Popular Science

Airports aren’t typically known for being the best places to view the night sky. But last spring, the Jackson Hole Airport in Wyoming became the first airport in the world to become certified as an International Dark Sky Place, thanks to a community committed to night sky preservation. Here’s how they did it, why it matters, and how it’s still as safe to fly into as any other airport (because we know you were wondering).

What Is an International Dark Sky Place?

According to Michael Rymer, communities program manager at DarkSky International, around the world, the organization DarkSky International has certified over 260 cities, parks, preserves, and counties on six continents as home to remarkable night skies—places where stargazers are practically guaranteed to be dazzled by the cosmos due to a relative absence of artificial light.

DarkSky International offers several different certifications. In the case of a national park like Big Bend in Texas or a sanctuary like Rainbow Bridge National Monument in Utah, certification means the spaces are far enough from major cities that there’s little measurable light pollution obscuring the view. But it’s not just about stars; dark night skies also preserve ecologically sensitive areas, especially for nocturnal wildlife that can be negatively impacted by excessive artificial light at night.

Jackson Hole became the first airport in the world named an International Dark Sky Place in April 2025. Image: DarkSky

In towns like Flagstaff, Arizona—the first International Dark Sky Community and Dark Sky Place in the world—it means the entire community has prioritized public and private lighting that reduces light pollution enough so that you can still see a full sky of stars, perhaps even the Milky Way, from downtown.

Teton County, an area of 4,216 square miles that includes the town of Jackson, Grand Teton National Park, and the Jackson Hole Airport, is one of these Dark Sky Communities. With the support of local nonprofit Wyoming Stargazing, the airport itself, the city of Jackson, and the county it’s in are all officially Urban Night Sky Places, a designation reserved for “urban areas that promote an authentic nighttime experience despite being in the midst of significant artificial light,” according to the organization. The county and airport were certified simultaneously in 2025.

Urban Night Sky Places are a bit different. Unlike parks, sanctuaries, and reserves, these places don’t have to provide a specific measurable reduction in light pollution, and compliance is voluntary, not compulsory. But they must adopt a lighting management plan or policy that addresses all outdoor lighting over time and commit to bring all of its lighting into compliance within 10 years of being certified.

Community outreach, collaboration, education and destination-chosen lighting policies are also emphasized. “The town of Jackson was very much on board,” offers Rymer, ans the airport saw a reduction in light pollution after the switch.

“Standing in the parking lot, one can look up and pick out constellations. Once you leave the airport, one can see the Milky Way less than a mile from a commercial runway,” says Jac Stelly, the airport’s environmental manager.

Safety first

In case the thought of a dark airport has you concerned about safety, fear not. “We take safety very seriously,” states Rymer. But maybe more importantly, actual air-side lighting—including landing strip lights, safety lights, and anything along the runway—is mandated and regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration and can’t be altered.

“There’s only so much you can do regarding lighting on that side,” says Jeremy Barnum, chief communications officer for the Jackson Hole Airport Board. “There’s a lot you can do on the land side,” he continues, speaking of the areas of the airport that travelers encounter, “so that’s where we focused our efforts.”

Lighting strategies

Those efforts included replacing roughly 300 light fixtures, spending around 600 hours of direct labor, and at least as much time on strategy and deliberation, explains Stelly.

Most updates involved relatively small changes that collectively made a big difference. That includes focusing on where and when light is actually needed. For example, between midnight and 4:00 am, parking lot lights dim to 30 percent. Sensors allow many of those lights to bump up to 60 percent when motion is detected.

Many bulbs were switched to LEDs with a warmer color temperature, which results in less light pollution, and most land-side and employee area lights were given shields to reduce light spill. Others are on dimmer switches or motion sensors to reduce light when it’s not needed. Dark Sky certification focuses on addressing exterior lights, but the airport broadened the scope to include indoor lighting too, like timing-scheduled shades and dimmers.

View this post on Instagram

Lights in the fuel facility, car rental area, and any non-customer facing areas, including private aviation, are now able to be fully shut off, too. “It is an all-encompassing project,” Stelly states. The airport also added signs providing information about the importance of dark skies education about the importance of responsible light at night and why dark skies are not just about seeing stars is also an important part of the Dark Sky Places program.

“The airport checked all the boxes. They went above and beyond. Jackson Hole Airport set a strong precedent for airports everywhere,” Rymer says.

Why go to all the effort and investment? “It’s part of our values,” Barnum says. Perhaps not surprising since it’s the only airport in the U.S. to be fully located within a national park, which Stelly says warrants a special commitment to environmental stewardship.

And while Grand Teton National Park isn’t a certified park on its own yet, the relatively pristine night skies in the region that’s largely undeveloped are part of what makes it such a special destination for locals and visitors alike. “This is an endorsement of Jackson recognizing that our natural resources are what makes us extraordinary,” Barnum states.

Proof of concept

As the first airport to receive this designation, Stelly hopes they can stand as proof of concept for other airports, proof that airport infrastructure can coexist with natural ecosystems, no matter the size of the airport. “It’s a really great opportunity to broaden the idea of what’s possible,” he says.

They’ve created the roadmap; it’s now up to other airports to follow suit. In the meantime, a trip to Jackson, Wyoming, now means visitors can enjoy a clearer night sky than ever before. Even from the airport parking lot.

The post The world’s only dark sky airport sits inside a national park appeared first on Popular Science.

For the world’s smallest sea turtles, life in the ocean is getting pretty noisy. These relatively little turtles (on average they’re still 75 to 100 pounds) mostly found in the Gulf of Mexico already face  fishing gear accidents, seacraft collisions, plastic pollution, and habitat deterioration, and now excess noise may be harming the critically endangered and rare  Kemp’s ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys kempii). 

We say might because even though these sea turtles share waters with extremely busy shipping lanes, scientists know very little about their underwater hearing. As such, a team of researchers set out to understand what, exactly, these animals can perceive in terms of sound.

“Understanding hearing ability is a fundamental step in determining whether human-generated noise could affect a species,” Charles Muirhead, the co-author of the recent study published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and a researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Sensory Ecology and Bioacoustics Lab, tells Popular Science. “Our goal was to provide a more robust and representative understanding of their hearing sensitivity so that future research and conservation efforts can be built on stronger scientific foundations.”

This notion is particularly significant given the fact that Kemp’s ridleys are the world’s most critically endangered sea turtles. 

Muirhead and his colleagues put sensors on Kemp’s ridley sea turtles’ heads and recorded the electrical signals that passed through their auditory nerves as they played sounds from 50 to 1,600 hertz. In the spectrum of human hearing, 50 hertz is on the lower side. 

Related Turtle Stories

17 rehabilitated sea turtles released off Cape Cod

Green sea turtle no longer Endangered

These sea turtles ‘dance’ when magnetic fields lead them to a snack

We may finally know where young turtles spend their ‘lost years’

This approach revealed that the turtles’ greatest hearing was at about 300 hertz, and that they began to struggle with higher frequencies. It appears that Kemp’s ridleys’ best hearing aligns with the low-frequency band that hosts a significant amount of sounds, presumably from industrial operations in the ocean like oil and gas drilling and vessel traffic, according to Muirhead.

“This is significant because we’ve known that their movements and distribution overlap with industrial and boat noise sources both in space and time—and we’ve now confirmed that the turtles are capable of detecting these sounds,” Muirhead says. “However, detecting sound does not automatically mean it causes harm or disturbance. Whether noise ‘bothers’ turtles depends on several factors, including sound level, duration, distance from the source, and the behavioral or ecological context in which the exposure occurs.”

Now that we know what these turtles can hear, future research can investigate just how human sounds impact them and what that means for conservation efforts.

More broadly, Muirhead explains that, “understanding how animals perceive their environment is essential for effective conservation.Hearing is only one piece of the puzzle.” 

The post The world’s smallest sea turtle lives in a noisy ocean appeared first on Popular Science.

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.

Related Stories

Don’t pick up frozen iguanas

After a 5,000-mile float, these iguanas probably set an ocean record

Pink Iguana hatchlings spotted for the first time on the Galápagos in decades

“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.”

Subscribe to Ask Us Anything

Listen and follow Ask Us Anything on your favorite podcast platform:

Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Or wherever you get your podcasts.

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.

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.”

Related 'Ask Us Anything' Stories

Is crossing your eyes really bad for you? We asked an optometrist.

Why our ancestors had straight teeth without braces

Why we have two nostrils instead of one big hole

How do we get our eye color?

Why do we have five fingers and toes?

What should we eat to improve our eyes?

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.

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.  

Related Olympics Stories

The only person to win an Olympic medal and a Nobel Peace Prize

Australia mints colorful $1 coins to honor Olympians and Paralympians

The evolution of Olympic swimwear: From wool ‘costumes’ to tensoelastic race suits

Paris Olympics’ purple track is made with crushed mussel and clam shells

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.

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. 

Related Stories

100 years ago, ‘ghost ship’ sails baffled Einstein—now they’re making a comeback

In 1928, Eric the Robot promised the robo-butler of the future

A century ago, suspended monorails were serious mass-transit contenders

Why aren’t we driving hydrogen powered cars yet? There’s a reason EVs won.

400 years of telescopes: A window into our study of the cosmos

100 years ago, the battle for television raged

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.

Roadkill isn’t the most pleasant of subjects. As much as people try to avoid it (and not contribute to it), the untimely animal deaths are an unfortunate, inevitable byproduct of a society reliant on cars. In Brazil alone, it’s estimated that anywhere between two and eight million birds and mammals are killed on roadways every year. In Europe, the potential tally may climb as high as 194 million.

While viral headlines occasionally highlight various roadkill gourmands, the expired creatures actually have many other benefits. A team of biologists at Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) investigated what happens when scientists frequently use these natural cadavers in their own work. According to their findings recently published in the journal Biology Letters, roadkill is being tapped for a wide array of investigations—but the possibilities are even greater and more sustainable than most people realize.

“Because the animals are already dead, researchers can often avoid live capture and handling, aligning perfectly with global animal-ethics principles that encourage replacing invasive methods wherever possible,” study co-author and RMIT biologist Christa Beckmann explained in a statement.

Along with colleagues from Western Sydney University, Deakin University, and Trent University, Beckmann evaluated 312 peer-reviewed studies from 67 countries around the world that focused on goals “other than enumerating or mitigating roadkill.” They tallied at least 650 species—mostly mammals,followed by reptiles, birds, amphibians, and invertebrates. In total, the team identified around 117 different use cases for roadkill in various scientific projects.

“We found examples of successfully using roadkill to map species distributions, monitor disease and environmental pollution, study diets, track invasive species, [and] supply museum collections,” Beckmann said. In some instances, she added that roadkill also helped identify local populations previously believed extinct and even included species “previously unknown to science.”

Beckmann knows the streetside casualties aren’t appropriate for all research projects and come with their own biosafety considerations, but still believes there are far more uses for them waiting to be explored.

“While roadkill will always be tragic, using these losses wisely could help drive scientific discovery and conservation forward, rather than letting valuable information decompose by the roadside,” she said. 

The post Roadkill is a surprising and untapped source for scientists appeared first on Popular Science.

In a state better known for its delicious seafood and as the home of the United States Navy, there’s a new effort to create the country’s first state shark. Earlier this month, Maryland State Senator Jack Bailey and House Delegate Todd Morgan filed SB135 to designate the megalodon (Otodus megalodon) as the official state shark. 

While the mighty megalodon is not swimming along the shores of the Bay State now, the enormous prehistoric shark relative once dominated the shallow seas that covered Maryland and the rest of the Atlantic coastal plain. They lived about 23 million years ago (during the Miocene Epoch), before going extinct about 3.6 million years ago. They were about three times bigger than a modern great white shark. Some estimates put them upwards of 82 feet long and 66,000 pounds. They primarily ate whales and the ancestors of dolphins and manatees, while their young hunted seals.

But why should “the meg” be the state shark of Maryland? The beaches along southern Maryland are full of megalodon fossils—particularly their giant teeth. Megalodon teeth have been found in several counties including Anne Arundel, Caroline, Calvert, Charles, Dorchester, Prince George’s, and St. Mary’s. Citizen scientists and paleontologists alike have also uncovered teeth from other non-megalodon prehistoric shark species including Galeocerdo contortus and Galeocerdo triqueter (similar to modern day tiger sharks) and Sphyrma prisca (a relative of the hammer head shark).

An assortment of fossilized shark teeth, as photographed by Dennis Garcia and submitted to the 2013 DNR Photo Contest. Image: Dennis Garcia / Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Calvert Cliffs State Park in southern Maryland is a common spot for digging up teeth and the Calvert Marine Museum has a number of fossils on display. Paleontologists believe that Maryland was once a whale and dolphin calving ground and nursery for hungry megalodons. A roughly 15-million-year-old fractured whale vertebrae and tooth uncovered in Calvert Cliffs even shows evidence of a possible megalodon attack. 

“Turns out no state has a state shark, so we’re hoping Maryland is the first,” Dr. Stephen Godfrey, curator of paleontology at southern Maryland’s Calvert Marine Museum, told WMAR Baltimore. “To me, this is such an iconic animal. I think it’s time for megalodon to take center stage as the first shark designated as a state shark.”

If the bill is approved by Maryland’s General Assembly and signed by Governor Wes Moore, the designation would take effect October 1, 2026. The megalodon would join Maryland’s other state symbols, including the Baltimore oriole (state bird), jousting (state sport), and walking (state exercise).

The post Megalodon could become Maryland’s official state shark appeared first on Popular Science.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACTS: Beaver Skull Obsession, Aussie Widowmakers, Koalas Eating $#!%

By: Jess Boddy

This week on Weirdest Thing (and for the next few episodes), I’ll be hosting the show without Rachel while she’s away on parental leave. That means I’m bringing on pairs of my favorite creator friends to host the show with me!

This week, we’ve got two of the funniest people I know—rickypeacock and MattyisTalking. These two are members of the Goo Crew stream team, have RP walked across all of Azeroth, and made YouTube essays about Charlie Brown’s capitalist nightmare. I asked these two certified weirdos to research their favorite science-adjacent topics for the show, and I think we ended up with a pretty dang good episode.

Matty explained how, after seeing Zootopia 2, he simply could NOT stop thinking about beaver skulls. He was finding moments to steal away and Google them. So when I asked him to dig deeper into something for Weirdest Thing, of course it was beavers.

And what he found was fascinating. Sure, we already know beaver butt glands secrete vanilla-scented substance. But now there are new revelations on how they change the environments they live in for the better. Some researchers are even calling them ecosystem engineers and climate heroes for how their work can help prevent or lessen the intensity of wildfires. 

My fact for this week also had to do with wildfires, specifically those on the west coast that are fueled by eucalyptus trees. It turns out, none of those are native to the United States—they all came from Australia. Back in the mid 1800s, folks in the US thought eucalyptus was the solution to some major timber shortages. Those mattered a lot when we were building heaps of railroads, for instance. But introducing the trees didn’t exactly go as planned. While they did offer some environmental benefits (like windbreaks, shade, and soil quality improvements), they turned out to be completely useless for timber you’d use to build railroads. But there were already forests full of them out west (if you live in California, you’ve seen them). And they’re also saturated with very flammable eucalyptus oil, turning them into tree bombs when set ablaze. That’s not a great combo with a biome known for wildfires. And that’s not the only reason they’re dangerous—listen to the full episode to hear how they got their Aussie nickname, the “widowmaker.”

I learned all about these trees on my recent trip to the Blue Mountains, which is about two hours west of Sydney and totally blanketed in eucalyptus forests. In fact, they’re why the Blue Mountains are blue. Ricky also visited Sydney a few weeks ago, and decided to regale us with all of his strangest koala facts. Tune into Weirdest Thing this week to hear all about how they run on the ground at “full” speed (it’s not very fast), have brains as smooth as marbles, and grow to the size of 35,000 jellybeans.

The post Americans planted entire forests of exploding Australian trees appeared first on Popular Science.

From figure skating to ice hockey, many of the most popular winter sports stem from a long history of people simply playing around on ice skates. Part of what makes a good skater so fun to watch is the juxtaposition of their clear technical skill and the seeming effortlessness with which they glide across the ice. They make it seem so natural. But if you step back and think about it, strapping what are in a sense thin knives to your feet and charging out onto a field of slick ice seems like an objectively wild thing to do. So when and why did humans first create ice skates? And how did they become a ubiquitous and beloved staple of winter fun?  

These questions are surprisingly hard to answer, both because we don’t have a ton of archaeological or historical sources on early ice skates and because only a few researchers have explored them. Popular accounts of the history of ice skating are riddled with errors, Bev Thurber, one of the rare specialists in the field, tells Popular Science. And experts differ in their interpretations of the artifacts and accounts we do have.

But we know a few things about the evolution of ice skates with relative certainty. Such as the fact that the earliest ice skates weren’t made of sharpened metal, but instead of smooth bone. 

Early ice skates were made of bone

Although pop histories often claim that ice skates emerged around 3,000 BCE in what is now Scandinavia, there’s actually no clear historical basis for that claim. In reality, no one is sure when the practice of ice skating emerged. The best we can say is that, over the course of the second millennium BCE peoples from Central Europe to the Eurasian step cut long bones from animals like sheep and cows to fit the size of their feet. These early innovators then drilled holes through the bones and threaded leather straps through them. They tied these simple devices to the bottom of their general-use footwear, and set off onto the ice. 

Many historians assume that these ancient “bone skates” were utilitarian devices, used for fast transit along frozen rivers and lakes. In 2007, two biophysicists experimenting with replica bone skates concluded that they did require less energy expenditure than walking on the same ice. 

A pair of Viking ice skates made from bone. They were strapped to feet and the skater propelled themselves with a pole. With the flat bottom, they were pretty much useless for figure skating. Image: Contributor / Star Tribune via Getty Images

However, Thurber, who made and experimented with her own bone skates, says they’re not the most practical mobility tools. For starters, they only work well on clear ice, which is not easy to find in nature. Even then, smooth and slick with residual fats and oils, the bones slide around too easily to allow people to simply push off with their feet alone. So users likely relied on sticks for propulsion. But even with sticks, Thurber says, “It’s almost impossible to stop or turn.”

“The evidence for practical use is pretty weak,” she argues. Instead, she thinks people mainly used them for fun. In 1180, William Fitzstephen, a former secretary to the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket, recorded one of the earliest accounts in English of people using bone skates. He describes people using them to play on frozen marshes, rather than make their way to work. 

The first metal skates

In the 13th century, craftspeople in what is now the Netherlands swapped out bone for strips of wood embedded with iron blades. These wood-and-iron skates were then likewise strapped to people’s shoes. No one’s sure why artisans made the shift. They may have been building on a prior innovation, since lost to history.

“There are a lot of unknowns surrounding the transition from bone to metal skates and the development of edge-pushing,” says Thurber.

Niko Mulder, another early skating expert, speculates that these early metal skates may have started out as a status symbol. But if that was the case initially, by the 1300s, even the common folk used them. 

The rapid adoption of metal blades likely reflects the superior control and mobility they offered. While bones slide over clean ice, blades actually liquify the ice directly below them, creating a sort of track for the skate. The water fills imperfections in the ice, allowing for a smooth glide, and then freezes over again as the skate moves on. This meant not only a drastic increase in speed, but the development of techniques for propulsion without the aid of a stick and for making rapid, fluid turns—that is to say, the birth of ice skating as we know it. 

These metal ice skates were made in the U.S. sometime between 1840 and 1859. Image: Heritage Images / Contributor / Getty Images Unknown

Over the next few centuries, craftspeople developed little improvements, like the addition of small spikes and later curves or wedges on the toe of a blade for added stability. But as metal skates spread across Europe and beyond, the basic design remained fairly consistent—likely because it was relatively cheap and efficient, and many people just wanted to use skates for idle fun. 

Ice skates meet mass production

The next big jump in skate technology comes with the popularization of skating in England and America. Skates already had a long history in these countries, but clubs dedicated to skating emerged in the former in the 18th century and the latter in the 19th century.  As Sean Maw, a sports engineer who works on speed skate design, points out, the early industrial revolution changed the way people saw and used their leisure time. Sports in particular grew more organized and specialized. And people were eager to apply new materials and mass manufacturing techniques to equipment.

As organized speed skating emerged, it created demand for longer, thinner blades that would spread a skater’s weight out so they wouldn’t cut as deep into the ice—and would allow for a longer push on each stride to build up momentum. As hockey professionalized, it created new demand for tweaks to blades that’d allow for fast stops and quick turns. And as figure skating evolved from competitions where contestants literally etched a set of designs into the ice into a balletic display involving jumps and spins, it created demand for the development of “toe picks,” the jagged tip you see on some ice skates that help with takeoff and landing. 

This vintage photograph taken in February 1909 shows a group of ice skaters in Graz, Austria. Image: Public Domain

Dig around in 19th century patents, as Thurber has, and you’ll also find some wild ideas that never made it to production, like skates that convert into roller blades. However, you’ll also find spikes and clamps that allow for a more stable attachment between shoes and skates, and metal frames that slowly displaced wood slats. 

Look at old skates from this period and you’ll also notice a ton of subtle adjustments to the curve of the bottom of the blade, which determines how long it stays in contact with the ice over the course of each stride, and to the grinding and etching of the metal’s edge. By the early 20th century, decades of experimentation and incremental adjustment gave birth to the activity-specific boots-with-built-in-skates most of us are familiar with. 

Ice skates keep developing

Dedicated sports engineers and tinkerers alike continue to fine tune specialized skate designs. But biomechanics expert and skate designer Dustin Bruening tells Popular Science that “the most interesting thing about skate development over the past century is the lack of development.” 

The last major change in design was the “clap skate,” developed through the 1970s and ‘80s and popularized among speed skaters in the ‘90s. These skates’ blades are not fully attached to their boots, with a hinge at the front allowing the heel to lift away and the metal edge to remain on the ice. 

However, the idea for clap skates notably dates back to the 19th century, Maw points out, and just languished until an engineer finally found the right materials and design adjustments to make the concept work. Although some grumbled about the shift, speed skaters adopted this innovation because it gave users a clear acceleration advantage. 

German speedskater Monique Angermüller wears clap skates while competing at the 2008 speedskating world cup in Heerenveen, the Netherlands. Image: McSmit / CC BY-SA 3.0

Other innovative designs, like a figure skate with a hinged ankle, which Bruening and his colleagues developed to better absorb the harsh impact of jumps, have struggled to gain traction. Bruening believes the market for specific skate types is just too small, the cost of development and rollout too high, and the cultural inertia too strong for some changes. But Maw points out that big innovations also run into resistance because, like the shift from bone to metal, they can alter the nature of skating. 

“Claps changed who was a good speed skater,” he says. “They took away an emphasis on technique and instead emphasized power.” Clap skates are also more expensive than other skates, he adds, so they changed the calculus for getting into the sport. 

None of this means skates have stopped evolving, Maw explains. Most modern innovation just focuses on fine-tuning materials and designs—and the prospect of developing bespoke blades for each athlete’s body. But Maw hopes that experimentation will also lead to the development of cheaper skates as well, so that more people get a chance to glide across a field of ice. 

In The History of Every Thing, Popular Science uncovers the hidden stories and surprising origins behind the things we use every day.

Related 'The History of Every Thing' Stories

Ketchup was once a diarrhea cure

Pilates started in a WWI internment camp

How WWII made Hershey and Mars Halloween candy kings

Lip balm’s surprising history from earwax to Lip Smackers

How WWI and WWII revolutionized period products

The post From bones to steel: Why ice skates were a terrible idea that worked appeared first on Popular Science.

Amazon is racing to catch up to Starlink in the battle for satellite internet dominance, and it’s creating problems for everyone else. Only 180 of the proposed 3,236 Amazon Leo satellites are currently in low Earth orbit, but they’re already routinely bright enough to disrupt astronomical research, according to a forthcoming study. And of the nearly 2,000 observations conducted during the assessment, 25 percent were determined to “distract from aesthetic appreciation of the night sky.”

Amazon announced its satellite broadband internet company, originally called Project Kuiper, in 2019, but struggled for years to get the endeavor up and running. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Starlink has made huge strides in its own satellite internet constellation—while also garnering many of its own criticisms. Amazon finally launched its first equipment into orbit in April 2025 before swapping the Project Kuiper name for Leo last November. Service is expected to begin after 578 satellites reach orbit, and Leo’s current licensing agreement stipulates it must have half of its constellation deployed by July 30, 2026.

Representatives of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) don’t sound very pleased by the progress so far, however. As the leading global consortium of astronomy experts, the IAU helps shape public space policy while also serving as the organization officially responsible for naming and classifying all celestial objects. Its Center for the Protection of a Dark and Quiet Sky also has long maintained two clearly established brightness limits for orbiting objects—one to ensure astronomical research isn’t impeded, and another to conserve the “natural beauty of the stars.”

“The International Astronomical Union recommended an acceptable brightness limit which states that satellites in operational orbits should not be visible to the unaided eye,” the IAU authors explained in their study. “The IAU statement also defined a brightness limit for interference with professional astronomy which we call the research limit.”

The IAU has repeatedly voiced its concerns about night sky light pollution, especially as multiple companies vow to send thousands of additional satellites into an already crowded low Earth orbit. So it’s particularly concerning when only 180 of Leo’s deployments are raising red flags for both the acceptable brightness and research limits. After conducting 1,938 observations of Leo satellites currently deployed, the IAU determined the equipment exhibits an average brightness magnitude of 6.28. For reference, the faintest stars seen in a perfectly dark evening sky register a 6.0 magnitude. Although that makes them faint enough to often miss with the naked eye, the satellites still frequently reflect flaring light that’s discernible without a telescope. The IAU also previously stated all satellites should be below a 7.15 magnitude, but some of Leo’s satellites were “consistently brighter.” The overall findings weren’t any better, either. 

“For spacecraft in their operational mode, 92 percent exceeded the brightness limit recommended by the IAU for interference with research, while 25 percent distract from aesthetic appreciation of the night sky,” they concluded.

The IAU notes that “based on private communication, Amazon is working on reducing satellite brightness,” including the development of a specialized dark exterior coating. At the same time, the study authors cautioned these remedies may not be enough. Leo’s current satellites all orbit at an average altitude of 391 miles, but Amazon possesses a Federal Communications Commission approval to operate at heights as low as 366 miles. That could make for an even brighter constellation—one that may drown out the constellations humans have gazed at for hundreds of thousands of years.

The post Amazon’s 180 internet satellites are already too bright. It wants 3,000 more. appeared first on Popular Science.

The casket industry may soon require life support in the United States. According to analysis from the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA), cremation is by far the more popular option compared to the traditional burial method. The NFDA estimates around 63 percent of all funerary requests were for cremation in 2025, compared to about 31 percent for casket burials. There’s no indication that the shift will level off anytime soon, either. By 2045, as many as 80 percent of bodies in the United States will be cremated instead of interred in the ground.

As Axios noted, no single reason explains the shifting preferences. Instead, the transition likely reflects a combination of factors, including evolving religious beliefs, environmental concerns, as well as the simple issue of economics. In 2023, the NFDA estimated the average cost of a casket burial, accompanying viewing, and memorial service to cost about $8,300. Meanwhile, the median cost that same year for cremation by itself was only around $2,750. Similar to the continued rise in cremation numbers, inflation issues will almost assuredly keep prices rising for both options in coming years.

Unfortunately, some of cremation’s growing popularity may be a bit misguided. Although often cited as a “greener” or more environmentally sustainable alternative to casket burials, the fire-based process isn’t without its own ecological impacts. The 1,400–1,900 degree Fahrenheit temperatures required to properly reduce a body to ash is usually achieved using either natural gas- or oil-fueled flames. And aside from CO2 emissions, the fires also release mercury thanks to people’s incinerated dental fillings.

Alternatives to cremation offering similar results are gaining traction, however. Aquamation, as the name implies, swaps out the flames for heated water and alkali that break down a body over the course of around 12 hours. The method itself emits about 20 percent less carbon, but simultaneously produces  between 100 and 300 gallons of liquid waste that puts a strain on municipal treatment facilities.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for a final resting place, but given that everyone eventually shuffles off this mortal coil, it’s a decision that deserves thoughtful consideration. But if you want to go out as green as possible, experts agree one option stands out from all the rest: natural burials, aka “human composting” is probably the best bet.

The post 80% of Americans may opt for cremation by 2045 appeared first on Popular Science.

As much of the country contends with an unprecedented winter storm, understanding the difference between sleet, snow, and freezing rain has never been more important. 

In a new episode of Popular Science’s Ask Us Anything podcast, we get into all the nitty gritty details of what makes each of these winter weather events different from one another. It may surprise you just which one is the most dangerous. (Clue: It’s not snow.)

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, there’s a reason cats love boxes and no, hot workout classes usually aren’t better. If you have a question for us, send us a note. Nothing is too silly or simple.

This episode is based on the Popular Science article “What does ‘chance of precipitation’ really mean? A meteorologist explains.”

Subscribe to Ask Us Anything

Listen and follow Ask Us Anything on your favorite podcast platform:

Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Or wherever you get your podcasts.

Full Episode Transcript

Laura Baisis: Let’s say you’re 10 years old. The weather outside is, as they say, frightful. Fluffy, white snow is falling and the roads are glistening, and you are wishing and hoping that it will be enough to cancel school. 

You turn on your local weather to get a more detailed forecast, and hear the meteorologist throwing around words like “sleet” and “freezing rain,” and wonder if either of them will crush your snow day dream. You hold your breath as the school closings are finally announced. 

Newscaster: Schools already announcing closures for tomorrow… 

LB: Your school is closed, but not just from snow. The snow combined with freezing rain has turned the roads into a skating rink, and everyone should stay put and pour that second cup of hot cocoa.

Welcome to Ask Us Anything from the editors of Popular Science, where we answer your questions about our weird world. From “Why does your dog gets so excited to see you?” To “Is the universe really infinite?” No question is too outlandish or mundane. I’m Laura Baisis, the news editor at Popular Science. 

Sarah Durn: And I’m Sarah Durn, features editor at PopSci.

LB: For all of us here, we can’t help but chase down wonder inducing questions. We’re hardwired to be curious. And this week our curiosity has led us to decoding wintry precipitation. 

SD: Okay, so potentially silly question here, but what exactly is precipitation? And what causes the different types of precipitation to form?

LB: No, silly question. 

SD: Thank you. 

LB: So precipitation is any water falling down to Earth’s surface. A lot of times this is rain, but precipitation is also a broader category that includes snow, sleet, and freezing rain. 

SD: Alright, gotcha. Obviously we all know snow, pretty flakes and all that, but what exactly are sleet and freezing rain? How are they different from snow? 

LB: So sleet is tiny little ice pellets, basically like winter hail. 

SD: But it’s different from actual hail. 

LB: Yeah, it is. Sleet forms as the snow melts to rain in the atmosphere, but then refreezes right before hitting the ground. Hail forms during summer thunderstorms and can be a lot bigger than sleet. Some can even be the size of golf balls.

SD: So if you have ice pellets in winter, it’s sleet. And if you have them in summer, it’s hail? 

LB: Yep. That’s generally what’s happening. 

SD: And then how about freezing rain? 

LB: That’s precipitation that freezes when it hits the ground. Freezing rain is actually the most dangerous kind of winter precipitation because it coats everything in black ice.

SD: Yikes. The amount of times I have slipped on black ice growing up in northeast Ohio. Not fun. 

LB: Ouch. 

SD: Now, before we dive into all things winter weather… Listeners, we want to know: what questions are keeping you curious? If there’s something you’ve always wondered, submit your questions through popsci.com/ask.

We may even feature your question in a future episode. 

LB: Can’t wait to hear all your ideas! Up next, we’re going to dive into how snow, freezing rain, and sleet actually get created in the atmosphere. 

SD: With a pretty sweet analogy that’s coming up after this quick break. 

LB: Welcome back. 

SD: Yes, welcome. Okay, so I was doing some research during the break and it turns out that in the UK sleet actually refers to a mix of rain and snow.

LB: Ooh. The plot thickens, 

SD: And in some languages there are even more terms to describe different kinds of winter weather. 

LB: Go on. 

SD: It’s something you’ve likely heard before, but Inuit languages do in fact have a ton of terms for snow. For instance, and please excuse any mispronunciations here, in Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, they have words like apingaut, which means “first snowfall.” 

LB: Ooh, interesting. 

SD: Other languages with a bunch of terms for snow are Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Scots. 

LB: Honestly wouldn’t have guessed those, but that makes sense. 

SD: Yeah. Especially because far northern Japan is actually the snowiest inhabited place on Earth. So in Japanese you have words like miyuki, which means “beautiful snow” and shinshin which is the sound snow makes, or “the sound of no sound.”

LB: Ooh. 

SD: And in Scots you have doon-lay, which is just fun to say, and means a heavy snowfall. 

LB: Those are so many beautiful words. 

SD: So, Laura, you actually wrote a whole story about precipitation, not to mention basically like all of our weather stories. 

LB: Guilty. I wanted to be a meteorologist when I was eight. So weather stories are basically my way of making that little weirdo proud without needing calculus and physics.

SD: Oh my gosh, adorable. So let’s start at the beginning. How do sleet, freezing rain and snow form in the atmosphere? 

LB: So, as we said earlier, these are all types of precipitation, and all precipitation actually starts out as snow. 

SD: Whoa, that’s so cool. 

LB: Right? Even that muggy summer afternoon downpour begins as snow.

It just melts and turns to rain as it falls through the atmosphere. 

SD: That’s so wild. 

LB: Now, if it’s cold enough closer to the ground, the snow that forms in the clouds will simply remain as snow as it comes down to Earth. Variations in the atmosphere’s temperatures, like a layer of warmer air, can affect whether the snow becomes sleet or freezing rain.

SD: So what makes it hit the ground as sleet? 

LB: Good and important question. Sleet happens when snowflakes falling to the ground partially melt as they fall through a shallow layer of warm air in the atmosphere. Those more slushy drops than refreeze when they fall through a deeper layer of colder air just above the Earth.

They then reach the ground as those little frozen raindrops that bounce basically like ice pellets. 

SD: Gotcha. And then what about freezing rain? 

LB: So this one is a little more tricky, especially to forecast. Unlike sleet, freezing rain doesn’t hit the ground as little ice pellets. It begins as snow, but then melts when the water droplet falls through a warmer and more shallow pocket of air.

That water drop will then expand and freeze as it hits a colder pocket of air or if the temperature on the ground is below freezing. So instead of falling as that nice little ice pellet, the water drop freezes upon contact with the ground. 

SD: And this is what makes that icy layer, which is so dangerous for drivers, pedestrians, and anyone outside.

LB: Yeah, exactly. One way to think about the difference is to imagine a box of fresh donuts. 

SD: Ooh, love a food analogy. 

LB: Right? Freezing rain is like that glazed donut with a nice, clear coating of icing on top. 

SD: Yum. 

LB: Kind of my favorite. Now, freezing rain gives the ground a similar clear coating that is very slippery.

On the other hand, sleet is like a donut with sprinkles, rainbow or chocolate. It covers the ground in these little crunchy pellets that aren’t quite as slippery. 

SD: You know, I never thought that donuts would help us explain the weather. 

LB: I mean, honestly, meteorology is so complex, so having analogies like these are really, really helpful.

And a big shout out to the team at KETV in Omaha, Nebraska for this delicious analogy. 

SD: Oh, I love local news. 

LB: Same. And please, PSA be kind to your local meteorologist. They don’t have an easy job. 

SD: Is it really hard to predict winter weather? 

LB: It can be, especially freezing rain. 

SD: Yeah. Why is that? 

LB: Even a slight change in the atmosphere can mean a completely different forecast.

So if there’s a pocket of warm air in the right place, a snowy day can become a sleet or freezing rain day. Or vice versa, and those atmospheric changes can happen really quickly changing forecasts on a dime.

SD: And freezing rain is probably the most dreaded winter weather forecast, right?

LB: Absolutely. 

SD: What makes it so dangerous?

LB: It usually causes the most damage. Freezing rain can bring down tree limbs, power lines, and cause car accidents. In fact, only 100th of an inch of freezing rain is enough to make walking and driving unsafe. 

SD: Yikes. 

LB: It also might look safer to drive because it doesn’t look like a blinding blizzard or raging snowstorm outside, but a storm with freezing rain can make invisible black ice, which is what makes driving so risky.

SD: So in general, when are weather forecasts most accurate? 

LB: Basically the closer you are to the day you’re trying to predict the better. 

SD: I mean, I guess that makes sense. 

LB: Yeah. So meteorologist Cyrena Arnold told me that it’s like driving down a long dirt road. Imagine you see a swirl of dust indicating that something is approaching, but you don’t know if it’s another car, a large truck, or maybe a cow.

Once the swirl of dust gets closer, you notice it’s blue. Then you see that it’s a compact car and eventually you can tell it’s the make and model. Forecasting is really similar. The closer we get, the better picture we have. 

SD: That’s a great analogy. 

LB: Right? And remember whether forecasting is really hard. It combines some serious high level math and physics that most of us can’t even compute, myself included, with constantly changing variables. It’s incredibly nuanced and difficult. So remember that most legitimate forecasters are just doing their best. 

SD: And if you wanna dive deeper into the world of precipitation, check out Laura’s full story on Popular Science. It’s amazing. We’ll link it in the show notes.

And with that, we’ll be back shortly with a brief history of when the U.S. government actually outlawed the weather. 

LB: Oh my goodness. What? 

SD: Well, technically censored, but it’s still wild. That’s coming up after this short break. 

LB: And welcome back. Okay, Sarah, I still can’t believe you dropped that bomb right before the break.

The U.S. government censored the weather?

SD: I know it sounds fake, but it’s real. During World War II, the U.S. government decided weather forecasts were basically military secrets. 

LB: Because clouds can be spies? 

SD: Pretty much. Officials worried that if enemy submarines heard things like wind directions, storms, or fog reports, they could then predict conditions along the U.S. coast.

LB: So instead of partly cloudy Americans, just got…nothing? 

SD: Exactly. After Pearl Harbor, weather maps literally went blank. 

LB: Whoa. 

SD: Radio stations weren’t allowed to talk about the weather unless they got special permission. 

LB: Even during dangerous storms? 

SD: Yeah, and sometimes there were really bad consequences for that silence.

In 1942, for example, a massive tornado outbreak tore through Mississippi and Tennessee, but radio stations couldn’t warn people about it. One station in Memphis was only allowed to say doctors and nurses are urgently needed without explaining why. 

LB: Cryptic and terrifying. 

SD: Yeah. Can you imagine? And without weather forecasts, everyday life got weird too.

Baseball announcers couldn’t announce rain delays. Farmers were caught off guard by freezes. Even Eleanor Roosevelt got scolded for casually mentioning clouds in her newspaper column. 

LB: How dare they scold America’s best First Lady. 

SD: I know, but people obviously still needed to know what the weather was like, so they turned to almanacs, rumors, and DIY gadgets.

Even a Popular Science approved weather glass, basically a thermometer you hang outside your home and read from inside. 

LB: Of course, we were involved. 

SD: I mean, of course. Eventually after a surprise hurricane barreled into Galveston Bay, Texas, in 1943, the government admitted the downsides outweighed the benefits of keeping the weather censored.

LB: So when did the weather get uncensored? 

SD: Later that year. So in October 1943, weather forecast returned after almost two years. 

LB: Which feels like another great reminder that weather isn’t just small talk, it’s a public safety issue. 

SD: Exactly. Forecasts really save lives. 

LB: Honestly, after learning about this, I’ll never complain about a bad forecast the same way again. Not that I usually complain because I love meteorology, but now I really won’t. 

SD: Yeah, same. Better to know about a bad weather day than be surprised by it.

LB: And that’s it for this episode, but don’t worry, we’ve got more fun Ask Us Anything episodes 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 us a rating and 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 also co-produced by our very own Laura Baisis and is based on an article she wrote for Popular Science. 

LB: Thanks, Sarah. A big thank you to the whole Ask Us Anything team, and to you, our listeners, for tuning in. 

SD: And one more time. If you want to have your own wonderment explained on a future episode, go to popsci.com/ask. Until next time, keep the questions coming.

The post The most dangerous type of precipitation isn’t snow appeared first on Popular Science.

A tiny tropical flower is challenging a longstanding model for plant evolution. According to researchers at the Field Museum in Chicago, an oddball member of the lipstick vine family evolved to attract more pollinators before spreading to other parts of the world, and not the other way around.

“It was really exciting to get these results, because they don’t follow the classic ideas of how we would have imagined the species evolved,” explained Jing-Yi Lu, a botanist and coauthor of a study published today in the journal New Phytologist.

Most lipstick vines look like their name implies: lengthy plants featuring vibrantly red, tubular flowers. Identifiable across Southeast Asia, their nectar primarily attracts longbeaked sunbirds, who in turn help spread pollen for propagation. In Taiwan, however, one lipstick vine species known as Aeschynanthus acuminatu looks dramatically different from its relatives. Instead of crimson flowers, A. acuminatu possesses much shorter, wider flowers with a greenish-yellow coloration.

“Compared to the rest of its genus, this species has weird, unique flowers,” said Lu.

Female Black-throated Sunbird (Aethopyga saturata) visiting the typical sunbird-pollinated Aeschynanthus bracteatus in Pingbian, southeastern Yunnan, China. Credit: Jing-Yi Lu

Because of this, A. acuminatu is far more suited for Taiwan’s shorter-beaked birds. It’s a good thing, too—sunbirds aren’t found anywhere on the island. That said, the yellow-green lipstick vines are also found on the mainland. Knowing this, Lu and his colleagues began to wonder where the plant evolved first.

“At the heart of our study is a question of where species originate,” said Rick Ree, a study coauthor and curator of the Field Museum’s Negaunee Integrative Research Center. “There must have been a switch when this species evolved, when it went from having narrow flowers for sunbirds to wider flowers for more generalist birds. Where and when did the switch occur?”

Many botanists might assume the answer could be found in the Grant-Stebbins model. Utilized in the field for over half a century, the Grant-Stebbins model asserts that plants usually evolve different species after they migrate into new regions featuring different types of pollinators. With this in mind, it stood to reason that A. acuminatus originated in Taiwan to accommodate the island’s short-beaked birds. However, the researchers were surprised by what they saw after using lipstick vine DNA samples to assemble a series of family trees.

“The branching patterns on the family trees we made revealed that the A. acuminatus plants on Taiwan descended from other A. acuminatus plants from the mainland,” said Ree.

This means that for some reason, the shorter, greener lipstick vines evolved in a region with plenty of sunbird pollinators. If true, then this contradicts the Grant-Stebbins model—but researchers have a theory about how this could happen.

“Our hypothesis is that at some point in the past, sunbirds stopped being optimal or sufficient pollinators for some of the plants on the mainland,” explained Ree. “There must have been circumstances under which natural selection favored this transition toward generalist passerine birds with shorter beaks as pollinators.”

Ree stressed that their unexpected conclusions were only reached after botanists like Lu took time to travel into the field themselves.

“This study shows the importance of natural history, of actually going out into nature and observing ecological interactions,” he said. “It takes a lot of human effort that cannot be replicated by AI, it can’t be sped up by computers—there’s no substitute for getting out there like Jing-Yi did…”

The post This odd vine contradicts long-standing evolutionary theory appeared first on Popular Science.