Popular Science

What’s big, rare, and smells like literal death? If you guessed a corpse, you’re not wrong. The pungent flower in question is a tropical plant called titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum), a species of corpse flower. Appropriately, people say it smells like rotting flesh. 

The stinky plants are rare and native to the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Nevertheless, a corpse flower named “Pangy” calls Massachusetts’ Mount Holyoke College home, where it has just bloomed, according to the Associated Press.

“Terrible,” “horrible,” “putrid,” and “rotten” are just some of the one-worded descriptions the blooming has inspired, per a Mount Holyoke College social media video. One person has a more inspired take: “Impressive. I don’t think I’ve smelled a flower that smells like that anywhere, so very impressive.” 

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The chances to be impressed by a titan arum are few, however, because its blooming cycle is brief and occurs every five to seven years. Researchers reportedly discovered the chemistry behind its pungent odor in 2024. 

“A few people who have come in since have described the smell as being unbearable, tangy, like a trash can — it’s overwhelming,” Tom Clark, director and curator of the Mount Holyoake College Botanic Garden, told the Associated Press. “But that odor is there for a purpose. It’s there to attract pollinators, flies in particular.”

Here’s everything you wanted to know about corpse flowers but were afraid to ask.

What makes corpse flowers so smelly?

Several chemical compounds contribute to this smell. Sufides are the key odorant. Dimethyl trisulfide gives the flower its rotting animal-like sulfury odor. Dimethyl disulfide is a lesser, but still present smell like garlic. Additionally, a chemical found in sweaty feet called isovaleric acid and compound that smells like a mix of garlic and cheese called methyl thiolacetate are also present. The last scent to hit your nose before the flowering structure collapses after a few days is trimethylamine. This compound smells like dead fish.

What else makes corpse flowers stick out?

That signature smell isn’t the only striking feature of this plant. The titan arum creates the biggest unbranched cluster of flowers on earth. If you’re thinking to yourself, I only see one flower, that’s because the structure you’re looking at is not a flower. It’s a spadix (the tall pole-looking thing) and a spathe (a kind of leaf). There are many small flowers at the bottom of the spadix. Speaking of the spathe, regardless of what inspired the species’ genus name (Amorphophallus) its resemblance to the male genitalia is self-evident. 

How big are corpse flowers?

Amorphophallus titanum has the largest known unbranched inflorescence in the plant kingdom. The bloom can grow up to eight feet tall, according to the United States Botanical Garden with some individual plants reaching heights of 12 feet. 

Why do their flowers disappear so quickly?

Generally, corpse flowers can take about seven to nine years to bloom. Some will only bloom once every few decades. They also do not have an annual blooming cycle like many other plants, and will only bloom when it has enough energy to do so.

The corpse flower stores its energy in a swollen base at the stem–called a corm–that weighs about 100 pounds. Corpse flowers have the largest known corm in the plant kingdom. If it is a non-flowering year, one leaf about the size of a small tree will shoot from the corm. The leaf will then branch out into three sections, with each part growing more leaflets. After several years, the plant will finally gather enough energy needed to bloom. The bloom can then only be held for about 24 to 36 hours before collapsing. 

Are corpse flowers endangered?

Like in botanical gardens, corpse flowers are rare in nature as well. The species Amorphophallus titanum is listed as Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Some botanists estimate that there are fewer than 1,000 individual plants in the wild. The IUCN also estimates that the population has decreased by more than half over the past 150 years. Logging and turning the plant’s habitat into land for palm oil plantations are believed to be the reasons behind the decline.  

Are they dangerous to more than just our noses?

According to the Chicago Botanic Garden, each corpse flower can produce over 400 fruits with two seeds. The fruits will go from a gold color to a rich crimson. They are fully ripe about six months after pollination. 

However, don’t eat them. Their fruit is poisonous to humans. Large, orange-beaked birds called the rhinoceros hornbill typically eat the fruit and disperse the seeds. 

The post Rare rotting-flesh smelling flower blooming at a Massachusetts college appeared first on Popular Science.

Randi Minetor has written nine books about people dying in national parks. Needless to say, she has a lot of thoughts about it.

“A lot of people go to national parks to challenge themselves, to try things they have never tried before,” she tells Popular Science. “They’ll take a course in canyoneering or hire a guide to go up a mountain; they’ll push themselves in ways they haven’t before. Not everyone can do those things,” she warns. “Just because you want to do it doesn’t mean you can.”

It’s excellent advice that doesn’t always get followed. Yet the number of people who die in national parks each year is smaller than you might expect. Across all national parks, the National Park Service reports an average of 358 deaths per year. 

“The parks work very, very hard to prevent people from getting killed,” she says, with robust search and rescue teams.

When a visitor does die, the work for rangers is far from over. 

The hasty search

The moment a visitor goes missing or needs help, rangers move fast, says Minetor.

“When somebody reports that someone’s in trouble, that immediately puts a process into action in the park,” she says. “You’ve got to tell people where you’re going, so that if anything happens, they know where to look.” Although rules vary by park, visitors are strongly encouraged to share their itineraries before heading into remote or backcountry trails. 

Some people resist even that basic step, Minetor says. “Some people are ‘too cool’ to talk to a ranger or to sign a registry,” she says. “They’re the people who are never going to be found.”

One of the first steps the park will take when someone is reported missing is to conduct what is called a “hasty search,” although Minetor emphasizes that this step is neither rushed nor perfunctory. 

In a “hasty search,” two or three rangers will go out and walk the trail and see if they find anything on the ground that tells them where a missing person might be. Video: Hasty Searching in Search and Rescue – Search Techniques, Emhance International Responder Development®

“It’s called this because they do it right away. Two or three rangers will go out and walk the trail and see if they find anything on the ground that tells them where this person is—a footprint, candy wrapper, anything that will give them an idea,” she says. “Very often, that person is then found through the hasty search.”

The search continues

If a more extensive search is needed, the park will enlist community volunteers to conduct a grid search, spreading out across the terrain in a coordinated pattern, covering every inch until they find something—or accept that they’re not going to. 

Many of the same features that draw adventurous visitors to national parks in the first place—mountains, glaciers, canyon gorges, swift rivers—are the very ones that make recovery operations extraordinarily difficult.

For people in truly remote or inaccessible locations, the park deploys rangers trained specifically in climbing rescue, who make the harrowing ascent themselves to assess what it will take to get the person—or body—out.

In terrain too steep or rugged for a helicopter to land, they may use a technique called short hauling, in which the person is suspended beneath the aircraft on a rope and harness and flown to the nearest point where the chopper can touch down.

In terrain too steep or rugged for a helicopter to land, rescuers might use a technique called short hauling, in which the person is suspended beneath the aircraft on a rope and harness and flown to the nearest point where the chopper can touch down. Image: MichaelSvoboda / Getty Images True Photography

Many of the same techniques are used whether rangers are hoping to find someone alive or recover remains. Regardless, rangers “use aerial reconnaissance and on-the-ground search teams,” says Minetor. “Once the search is deemed a recovery rather than a rescue, fewer teams will be involved in ongoing searches, and the frequency may subside.”

It’s work that demands extraordinary commitment from the rangers involved. 

“These are people who dedicate their lives to saving other lives,” Minetor says. “It’s amazing.”

Sometimes, however, even these rescuers reach their limits. In severe winter conditions, a recovery may have to wait—the body is secured in place on the mountain until weather improves enough for rangers to safely return.

“For people who think climbing a mountain in the dead of winter is a great idea,” notes Minetor, “Let me just say: It isn’t.”

The aftermath

Once remains are recovered, a medical examiner determines the cause of death before they are released to the family.

However, it’s important to note that not every park death requires a wilderness search. When someone dies in a more straightforward way, like a heart attack on a trail or a fatal crash on a park road, the response typically looks more like a conventional emergency, with local first responders arriving on scene rather than deploying a search and rescue team. 

The issue of jurisdiction is more complicated than one might expect for deaths in national parks, with up to three agencies potentially claiming a person’s remains.

“Response to a fatality in a national park may involve up to three jurisdiction types—federal, state, or county,” says NPS spokesperson Elizabeth Peace. “Oftentimes, it is the local or state law enforcement that is the primary or lead [agency], with the National Park Service having concurrent jurisdiction.”

In practice, this means that families seeking information after a death in the park should know which agency is leading the response, since it might be the local sheriff’s office or state police, not the park itself, who will be their primary point of contact. 

It is the lead law enforcement agency that generally handles notifying next of kin, says Peace. However, other law enforcement entities may also take action to share information as quickly as possible. The inter-agency coordination helps ensure the family is informed before they hear of a loved one’s death on the news.

“Time is of the essence with next-of-kin notifications. The National Park Service works as quickly as possible to make contact before personally identifiable information is shared in the media,” says Peace.

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For the family left behind, there is, at least, no bill. Minetor says in all her research, she has never come across a family that has had to pay for the cost of a rescue. Only a few parties who got into trouble because of their own “extreme negligence” have received a bill, she says. 

“The park just wants to bring people out alive,” Minetor says. 

National parks have even become the setting for what some are calling “alpine divorce”—a term you may have seen lately for when one romantic partner abandons the other in dangerous terrain, sometimes with fatal consequences. 

For anyone thinking a national park is a great place to end your marriage and collect on life insurance, Minetor has a warning. “Nobody ever collects a cent; the insurance companies know what this is,” she says. “Almost every park that has cliffs has one of these stories, and all of the homicidal spouses are in prison.”

After years documenting almost every conceivable way a person can die in a national park, with titles including Death in Glacier National Park and Death in Rocky Mountain National Park, Minetor has one final surprise in store. 

The leading cause of death isn’t mountain falls or flash floods. “Auto accidents and drowning are the two biggest causes of death in national parks,” she says. “Most of them, honestly, are car crashes.”

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.

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The state of Connecticut is probably not the first place that comes to mind when you think of bears. However, the Nutmeg State is home to about 1,000 to 1,200 black bears (Ursus americanus) bears. The bears can be found throughout the state, with most concentrated in its mountainous northwestern corner.

For the first time, a mother bear in Connecticut has been spotted with five cubs. NBC4 Connecticut shared a video of the family, and Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) confirmed that it is the largest litter ever observed in the state. 

By the mid-1800s, humans pushed out black bears from the state by clearing  forest land for farms. After farmers abandoned a number of farms in the late 1800s, forestland began to regrow and bears returned. The DEEP Wildlife Division had evidence of a resident black bear population in the 1980s, and the population has steadily increased ever since.

Bear cubs like these typically emerge in the spring. According to DEEP, mother bears will sometimes leave their cubs alone while they climb up trees to find food and are not abandoning them. It is important to leave the cubs alone—even if they are vocacalizing—and contact a local wildlife management office. Mother bears may travel over a mile while foraging, leaving the cubs unattended  for up to 12 or more hours. 

“Removing cubs from the wild can unintentionally orphan them if the adult bear cannot locate and reunite with the cubs,” DEEP writes. 

This behavior can also happen during bad weather, and it’s important that a cub’s fur protects them from the elements and even spring’s rollercoaster temperatures. 

More than 1,000 bear sightings have been reported since January in Connecticut, and that number will only increase as temperatures warm. There were over 12,000 reports of bear sightings in Connecticut last year. By comparison there were only 22 sightings in 1996. Nearby Massachusetts is home to about 4,500 bears, but Maine wears New England’s bear crown at up to 35,000 bears. 

The post Litter of 5 bear cubs spotted in Connecticut for the first time appeared first on Popular Science.

Titan is the largest of Saturn’s 292 known moons, by far. It’s also the only other cosmic body apart from Earth confirmed to host standing liquid similar to our oceans in our solar system. But don’t necessarily expect calm conditions. According to a new modeling system detailed in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, the smallest gust of wind on Titan could generate huge, roiling waves across seas of hydrocarbons.

While there are an endless amount of fascinating places across our solar system, Titan remains one of the most intriguing. It’s nearly 50 percent larger and 80 percent more massive than Earth’s moon, making it even bigger than the planet Mercury. Titan is also teeming with prebiotic compounds, meaning it’s one of the best contenders for hosting life in oceans beneath its icy shell. 

While its average surface temperature of -296.59 degrees Fahrenheit ensures a total lack of flowing water, there are still rivers and seas full of light hydrocarbons such as ethane and methane. Astronomers have long suspected these large bodies of liquid generate waves that regularly carve out coastlines and shape landscapes, but Titan’s thick atmosphere and distance from Earth makes it difficult to confirm.

Scientists may still lack visual confirmation of the moon’s waves, but they can now gain a better sense of their fluid dynamics with a new modeling system from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Appropriately named PlanetWaves, the free-to-use simulator indicates that unlike Earth, the smallest breeze would easily birth 10-foot-waves thanks to Titan’s unique surface.

“On Earth, we get accustomed to certain wave dynamics,” study co-author and geophysicist at WHOI Andrew Ashton said in a statement. “But with this model, we can see how waves behave on planets with different liquids, atmospheres, and gravity, which can kind of challenge our intuition.”

Previous research has largely focused on predicting how a planet’s gravity may affect waves. As MIT planetary scientist Una Schneck explained, their team’s model is the first to include additional important compositional factors like a liquid’s surface tension, viscosity, and density. And when it comes to Titan’s liquid, the results would be hard to comprehend if seen firsthand.

“It kind of looks like tall waves moving in slow motion,” said Schneck. “If you were standing on the shore of this lake, you might feel only a soft breeze but you would see these enormous waves flowing toward you, which is not what we would expect on Earth.”

Gravity also plays an important part in allowing—or preventing—waves. In addition to Titan, the study’s authors tested PlanetWaves on conditions once seen on ancient Mars, as well as three exoplanets far beyond our solar system. In each case, the location’s unique factors create very different situations. 

The “cool super-Earth” LHS1140b may have water, but its strong gravity would hinder large waves without significant wind gusts. Meanwhile, Venus-like exoplanet Kepler 1649b’s sulfuric acid lakes require even stronger wind speeds. However, exoplanet 55-Cancri e is the most stubborn of all the simulated planets. Its powerful gravity and oceans of molten lava would need hurricane-like conditions to create even the smallest waves.

PlanetWaves is far more than a novel simulator. Calculating fluid behaviors on distant planets and moons could help inform engineers building new spacecraft and probes. If all goes as planned, the Artemis program is expected to build the first long-term human presence on the moon sometime in 2028. What comes next is anyone’s guess, but researchers are preparing to go with the flow.

“Imagine a completely still lake,” Ashton said. “We’re trying to figure out the first puff that will make those first little tiny ripples, on up to a full ocean wave.”

The post Saturn’s largest moon could see 10-foot waves from a tiny breeze appeared first on Popular Science.

Archaeologists in Poland are finally solving an over 2,000-year-old mummy mystery. After modern warfare erased vital information about the ancient Egyptian child, researchers were unsure about the boy’s origins and life. Now, they’ve discovered a striking detail while examining the delicate remains—a once-hidden ritual object resting on the boy’s chest. Their findings published in the journal Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage are now helping fill in the gaps of our understanding of ancient burial practices, while also underscoring how much is left to learn about the complex art of Egyptian mummification.

The child’s precise origins are an unfortunate casualty of war. Although the mummy has remained a part of the Archdiocesan Museum in the city of Wrocław since 1914, its records were lost during World War II. The well-preserved body remained in the museum’s archives for decades, but archaeologists only began a first comprehensive analysis in 2023. Led by historian Agata Kubala at the University of Wrocław, the team utilized techniques including CT scanning and X-ray imaging to create highly detailed, 3D images of the mummy and its decorated casing known as the cartonnage. This allowed them to gain unprecedented looks at the specimen without damaging it.

The boy likely came from a middle-class family during the Ptolemaic Period. Credit: Marzena Ożarek-Szilke / University of Wrocław

Kubala and her team determined the boy was around eight years old when he died based on his teeth development. However, without any obvious signs of disease or physical trauma, his exact cause of death remains unclear. Despite these gaps, they still could confidently assess other details about the mummy. Preparers extracted his brain through the nasal cavity using traditional methods, but also removed most of his vital organs via some unconventional routes. Mummification frequently relied on organ removal via abdominal incision, but in this case, they appear to have done so through the rectum. The body itself was then partially filled with textile materials, but lacked a large amount of resin. Taken altogether, researchers say these details point to a middle-class family’s burial during the Ptolemaic Period (about 332–30 BCE).

Although the historical records are gone, the mummy’s cartonnage offered numerous clues about its origins. It included iconography and thematic images of rosettes, a winged scarab, and lotuses all point to Upper Egypt—more specifically the area near Kom Ombo or Aswan. There is even the depiction of a hybridized deity carrying a mummy. The study’s authors theorize this may be the primordial snake god, Nehebkau.

But according to the archaeologists, the most intriguing find isn’t the mummy’s preservation techniques or cartonnage design. During 3D imaging, experts noticed an unknown object placed on the child’s chest. Attempting to physically examine the item is far too risky given the overall state of the remains. While a definitive answer isn’t possible just yet, the archaeologists think the item is possibly a papyrus scroll containing personal information on the boy—maybe even his name. The researchers are undeterred, and plan on exploring alternative methods to reveal the object’s secrets.

“This is not the end of the research,” Kubala said in a university statement. “We are still working on the mummy.”

The post Mystery item spotted in 2,000-year-old Egyptian child mummy appeared first on Popular Science.

This time of year, new flowers and animals are everywhere. Baby birds and squirrels pop up in nests, while opossums and bunnies roam as the weather warms up. Not exactly known for their speed, turtles are also waking up from brumation—aka reptile hibernation. 

Busy roads can be particularly dangerous for turtles, even with the protection from their hard shells. Every squished turtle is another that won’t help create the next generation, which is not welcome news for many already endangered turtle species. Out of 356 known turtle species, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists 161 of them as threatened. 

If you spot a turtle trying to cross a road, it is important to follow some simple rules.

Make sure that you are in a safe place to stop. You won’t be able to help a turtle if you get hurt. If driving, put on your hazard lights and slowly pull over onto the shoulder.

Assess the situation. It might be best to just stand guard as the turtle crosses on its own. If the turtle is not moving away from danger, pick it up and move it across the street in the direction that it was already going. Turtles know where they want to go to nest, feed, and reproduce, so putting them in the direction they are heading will help them get there faster.

A Blanding’s turtle crossing the road. Image: Courtney Celley/USFWS.

Never pick up a turtle by its tail! Instead, gently place your hands on both sides of the shell as if you are holding a hamburger to carry it. If you do not want to carry the turtle, you can put it on a car mat and carry it across the road that way. 

If you encounter a snapping turtle, be particularly careful. The United States Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) describes them as having “very long necks and a very short temper.” Keep your hands as close to their backside as possible. Snapping turtles are generally more aggressive in how they defend themselves compared to other turtle species. For example, box turtles are more likely to pull themselves into their shells during a rescue. And remember, an aggressive turtle is simply trying to stay alive or to protect their eggs.

An eastern box turtle on a road. Image: Danielle Brigida/USFWS.

Place the turtle on a low spot in the ground, since high impact falls from a tall rock or building can injure them. 

After safely moving the turtle, it can also help to take a picture of the turtle and report it to your local fish and wildlife department. This can help scientists assess local populations.

If you find an injured turtle, safely contain it in a box, log where you found it, and call your local wildlife rehabilitation center for instructions. Importantly, do not try to fix the injuries yourself! Keep it contained and away from danger until rehabilitators can assess the situation. And please don’t keep injured turtles or the healthy ones as pets. Uninjured turtles are best left alone and in the wild. 

The FWS also encourages people to learn more about turtles in your area and get involved in road planning decisions that could impact their welfare. 

The post How to help a turtle cross the road appeared first on Popular Science.

There are some among us who can’t remember which pants they wore yesterday or whether they have plans tonight. Take that person and put them on a bicycle, however, and if they had any kind of comfort level riding in the past, odds are, they’ll have no trouble balancing and steering, even if it’s been years—or decades—since their last ride.

The axiom “like riding a bike” exists for a reason, and it’s supported by ample amounts of evidence that casts light on the weird neuroscience of memory. So why is it, exactly, that we seemingly never forget how to push the pedals and ride? 

The many types of memory

On the surface, remembering a skill like cycling and also being able to call to mind your spouse’s birthday seem similar. After all, these are two things you learned in the past, so it stands to reason your brain would process them the same way. That, however, is not the case, explains Dr. Andrew Budson, a professor of neurology at Boston University and co-author of the book Why We Forget and How to Remember Better. 

Humans have three distinct kinds of long-term memories, he explains, each of which are processed, stored, and accessed via different pathways in the brain. 

1. Semantic memory is how we store information and facts that allows us to navigate the world: how to use objects and tools like toasters and screwdrivers or knowing the differences between cats and dogs. 
2. Episodic memory pertains to long-term memories specific to the person who lived through the experience, like a first kiss. 
3. Finally, procedural memory allows us to retain knowledge of tasks that become second nature and automatic, like playing guitar and, yes, riding a bike. (What we call muscle memory is a type of procedural memory, though the latter is a broader term. All muscle memory is procedural, but not all procedural memory is muscle memory). 

The truth is there’s nothing particularly special about bike riding—the axiom could have used many other skills, such as ice skating or swimming (in fact, swimming was the favored example of something people don’t forget how to do up until the 1940s, when cycling’s popularity exploded). 

Up until the 1940s, people referred to swimming, not cycling, as a skill you’ll never forget. Image: Contributor / Getty Images / Harold M. Lambert

“Riding a bicycle would certainly be a sort of a motor activity, and it depends upon some structures deep inside the brain called the basal ganglia,” says Budson, along with other regions of the brain, including the cerebellum. “Those are the key regions, and that’s very different than memory for episodes of our life, such as remembering last night’s dinner.”

Procedural memories get hardwired in, while still leaving some room for malleability. One bike isn’t the same as another—riding a mountain bike is slightly different than taking a leisurely trip across town on a fixed gear—so once a skill is stored, the basic motions are easy to access, but you can still adapt. 

“What is quite different about procedural memories is that they rely on these different brain structures that are, in general, much more resistant to change over time,” says Budson. “That’s why once you’ve learned how to touch type, you know you can still touch type, although you can certainly adapt it. When you get a new computer and they’ve moved the Escape key or something like that, you’re able to adapt to that.”

Why scientists can’t study cycling and memory directly

Given the popularity of the phrase, it may come as a surprise that there’s not a ton of research out there that specifically examines why we retain the memory of how to ride a bicycle. 

That’s not to say there’s nothing out there on cycling and memory: Some studies have concluded that cycling desks help improve cognitive performance. Others have found a linkage between cycling and improved long-term memory. But few scientists have directly studied biking as an example of procedural memory. 

There’s a few reasons why: first, it can be hard to scan a person’s brain while they’re riding around on a 12 speed. Second, as Dr. Elizabeth Kensinger, a psychology professor at Boston College and Budson’s co-author, explains, a subject self-reporting how good they are on a bike can be faulty and could skew results. 

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Instead, neurologists and psychologists have designed experiments to test procedural memory on entirely new skills, including having subjects draw shapes by looking at their hands in a mirror. It’s tricky at first, but over repetition, they start to get better and better.

“My best guess is that it just feels very uncontrolled versus all of the types of motor skills that scientists have been able to train people how to do,” says Kensinger. 

There are far easier, more convenient ways to examine procedural memory. In science, control over variables is essential to reliable results, and bringing a few folks who have gotten rusty on a bicycle out for a few spins around a velodrome leaves too much to chance to gain any solid data. 

Practice makes perfect

Doing something once isn’t enough to generate the kind of recall associated with procedural memory. The neural pathways involved in the activity need to be beefed up. 

“It’s so much faster for you to learn something the second or the third time than it was for you to learn it the first time,” says Kensinger. “There is something that is priming those pathways to be able to become established more much more quickly.”

In other words, hopping on a bike once won’t be enough for you to be able to do it again perfectly after decades away from bicycles. Repetition is key to forming procedural memories that can be easily jogged even after extended periods of inactivity. 

“Our procedural memories do degrade, but they degrade more slowly than your episodic memories,” explains Budson. “So there’s no doubt that practice helps it to stay very active and that it comes back more quickly.”

While procedural memory activities may need repetition to get wired into our brains, the good news is we’re capable of forming these kinds of memories throughout our lives. 

“If you think about many older adults, they need to learn pretty complicated motor skills,” says  Kensinger. “They might need to learn how to use a wheelchair that might have fairly complicated mechanisms to lock and unlock the brakes. Older adults are quite capable at learning those types of procedural skills as well.”

While adapting to new limitations can be frustrating, our ability to develop new skills near-automatic is helpful as we age. Whether that’s learning how to use a walker, or even using a computer or iPad, grandma and grandpa just need some time and patience to develop new procedural memories. 

It’s easy to see why humans evolved to retain and execute skills without conscious thought. Running away from predators or searching for food shouldn’t be something that requires a ton of focus. So the next time you’re zooming along on your bike, take a second to thank your procedural memory, even if you can’t remember where exactly you’re going. 

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.

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Few cultures exist in a vacuum, even those separated from others by hundreds of miles of open sea like the island nation of Japan. Nearly 70 years ago, archaeologists discovered an ancient suit of armor beneath one of the island nation’s most prominent historical sites. Now, researchers can finally trace the 1,400-year-old armor’s telltale artisanry back to Korea. Specifically, to the Baejke Kingdom—one of Korea’s three major empires dating back to the 18th century BCE.

Buddhism truly began to flourish in Japan beginning in the sixth century CE after monks arrived from mainland China and Korea. Few places represent this monumental cultural shift more than the Asuka-dera Temple complex, located about 23 miles southeast of Osaka. 

Asuka-Dera’s establishment near the start of the seventh century marked the first full-scale Buddhist temple on the island archipelago.

According to ancient documents including the second-oldest history of Japan, Nihon Shoki, craftsmen and monks from the Baekje Kingdom helped build the temple complex. Baekje was one of the “Three Kingdoms of Korea” that flourished between the 18th century BCE and 660 CE.

Archaeologists from the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties originally located the armor fragments beneath a pagoda’s foundation during 1957 excavation work. While its construction resembled armor previously linked to Baekje royal sites in Korea, technology at the time wasn’t advanced enough to supply a definitive answer.

In 2015, however, equipment like X-ray and 3D imaging finally allowed researchers to further examine the Asuka-dera armor. They discovered that, like Baekje armor, the Japanese monastery finds were crafted by interlacing small iron plates with cords into what’s known as a lamellar structure. This approach provided wearers with solid protection without sacrificing flexibility, especially because the torso, upper arm, and shoulder segments were all connected into a single shirt-like piece of armor.

Similar armor excavated between 2011 and 2014 at Gongsanseong Fortress, a historic Baekje compound located about 50 miles southeast of Seoul, also supports this. At the fortress, researchers identified inscriptions on the plating that date to 645 CE—around the exact same era as Asuka-Dera’s construction. In 2024, archaeologist Takehiro Hasumura confirmed the overlaps after examining the Gongsanseong specimens firsthand.

By the 7th century, elite Japanese warriors began to adopt keiko-style armor. Like the Baejke design, keiko armor consists of interwoven and flexible lamellar iron scales. Keiko’s adoption—along with its design—now makes it clearer than ever that Baekje artisans, specifically armorers, traveled alongside mainland Buddhist monks and emissaries. 

With additional excavation projects, archaeologists hope to further contextualize other pivotal cultural exchanges between these and other East Asian kingdoms.

The post Armor buried under Japanese temple linked to ancient Korean kingdom appeared first on Popular Science.

Spring is here, and that can only mean one thing: the return of robot birds. In Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park, rangers and conservationists are once again deploying specially designed robotic decoys of the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in a bid to encourage breeding. Although they may not exactly look like the real thing to human park visitors, ecologists hope the robo-birds can convince the region’s dwindling grouse population to start reproducing. .

The greater sage-grouse is a prime example of the consequences of habitat loss. Around 16 million of the chicken-sized birds lived across North America at the beginning of the 20th century. Ecological surveys now indicate that by the late 1960s, grouse populations in the West began to decline an average of 2.3 percent every year. While the species as a whole isn’t endangered, populations in areas like Grand Teton National Park are at serious risk of completely disappearing. At one of the park’s breeding sites—known as leks—conservationists only tallied three male grouses last year.

A major reason for Grand Teton’s declining population is owed to years of grazing cows destroying their typical food supplies and hiding spots. Although it’s been decades since the last cattle herds trampled over the region, grouse numbers have yet to improve. Part of this is also due to the nearby Jackson Hole Airport. As the only airport inside the national park, plane traffic has further disrupted the birds’ lives. In some cases, aircraft have even struck and killed unlucky grouse.

Over the last eight years, Grand Teton staff have partnered with various community organizations and local schools to restore around 100 acres of pasture near the airport. They have particularly focused on reintroducing native plants and maintaining leks for grouse breeding. But building up the space is only one part of the battle.

“One of the challenges with restoration is that even when you create great habitat, wildlife doesn’t always show up right away,” Grand Teton Park spokesperson Emily Davis explained in a recent SFGATE profile.

Like a similar project last year, rangers tasked local high schoolers to help bring back the grouse. For 2026, they enlisted the RoboBroncs—Jackson Hole High School’s robotics team—to design and build mechanical grouse decoys. While the bodies are largely composed of repurposed materials like blankets and packing foam, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department supplied actual pointy tail feathers.

There are two types of robo-grouse installed at Grand Teton Park—stationary mounts, as well as automated models built to move and dance like the actual birds during mating rituals. Some of them are even capable of puffing their chests like a male grouse. To boost the realism, recorded breeding calls are also played every day beginning at 5 a.m. on nearby concealed speakers.

“The idea is to encourage birds to begin displaying and mating at the restored site,” Davis explained. “Because brood-rearing happens near the lek, this can help draw more sage-grouse to the area over time.”

With any luck, the robotic assistants will help steer sage-grouse away from the airport towards restored habitats, where they will meet mates and breed. The standard courtship season lasts through mid-May, and rangers will be monitoring each step of the way using a trail camera.

The post Robot birds deployed in Grand Teton National Park for sexy time appeared first on Popular Science.

Many of the animals we know and love today have tails, from the littlest kitten to the largest whale. These tails vary widely by anatomy and purpose—from the grippy tails of opossums to the balancing tails of kangaroos to the swimming tails of fish. Others tell us how an animal is feeling, like a happy puppy with a wiggly butt. 

Having a tail that extends beyond the anal opening is a requirement of membership in the phylum Chordata, where humans and all other vertebrates reside. But us humans don’t really have a “tail” in the same way most creatures do, at least past eight weeks in the womb. Neither do our closest primate relatives. 

For humans, the story of losing our tails goes way back in the evolutionary timeline. “The reason that humans don’t have tails is that our ancestors didn’t have tails,” says Carol Ward, a distinguished professor in the integrative anatomy program at the University of Missouri. But how we lost tails is a story that goes back at least 20 million years into human—and ape—geneological history. 

One tail of a mystery

In the heart of the Miocene, land-dwelling animals were starting to look more and more like the fauna of today. During this era, which lasted from around 23 million years ago to five million years ago, the first dog-bears appeared, primitive giraffes frolicked through Eurasia, and dog-sized three-toed horse ancestors lived in Florida. 

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Humans, on the other hand, weren’t exactly humans yet. Human evolution is a story of divergence that goes back to the Miocene when African apes split off from orangutans. Recent research estimates that the last common ancestor between humans, chimps, and bonobos split off around five to six million years ago, and evidence for early members of the Homo genus didn’t appear in the fossil record until around 2.8 million years ago. 

The trouble here is that these evolutionary cousins of ours are also tailless. So to find a tailed relative, we have to go back even further. Around 25 to 30 million years ago, our ape ancestors branched off from tailed monkeys. Once that split happened, many species of tailless apes started popping up in the millions of years that followed. This makes it pretty much impossible to determine which exact tailless species would go on to evolve into us, says Ward. 

The fossil record only offers us limited glimpses of what was happening, but even those snippets are enlightening. One such glimpse is the Ekembo, a genus with specimens dating back 17 to 20 million years ago that have been found in Kenya. Fossils of one species in this genus, the Ekembo heseloni, offer up a pretty good look at the relationship between apes and tails at the time, says Ward. These guys probably looked like chimps with legs and arms of the same length, adds Ward, and fossil evidence suggests that these creatures climbed on tree branches on all fours and kept the long, bendy lower backs that modern apes eventually lost. But what they were missing was the key components necessary for a tail. 

When it comes to pinpointing when ape tails disappeared, we have to look to the sacrum fossil, the bony structure at the base of our lumbar vertebrae. Sacrum fossils for say, cats and other tailed mammals, lead into a bunch of tail vertebrae. For apes and humans, the sacrum ends with just a small tip. 

“We have that small tippy point for Ekembo heseloni,” Ward says, “We know that sacrum could not have supported a tail, and that animal didn’t have one.”

The above skeleton belongs to an ancient ape, Ekembo nyanzae, dating back 17 to 20 million years ago that have been found in Kenya. Image: Ghedoghedo / CC BY-SA 3.0

But Ekembo isn’t the only example of a tailless primate from around this time. Another Miocene-era ape dubbed Nacholapithecus appears in Kenya’s fossil record about 15 million years ago. Fossils of these creatures’ sacrums demonstrate that they too wouldn’t have been able to support a tail, adds Ward.

While it’s not clear which exact ape goes on to become a hominid millions of years down the line, the evidence shows that apes had evolved to be tailless in this time period. And if our ancient ape ancestors didn’t have tails, homidis—and, in turn, humans—won’t either. 

Why hominid (and ape) tails disappeared

So we know pretty certainly that the “human” tail went the way of the dinosaurs long before humans were a twinkle in evolution’s eye. But why? There are a bunch of theories, but it may have to do with movement and motion, Ward suggests. 

Even though we, and our tailless brethren like gorillas, chimps, and gibbons, are related to these 20-million-year-old apes in some capacity, they likely looked very different from their modern counterparts. 

“Modern chimps and gorillas have really long forelimbs, really long hands and fingers, short hind limbs, and a bunch of other features for hanging below branches,” says Ward. “But millions of years ago, that wasn’t the case. [Early apes] had arms and legs that are about the same length, so we’re pretty sure they walked on all fours.” 

These strategies are intertwined with taillessness. While many animals use their tails to help maintain balance while in motion, they are especially useful if that movement is swift—think a running cheetah or a swinging monkey. 

Miocene apes were eating fruit out of trees, explains Ward. Getting to the good stuff on the edge of a fruit tree branch requires supporting their weight on multiple branches, moving slowly and carefully so as to not lose balance. 

For our slow-moving ape ancestors, a tail may have been a waste of energy to grow, or a potential liability waiting to be yanked by a predator. “They were climbing, but they were doing it deliberately,” Ward says. “The tail just didn’t offer an advantage.”

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 Why humans don’t have tails appeared first on Popular Science.

Many of the animals we know and love today have tails, from the littlest kitten to the largest whale. These tails vary widely by anatomy and purpose—from the grippy tails of opossums to the balancing tails of kangaroos to the swimming tails of fish. Others tell us how an animal is feeling, like a happy puppy with a wiggly butt. 

Having a tail that extends beyond the anal opening is a requirement of membership in the phylum Chordata, where humans and all other vertebrates reside. But us humans don’t really have a “tail” in the same way most creatures do, at least past eight weeks in the womb. Neither do our closest primate relatives. 

For humans, the story of losing our tails goes way back in the evolutionary timeline. “The reason that humans don’t have tails is that our ancestors didn’t have tails,” says Carol Ward, a distinguished professor in the integrative anatomy program at the University of Missouri. But how we lost tails is a story that goes back at least 20 million years into human—and ape—geneological history. 

One tail of a mystery

In the heart of the Miocene, land-dwelling animals were starting to look more and more like the fauna of today. During this era, which lasted from around 23 million years ago to five million years ago, the first dog-bears appeared, primitive giraffes frolicked through Eurasia, and dog-sized three-toed horse ancestors lived in Florida. 

Related 'Ask Us Anything' Stories

Do any bugs live in the ocean? Short answer: Not really.

How marine mammals stay hydrated in a salty sea

Why do we even have baby teeth?

Why our ancestors had straight teeth without braces

Why do we have five fingers and toes?

Why we have two nostrils instead of one big hole

Humans, on the other hand, weren’t exactly humans yet. Human evolution is a story of divergence that goes back to the Miocene when African apes split off from orangutans. Recent research estimates that the last common ancestor between humans, chimps, and bonobos split off around five to six million years ago, and evidence for early members of the Homo genus didn’t appear in the fossil record until around 2.8 million years ago. 

The trouble here is that these evolutionary cousins of ours are also tailless. So to find a tailed relative, we have to go back even further. Around 25 to 30 million years ago, our ape ancestors branched off from tailed monkeys. Once that split happened, many species of tailless apes started popping up in the millions of years that followed. This makes it pretty much impossible to determine which exact tailless species would go on to evolve into us, says Ward. 

The fossil record only offers us limited glimpses of what was happening, but even those snippets are enlightening. One such glimpse is the Ekembo, a genus with specimens dating back 17 to 20 million years ago that have been found in Kenya. Fossils of one species in this genus, the Ekembo heseloni, offer up a pretty good look at the relationship between apes and tails at the time, says Ward. These guys probably looked like chimps with legs and arms of the same length, adds Ward, and fossil evidence suggests that these creatures climbed on tree branches on all fours and kept the long, bendy lower backs that modern apes eventually lost. But what they were missing was the key components necessary for a tail. 

When it comes to pinpointing when ape tails disappeared, we have to look to the sacrum fossil, the bony structure at the base of our lumbar vertebrae. Sacrum fossils for say, cats and other tailed mammals, lead into a bunch of tail vertebrae. For apes and humans, the sacrum ends with just a small tip. 

“We have that small tippy point for Ekembo heseloni,” Ward says, “We know that sacrum could not have supported a tail, and that animal didn’t have one.”

The above skeleton belongs to an ancient ape, Ekembo nyanzae, dating back 17 to 20 million years ago that have been found in Kenya. Image: Ghedoghedo / CC BY-SA 3.0

But Ekembo isn’t the only example of a tailless primate from around this time. Another Miocene-era ape dubbed Nacholapithecus appears in Kenya’s fossil record about 15 million years ago. Fossils of these creatures’ sacrums demonstrate that they too wouldn’t have been able to support a tail, adds Ward.

While it’s not clear which exact ape goes on to become a hominid millions of years down the line, the evidence shows that apes had evolved to be tailless in this time period. And if our ancient ape ancestors didn’t have tails, homidis—and, in turn, humans—won’t either. 

Why hominid (and ape) tails disappeared

So we know pretty certainly that the “human” tail went the way of the dinosaurs long before humans were a twinkle in evolution’s eye. But why? There are a bunch of theories, but it may have to do with movement and motion, Ward suggests. 

Even though we, and our tailless brethren like gorillas, chimps, and gibbons, are related to these 20-million-year-old apes in some capacity, they likely looked very different from their modern counterparts. 

“Modern chimps and gorillas have really long forelimbs, really long hands and fingers, short hind limbs, and a bunch of other features for hanging below branches,” says Ward. “But millions of years ago, that wasn’t the case. [Early apes] had arms and legs that are about the same length, so we’re pretty sure they walked on all fours.” 

These strategies are intertwined with taillessness. While many animals use their tails to help maintain balance while in motion, they are especially useful if that movement is swift—think a running cheetah or a swinging monkey. 

Miocene apes were eating fruit out of trees, explains Ward. Getting to the good stuff on the edge of a fruit tree branch requires supporting their weight on multiple branches, moving slowly and carefully so as to not lose balance. 

For our slow-moving ape ancestors, a tail may have been a waste of energy to grow, or a potential liability waiting to be yanked by a predator. “They were climbing, but they were doing it deliberately,” Ward says. “The tail just didn’t offer an advantage.”

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 Why humans don’t have tails appeared first on Popular Science.

Every mammal gives birth to live young, except for a handful of egg-laying monotremes like the platypus. But did the earliest ancestors of mammals also reproduce through eggs? It’s a question that’s stumped evolutionary biologists for decades, but researchers finally have a definitive answer. Published on April 9 in the journal PLOS One, their findings rely on a 250-million-year-old fossilized egg, sophisticated technological advances, and a lot of patience.

Paleontologists discovered the specimen in question almost 17 years ago during an excavation in South Africa’s Karoo Basin. The arid region located over 200 miles northeast of Cape Town is particularly well known for its vast troves of ancient fossils.

“My preparator and exceptional fossil finder, John Nyaphuli, identified a small nodule that at first revealed only tiny flecks of bone. As he carefully prepared the specimen, it became clear that it was a perfectly curled-up Lystrosaurus hatchling,” University of the Witwatersrand paleobiologist Jennifer Botha said in a statement. 

The fossilized egg photographed in the control room of the ESRF in France. Credit: Julien Benoit

Lystrosaurus was a pivotal species in the evolutionary journey of mammals. The herbivores arrived on the planet during the aftermath of the End-Permian Mass Extinction about 252 million years ago. Likely caused by volcanic eruptions in present-day Siberia, the End-Permian cataclysm eventually wiped out around 57 percent of all biological life, including 70 percent of terrestrial vertebrates. Lystrosaurus managed to thrive despite the era’s volatile climate, warm temperatures, and frequent droughts. Although Botha and her colleagues suspected their discovery showcased the remains of a hatchling inside its shell, the required imaging technology to assess their theory did not exist in 2008.

Within a few years, however, the development of advanced synchrotron X-ray CT scanning allowed a path forward. Botha brought the fossil to the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France, where collaborators could finally examine it under the proper conditions. Only then could they identify a key piece of evidence—an incomplete mandibular symphysis. This section of lower jaw is crucial for an animal to eat, but only after its two halves fuse during gestation.

“I was genuinely excited,” recalled University of Witwatersrand paleobiologist Julien Benoit. “The fact that this fusion had not yet occurred shows that the individual would have been incapable of feeding itself.”

This means their Lystrosaurus wasn’t fully developed when it died, and its positioning could only mean one thing: it was still inside an egg. More specifically, the team believes Lystrosaurus laid soft-shelled eggs, which explains why fossilized evidence is so difficult to find.

A 3D reconstruction of the skeleton. Credit: Julien Benoit

Although small, the egg is large compared to the mammal ancestor’s body size. Today, larger eggs usually contain more yolk, which include all the nutrients needed for an embryo to develop without a parent feeding it. The bigger eggs are also much more resistant to drying—a vital strength during the harsh climate following the extinction event. Taken altogether, it appears that Lystrosaurus was already highly developed when it hatched. This made them able to evade predators, take care of themselves, and quickly begin reproducing.

Beyond filling in a major gap in mammalian evolution, Lystrosaurus can help biologists understand how species might continue to adapt to an increasingly chaotic ecosystem.

“This work is highly impactful because it offers a deep-time perspective on resilience and adaptability in the face of rapid climate change and ecological crisis,” said Benoit, adding, “This discovery [is] not just a breakthrough in paleontology, but also highly relevant to current biodiversity and climate challenges.”

The post Proto-mammals laid eggs, paleontologists finally confirm appeared first on Popular Science.

Every mammal gives birth to live young, except for a handful of egg-laying monotremes like the platypus. But did the earliest ancestors of mammals also reproduce through eggs? It’s a question that’s stumped evolutionary biologists for decades, but researchers finally have a definitive answer. Published on April 9 in the journal PLOS One, their findings rely on a 250-million-year-old fossilized egg, sophisticated technological advances, and a lot of patience.

Paleontologists discovered the specimen in question almost 17 years ago during an excavation in South Africa’s Karoo Basin. The arid region located over 200 miles northeast of Cape Town is particularly well known for its vast troves of ancient fossils.

“My preparator and exceptional fossil finder, John Nyaphuli, identified a small nodule that at first revealed only tiny flecks of bone. As he carefully prepared the specimen, it became clear that it was a perfectly curled-up Lystrosaurus hatchling,” University of the Witwatersrand paleobiologist Jennifer Botha said in a statement. 

The fossilized egg photographed in the control room of the ESRF in France. Credit: Julien Benoit

Lystrosaurus was a pivotal species in the evolutionary journey of mammals. The herbivores arrived on the planet during the aftermath of the End-Permian Mass Extinction about 252 million years ago. Likely caused by volcanic eruptions in present-day Siberia, the End-Permian cataclysm eventually wiped out around 57 percent of all biological life, including 70 percent of terrestrial vertebrates. Lystrosaurus managed to thrive despite the era’s volatile climate, warm temperatures, and frequent droughts. Although Botha and her colleagues suspected their discovery showcased the remains of a hatchling inside its shell, the required imaging technology to assess their theory did not exist in 2008.

Within a few years, however, the development of advanced synchrotron X-ray CT scanning allowed a path forward. Botha brought the fossil to the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France, where collaborators could finally examine it under the proper conditions. Only then could they identify a key piece of evidence—an incomplete mandibular symphysis. This section of lower jaw is crucial for an animal to eat, but only after its two halves fuse during gestation.

“I was genuinely excited,” recalled University of Witwatersrand paleobiologist Julien Benoit. “The fact that this fusion had not yet occurred shows that the individual would have been incapable of feeding itself.”

This means their Lystrosaurus wasn’t fully developed when it died, and its positioning could only mean one thing: it was still inside an egg. More specifically, the team believes Lystrosaurus laid soft-shelled eggs, which explains why fossilized evidence is so difficult to find.

A 3D reconstruction of the skeleton. Credit: Julien Benoit

Although small, the egg is large compared to the mammal ancestor’s body size. Today, larger eggs usually contain more yolk, which include all the nutrients needed for an embryo to develop without a parent feeding it. The bigger eggs are also much more resistant to drying—a vital strength during the harsh climate following the extinction event. Taken altogether, it appears that Lystrosaurus was already highly developed when it hatched. This made them able to evade predators, take care of themselves, and quickly begin reproducing.

Beyond filling in a major gap in mammalian evolution, Lystrosaurus can help biologists understand how species might continue to adapt to an increasingly chaotic ecosystem.

“This work is highly impactful because it offers a deep-time perspective on resilience and adaptability in the face of rapid climate change and ecological crisis,” said Benoit, adding, “This discovery [is] not just a breakthrough in paleontology, but also highly relevant to current biodiversity and climate challenges.”

The post Proto-mammals laid eggs, paleontologists finally confirm appeared first on Popular Science.

Travel is notoriously hard on your digestion. Jet lag, dehydration, stress, and even slight disruptions to a regular meal schedule can result in unpleasant bathroom difficulties. But the next time you’re struggling with toilet troubles away from home, try to remember: At least you’re not dealing with it in outer space.

“I was thinking about how even on Earth, travel is one of the biggest constipation triggers,” Sarah Jane Bunger tells Popular Science. “[It’s] always going to make this perfect storm of constipation while on Earth. So it’s only going to be more and more exacerbated once you go outside Earth.”

It’s Bunger’s job to think about these things. She’s the global research and development lead for Dulcolax, where she oversees anything and everything tied to new formulas and clinical activities for the laxative and stool softener. But even after more than 13 years in the business, she was honored to learn the medication was available to a new demographic: the astronauts aboard Artemis II.

“We weren’t propositioned ahead of time. It was a lovely surprise for us that we were included,” she says of Dulcolax’s inclusion in NASA’s official Formulary and First Aid Kit.

Supplements like Dulcolax—specifically bisacodyl—are included on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medications, something keenly monitored by NASA’s medical team. At the same time, spacecraft cargo storage is always at a premium, so astronauts need meds that both get the job done and take up as little room as possible.

“I always think of the infamous example of sending a female astronaut up with, like, 100 tampons,” says Bunger, referring to Sally Ride’s historic first mission. “They want to make sure that they’re not overpacking, but that they have everything on hand that the astronauts might need to treat themselves while they’re up there.”

Bunger explains that constipation can be particularly troublesome for astronauts during the first few days in space while their bodies adjust. Eating is predictably difficult in space, although not necessarily for the reasons you think. Zero gravity makes digestion harder on an astronaut’s body because their organs and musculature must work in conditions they’re not evolved to handle. Bunger likens the digestive tract to an elastic material like leggings. While peristalsis—a muscle’s ability to contract and produce wavelike motions—helps move an object through the stretchy passageway, gravity is always lending a hand. Remove the earthbound physics altogether, and all that’s left is the peristalsis.

“That’s why they’re still able to swallow, even without the help of gravity. So there is some impact from the lack of gravity up there,” Bunger says.

Luckily, laxatives like Dulcolax are engineered to work both on- and off-world. The medication aboard Artemis II is the same as the types found in grocery stores, and features a protective coating that guards it against corrosive stomach acid. This allows it to delay dissolving until it reaches the lower GI tract. Bisacodyl also works on contact, so it doesn’t need to be metabolized by the kidneys or liver.

As helpful as the laxatives may be during the Artemis II mission, Bunger hopes their inclusion in the first aid kit has wider ramifications for everyone, not only astronauts.

“Honestly, if I could pick a benefit coming out of this, it would be that it helps address the stigma [of constipation] for some consumers,” she says. “If even astronauts are dealing with this, then you shouldn’t feel bad about the fact that maybe your GI tract is a little bit off, too.”

While not on the official list of mission experiments, there is also the possibility of real scientific progress thanks to laxatives in space. Bunger points out that no one has yet to study the effects of taking them while traveling to the moon.

“I would settle for a stock report,” she suggests. “I don’t need to know who took it and I don’t need to know when. I just want to know that it was taken.”

The post Even astronauts get constipated in space appeared first on Popular Science.

In March, NASA released a broad overview of the Artemis II mission menu accompanying astronauts on their historic, 10-day lunar flyby mission. The rundown was relatively comprehensive, but it lacked a crucial bit of information: Which specific five hot sauces have now traveled farther than any other condiment in human history?

After much anticipation, answers have finally arrived. Speaking with Axios, Johnson Space Center public affairs specialist Victoria Segovia confirmed the astronauts brought along Tabasco, Cholulu, Frank’s RedHot, Heinz Hot Taco Sauce, and Sriracha.

At the risk of sounding biased, the list isn’t exactly the spiciest of revelations. In terms of Scoville rating (the widely utilized hotness assessment based on capsaicinoid levels), the most mouth-burning sauce aboard Artemis II is Cholula with around 3,600 Scoville Heat Units (SHUs). The aficionados at PepperGeek.com deem this a “respectable heat” with a “decent bite,” but that’s about it. Second place is a tossup between Tabasco and Sriracha, each possessing around 2,500 SHUs. Meanwhile, Frank’s RedHot sits in last place with 450 SHUs.

This isn’t a knock on any of the hot sauces’ flavors, of course. If anything, their inclusion speaks to their appeal. Eating is difficult in space, although not necessarily for the reasons you think. Many astronauts have reported odd sensory shifts while traveling beyond Earth. Former NASA astronaut Douglas Wheelan once recalled that strawberries tasted sickeningly sweet and green beans had a grassy flavor during his 178-day tenure aboard the International Space Station.

Others have reported food simply tasting blander. This is largely due to how bodily fluids behave and realign in microgravity, which frequently causes swelling in the nasal passages. Much like having a cold, the subsequent congestion can then block odor molecules from reaching olfactory receptors. Knowing all this, astronauts routinely pack condiments to alleviate at least some of the mealtime weirdness. The hot sauces on the Artemis II mission probably won’t destroy anyone’s tastebuds, but that’s totally fine. Simply being in outer space does a decent job of that on its own.

The post The 5 hot sauces aboard Artemis II are kinda weak appeared first on Popular Science.

I have a confession to make: In my late teens, my car ran out of gas along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Rather than pump my own gas in PA, I’d been trying to make it across to neighboring New Jersey—a state that’s notoriously known for prohibiting self-service at gas stations—on an almost-empty tank. The truth is, I had no idea how to fill a tank on my own.

Since Oregon softened its laws back in 2023, New Jersey remains the only U.S. state in which drivers are not allowed to pump their own gas. Those of us from the Garden State often find the entire process of fueling up intimidating: so much so that we’re willing to run on fumes rather than work the pumps ourselves. My experience on the PA Turnpike was a learning one, for sure. But it left me with questions. 

In order to tackle some of those questions, we at Popular Science asked both Dr. Michael Jerrett, a professor at the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA, and Thomas Wright, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development, to weigh in on New Jersey’s unusual law and the science behind it. 

The origins of New Jersey’s ban on self-service

While the first dedicated, drive-in gas station opened in Missouri in 1905, it took until the 1970s for most states to switch over to self-service. They did so in part due to rising gas costs resulting from the 1973 energy crisis. Facing tight margins, gas stations realized they could lower their overhead by reducing staff and then pass that savings on to customers. In short, having patrons pump their own gas allowed gas stations to remain competitive.

To make the switch, these states had to modify their fire codes. This included installing emergency cut-off switches for all pump stations and heavily regulated latch-open nozzles (those notches that allow you to keep gas flowing without having to hold the nozzle yourself). 

Two states held out: New Jersey and Oregon, primarily due to laws they enacted during the mid-20th century citing safety concerns, such as high fire risks and health-safety hazards, including exposure to toxic fumes. 

New Jersey’s legislation prohibiting customers from pumping their own gas dates back to 1949. It’s known as the Retail Gasoline Dispensing Safety Act. Under New Jersey’s law, “trained attendants—rather than customers—handle the dispensing of fuel as they are required to know where emergency shutoffs are, recognize potentially unsafe conditions, and ensure that only approved containers are filled,” says Wright. 

New Jersey gasoline attendant posts a new price low of 15.50 cents per gallon in October 1951. Image: Contributor / Getty Images / Bettmann The health risks associated with pumping gas

While pumping gas is an act that most people (New Jerseyans excluded) do without thinking, there are health hazards associated with it. 

“Basically, gasoline vapors include benzene,” a colorless, sweet-smelling chemical that’s highly flammable, says Jerrett, “as well as other volatile organic compounds,” which are carbon-based chemicals that evaporate into the air at room temperature. 

These include toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene—all used to help improve a fuel’s efficiency and stability as well as an engine’s performance. All of these flammable, colorless liquids are considered neurotoxic, meaning being exposed to them in large doses can cause headaches, fatigue, and even more severe symptoms like death. 

But don’t get too worried, says Jerrett, since it’s the dose that makes the poison. Gas stations nationwide have gone to great lengths to limit our exposure to vapors at the pumps. “California, for example, uses rubber sealers around the nozzle for fueling,” says Jeffett. These prevent harmful gasoline vapors from escaping into the atmosphere during refueling, which protects not only the people at the gas tank but also the environment. 

Wright says that prohibiting self-service also helps with overall general safety measures. “When customers pump their own gas, it’s simply harder to enforce basic rules like turning off engines or not smoking.” 

Indeed, smoking or vaping both provide ignition sources that can be highly flammable at a gas station. It’s the same for vehicles that are left running. Turning off your car’s engine prevents heat from the vehicle’s exhaust inadvertently igniting gasoline vapors. 

There’s also static electricity. This build-up of electrical charge (we’ve all felt that zap!) on the surface of an object often happens when you slide onto and off of your car seat. This can generate high-voltage sparks exceeding 1500 volts, which can easily spark a fire. 

The best ways to avoid a zap are to not get back into your vehicle while you’re filling up and to ground yourself (try touching a metal part of the car away from the nozzle) if you feel a static charge. 

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Limiting your own exposure 

For self-service patrons, there are things you can do to limit your exposure at the pump, says Jerrett. Avoid standing over the nozzle while filling your tank, or use the latch-open if it’s available and simply walk away. Higher wind speeds can disperse vapors more readily, so avoid pumping gas until the weather calms. 

While fires at gas stations do occur, roughly three-quarters of them result from mechanical or electrical malfunctions—not from pumping gas. In fact, only about four percent of them begin with gasoline igniting, so the chances of starting a fire at the gas station are extremely slim. 

Still, having a trained attendant pumped your gas is generally considered a safer option, since it reduces the risks of vehicles left running, static electricity, and consumers lighting up. It also keeps people who may be at higher risk for health complications—such as senior citizens and pregnant women—away from toxic fumes. 

The benefits of full-service 

In 2025, New Jersey had more than 1,900 gas stations and roughly 10,000 workers in the Auto & Watercraft Service Attendant category, which includes gas station attendants. “The law we’re tasked with enforcing prioritizes safety, accountability, and job creation,” says Wright. “Plus, the temperature is better in the car.”

Now, if they could just arrange a course in how to pump your own gas for those traveling out of state…

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.

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Christina Koch made history this week, becoming the first woman to travel around the moon. The NASA astronaut’s lunar flyby wasn’t her first groundbreaking moment: Koch also holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman and took part in the first all-female spacewalk.

Despite being a seasoned space explorer, the impact of seeing Earth as a small dot in vast blackness still astonishes Koch. In a post shared by NASA on Instagram, Koch poignantly reflected on the Artemis II mission:

The thing that changed for me, looking back at Earth, was that I found myself noticing not only the beauty of Earth, but how much blackness there was around it and how it just made it even more special. It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive. We evolved on the same planet, and we have some shared things about how we love and live that are just universal. And the specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized when you notice how much else there is around it.

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Koch, along with the rest of the Artemis II crew, return to Earth on April 10.

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Supermassive black holes literally don’t add up. Astrophysicists know it takes more time than is mathematically possible for one of them to reach its incomprehensible proportions via standard gas accretion. Despite this, they are clearly observable at the center of nearly every large galaxy. So how do they get so big?

The likeliest explanation is that supermassive black holes attain their size when two smaller black holes smack into one another during a galactic collision. For years, this theory has remained simply that—a theory. However, evidence from a team at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy now offers the first clear look at a pair of supermassive black holes at the heart of a distant galaxy. As they explain in a study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the duo is racing towards a head-on collision.

Markarian 501 (Mrk 501) is an elliptical galaxy located in the Hercules constellation, and the site of the breakthrough. Researchers recorded a spectrum of radio frequencies during dozens of observations over 23 years. Like many other galaxies, Mrk 501 features a jet of supercharged particles ejected from a black hole at nearly the speed of light. Mrk 501’s jet is particularly bright because it points towards Earth, making it easy to study.

Researchers started noticing something peculiar over the years of observational data. Although oriented in a different direction, it became increasingly clear that there wasn’t one, but two jets emitted from the heart of Mrk 501. In a matter of weeks, astronomers tracked the second jet as it started behind the first one, then proceeded to move counterclockwise around it. In June 2022, the radiation appeared so crooked that it looked almost circular—a situation known as an Einstein ring. The researchers believe the likeliest explanation for this was that the system was briefly, perfectly aligned towards Earth. During that time, gravitational lensing from the first black hole bent the second jet’s light behind it.

The graphical depiction shows the central region of the galaxy Mrk 501 at a frequency of 43 gigahertz on three different days. The contours indicate the intensity of the emission, while the grey circles mark bright regions within the jet, identified through model calculations. One can track the movement of the jets by following the movement of these regions. The previously known jet (Jet 1, orange guide line) pointing towards Earth is clearly visible. The newly discovered second jet (Jet 2, blue) changed its appearance within a few weeks. Both particle streams originate close to each other in the core of the galaxy. The position of the black hole (BH) associated with Jet 1 is marked with an arrow. Credit: Silke Britzen

“We searched for it for so long, and then it came as a complete surprise that we could not only see a second jet, but even track its movement,” study coauthor and astronomer Silke Britzen said in a statement.

After multiple repeating brightness cycles, Britzen and colleagues estimated the black holes orbit each other once every 121 days. The distance between them is 250–540 times farther than Earth’s distance to the sun. That may sound like a lengthy separation, but it’s actually incredibly close for cosmic objects possessing masses anywhere between 100 million and 1 billion times that of our sun. They’re already so near one another that it’s possible they merge a century from now.

Unfortunately, no one will likely ever witness the actual grand finale. At more than 440 million light-years away from Earth, the two black holes are inseparable even when seen through astronomy’s most advanced tools. This will only become more difficult to see as they move closer to one another. That said, the dual jet emissions remain the strongest evidence so far that supermassive black holes grow by combining forces. If true, the pair should eventually start emitting extremely low-frequency gravitational waves that are detectable—providing even more evidence of the astounding meetup.

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Less than a 30 minute drive from the University of Cambridge, a metal detectorist followed beeps to a remarkable treasure: a ninth century gold coin pendant. 

Now finding long-lost coins in the English countryside isn’t exactly unheard of. In 2025, another metal detectorist discovered a gold coin dating back to the Iron Age in East Yorkshire. Before that, a Viking silver cache was discovered in North Yorkshire.

But this newly discovered gold coin isn’t like the others. This coin might just rewrite history, at least a little bit.

What makes this coin a bit of a head scratcher is what it depicts: a bearded profile of Saint John the Baptist. Thanks to a Latin inscription, experts have no doubts the coin shows the Christian saint. But what experts don’t yet understand is why the Vikings, who had conquered the English kingdom of East Anglia (where the coin was found) and who weren’t Christians, minted or wore a coin with a Christian saint on it. Why would pagans want a coin with a Christian on it?

In an interview with BBC, numismatics expert Simon Coupland compared the coin to “a child trying to fit a hexagonal object into a square hole.” The coin just doesn’t fit into history the way it should, which suggests we may have some of the history wrong. 

Maybe pagan Vikings liked wearing pendants showing Christian saints as a way to assimilate into East Anglia’s largely Christian population? Or maybe a Christian East Anglian wore the pendant? Or maybe a Christian Viking wore the pendant, even though most historians believed the invading Danes were pagan, not Christian?

And just like that, one small gold coin can upend history—rewriting England’s cultural landscape during the island’s perilous ninth century. 

Limestone relief of John the Baptist from Zakynthos, Byzantine and Christian Museum, Greece. Image: Public Domain

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The humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) is widely seen as a model success story for wildlife conservation. Prior to the 1986 global ban on commercial whaling, marine biologists estimated only around 10,000 of the marine animals still existed around the world. Today, more than 135,000 of them swim in Earth’s oceans.

This steadily increasing population is a testament to both human environmental stewardship as well as the humpback whale’s own adaptability and intelligence. But even scientists aboard the superyacht-turned-research vessel M/Y Solace were surprised at the sheer number of whales during a recent excursion in the Caribbean. Speaking with Popular Science, the EYOS Expeditions team confirmed that Navidad Bank, a shallow underwater coral formation around 62 miles off the coast of the Dominican Republic, is one of the world’s most densely populated humpback whale breeding grounds.

“This is an extraordinary testament to the power of long-term marine conservation,” Jonathan Delance, Chief Conservation Officer for the Dominican Republic Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, said in a statement. “Decades of conservation have allowed humpback whales to thrive in Dominican waters, and the density documented at Navidad Bank underscores the global importance of creating a sanctuary for our treasured marine life.”

Depending on their location, humpback whales typically spend much of the year in colder waters closer to the poles, where they feed on abundant sources of krill. As ocean temperatures warm, they instinctually migrate towards breeding grounds around the world, including areas of the Caribbean. Female whales typically gestate for about 11.5 months and usually give birth to a single calf, who then spends around a year with their mother before setting out on their own.

Pregnant humpback whales will typically gestate for 11-12 months before giving birth. Credit: Caribbean Cetacean Society

Orchestrated in collaboration with the Dominican Republic government and the Caribbean Cetacean Society, the visit to Navidad Bank from scientists with Fundación Puntacana and Fundación Dominicana de Estudios Marinos/FUNDEMAR captured incredible footage and images of North Atlantic humpback whales as they traveled amid their winter nursery. The observations culminated with a total of 513 whale sightings in a single day. According to the team, the event is even more incredible knowing that the whales were congregating far before the peak migration period usually spanning March and April.

“We have seen a profound shift toward travel that yields a sense of purpose through genuine exploration,” added EYOS Explorations co-founder Rob McCallum. “Our guests are increasingly…investing their resources into moments that contribute to our understanding of the natural world.”

The full findings will be presented to the International Whaling Commission in the hopes of further emphasizing Navidad Bank’s integral role in helping some of the ocean’s largest and most fascinating animals thrive.

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