Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2024 i Popular Mechanics

FASTER-THAN-LIGHT TRAVEL

THE CREW OF THE USS ENTERPRISE starship streaks to a new adventure in every episode of Star Trek, somehow traveling at several times the speed of light. This sci-fi mode of practical interstellar travel inspired Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre to investigate the feasibility of a real method for light-speed propulsion. Eventually, Alcubierre published his cutting-edge research to an astonished community of theoretical physicists. The eponymous Alcubierre warp drive hypothetically contracts the spacetime in front of a spaceship while expanding the spacetime behind it, so that the ship moves from Point A to Point B at an “arbitrarily large” speed. By distorting spacetime—the continuum enfolding space and time—an observer outside the ship’s “warp bubble” would see the ship moving faster than the speed of light, even though observers inside the craft…

3 min

What the Equal Sign Really Means

MATHEMATICIAN KEVIN BUZZARD IS grappling in a recent paper—uploaded to the preprint server arXiv—with a simple coding idea that becomes a “thornier concept” when translated into math: What does the equal sign actually mean? “Six years ago, I thought I understood mathematical equality,” Buzzard wrote in his paper. “I thought that it was one well-defined term, and that there was nothing which could be said about it which was of any interest to me as a working mathematician with a knowledge of, but no real interest in, the foundations of my subject. Then I started to try and do master’s-level mathematics in a computer theorem prover, and I discovered that equality was a rather thornier concept than I had appreciated.” In coding, there are different kinds of “equal,” and you…

4 min

This Brand-New Cat Color

YOU’VE PROBABLY HEARD OF spooky black cats, distinguished-looking tuxedo cats, and chaotic orange cats. If you’re really into cats, you might even have heard of lesser-known color variants like seal point and ticked tabby. But there’s officially a new cat color in town—salmiak, or “salty liquorice,” named for a popular snack food in Finland, where this coat color has been making itself known. The pretty black, white, and gray shade is thanks to a fur strand that starts off black near the root but grows whiter and whiter toward the tip. Since 2007, researchers at the University of Helsinki have been trying to determine exactly what causes this shade—and they think they’ve finally figured it out. Technically speaking, cats come in only two colors—black and orange. Any other color is…

2 min

This Missing WWII Plane

MAJOR RICHARD BONG WAS THE TOP flying ace of World War II for the United States, credited with 40 aerial victories against Japanese aircraft. For his heroism, General Douglas MacArthur presented Bong with a Medal of Honor in December 1944. According to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, Bong undertook dangerous combat missions and downed enemy planes, despite being “assigned to duty as gunnery instructor, and neither required, nor expected, to perform combat duty.” Bong, who was known as the “Ace of Aces,” took down all 40 of those Japanese fighter planes while flying the same aircraft: a Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter that he named for his sweetheart, “Marge.” And for 80 years, that historic plane was lost to time. But now, Marge has finally been found, thanks to a…

2 min

KIDNEY DIALYSIS IS TIME-CONSUMING. UNCOMFORTABLE. CONFINING. EXPENSIVE. ARCHAIC.

WITH A SMALL CLICK, JSHON THOMAS connected himself to his life support. It was the last step in an hour-long process involving hundreds of steps that Thomas completed with the precision of an airline pilot prepping for a transcontinental flight. Even though the 59-year-old violinist and learning and development professional had heard this percussive snap hundreds of times—Thomas hooks up to the NxStage System One dialysis machine and Pure Flow water recycling system in his living room four times a week—he still checked off each step of the four-page list in black pen. If everything went right, Thomas’s dialysis machine would easily remove toxins from his blood that his failed kidneys no longer could. Today was not one of those days. For the first two hours of his treatment, the…

21 min

GEAR OF THE YEAR

Stihl RZA 760 ZTR Mower $27,499 Stihl’s new RZA 760 Zero Turn Rider (ZTR) is the most remarkable electric mower we’ve ever tested—a professional-level machine built for daily use. Its expense is beyond what a typical homeowner might be willing to spend, but it is a window of what we can expect to see for residential mowers in a couple of years. With a 60-inch deck and a top speed of 16 mph, the RZA 760 can cover a lot of ground quickly. In testing, we were able to mow just over 4.5 acres in an hour and 45 minutes. This test area can take over 4 hours with a lawn tractor and about 3 hours with a typical 54-inch zero turn. Stihl claims a run time of up to…

15 min

$ 3.99

A $4 vase sitting on a Maryland thrift store clearance rack looked interesting to Anna Lee Dozier, so she decided to make the purchase. It took about five years for Dozier to discover that this inexpensive addition to her household collection was in fact a roughly 1,200-year-old Mayan artifact. A few years later she visited the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City while on a work trip. “Some of the things I was looking at looked awfully like what I had at home on my shelf,” she said. Experts believe that the vase dates between A.D. 200 and A.D. 800, during the height of Mayan influence. Dozier was more than happy to put such a find in its rightful place. “Giving it back,” she said, “feels so much better…

1 min

REGROWING HUMAN TEETH

The average adult human body contains 206 bones—the hardened mixtures of calcium, minerals, and collagen that provide the biological scaffolding that walks us through our day. Bones are incredibly resilient, but if they do break, they have this nifty trick of regrowing themselves. Teeth, however, are not bones. Although they’re made of some of the same stuff and are the hardest material in the human body (thanks to their protective layer of enamel), they lack the crucial ability to heal and regrow themselves. But that may not always be the case. Japanese researchers are moving forward with an experimental drug that promises to regrow human teeth, and human trials are set to begin this year. This development follows years of study around a particular antibody named Uterine sensitization–associated gene-1 (USAG-1),…

1 min

How to Be Super With Super Glue

EVERY ADHESIVE REQUIRES YOUR PARticipation. Not every glue works in every application. Super glue (cyanoacrylate) is no exception. There are hundreds of applications for this material, and probably several dozen common applications and techniques that you need to know. We’ll boil it all down to a few basics. Don’t Glue These Materials // Never use cyanoacrylates to bond cotton, wool, burlap, or blends of those materials with synthetic materials such as polyester. Cyanoacrylates can react exothermically with these materials, and the reaction is so powerful that it can produce smoke (maybe even catch fire). Use the Right Glue // Super glue can have a thick or thin consistency, up to the point of being a gel. Use thick glue where you need the adhesive to stay put, such as on…

2 min

Priceless Treasure or Elaborate Sham?

A MASSIVE TREASURE LIES HIDDEN IN A MANSION IN PHILADELPHIA. Ken Bauman is certain of it, and he spent 22 years in law enforcement—most of it as a railroad detective with the Norfolk Southern Railway police. He has pursued this historic stash—said to include nearly 3,000 pounds of gold and 5,100 pounds of silver, among other highly valuable items—for nearly two decades. Bauman can pinpoint exactly when he began searching: July 30, 2005. That’s the day he learned of the Beale ciphers, a three-part, nineteenth-century code said to be the key to the vast treasure. At 63, Bauman has a crew cut and gray beard and plainspoken Midwestern style that reflects his Indiana heritage. He’ll say things like, “I’m an out-of-the-box thinker. This is why I was very good at…

22 min

A New Super-Bomb

AN AIR FORCE BOMBER WAS RECENTLY spotted with one of America’s newest munitions: the GBU-72 Advanced 5K penetrating bomb. The bomb is designed to help penetrate hardened underground defenses, destroying targets buried under earth and concrete. The weapon appears just as the UN’s nuclear agency warns that Iran is accelerating efforts to manufacture enriched uranium—an essential component of nuclear bombs—at underground facilities. A TORCH Sighting // According to The Aviationist blog, aviation photographer Ian Recchio was in California’s Mojave Desert earlier this year when he overheard chatter on his scanner that referred to an aircraft with the TORCH call sign. Recchio looked up and saw a KC-135 Stratotanker “dragging” a B-1B Lancer bomber—a term used by enthusiasts when an aerial refueling tanker is seen in tandem with another aircraft, typically…

4 min

Mysterious Microwave Signals

SPACE IS A BIG PLACE. But despite our diminutive size among the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way (which is itself among hundreds of billions of galaxies), scientists have slowly pieced together a long list of all the strange stuff we might encounter throughout the cosmos. However, sometimes humanity’s collection of observational equipment comes across as a real head-scratcher. Meet the latest one, identified in a paper published in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters—the millimeter ultra-broad-line object, or the MUBLO for short. The object in question lies near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, which the researchers describe as containing “tens of millions of solar masses of gas, a supermassive black hole, a tenth of our galaxy’s ongoing star formation, and an extensive graveyard of…

2 min

ALL THESE DIFFERENT PORTALS

PORTAL TO HELL OceanGate’s cofounder wants to explore one of the deepest “blue holes” (sinkholes filled with water) on Earth. Dean’s Blue Hole—which local legends say is actually a portal to hell—is a staggering 663 feet deep, and is ripe for exploration. PORTAL TO THE UNDERWORLD A “portal to the underworld” statue depicting the Olmec jaguar god Tepeyollotlicuhti returned to its Mexican home in May of 2023. After a year of work, the statue—which had been broken into smaller pieces by looters—has finally been restored to its former glory. PORTAL ANOMALY A new study has revealed an L-shaped structure and accompanying anomaly right next to the Great Pyramids of Giza. Although it’s impossible to know for sure what the anomaly is, the researchers guess that the L-shaped discovery could be…

1 min

HOW TO BUILD AN ELECTRIC GUITAR

An electric guitar can be a rewarding woodworking project that doesn’t require a bunch of experience. Compared to an acoustic guitar, whose body construction and materials vastly affect its sound, an electric guitar’s sound is generated by the parts screwed to the body. A simple rectangular slab of wood can be effectively used as an electric guitar body—in fact, most electric guitars commercially available are solid-body construction. Building an electric guitar can be as complicated or as simple as you like, as long as you follow some basic principles for component placement. Our design was retro-inspired, with a hollow body, traditional F-holes, and a top (front) and back like many modern guitars. You can build this guitar exactly as we have, using the templates provided at popularmechanics.com/guitar, simplify it making…

12 min