust outbreaks one of clearest manifestations of the climate crisis today.”

Human behavior such as overgrazing and overfarming can also create conditions that elicit swarming, according to Cease. Livestock overgrazing and intensive cropping can degrade land and cause soil erosion, creating nitrogen-poor soil that spawns carb-heavy plants which support locust growth and help sustain swarms traveling long distances.

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What happens when driverless cars break the law?

Nidhi Sharma — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 09:48:00 -0400

Driverless cars, once a distant techno-optimist’s dream, are making their way into more cities, racking up miles and attracting a loyal fan base. They’re also increasingly racking up tickets and driving in ways that would land a human driver in hot water.

‘Just insects doing their thing’

During July Fourth celebrations this year, several Waymo autonomous robotaxis operating near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge reportedly hit technical trouble that led to at least one vehicle driving over an exploding firework with two passengers inside. The riders (who luckily escaped harm) said they smelled smoke coming out of the vehicle and promptly bolted at the next intersection.

As part of their next steps, researchers at Gaston Berger University in Senegal, led by locust biologist Mamor Touré, are using compost fertilizer rather than more costly commercial fertilizer, to achieve the same effects in a more accessible and sustainable way. Cease says that their work with the Senegalese researchers supports farmers as active participants in locust management. It also may fight the perception that locust swarms are random, if not malignant, forces of nature or even divine will.

“There’s this narrative, largely driven by our religious histories, that locusts are a plague and they arrive when you do bad things,” Cease says. “But, in fact, they’re just insects doing their thing – and there are many aspects of how we manage our landscapes or how we are broadly affecting climate that impact the probability that these locusts will form swarms.”

The post Locust swarms may meet their match in protein-enriched crops appeared first on Popular Science.

This wide-eyed baby primate is cute, cuddly—and venomous

Margherita Bassi — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 09:00:00 -0500

As 2025 drew to a close, the Bronx Zoo in New York welcomed one of the most adorable animals you could imagine into the world: a pygmy slow loris (Nycticebus pygmaeus).

A couple of months earlier, a California driver claimed a pair of Waymos cut her off and blocked her from moving forward for nearly 50 minutes, causing a traffic pile-up and frantic 911 call. Halfway across the country, as many as five Waymos in Austin blocked police and emergency crews responding to an active shooting that left four people dead and a dozen injured.

In the picture shared by the zoo, the tiny endangered primate baby stares out with its giant dark eyes so intensely you’d think it was born with its eyes open. Indeed, that’s exactly how slow lorises come out—as well as completely covered in fur. Mothers hold infants on their stomachs, occasionally placing them on a branch as they forage—and, who are we kidding, likely take a break.

The baby pygmy slow loris was born in December 2025. Image: Bronx Zoo / WCS.

The image seems to have captured exactly that moment, with the young pygmy slow loris clinging to its branch the same way a preteen anxiously clings to a grocery cart in line for the cash register while mom sprints back to aisle three for a forgotten item.

“The question is not if this is going to turn into a deadly situation for someone, but when,” Austin City Council member Paige Ellis said at a meeting following that incident.

Not to worry, though. Time will make the furry primate more self-reliant and energetic and it will wean completely at about six-months-old. As adults, slow lorises weigh around one pound. As for whether it’s male or female, we don’t know yet—that will be revealed during its first check up with the vet. It also hasn’t been named yet.

Human drivers in any of these situations would likely face a confrontation with police and the real possibility of a citation—or worse. But that calculus changes when there’s no one behind the wheel. Across the country, cities and states are still figuring out how to sanction a driverless vehicle that breaks the law, even as the well-financed companies operating them rack up thousands of dollars in parking tickets with seemingly few consequences.

Pygmy slow loris’ fully wean by about six-month-old. Image: Bronx Zoo / WCS.

To call the situation a work in progress is an understatement. Many localities that allow these vehicles on public roads still lack clear legal mechanisms for issuing moving violations. Where laws do exist, enforcement remains light-handed. Experts in autonomous vehicle (AV) policy tell Popular Science that this seemingly basic question, “what happens when a driverless car breaks the law?”, is still surprisingly complicated to answer.

“As it acclimates to its environment, the newborn will remain with its mother to promote healthy growth and maternal bonding,” Keith Lovett, Director of Animal Programs at the Bronx Zoo, tells Popular Science. He adds that slow lorises are “the only known venomous primate” and “produce a toxic secretion from their brachial gland that becomes venomous when mixed with their saliva.”

“In principle, AVs are licensed drivers and someone owns and operates them,” University of Southern California Gould School of Law professor Gregory Keating tells Popular Science. “They should be treated like any other licensed driver.”

The pygmy slow loris is native to Southeast Asia and its lifespan is between one and two decades. It is listed as Endangered, according to a 2021 assessment by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Its population suffers from human-caused habitat loss and hunting for food, the pet trade, and “medicinal” reasons. The baby was presumably born within the context of the Pygmy Slow Loris Species Survival Plan. The breeding program among zoos (in which the Bronx Zoo is involved) preserves genetic diversity within the pygmy slow loris populations.

Despite spending years studying this very issue, Keating says the path forward remains hazy.

The pygmy slow loris is the only venomous primate species. Image: Bronx Zoo / WCS.

“In practice, I don’t know what’s going on,” he adds.

In addition to being venomous, it is also a nocturnal primate. At the Bronx Zoo, visitors have the opportunity to see nocturnal animals in action without having to spend the night. The pygmy slow loris baby is the first primate birthed at their World of Darkness exhibit, a space that simulates nighttime darkness during the day and daytime brightness at night.

Driverless cars are racking up parking tickets

“Bronx Zoo animal care staff will continue to closely monitor and attend to the growing baby in the zoo’s new World of Darkness exhibit, with its first veterinary exam to take place in the next few months,” Lovett concludes.

The post This wide-eyed baby primate is cute, cuddly—and venomous appeared first on Popular Science.

Caterpillars use tiny hairs to hear

Margherita Bassi — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 12:08:00 -0500

Have you ever walked into a room full of caterpillars? While the answer for most people is probably no, those of us who have may have noticed the insects reacting to the sound of your voice. That’s what happened to Carol Miles, a biologist at Binghamton University in New York.

Cars breaking laws, whether driven by humans or algorithms, fall broadly into two categories: traffic violations and moving violations. Anyone who’s gotten a parking ticket is familiar with the former, and increasingly, so are driverless cars. In 2024, Waymo, by far the most common robotaxi operating today, accrued over 589 parking tickets in San Francisco and $65,065 in fines, according to The Washington Post. The Post reported another 75 tickets further south in Los Angeles. In Austin, where the company more recently started commercial operations, Waymo has reportedly received 20 parking-related citations as of June 23. Zoox, another robotaxi firm backed by Amazon, also received a citation for parking in a tow-away zone.

“Every time I went ‘boo’ at them, they would jump,” she explained in a statement. “And so I just sort of filed it away in the back of my head for many years. Finally, I said, ‘Let’s find out if they can hear and what they can hear and why.’”

Miles and the team brought tobacco hornworm caterpillars (Manduca sexta) into a room that is among the world’s most silent—the university’s anechoic chamber. Inside of this silent room, the team could precisely control the sound environment, as they worked to pinpoint what sounds trigger the bugs.

Cops issuing those tickets basically approach it the same way as they would a car with a human driver. Matthew Raifman, autonomous vehicle and traffic lead at UC Berkeley’s SafeTREC, tells Popular Science that in these cases, it’s the vehicle, not any individual behind the wheel, that’s on the hook–the same as it would be for a human-driven car. Parking tickets already work this way: If you borrow a friend’s car and get a ticket, it’s the car’s registered owner who pays, not the friend who parked it. Since an AV’s registered owner is the company that operates it, that same logic extends easily to driverless cars. A traffic cop who comes across an empty, illegally parked driverless car can simply print a ticket and place it on the windshield. At the end of the day, perhaps after picking up more passengers, the AV returns to a depot where a human employee collects the ticket and sends it up the chain for payment.

How cops are supposed to arrest a car with no driver

Ticketing driverless cars for more serious moving violations gets more complicated. Most municipalities still don’t have clear mechanisms for citing these vehicles when they block traffic, make illegal U-turns, or commit other mistakes that would normally lead to tense conversations with police. The core issue is confusion over who is held responsible when no human is actually making the mistake.

The team understood that caterpillars had reactions, but were not sure if it was to airborne sounds or the base’s sound vibrations they can feel with their feet. Because caterpillars often hang out on plant stems, the team had speculated that perhaps they picked up on sounds because of the plant’s vibration.

If a police officer observes an AV committing a moving violation, they generally flash their lights to signal the vehicle to pull over. Robotaxis are programmed to use their onboard sensors to detect police flashers, though some vehicles have struggled to do so in the past. If the AV pulls over, the officer must determine who the rogue car belongs to. Today, with only a handful of robotaxi firms operating, that detective work is pretty simple. But it could get much trickier in the near future as more AV companies enter the market, or if individuals begin owning and operating their own autonomous vehicles.

In the anechoic chamber, researchers can deliver sound and vibration independently of each other and understand the kind of response they solicit. They studied the caterpillars’ response to airborne sounds and surface vibrations at high- (2000 hertz) and low-frequency (150 hertz) sounds.

“Just because robotaxis are dominant right now doesn’t mean that robo taxis will dominate in the future,” University of South Carolina law professor and AV policy expert Bryant Walker Smith tells Popular Science. “We could have one company that develops the automated driving system, another company that puts it on a vehicle, another company that buys the vehicles.”

The researchers found that caterpillars perceive both, though they had a 10- to 100-fold greater reaction to airborne sound compared to the surface vibrations that they sensed through their feet.

A clear example of how this confusion can play out occurred late last year in Northern California. San Bruno police, conducting a DUI operation, say they spotted a driverless Waymo make an illegal U-turn in front of them. Officers pulled the wayward Waymo over and contacted a human representative through the car’s speakers to report a “glitch.” But because there was nobody behind the wheel, no ticket or citation was issued the way it would have been if a human driver were involved.

Graduate students Aishwarya Sriram and Sara Aghazadeh test caterpillars for their ability to detect sound under the guidance of Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering Ronald Miles and Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Carol Miles at the anechoic chamber in the Engineering and Science Building at the Innovative Technologies Complex. Image: Greg Schuter.

“Since there was no human driver, a ticket couldn’t be issued (our citation books don’t have a box for ‘robot’),” a San Bruno Police Department Facebook post explained following the incident reads.

The next step was figuring out how they were hearing the sounds, and to do that, the team removed some of their hairs. While that might seem like an odd strategy, many insects perceive sound through hairs that detect how it moves the air. In fact, the team’s caterpillars were less sensitive to sounds after they lost hair on their abdomen and thorax. Miles and her colleagues’ theory is that the tobacco hornworm’s hearing might be evolutionarily tuned to detect the wing beats of predatory wasps.

“That’s right… no driver, no hands, no clue.”

Back in the world of human hearing, their research could play a role in microphone technology.

The findings were presented at a joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Acoustical Society of Japan in December 2025.

“There’s an enormous amount of effort and expense on technologies for detecting sound, and there are all kinds of microphones made in this world. We need to learn better ways to create them,” added Ronald Miles, a co-author of the study and a Binghamton University mechanical engineer. “And the way it’s always been done is to look at what animals do and learn how animals detect sound.”

The post Caterpillars use tiny hairs to hear appeared first on Popular Science.

Groundhogs don’t poop during hibernation and 6 other random facts

Mack DeGeurin — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 10:00:00 -0500

Despite advances in meteorological technology, we still keep a close eye on a rodent’s burrow every February 2 for a weather forecast. While groundhogs—also called woodchucks—have been associated with the end of winter and beginning of spring for centuries, there’s more to know about our rodent friends than their amateur Al Roker’ing.

“I’ve been in a Waymo but, being a mere passenger, I’ve never poked around in the glove compartment to see if they carry their ‘papers’ around approximately the way that human beings do,” Keating says.

No pee or poop

Worries about AVs breaking the law aren’t hypothetical. A recent CNN analysis of federal government records and social media footage found hundreds of driverless cars running red lights, driving into oncoming traffic, ignoring emergency road closures, and executing other potentially dangerous maneuvers. Around that same time, Waymo temporarily pulled its vehicles from highways following reports from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of at least 13 instances where they drove into active construction zones. The company has since started resuming highway routes.

Unlike bears, groundhogs are true hibernators. During hibernation, they don’t eat and rely on the fat stores they have built up and go into a deep and full sleep during the winter.

Waymo and independent supporters of AV rollouts generally have repeatedly claimed that, even when taking these issues into account, autonomous systems get into fewer crashes and drive safer than humans. Recent research lends credence to that argument in certain cases, but AVs are still limited in where and how they can operate.

“They don’t wake up and walk around, go to the bathroom or anything like that,” Karen McDonald, STEM program coordinator at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland tells Popular Science. “The waste is actually being recycled in their body.”

“No technology is perfect, but while human drivers can only learn from their individual experiences, Waymo takes community feedback and applies those safety learnings to our entire fleet,” a Waymo spokesperson told CNN in June.

When they are awake in the spring, summer, and fall, groundhogs use restroom chambers in their burrows to limit odors and fecal contamination in their main chambers. They also reduce their metabolism, heart rate, and breathing rate. As a result, the little waste they create in their blood is recycled chemically into their body.

A new type of ‘ticket’ for autonomous vehicles

During the winter, their body temperature also can drop from around 100 degrees Fahrenheit to around 40°F. Their heart rate slows from about 80 beats per minute to as low as four to five and about 16 breaths per minute. They also lose up to half their body weight.

Regulators hope some creative new legislation can help clear up the confusion. California enacted a law allowing police to issue a “notice of noncompliance” to AVs. The whole point of these notices, and why they mark an important step forward, is to create an official record for when an AV makes a mistake, Raifman notes. Those notices are then updated in the California DMV’s system within 72 hours. Prior to this, police didn’t have a clear way to document when an AV violated the law, creating a gap that contributed to uncertainty about how well the technology works in the real world.

Move over, meerkats

Still, actually punishing human drivers and AVs isn’t a one-to-one comparison. When humans make mistakes, they receive points on their driver’s license. Rack up enough points, and a driver risks losing their license altogether. As Raifman points out, notices of noncompliance attempt to apply a similar deterrent for AV companies. The notices are recorded, added up, and factored into whether state regulators continue granting those companies permits to operate autonomously. Too many violations, especially those causing major traffic issues or injuries, could lead to a company’s permit being revoked. But unlike humans, AV makers don’t have to worry about individual monetary fines for these moving violations.

In addition to a chamber for storing waste, a groundhog burrow system may include separate areas for sleeping, nesting, and raising young. It may also have multiple entrances for ventilation and rapid escape should a predator arrive. However, something is missing.

An autonomous Waymo car drives into the blocked off Potrero Annex construction site while a construction worker watches. Image: Getty Images Thomas Hunter II/Alamy Live News

“Their burrows do not have the food storage or a kitchen, because they are the pantry. They’re the ones storing the food,” McDonald explains.

“It’s an indirect mechanism to enforcement, but it is not enforcement through money and points,” Walker Smith said.

Groundhog burrows have the same configuration no matter the season and they are also considered important ecosystem engineers.

Raifman compares this enforcement method to how regulators manage pollution from power plants. Local governments often grant permits allowing a facility to emit certain pollutants, but only up to a specified amount. If a plant exceeds that or otherwise violates its permit, regulators can issue a notice of violation, which, depending on its severity, can lead to a permit suspension or even cause operation to shut down.

“Their burrows can end up providing habitat for multiple apartment dwellers. You may find a box turtle or a rabbit family or other animals living there,” says McDonald. “It creates these habitats but also changes the soil chemistry because they’re digging and they’re mixing up the soil.”

That’s a different process than the one facing an individual resident who pollutes their own backyard. In that case, they’d likely just receive a citation. In both the power plant case and now with AVs, enforcement relies on an ongoing back-and-forth between corporations and regulators, rather than a single punishment to an individual.

Groundhogs have the nickname “whistlepig” because when alarmed, they use a high-pitched whistle to warn the colony. Image: Michael Oberman/USFWS.

That may make sense on paper, but it’s also frustrating for everyday drivers, many of whom are just now seeing AVs spring up in their towns and on their roads without their input. The frustration shows up in comment sections and forums, with some describing what can seem like two separate rules or laws–one for humans and another for robots and their owners.

The neighborhood watch

“They pay the fine and just keep doing what they are doing,” one Reddit post on the topic reads. “This is the corporate reality we live in, where corporations are supposedly people, but have none of the responsibilities or need to deal with things like following the law that the rest of us do.”

Groundhogs can build tunnels that are 20 to 45 feet-long thanks to their strong forelimbs and curved claws. When they make burrow tunnels, they will also create plenty of exits to escape potential predators–and warn others.

Raifman believes enforcement and accountability for driverless cars are broadly improving, but he also empathizes with annoyed drivers who feel the status quo is unfair. One major issue contributing to that frustration, he notes, is that the “pain” felt by a human driver and an AV company violating the same law isn’t equal. A robotaxi company accruing hundreds of thousands of dollars in parking tickets can simply shrug it off as a cost of doing business. For a human driver living on a budget, however, just a few tickets can severely impact their finances.

“They actually are sort of like an alarm system for the forest, because they keep watch for predators,” McDonald explains. “If groundhogs call other animals, they’ll know that the danger is nearby and will watch for predators too.”

“I think that’s where there’s an asymmetric relationship compared to humans, and I think that’s a source of frustration,” Raifman says.

Solitary creatures

Autonomous vehicles are a physical manifestation of growing AI anxiety

Even though they make for pretty good neighbors, groundhogs lead fairly solitary lives. They live alone for most of the year and only come together briefly during the spring breeding season.

That pent-up frustration stems, in part, from a familiar pattern in tech: innovations move fast, maybe breaking some things along the way, and regulators end up playing catch-up. Right now, cities with the most exposure to driverless cars (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin) have just begun to sort out what fair and consistent enforcement looks like, even as the technology keeps expanding well ahead of it.

“They definitely like it alone, except when they have their babies. The females have the young, they rear them and they kick them out,” McDonald says.

In just the last year, Waymo has nearly quintupled its fleet, from around 700 vehicles to nearly 4,000, according to The New York Times. Zoox and Tesla are both preparing significant robotaxi launches in multiple cities, and changes to federal rules mean many of these vehicles won’t even have visible steering wheels or pedals. Driverless 18-wheelers are already barreling across Texas highways, and the prospect of individual car owners swapping on true hand-off, eyes-off driving features in their own vehicles gets closer every day.

Groundhogs are nature’s alarm clock, not weather forecaster

And even if the AV supporters are right that the technology is ultimately safer than humans, sheer scale means more and more people will end up watching these vehicles behave badly. In a climate where public trust in automation and AI broadly is souring, driverless carmakers may have more incentive than ever to keep their cars from running afoul of the law, not just to satisfy regulators, but because the cars themselves have become a material stand-in for how people feel about AI writ large.

In the United States, the legend goes that various groundhogs can predict if spring will arrive early or if there will be six more weeks of winter weather. While there is no evidence that groundhogs can forecast the weather, they can use sunlight to tell when it is time to wake up closer to spring.

“I think people are going to put a lot of their hopes and fears about AI generally disproportionately on automated vehicles because they’re so visceral and physical and real and obvious,” Walker Smith said.

They rely on the photoperiod, or the number of consecutive hours of light in a 24-hour period, as an environmental cue. As the hours of sunlight increase towards the spring, it signals the end of winter.

The post What happens when driverless cars break the law? appeared first on Popular Science.

Rats make an ultrasonic sound when they eat chocolate

Margherita Bassi — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 08:50:00 -0400

There’s nothing better than sinking your teeth into a sweet, creamy chocolate bar. Rats think so, too—and they may announce their chocolate-infused joy to the world at ultrasonic frequencies.

“They rely on the photoperiod more than other animals to know when to wake up. And because they are so reliant, they’re like a clock,” says McDonald. “We know they’re going to emerge at that photoperiod when spring is coming.”

Researchers have previously linked ultrasonic rat vocalizations with different emotional and motivational states in the animals, such as in reaction to rewarding stimuli. For example, the rodents vocalize in this way when eating something sweet.

There is no correlation between the groundhog seeing a shadow and the arrival of spring.. Image: USFWS.

Now, a team of researchers in Japan have discovered that rats emit a particular ultrasonic vocalization while eating chocolate. Their findings are detailed in a study recently published in the journal eNeuro.

Ultimate survivors

To come to this conclusion, the researchers compared ultrasonic vocalizations that rats emitted when they had access to chocolate, with those they made when they didn’t have access to the candy. The team also compared them with a chocolate-free control group of rats. Researchers then used AI to analyze the vocalizations’ acoustic features, identifying a distinct ultrasonic vocalization—officially 40 kHz inverted-U—strongly associated with chocolate snacking.

Groundhogs are not considered endangered or threatened, partly because they have an incredibly varied diet.

“When rats eat something delicious such as chocolate, they emit a distinct ultrasonic call that humans cannot hear,” Koshi Murata, a study co-author and researcher at the University of Fukui, said in a statement. “This call drops sharply when the brain’s opioid ‘pleasure’ system is blocked. This suggests that rats may be vocally expressing the enjoyment of eating, offering a new window into whether animals experience pleasure as we do.”

“They eat a lot of different types of plants,” says McDonald. “Instead of specializing, they have this broad diet that allows them to live in disturbed areas where humans are, where there’s a variety of plants. They eat different types of grasses, they might eat some clover. They like wild flowers because they’re tasty and pretty. They’ll eat leaves from plants. They might even, if there’s not a ton of food out, they might chew on some bark.”

To see if this distinct vocalization was related to the tastiness of food or just eating in general, Murata and colleagues compared chocolate-eating vocalizations with the sounds the rats produced while eating regular food. And while the rats ate similar amounts of both, they emitted significantly more 40 kHz inverted-U USVs while eating chocolate.

Ancient roots

In a separate food-choice test, the rats also demonstrated an obvious preference for chocolate: 15 out of 16 rats picked chocolate over the regular food (and can we blame them?). In two experiments, researchers also found that the vast majority of 40 kHz inverted-U USVs were emitted within one second of a feeding event.

While Groundhog Day in the United States is on February 2, the celebration has deep European pagan roots. The origin likely lies in the Celtic festival of Imbolc, which marks the half-way point between the winter solstice and spring equinox. It is celebrated on February 1 and associated with the Celtic goddess of fertility (now known as St. Brigid) and celebrates longer days ahead. Groundhogs emerging from their dens were seen as a symbol that spring was on its way.

“Our discovery suggests that animal vocalizations could serve as a real-time, non-invasive readout of internal emotional states—specifically, how much an animal is enjoying its food,” said Murata. “Such a tool would allow researchers to measure ‘pleasure’ more directly than current methods permit, and could accelerate research into the brain mechanisms that generate positive emotions.”

Like many pagan traditions, Imbolc eventually merged with Christianity and became Candlemas (celebrated on February 2) in the 400s. In the Catholic Church, Candlemas commemorates the purification of the Virgin Mary and the presentation of Christ in the Temple and the candles needed for the year ahead are blessed.

Understanding more about how the brain processes rewarding experiences could shed light on behaviors like overeating, as well as conditions like anhedonia, or the inability to feel pleasure and a common symptom of depression.

The post Rats make an ultrasonic sound when they eat chocolate appeared first on Popular Science.

The best refurbished gadgets to buy (and where to find them)

Laura Baisas — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 13:01:00 -0400

Whenever the time comes around to upgrade your phone, tablet, or laptop, you don’t necessarily have to go for the latest (and most expensive) model. You can take the refurbished route instead.

As for why these lowly rodents continue to remain part of our end-of-winter celebrations, McDonald says it’s pretty simple.

Refurbished tech sits somewhere between brand new and used, although the exact definition depends on where you’re buying from. Typically, these devices will have been returned after a certain period of use, though the length of that period and the extent of the use can vary from gadget to gadget.

“Small woodland creatures are magnetic.”

The post Groundhogs don’t poop during hibernation and 6 other random facts appeared first on Popular Science.

A Harry Potter quiz may predict your career prospects

David Nield — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 08:01:00 -0500

Many people dream of starting their own business but wonder if they have what it takes. According to new research, you can find the answer to that dilemma in a Harry Potter house quiz.

What you always get with refurbished devices is a guarantee that they’ve been professionally inspected, cleaned up, and (where necessary) repaired. They’ll come with a warranty of sorts too, so you can be confident they’re not going to fail out of the box. They are often a year or two (at least) behind the latest gadget releases as well.

Researchers in the Netherlands studied the four Hogwarts houses as personality types. Typically, Gryffindors are known for bravery and courage; Slytherins are known for cunning and ambition; Hufflepuffs are loyal and friendly; and Ravenclaws are diligent and shrewd. The researchers found that people who identify as Gryffindor and Slytherin are more likely to be start-up founders.

Crucially, these items will cost you significantly less than buying new, and there’s a good chance they’ll last almost as long too. At the very least, it’s worth looking around to check out current models and prices—here’s how to do it.

“In the Harry Potter world itself, Gryffindor and Slytherin are quite different morally,” Martin Obschonka, the lead author and a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Amsterdam, tells Popular Science. “But they are similar in one important way—both houses are defined by a willingness to challenge rules and authority.”

The best refurbished tech you can buy

This kind of behavior, which researchers call “deviance,” is linked to entrepreneurship, the researchers say. The study was recently published in the journal Small Business Economics.

Phones are pretty much the perfect gadget if you’re wanting to take the refurbished route. A constant, annual cycle of new models hitting the market means old models being sold on, and lots of different places to buy from. Any refurbished marketplace you come across will likely have a phones section. You can throw in tablets here too, which are again regularly updated and widely available.

A bit of “scholarly mischief”

What’s more, year-on-year phone and tablet upgrades are more iterative than they used to be. You’re not really missing out too much by having a phone design or a tablet spec that’s a year or two old—these devices are well supported with software updates for many years by Apple, Google, Samsung, and other manufacturers. That means you don’t need to worry about your refurbished bargain becoming obsolete soon after you’ve bought it.

Researchers have long tried to understand what makes entrepreneurs tick, but most studies focus on just one trait at a time, such as creativity or risk-taking. Real people are more complex than that. Since it is very hard to measure someone’s whole character using standard surveys, Obschonka’s team decided to look beyond traditional science tools.

Laptops are another product category well suited to being refurbished. There’s an even greater choice than with phones and tablets when it comes to specs, designs, and screen sizes, which means you’re likely to be able to find something that fits your requirements without too much searching.

At first, the idea of using fictional character types as personality profiles felt like a bit of “scholarly mischief,” Obschonka admits. However, the team used a very large dataset and results held up across two separate studies. Mischief managed.

Apple will sell you refurbished iPhones directly. Screenshot: Apple

The link between Harry Potter houses and entrepreneurship

Games consoles can be bought refurbished too. Here the refresh cycle is much slower—there were seven years between the PS4 and the PS5, and we’re still waiting for the PS6—so you’re not really buying outdated tech, just pre-owned. Older consoles often show up on refurb portals as well, if you want to do some retro gaming.

In the first study, the team used data from the TIME Magazine Harry Potter quiz. Nearly 800,000 people had taken the quiz online. The researchers grouped the results by U.S. regions, called Metropolitan Statistical Areas. They then compared the percentage share of each Hogwarts house in 338 regions with how many start-ups existed there.

The tricks to finding a good refurbished gadget deal are all common sense: Buy from a reputable outlet (see below), look particularly closely at the details given for the item condition and the included warranty, and shop around several sites for the best deal.

It turned out that regions with more Gryffindors and Slytherins had more start-ups. On average, these regions showed about seven percent higher start-up density than others.

Give some thought to timing as well. Phones in particular are usually released on a predictable schedule—Google, Samsung, Apple, and others all tend to launch new handsets at the same time each year. So if you’re hearing rumors about product refreshes, you might want to wait until they’ve arrived. It’s always going to have a knock-on effect on the refurbished market, and you might be able to get a later model.

The second study focused on individuals instead of regions. Obschonka’s team surveyed a representative group of 820 U.S. residents who had taken the Harry Potter quiz, asking about their interest in becoming entrepreneurs.

Where to find the best refurbished tech

The results revealed that people with Gryffindor or Slytherin personalities were more likely to say they wanted to start a business.

There are plenty of places to find refurbished tech online, which tells you that plenty of shoppers see the appeal—and gives you the chance to compare prices and save as much money as you can. To begin with, Apple, Google, and Samsung all have official stores for refurbished tech, with one-year warranties as standard.

@clipseries90 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire#harrypotter #film #tiktok #voldemort #fypシ ♬ sonido original – ClipSeries

If you’re looking at third-party refurbished tech stores, BackMarket has one of the widest range of gadgets. You’ll find phones, tablets, laptops, consoles, speakers, headphones, smartwatches and more here, and some significant discounts too. As well as a one-year warranty as standard, the site also has a free 30-day returns policy, in case you change your mind about what you’ve bought.

“Importantly, the findings held across two different levels of analysis, from large-scale regional patterns to individual psychology, which gives us greater confidence that these effects are meaningful,” Obschonka says.

Don’t discount eBay from your searches either. Yes, there are lots of individuals selling old tech here that’s way past its best, but there are also real manufacturers and reliable third-party stores selling refurbished kit through the portal too, covering every category you can imagine—one way to get started on your refurb search is to click the Brand Outlet link at the top, though you can also run a general search.

‘Bright’ versus ‘dark’ deviance

BackMarket offers a wide range of refurbished tech. Screenshot: Backmarket

Gryffindors show what the researchers call “bright deviance.” They “tend to break rules out of courage, moral conviction, and a desire to do what they believe is right,” Obschonka explains.

Then there’s Swappa, which is another well-respected source of refurbished gadgets. It has a mix of used and refurbished items, and a mix of individuals and professional tech sellers, so be sure to read the listings carefully to know what you’re getting. Reassuringly, all the listings are reviewed by Swappa staff, and the condition of gadgets (plus details of any warranty) have to be clearly stated.

Meanwhile, Slytherins show “dark deviance,” tending to “bend rules more strategically, driven by ambition, competitiveness, and calculated goal pursuit,” he says.

Also worth a look is Amazon Renewed, especially if you’re already used to the Amazon shopping experience, because everything works in the same way. The condition of items and the warranties attached to them can vary, but everything comes with a 90-day guarantee window for returning items if you need to.

Even though their reasons differ, both types of rule-breaking can lead to starting a business. This idea fits with an almost century-old theory of entrepreneurship, proposed by economist Joseph Schumpeter, which says that entrepreneurs often succeed by challenging rules and norms.

Ideally, it’s best to be checking multiple different sites in your search for the best refurbished tech—there isn’t the same consistency of pricing as you’ll find on something that’s brand new, so you can compare different offers against each other (just be sure to check on what else you get for the price, in terms of returns policies and extras).

What about Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw?

The post The best refurbished gadgets to buy (and where to find them) appeared first on Popular Science.

500 snails mailed to Tahiti to reclaim their natural habitat

Clarissa Brincat — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 10:25:00 -0400

Staff at St. Louis Zoo in St. Louis, Missouri recently opened up a very special delivery in the mail: an overnight shipment of 500 adult Partula snails.

Other Hogwarts houses showed weaker links to entrepreneurship. Based on earlier research, Obschonka and his team think that Hufflepuff traits like loyalty and hard work may actually make people less likely to take risks or try new ideas.

Their journey began at the Detroit Zoo in Royal Oak, Michigan, and it’s not quite over yet. The small invertebrates’ final destination is Tahiti, where they will be released into the wild as part of an international effort to reestablish wild populations of Partula snails.

And while some studies have found that creativity and knowledge—two key Ravenclaw traits—can help in business, researchers have not found clear evidence that being generally very intelligent automatically leads to becoming an entrepreneur.

“The snails are sent ‘priority overnight’ via either FedEx or UPS. The snails are carefully packed using insulating materials and special ‘phase change’ packs to stabilize the temperature inside,” Mark Vassallo, Curator of Amphibians at the Detroit Zoological Society, tells Popular Science. “Currently the Detroit Zoological Society bred snails are taking a pit-stop at St. Louis Zoo where they will be fed a special diet in order to prepare them for the wild.”

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Partula snails are small, tree-dwelling native to islands in French Polynesia. In Polynesian cultural heritage, each unique Partula snail shell represents an island. When humans introduced the predatory rosy wolf snail to the region to manage another invasive snail species, it wrecked Partula snail populations.

So what?

A Partula snail is weighed and measured by keeper Tom Maunders, during the annual weigh-in at Whipsnade Zoo in England. Image: Joe Giddens/PA Images via Getty Images.

According to Obschonka, “these findings matter because they challenge the idea that there is only one good entrepreneurial personality.” Instead, different character types can succeed, as long as they are willing to challenge rules in some way.

For decades, the Detroit Zoo has been breeding and raising Partula snails and helping return them to their native habitat by the thousands in Tahiti. In fact, the 500 en route right now were all bred at the zoo. Each of their shells features an orange dot of animal-safe paint that glows in UV light, which identifies them as one of the snails released in 2026. Each year has a different color, and the dots also allow conservationists to easily monitor them in their natural habitat.

The study also suggests that “fiction is not just entertainment,” Obschonka says. While stories like Harry Potter are not explicitly about entrepreneurship, they explore deep questions about human character, motivation, and how people relate to rules and authority. Obschonka believes entrepreneurship researchers “should take popular fictional literature more seriously as a source of insight.”

This upcoming release is part of an international recovery program that has returned 11 different Partula species formerly deemed extinct in the wild to their native environments, consisting of over 17,000 individual snails. The Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans, Louisiana, also recently sent 200 Partula snails to Tahiti.

Understanding entrepreneurial character matters beyond business, Obschonka says. People with rule-challenging personalities also appear in politics and public institutions, and their attitudes toward rules can shape decisions that affect society as a whole.

The post A Harry Potter quiz may predict your career prospects appeared first on Popular Science.

11 stunning finalists for the Youth Photographer of the Year prize

Margherita Bassi — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 13:01:00 -0500

Young people have a different perspective on our world, both literally and figuratively. Their eyes see things differently and if you hand them a camera, you might understand more.

Orange markings on Partula nodosa snails bred at the Detroit Zoo glow under ultraviolet light. The markings will help researchers identify and monitor the 2026 release group after the snails are returned to the wild in Tahiti. Image: Detroit Zoo.

The Sony World Photography Awards has announced the talented photographers shortlisted in the 2026 Student and Youth competitions. The Student competition features images from university students, while the Youth prize goes to photographers aged 19 and younger.

When asked what “success” looks like, Vassallo explains that, “Success for a conservation project can be defined in stages but ultimately, a self-sustaining population with consistent reproduction and very importantly, proper habitat that is protected to sustain that species to allow long term recovery and stabilization of that population.”

“Between Two Worlds”
This photograph was taken in Çeşme, İzmir, Turkey, during a coastal swim. The photographer captured the moment a horse and rider entered the water, using an over-under perspective to show both environments in a single frame.
Copyright: © Doğa Ergün, Türkiye, Shortlist, Youth Competition, Sony World Photography Awards 2026

Some species of Partula snails are already extinct in the wild, such as Partula nodosa. In the wake of reintroductions of the species, however, experts were excited to observe offspring born in the wild.

The post 500 snails mailed to Tahiti to reclaim their natural habitat appeared first on Popular Science.

Why do dogs’ legs shake during pets? It’s not because they like it.

Popular Science Team — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 08:03:00 -0400

Imagine this: You’re at the doctor’s office, and instead of one quick tap with the reflex hammer—the kind that makes your leg kick out without you meaning to—they just…keep going. Tap, tap, tap, right on that same spot below your knee, for a solid two minutes straight. It wouldn’t hurt you. But after a while, you’d probably start feeling pretty strongly about wanting it to stop—and if they didn’t, you might start wanting to kick someone on purpose.

Aakash Gulzar, a finalist for Student Photographer of the Year, submitted a series of images titled “Kotar’baaz.” The series (seen below) documents the Indian-administered pigeon keepers of Kashmir across rooftops, shrines, and markets in Srinagar. “It’s a story of love, patience, and the enduring spirit of a place that refuses to lose its soul,” Gulzar says.

Now imagine you’re a dog, and someone finds your “sweet spot”—that one particular patch of skin on the side or back—and won’t quit scratching it. Suddenly, your back leg is kicking without your permission, over and over, like it’s got somewhere better to be. As adorable as it looks from the outside, it’s probably not exactly a party for you.

The Student Photographer of the Year and Youth Photographer of the Year will be announced on April 16, 2026, at ceremony in London.

“It’s an annoyance,” says Nancy Thomas, DVM, a veterinarian with Telavets, an online veterinary expert consultation service. “It doesn’t do any good to continue doing it. The spinal cord is trying to say ‘get off of me.’”

“Kotar’baaz”
Owais, 23, works full-time as a caretaker for over a thousand pigeons in Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir, on April 15, 2025, more than 100 kilometers away from his home. Employed by a local businessman who owns the prized birds, Owais spends his days feeding, cleaning, and tending to their needs. “It’s exhausting at times,” he says, “but I’ve grown attached to them. This is what I want to do; I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
Copyright: © Aakash Gulzar, India, Shortlist, Student Competition, Sony World Photography Awards 2026 Aakash Gulzar

So what is the mechanism behind your pup’s leg acting on autopilot?

“Kotar’baaz”
Visitors gather near the Dargah Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir, on Feb. 28, 2025, often pausing to photograph the pigeons that move freely through the courtyard. Across the city’s mosques and shrines, the birds share space with worshippers in quiet ease.
Copyright: © Aakash Gulzar, India, Shortlist, Student Competition, Sony World Photography Awards 2026 Aakash Gulzar

Your dog’s leg has a mind of its own

“Suspiria de Profundis”
Suspiria de Profundis engages Jean-Paul Sartre’s proposition that meaning arises from nothingness, requiring meaning to be formed through experiences. The tactile, analogue nature of this series guides the viewer towards a deeper, more intuitive encounter with their own existential orientation. Perhaps, this may even tune the audiences towards a shared understanding of spaces and places in time. The images in Suspiria de Profundis evoke relic-like atmospheres and gothic unease, inviting sustained reflection on the human condition.
Copyright: © Matte Dixon, Australia, Shortlist, Student Competition, Sony World Photography Awards 2026

So it might look like your dog is practicing to bend it like Beckham, or maybe is angling for a spot with the Rockettes, but what is really happening is entirely out of your pet’s control. It’s something called the pruritic scratch reflex.

“The River Without Fish”
The fish belong in the river, but the river is gone. A man stands in the water, while balloons shaped like dolphins float above, a parody of joy. Nature is replaced by plastic, survival is presented as celebration. Urbanisation turns rivers into markets, creatures into commodities, and memory into something fleeting.
Copyright: © Jubair Ahmed Arnob, Bangladesh, Shortlist, Student Competition, Sony World Photography Awards 2026 Jubair Ahmed Arnob

It’s a reflex arc, a shortcut in the nervous system that bypasses the brain altogether to allow for an instant response. When something (your hand, a flea, a burr caught in the fur) touches the skin in that spot, sensory nerves pick up on it and send a signal straight to the spinal cord. The spinal cord doesn’t pause to think it over, according to Thomas; it’s the same shortcut your body uses when you touch a hot stove, although your dog’s involuntary kicks do not involve pain.

“Cruce Imposible”
Taken during a BMX freestyle event in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jane Mozzi shot this image while the rider was performing a backflip; simultaneously capturing the landing of a plane behind them, giving the illusion of a plane propelling the rider forward. Mozzi loved this photo because of the perfect timing of this unique moment, captured in one single take.
Copyright: © Jane Mozzi, Argentina, Shortlist, Youth Competition, Sony World Photography Awards 2026

“You touch a stove, and the signal goes from the sensory nerves up to the spinal cord, and the spinal cord immediately sends a message back to your finger to get off the stove,” Thomas says. “It’s a millisecond kind of a deal.”

“Autumn’s Frame Around Mount Fuji”
Mount Fuji framed through the autumn leaves that surround lake Kawaguchi, with an admirer looking on.
Copyright: © Riley Shickle, United Kingdom, Shortlist, Youth Competition, Sony World Photography Awards 2026

When dogs twitch during pets, it’s not because they like it. Video: That’s the Spot, @TheDogRufferee

“Triangle Frames”
A modern triangular sculpture frames the Great Pyramid, accented by bold red fabric and a field of mirrors. The photographer sought to capture the harmony between the stark lines of the installation and the ‘eternal shape of the pharaoh’s tomb’, creating a ‘geometric interplay of past and present’.
Copyright: © Abdallah Islam, Egypt, Shortlist, Youth Competition, Sony World Photography Awards 2026

The reason dogs have the pruritic scratch reflex basically comes down to pest control: that particular area along your dog’s flank is prime real estate for fleas, ticks, mites, and burrs—the kind of small, easy-to-miss irritants that can burrow in or bite before a dog even notices. Rather than relying on conscious awareness to catch the pest, dogs’ built in a shortcut: If something touches down in that zone, the leg kicks automatically on the off chance it’s actually a threat trying to dig in.

“Red-Eyed Watcher”
Keira Pereira encountered this red-eyed tree frog in the Costa Rican rainforest, perched along a narrow leaf, motionless against the darkness of the night. Using controlled artificial light, the photographer isolated the frog to emphasise its alert posture, vivid eyes, and delicate grip, capturing the stillness of nocturnal life in the rainforest.
Copyright: © Keira Pereira, Canada, Shortlist, Youth Competition, Sony World Photography Awards 2026

It’s the same basic reflex that makes a horse’s skin twitch to shake off a fly, says Thomas, who also created an emergency medical ID tag for horses and their riders.

“Keep it Clean!”
Perched gracefully on a sturdy branch, a majestic peacock surveys its surroundings against a glowing golden backdrop, scanning the landscape for any signs of danger. Between watchful glances, it gently preens its feathers, maintaining its regal appearance.
Copyright: © Jeirin Anton, Sri Lanka, Shortlist, Youth Competition, Sony World Photography Awards 2026

The post 11 stunning finalists for the Youth Photographer of the Year prize appeared first on Popular Science.

These rare, giant millipedes only exist in Florida

Margherita Bassi — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 11:17:00 -0500

While Florida is perhaps best known for its beaches and wetlands, its landscape hosts other notable features: ridges. Millions of years ago, sea levels were higher than they are today, and these elevated areas of land became like islands. The species living on these ridges evolved in complete isolation, so the area is now packed with native animals that don’t exist anywhere else.

“It’s a mechanism designed to keep nefarious things off the body,” Thomas says.

The earliest and tallest of these unique systems is the Lake Wales Ridge in central Florida. It’s home to the Florida scrub millipede (Floridobolus penneri), one of North America’s biggest millipedes. This rare and little-known arthropod is unique to the Sunshine State, and can reach up to four inches in length. It moves with over 100 legs and mostly lives underground and comes out at night.

It’s not the same as tickling

Apparently, they’re also picky when it comes to making babies. At least, the ones in the care of Anne Sawl—a graduate student in conservation biology at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg—seemed to be. It wasn’t until she put them in a kiddie pool with plants from the ridge that she found an offspring.

A very common misunderstanding around the pruritic scratch response is that it is a form of tickling, and it’s easy to see why: your dog is responding in a riotous, involuntary, and rather comical way to a physical trigger.

Graduate student Anne Sawl cares for dozens of rare Florida scrub millipedes in a USF St. Petersburg lab, where the arthropods recently reproduced and their offspring are now being raised. Image: University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

But as gleeful as it looks when your dog breaks into those rapid-fire leg kicks, the experience is probably neutral at best for your dog. By continuing to do it, you could be “perpetuating the annoyance,” according to Thomas. Even tickling isn’t universally and unequivocally loved.

“One day, I was moving dirt near the roots of the plant and noticed a tiny white speck,” Sawl explained in a statement. “It caught my eye. I picked it up and realized it was a baby millipede. After so much trial and error in the lab, I was completely flabbergasted that they had reproduced.”

“A lot of people hate being tickled,” she says.

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Maybe the millipedes weren’t used to so much attention. After all, they hadn’t been scientifically surveyed in almost 20 years. Within this context, Sawl’s research into the Florida scrub millipede’s population numbers and spread is providing new information that could aid future conservation endeavors..

A scratch your dog will actually enjoy

The endemic species is believed to be threatened by major habitat loss. Researchers estimate that human activity has destroyed 85 percent of the Lake Wales Ridge’s natural habitat from before humans settled there, according to Sawl.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean your dog is necessarily having a miserable time every time you find that spot. In general, the reflexive leg kick is just proof that your dog’s built-in protective wiring is working exactly the way it’s supposed to. But there’s one pattern worth keeping an eye on. If your dog reacts almost anywhere you touch them, or seems unusually sensitive even on their belly (which is normally a calmer, less reactive area due to its lack of contact with the ground), that’s worth mentioning to your vet.

About 32 Florida scrub millipedes were born and are now thriving in their lab habitat on the St. Pete campus. Image: University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

“That’s a possible red flag for atopy,” Thomas says, referring to allergies or skin inflammation that leaves the whole body more sensitive. It’s similar to how a patch of poison ivy makes even light touch uncomfortable.

“Anne has taken a group of animals most people overlook and produced multiple chapters of publishable research with brand new information,” added Deby Cassill, a professor of integrative biology at the University of South Florida and Sawl’s adviser. “Millipedes might not be glamorous, but they are ecological champions in these fragile habitats.”

“That might be a bit of a sign,” Thomas says. “These dogs might be a little extra sensitive, due to a skin condition.”

Florida scrub millipedes play an important role in nutrient recycling—or rather, their digestive system does. They turn their plant meals into a crucial source of nutrients, according to Sawl. Yes, we’re talking about their poop.

To make bonding with your dog more enjoyable for both of you, Thomas advises sticking to areas not commonly associated with the pruritic scratch reflex, such as the belly. She also recommends watching your dog’s body language to ensure they’re having as much fun as you. It’s a much better way to ‘get your kicks’ without turning your dog into a full-on kickboxer.

However, Sawl has also found that these unique, many-legged arthropods prefer mushrooms and fungi instead of some plant material researchers previously thought. They might just be picky animals through and through.

The post These rare, giant millipedes only exist in Florida appeared first on Popular Science.

February stargazing: A planet parade comes to town

Jennifer Byrne — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 09:00:00 -0500

February 1	Full Snow Moon
February 8	Alpha Centaurids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak
February 28	Six Planets in Alignment
All Month and Year	Possible Auroras

“If you’re rubbing their belly, and they’re all spread out and relaxed-looking, that’s a sign you’re on the right track,” she says.

February: it’s a short month, and it’s also relatively short on stargazing highlights. Still, patient stargazers will be rewarded with a memorable planetary alignment. And for those readers joining us from the Southern Hemisphere, there’s also the Alpha Centaurids meteor shower to look forward to.

The post Why do dogs’ legs shake during pets? It’s not because they like it. appeared first on Popular Science.

3 myths about the weather

Tom Hawking — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 15:04:00 -0400

Everyone complains about the weather, the old line goes, but nobody ever does anything about it. But it’s not exactly true, is it? People have always done something about the weather—mostly by trying to predict it, then arranging our lives around the forecast.

February 1: Full Snow Moon

It makes sense, then, that we’ve picked up a few ideas about outside conditions that don’t quite hold up. From cold weather making you sick to red skies in the morning, here are some common beliefs about the weather that aren’t entirely true.

This month’s full moon falls on the very first day of the month, which means we were only one day away from one of the rarest lunar phenomena: a month with no full moon at all! This can only happen in February—since it’s the only month shorter than a full lunar cycle—and last happened in 2018. There’s no agreed-upon name for this phenomenon, but since it’s the opposite of a blue moon—the second full moon in a month with two full moons—we rather like black moon.

Cold weather doesn’t cause colds

But anyway, there is a full moon this month, and appropriately enough, it’s called the Snow Moon, a name that will resonate with a whole lot of people in North America right now. As per the Farmer’s Almanac, the Snow Moon will creep into the winter sky at 5:09 p.m. EST on February 1, casting its pale light over the frozen landscape.

You’ve heard someone say it, or maybe you’ve said it yourself: “Put on a jacket—you’ll catch a cold.” The problem is that cold weather doesn’t cause colds—at least, not directly.

February 8: Alpha Centaurids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

Manal Mohammed, a Senior Lecturer in Medical Microbiology at the University of Westminster, wrote about this for The Conversation. “Cold temperatures do not cause infections by themselves,” she concludes. “Instead, they shape the biological, environmental and social conditions that allow respiratory viruses to thrive.”

The only meteors on offer this month are the Alpha Centaurids, which are predicted to peak on February 8. Unfortunately for those of us in the frozen north, it’s the Southern Hemisphere that’ll get the best view of these meteors. That’s because from north of the equator, the radiant point (the point from which the meteors appear to originate) never rises above the horizon. Still, that’s not to say that you won’t get lucky, but we don’t recommend waiting out in the cold all night for a glimpse of a shooting star if you are not below the equator where summer is in full force.

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For example: People spend more time inside during cold weather, which can help viruses spread. These indoor spaces tend to be heated, meaning the humidity is low, meaning nasal passages are dry. This makes it more likely that you’ll catch a virus. And, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine, the fact that school is in session during the winter is also a factor.

February 28: Six Planets in Alignment

There are physiological factors as well, according to Mohammed. “Breathing in cold air lowers the temperature inside the nose and airways, which can trigger vasoconstriction,” she writes. She adds that this can weaken the local immune defenses in the lining of your nose and airways. But that’s not the same as a direct causal link.

While the full moon fell on the first day of February, stargazers will have to wait until the very last day of the month for a genuine celestial highlight. But it’s one that’s worth waiting for: six planets in alignment! Four of the planets will be visible to the naked eye: gleaming Venus, fleeting Mercury, resplendent Saturn and, of course, big ol’ Jupiter. The remaining participants—distant cousins Neptune and Uranus—will be able to join the party via binoculars or a small telescope.

So, while it’s true that you’re more likely to catch a cold or the flu during the winter, that isn’t directly caused by your failure to wear a jacket. It’s the viruses, not the temperature, that make you sick.

The planets will be strung low over the horizon about one hour after sunset, starting with Mercury in the west, hovering in the constellation Pisces. Venus will be visible nearby, with Saturn and Neptune clustered above. Jupiter will be visible just to the right of the moon, and Uranus will sit about halfway between Jupiter and the cluster of other planets, at the same elevation as the former.

Lightning can strike the same place twice

All Month and Year

“Lightning hitting the same place twice” is a cultural shorthand for something unlikely happening. But is it accurate? Kind of. It’s true that, all things being equal, it’s unlikely for lightning to strike the same place twice. But all things aren’t equal.

There’s one other sight that might await those looking to the sky this month—and, indeed, for the rest of 2026. This year promises to be a banner year for the auroras borealis and australis. As per Time and Date, the reason lies with a solar phenomenon known as the coronal hole, when the sun’s magnetic field allows large amounts of plasma to escape into the solar system. There’s also a relatively high chance of coronal mass ejections, the powerful geomagnetic storms that can bathe much of the world’s night sky in ghostly light in the right conditions.

Lightning tends to hit the highest nearby object, which is why it’s a bad idea to go under a tree during a lightning storm. In big cities this means the largest buildings are hit frequently. New York City’s Empire State Building is hit, on average, 25 times per year, according to New York City Emergency Management. The CN Tower, north of the border in Toronto, is hit three times as often—75 times per year according to the tower’s website. This isn’t to say these buildings are unsafe—both have lightning rods, which give the current a safe path to the ground. It’s just that they’re hit multiple times a year.

Anyway, remember that you’ll get the best experience if you get away from any sources of light pollution, let your eyes acclimatize to the darkness, and check out our stargazing tips before heading off into the night.

Lightning over New York City. Image: Getty Images BradNYC

Until next month!

The post February stargazing: A planet parade comes to town appeared first on Popular Science.

How a hobbyist’s hunch uncovered hidden Roman military camps

Justin Pot — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0500

An amateur archaeologist armed only with satellite imagery and a hunch helped uncover evidence that’s reshaping how historians understand the Roman Empire’s advance into present-day Germany in the third century CE.

So lightning not only can hit the same place twice, but does so pretty often. Although, according to NOAA, it doesn’t always hit the highest point—so there’s truth to the idea that lightning is hard to predict.

In 2020, hobbyist Michael Barkowski was combing through aerial imagery available online, when he spotted an unusual formation near the town of Aken, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt in northwestern Germany. Barkowski suspected that the large rectangular outlines and apparent ditches he was seeing could be signs of marching camps that were commonly deployed by Roman legions. Although remains of such camps have been identified elsewhere in Germany, historians had not found evidence of any this far north.

Red skies really can predict the weather

After Barkowski reported the sightings, professional archaeologists from Germany’s State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt conducted their own aerial surveys. Their findings confirmed Barkowski’s hunch—and then some. Subsequent surveys revealed not just one, but four Roman marching camps spread across towns in the state dating back to the 200s CE, according to Germany’s State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony.

You’ve heard it: “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight; red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.” The idea that the color of the sky can predict the weather is really old—it’s referred to in the Bible (Matthew 16:2-3, if you want to look it up). But is there any science behind this?

The surprise findings, which the State Office calls an “archaeological sensation” carry major implications. Specifically, they suggest the Roman Empire may have advanced significantly further into Germanic territory than previously believed. They are also just the latest in a string of archaeological breakthroughs made possible by increased volunteer efforts and the widespread availability of modern aerial imagery.

Yes, it turns out, but it doesn’t work everywhere. To understand why, we need to explain a few things. First: What causes red skies? “A red sky appears when dust and small particles are trapped in the atmosphere by high pressure,” according to the UK Met Office. “This scatters blue light leaving only red light to give the sky its notable appearance.”

Entrance to the marching camp of Trabitz with the characteristic titulum in an aerial photograph. Image: GeoBasis-DE / LVermGeo ST, Datenlizenz Deutschland – Namensnennung – Version 2.0.

A red sky means there’s high pressure between you and the direction of the sun. The sun sets in the west and rises in the east. So, a red sky at night generally means there’s high pressure to your west; a red sky in the morning means there’s high pressure to the east of you.

Roman soldiers left behind a smattering of camps

Red skies can predict the weather…in some places. Image: Getty Images Richard Newstead

The Roman legion—the empire’s primary elite infantry unit—is often defined by its strict discipline and organization in battle.Their military camps weren’t any different. Soldiers would establish the outposts at the end of a day’s march to serve as defensive positions during long military campaigns. Camps were typically rectangular with rounded corners and a gate adorning each side. Each camp was distinguished by titulum, (basically a low bank and ditch built just outside the main gate) to slow or stop an enemy’s advance. The camps varied in size, but a typical set up could house around 300 soldiers. A traveler walking through one of the camps would find the commanding officer’s tent located in the center.

But why does that predict the weather? Because, in the mid-latitudes, the wind generally blows from the west—this is called the prevailing westerlies. High pressure means stable, dry weather. A red sky at night means the high pressure is to your west, which the westerlies will bring to you; a red sky in the morning means the high pressure is to your east, and the wind will blow it away from you.

Historians have documented Roman camps scattered throughout much of the empire’s border regions, where the military conducted the bulk of its campaigns. This included large parts of present-day Germany, which the Romans began conquering around 13 CE under Emperor Augustus. Fighting there continued there for the better part of 30 years, before a major defeat forced a prolonged Roman withdrawal. Fast forward nearly 200 years later to the 3rd century, and Romans returned to the region, launching a new military offensive aimed at disrupting Germanic tribes that had grown larger and more organized.

But, again, that only works in the mid-latitudes, where the prevailing westerlies are the norm. This region is between 30 and 60 degrees in both the southern and northern hemispheres, a region that includes most of Europe, the continental United States, southern Australia, and Japan, among other places. So, if you’re in one of those places, a red sky in the morning actually does point to a change in the weather. If you’re in the tropics, though, the weather tends to build up locally rather than arriving from somewhere upwind, meaning the colors at sunrise and sunset aren’t as useful for predicting it.

“The relationship between Romans and Germanic tribes was subsequently characterized by the defense against incursions into the Roman Empire, by punitive expeditions, but also by repeated contractual agreements and the settlement of Germanic tribes on Roman soil, as well as the payment of money in return for maintaining peace,” Germany’s State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony writes in a press release.

So this isn’t entirely a myth—there’s truth to the saying. It just doesn’t work everywhere on Earth.

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How to find the best new tech on crowdfunding websites

Mack DeGeurin — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 11:00:00 -0400

If you want to find the most innovative and coolest new tech of the moment, you shouldn’t always automatically turn to familiar names like Apple, Google, and Samsung. You’ll find a whole host of smaller companies and start-ups testing out their ideas and prototypes—and looking to raise funds for the projects at the same time—over on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

New camps sighting alter the historical record

These two sites work similarly. Creators pitch their ideas and show you how far they’ve got in terms of prototyping and development. If you’re interested, you put down some money—usually less than you’ll pay if you wait until the finished product goes on sale—and this collected cash is then used to fund production.

Although some historical records suggest that the late Roman advance may have reached as far north as the Elbe River, archaeologists had not found any physical remains to support those claims. That’s what made news of Barkowski’s initial finding so alluring to professional archaeologists. Once they confirmed the presence of the first camp in Aken, they expanded their search area and found a similar structure near Trabitz, roughly 170 miles to the south. A year later, follow-up aerial surveys identified another structure near Aken and one in Deersheim.

From a quick scan at the time of writing, you’ll find portable wind turbines, retro game consoles, pocket cameras that turn into drones, and smart lunchboxes on these platforms. Whatever kind of tech you’re interested in, you’ll find there are plenty of products to browse through (and there’s lots more besides tech gadgets, too).

Those findings paved the way for a series of large, on-the-ground surveys conducted between 2024 and 2025. A team of archaeologists walked over the camps, metal detectors in hand, in search of artifacts. It was a scientific gold mine—or more accurately, an iron mine. The team documented over 1,500 individual objects, most made of iron.

While there are no guarantees that these projects will actually turn into finished products, a good number of them do, and you can usually spot the ones that are less likely to succeed (as we’ll cover below). In the ideal scenario, you get yourself a new gadget you find useful, and save money at the same time by being an early backer.

Find the coolest tech being crowdfunded right now

The artifacts include a variety of Roman coins and an unusually large number of nails and bolts. Researchers believe that the nails and bolts were likely attached to the soles of soldiers’ sandals to increase traction. Radiocarbon dating of the objects places them in the early third century, which just so happens to coincide with a military campaign in Germany launched by Emperor Caracalla.

Once you land on the Kickstarter or Indiegogo home pages, it’s not difficult to start browsing around for gadgets that might interest you: These platforms are built to make discovery as straightforward as possible, and you’ll immediately see some recommended crowdfunding projects on the front page that are proving popular with other people.

The newly discovered camps bring concrete physical evidence to theories that were previously only suggested by letters and indirect artifacts. And none of that would have happened if it weren’t for a curious hobbyist looking through images.

The post How a hobbyist’s hunch uncovered hidden Roman military camps appeared first on Popular Science.

King cobras take the train in India

Andrew Paul — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 15:23:15 -0500

The king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) isn’t a difficult snake to spot. A fully grown adult easily reaches over 13 feet long, making them the largest venomous snakes in the world. But despite their size and iconic appearance, at least one vulnerable species in India is sneaking aboard trains and accidentally arriving into new and dangerous habitats.

As well as highlighted listings, you get category links. These cover not just tech, but all sorts of other areas as well, including art, film, photography, education, design, journalism, travel, fashion, and community—so when you’ve exhausted all the cool hardware on these sites, there’s plenty more to look at.

In a study recently published in the journal Biotropica, researchers from Museum Liebnitz in Bonn, Germany, analyzed available verified local cobra reports and rescue records made between 2002 and 2024 in the Goa region of southwestern India. In all, they identified 47 encounters with the Western Ghats king cobra (Ophiophagus kaalinga) over 22 years. Beyond the danger of such meetings, there was a larger problem: the Western Ghats isn’t endemic to Goa.

If you’re looking for something specific, use the search function. Maybe you’re after a travel adaptor that doubles up as a USB hub, or a robot that can keep your pet company, or a smart suitcase designed to carry laptops, tablets, and cameras. Whatever you’re after, chances are someone is trying to get it crowdfunded on Kickstarter or Indiegogo.

Herpetologist and firsthand volunteer king cobra rescuer Dikansh Parmar can personally attest to the issue. His 2017 encounter is one of his own study’s five separate snake sightings located on or near trains. Following additional interviews with local residents revealed the serpents were also spotted in villages and neighboring forests, but nowhere in the surrounding farmland.

You’ll find thousands of projects running at any one time. Davie Nield

“With the increased global availability of low-cost smartphones and social media in recent years, the number of reports of snakes on and around trains in India has increased, with three incidents recorded in a 30-day period, and many more emerging on social media,” Parmar and his co-authors wrote.

Click through to any of the project listings, and you’ll get a massive amount of extra information about what’s involved. Creators know that the more detail there is, the more likely they are to attract enough funding, and you’ll typically find product photos, videos, specs, and a schedule for bringing it to market.

Do Western Ghats King Cobras, Ophiophagus kaalinga, take the train? (a) View of Chandor Station, Goa, India, from below the platform, showing the vegetation and the concrete pillars, where the snake was found. This location is atypical and unsuitable for king cobras. (b) Laborer accommodations lie just a dirt path away from the concrete pillars where the king cobra was recorded. (c) The snake emerged from beneath a pile of railway tracks stored at the site for ongoing railway maintenance and repair. (d) An Indian Cobra (Naja naja) on a windowsill in the moving Lokshakti Express train near Valsad, Gujarat State, India. Photos by Dikansh S. Parmar (a, b), Sourabh Yadav (c), and Sameer Lakhani (d). Credit: Biotropica

There should also be details about the company making the product. Often these will be smaller start-ups (or even individuals), but you do occasionally see larger tech companies take the crowdfunding route as well: The Ultrahuman Ring Pro was recently crowdfunded on Kickstarter, for example.

Based on these and other reports, the team developed a theory: Western Ghats cobras are hitching rides on trains to new locales. They suspect that the snakes are likely attracted to railway cars for a mixture of reasons, including prey like rodents and the lure of safe, secure shelters.

The all-important financial information will be included here too: How much money has been raised so far, what the target is, and the various tiers at which you can contribute. As well as getting a discount on the finished product, backing a project usually means you’ll be able to access certain rewards, such as bundled accessories or even a say in how the product is developed going forward.

Their final destinations around Goa aren’t ideal, however. After conducting a species distribution model that integrated factors like human activity, vegetation, and climate, Parmar then compared hypothetically suitable habitats to the actual cobra rescue locations. His team discovered the snakes have the best chances for survival in Goa’s interior, away from the coast but close to rivers and streams in forests. More often, however, reports placed the snakes near railway sites that are drier, more exposed, and house fewer prey options. Instead of climate shifts forcing their migration, Parmar explained another factor is now at play.

What to look out for on project listings

“Our findings suggest a different, more passive mechanism: railways may act not just as corridors for active movement, but as high-speed conduits,” he wrote “This contrasts with the typically negative impact of roads, which often function as barriers or significant mortality sinks for snakes.”

Both Kickstarter and Indiegogo have similar rules when it comes to backing projects: If the product doesn’t actually get funded, you don’t lose anything. However, if the funding goal is reached, your money is taken—and the responsibility shifts to the project creator rather than the crowdfunding platforms. If the gadget never materializes, that’s on the creator, not Kickstarter or Indiegogo.

Parmar’s team argued it’s very plausible that train migration routes are a vastly underreported method of travel—not only for king cobras, but other vulnerable species, as well. Only by better studying and understanding these situations can conservationists protect the animals, as well as any surprised commuters.

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Oldest fossilized dinosaur vomit discovered in Germany

David Nield — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 13:27:00 -0500

Approximately 290 million years ago, a carnivorous dinosaur stomping around present-day Germany had a tummy ache. The Paleozoic predator eventually vomited up its stomach contents, and then hopefully continued to live its best dino life. Unlike most ancient regurgitated meals, this particular mixture of half-eaten prey and digestive bacteria successfully fossilized into what’s known as a regurgitalite.

At that stage you may get a refund or you may not, or you may get something different for your money. With that in mind, be careful about the projects you decide to back. As per figures quoted by Kickstarter, around 1 in 10 crowdfunded projects fail completely, so the vast majority succeed—but it’s still best to be wary.

In 2021, paleontologists discovered the extremely rare find while working in the famous Bromacker Permian dig site, about 155 miles southwest of Berlin. As they detail in a study published on January 30th in the journal Scientific Reports, the fossilized regurgitation is the oldest specimen of its kind, and contains a wealth of insights into the still frequently mysterious food chain of terrestrial dinosaurs.

To start with, look at the people behind the project. What’s their track record with launching products? Have they dealt with hardware manufacturing before? Has the company made any devices previously? Does it have a portfolio of other products you can check out and actually buy?

What is a regurgitalite?

Pay close attention to the listing details before pledging any money. Davie Niel

Bones tell researchers a lot about ancient species, but they can’t provide the whole picture. In addition to anatomical remains, paleontologists often focus on other biological samples such as coprolites, aka fossilized poop. But due to their composition, most coprolites are only preserved in aquatic settings like oceans and lakes, meaning it’s easier to reconstruct marine life menus compared to land dinosaur food webs.

Then there’s the project itself: You should weigh up how realistic the project’s aims are, especially if nothing similar is on the market. Look for evidence of prototype gadgets that have already been tested and reviewed, as well as details on how the product will be made and how its parts will be sourced.

This is partly why a team from Humboldt University of Berlin’s Natural History Museum and the French National Centre for Scientific Research initially suspected their fossil-in-question (known as MNG 17001) to be a coprolite. However, further analysis and morphological clues proved otherwise. Fossilized poop is usually preserved in comparatively regular cylindrical or conical shapes, with any residual bones suspended in an organic sedimentary matrix. This mineralized casing is also generally high in phosphorus—a consequence of bacterial bone digestion.

Rewards are something else to look at—do these seem reasonable and practical, or are the creators overreaching and promising too much? A crowdfunded project’s success isn’t solely down to the main product, since rewards that get too complicated or too costly can cause problems too.

But MNG 17001 doesn’t look anything like a coprolite. The bone fragments aren’t housed in a sedimentary matrix, and it had very low phosphorus levels. Taken altogether, the team knew they were looking at a regurgitalite, or fossilized vomit, likely preserved due to the Bromacker site’s origins as a wet floodplain.

There’s no magic formula for predicting whether a Kickstarter or Indiegogo project will be successful or not, but those pointers should give you a good idea. There’s also the question of the price contributors are being asked to pay: Don’t give more than you can afford, and if you have doubts, maybe wait until it’s actually on sale to everyone.

The post How to find the best new tech on crowdfunding websites appeared first on Popular Science.

Single California condor mother gets help raising her chick

Andrew Paul — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 10:15:00 -0400

Wild condor parents usually make a great parenting team. But when one female California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) in Pinnacles National Park in Central California found herself in the role of a single mother, park biologists stepped in to help.

An ancient survival trick

The condor mother wasn’t able to provide sufficient care and food for her chick while on her own. Field biologists realized that when hunting for food, she returned to the nest less frequently. The chick needed more nutrition to grow and develop appropriately.

Carnivorous dinosaurs are far from the only animals to ever regurgitate after a hefty meal. Even today, many predators frequently throw up harder-to-digest material like teeth, bones, and hair as a means to conserve overall energy. But MNG 17001 marks the first instance of a confirmed regurgitalite from a completely terrestrial Paleozoic predator.

“Based on her behavior, she had largely abandoned the nest, and the chick was unlikely to survive without intervention,” a spokesperson for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance tells Popular Science.

Although paleontologists aren’t entirely sure about the identity of vomit’s creator, they have narrowed down the possibilities. Computed tomography scans allowed them to reconstruct the fossil’s dozens of half-digested bones in 3D, which they then matched to known species. These included the nearly complete maxilla (upper jawbone) of a small ancestor of today’s reptiles, Thuringothyris mahlendorffae, as well as the humerus belonging to the oldest known bipedal vertebrate, the bolosaurid Eudibamus cursoris. The final evidence—a bone from a diadectid—proved the most telling. Members of the Diadectidae were the first fully herbivorous tetrapods, as well as the first truly large land-based animals. Diadectes, for example, easily grew as big as 10-feet-long.

Pinnacles National Park biologists took the chick when it was around one month old and sent him to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s California condor breeding facility. There, he’s receiving care in a specialized puppet-rearing program.

Potential suspects

Paleontologists aren’t sure about the specific diadectid species, but they do know that whatever feasted on it must have been equally sizable. In the Bromacker region, only two predators fit the bill. The first contender, Tambacarnifex unguifalcatus, isn’t widely known and likely resembled a huge monitor lizard. The second, Dimetrodon teutonis, is much more recognizable with its distinct sail-fin along its back.

No matter its true identity, the ancient predator’s upset stomach yielded a remarkable time capsule into Paleozoic life, death, and regurgitation. The first-of-its-kind fossilized vomit also hints at opportunistic hunting behaviors among apex land predators, and illustrates just how long carnivores have relied on the (admittedly unseemly) digestive trick to maximize their survival odds.

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Skeletons reveal Stone Age mother and daughter had a rare genetic condition

Margherita Bassi — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 11:08:24 -0500

In 1963, paleoarchaeologists working in southern Italy discovered a unique and puzzling burial scene within an ancient cave known as Grotta del Romito. Inside the cavern, researchers excavated the bodies of two Paleolithic individuals buried in an embrace over 12,000 years ago with no signs of outward trauma. Designated Romito 1 and Romito 2, both subjects had clearly shortened limbs, each with a respective height of around 4.75 and 3.6 feet tall.

“The puppet-rearing program is a specialized care method used to raise young California condor chicks without allowing them to see or bond with human caretakers,” says the spokesperson. “Wildlife care specialists use hand-crafted puppets that resemble adult California condors and completely cover the caretaker’s hands and arms. Caretakers use the puppet’s beak to deliver food directly to the chick, mimicking the way an adult condor parent would feed its young in the nest.”

In the six decades since, experts have argued at length about the pair’s relationship, sex, as well as an explanation for their unique physical features. Many have posited that the two exhibited some form of dwarfism, but direct evidence has eluded them. Now, researchers believe they have definitive answers. According to a study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Romito 1 and 2 were most likely a parent and child born with a rare genetic disorder called acromesomelic dysplasia.

The chick was named Cayic (pronounced Chai-eech), meaning “strong” in the Mutsun language of the Indigenous people of California’s Central Coast. Thankfully, Cayic is demonstrating normal growth and development, and experts plan on returning him to the wild next fall.California condors are still considered critically endangered, after nearly going extinct.

AMD is one of the rarest documented genetic disorders. Only around 10 million people in the world carry the altered NPR2 gene, and of those, just 3,500 are estimated to display the physiological conditions including shortened limbs, spinal curvature, and stiff joints.

As for the chick’s father, he had stopped returning to the nest and eventually died while receiving treatment for suspected lead poisoning. Lead poisoning is the greatest cause of death for California condors and a severe obstacle in the species’ recovery. The species is also threatened by the consumption of microtrash.

To reach their conclusions, the team collected samples from both subject’s temporal bones at the base of the skull, an area that is particularly well suited for preserving genetic material. Subsequent examination revealed a first-degree relationship between the two individuals. More specifically, Romito 1 was the mother and Romito 2 was her daughter.

California condors, or “thunderbirds” for Native Americans, are North America’s largest flying birds. Their wingspan is almost ten feet long, but their mighty reach didn’t keep them from reaching the brink of extinction. During the 1980s, there were fewer than two dozen of them in the wild. In 1986, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service put them all in a captive breeding and release program, including at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Six years later, the program had bred enough chicks to return the first condors to the wild.

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- Read more about the Stone Age

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As of the end of 2025, there are 607 California condors in the world, 392 of which are in the wild. One of them is Cayic’s mom.

“Identifying both individuals as female and closely related turns this burial into a familial genetic case,” said Daniel Fernandes, a study co-author and University of Coimbra anthropologist. “The older woman’s milder short stature likely reflects a heterozygous mutation, showing how the same gene affected members of a prehistoric family differently.”

“The mother may go on to pair with another male, and we hope she will have another opportunity to breed during a future breeding season,” says the spokesperson.

The post Single California condor mother gets help raising her chick appeared first on Popular Science.

16 splashy and spectacular images from the 2026 Ocean Photographer of the Year awards

Andrew Paul — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 08:02:00 -0400

In French Polynesia, an adult seahorse floats in ocean waters alongside two juveniles. His head appears bowed, as the young fry look on curiously. The captivating black-and-white image (seen below) by photographer Julien Anton took top honors at the 2026 Ocean Photographer of the Year awards.

Fernandes and colleagues also identified the homozygous variant of the NPR2 gene in Romito 2, which is critical to bone growth and likely explains her slightly taller stature. Taken altogether, the team concluded both Paleolithic women had acromesomelic dysplasia (AMD), Maroteaux type—a condition that stunts a person’s height and shortens their limbs.

French Polynesia
An adult seahorse pictured with newly born juveniles in the shallow seaweed-filled waters of Moorea, French Polynesia. While it is not known if these seahorses are related, their arrangement creates the impression of a farewell, as if the tiny seahorses have gathered around their father after he has released them into the world. Seahorses are now rare in French Polynesia so this image was the result of long hours of searching among the seaweed.
Credit: Julien Anton / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026

Despite the physical limitations of shortened limbs, people with AMD generally maintain a normal life expectancy today. That said, it’s easy to imagine how the condition could severely hinder someone in a Paleolithic hunter-gatherer society—but that does not seem to be the case for Romito 1 and Romito 2. If anything, they experienced the exact opposite. Both survived well into late adolescence, if not full adulthood before they died. This implies a concerted, regular support system from those around them.

“Winning Ocean Photographer of the Year is an immense honour – one I’m proud to share with my family, and with the local residents, naturalists and fishermen of Tahiti and Moorea whose knowledge made this image possible,” Anton said in a statement. “We spent countless hours searching in difficult conditions, with no guarantee of finding a single seahorse. That is what made the moment so extraordinary – when the juveniles turned back towards the adult, it felt like something far beyond what I had dared to hope for. I am not a professional photographer; for me, photography is simply how I share what I see and feel. My hope is that this image can serve as a bridge between science, conservation and a world that deserves to know what is at stake.”

“We believe her survival would have required sustained support from her group, including help with food and mobility in a challenging environment,” explained study co-author Alfredo Coppa from Rome’s Sapienza University.

The 2026 Ocean Photographer of the Year competition celebrates Big Blue’s incredible beauty while also highlighting the urgent need to protect it in a rapidly changing world. The annual contest is co-presented by Oceanographic Magazine and Blancpain.

Beyond helping the contextualize ancient human societies, understanding and identifying genetic conditions in Paleolithic individuals could also help present-day medical research.

Sealion Island, Falkland Islands.
Southern elephant seal pups explore shallow rock pools on Sea Lion Island in the Falkland Islands, testing their first movements in the water after being weaned by their mothers. These young seals must quickly learn to swim and survive independently. As they climb over one another and investigate their surroundings, this scene captures a key moment in their journey from land-bound pups to ocean explorers.
Credit: Matty Smith / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026 Credit: Matty Smith / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026

“Rare genetic diseases are not a modern phenomenon but have been present throughout human history,” said Adrian Daly, a study co-author from Liège University Hospital Center in Belgium. “Understanding their history may help [recognize] such conditions today.”

The post Skeletons reveal Stone Age mother and daughter had a rare genetic condition appeared first on Popular Science.

The extreme sport of skijoring, where horses pull skiers at 40 mph

Popular Science Team — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 09:01:00 -0500

The high-adrenaline winter sport of skijoring, derived from the Norwegian word for “ski driving,” takes so many forms that it even defies uniform pronunciation.

Baja California, Mexico
In the Pacific waters of Mexico, this photograph captures the aftermath of a successful orca hunt. Nearly an hour after a pod separated a humpback whale calf from its mother, the orcas resurfaced carrying their prey between them. The event reveals the cooperative hunting strategies of orcas, where multiple individuals work together to isolate and subdue large prey. What the image doesn’t show is that after the kill, other scavengers, including silky sharks, were drawn to the remains, showing how one event can influence an entire marine food web.
Credit: Rafael Fernandez Caballero / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026

“If you go to France, it’s skijoering, pronounced SKEE-zhor-ing. In German, it’s skijöring, pronounced SHEE-yuh-ring,” says Loren Zhimanskova, founder of Skijor International and Skijor USA. “In Norway, it’s skikjøring, pronounced SHEE-shuh-ring. Every culture has its own version, and that’s part of what makes the sport so special.”

Lady Elliot Island, Australia
“Arms of Connection” captures two octopuses during courtship on a shallow coral reef at Lady Elliot Island, part of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The male extends his specialised mating arm, known as a hectocotylus, to transfer spermatophores to the female. The interaction continued for several minutes as the male approached and the female moved across the reef before eventually accepting him.
Credit: Joshua Blank / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026

This changeability goes beyond umlauts and accents—it’s at the heart of the evolution and modern practice of this eclectic sport.

Raja Ampat, Indonesia
A bottlenose dolphin bites a small fish beside a traditional bagan fishing platform in Indonesia. These dolphins have learned to associate the illuminated nets with an easy source of food, often taking discarded or unwanted fish provided by fishermen. Bagan vessels use lights at night to attract fish before lowering nets from floating platforms. This image captures the close relationship between a wild predator and a human fishing practice, while revealing how animal behaviour can adapt to changing ocean environments.
Credit: Henley Spiers / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026

At its core, skijoring is a winter sport in which a skier is pulled across the snow by a horse. In European competitions, the horse typically runs riderless, while in Western-stye competitions a mounted rider steers the horse through a fast-paced obstacle course.

Goose Bay, New Zealand
A New Zealand fur seal tears apart a rough skate in the waters of New Zealand, while seabirds gather for the scraps. Unable to swallow such large prey whole, the seal throws the skate repeatedly to break it into smaller pieces. Photographed from a kayak, this scene reveals the feeding strategy of a powerful predator and the chain of life that follows every meal.
Credit: Allan Cronin / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026

“It’s that free-flowing, wildhearted diversity that makes our sport so attractive,” Zhimanskova says. But that diversity is also why skijoring may never again grace the Olympic stage after being included as a demonstration event in the 1920s.

French Polynesia
A green turtle approaches the camera, appearing curious about her reflection in its dome port. The photographer positioned the camera just below her eye level to create a more intimate portrait; staying within 3-10 metres of the surface kept the sunlight sharp, creating distinct rays through the water. A fast shutter speed and small aperture controlled the intense brightness, while a small amount of strobe light revealed the turtle’s details.
Credit: Jenny Stock / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026 JENNY STOCK

What is skijoring?

Cuba
A Caribbean reef shark swims through purple sea fans and porous sea rod in Jardines de la Reina, Cuba. The marine park has been protected since 1996, with limits on fishing and visitor numbers helping its reefs and wildlife thrive. Stretching for around 90 miles, the protected archipelago is known for healthy corals and abundant marine life. Caribbean reef sharks can reach three metres in length and are important apex predators, helping maintain balance within the reef ecosystem.
Credit: Jenny Stock / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026

The two main ways to skijor don’t have much in common. In Europe, a lone skier navigates a riderless horse around an oval track, racing shoulder-to-shoulder with other competitors. In the American West, a rider guides the horse through an obstacle course while the skier navigates gates, lands jumps, and sometimes catches rings, all while managing roughly 33 feet of rope at speeds that can reach 40 mph.

Tonga
A mother humpback whale and her calf glide through Tonga’s warm, sheltered waters. The calf stays close to its mother at first, then becomes curious, swimming in playful circles and approaching the camera. The mother remains calm and watchful, guiding her young when it comes too close. Tonga’s protected waters are an important nursery, where pregnant humpbacks give birth and calves grow stronger before beginning their long journey south towards Antarctica. This encounter captures the quiet bond between mother and calf.
Credit: Jenny Stock / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026

What does it feel like to travel on horse-drawn skis? Zhimanskova says the sensation is similar to waterskiing: sitting back slightly against the pull of the rope, keeping the knees flexed, and relying on arm and leg strength to stay upright.

North Sulawesi, Indonesia
A male Banggai cardinalfish shelters newly hatched juveniles inside his mouth, continuing the parental care that follows a three-week incubation period. After hatching, the male may brood the young for another 10 days without feeding, protecting them from predators until they become more independent. This image captures two juveniles peering from their father’s mouth, revealing the specialised mouthbrooding strategy that helps this species increase the survival of its young.
Credit: Suliman Alatiqi / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026

“It might be a bit easier than water skiing, because with waterskiing, you have to go fast to stay afloat,” she says. “With a horse, you can go slower.”

Raja Ampat, Indonesia
A pygmy seahorse, no larger than a grain of rice, clings to a delicate hydroid in the reefs of Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Perfectly camouflaged, these tiny animals are rarely seen, even by experienced divers. Photographing them requires patience and careful buoyancy to protect their fragile habitat, reminding us that some of the ocean’s most remarkable wildlife is also its most vulnerable.
Credit: Iris Uijttewaal / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026

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Lembeh, Indonesia
A Braun’s pughead pipefish peers from between coral polyps in Lembeh, Indonesia. Its unusual features give it a curious, almost surprised expression, helping people connect with a species rarely seen outside its coral home. Some guides damage coral colonies to make these tiny fish easier to show to visitors, but this image was captured by waiting patiently and allowing the animal to appear naturally.
Credit: Luis Arpa Toribio / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026 Luis Arpa

Zhimanskova notes that skijoring has a very different sensation than horseback riding on snow. With the skier’s weight distributed across skis rather than concentrated in a saddle, the horse can move more efficiently over snowy terrain, while the rider and skier are able to navigate sharper turns without destabilizing the horse.

Tamarama Beach, Australia
Dolphins ride the waves alongside surfers at Tamarama Beach, Sydney, during a powerful swell and offshore winds. The pod stayed with the surfers for more than an hour, moving through the lineup as naturally as the people around them. Captured from the water, this image shows the ocean as a shared space, where humans and wildlife briefly move together within the same powerful coastal environment.
Credit: Gergo Rugli / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026 GERGO RUGLI

From winter work to winter sport

Panglao, Philippines
A freediver is surrounded by a vast school of sardines, which part to form a striking halo as they move around her. Captured during an unplanned morning dive, the image reveals the calm trust that can exist between people and marine life. It is a reminder that patience and respect for the ocean can lead to its most extraordinary moments.
Credit: Benjamín Yávar / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026

Long before skijoring became a competitive sport, it was a practical form of winter transportation. The Sami people of Scandinavia used skis and reindeer to efficiently traverse snowy expanses, and Nordic militaries later adapted the practice to move troops and supplies through harsh winter conditions.

Hawai’i, USA
The photographer shot this image of a surfer, windsurfer and kitesurfer sharing the same towering wave at Pe’ahi, known as Jaws, on Maui’s north shore, from a doorless helicopter. At the time there was an unusual combination of huge swell and strong wind that allowed three different forms of wave riding to happen in harmony. In the spray, a rainbow forms. It has been created by the same wind powering the riders across the wave.
Credit: Daniel Edmond Sullivan Jr / Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026

The post 16 splashy and spectacular images from the 2026 Ocean Photographer of the Year awards appeared first on Popular Science.

Yosemite National Park highlights Indigenous arrowhead crafting

Andrew Paul — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 15:31:00 -0400

There is a simple reason why Indigenous arrowhead crafting has remained largely the same for thousands of years—if something works, it works. The earliest examples of these lethal tools date back around 74,000 years ago to Stone Age Ethiopia, but the skill is still practiced today by trained artisans around the world. Yet, the process isn’t only a matter of breaking rocks into sharp-edged projectiles.. As Yosemite National Park officials recently highlighted, there is more to this very specific technique called knapping.

Over time, people began to appreciate a different aspect of this snowy time-saver—it was fun. By the early 1900s, skijoring had evolved into a recreational activity in the Alps, where it developed into an organized sporting activity. It eventually attracted some high-profile fans, including Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the Winter Olympics. His enthusiasm for the sport led to its inclusion as a demonstration event at the 1924 Games in Chamonix, France, and again in the 1928 Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

Proper knapping largely hinges on choosing the correct stones. These usually include chert, flint, and most notably obsidian due to their surgically sharp fracture lines. Artisans then slowly and purposely break off flakes of rocks to shape them into not only aerodynamic arrowheads, but knives, scrapers, and spear points.

As the sport eventually made its way west, it evolved a distinctly American style. By around 1914, American tourists began bringing skijoring back from their European vacations, and it began appearing at resorts like Mirror Lake in Lake Placid, New York. These early U.S. iterations hewed closely to the European roots of the sport.

Knapping requires carefully breaking off flakes of stone to hone the shape and angles. Credit: Yosemite National Park ANNA CIRIMELE

In Lake Placid, New York, skiers hold tight as horses pull them along on a frozen Mirror Lake on December 26, 1936. Image: Contributor / Getty Images / Underwood Archives

Interestingly, obsidian isn’t native to the Yosemite, yet the region’s Indigenous communities have prized the material for generations. The volcanic glass was introduced into the area via ancient trade routes that crossed over the Eastern Sierra’s Mono Lake in present-day eastern California near the Nevada border. Tribes separated by hundreds of miles relied on these and similar exchange networks to swap tool materials for animal skins, medicinal plants, as well as nutritious pine nuts and acorns.

“The Western version started in towns like Jackson, Steamboat, and Banff, and was more free-spirited and rugged, more about testing your skills,” says Zhimanskova. “That’s how rodeo started. Cowboys roped as part of their jobs, but when they had time off they said, ‘Well, who can rope the best?’ It became a friendly competition, and then evolved into a structured sport, like rodeo.”

Yosemite’s earliest Indigenous communities initially knapped obsidian into larger points for spears and spear throwers known as atlatls. As hunting technology evolved over hundreds of years towards a reliance on bows and arrows, the obsidian points shrank in size to make them more aerodynamic.

Skijoring continues to take many forms

The national park celebrates the ancient tradition of knapping at its annual Knap-In event, which includes demonstrations, workshops, and other hands-on opportunities. While this year’s Yosemite Knap-In took place in August, numerous others are held across the United States throughout the year.

The post Yosemite National Park highlights Indigenous arrowhead crafting appeared first on Popular Science.

Tiny crabs discovered hitching rides on sea snakes

Andrew Paul — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 14:11:06 -0400

Many organisms often set up their homes on sea turtles. Known as epibionts, the most noticeable passengers are usually the algae and barnacles clinging to the marine reptile’s protective shell. Other epibionts include tiny crabs in the Planes genus who frequently hitch rides inside the crevices between a turtle’s shell and body.

In modern practice, skijoring has splintered into a wide range of styles—not even the horse is set in stone. Some skijorers are pulled by dogs or miniature ponies, others by snowmobiles, motorcycles, or cars, and at least one donkey has reportedly gotten in on the action. Still, the most common form of the sport involves a skier pulled by a galloping horse, either with a rider or without.

Biologists at the Florida Museum of Natural History recently confirmed a surprising addition to crustaceans’ roster of ocean taxis, however. After examining dozens of specimens collected during surveys off Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast, researchers now know that some small crabs will occasionally climb aboard sea snakes. But these aren’t the Planes crabs the biologists expected. As they describe in a study published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, the clawed invertebrates instead belong to three species related to Planes within the same family.

It’s uncertain whether skijoring will reappear in future Winter Olympics. Zhimanskova believes gaining approval from the International Olympic Committee would require a level of international standardization that might be at odds with the sport’s notoriously untamed nature.

University of Florida (UF) marine herpetologist Joseph Pfaller first noticed one of the suspicious crabs back in 2012 while studying the yellow-bellied sea snake (Hydrophis platurus). More specifically, he was examining the reptiles’ old skin. Sea snakes shed their scales just like their land-based cousins, but they accomplish the task much differently. Without any hard surfaces to slide against, sea snakes coil into loops to generate enough friction to remove the outer epidermal layers.

Still, some efforts have been made to add structure to the sport without sacrificing its freewheeling spirit. Zhiimanskova helped establish the SkijorCup, a standardized point system designed to connect competitions across events while preserving the sport’s culture and emphasis on equine safety.

“When you find a sea snake’s skin, it’s usually in a knot,” Pfaller explained in a UF profile.

“Skijoring races have always resisted a governing body because people involved in the sport are so inherently independent,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean they aren’t willing to work together to grow and improve. The trick is finding the right formula that unifies, allows for independence, and doesn’t involve governing or sanctioning.”

The yellow-bellied sea snake is studied more for its appearance and behavior than its passengers. Credit: Flaxington

Rider Kylee Nielson and skier Magnolia Neu took home the first ever Women’s Division championship buckle following this race. Image: Amanda Dilworth / PRO Skijor / WESTERN EDGE PHOTO

After only collecting a couple of snakes, Pfaller soon watched a small crab fall off one of them. He knew the ocean serpents sometimes hosted barnacles or other stationary organisms, but couldn’t recall a similar situation involving crustaceans—so he started paying attention.

Beyond the competition itself, modern skijoring has developed a distinct visual culture that’s part of what makes it so magnetic. Modern skijoring events in the American West often look like a mashup of apres-ski attire and Yellowstone-esque Western flair.

Pfaller amassed 371 sea snakes by the end of his expedition, and he identified far more than crabs. Some of the reptiles also hosted shrimps, snails, and even a clingfish. Pfaller and his colleagues assumed no one previously noticed the additions because marine biologists are generally more focused on the yellow-bellied sea snakes themselves due to their colorful appearance, uncommon distribution, and fascinating underwater behaviors.

Fur coats, chaps, and cowboy hats add a renegade swagger to pristine snowscapes, and participants and spectators alike embrace the sport’s anything-goes aesthetic. Some competitions even celebrate skijor chic through organized “red carpet” events.

Technically speaking, most of the crabs weren’t actually crabs just yet. Instead, most of Pfaller’s collection were considered to be in megalopae—a phase between larva and adult life. That said, at least one young crab appeared to belong to the Planes genus.

“I always say it’s the Kentucky Derby, but on snow with a twist,” says Kylee Nielson, a competitive skijor rider who, together with skier Magnolia Neu, took home the first-ever Women’s Division championship buckle at PRO Skijor’s recent Frontier Tour in Heber City, Utah.

Although Pfaller stored the preserved specimens at Florida Museum of Natural History, he soon transitioned to focusing on sea turtles instead of snakes. It took a decade before the oddities resurfaced. After casually mentioning the collection to University of Guam crustacean expert Robert Lasley, his colleague couldn’t resist the joke:

“Tons of fur coats, cowboy hats, chaps—the crazier, the better.”

“‘Wait! Wait! Wait! Are you saying you have planes on a snake?’” remembered Pfaller, referencing the cult horror movie Snakes on a Plane.

“Three heartbeats”

One of the crab megalopa found on a sea snake. Credit: Elefánti et al. (2026)

Beneath the chaps-clad pageantry, skijoring relies on an intimate partnership of timing and trust, leaving little room for error. Megan Smith, a novice skijorer married to seasoned competitor Patrick Smith, has come to understand that firsthand.

The pair decided to follow up on his specimens by sequencing their DNA, assuming to confirm their Planes suspicions,but results collected by study co-author and UF invertebrate researcher Soma Elefánti weren’t what they expected.

“It’s a sport of three athletes, not just the rider and the skier,” says Megan, a former restaurateur and photographer who connected with Patrick after posting her photos of his races. “Skijor is rider, skier, and horse.”

“Honestly, the thought that we could name this study ‘Planes on a Snake’ was enough to get me motivated, but when we got the results, it was evident that something weird and interesting was going on here,” Lasley said.

“They call it ‘three heartbeats,’” adds Patrick.

The phrase exemplifies how closely the sport binds this essential trio, who share very real consequences if one “heartbeat” should fall out of sync.

As it turned out, none of the megalopae were in the Planes genus. Instead, they belonged to other species in the Grapsidae family, whose adult crabs live on Costa Rica’s coastal trees and rocky shorelines. The study authors knew most crabs release larvae into the water, regardless of living on land or in the water when adults. Because of this, they theorized that the larvae that survived long enough to transition into megalopae instinctually started scoping out a more solid habitat.

Rider Megan Smith pulls skier Austin Gardner, moments before the finish line in their first-place run in the novice skijor division at Estes Park, Colorado. Image: Justin Treptow

“They can swim well, but these things are also built to climb or settle onto something,” Lasley said.

This three-athlete interdependency was truly driven home recently for Patrick. During a two-day event, he was riding near the top of a stacked field when a turn went wrong. The horse, Lady Porcha, lost her footing on the icy course and went down, sending both of them sliding briefly across the track.

The megalopae that eventually ended up on coastal drift lines likely encountered sea snakes, latched on, then were swept back out into the ocean.

Lady Porcha quickly got to her feet and finished the run uninjured, but Patrick was knocked to the ground as the skier’s rope caught his spur and pulled his boot free.

“The snakes are just there, and the crabs don’t know the difference,” explained Pfaller.

“You skipped like a stone on a pond,” Megan recalls.

The reason no adult Planes crabs were found on the snakes can also be explained by their family tree—Planes crustaceans evolved to know better than to try making a home on the reptiles. Meanwhile, these other species in the Graspidae family are still learning. But since these floaters would never make it back to shore, evolution would have likely taught them the hard way.

The fall drew a collective gasp from the crowd, and people rushed in to help. Patrick walked away with a twisted ankle, shaken but intact—and relieved, above all, that the horse was okay.

“It’s not a good idea. These crabs [had] made a poor decision,” said Lasley.

The post Tiny crabs discovered hitching rides on sea snakes appeared first on Popular Science.

Dog poop not picked up? Blame people staring at their phones.

Jennifer Byrne — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:32:00 -0400

Anyone who regularly walks a dog has likely felt the heavy pull of their smartphone to break up the monotony. Though the hustle and bustle of modern life makes multitasking more appealing than ever, distracted dog walking can put the pooch and its owner in dangerous spots. It may also contribute to piles of abandoned, unscooped poop.

Patrick and Megan participate in skijoring competitions throughout the winter. While Patrick approaches the sport as a serious contender, Megan—who picked up a win of her own recently—is more drawn to the fun of it all.

That last point comes from a new study published in the journal Society & Natural Resources by researchers at the University of Surrey in England. The team spent 40 hours observing dog walkers across several sites in the Surrey Hills National Landscape southwest of London, to see how they actually behaved on walks. On 11 different occasions, they spotted owners so absorbed in their phone’s enticing glow or tuned out with headphones that they apparently didn’t notice their dog had relieved itself.

“He’s like ‘I’m here to win,’ and I’m there to see my friends,” says Megan. “We’ve found a really good community here. Everyone is positive and roots for each other.”

The post The extreme sport of skijoring, where horses pull skiers at 40 mph appeared first on Popular Science.

Facial recognition AI trained to work on bears

Andrew Paul — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 15:55:00 -0500

For most people, assessing a bear’s weight or fur color isn’t a top priority during an unexpected encounter in the woods. Instead, the desire to survive generally wins out over lingering to admire the predator’s sizable claws or snout shape. Knowing this, you’d be forgiven for having difficulty differentiating one bear from another.

This abandoned dog poop, which the team artfully calls “pet fouling,” wasn’t the result of particularly ill-intentioned owners. Instead, the researchers say it was mostly a matter of distraction from the dirty task at hand. And poop wasn’t the only issue. Distracted dog walkers were also less likely to catch their dogs entering undergrowth or disturbing nearby wildlife and livestock. Unchecked smartphone use, in other words, inadvertently made walkers crappier neighbors.

For many ecologists, monitoring individual animals over long periods of time—even years—is crucial to conservation efforts. But even the experts easily get confused. This is especially true given a bear’s often dramatic, seasonal weight fluctuations, as well as how physically different they may look pre- and post-hibernation. To help wildlife biologists make sense of it all, a team at Switzerland’s EPFL and Alaska Pacific University (APU) has developed PoseSwin, a machine learning program capable of telling brown bears apart from one another. The technology was recently detailed in a study recently published in the journal Cell Current Biology.

“Dog walkers are often portrayed as either responsible or irresponsible, but our research shows that the reality is far more complicated,” Tom Roberts, a study co-author and University of Surrey Senior Lecturer in Environmental Sociology, said in a statement. “Most people care deeply about their dogs and the countryside. Problems frequently arise because their attention is divided or because facilities do not match how dog walking actually happens.”

PoseSwin was trained on over 72,000 photos of 109 different brown bears taken by APU researcher Beth Rosenberg between 2017 and 2022. Rosenberg captured the images at all times of day and night and in various weather conditions, while also making sure to document the bears in a variety of behaviors. She and her colleagues then relied on their existing knowledge of brown bear physiology to determine the handful of anatomical details that remain relatively constant over the animal’s life. These features include their brow bone angle, ear placement, and muzzle shape. Next, they incorporated data on how bears looked in different poses and at varying angles.

Dog walking: a moral conundrum

“Our biological intuition was that head features combined with pose would be more reliable than body shape alone, which changes dramatically with weight gain,” explained Alexander Mathis, a project collaborator and researcher at EPFL’s Brain Mind Institute and Neuro-X Institute. “The data proved us right—PoseSwin significantly outperformed models that used body images or ignored pose information.”

Observing dog-walker habits gave the researchers a glimpse into how people morally negotiate the responsibility of shared spaces in their daily lives. Walking dogs in the protected region, that also includes farmland, means balancing the interests of the dog walkers, the dogs, farmers, and the natural landscape itself. Overall, the team says the majority of dog walkers they observed were responsible stewards. Most consistently picked up after their pets, with some even collecting waste left behind by other animals. They also tended to adhere to other polite conventions, like keeping their dogs on a leash and on specified trails.

From there, the team took PoseSwin for a field test with help from citizen scientists. After amassing more brown bear portraits from visitors to Katmai National Park and Preserve (home of Fat Bear Week), researchers fed the photos into the machine learning program. In multiple cases, PoseSwin successfully matched individual bears to those already in its database. Already, PoseSwin’s designers could begin to track how and where these predators moved in search of seasonal food.

But issues arose when digital devices got involved. Unscooped poop tended to happen early in walks, concentrated near parking lots and along busy paths. Dogs weren’t sneakily waiting to poop in unsuspecting bushes or flower beds. They were more or less dutifully doing their business on a schedule. It was their owners who were shirking the job, temporarily blinded by the pull of social media and emails. A researcher describes the scene in the following field note included in the study.

“This is a concrete example of the PoseSwin model’s potential,” said Rosenberg. “The technology could eventually be used to analyze the thousands of pictures that visitors take every year and help to build a map of how brown bears use this expansive area.”

“Many wore headphones or were on calls,” they wrote. “Some paced a short loop while talking; others stayed by the gate scrolling on their phones as their dogs ran around the field with little supervision.”

Rosenberg and her colleagues are now using PoseSwin to monitor over 100 bears living around McNeil River State Game Sanctuary without disrupting their daily habits. In doing so, they should gain more accurate information on the bears’health and wellbeing, providing a much needed boost to conservation efforts.

The team also interviewed 15 farmers, land managers, and countryside business owners to get their thoughts on how best to share the space with dog walkers. Broadly, the recommendations were to try and work with the walkers, rather than aggressively enforce new rules or restrictions. The study recommends placing plastic waste bins near areas where dogs often poop to make cleanup easier. They also suggested adding dedicated off-leash areas where dogs can run freely without disturbing the environment, as well as friendly signage explaining why fouling the area can be harmful.

“Bears are at the top of the food chain and ensure the proper functioning of their ecosystem. They are critical to maintaining healthy systems,” explained Rosenberg.

“While dogs can deepen human engagement with nature, they also shape how landscapes are encountered and used,” the researchers write in the paper.

PoseSwin likely won’t remain so bear-centric. Early benchmark tests indicate it’s also incredibly accurate when trained on macaques, suggesting it could soon expand to handle many other species. The machine learning algorithm is also available open-source, so anyone can access it for their own subject—although there’s a good chance none of them will be harder for PoseSwin to identify.

Distracted walks aren’t great for dogs, or their owners

“Bears are perhaps the hardest species to recognize individually,” said Mathis. “We focused on them first with the idea that our program could be adapted to other species, from mice to chimps.”

The post Facial recognition AI trained to work on bears appeared first on Popular Science.

Rare copy of Declaration of Independence going to auction

Andrew Paul — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 14:09:52 -0500

The Declaration of Independence is up for sale, but it will cost more than most of us can afford. Despite this, the edition offered by Goldin Auction was originally printed and distributed so that colonists could read the Second Continental Congress’ argument for separating from Great Britain in July 1776.

This study took place in the calm, rural English countryside, and even there, some walkers were still drawn to devices. It may be even more likely in urban and suburban areas, where dog walking can often feel less like leisure and more like an obligation to push through. But distracted walking can cause problems for dogs, both physically and mentally.

The document is part of a collection of over 400 historic items scheduled for auction in May, and is set to coincide with the 250th anniversary of American independence. However, this isn’t necessarily a recognizable version of the Declaration of Independence. Instead of a carefully handwritten piece of parchment (what’s known as an engrossed copy), this variant is one of the few surviving broadside editions. A broadside is a large, single-sided page of printed material, and was one of the easiest and most popular ways to spread public information at the time.

On the physical side, owners staring at their phones are more likely to miss their dogs gobbling a sharp bone or other dangerous litter that could wreak havoc on their guts. They also might not see or hear the signals their dog is sending, like if they are getting tired, which could lead to injury. Dogs communicate with us mostly using body language, so when they look up only to see their owners far away in cyberspace, it can make them frustrated. Distracted walkers also might not notice another reactive dog nearby until they are so close that a scuffle breaks out. Listening to music, especially with noise-canceling headphones, can also drown out the subtle sounds of quickly approaching cyclists or, more frequently these days, e-scooter riders.

In this case, Declaration of Independence broadsides were distributed throughout the colonies shortly after the original document was signed. The copies were then read at town gatherings and posted in public forums to raise awareness of their cause and win people over to the idea of breaking away from Britain.

“When an owner is more attentive to their surroundings, they can be proactive versus reactive to these things,” University of California Davis Veterinary Medicine Professor of Clinical Animal Behavior Science Melissa Bain said in a recent interview with HuffPost.

Although the broadside headed to auction this year doesn’t include a specific printer’s mark, Goldin appraisers believe additional contextual details trace it back to a publisher in Exeter, New Hampshire. Around 125 July 1776 broadsides are known to still exist today, but only 10 examples remain of this specific edition.

Mentally, distracted walkers give more attention to their devices than to their pets, leaving the dog confused. Dogs have evolved to look to our eyes for information, including feedback that reinforces whether they did something good or bad. When they check in and there’s no connection, wires can get crossed. They can also get anxious if they don’t have enough time to sniff around on their walk, something that can be exacerbated by a distracted owner hurrying them along. Some Animal behaviorists liken dogs sniffing things on their walks to reading the newspaper or, perhaps more fitting in this case, checking social media.

Goldin didn’t offer a valuation estimate, but it will probably sell for a hefty price based on similar, recent auctions. On January 23rd, anExeter broadside in similar condition offered by Christie’s sold for nearly $5.7 million.

And though the University of Surrey researchers have recommended more cooperative ways of dealing with unscooped dog poop, others are taking more assertive action. Apartment complexes around the United States are increasingly using services that collect discarded dog poop, take DNA samples from it, and trace it back to its owners to issue fines. In some cases, companies that act as the “Poo Police” have even appeared in eviction court.

The Declaration of Independence is a remarkable historical document not only for its ambitions, but how it justified severing colonial ties with Britain. Its authors included a list of 27 specific grievances citing “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” These included obstructing the “Administration of Justice,” and “[keeping] among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.”

The post Rare copy of Declaration of Independence going to auction appeared first on Popular Science.

Amazon is clearing out Dewalt power tools and batteries: Get a battery 2-pack for just $91.46 shipped

Mack DeGeurin — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 13:21:18 -0500

Winter may not seem like the best time to take on home improvement projects, but they’re a great option for fending off cabin fever. But, to do the job right, you need proper power tools and Amazon’s Dewalt clearance sale can help in that regard. Right now, the massive online retailer has a wide selection of Dewalt tools on sale. Perhaps even more importantly, you can get extra 20V batteries for the lowest prices we have seen this year. After all, you can never have too many tools and you can certainly never have too many batteries.

That’s all a lot of trouble that could potentially be avoided by taking a brief break from screens and being present. Past research has even shown that dog walking and seeing your dog have fun can improve the dog walker’s mood.

Editor’s picks

So, put down the phone and pick up some poop.

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DEWALT 20V MAX 4Ah Lithium-Ion Battery 2-Pack (DCB240-2) $91.46 (60% off)

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The post Dog poop not picked up? Blame people staring at their phones. appeared first on Popular Science.

How to craft pocket notebooks for pennies

Andrew Paul — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 11:17:18 -0400

E-ink tablets are much easier on the eyes and often even allow users to write on them using a stylus, but the bells and whistles frequently come with a steep price tag. Luddites on a budget still frequently opt instead for a classic pocket paper notebook,but even then, the portable thought journals frequently feel unnecessarily expensive. A pack of three miniature Moleskine journals currently costs $13, leaving many aspiring writers to jot down their ideas on scraps of paper and coffee shop receipts.

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But just because fancy notebooks cost a lot of money doesn’t mean they’re inherently pricey to manufacture. There isn’t even a lot of technique required to craft your own backpocket diary. As YouTube creator Perry Daniels recently highlighted, some decent paper, scissors, twine, and a needle are all you need to make your own small notebook.

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The most basic versions literally cost a dollar or two to make, but you’re welcome to gussy them up with fancier cover card stock, rounded edges, and other little flourishes. Staples will work in a pinch to bind the spine, although Daniels recommends spending the extra time stitching the seam. This allows your notebook to crease closed more easily, and it also simply looks a lot more professional and intentional.

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Anyone who carries a pocket notebook daily knows that they often aren’t long for this world. The casual wear-and-tear often reduces them to shreds faster than you can fill them, and every regular user has left at least one on a cafe table. So, the next time the inevitable happens, take a moment to consider assembling a cool replacement yourself before shelling out the cash.

The post How to craft pocket notebooks for pennies appeared first on Popular Science.

The cubs from Katmai’s ‘Brady Bunch’ blended family are all grown up

Laura Baisas — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 10:05:00 -0400

To the untrained eye, two female brown bears (Ursus arctos) in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve look like any other bears. But Bear #609 (Bean) and Bear #620 were raised in Katmai’s historic Brady Bunch-esque blended family.

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Between mid-August and October 2022, Bear #910 blended her family with her sister Bear #909’s family. In the process, she adopted her sister’s 2.5-year-old female yearling cub (a one- to two-year-old cub still with its mother), while she herself had a spring cub (a first-year cub that was born over the winter and emerges in the spring). Adoptions like these are exceptionally rare in the wild, and it is believed to be only the second such adoption at Katmai. The behavior has also been observed in polar bears.

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The sisters were frequently seen fishing together with their cubs, teaching them how to fish throughout 2023. That same year, Bear #909’s ovulation cycle began again, and she separated from her offspring Bear #609 (Bean). A study on their family was published in the journal BioOne in 2025.

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Bear #910 walking along the beach. Image: NPS/Cory Cravatta Cory Cravatta

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The adopted Bear #609 (Bean) is a female bear, with large oval-shaped ears with slight blonde tips. She has a dark coat with blonde grizzling, and has a fluffy headband by the fall. Bear #690 (Bean) won the Fat Bear Week Junior competition in 2022, and is now considered a fully independent bear.

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Bear #620 is Bear #609’s biological cousin and believed to be the daughter of Bear #910 who blended their families. She is identified by a slightly upturned narrow muzzle, tall oval ears, and a semi-prominent hump on her back. During the early summer, her head and mane are a light brown with a reddish blonde and a white chin. By the fall, she sports a more fluffy grizzled fur headband around her head.

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According to Katmai naturalist Mike Fitz, it is unclear how being raised with two strong maternal figures will affect their adulthood. Brown bears will often establish a home range that overlaps with their mothers, and a hierarchy in the region develops among related bears along their mother’s line. Those bears within the same matriline may have more tolerance for each other.

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“If #609 and #620 continue to make Brooks River part of their home range, then we will have a special opportunity to watch the growth and maturation of two especially social young female bears in the same place that their mothers make a living,” Fitz explained in a recent video. “Familiarity with each other and the river and other bears who make it their home as well, sharing space with their large, successful mothers, may very well prove to be keys to their survival, longevity, and success.”

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We also do not know just yet if members of this historic bear family will be contestants in Fat Bear Week 2026. The bracket will be announced on Friday, September 18.

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Most bear mothers generally keep their litters separated, and this year was an example of why they tend to stick to themselves. On Tuesday, July 28, the live-cams captured a young brown bear cub being killed and eaten by an unrelated mother bear (Bear #806). The deceased cub was born this spring, and was one of Bear #909’s cubs. Bear 909 started this season with two cubs, but has now lost both.

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On Sunday, August 2, one of Bear #335’s (also known as Jolly) cubs died, after following three unrelated cubs up a tree. The mother of the cubs already in the tree attacked Bear #335’s cub, who did not survive the encounter. The identity of the mother bear who killed the spring cub was not confirmed.

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Following the first cub’s death, Fitz and park rangers Christine Loberg and Sarah Bruce said that while infanticide by female adults does occur, this is likely the first documented case occurring at Brooks River. While there is no single answer as to why mother bears are killing cubs, some experts suspect bear adoption, food scarcity, and fights for dominance all play a role.

The post The cubs from Katmai’s ‘Brady Bunch’ blended family are all grown up appeared first on Popular Science.

Apple sealed the iPod shut, and hackers have been prying it open ever since

Stan Horaczek — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:36:25 -0400

I recently found my old iPod Video, and it still works. More importantly, it still has the version of Most Precious Blood’s “So Typical My Heart” with original vocalist Tom Sheehan singing. I’ve been toying with the idea of modding the iPod so it works with wireless headphones. I probably never will, but it’s fun to think about.

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That itch has followed the iPod for its entire life. Apple built a sealed music player, and people spent the next two decades prying it open to see what else it could do. PopSci was right there with them with our ever-present willingness to void warranties.

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The high-res images of this project are unfortunately gone the way of the 30-pin connector. Popular Science

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The best example ran in the July 2011 issue. Vin Marshall built a tube-amp iPod dock that paired Apple’s music player with amplifier tech that peaked half a century earlier. In a tube amp, a small signal applied to the tube’s grid controls a much larger current, and that current drives the speaker. Marshall conceded that solid-state amps beat tubes on cost, size, and reliability, but that’s not the point. People still love tubes for their warm sound and orange-yellow glow, and his build leaned into both.

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All in, the project cost about $400. Marshall started with S-5 Electronics’ 16LS amplifier kit, added an off-the-shelf iPod dock, and mounted everything in an aluminum enclosure from Hammond Manufacturing. He didn’t have to design a circuit. Most of the labor went into drilling holes and mounting parts. The finished amp worked with a remote, and while it wasn’t especially loud, it had no trouble filling a living room.

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Docking the iPod did more than hold it upright. Apple’s 30-pin connector, which arrived with the third-generation iPod in 2003, carried a line-level audio signal, so the amp got its music before it passed through the iPod’s tiny headphone amplifier. You don’t have to be a snobby audio purist to notice the difference in quality this path provided.

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That connector didn’t have much time left. Apple replaced it with Lightning in September 2012, about 15 months after Marshall’s build went online, and a generation of 30-pin docks started its slow migration to thrift store shelves.

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Marshall’s project has aged better than the connector. He posted his schematic, bill of materials, and assembly instructions on GitHub, and they’re still up. As of September 2026, TubeDepot still lists the 16LS kit at $349.95, which would eat most of Marshall’s original budget on its own.

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Images like this make me want to get my DIY on. Popular Science

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Two years earlier, Laura Silver took a more musical route in New music from an old iPod. At an Eyebeam workshop in New York, she installed ipodLinux and pdPod, a port of the open-source audio language Pure Data, and turned an early iPod into a pocket drum kit. She found the iPod at a Lower East Side recycling center, learned the hard way that third-generation models needed FireWire instead of USB to power up, and later turned the empty case into a snack container. Remember FireWire? Good times.

Batteries and charging

The experts at that workshop told Silver the newer, slimmer iPods were nearly hackproof. That turned out to be half right. Hackers cracked the first iPod touch within about a month of its September 2007 launch, and jailbreaking grew into a hobby of its own.

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Hard-drive iPods got bigger guts. By 2009, you could upgrade an old iPod to 240GB with a Toshiba drive that cost more than $300 by itself. Once the touch picked up cameras with the 2010 iPod lineup, retired models eventually found second lives as free home security cameras.

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If you saw this view of your iPod, you were either having fun doing a DIY project or you were sad because you broke your iPod. Popular Science

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Apple discontinued the iPod classic in 2014 and the iPod touch, its last iPod, in May 2022. The tinkering didn’t stop. Axios reported that eBay searches for the iPod classic rose 25 percent from January through October 2025 compared with the same stretch of 2024. Modders now replace spinning hard drives with microSD cards through iFlash adapters and install batteries with several times the original capacity. Rockbox, the open-source firmware that has run on iPods for about 20 years, reached version 4.0 in 2025.

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That brings me back to my wireless headphones. Moonlit’s Classic Connect 2 kit adds Bluetooth 5.2 and USB-C charging to the fifth- and 5.5-generation iPod Video, and the core install doesn’t require soldering. The company estimates the whole job takes 10 minutes. That puts a lot of pressure on “I probably never will.”

The post Apple sealed the iPod shut, and hackers have been prying it open ever since appeared first on Popular Science.

In 1959, the first nuclear-powered merchant ship set sail before the world was ready

Stan Horaczek — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 08:54:00 -0400

By the time naval architecture firm George G. Sharp tasked Jack Heaney with the design of the world’s first nuclear-powered merchant ship, the Glasgow-born designer had already broken many styling norms. In the mid-1940s, Heaney transformed routine ocean transport into a festive occasion when he designed the interiors of the SS President Wilson and SS President Cleveland with Hawaiian murals, carved glass panels, and a smoking lounge dressed in playful, exotic wall art. His gift for making the mundane desirable wasn’t confined to ocean liners—New York’s Museum of Modern Art had already put one of his stackable aluminum chairs on display in 1947. But nothing in Heaney’s career had prepared him for the commission that reached his drawing board in 1957.

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At the time, the shadow of 1945, when the world first witnessed the terrifying power of the atom, loomed large. Following World War II, the United States and Soviet Union were locked in a nuclear arms race, and the public associated splitting atoms with annihilation. Atoms meant war.

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To shift that sentiment, President Eisenhower launched his Atoms for Peace initiative, aimed at demonstrating the civilian benefits of nuclear technology—and the NS Savannah, or Nuclear Ship Savannah, was to be its flagship. Heaney suddenly had a much more daunting task than usual; he would have to make the feared desirable.

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More than half a century since theSavannah was decommissioned in 1971, there is no nuclear-powered merchant ship in active commercial service anywhere in the world. Four nations have tried. None succeeded, mostly because the economics were not compelling enough and no one trusted nuclear ships.

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In the interim, nuclear reactors have only become smaller and safer. Now, as the true cost of burning oil at sea comes due—commercial shipping produces more than three percent of global greenhouse gas emissions—the economics of nuclear-powered merchant ships may finally be compelling. But the problem Heaney was hired to solve in 1957 still stands in the way, persuading people to trust what they fear.

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The making of a maritime designer

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John “Jack” Heaney was born in Glasgow in 1904. He grew up during a time when the River Clyde, which runs through the heart of Glasgow, served as the world’s premiere shipbuilding hub, with nearly 40 shipyards situated on its banks. Heaney studied naval architecture at the University of Glasgow, while taking classes at the Glasgow School of Art and apprenticing at the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company.

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When Heaney emigrated to New York in 1926, he worked a string of jobs, including a brief stint as a door-to-door refrigerator salesman, before joining the New York City-based naval architecture firm George G. Sharp, Inc. in 1937. At Sharp, Heaney quickly developed a reputation for having an engineer’s eye and artist’s hand, helping design the interiors of several prominent passenger-cargo ships—a specialized form of merchant ship that is part cruise liner, part cargo vessel—including the Robin Line, the Delta Line, and the American President Lines. In 1947, the same year MoMA put his chair on display, Heaney opened his own design firm on West 54th Street in Manhattan. A decade later, the Savannah project came across his bow.

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Originally tasked with the ship’s exterior design, Heaney eventually assumed responsibility for the ship’s interior styling, too. From stem to stern, it was Heaney’s job to design a nuclear-powered ship that passengers would want to cruise on for pleasure, and that businesses would want to ship merchandise on for commerce.

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The NS Savannah was the first nuclear-powered merchant ship. Image: Contributor / Getty Images / Mondadori Portfolio

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Atoms for Peace

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Eisenhower had announced the Atoms for Peace initiative four years earlier, in a December 1953 address to the United Nations. The atom, he argued, should be turned from a great destructive force “into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind.” Under Eisenhower, the U.S. began sharing reactor technology and medical isotopes with allied nations. Atoms for Peace sought to prove that the technology that had obliterated two cities could also light homes, treat cancer, build harbors, and move ships.

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Toxic algae turned a frozen lake green

Andrew Paul — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 11:56:36 -0500

In the Czech Republic, a frozen lake’s emerald green ice is giving biologists an unprecedented opportunity to study a strange—and ominous—natural phenomenon. At the end of 2025, researchers at Czech Academy of Sciences traveled to Lake Lipno in South Bohemia to collect and examine samples from a rare cyanobacteria bloom in the dead of winter. Their findings could help better understand a problem that threatens both local marine life and nearby human populations.

The U.S. Navy, meanwhile, saw the advantages of a vessel that could continuously plow the ocean without refueling for months, or even years. The USS Nautilus was the first atomic-powered vessel, a sub, launching in 1955. By the time Sharp signed Heaney to the Savannah project, two more atomic-powered subs were patrolling the world’s oceans (USS Skate and USS Seawolf). But military vessels primarily keep to military ports, so the public rarely saw them.

Like many bodies of water, Lake Lipno is no stranger to cyanobacteria. The photosynthetic blue-green algae typically flourishes during the warmer months of summer and autumn, particularly in an environment with excess nutrients—a process known as eutrophication. Cyanobacteria blooms are notoriously foul-smelling, but the real issue is the damage they wreak on local ecologies. Each bloom produces exponentially growing waves of cyanotoxins that can poison and even kill nearby aquatic organisms. Unfortunately, these algae incidents are increasing due to climate change and human pollution, particularly industrial phosphorus runoff.

Eisenhower needed a civilian showcase that would disassociate atom-splitting from mushroom clouds. That showcase would be Heaney’s NS Savannah. As a passenger-cargo ship, the Savannah would routinely sail into commercial harbors like Rotterdam, Le Havre, and New York, normalizing nuclear reactors and demonstrating their safety. At least, that was the goal.

It’s unclear how frozen algae blooms could affect their ecosystems. Credit: Petr Znachor

How safe is our A-ship?

In the Czech Republic, most freshwater reservoirs usually see cyanobacterial blooms dissipate by the end of September. However, Lake Lipno has long experienced longer algae seasons. Marine biologists have repeatedly recorded sizable cyanobacteria populations through November, and occasionally into December and even January. Similar conditions at the end of 2025 allowed a biomass of algae to linger near the lake’s surface until the water began to freeze. According to researchers, weeks of sunshine, calm weather, and fair wind conditions were likely to blame. They also confirmed that their field samples contained the common cyanobacteria species Woronichinia naegeliana.

In 1959, the same year the Savannah launched, Popular Science ran a short feature designed to quell readers’ fears: “How Safe Is Our A-Ship Savannah?” The staff-written story read more like a safety brief than an objective review. While boasting about its efficiency—“on a single loading of A-fuel, the Savannah will have a range of 350,000 nautical miles”—the article focused mainly on the “worst possible accidents that might befall the first atomic merchant vessel.” Such caution seemed justified. That same year, Denmark canceled a scheduled visit by the USSSkate to Copenhagen, and England agreed to receive visiting nuclear submarines only at the remote Isle of Portland, population 12,000, rather than major ports.

While the thin ice cover was itself transparent, the cyanobacteria retained its telltale green color that could easily be seen from the shore and overhead. A brief warm spell near December 24th melted some of the ice, which then refroze . The differences in solar radiation absorption allowed these new patches of clear ice to develop over darker areas of algae, forming what are called “cyanobacterial eyes.” The bloom only dissipated after heavy snowfall finally blocked enough light from reaching it beneath the ice.

Popular Science’s initial coverage was not anomalous. “Passengers will receive no more radiation on the Savannah than they receive from normal background radiation of the earth in their day-to-day lives,” The New York Times reassured its readers.

Refreezing causes ‘cyanobacterial eyes’ to develop in the ice. Credit: Petr Znachor

By 1961, however, as the Savannah prepared to begin its cargo and passenger service, which commenced in 1962, Popular Science’s editors were fully onboard, launching a four-part series that spanned four consecutive issues and more than a dozen pages. The do-it-yourself mini-manual provided detailed instructions for readers to build and sail their own four-foot model of the ship. Four different writers and editors took part in the project: hull casting one month, superstructure the next, then a working steam turbine, and finally radio controls. Even as Popular Science promoted its features, the real Savannah was being fitted with Heaney’s final touches.

It’s unclear how these icy winter blooms will affect their ecosystems, but unfortunately, similar incidents will almost certainly become more common—both at Lake Lipno and in other waters around the world. In the United States, it’s possible that cyanobacteria sightings could soon stretch into December or even January.

The January 1961 issue of Popular Science shows a model of the NS Savannah assembled with screws and dowels. Image: Popular Science, January 1961 issue

“Green ice on Lake Lipno fits into the long-term changes we observe here in connection with eutrophication and ongoing climate change,” said hydrobiologist Petr Znachor. “It suggests that we may witness similar surprises more frequently in the future.”

The post Toxic algae turned a frozen lake green appeared first on Popular Science.

Svalbard polar bears are doing surprisingly well (for now)

Laura Baisas — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 11:00:00 -0500

The Arctic’s polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are often the poster species for the perils of climate change. Threatened by rapidly dwindling sea ice and habitat loss as the world warms, over two-thirds of polar bears could go extinct by 2050. Despite the dire situation, polar bear populations on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard have improved. The reason could be hidden beneath their fur and in their surroundings. The findings are detailed in a study published today in the journal Scientific Reports.

Domesticating the atom

The Svalbard archipelago is located halfway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The remote region is home to a seed vault, about 2,100 people, and some unique wildlife—including the world’s smallest reindeer. There are also an estimated 3,000 polar bears and about 300 remain on Svalbard year-round, while others migrate. Internationally, polar bears have been protected from hunting since 1973, so their primary threats are increased temperatures due to climate change, habitat and food resource loss, and encroachment by humans.

On a conventional ship, fuel is stored low in the hull, in tanks that any port can refill with diesel by hose. But Savannah’s single, massive fuel core had to sit in the hull’s center, beneath an opening in the deck, so it could be accessible by overhead crane for refueling. Heaney’s answer to this exterior design problem became the ship’s signature: a streamlined, teardrop-shaped superstructure. Popular Science’s writers praised Savannah’s sleek, futuristic lines as “graceful as a racing yacht’s,” and called its reactor housing “a well-placed superstructure [that] blends airfoil curves with sharply angled planes for a dazzling effect.”

Since 1980, temperatures in the Barents Sea region surrounding Svalbard have increased up to two degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade. However, a 2004 census of the Barents Sea polar bear population counted approximately 2,650 individuals and that number did not shrink in size until recently. The reasons behind the decrease have been unclear.

Below decks, Heaney took the fear problem head on, weaving Atomic Age motifs into the ship’s interior. In the veranda, the cocktail bar’s backlit wine rack depicted the trilinear chart of the nuclides in blue, red, and yellow glass; the tables ringing the dance floor glowed, their tops lit by “panelescent,” or electrically charged luminescent panels. Even the floor tiles in the main stairwell carried the atomic theme. A separate lounge nearby offered passengers a closed-circuit television view into the reactor containment vessel. Overhead light beamed down through light fixtures adorned with stylized atoms.

In the dining room, sculptor Pierre Bourdelle installed a wall mural titled “Fission.” Nearby, suspended in glass, hung a small gold model of the NSSavannah’s namesake, the 1819 steamship SSSavannah, the first ship to cross the Atlantic under sail and steam. Heaney hoped such Old World symbolism would make people feel comfortable dining, dancing, and sleeping no more than a dozen yards from a nuclear reactor.

In the new study, Norwegian Polar Institute polar bear ecologist Jon Aars and colleagues investigated why the Svalbard population has remained so stable.

As a design achievement, Savannah was a triumph. Her passenger cabins were mostly full from 1962 to 1965, and more than 1.4 million people toured the ship across 46 ports in 13 countries.

“Svalbard (and the Barents Sea area) has experienced a much faster loss of sea ice than other areas having polar bears,” Aars tells Popular Science. “The bears are not hunted, they have few competitors when on land, and they may have more alternative prey sources when on land than in most other areas.”

Even the plates and silverware used on the NS Savannah had an atomic motif. Image: Baltimore Sun / Contributor / Getty Images / Kim Hairston

They poured over data from 1,188 body measurement records of 770 adult polar bears taken between 1992 and 2019. They specifically looked at the bears’ body composition index (BCI). BCI indicates the amount of fat reserves and body condition in the bears. The team compared BCI with the number of ice-free days in the Barents Sea region across the 27-year period.

Sunk by economics—and fear

While there were roughly 100 more ice-free days (about four days per year), the sampled polar bears’ BCI increased after the year 2000. According to Aars, this surprising result indicates that their fat reserves increased as sea ice levels decreased.

But novelty was never going to be enough to move public sentiment or make Savannah pay for itself. The combined ship-and-reactor construction cost ran to roughly $46 million, three to four times what a comparable conventional freighter cost at the time, and the ship’s specialized nuclear crew commanded specialized wages. No private insurer would touch a nuclear-powered merchant ship; the U.S. government had to indemnify it instead, extending $500 million in federal liability coverage just to get foreign ports to receive the ship. Every port call required a small diplomatic mission of its own, negotiated weeks in advance, with tugs standing by in case of an accident. Some countries, like Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, never accepted Savannah.

These improvements in the body conditions might be due to a population increase in the reindeer and walrus that the polar bears eat. The sea ice loss may also lead to more ringed seals gathering in smaller areas of sea ice, which could make polar bear hunting more efficient.

By the end of the 1960s, the U.S. Defense Department, one of merchant shipping’s largest customers, had concluded that conventional freighters remained the better bet. With no federal appetite left to continue funding a revenue-losing program, Savannah was withdrawn from service in late 1971 with no plans to build another.

The timing proved fateful. Two years after Savannah was decommissioned, the 1973 oil embargo sent fuel prices soaring; had it still been sailing, the ship’s independence from oil might have tipped the scales for commercial customers, even if the public remained fearful.

Fear kills future “A-ships”

However, the team believes that further reductions in sea ice may negatively affect the Svalbard populations, as it could increase the distances they need to travel to access their hunting ground. This has already been observed in other polar bear populations.

In 1979, the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island—eight years after Savannah’s own retirement—hardened American public fear of nuclear power for more than a generation. The Soviet Union’s Chernobyl accident in 1986 and Japan’s Fukushima accident in 2011 reinforced that fear.

Aars is also interested in studying their land-based diet more and how much energy they have to burn when the sea ice is lower in the summer. He also stresses that more research—particularly long-term research— is needed to better understand how different polar bear populations will adapt to a warming Arctic.

Three other nations tried what the U.S. attempted with Savannah, and each ran into the same wall. West Germany’s nuclear-powered merchant ship Otto Hahn logged 650,000 nautical miles over a decade before port restrictions and rising costs forced her conversion to diesel in 1979—the same year as Three Mile Island.

“You need to study the population [if] you want to know how [it] is coping,” says Aaars. “You cannot extrapolate findings from other areas where things may be very different.”

The post Svalbard polar bears are doing surprisingly well (for now) appeared first on Popular Science.

The only person to win an Olympic medal and a Nobel Peace Prize

Bill Gourgey — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:01:00 -0500

The serious son of Quaker parents, Philip Noel-Baker was first a scholar, then an Olympian, and finally a Nobel Peace Prize winner. He is the only person ever to have won both an Olympic medal and a Nobel.

Japan’s nuclear-powered Mutsu fared worse. Local fishermen blockaded it in harbor for two years before the ship could even sail, and when its reactor went online in 1974, it leaked. The crew had to improvise radiation shielding using boiled rice and old socks.

First, an Olympic medal

The Soviet Union’s nuclear-powered Sevmorput, the last of the four and the only one to operate into the 21st century, has sat idle at a dock in Murmansk since 2024. As of today, not a single nuclear-powered merchant ship plows the seas anywhere on Earth.

By 1912, Noel-Baker had already earned honors in history and economics at Cambridge, and he was on the way to a graduate degree in international law.

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But the 22-year-old was also president of the Cambridge Athletic Club, and that July he took some time off from his studies to join the British track and field team for the fifth modern Olympic Games in Stockholm.

Take two?

It was an eventful Olympiad. The American multi-sport phenom Jim Thorpe easily won the pentathlon and decathlon, prompting an impressed King Gustav V of Sweden to declare Thorpe “the greatest athlete in the world.” That year saw the Olympic debuts of equestrian sports, women’s aquatics, and the nation of Japan.

And yet, military fleets have proven the technology works. The U.S. Navy alone has logged more than 6,200 accident-free reactor-years since 1955. What’s more, reactor designs have advanced significantly since Heaney’s day. Small modular reactors, or SMRs, have been engineered to be smaller, safer, and simpler to certify than anything available in 1959. SMRs are now in active development for maritime use, including a Norwegian consortium’s NuProShip program, and a molten-chloride test reactor that Core Power and TerraPower are building at the Idaho National Laboratory.

Great Britain took home a silver in tug-of-war, just one of 41 medals British athletes won that year. Noel-Baker was not among them; he ran the 800 and 1500-meter races, taking sixth place in the latter.

The pressure to act has intensified, too. Commercial shipping produces more than three percent of global greenhouse gas emissions—a share that could climb to 10 percent by 2050 if the industry does nothing while the rest of the world decarbonizes. In 2023, the International Maritime Organization, which governs commercial shipping, committed its member states to a net-zero target by 2050, a goal serious enough that the IMO is now weighing previously unthinkable measures like SMRs.

In 1912, Philip Noel-Baker (far left) competed in the 1500 meter (shown here) and 800 meter races at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. Image: Contributor / Getty Images / ullstein bild Dtl.

But none of it matters if nuclear-powered merchant ships remain taboo.

It may not have been his best showing, but Noel-Baker—who hyphenated his name when he married his wife, Irene Noel, in 1915—did better at the next Olympiad, held in Antwerp in 1920, after the 1916 Olympics were cancelled due to World War I.

Sixty-five years after Jack Heaney tried to make the atom desirable, the real problem with nuclear reactors was less about the technology and more about public perception. Unfortunately, that perception has kept a viable climate solution off the table for more than half a century, at a cost now measurable in our planet’s atmosphere. As the shipping industry searches for a way to shed its considerable share of global carbon emissions, it is not physics but persuasion that remains unsolved.

That year, the 30-year-old won silver in the 1500 meter race, his only Olympic medal. But nearly four decades later Noel-Baker would return to Scandinavia for a gold one.

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‘Squid butt’ fossil belongs to one of the ‘chunkiest’ cephalopods ever discovered

Andrew Paul — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 16:10:00 -0400

Thanks to having the “chunkiest squid butt” ever seen on an ancient cephalopod, paleontologists have discovered a 160-million-year-old octopus cousin. The newly identified fossils are described by an international research team in their study recently published in Papers in Palaeontology, which also includes a potential explanation for Wyoteuthis linsterorum’s hefty proportions. Just like today’s tentacled ocean dwellers, the Mesozoic squid ancestor likely had no problem devouring its relatives—or even members of its own species.

Then, a Nobel Peace Prize

W. linsterorum is a belemnite, a group of prehistoric cephalopods who left behind some of paleontology’s most common fossils. Examples of their bullet-shaped structures known as a rostrum have regularly shown up at dig sites around the world for over 200 years. This includes the Sundance Formation in present-day Wyoming, which was covered by an inland sea millions of years ago.

Noel-Baker’s father, a successful London businessman and dedicated pacifist, put his own belief in public service into action as a member of the London County Council and, later, in the House of Commons. Noel-Baker took after his father, and was dismayed when war came to Europe so soon after the jubilant spectacle of internationalism he had witnessed in Stockholm.

Most of Wyoming’s belemnites are comparatively tiny—usually about two-to-four inches long and less than one inch wide. But about 30 years ago, Wyoming Dinosaur Center founder Burkhard Pohl found a fossil that “stuck out like a sore thumb,” according to study co-author Bill Wahl. While the preserved belemnite rostrum was about as long as other examples, it measured about 2.4 inches wide. Based on what they knew of belemnite proportions, paleontologists estimated this specimen’s entire body probably reached nearly two feet long.

On August 4, 1914, Noel-Baker “listened to Big Ben strike midnight as the Horse Artillery thundered along the Embankment to Victoria to entrain for France,” he later recalled. “And we knew that the guns were already firing, that the First World War had come.”

The two ‘W. linsterorum’ fossils were discovered over 30 years apart. Credit: Jessica Lippincott

A conscientious objector, he would devote his own war effort to organizing ambulance services for Allied soldiers injured on the front lines, earning multiple citations for valor. But like many who had seen the worst of the so-called Great War, Noel-Baker returned with an even greater zeal for peace.

Without any comparable examples, the thick squid butt remained in storage for nearly three decades. In 2019, fossil collector Cliff Linster finally discovered a similar cephalopod near Ten Sleep, Wyoming. He soon donated it to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, and researchers began analyzing this pair of mystery fossils.

After the war, Noel-Baker served as principal assistant to Lord Robert Cecil, one of the architects of the League of Nations (and himself a future Nobel Laureate). He continued working for the League in various capacities throughout the 1920s and for most of the ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s and ’60s served in Parliament as a minister from the Labor Party.

Computed tomography (CT) scanning allowed the team to inspect the remains without damaging them. The results confirmed the ancient sea creatures were never-before-seen belemnites.What’s more, they belonged to a family researchers previously believed went extinct millions of years earlier.

After World War II, he joined the effort to replace the flawed League with what would become the United Nations, working tirelessly all the while for multilateral disarmament.

“After spending years fossil hunting in Wyoming and collecting countless fossils of the common Pachyteuthis belemnites here in Wyoming, this one is unlike anything I have ever seen,” Jessica Lippincott, a paleontologist and study co-author, said in a statement.

Seated from left to right, Sir Philip Noel-Baker, Sir Hartley Shawcross, and Sir Alexander Cadogan represent the United Kingdom at the United Nations General Assembly at Flushing Meadow, New York City, in October 1946. Image: Stringer / Getty Images / Keystone

But why did W. linsterorum evolve to reach such bulky proportions? The team believes the answer lies in the diets of many present-day cephalopods.

While some of his contemporaries advocated a realpolitik approach, or even hewed to the idea that powerful weapons were the best deterrent against violence, Noel-Baker “believed fervently in the cause of peace and advocated disarmament as the only answer to war,” said Professor Michael E. Cox, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, in a 2024 lecture. “In other words, he was not a realist. He was what many called him at the time, a romanticist—dare I even use the word—a utopian.”

“A possible explanation is that their relatively large size gave them an advantage when hunting co-occurring smaller belemnites of the genus Pachyteuthis,” explained paleontologist Alexey Ippolitov, a study co-author now at New Zealand’s Victoria University. “Modern squid, after all, are hardly picky when it comes to prey: they readily hunt not only other species of cephalopods, but sometimes even their own kind.”

Undeterred by Noel-Baker’s critics, the Norwegian Nobel Committee granted him the Peace Prize in 1959, shortly after the publication of his book, The Arms Race: A Programme for World Disarmament, which offered a detailed plan for getting rid of both nuclear and conventional weapons.

An unexpected and surprising species, W. linsterorum is named in honor of Cliff Linster, who died in June 2026. While he didn’t live to see the dedication, Linster was well aware that the team was working to describe the animal he helped discover.

Philip Noel-Baker’s legacy

“It goes to show that we are still finding new species of fossils all the time, and people who rockhound or collect invertebrate fossils can also contribute to science,” said Lippincott.

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Humans experimented with mind-altering drugs 25,000 years ago

Amy Crawford — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 14:21:56 -0400

We humans love our mind-altering substances. Cultures around the world have discovered, ritualized, and simply experimented with alcoholic drinks and ingestible drugs for millennia. However, recent archaeological evidence indicates humanity possibly began utilizing psychoactive plants much earlier than previously believed. Based on findings published in the journal Science Advances, some communities in present-day Indonesia enjoyed the effects of betel nuts as long as 25,000 years ago. This pushes the timeline over 23,000 years back from documented Neolithic and Bronze Age uses circa 1,500 BCE.

Eight more Olympics had taken place since Noel-Baker won his silver medal, the games interrupted by yet another world war. Meanwhile, new weapons had been developed, weapons more terrible than previous generations could have imagined. Noel-Baker, now nearing 70 years old, used his Nobel Lecture to look back on a dangerous half century, and to issue a warning to the future.

The areca nut (Areca catechu), better known as the betel nut, isn’t widely known in the United States, but it’s one of the world’s most popular intoxicants. Most frequently seen across southeast Asia cultures, its global usage only trails behind alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine. Betel nuts are prepared by grinding and processing the plant seeds with slaked lime (calcium hydroxide). This fine powder is often combined with additional ingredients such as flavoring spices or tobacco to make a “quid,” that is then chewed as a stimulant. There are millions of betel users today, with some estimates putting the global total at 1-in-10 people.

“The arms race still goes on; but now far more ferocious, far more costly, far more full of perils, than it was then,” he said. “It is the strangest paradox in history; every new weapon is produced for national defense; but all experts are agreed that the modern, mass-destruction, instantaneous delivery weapons have destroyed defense.”

Many researchers contend that most human intoxicant use began with fermented alcoholic drinks, amid the rise of farming during the Neolithic era about 13,000 years ago. Adam Brumm, one of the study’s co-author and an archaeologist at Australia’s Griffith University, believes otherwise.

Trying to curb war with rules and limits had come to nothing, he argued. Instead, he issued a challenge to the international community, the building of which had been his life’s work, from the track to the treaty table. Proudly utopian to the last, he declared, “I start with a forthright proposition: it makes no sense to talk about disarming unless you believe that war, all war, can be abolished.”

“This theory fails to account for the possibility that very ancient drug-taking lies at the roots of our most commonly used psychoactive substances,” he explained in a university profile.

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This Dickies winter clearance sale has pants, jackets, hoodies, flannels, and more up to 70% off

Andrew Paul — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 21:43:53 -0500

I still have a pair of Dickies pants I used to skateboard in during high school. They’re more than 20 years old and they’re still wearable. Right now, you can grab yourself some burly new workwear for absurdly low prices during the Dickies winter clearance sale. The company has more than 100 products up to 50 percent off, with an extra 20 percent discount at checkout when you use code: SAVE20.

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Brumm and his team cite evidence gathered from the extremely rare skeletal remains of two early human foragers discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The older of the two lived between 25,000 and 16,000 years ago, while the younger individual is 7,600 to 6,300 years old. Unlike many other documented skeletons from the region, these hunter-gathers both exhibit rarely seen dental damage in the form of deep, curved grooves in the teeth. Researchers theorized this unexpected deterioration stemmed from a never-before-identified practice of regularly sucking on entire betel nuts.

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But there was a problem—this hypothesis contradicted earlier studies of betel nut usage. Many scientists believe the drug’s primary neuroactive alkaloid, called arecoline, is only noticeable after chewing betel nuts processed with slaked lime. Lab experiments conducted by Brumm’s group suggest this isn’t necessarily always the case. To test their theory, researchers soaked betel nuts in artificial saliva, then introduced the mixtures to exposed cloned human receptors grown from frog egg cells. These receptors included specific proteins that function as molecular switches overseeing neural activity.

The study authors discovered that even simply sucking on whole betel nuts is all it takes to release enough arecoline to elicit altered neural activity and physiological effects. To further bolster their findings, biochemists even flagged arceoline traces in the dental tissue of both hunter-gatherers.

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However, the ancient humans living on Sulawesi didn’t necessarily ingest betel nuts for recreational use. Unprocessed nuts likely offer milder effects, but arceoline remains a natural analgesic. Knowing this, the study’s authors surmise these betel nut habits were self-reinforcing.

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“Sucking these hard, abrasive seeds wore down the foragers’ teeth so badly that in some cases the inner pulp chamber became completely exposed,” explained Brumm. “So while this habit may have been a remedy for toothache, years of prolonged nut-sucking eventually caused much worse dental health problems, creating a cycle of continued habitual use.”

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The implications go far beyond revising the timeline of humanity’s relationship with mind-altering substances. If true, this means at least some ancient hunter-gatherer cultures discovered psychoactive properties before the development of agriculture.

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“The study implies that some modern drug-taking behaviors are deeply rooted in forager traditions,” added Brumm.

The post Humans experimented with mind-altering drugs 25,000 years ago appeared first on Popular Science.

Fat Bear Week kicks off September 22

Laura Baisas — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:45:18 -0400

The salmon? Eaten. The days? Shorter. The bears? Fatter.

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After spending the summer eating the fatty pink salmon swimming through Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, it’s time to celebrate the park’s iconic brown bears (Ursus arctos). Fat Bear Week begins on Tuesday, September 22, and here is everything you need to know.

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