Innholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2022 i Popular Science

GENERALLY SPEAKING, humans will try to eat anything at least once. Some anthropologists theorize that prehistoric people sussed out what was edible by trial and error, but we haven’t stopped pushing our palates in new, sometimes dangerous directions. The risk of illness and even death is often baked into our favorite flavors and fares. Here are some beloved bites that can kill—if things go awry. Fugu A dash of danger is part of the appeal of this lean and mild whitefish, which is served as slivers of sashimi in select Japanese restaurants. Tetrodotoxin, a paralysis-inducing chemical that disrupts the connections between neurons and muscle cells, collects in the liver and sex organs of this family of pufferfish. Japan’s health ministry requires fugu chefs to be certified in properly cleaning and…

THE DEVIL found his first advocate in the church. In 1587, Pope Sixtus V established the role of Advocatus Diaboli, a Vatican official whose job was to combat any biases the pontiff might hold when advancing a candidate for sainthood. The Advocatus Diaboli would present counterarguments and dissect the validity of miracles thought to have been performed by the person in question. The role has evolved since its religious beginning into a less formal but more sinister one in our day-to-day lives. Now psychologists know that playing devil’s advocate in a public meeting or Twitter thread can prove unnecessary and, in some cases, harmful. From the historical church to modern boardrooms, the devil’s advocate was intended to be a crusader against groupthink, a phenomenon that can hinder proper decision making,…

IT HAD BEEN a good day for Leslie McMichael, who was pretending to be Jessica Alba, who was pretending to be a superhuman. McMichael was Alba’s stunt double on the set of the TV series Dark Angel, an early-2000s show about a person who’s been genetically modified to be athletically awesome. Her task was to dive from a full-on run into the back of an open SUV. The sequence, which had been choreographed down to the inch and tightly rehearsed, called for the car to stop at a mark on the ground, so McMichael knew precisely where to aim her body. At top speed, she dove toward the predetermined point. But midway through the air, McMichael saw something was wrong: The stunt driver had missed the mark, and she was…

BROKEN ASPHALT scars the parking lot between the buildings of the abandoned Gladstone School in Pittsburgh. Concrete staircases sit unused. Rusted iron fencing encircles the recess yard. Graffiti covers brick walls. Even the sky, as if understanding the setting, is overcast. But on this warm May day, this ghost town amounts to an urban playground for a band of extreme-trick artists. Their vehicles of choice: pogo sticks. Within minutes of arriving, six jumpers begin sizing up the obstacles over which they’ll bounce, flip, and spin. A small, fenced enclosure catches the eye of 19-year-old Konner Kellogg, who stands five-foot-nine. He steps onto his pogo’s pegs and within three bounces is sailing more than 8 feet into the air. Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh. As the others stop to take in the scene, Kellogg—or just…

TYPICAL WHEELCHAIRS aren’t meant to tackle ground much gnarlier than a sidewalk’s cut curb or a paved parking lot. That’s why Massachusetts-based Grit Wheelchairs decided to create a rugged, all-terrain model that would traverse trails as handily as a mountain bike. The Grit Freedom Chair began as a student project at MIT nearly a decade ago. Built from common and readily available parts, including knobby 26-inch tires, the device has a drivetrain that works much like a whip’s. The rider pushes and pulls a pair of tall handles, which transfer energy to a pair of chain-driven mechanisms—one per side—that propel the rig down the trail. There are no gears, but the person cranking can shift their grip on the handles to tweak their movement: Keeping the hands at the tops…

WHEN POPULAR SCIENCE associate editor Herb Pfister offered up instructions for do-it-yourself scuba gear in 1953, exploring the deep sea for fun was such a new idea that the acronym SCUBA—self-contained underwater breathing apparatus—was only a year old. The man who coined the term, Christian Lambertsen, was an Army doctor during WWII and developed one of the early untethered underwater breathing devices. It was known as a closed-circuit rebreather, and it scrubbed CO2 from exhalations and recirculated oxygen for the US Navy’s “frogmen” divers. Lambertsen’s device was neither the first nor the last such apparatus. Japanese blacksmith Kinzo Ohgushi fashioned the first known underwater breathing machine in 1918, and marine explorer Jacques Cousteau and French engineer Émile Gagnan followed up Lambertsen’s contraption with the Aqua-Lung, which employed a regulator that…

THE MOST IMPORTANT moments of a day on Hōkūle‘a, a 62-foot-long deep-sea canoe, are sunrise and sunset. That’s when the navigator can know for sure where the sailboat is headed. In between, the swell—the direction of the waves—helps hold course, but “you have to have known what direction it’s coming from based on where the sun rose,” says Ka‘iulani Murphy. At night, the stars are an important guide: “The sky kind of gradually changes with your latitude,” Murphy says. But on cloudy days, it is impossible to find a true path without sunrise and moonrise. Murphy is a watch captain for the Polynesian Voyaging Society, the oldest and best-known group dedicated to the wayfinding methods that first brought humans to Hawaii as early as 300 CE. Originally from Waimea, a…

TO ALEXEI LEONOV, the colors in space were much more beautiful than those on Earth. No photograph could match what the late Russian cosmonaut experienced while floating hundreds of miles above his home planet in 1965: the distant curve of blue suspended in the deep black of space; the sunset as lines of reds, greens, and yellows skimming the horizon. Other explorers have shared this otherworldly perspective, but back then no one saw it as Leonov did—from beyond the safety of a spacecraft during history’s earliest spacewalk. With only a 16-foot tether as his lifeline, the pilot of the Voskhod 2 mission drifted alone through low Earth orbit. But after 12 minutes, awe turned to panic when his suit ballooned to the point where he couldn’t fit back through the…

DAN BLOCK has an easy charm and a twinkle in his eye—a natural charisma that would surely serve him in all manner of glamorous professions. That makes it all the more jarring to see him stick a power drill up his nose in front of a cringing crowd of onlookers. After taking a moment to angle the machine just so, he turns it on, the bit rotating at dizzying speeds inside his head. The terrible whirring sound is enough to make even me—a stalwart masochist and the author of a book about the pleasure of pain—nearly black out from the rushing sensation of dread. But instead of straightforward revulsion or concern, my wooziness transmutes into a celebratory high. If the shocked silence that gives way to applause and relieved laughter…

IN THE NORTHWESTERN outskirts of Visalia in Tulare County, California, Bryan Ruiz drives down a familiar dirt road that cuts through farmland. He comes up to an irrigation pipe that’s created a “pretty nasty” situation—a small patch of vegetation and algae-covered water baking under the early June sun. As his shadow looms over the pool, a wormlike critter less than half an inch long quickly tries to submerge out of sight, but before it can, Ruiz scoops it up with a long metal dipper. He squints at his catch: a larva of Culex, a genus that includes common house mosquitoes. While it may seem innocent at this phase, even a bit clumsy and silly tumbling in the water alongside perhaps hundreds more wrigglers, the larvae grow up to be disease-carrying…

CLIMATE SCIENTISTS often consider Svalbard a hotspot of global warming. Since the 1990s, Earth’s average temperature has increased by less than 1°C, but the average winter on the frosty archipelago sandwiched between mainland Norway and the North Pole has crept up 1.7°C with each decade. In these remote reaches of the planet, even a few degrees can drastically alter the landscape. Because the increases are so extreme at Svalbard, scientists have flocked to study the site, and since 2019, photographer Esther Horvath has captured life in this icy terrain. Her focus: an international group of women, some as young as their 20s, who run Ny-Ålesund, a mining village turned scientific base camp. From there, they witness the shift in all its fury and reveal how changes in the far reaches…

YOU’VE PROBABLY felt it at some point in life: a flushed face, a thumping heart, and a coating of sweat on your palms. That intense sensation, aka an adrenaline rush, is triggered by stress, nervousness, or excitement, whether you’re talking to a crush or about to cannonball off a 10-foot-high diving board. What happens to the body in any of those scenarios is the same. The special cascade of molecules begins in organs called adrenal glands. They secrete the hormone adrenaline, also known as epinephrine, prepping your body to take action, says Alan Goodman, a professor of biological anthropology at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. The chemical helps you respond in high-stakes situations—and even to fight or flee. In fact, as soon as your brain senses danger, it tells your body…

WHEN ACTION PARK first opened its gates on a New Jersey ski mountain in 1978, people probably showed up expecting run-of-the-mill amusements: go-karts, a lazy river, maybe a casual wave pool or two. But the 2,700-foot Alpine Slide, a track made of concrete, fiberglass, and asbestos that zigzagged through the funfair, was something else entirely. Riders plopped down on a little sled at the top—no helmets, no straps, no guardrails—and went wherever gravity took them at alarming speeds. Eventually a park-goer did die on the Alpine Slide, and, after five additional fatalities and countless head wounds, electric shocks, and broken teeth, the entire venue shut down in 1996. New owners repeatedly tried to reopen the cult favorite destination, but after continued safety issues, the park’s operators finally decided to rebrand…

“WE DESCEND SLOWLY, the noise and busyness of the outside, and the light of day, dims behind us,” says Zachary Klukkert, making the scene at the mouth of the foreboding Vintany cave sound calm, almost meditative. At about 83°F, the waters are indeed soothing—nearly bathtub warm. But while the Central Michigan University anthropologist’s initial descent may drown out the chaos of the topside world, it leads him ever deeper, inch by inch, into a dark and stony maw. His venture will take him nearly 100 feet beneath the surface of Madagascar, to the last resting place of giant lemurs, crocodiles with devilish horny protuberances, and some of the largest birds to ever walk the Earth. They’re remnants of a world that thrived here thousands of years ago, then vanished for…

WHETHER YOU’RE trying to free solo Half Dome or huck off the sketchy ramp you built in your backyard, you need video evidence of your exploits. Without footage to share on the web, then it might as well have never even happened, right? There’s no shortage of burly action cameras that can shoot super-smooth, high-res footage—and survive a brutal and bruising wipeout. But depending on your activity of choice, each model has its own strengths (and weaknesses), so we’re here to help you choose the right one for your possibly ill-advised antics. THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN BUYING AN ACTION CAMERA RESOLUTION The current gold standard for video footage is 4K, which has a native resolution in the neighborhood of 3,840 by 2,160 pixels. Some cameras can go higher res, which…

SURE, YOU COULD strap into a wing suit and hurl yourself off a cliff to feel an adrenaline rush. But why risk your limbs when you could build a VR rig and get all the excitement with none of the getting crushed into a ball of smashed bones and organs? In fact, research has shown that an immersive faux experience tickles the brain in almost the same way defying death does IRL. Here’s what you need to build a fully enthralling virtual reality setup. VEST The Woojer Vest Edge monitors what’s happening in your VR games and translates it into tactile feedback that you can feel as you play. Its six transducers—two on the front, two on the back, and two on the sides—pump sound directly into your body at…