Oustide feeds

To state the obvious, it’s been a particularly frigid winter across most of the eastern United States. Winter’s icy grip has not even spared the Sunshine State, where a total of 5,195 frozen green iguanas—an invasive species—have been removed from the ecosystem and euthanized. 

Green iguanas (Iguana iguana) are considered an invasive species in Florida. They were introduced in the state during the 1960s and can harm native fish and wildlife, cause damage, and may pose a threat to human health and safety. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), nonnative reptile species like green iguanas and Burmese pythons are only protected by anti-cruelty laws and “can be humanely killed on private property with landowner permission.” 

Cold weather can make things interesting when it comes to iguanas, and Florida has had no shortage of cold this winter. Miami saw its coldest February 1 on record at 35 degrees Fahrenheit, with wind chills down to 26 degrees. Reptiles like iguanas are cold-blooded and  rely on external environmental conditions to regulate their body temperature. Since the outside temperature has such a drastic effect on their bodies, cold-blooded animals often adapt their behavior as a response. When air temperatures get below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, the reptiles will get stunned (or freeze), lose their grip, and fall from trees. After they fall from a tree, they may appear to be dead, but their body functions remain intact.

In response to the record-breaking cold, the FWC implemented Executive Order 26-03, which temporarily allowed people to remove live, cold-stunned green iguanas from the wild without a permit and transport them to wildlife officials. As a result, residents brought in 5,195 frozen iguanas between February 1 and 2. The iguanas were then euthanized.

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“As an invasive species, green iguanas have negative impacts on Florida’s environment and economy,” FWC Executive Director Roger Young said in a statement. “The removal of over 5,000 of these nonnative lizards in such a short time span was only possible thanks to the coordinated efforts of many staff members in multiple FWC divisions and offices, our partners, and of course the many residents that took the time to collect and turn in cold-stunned iguanas from their properties.”

Frozen iguanas are also a uniquely Florida problem, since green iguanas primarily live in climates that are warmer. At up to seven feet long and weighing upwards of 30 pounds, a falling iguana can be dangerous, so pedestrians should exercise caution when walking under palm trees in colder weather. If you see a frozen iguana on the ground, do not rush in to warm them up. In normal circumstances, you may be fined for moving it somewhere else. Instead, it’s best to just leave the iguana alone since it should bounce right back once the temperatures hit 50 degrees again. 

The post Florida euthanizes 5,195 frozen iguanas appeared first on Popular Science.

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

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

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

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

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Full Episode Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

I’m Sarah Durn, features editor at PopSci.

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

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

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

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

AC: Ugh.

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

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

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

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

AC: Yes.

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

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

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

SD: It’s too cold.

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

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

AC: Oh, wow.

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

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

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

AC: Aw man, cliffhanger.

SD: I know! Sorry.

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

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

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

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

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

SD: Yeah, this is not a new problem.

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

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

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

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

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

AC: One big reason is thermometers.

SD: Okay, tell me more.

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

That starts to change around the 1900s.

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

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

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

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

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

AC: So how exactly does hypothermia affect the body?

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

AC: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

AC: Huh.

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

AC: Oh, that’s terrifying.

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

AC: Ah, so how did she survive that?

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

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

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

SD: I know, me neither.

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

SD: Yeah, so this toddler.

AC: Oh no.

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

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

AC: That number is still so shocking to me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SD: Yeah. Though a very carefully controlled one.

AC: Yes. Of course.

SD: Hypothermia is still very bad, very dangerous.

AC: Yes.

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

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

SD: Exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AC: Mm-hmm.

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

AC: Brr!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AC: Stay warm out there, everyone.

SD: Yeah. Bundle up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The film itself was manufactured in 1956. Credit: Salisbury Photo Centre Some of the photos show the Badrutt’s Palace Hotel in St. Moritz. Credit: Salisbury Photo Centre. Most of the pictures were taken on a ski trip, but at least one showed what appears to be a garden party in the UK. Credit: Salisbury Photo Centre

The post $13 thrift store camera hid 70-year-old undeveloped film appeared first on Popular Science.

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

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

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

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

And that’s what they did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lobstermen’s game of telephone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The FCC has given SpaceX a time-limited waiver for 18-24 months, effective January 9, 2026 to increase KU band transmission. This immediately authorizes SpaceX to exceed equivalent power flux density (EPFD) limits for KU-band operations in the US, enabling higher transmission power from Gen2 Starlink satellites. This will be made permanent during the next 6-12 ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tesla is down to $1.24 trillion in market capitalization. After SpaceX bought XAI a few days ago the valuation of SpaceX is $1.25 trillion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Credit: Milano Cortina 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elon Musk discusses the convergence of AI, robotics, energy, and space tech as critical to humanity’s future. There are bottlenecks in power, chips, and manufacturing. Elon predicts orbital data centers will become the cheapest and most scalable AI infrastructure within 30-36 months due to unlimited solar energy and regulatory ease, with SpaceX launching hundreds of ...

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SpaceX Starlink Direct-to-Cell aims to connect billions of existing smartphones to LEO satellites. No hardware modification required. No special SIM card. T-Mobile’s beta already delivers SMS to unmodified phones via Starlink. But scaling to full voice and data service demands solving a hidden bottleneck. Every time a LEO satellite passes overhead and hands off to ...

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Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross explains why the rapid collapse in the cost of AI is doing more than improving software. It is triggering a chain reaction that could collapse the cost structure of the entire economy. This conversation explores the idea of an Economic Singularity, where intelligence becomes radically cheaper, robotics turns that intelligence into near-zero ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Termites are swarming Florida even faster than predicted appeared first on Popular Science.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seated para alpine skiers have inspired this design, the depicted figure’s fast movement a great example of determination and athleticism. In their speed, snow is seen splashing across the coin’s field and even extends into the printed segments. Sculpted snowflakes decorate the background, strengthening this coin’s connection to the winter aspect of the games. Image: Royal Australian Mint. Freestyle skiers have inspired this design, the figure depicted seen mid-pose, their striking position showcasing the agility and athleticism during a freestyle performance. Sculpted snowflakes decorate the background. Surrounding the figure, coloured print features the Australian Olympic Team logo and the aesthetics of the Australian 2026 Winter Olympics branding.Image: Royal Australian Mint.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Henry Ford (left) and Thomas Edison (right) pose with their newly purchase electric cars from Detroit Electric. Image: Public Domain The early 20th century heyday of electric cars

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

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

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

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

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

The Ford-Edison electric car that never was

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oil, gas, and our love affair with internal combustion

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

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

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

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

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The road not taken

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are several reason why the Tesla and SpaceX merger will not happen and definitely not this year. It would be the largest merger deal involving a global public company ever. It would be the largest by several times. This makes it risky and complex. It will involve EU approval and if the EU rejected ...

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