Popular Science, Articles Editor Kevin Gray Information Editor Katie Peek, Phd

MARS COLONY: A uniquely Australian perspectiv

THE INVENTOR'S HANDBOOK How to make your dream a reality

Inventor David Loury believes personal aircraft need to be beautiful, as well as functional SKY BEAUTY WHY THE WORLD NEEDS THE VALKYRIE

PLUS: OMNI Flying Hoverboard JIBO Robot Companion CLIP Super-Fast 3D Printer HOLY BRAILLE Tablet for the Blind TRIDENT Submarine Drone And More Amazing Inventions!

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Editor’s Letter

Issue #90, May 2016

EDITORIAL Editor Anthony Fordham [email protected] Contributors Lindsay Handmer, Carl Williams

DESIGN Group Art Director Malcolm Campbell Art Director Tim Frawley

ADVERTISING Divisional Manager Jim Preece [email protected] ph: 02 9901 6150 Rumours of the Death of National Advertising Sales Manager Lewis Preece [email protected] ph: 02 9901 6175

Production Manager Peter Ryman Australian Manufacturing Circulation Director Carole Jones

US EDITION Editor-in-Chief Cliff Ransom Are... Complicated Executive Editor Jennifer Bogo Managing Editor Jill C. Shomer

EDITORIAL Editorial Production Manager Felicia Pardo During the production of this issue of Australian Popular Science, Articles Editor Kevin Gray Information Editor Katie Peek, PhD. Arrium Limited finally went into receivership, sounding the death Technology Editor Michael Nunez Projects Editor Sophie Bushwick knell for the steel town of Whyalla (maybe). This, according to the Associate Editors Breanna Draxler, Lois Parshley Assistant Editor Lindsey Kratochwill doom-sayers, is it for Australian manufacturing.

ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY Design Director Todd Detwiler We can’t make cars, we can’t this country (one of the few was only worth big bucks Photo Director Thomas Payne make steel, even the Electrolux in the world that can produce because huge companies had POPSCI.COM Online Director Carl Franzen fridge factory in Orange shut much more food than it needs monopolies on the business. Senior Editor Paul Adams Assistant Editors Sarah Fecht, Loren Grush down in April. to feed its population) won’t The actual price of steel is low

BONNIER’S TECHNOLOGY GROUP Now obviously the closing simply start up the factories (at time of writing a billet of Group Editorial Director Anthony Licata Group Publisher Gregory D Gatto of these companies is terrible and blast furnaces again? steel was worth US$50 per news for the people actually Oh, you say it takes time and tonne). A fully-assembled BONNIER Chairman Tomas Franzen employed by them. But specialist knowledge to bring microwave tile-based active Chief Executive Officer Eric Zinczenko Chief Content Officer David Ritchie politicians have always used those industries back and phased array radar system, Chief Operating Officer Lisa Earlywine Senior Vice President, Digital Bruno Sousa these local stories to push that could mean us losing a like the ones they make at CEA Vice President, Consumer Marketing John Reese national agendas. Big business war or something? Please. Technologies in the ACT, is is aggressively Darwinian in You tell Australians that we worth quite a bit more. operation. Make the slightest need 10,000 tonnes of steel by It is absolute Economics mistake, fail to evolve with Friday to avoid an invasion, 101 that as a democratic a changing market, bleat too we’ll have the stuﬀ rolling out country grows and Chief Executive Officer David Gardiner prospers, it abandons basic Commercial Director Bruce Duncan loudly for governments to by Thursday morning. bail you out “to protect the Anyway, all that’s not the manufacturing for specialist Popular Science is published 12 times a year by nextmedia Pty Ltd ACN: 128 805 970 jobs” even though there’s no point. What is the point is that manufacturing and services. Building A, 207 Pacific Highway St Leonards, NSW 2065 commercial point to existing also during the production Everyone is taught this but

Under license from Bonnier International Magazines. © 2014 Bonnier anymore, and you’re dead. of this issue, I went to a no one seems to either believe Corporation and nextmedia Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited. Popular Science is Anyway, now we’re told Data61 expo that showcased it nor think it’s a good thing. a trademark of Bonnier Corporation and is used under limited license. that Australia has become all the amazing stuﬀ the Jobs! Jobs! Think of the jobs! The Australian edition contains material originally published in the US edition reprinted with permission of Bonnier Corporation. Articles express “uncompetitive”. And it’s true various project groups in that To which I say, as of April the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Publish- er, Editor or nextmedia Pty Ltd. ISSN 1835-9876. we no longer make T-shirts or organisation are doing. 2016, what jobs?

Privacy Notice stuff ed toys or wooden tables Yes, Australia may not be Is Australia exposed to a We value the integrity of your personal information. If you provide personal information through your participation in any competitions, surveys or or large chunks of steel, as making steel billets. But if collapse in international law offers featured in this issue of Popular Science, this will be used to provide the products or services that you have requested and to improve the cheaply as countries where you need a nanoscale energy and order? Yes. But it is far content of our magazines. Your details may be provided to third parties the rulers are happy to keep harvester, we do have a easier to be rich and full of who assist us in this purpose. In the event of organisations providing prizes or offers to our readers, we may pass your details on to them. From time an underclass of brutally poor nanotech foundry in Victoria smart people doing smart to time, we may use the information you provide us to inform you of other products, services and events our company has to offer. We may also give people doing backbreaking that can make that for you. things and suddenly have to your information to other organisations which may use it to inform you about their products, services and events, unless you tell us not to do so. labour for a dollar a day. If you need robot co-workers, start making steel again... You are welcome to access the information that we hold about you by getting in touch with our privacy officer, who can be contacted at nextmedia, But there’s a big diff erence membrane fi lters, spacecraft than it is to be dirt poor and Locked Bag 5555, St Leonards, NSW 1590 between “we can’t make steel” parts, ultra-sensitive sensors have no customers for the www.popsci.com.au and “we don’t make steel”. of all types, a global air traffi c lumps of wood you hack out of To subscribe, call 1300 361 146 Australia absolutely knows control system, or the designs your 19th century sawmills. or visit www.mymagazines.com.au how to make steel and if the for a whole bunch of new cars, THE POPSCI PROMISE We share with our world really went to hell in a we can do that. ANTHONY FORDHAM readers the belief that the future will be handbasket do you not think Fact is, making steel [email protected] better, and science and technology are leading the way.

POPSCI.COM.AU 03 Contents #90

Alexander Duru is literally risking life and limb to bring his dream to life. What will you create? 38 THE INVENTION ISSUE We showcase the most amazing inventions of the year, including: 38 Valkyrie / personal aeroplane 40 Omni / flying hoverboard 42 Eternal / self-powered camera 43 Jibo / robot companion 44 CLIP / super-fast 3D printer 45 Holy Braille / tablet for the blind 46 Eora 3D / smartphone 3D scanner 47 Trident / cheap underwater drone 48 PSM Pill / internal biomonitor 49 MX3D / bridge printer 76 FROM THE ARCHIVES GODDARD DEFENDS HIS ROCKET He was told rockets wouldn’t work in space. In 1924, he wrote us a column explaining how of course they do.

Please refer to page 68 for details GETTY IMAGES

04 POPULAR SCIENCE MAY 2016 For daily updates: www.popsci.com.au 41 50 56 62 MYTHBUSTERS THE INVENTOR’S FOR LOVE OF A UNNATURALLY SIGNING OFF HANDBOOK RED PLANET DELICIOUS Adam and Jamie give their final Got an invention deep The Mars Society gets no Is our obsession with “natural” interview, and reflect on their inside your mind? Here’s government money, but does food bad for business, society, amazing life as celebrity how to extract it and millions of dollars of space travel the planet and even the hapless “makers and builders”. maximise success (and profit). research anyway. Why? animals we eat?

NOW NEXT MANUAL The state of the art Pre-boarding the future Build tomorrow, yourself

06 BBQs with apps, really 24 El Niño’s epic surf 70 Make a bugbot for... reasons 12 BenQ’s beautiful... desk lamp? 26 A brief history of space helmets 72 Recreating deadly balloons! 14 Why Giphy wants to rule the world 28 Can we ever bring back privacy? 73 Use big data to help you upgrade 16 Vivid, the tiniest external HDD 30 Kickstarting videogames your new house. 18 Is premium petrol worth it? 32 Is it time to abolish schools? 74 Three projects reinvent breakfast 20 Tesla’s Model 3 wins at hype 34 WTH is the “14Nm die process”? 75 Hack Teddy Ruxpin to say 22 Bees get better backpacks 36 Plants breathe - who knew. anything (ie swearwords)

THE OTHER BITS 03 A word from the editor | 78 Ask Anything: why do the yanks still use inches? A garnish, to add colour 80 Retro Invention: The Most Hyped Products Ever | 82 Lab Rats

POPSCI.COM.AU 05 EDITED BY XAVIER HARDING+DAVE GERSHGORN SMARTER SMARTER GRILL 6 of connectedbackyard technology. innovative gadgets usherinanew age we can’t forgetthebackyard. Theseeight In theage POPULAR SCIENCE POPULAR of theconnectedhome, GERSHGORN by guests you taste. have fiery tellyourits brushed-steel barbecue curves ofyour airconditioning.And in thecomfort cook apizza—allwhileyou kickbackinside is appenabled,lettingyou grill,smoke, or grill.This12kWburner Bob Grillsonsmart too. That’s the lazy-mangeniusbehindthe you shouldbeabletocookasteak fromone If you canhailacabfromsmartphone, US$5,000 PREMIUM BOB GRILLSON DAVE PHOTOGRAPHY BY

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Reinvention

The humble desk lamp is actually a made adjustment”. A LAMP pretty common focus for an amazing Word salad aside, the WiT is high-end redesign - consider if you specifi cally designed to be used will FLUXO (the world’s fi rst truly alongside an LCD display. The THAT KNOWS smart lamp), Lumir C (a candle- touch-activated “e-reading” powered LED lamp, seriously), The mode uses an ambient light WHEN YOU’RE Lampster (a robot-shaped lamp with sensor to detect how bright the “attitude”) and the Fade Task Lamp user’s monitor (or Kindle) is, (it simulates sunsets). What most of and adjusts the lamp’s output READING these have in common is they cost to “balance” illumination. hundreds and - Fade excepted - are all The LED strip in the WiT boutique projects only made possible covers 90-degrees and can be by Kickstarter crowdfunding. brighter in the centre than on by Now, a major corporation is the edges, while also adjusting ANTHONY FORDHAM pushing a $250 desk lamp too. BenQ colour temperature. Like the calls its lamp the WiT. Of which latest version of Apple’s iOS brevity may be the soul, but the on the iPhone, this means the acronym is anything but. It stands for WiT can cast a yellower, more “Wide arc illumination”, “Integrated gentle light in the evening, eye comfort features” and “Tailor which BenQ says can reduce BENQ WIT eye strain. LED Power: 18W Yes, it’s a $250 Colour range: 2700-5700K desk lamp, but if Light output: 1800 Lux @ 400mm you’re spending serious Output angle: 90-degrees hours at the PC, the WiT Price: $249.95 could quickly pay itself off in www.benq.com.au savings on eye-strain-induced migraine medication...

12 POULAR SCIENCE WELCOME TO ANE W DEC A DE THE NEW VIVID B1 DECADE SOUNDS LIGHT YEARS AHEAD

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The Platform

14 POPULAR SCIENCE MAY 2016 Now The Platform

THE GUY WHO MADE US POPULAR SPEAK IN GIFS SCIENCE

If you’ve ever shared a GIF—those brief video loops of movie by XAVIER HARDING scenes and cooking tutorials—you’ve used the future’s most effective communication tool. At least that’s what Giphy, the three-year-old indexing platform for GIFs, is telling us. In a busy world, where even tweeting takes too much time, the highlight clip has become our go-to lexicon. More than 65 million people think it will be used for really practical things. Like, you get a cut and you think, “How do I a month use Giphy to search and share GIFs. But for company stitch myself up?” You can find a GIF that will founder Alex Chung, our global chatter will soon be a lot more show you in five seconds what to do. The same than just piano-playing cats and Beyoncé moves. goes for CPR, or the Heimlich maneuver. As well as how-to’s, recipes, everything.

What’s the most surprising use of GIFs you’ve seen? Why do we need a search You’re not getting information from The I was at South by Southwest, and a mother engine for GIFs? New York Times. You’re getting it from came up to me and she said: ‘I just want to No one searches Google for self-expression. friends, from Twitter. It’s peer-to-peer. GIFs thank you. I have an autistic child, and we use When was the last time you searched are a great format for sharing information your site to teach him what human “happy” or “sad”? You would just get anti- and for self-expression. We always ask, expression is. There’s no place else I can really depressant pills or it would be the Wikipedia “When has the Internet really made you do that.’ And it was just really heart warming. I felt kind of proud at that moment.

Wow, that is amazing. Any others? Well, for dancers, when they choreograph a A mother told me she used the site to teach routine, they break it down into specific move- her autistic child what human ments. This is the vocabulary of dance. There’s no way to translate it well onto paper. So GIFs expression is. I felt proud at that moment. become like their sketches. They are an easy way to codify those dance moves.

GIFs are like a return to form for page for what sad is. That’s not useful, unless cry? Or made you go ‘aww’?” It doesn’t humans. Like a grown-up show-and-tell. you’re a fifth grader writing a report. Google’s really do that. Unless you read some really It’s true. GIFs can represent a concept page rank is taken straight out of the citation beautiful poem, but that happens like— that other mediums can’t, such as infinity— system for library management. It was never because they are forever looping. Nowadays meant to index all of pop culture. Every day. communication is messaging. Everything Yup, every day [laughs]. But really, beyond that was on the internet is now shared within Why do you say GIFs are the that, GIFs are efficient. It’s the easiest natural messaging apps and is conversation based. communication tool of the future? way to communicate by using the entire GIFs are everything we as humans want to say The Internet has changed communication. lexicon of pop culture as your dictionary. We that words can’t express.

PHOTOGRAPH BY Liam Sharp POPSCI.COM.AU 15 Now MAY 2016 Form Factor

THE PRETTIEST DICTIONARY OF OBSOLESCENCE PORTABLE STORAGE SUPERFLOPPY: Collective term forthebriefattemptinthe1990s to provide PCs with removable storage that could hold more than When Nick Popov went down to his drives have dozens of moving parts, and the1.44MBofastandard3.5-inch ﬂoppy disc. Brands included the by local Big Chain Computer Store to buy an while they are built tough, they do wear ANTHONY Flextra (21MB), ﬂoptical drives FORDHAM external hard drive, he was dismayed at out. And many’s the thesis that’s been (21MB),Iomega’sZipdrive(100MB the range on offer. To him, pack-of-cards lost after an inopportune “head crash”. and eventually 750MB) and the was too big. He wanted something that Desktop PCs and notebooks, SuperDisk (120MB). All were could slip into a pocket or disappear into a meanwhile, have been turning to solid- rendered obsolete by cheap CD burnersintheearly2000swhich laptop bag. And above all, he wanted it to state drives (SSDs) for some years now. could store 640MB on a disc costing be solid-state. So he built the Vivid SSD. Using flash memory similar to what onlyacoupleofdollars. Most of the external USB hard drives you find on camera’s memory chip - from the likes of Seagate and Western or the computer’s own RAM - these Digital still use notebook PC magnetic drives have no moving parts at all. And mix-and-match as they please. There’s drives. Several magnetic platters spin because a read-head doesn’t have to also a free engraving option. at extreme speeds while a tiny read- physically move across a platter, an SSD You won’t just lose this thing in your head moves back and forth even faster, can be very, very fast. bag, you’ll lose it in your pocket, it’s that encoding data via magnetic fields. These Today, this technology is mature and small. And more importantly, it’s fast. it’s getting increasingly In our tests, we benchmarked the 1TB difficult to buy a high- Vivid at 439 megabytes a second read, quality notebook PC that 451 MB/s write, over USB3.0. doesn’t have an SSD. Of course, you have to pay for this VIVID SSD So Popov decided to kind of performance. The 250GB Capacities: 250GB, 500GB, 1TB create an ultra-compact version is merely expensive, while at Connectivity: USB3.0 USB equivalent. $599, the 1TB unit is eye-watering (a Flash type: Synchronous MLC The result is this, typical USB 1TB magnetic drive costs Features: TRIM, ECC, EMS the Vivid SSD. It’s tiny, around $150). But this is what things protection, SMART really tiny, the size of a cost when they’re built not by a giant Read speed: 439 MB/s flattened matchbox. corporation, but a single entrepreneur Write speed: 451 MB/s The case is obsessed with detail and using only Warranty: 5 years beautifully machined quality components. Dimensions: 67 x 40 x 10mm aluminium in two Yes, we’re pretty impressed with Weight: 80g separate pieces, and the Vivid SSD. If nothing else, it really Price: $199 - $599 buyers can choose showcases how far we’ve come since www.vividstorage.com from eight colours and the days of the 5.25-inch floppy.

16 POPULAR SCIENCE

Now MAY 2016 End Game

INAPOST-PETROL WORLD, HOW DO YOU MAKE PEOPLE BUY PREMIUM?

At some point in the last ten without fear of clogging up with yearsorso,petrolretailers particulates and other by-products around the country all seemed of incomplete combustion or partly to come to the same conclusion: burned oil or whatever. service stations should only sell “Engines are becoming more unleaded RON91 “E10” regular susceptible to dirt,” Whitfield claims, fuel with 10% ethanol, RON95 but then says: “Yes, in newer engines premium and RON98. Regular it doesn’t build up as quick, but the unleadedwasout.Motorists servicing intervals on these cars were told that higher RON is much, much longer. People are numbers meant better quality, driving around with dirty engines and andthemajorbrandswould that’s affecting their emissions and sell special formulations of the power. You might not even notice it RON98fuelwithcoolnames until you try going up a steep hill, likeV-PowerorVortexor, in the people will see a power loss there.” case of BP, Ultimate. Whitfield says that while all CONCEPT... BOWSER? These ultra-premium fuels of BP’s fuels are of course high This Wayne Helix fuel dispenser was part of BP’s “Fuelling the Future” differ from regular petrol in 1955 quality, the more basic products do showcase for the London Olympics back that they contain patented a likewise basic job of cleaning a in 2012. It shows detailed labelling for additiveswhich-thebrands car’s injection system. He says BP’s the biofuel components in both petrol Year of production and diesel and is designed to handle claim-improveperformance, latest formulation for Ultimate 98 - of first direct- those more challenging, but perhaps emissions and even clean the the specifics of which are patented more sustainable, fuels. While biofuels injection petrol engine as it drives. and thus secret - keeps an engine have many downsides, they’re certainly engine, found in In fact this kind of petrol cleaner and gives an immediate 3.1% more interesting than another new the Mercedes-Benz version of fancy crude... have been around since at 300SL “gull-wing”. improvement in economy (assuming least 2000 (diesel was added The 2996 cc, inline- the driver uses a particular drive more recently). BP’s fuels six M198 developed cycle as defined by BP). relief from the infamous “cycle” that technicalexpertintheGlobal 222HP (165kW) - Ultimate 98 is priced quite a bit sees pump prices rise and fall by over Fuels Technology Group, still respectable more than 3.1% higher than even 25c a litre in the average week. GarryWhitfield,saysthe first today, esp in a RON95 petrol, so the benefits have to Whitfield (or rather, his PR minder) Ultimate “product” came on the 1093kg car! go beyond fuel consumption to justify wouldn’t be drawn on whether BP market in 2000. the price. “It’s for people thinks its Ultimate range “Engine technology was who care about their of fuels can survive prettydifferentbackthen,” cars,” says Whitfield. BP ULTIMATE 98 another massive shift hesays.“Veryfewpetrol While petrol Octane rating: 98 in oil prices - either up cars were direct-injection, consumption in Australia Claimed or down. But it’s hard to forinstance.”Inotherwords, isn’t exactly falling, efficiency see how, in a world of thesemore“primitive”engines fuel companies must increase: 3.1% ubiquitous hybrids and (thoughplentyofJapanese be starting to feel Range needed to increasing interest in andEuropeancarsstarted like they’re living on clean: 1300km long-range EVs, creating getting direct borrowed time. The Price: E10 price + yet another “premium injection in the phenomenal pre-order $0.18/L (average, petrol” is a sustainable late 1990s) success of the Tesla April 2016) long-term marketing by www.bp.com ANTHONY could handle Model 3 (see page 20) strategy - in any sense of FORDHAM rougher fuels shows some of us want the word “sustainable”.

18 POPULAR SCIENCE

Now MAY 2016 Speed Lab

THE SEXIEST confirmed, probably more like semi-affordable) electric car TESLA with 300km+ of range and decent performance. The reveal on 31st March 2016 was only part one of the YET pre-launch hype. A second reveal later this year will confirm the many, many questions we all still have about the Model 3, and will After luring potential BMW and Mercedes- done must be tasting an all too hopefully show a finished interior, Benz owners over to the land of luxury EVs different flavour of adrenalin: TESLA MODEL 3 safety ratings, and the AWD with the Model S, and branching into the fear. The company has promised Platform: version. Elon Musk expects pre- ultra-lucrative SUV market with the Model X, deliveries of the Model 3 will 5-door sedan orders will have topped 500,000 Tesla has now at last unveiled its “affordable” begin in 2017, but car industry 0-60: <6 seconds by then, making the Model 3 the smaller car - the Model 3. observers have their doubts. Range: 345km most successful car launch in You can hardly have missed it. The launch Forbes, for instance, cited Drive: Rear- history. In terms of orders, anyway. itself showcased an attractive smallish Tesla’s ongoing production wheel, AWD TBC Superchargers, gigafactories, sedan without the Model S’s lift back, and an problems as a bad sign. Musk Safety rating: middle-class EVs, this is the obviously unfinished interior, but it was the himself admitted the response Untested Tesla future. There’s a lot that public response that really made the news. was over three times greater Autopilot: can go wrong. But with this Tesla took over 325,000 pre-orders in less than expected. Standard massive life-giving transfusion than a week, providing the company with a What all this does show, Price: of cash into a company that has much-needed US$300 million-plus injection however, is that there is massive US$35,000 (AU only a passing acquaintance with of cash (each pre-order costs $1000) and the appetite for an affordable pricing TBC) profit, there’s also much that can potential to earn over US$14 billion... if it can (or once Australian pricing is go right. Watch this space. meet the production demand. This is the huge challenge of course. At almost the same time as it was launching the Model 3, Tesla had to admit its deliveries of TOOS3XYFORMY(FORD)KA? the Model X had fallen short of targets. Backin2013,TeslatriedtotrademarknottheModel3,buttheModel The company says this is because the E.Fordputastoptotheapplicationbecause...well,it’skindof crossover with its radical sensor-equipped complicated.ThebigblueovalappliedtotrademarkModelEbackin “falcon doors” fell victim to - and this is a 2001forusewithitsownelectricvehicles.Oddlythough,Fordcancelled real quote - “[our] hubris in adding far too thatapplicationin2010.Atthesametime,ithadaseparateModelE much new technology” which trademarkapplicationineﬀectin2003forsomekindofcar-relatedonline delayed production. messagingthingitwastoyingaroundwith.Thisapplicationwasabandoned Right now, while CEO in2006.Ofcourse,whenTeslapoppedupin2013withitsownModelEapplication,Ford by Elon Musk is on a high, objected.WhatevertheheckFordisthinkingwhenitcomesto“ModelE”,it’sobviousby ANTHONY the people at Tesla who thedesignoftheModel3’slogothatTeslahasn’tabandonedthe“SEX”joke.Thereareeven FORDHAM have to actually get stuff rumoursofasmallercrossovercall,yep,theModelY.Verys3xy,Tesla.Verys3xyindeed.

20 POPULAR SCIENCE Subwoofers SQ Focal P20F

Continuing the tradition of‘Af ‘AwardWid Winning’’ C ar Audiodi

Focal Performance – P20 F Flax Cone 8“ Subwoofer

Just one in the Focal range of Performance Flax Cone Subwoofers the P20 F consists of a straightforward 4-Ohm voice coil, which is perfectly suited for small enclosures (closed or bass-reflex). Several innovations raise its performance to an even higher level. The dual magnet delivers improved linearity and ensures optimal magnetic power delivered to the voice coil, which features a new cooling system. Glass fibre is used for the mounting of the voice coil, making it more robust while protecting the cone from the heat emitted. Last but not least, the new fixings connecting the cone to the voice coil and the spider to the basket improve reliability for extreme use (very high excursion).

Put simply great sound, reliability and high performance – an all-round WINNER

Visit www.focalaustralia.com.au for the dealer nearest you! Now MAY 2016 Nanotech

The sensor on the bee (pictured) requires a “reader” mounted on the hive entrance. The newer sensor is powered by the bee’s own movement. While the energy harvester (shown inset) is complete, the sensor package still needs to be made more compact before it can be rolled out in large numbers.

COLONIES IN CRISIS Bees are in trouble around the world, especially in the Americas and Europe where “colony collapse disorder” can wipe out a colony. Adult workers simply disappear, BEES TO POWER leaving the queen and immature workers to starve. While this disorder has been known throughout our 5000+ year history with bees, the incidence of collapse seems THEIR OWN to have massively accelerated since 2010. The CSIRO’s work, combined with data from around the world, will SALVATION hopefully shed some light on this unfolding disaster.

Physicists and entomologists onlyonestepupfrompainting re-capturing tens of thousands energyasthebeefliesaround at the CSIRO (and now Data61) tinynumbersonthebeewitha of bees to change their batteries the world, oblivious. havespentthelastfewyears likewise tiny paintbrush. just isn’t practical! Despite the sophistication of gluing tiny sensor backpacks A more valuable So Data61 has his silicon-based harvester, Prof to honeybees. These sensors, system would see worked with a deSouzaremainsinaweofthe once “read” by a device each bee equipped Victorian nanotech natural biological systems on mountedovertheentrance withacompactradio foundry to create a which his device depends. to the hive, provide valuable transmitter, more minute “engine”, a “This is the direction information on swarming and like the kinds of $81 100-micrometre biotechnologyhastogo,”hesays. pollinating behaviour. tags scientists use wide energy- “Itisamazinghowthebeedoes Scientistsalsosetupsugar- on everything from harvesting system all this, just with hydrocarbons Cost, per waterfeedingzonesandexpose possumstoblue that uses nano-scale and these incredible, beautiful hive, of bee bees to different levels of whales. Instead of springs to literally biological structures.” pollination Whiletrackingbeesin pesticides and other pollutants, waiting for the bee to services for convertabee’s toseehowtheseaffectthe return to the hive for almonds in buzz into power. moredetailisimportantfor hive’sabilitytopollinatecrops analysis, it could be Australia. In Project leader cropsecurity,it’stheenergy and produce honey. tracked in real time, California, Professor Paulo de harvesting device that has the Untilnowthough,these wherever it is. the cost is Souza-aphysicist, Popular Science team excited. sensorshavebeenpassive, The technological $250 per hive, not an entomologist Rightnow,itproducesamere littlemorethananelectronic limitation of building dueinpart -saysthereal trickleofelectricity,justenough serial number that allows apoweredsensor to the risk of innovation here is to power a simple sensor identification of individual bees. smallenoughfora colony collapse usingaflatstructure; package in the bee’s backpack. Because they beetocarry?Power. disorder. similar energy One day though, it could scale have to be read Whileit’spossibleto harvesters have their up to power our pacemakers, byascanner, buildabatterysmallandlight springs arranged vertically. other medical implants... or even by ANTHONY the backpacks enough, keeping it topped up is... The horizontal configuration our mobile phones. Just another FORDHAM are basically problematic. Believe it or not, more efficiently scavenges thingtothanksbeesfor...

22 POPULAR SCIENCE SOURCE: CROP POLLINATION ASSOCIATION INC. MAY 2016 Now Pro Bono

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The largest wave of 2016? Aaron Gold’s 18-plus-metre wave at Jaws, which is oﬀ Maui’s North Shore.

24 POPULAR SCIENCE PHOTOGRAPH BY Mike Coots MAY 2016

141

Number of giant waves at the 2016 Eddie Aikau tournament in Waimea Bay, which is held only when waves top 35 feet.

Every few years, El Niño—the weather phenomenon caused by unusually high surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean—deals us some wild cards. Some are devastating, in the form of floods and droughts. Others are godsends, in the form of much-needed rain or this year’s gargantuan waves that gave surfers the ride of their lives. This past winter’s El Niño was one of the three strongest on record, creating waves with magnitudes not seen in nearly two decades. The breaks that pro surfers paddled into during the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational (pictured) in late February ranged from 12 to 18 metres. The monster swells, according to Mark Willis, chief meteorologist of the website Surfline, are the result of an extended southward Pacific jet stream—strong upper- level winds lift warm evaporation into the atmosphere and begin to turbulently churn that moisture. This action creates more intense and frequent storms that, when combined with offshore winds that help waves grow larger and break cleanly, lead to some once-in-a-lifetime surfing sets. by ANNABEL EDWARDS

POPSCI.COM.AU 25 Next In the 47 years since humans first Now & Later stepped on the moon, space-helmet technology hasn’t exactly made a giant leap. But the prospect of exploring Mars has NASA’s designers literally back at their drawing boards. “The requirements are different from anything we’ve done before,” says Dave Lavery, who leads NASA’s Solar System Exploration Program. These requirements include What We’ll durability (to withstand abrasion in wind storms), flexibility (for yearlong missions), and field of view (for 360-degree visibility). Wear to Mars “The shape [of future helmets] is going to be driven by the ability to see your feet while walking on the rough surface The Evolution of of Mars,” says NASA’s Amy Ross, who the Space Helmet designs space suits. Now it’s up to NASA to get us there.

by SARAH FECHT

PAST (1960s & ’70s) The iconic bubble helmet worn by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin was built to withstand the moon’s extreme temperature swings and protect astronauts’ eyes from solar glare and radiation. At the back, the helmet’s ﬁ tted shape cushioned the head in case of an emergency during launch or landing.

PRESENT Today’s helmet is almost identical to the Apollo era’s—bulbous and locked solidly into the neck of the suit— except that this one has cameras and lights. Since the International Space Station circles the Earth every 92 minutes, astronauts might be suddenly plunged into darkness during a spacewalk, so lights are a must.

26 POPULAR SCIENCE MAY 2016

FUTURE (2030s & ’40s) On Mars, visibility and range of motion will be extremely important. That’s why the helmet for the BioSuit—one of the contending designs for a Mars mission—moves freely with the astronaut’s head, like a motorcycle helmet. It will also have a heads-up display with information on navigation, logistics, scheduling, situational awareness, and life support.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Douglas Sonders POPSCI.COM 27 Next

The Conversation Privacy. Here’s

by HowWeFixIt. MATT GILES

In the wake of Edward Snowden’s NSA reveal, society has grappled with technologies, 3 which 1 would allow access to how to balance personal privacy private information.4 and public safety. Events like the mass This could create terror attacks in San Bernardino, Brussels, unintended entry points Laura and Paris have only raised the stakes. for rival governments and hackers, as well as damage the brands and Poitras trustworthiness of tech Records of our daily lives now exist on companies’ products. our smartphones. That is why the prospect Some people say they don’t mind giving of a federally sanctioned iPhone hack— up privacy because they have nothing to Academy Award-winning even a one-time occurrence under the hide.5 But citizens in the US and abroad ﬁ lmmaker of Citizenfour, argument of national security—could open have the right to be shielded and need to be a documentary about the a Pandora’s box; 2 it could threaten future shielded from state prying. 6 Snowden-NSA aﬀ air technological rights and human rights. Encryption has gone from niche to US presidential candidates are necessary—the software and apps are no st for those in the know. 7 They

1. The post-9/11 era was filled with impunity; there was no accountability. When a country maintains that culture over multiple decades and presidencies, it becomes hard to backtrack.

2. I trust the state, but only for very specific things. The reason we have laws and the Constitution is that trust is not enough.

3. The risks of all this private information being made public are very real. I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of what can happen when that information is released.

4. Criminals and terrorists will always try to circumvent protections—it’s going to happen. We need to use the resources we have at organisations like the NSA to secure things, not break them. ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES MAY 2016

Jacob Appelbaum

Computer security researcher, journalist, and member of the Tor project

encode information, protecting reams of until now, taken for granted. 9 Future personal data (like medical records) 8 and citizens, raised online with all of the JACOB’S metadata (like geospatial information) inherent beneﬁts and risks, 10 will that are being uploaded to the cloud every hopefully better understand how to DEVICES second of the day. navigate these new digital waters. 11 Safer software and hardware, however, They’ll insist on defending their might not be enough. Like the US Bill of freedom by controlling what information Rights, we’ll need a legal framework to they let others—corporations and A German-made protect the Internet rights that we have, governments alike—see. 12 Cryptophone, which he uses to call Julian Assange

An iPhone 5C 5. with microphones We are trying to install human-rights 9. Privacy is not a futurist thing. protections into the architecture of systems If you can connect to the Internet now, removed to that people use by default every day. someone can connect with you in a avoid tapping There will be people who don’t want to use secure fashion, even behind firewalls. those systems, but at least you won’t have to be a software expert to be protected. The encryption service Silent 10. What scares me is the next generation. Circle, which 6. Saying you don’t care about privacy is They might take mass surveillance as he uses to call a like saying you don’t care about free speech. the new normal. The people being targeted regular telephone seem to be those who are limited in their Maybe you don’t feel that you personally network need privacy, but you do believe a journalist understanding of what’s possible. or a lawyer or a doctor does. through Tor

Several Androids 11. If you send a postcard, you don’t that run on 7. There are people who were initially shocked expect privacy. If you put it in an envelope, by the idea of using computers to communi- you do. It’s the same with the Internet. free and secure cate, but now they are on Skype. People adapt Yes, there will always be online governmental software to technology—they figure it out. Trusted cyber scrutiny—that won’t go away—but there will communication tools are ready and available. be strategies to preserve privacy, and tactics that can subvert unwarranted mass scrutiny.

8. When you centralize records, those computer systems are vulnerable. There are laws to 12. If you are in middle school now, there is protect that information, but criminals who break a good likelihood you already have a digital foot- into a doctor’s computer don’t care about laws. print. You’ll want to defend it, and defend the new kinds of democratic relationships it creates. MICHAL ANDRYSIAK

POPSCI.COM.AU 29 Next MAY 2016 amuse.bouche Do they hate big budgets, or do they just

by hate responsibility? DANIEL WILKS

he combined development and IF PREVIOUS YEARS ARE ANY marketing budget for console shooter/ MMO hybrid Destiny topped out GUIDE, HALF TO TWO THIRDS OF around US$500 million ($660m). THOSE SUCCESSFULLY FUNDED Thoughthegamestillcomfortably GAMES WILL FOLD BEFORE T holds the record for the most DELIVERY, BE SIGNIFICANTLY expensiveevermade,therearemanyothertitles thathavebudgetsrivallingthoseofanybigbudget DELAYED OR WILL OTHERWISE Hollywood production. UNDER-DELIVER IN SOME WAY Despite being that very rare videogame entity -anoriginal,newIP-Destinyinitscoregameplay nevertheless conforms to that golden AAA rule: with such high budgets, large studios are very risk averse, and more often than not home in on sequels and tried and true gameplay mechanics (run, shoot) rather fi nancial success, Chris Roberts’ uber-ambitious project than branching out on new ideas. highlights the pitfalls of the crowdfunding model. So for many game developers, the lure of big As of this writing, Star Citizen has amassed $112 budgets has little appeal. They have distanced million in pledges since the project was fi rst launched themselves, at least in part, from the pressures and in 2012. But right now there’s still only a very limited expectations of mega-budget titles by turning to “dogfi ght mode” currently available to backers. Yet the crowdfunding to gather money for passion projects. marketing of this unreleased game is so eff ective (you Daniel Wilks A type-species example: Pillars of Eternity, known can buy beautiful spaceships in much the same way is the editor of at the time as Project Eternity, was probably the fi rst as you order a real car online, then walk around them PC PowerPlay, mega successful crowdfunded campaigns from a big in a virtual hangar), some gamers have already spent Australia’s name developer. hundreds and even thousands of dollars on these virtual oldest (and Obsidian Entertainment, creator of a number of ships - which can’t yet be fl own in space. best) PC gaming hugely successful AAA titles including Star Wars: Star Citizen and its many sub-games still have no set magazine. He Knights of the Old Republic II and Fallout New release date, but the money keeps coming in, extending has personally Vegas, launched the crowdfunding campaign for the stretch goals for backers, the ambition of the lost/wasted Project Eternity in 2012 after being told that there developers and the time it will take to fi nish the project. many tens was no market for an RPG with 1990s-style top-down Yes, 2015 was a bumper year for gaming of dollars on terrible “isometric” graphics. crowdfunding. Across all gaming categories - Kickstarter The market analysts were wrong and Obsidian videogame, boardgame, card and RPG - according to projects was right: the campaign quickly blew past the initial Kickstarter’s own statistics, about 49% of the 15433 including funding goal, eventually netting just shy of US$4 gaming projects launched were successfully funded. “Woolfe: The Red million ($5.3m). But if previous years are any guide, anywhere from Hood Diaries” Of course, crowdfunding adds its own pressures half to two thirds of those successfully funded games and “Samurai to game developers, as pledges essentially act as pre- will fold before delivery, be signifi cantly delayed or will Cop 2: Deadly orders for titles, and gamers aren’t known for being otherwise under-deliver in some way (fewer features, Vengeance.” the most forgiving bunch when it comes to delays or poor quality, supply problems etc). lack of information. Crowdfunding may be a boon to developers looking Star Citizen, a massively multiplayer space to free themselves from the pressures of mega-budget exploration and combat game is a reigning hall-of- productions, but consumers should defi nitely go in with shamer when it comes to delays. Despite its massive their eyes open, and their expectations realistic.

30 POPULAR SCIENCE $0- 6<5,);165 .69 ;0- ,=)5+-4-5; 6. :;96564@ :<7769;15/ -?+-33-5+-

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Donate to the Foundation for the Advancement of Astronomy : 4 46<5; ;0-9((((((((((((((((((((((((((( !9-.-99-, 791A- )+;1=1;@ ;6 :<7769; 56; +647<3:69@ (((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( 0-8<-: 7)@)*3- ;6 B6<5,);165 .69 ;0- ,=)5+-4-5; 6. :;96564@D 9-,1; )9, !)@4-5;: 6 ):;-9+)9, 6 %1:) )9, <4*-9 ((( ((( ((( ((( ((( ((( ((( ((( ((( ((( ((( ((( ((( ((( ((( ((( ?719@ );- ((( ((( )9,063,-9 )4- (((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( );- (((((((((((( )9,063,-9 :1/5);<9- ((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

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Rethink

Is it Time to Abolish Schools? by ANTHONY FORDHAM

o, bear with me. Seriously, in this HIGH SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE online connected app-uploaded SHOULD SHOULD BE ABOUT gamifiedsocialmediaworld,does makingkidsgotoasortoflabour- MEETING IN COFFEE SHOPS TO N camp like institution to be trained to DISCUSS SHAKESPEARE WITH A alljumpupandrunaroundwhena TEACHER WHO DOESN’T HAVE TO bell rings, make much sense anymore? GET TO A CRUMBLING BUILDING Okay context. Around about a century ago, BY 0630H FOR “CLASS PREP”. manyoftheWesterndemocraciescameupwitha brilliant idea. If they could educate the population to a standardised level, that might just create a society where literate individuals could get jobs, make money, ADHD or one of the more annoying (to teachers) forms and spend that money on all the amazing new things of dyslexia. If you’re depressive or intensely introverted, science and tech was creating. Like cars and ice-boxes if you need to lead a group to thrive or be led yourself. and eventually radios and televisions. Square pegs and round holes? Some people aren’t even The other thing that was happening in the world pegs at all. Some just can’t be taught, this way. at that time was rapid industrialisation. Where once For most of the 20th century, the institutional school people lived on the farm - and kept farm time, and was the worst form of education we had - except for all the life revolved around chores, and kids would learn to others. Yet until now, the problem with homeschooling is read in the evenings if they were lucky - now people that people can get intellectually isolated. There’s no cross- worked in factories. And what are factory jobs all pollination of ideas. Yes people have been successfully about? That’s right: shift work. homeschooled, but the teaching parent absolutely must be Here was a new age where parents had to clock in engaged with the world at large. at, say, 0700h and work until 1600h. What to do with What the internet and its attendant computer the kids for that time? Send them to a factory of their technology allows now, though, is the creation of own, of course, but a factory where they learn. From decentralised education. Teaching can be tailored this, the school-as-we-know-it evolved. (perhaps ultimately by AIs) to the individual. Potentials Yes, schools also take ideas from private academies can be realised. And of course there needs to be and even the military a little bit, but the rigidly mandated socialisation, “play groups” if you will. Anthony defi ned lesson times and locations and the Pavlovian But attending a primary or high school of the Fordham is “ringing of the bell” where everyone gets up and future should be more like university. It should be less the editor of changes places - that’s the industrial revolution writ about turning up at the gate by 0845h, and more about Australian small, right there. If you think about it, it’s weird. logging hours in a mathematics app. About meeting in Popular Science. He survived Yes schools work but there are many downsides libraries and coff ee shops to discuss Shakespeare with the great NSW to the way they educate. If you’re a particular type of a teacher who doesn’t have to commute at 0630h to get public education person with a particular intellectual and academic to a crumbling building in time for “class prep”. About system, but has style, you will excel in a typical school. You need to be dedicating a whole day to a cricket match, not just two no scars to show smart - but not too smart or you’ll get bored. You need crowded hours on a Wednesday, because the adaptive it. Because all to be able to work and study hard - but not too hard online systems know how to make sure you’re getting his scars are on or you’ll fi nish too quickly and get bored. You need to enough geology study later in the week. the inside. be able to think critically and have original ideas - but Will any of this happen? Only if we’re bold. Because within a specifi c framework, otherwise your teachers it’s very easy to just say “the current system exists, won’t understand you and you’ll get bored. therefore it must work.” But I for one would spare the Woe betide if you exhibit atypicality in some next generation those long, dreary afternoons spent way, though. If you’re “on the spectrum” or you have doing nothing useful but waiting for a bell to ring.

32 POPULAR SCIENCE AUSTRALIA’S No.1 GUIDE TO AUDIO & AV www.AVHub.com.au

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The amazing Floating Turntable PLUS! Killer Klowns From Outer Space on Blu-ray Next MAY 2016 Phrasebook

What the heck is... The 14 Nanometre Process

The individual transistors in the microchips that control your PC, tablet, smartphone and more are getting smaller and smaller. In fact, they’re now so small, engineers are running into problems.

The modern microchip is an amazing thing. it comes to performance and low An entire microscopic city of mathematical power consumption. Where it all started. Turing’s potential, a vast metropolis of tiny gateways The ultimate dream, at least “Bombe”, the code-breaking proto- arranged in very precise patterns to maximise according to Intel’s futurists, is a computer he designed in 1939 performance, minimise power use and waste SEVEN nanometre process. Chips heat, and enable you to view cat videos online in that need so little power and will packed much closer together too - and increasingly intense resolution. be so cheap to replicate (if rather something few people realise is that in A key part of what makes this possible is expensive to develop) they will appear the early 2000s, transistors reached a shrinking the physical size of the transistors in everything from clothing tags to size where just making them smaller inside the chip, so designers can fit more onto coffee cups. The era of “ubiquitous did not increase performance. the integrated circuit. More transistors means computing” will then begin. Increases in CPU speed since faster mathematical performance. the 2000s have come instead from Looks good on a label design changes. The FinFETs and tri- Technology vs physics Except, even up at 14 Nm engineers gates and what have you. For instance, Engineers talk about the size of these are not sure what that measurement a FinFET can be 35 nanometres long transistors in nanometres. Back in 2013, CPUs means anymore. These “nanometre” in total, but have a central fin that is were built to a 22 nanometre standard. Today, measurements have become more just eight nanometres wide. the latest chips are on a 16 Nm process but... a marketing term, rather than Ultimately, engineers want to build that might no longer mean what people think. 5 describing any physical feature of gates that are made up of a just few The thing is, the smaller the transistors (or the chip design. It used to mean atoms. But silicon may not be the “gates” as they are also known) get, the more Number of the length of the transistor, but material for the job. So the next great they are disturbed by quantum effects. These transistors, then manufacturers started using technological leap forward could be gates are so small, the electrons they use to in billions, many different methods to increase as dramatic as the shift from valves to carry an electrical signal can bounce around or on the main performance. Transistors are now solid-state transistors themselves. “leak” and create mathematical errors. system-on- To deal with this, chip manufacturers have chip (SoC) had to develop increasingly sophisticated and of the 3D FUTURE complicated technology. Solutions include the Microsoft FinFET or “Fin Field Effect Transistor”, used by Xbox One Chip architecture used to be two-dimensional, etched into the surface of IBM, AMD and others. Or there’s Intel’s tri-gate videogame a silicon wafer using a process called lithography. Today, brain-meltingly console. An 3D transistor used in its complex technological processes allow manufacturers to build nano-scale Intel 386 by Ivy Bridge, Haswell and 3D structures into their chips, including tiny ﬁ ns and channels, and add ANTHONY CPU from Skylake series processors special insulating materials and more. Silicon may have a hard limit when it FORDHAM 1985 had that has given the comes to performance, but human ingenuity keeps pushing that limit back. company a real edge when 275,000.

34 POPULAR SCIENCE

MAY 2016

In a Warming World, Will Plants Hold More Carbon... Or Less?

THE DISCOVERY by CARL An international team of scientists from Australia, the United Alaskan tundra. The plants were specifically chosen to WILLIAMS States, Sweden and New Zealand, have found that a wide represent seven different types of ecosystems. range of different kinds of plants respond to temperature Researchers measured the respiratory response of the changes in strikingly similar ways. plants to temperature changes, and despite the wide range Over a three-year period, a diverse range of plant of plant types and diversity of habitats, found that the species – from herbs and grasses to towering trees – were “sensitivity of respiration” to temperature, decreases as surveyed at 18 locations across the planet, including plants get warmer, and was consistent across all 231 species temperate rainforests in Far North Queensland, boreal examined. This challenges current assumptions on how plant forests in Sweden, tropical forests in Costa Rica and the respiration responds to changes in temperature.

THE IMPLICATIONS currently assume that plant According to Owen Atkin from the ARC Centre of respiration doubles for every Excellence in Plant Energy Biology at ANU: “Our 10°C rise in temperature. This findings highlight the need to better understand the 400 assumption, however, has now response of plants to temperature changes if we are to found to be incorrect. predict how natural ecosystems will respond in future “We clearly demonstrate parts per million climate scenarios. there is a fundamental that global “We have a reasonably good understanding of response of respiration to atmospheric plant biology, but we haven’t translated that fully to temperature,” explains Mark levels of carbon current climate models.” Tjoelker of the Hawkesbury dioxide reached in The research, published online in the journal Institute for the Environment March 2015, 43 per PNAS, is the most comprehensive study of plant at Western Sydney University, cent above pre- respiration responses to temperature yet conducted, industrial levels and a co-author of the paper, and has important implications for predicting “and an over-simplification climatic responses to increased global temperatures of this response function in as well as our understanding of how plants may current climate models.” respond to a warming planet. Plants play a major role in Climate models that simulate the interactions of the global carbon cycle – the global cycles of carbon with land and oceanic systems, movement of carbon between

36 POPULAR SCIENCE Next

Ergo Propter Hoc

In a warmer world, plants may retain more of the carbon made available to them by photosynthesis and, therefore, possess greater capacity to act as carbon sinks

theatmosphere,oceansandland–byusingtheSun’s “What’s exciting about the crops as higher amounts of CO2 energy to convert carbon in atmospheric carbon dioxide research is they appear to have are made available for plant

(CO2)intoorganiccompounds,suchassugarsand found a convergence in the growth, with lower levels of fats.Weknowthisasphotosynthesis,andthisprocess temperature response of plant protein and micronutrients like resultsinaflowofCO2 fromtheatmospheretothe respiration, which represents iron and zinc observed. biosphere,causingplantstoactascarbonsinksthat asignificantstepforwardin According to Tjoelker, soak-up atmospheric CO2.Infact,plantsaccountfor improving the accuracy of current research is “just about 120 gigatonnes of carbon being removed from climatemodels.”saysMartin the tip of the iceberg” in the atmosphere every year. DeKauwefromtheClimateand our understanding of plant Butplantsdobreathe,orrather,theircellsconsume Forest Ecosystem Modelling respiration and how plants will oxygen and give off CO2.Cellularrespirationbyplants Group at Macquarie University. function in a warming world. returnsaroundhalfofthecarbontheycapture,back The research indicates that to the atmosphere, and so global rates of respiration in a warmer world plants may -howfastplantsarebreathing-haveasignificant retain more of the carbon influenceonthesizeofthelandcarbonsinkandinturn madeavailabletothemby the levels of atmospheric CO2. photosynthesis and, therefore, Climatemodelstodate,however,havepoorly possess greater capacity to represented the respiration response function to actascarbonsinks,whichour temperature in their simulations. climatemodelsshouldreflect. Also, by retaining more IN SHORT carbon,plantsincreasetheir Climate scientists were biomass, though this may not worried that higher necessarily mean biomass temperatures would mean humans find useful; we mainly plant “respiration” releases

useseedsorfruits. more CO2 than photosynthesis Indeed,workcarriedout sequesters. New studies show $1.2trillion under the Australian Grains Free that at higher temperatures, plants retain more carbon Air CO₂ Enrichment (AGFACE) and work more efficiency as the annual economic cost in US dollars of program, has reported carbon sinks. This could affect global warming, wiping 1.6% annually from reductions in the nutritional future climate models. global GDP contentofmanystaplefood

POPSCI.COM.AU 37 1

AVIATION THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THE 2016 PLANE EVER MADE

David Loury isn’t a classic-car kind of guy. But when he decided to INVENTION come up with a radically different design for a private plane, he turned to luxury automobiles—and their design-forward aesthetic—for inspiration. “Maserati and Mercedes-Benz were the two main cars I looked at, and I engineered ideas and concepts from them,” says the independent aerospace engineer. Those concepts evolved into the Valkyrie: a five-seat, single-piston-engine plane that he calls a “high-tech vehicle of the future.” AWARDS The Valkyrie’s exterior certainly looks futuristic—and beautiful.

38 POPULAR SCIENCE 1 With a 260-kilowatt engine, the Valkyrie can reach 260 knots (480 km/h). It has a range of over 1,900 kilometres.

2 Valkyrie’s single-piece Plexiglas canopy is the largest ever on a private plane, providing a 320- faster, with less fuel burn than a to start filling preorders for the degree view. Cessna or comparable aircraft. experimental version of the plane, The canard also makes it nearly Valkyrie X, as early as late 2016, impossible to stall— that is, to lose and aims to make the consumer That’s because Loury designed lift in midair. Coupled with simple version, Co50 Valkyrie, available in it to have aesthetic proportions: controls (just one handle-to-handle mid-2017. The only thing standing “a convex profile in the front, a throttle) and the information-rich between you and a Co50 Valkyrie is concave one in the back, and an Garmin G3X flight-display system, Invention: the $970,000 price tag. inflection point where they join.” Valkyrie is extremely user-friendly. Valkyrie “It’s not cheap to make a plane In addition to looking good, “When you start the engine, it’s Inventor: like this,” says Loury. But he Loury wanted Valkyrie to be as easy to control as a car,” Loury David Loury points out the price is only slightly efficient and easy to fly. So he says. “So even if you are a bad Company: more than similar private aircraft. Cobalt gave it a canard, a second wing pilot, it will forgive your errors.” “Before the Valkyrie, the offerings near the nose that supplies To a point that is. It’s certainly not Maturity: weren’t glamorous or fun,” he says, additional lift. This helps make completely stall-proof. vvvvv “and not nearly worth the effort.” the plane up to 20 per cent Loury’s startup, Cobalt, plans MATT GILES IMAGE COURTESY COBALT COURTESY IMAGE

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY Eric Heintz POPSCI.COM.AU 39 20 16 INVENTION AWARDS

RECREATION FINALLY, A HOVERBOARD THAT FLIES

1 Duru controls his altitude and speed On May 22, 2015, Lake Ouareau using a handheld remote fashioned in Quebec, Canada, was from a pair of pliers. peaceful and sunny. Then something straight out of 2 Snowboard bindings strap his feet to science fiction roared across the frame. the water. Alexandru Duru, balancing on a homemade hoverboard 4.8 metres above the surface, flew a distance of 275.8 m—smashing the previous Guinness World Record (a measly 49.9 m) for the farthest hoverboard flight. “Riding it is a feeling that no other machine can provide,” Duru says. “Nothing comes close.” Duru, a software engineer, has devoted the past five years to perfecting his hoverboard design, called Omni. His first attempt was little more than a piece of wood strapped to a motor and propeller. The current iteration—refined by his new company, Omni 2 Hoverboards, and local university students—is made from carbon fibre but still has a DIY feel: It achieves lift with eight electric motors each with a large propeller, all powered by 16 lithium-polymer batteries. Duru and his team are now developing a second prototype that’s sleeker, more powerful, and safe enough for an eager public. He plans for it to be 1 ready for distribution by 2017. “Most people imagine a future Invention: with hoverboards in them,” Omni he says. “I think it’s going to Inventor: Alexandru Duru happen for sure.” ALYSSA FAVREAU Company: Omni Hoverboards Maturity: vvvvv

40 POPULAR SCIENCE PHOTOGRAPHY BY John Kealey MAY 2016

Q&A With Adam Savage

A LIFETIME OF INSPIRATION Howdoyouget reason, it took me a THE MYTHBUSTERS started on a project? while to understand that When I build stuff, I like starting from scratch is to have the materials I the most powerful thing If science and technology are best will work with in front of I can do. As tedious as it left to professionals, nobody told Adam me so I can understand might seem, the result is them. But before getting better—the second try Savage and Jamie Hyneman. For 14 to them, I do construction is almost always better seasons, they have provided scientific reality and problem solving in than the first. checks to more than 1,000 common myths my head. The process of building in my head What’s the biggest on their hit TV series, MythBusters. In March is one of my favourite obstacle you’ve faced and 2016, the wild ride came to an end. feelings—I get an overcome? endorphin rush. Drawing At a certain point in every During their run, the dynamic duo and their co-hosts determined helps me remember build, I have felt like it the truth not by quoting expert opinions, but by conducting their the ideas I am having. would be a total failure. I’d own rough-and-ready experiments. Although they did consult I certainly think the get 70 per cent into it, and experts, “We always based our conclusions on something we pencil is one of the I would think that this is saw happen,” Savage says. most powerful tools for a piece of crap; why waste Before MythBusters, “DIY” usually referred to building a invention ever. I use this so much time on it? bookcase or insulating an attic. But the series showed us a really wonderfully crappy Then I would realise I quirkier, more creative application for hands-on skills. Nearly Paper Mate Sharpwriter have to push through. every myth called for a testing contraption, often involving No. 2 mechanical pencil. But it still happens. I explosives or firearms, operated by hosts who clearly loved I pick one up and I feel feel that way on almost creating gonzo rigs. like inventing. everything I do. You couldn’t watch without getting the itch to break out a power tool. It’s no coincidence, then, that Savage and Hyneman’s Any tips for DIYers? Do you ever popularity coincided with the rise of the maker movement, which Be ready to build takeadayoff? celebrates fun and often wildly impractical creations. everything three to No,Iamsoaddictedto “They were an enormous inspiration to the movement,” says four times. It is a making things. There Mark Hatch, CEO of the maker mecca TechShop. developmental process, are days I don’t build Savage and Hyneman would call that myth busted. “We andInevergetitright anything, but I am always stumbled on a way of doing the show that surfed the wave,” the first time. Being thinking. That’s how I Hyneman says. Still, they taught us all that technology exists to open to that fact helps function best. JAMES B. MEIGS MAARTEN DE BOER/GETTY IMAGES MAARTEN be used, abused, hacked, and modified. free me up. For some AS TOLD TO MATT GILES

POPSCI.COM.AU 41 20 16 INVENTION AWARDS

ENERGY lasting camera by making second, displaying the images photodiodes—devices that on an external monitor. SELF- convert light into electricity The group next plans to reduce —do double duty. In digital the camera’s size while increasing POWERED cameras, photodiodes measure its speed and resolution. That light. In solar panels, they way it could be used for specialty CAMERA harvest energy. The eternal projects where size and access camera’s photodiodes do both to power are concerns: to track jobs. This enables the camera wildlife as part of conservation to generate enough power to projects, to use less power on space- take photos forever—as long as exploration missions, or to provide At ﬁ rst glance, the boxy there’s light available. round-the-clock security. “eternal camera” looks like Nayar’s team began by For Nayar, the camera’s an old daguerreotype device. building just one double-duty Invention: appeal goes beyond its technical But appearances are deceiving. photo diode. Mounted on a robot Eternal accomplishments. “There’s a camera This is something new— that slowly moved it in a grid, it romantic aspect to this,” he says. a camera that powers itself. captured an entire picture one Inventors: “To have anything that can produce Shree K. Nayar The computer vision lab at pixel at a time, which took about Mikhail Fridberg information without consuming Columbia University, led by an hour. The current iteration Daniel C. Sims power, that can go on forever—it’s a computer scientist Shree K. of the camera incorporates 1,200 Affiliation: powerful concept.” Nayar, created this ever- pixels and takes a photo every Columbia ALYSSA FAVREAU University Maturity: vvvvv

2 1 The eternal camera’s image sensor uses 1,200 photodiodes in a 30-by-40 array. 1

2 Each photodiode 3 measures the light that passes through a lens and turns it into an electrical signal, which represents a single pixel. Combined, the signals create an image—just as they do in a standard camera.

3 Unlike conventional cameras, each of the eternal camera’s photodiodes are wired into a special circuit, which takes some of the electricity produced from the absorbed light and stores it in a capacitor to power itself.

42 POPULAR SCIENCE ILLUSTRATION BY MCKIBILLO COURTESY JIBO his repertoire after heshipsto so they can continually addto versions were oﬀ version ofJibo(standard home campaign will getadevelopers’ during theinitialcrowdfunding who shelledoutanextra $100 snap photos ondemand.Those a favourite bedtimestory or preferences. Hecan even recite autonomously learn individual robot can recognise faces and 3.4-kilogram, nearly 30-cm-high takes calls andgives alerts. Like The any goodassistant, Jibo he’s part ofthefamily,” shesays. with Jibo. “Hereally feels like devices,” Breazeal says. Not so everybody’s staring at their image ofthedinnertable where one another. “We allknow this as phones,distract peoplefrom Most machines,such smart ready to engage its owners. campaign, andtoday, Jibo is launched anIndiegogo She co-founded acompany, the same endearing charm. a real-life robotic assistant with MIT, Breazeal decidedto infuse insocialroboticsan expert at personality. Decades later, as to be,but they alsoradiated functional, aswe expect robots Star Wars loved R2-D2andC-3PO from As achild, TO HANGWITH YOU’LL WANT COMPANION THE ROBOT ROBOTICS . They were notonly

Cynthia Breazeal ered for $499), that there’s ahuge opportunity persona. “Alexa hasvalidated Amazon Echo withits Alexa hrhm I,sc sthe as such AIs, home ther friendly expressions. displays arange of to follow theuserand touchscreen faceswivels in aneagervoice. His his headwhileconversing Jibo inquisitively cocks ment andpersonal attention.” sense ofhigh-touch engage- half thetime.Jibobrings that says. “But Iforget she’s there of technology inthehome,”she for innovating theexperience SARAH STANLEY vvvvv Maturity: Jibo Company: Todd Pack Rich Sadowsky Andy Atkins Fardad Faridi Jonathan Ross (pictured) Cynthia Breazeal Inventors: Jibo Invention:

20 16 INVENTION AWARDS

MANUFACTURING FASTEST 3D PRINTER EVER

During a TedTalk in March 2015, Joseph DeSimone quietly revolutionised 3D printing. With little fanfare, he printed a palm-size geodesic sphere, a task that normally takes hours, in a little over six minutes. A serial entrepreneur, DeSimone had devised his rapid 3D-printing method with help from his former postdoc Alex Ermoshkin. Instead of using conventional techniques, they drew inspiration from the liquid-metal T-1000 Invention: assassin in Terminator 2. Continuous Liquid BREAKOUT YOUNG INVENTOR Like the ﬁ ctional robot, their M1 printer Interface Produc- tion (CLIP) “grows” solid objects out of liquid—by applying ANN MAKOSINSKI ultraviolet light and oxygen to resin in a Inventors: Joseph DeSimone technique called Continuous Liquid Interface Alex Ermoshkin Ann Makosinski’s first serious toy Production, or CLIP. “We’re using light as a very Ed Samulski was a box of transistors. She’s been delicate chisel that can make complex, amazing Company: things,” DeSimone says. The result is 25 to 100 Carbon tinkering ever since, creating projects times faster than conventional printing. It also Maturity: with a hot-glue gun and household works with more materials, including the entire vvvvv items. A few years ago, she used her polymer family, and at a higher resolution than hobby to solve a real-world problem. competitors, which build objects in layers— A friend in the Philippines making CLIP ideal for custom commercial mentioned she was failing school; manufacturing. Now the company DeSimone without electricity, she couldn’t do co-founded, Carbon, is partnering with BMW, Johnson & Johnson, and others to do just that.

her homework at night. So Makosinski N devised a flashlight powered by the heat of your hand. It uses peltier tiles, which generate electricity when Carbon created this one side is hotter than the other, to sphere as a test of the draw energy from the heat difference printer’s ability to work between hand and air. Makosinski with acrylate resin. submitted her invention to the 2013 Google Science Fair and won first place in her age group. She has since nabbed prizes from competitions such as the 2014 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, and has twice appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Makosinski is now enrolled at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, but hitting the books hasn’t stopped her from inventing. Her latest creation is the eDrink, which uses the heat from a coffee mug to charge a phone for 30 minutes. SARAH FECHT 1

1 Each dot sits on an inflatable bubble.

2 Air or liquid flows into a specific channel to reach the bubble, which inflates and lifts that dot.

3 A microfluidic chip controls the pattern that emerges.

ACCESSIBILITY led by Brent Gillespie, Alex $3,000; expanding them to a Russomanno, Mark Burns, full page could potentially raise QUEST FOR and Sile O’Modhrain, hope to the price to as high as $55,000. develop a refreshable display to To reduce that cost, the team THE HOLY translate an entire page at once. chose to make their device with The project was partially microfl uidics. BRAILLE motivated by O’Modhrain, who Here’s how: A refreshable is visually impaired. “Existing display must raise and lower displays don’t allow you to braille dots—a full page might access lots of braille code and include up to 10,000—to create graphical information,” she a pattern. In the team’s device, a says. “Math and music codes, for microfl uidic chip controls this Digital tablets provide access example, are displayed spatially, process by moving small doses to a world of information—but so that they’re spread over of fl uid through tiny channels. Invention: there’s no elegant, aff ordable multiple lines.” Holy Braille Their prototype is only a couple way for the visually impaired to Existing technology could Inventors: of inches wide, but the team read from them. That’s because conceivably allow for a full-page Brent Gillespie hopes to expand it to a full-page current braille readers, which braille screen that refreshes like Alex Russomanno display that would cost $1,000 attach to the bottom of a tablet, a tablet. But the price would Mark Burns to $2,000. As for the device’s (not pictured) provide room for only one line be astronomical. For instance, Sile O’Modhrain name, collaborator Noel Runyan of text at a time. Researchers single-line displays that rely Affiliation: coined a popular moniker: at the University of Michigan, on electronics cost more than University of Holy Braille. XAVIER HARDING Michigan Maturity: v vvvv

ILLUSTRATION BY MCKIBILLO POPSCI.COM.AU 45 20 16 INVENTION AWARDS

GADGETS PRECISE 3D SCANNING ON THE GO

In 2012, Rahul Koduri, Asfand Khan, and Richard Boers were designing a solar tracking system. But it didn’t work. To Invention: fi nd out what went wrong, eora 3D they needed to fi nd out how Inventors: the shape of a metal dish had Rahul Koduri warped—by performing a 3D Asfand Khan Richard Boers scan. “The cheapest option we Company: could fi nd for a scanner was eora 3D $20,000, which we couldn’t Maturity: aff ord,” Khan says. “So we vvvvv patched something together using open-source libraries, a

camera, and a cheap laser.” 3D EORA COURTESY

DRONES elusive, but Stackpole and manoeuvres, and a sleek profi le A DRONE FOR Lang still found success: that provides steadier, faster They discovered a market movement. This enables Trident THE EVERYDAY for aff ordable, collaborative to perform transects, which is underwater exploration. when it semi-autonomously COUSTEAU The pair decided to produce travels in long parallel lines to a kit that would make such capture the topography of a exploration “accessible to seabed or lake bed. Users will everyone,” Lang says. So far, also be able to modify their thousands of people have used drones with extra tools, such Four years ago, Eric Stackpole it to do things like observe as special lighting systems and and David Lang were on melon-headed whales and water samplers. a quest for treasure: They discover biofl uorescence in a Not to mention, the wanted to build a cheap clam species. inventors say, Trident is fun remotely operated vehicle Invention: Now their company, to control. “Normal ROVs feel (ROV) and explore an Trident OpenROV, has built a new much slower and heavier,” underwater cave rumoured Inventors: vehicle called Trident—a drone Lang says. Steering Trident is to contain gold. For help, Eric Stackpole that works right out of the box. “almost like fl ying a jet fi ghter,” they turned to like-minded David Lang Thousands of people in Stackpole adds. “When you get enthusiasts online. An open- Company: their online community helped down there and start looking source community quickly OpenROV OpenROV develop Trident’s around, it’s addictive.” OpenROV formed to contribute to the Maturity: new features: a dive depth of plans to start shipping the ROV’s design. vvvvv 100 metres, a three-thruster drone in November. The treasure proved design that allows for delicate SARAH STANLEY

46 POPULAR SCIENCE While doing online photos without capturing research to reﬁne their home- reliable depth data. Eora 3D built device, the team realised achieves higher precision via a other DIYers wanted their own soft-drink-can-sized device that cheap, accurate 3D scanners attaches to the smartphone too. So they put aside the solar and sweeps a green laser across project and created eora 3D (yes, an object. The laser allows the no capital). It’s a smartphone- phone to capture depth data connected laser scanner that for each pixel as the phone achieves the same resolution snaps photos. The smartphone as an industrial scanner but at app then stitches more than a a somewhat lower price: $415. thousand of these images into After a successful Kickstarter a digital model. campaign, the device will begin To capture the object from shipping to backers in June. all angles, users can place it on a Thekeytoeora3Disthatit Bluetooth-connected turntable, harnesses the processing power which rotates in sync with of smartphones, making it “as the laser. The turntable, which TASTIEST INVENTOR AWARD much a software innovation comes with the device, is ideal as a hardware innovation,” for scanning small objects. For says Khan. There are other larger ones, eora 3D can take a ALTON BROWN smartphone scanners, but few scans at diﬀerent angles they are low-resolution. That’s and stitch them together later. Food Network star Alton Brown

FROM TOP: PHOTOGRAPH BY SARAH DE HEER; COURTESY OPENROV DE HEER; COURTESY SARAH BY PHOTOGRAPH FROM TOP: because they stitch together SARAH STANLEY began hacking (his preferred term) kitchen devices on his food-science show, Good Eats. During season one, he made a fish smoker from a cardboard box. Since then, his hacks have grown in size and showmanship. For his first national culinary variety show in 2014, Edible Inevitable, Brown built his Mega Bake oven, which uses 54 one-thousand- watt lights to cook a pizza in three minutes. And his Jet Cream—two fire

extinguishers, one filled with CO2 and the other with a “top secret” chocolate- cream mixture—makes carbonated ice cream in just 10 seconds. “Experimentation is the finest expression of curiosity,” says Brown, who is currently on his second tour, Eat Your Science. “It’s trying to match what 2 you know with what you can learn and what can be done. So what do I say to kids and young adults? Take apart the lawnmower. Build the jetpack. And don’t forget the kitchen is a laboratory, and there’s one in every house.” 1 An HD video JASON LEDERMAN camera captures the underwater scene. 1 2 A neutrally buoyant tether sends live video and other flight data to the surface.

POPSCI.COM.AU 47 20 16 INVENTION AWARDS

HEALTH That’s what Giovanni as well as a tiny thermometer Traverso, a gastroenterologist that measures core body SWALLOW and biomedical engineer at temperature. It is the only pill Harvard Medical School, and Al of its kind that can track three A PILL TO Swiston, a biomaterials scientist vital signs at once. at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, So far, the prototype has MONITOR realized when they met at successfully been tested in pigs, YOUR VITALS a work event in 2012. At the and the team plans to try it in time, Traverso was working on humans next. If all goes well, ingestible devices and Swiston the military could one day use on vital-sign monitoring—so the device to monitor soldiers they decided to join forces to in the ﬁ eld for hypo thermia create what Traverso calls “an or dehydration. A marathon Vital signs are key indicators ingestible stethoscope.” runner could closely track her “It’s basically a really tiny heart rate during a race. And of health. But tracking some Invention: of these signals, such as the microphone that is able to listen PSM Pill doctors could look for abnormal body’s core temperature, can just like the doctor would,” Inventors: heart rhythms or early signs of require invasive tactics—which says Swiston. The PSM pill Giovanni Traverso asthma. The researchers hope is especially problematic for (short for “physiological status Robert Langer to one day incorporate drug Al Swiston active or injured patients. monitoring”) contains special delivery so the pill could also Almost anyone, however, can microphones that pick up the Affiliation: treat the conditions it detects. Harvard Medical swallow a pill. sounds of the heart and lungs, School, MIT’s CLAIRE MALDARELLI Lincoln Laboratory Maturity: v vvvv

2 1 Once a person swallows the pill, hydrophones (microphones that work underwater) pick up sounds coming from the heart and lungs, while a small thermometer measures core body temperature.

2 The monitor sends the sound and temperature data to a computer, where an algorithm separates the waveforms of the sounds into two distinct tracks: one for respiratory rate and one for heart rate. 3 3 As the pill travels through the GI tract, the doctor is able to continue monitoring vital signs until the pill passes—which happens within a day or two.

48 POPULAR SCIENCE ILLUSTRATION BY MCKIBILLO MAY 2016

The multiaxis industrial robots are essentially robotic arms equipped with extruding tools and the software to control them.

ARCHITECTURE printing, or MX3D. movement. The MX3D has six: “We thought, ‘Why not get It is a mobile, freely moving A BRIDGE an industrial robot, attach an robot that can travel with and advanced welding machine to around the printed structure PRINTER it, and see what it does?’” says to build an object of nearly any Tim Geurtjens, chief technology size or shape. oﬃ cer of Joris Laarman Lab To showcase MX3D’s ability and its spinoﬀ R&D company, to create durable, large-scale also called MX3D. objects, the team is printing For the past 12 years, the Joris First, the team developed a fully functioning steel Laarman Lab in Amsterdam unique software to control bridge in Amsterdam—a city has crafted experimental the industrial robotic arm. of 165 canals. They wanted furniture and artwork. To Then they attached extruders— to do a project that would produce their more ambitious which are the parts of printers Invention: demonstrate the technology designs, Laarman and his that push out material—to MX3D and inspire people at the partners adopted 3D printing it and started printing with Inventors: same time. “So we came to the early on. But existing printers copper and aluminium. Tim Geurtjens idea of printing a footbridge,” Joris Laarman couldn’t produce their larger Most 3D printers attach the Gijs van der Velden Geurtjens says, “since we are creations. So the team built its extruding tools to a frame, Company: from Amsterdam, after all.” own system, called multiaxis 3D which gives them three axes of GRENNAN MILLIKEN COURTESY MX3D; ALL INVENTOR IMAGES COURTESY OF THE INVENTORS COURTESY IMAGES MX3D; ALL INVENTOR COURTESY MX3D Maturity: vvvvv

POPSCI.COM.AU 49 thE iNveNtOr’s haNDBOOk BY RACHEL NUWER /// ILLUSTRATIONS BY DOUBLENAUT

We are living in a golden age of invention.

Makerspaces and online creator communities abound; information is abundant and free; equipment is affordable and available; and crowdsourcing platforms offer a great way to test interest and build excitement around a new idea—as well as to fund it. Because barriers to

entry are now practically non-existent, these days anyone can be an inventor.

As a result, the number of amateur creators is on the rise. Most important, people of every age, gender, and background are involved in this movement. “You don’t have to be an expert in a field in order to make an original contribution,” says Steve Sasson, inventor of the digital camera and a 2011 National Inventors Hall of Fame inductee. “You can become an inventor › simply by having an idea, working on it, and refining it.” ›

iDeATiON

Every Wednesday I’m inspired by every- In historical A lot of inventions we do a live Google+ one around me, and studies of inventors, that come about hangout called Show by reading about what we’ve discovered are because new and Tell ” “ . People from things are like in other that they often find technologies allow around the world show parts of the world. the world to be people to apply off what they’re work- When I see someone irritating, and they or combine them in ing on. Solving prob- struggling, I want want to fix it. ways that haven’t lems that they bring to to do everything I can been done before. us is the number-one to ease that struggle. eRiC HiNtZ place I get inspiration Historian, lEON for new ideas. DANiellE Lemelson Center for SANDleR APPlesTONE the Study of Invention and Innovation at Executive Director, liMOR fRieD CEO, the Smithsonian Deshpande Center Founder and Other Machine Co. for Technological Lead Engineer, Innovation at MIT Adafruit

50 POPULAR SCIENCE MAY 2016

POPSCI.COM.AU 51 So you have an idea. How do you know if it can bring you fame and fortune? Follow this ﬂowchart to ﬁnd out.

Try Try again! DOeS A again! SiMilAR PRODUct AlReADY eXisT?

Not really Can you No hire or partner with Yes No someone who can help? Yes Does your idea somehow improve on what’s already out there? Not sure Yes Is there a Nope market for it? Yes Will it be Run the idea an affordable, by 20 to 50 competitively experts and/or priced product? potential customers. Do they express enthusiasm and interest? Not sure Yes

Yes Are you driven, passionate, and stubborn about your idea yet intellectually Meh, I just want money and fame honest with yourself?

Yes

You’re a Are you willing to Let’s hobbyist invest years of your go! Yes inventor! life bringing this thing to market?

Um, not really

PROTOtYPiNG Fear of failure (or looking crazy or stupid) is the biggest hurdle for inventors. “You can’t be concerned with that,” says Ayah Bdeir, founder and CEO of littleBits, a platform of easy-to-use modules that snap together into electronic projects. “You have to get over it and just jump.” ››

52 POPULAR SCIENCE MAY 2016

1 Research & Model DIGITAL MODELLING > 2D MILLING MACHINES > 3 Finalise and 3D modelling and Commonly used in Inventors, like design software, such as industry for producing The final prototype artists, start with AutoCAD or SolidWorks parts with precise sizes should be presentable for representations before and shapes potential investors and they attempt to make customers. something. Among their 3D PRINTERS > Used to methods and tools: 2 Experiment create three-dimensional SCALING UP > The tools you objects in plastic, metal, used in the experimental RESEARCH > The Internet The creative process wax, nylon, and more phase might get the job is a great way to find requires trial and error— done, but your final proto- available materials and you must test your proto- LASER CUTTERS > Uses a type will be built to scale possible technologies and type, tweak it to make it high-power beam to make and it will likely entail techniques you can apply. work better, and then test exact cuts at high speeds more expensive materials The broader your search, it again. Repeat over and and more careful design. the better. Mixing disci- over again until there’s no ELECTRONICS TOOLS > plines often produces room for improvement. Such as a multi meter OUTSIDE HELP > If a proto- the best results. The goal is to quickly and for measuring electric type’s final creation inexpensively prove the resistance, voltage, and requires skills you don’t DRAWING > Pencil & paper technical feasibility of current; an oscilloscope have and can’t easily learn, your product. Tools for for debugging circuits; hire expert help. MODELLING > Cardboard, this phase include: and a soldering iron X-Acto knife, hot glue

POPSCI.COM.AU 53 › fUNDiNG ›

Most inventions that die—the good and the bad alike— do so because of a lack of money. For those who are not independently wealthy, there are still a number of options for funding the invention process.

Crowdfunding first place for his design yourself,” she says. If way to pitch your idea is a and used the prize money customers like your idea personal connection or an S. Brett Walker chose to start a company. Similar and you listen to their introduction: “Investors Kickstarter to fund invention challenges are feedback, she says, you’ll fi nd social validation to the Circuit Scribe—a hosted by Netflix, the Bill soon see a profi t. be valuable,” she says. rollerball pen fi lled with and Melinda Gates Foun- conductive ink— dation, and—for young Investors Outsourcing because his invention was inventors—the National straightforward (“Every- Inventors Hall of Fame and Prior to co-founding the Licensing or selling your one knows how to use a Georgia Tech. company behind commu- intellectual property can pen”) and inexpensive. He nications gadget goTenna, spare you the hassles of also thought it would be a Self-funding Daniela Perdomo worked a startup. For Alexander boon for the maker com- with tech startups. So she Nectow, the co-inventor munity, which is active on Limor Fried started already had venture- of Retro-TRAP—which crowdfunding sites; such Adafruit by investing capitalist connections. enables high-resolution platforms can also test $10,000 of her own money. They provided funds molecular studies of the interest in an idea. This let her test interest and to build goTenna, in brain—licensing to two get immediate feedback. exchange for a slice of the drug companies was a Competitions “Rather than trying to raise company. “If you don’t no-brainer (heh). “My ma- $5 million and then blowing have a network in the jor interests are in basic In 2007, NASA challenged it all because there’s a flaw tech world, there are a lot science and research, the public to design that you didn’t realise, first of VCs and angels who not starting a company,” the next generation of do a small manufacturing publicly post their emails he says. “I preferred to astronaut gloves. Peter run of a handmade design, or are active on Twitter,” let others apply the tool Homer, an engineer, took using money you put in she says. But the best for their own needs.”

TO MARKeT

Ideally, you’ve been developing a community of The challenges of scaling up production often catch “true believers,” as tech entrepreneur Danielle Applestone inventors off -guard, so the earlier you begin thinking calls them—people who know about and support your about manufacturing and introducing yourself to manu- product. Get your prototypes into their hands fi rst. Not facturers, the better equipped you will be for the future. only will those people provide valuable feedback, they’ll also A typical company might reach one per cent of the total spread the word. To extend your reach, evangelise about market in its fi rst year, three per cent in its second, and your product at conferences, meetups, and hackathons, and fi ve per cent in its third. So if your total market is about write about it in forums and blogs. The media can also help 10,000 people, you’ll need to make 100 products your fi rst you reach new audiences and build your customer base. year. For anything fewer than 1,000 units, you should Seize upon every opportunity for an interview, even if it’s probably just build your products in-house, following not with a major news outlet; you never know who the the same procedures you used for your prototype. For story might reach. Most companies hire professional 1,000 to 5,000 products, team up with nearby manufac- marketers to help with this phase. Finally, use feedback and turers to ensure an easy working relationship and low market research to determine demand. This will help you transportation costs. Once you hit 10,000 units, however, set the pace for scaling up. you’ll need to fi nd a large-contract manufacturer. MAY 2016

POPSCI.COM.AU 55 FOR LOVE OF A RED PLANET It’s not afﬁliated with any space agency, its members aren’t astronauts and will probably never go to space, but the Mars Society remains dedicated to a single ideal: the human colonisation of the Fourth Rock from the Sun. BY ANTHONY FORDHAM MAY 2016

I WANTED TO BECOME AN ASTRONOMER, BUT I DIDN’T HAVE THE MATHS. SO I BECAME A GEOLOGIST. PHOTO BY DR LINE DRUBE BY PHOTO

POPSCI.COM.AU 57 FOR LOVE OF A RED PLANET

he sun rises on a desolate landscape. Theseredhillshave neverhadtheirharsh angles softened by afallofleaves,ablanketof moss or even the lace-like encrustationsoflichen.Andit’s beenaeonssincewaterflowed here,thoughyoucanstillsee where ancient streams cut their wayintotherock. Theoverwhelmingsense here is of stillness, of the unimaginable blankness of deep time,ofaplacecontenttowait, forathousandyears,amillion. Suddenly,afigurecrosses thehorizon.Itstops,raises ahandasiftoshielditseyes againstthebrightmorningsun. Itwearsaspacesuit,fishbowl- helmeted, encrusted in sensors andothertechnology.The When the team is in “full simulation” mode, every time they leave figurestaggersdownintoa the habitat they must wear space suits. Each rig weighs up to 20 kg, shallow depression. Dust shifts the 1G equivalent of the 120kg worn by the Apollo moonwalkers. around its ankles, stirring fitfullyinalightbreeze. Thenthefigurereachesup andtakesoffhishelmet. the Flashline Marsh Arctic government, the Mars Society will do valuable research He breathes deep, then makes Research Station. That tiny on Martian fi eld work. NASA, ESA and the Russians anoteonaclipboard.Because facility, looking like little more will look at their data with interest. But the money thisplaceofredrocksand thanawatertank,simulates comes from donors and members, and no one involved desolation isn’t Mars. It’s Utah. Martianfieldworkinan has any illusions that they personally stand any kind Andthemaninthespacesuit entirely different way. of chance of going to space, let alone Mars itself. isn’taninterplanetarytraveller. LocatedinnorthernCanada What is this strange organisation? Vaguely He’samemberoftheMars on Devon Island, FMARS sits reminiscent of the great “societies” of the age of Society,andpartofacrewdoing inaregionofpermafrost,in exploration - such as the Royal Society - the Mars Society experimentsatMDRS-theMars an ancient impact crater. It’s is a grassroots club, a gang of Mars-obsessed scientists, Desert Research Station. 165 km north of the nearest artists and people of no particular expertise who all town (Resolute, Nunavut) and share a common goal: to do whatever they can to help in VOLUNTEER ARMY isclassifiedasapolardesert. the long, hard road to a human presence on Mars. It’soneoftheSociety’stwo It’s also what the Mars Society While the Society is global, there are regional majorresearchfacilities. callsa“Marsanalogue”.Here, versions. All have the same philosophy - humans on TheotheroneisFMARS, withoutthesupportofany Mars - but for such mundane purposes as tax breaks PHOTO BY MARS SOCIETY AUSTRALIA / DR LINE DRUBE SOCIETY AUSTRALIA MARS BY PHOTO

TIMELINE: 1951 1912 THE SANDS A PRINCESS OF MARS MARS IN OF MARS (ARTHUR 1898 (EDGAR RICE C CLARKE) 1959 THE WAR OF BURROUGHS) 1948 1950 Clarke’s debut is THE SIRENS OF THE WORLDS The author of MARVIN THE THE MARTIAN the fi rst “hard SF” TITAN (KURT FICTION (H G WELLS) Tarzan set a CHRONICLES novel about Mars, VONNEGUT) MARTIAN Martians come swashbuckling (LOONEY TUNES) (RAY BRADBURY) has a space ship Brainwashed Earth Science fi ction writers have always had a to Earth and romance on Mars This iconic Like much of called Ares and deals exiles settle Mars get killed by our based on the work character looks the early fi ction, with terraforming - and then re-invade fascination with the red planet. Even the germs. Remade of astronomer innocuous but his assumes Mars remarkable given it Earth. Because ones who know it isn’t really red. Here are approximately one Percival Lowell. tech packs a punch, is inhabited by was written 10 it’s Vonnegut, some key moments in Martian fi ction. billion times since, Its relationship to much to Daffy older, more years before humans it’s probably a in various media. reality is... slight.. Duck’s chagrin. advanced beings. went to space. metaphor.

58 POPULAR SCIENCE MAY 2016

LEFT: Located in the Utah badlands, the Mars Desert Research Station simulates the arid conditions similar to those on the red planet. BOTTOM: Will Mars’ 38% gravity allow explorers to just hang paper from hooks and keep objects in open bins? It’s difficult to test.

that the Planetary Society was too broad-based. We needed something more focused.” The Mars Society Australia formed soon after and Clarke was elected to the board in 2001. For him, INTEREST IN the Society offers scientists one MARS WANED very obvious and big advantage. DURING THE HEIGHT “The big problem OF THE COLD WAR in science today is that its enormously AND DIDN’T REIGNITE difficult to get funding for multi-disciplinary UNTIL MARS GLOBAL science,” he says. “If you want to study the SURVEYOR IN 1996 reproductive system of the Corroboree arrival at the red planet of frog or the biochemistry of the and governance, national societies exist. Our is the the Mars Global Surveyor. hibernation of the Bongong Mars Society Australia. For the first time in 20 years, moth, you can do that. But if (relatively) high resolution you want to go to a remote LOCAL KNOWLEDGE photos were streaming area and simulate a Martian Australian Popular Science spoke with the current back to Earth, capturing field expedition, there’s just no president, Jon Clarke. His first taste of the potential of imaginations once more. university that will give you human spaceflight was as a child, following the great “It was a new age for money for that.” Apollo adventure via the pages of LIFE Magazine (and exploration,” says Clarke. maybe the odd issue of Popular Science?). “Because we could look at the A MARTIAN WORKDAY “I wanted to become an astronomer,” he says. “But I images on the Internet almost What the Mars Society’s didn’t have the maths. So I became a geologist.” He sees as soon as they arrived.” “missions” to its two going to Mars as the logical next step beyond the moon. As a result, in 1997 the Mars simulators do is integrate “I remember being disappointed when I realised a Mars Society first formed in the US. engineering, biology, human mission wasn’t going to happen in the 1980s.” “It grew from a group called resources and more to see Interest in Mars waned during the height of the the Mars Underground,” says exactly how a Martian field Cold War, and didn’t re-ignite until 1996 with the Clarke. “There was a feeling mission should be designed.

1961 STRANGER IN 1992- A STRANGE LAND (ROBERT A 1968 1996 HEINLEIN) DO ANDROIDS RED/GREEN/ A human raised DREAM OF BLUE MARS 1967 1990 (KIM STANLEY as a Martian must ELECTRIC 1993 1964 SHEEP? MAN PLUS 1985 TOTAL RECALL ROBINSON) reintegrate on DOOM (ID SOFTWARE) SANTA CLAUS (PHILIP K DICK) (FREDERIK POHL) WATCHMEN (TRISTAR) An epic trilogy of Earth. Origin of In the story To survive on (ALAN MOORE) Arnold the colonisation Set on Mars, this videogame had the word “grok” CONQUERS THE MARTIANS that inspired Mars, a man is This famous comic Schwarzenegger and terraforming revolutionary “2.5D” graphics and (“to understand”) (EMBASSY Bladerunner, illegal transformed sends its Superman goes to Mars and of Mars. A real made its developers overnight which is still used PICTURES) Martian escapees into a cyborg surrogate, Dr does violence. Also, benchmark in millionaires. Despite the hacknied by uber-geeks Regarded as one of complain of the and eventually Manhattan, to something about Martian fiction storyline involving ancient Martian to this day. the worst movies terrifying oldness abandons his ties consider his options a prostitute with despite not being portals and demons from hell, ever made. of the place. with Earth. on Mars. three boobs... you know, that good. it essentially defined the “first

POPSCI.COM.AU 59 FOR LOVE OF A RED PLANET

THIS: Fully suited “simulacranauts” test a sampling device. LEFT: Rovers have proven their worth on Mars, and will surely accompany any human exploration team. BOTTOM: Testing newer suits in Australia’s harsh interior. Despite the plants, this is very Mars-like environment,

“That Russian experiment, in the simulated spacesuits.” Mars 500, that simulated the Called Mars 160, the mission (which will start at space journey,” says Clarke. MDRSin2016)willworkcloselywithNASA’s Ames “Whatwedoissimulatethe Research Centre and the Russian space agency fieldworkonthesurface too.Theaim?Tosimulateafieldprogramfor the of the planet. Everything is exploration of Mars. recorded, analysed. Human Ofcourse,thisallcostsmoney,andtheMars safetycomesfirst,butafter Society relies on donations and support from that it’s all science.” members.Butitsfacilitiesare“opentoeverybody” Clarke says more than one Clarkesays,whileNASAtendstospendmillions spaceagencyisinterestedin doingaveryspecificexperiment,thenlocks all its the Mars Society’s results. equipmentawayinashed. NASA and the ESA are big supporters, while the Russians APLANETGIRTBYSEA show interest. Clarke is an advocate for the construction of a new As mentioned, currently and even more sophisticated “Martian base” at the Society has two stations, Arkaroola in the Flinders ranges. MDRS in Utah and FMARS “It’ssufficientlyisolated,butithasanall-weather onremoteDevonIslandin runway 30 minutes from the site,” he says. “It’s about Canada. In fact, Clarke is due aday’sdrivefromAdelaideandtherearenomining JOIN THE JOURNEY! tojoinateamatFMARSinthe leasesornativetitletoworryabout.”InfactArkaroola The Mars Society Australia is open to northern summer of 2017, as wasAustralia’sfirsteco-tourismventure.“There new members. For a yearly fee, you’ll thecrewgeologist. areevenradioactivehotspringsatParalana,” says get email updates, invites to various “There’llbetwoengineers,a Clarke. The location is under a weaker part of Earth’s events, and of course the opportunity to biologist, myself as geologist, a magneticfieldandisalsosubjecttohigherthan contribute. The Society wants - needs - health and safety officer and a normal levels of cosmic radiation - all things that people to come up with ideas and help out journalist,” says Clarke. “We’ll makeitagreatMarsanalogue. with projects. Think interplanetarily, act be running in simulation mode “One of the really big advantages is that Arkaroola locally. marssociety.org.au most of the time. That means if wouldletussimulateareallylongtraverse,”says we want to go outside, it will be Clarke, referring to the long overland trips any PHOTO BY MARS SOCIETY AUSTRALIA / DR LINE DRUBE / MARS ONE / DR LINE DRUBE MARS SOCIETY AUSTRALIA MARS BY PHOTO

2000 2000 MISSION TO MARS 2000 2001 1996 THE GREAT (BEUNA VISTA) RED MARS RED FACTION 2003 VOYAGE WALL OF MARS First of the “Mars (WARNER BROS) 2001 (VOLITION) ILIUM (DAN (STEPHEN (ALASTAIR fever” movies that In the next of the GHOSTS OF MARS The “other” famous SIMMONS) BAXTER) REYNOLDS) presumably started “Mars fever” films (SCREEN GEMS) Mars videogame. In the far future, In an alternate 1986 Reynolds gives pre-production of the early 2000s, For some reason, One of the first Mars is the site 1995 where JFK was Mars as the origin in the late 1990s, Val Kilmer must get director John games to allow of a bizarre DOOM II: HELL ON EARTH never assassinated, of one of his post- starred Tim Robbins the better of a robot Carpenter sets his the player to dig re-enactment of (ID SOFTWARE) NASA eschews both human societies in and a mysterious that can do kung-fu remake of Assault their way through the Trojan War Adds more nasties and eventually Shuttle and Voyager his award-winning beam of light. while dealing with on Precinct 13 on a level, almost but by post-humans moves the action to Earth, but programs to a first Revelation Space Tried to be all Mars and weird Mars. Because not entirely in away who resemble the otherwise the same DOOM we love. woman on Mars. series of novels. 2001... and failed. bugs or something. “Mars fever”. unlike Minecraft. Greek Gods.

60 POPULAR SCIENCE MAY 2016

MEANWHILE ON REALITY TELEVISION

So,MarsOne.RememberMarsOne? The one-time darling of the mainstream media of an entire crew fazes him. that promised to send four colonists on a one- “None of the disasters way trip to Mars, using commercial space tech, in space shut down their and paying for it with an ambitious reality TV respective space programs,” program? Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp (who we he says. “Flying in space has may have interviewed a few years back) claims enormous risk. Yes people die the show could be bigger than the Olympics, in their cars every day but bigger than Ben Hur, bigger than Jesus probably. you personally have a tiny Unfortunately, if you visit the Mars One website chance of being in an accident. today, you won’t find any news about the When you go to space though, progression of mission, but you will be invited Mars One’s fantastical concept for a the chance of disaster is to purchase a book about what Mars One is and habitat - realistic or hopelessly optimistic? almost one in ten. Who would what the colonists will need to do to survive. sign up for those odds?” His Critics (including MIT and a number of AustraliancandidateJoshRichardsspentafew implication is clear: he would. journalists) are now fairly sure Mars One will days in a fake habitat at Circular Quay to promote Yet Clarke himself is well never launch anyone toward the red planet, ever. the DVD release of Matt Damon’s The Martian, past the age of experiencing Not that the program is a scam, as such, rather but he offered no actual updates about Mars One. spaceflight personally. that it’s hopelessly naive. Lansdorp breezily While it was a beautiful dream, it’s likely “What do I hope we achieve dismisses concerns the colony will poison itself the harsh realities of what it takes to even get before my time is up?” he asks. with excess oxygen, and that his cost estimates humans to low Earth orbit have taken the wind “I’d like to see humans back are at least an order of magnitude too small. out of Mars One’s (solar?) sails. We wish it was a in space, beyond Low Earth Meanwhile, the “accepted candidates” real thing that will really happen. But it probably Orbit.” He doesn’t exactly say continue to do media and promote the company. isn’t, and it probably won’t. www.mars-one.com we’re destined for the stars, but he says we should keep up the work, and keep our eyes on eventual Martian explorers will have to take. “We need the technology is available the prize: Mars. an empty circle, 200 kilometres across. Australia is one nearly off the shelf, or exists “Whatever happens, good of the few places left where you can get that.” in prototype form. We’ve been or bad,” says Jon Clarke, “the The Mars Society Australia has designed a new putting people on the ISS for choice will be up to us.” habitat it calls MarsOZ. The cost to build? A cool years, and some astronauts million. But Clarke says a downsized version could be have clocked up the equivalent DISCLOSURE: Our built for around $300K. of a round-trip to Mars. People interview with Mars Society “The interest is there, but the money hasn’t are routinely spending six Australia president Jon yet come,” he says. Though the ANU school of months in space.” Clarke is thanks to the latest engineering designed MarsOZ, “we run into the Over the next hour or so, instalment of the videogame integrated research funding problem again,” Clarke Clarke and I go on a long and DOOM. This fourth game in says. Uni funds are tight. No one wants to spend rambling conversational the long-running series has money on “general” science. journey discussing all the amazing graphics and frenetic possible pitfalls and dangers action... and it’s set on Mars. OUR MARTIAN DESTINY and “unknown unknowns” of Find it in shops and via digital “I firmly believe we could put people on Mars within a potential Mars shot. But he download from 13th May. a decade, if money was no object,” says Clarke. “Yes, refuses to relent. Not even the That’s right. Friday the 13th. it would cost a few hundred billion but so much of prospect of a disaster, the loss doom.com

2015 2011 THE MARTIAN THE MARTIAN (MATT DAMON!) (ANDY WEIR) 2012 A mere four years An astronaut is JOHN CARTER after the novel we left behind on Mars (DISNEY) get this. Jon Clarke 2004 2005 and must fend A disastrously- says it’s one of the 2016 DOOM3 (ID SOFTWARE) DOOM (UNIVERSAL PICTURES) for himself while marketed ﬁlm few movies that DOOM (ID SOFTWARE) The game that started it all is back, Pits The Rock against demonic awaiting rescue. version of Edgar captures “why Like all the DOOM games/movies, with a cutting-edge 3D graphics mutations of scientists named Popular via eBook Rice Burrough’s we would go to this is an action/horror shooter that engine, set in a Martian reﬁnery after the developers of the original due to liberal use of ancient Barsoom / Mars, the wonder starts on Mars, with demons. The being overrun by demons. SOP. game. Regarded as... poor. blogger-speak. Mars stories. of that experience.” graphics will blow your mind.

POPSCI.COM.AU 61 DELICIOUSUNNATURALLY

Our obsession with “natural” food could be holding us back, at least that’s the argument in Jayson Lusk’s latest book. But does he put too much faith in the altruism of the free market? Should we (or indeed can we?) trust industrial agriculture to keep us healthy?

In one of the ﬁrst chapters of and melting them together in Unnaturally Delicious, Jayson a dish. The recipe claimed half Lusk’s new manifesto detailing an hour was needed to prepare “How Science and Technology the dish, but it took them all are Serving Up Super Foods to afternoon. The result? It was Save the World”, he describes a pretty good, but it wasn’t quite memorable meal with his wife right. “Guess we’ll just have to at the Las Vegas Mesa Grill, wait till our next trip to Vegas to “one of the trendy restaurants have the real deal,” Lusk laments. owned by the celebrity chef The point of this anecdote is to Bobby Flay.” As fans of Mexican highlight how the “naturalness” and south-western food, they of and genuine from-scratch course “thoroughly enjoyed” the nature of the recipe made it not restaurant’s signature entrée: more enjoyable, but less. Some goat cheese queso fundido. people might like this kind of So thoroughly did they enjoy cooking. But odds are most of us this entrée, that his wife bought don’t. In Unnaturally Delicious, Flay’s cookbook. And with that, Lusk, a distinguished professor their disappointments began. of Agricultural Economics at First, the fuss over ﬁnding the Oklahoma State University, right kind of chilli peppers. whips up a benevolent portrait of Then, the time spent roasting technological change, recounting the peppers, making a roux, the stories of various “disruptive” assembling the various quesos innovations that could save our

BY NADIA BERENSTEIN MAY 2016

POPSCI.COM.AU 63 UNNATURALLY DELICIOUS

“CAGE-FREE EGG PRODUCTION CREATES ANOTHER SET OF COMPLEX PROBLEMS

lives and our planet, if only we’d get over our nostalgic obsession torusharoundwithoutacareintheworld,inagrassy with so-called naturalness. Because naturalness ain’t that great. meadow? — but is that kind of life actually best for In the book, readers encounter a techno-utopia that is new yet domesticatedhens?It’snotatallclear. familiar, attuned to our needs in spite of ourselves, and always Whileethicaleatersshouldmaybesuckdownthe perfectly at our command. But as might be evident from his robochef additional egg cost, cage-free production creates another ardour (see “Machine Cuisine” boxout), in Lusk’s zeal to celebrate set of complex problems, including increased risk of technology’s triumphs in “overcoming” nature’s limits, he frequently diseaseandhenmortalityduetointra-hensquabbles, oversells his case, touting the latest technological ﬁ xes while signiﬁcant environmental and air quality issues, and downplaying the complexity of choices needed to get us there. growing (human) worker dissatisfaction. Unnaturally Delicious excels in some important respects. There Yes,thecrampedbarecageisprettyobjectivelybad. is much in this book to please a reader curious about what the Buttherearechoicesthatliebetweenthe“freeand farmers of the future are up to. Lusk has a relish for the technical natural” hen and the miserable egg factory. aspects of agronomy, and writes with lucidity and enthusiasm, Luskdescribessomeoftheemergingsolutionsthat for instance, about the “precision farming” methods that combine will allow us to eat our omelettes in good conscience: GPS, ingenious sampling techniques, and big data analytics, enhanced cage systems designed with hen behaviour allowing farmers to customise the application of water, fertilisers, in mind, which include perches and nesting areas; or a and pesticides on a nearly plant-by-plant basis, minimising the funkyDutchhenfactorybuildingcalledtheRondeel. resource intensity and environmental impacts of farming.

HEN OR FARMER: WHICH COMES FIRST? In another intriguing chapter, Lusk examines the eff ects of a recent California ballot referendum banning the use of battery cages on the business of industrial egg production. A hen in a battery cage seems such a self-evidently miserable thing that it’s diffi cult to think of the cage as anything but an invention of profi t-maximising maniacs, but Lusk describes how its design solves multiple problems entailed in hen rearing. “There’s a reason farmers started bringing their hens indoors decades ago,” he reminds us. “It wasn’t because they were evil This seems an obviously cruel way to farm. But is ‘factory farmers’ but because they could provide a safer and fully open pasture bad more stable environment for the hens.” Getting rid of cages and in a different way? letting hens run free seems like a great idea — who doesn’t want

64 POPULAR SCIENCE MAY 2016

He also suggests creating a market for animal welfare credits, similar to the emissions permits sold to incentivise investment in cleaner energy. In Lusk’s accounting, the California ballot initiative, motivated by misguided sentimentality but unwilling to back up its feelings with investments in new methods of egg production, made little diff erence to the actual experiences of hens. For Lusk, this story has a clear moral: meaningful change comes neither from the ballot box nor from government regulations and standards, but from investment in basic research and technological innovations, guided by free market processes. Perhaps, in an age of opportunists and “tangential experts” such as the mega-popular Food Babe (see boxout overleaf), this kind of book is vital and necessary. To many intelligent, well-meaning, and infl uential people, the call for more local food and more farmer’s MACHINE markets, less processed food and less fast food, seems like a no-brainer. These are solutions to Western CUISINE culture’s anguished and dissociative relationship to food, our shamefully fat children, our pained and dying bodies, our ravaged and warming planet. Clearly, everyone who crab bisque by duplicating And it is absolutely critical to question the pieties cares about fi ne food the movements of a that associate the “natural” with the good and the needs the services of “a celebrity chef. harmless, to ask who benefi ts and who bears the costs, personalised chef that Lusk’s faith in the and to calculate just what those costs are. makes perfect dishes every infallibility of the kitchen time, without complaining robot is almost touching: TRUST THE MARKET(?) and without pay.” A “The robot doesn’t forget But for the moral authority of the “natural,” Lusk robochef, like Rosie from whether it added an unquestioningly substitutes the moral authority of the Jetsons, could be just ingredient, how long the markets. Repeatedly, he suggests that the market the machine to salvage onions have been sautéing, picks winners and losers for the greater good of all. desire from disappointment. or when to reduce the heat.” Discussing bioengineered yeasts, for instance, he This robochef, Lusk You’d never be able to informs us, isn’t just a tell the difference between claims: “to the extent that biotechnology applications dream of a future past, the robochef’s handiwork can pass the market test, they may also address but a present-day reality. and that of the master chef. concerns that many social justice advocates express Designed by Moley “Actually, the robot would about exploitative plantations, high food prices, and Robotics, a prototype make the dish precisely the unequal access to quality, nutritious foodstuff s.” This robochef — a pedestal same every time, whereas may or may not be true with regards to these products, topped by a two-metre even the best chef is known but it should be abundantly clear that social utility is cylinder with programmable to make the occasional not an inevitable consequence of commercial success. robotic arms — debuted at mistake.” Such a machine, One chapter in particular, pointedly titled “Waste a German industrial fair in he crows, could make the Not, Want Not,” exemplifi es both the book’s greatest 2015, where it prepared a entire kitchen obsolete. strengths — its lucid accounting of costs and benefi ts, its descriptions of technologies in development and machines in operation — and its greatest liability, a credulous insistence on the benevolence of With a bad technological entrepreneurs in a free market. Thermomix, you The chapter focuses on Beef Products International throw everything (BPI), and its chief product: lean fi nely textured beef. in a pot and it Founded by Eldon Roth in 1981, BPI pioneered explodes in your technologies for separating “high value edible protein” face. A bad robot from cartilage, fat, and other components of beef kitchen simply scraps, the tissue that remains on a beef carcass after strangles you to butchering which would otherwise go largely to waste. death and makes According to BPI, the protein salvaged each day sausages out of from beef scraps is the equivalent of nearly 6,000 your remains.

POPSCI.COM.AU 65 UNNATURALLY DELICIOUS

1. Vat grown 2. A free range 3. Organic meat: offence lifestyle might cheeseburger. against nature or have hidden ‘Healthy’ and tasty, inevitable future? disadvantages for but incredibly Is it really worse hens. Is there an resource intensive than killing cows? ethical compromise? and inefficient.

an ingredient in almost three-quarters of the nation’s hamburgers to nearly none.” BPI had to close factories and lay oﬀ more than six hundred employees.

HAGIOGRAPHICAL BUTCHERY On one hand, we have our horror at pink slime, a disgust that has historic roots in muckraking exposes like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and in deep-seated cultural taboos concerning the We suspect Jayson Lusk wouldn’t hesitate to hook into a grapefruit that really looked like this. Each distinction between edible food and inedible waste. segment a different, life-enhancing flavour. Consume! On the other side, we have the factory meticulously designed to exclude pathogens and to recover the maximal amount of protein from the trash-heap, as well as all the jobs and value created. cattle. Finely textured beef meant both a reduction in To this reader, it’s an intriguing case that shows how waste and a reduction in ground meat prices. technological systems are entangled in complex and sometimes However, you’re more likely to know fi nely textured contradictory ways with social values, and how the languages beef by its pungent dysphemism: “pink slime.” If so, of science and of food can apparently be at odds, even when the image it will bring to mind is of a soft-serve-like describing the same object. Pepto-pink sludge, perhaps accompanied by ominous But for Lusk, the story of “pink slime” is a story of profound music and exhortations decrying agribusiness and injustice, plain and simple. Lusk portrays BPI as a family business, demanding “real food.” whose patriarch, Roth, rose from humble origins, never attended But, according to Lusk, the notorious image is not college, and yet built a great company on the strength of an idea a photograph of fi nely textured beef, which is neither and an invention. slimy nor pink (except when frozen, as with other Roth is the archetypal hero of this book, the eff ortlessly ground beef). “I’ve yet to fi nd a food industry expert humanitarian entrepreneur, whose innovations serve the social who knows what’s in the picture,” he says, “yet it is the good by reducing food waste, and who fully recognises the web image most viewed in connection with the term.” tremendous responsibility that his company bears for the public’s (For instance, imgur.com has a running gag where one health and safety. Yet he has been laid low, heartbroken actually, as of the Telly Tubbies’ custard-making machines is held his company’s product is maligned and its market share crumbles. up as an example of pink slime production.) It’s a compelling tale, but one problem, of course, is that they’re Food activists use pink slime as a sort of anti-mascot not all like Roth. Lusk labours to explain how the logic of the for the multiple outrages perpetrated by Big Food, and marketplace holds food producers to higher safety standards demanded that fast food and other companies cease to than the government ever could, and how business principles use it in their burgers. support conservationist ethics more strongly than the laws “Finely textured beef,” Lusk says, “went from being environmentalists lobby for. In case after case, Lusk’s clear

66 POPULAR SCIENCE JARGON BUSTER

LOCAVORE - a person who prefers to eat food produced locally, despite studies that show centralised production and distribution is more efﬁ cient for large urbanised populations.

FOOD BABE - blog name for former management 3 consultant Vana Deva Hari, who gives nutrition advice and is heavily criticised for allegedly relying too much on pseudoscience

PINK SLIME - unofﬁ cial name TECHNOLOGY IS ENTANGLED IN of a meat product created “ by processing carcasses to recover protein that would COMPLEX AND CONTRADICTORY otherwise be wasted. Made unpopular by viral videos WAYS WITH SOCIAL VALUES showing a substance that probably isn’t “pink slime” at all.

CHEMOPHOBE - distinct implication is that the government is redundant, useless, or from the actual phobia of regressive, and in any case completely behind the curve when it chemicals, chemophobes comes to technology. draw arbitrary distinctions between “natural” and HEALTHY EATING: WHO MAKES THE CALL? “artifi cial” chemicals in Lusk’s previous book, The Food Police: A Well-Fed Manifesto food and adjust their About the Politics of Your Plate (2013), is, by some accounts, diets accordingly. something of a screed, decrying the eff orts of elite liberal (it’s American, so he means progressive) “food fascists” to tax away our freedoms in a nanny state run amok. Unnaturally Delicious certainly puts a kinder, gentler spin on these politics — describing, for instance, the ways that government regulations of organic production and small farmers.” For Lusk, benefi t big business to the detriment of small entrepreneurs, and socially oriented research is unproductive. the gains that could be made by young researchers in academic And yet, our food system is both social and and government labs if only the public would quit fretting about technological, natural and artifi cial. But just as GMOs, gluten, and artifi ciality. the anti-battery-cage activists’ could not allow In spending so much of his fire criticising the pomposity themselves, politically, to see how the cage was of locavores or the chemophobia of buffoons (see boxout), he entangled in larger technological systems of food fails to take seriously that public concerns about the role of production, Lusk is blind to or dismissive of the social big business in food production might not be due to solely to and cultural contexts into which his technological ignorance or anti-science bias. solutions must fi t to be eff ective. While Lusk admits that the US federal government (and by “The all-natural future is not the kind of future extension, all government) plays an important role in funding in which I want to live,” Lusk says at one point. I am basic research — indeed, he acknowledges his own academic in full and enthusiastic agreement. But I’m not sure position at a land grant college is only made possible by public that the future that he off ers - where an unregulated funds — he laments an erosion in the quality of that work. market can do whatever it wants to our food, while we “An increasingly larger portion of federal research dollars has trust in the idea that they think making people sick is shifted away from productivity-enhancing research” on things bad for business and so will do so much more than a like soil, seeds, and machines, “toward research on social goals government to keep food safe and healthy - is the one like childhood obesity, climate change, and the economic viability that I would like to live in, either.

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An Obstacle- Dodging Bug Bot

TIME 2 hours In 1984, Italian neuroscientist Valentino Braitenberg COST $30 published a book exploring how complex animal behaviours DIFFICULTY ••••• might arise from simple networks of nerves, sense organs, and muscles. That book, Vehicles, inspired a robotics movement now known as BEAM (Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, Mechanics), which is dedicated to designing simple robots that do complex things. You can build your own BEAM robot with only four switches, two batteries, and two motors. Despite its simplicity, this basic, buglike robot can detect and avoid obstacles, shut down by SEAN MICHAEL if lifted or flipped, and wake or sleep on command. RAGAN Just make sure to set it down on a smooth, flat floor.

70 POPULAR SCIENCE PHOTOGRAPH BY Jonathon Kambouris MAY 2016

TOOLS

MATERIALS Drill and bits Screwdriver setElectrician’s tool Soldering iron • 2 single-C four matching battery boxes screws with leads • 2 snap-action • 2 6-32 T-nuts lever switches with matching with 25-mm arms screws • 2 sheet-metal • 2 small screws spring clips • 2 3×AAA • 4 ¼ R bevel flashlight battery tap washers cylinders • 2 machine • 6 AAA batteries screws with • 2 6-32 aluminium matching nuts and rivet nuts split washers • 2 DC gear motors, • 1 snap-action 300 to 600 rpm roller switch with • 2 large paper 25-mm arm clips, straightened • 1 DPDT • 2 small slideswitch female quick- • 2 M3 × 10 mm connect lugs F/F threaded standoffs with

INSTRUCTIONS

1 Drill out the battery hole farthest from the 3 Solder two red wires with screws. Connect 6 Depress the roller boxes’ spring rivets. Save wheel and secure with to the roller switch’s NO one black wire to the NC switch. Touch one black the ring terminals and a nut. Rotate the switch terminal. Then use 4-40 terminals and the other lead to one motor ter- attached wires. Remove until its other hole is screws, nuts, and wash- to the NO terminals. minal on the same side the T-nuts’ prongs, put parallel to the long box ers to mount the battery Solder a black wire to of the robot, and one them in the holes, and edge, and drill a small boxes back to back with each C terminal. red lead to the other. If put a spring clip, tap hole through the plastic switches in between. the wheel doesn’t turn washer, and ring terminal below. Solder the four Install standoffs at the 5 Load the torch forward, reverse red on the posts. Secure with front pins of the slide rear corners. cylinders and pop them and black. Solder leads. 6-32 screws. switch to the roller into the battery boxes, Repeat for both motors. switch’s C terminal. Sol- 4 Align the lever switches one facing forward and 2 Pass a 4-40 screw der the red wire to one at 90 degrees. Solder one backward. Press a 7 Solder the paper clips through one box’s of its rear pins. Demount their NC terminals tap washer onto each into quick-connect lugs bottom corner hole on the switches. Repeat for together and solder rivet nut and a rivet nut and bend into “whis- the end nearest the clip. the second battery box, wire between their NO onto each motor shaft. kers” that cross ahead Temporarily mount the but connect its red wire terminals. Mount the Snap the motors into the of the robot. Slip the roller switch: Pass this to the opposite pin. switches across the front spring clips and turn on lugs over the switch screw through the switch of the battery boxes the slide switch. levers and let the bot go. ILLUSTRATION BY CLINT FORD BY ILLUSTRATION

POPSCI.COM.AU 71 Manual MAY 2016

History Strikes Back

Attack of the Fire Balloons

In November 1944, Japanese soldiers DIY-history columnist in a top-secret oceanside location loosed WILLIAM GURSTELLE a set of balloons into the westerly gives bygone weapons a modern spin winds. These globes, about 10 metres in diameter, contained a crude but ingenious device for releasing ballast that their inventors hoped would keep Last year, a pair of foresters them airborne for three to four days— found a 70-year-old Fu-go, long enough to reach the United States. half-buried but intact, in the There, an onboard timer would activate, mountains of eastern British causing the balloons to drop their Columbia. That amazing payload: incendiary bombs. discovery inspired me to build Of the roughly 10,000 balloons—or my own fire balloon—without the “Fu-go”—launched, about 10 per cent dangerous payload. made it across the ocean. But the timer My design is much simpler couldn’t control where the bombs than the historical one. Because dropped, so most fell in unpopulated my fire balloons lift off with hot areas. The strategy never amounted to air rather than helium, I need to much. Still, these balloons were the first use only lightweight materials. successful intercontinental weapons. First I smear a dab of Sterno inside a small aluminium pie tin. Once lit, the fuel heats the air in a flimsy, plastic dry-cleaner bag, WARNING: Play with fire, and you attached to the pie tin with thin could get burned. So be careful, and wire. The volume of heated air keep your balloon under control! gives the device enough buoy- ancy to rise hundreds of metres. To prevent my DIY Fu-go from starting fires, I tether it with a spool of fine wire. On a cool, still night, it looks like a jellyfish with a pulsing orange heart floating toward the clouds.

72 POPULAR SCIENCE PHOTOGRAPH BY Ackerman + Gruber MAY 2016 Manual Fund it already Use Big Data To Save On Energy Bills by ANTHONY FORDHAM

Until now, if you wanted to know how much heat leaked out of 12 your house, how much insulation might cost, or whether or not a photovoltaic system would be 1 URBAN HEAT ISLAND 2 WINTER HEAT LOSS worth installing, you had to call in Heatmap data combined with Google maps Again using thermal data, this layer a consultant. They’d stomp around lets you select your house and see exactly how shows how much heat escapes from your your property and eventually hot the roof gets at midday (and how cool at house during winter - that means you’re paying give you a report which you can’t night) - this factors into to your insulation costs. for heat you shouldn’t need to use. Click on help but think is probably slightly Town planners can also pinpoint unpleasant your roof to see how much insulation could biased toward you paying for stuff “hot spots” in public areas and add more trees cost, based on what R-value you want to you might not actually need... or other shade. achieve (from 3.5 to 5). The CSIRO and Data61 is running a pilot project with the City of Port Phillip council to provide residents with free data that shows them, well, pretty much anything they need to know. Our science organisations are awash with data these days. Companies like Esri offer data subscription services to platforms 34 such as ArcGIS. Planes and satellites criss-cross the country 3 SOLAR POTENTIAL 4 RAINFALL capturing all kinds of surface Perhaps the most useful layer. Using LIDAR Pretty straightforward, this layer shows how data: Heatmaps, water, insolation data, and combining the angle of the rooftop much rain hits your roof. It’s also possible to (the amount of solar energy with the direction it faces, it’s possible to get draw polygons to take in the whole property, hitting the ground) and more. an accurate estimate of how much electricity the back shed, etc. Homeowners can use the Making use of the data requires a given section of roof should be able to data to assess how much water they should building platforms that the general produce. Includes solar power and solar hot be able to capture and whether a water tank public can use. Enter OurClimate. water analysis. or gutter upgrade is worth it. Ultimately, this service - paid for by your local council - could offer residents multiple layers of information about their address. CHECK IT OUT Here’s what CSIRO trialled in the Right now, OurClimate is called MyClimate and exists as a pilot study for the City of Port Phillip only. But City of Port Phillip. you can have a play with the system at: thermalweb.it.csiro.au/acrgis/myclimate/index.html

POPSCI.COM.AU 73 Manual MAY 2016 Theme Building

Three Projects That Reinvent Breakfast

It’s hard to get excited about a meal that takes place when you’re by half-asleep. To get the day started right, these makers have invented JEREMY S. COOK machines that shake up breakfast. Their outlandish appliances might not end up on your table, but they’ll certainly whet your DIY appetite.

1 CEREAL HACKS 2 BACON ALARM CLOCK 3 WAFFLE-MAKING ROBOT

In March 2015, artist and and a head-mounted Traditional alarm clocks alarm.” With help Jon Eivind Stranden, a and it does the rest.” At inventor Dominic Wilcox crane for scooping tasty wake you with annoying from friends, including Norwegian electrical- the heart of the WaffleBot got an offer he couldn’t cereal. The latter, which beeps. Tech entrepreneur engineer Josh Myer, he engineering student, is a waffle iron, opened refuse. Kellogg’s wanted appeared on The Late Matty Sallin decided to built a pig-shaped device. created the WaffleBot and closed by a motor him to create five goofy Show, uses three levers make mornings more Partially inspired by the to help cook breakfast on a wire, and a custom devices to liven up cereal. to control the crane’s pleasant—with a bacon- Easy-Bake oven, it uses when he has (non royalty) valve that releases the Wilcox dreamed up 20. motion and a fourth to scented alarm clock. two halogen lights to heat guests. “It solves the delicious batter. After a He eventually built seven, release milk. “The way “You probably have a up precooked bacon in problem of having to preset cooking time, the including a cereal- it moves looks robotic,” memory of waking up to about 10 minutes. Such constantly fill and empty iron rotates upside down serving drone, a spoon Wilcox says, “but it’s the smell of breakfast,” a healthy solution! Once the waffle iron,” he says. and automatically falls with LED eyes, a “tummy powered by hydraulics.” Sallin says. “It’s a he’s awake, Sallin simply “You just select how open, releasing a waffle rumbling amplifier,” Which makes it cooler. completely effective eats breakfast in bed. many waffles you want, onto a waiting plate.

74 POPULAR SCIENCE ILLUSTRATIONS BY Chris Philpot Manual Repurposed Tech

MATERIALS

Hack a Teddy •TeddyRuxpin Driver, Dual TIME 3 hours • Screwdriver TB6612FNG COST About $85••• • Wirecutters • 3.5 mm audio cable DIFFICULTY Ruxpin to Say • Soldering iron • 3.7-volt single-cell • CHIP computer Li-po battery Anything • SparkFun Motor

Remember this guy? Back in the 1980s, Teddy Ruxpin took the world by storm. Now, Oakland engineer Andrew Langley is bringing Teddy back. He hacked the bear’s circuitry and installed CHIP, the $9 computer that his company, Next Thing, had just crowdfunded. The 1 GHz computer can run text-to- voice algorithms to let the bear read anything. He might not be a true AI or have learning capability or even be that huggable anymore, but at least you can program him to shout aggressive beat poetry at your great aunt. Which is what inventing is all about really, isn’t it?

by ANDREW ROSENBLUM

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Purchase a working Teddy 2. To sync the upper and lower 3. An H-bridge circuit will 4. Cut the audio output wires 5. Follow CHIP’s directions Ruxpin from eBay, and jaws, wire them together: Clip let the CHIP control Teddy’s that connect Teddy to his to boot up and log onto the EVISCERATE IT! Pop open the first two wires on the upper motors. Find the relevant onboard speaker, and rewire Internet. Then download its back with the screwdriver. and lower jaw connectors, and wiring diagram via Google them to the audio cable. Langley’s software from Inside, identify three sets of solder together the “jaw open” to connect the CHIP, the motor Plug the cable and the battery Github. Launch the interface, motor connectors for the eyes, and the “jaw closed” wires. driver, and the bear’s control into the CHIP. Now his very soul and give Teddy something upper jaw, and lower jaw. This doesn’t count as torture. board / tiny fuzzy soul. is yours to command. (preferably demonic) to say. PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL BUCUZZO (3) MICHAEL BUCUZZO BY PHOTOGRAPHY

POPSCI.COM.AU 75 Archives September 1924

Goddard’s Truth Falls on Deaf Ears

by ANTHONY FORDHAM

Here in September 1924’s and the mainstream media to The first reusable spacecraft, the Shuttle, had to dump unimaginable future, we were understand and accept that his its external tanks during liftoff. Blue Origin and SpaceX surprised at the sudden resurgence of rocket design wouldn’t just work in can now land their rockets - and thus a new era is born. fl at Earth theory over the New Year a vacuum - it would work better. period. Pop scientists and amateur After the publication of his Toclaimthatitwouldbeistodenyafundamentallawof rappers alike found themselves defi nitive work “A Method of dynamics, and only Dr. Einstein and his chosen dozen, so embroiled once more in a debate we Reaching Extreme Altitudes” in few and fi t, are licensed to do that.” all thought had been settled or at 1919, the New York Times took Chosen dozen? Apparently Einstein is Science Jesus, least gotten-over some years ago... special pains in January 1920 to Goddard is dumb, and the New York Times knows the One of the many wrong “facts” Flat ridicule Goddard in an unsigned best time to kick a man is when he’s proposing the Earthers use to “prove” that we’ve editorial (the anonymity was a wise creation of a technology that will literally change history: never been to space to photograph hedge of bets, as it turned out). “That Professor Goddard, with his “chair” in Clark a spheroid Earth, is the “fact” that While the nameless editor agreed a College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian a rocket engine cannot operate in a rocket could indeed carry scientifi c Institution, does not know the relation of action and vacuum because there’s nothing for instruments to high altitude, he reaction, and of the need to have something better than the exhaust to push against. took issue with the idea that the a vacuum against which to react - to say that would be This issue has been around for a engine could operate in a vacuum: absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge while. Inventor of the fi rst liquid- “After the rocket quits our air and ladled out daily in high school.” fuel rocket and one of the founders really starts on its longer journey, its Unfortunately, it turned out the New York Times of the space age (and the US rocket fl ight would be neither accelerated anonymous editor of 1920 didn’t understand the “relation program too), Robert H Goddard, nor maintained by the explosion of of action and reaction” either - or rather, failed to realise a struggled to get the general public the charges it then might have left. rocket accelerates not because its exhaust pushes against

In discussing the high-altitude hus as a boy on roller skates throws rocket, there is not much question as some weights backward, he will be to the long ranges possible, if a high pushed forward by the reaction... The velocity of the expelled gases is had aster he throws the weights, the with a rocket consisting chiefly of aster he will be pushed forward. In a propellant material. There is, however, vacuum, the gases from the rocket will much criticism of the idea of the rocket scape at high speed, and the rocket propelling itself at a height where there herefore will continue to be kicked is practically a perfect vacuum, it being orward by the reaction. maintained that there will be “nothing Everyone knows that a blank for the explosions, or expelled gases, cartridge, fired in a revolver, produces A boy on skates to push against.” throws weights a kick of the revolver; and the a Contrary to common supposition, behind him, and apparatus [see opposite, the one at the By PROF. ROBERT H. GODDARD however, the explosions have a end of our red arrow] in which a blank Head of the Department of he rolls for- greater effect in a vacuum than in the cartridge is fired in a revolver free to Physics, Clark University wards. Physics air. In fact, if the air were very much in action! turn about an axis, shows that the kick compressed, the explosions, instead of occurs also in a vacuum. giving strong propulsion, would have On the other hand, if a blank no effect whatever. cartridge could be fired in a tank To see this, it must be realised that containing air under a pressure so what pushes the rocket forward is the great that no gas could escape, then gas that is shot back toward the rear. there would be no motion of escaping MAY 2016

air, but because the rocket itself is achievements and his pioneering being pushed forward by the exhaust liquid-fuelled rocket launches at as it leaves the rocket. Roswell between 1926 and 1941, Goddard attempted to put all non-physicists kept up the this to rights in the September ridicule Sadly, after years 1924 edition of Popular Science suff ering from the eff ects of (we’ve reproduced his piece below) tuberculosis, Goddard died of but at the time it had little eff ect. throat cancer at the age of just 62. Despite Goddard’s many scientifi c While Flat Earthers still believe rocket propulsion in a vacuum is impossible, the rest of civilisation had to admit that Goddard was right once rockets, you know, actually started going into space. On 17th July 1969, the day after Apollo 11 launched and while Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins where literally on route to the moon, in hard vacuum, propelled only by rockets, the New York Times fi nally saw fi t to publish the following correction: “Further investigation and experimentation have confi rmed the fi ndings of Isaac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now defi nitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well Goddard’s original patent for a liquid- as in an atmosphere. The Times fuelled rocket. Filed under “mad!” regrets the error.” Thanks guys. Because the editors of 1924

Goddard built various deadly- couldn’t yet appreciate how looking ‘apparatus’ to bust myths long before the Mythbusters amazing it was having Robert H Goddard (and Werner von Braun, gasestogiveakicktotherevolver. Ask any engineer if he would etc) writing columns for them, discard the condenser on his engine, they went with his cover. h ink in which steam exhausts into a partial vacuum, and replace it by a tank you understand it? Please email under pressure. He will tell you that if there were sufficient pressure in the us at let [email protected]. Is the tank into which the exhaust passes, man with the paintbrush ba ed it would stop the engine. The same principle applies to the rocket. at the high-tech amazingness of In order to test this point, a The results of 50 tests proved that rocket chamber was fired in a tank there is a 20 per cent greater lifting the ute-mounted spray painter pumped down to but 1/1500 normal force on a rocket in a vacuum than in behind him? Does he, like so atmospheric pressure... When the air at ordinary pressure. This proof gases were fired downward, the recoil of reaction in a vacuum is but one of many in the 20s, have lice? kicked the chamber upward, and the a number of matters than have been rise was registered by a scratch on a settled experimentally, and that will Progress indeed! strip of smoked glass... lead to rather startling results.

POPSCI.COM.AU 77 Ask Us Anything ANSWERS BY Daniel Engber & Anthony Fordham

Q: WHY HASN’T THE US ADOPTED THE METRIC SYSTEM?

datory. Instead, business owners and people Short answer It’s complicated. who opposed big government and globali- Q: IS HISTORIC sation—and who saw conversion as ceding control—wonthebattleforheartsandminds. LIFESPAN A Gallup poll at the time showed that 45 per cent of Americans opposed the switch. SKEWED BY A: Today,theproblemwithmetricis While most nations use the metric system thesameasit’salwaysbeen:Thebenefitsof DEAD BABIES? —thoseunitsofdecimalsthatareuniversally switchingarenegligible,butthecosts employed in science—the US still clings to are huge. Manufacturers would have to Short answer: Only if you confuse pounds, inches, and feet. Despite several convert values on packaging. Ordinary “lifespan” with “life expectancy” high-profile attempts to change that, people would have to replace their tape Americansrefusetoconvert. measures,switchtometricwrenches,waste ThomasJeffersonfirsttriedtomovethe timefiguringoutwhatitmeansto A: Popular Science mothership’s home nation say its 20 degrees Celsius outside. toward a decimal-based system in 1789. Even metric fans see the hassle. “Like Most people accept the idea that until the Butwithoutsupportfromscientists,hisidea alleducatedpeople,Ijustassumeditmade mid 20th century, the average person died flopped.Morethanacenturylater,in1906, perfect sense to go metric,” says Donald in their 40s or 50s. But if you think about telephoneinventorAlexanderGrahamBell Hillger,presidentoftheUSMetricAssoci- it, there was massive infant mortality back told US Congress that “few people have ation,whichwasfoundedacenturyagoto then, so does this skewing average length any adequate conception of the amount of promoteconversion.“NowIlookatitand of life? Did people who survived childhood unnecessarylabor(sic)involvedintheuseof think: ‘Exactly what am I personally going to actually live as long as we do now? our present weights and measures.” getfromthis?I’mgoingtogetannoyed.’” Nope, they did not. While it’s true that all Strong words, but still no change. Still, metric creep is already here. Yanks those poor babies would drag down average Thingslookedpromisingin1968,when buysoftdrinksbythelitre,machinecar lifespan if they got counted, that’s not how Congress authorised a three-year study that partsinmillimeters,andmeasuremedicine life expectancy is calculated. eventually recommended converting to inmilligrams.“It’sgoingtohappen,”Hillger Basically, for a given time period, let’s say metricandlaidouta10-yearplantoget says,“butattheratewe’regoing,itwilltake the 1880s, demographers look at both the there.Buttheydidnotmaketheswitchman- awhile.”Itwillbeagameofinches.Geddit? birth and death rate in the population and assign each age group a life expectancy. If you are already 85 in 1880, you can expect to live until 89. If you are 25, you can expect to reach your 60s. If you were just born? Sorry, odds are you won’t see your 50th birthday. This takes into effect periods of extreme child mortality (in London in the 1700s, infant mortality was over 70%!), war and pandemics like the Spanish Flu. While life expectancy is a statistically modelled “guess”, we of course do have data on the lifespans of people born long ago. And the data is clear: the average person today lives longer than at any period in the past. Here’s to a long life.

78 POPULAR SCIENCE MAY 2016

Have a burning question? Email it to [email protected]

Q: Could the Tasmanian Tiger still exist somewhere in the wild? Q: WHY DOES SUNLIGHT A: At 68,401 km2, Tasmania is a respectable size for an island, but it’s still a mere sliver of LIGHTEN HAIR BUT the planet’s total 510.1 million km2 of land. But it’s still plenty big enough, and wild enough, to DARKEN SKIN? hide a supposedly extinct apex predator. Maybe. In their primitive wisdom, colonial Europeans decided the best way to deal with Thylacines hassling their chook pens was to shoot the lot of Short answer Skin protects itself; hair doesn’t. ‘em and pay hunters a bounty (they also offered a bounty on Tasmania’s indigenous population, but that’s another even less pleasant story). As a A: result, a species that had already lost its foothold The sun’s ultraviolet rays damage skin and hair. So both rely on a pigmented on the mainland was pushed to apparent polymer called melanin for protection. Melanin both absorbs and scatters UV rays, extinction: as any cryptozoology enthusiast keeping them away from your cells’ fragile DNA. But melanin degrades over time and knows, “Benjamin”, the last Thylacine, died in loses its colour from prolonged exposure. Beaumaris Zoo in 1933. In hair, the result is a bleached or yellowed effect. But because hair cells are dead— Once the animal went extinct, everyone’s comprised only of lipids, water, pigments, and structural proteins—these light strands attitude totally changed. Today, we want to remain in this damaged state until new hair with fresh melanin grows to replace them. believe they still exist. Since that sad day in Skin cells, on the other hand, are alive and can react and adapt to UV rays. When sun 1933, there have been over 3800 claimed hits the skin, the body cranks out a hormone that binds to melanin-making cells, causing sightings of Thylacines in Tasmania, with a them to produce more melanin for additional protection. This melanin populates the slight concentration in the north east. lower epidermis and becomes darker as it disperses to the upper layers. Over time, Look, Tasmania is still pretty wild in a lot of this process leads to a suntan, which serves to protect you better. places. High in the hills, deep in the shadowed Prolonged exposure to UV light can eventually damage skin’s cellular DNA, though, valleys, in the far wilderness where leaf-litter and those damaged cells put you at a higher risk for skin cancer. Tanning and repeated and fallen branches cover the ground to a sunburns only multiply those risks. So feel free to sun your hair until it’s golden blonde— depth of two metres or more, a dog-sized utsl t eronthatsunscreen predator could still make itself a secret life. It’s a nicer thought than the idea we drove a rare animal to extinction for no good reason, anyway. Apparently, they didn’t even eat chooks.

Q: Is there a secret hydrogen engine that profit-hungry oil companies suppressed? A: It’s a fun conspiracy to believe in, but it doesn’t really matter. The issue with hydrogen engines isn’t whether or not they work or are more efficient. They do work, and their efficiency depends on what method they use to generate power. The issue with hydrogen is getting the hydrogen into the engine in the first place. Unlike petrol, hydrogen has to be stored at high pressure and extremely low “cryogenic” temperatures. That means expensive infrastructure. The oil companies don’t need to worry about H2 engines stealing their business. Until hydrogen service stations are built, no one has to suppress anything. Big oil still has us by the balls.

POPSCI.COM.AU 79 THE SEGWAY Segment: Personal transport Hyped: 2001 Released: 2002 The Segway was meant to change the world and revolutionise personal transport. And while the actual product is fun and relatively easy to use, it cost US$4950 on release - a punishing price for an electric scooter. Inventor (and Popular Science favourite) VIRGIN GALACTIC Dean Kamen had to sell the company, and Segment: Space tourism in 2010, the new CEO died after plunging Hyped: 2004 off a cliff... on a Segway. You’ll most Released: Still waiting likely encounter a Segway today on Backed by billionaire Richard Branson, the much hyped promise was a city tour. Don’t buy one of the suborbital joy flights, with the (much more) distant ultimate goal of knock-off clones that costs a establishing a space hotel. Founded way back in 2004, the company tenth the original price: there’s got loads of interest (and millions in investments) but has yet to make a reason they’re so cheap. any commercial flights. Despite an impressive pace of development, the promised flights were always just a year or two away. Then Today’s Equivalent: The in 2014, the VSS Enterprise broke up in mid-air. The company is “hoverboard”, a weird gyro- currently on hold, despite building a spaceport in the US desert. stabilised two-wheeler with no control stick, which people fall off Today’s Equivalent: Mars One promises to send four colonists on a and hurt themselves. Whereupon the one-way trip to Mars but a complete lack of, well, anything makes the hoverboard bursts into flames. organisation appear to be either hopelessly naive or an actual scam.

Famous inventions that got carried away TheHypeTrainwith themselves

The saying goes: invention is 1% inspiration, VIRTUAL REALITY 1.0 99% perspiration. But Segment: Virtual reality / gaming maybe the real figure Hyped: 1990s Released: 2000s, kinda is 1% inspiration and Before the Oculus Rift there was VR. Celebrated perspiration, and 99% in cyberpunk and featured in dozens of 1990s marketing. The length sci-fi flicks, it promised to transport the user into a and velocity of the Hype virtual world via head-mounted stereoscopic video Train - getting the public goggles. The problem? VR was first conceived in excited by an invention - a world without small, cheap high-definition LCD displays, or accelerometers, or even PCs capable is almost (but not quite) of rendering a realistic virtual world in real-time. completely unrelated to That didn’t stop various headsets hitting the the actual success of the market. Most cost tens of thousands of dollars invention itself. Here are and were limited to research labs. The few, very some examples of the limited consumer units were expensive and caused most hyped inventions in headaches. The concept was sound, but the technology just wasn’t ready. history. The marketing was inspired. The product Today’s Equivalent: VR is here at last thanks to the itself? Results varied. tech in your smartphone. Tiny displays, powerful sensors and $1500 gaming PCs that outperform the supercomputers of the 1990s have made devices like the Oculus Rift (hyped in 2012, deliveries start this by LINDSAY HANDMER & ANTHONY FORDHAM year) and the HTC VIVE possible. Only 20 years late!

80 POPULAR SCIENCE MAY 2016

3D TV/FILM Then Segment: Entertainment Retro Invention Hyped: 1980s Released: 2010

Another staple of science-fiction, 3D entertainment was pioneered at the theatre with anaglyph glasses - those dorky paper jobs with one cyan eye and one red. By encoding half of the image with a red filter and half with cyan, a limited 3D effect could be created, at the expense of colour fidelity. The advent of LCDs and polarised lenses allowed other technologies to bring 3D to the cinema, but it took high-resolution LCD displays (and digital projectors) to bring 3D back in a big way starting in 2010. Mid- to high-end TVs sold in the last five years usually have 3D functionality via LCD-switching glasses that need a battery, or more commonly via polarised plastic lenses. Market research shows people hardly use 3D and today it definitely takes second place to 4K as a killer THE TRUE PIONEER AIRSHIPS feature. Cinemas have embraced the tech, however. High Segment: International transport resolution digital projectors give good results, and it allows Hyped: 1920s cinemas to charge a premium on tickets. Think the iPhone saved Released: 1920s-1940s Apple? It would never have happened without the iPod. Back in the 1920s, lighter-than-air dirigibles Today’s Equivalent: 4K. This ultra-high resolution has The original was a 5GB lump promised a new class of travel. Dignified, four times the pixels of full HD with its 3840x2160 grid (vs with flaky software, a weird sophisticated, classy and luxurious, 1920x1080). Ultra HD TVs are now affordable but ironically Firewire cord and Mac-only connectivity. But it tapped a Zeppelins such as the Hindenburg plied the there’s still very little 4K content available. previously unidentified desire skies, shuttling wealthy passengers from in the market for personal tech Europe across the Atlantic to New York that wasn’t just functional, (docking atop the Empire State Building) and but beautiful. There were other music players, but the Rio, Brazil. The biggest airships were over iPod won the hyper-Darwinian twice as long as the largest fixed wing craft game of consumer electronics flying today, and vastly out-ranged planes survival, and the rest is history. and auto-gyros alike. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t the Hindenburg disaster that sounded the death knell for airships. No, it wasn’t that one airship crashed, it was that pretty much all airships crashed, eventually. The US Navy’s pride the USS Shenandoah crashed in 1927, and the sister-ships USS Acron and USS Macon crashed in 1933 and THE FLYING CAR 1935 respectively, and there were many Segment: Personal transport others. The USS Los Angeles and the Graf Hyped: 1920s-2010s Zeppelin were unusual in that they both Released: TBA retired without crashing. The Graf Zeppelin The dream of personal flight, of taking to the sky managed 17,177 flight hours and the as easily as we now take to the road, has a long AN ELECTRONIC Los Angeles racked up 4,181 (some history. Way back in 1926, Henry Ford tried to DEMON WRAPPED modern airliners have flown well over build ‘the Model T of the air’ and later predicted IN CUTENESS 100,000 hours). The real problem? that a combination car and plane was mere years Airships are just too slow. away. In more recent times (the 1990s onwards), Furby was the must-have toy the Moller Skycar appeared on Popular Science’s of 1998. The massive hype was Today’s Equivalent: Supersonic commercial cover more than once, and continually renewed in part due to its fake robotic air travel and “suborbital” flights. Sydney to our hope of driveway take-off, until the joke (fauxbotic?) nature, in a world London in four hours? Yes please! could no longer be sustained and the company that had a vague idea that robots and computers were filed for bankruptcy. Just last year, the gorgeous becoming “a thing”. Following looking Aeromobil (pictured) sparked worldwide fights over the limited number attention - before a crash landing that is. In any of first-run units, Fury went on case, it’s more a “streetable plane” than a “flying to sell/spawn over 40 million abominations. The joke? The car” as are all the other various examples. “learning” was all fakery. But inventor David Hampton was Today’s Equivalent: The flying car remains an happy to wait - an “Empto- enduring “tech of the future” even today, when we Tronic” Furby hit shelves in 2005, and a proper learning live in the future. A closer dream is the affordable toy-bot with LCD eyes and an electric car with road-trip range. Could Tesla’s app arrived in 2012. Model 3 finally deliver?

POPSCI.COM.AU 81 Labrats STORY BY Subject Zero

resemble the traditional foods that Inverse Pyramid inspired it. I suddenly realise the bean shape is touching the potato shape, Body Fuel Life damnit. I hate that in a meal. “Nutritionally enhanced,” says Fodmap, leaning forward and pointing Support Coupons one blood-red fingernail at the slop. Is it fair to judge a food based purely “Completely ethical in every way. And of course totally recycled.” on whether or not you can digest it? “Recycled?” I exclaim. Fodmap suddenly looks askance. My relationship with food has flavouring powder?” I hazard. “Um no, no not recycled. Definitely always been strictly utilitarian. When “EXACTLY!” cries Fodmap. not recycled. Definitely no residual you’reoneoftheintellectualpoor,you “Unsustainable! Our personalised organics from aquarium exhibits that gotta leave your hang-ups about the recipes - which you can share on have completed their life cycle. No beans touching the mashed potatoes, Twitter and Instagram via a dedicated nono.Grounduplungfishyousay? uh,somewhereelse. button on our integrated digital Who gave you that idea? Did someone TypicallyIeatoutofpackets. oven-arecompletely free of all leak?Issomeoneleakingtothe MaybeIshouldmovetoacountry unsustainable crops and food sources press?”Fodmapgripsthetable,looks thatstillhasthekindofpoorpeople including wheat, rice, cotton, water, aroundwildly,blinksalot. whocookstreetfood,butnone brown coal, gelatin, wild-caught Inanefforttoplacateher,Iforka of those countries do the sorts of yellowfintunaandsaffron.” mouthful of soggy cardboard into my scientificresearchIrelyontopay “What... what does that leave?” I face.Yep,ittastesexactlylikeIalways me$125perexperiment.SoIbuy ask, because I can’t help myself. imagined soggy cardboard would noodlesinbulk. “Excellent question,” says Fodmap, taste.Ichewawayatitfora I’ve previously recounted my and examines her nails for about a bit. Fodmap looks hopeful. experience with food replacement minute. She looks up. “Oh! Well, our “Isit...good?”sheasks, powders. The powder is convenient, nutritionally ethical ingredients are breathlessly, staring at me intensely. yes,butthetotalglandularcollapse from completely natural non-animal “Uh,”Isay.“Definegood?” thatfollowsisnot.Maybeit’sa colouringagentsand cellulose.” “Doesit...canyoutastethe psychosomaticthing.Ineedmyfood “Cellulose?” I ask. “Like, from ethicalintegrity?Canyoudetectthe to at least look like,youknow,food. plants?Ithoughthumans couldn’t, personalised nutritional enrichment? NEXT “Unsustainable farming practices you know, digest cellulose?” Or is it just a bit too lungfishy?” She aren’t sustainable,” says Sally “HAHAHA!” says Fodmap and I blanches.“Notthatitwouldbeat ISSUE! Fodmap,theCEOofInversePyramid. mean she doesn’t laugh, she carefully alllungfishy.Nolungfishusedinthe Issue #91, It’sanew‘science-basedtechno-food and deliberately says HAHAHA. production of Inverse Pyramid Body June 2016 providerwithdigitalappandsocial “That’s what agribusiness and the fast Fuel Life Support Coupons.” media nutrition gamificationTM’. She food megacorps want you to believe. She’s doing some kind of weird On sale 2nd goeson:“Webelieveinaworldwhere Cellulose is the most abundant finger-crossing ritual, like I guess the June 2016 food can inspire us to create amazing organic compound on the planet. marketingequivalentofwardingoff ORION: INSIDE socialexperiencesbyharnessingthe Therefore humans must be able theevileye.Idecidetoignoreit,and NASA’S MEGA- power of emergent communities.” to digest it, otherwise we couldn’t swallow. It goes down... pretty bad. BUDGET We’resittingataplainformicatable haveevolvedinthefirst place. See? “OhGod,”saysFodmap,staring CREWED somewhere in the city’s south. As Checkmate, science!” Fodmap sits atme.“Didyoujustswallowthe MISSION usual,Igivemylittlespeech:“Look, back again, looking very satisfied. substrate?Whydidyoudothatyou TO MARS // I’mjustheretodothetest,Idon’tneed “Come on,” she says. “Eat up.” idiot, that stuff is basically cardboard. Suspended animation // background justification for why you’ve I look down at the plate in front of You can’t digest cardboard.Ugh!Itold UBER FOR createdyourproductorwhatever.I me. Following Fodmap’s speech I am Sonnyweneedinstructions.Thisstuff BLOOD? // justwanttogetthisdoneandgetmy now certain of what I had previously isn’t intuitive at all. We better stop the Olympic tech // $125becauseI’mlowonramen.” only just suspected: this is a plate of test.Here’syour$125.Isuggestyou MAKING DRUGS “Ramen!” splutters Fodmap. “Do corrugated cardboard and powdered spendatleastsomeofitonlaxatives.” IN SPACE // youknowwhatthatstuffismadeof?” milk. The cardboard has been cut Ismile,becauseshesaysthatlike Disaster theme “Uh, wheat and artificial miso-style into different shapes that vaguely I’ve never heard it before. park + MORE!

82 POPULAR SCIENCE The screens of the Future are available today!

Screen Innovations has worked with NASA to The criteria for a screen in space were unique, from develop a one-of-a-kind, ambient-light-rejecting, the obvious need for extreme lightness and easy zero-gravity screen to be installed in the Interna- storage to trickier requirements such as screen tional Space Station… rigidity in zero gravity and the ability to reject the Until now, astronauts on the International Space bits of food and other detritus that have a habit of Station communicated with Mission Control and ǡɁŘǜǔȭǷŘʁɁˁȭƞ˘ƬʁɁȊǷʁŘ˸ǔǜ˿Ƭȭ˸ǔʁɁȭȧƬȭǜʊƖ their families back home on tablet-sized 13-inch Although the theatre in your home resides in displays. Now they will have a large roll-out screen a more-worldly environment with picture quality from Screen Innovations, together with a laser pro- taking a front row seat it’s nice to know that Screen jector that should last more than 30,000 hours of Innovations also delivers the best down-to-earth use – that’s a movie a day for more than 40 years. solution around.

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