Popular Science

Routine checkups for humans are usually straightforward. The doctor tells you what to do, and unless you’re a squirming baby or terrified of needles, you pretty much follow instructions. 

But what happens when the patient is a giant yellow-orange eel with sharp teeth? Things get a bit slippery. At the New England Aquarium, experts need to follow a complicated process in order to get Thomas, a green moray eel (Gymnothorax funebris), ready for his yearly checkup. 

The first step consists of retrieving Thomas from the aquarium’s giant ocean tank. Divers get him into a plastic barrel.Thomas and the barrel are then submerged into a different water tank with powdered anesthetic water, Melissa Joblon, New England Aquarium’s director of animal health, tells Popular Science. 

“We have to be really cautious to make sure that he’s fully anesthetized before we handle him because they can be dangerous,” she adds, “and they’re very slippery and can kind of slither away if we’re not really careful.”

Once Thomas is essentially knocked out, the team lifts him from his sedation bin and onto a rack. They then flush water—with more of the anesthesia agent—which allows him to continue breathing. 

The medical exam is preventative care, meaning the team is on the lookout for any health issues to catch them before they become serious. The session includes a physical exam, bloodwork, a full ultrasound, and an electrocardiogram. The team is essentially investigating the eel’s outsides and insides. 

“We do full routine annual exams on the majority of the animals that live at the aquarium, similar to bringing your cat or dog to a vet once a year,” Joblon explains. 

Thomas is probably 18 to 21 years old, but he was a juvenile when the New England Aquarium took him in. A pet owner donated him after wisely deciding that they couldn’t care for the eel anymore—Thomas was becoming too big. Green moray eels are, after all, among the largest morays—they can be eight feet long.

Here’s to making sure Thomas eels good. 

The post Thomas the moray eel goes to the doctor appeared first on Popular Science.

We’ve all seen the movies. Scientists gear up to chase tornadoes across the Oklahoma plains, competing with each other to get there first. But is the reality of storm chasing anything like the movies? In a new episode of Popular Science’s Ask Us Anything podcast, we ask real life storm chaser, Cyrena Arnold, to untangle fact from fiction and break down what it’s really like to go speeding after tornadoes. 

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 some birds talk like people and no, airplane toilets won’t suck you into the atmosphere. 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 “The real storm chasers of the Great Plains.”

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Full Episode Transcript

Sarah Durn: It’s a balmy Saturday afternoon in Kansas, and you’re driving along a wide open road. You glance in the rear view mirror and your heart skips a beat. Huge, black storm clouds are building in the sky behind you. Lightning flashes. Thunder rumbles. On the radio, an alert blares. A tornado has been spotted not far away.

As you drive as fast as you can away from the storm, a caravan of 10 SUVs whizzes by. What the heck are they doing? Why would anyone drive towards a tornado? 

Little do you know, that caravan is packed with hardened storm chasers, just like Helen Hunt’s character in the 1996 classic film Twister. But is real storm chasing anything like the movies?

Welcome to Ask Us Anything from the editors of Popular Science, where we answer your questions about our weird world, from why do we need braces to how fast would New York City fall apart without people? No question is too simple or too out there. I’m Sarah Durn, an editor at PopSci.

Laura Baisas: And hello, I’m news editor Laura Baisis.

SD: Here at Popular Science, we can’t stop thinking about all the world’s strangest questions, and this week, we have a special interview episode of Ask Us Anything delving into all things storm chasing. Woo-hoo. What is it? Who does it? And is it anything like the movies? Laura, you actually interviewed real-life storm chaser and meteorologist Cyrena Arnold for this episode.

LB: I did. Cyrena is the absolute coolest.

SD: Ah, I wanna go storm chasing with her so bad.

LB: Kinda do and kinda don’t. Kind of a little afraid of it, but also if I’m gonna go storm chasing with anybody, I think a seasoned meteorologist is kind of the perfect person to go with.

SD: Yeah, I don’t know. I might get too scared, but the idea of it seems fun.

LB: The idea of it’s great. Sounds great on paper.

SD: Sounds great. And you also wrote a story for Popular Science all about storm chasers, so before we get into your interview with Cyrena, let’s lay a bit of groundwork here. Can you tell us what exactly is storm chasing?

LB: So it’s a term that’s evolved quite a bit over the years, but Hollywood tornado movies basically get a lot of it right.

In general, storm chasing means tracking a severe thunderstorm where a tornado is likely to form.

SD: So badass. So where do chasers typically go to track these storms?

LB: It varies, but tornadoes primarily happen here in the United States.

SD: Really, you don’t get tornadoes elsewhere?

LB: You do. While tornadoes happen in China, Canada, and even Australia, nowhere has tornadoes like the good old U.S. of A.

We have by far the most frequent tornadoes, as well as the most dangerous storms.

SD: I don’t know if that’s an award you want. 

LB: No.

SD: And when and where do most of these tornadoes happen in the U.S.?

LB: So it can vary a bit. Peak tornado season for the Southern Plains, so that’s Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, is from May into early June.

On the Gulf Coast, it’s earlier in the spring, and in the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest—so think North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota—tornado season is more June and July.

SD: And what are chasers actually doing when they go out?

LB: So that’s cool. That all depends on the specific chaser. For a lot of hobby storm chasers, it’s all about getting that great picture or video of a tornado.

SD: Kinda like Glenn Powell’s character in Twisters?

LB: Exactly. So then you have storm chasers with more of a meteorology background. These chasers can collect really important data on these storms, so things like wind speed, direction, precipitation. All of this helps weather forecasters get on-the-ground data that even the most advanced radar might not see.

SD: Okay, so it’s a little more like Daisy Edgar-Jones’s character in Twisters, or Helen Hunt’s character in the original film.

LB: Exactly.

SD: And I imagine the fact that these real-life storm chasers can report things that radars can’t see is really important, right?

LB: Absolutely. Storm chasers in the field can radio back in to the National Weather Service about what they’re seeing, and from there, the Weather Service can issue potentially life-saving warnings.

SD: Wow, so storm chasers are actually saving lives.

LB: Absolutely, and that’s not something I necessarily even realized until I spoke with Cyrena and she talked about how important that is. Storm chasers are able to be the eyes and ears on the ground and help keep people safe.

SD: No pressure.

LB: Yeah, yeah. None whatsoever.

Now, before we get into my interview with real-life storm chaser Cyrena Arnold, we want to hear from you. What questions are rotating around in your brain? Submit your question by clicking the “Ask Us” link at popsci.com/ask. Again, that’s popsci.com/ask, and click the “Ask Us” link.

SD: We’ll be right back with Laura’s interview with a real storm chaser, after this quick break.

LB: And welcome back. Today, we have a very special guest interview. With us is Cyrena Arnold, a meteorologist, author, and host of the Storm Front Freaks podcast. She’s currently based in New Hampshire, where she is the director of product marketing at Atmospheric G2, and importantly, has 20 years of chasing storms.

Cyrena, thank you so much for joining.

Cyrena Arnold: Yeah, you’re welcome.

LB: So first, tell me, how did you get into storm chasing?

CA: Ah, that’s a very good question, and how I got into storm chasing was accidentally storm chasing. So I was born in the southern Caribbean where they don’t even get hurricanes, where the weather is really nice.

And when I was five, we moved to Denver, Colorado, or a suburb of Denver, and all of a sudden one day there was this thunderstorm, and I’d never seen a thunderstorm before, and then there’s hail, and I’d never seen hail before, and there was lightning, and I hadn’t seen that, and then a funnel cloud formed.

LB: Ah.

CA: And it formed a tornado, and the tornado just went across this big field, and I so vividly remember standing in the doorway of my house, looking out at that and going, “Wow.” That’s, that’s cool. 

And a switch flipped in me when that happened. And so I just, I just loved weather, and I have really dedicated my entire life to it, you know, all of my education and every science fair project and everything like that.

So I knew I wanted to study severe weather. I knew I wanted to go to the University of Oklahoma, and when you’re out there at the meteorology school. It was wonderful. My first big storm chase was Cordell, Oklahoma, October 9th of 2001, where we saw seven tornadoes. One was a F3 tornado.

LB: Wow.

CA: And that’s the beginning.

LB: And one thing I think, like, me, myself, and anybody that watches some sort of a sci-fi or some sort of fictional take on a very real thing has to wonder: What do the actual scientists think about this portrayal? So can you tell me, what do you think about the Twister films specifically? Are they at all accurate?

CA: Yes and no. 

LB: Right. 

CA: There are some things about them that are super accurate.

LB: Mm-hmm.

CA: And there are some things about them that are not. I think the, for me, the funniest thing is how successful they are in storm chasing. They make it seem so easy.

LB: Right.

CA: You, you know, we’re out, oh, we’re gonna get in the car, and you drive 30 minutes, and there’s a tornado, and there’s another tornado, and, and no. No. No, no, no, no. The, the real story—

LB: Hmm…

CA: —is that you see a tornado on average about one out of every 10 of your storm chases.

SD: Wow.

CA: So you have a very low percentage rate. And then in order to do that, you’ve gotta forecast this right. You’ve gotta set yourself up in the right place. You’re possibly driving hundreds of miles, and you’re putting in a tremendous amount of time for a couple seconds.

Most tornadoes are very short-lived. They’re small, and there are some bigger ones, but you spend a lot of time and work to be successful, and I’ll go entire years and not see one. That’s probably one of the biggest things is that they just make it look so easy and, and so simple, and it’s not. Some other things that they get right or wrong, there’s always, like, a rivalry, right?

Yeah. Like in Twister, you know, it was Jo and, you know, Jonas and, and they fought. And, in the Twisters movie, same thing, right? You know, these competitive chase teams. This is a hobby that has some of the greatest camaraderie out there, and if you don’t believe me check out a gas station any time you see a whole bunch of storm chasers there.

They’re not fighting in the parking lot. They’re doing stuff together, looking at weather models together. They’re taking pictures together, laughing, joking, playing, like, football together. This is a like, a group thing. And I know when we’re out there with the Storm Front Freaks, we’ll see people that we’ve interviewed on our podcast and that we know and talk to, and you, like, run up to these people and give them hugs and high fives.

You know? You know these people, and we have this common bond.

LB: Yeah.

CA: So there is a lot more camaraderie in it, and very, very little competition.

LB: What about some things if it’s like your group, where you’re going out there and you’re, you’re not necessarily doing pictures and video, you’re doing more research and data.

How is that portrayed in the movies, that side of it?

CA: Yeah. It’s funny because in the movies it seems like everyone’s out there for research purposes. And that’s really cool, and in the 1980s and ’90s, that was absolutely true. Most of the people who went storm chasing were meteorologists. It was for scientific purposes, stuff like that.

Today because of those movies, they’ve made it a lot more popular where a vast majority of the storm chasers that are out there now have absolutely no meteorological credentials. And that’s totally cool. That’s fine as long as you go through a lot of training education, ’cause this is still an, this is an incredibly dangerous thing to be doing.

You can’t just walk out your front door and say, “I’m gonna go chase a tornado today,” or you’re gonna get yourself hurt. So most of the people who are out there are hobbyists. They do it for fun. They’ve taken a lot of chaser education courses and talked with other chasers, and a lot of those people who are doing it for fun or into photography.

They, maybe they want a picture of a tornado. Maybe they want really great storm structure. There are still researchers out there. There are still research projects. You have mobile radar on wheels teams out there with remote mesonet sites, so cars or stations you can move to have weather sensors on the ground, and they are collecting data, and we are still trying to understand how tornadoes form.

And that’s a part of it as well. And then you have the small sliver, fraction of a percent of, let’s just call them YouTuber using yahoos or stuff like that like wanna try to touch a tornado and bring you as close to it as possible, but that’s a real small sliver, so—

LB: Okay.

CA: —storm chasing is an incredibly wide spectrum of what’s out there, and, and I’d say a vast majority of them are out there to witness the beauty of nature and actually don’t have any degree or credentials or education in meteorology at all.

LB: And you mentioned the danger. How dangerous is it really?

CA: That can vary. If you wanna stay back from the storms, and you’re wanting to get storm structure, you wanna see the mammatus, and you wanna see the anvil. Maybe you’re far enough back you can see, like, an overshooting top. That’s, that’s pretty good.

LB: Yeah.

CA: You’ll find yourself okay there. But the hazards aren’t just the tornado. The hazards are downbursts. The hazards are lightning. The hazards are hail. The hazards are flooding, flash flooding. Water and flooding kills more people in weather than all of the different weather perils combined.

LB: Wow.

CA: So flooding is incredibly dangerous.

But if you have properly educated yourself, you understand the storm structure and where these different things are located and understand storm motion and dynamics and thermodynamics—

LB: Mm-hmm …

CA: —it can be done in a relatively safe way.

LB: Have you ever been caught up in a situation that you’ve thought, “Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten myself into this,” or, you know, any, um, dangerous storms?

CA: Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh, I got caught one time in a wet microburst of a storm structure that I didn’t understand, and I have never felt wind and rain like that in my life. I was stuck inside my truck. I couldn’t see anything. It was rocking like I was in a hurricane, and the bed liner in the back of my truck was bowing from how much wind was going through there.

I thought it was gonna pop out and go flying away. My ears popped from this wet microburst. It was crazy. 

LB:  Mm-hmm. Wow. 

CA: I remember when this happened, I was like, “I’ve messed up. This is not a safe place.” I’ve been way too close to lightning. When you’re out storm chasing, that’s just inevitable as well.

So I got a car stuck in the mud one time because the mud out there is a special kind of mud that when it gets wet, that turns into the slickest stuff you’ve ever seen, and unless you have four-wheel drive, you’re not getting out of it. Learned that the hard way, and while running to safety, almost got hit by lightning.

I’ve chased tornadoes at night, ’cause I thought that would be fun, and then I realized I couldn’t see anything. So in, in my early days, in my college days, I’ve made a ton of mistakes, and I’m really lucky to say that I, you know, I learned from all of those experiences.

LB: Do you have… I, I know that this might be like asking, you know, what’s your fav- who’s your favorite kid, but do you have a favorite chase?

CA: Ooh. There was a storm in Clovis, New Mexico May of 2003 that was probably the angriest storm I’ve ever seen, and it was actually, it’s funny, we called her Tina because it was the day we chased her was either the day of or the day after Tina Turner passed away. And you know, and she was a, like, powerhouse, right?

And so this storm was just ferocious. And so we called her Tina, and so I’ll always remember Storm Tina. It had inflow winds blowing into the storm at, like, 67 miles an hour sustained. This thing was just sucking up air from the lower atmosphere and throwing it up high like I had never seen in a storm before.

The teals and the green colors you saw inside the storm from the hail that it was producing in the places that I didn’t wanna be were incredible. This storm was just, it was angry, and it was ferocious. 

There’s also a storm, God, in the early 2000s. I was in, like, Okarche, Oklahoma, and this one, I, was hilarious ’cause we have our old-school video cameras. We’re filming it. We know we’re in the right area. We’re looking at the storm structure. The sirens in the town go off, which gives you goosebumps, and when you’re a storm chaser, is one of the coolest sounds in the world. If you’re living there, that’s terrifying. And we’re looking for it, looking for it, and we, you know, kind of, kind of finally see it at the end, but then we gotta drive away and get to safety.

We go back and watch our video that night, and with the resolution of the video camera, the contrast was better, and there was a funnel and a tornado in front of us the whole time, and we couldn’t see it because of—

LB: Whoa …

CA: —the way the light was and the brightness and the contrast. We were in, like, just this weirdest place.

LB: Just the whole time, it was there? Just—

CA: The whole time, yep.

LB: Hanging out.

CA: Just hanging out, had no idea, and so it was, yeah, and that one was, that, like, that’s just one that, uh, me and, and my friends from college, we just look back at and laugh. Like, to this day, we’re still like, “Oh, yep, you know? That Okarche day, man.”

LB: So when you’re actually out there, how is that whole team setup and dynamic different than it is in the movies?

CA: The movies are funny ’cause it’s almost like there’s the set day. Yeah. Where, where all of a sudden, hey, on the calendar, oh my God, it’s May 1st, tornado season is, is opening. You know, and that’s not how it is at all.

There are opportunities where chasers can get together. There’s storm chasing conferences. They usually happen in the off-season in, like, February, which is nice. But with a changing climate too, we have changing storm times, and we’re actually seeing Tornado Alley shift further east, and the seasons are longer.

We’re seeing it fall more into, uh, February, March in, in the southeastern parts of the U.S.. So people just start showing up, and you start chasing on their own. And once you really start getting into the severe season, yeah, you meet up, and you see other people when you’re out there, and in the gas station parking lots, people are there, and you see each other and can hang out for a bit while you’re staging and waiting for storm initiation or whatever.

But it’s not like they show in the movies where it’s like, “Oh my God, everyone mark your calendar for this day and we’re all gonna meet at this gas station in this small Oklahoma town.” It doesn’t work that way at all, and there’s days you can have a line of storms that form from Texas through the Dakotas, and so storm chasers just spread out all along across that line naturally, and it’s just a very natural sort of process. That’s not as scheduled and not as quick and easy as they make it look in the movies.

LB: There you go. Last question, but I love to ask scientists this one, whether it be from movie, TV, comic books, books, favorite fictional scientist?

CA: Miss Frizzle. Does she count?

LB: Oh, 100%. She, she definitely has a PhD, but is also teaching elementary school as a scientist, yes.

CA: You know she’s a teacher—

LB: Mm-hmm.

CA: But man, Miss Frizzle embodies everything about science, the curiosity, the willing to learn, making mistakes and trying again, and also, like, rocking outfits.

LB: Yes.

CA: Like, really cool science-y dresses and stuff while doing it, and making science fun, and I think that is awesome. I am so … I’m game. That’s great. Sign me up. She’s amazing.

LB: Cyrena, thank you so much for joining us. Now, if people wanna find you on the internet, where should they look?

CA: Everything for me is at wxcyrena, and Cyrena is spelled really unusually. Thank you, Mom and Dad. Love you so much. It’s C-Y-R-E-N-A, so W-X-C-Y-R-E-N-A on all the social media platforms.

My website, everything is at wxcyrena. And find me. Find me on social media. We’re gonna be talking about the storm chase while we’re out doing it, so check in and see what’s going on there. And we were just talking about Miss Frizzle. She’s one of my favorite people, and I am trying to be her, I think, more and more every day.

I’ve written three children’s books about weather, too, and so you can find those through the links in trying to find me. I have The Weather Story, The Hurricane Story, and The Tornado Story, which are factual books, real meteorology, but in a nice, lyrical, easy to understand way for kids, and it’s just so important to me that science communication and science education piece is a cornerstone of what I do, so go check those out, too, if you’re looking me up.

LB: Awesome. Well, thank you, and good luck chasing.

CA: Thank you. I hope you find some wonderful, what we, other people call terrible, weather.

SD: What an interview. Now I really wanna go storm chasing with her.

LB: I know. I’m more convinced now. 

And that’s it for this episode, but don’t worry, we’ve got more episodes of Ask Us Anything 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 and review.

SD: Our producer is Alan Haburchak. This week’s episode was based on an article written for Popular Science by Laura Baisis.

LB: Thank you, team. Thank you, meteorologists and storm chasers, and thanks 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, and listen to those storm warnings.

LB: Seriously, they’re very important.

And seriously, watch out for flying cows.

SD: Moo.

The post Is storm chasing really like the movies? appeared first on Popular Science.

A team of engineers at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) have developed a humidity-based image encoder that looks straight out of James Bond’s Q-Lab. The postage stamp-sized chip can store a hidden message that is only revealed when exterior humidity levels surpass 60 percent. The image can then be concealed again by bringing humidity back down. In practice, that means someone handed an object with the chip on it could simply breathe on it to unveil its secret message.

While it’s a potentially nifty tool for an undercover spy, the researchers say the encoder could also be used to reveal a security code on a credit card, or even serve as a visual indicator of climate changes in a particular area. In all of these cases, humidity essentially acts as a key. The findings were recently published in the journal Light: Science & Applications. 

“You can imagine using this as a built-in security feature with the environment acting like a key that unlocks different pieces of information,” study co-author and UC San Diego electrical and computer engineering postdoctoral researcher Asad Nauman said in a statement. 

In a video demonstration, a clear blue image of a UCSD trident logo appears and then quickly begins to fade as the area around it brightens. After only a few seconds in, the UCSD library logo emerges. The image then fades back to the man with the trident before switching back once more to the library logo.

Hiding a message in plain sight 

The chip consists of two separate hydrogel layers. The bottom layer, made of a phase-changing material called antimony trisulfide, essentially acts as a canvas onto which lasers can etch messages. These can be text or, as in the example above, full images. The top layer is made of a softer hydrogel material called azido-grafted carboxymethyl cellulose. This layer swells in humid conditions and shrinks in dry ones, which is why the hidden message becomes visible.

The transformation of the UCSD Triton logo to the UCSD library logo. Left to right: The UCSD Triton logo is visible at a 40% humidity level; the UCSD library logo begins to appear and overlap the Triton logo at a 60 percent humidity level; the UCSD library logo is solely visible at an 85% humidity level; and both images are overlapped at a 95 percent humidity level. Image: NDAO Lab

The first, low-humidity image or message is visible when humidity levels are at or below 40 percent. As humidity levels approach 60 percent, the hidden message starts taking shape. It is   then fully visible at 80 percent humidity. The image reveal is also accompanied by a color shift due to small gaps between the two hydrogel layers. When the top layer swells and expands, the increased space between the layers alters the way light reflects off them, resulting in a shift from blue to red.

Of course, for any of this to work, a spy or other user would need to operate in an area with a predictable climate. Blowing on a message in a tropical environment where the air is already thick with moisture probably won’t  do the trick. Still, in a pinch, it might beat having to write out long, intricate messages on finicky invisible ink.

The post Breathing on this chip reveals a secret message appeared first on Popular Science.

Attention creative souls! While NASA might feel like an exclusive den of scientists, engineers, and otherworldly athletes, the agency is reaching out to storytellers and artists via two new initiatives.

“As NASA pushes the boundaries of exploration and innovation for the benefit of humanity, the agency is looking for partners to share mission stories covering Artemis Moon missions, nuclear propulsion, aeronautics, and more,” NASA wrote in a press release. Since “journalists” aren’t mentioned in either of these calls for creatives, it would appear that NASA is seeking other means to keep people talking about its missions. 

Specifically, they are seeking proposals from creatives including documentarians, songwriters, storytellers, and poets for projects about missions including Artemis III in 2027 and Space Reactor-1 Freedom to Mars in 2028, among others. Proposals are due by the end of June.

NASA is also launching another creative initiative called Moon Joy June. 

“To keep the Moon Joy alive after the Artemis II mission, NASA is hosting a month-long art challenge on Instagram, Threads, and Tumblr. Each week during the month of June 2026, NASA will provide a prompt to inspire participants to make and share their artistic creations,” they explain in an FAQ page.

The prompts have already been released, so artists looking to participate can already start brainstorming. Week one’s prompt is “launch,” week two will be “moon,” week three will be “crew,” and week four will be “Earth.” 

A note to the competitive-minded—the agency highlights that Moon Joy June is not a contest but an art challenge, meaning there will be no prize. And as if it could get any worse for type-A people, participants don’t actually have to follow the prompts. It seems like we’re in for a free-for-all artistic takeover of the three social media platforms.

Non-traditional art forms like nail art and latte foam art are also welcomed. In NASA’s words, “The sky is (not) the limit!” 

The post How you can help NASA (even if you failed math) appeared first on Popular Science.

A unique turtle is officially getting a second chance at life in the big blue. Last month we reported on a special resident at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center in Jekyll Island, Georgia: a first-generation hybrid sea turtle, the child of a Loggerhead sea turtle father (Caretta caretta) and a Kemp’s ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys kempii) mother. Nicknamed Earl Grey, the reptile-turned-celebrity has returned to the wild. 

This Hannah Montana of turtles was slated to be released on Wednesday, but on Tuesday the Georgia Sea Turtle Center announced a change of plans because of “some unexpected pre-release complications.” Luckily, these complications must have been resolved. He was sent on his way Thursday morning, only one a day behind schedule. 

“Yesterday evening, veterinarians at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center determined that the best course of action for Earl Grey’s well-being and successful transition back into the ocean was to conduct a private release,” according to a George Sea Turtle Center spokesperson.

The turtle was rescued from a beach in Brewster, Massachusetts, where it was stranded and cold-stunned. The turtle’s mixed background was revealed by genetic testing after the Loggerhead ridley (or Kemp’s Loggerhead?) arrived at the turtle center. Hybrid animals are natural, but we don’t know how many wild hybrid sea turtles there are. Most hybrid animals are only confirmed with genetic testing. 

Earl Grey on his way to the beach for release. Image: Jekyll Island Authority.

“From an evolutionary perspective, hybridization could be one of many ways genetic diversity is introduced into a population,” Jaynie L. Gaskin, Georgia Sea Turtle Center director, told Popular Science in April. “We encourage other rehabilitation facilities to consider genetic testing for any suspected hybrid sea turtles, as there may be more individuals than we currently realize!”

In a Facebook video, the turtle center highlights the traits that the rare hybrid sea turtle inherited from each species, including a hook-shaped beak of a Kemp’s ridley (the mother) and the colors of a Loggerhead (the father). A combination of, in their words, the “best of both worlds.” . 

Stay warm, E.G.! 

The post Rare hybrid sea turtle released back into the ocean after rescue appeared first on Popular Science.

This weekend, Earth will be treated to a nice blue moon. Our planet’s only natural satellite won’t put on a pleasant azure hue (indeed, blue moons have nothing to do with color). Instead, it will be the second full moon for the month of May, following the full Flower Moon on May 1. The blue moon will reach peak illumination at 4:46 a.m. EDT on Sunday May 31. 

Seasonal vs. calendrical

According to the Farmer’s Almanac, there are two definitions of a blue moon—a seasonal blue moon and a calendrical blue moon.

A seasonal blue moon is one extra full moon within an astronomical season, or the dates between solstices and equinoxes. A typical astronomical season has three full moons within it. If it has four full moons instead, then the third may be called a blue moon. 

A calendrical (or monthly) blue moon is the one most of us are familiar with. It is the second full moon to fall in one calendar month—like in May 2026. It takes the moon roughly 29.5 days to complete one cycle of phases (new moon to new moon). So if a full moon falls on the first of the month on the calendar, there will be a second full moon at the end of the month. The only month in which a calendrical blue moon cannot fall is February. 

How rare are blue moons?

Blue moons are not quite as rare as the phrase “once in a blue moon” makes it sound. Calendrical blue moons happen every 2.5 years (or 30 months) on average, and seasonal blue moons fall about once every two to three years. 

The last calendrical blue moon was on August 31, 2023 and the next calendrical blue moon will rise just in time to ring in the new year on December 31, 2028. 

Two blue moons can also occur in one year. In 2018, January and March both had two full moons, with no full moon in February. The next time two blue moons will fall in one calendar year won’t be until 2037.

Why is it a micromoon?

May’s blue moon will also be a micromoon and the smallest micromoon of the year. Micromoons have nothing to do with size and everything to do with distance. Typically, the moon is about 238,855 miles away from Earth. Micromoons are further away, and this month’s micromoon will be 252,360 miles away. With the further distance, a micromoon may appear a bit smaller and dimmer than usual. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum are supermoons, which are closer to Earth at only 225,130 miles away.

How to watch and photograph a blue moon

If you want to see the blue moon rise over a historic city, the Virtual Telescope Project will broadcast the event live from Italy. 

NASA has also put together a handy lunar photography guide if you want to snap that perfect moon pic. If using a smartphone, NASA recommends stabilizing the device, turning off the flash, and tapping the moon on screen to focus the camera directly on it instead of the sky. Your brightness also needs to come down and taking pictures at twilight or as the moon clears the horizon will give the sensor less contrast. 

The post Look up for a blue moon on May 31 appeared first on Popular Science.

A pleasant swim at the beach or pool can quickly turn deadly. Every year, over 4,000 people die from unintentional drowning across the United States. 

Swim safety experts say drowning is highly preventable. They recommend learning basic swimming skills, designating “water watchers” to keep an eye on children in the water, and avoiding swimming alone or under the influence.

But what if your outfit could stop you from drowning? Swim safety experts say wearing the right color on your next beach day is a good way to stay visible and out of harm’s way—especially for inexperienced swimmers and kids.

So what are the safest swimsuit colors?

Lisa Zarda, Executive Director of the U.S. Swim School Association, says people wearing bright, neon colors are easiest to spot in pools, lakes, and oceans, while blue, black, white, and gray swimsuits blend into the water. 

“When the water is moving and reflecting the sunlight, certain colors just disappear under the water,” she said. “Especially in open water, where it can be kind of murky and hard to see: The brighter the color, the better.” 

Wearing bright colors helps lifeguards and other safety officials identify and rescue people who are at risk of drowning. Vivid orange and super-bright, highlighter yellow are two standout colors for swim safety.

“Think safety vests and traffic cones,” Zarda said. “Those are bright colors also for a reason—so that they can be easily seen.”

An informal study by Alive Solutions, a public safety group, tested swimsuit visibility in three different conditions: in a pool with a standard light bottom, a pool with a dark bottom similar to dark blue ocean environments, and in an outdoor lake with brown-gray water. 

Across the board, the study identified bright, neon orange as the most visible color. But there was some slight variation of which colors stood out best in different environments. Against a dark pool bottom, neon yellow, green, and orange were the most eye-catching, while even brighter reds and pinks appeared darker, and both light and dark colors faded into the water. 

In a pool with a light bottom, most colors stood out, while light colors like white and light blue disappeared almost instantly. 

In a lake, only neon colors were visible while all other colors quickly blended. So bottom line: stick to a neon orange swimsuit if you want to be sure to be seen.

Dark colored swimsuits can be especially hard to spot in open water. Image: mrs / Getty Images / MARTINS RUDZITIS What makes neon stand out?

All visible color is the result of reflected light. A red apple, for instance, absorbs many wavelengths along the light spectrum, but bounces back red wavelengths. So to the human eye, an apple appears red.

Ordinary colors, like the red of an apple, only reflect the light they receive, but fluorescent pigments do more than that. They also absorb incoming nonvisible ultraviolet and some visible blue light and then re-emit part of that energy as intensely visible light. This is why fluorescent colors almost seem to glow.

Fluorescent shade’s high-contrast is why traffic safety signs, protective gear, and safety and rescue objects, like buoys, are often made with neon materials. It’s also what makes fluorescent swimsuits extra safe.

Swim safety for kids

As summer comes into full swing, Zarda says wearing a neon swimsuit is just one piece of the puzzle to prevent drowning, particularly for kids.

Children are extremely vulnerable to drowning accidents. Kids between ages one to four die from drowning more than any other cause of death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For children aged five to 14, drowning is the second leading cause of unintentional injury.

“Choosing the right swimsuit color doesn’t replace any of the other important layers of protection.” Zarda said. 

“Always having undistracted adult supervision, having a fence around your pool, enrolling your child in swim lessons so that they know how to swim and navigate in the water—those are all still very important.”

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

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The post What’s the safest swimsuit color? Skip blue and black. appeared first on Popular Science.

A 31-year-old New York native named Kelsey Pfendler is one week into her audacious quest to become the youngest woman to row unassisted from California to Hawaii. To complete her over 2,400-mile journey, she will need to face stormy seas and traverse waters teeming with all types of ocean life.  If she succeeds, Pfendler will become the first American woman ever to do so.

@yourowkelsey

A couple hours of napping and some food will make you feel like a new woman! Waves and wind are still big, but luckily they are becoming more favorable, allowing Kelsey’s boat to catch and ride the waves. Kelsey is rowing to raise funds for The Whale Foundation an organization whose mission is to support, restore, and celebrate the health and well-being of the Grand Canyon river guiding community. Links to learn more and donate are in our bio. @Concept2 @Recpak @insta360 official

♬ original sound – YouRowKelsey

Pfendler set off from Monterey, California on May 21 and has been posting daily updates on her TikTok. A separate live tracker  also plots her position on a digital map. As of May 28, the tracker shows her off the Southern California coast, moving at 1.6 knots. The multi-month voyage is a major test of physical strength and mental fortitude,  and it’s already proven grueling. In just her first week, Pfendler battled strong headwinds as she pushed away from the California coast, leaving her hands covered in blisters.

@yourowkelsey

Absolutely flying today! Waves are around 14ft and wind maxed about 22mph earlier, which gave her a good boost of speed. 229 miles so far, about 2,000 to go. @Concept2 @Recpak

♬ original sound – YouRowKelsey

And it has only gotten tougher. Pfendler’s route took her directly into the path of a weather front, bringing bone-chilling temperatures and punishing waves. Worse, while taking cover from the waves, she lost the cap to her heavy-duty freshwater bag. Though she has the ability to make more freshwater with a desalination device, it runs on solar power and the storm left the skies too dark and overcast for the device to work. As a result, Pfendler has had to tap into her emergency supply of 25 small water bottles, a scarcity that has also prevented her from using water to rehydrate her freeze-dried camp food.

“It’s tortillas and peanut butter until I get some sun,” Pfendler said. 

But the trip has had its lighter moments as well. Pfendler posted an update sharing her excitement when she crossed the continental shelf. At about 50 to 60 miles off the California coast, crossing the continental shelf is something few humans get to experience so intimately.  She also recounted a moment where she spotted either a sea lion or a dolphin hunting fish nearby, sending them leaping out of the water all around her boat.

“It was really cool, it was in the dark and it was kinda special for me,” Pfendler said, 

This quest  isn’t Pfendler’s first rodeo. She completed a similar rowing trip from California to Hawaii in 2024 with three companions, serving as the skipper. That trip took 40 days, 22 hours, and 14 minutes. Still, rowing in total isolation—even for an experienced oarswoman—adds another layer of challenge. If Pfendler completes the trip, she will be just the third woman ever to do so. The record, set by British rower Lia Ditton in 2020, currently stands at 86 days, 10 hours, and 56 seconds.

The post Kelsey Pfendler is trying to become the youngest woman to row solo from California to Hawaii appeared first on Popular Science.

For decades, scientists have known that Earth’s magnetic field helps migratory birds and homing pigeons navigate. Just how our feathered friends sense the invisible sphere around the Earth, however, has been less clear. 

At least part of the answer appears to be hiding inside a seemingly random organ. Immune cells inside pigeon livers called macrophages are sensitive to the planet’s magnetic field. These cells function like an internal compass, according to a new study published today in the journal Science. 

Macrophages destroy old red blood cells, which makes them accumulate iron. The iron makes the macrophages  superparamagnetic, a kind of magnetism that takes place in particular nanoparticles. The nanoparticles can then be magnetized if a magnetic field is applied to them. 

“When pigeons fly, the nanoparticles align with the magnetic field and become ‘magnetized,’” Clivia Lisowski, a co-author of the study and a post-doctoral researcher in Immunology at the University of Bonn, tells Popular Science. “Like that, pigeons can sense Earth’s magnetic field.”

Electron microscopy image of pigeon liver tissue shows hepatic macrophage (blue) in contact with nerve fiber (yellow), which enables them to transmit (“magnetic”) information to the pigeon brain. Image: Lisowski et al. (2026) Science.

To understand how these particles help the pigeons navigate, Lisowski and her team tracked down where magnetic cells are in pigeons’ bodies. Because the liver and spleen store significant quantities of iron, researchers thought these might be good candidate organs. The  liver had a significantly stronger magnetic response than any of the other tissues in the study, according to study co-author Ulf Wiedwald, an expert in nanoscience at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, 

From there they homed in on macrophages, and put these important immune cells  to the test. They studied  pigeons that were trained to fly back to their aviary in Konstanz, Germany, from over 12.4 miles away. Pigeons whose macrophages had been removed got lost when the weather was overcast. But when the sun was out, the pigeons reached the aviary, probably with the aid of solar cues. 

The findings show  how the birds employ magnetic sensing to find their way, as well as the sun’s orientation. 

“Our study has implications for both the immune research landscape as well as for research on animal navigation or magnetoreception, respectively. For animal navigation it’s a new concept of how animals sense/perceive Earth’s magnetic field,” Lisowski says. “We think that this ferrimagnetic mechanism can actually explain how birds migrating at night, or sharks or bats or other animals migrating in dark environments can perceive Earth´s magnetic field.”

The team also found that the iron-rich macrophages are close to nerve fibers, indicating that magnetic information can get to the brain via this route. Ultimately, this shows how important  interdisciplinary research, involving immunologists, behavioral biologists, and physicists, carries  significance for more than just birds. 

As for the immune system, Lisowski explains that to accomplish its different fuctions—such as defending our bodies from pathogens and healing wounds—it has to sense the environment.

“Our finding that the immune system can also sense the Earth´s magnetic field is a complete new layer in this concept of ‘immuno-sensation’ and opens the door to new research,” Lisowski explains. 

The post Pigeons use their livers to sense Earth’s magnetic field appeared first on Popular Science.

Sunburn and mosquito bites go together in the summer like a hot dog and ketchup. To keep from becoming a mosquito buffet, most of us turn to bug sprays with DEET.  An acronym built from its scientific identification (diethyltoluamide), DEET was developed for the United States Army in 1946 and entered civilian use in 1957. It is generally considered safe when used as directed. 

However, mosquitoes can learn to associate the repellant with food. They may even become attracted to it. The findings are detailed in a study published today in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

“If someone applies DEET and the concentration fades over time, but a mosquito still manages to feed, the insect may begin associating that smell with a reward,” Clément Vinauger, a study co-author and biochemist at Virginia Tech, said in a statement. “That’s a possibility we should take seriously when we think about how repellents are used in the real world.”

Ace processors

Like it or not, Earth’s over 3,500 known mosquito species are pretty smart and an evolutionary wonder. They use sensory information to find hosts and can adapt to changing environments.

In previous studies, Vinauger’s team has shown that the insects remember and avoid hosts who swat them away, can combine smell and vision to precisely track humans, and even gravitate toward and away from the smell of certain soaps.

“Mosquitoes are remarkable at processing information about their environment,” Vinauger said. “What we are trying to understand is not only how they detect us, but how their brains interpret those cues and turn them into behavior.”

A DEET-covered dinner bell?

In this new study, the team focused on the yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti). This species spreads several diseases to tens of millions of people each year, including dengue fever, Zika, yellow fever, and chikungunya.

The team trained mosquitoes using a form of Pavlovian conditioning. Often called “Pavlov’s dogs,” this training method developed by neurologist and physiologist Ivan Pavlov in the early 20th century was used to teach dogs to associate the sound of a bell ringing with food. 

The mosquitoes were restrained behind a piece of fabric mesh. They then offered the mosquitoes a bag of warm blood (yum) that was just out of the insects’ reach to see how enthusiastically the insects stabbed at it with their proboscises. As expected, the mosquitoes were interested in the blood, particularly when the team rewarded them by lowering the bag within reach. Things changed a bit once DEET entered the experiment. When the team offered the insects blood when surrounded by the scent of DEET, they initially stayed away from the potential feast.  

A female yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti), feeding on a bag of warm blood. Image: Romina Barrozo.

To see if they could be trained to associate that smell with the dinner bell, the team fed the mosquitoes warm blood for 20 seconds, squirting the scent of DEET into the enclosure in the final 10 seconds of dining. They repeated the procedure three more times before noting how the mosquitoes responded to only the scent of DEET. In this trial, over 60 percent of mosquitoes tried to bite when they smelled DEET.  

To examine further, the mosquitoes were given a choice between two human hands. The hand belonged to study co-author Ayelén Nally of the University of Buenos Aires. One of Nally’s hands was coated with DEET at normal concentrations and the other was bare. The untrained mosquitoes avoided the DEET-treated hand, while the trained mosquitoes were drawn to it.

Interestingly, the mosquitoes could form that same association when sugar, instead of blood, was used as the reward. 

According to the team, they are seeing how the mosquito’s brain can rewrite its response based on their experiences. What they have learned matters just as much as what a chemical like DEET does. 

“If mosquitoes are repeatedly exposed to DEET, it becomes less effective as a repellent,” study co-author Claudio Lazzari from University of Tours in France added.

Keep the bug spray

Importantly, this does not mean you should stop using DEET completely. It is still one of the most effective ways to keep the dangerous insects away, particularly where mosquito-borne disease is common.

“If you’re in tropical regions where disease risk is real, you should use it,” Vinauger said. “Instead of applying a lot at once, you may want to reapply regularly so it’s always active and providing continuous protection.”

Treated clothing may also be a challenge since DEET concentrations in fabric decline over time. Additional study to understand their behavior is crucial for public health as mosquito-borne illnesses increase due to climate change. 

“We need to understand how mosquitoes keep outsmarting our control strategies,” Vinauger concluded. “And that takes understanding how they work—at the molecular level, the neural level, the behavioral level.”

The post Mosquitoes can learn that DEET means dinner is served appeared first on Popular Science.

Everyone who has ever owned a hamster knows the sound: the small, relentless squeak of the exercise wheel, usually starting around two in the morning.

As you watch your cute furball running toward no destination whatsoever, you might wonder: What’s going on here? Is little Hammy acting out of restlessness or boredom? 

For decades, scientists assumed it was exactly that: a neurosis, an artifact of captivity, the hamster equivalent of doing push-ups in prison. 

But in 2014, researcher Johanna Meijer conducted a study that suggested a less depressing scenario. When wild mice came across a wheel in their natural habitat, they got on the wheel and ran—sometimes for up to 18 minutes at a stretch.

So if it’s not boredom or neurosis (wild mice surely have plenty of more important tasks than wheel running), what is it? 

Dr. Theodore Garland Jr., a professor of biology at UC Riverside, has spent more than 30 years trying to figure that out. 

“There’s still a lot of controversy about what, exactly, wheel running means to an organism,” Garland says. “What is it? What is the organism trying to do?”

Why wild mice run on wheels just like your hamster

In Meijer’s 2014 study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, she and her colleagues placed exercise wheels in two different locations: a green urban area and a dune area not accessible to the public. For more than three years, they recorded wildlife activity at both locations.

They found that wild mice closely mirrored the behavior of their cage-dwelling counterparts. At both locations, the mice frequently ran on the wheels—often for lengths of time equal to the “workout” durations of captive mice.

Although food was initially used to attract animals to the wheel, the researchers found that wheel running continued even after the food was removed. This suggests that the animals not only ran voluntarily on the wheel, but did so without any external reward. 

The wheels attracted more than just mice, too. Shrews, frogs, and even slugs were recorded using the equipment (a few snails were excluded from the study due to “haphazard” movements on the wheel). But wild mice used the wheel far more than another animal, accounting for 88 percent of all wheel runners. 

Hamsters aren’t the only creatures that like running on wheels. Video: Wild Animals Caught On Hamster Wheel, Live Science

So, why do rodents specifically enjoy a run to nowhere? Are slugs simply less committed to their cardio?

According to Garland, rodents are simply built for it—bigger home ranges, faster metabolisms, and the aerobic capacity to sustain speed over distance.

“A toad isn’t going to be running 10 kilometers in a day,” Garland says. “Whereas a chipmunk could be.”

Dopamine keeps mice and hamsters coming back for more

But that’s only part of the story. The more interesting question is why any animal would choose to do it at all.

According to Garland, the drive to run on wheels among free-ranging animals is not fully understood, but the behavior is likely tied to the reward centers of the brain. 

“Dopamine is viewed as the final common denominator,” Garland says, referencing the neurotransmitter that delivers a sense of pleasure to the brain’s reward system. Similar to a human working out at the gym, mice get a dopamine boost every time they run on their trusty wheel. 

In Garland’s own lab, mice placed in larger, rat-sized wheels will sometimes slow down mid-run and rather than jumping off as the wheel keeps spinning, complete a full 360, and keep going. It serves no obvious purpose. It looks, for all the world, like a bit of acrobatics, as if the little mouse is creating its very own roller coaster.

“I’m hesitant to use the ‘F-word’ about lower vertebrates,” he says, “but it’s hard to ignore the idea that they’re getting some sort of pleasure or enjoyment out of it.” 

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The reward system may explain the drive, but Garland sees something even more elemental at work—something similar to the “zoomies” dogs and other young animals get. 

A baby horse, Garland notes, will sometimes just tear around a field for no apparent reason—solo, unprompted, burning energy for the sheer joy of it. “We used to call it nip-norting,” he says, “just going crazy, even without another individual to egg it on.”

Exercising at a young age leads to lifelong habits, even for hamsters

Rodents’ love of running on wheels might even have implications for humans. Some of Garland’s work suggests that, when introduced at a young age, wheel running can become a lifelong habit.

In his study, Garland found that mice given access to a running wheel immediately after weaning, at just three weeks old, ran significantly more as adults.

“It’s got to be something up here,” Garland says, indicating the brain. “Their reward system has been permanently tweaked.”

Whatever it is keeping these little guys running, an early start seems to predict an ongoing practice. The implications, Garland believes, extend well beyond mice. For instance, cutting physical education from school curricula, he says, could be “a huge public policy disaster,” leading to adults who aren’t used to exercising.

“If you’re a kid who never gets to play basketball or tennis,” he says, “and then you get to college, and your friends are playing pickup games, it’s probably not even on your radar to do that kind of thing.”

Of course, none of this is on your hamster’s radar at all. They’re just galloping away, keeping you awake with the endless rotation of their squeaky wheel. But all that running can also lead to some good: Recently, a resourceful young YouTuber rigged his brother’s hamster wheel to charge his phone.  

But no need to worry—the clever teen isn’t exploiting the toil of a joyless captive. Hammy, it seems, is just doing what comes naturally. 

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

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This article was originally featured on The Conversation.

On May 22, 2026, the Pentagon released a second batch of previously classified photos and videos showing what appear to be unexplained flying objects. These file dumps were the culmination of a process that was set in motion back in July 2023, when a group of government whistleblowers testified before Congress that the U.S. government was secretly in possession of extraterrestrial spacecraft and suspected alien body parts.

That congressional hearing marked the beginning of a cultural shift in which UFO reports are increasingly treated as a matter for serious discussion, both within the government and the scientific community.

The Pentagon released over 200 previously classified UFO files in May 2026. Image: Department of Defense

But is this newfound legitimacy deserved? As an aerospace scientist who studies aircraft and spacecraft design, I approach this question using math, physics and the principles of engineering. To assess the plausibility of alien visitors, it’s necessary to understand the obstacles that an extraterrestrial vessel would need to overcome to reach Earth.

The tyranny of distance

There is no evidence of intelligent alien life in our solar system. So any extraterrestrial visitors would likely have to come from another star system within our Milky Way galaxy.

Proxima Centauri, the star closest to our Sun, is located 4.25 light-years (about 25 trillion miles or 40 trillion kilometers) away.

For perspective, if Earth were the size of a pea, the distance to Proxima Centauri would roughly equal the distance between New York and Sydney, Australia.

Even the stars closest to Earth are incredibly far away.

Since only a fraction of stars are thought to host intelligent life, the nearest alien civilization – if one exists – is surely much farther away than Proxima.

A need for speed

Given the scale of interstellar distances, it’s inevitable that any alien voyage to Earth would span many years and possibly several centuries. But as the time spent in transit increases, so does the risk of catastrophic accidents or system malfunctions that could jeopardize the mission. So it’s important to avoid an overly lengthy journey by traveling as fast as possible.

No object can reach or exceed the speed of light (roughly 186,000 miles or 300,000 kilometers per second). But well before approaching that threshold, engineering constraints begin to assert themselves. Limited fuel availability and the potential for structural damage will restrict the spacecraft’s peak velocity.

There is no universally accepted upper limit on interstellar flight speeds, but studies tend to converge around 19,000 miles per second (30,000 km/s) – 10% of the speed of light – as a realistic cruise velocity. At this speed, a journey of 10 light-years will take approximately 100 years to complete.

Fueling the dream

Finding a way to accelerate the ship to its target cruise speed is the central challenge facing any would-be alien explorers.

Interstellar space is unforgivingly vast, but the emptiness has some advantages. The lack of atmosphere means there is no aerodynamic drag. So when the ship reaches its cruise speed, it can shut down its propulsion system and coast toward the final destination. Unfortunately, the lack of atmosphere also means there is nothing to slow the ship down prior to arrival. So ideally, the propulsion system would be used for both acceleration at the start of the trip and deceleration at the end.

One of the more exotic propulsion strategies employs high-powered laser beams to push the ship through space. The beam is projected from a stationary array near the travelers’ home planet and directed toward a thin reflective sail attached to the ship. The beam’s photons exert radiation pressure on the sail, propelling the ship forward.

This approach has a major advantage in that it requires no onboard fuel. But the amount of energy and infrastructure needed to operate the laser would be staggering. Also, beamed propulsion provides no mechanism for deceleration. At best, this method could be deployed as part of a hybrid strategy that uses a separate system for deceleration.

A more practical approach is to use rocket propulsion. Rockets generate propulsive force, also known as thrust, by expelling high-velocity exhaust in a rearward stream. By reversing the direction of the exhaust, rockets can also be used to slow the ship down.

Their main disadvantage is that rockets must carry their own fuel in addition to carrying the passengers, the habitat and other life-sustaining systems. The extra load necessitates even more fuel. In other words, you need fuel to transport your fuel. The result is a costly snowball effect that can cause the total fuel requirement to balloon to absurd proportions.

Rocket propulsion can be divided into three broad categories.

Chemical propulsion uses chemical reactions – typically combustion – to extract energy from the bonds between atoms. All human space missions thus far have used chemical propulsion. The problem with this method is that it accesses only a tiny fraction of the energy contained within the fuel.

Consequently, using chemical propulsion on a spacecraft with a cruise velocity of 19,000 miles per second (30,000 km/s) would require more fuel than all the mass in the observable universe.

Antimatter propulsion is theoretically the most efficient option. When antimatter comes into contact with ordinary matter, the two undergo mutual annihilation and 100% of their combined mass is converted into energy. This makes it possible to achieve the same cruise velocity – one-tenth the speed of light – with fuel accounting for less than a quarter of the ship’s total mass. This is science fiction-level fuel efficiency, which makes antimatter an attractive option for interstellar propulsion.

The downside is that antimatter is extremely unstable and difficult to make. To date, particle physicists have produced less than 20 billionths of a gram of antimatter. Moreover, these particles had lifespans lasting only fractions of a second and a price tag in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Nuclear fusion offers a more viable alternative to antimatter. This approach harvests energy stored inside the nucleus of an atom using the same process that powers the Sun. With current technology, fusion engines remain aspirational, but they could, in theory, produce 10 million times more energy per kilogram than chemical rockets.

NASA has been working to develop nuclear propulsion. This artist’s impression shows what a nuclear-powered rocket could look like. Image: Public Domain, John Frassanito & Associates/Wikipedia

Still, a fusion-powered ship with a cruise velocity of 19,000 miles per second (30,000 km/s) would require fuel equivalent to 150 times the mass of the ship itself.

A delicate balancing act

These numbers assume that our extraterrestrial visitors have figured out how to efficiently convert the energy released by their reactor – whether nuclear fusion or antimatter – into thrust.

Just as importantly, they must be able to create optimized fuel tank structures that are ultra lightweight yet highly secure. Designing the structure of the ship, from the fuel tanks to the hull, would be one of the biggest engineering challenges of the entire mission.

Interstellar space contains a sparse smattering of hydrogen atoms and microscopic grains of cosmic dust. At 19,000 miles per second (30,000 km/s), dust particles would smash into the ship’s hull with the energy of a .22-caliber bullet. The bombardment of hydrogen atoms would produce a violent cascade of radiation that could erode even the most resilient engineering materials.

Surviving the onslaught would require no less than a flying fortress with complex magnetic shielding. This would increase the total mass of the ship, which further drives up the demand for fuel.

This example is just one of the hundreds of delicate design trade-offs that would plague any interstellar vessel. Each individual design requirement acts as a filter, reducing the number of feasible solutions.

Finding a single system that simultaneously satisfies all the requirements is analogous to shopping for a car online. With each new filter you apply – four-wheel drive, black exterior, less than 10,000 miles on the odometer – the number of available options dwindles.

When design requirements are in tension with one another – for example, requiring a structure that is lightweight but also supremely durable – the number of feasible solutions can drop to zero.

No single law of physics prohibits an interstellar voyage to Earth. But the combined effects of hundreds of extreme, often conflicting engineering requirements may render it physically infeasible.

It’s also possible that alien civilizations have discovered novel technologies that outperform anything currently known to humans. But like the examples discussed here, any such technology will inevitably encounter its own engineering hurdles.

The trillion-dollar question

Ultimately, engineering challenges are just some of the many barriers to interstellar travel. Any prospective alien visitors must also have sufficient cognitive ability, technological maturity, physical resources, collective desire and proximity to Earth.

That said, if the stars were to align and an alien vessel made it to Earth intact, it would trigger a torrent of burning questions: Where are they from? What do they want? What are they made of?

But the question that would go furthest in shedding light on the deeper mysteries of the universe is, “How on Earth did they get here?”

The post Could aliens ever visit Earth? An aerospace scientist unpacks the challenges of interstellar spaceflight. appeared first on Popular Science.

Animals are not the only stinky living things on this planet. The putrid corpse flower blooms with  the stench of rotting flesh, as does the lesser-known (but equally pungent) Bulbophyllum phalaenopsis. Then there is the elegant stinkhorn (Mutinus elegans), a fungus known for its phallic appearance and spores that give off the odor of rotting meat.

Also called the devil’s dipstick, elegant stinkhorns are found across most of eastern North America, particularly from spring to the earliest days of winter. It has also been found in parts of Europe and Asia. They typically prefer temperate climates and looser soils, springing up in gardens, mulch beds, forests, and wood debris during warm and wet weather. They can grow to about four to six inches tall, and a mature mushroom will only last a day or two before subsiding. 

The sticky (and stinky) brown spore substance attracts insects to help the fungi spread. Image: Tina Shaw/USFWS.

All of that stench comes from the dark and slimy coating on the mushroom’s tip called the gleba, and it serves an important purpose. The fungi uses this dark and stinky spore mass to get the flies and other insects buzzing. Once they get a whiff of that rotten flesh smell, they will land on the stinkhorn and get covered in spores. As the bugs fly away, they spread the stinkhorn’s spores far and wide, so that more stinkhorn can pop up elsewhere.  

During the Victorian era, their penis-like appearance was reportedly distressing to some ladies. According to one story, naturalist Charles Darwin’s daughter Henrietta (or Etty), was openly combative towards the elegant stinkhorn. She would roam the woods armed with a spear, following her nose to the offensive mushrooms. Her niece recalled that Etty would find the fungi and “poke his putrid carcass into her basket.” After cleansing the territory, Etty would then secretly burn it to protect “the morals of the maids.”

Henrietta “Etty” Darwin (1843-1927) was the eldest of Charles Darwin’s daughters to reach adulthood. Image: Cambridge University Library. 

If you encounter this bizarre fungus in the wild like Etty Darwin, don’t worry. Beyond offending your nostrils, it is not poisonous or dangerous to your health. But you still probably shouldn’t eat it anyway. 

The post This phallic fungus also smells like rotting flesh appeared first on Popular Science.

When Sachita Shah sent her cardiologist brother an ultrasound of her patient’s heart, he was very confused. The heart was huge, and the left ventricle incredibly muscular. His confusion was warranted, as the ultrasound was not of a human heart. It belonged to another primate—a gorilla. Shah, emergency physician and VP of Global Health at medical equipment manufacturer Butterfly Network, tells Popular Science that if she had shown an ultrasound of a gorilla fetus to a radiologist, they would have assumed it was a human baby. 

Shah is on the gorilla care team currently looking after Jamani and Olympia, two western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) mothers at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Washington. Jamani gave birth on Monday May 18, and Olympia is expected to deliver her new baby imminently. Shah and her colleagues’s work involves conducting ultrasounds of Jamani and Olympia’s baby bump—though now probably just Olympia’s—to keep an eye on the baby’s growth and position. 

“We got a really pretty baby face,” Shah says, speaking of the ultrasounds. “We could see nose and lips and fetal breathing movements and heartbeat and drinking fluid, opening mouth and swallowing. For all intents and purposes, it was very much the same [as a human baby].” 

The endangered gorilla mothers were trained to take part in the exams and procedures conducted by the gorilla care team, and they could choose whether to participate or not. The gorillas put their bellies against the edge of the enclosure for the scan (and received snacks), where there is a small opening through which the care team can reach through with the ultrasound probe. 

As such, the zoo needed a small and portable imaging device. That’s where Butterfly Network and their all-in-one ultrasound probe came in. 

“When you think of an ultrasound, you might think of a big cart with lots of different probes—a different probe if you wanted to do a pregnancy scan, or a heart scan, or a pediatric scan might have a tiny probe,” Shah says. 

Instead, the Butterfly probe they use at Woodland Park Zoo is a handheld ultrasound that plugs into a smart phone. It is around as big as an electric shaver, and it functions with a number of different softwares for either veterinarian or human health use. Notably, an app allows the team to use it for different types of scans—from a pregnant gorilla to a child’s lungs—that would traditionally require distinct probes and machines. 

Jamani’s baby was born on May 18 at 5:50 a.m. Image: Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren / Woodland Park Zoo.

Shah and her colleagues also used the Butterfly ultrasound device to scan the heart of Nadaya, the silverback gorilla father of both babies. In fact, the heart ultrasound Shah sent to her brother belonged to Nadaya.  They used human software for that scan, even though their vet software is optimized for fur. Fortunately, Nadaya’s chest isn’t very furry. 

Shah, who has gone through a pregnancy herself, was most moved by working with the gorilla mothers. 

“We could tell the baby’s head had dropped and we thought, ‘oh man, she must be so uncomfortable.’ And she was waddling and walking a little differently. I was like, ‘oh, I remember that, girl.’ It was just amazing to remember that we’re all connected in that way,” she says. 

Western lowland gorillas are critically endangered, so babies are always excellent news.

UPDATE May 27 8:19 a.m EDT

On Sunday, May 24, at 1:44 p.m. PDT, Olympia’s baby was delivered by an emergency C-section performed by a medical team who typically works on humans. This 5.4-pund boy is the western lowland gorilla’s second baby.

The post Pregnant gorillas undergo ultrasounds and the results might look familiar appeared first on Popular Science.

While a holiday weekend has come and gone, May 26 is not without a cause for celebration. It’s National Paper Airplane Day! 

The annual day commemorates the homemade aeronautical toy that has fascinated (and frustrated the less crafty) children and adults for generations. According to National Day, the practice of constructing paper planes is sometimes called aerogami, after origami, the Japanese art of folding paper. Building paper planes that can soar through the air like a bird is believed to have originated in ancient China, where paper was invented around 105 CE. However, the art of folding it into an airplane may have been perfected in Japan, as it is similar to origami.

Here in the United States, instructions for folding the Basic Dart were included in a children’s book published in 1859, so it is safe to say kids and adults alike have been making them for over 167 years. The term paper airplane was then coined in 1907 and replaced paper dart as the dominant term by the 1950s. In 2022, Kim Kyu Tae nabbed the Guinness World Record for the Longest Paper Airplane Throw Ever with a flight of 252.6 feet. According to Guiness World Records, the longest time flying a paper aircraft is 31.2 seconds and was achieved by Rao Chongyi and a team in China in February.  

If you’re inspired to create the world’s best paper airplane, we have you covered. You can also look to the great minds at NASA for inspiration. After all, the first letter “A” in NASA stands for aeronautics. Their step-by-step NASA Space Crafts tutorial will not only help you make a colorful paper airplane, but also NASA’s X-57 Maxwell and the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology.

May your National Paper Airplane Day be free of paper cuts.

The post It’s National Paper Airplane Day: How to make a NASA-approved plane appeared first on Popular Science.

Small as a grain of rice, polka-dotted, and everything nice. These are some of the ingredients that come together to make Thecacera sesama, a newly identified species of sea slug, or nudibranch, found swimming in Taiwan.

“Taiwanese divers call it ‘sesame’ in Chinese and it is also small like a sesame seed, hence the name,” researchers explain in a statement. Indeed, T. sesama is less than 0.12 inches long. The tiny bugger is also translucent and speckled black and yellow, and Ho-Yeung Chan “accidentally discovered” it while diving in 2019. 

A sketch of Thecacera sesama showing its appearance and morphological features. Image: Chen-Lu Lee.

Chan is a researcher at the National Taiwan Ocean University’s Institute of Marine Biology and Center of Excellence for the Oceans, but was an undergraduate student when he made the discovery. Chan didn’t realize he’d found a previously unknown species until after he’d spoken with sea slug identification expert Hsini Lin via Facebook. Chan is now lead author of a recently published ZooKeys study officially introducing T. sesama to the world. 

The new sea slug seems to enjoy a simple life. It displays just four main actions: feeding, searching, mating, and laying eggs on bryozoans. Also known as moss animals, bryozoans are a group of small aquatic invertebrates. The bryozoan that hosts T. sesama might also be a previously unknown species. 

Living specimens of Thecacera sesama. Image: Ho-Yeung Chan et al., 2026

While you might assume that the most difficult aspect of researching T. sesama is its miniscule size, the hardest part of the study for the team was the explosive weather of Taiwan’s Keelung coast. The island as a whole often has summer typhoons and large waves in the winter monsoon season, during which the sea is frequently colder than 60.8 degrees Fahrenheit. 

With these challenging conditions, researchers can only dive to investigate sea slugs for around a third of the year. The narrow window means that spotting the sesame-sized slugs is completely a toss-up.

“Nudibranchs are one of the key players in the marine food web,” the team explained. “They are extremely colourful and can be spotted on coral reef ecosystems. However, many nudibranchs are very small in size and are extremely difficult to spot underwater with the naked eye.”

Chan and colleagues believe that Taiwan’s marine environment is probably home to many other unknown tiny species. It remains to be seen what new strange creature will emerge from the island’s turbulent waters. 

The post Seed-size sea slug looks like an everything bagel appeared first on Popular Science.

An extremely rare piece of Olympics history hits the auction block this week. Sports enthusiasts with deep pockets have the chance to own an original gold medal from the 1924 Paris Summer Olympics. 

The harp on this side of the medal represents the Cultural Olympiad, an artistic and cultural program that ran alongside the athletic competition. Image: Nate D. Sanders Auctions.

The 1924 Paris Games were a hallmark of Olympics and sports history. More than 3,000 athletes from 44 countries competed in the first Olympics to include a Closing Ceremony. American swimmer Johnny Weissmuller won three gold medals and later went on to play Tarzan in 12 films. Swiss tennis player Richard Norris Williams won gold, after surviving the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. He almost lost both his legs after jumping into the freezing water, but made a full recovery. The Paris Games were also featured in the award-winning film Chariots of Fire.

The 1924 Paris Games were also the first to officially feature the iconic five-ring Olympic symbol. The rings were designed by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics and symbolize five continents and athletic unity. 

This symbol of sportsmanship set the standard for future medals. Image: Nate D. Sanders Auctions. 

The medals were designed by sculptor André Rivaud. The obverse side shows a winning athlete reaching out to help a fallen competitor, an image of sportsmanship that set the standard for future Olympic medal design. The five Olympic rings are beneath this scene. The reverse side features sports equipment alongside a harp, a nod to the Cultural Olympiad. This artistic and cultural program ran alongside the athletic competition to explore the links between art and sport and the values they both share.

The medal is about 2 inches in diameter and weighs 2.7 ounces. It is listed as “near fine condition,” is made from gold-plated gilt silver and has the “2ARGENT” stamp on the rim as a mark of authenticity. Only 304 gold medals were originally produced, making them one of the   rarest and most coveted pieces of Olympic history in existence. The auction will take place on May 28 with a minimum bid of $14,000.

Only 780 days to go until the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles, California. 

The post Extremely rare 1924 Olympic gold medal up for auction appeared first on Popular Science.

For a woman in her mid-40s to mid-50s, it arrives without warning. She wakes up, overheated, wondering why it’s so hot in the house—until she sees the thermostat is set for 70 degrees, same as always. Or, she’s midway through a work presentation when heat rises from her chest to her face, and she wonders if the flush on her cheeks is visible to everyone in the room. 

It’s a hot flash—a rite of passage for the majority of women in either perimenopause, the years leading up to menopause, or the years beyond it. Menopause itself is diagnosed after 12 consecutive months without a period, but the hot flashes don’t always get the memo.

Here’s everything doctors currently know about hot flashes.

What is a hot flash, and who gets them?

Hot flashes are a sudden heat flare up often paired with flushed skin and sweating. They don’t usually last long, between a minute and five minutes in duration.

Most women experience a hot flash about four and a half to five years after their last period, Dr. Monica Christmas, an OB/GYN at University of Chicago Medicine and director of its menopause program tells Popular Science. She also is the associate medical director of the nonprofit Menopause Society, which provides healthcare professionals with tools and resources to support women through the transition.

Women have grappled with hot flashes—whether simply annoying or genuinely debilitating—for centuries. In 1582, Dr. Jean Liebault of France was among the first to document the phenomenon. But while we know much more about hot flashes and night sweats than Liebault ever did, one question still stumps experts. 

“What we can’t answer is why doesn’t everybody get them,” Christmas says. “Because everybody doesn’t get them. I have patients that will say, ‘I don’t know,’ if I say, ‘Are you having any hot flashes or night sweats?’ And as soon as they say that, I’m like, ‘You’re not having them.’” 

What’s actually happening inside women’s bodies during a hot flash? 

During a hot flash, a woman might feel like she’s spiking a high fever, but physiologically, that’s not what is happening. As women approach menopause and the ovaries begin to make less estrogen, the brain’s internal thermostat—the hypothalamus—becomes hypersensitive to even small shifts in temperature, Christmas says.

The body “thinks” it’s overheating, even when the actual temperature hasn’t changed much. In response, our bodies try to cool us down. Blood vessels dilate, which is supposed to help dissipate some of that heat, but then that triggers a sweating reflex.

“Many people will say, ‘I feel this out of nowhere, this surge of warmth that typically is from the nipple line up,’” she says. “And then as soon as the heat came on, and I felt like I was internally heated up or on fire, I start to sweat.” 

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How do women experience hot flashes differently? 

Exactly how an individual woman experiences hot flashes varies wildly. Some describe very mild symptoms. Others grapple with profuse sweating. Some experience only hot flashes during the day, while some have regular night sweats. About four in five women experience them at some point during the menopause transition, according to the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists.

“There’s a lot of variability,” Christmas says. Common triggers include alcohol, caffeine, high-sugar and highly processed foods, along with stress.

Black women also are more likely to experience more severe and longer-lasting symptoms, sometimes up to 11 years, she says. And research also shows that women with more severe, longer-lasting hot flashes and night sweats appear to be at higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

That doesn’t mean treating hot flashes automatically lowers heart risk, Christmas says. But it does reinforce that these women deserve particularly careful attention to blood pressure, cholesterol, and lifestyle. “I want to make sure I’m doing everything possible to minimize that risk,” she says when she treats her patients. 

There’s more to hot flashes than hormonal changes

For decades, the entire process was blamed purely on estrogen loss, Christmas says. But that explanation left some unanswered questions. 

“That doesn’t explain why every menopausal woman doesn’t have night sweats,” she says. “And it also doesn’t quite explain why we can sometimes start to experience them during the perimenopause transition because during perimenopause, people still have some estrogen.” 

Newer research now is telling a more complex story. When the brain recognizes that a woman’s estrogen levels are low, nerve cells in the hypothalamus called KNDy neurons (pronounced “candy”) become overactive, releasing neurotransmitters, which are chemical signals the brain uses to send messages throughout the body. These neurotransmitters include kisspeptin, dynorphin, and neurokinin B. 

“It’s actually those neurotransmitters that seem to have more of an impact on our ability to regulate our internal temperature,” Christmas says. “They’re not hormones.” 

What to do if you get a hot flash

For women in the middle of their hot flash years—along with the 10 percent of menopausal women who continue to experience them—there are treatments. 

Estrogen-based hormone therapy can help, but not every woman, including those with a history of blood clots or breast cancer, can take hormone therapy. 

Hormone therapy can help alleviate hot flashes. Video: Hormone therapy – Four things a Mayo Clinic women’s health specialist wants you to know., Mayo Clinic

Fortunately, researchers’ new understanding about the role of KNDy neurons has allowed for new treatments that block the brain signals that trigger hot flashes in the first place. The FDA approved a new drug called Veozah (it’s chemical name is fezolinetant) in 2023. It targets the neurokinin 3 receptor, which plays a key role in regulating body temperature. 

Lynkuet, another drug (with the chemical name elinzanetant), came along in 2025. It blocks both the neurokinin 1 and neurokinin 3 receptors, interrupting the process that triggers hot flashes at two points instead of one. 

Other medications can also provide relief, though weren’t originally developed for hot flashes, Christmas says. Some SSRIs and SNRIs; gabapentin, a neurologic medication; and oxybutynin, used for overactive bladder, are all used off-label for hot flashes and night sweats. 

Cognitive behavioral therapy and hypnosis also have been shown to reduce hot flashes. “I’m menopausal, too, so I know if I’m under a lot of stress or in a stressful situation, I’m going to probably have more hot flashes than not,” Christmas says. 

“So there’s certainly something about being able to calm our central nervous system down that seems to have an impact, too.”

If you’re struggling with hot flashes, Christmas recommends seeing your healthcare provider for help. Treatments are available. What’s more, in some cases, hot flashes or night sweats could signal other issues, including thyroid disorders, cancer, and infections, among others. 

But bottom line, when it comes to hot flashes, you don’t have to sweat them out.

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 What happens inside your body during a hot flash appeared first on Popular Science.

In March, we reported on a wild bobcat that had been hit and dragged by a car, who also got her head stuck in the car’s grill. As if things could get any worse, the wild feline arrived at Raven Ridge Wildlife Center in Pennsylvania on a Sunday, and the nearby veterinary practice was closed. But thanks to two lucky acquaintances, a mobile x-ray machine was brought in, revealing that the bobcat had broken two legs. 

Thanks in part to the fact that her bone fractures were clean breaks, her team decided to risk a surgery. The next morning, two surgeons operated on the bobcat contemporaneously. After the operation, Tracie Young, director of the Raven Ridge Wildlife Center, told Popular Science that she was doing “fantastic” and “starting to act like a bobcat.” 

The female feline has been healing at Raven Ridge Wildlife Center for two months. Image: Dawn Rise Ekdahl / Raven Ridge Wildlife Center.

In her great misfortune, the cat has been rather lucky—and it seems like the luck is holding. Two striking coincidences have now come together to get her a custom-made cage for her rehabilitation. 

“After two months of recovery, the bobcat now needs to be moved outside for exercise and to begin building muscle tone,” the wildlife center wrote on social media. “We had to devise a safe and creative way to get her outdoors, necessitating the construction of special caging. We determined that a custom dog kennel would be the only viable option.”

However, the problems were twofold: time and money. The dog kennel builders the wildlife center contacted needed at least eight months to build the rehab cage, and the project would cost thousands of dollars. But then Raven Ridge’s photographer Dawn called her neighbor Glen for suggestions, who turned out to be the owner of a kennel-building business and could build the kennel in two weeks. 

The custom-built kennel was made for the bobcat in only two weeks. Image: Dawn Rise Ekdahl / Raven Ridge Wildlife Center.

And if you think that’s enough of a coincidence, it gets even better. The very day construction commenced, Raven Ridge Wildlife Center received a letter with a generous donation. A woman named Raven Minervino has passed away, and her husband wrote that she had consistently supported the wildlife center. After she died, her husband had asked that rather than getting flowers, people make donations in her memory. The letter had a donation in her memory large enough to pay for the custom bobcat cage.

“Thanks to all this support, we successfully moved the bobcat to the new enclosure, where she is now exploring, exercising, and much happier,” reads the social media post. Raven Ridge plans to (or perhaps already has) put a plaque in Minervino’s memory on the cage. 

Both of the bobcat’s broken legs have healed, and since having the custom cage, she has put on ten pounds, bringing her to the much healthier total of 19 pounds. Adult female bobcats weigh approximately 15 to 20 pounds on average

The post Bobcat that survived being hit by a car gets a custom-built kennel appeared first on Popular Science.

To effectively travel on Mars, rovers need to deal with a lot of sand. German engineers have created a new kind of ground rover that uses swimming motions to push through sand that may otherwise cause the  wheels to get stuck. Its inspiration: the African sandfish (Scincus scincus), a lizard known for burrowing into the Sahara Desert and literally swimming through its sand like a fish. It’s one of the animal kingdom’s strangest methods of propulsion, but it may help shape the future of Mars exploration.

A video of the rover, released this week by the University of Würzburg, shows a mini-fridge-sized, silver rover making its way through a sandy, Martian-mimicking test floor. Rather than rolling forward, each of its four wheels cuts through the sand in what looks like a figure-eight motion. The rover pushes on several yards and then cuts a corner and returns to where it started.

“The wheels mimic the animal’s [sandfish’s]characteristic interaction with the ground, generating both longitudinal and lateral forces,” University of Würzburg researcher Amenosis Lopez said in a statement. “The rover leaves sinusoidal tracks in the sand.” 

The sandfish: nature’s cute solution to slippery sand 

Though most people likely associate space rovers with round wheels or tracks reminiscent of those on WALL-E, neither design is ideal for dealing with Mars’s uniquely harsh and sandy environment. Sand is unique because it’s a material with both solid and liquid-like qualities. On top of sand’s mixed texture, rovers roaming on the Red Planet have to deal with steep slopes and uneven terrain, where varying levels of slipperiness can cause imbalance. Patches of softer sand are also a nightmare for wheels, making the prospect of a rover getting stuck never far from mind

But nature figured out a solution to this issue millions of years ago, and it’s called the sandfish. Contrary to its name, the Sahara Desert native is a lizard in the skink family. Above ground, the sandfish uses its tiny legs to scrabble around much the same as any lizard. Things get more interesting when it burrows down into the sand. X-ray imaging shows  the sandfish propelling itself forward under the sand, using a powerful waving motion to generate thrust and overcome drag. The result looks like an animal swimming through the sand, remarkably similarly to how a fish would oscillate its body to move through water

Engineers at Georgia Tech took those observations and used them to create their own sandfish robot in 2011. Testing with their robots showed that the little lizard’s oddly wedged shaped head may also help it generate lift forces and more easily swim through sand. 

Sink or swim: new rover did both 

Researchers working on the sandfish-inspired robot said it outperformed a wheeled version when navigating through a sandy test track. Where the round wheels would wobble and weave, the oscillating wheels stayed relatively stable. That’s not to say the new approach worked right out of the gate. Early models of the design were reportedly so heavy that the  rover literally sank into the sand. The team went back to the drawing board and made a second version, this time increasing each wheel’s width and reducing overall mass

It’s unlikely these oddball new wheels will become the main chassis system for NASA rovers, at least not in the immediate future. More work still needs to be done to increase their overall controllability and account for slippage that can occur in complicated, real-world environments. There are also the added variables of accounting for scientific instruments and other cargo a rover might have to carry. 

More than anything, the wheel design is a testament to the sandfish’s innate ingenuity and evolutionary gifts. Many scientists only recently began to truly appreciate these traits and what other technology they could inspire. 

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