THE DARK SIDE OF VIRTUAL REALITY

THE SUMMER ISSUE

J u l y/

Star
Trek,s
A fanboy grows
up (sort of ), takes
Scottys chair,
and rethinks the
Federations
mission

EXCLUSIVE:

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Tech training
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42

1ST ANNUAL
INSANE IDEAS
( WITH SIMON PEGG )

Win this vintage Enterprise toy and four

other pieces of merchandise signed by Pegg.
Enter at facebook.com/popsci.

Featuring
54
THE REANIMATORS
When in crisis, the human body can
slow its metabolic clock to the point of
appearing dead. But what happens
when doctors start doing it on purpose?
REN E EB ER SO LE

60
THE SCIENCE OF HEROES

The futuristic training tools that

U.S. Olympians are using to stay
ahead of the competition.
WILL CO CK R ELL

68
VIRTUALANDIA

As everybody moves in,

whos making the rules?

AMY W EST ER V ELT

74
INSIDE NASAS MARS MISSION

An exclusive look at NASAs

$18 billion Orion space project thats
going to take us to the surface of
Mars in the 2030s.
SA RAH FECH T

PHOTO G RA P H BY

HERE AND ON
THE COVER
F. Scott Schafer
photographed
Simon Pegg, who
stars in this months
Star Trek Beyond.
Insane Ideas
type designed by
Mikey Burton.

F. Scott Schafer

Feed
Volume 288 No. 4

JULY/AUGUST

CONTENTS
201 6

Feed
For daily updates: facebook.com/popsci

Volume 288 No. 4

22

26

28

34

35

84

96

100

Departments
FEED
08 Whos-who in Virtualandia (Its a surprise!)
10 Before We Begin

NOW
13 Travel gadgets that will optimize your

summer getaway
18 10 great ideas in gear
20 The photographer-in-chief shares his favorite
lenses and best tips
22 Lyft founder Logan Green on the future of cities
and self-driving cars

06

POP S CI. CO M

24 A magnetic shark repellent that looks like a

fitness watch
24 Give your ear a superpower
26 The next-gen glass at Apples new campus

NEXT
28 Collision-resistant drone to the rescue
30 Test your fear of death at this risk theme park
32 Ellen Pao on building and maintaining

discrimination-free workplaces
34 Growing medicine in space
35 Scientists re-engineer the high-heeled shoe
36 The future of wireless communication is bright
37 Black carbon is climate changes most

overlooked perpetrator
38 Tokyos 2020 Olympics will be the techiest ever

MANUAL
84 Like the mighty Thor, only you can lift this

electromagnetic hammer
86 A wearable office for on-the-go efficiency
88 An orchestra made of beer glasses
90 Ghostbusters proton packs get a makeover
92 Three DIY bug traps that actually work
94 Create a vortex ring in your swimming pool
96 Add dimension to your drawings
98 A moonlighting astronomer
100 Become a human circuit board

END MATTER
102 Ask Us Anything: Are skunks bothered by their

own smell?
110 Terminus: Dispatch from the Future

2016 Goose Island Beer Co., Goose IPA, India Pale Ale, Chicago, IL | Enjoy responsibly.

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

For our Virtualandia feature,

the staff donned VR goggles and
posed for photographer Peter Rad.
What on earth were we thinking?

Acting
Design Director
I see the future.
Its a sidewalk
in my face.

Elizabeth
Catalano
OK, so
walking and
Minecrafting
isnt the
best idea.

Molly
Battles
Public Relations
Manager
I wonder if this
can delete the
Kardashians.

EDITORIAL
Articles Editor Kevin Gray
Managing Editor Jill C. Shomer
Senior Editor Sophie Bushwick
Technology Editor Xavier Harding
Assistant Editors Dave Gershgorn, Matt Giles
Editorial Assistant Grennan Milliken
Copy Chief Cindy Martin
Researchers Ambrose Martos, Erika Villani
Editorial Intern Annabel Edwards
ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Acting Design Director Chris Mueller
Photo Director Thomas Payne
Digital Associate Art Director Michael Moreno
Associate Art Director Russ Smith
Acting Production Manager Paul Catalano
POPULARSCIENCE.COM
Online Director Carl Franzen
Senior Editor Paul Adams
Social Media Editor Jason Lederman
Assistant Editors Sarah Fecht, Claire Maldarelli
Contributing Writers Kelsey D. Atherton, Mary Beth Griggs,
Alexandra Ossola
Video Intern Ben Searles

08

PO P S CI. CO M

Grennen
Milliken
Editorial
Assistant
How creepy
could I possibly
look in this?

Thomas
Payne
Photo Director
When do
I tell my dog
that I chose the
red pill?

Jill
Shomer
Managing
Editor
Did I
leave the
oven on?

Sophie
Bushwick
Senior
Editor
Dont trip,
dont trip,
dont trip,
dont...

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Brooke Borel, Tom Clynes, Clay Dillow, Nicole Dyer, Daniel Engber,
Tom Foster, William Gurstelle, Mike Haney, Joseph Hooper,
Corinne Iozzio, Gregory Mone, Adam Piore, P.W. Singer, Erik Sofge,
Kalee Thompson, James Vlahos, Jacob Ward

Xavier
Harding
Technology
Editor
*Internally
screaming*

Hilary
Langlois

Ian
Daly

Umm... that
upcoming
curb isnt
so virtual.

When can
I watch
Shark Tank
on this?

Group Events & Promotion Director Beth Hetrick

Associate Directors Eshonda Caraway-Evans, Lynsey White
Consumer Marketing Director Bob Cohn
Public Relations Manager Molly Battles
Human Resources Director Kim Putman
Group Production Director Michelle Doster

Group Editorial Director Anthony Licata

Group Design Director Sean Johnston
BONNIER TECHNOLOGY GROUP
Vice President, Publishing Director, New York Gregory D. Gatto
Associate Publisher Jeff Timm
Financial Director Tara Bisciello
Northeast Advertising Office Matt Levy (Manager),
Frank McCaffrey, Chip Parham
Midwest Manager Doug Leipprandt
West Coast Account Manager Stacey Lakind
Detroit Advertising Director Jeff Roberge
Advertising Coordinator Nicky Nedd
Digital Campaign Managers Amanda Alimo
Digital Campaign CoordinatorJustin Ziccardi
Group Sales Development Director Alex Garcia
Senior Sales Development Manager Amanda Gastelum
Sales Development Manager Charlotte Grima
Creative Services Director Ingrid M. Reslmaier
Marketing Design Directors Jonathan Berger, Gabe Ramirez
Marketing Design Manager Sarah Hughes
Digital Design Manager Steve Gianaca

Chairman Tomas Franzn

Head of Business Area, Magazines Lars Dahmn
Chief Executive Officer Eric Zinczenko
Chief Financial Officer Joachim Jaginder
Chief Operating Officer David Ritchie
Chief Marketing Officer Elizabeth Burnham Murphy
Chief Digital Revenue Ofcer Sean Holzman
Vice President, Integrated Sales John Graney
Vice President, Consumer Marketing John Reese
Vice President, Digital Operations David Butler
Vice President, Public Relations Perri Dorset
General Counsel Jeremy Thompson

This product is from

sustainably managed
forests and
controlled sources.

P HOTO GR A P H BY PE T E R R A D

Chris
Mueller

Feed

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

Before We Begin

Rios Olympic
Mascots
Meet Vinicius (left) and Tom (right),
the mascots for the 2016 Rio Olympics and Paralympics, respectively.
The colorful little critters are named
after the bossa nova musicians Tom
Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes,
and were designed to be magical
amalgamations of the many plants
and animals of Brazil. They also
have superpowers. Naturally.

RoboCup
This summer, more than 500
teams from 40 countries clashed
on mini soccer pitches in the 20th
Annual Robot World Cup in Leipzig,
Germany. Up to 10 child-size robots
puttered around at perhaps the
slowest speeds the sport has ever
been played but miraculously still
managed to nd the back of the
net. The RoboCup Federations goal
is to produce intelligent, humanoid
robots that will be able to beat human World Cup champions by 2050.
But rst the bots will have to learn
how to kick the ball consistently
without falling over.

FROM THE

ARCHIVES

Water Polo with

Mechanical Steeds
JUNE
1939

10

As readers dusted off baseball gloves and rummaged for swim trunks in the summer
of 1939, we highlighted new inventions for sports that spanned from practical to bizarre.
Some concepts took hold, like ball-throwing machines for batting and pitching practice, and
some never quite made it, like polo on watera distinctly different sport from water polo. We
described it as an exciting aquatic game played on mechanical steeds, skimming the water
under the power of husky outboard motors. What could possibly go wrong?

PO PSCI. CO M

Want more? Check us out on

social media! Besides Facebook,
Twitter, Pinterest, and
Instagram, look for our
icona chimp in a space suit
on Tumblr and List App. You
can even watch us test gear,
fly drones, and conduct
experiments (sometimes on
each other) on Periscope.

Its the ride

;,!;1!'89W
When the sun meets the
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Company, Washington, D.C. 20076; a Berkshire Hathaway Inc. subsidiary. Motorcycle and ATV coverages are underwritten by GEICO Indemnity Company. 2016 GEICO

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

1. BlUeSMART
CARRY-ON
$399
Theres nothing
worse than seeing the
baggage carousel go
arounddevoid of your
bag. Bluesmarts roller
includes GPS to locate
it when lost, a scale
to weigh your items,
and a built-in battery
that can charge your
iPhone six times over.

EDITED BY XAVIER HARDING + DAVE GERSHG O R N

HACKING YOUR
TRAVEL KIT

flight

weight in KG

AZ678

77-53-46

Gate

140
Terminal

15

OPTiMiZE
YOUR SUMMeR
GeTAWAY
Go ahead, tap Buy on that
plane ticket. But before making
your great escape, be sure to
pack this essential gear.

P HOTO G RA P H Y BY

Sam Kaplan

by
X AV I ER
HARDING

P OP SC I . C OM

13

Now
First Look

4. KARMA GO HOtSPOT
$99
Karma puts connectivity in your
pocket by pulling in cell signals and
spitting out Wi-Fi. Eight users can
simultaneously browse, download,
and share using fast 4G LTE speeds.
And no yearly contract means sneaking back onto the grid at your leisure.

Electrical adapters get the Swiss

Army knife treatment with Ventevs
adapter. It packs four AC prongs
capable of mating with sockets
of 150 different countriesinto a
single, stylish adapter. Plugging in
lets you charge two devices via USB
and one through an AC plug.

3. KiNDlE OASiS
$290
Amazons latest e-reader is
ultra-compact and comes with a
magnetic cover that houses its own
batteryextending power from
weeks to months. Storage of 4GB
means you can stock up on a Smithsonians worth of novelsto distract
from the real-life drama of travel.

14

PO PSCI. CO M

5. SAMSUNG GeAR VR
$100
Tune out oversharing travelers
by slipping into virtual reality.
The Gear VR lets you watch immersive 360-degree video, load up
a VR game, or train for the Rio
Olympics (see page 60). Just
be ready for the stares youll get
after leaving the matrix.

6. SCOtteVesT
RfiD $135
Most gear-stashing travel vests
look flagrantly dorky. Not so for
ScotteVest. The light, machinewashable vest has 26 pockets and
blocks RFID signals, meaning clever
crooks cant wirelessly copy your
credit card or passport data.

P R O P ST Y LI N G BY M I C H E LLE LO N G O

2. VeNTeV GlOBAL
CHARGiNG HUB
$35

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Now
First Look

8
11

10

10. TeNS filteR

SUNGlASSeS$110

8. eMiE RADiO
SPeAKeR $30
A vacation is always improved by
the right tunes. Emies vintage-looking, 5.6 ounce powerhouse offers
six straight hours of Bluetooth
DJing. Its not much for booming
bass but is perfect for tossing in a
beach bag. Be ready to belt aloud
your favorite summer jam.

7. HeRSCHeL PACKABlE
BAG $50
Sure, Herschel is trendybut for
good reason. This lightweight,
stuffable duffle is no exception.
The ultra-packable bag folds up
tiny and neat, taking up minor
space in your luggage. It unfurls
on arrival for day trips to the
beach (snacks and a bathing suit)
and for nights out on the town
(leave it empty, for souvenirs).

9. BOBBlE WATeR
BOttlE $10
Hydration is critical, but not all tap
water is created equal. If the output
from the local spigot is safe to drink
but tastes off, a Bobble bottle fixes
that with a self-activated charcoal
filter. The replaceable filter pours
about 300 servings before needing
a change. At the cost of about two
throwaway bottles, its worth it.

Dont just filter those Instagram

photos to look retro; filter your
entire life in real time. Tens sunglasses enhance your visuals with
a summery tint, offering the effect
of instant nostalgia. UV-blocking
makes them practical too.

11. SANDleSS BeACH

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When sand collects on your
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but not back up. More grains of
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Now

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

Goods

HiT
lisT
10 Great Ideas in Gear

2 GIROPTIC
360 CAM
Were still figuring out
what 360 cameras can
do. Giroptic made its
modular; with different
base attachments, it
can screw into a light
socket to monitor your
home, record on-the-go
stunts, or live-stream
events through an
ethernet port. Thats a
start. $499
3 RAZER CORE
Up your gaming game
without the bulk of a
desktop PC. The Razer
Core (plus a graphics
card) lets you plug
massive computing
power into compatible
laptops. $499
4 ANKER
POWERHOUSE
While USB battery
packs are great for day
trips, the Powerhouse is
perfect for car camping,
packing a weekends
worth of juice. Its the
size of a small cooler
and weighs nearly
10 pounds, but it can
run your minifridge
overnight. $500

by
DAV E
GERS HG OR N

18

POPSCI. CO M

5 MOLESKIN SMART
WRITING SET
If you like old-school
writing but still want
digital replicas of your
brilliance, Moleskines
smart notebook and
pen set automatically
syncs your musings to
the cloud. $199
6 HERO SMART PILL
DISPENSER
Not every gadget is
made for millennials.
This pill dispenser
ensures the right mix
of pills at the right
time, with alerts for
when meds need to be
reordered. The Hero
can hold up to 10 drugs,
and can even handle
multiple users. $599

3
4

6
5
7

7 LEXAR IPHONE
MICROSD CARD
READER
Why bother taking all
that drone footage
if you cant share it?
Download photos,
videos, and audio from
any microSD card,
and share it from your
phone or iPad. $41
8 HP SPECTRE
At 10.4 mm thick,
the Spectre is the
8
slimmest, sleekest
laptop you can buy.
Outfitted with Intel
Core i5 or i7 processors
and USB-C ports, HPs
latest machine ushers
in the future of laptops.
Starting at $1,169
9 ZEPP SMART BAT
Baseball is all analytics
these days. Now so is
the bat. Zepp quantifies
your swing by tracking
your bats angle, position, and speed,
and then offers tips
(via smartphone app)
on how to improve.
Price TBD

10 NORMAL
HeADPHONeS
Most wireless
headphones arent
wirelessthey need
a microUSB cable
for charging. Normal
skips the cable for an
integrated USB charger. Plug straight into
a computer or battery
pack to rejuice. $199

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY EIGHT; COURTESY GIROPTIC; COURTESY ANKER; COURTESY HERO
COURTESY ZEPP; COURTESY LG; COURTESY HP; COURTESY LEXAR; COURTESY MOLESKIN; COURTESY RAZER

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Sleep-tracking
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mattress cover. It
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Now

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

Ask an Expert

1
2

2
FUJIFILM X100T
In his downtime,
Souza prefers the
compact Fujilm
X100S (Fujis since
updated to the faster-focusing X100T).
It has the same
large DSLR sensor
but housed in a
slimmer body.

SOUZAS
BEST TIP
Always prep your camera settings,
even if youre not planning to take
photos. As I walk out of Air Force
One, Im looking outside and
estimating the correct exposure.

20

PO PSCI. CO M

CANON 135 F/2.0 L

AND 35 F/1.4 L
These lenses dont
zoom, but they
take advantage of
more available light.
The 35mm is for
up close, and the
135mm is for when
Souza needs to keep
his distance.

PHOTOG
iN CHieF

(FEATURING PETE SOUZA)

CANON 24-70
F/2.8 L II
Souza didnt trust
Canons rst 24-70
lens. But the second
generation of the
lens adds three
low-distortion internal glass elements,
and now its his
primary shooter.

Your Instagram will never be as cool as

Pete Souzas. He travels the world with
the presidentshooting candids of Angela
Merkel (in virtual-reality goggles) and
Steph Curry (cringing in board-game
defeat as Obama cheers). His globe-trotting
job is 24/7. For the ever-shifting circumstances, he has the ultimate strippeddown kit, shown above, to perform in
every condition. Even
if youre not POTUSby
worthy, you would do
DAVE
well to shoot with these.
G ER S H G O R N

P HOTOGR AP H BY

Sam Kaplan

I N S E T : M I C H A EL K A P PE LE R /A F P /G ET T Y I M AG ES

1
CANON 5D MARK III
Canons agship
camera body is a
photojournalism
standard. Souza
carries two, and
almost always uses
them in silent mode
to reduce shutter
sound during sensitive moments.

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Now
The Platform

22

P O P SC I .C OM

Now

J U LY /AU G U ST 2 0 1 6

The Platform

SelF-DRiViNG
TO UTOPiA
Its only four years old, but Lyft is already proving its
more than just a ride-hailing appits a vision for the future.
In May, reports surfaced that the San Francisco-based startup
and General Motors would begin testing a fleet of self-driving
electric taxis starting next year. This came months after
GM invested $500 million in Lyft as part of a shared mission
to deliver autonomous vehicles worldwide. If Lyft co-founder
Logan Green has his way, car ownership and operation will
be a luxury, not a necessity. And that could forever transform
the face of our cities, suburbs, and cars themselves.
Are the days of owning a vehicle over?
No, but I predict that the majority of
folks will opt for the variety and flexibility
youll get in a network, like Lyfts. Consider this: Why would you want to own a
car and have to do all that work yourself?
Why would you want to worry about
parking yourself, deal with washing the
car yourself? Plus, an estimated 94

of the time. When you start to imagine

all of the idle vehicles disappearing
theres a massive amount of room to
make roads more efficient. Imagine a
neighborhood that has no cars parked on
the sides of the streets; those streets
can then be narrowed. In a downtown
area, you can have wider sidewalks.
Cities can be built more around people.

Start to imagine all of the idle vehicles

disappearingtheres a massive amount
of room to make roads more efficient.
percent of road accidents are caused
by human error. For safety reasons, it
only makes sense to operate autonomous
cars on a network.
How will that change a landscape thats
built around cars that we own and drive?
A car is used, on average, only 4 percent

PH OTO G RA P H BY

Cody Pickens

You dont have to have thousand-car

parking garages taking up entire buildings. In the suburbs, you dont need a
driveway taking up half of your front
yard. You dont have to have a massive
parking lot in front of every shopping
mall; you can have pickup and drop-off
areas instead.

POPUL AR

Q&A

SCIENCE

Edited & condensed by

XAVIER HARDING

OK, but we still have to store all

those driverless cars somewhere.
That will be one of the big challenges.
Its going to be a combination of small
staging areas in dense parts of town and
larger staging areas a little farther outside
town. But you dont have to clutter up the
core of the city with a bunch of idle cars.
How will I and hundreds of others line
up for this robo taxiin loading zones?
Yes, loading zones will be very important.
Its already an issue in cities where Lyft
picks up and drops off and the car blocks
the flow of traffic. I think cities will need
to create loading zones to facilitate that.
How will cars look when theyre not
designed for drivers? Is it just a room on
wheels? Netflix and a minifridge?
I dont think theyll have steering wheels.
I dont think youll expect anyone will have
to step in and take over. Youll have more
room, but the rest is a huge unknown.
We dont know what people are going to
want to spend their time doing in these
cars. Are they going to want to work?
Sleep? Are they going to want more social
configurations so they can have more
conversations with fellow passengers?
Probably some of all of those. In the
next few years, well start to learn what
people will want as we start testing these
vehicles in the field. But ultimately, they
will look very different than cars do today.

P OP SC I . C OM

23

Now

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

Standout

GiVE YOUR
eARS SUPeRPOWeRS

SPEED OF SOUND
Here Active Listening
System processes sound
more than 6,000 times faster
than the blink of an eye.

Behold, tiny mixing boards for your ears.

With the help of a smartphone app, the Here
Active Listening System can boost the mids or
highs at a live concert, dampen the noise of an airplane cabin, or re-create the reverb of Abbey Road
Studios while you attempt Hey Jude at karaoke.
These arent headphones. Theyre an entirely
new way of hearinga way to custom-sculpt your
auditory experience in real time. Originally
made for musicians and audiophilescomposer
Hans Zimmer endorses themthey are now
being deployed for more practical purposes, like
blocking out the world to get some work done.
The app has three tabs: a simple volume knob,
an equalizer, and a group of lters that enhances
or eliminates noise. The buds batteries last up to
six hours, and the case doubles
as a charging station. It holds
by
two extra charges, so you can hit
DAVE
Coachella and then catch a few
GERSHGORN
Zs on the plane home.

Out There

Sharks lurk in shallow waters and are drawn to activitylike the ailing of
warm-blooded bodies. To ward off attacks, California brothers Nathan and David
Garrison developed Sharkbanz, a wrist strap that repels
sharks by deploying a weak electric eld. Sharks rely on
by
electrically sensitive sacks in their snouts to navigate,
BERNE BROUDY

24

PO PSCI. CO M

C OU RT ESY S H A R K BA N Z

A WRISTBAND THAT REPELS SHARKS

and Sharkbanz scrambles this sense
with annoying interferencealmost
like shining a bright light in its eyes.
The band wont harm the shark and is
only a deterrentso no guarantees.

P HOTOGR AP H BY

Sam Kaplan

Now
Materials

Three miles from Apples Cupertino, California, headquarters, the tech giant is building
something as massive as its own global reach: a new campus dubbed the Spaceship.
With a nearly 1-mile circumference, the campus will be wider than the Pentagon when
completed later this year and will house 13,000 employeesincluding design grandmaster
Jony Ive, who helped sculpt the iPhone, and CEO Tim Cook, who helps keep profits in
the billions-with-a-B territory. Apples Campus 2 (estimated cost: $5 billion) will run entirely
on clean energy, powered mostly by solar. But whats really grabbed our
attention are the 3,000 panels of curved glassthe largest pieces of structural glass ever madethat will encase Apples mothership. That and the
by
hollow concrete that lets this building breathe. We asked nicely, so Apple
XAVIER
gave us an exclusive look at these breakthrough design elements.
HARDING

26

POPSCI. CO M

C O U RT E SY A P P L E ( 3)

APPlES GlASS HOUSE

JA N/ F EB 2 0 1 6

THE GlASS

THE PRECAsT CONCReTE

To build these sweeping panels, Apple could rely only on sedak/

seele: the company behind Steve Jobs favorite Apple Store (on
Manhattans Fifth Avenue). The German firm was tasked with
fabricating 10-and-a-half-foot-tall glass ranging from 36 to 46 feet
wide, over twice the length of the largest standard pane. We
curved the glass during lamination, says sedak/seele managing
director Nelli Diller, right after heating it to 600Celsius to
strengthen it. The heaviest panes weigh over 3 tons. All told, the
campus boasts 900 panes of vertical glass, 1,600 panes of canopy
glass, 510 panes of clerestory glass, and 126 panes for skylight
glass. The best glass today has a 1/8 -inch tolerance: It can be 1/8 inch longer or shorter than specified. But Apples glass, designed
with extreme precision, was made with a 1/32 -inch tolerance.

The new building actually breathes, thanks to custom

hollow concrete slabs that form both the floors and ceilings.
Big air gaps let the building self-ventilate, largely removing
the need for conventional cooling methods, says Stefan
Behling, a senior executive at international architecture and
design firm Foster + Partners, the company behind the slabs.
Designing the one-of-a-kind airy concrete was done by a team of
70 engineers. Each concrete slab averages 13 feet by 40 feet. And
just like cinder blocks and I-beams, the hollow middle doesnt
take away from the concretes strength, says Behling. The
company used 4,300 concrete slabs, weighing a total 212 tons, to
create the structure. Thats kind of light when compared with
the Spaceships 330-ton, 92-foot-tall campus restaurant doors.
P OP SC I . C OM

27

EDI TED BY MATT G ILES

Rescue workers trying to reach a

fallen climber in a 100-foot crevasse
face perilous conditions. Elios,
a rescue drone made by the Swiss
flying-robotics company Flyability,
tries to minimize these threats.
Roughly a 15-inch sphere, Elios
draws inspiration from houseflies,
which bounce off a surface and keep
flying; it is equipped with a freely
rotating carbon-fiber exoskeleton
that spins on a separate axis from the
drone avionics inside it. When Elios
hits a wall, the cage continues spinning and absorbs the energy of the
collision, while the propellers inside
keep spinning and the HD camera and
lighting system remain stabilized.
It can navigate such extreme
environments as collapsed buildings,
chemical spill sites, and even
glaciersjust about any break in
case of emergency scenarios.

the amount of
time, in minutes ,
it to ok Elios
to n av igate
t h e Ze r m att
G l ac i e r,
which had
prev iously
been
i n access i b l e
to o t h e r
drones

C O URT ESY F LYAB I LI T Y (2 )

by
GRENNAN
M I L L I KE N

20

28

POPSCI. CO M

JULY / AUG UST 201 6

The Elios beat out 800

other entries to win a
$1 million prize in the rst
ever Drones for Good
competition in 2015.

P OP SC I . C OM

29

Next
Concepts & Prototypes

RISK THEME PARK

Height: 262 feet
Death-defying scenes: 9
Proposed site: Daegu, South Korea

1.
4.

30

P O P SC I .C O M

by
CO R I N N E
I OZZ I O

Few of us face death by choice, and weve become comfortable relying

on firefighters, cops, and others to do the death-facing for us. That, argues
Soon-Min Hong, has bred in us a cavalier attitude toward these vocations.
The collective lack of understanding inspired Hong, a student architect at
Londons Royal College of Art, to design the Risk Theme Park, a conceptual
high-rise that lets us tap into our inner Bruce Willis. Firefighters guide
groups of 20 through nine death-defying disaster scenarios. The goal of the
exercise, which is meant to be located in Daegu, South Korea, is to teach
people to value and appreciate through experience, and the park offers
visitors both perspective and adrenaline spikes. Safely, of course.

SO O N - MI N H O N G

A THEME PARK FOR

DISASTER
JUNKIES
TEST YOUR SURVIVAL SKILLS

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

1.
PERILOUS
DESCENT
The journey begins
on the ninth oor
a remembrance
garden honors
fallen reghters.
One level down,
guests can bungee
jump toward the
mountainside below
from a platform
that extends several
yards past the
structures side.

2.

2.
SAFETY FIRST
The theme park sits
atop a real re and
police station, and
is staed by rst
responders. Adults
use narrow ladders to
connect all nine levels,
while children 5 and up
rely on slides. Should
any of the levels
controlled blazes get
out of hand, three
water towers oer
immediate relief.

3.
SMART
EVACUATION
After briey resting
on a pool level, guests
can continue to
descend by crossing a
walkway to the top of
a simulated high-rise
facade. Evacuees use
a net or a climbing
wall to rappel down
the building to safety,
which mirrors how
South Koreans escape
burning high-rises.

4.
UNSTEADY
FOOTING

5.
WILDERNESS
RESCUE

Visitors descend a
staircase to the next
level, which is pitched
at a 10-degree angle to
mimic Daegus uneven
terrain. Monkey bars
and an adult-size
hamster ball (to roll
to the next disaster)
oer a playground
vibe, but the most
daring can high-dive
to the pool below.

Another way out

leads to an engineered, scaled-down
mountaintop that
connects the pool to
the parks base. Manufactured rainstorms
make a guests hike
down treacherous.
Clumsy when wet?
Ropes and zip-lines
provide additional
options for escape.

6.
TRAPPED
UNDERGROUND

3.

5.

6.

Inspired by a 2003
Daegu arson that
killed 192 people
during a morning
rush hour, visitors
must survive a
subway re. There
are two options to
reach safety: Drop
out a train door
through a chute,
or snake across the
tracks as if theyre
balance beams.

Next
Geeking Out

PAO
On Solving
-isms Within
the Workplace

As told to
M AT T G I L ES

J AS ON HE N RY / THE NEW YORK TIMES/ R E DU X

After seven years of

working at Kleiner
Perkins, one of Silicon
Valleys pre-eminent
venture-capital rms,
Ellen Pao felt that
bosses had passed her
over for promotions,
choosing instead
less-qualied candidates. So in 2012,
she led a genderdiscrimination lawsuit.
Though she didnt win,
her trial helped expose
the tech industrys
persistent lack of
diversity and frequent
gender-harassment
issues. She has since
become an ear and a
voice for others with
shared experiences.
Here she oers
insights on how to
create an inclusive
workplace in the
Valleyand beyond.

32

POPSCI. CO M

Next

J U LY /AU G U ST 2 0 1 6

Geeking Out

The trial was a moment of clarity for a lot of people

for women who were experiencing discrimination
or harassment, or for men and women of color.
Their experiences may have been unique, but they
all shared common threads of bias, of unfair pay,
of fewer opportunities. The trial didnt raise brandnew issues, but it made it OK for people to talk about
them in a way that had never happened before.
Whether it is being moved to a smaller
oce, or being told to go take notes, or
being asked to wait to get promoted, people told me experiences that they had
kept inside because they werent sure
what other people would make of it.
Change is uncomfortable, but Ive
began to see some startups recognize that
diversity and inclusivity are good things.
They want to recruit more women, more
people of color, and more people who
have dierences. And there is a natural nancial message. McKinsey & Co.
has done research showing that broad
diversity can result in 35 percent better
nancial performance.
There is a wide range of things that
companies can dofrom blind resumes
to referral bonuses for nontraditional

candidates to blind coding tests. In the

next 10 years, there will be even more
techniques and technologies that will
turn out to be successful at building
diverse and inclusive teams that lead to
nancially successful companies.
The tech industry hasnt moved as
quickly as I thought it would. If we can
solve it here, though, other industries
should be able to address these issues. But
this generation is more aware of the glass
ceiling. Theyve entered the workplace
with eyes open. You have a generation of
women and people of color and all kinds
of underrepresented groups who could
nd places where they might succeed
earlier on in their career, which then helps
them become more successful. They got
on that path earlier. And that is inspiring.

This
generation
is a lot more
aware of the
glass ceiling.
Theyve
entered the
workplace
with eyes
open.

36

Percent of
African-American and
Asian applicants
who whitened,
or changed,
their resumes,
per a 2016 study.

 


@GoodyearRacing
2016 The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. All Rights Reserved. NASCAR is a registered trademark of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, Inc. 2016 Hendrick Motorsports, LLC

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

34

PO P S CI. CO M

BUT IT
WONT SAVE
THE ICE CAPS.

D R A _ S C H WA RT Z /G E T T Y IM AG ES

Greenhouse gas gets all the attention. Most agree it is the main
cause of our warming planet. But scientists say black carbon, or
sootwhich comes from diesel engines, coal-burning plants, and
open biomass incineration (among other forms)is the nearest
runner-up, and the one most readily overlooked.
In addition to causing health issues that lead to millions of deaths
each year, black carbon absorbs light, mixes with water droplets
found within clouds, and settles on snow and ice to devastating effect. It darkens the landscape of the Arctic, says Chris Cappa, a civil
and environmental engineering professor at the University California
at Davis. The once-pristine white surfaces become smudged and
reflect less solar radiation back out into space, which accelerates
warming and melting at an alarming rate, says Cappa.
Eliminating black carbon could stop about
40 percent of global warming. Its not hard to
scrub emissions at their source. And because
by
soot only stays in the air for weeks, there would be
JEN
a near-immediate decrease in the planets heating,
SCHWARTZ
buying us more time to replace fossil fuels with

clean energy. But doing so would

trigger a second type of climate
change. When black carbon
reaches the atmosphere, its
already mixed with sulfur dioxide
and other organic matter. Those
particles actually reflect sunlight, causing a global cooling
effect by preventing that solar
radiation from penetrating the
lower levels of the atmopshere.
You cant just turn off the black
carbon without turning off those
cooling effects too, says Cappa.
Factor in the loss of the cooling
particles, and that 40 percent
figure drops to about 25 percent.
The technology to isolate
and filter out black carbon is in
its infancy, so for now, the trick
is choosing which black-carbon
emissions are most worth
reducing outright. We know that
open biomass incineration and
diesel engines have more black
stuff relative to the other, cooling
components, says Cappa.
Tackling those sources with
the existing tech would promote
the health of both us and Earth.

Next
Decoded

ZERO GRAVITY PHARMACY

On a family vacation to the California
Space Center in Los Angeles a few years
ago, medicinal chemist Clay Wang had a
disturbing thought: As we explore space, and
travel farther and farther away from Earth,
a lot could go wrong. Systems could fail.
Hardware could break down. And what about
the crew? What happens if they get sick
and run out of medication a year or so into a
three-year trip to Mars?
Drugs have an expiration date, and both
radiation and the vibrations of space travel
might degrade them more quickly. Wang
thinks future Mars explorers might rely on
a revolutionary solution: growing their own
medicine en route. Its a tactic that has been
theorized but never tested in space.
Wang, conveniently, runs a lab at the
University of Southern California that studies
natural medicine. This past April, his lab sent
specimens of the soil fungus Aspergillus
nidulans to the International Space Station
to see how it might fare on a Martian odyssey.
The results are pending, but Wang is
curious to know whether the stresses of
space activate previously unknown genetic
pathways in the fungus. This could cause
A. nidulans to generate novel compounds
and lead to new medicines for Earthlings

G UT T ER C R ED I T T K H E R E

S CI E PRO/ S CI E N CE PHOTO L I B RA RY / GE T T Y I MAGES

ASTRONAUTS WILL USE MOLD TO GROW MEDICINE IN SPACE

and astronauts alike.

Its like a factory where
many of the machines
have always been switched
off, says Wang. In space,
those machines might suddenly turn on
for the first time. Once scientists better
understand how the space environment
affects the funguss biology, Wangs hope
is that astronauts could then replicate the
process to manufacture their own drugs
on the long journey to Mars.
Future Mars missions could carry a
few spores of several benevolent fungi
and quickly scale up. If explorers run out
of penicillin, for example, Ground Control
could email the gene sequences that cause
the fungus to produce the drug. Then an onboard DNA synthesizer would write those
codes into a lab-grown cell that replicates
until there are enough drugs to do the job.
That end goal is years away, but Wang
hopes his experiment will plant the seeds
(or spores) that grow into reality.
Astronauts wont have to worry
about resupply, he says. Theyll have
a medicine cabinet full of different
strains to rely on.

by
SARAH
FECHT

BATTLETESTED
@GoodyearRacing

Next

JULY/AUGUST 2016

Rubicon

SAY
HI
TO
LI-FI
THE FUTURE OF WIRELESS COMMUNICATION IS BRIGHT
Whenever you use Wi-Fi to text
or download a Serial podcast, the
data travels over radio waves. The
trouble is that these waves occupy
such a narrow pathway along the
electromagnetic spectrum, which
limits the available bandwidth for
smartphones and other devices.
You can never create more
spectrum, says Harald Haas, a lead
mobile communications researcher
at the University of Edinburgh.
If radio waves are like a crowded
single-lane road, visible lightwaves
are like a wide-open freeway. The
solution for faster downloads is
to take advantage of this larger

36

POPSCI. CO M

swath through
LED bulbs. When
modified with a
signal processor,
the bulbs function
as semiconductors, embedding digital information
within lightwaves.
Light fidelity, or Li-Fi, promises
to stream data to wireless devices
in the form of LED flashes. They
change intensity fast enough to
transmit data at superspeeds
1 million cycles per second, or
1 megahertz (without a visual
strobe effect).
Haas began working on Li-Fi

by
AL L IS ON
WIL L IAMS

in the early 2000s, and it reached

speeds of only around 10 megabits
per secondenough for Internet
browsing but not for intense streaming. Then, in 2003, he managed to
split the data across frequencies,
upping the speed to 100 gigabits
per second, or about 15 times faster
than the fastest Wi-Fi.
Li-Fi is more secure too. Light
cant travel through walls, so the
signal cant either. The big drawback
is the lights need to be on for the
Internet to work. But an Indian
startup Velmenni recently unveiled
a Li-Fi-enabled LED that dims to a
barely visible 10 percent of its full
power and still transmits data.
The techs impact could be
greatest in regions without existing
Internet infrastructure. A single
LED-outfitted street lamp could
serve as an Internet hotspot for
homes and villages in a developing
areaall it needs is a receiver to
embed the data in the flashes. It
took 15 years for everyone to get WiFi, Haas says. With Li-Fi, I believe
it will take five years, and the clock
started last year.

People
worldw ide,
in billions,
who lack
Internet
access

I L LU ST R AT I ON BY

Harry Campbell

Next
FYI

ROCKET SCIENCE
MEETS
RUNWAY
RE-ENGINEERING HIGH HEELS

PHOTOGRA PH BY CHA RL I E L A N GE L L A

by ANNABEL EDWARDS

As SpaceXs former director of recruiting, Dolly Singh had a problem:

My high heels f***ing sucked. She
would walk up to 4 miles a day in
the unforgiving shoes, and couldnt
find a fashionable alternative.
Theres been no innovation within
the high-heel market in almost a
century, says Singh.
She founded Thesis Couture
staffing it with a rocket scientist,
an astronaut, and a mechanical
engineerand set out to design a
stiletto that was not only comfortable, but would also better absorb
shock, offer extra arch support, and
distribute body weight more evenly
across the foot.
In a standard pair of heels,
80 percent of your weight is on
the balls of your feet. Our goal is
to shift that to 50 percent, Singh
says. Thesis Couture will release
1,500 pairs of the limited-edition
stiletto, which retails for $925,
this year.

EVERYTHING WE LEARN MAKING TIRES FOR DALE JR.

INSPIRES WHAT WE ROLL INTO YOURS.

2016 The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. All Rights Reserved. NASCAR is a registered trademark of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, Inc. 2016 Hendrick Motorsports, LLC

123,355
Number of
ER injuries linked
to high heels
from 2002-2012

Next
Tech Trend

THE OLYMPIC
VILLAGE OF
THE
FUTURE
TOKYO 2020 WILL BE THE
BEST EVER FOR SOCIETY
by
HEATHE R HANSMAN

Hosting the Olympics

can put serious strain on a
countrys infrastructure and
finances. In preparation
for the 2016 games, Rio
de Janeiro has dealt
with issues ranging from
sewage-filled lakes to an
uncompleted subway line.
In Sochi in 2014, hotels
went unfinished after the
Winter Olympics began
the whole affair cost Russia
a record $51 billion. But
Japan, home of the 2020
games, wants to make
the event good for their
country and society. The
nation has done it before.
To host the 1964 Olympics,
Japan launched the
Tokaido Shinkansen bullet
train, which revolutionized
national transportation.
Drawing on the Japanese
sustainability concept of
mottainai (dont waste),
Tokyo will use robot cars,
holographic displays, and
driverless taxis to enhance
society, which should
make the 2020 games
a global winner.

38

POPSCI. CO M

HYDROGENPOWERED VILLAGE
The Tokyo Metropolitan
Government, which is creating the
Olympic and Paralympic Village, has
earmarked $367 million to develop
hydrogen fuel cell cars and refueling
stations around the sports complexes.
After the completion of the games,
the village will be an environmentally
friendly residential district powered
by a next-generation hydrogen
system, says Hikariko Ono, a
spokesperson for the games.

8K BROADCASTING
For spectators who wont be in the stands, the
Olympic Broadcasting Service will be shooting
the entire Tokyo Games in 8K UHD16 times the
resolution of standard high-def. Some viewers
dont have to wait: As a trial run, OBS will lm
130 hours of Rios festivities in what it calls
Super Hi-Vision 8K. Japans national broadcast
station, NHK, has signed on to broadcast it.
Tune in to see Bob Costas pores in all their
7,680-by-4,320-pixel glory.

JULY / AUG UST 201 6

HOLOGRAPHIC
INFORMATION
Most holograms (think
Tupac at Coachella)
are just digital images
projected on thin
screens and visible only
from certain angles.
But Mitsubishi Electric
has developed true
holographic technology,
projecting a 3-D image
you can actually walk
around. The tech uses
a beam splitter and a
retro-reective sheet
to make images appear
to oat. It wont better
society, but these
holograms might just
be the coolest event
in Tokyo 2020.

BIOFUELED FLIGHTS
Companies like Airbus and United have tested
biofueled ights, powered by things like used
cooking oil and algae. But now, Boeing, All Nippon
Airlines, and others are investigating a range of
options, including inedible plants like a owering
house plant and an oil seed plant, and algae-based
sources. The biofuels require large amounts of
plant mass, so various Japanese companies have
constructed large-scale farms and algae cultivation pools to produce enough of the green stu to
power all of the games potential air trac.

I L LU ST RAT IO NS BY

Michael Brandon Myers

DRIVERLESS TAXIS
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proclaimed that robo-taxis
would be present at the games. Tokyo-based Robot Taxi soon stepped
in to take orders. Initial eld tests for the cabswhich use a Robovision stereo camera to navigate and can be hailed by cellphone
began this past March in Kanagawa Prefecture. But the technology
still needs some tweaks, like teaching the software to read maps.

P OP SC I . C OM

39

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42

I N S E T PH OTO: S A M K A P LA N ; T Y P OG R A P H Y BY M I K EY BU RTO N

STARRING

S E T DES I G N ER : P E T ER G A R G AG LI A N O; P R O D UC ER : D E BO R A H B UR CH FO R S N OG PRODUCT I ON S .COM;

G R OO M E R : M I R A C H A I H Y DE FO R R EV IV E S K I NC A R E A N D S HU UE M UR A H A I R AT T HE WA L L GROUP; RE TOUCHI N G BY CATCHL I GHT DI GTA L

 Interview

THIS SUMMER, THE CREW of the Enterprise nds

themselves in yet another interstellar pickle.
Who will hit the warp drive on the funny? Our
cover lad, Simon Pegg, of course. The Englandborn actor returns as chief engineer Montgomery
Scotty Scott in this years franchise reboot, Star
Trek Beyond. And it happens to coincide with the
50th anniversary of Gene Roddenberrys iconic
(and campy) TV show.
Yeah, Pegg has heard all the Beam me up, Scotty
catcalls he can take. Even his mother wont stop.
Still, the man is a comedian. Hes also (per his Twitter bio) a
zombie killer, supercop, alien buster, diesel weasel, and onetime
owner of the Millennium Falcon. So we gured the twisted mind
that brought us Shaun of the Dead, broke Ethan Hunt out of a
Russian prison (as Benji in Mission: Impossible), slipped on a fat
suit to play Unkar Plutt in last years Star Wars, and co-wrote this
years Star Trek would be the best spokesperson for our Insane
Ideas issue. Just how does this intergalactic polymath do it?
By giving her all shes got, Captain!

Q
&
a

PS: DO ANY OF THOSE BUTTONS

ON THE ENTERPRISE SET DO ANYTHING?
SP: One calls for pizza, but were not sure which one it is.
Occasionally pizzas just turn up and we know that someones pressed it, but it isnt clear. They actually all work.
If you press things, they light up. But nothing causes the
spaceship to y.

PS: DOES IT FEEL AS REALISTIC AS IT

LOOKS TO US FANBOYS AND FANGIRLS?
SP: The sheer attention to detail on the set design is
extraordinary. All the controls on the Enterprise are
touchscreen sensitive, and every button has a function.
And theres a way to steer the ship with various joysticks
and dials. You might never see a close-up of that in the
lm, but as an actor, it makes you feel like youre in a
totally real environment.

PS: I SUPPOSE THAT MAKES IT EASIER TO

PRETEND YOURE ON A STARSHIP.
SP: These sets are so fully realized, and it was a fairly
monumental shoot, this one. For the rst time, the bridge
was built on a gimbal so that it shook and we didnt have
to pretend the ship was being rocked around, which
is one of the most beloved Star Trek traditions: The
camera shakes and the actors go LEFT! and RIGHT!
There was a faint ennui about it: Oh, we dont have to
pretend anymore?

PS: WHATS YOUR FAVORITE GADGET ON SET?

SP: My Scotty watch. Ive worn it in every lm, but I dont
think anyones seen it. If you press it, it goes all blue and
ashy. I like to press it sometimes when Im bored. Ive
tried to put it in the shot, but it never got in. So its an
unseen, beautiful thing.

PS: STAR TREK HAS BEEN AROUND FOR HALF A

CENTURY. WHATS CHANGED SINCE IT BEGAN?
SP: Whats kept the series going is this idea of hope
the idea that we actually manage to not only live on,

but we work together and go out into the universe and

we explore. In this one, we tried to slightly question the
strengths of Roddenberrys original vision. If the villain
is opposed to what the Federation is all about, we wanted
to make the audience wonder if the villain is right and
the crew is just assimilating the universe, rather than
their Federalist ideal to go out, make alliances, and build
a huge community. We wanted to take stock of that
and ask: Is that the right thing to do? Or are you just
colonizing the galaxy?

PS: I HEAR YOURE A MUSICIAN.

SP: I play the drums a little bit. And then lately I have
played harmonica with Coldplay a few times, and thats
always been extraordinary because for a few minutes,
without any qualications or any work to get there, Im
standing in front of 80,000 people playing harmonica!

PS: HOW DID YOU GET THAT GIG?

SP: Chris [Martin] and I go back a long way. We became
friends when they were a shoegazing indie band that
nobodyd ever heard of. They did a gig in 2001 at a festival,
and they werent even on the main stage, but I got up and
played harmonica with them. And every now and then
Ill go to see them, and Chris will be like, Come on up and
play! and Ill go, I dont want to; I just want to enjoy the
show and not feel nervous! But he says, You gotta! So I
end up sh*tting myself for the entire show until I do my
bit, and then I feel like a rock star for the rest of the night.

PS: DOES THE STAR TREK ENTOURAGE

EVER HANG OUT IN REAL LIFE?
SP: Weve all known each other for a long time, and we
get on very, very well. In Vancouver, where we shot this
one, youd often walk into a nightclub or a restaurant and
see the entire crew of the Enterprise. We went into one
club and sat at this big horseshoe tableme, Chris [Pine],
Zach [Quinto], John [Cho], Anton [Yelchin], and Deep
[Roy]and on the screen above this table, they put Star
Trek on, and we were like: What the hell, man?! We dont
really want to say, Hey, were here!

PS: DO YOU THINK SCOTTYS A LITTLE JEALOUS

OF THE KIRK-AND-SPOCK BROMANCE?
SP: I dont think he cares. I kind of feel like he lives in
his own world, Scotty. I think he likes being in the guts
of the ship xing stu. And obviously in this iteration,
hes got his little pal, Keenser, whos like this little oyster
or bivalve creature. Now hes a regular xture as Scottys
right-hand manor right-hand bivalve. So hes ne.

PS: DID YOU MEET YOUR PREDECESSOR, JAMES

DOOHAN, BEFORE HE PASSED AWAY IN 2005?
SP: Weirdly, I met him at an SFX [Science Fiction Expo]
convention years before. He was guest of honor. It was
very much the endhe was in a wheelchair and he was
very frail, but I got to meet him. It always strikes me as
so strange that that was in my future, and I didnt know
and would not be able to tell him. So I consider that to be
an extraordinary, fortuitous thing that I got to meet him,
even though it was a good three years before Id play him.
I was like, Wow, thats the universe opening up.
EDITED AND CONDENSED BY IAN DALY

44

PO P S CI. CO M

Watch Pegg answer

even crazier questions
at popsci.com/pegg.

P OP SC I . C OM

45

46

POP S CI. CO M

3-D MEDICINE

Absurd. Foolhardy. Impossible.

Thats what they say about big
ideasuntil they change the world.
Here are this years best.

I l l u s t r a t i o n s b y N AT H A N F O X

WEAPONS

Comet-Busting Rockets
Really big space rocks (a mile
or wider across) crash into Earth
about once every 500,000 years.
Thats rare, but we might not spot the
next one until its too late for existing
technology to stop itespecially if its
a comet. Because comets can travel
twice as fast as an asteroid, wed need
something 20 times more powerful
than anything in our arsenal to fend it
off. Whats humanity to do? One scientist has an answer: fusion rockets.
Glen Wurden, a plasma physicist at
Los Alamos National Laboratory by
day and an amateur astronomer by
night, has conceived a comet-buster
that would work like this: Harnessing
the tremendous energy of fusion, the
process in which two atomic nuclei
collide to form a new nucleus, could
propel a rocket to more than 100 kilometers per second. Thats 100 times
faster than the fastest cruise missile.
The science of controlling the reaction
on boardin a plasma surrounded by
a magnetic ringhas already been
proved possible in labs. Once the
rocket approaches the comet, the idea
isnt to score a direct hit, but rather to
set off a nuclear bomb close enough
to boil away surface material, changing the comets mass and trajectory.
Wurden thinks itd be worth spending
up to $40 billion over 40 years to build
it. Sure beats becoming a fossil record.
Sarah Fecht

RESTORING
FERTILITY
BY PRINTER
WEVE BECOME PRETTY
good at treating certain types
of cancerparticularly in
kids. Eighty percent of children under 18 are now beating
their various malignancies
for at least the rst ve years,
compared with less than 10
percent in the 1950s.
But female survivors often
face a common problem when
they grow up: Their harsh cancer treatments have left their
ovaries barren. So reproductive biologist Monica Laronda
and biomedical engineer Alexandra Rutz of Northwestern
University set out to build
them new ones. They designed
a 3-D-printed prosthetic ovary
that can grow healthy eggs.
Their secret is scaolding,
which is made of 3-D-printed
gelatin, and holds ovarian follicles that secrete hormones
and contain the structures
that develop into eggs.
The ovary needs to be rigid
enough to be transplanted,
and roomy enough in which
eggs can mature. Researchers
tested the device by replacing
the 1.5-millimeter-wide ovaries
of a few dozen mice with the
prosthetics. At the Endocrine
Society meeting in April,
Laronda announced that
some of those mice later gave
birth to healthy ospring.
Of course, human eggs
grow larger and take longer
to mature, so scaling up to
piglets is the next step. And
researchers have already
begun preserving and studying ovarian tissue samples
from pediatric cancer patients.
Children being treated today
could have new hope when
the time comes to make
children of their own.
Alexandra Ossola

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47

EXTREME SURGERY

TRADING
FACES
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF
PATRICK HARDISON
Photography by JJ SULIN

48

PO P S CI. CO M

On September 5, 2001, a
two-alarm blaze at a mobile home
outside of Senatobia, Mississippi,
drew dozens of firefighters to the
scene. Patrick Hardison, a local
tire salesman, was among them.
When the homes roof gave
way and the ceiling crashed down,
Hardison was the only one still in the
trailer. His respirator mask melted
onto his face. His lips, ears, eyelids,
and much of the skin on his head
were burned off.
Fourteen years and 71 surgeries
later, Hardison remained grossly
disfigured. Then he met Dr. Eduardo
Rodriguez, chair of plastic surgery
at NYU Langone Medical Center. He
suggested a daring idea: to remove
Hardisons face and attach another.
In August 2015, a suitable donor
was foundDavid Rodebaugh, a
bicycle mechanic who had been in
a fatal accident. He had a matching
blood type and compatible genes.
After a 26-hour surgical
procedure, Hardison emerged with
a new face. This spring, Popular
Science tagged along with him during
a follow-up visit to Dr. Rodriguez
to see what life is like in someone
elses skin.
Matt Giles
David Rodebaugh, a bicycle
mechanic in Brooklyn

FR O M TO P: C O RT ES I A /N OT I M E X/ NE W S C O M ; H A N DO UT C O URT ESY N Y U L A N GON E

Patrick Hardison,
before the 2001 accident

8:01 AM

My face still has a tingling ache and pain.

When I shower in the morning, I let hot
water run over it, which helps some. After
the surgery, I was taking 15 pills at 8 a.m.,
and another 15 at 8 p.m. Now I take six in
the morning, and only four at night.
The medication can make me feel woozy,
but the times it doesnt are a thousand
times better than the times is does.
I am also sleeping more. I still get up at
5:30 or 6, but now I sleep three or four
hours without waking up.

BACK TO
DAILY LIFE

Hardisons transplant
surgery was the most extensive of the dozens attempted
worldwide during the past
decade. Nearly a year after his
transplant, Hardison is still on
a diet of immunosuppressant
drugs to stop his body from
rejecting the new face. He has
yet to suer a rejectiona
rst in this pioneering eld.

9:12 AM

People stopped staring at me right after

the surgery. I went to Macys and did
some shopping the day I got out of the
hospital, and I realized people werent
looking at me anymoreeven though my
face was swollen, they just thought I had
jaw surgery. They didnt look at me and
think, He had a face transplant. It was a
great feeling. When I first looked at myself
in the mirror, I realized right away that this
was my face. There was no taking it off.

9:31 AM

Before the surgery, I had two little

pinholes that I could see out of. My eye
doctor told me I was like a horse with
blinders onI could see only straight in
front of me. I was 20/2200 in vision.
I am now about 20/30. I dont have
trouble reading the cellphone screen
anymore, but I am so used to holding my
phone close to my face. Whenever I pick it
up now, it goes there automatically.

P OP SC I . C OM

49

 10:00 AM

My surgeon, Dr. Rodriguez, wants to

make sure nothing is out of place. Ive had
six or seven touch-ups since the transplant,
and I met with him to discuss another,
which will raise my forehead and eyebrows.
They were too low. There will always be
some more stuff theyll have to straighten
outI still have to come to NYU once a
month to do lab work and also see my psychologistbut this next surgery should get
me settled for at least the rest of the year.

6:00 PM

People label me disabled. I hate that.

Its been less than a year since the surgery,
and I am way ahead of schedule. I opened
my eyes 10 days after the transplant,
which everyone thought would take me six
months to do. I didnt want to become a
hermit following the procedureI just want
to get back to living my life. I am taking
my kids to Disney World this summer,
and since Dr. Rodriguez scheduled the
removal of my trachea tube, I am finally
going to be able to jump in the water.
I havent done that since the accident.

50

PO P S CI. CO M

To watch a video of our day with Hardison, go to popsci.com/trading-faces.

MAKING BABIES

Womb Not
Required
THE FIRST 13 days
following human
conception have
mostly remained a
mystery to science.
It is all but impossible

to observe: Since
pregnancy hormones
are too low to register
a positive test, its hard
to know if a woman is
pregnant, and without
looking into the
womb, we cant watch
fertilized eggs grow. We
broadly understand the
processthe embryo
(a mass of cells known

as a blastocyst) sheds
its outer layer and
implants in the
uterine lining.
In May, though,
researchers from
Rockefeller University were the rst to
watchand raise
human embryos in the
laboratory for 13 days
(the maximum ethically

allowable amount).
The Rockefeller
researchers grew one
in a lab by giving it
insulin and other
nutrientsno lining
necessary. This demonstrated an embryo itself
contains the genetic
instruction manual
for its development,
and it isnt shared with

the mother (at least

not initially). That
promises new models
for human growth,
and insights into failed
pregnancies. While the
research doesnt mean
we can grow babies in a
lab, it hints at a future
where human wombs
might be optional.
Dave Gershgorn

SPACE EXPLORATION
CLIMATE CHANGE

AI POLICES SMOG
CHINA HAS SOME of the worst
air pollution in the world, and the
smog-choked capital, Beijing, has
become its poster child. Breathing
its air, according to a study released
last year by U.S.-based nonprot
Berkeley Earth, can be as unhealthy
as smoking 30 cigarettes a day.
Worse: Because air quality uctuates so wildly (depending on industrial activity, trac, and weather),
its dicult to give residents ample
warning to protect themselves.
Thats changing, thanks to
artificial intelligence and the
Internet of Things. Under a new
initiative called Green Horizons,
IBM has been collecting data from
pollution sensors spread across
the capital city, and crunching that
data with cognitive computing
(aka artificial intelligence) and

predictive analytics. The resulting

complex modeling system sees
patterns where we humans saw
only chaos.
Since launching the initiative in
2014, IBM has been able to generate
high-resolution 1-by-1-kilometer
pollution forecasts 72 hours in
advance, giving citizens more
warning and planning time.
But most important, its
pinpointing those responsible for
the problem (traffic and factory output), and advising the
government on how to reach its
goal of reducing smog-generating
particulate matter in the capital by
25 percent by next year. IBM is
now rolling out the initiative
in other heavily polluted cities,
including Johannesburg and New
Delhi. It might not look as impressive as Watson beating humans
at Jeopardy!, but who wouldnt
take clean air for 500, Alex?
Matt Giles

Tiny Ships Seek

Deep-Space Aliens
Russian billionaires
dont think small, but
Yuri Milners plan is tiny. The
former physicist pledged $100
million in April to build thousands
of cracker-size spacecraft.
Their mission: to search for
extraterrestrial life and habitable
planets in our neighboring star
system, Alpha Centauri. The real
breakthrough is how theyll get
there. Theyll unfurl light sails
that use photons to push them
forward the way sailboats use
wind. Powerful lasers on Earth
will blast them with enough
energy to accelerate them
to one-fifth the speed of light, so
their journey will take between
20 and 30 years. Dave Gershgorn

P OP SC I . C OM

51

ENERGY

A Robot
Army
to Build
Solar
Panels
(On the
Moon)
52

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AS THE GLOBAL
headcount nears
8 billion, our thirst for
kilowatts is growing by
the minute. How will
we keep the lights on
without overheating
the planet in fossil-fuel
exhaust? Alternative
energy is the obvious
choice, but scaling up is
hard. It would take an
area the size of Nevada
covered in solar panels
to get enough energy to
power the planet, says

Justin Lewis-Weber,
and to me, thats just
not feasible. This past
March, Lewis-Weber,
a then-high school senior in California, came
up with a radical plan:
self-replicating solar
panelson the moon.
Heres the gist: When
solar panels are orbiting Earth, they enjoy
24 hours of unltered
sunshine every day,
upping their productivity. Once out there,

they could convert that

solar radiation into
electricity (just as existing solar panels do)
and then into microwave beams (using the
same principle as your
kitchen appliance).
Those microwaves then
get beamed back to
Earth, where receivers
convert them back into
electricity to power the
grid. Simple! Except
that Lewis-Weber
estimates that building

and launching thousands of pounds of

solar panels and other
equipment into space
will be outrageously
expensive, in the range
of hundreds of trillions
of dollars.
Instead, he suggested, why not make them
on the moon? Land
a single robot on the
lunar surface, and then
program it to mine raw
materials, construct
solar panels, and (heres

FLYING CARS

Commute by
Passenger Drone

the fun part) make

a copy of itself.
The process would
repeat until an army
of self-replicating
lunar robot slaves
has churned out
thousands of solar
panels for its powerhungry masters.
Youd still have
to get those panels
to orbit Earth so a
steady beam could
reach the surface;
thats where the

moons weak
gravity and nonexistent atmosphere
come in handy,
requiring far less
energy (and money)
for the panels to
escape. It might be
a moonshot, but the
technology to pull
it o isnt far away.
How does that
stack up to your
high school
science project?
Sarah Fecht

Traffic jams
and overcrowded highways
dont fit with any
Utopian vision
of the future. So
Derrick Xiong, cofounder of Chinabased consumer
and commercial
drone company
EHang, had an
insight: The only
way out is the sky.
Xiongs four-armed,
single-passenger
EHang 184 is the
worlds first drone
capable of transporting humans.
It has many of the
comforts of a commercial plane, such
as air conditioning
and lighting, but
with the autonomy
of a drone. Passengers use a Microsoft Surface tablet
to regulate the
amenities, while a
command center
remotely monitors
flights and handles
the logistics of
air-traffic control.

While it isnt
meant to be a
replacement for
other methods
of air travel, it is
intended to relieve
the stress on the
U.S.s increasingly problematic
transportation
infrastructurea
system that could
cost as much
as $3 billion to
fix. The EHangs
ability to take off
and land vertically, along with the
minimal training
required for riders,
gives it advantages
above cars and
planes. With a
release date thats
still uncertain and
a price comparable to a small
plane (upwards
of $300,000), the
EHang wont be
replacing the Prius
anytime soon. But
gridlocks days
may be numbered.
Lindsey
Kratochwill

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P OP SC I . C OM

55

56

PO PSCI. CO M

After falling
through the ice
(right) while
snowshoeing,
Kelly Dwyer
(above) was technically dead for
five hours when
doctors brought
her back.

T H I S A ND O PP O S I T E PAGE : C O URT ESY K ELLY DW Y ER

Kelly Dwyer strapped on a pair of snowshoes and

set out to hike a beaver pond trail near her home in
Hooksett, New Hampshire. When the sun dropped
below the horizon hours later, the 51-year-old
environmental educator still hadnt returned home.
Her husband, David, was worried. Grabbing his
cellphone and a ashlight, he told their two daughters he was going to look for Mom. As he made his
way toward the pond, sweeping his ashlight beam
across the darkening winter landscape, he called
out for Kelly. Thats when he heard the moans.
Running toward them, David phoned their
daughter Laura, 14, and told her to call 911. His ashlight beam soon settled on Kelly, submerged up to
her neck in a hole of dark water in the ice. As David
clutched her from behind to keep her head above
water, Kelly slumped into unconsciousness. By the
time rescue crews arrived, her body temperature
was in the 60s and her pulse was almost too faint
to register. Before she could reach the ambulance,
Kellys heart stopped. The EMTs attempted CPRa
process doctors continued for three hours at a
hospital in nearby Manchester. They warmed her
frigid body. Nothing. Even debrulation wouldnt
restart her heart. Kellys core temperature hovered
in the 70s. David assumed hed lost her for good.
But Kellys life wasnt over. A doctor rushed her
to nearby Catholic Medical Center, where a new
team hooked her up to a cardiac bypass machine
that more aggressively warmed, ltered, and

oxygenated Kellys blood, and rapidly circulated it

through her body. Finally, Kellys temperature crept
back up. After shed spent ve hours medically
dead, doctors turned o the bypass machine, and
her heart spontaneously began beating again.
Incredibly, Kelly Dwyer walked out of the hospital
two weeks later with only minor nerve damage to
her hands. Upon seeing her, the team that rescued
Kelly from the pond reacted as if they were seeing
a ghost. In some ways, they were. Five years later,
friends still call her miracle woman.
Bringing people back from the dead is not science ction anymore. Typically, after just minutes
without a heartbeat, brain cells start dying, and an
irreversible and lethal process is set in motion. But
when a person becomes severely cold before his
heart quits, his metabolism slows. The body sips
so little oxygen that it can remain in a suspended
state for up to seven hours without permanent
cell damage. Thanks to improvements in technology (like the cardiac bypass machine that saved
Dwyers life) and medical understanding, the odds
are getting better for coming back from the edge.
They are so good, in fact, that some doctors and scientists are testing a bold new hypothesis: What if
you could induce a near-death state in order to save
lives? If it can be done, it could be a game changer
for saving some of the nearly 200,000 Americans
who die each year due to trauma injuries. By essentially pressing pause, doctors might be able to
buy precious time that could mean the dierence
between life and death. Suspended animation is no
longer the stu of Star Wars or Avatar.
A handful of scientists and medical experts
across the country is now looking for ways to
suspend life in order to perform surgeries without
the threat of a trauma patient bleeding to death,
or to prevent tissue damage during the treatment
of cardiac events. Some aim to pump ice-cold
saline solution into patients veins. Others are
searching for a suspended-animation drug. The
Department of Defense too is heavily involved,
with the hope that thousands of servicemen
and servicewomen could benet as well: Ninety
percent of war casualties result from bleeding out
on the battleeld. In 2010, it launched a $34 million
initiative called Biochronicityan interdisciplinary
research project to gure out how to manipulate
the human clock.
The goal is to examine the way our bodies know
that time is progressing, explains Col. Matthew
Martin, a 48-year-old active-duty trauma surgeon
whose research is funded through Biochronicity.
The battleeld application would be the slowing
down or the stopping of time, making a wounded
soldier able to survive longeror even survive
indenitelyso that we can get somewhere to
treat the injury, says Martin, and then reverse
that suspended state.

r. Mark Roths oce at the 15-acre

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research
Center in Seattle is crammed with
boxes of newspaper clippings and
journal articles about people who
came back from the dead. There
is a skier in Norway, a toddler in
Saskatchewan, and two shermen who capsized
in the Gulf of Alaskaall of whom had atlined in
the freezing cold.
Ive been a student of these cases for 20 years,
Roth tells me. At 59, Roth ts the mold of a mad
scientistwith white hair that stands straight up,
and a tendency to wave his hands while rattling
on about metabolic reactions and the periodic
table. He is also the winner of a MacArthur Genius
Grant for his work manipulating the biological
clocks of small sh and garden worms. He is widely
recognized as a pioneer in the pursuit of using
suspended animation in trauma treatment.
Hunched over a microscope, in a burgundy
T-shirt with matching Converse All Stars, he invited me to take a look at a petri dish bustling with
tiny, hours-old zebrash. Because theyre transparent, you can see their hearts beating and the blood
moving about the tail, he says. This is the core of
our own animationthe heart and blood ow. Ill
turn it o and on like a light switch. Were going to
take away the oxygen and alter their animation.
Were going to make a dierent kind of air.
Using a clear tube, Roth began piping nitrogen
into a transparent box containing the petri dish.
Were going to let that sucker go all night, he says.
The air were breathing is whats in there now, but
in time, this whole system will become straight-up
nitrogen, which will eventually get to these creatures and turn them o. In the morning, well put

By essentially pressing pause, doctors could buy time that

could mean the difference between life and death.

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

them back into the room air, and theyll reanimate.

Then Roth prepped a similar experimentthis
one to show the eects, rather than the plausibility,
of suspended animation. Taking two petri dishes of
nematodes at precisely the same stage of development, he placed one dish in his nitrogen box and
left the other on a lab bench. His hypothesis: The
gassed worms metabolism should gradually slow
until theyre essentially suspended in time, while
the fresh-air siblings should keep getting bigger.
Because nematodes grow quickly, his theory would
be proved or disproved by tomorrow. Think of it as
the worm equivalent of the movie Alien, in which
the crew enters a suspended hypersleep state in
pods in order to endure a long interstellar journey
without aging. Like those pods, Roths nitrogen
box suspends his nematode crew in metabolic
stasis for the night.
Up until the early 2000s, Roths suspendedanimation experiments were conned to the scale
of tiny creatures, such as worms and sh. Then one
night he was watching the science documentary
series Nova on PBS. The show featured a cave in
Mexico that caused spelunkers to pass out because
of an invisible hydrogen-sulde gas.
If you breathe too much of it, you collapse, says
Roth. Its called knock-downyou appear dead.
But if you are brought out from the cave, you can
be reanimated without harm. I thought: Wow! I
have to get some of this!
After exposing mice to 80 parts per million of
some of that gas at room temperature, Roth found
he could induce a suspended state that could later
be reversed by returning the mice to regular air,
with no neurological harmjust like the spelunkers in Mexico. For Roth, it was a breakthrough.
The medical community immediately took notice,
seeing his works potential for treating heartattack victims and cancer patients. The $500,000
MacArthur grant followed soon after.
Since then hes been tinkering with compounds
found in other deadly gases, kept under lock and
key in a neaby lab room with tightly monitored
security cameras and alarms. These gases will
kill you, Roth says. Selenide, carbon monoxide,
cyanideyou could be dead in two minutes.
But they also might save your life some day.
Roth has identied four compounds (sulfur,
bromine, iodine, and selenium) that he now calls
elemental reducing agents, or ERAs. These naturally exist in small amounts in humans and can
slow a bodys oxygen use. Roth wants to develop
an ERA as an injectable drug that can, for one,
prevent whats called a reperfusion injurytissue
damage that can occur after doctors halt a heart
attack. This happens when normal blood ow
resumes; the sudden rush of oxygen can permanently damage heart cells, leading to chronic heart
failure (the leading cause of death in the world).

P OP SC I . C OM

57

58

PO PSCI. CO M

cool patients into a hypothermic state, essentially

inducing, intentionally, the same state that Kelly
Dwyer was in. To do that, he replaces blood in the
body with freezing-cold saline solution, quickly
reducing the patients core temperature to a frigid
50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit. It sounds extreme, but
if it works, it could be a lifesaverespecially in a
city that just suered its second deadliest year for
homicides (344 in 2015).
Routine care for trauma victims with injuries
such as gunshot wounds typically involves inserting
a breathing tube, and then using large intravenous
catheters to replace lost uids and blood while a
surgeon desperately attempts to repair the damage
before the patients heart fails. Its a race against
time, Tisherman says, and these endeavors often
dont work. Only 5 to 10 percent of people in cardiac
arrest from trauma surviveyour chances of living
are pretty slim.
Inducing a hypothermic state could buy surgeons
as much as an hour to operate. Afterward they could
resume blood ow and gradually rewarm the patient. Tisherman and his colleagues have spent more
than two decades perfecting their procedure in animals. Theyve had such success that in 2014, the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration gave them the goahead for the rst human trials to begin at UPMC
Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Tisherman wont reveal whether any patients have
yet been operated on, but the trial remains open.
If human patients follow the success of the animal
studies, their chances of survival could double.
If we take whats now 5 to 10 percent and make
it 20 percent, thats a big change, Tisherman says.
Thats a game changer.
Of course, saving patients in hospitals full of
cutting-edge equipment is one thing. Saving them
on the battleeld, where the nearest facilities could
be hundreds of miles away, is another. Thats the
challenge that plaguesand motivatesMatthew
Martin, the active-duty surgeon. After four tours in

O PP O S I T E PAG E, LE FT TO R I G HT : C HR IS H ON D R O S / G ET T Y I M AG ES ; C OURT ESY F RE DHUTCH.ORG

injects an ERA before the blockage is removed,

its possible to keep the heart muscle from being
destroyed in reperfusion.
Weve shown that you can intravenously inject
sodium iodide into a patient, creating a 75 percent
reduction in the damage that would be done to
the heart during standard care, he says. You can
preserve your heart from dying by temporarily
slowing it down. Roth recently started a private
company called Faraday Pharmaceuticals, and
hopes to begin experimenting with his ERAs in
human heart-attack patients in early 2017.
About a ve-minute walk from Roths lab at
Fred Hutchinson, Faradays oces were so new
when I visited in March that they smelled of fresh
paint, and the whole oor was still a sea of empty
cubicles. CEO Stephen Hill, a former surgeon, was
tying up a few loose ends before catching a ight
to North Carolina. Hed accepted the job in September 2015 after meeting Roth and talking about
the potential for tapping into the natural biology
that could save critically ill patients. One of the
things he said to me, Hill recalls, was, If you
took dead people and gave them state-of-the-art
therapy, how many of them would recover?
It was a strange question, of course, because
death isnt something one recovers from (and
neither Hill nor Roth are in the business of
resurrection). But thinking of death as something
malleable excited them both. There are circumstances in which it might be necessary to alter the
way the body utilizes oxygen, Hill says, causing
damaged tissues to temporarily hibernate rather
than permanently die.
Hill and Roth say that ERAs could one day be
used for a range of medical conditions, including
organ and limb transplants. Their rst target,
though, will likely be patients with heart attacks
undergoing procedures to restore coronaryartery blood ow. Other emergency traumas, such
as gunshot wounds, are promising candidates

Roth has identified four compounds

r. Sam Tisherman hates the phrase

suspended animation. As director
of the Center for Critical Care and
Trauma Education at University of
Marylands school of medicine in
Baltimore, he prefers emergency
preservation and resuscitation (EPR).

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

Iraq and Afghanistan, Martin is trying to achieve

the same results as Tishermanwithout extensive
equipment that would be impossible to bring to the
front lines. That means using chemicalsnot cold
to slow the bodys clock.
The question, says Martin, is, Can we decrease
the persons demand for blood so even for a period
of time, he actually doesnt need blood owing?
That would be the ultimate goal.
On breaks from performing surgeries, Martin
conducts research from his home base at Madigan
Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington. There
he examines the physiological eects of an experimental drug on pigs as they undergo a simulated
major trauma with bleeding.
The goal is to create hip-pocket therapy, he says,
where a medic could carry the drug in his bag and
whip out a syringe for a severely injured soldier.
He could inject this drug and start the process of
suspended animation, giving the soldier more time
to get to a surgical facility.
He and his colleagues have identied a series of
enzymes known as PI 3-kinase, which helps regulate
metabolism. They also found a drug that controls
the activity of those enzymes and is already in clinical trials as a potential cancer treatment. Martins
early data suggests that administering the drug at
the moment of ischemiawhen blood ow to the
heart becomes inadequatecan slow down the
metabolism without harming the animal.
For Martin, the sense of urgency isnt just scientic; its personal. Such a drug might have saved the
rst patient (well call him Private X) who died on
Martins watch, in 2007, when he was the chief of
trauma at a combat-support hospital in Baghdad.
Arriving with a group of other soldiers and civilians
who had been ravaged by an improvised explosive
device, Private Xs leg was mangled. Shrapnel had
penetrated his abdomen, one of his lungs was

Doctors are
experimenting
with machines
to replace blood
with cold saline.

Medics at field
hospitals like this
one in Kandahar,
Afghanistan, have
little time to save
trauma patients.

bruised, and hed suered multiple fractures of his

ribs. After Martin and his team operated, Private X
seemed stable enough for transfer.
But as soon as medics wheeled him into the ICU,
everything went wrong. The soldiers oxygen levels
suddenly dropped, and internal bleeding made its
way back into his bruised lung. Shortly after, he
went into cardiac arrest. This time, Martins team
couldnt save him.
In the U.S., with access to good hospitals, there
are some high-tech options to stop the lung bleeding
from the inside. Martin says, But they were not
available. I remember just standing at the bedside
feeling completely helpless.
Meanwhile, back at Mark Roths lab in Seattle,
hes likewise hoping the answer to stalling time lies
within a portable, injectable drug. Though ERAs
might face some challenges in the FDA approval
process, the eventual applications could be huge.
When you believe youve found a hammer, rst
you have to see if you can hit a nail into the wood,
he says. Then, if you build the utility and value,
other people are going to come along later and build
all sorts of things. Thats the eld of dreams.
A day after putting his nematodes to sleep, Roth
returned to his lab to check on their progress. As
expected, the little worms that spent the night in
the nitrogen chamber hadnt grown but were easily
brought back to life when exposed to fresh air. At
the same time, the ones left out on the table had
grown noticeably larger. Soon they would have
babies of their own.
Its a far cry from saving a human trauma patient.
But witnessing those tiny worms resurrected
under the white light of Roths microscope, it was
hard not to feel some of the frenetic enthusiasm
that drives him. For those worms, time had stood
stillbut for me, I felt Id just seen a glimpse of
the future.

P OP SC I . C OM

59

J U LY/AU GU ST 20 16

THE SCieNCE OF

HE
RO
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For great athletes, the margin between winning

and losing is razor-thina hundredth of a second,
a fingernail length over the finish line, a momentary
lapse in concentration. Which is why Team USA
has employed a secret weapon in the run-up to the
2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro: technology.
It should come as no surprise to the rest of the
world that the country that brought you Silicon
Valley is now turning athletic training on its head.
by W IL L CO CKR EL L

SWIMMING

HIGH-SPEED
MOTION CAPTURE >>
In swimming, form is just as crucial as force. Getting
the smallest detaileven the angle of your anklejust
right is an obsession for the elite because it can mean the
difference between podium and punching water. To help
the pros, video analysis is now an indispensable training
tool. Before, we literally just used the coachs eyeball,

>

PH OTO ILLU ST RAT IO NS BY

Graham Murdoch

N AT H A N A D R I A N

THREE GOLD MEDALS

The Tech
Video software, developed by BMW, picks up LEDs on
the swimmer's body, tracking his every move down to
the angle of his toes, and renders it in 2-D images.
How I t He lps

The images let the athlete study his form in minute

detail and perfect even the tiniest inconsistencies,
which can shave crucial seconds off his lap time.

HE
RO
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THE SWIM TEAM

USES CRASH-AVOIDANCE
TECHNOLOGY, MADE
BY BMW, TO CAPTURE,
MEASURE, AND ANALYZE
EVERY ANGLE, THRUST
AND ERRANT BEND IN
A SWIMMERS FOOT.

62

POPSCI. CO M

In early March, Adrian tweeted a short video of himself

diving into the pool with the LED sensors stuck to his
body. Though he's ostensibly helping Mark beta-test the
system, he's capturing lots of useful information about his
own technique, essentially gaining a great feedback loop.
One of the things Im able to see, he says, is the
degrees difference of my spine line. I noticed the amount
of movement I had through my upper chest compared
with guys who were consistently beating me. Its made
a marginal improvement. But marginal is exactly what
were looking for at this point. This is going to be huge in
understanding how we maintain momentum.
Eventually the team hopes to feed video analysis to a
poolside tablet in real time, letting coaches make micro
adjustments to an athlete's form on the spot. But Adrian
isnt waiting for the finished product to get a leg up.
I like to analyze, I like to understand why things
work, he says. I had never before looked at my dolphin
kick with that type of granular analysis. In swimming, if
you can make yourself more efficient without expending
more energy, thats free money.

SOCCER

SATELLITE-GUIDED
SUPERTRACKING >>

4
HIG H-T ECH
T RA IN ING
S ECRETS O F
O LYMP IA NS

1.
V i brat i n g
Sui ts

The MotivePro
suitdeveloped
by researchers
at Birmingham
City University in
the U.K.helps
gymnasts perfect
their gainers
and arabesques
by vibrating
when it detects a
less-than-perfect
maneuver.

Convincing the U.S. womens soccer team that it

needs an edge in Rio is like telling 1992 Michael Jordan
he should practice his jump shot. With three World Cup
trophies and four Olympic gold medals to its name, the
Womens National Team is the most dominant in soccer
historymale or female. And theyre favored to win again.
This time, however, the team will rely on advanced
technology, in the form of GPS tracking devices, to
provide a boost. Thanks to the miniaturization and power
of sensors, it captures several metrics on every player on
the field, down to speed, lateral movements, and impacts.
That specificity empowers the teams trainers to tailor
workouts and recovery programsboth of which are
crucial to improving performanceto each individual.
Weve always developed very talented players, says
center back Becky Sauerbrunn, the teams defensive
anchor. But at the global level, other teams are catching
up. So were trying to raise the bar, and thats where
cutting-edge tech comes in. Its womens soccer 2.0.
Developed by athletic sensoring company, Catapult, the system works similarly to consumer tracking
technology. It uses sensors that monitor motion at set
intervals. But this systemused by only a handful of elite
athletes and various NBA and NFL teamshas way more
processing speed, allowing it to measure what was once
considered unquantifiable: how hard you hit or get hit,

O PTEN
SPR
G UT
ERI NCGR ED
I TE TAKD:HFR
E RAEN C OI S X AV I ER M A R I T /A F P/ GE T T Y I M AG ES ; T HI S PAGE : DUA N E B URL ES ON / GE T T Y I MAGES

to fix alignment, strokes, and kicks, says Nathan Adrian, a

three-time gold medalist gunning for number four in Rio.
Now I strap LEDs on my body, and software does the
analysis. The setup can be carried around in a suitcase.
Engineers at BMW helped develop the portable
technology exclusively for the U.S. National Swim Team.
Instead of sensing a car drifting into your blind spot and
helping to prevent a crash, BMW programmed the system
to track the movements of a swimmers stroke with precision. Software then translates those movementsevery
thrust, stroke, or errant angle of the footinto data.
Here's how it works: Adrian sticks LED's on his body,
which are then picked up on high-speed video as
he swims. Algorithms translate those movements into
useful data coaches can then act on. Capturing and
translating that data, says Peter Falt, director of creative
consulting for the BMW's California-based Designworks,
was no small feat for the engineers, designers, and
programmers who built the system. It forced them, says
Falt, to work in what wereto them at leastharsh conditions (e.g., underwater), and to track and analyze some
very fast-moving objects (e.g., world-class swimmers).
One of the greatest 50- and 100-meter freestyle swimmers in the world, Adrian has competed in two previous
Olympics and has watched the tech that most swimmers
use, like slowed-down underwater video analysis, become
more precise. But BMWs motion-capture registers morenuanced movements.
The system translates the
data into 2-D renderings
that can be dissected
down to the imperfect
bend of a swimmers toes.
That gives swimmers
a level of feedback
they never had.
The swim team
uses these renderings
specifically to assess and
improve one of the sports
most important moves:
the dolphin kickthe first
few undulating full-body
motions a swimmer
makes after diving in,
or coming off the wall after a turn, and the moment of
maximum underwater momentum. Getting more from
that kick is key. Focusing this technology on the dolphin
kick was a milestone, says Russell Mark, the teams highperformance consultant. It is a huge weapon. Everyone
takes one or two kicks off the wall. But to be able to take
seven, eight, even nine good kicks? Thats really using it.
Now, when Adrian executes a perfect dolphin kick at
practice, trainers can turn the data into a baseline to tell
other swimmers how to replicate it. We know whos good
at the technique, Mark says. Its about figuring out how
we can get more of our athletes to be like that.

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

B E C K Y SAU E R B R U N N
One Gold Medal

The Tech

Trainers use high-speed tracking software, OctimEye

S5, to capture several metrics for each of 11 on-field
players, down to speed, lateral movement, and impact.
How It Helps

These metrics let coaches tailor each player's workout

and recovery programs so that a defender who hits
hard gets a different routine than a sprinting striker.

HE
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and whether you favor one side of your body over another.
The sampling frequency on the old units was once
every second, says Dawn Scott, the team's fitness and
sports science coach. In soccer, you could have changed
direction three or four times in a second. This thing picks
up every single movement and quantifies it.
The palm-size unit fits into a small pocket sewn into
the players sports bras, between shoulder blades, where
the higher position allows it to pick up a stronger satellite
signal. The increased accuracy allows for a detailed
record of what each
of the 11 players did
during practice, or in a
game. Now a striker
can know how long she
was runningand how
fast. A defender can find
out how many times she
was tackledand how
hard she hit the ground.
This is especially
useful for players in
D E F E N S I V E C E N T E R BAC K ,
positions where exertion
B E C K Y SAU E R B R U N N
levels are hard to
quantify using a heart
rate monitor alone. As
a defender, how much ground I cover isnt up to me,
says Sauerbrunn. Im defending against a forward, so
her movement determines my movement. So she may
cover less ground than a striker, and get her heart rate
up less often in some games, but she may make or take
more tackles, which can wear her down just as much as
a sprint. The GPS can actually measure things like how
many times I go for an aerial battle, she says. All that
extra data gives coaches a fuller picture of each player.
It also gives trainers a fuller picture of each player's
game exertion, also known as their load. Each
players load data influences an often-overlooked
factor for elite athletes: recovery. By watching each
players numbers in real time during practices, Scott
can monitor load thresholds that, if crossed, will
render the player ineffective in upcoming matches.
The coach can then tell her to take it easyor maybe
pull her from practice altogether.
With the Olympics coming up, we have only two days
of rest between games, says Sauerbrunn. Higher loads
mean youre more at risk for muscle fatigue, which
leads to strains and pulls. But you cant simply compare
one players load with anothers.
Eventually the technology may capture ever-finer
metrics, like skin temperature and core temperature,
lactic-acid levels, and even sleep cycles. That would be
phenomenal, says Sauerbrunn. Dawn likes to call it the
aggregation of marginal gains what can make us that
tenth of a percent better? Cutting-edge tech like this is
what will continue to keep us a powerhouse program.

T H E G P S CA N
AC T UA L LY M E AS U R E
THINGS LIKE HOW
MANY TIMES I GO FOR
A N A E R I A L BAT T L E . "

64

POP S CI. CO M

FENCING

THE SHARP END

OF BRAIN TRAINING

2.
Whole -Body
C r yo t he ra py

Exposure to a cryo
chambers nearly
minus 200 F
temperatures for
just two to three
minutes may reduce
inflamation and lead
to a shorter recovery
time for athletes of
any sport. However,
there have been
reports of users
getting frostbite.

Fencer Miles Chamley-Watson has a chink in his

plastron: Hes easily distracted. In a fast-twitch sport of
thrusting and parrying, the slightest lapse in focus means
a blade at your thorax. Luckily, theres an app for that.
Chamley-Watsons official sponsor, Red Bull, employs
experts who study stubborn weaknesses in their athletes,
and find unique ways to hack them. In Chamley-Watsons
case, they turned to neuroscientist Leslie Sherlin, who
created an app-based mental-training tool. Sherlin has
worked with big-wave surfers and eSports athletes, and
has devised a mental training game. The app was calibrated to suit Chamley-Watsons needs. Your brain has
different electrical signatures, whether youre focused,
concentrating, drowsy, relaxed, whatever, Sherlin says.
To fine-tune an athletes focus, the app works like a
video gameand Chamley-Watsons brain is the joystick.
Sherlin's team first identified the electrical signature of
the fencer's brain in a state of focus. Then they calibrated
a game so the same signature would trigger the movements of an on-screen avatar, a wing-suit flier.
Wearing a sensor-studded headset, Chamley-Watson

J U LY /AU G U ST 2 0 1 6

D EC AT H L O N

<< DATA ANALYTICS

AS H TO N E ATO N

I A N WALTO N /G ET T Y I M AG ES FO R I A A F

World Record Holder

zeroes in on a feeling of focus to guide his avatar on an

iPad or iPhone screen, and thus boost his concentration
skills. Our sense of focus is generally outside our awareness, so by moving his avatar, Chamley-Watson can learn
to harness that feeling and thus better control it. Its a
game changer for me, says Chamley-Watson. I think I
have the physical aspect over everyone in the world. But
mentally, I need an edge. I dont think anyones doing
what Im doing. I dont think people even know what it is.
Focus isn't every athlete's weakness, and Sherlin's
team can calibrate accordingly. For instance, a surfer
might use his game to improve relaxation, while an NBA
forward might use it to sharpen situational awareness.
As for Chamley-Watson, it doesn't matter if he achieves
Kasparov-level focushe is a distracting presence on the
fencing piste. Tatted-up, with bleached-blond hair, the
6-foot-4 New Yorker doesnt fit the fusty stereotypes of
his sport. In 2013, with superhuman reach and the reaction speed of a mongoose, he became the world champion. Nevertheless, recognizing the exact second to strike
is as crucial as striking itself, and Watson says everything
from a referee's call to the crowd can throw him.
Still, Sherlin can see from the raw data why ChamleyWatson is favored to win in Rio. Miles has really great
reaction speed, says Sherlin. He processes information
very quickly, and he doesnt make a lot of mistakes. Now
Chamley-Watsons opponents will know who to call to
help them relax after they lose.

3.
Tra i n i n g in
a Submarine
Tes t i n g Ta n k

To perfect their
boating skills
in a controlled
environment,
British kayakers
and canoeists
train in an enclosed
886-foot pool
owned by defensetechnology firm
QinetiQ, normally
used to test scalemodel submarines.

Its hard enough to excel in one sportbut 10? Decathlete Ashton Eaton, who won gold in London four years
ago, is one of those rare specimens who can. He outruns,
out-jumps, out-throws, and outlasts just about anyone
on the planet. A master of body mechanics, from javelin
throwing to pole vaulting, he, like all athletes, studies his
every micro movement in order to wincataloging and
analyzing each foot plant and finger wrap. But he also
pays attention to how he feels each time. And he records
it all with some technology he bought in the App Store.
The first would be familiar to any 12-year-old whos
kept a diary. Its called Day One, a $4.99 journaling app
for smartphone or iPad. In it, Eaton logs his every training
nuance, recording his results and his sensations. The
secret is being able to connect a feeling with the hard
data from a performance, he says. For instance, Ill do a
shot-put rep in practice and Ill feel a certain way about
it. If I have a good feeling and the shot put goes far, thats
a strong connection I want to be able to make later. The
apps search feature lets Eaton instantly comb through
years of workouts and personal bests to find each micro
adjustment that led to a breakthrough. He refers to his
method as fast data storage and retrieval.
I could run a 250-meter workout and then look at my
time from the same day a year earlier, he says. And I
can designate tags for running, shot put, javelin, or high
jump, and see how many workouts of that type Ive done.
When Eaton needs to capture crucial intel in real time,
he uses a $120- to $500-a-year subscription-based app
called Coachs Eye. It lets his trainer record his moves
on an iPhone, overlay voice notes, draw on freeze-frame
images, or even measure the angle of, say, Eatons elbow.
It also has a scrubbing featurethe ability to scan in
slow motion, backward and forward, and to examine
micro movements. We tend to break movements into
three phases: the start, middle, and finish, says Eaton.
But even within those movements, his coach breaks it
down into smaller phases. So its great being able to drag
your finger on the screen and really see in each frame a
more technical aspect of what youre doing, he says.
Eaton then learns from what he sees and makes
adjustments to his form on the spot. Its a technological
leap from when the 28-year-old athlete was a kid, watching athletes on TV and trying to mimic their movements
the best he could. I was never quite sure how close I
got, says Eaton. YouTube wasnt even around, and we
never did any of our own videoing back then. Now that
the best movements to mimic are his own (on a good
day), hell know exactly how close he gets. And its a lot
easier than trying to take a selfie while throwing a javelin.

P OP SC I . C OM

65

HE
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GWEN JORGENSEN
World Triathlon Series Champion

The Tech

The Rio bike course is viewable in 360 degrees through

a Samsung Gear VR headset. It lets Jorgensen see
each facet of the course, even looking around corners.
How I t He l ps

Jorgensen gains a near-muscle-memory knowledge of

the terrain and can game out her strategic responses.

J U LY /AU G U ST 2 0 1 6

T R I AT H L O N

<< VIRTUAL

REALITY RACING
Gwen Jorgensens secret training tool isnt her
$10,000 road bikeits her mind. As in when she kicks
back and closes her eyes. I use mental visualization
to prepare for races, says Jorgensen, who at 30 is
a two-time world-champion triathlete. The trend in
visualization training has taken hold in the top ranks
of elite athletes. So Jorgensen spent this summer
concentrating, via virtual reality, on the rutty streets of
Rios Copacabana neighborhood. Rio is a very tough
bike course, she says. There are big hills, and theres a
technical descent that will be a major factor.
Jorgensen's sport is among the most grueling on
the planet, covering swimming (.93 miles), running (6.2
miles), and cycling (24.9 miles). To perfect her form, her
trainers brought in virtual-reality pioneer Joe Chen. He
is a former product
lead at Oculusand
now at Vrse.works,
the production
house that makes
VR movies, and
VR content for big
media companies.
Chen flew to Brazil,
and attached a
bunch of GoPros to
the hood of a car,
matching it to the
eye height of a cyclist. Then we just
drove the course,
capturing it in 360
degrees, he says. He
then converted the
entire thing to an MPEG viewable on a Samsung Gear
VR. Jorgensen now uses it to follow the entire bike
route, or to play short clips of isolated sections that she
can study in detail. In other words, Rio came with her.
And it's a 24/7 companion. Wherever I am traveling
in the world, says Jorgensen, I can put on the goggles
and look at this courselook left, look behind me, look
rightand see every little nuance.
Training with VR, it turns out, is in some ways even
better than a real test ride. Its completely different
than memory, she says, which often fails me.
Jorgensen is relatively new to the triathlon, and
to cycling in particular. A former CPA, she had been a
longtime runner and swimmer when she decided six

C HA R LI E C R OWH U R ST / GE T T Y I M AG ES

JOE CHEN, FORMER

P R O D U C T L E A D AT
O C U L U S , D R OV E T H E
RIO BIKE ROUTE WITH
G O P R O S AT TAC H E D
TO A CA R H O O D ,
A N D T H E N C O N V E RT E D
I T TO M P E G F O R
V I RT UA L T R A I N I N G .

4.
CVAC Pods

This futuristic pod

(developed by
Temecula,
Californiabased
CVAC Systems) is a
super-fast alternating barometricpressure changer
that helps cyclists
and other athletes
improve endurance
before they hit the
course.

years ago to add cycling to her skill set. Two years

after going pro, she qualified for the 2012 Olympics.
But during the London games, she blew a tire, finishing
38th. She has since bounced back, winning more
consecutive races than any female triathlete in history.
Now she is considered the most dominant female in the
sporteven though she has yet to medal. She hopes
Chens VR training finally helps put her on that podium.
Its so hard to explain how real it is, she says. Its not
something Ive ever experienced before.
The goal of VR training is not merely to learn the
course, though that helps; its to gain an almost musclememory knowledge of the terrain and its challenges,
and to game out your responses. I still have a pretty
steep learning curve on the bike, says Jorgensen.
This VR stuff is about confidence buildingpreparing
myself so I have as many tools as possible, mitigating
anything that could potentially happen on race day.
Jorgensens body language changes when she wears
the goggles. You can see her figuring things out, says
Chen, who observed her the first time she tested them.
All of a sudden, she was into this technical section
and realized she could look through corners, he says.
Her body took over as she leaned and craned her neck.
These become strategy sessions for figuring out where
you hammer down or lay back a bit if the risk is not
worth the reward.
There is, however, one thing lacking in the VR-training
experience that Chen builtthe ability to speed up or
slow down. Thats why Jorgensen can use it only in
visualization sessions, not sitting atop and pedaling a
stationary training bike. Chen thinks it won't be long,
though, before cyclists are using the visualization
functionality combined with a whole lot more.
As an industry, we hope to start creating simulations
that challenge not only the visual systems, but also the
physical systemseven the balance of the inner ear,
he says. We want to be able to put you on a bike and
simulate G-forces. Or allow you to try different lines
through a corner to see which is fastest. But were not
quite there yetand the last thing we want to do is a
science project on a successful athlete.
Once the technology scales up, Chen sees other
training possibilities. It could, for instance, be useful
to racecar drivers when they cant execute an actual
practice lap. (It also costs a lot of money every time a
driver takes the wheel of a professional car.) Formula
1 drivers spend a lot of time in these very complex
multimillion-dollar simulators, Chen says. While VR
is no substitute for driving an actual course, it will help
familiarize drivers with the track. Its a head start.
The cycling section of this years triathlon is sure to
add some classic Olympic drama, but Chen believes
Jorgensen can triumph, almost as if she were back home
and merely visualizing it. For Gwen, he says, we want
riding this course to be like getting up in the middle of
the night to get a glass of water from her kitchen.

P OP SC I . C OM

67

As everybody
moves in,
who's making
the rules?

BY
AMY WESTERVELT
PHOTOGRAPHY
BY PETER RAD

P OP S C I. C OM

69

A mans disembodied voice tells me to

pick up a silver handgun sitting on a
seat to my right. You better be ready to
shoot, he says. My stomach tightens as
the station platform comes into view.
The doors open. I pick up the gun and
start firing. Torsos explode. Strangers
run at me. I squeeze rounds. More
blood. When I run out of bullets, I grab
a rifle. Shadows hit the platform. Then, from out of nowhere, rockets
fly my way. Overwhelmedand a little nauseousI throw my hands in
front of my face, terrified, and tear off my virtual-reality goggles.
For five minutes, Ive been riding Bullet Train, a VR demo from Epic
Games, while standing in a dark padded booth in downtown San Francisco. Epic is one of 550 vendors at the Game Developer Conference,
a five-day tech fest at the Moscone Center exhibition complex. I look
around. The two young female game reps are grinning, like Way cool,
right? This is Silicon Valley, after all, land of the future. My adrenaline
is spiking. My palms are a sweaty puddle of fear and sudden relief.
The thrill of first-person-shooter games is well-known. Their adrenaline rush is the currency of a $90 billion dollar gaming industry built on
skill, competence, and fantasy alter egos. But with those games, weve
always been aware that we are in our living room, bowl of chips and Red
Bull at the readyuntil now. VR isnt just an incremental improvement
in technology, like better graphics and faster processing; its a different
encounter entirelyone that tricks your senses into experiencing the
virtual as real. Presence is the primary buzzword tossed around at the
GDCs first-ever virtual-reality track, the perception that youre not just
watching the action. You are in the action.
Its the first medium that creates the sensation that youre somewhere else, says Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games. It is so
realistic, you have a hard time doing things contrary to your intuition.
If youre standing at the edge of a chasm, even though youre really just
standing in a room, says Sweeney, youre afraid to step forward.
Transformative is another descriptor favored by the young VR
evangelists, who tout headsets with the enthusiasm of 19th-century
carnival barkers. See the future right before your very eyes! Travel
continents without a passport! Dine with the dinosaurs! This year, tens
of millions of people will likely buy VR headsets. The Oculus Rift, HTC
Vive, Samsung Gear, and Google Cardboard are in homes alreadyand
Sonys PlayStation VR will soon join them, connecting to millions of

70

POPSCI. CO M

G R OO M I N G BY K I T T Y B ES PA LKO

Im standing
st
inside
a moving subway car. Its dimly lit, but I can make
out the layer of grime on the doors and windows.

consoles. Its not only games. VR is taking root in education, healthcare,

sports, architecture, and porn. A handful of early research suggests
VR embeds itself deeper in our psyche, stays with us longer, and can
alter our behavior longer afterward than any other type of media we
consume. Its been shown to influence racial and sexual stereotypes.
It has triggered emotional rewiring in users. With such great power
comes great responsibility. Will our immersive travels make us the best
versions of ourselves? Or the worst? Should people be allowed to virtually act out anything they choose? What about rape fantasies? What
happens when you virtually kill people and feel like you actually did?
When researchers show people traditional media, such as TV and
movies, and then subject them to similar content in virtual reality,
they are initially affected by both equally. But a week later, they forget
their exposure to everything but the VR scenario, says Sun Joo Ahn,
a researcher at the University of Georgia. What they experience in a
sensory way sticks with them over time. The effects are persistent.
Consider too the racial- and gender-stereotyping issues already
plaguing the gaming and entertainment industries. When the line
between real and unreal becomes blurrier, do we need different rules?

Being a woman at GDC is a like being a brunette

in Swedenyou exchange knowing nods with
other members of your tribe. You also studiously
avoid herds of men with unkempt beards. Spread
across three giant buildings at Moscone, its
Disneyland for gamers. There are booth babes
and dudes in tees walking with their phones out,
capturing every moment. The VR track is jam-packed with the kind
of buzz befitting a technology at an inflection point. The popular kids
on the blockthe aforementioned Epic, Oculus, Sony, Google, and
Samsungrequired appointments to experience their wares. All told,
I road-tested five VR games and didnt encounter a single female or
minority onscreen. EVE: Valkyrie, one of two video games bundled
with the Rift, does feature a female military captainand black
soldiers are not uncommon in war gamesbut, as in all video games,
they tend to play to stereotypes. Thats no accident.
If a companys already sold a trillion copies of Grand Theft Auto
in which we smack around women and sexualize them, why change

JESSE FOX,
O H I O S TAT E
UNIVERSITY
RESEARCHER

if some men
see women as sluts
and teases, and
then interact with
avatars like that in
vr, then their ideas
are confirmed.

that? asks Jesse Fox, a researcher I

spoke to at Ohio State University. If
companies are already taking a risk
on a new technology, theyre not also
going to take risks with different types
of content.
Fox studies the way in which new
media technologiesincluding VR,
video games, and social networking
influence our offline identities, beliefs,
and behaviors. She has studied how
virtual virgins and female vamps
altered users real-world attitudes.
After exposing research subjects to
vamps in VR, Fox found women and
men are both more likely to buy into
the rape myth: the idea that women
have an unconscious desire to be raped.
In media studies, weve seen that
people will look to confirm their biases, Fox says. "If you think all black men
are criminals, for example, you might
see a black male criminal in a film and
go, See, I was right. Extending those
stereotypes into VR, where interactions feel more real, could reinforce
them further. If there are men who see
women as sluts and teases, and then
they interact with avatars that play
into those stereotypes in virtual reality, she says, then the more their ideas
are confirmed, and the more theyll
believe them. Extreme uses of VR
might be inevitable. Say Im a teenage

boy who gets rejected for prom, so I go

home and make that girls avatar, and
rape her in a virtual world, she says.
These cases pose a huge risk of harm.
But some of the most revealing
research into the effects of VR has illustrated its strange power to bring out
the best in us. Jeremy Bailenson, who
runs the Virtual Human Interaction
Lab at Stanford University, designed
what he calls the superhero experiment. He gave 16 VR subjects the
power of flighta do-gooder superpower,
in the subjects eyesand tasked them
with finding a missing kid in a digital
cityscape. He gave 17 other subjects
the same task but via helicopter. After
the session, the superheroes were
more likely to help a real-life research
assistant pick up an accidentally
knocked-over cup of pens from the
floor. Bailenson says it suggests that
the first group had transferred their
superhero identity into the real world.
However, he is not sure why exactly.
One thing he does know is that a VR experience tends to cause more empathy
and change than other media, he says.
Concerned about the impact their
violent games might have on VR users,

72

POPSCI. CO M

some gaming companies are self-policing. Piers Jackson, the game

director at Guerrilla Cambridge, told a panel at Paris Games Week
this past October that portraying death in the companys first-personshooter game on PlayStation VR, was off-limits. Its just too intense.
We made some core decisions early on that we werent going to kill
people, he told the panel. That was something we deliberately did.
When new, all forms of mediafrom radio to television to the Web
are met with some trepidation over their potential to warp malleable
young minds. That, in turn, usually elicits eye rolling from creators.
Theres always a tendency to ascribe old problems to new media
whenever it comes out, right? asks Sweeney. You read newspapers
from the 1930s, and it was comic books that were degrading our youth.
But even he admits VR is a more visceral media than weve ever seen.
A horror game can be really scary, and a violent game could be very
realistically violent, he says. That means developers have to put more
thought into the sorts of experiences they want to give players.
Its not just video games that have insiders worried. Companies will
also one day build out social VR platforms that will let you hang out
with friends or strangers around the worldsay, to watch a movie or
work oruse your imagination. With harassment already a problem in
online communities, what might intimidation feel like in a headset?
Someone could whisper horrible things in your ear or invade your personal space, says Patrick Harris, lead game designer for Minority Media, which makes empathy-building VR games that deal with bullying
and trauma. If they back you up against a wall, it can be pretty scary.
Such abuse is the reason social-media companies have put anti-abuse
policies in place for their users, because trolls always show up to spoil
the fun, no matter how friendly the atmosphere. VR wont be any different, says Mike Beltzner, a product manager on Facebooks social VR
initiatives. Unfortunately, he says, some people want to be the worst
version of themselves and do horrible things without consequence.
Facebook identified that behavior early on as a cost to anonymity in
the online space. Thats why weve always had a tight tie between the
real you and what youre doing online, says Beltzner.
Enforcing those same Facebook abuse policies on social VR will
ensure it delivers more delight than distress. However, says Beltzner,
that approach does not apply to the companys Oculus game users. It
likely wont be apply to other VR game platforms, even multiplayer
games where players interact. In gaming, a lot of people dont want it
to be tied to their real identity, Beltzner says. Well respect that.

Theres always a
tendency to ascribe
old problems to new
media. newspapers
in the 1930s said
comic books were
degrading our youth.

T I M S W E E N E Y,
FOUNDER OF
EPIC GAMES

FR O M TO P: C O U RT ESY E PI C G A M ES ; C O URT ESY C C P G A M ES ; C O URTESY HI T L A B

Choose
your
(virtual)
weapon
The National Football League is not a place one
looks to for empathy building. But in order to combat racism and sexism in its ranks, it is considering
using diversity-training scenarios developed by
Bailenson. In his work, Bailenson has found people
are more likely to feel empathy for the opposite sex
or other ethnicities if they experience sexism or
prejudice in a virtual world. Its almost like experiencing it firsthand.
In one of Bailensons empathy modules, an angry white avatar is
harassing the user. When the user raises his arms in self-defense, he
sees he has black skin. Allowing someone to really experience the
trauma another person deals with makes it meaningful, says Bailenson.
It creates a lasting respect for other people. Bailensons company,
STRIVR, already supplies some NFL teams with virtual-reality athletic
training and can easily add these empathy modules to those headsets.
Not surprisingly, the psychiatric community has seized onto the
empathic and transformative powers of this new medium. It already
uses VR to treat drug addicts and soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress. The game SnowWorld takes acute burn victims through an icy
canyon in which harmless-looking snowmen hurl snowballs at them.
The objective: Pelt them back. Brain scans have shown that the playful
and distracting mission, and the gently falling snow, eases pain.
While no one has yet conducted MRI brain studies on people playing
violent or sexist VR gamesmostly because patients need to keep their
heads still to be scannedit isnt hard to imagine what might happen if
you gave those snowmen a bad attitude and some sharp butcher knives.
Good or bad, the marketnot policywill dictate how and where
virtual reality spreads. We cant possibly know how to respond to things
we havent yet observed. But media experts and academics say that we
can start tackling the stereotype issue by employing more women and
minorities at companies making the contentand by sharing the experiences with diverse audiences who can influence what gets made.
Thats become a mission for Jacqwi Campbell. She runs the nonprofit
Tonbo Haus, which curates events around San Francisco to educate
people on VRs presence and power. The only way VR can be inclusive
is by adding quality, diverse content, she says. The only way you can do
that is by getting equipment into the hands of more people.
Early indicators suggest were headed in that direction: Bailenson
says he regularly advises big VR companies like Oculus-owner Facebook and Samsung on content. Even at the GDC bro-fest, the VR track
featured far more talks about minorities, women, and dealing with
harassment than the traditional gaming tracks did. So its on peoples
radar. There is also talk of a VR-specific rating system, and Oculus has
said it wont allow porn on its headsets (although theres already a hack
for that). In each case, the message is clear: Proceed with caution.
We do this time and again with new technologies, says Jesse Fox,
the Ohio State VR researcher. We just put it out to the masses first
and then look into impacts later. Like with cellphones. We made them
this essential part of everyones life and joband then figured out that
probably all that screen time wasnt healthy. Thats a big concern for me
with VR. We just dont know what were walking into yet.

From virtual killing to actual

healing, VRs applications are
already myriad. Here are three
windows into those worlds.

B ULLET TR AI N
Demoed at last year's GDC, Epic Games'
first-person VR shooter epic feels so real
that it left the author terrified and shaking.

EVE: VALK YRI E

CCP Games's sci-fi shoot-em-up features
a female protagonist, one of the few VR
games that depicts a woman as a leader.

SN OW WO RLD
Developed by the University of Washington's HITLab, SnowWorld eases pain in
burn victims by giving them a playful mission that shifts attention from what hurts.

EX P O S U RE

PO P UL AR S C I EN C E EXCLUSIVE

INSIDE
NASAS
MARS
MISSION

NASAS $18 BILLION ORION PROGRAM WILL DELIVER HUMANS TO

T HE S UR FAC E OF M A R S S OM ETIM E IN THE 2 0 30 s . FOR THE FIRST TI ME,
T HE AGE N CY OP E N E D I TS D OOR S AT T HR EE FACIL IT IES AROUND
THE COUNTRY TO GIVE US AN EXCLUSIVE LOOK AS THEY BUILD THE
C AP S U LE A N D R OC KE T SYST EM S THAT WIL L TAK E U S THERE.

By Sarah Fecht /// Photography by Spencer Lowell

TESTED UN DER PRES SU R E

Orion is the rst manned

spacecraft NASA has built
in a generation. Its aim is to
take humans farther than
theyve ever gone, beginning
a new era of deep-space
exploration. This Orion
capsule at Kennedy Space
Center in Florida will be
part of the rst mission in
2018. To ensure its airtight,
engineers will pump in more
air than its meant to handle,
checking for weak points in
its structural integrity that
could endanger a crew.

EX P O S U RE

SOL AR PA NE L CHO REO G RA PHY

An X-shaped array of four 24-foot

solar panels will generate 11 kilowatts
of energy to power Orions computers,
life support, and other onboard
equipment. Folded during blasto,
they will unfurl like accordions
in space. Here, at NASAs Glenn
Research Center in Sandusky,
Ohio, engineers test mock versions
of the panels to ensure they wont
jam when they are deployed.

76

PO PSCI. CO M

P OP SC I . C OM

77

EX P O S U RE

SOU N D CHECK

Rocket launches are loud

180 decibels or moreand can
turn human organs into jelly. They
can also wreak havoc on a space
capsule. So engineers in Sandusky
test Orions structural integrity by
blasting its parts with 152 decibels
of noise inside the worlds most
powerful acoustic chamber.

P OP SC I . C OM

79

EX P O S U RE

A F UEL TOWER RI S ES

Below is one of ve barrels that will

form Orions 130-foot-tall hydrogen
storage tank. The rocket will burn
730,000 gallons of cryogenic liquid
hydrogen (stored at minus 423 F) and
oxygen as it leaves Earth. Engineers
at this NASA assembly facility in
New Orleans will stack the nished
barrels onto the blue scaolding at
right, and then fuse them together
with other parts of the rocket.

80

PO P S CI. CO M

Just because
you cant see it
doesnt mean
its not there.

Although its more common in older women, ovarian cancer

affects women of all ages, even in their 20s. There is no early
detection test, and symptoms can be subtle. But while you
cant see it, you can take steps to get ahead of it by knowing
your risk factors. Family history of cancer and presence of
gene mutations like BRCA are risk factors, so talk to your
family and your doctor. This information makes you less
likely to ignore vague signs that could indicate disease.
Meanwhile, promising collaborative research
will continue to shed light on new advances in
diagnosis and treatment of ovarian cancer.
To learn more about symptoms,
risk factors and research go to
SU2C.org/ovarian

Minnie Driver
Stand Up To Cancer Ambassador
Photo by Martin Schoeller

Stand Up To Cancer is a program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation,

a 501(c)(3) non-prot organization.

EX P O S U RE

CAP P I N G O FF A HE AV Y LOA D

Two domes will cap the top

and bottom of the cylindrical
hydrogen tank (once their
holes are covered). At lifto,
hydrogen and oxygen will
collide inside the rockets
repurposed space shuttle
engines, exploding with
enough thrust to lift 286,000
pounds20 percent more
power than the rocket
that carried Neil Armstrong
to the moon.

82

POPSCI. CO M

70%

RD

off

Taught by Professor Michael E. Wysession

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

LECTURE TITLES

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5.

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6.

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7.

Petroleum: Chemistry, Retrieval, and Use

8.

New Petroleum Directions

9.

Fossil Fuel Energy: Issues and Concerns

10. Understanding Carbon Dioxide

11. The Science of Nuclear Power
12. The Nuclear Fission Fuel Cycle
13. Sunlight: Inexhaustible Energy Source
14. Solar Power and Electricity
15. Wind Power and Electricity
16. Hydroelectric Power: Electricity from Water
17. Biofuels: Biodiesel and Ethanol
18. Geothermal Energy
19. Energy Storage Technologies
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22. Energy Sources: Economics and Politics
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Only You
Can Lift This
Hammer
TIME 8 hours
COST $250
DIFFICULTY w

wwww

about replicating that function, and there it

was, he says. All he needed was an electromagnetwhich can be turned on and off by
electrical currentand a fingerprint scanner.
Pan wired together the electromagnet and
scanner, and placed them inside an off-theshelf toy Mjolnir. When switched on, his
hammer becomes magnetized and will stick
fast to metal until the scanner recognizes his
touch and releases the weapon.
Last October, Pan used his gizmo to prank
unsuspecting Angelenos: He placed the
hammer on metal surfaces, such as manhole
covers, and recorded passersby as they futilely
tried to lift it. Then he would walk into frame
and effortlessly heft it himself. His online video
has been viewed more than 14 million times.
But dont settle for watchingfollow these
instructions to build your own Mjolnir.

by
ERI C
H AGA N

84

PO P S CI. CO M

P HOTOGR AP H BY

Sam Kaplan

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

I LLUST R AT I O NS BY C LI N T FOR D

M AT E R I A L S
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TO O L S

X-Acto knife

Dremel

Hot-glue gun

Soldering iron

Scissors

Screwdrivers

Multimeter

IN STR UCTIO N S
1 Unscrew the props handle
and trim down the screw
threads. Cut out a removable
door on the top of the hammer
and cut three more rectangular
sections on the bottom.
2 To make a new handle from
pipe, first use a Dremel to cut a
hole for the fingerprint scanner.
Attach the pipe flange. Wrap
the full length of the pipe in the
suede leather, stuck in place
with hot glue. Fill in any gaps
with suede cutoffs.
3 Cover the metal section of
the fingerprint scanner in two
coats of clear nail polish to
prevent it from grounding. Hotglue the scanner into the pipe
and attach the cable. Glue the
toggle switch to the opposite
end of the pipe, running the
wires past the fingerprint scanner into the 9-volt battery case.
4 Place the drawer handles on
either side of the transformer,
and attach them to the plywood
base. Screw the pipe to the opposite side of the base, keeping
the wires outside the pipe
flange. Place the entire assembly inside the plastic Mjolnir so
the transformer sticks out of
the holes in the bottom.
5 Connect the capacitive
sensor to the pipe flange with
screws, washers, and crimp
connectors. Slide the four
12-volt batteries into the case.
6 Connect the Arduino to the
other electronics with the
wiring diagram at popsci.com/
mjolnir. Then upload the code
at the same link to the Arduino:
first the fingerprint code (to
teach the hammer to recognize
you), then the hammer code.

P OP SC I . C OM

85

Manual
Repurposed Tech

Wear Your Ofce

The author on the goand at workwith his walking desk.

TO O LS + M AT E R I A LS

TIME 1 hour
COST $80
DIFFICULTY w

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I N ST R U C T I O N S
1. Replace the drum hanger bolts with
5
/16-18 carriage bolts. Secure them
from the front with flat washers, lock
washers, and wing nuts. Replace the
height adjustment and belly-band
attachment locknuts with 1/4-20 wing
nuts and washers. This will make it
easy to break down or adjust the desk.
2. Temporarily remove the T-bar,
clamp it in a vise, and bend it with a
rubber mallet until the bar is horizontal. Drill a 1/4-inch hole about 1/2 -inch
from each end, and remount the bar
to the carrier.
3. Position the cutting board on
the T-bar, adjust for comfort, and
mark the location of the holes in
the T-bar on the cutting board from
underneath. Drill two 9/32 -inch holes
where marked, hammer the T-nuts in
from above, and secure to the T-bar
from below with flat washers, lock
washers, and wing bolts.
4. Center your open laptop on the
cutting board, and locate two drilling
centers along the front edge near the
corners. Drill pilot holes. Then install
offset clips with wood screws and
washers to hold down the keyboard.
Finally, install one rubber spacer
along each side and one against each
back corner to prevent the computer
from sliding around.

FR O M TO P: P HOTO G R A PH BY A ND R E W C HA N ; P HOTO GR A P H BY S A M K A PL A N

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computing jobs such as live blogging, managing
inventory, and data collection. Walk this way!

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Manual

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

Thats a Job

A Surreal Stradivari
In 2010, Andy Cavatorta was a masters student at the
MIT Media Lab when Bjrk visited. The Icelandic musician
was seeking a collaborator to make music using the forces
of nature. Cavatorta was eager to help: For
by
LYDIA CHAIN
years, the software engineer spent his evenings
tinkering with noisemaking robotic sculptures.
Together, he and Bjrk dreamed up gravity harps, enormous
pendulums 20 feet high that played notes by swinging
columns of strings past stationary picks. Bjrk used them
on her 2011 album Biophilia and for a subsequent tour.
More commissions followed, allowing Cavatorta to charge
as much as $250,000 per project. Stella Artois hired him to
build an entire orchestra incorporating its signature chalice,
and most recently, Danish ensemble Between Music ordered
instruments for an underwater concert. Cavatorta talked to
Popular Science about his method and inspiration.

What is your process like?

I build cheap, shabby prototypes, because Id rather find
out something is a bad idea for
$5 worth of cardboard than
later, when its made of steel. In
the process, I find ways to make
it sound and look beautiful.
How did you make
underwater instruments?
The acoustics are completely
differentall the things that
work in the air just dont underwater. One of the instruments
works like Benjamin Franklins
glass armonica, but the water
vibrates the bells, playing multiple notes at the same time. The
other is similar to a hurdy-gurdy
and has this otherworldly
electric-guitar wail.

What is the purpose of

your inventions?
I always want people to be
movedit cant be a gimmick.
There was a time when the pipe
organ was a crazy, experimental
technology, and I like to think
what I make is in the same vein.

Killer App

Astro Drone

88

POPSCI. CO M

Want to hone your spaceight skills? The Astro Drone app, made by the European
Space Agency, lets pilots y a real-world Parrot AR.Drone through a virtual extraterrestrial environment. The free iOS game combines the drones live video feed with
augmented reality. Players earn points for avoiding digital space debris and docking
with a simulated target. If they choose to log their scores, the data
can be used to improve real space probes navigation. It was the
by
quickest and also most fun way to train our algorithms with data,
A N NA B EL
EDWARDS
says Leopold Summerer, one of the apps developers.

FR O M TO P: M I TC H EL L M C LE N N A N; D U ST I N C O H EN

For Stella Artois,

Cavatorta built an orchestra that includes
a aming pipe organ
(second from the left).

Thank you for being a subscriber!

Our iPad edition is now included in
your print subscription.

How to claim your iPad subscription:

1. Download the free Popular Science app from the iTunes app store if you have not done so already.
2. Open the app and tap the My Account button on the bottom of the front page.
3. Tap the bar that says Current Print Subscribers Digital Access.
4. Use one of the 3 options to enter the information associated with your subscription, as requested.
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other countries. iPad is a trademark of Apple Inc. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.

Manual

JULY/AUGUST 2016

If you need to bust a ghost, who you gonna

call? A physicist, naturally.
For this summers reboot of the 1984 comedy Ghostbusters, director Paul Feig asked
particle physicist James Maxwell to help
design proton packsthe iconic gear that
the team uses to splatter specters. Maxwell,
who has worked at MIT and is now at the
Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Virginia,
already had futuristic-looking equipment to
draw from, including a helium-3 polarizing
apparatus that produces high-pressure vapor.
I wanted to add real-life physics to a
fantastical device, he says. I had to consider,

5-Minute Project

Magnet Car

Steve Maxwell, an engineer

at K&J magnets, created
a tiny self-propelled car
from three neodymium
magnets, one AA battery, and
aluminum foil. It is a very
cool scientic experiment,
by
ANNABEL EDWARDS

90

PO P S CI. CO M

each proton pack with

a synchrotron (a ring-shaped
particle accelerator), cryogen
tanks, and a hydrogen
plasma source. Corwin also
added a magnetic system to
easily reholster the wands.

he says. You can see the interaction between electric elds and
magnetic elds.
To build Maxwells tiny car, place a ring-shaped magnet on a
batterys positive post and add circular magnets to both ends.
Then lay down aluminum foil as a makeshift road, smoothing
out any bumps. The contact between battery and foil allows
an electric current to ow. Because that electricity runs perpendicularly to the eld created by the magnets, it generates
torque. This rotational force rolls the car across the foil on its
magnet wheelsquickly draining the battery in the process.

FR O M TO P : C OU RT ESY S O N Y P IC T UR ES ; I LLUST R AT I ON BY C L IN T FO RD

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Manual

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

Theme Building

Mo squitoes

Stink bugs

2
1
3

Fruit flies

Three
DIY Bug
Traps That
Actually
Work
1 ST I N K B U G S
Omnipresent stink
bugs, with their pungent corianderlike odor
(used to defend against
predators), can make
a home uninhabitable.
Ashcraft has a quick
fix. Start by cutting off
the top 2 inches of a
two-liter bottle. Then
invert and tape the
neck to the opening so

92

PO PSCI. CO M

the top sits within the

bottle. Drop a small
battery-powered light
into the container. In a
dimly lit space, the light
will attract stink bugs,
trapping them until you
can dispose of them.
Make sure to place this
in attics, basements,
or other dark areas,
Ashcraft says.

Uninvited guests at your summer cookout can be real pests.

You can get rid of your annoying insect visitors with a DIY bug trap.
But bear in mind that not all the traps you find on the Internet work.
A sonic mosquito repellent is one failure. There is no scientific
basis for bug-repellent traps that claim to use a high-pitched
frequency to drive away pests, says Roxanne Connelly, an
entomologist at the University of Florida. Traps claiming to
attract bugs with yeast are equally dubious.
Connelly and Ty Ashcraft, an exterminator at Holistic Pet
Solutions in Charlotte, North Carolina, offer three traps that
actually get the job done, and explain why they work.
by
MATT GIL E S

2 M OS QU I TOE S
Not all mosquitoes are
attracted to the same
bait. Connelly suggests
a low-tech ovitrap,
which uses standing
water to lure Aedes
albopictus and Aedes
aegypti, two common
breeds. First, cut off the
top of a two-liter plastic
bottle, and spray-paint
the outside a solid

black. Then drill two

/8 -inch overflow holes
below the brim. Cover
them, and the top, with
fine mesh. Secure a wet
cloth around the brim
(soak it once a day) and
fill the trap with water.
Eggs, laid on the fabric,
will hatch, fall through
the mesh, and grow too
large to escape.
3

3 F R U I T F LI E S
For fruit flies, Connellys recommended
trap is simple. Fill a
quart-size bowl with a
sudsy mixture of water
and dish soap. Then set
a smaller bowl, filled
with a quarter-cup of
red-wine vinegar, afloat
in the center. The vinegar attracts fruit flies,
which then get stuck in

the suds. Do this a few

days before having people over. I refresh the
soap twice a day, and
within three days, that
typically clears all the
flies, Connelly says.

I L LU ST R AT I ONS BY

Chris Philpot

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Manual

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

Backyard Science

One day, I was browsing online when I discovered a video of two round shadows on the
bottom of a swimming pooland nothing on
the surface that might be casting them. Even
weirder, they were moving, in unison, across
the pool instead of dying out. When I asked a
fluid-dynamics professor what was going on,
he said it was probably a half-ring vortex.

liquid next to it is dragged forward, while

the water farther out remains still. This
speed difference makes the fluid curl
around the plates submerged edge.
The ends of the vortex create two
dips in the waters surface that bend
sunlight outward, just like a glass lens.
This creates a bright ring around two
dark circles, forming the black spots.
HOW TO MAKE A VORTEX

by
DIANNA COWERN

Dip a plate halfway into a

still pool. Drag it forward
for a few inches and gently
lift it out at an angle.

Look for the two dimples

that form on the surface of
the wate r, above the black
spots on the bottom.

D ro p a l i tt l e fo o d co l o r i n g
into each dimple. The dye
will be pulled down into
the half-ring vo r tex.

P HOTOGR AP H BY

Charlie Langella

I L LUST R AT I O N S BY R O BE RT L . PR IN C E

I Created a
Vortex Ring
in the Pool

To test this hypothesis, I created my

own black spots by dragging a dinner
plate through my friends backyard
pool. The plates motion created, on the
pools surface, two dimples that slowly
drifted away from me while remaining in sync with each other. When I
squeezed a few drops of food coloring
into each dimple, the dye swirled down
to reveal an incredible half-ring vortex
connecting the dimples to each other.
A vortex is a spinning column of
liquid or gas, such as a tornado. I knew
my experiment was a vortex because
it carried the dye alongand vortices,
unlike waves, can transport matter.
Vortices form because of shear force,
when a fast fluid moves past a slower
one. When you push the plate, the

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Manual
Toolbox

1
3DO O DL ER
STA R T
$ 49.99

2
LIX PEN
$1 39.95

3
7 T EC H P E N
$ 8 1 .00

Add Dimension
to Your Drawing
Living in the futureas we dopens and 3-D printers are no longer
separate items. You can now create plastic masterpieces on the go
with 3-D-printing pens. Simply place the pen on a surface, draw a
line up into the air, and then start adding details to this anchor.
The pens are still new. 3Doodler, which launched its $2 million
Kickstarter campaign in 2013, was the rst. Now there are several
upstarts to choose from, so we tested three popular models.

96

PO P S CI. CO M

3DOODLER START
3Doodler sells two models: the flagship 3Doodler
2.0 and, for novices like
us, the Start. The latter
practically screams user-friendly with its single
button and chunky, graspable body. Insert plastic
filament into the hole at
the top, press the orange
button, and wait about
60 seconds for the pen to
warm up. Then hold the
same button to draw. A
$99 kit includes the pen
as well as stencils that
help you get over the
initial learning curve.

LIX PEN
Weighing in at 1.6 ounces,
the Lix has the slimmest,
lightest design we tested,
which makes it feel more
like a real pen than its
competitors. It even
includes a penlike clip at
the end, which has four
green indicator lights that
show when the filament
is ready to use. The pen
effect is marred slightly
by the fact that Lix must
remain plugged into a
power source while in
use. Still, you can rest
easy knowing its the
classiest of 3-D tools.

7TECH PEN
7Tech is the only one of
the three pens we tested
that lets users control the
filaments speed and temperature. You can read
these figures on a small
screen and adjust with
two sets of arrow-shaped
buttons. While 7Tech
gives you control, its
cumbersome: It needs
to be plugged in during
use, and the filament
that comes with the pen
is curved in a circular
shape, which sticks out of
the device and gets in an
aspiring artists way.

T h e L i x tea m d rew
this ball and bowl
out of black plastic
f ilament.

P HOTOGR AP H BY

Sam Kaplan

I N S E T : JI LL S HO M E R

by
XAVI ER
HARDING

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Manual

JULY/AUGUST 201 6

Meet a Maker
The Trid Nebula, 5,200
light-years away, as
shot by Hug.

Moonlighting
Astronomer
by
SAR AH
F EC H T

Gary Hug has

worked as a food
s c ienti s t a n d a
machinist, but his
pass io n i s a mateu r
astronomy.

everything himself, except the 22-inch mirror

and the motors that move the scope. A camera
feeds views of the cosmos into his Observatory Control Center and Laundry Room.
Hug calls his telescope Little Blue 22,
named for the mirrors size and for the Little
Blue River where his grandfather took him fishing as a boy because, he says, you never knew
what you were going to catch. Since 1997, Hug
has caught, or rather, discovered, almost 300
asteroids and a comet. He has studied objects
near Pluto and quasars (super-bright starlike
objects) up to 11 billion light-years away.
Theres always a chance of discovery, Hug
says. Its hard to remember that at 2 in the
morning, but generally thats when it happens.

let
omp

eB

K
r a ke

its!

Discovery
is what gets
you going. Its
why you stay
up all night.
COURT ESY GA RY HUG

Gary Hug received his first telescope at Christmas when he was

12. Though he became a machinist rather than an astronomer, the
stars have always fascinated him.
He used to drive 25 miles to peer
through the 27-inch telescope at
the Farpoint Observatory outside
Topeka, Kansas, for eight hours
at a time. Then, nearly 10 years
ago, he tired of the commute and
decided to build his own spyglass.
Hugs Sandlot Observatory is
a wood-frame shed in his backyard that houses a 7-foot-long
1,500-pound telescope. Hug built

Manual

JULY/AUGUST 2016

Enviable Project

BECOME
A HUMAN
CIRCUIT
BOARD
by
GRENNAN
MI L L I KE N

HOW ITS MADE

Zheng and Lalwani
sewed a soft grid of
felt and conductive
thread onto a plain
T-shirt. At each
intersection on the
grid, they added
small metal snap-

ts where interchangeable circuit

components could
attach. To create
each component,
they embedded a
snap and an electronic piecesuch

as a battery or an
LEDin brightly
colored felt. An
electrical current
ows between
snaps via the
conductive thread
to let the battery

FireBird
Torch Lighter

component light
the LED. Wearers
can rearrange
pieces to create
dierent circuits,
such as allowing a
push button to control LEDs. In this

way, says Lalwani,

the child becomes
a microcontroller.
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JOHN ELLIS MACHINES...

THE WORLDS FIRST AND ONLY
REPURIFYING REDISTILLER
Have you ever asked yourself this question:
Why do we age? Why does our skin get old
and wrinkled? Or, for others of us: Why did I
get cancer and others dont? Those are questions the National Institute of Health has been
investigating for decades through dozens of
studies on their website, NIH.gov. They refer
to this element as DDW, or Deuterium Depleted Water. Its one of those oddities of science,
you might say, that comes with a blessing and
a curse. Deuteriumhas a curative affect on
many of mans most feared diseases, but as
it is killing the pathogens which cause those
diseases, Deuteriumis doing one other thing:
its damaging your DNA. You will nd dozens
of scientic studies you can access by going to https://www.johnellis.com and clicking
on the green link, Revealing Waters Secrets.
Studies conrm the phenomenal DDW results
which John EllisWater has achievedbut
with a twist.
To produce DDW, the technician must redistill the water in a centrifuge 60 times (producing an estimated net cost to the consumer
of $300.00 for a small bottle. The 13 patents
on the John Ellis E-5 steel distillers redistill
and repurify the water hundreds of timesautomatically, not just once nor 60 times, killing
all of the pathogens in the waterincluding
DDW. When the FDA applied for patent protection, he was required to prove his distillers permanently changed the hydrogen bond
angle of water from 104 to 114. John Ellis
water was scientically analyzed by Dr. G.
Abraham, MD with a scanning electron microscope [SEM] at the UCLA Medical Center
when detractors, many of them selling unsafe
plastic distillers were shouting quackery!
because the John Ellis Electron 5 stainless
steel distiller, the product of 332 FDA reports
and 13 patents was more expensive than the
much cheaper plastic distillers which, possibly, will ultimately leach toxins into the water
plastic distillers boil.
It is by constantly redistilling and repurify-

ing the water in the John Ellis Electron-5

distiller that you produce MEASURABLE ENERGY. (See the Ammeter video at www.johnellis.com (which shows you how a debrillator powers your heart) and youll understand
how scientists can measure energy and why
your heart doesnt have to work that hard to
keep you alive. With 13 patents, you dont
need to spend hundreds of dollars on a few
ounces of DDW water when you can either
buy bottled water from John Ellis.com, or
make it at home for pennies a day. (And, heres
the biggest secret I can share with you about
my water.) Most people who buy bottled water
do so because they think they cant distill it
themselves. They wonder: What if I cant do it
right, myself? Heres the secret. The E-5 does
it by itself. Its like baking a cake. You put it in
the oven, set the timer and go play canasta until the timer rings. (Only the E-5) doesnt have
a ringer. Crystal Clearis a family business.
Its been here for over 40 years, and with the
next generation standing in line waiting for the

CALL US FOR A FREE

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mantle to pass, you know that your children

and grandchildren will still be doing business
with my children and grandchildren 100 years
or more from now.
As far back as Jan. 27, 1992 a Washington
Post reporter, Edward Coty, was the rst to
ever refer to John Elliswater as light water
and almost in the same breath, as miracle
water. One of the early DDW water producers, referred to their product as light water.
The water, whether produced by NIH, someone else, or John Ellis is not a miracle, its
science. When Edward Coty referred to John
Elliswater as miracle water he was correct
with respect to one factwith that one company: Changing the hydrogen bond angle of
ordinary tap or well water from 104 to 114
produces over 100,000 lifesaving results.
I guess you could say thats a miracle. Particularly since, like the nicotine patch you wear
to quit smoking, water with a bond angle of
114 or more will also penetrate your skin. An
independent Doppler Ultrasound study conrmed at UCLA Medical School that a diabetic
increased blood ow by soaking a diabetic
foot, black from the disease, which doctors
were scant days from amputating. The foot
went from black to esh tones. The patient?
He still has his foot.
Today, you have the opportunity to try the
most patented distiller in America. What do
these 13 patents do, and why are they needed? Non-patented distillers distill water. What
else do they do? Nothing. DDW distills the water-once. DDW puries the water once. The
John Ellis Electron 4 and Electron 5 redistill and repurify the water they process until
its the purest water money can buy, or people
can distill and purify at their kitchen sink.
When people tell you the only thing water
cures is thirst, the NIH can assure them of
dozens of tests on Deuterium Depleted Water
that conrm phenomenal DDW resultsnot
on thirsty patients, but patients suffering from
medical maladies.

OUR 501(c)3 LIVING WATER ENVIRONMENTAL FOUNDATION

STILL NEEDS YOUR TAX EXEMPT DONATIONS TO MEET THE
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AS WELL, MAKE THAT DONATION AT 845-754-8696

WATERCURESANYTHING.COM

WORKS FOR YOU...

OR YOUR MONEY BACK !

Go Ahead...
Have a burning question?
Email it to askanything@
popsci.com or tweet it to
@PopSci #AskAnything.

THE SMELL OF THEIR

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This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

While no one has polled skunks on the

topic, experts have made some keen observationsfrom a distance.
When a skunk gets sprayed in the face, it
will react much like a dog does, says Jerry
Dragoo, a biology professor at the University
of New Mexico, who heads up what he calls
the Dragoo Institute for the Betterment of
Skunks and Skunk Reputations. It will rub its
face along the ground, trying to wipe it off.
I suspect the skunk is coping with the burning
sensation of high-concentration liquid in its
eyes and the mucous membranes of its nose.
As for the odor itself, the story might be
different. Skunks do have sensitive noses
they probe their environment by sniffing the
air and rely on olfaction for finding food. But

102

POPSCI.C OM

A N SW E R BY

Dragoo suspects theyve grown accustomed

to the smell of their own spray, so it doesnt
bother them the way it bothers other species.
Ive seen them in covered traps after they
have sprayed, and they appeared to have no
reaction, Dragoo says.
The most offensive component of skunk
spray is a sulfur compound called thiol. Its
similar to the chemical added to natural and
propane gases to give them a distinctive
danger odor. Our noses happen to be very
sensitive to that, says William Wood, Ph.D.,
professor emeritus in the Chemistry Department at Humboldt State University in Arcata,
California, who has studied the chemistry of
skunk secretions. But prolonged or repeated
exposure to even the stinkiest compounds can
lead to olfactory fatigue, Wood says. High concentrations of the compounds can keep the
olfactory receptors in the nose from resetting
so that the odor is no longer detected. Even
I have experienced olfactory fatigue with
skunk spray, says Wood. I smell it once and
then cannot detect the odor for minutes to
hours. I assume it is the same with skunks.

Melissa Klein

I LLU ST R AT I O N BY

Jason Schneider

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Terminus

JULY / AUG UST 201 6

Dispatch from the Future

A robot offers some

acorns to a squirrel,
and a connection
emerges between
two life-formsone
artificial, one authentic.
Empathy is part of
an ongoing series by
science-fiction artist
Donato Giancola that
centers on sentient
robots that see the
world with naivet.
Giancola likes the
robots because, he
says, they become a
really broad representation of humanity and
our technology, though
he concedes that
artifical intelligence
probably isnt going
to be embodied inside
a walking, talking
robot. Nevertheless,
the scene conjures
a future in which AI
is so advanced, it
includes sophisticated
emotionlike empathy
for a hungry squirrel.

by
KAT I E
P EEK

POPULAR SCIENCE magazine, Vol. 288, No. 4 (ISSN 161-7370, USPS 577-250), is published bimonthly by Bonnier Corp., 2 Park Ave., New York, NY 10016. Copyright 2016 by Bonnier Corp. All rights reserved. Reprinting in whole or part is forbidden except by
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110

P OPSC I .C O M

D ON ATO G I A N C OL A

Dispatch from the Future

is a series that imagines
through images and
wordshow humanity will
live in the decades and
centuries to come.

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