Popular Science

The 5 coolest entertainment innovations of 2025

Popular Science Team — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 10:15:00 -0500

In 2025, Popular Science continued our mission to demystify our weird world for millions of readers. We debunked myths about baby birds and garbage patches. We answered your wildest questions—from how airplane toilets work to why you don’t remember all your dreams. And hopefully, we delivered stories that informed and entertained. Using a secret formula of traffic data, social activity, and curatorial instinct, we selected 26 stories that delighted you, dear reader, this year.

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The radioactive ‘miracle water’ that killed its believers

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In the 1920s, Radithor promised to cure everything from wrinkles to leukemia, but its unintended results were deadly.

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Runes found in Canadian wilderness baffle archaeologists

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Archaeologists remain baffled by a surprising, seemingly ahistorical find located deep in the Canadian wilderness. But after years of research, analysis, and historical corroboration, an interdisciplinary team has finally made their findings available to the public. Tucked away in a forest approximately 465 miles northwest of Ottawa, a massive slab of bedrock features a hand-etched rendition of the full Lord’s Prayer. But the religious text isn’t inscribed in French or English—it’s composed of over 250 symbols from the oldest known runic alphabet.

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Prepping isn’t just for preppers anymore—it’s time to get a go-bag

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Everything you need for a go-bag. Image: Used with permission

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For most folks, the word “prepper” evokes an image of someone who’s got way too much time on their hands at best, and who spends way too much time following conspiracies on the Internet at worst. But while you might not want to fill a backyard bunker with canned food (or, frankly, need to), the truth is that you’re almost certainly overdue for a little prepping.

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Man from uncontacted tribe emerges from rainforest, signals to villagers

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Brazil’s Fundação Nacional dos Povos Indígenas (National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples, or Funai) estimates around 100 uncontacted Indigenous groups still live deep in the Amazon rainforest. But on February 12, a man from one of those communities decided to meet his neighbors.

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14 outstanding images from the 2025 World Nature Photographer Awards

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A playful polar bear. A helpless robber fly. And two hippos battling in golden light.

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Robot bunnies deployed in Florida to fight invasive pythons

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The robot bunnies hope to lure the Burmese pythons out of hiding. Image: sfwmd

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Researchers found a creative new solution to track down the snakes.

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You’re actually not allowed to keep bird feathers you find on hikes—and it’s all thanks to two women who got really mad about hats

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In 1886, ornithologist Frank Chapman went birdwatching in an uptown New York shopping district—but he wasn’t looking to spot living birds. He wanted to see how many different avians he could find on people’s hats.

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He counted 542 hats adorned with parts from 174 different bird species. This wasn’t unusual: 19th-century women were obsessed with elaborate feathered hats featuring everything from woodpeckers and blue jays to egret plumes, vulture wings, and entire stuffed birds. Egret feathers were especially prized at $32 per ounce (twice the price of gold) because they only grow during nesting season. Hunters would massacre entire colonies during this vulnerable period, wiping out two generations at once.

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Enter Harriet Hemenway and her cousin Minna Hall, two Boston socialites who read about the egret slaughter and decided enough was enough.

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch isn’t just a floating trash pile

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Azure waves lapping against huge piles of built-up junk. Garbage mountains rising above the sea. A thick crust of filth coating the ocean’s surface. It’s easy to find striking images of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). The problem is that these pictures of the GPGP are misleading and obscure the truth about the content of the GPGP, its origins, and the threat it poses to our ocean life.

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The U.S. tried permanent daylight saving time—and hated it

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Between January and September in 1974, President Richard Nixon made daylight saving time permanent for a brief period. Image: Public Domain

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The consensus amongst sleep experts and researchers is that we’d be best served just dropping the whole idea of DST and returning to plain old standard time (“ST”) throughout the year. But there’s another possibility: What if it was daylight savings time all year round?

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Well, that actually happened in the mid 1970s.

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How do airplane toilets work?

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The engineering is surprisingly simple and remarkably clever.

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Know how to read cursive? The National Archives wants you.

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The National Archives needs help from people with a special set of skills–reading cursive. The archival bureau is seeking volunteer citizen archivists to help them classify and/or transcribe more than 200 years worth of hand-written historical documents. Most of these are from the Revolutionary War-era, known for looped and flowing penmanship.

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Fungus-infected zombie spiders discovered in Northern Ireland

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The new fungus Gibellula attenboroughii on the orb-weaving cave spider. CABI/Evans et. al 2025

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While filming a documentary in Northern Ireland, a team of scientists discovered a new fungus that appears to manipulate spiders’ behavior–and turn them into “zombies.”

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17 delightful Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards outtakes

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Nature is cruel, majestic, and fascinating. Sometimes, it’s also a bit silly.

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The Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards has released 17 previously unseen submissions to its 2024 competition that celebrate the lighter side of the animal kingdom. From an orangutan mother unfazed by her child’s antics to a brown bear cub face palming, these photos will make you say “relatable.”

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130-year-old butter bacteria discovered in Danish basement

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For over a century, simple lactic acid bacteria has been one of the most reliable additives to keep food and drinks safe. It goes in butter, cheese, and other dairy products to help extend their shelf life. Now, a team in Denmark has uncovered some of the preservation aid’s earliest examples. Their findings only come after a chance discovery hidden away in the bowels of a university basement.

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Yellowstone employees recover over 300 hats from hydrothermal areas

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A small sample of the hats collected by the Yellowstone National Park Geology Program from sensitive thermal areas throughout the park in 2025. CREDIT: National Park Service photo by Margery Price, September 3, 2025.

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It’s a bird! No, it’s a plane! No, it’s your hat, ripped off your head by a gust of wind, spiraling off into the unknown. It’s happened to the best of us. The only thing left to do is purchase another one before your face gets sunburnt. Soon, the destiny of your former hat, along with everyone else’s, is far from mind—except for one special team at Yellowstone National Park.

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So far this year, the National Park Service geologists at Yellowstone have recovered over 300 lost hats from hydrothermal areas.

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Could the Carrington Event happen again?

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It happened in 1859. Today, it would be catastrophic.

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Why 60 degrees in fall feels different than in the spring

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Picking out what to wear during the fall or spring can be tough. It might be sweater weather in the morning, only to feel more like summer heat by lunchtime. Or temperatures may start out in winter’s biting chill and suddenly warm up. It can be difficult to see 60 or 65 degrees Fahrenheit during a morning forecast and accurately anticipate what that will even feel like. There is actually a meteorological and a biological reason why the same temperature can feel different depending on the season.

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The 50 greatest innovations of 2025

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At Popular Science, we’ve published our prestigious Best of What’s New list since 1988. Our enthusiasm for ground-breaking innovations dates back even further than that—all the way to May 1872. For 153 years, we’ve celebrated the science and technology that shapes our everyday lives and launches humanity forward.

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NOAA needs help identifying car found in WWII shipwreck

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There is no immediate explanation for the car’s inclusion aboard the aircraft carrier. Credit: NOAA

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A World War II aircraft carrier sunk by Japanese forces contains an unexpected piece of cargo at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean: a mystery car. Now, NOAA researchers want the public’s help to identify the vehicle inside the remains of the USS Yorktown. The discovery was made on April 19 during a remotely operated deep water survey at the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.

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Do infrared saunas work? What the science says.

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If you wake up hungry and achy every morning, one man might have all the answers you need: Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. At the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, Kellogg, who is famous for creating Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, introduced the so-called Incandescent Electric-Light Bath. That innovation, which used electric bulbs as light therapy to apply heat to the body, laid the groundwork for the modern infrared sauna. The purported benefits of an infrared sauna offer plenty of promise—from limbering up our limbs to detoxifying our bodies—and the market is surging these days with expanding options inside wellness clinics and for the home. But can infrared saunas relax muscles, reduce stress, and detoxify?

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Why does Air Force One take so long to replace? It’s not just bureaucracy.

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Illustration of the VC-25B color scheme announced March 2023. Image: U.S. Air Force

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From the outside, the president’s plane doesn’t look all that different from a commercial 747 jet, save the large “United States of America” text stretching along its side. The real differences are under the hood.

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What to do if you find a baby bird out of its nest

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It’s a myth that parents will reject a lost chick because of a human scent.

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Why are airline seats so small? It all started in 1978.

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Earlier this year, while boarding a flight out of Houston, Texas, I noticed my slightly overfilled, bulging backpack wouldn’t quite fit in the space between my feet. I bent down, trying to smoosh it into place—only to realize I couldn’t actually reach the cabin floor without my face slamming into the seat in front of me. For a brief, heart-racing moment, I was stuck, looking like a MythBusters crash dummy bracing for impact. Were airline seats always this cramped? Or had I just gotten that much bigger?

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It turns out, I wasn’t alone. Nearly everyone I’ve spoken to since has had a similar thought. Plane seats, they argue, have definitely gotten smaller. Experts interviewed by Popular Science confirm that hunch: some seats are indeed shrinking, even as passengers are, on average, getting larger. Meanwhile, airlines are capitalizing on minimal seat-size regulations to pack more people into each flight. The result? Higher revenues for top carriers and supposedly cheaper tickets.

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Is microwave cooking nuking all the nutrients?

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Originally used for radar and other technologies, the power of microwaves was first harnessed specifically for heating food in 1947. By the late 1960s, commercial microwave ovens were small and inexpensive enough to become fixtures of the modern kitchen. And by the 1970s, scientists were starting to wonder just how this form of electromagnetic radiation might be affecting the food that it heated. Microwaving food produces different textures and flavors than other cooking methods. So what, if anything, happens to the nutrition in food when it gets nuked in your microwave oven?

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Why don’t you remember all your dreams?

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Whether you recall them or not, you likely dream nightly.

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Buy a vintage military airplane for $25

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Over a dozen vintage planes are currently scattered across an aircraft boneyard in northern Wyoming. If you can travel about 85 miles east of Yellowstone National Park to Big Horn County, relics such as a Lockheed P-2 Neptune could be yours for as low as $25—just don’t expect to fly away in any of your new purchases.

The post 26 Popular Science stories you loved in 2025 appeared first on Popular Science.

January stargazing: A supermoon, asteroid, and one very large planet

Tom Hawking — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 09:00:00 -0500

January 2	Asteroid 40 Harmonia in Full Opposition
January 3	Full Wolf Supermoon
January 3–4	Quadrantids Meteor Shower Predicted peak
January 10	Jupiter in Full Opposition

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The stargazing calendar for 2026 gets off to a bit of a contrary start. January is all about opposition, which is the astronomical term for a configuration where a celestial object is directly opposite the sun in the sky. These configurations generally provide great opportunities for viewing the object in question, because from our perspective, it will be both fully illuminated and also far removed from the sun’s glare. Here’s what’s on tap for the first month of the new year.

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January 2: Asteroid 40 Harmonia In Full Opposition

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2026 starts with an opportunity to take a look at an asteroid: Asteroid 40 Harmonia. The space rock is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Harmonia is chiefly notable for its size: at just under 70 miles in diameter, it’s in the top 1 percent of the largest asteroids ever observed.

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Even so, you’ll need a decent telescope to get a look at it when it reaches full opposition to the sun on the evening of January 2. If you’re possessed of such a telescope, In the Sky recommends looking for the asteroid at its peak elevation above the southern horizon, just before midnight on January 2.

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January 3: Full Wolf Supermoon

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The first full moon of 2026 is the Wolf Moon. And it’s a supermoon—the fourth in a row! As per the Farmer’s Almanac, it will reach full illumination at 5:03 a.m. EST on January 3, so set your alarm and get howling.

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It also goes along with early January’s opposition theme. A full moon is also basically a case of two celestial bodies—in this case, the sun and the moon—being on opposite sides of the earth. The moon is tidally locked to the Earth, so one of its hemispheres always faces towards us. When the moon is full, that hemisphere is directly opposite the sun. In facing towards us, it is also positioned directly toward the sun. This means the entire hemisphere is illuminated by sunlight, allowing us to see it.

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January 3–4: Quadrantids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

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Unfortunately for meteor enthusiasts, the supermoon will almost certainly obscure this year’s installment of the Quadrantids. This shower isn’t super straightforward to catch at the best of times—its peak only lasts a few hours, although the meteors themselves can be spectacularly fiery and bright. This year’s peak is predicted for the night of January 3 and early hours of January 4. If you’re lucky, you might still see a fireball or two in the northeastern sky.

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January 10: Jupiter In Full Opposition

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As January’s celestial objects in full opposition to the sun theme continues, a new challenger arrives on January 10. Look up there in the constellation Gemini! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it an absolute unit? Well, technically speaking it’s actually a colossal ball of hydrogen and helium that weighs more than twice as much as every other planet combined, and it’s rumbling into the night sky this month without an ounce of shame.

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We speak, of course, of Jupiter, the stoutest of stout celestial bodies. January 10 will provide one of the best chances to see our solar system’s largest planet in all its glory. Jupiter will rise in the east at sunset and will be highest in the sky around midnight. Technically, it will reach full opposition at 3:34 a.m. EST on January 10, but it should be easily visible to the naked eye all night.

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Anyone with a small telescope (or even some decent binoculars) should also be able to see Jupiter’s four Galilean moons—Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. If you’re wondering, they’re called the Galilean moons because they were first identified as moons of Jupiter by Galileo Galilei in early 1610.

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Anyway, remember that you’ll get the best experience if you get away from any sources of light pollution,let your eyes acclimatize to the darkness,and check out our stargazing tips before heading off into the night.

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Until next month!

The post January stargazing: A supermoon, asteroid, and one very large planet appeared first on Popular Science.

The corkscrew began as a tool for muskets, not merlot

Andrew Coletti — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0500

“The invention of the cork is the most important event in the history of fine wine,” wrote British wine historian Hugh Johnson. If this is true, the invention of a tool to remove the cork can’t be too far behind in importance.

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The story of the corkscrew is one of ingenious creativity. Originally derived from early firearms technology, corkscrews were once only used to remove stuck wine stoppers. But the popularization of the device led directly to one of the biggest technological breakthroughs in the history of wine: the airtight glass bottle, tightly sealed with a breathable cork.

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The challenge of wine storage

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To understand how the corkscrew became an essential tool, we have to start with understanding why we seal our wine with corks in the first place. Wine quickly oxidizes and spoils when exposed to too much air, but a small amount of air transfer causes chemical reactions that develop its flavors to the fullest. The use of a cork seal greatly increases wine’s lifespan as well as the complexity of its flavor.

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Before the cork came into common use in the 17th century, winemakers had struggled for centuries with how to get their wine to “breathe” just the right amount. Ancient vintners reinforced pottery wine containers with waterproof substances like beeswax, pitch, and pine resin, and stoppered them with rags. Sometimes olive oil was poured inside containers to float atop the wine and form a barrier from the air. However, these sealants and additives changed the wine’s flavor, and could only extend its shelf-life so far.

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Porous cork wood, native to the western Mediterranean, works well as a stopper for wine because it is naturally elastic and permeable. It conforms tightly to the shape of the vessel and allows only a minuscule amount of air in (in a standard modern wine bottle, about one milligram per year). The ancient Romans recognized the potential of cork for sealing their clay wine vessels. But it wasn’t until the early modern era that glassblowing became advanced enough for wine to be corked in glass.

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Ancient Romans used two-handled jugs known as amphorae to store wine and olive oil. Image: DepositPhotos

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The origins of the wine bottle

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Before the modern practice of tightly corking wine bottles, the first corkscrews were likely used only in emergencies. By the 1600s, wooden barrels, borrowed from the cider and beer brewing traditions of northern Europe, had replaced ancient clay amphorae for aging and selling wine. Also borrowed from cider making was the use of glass bottles to bring wine conveniently from barrel to table, stoppered with a chunk of cork. But “since these bottles were employed just for service, the stoppers never needed to be all that secure,” wine writer Paul Lukacs explained in his book, Inventing Wine. “They did, however, sometimes get stuck.”

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According to journalist George M. Taber, “for many decades, there were only two ways to remove the cork [from a bottle], and both of them were bad.” One was to leave the cork sticking out, which made the bottle more difficult to store and the seal less effective. Pushing the cork all the way in made for a better seal, but the only way to get it out was to cut the glass neck of the bottle. This required special heated metal pincers and rendered the bottle unusable. The solution to this design flaw would arrive from an unlikely place.

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Enter the corkscrew

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Since the 1630s, European soldiers and hunters had employed a small metal spiral for twisting unspent charges out of the barrels of their muskets. This tool was known by various names, including “wad hook,” “steel worm,” and “gun worm.” It turned out that the gun worm was also ideal for removing stuck corks from bottles. Even today, the spiral part of a corkscrew is called its “worm.”

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We don’t know exactly who first applied the gun worm to corked bottles or when, causing Johnson to label the origins of the corkscrew “a teasing mystery.” An English source from 1681 features the first-known written reference to a “bottlescrew” being used on corks. Just like the glass bottle, the corkscrew or bottlescrew spread from English cidermaking into winemaking. By the mid-1700s, the corkscrew had become commonplace throughout Europe, helping to usher in a new chapter in the history of wine. Wine could now be aged and stored for much longer than before, and sold in glass bottles with an easy means of opening.

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Various early corkscrews housed at the Corkscrew Museum in southern France. Image: Getty Images / Contributor / DEA / ALBERT CEOLAN

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Technological advances

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As the glass bottle became integral to the production of wine, inventors continued tinkering to improve its complement, the corkscrew. In 1795, English Reverend Samuel Henshall received the first patent for a corkscrew design. Like some modern models, Henshall’s corkscrew featured a horizontal disk (today known as the “Henshall button”), to prevent the worm from going too deep into the cork.

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In 1882, German inventor Carl Wienke made another major breakthrough in corkscrew design. Wienke patented the first folding corkscrew, which used a fulcrum to provide leverage for pulling the cork out of the bottle with less force. The descendant of this device remains in today’s bars and restaurants, often with the addition of a blade for cutting the foil off the tops of bottles. Today, it’s known as the “waiter’s friend,” but another popular name for it is the “wine key.” This is not just because it’s the “key” that unlocks the bottle, but from a mispronunciation of “Wienke.”

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In recent years, product designers have adjusted the length of the worm and fulcrum to try and improve the classic waiter’s friend. Others have created entirely new designs, like electric versions that pull corks out with the press of a button. In 2025, food publication Serious Eats compared different wine opener models and found that each had its benefits and drawbacks. A two-pronged model called the “cork puller” was recommended for delicate vintage bottles, but required some finesse to operate. Electric models required little physical effort, but were more expensive. Serious Eats chose the tried-and-true waiter’s friend as its overall recommendation, as did Wirecutter in their own 2025 corkscrew comparison.

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German inventor Carl Wienke patented the first folding corkscrew in 1882. Image: Getty Images / Contributor / DEA / A. DAGLI ORTI

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The corkscrew’s future

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In 2022, a consumer report by UK household goods retailer Lakeland found a striking generational difference in corkscrew ownership. While 81 percent of people aged 65 or older reported that they owned a corkscrew, for 18- to 24-year olds, that figure was just 27 percent. Lakeland’s study identified a combination of reasons for this difference, including shifts in generational drinking habits. Another possible factor is the growing popularity, and convenience, of another innovation: the screw cap wine bottle.

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A 2018 survey found that the global market share of screw cap wines had increased by over 13% since 2012. Besides ease of opening, winemakers cite quality control as a reason for using screw cap bottle closures. The natural wine cork is “well known in the wine industry to be a less than perfect product,” according to a 2002 paper on wine closure technology. Natural corks can crack, increasing oxidation, or introduce a mold known as TCA, further damaging the wine’s flavor. When sommeliers offer you a taste of the wine before they fill your glass, it’s to make sure the cork hasn’t spoiled the individual bottle.

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The same paper noted that “consumers naturally blame the wine and not the cork” for off wine flavors because they can’t physically see the cause. This means that a few tainted bottles could lead to loss of business and a damaged reputation for the winemaker. Screwcap bottle closures make it easier to ensure that every bottle will taste the same.

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However, there might be reasons not to discard the corkscrew just yet. A 2025 study found that corked wines were superior to screw cap wines in preventing the migration of microplastics. And the classic pairing of corkscrew and cork still has a powerful psychological impact on consumers. In a 2018 study published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management, researchers noted that “findings confirmed the positive halo effect of natural corks when compared with screw cap and synthetic cork closures.” The halo effect is a form of cognitive bias where observing one feature causes people to infer the presence of other, positive features. In the case of wine, drinkers tend to assume that a natural cork closure indicates better quality and flavor.

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As long as wine has been around, winemakers have attempted to improve how the beverage is stored, aged, and sold. But the corkscrew, once borrowed from rifleman’s equipment, has gone hand in hand with the cork for so long that it might be hard for wine drinkers to let go of it entirely. Only time will tell whether new technology will replace this centuries-old pairing.

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

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The post The corkscrew began as a tool for muskets, not merlot appeared first on Popular Science.

The 5 coolest entertainment innovations of 2025

Mack DeGeurin — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 14:00:00 -0500

The smartphone era has brought about an era of convergence when it comes to consumer electronics. Tons of devices we used to rely on—small cameras, calculators, flashlights, music players, etc.—have rolled up into our phones. Entertainment has experienced a similar move toward a small-screen singularity. In 2025, users collectively watched more than 4 billion minutes of TikTok content on their phones every single day. Still, big screens persist. This year’s list includes a pair of new TV technologies built to be enjoyed from feet away, not inches from your face. A pair of clever earbuds use magnetic fluid to let you hear familiar music with a fresh sound. And, while it’s already perhaps too easy to start a podcast, the industry standard microphone has gotten a very useful upgrade that makes high-quality content creation even more accessible.

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“Hubble has given us a front row seat to the chaotic processes that are shaping disks as they build new planets—processes that we don’t yet fully understand but can now study in a whole new way,” study co-investigator and Center for Astrophysics Joshua Bennett added.

The post Hubble spots massive sandwich-shaped blob in deep space appeared first on Popular Science.

The 5 coolest gadget innovations of 2025

Mack DeGeurin — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 14:00:00 -0500

Deep down, we want to be cyborgs. We spend huge chunks of time interacting with technology every day, but the friction created by devices and interfaces persists. This year, we got closer than we have been to tech that truly augments reality. Meta took its smart glasses beyond its beginning as a simple content creation tool. The rest of the innovations run the gamut from a drone that captures aerial images in a new way to a grand platform designed to help AI systems navigate the physical world. Ultimately, all of these devices are designed to help humans do more of the things humans already like to do. That’s the way it should be.

5 incredible aerospace breakthroughs in 2025

Popular Science Team — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 14:00:00 -0500

2025 was full of efficiency innovations and bold initiatives in the world of aerospace. From the most detailed movie of the night sky ever made to the first commercial soft landing on the moon, this year has been an inflection point for exploring and understanding the vast expanse above our heads. We also saw breakthroughs in small changes to commercial airliners that improve efficiency, as well as a new type of rocket engine that might be the future of extremely high speed air travel, plus the closest view of Mercury we’ve ever seen!

(Editor’s Note: This is a section from Popular Science’s 38th annual Best of What’s New awards. Be sure to read the full list of the 50 greatest innovations of 2025.)

Grand Award Winner, Gadgets

Innovation of the Year

Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses and Neural Band by Meta: The first true face computer

Vera C. Rubin Observatory by U.S. National Science Foundation & Department of Energy: World’s largest digital camera to conduct 10-year survey of the night sky

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Meta’s Ray-Ban Display glasses and Neural Band represent the first successful attempt to make “face computing” feel like a feasible tool rather than a demo. A tiny display in the right lens overlays simple interfaces, captions, directions, and AI answers into your field of view, as the built-in microphones, speakers, and camera handle audio and capture in the background. The paired wristband reads small electrical signals from your forearm muscles so subtle finger movements act as clicks and scrolls, instead of relying on loud voice commands or big mid-air gestures. The near-eye display, on-body sensing, and assistant-like software fit into familiar-looking frames in a way that feels like it could exist in the real world. It makes routine tasks—translation, navigation, quick queries—possible without pulling out a phone, while forcing new conversations about what it means to have nearly invisible cameras and always-on AI in social spaces.

Prepare to see space like never before. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a groundbreaking US-funded project that will capture the most detailed, dynamic map of the night sky ever made. Using the world’s largest digital camera, it will capture a time-lapse of the entire sky every few nights to reveal billions of objects and catch fast-changing events like supernovae and near-Earth asteroids. Its massive dataset will help scientists better understand dark matter, dark energy, and the structure of the universe while also improving planetary defense.

Cosmos by Nvidia: A “world model” stack for physical AI

The 3,200-megapixel Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera is the size of a small car and twice as heavy, tipping the scales at 6,000 pounds. The sensor’s huge number of megapixels is equivalent to 260 modern cell phone sensors. The camera is so powerful, it could snap a clear image of a golf ball from 15 miles away.

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By making its data widely available, the observatory will also open new doors for discovery for researchers, students, and citizen scientists around the world.

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Riblet-shaped coating on 787 by Japan Airlines: Stabilizing airflow, reducing turbulence, and increasing fuel efficiency

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Cosmos is Nvidia’s toolkit for AI systems that have to deal with the physical world, like robots and autonomous vehicles. Video models can generate realistic scenes and short “futures” so machines can practice in simulation, while data tools clean and search huge logs of real sensor recordings for specific situations. Instead of each developer building their own patchwork of simulators and datasets, Cosmos offers a shared set of models and utilities tuned to Nvidia’s robotics and computing platforms.

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More infrastructure and logistics are being handed off to automated systems, which need reliable ways to learn about rare or dangerous edge cases without causing real harm. If platforms like Cosmos work as intended, they make it easier to prototype and test those systems in synthetic worlds before they interact with actual streets, warehouses, and people.

Deployed on Boeing 787-9 aircraft starting in January, the coating uses tiny, sharkskin-like grooves called riblets to guide airflow smoothly along the aircraft’s surface. By keeping the air more organized and reducing small pockets of turbulence, the riblets cut aerodynamic drag, which normally wastes energy. That reduction in drag translates directly into better fuel efficiency, lowering operating costs and reducing the plane’s carbon emissions. Overall, this smart surface technology gives the 787 a quieter, cleaner, and more efficient ride without changing the aircraft’s shape or engines.

Antigravity A1 by Insta360: A 360-degree drone for photo-first flying

Blue Ghost lunar lander by Firefly Aerospace: First commercial company to soft land on the moon

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Antigravity’s first drone, developed with action camera maker Insta360, is built around a 360-degree camera instead of a forward-facing one. Rather than aiming a single lens during flight, the drone records everything around it; you decide on the framing later when you edit, turning the same flight into wide landscape shots, vertical clips, or immersive views. By separating “flying” from “camera work,” it lowers the skill barrier for getting usable aerial footage and gives experienced pilots more flexibility in tight or unpredictable environments. It’s a rare case in which a product drastically lowers the learning curve for beginners while substantially expanding creative options for experienced users.

The Blue Ghost lander was the first commercial vehicle to soft-land on the Moon, marking a major milestone in the shift from government-only lunar missions to public–private exploration with its March 2 touchdown. Over the summer, Firefly Aerospace was awarded a NASA contract to deliver science and technology instruments to the Moon’s south polar region, an area crucial for studying water ice and future human exploration. Successful delivery will help NASA gather data needed for future Artemis missions while proving that commercial companies can reliably operate on the lunar surface, demonstrating the Blue Ghost lander to be a major step toward a more sustainable, commercially driven lunar economy.

Pioneer Na by BLUETTI: A sodium-ion power station that works in real cold

Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine by Venus Aerospace: Powering future flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo in under two hours

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BLUETTI’s Pioneer Na portable power station swaps common lithium-based cells for sodium-ion batteries. Sodium-ion packs generally store a bit less energy per kilogram but offer several important upgrades. For users, the sodium cells can charge and discharge in cold weather conditions where many lithium units either lock out charging or lose much of their effective capacity. Cold tolerance matters for cabins, unheated garages, winter storms, and field work in colder regions, where backup power often fails right when it’s needed most. As a consumer product, Pioneer Na demonstrates how sodium-ion chemistry is moving from lab prototypes into real devices, suggesting a future mix of storage technologies instead of a single, lithium-only path. The sodium-based cells are built from much more abundant raw materials than their traditional competition.

Venus Aerospace’s Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE) is a new type of rocket propulsion that creates continuous spinning shockwaves to burn fuel far more efficiently than traditional rocket engines. This technology is targeted to enable aircraft to travel at speeds of Mach 4 to Mach 6 (3,069 to 4,603 mph), making routes like Los Angeles to Tokyo possible in under two hours. Because the engine produces more thrust with less fuel, it opens the door to faster, lighter, and potentially more affordable high-speed travel. In short, the RDRE is a key step toward turning ultra-fast, global point-to-point flight from science fiction into realistic transportation.

UV Printer E1 by Eufy: A desktop UV printer that adds texture to objects

BepiColombo by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) & European Space Agency (ESA): Exploring Mercury closer than ever

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The eufyMake UV Printer E1 is a compact UV printer meant for objects, not paper. It uses UV-curable inks and repeated passes to build up millimeters of raised texture on plastics, metals, glass, and other materials, which are handled by fixtures that can hold flat panels, bottles, and long flexible pieces in the same machine. Alignment lasers, an onboard camera, and automatic printhead cleaning are there to keep that process predictable instead of fussy. Bringing this kind of textured, multi-material printing down to a desktop footprint lets small shops and serious hobbyists produce innumerable artistic and practical projects.

BepiColombo is the most ambitious mission ever sent to study Mercury, a planet that’s hard to reach because of the sun’s intense gravity. The spacecraft carries two orbiters—one built by the European Space Agency (ESA) and one by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)—that will map Mercury’s surface, study its thin atmosphere, investigate its magnetic field, and analyze its interior structure. These measurements will help scientists understand how rocky planets form and evolve, including Earth-like worlds in other star systems. By working together, JAXA and ESA are tackling one of the toughest destinations in the solar system and filling in major gaps in our understanding of the innermost planet.

The post 5 incredible aerospace breakthroughs in 2025 appeared first on Popular Science.

The 5 coolest gadget innovations of 2025

Stan Horaczek

From a UV printer to a 360-degree camera drone.

The post The 5 coolest gadget innovations of 2025 appeared first on Popular Science.

5 incredible aerospace breakthroughs in 2025

Popular Science Team — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 14:00:00 -0500

(Editor’s Note: This is a section from Popular Science’s 38th annual Best of What’s New awards. Be sure to read the full list of the 50 greatest innovations of 2025.)

Innovation of the Year

Grand Award Winner, Gadgets

Vera C. Rubin Observatory by U.S. National Science Foundation & Department of Energy: World’s largest digital camera to conduct 10-year survey of the night sky

Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses and Neural Band by Meta: The first true face computer

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By making its data widely available, the observatory will also open new doors for discovery for researchers, students, and citizen scientists around the world.

Riblet-shaped coating on 787 by Japan Airlines: Stabilizing airflow, reducing turbulence, and increasing fuel efficiency

Cosmos by Nvidia: A “world model” stack for physical AI

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Blue Ghost lunar lander by Firefly Aerospace: First commercial company to soft land on the moon

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Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine by Venus Aerospace: Powering future flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo in under two hours

Pioneer Na by BLUETTI: A sodium-ion power station that works in real cold

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BepiColombo by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) & European Space Agency (ESA): Exploring Mercury closer than ever

UV Printer E1 by Eufy: A desktop UV printer that adds texture to objects

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The post 5 incredible aerospace breakthroughs in 2025 appeared first on Popular Science.

22 breathtaking images from the 2025 Landscape Photographer of the Year awards

Stan Horaczek

The vibrant magnificence of Earth.

The post The 5 coolest gadget innovations of 2025 appeared first on Popular Science.

22 breathtaking images from the 2025 Landscape Photographer of the Year awards

Julia Daye — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500

Earth is stunning. From Iceland’s spectacular fire and ice landscapes to Yemen’s otherworldly Socotra dragon trees, our home planet hosts a diverse lineup of jaw-dropping scenery.

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Ethan was able to live a relatively normal college life for over a year after that—rock climbing, going to class, living with friends. Sherman says it’s given him time and quality of life. Ethan graduated with honors from the University of Michigan on December 14, 2025.

The post ‘Hope in a bottle’ for a deadly cancer and the firefly gene that lit the way appeared first on Popular Science.

9 new butterflies discovered in old museum archives

Margherita Bassi — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 12:15:00 -0500

When you think of butterflies, chances are you imagine unmistakable insects with bright, bold wings. But it turns out that individual butterfly species are sometimes shockingly difficult to tell apart. Cue museum collections and genetic analysis—a biological dream team.

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“Thanks to the genetic revolution and the collaboration of researchers and museums in various countries led by London’s Natural History Museum, century-old butterflies are now speaking to us,” Christophe Faynel, an entomologist at the Société entomologique Antilles Guyane, said in a statement. “By comparing modern DNA with ancient DNA from historical specimens, we can resolve long confused and unnoticed species and uncover greater biodiversity than previously known.”

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An international team of scientists in AMISTAD, a new research project led by London’s Natural History Museum, are sorting through the members of a group of blue South American butterflies. Using more than 1,000 samples from collections around the globe, they discovered nine previously unidentified butterfly species in the Thereus genus. This genus gossamer-winged butterfly is found in the neotropics.The teams gave priorities to the Thereus species at risk, since South America’s tropical forests undergo rapid deforestation.

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Plate illustrating the forewing androconia of 16 male butterflies in the Thereus genena species group, revealing distinctive scent-scale patterns used to differentiate the species. Image: Zootaxa

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The team also retrieved genetic material from an over 100-year-old butterfly leg using a cutting-edge DNA sequencing technique. With this material, they could study the tiny physical distinctions between butterflies so visually alike, entomologists thought they were the same species. The genetic examination confirmed the differences concealed right beneath their noses.

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The team specifically looked at a group of Neotropical butterflies called the genena species group within the subfamily Theclinae, which was thought to consist of just five species. Faynel and his colleague’s results, recently published in Zootaxa, bring to light new information about our fellow terrestrial creatures, helping us understand the various relationships between species and target conservation endeavors in the direction of potentially endangered ones.

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“Some newly identified species were collected a century ago in habitats that might no longer exist, putting at risk the existence of these species and highlighting the urgency of this work,” said Blanca Huertas, Principal Curator of Butterflies at the Natural History Museum and co-author of the study.

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The newly named species include Thereus cacao, T. ramirezi, and T. confusus, with researchers drawing inspiration from regions, local scientists, and the taxonomic knot they overcame, presumably among others.

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Ultimately, the study is also a testament to the enduring scientific value of collections. The Natural History Museum hosts “five million butterfly specimens which makes up about 6% of the entire collection,” Blanca concluded. “With some of these specimens dating back to the 1600s, the Museum’s collections are an irreplaceable archive of life of our planet, allowing scientists and researchers to study species that may no longer exist, or are known to be at risk.”

The post 9 new butterflies discovered in old museum archives appeared first on Popular Science.

Butt breathing and 5 other ways animals stay warm in winter

Laura Baisas — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 10:03:00 -0500

Winter has officially arrived in the Northern Hemisphere. With today’s winter solstice, the days will start to get a little bit longer, but the cold will stick around. We humans typically handle the dipping temperatures by staying inside, sleeping more, and dressing in layers. But what about other members of the animal kingdom? Here are some unique ways that animals survive winter’s deep freeze.

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Brumation nation

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To fend off winter’s chill, some reptiles and all amphibians brumate. Brumation is basically a less intense form of hibernation. Bears and other mammals who hibernate spend a lot of the time sleeping. Instead, brumating amphibians and reptiles go through a period of dormancy with small bursts of activity.

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“During the winter, brumation is like taking a long nap, getting up when it gets a little warmer, going to the bathroom, drinking some water, and then going back to sleep,” Karen McDonald, the STEM program coordinator at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland tells Popular Science. “Hibernation is sleeping all winter and relying on your fat stores.”

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Reptiles and amphibians need to wake up in order to drink water so that they don’t get dehydrated. They will typically get up for that refreshing sip on more mild winter days. If they’re lucky, they’ll get some extra sun in the process.

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Wood frog in Minnesota. Unlike most other frogs that spend their winters underwater, the wood frog stays on land and freezes solid. Image: Jasper Shide / Public Domain.

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Frozen frogs

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When cold fronts swoop down to Florida, frozen iguanas will inevitably fall out of trees. But for the wood frogs that live across New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest that cold is much more frequent. However, their solution is not brumating. Instead, they freeze solid.

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For months, wood frogs will burrow underneath leaf litter on forest floors with no breathing, heartbeat, or brain activity. Once the weather begins to warm, they will spring back to life. According to the National Park Service, this strategy allows wood frogs to become active very early in spring. The land thaws and warms more quickly than the ice-covered lakes where other frogs burrow in the mud. This means that the newly active wood frogs can mate and lay eggs in small ponds earlier than other frogs.

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Take care of those feathers

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Not all bird species survive the winter by flying south to warmer climates. Some, like cardinals, chickadees, and blue jays stay put. In order to survive the cold, they have to take very good care of their feathers. Some species will grow all new feathers for the winter. Other birds will fluff up their feathers to help trap pockets of air around their bodies to stay warm. Preening also helps some birds waterproof their feathers, by spreading oil from a gland near their tails to the rest of their body.

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Birds will also find good places to hunker down or huddle up with other birds of the same species. Winterberries and some other plants will also still produce fruit that can help keep them fed until spring. A well-stocked bird feeder can also help, just be sure to keep it clean.

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A northern cardinal visits a feeder at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Image: Haley Jackson / Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

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Blue (crab) Christmas

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The blue crabs that call the Chesapeake Bay home spend their winters in deeper parts of the bay. There, they burrow into the mud underwater and enter a dormant state.

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“This is not traditionally considered hibernation because unlike some mammals, crabs don’t undergo physiological changes that reduce their body temperature,” Smithsonian Environmental Research Center senior researcher Matt Ogburn tells Popular Science. “Nonetheless, they are still largely inactive and their metabolism slows down.”

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The blue crabs will stay that way until water temperatures reach approximately 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

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Blue crabs, a keystone species in the Chesapeake Bay, spend their winters buried under the mud in the deepest part of the Bay, in a dormant state. Image: Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

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‘As solitary as an oyster’

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We’re not saying that oysters are lonely misers like Ebenezer Scrooge. These filter-feeders are actually very good for the planet. Oyster beds are important storm barriers and the bivalves help keep the water clean. In a single day, an oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water.

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They get most of their food by filtering water through their bodies and grabbing nutrients like algae and plankton. However, those food sources dwindle up come winter.

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A restored oyster reef in a sanctuary in Harris Creek, part of the Choptank River in Maryland. Oysters close their shells and live off their glycogen stores from the summer to make it through the winter. Image: Smithsonian Environmental Research Center Fisheries Conservation Lab.

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“Oysters feed frantically in summer, when there’s lots of algae around to filter out of the water, “ says Ogburn. “This helps them store up glycogen that they burn to survive the winter.”

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In winter, they will go dormant and survive on those stores of sugar, similar to what reptiles and amphibians rely on during brumation.

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Yes, turtles do breathe through their butt

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Turtles spend the winter underwater—where they breathe out of their butts. While it may seem a bit unusual to us mammals, breathing through their butt is an important survival strategy.

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“It allows turtles like snapping turtles and painted turtles to remain frozen under the ice and still breathe under water,” says McDonald.

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This process is called cloacal respiration, where they exchange gasses through the tissues lining their cloaca—the end of their digestive tract. This allows them to stay submerged underwater for longer periods of time.

The post Butt breathing and 5 other ways animals stay warm in winter appeared first on Popular Science.

Lost in space: How ’digital twins’ saved NASA’s robots

Yook JiHun — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 08:02:00 -0500

A standard ballpoint pen will not write in space. Without gravity, the ink refuses to flow. This simple failure illustrates a profound headache in space exploration: tools designed for terrestrial use often become useless in a microgravity environment. Robots, for all their technological sophistication, are no exception.

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Autonomous free-flying robots aboard the International Space Station (ISS) frequently lose their bearings. Without gravity to distinguish up from down, even precision sensors suffer from accumulating errors, causing the machines to drift. Until recently, astronauts sometimes had to intervene manually, interrupting their tightly scheduled work.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has found a solution to this persistent problem through a collaboration with Professor Pyojin Kim and his team at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST). An expert in navigation technology, the science of enabling robots to determine their 3D position and orientation, Professor Kim has proposed an algorithm to significantly suppress these errors. By reducing the ’absolute rotation error’ to within about 1–2 degrees on average, the team has enabled robots to perform long-term missions without requiring human intervention.

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We spoke with Professor Kim to discuss how he adapted technology for the cosmos and the breakthrough that keeps NASA’s robots on track.

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Saving space robots with digital twin navigation

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The International Space Station is a colossal orbital laboratory, roughly the size of a soccer field. It was built by connecting modules that were developed by different nations. Inside the Japanese Experiment Module ’Kibo’, a free-flying NASA robot named Astrobee is hard at work. Its mission is to take over routine chores, freeing astronauts to concentrate on research. With days scheduled to the minute, any time spent on maintenance is a costly distraction for the crew.

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In actual operation, however, Astrobee didn’t work as flawlessly as expected. It frequently lost its bearings, requiring astronauts to step in for recalibration. NASA engineers and Professor Kim’s team collaborated to find a way for the robot to operate reliably without supervision, so the astronauts could focus on their critical research.

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The root of the disorientation is the absence of distinct gravity. Terrestrial robots rely on an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) to sense tilt and orientation relative to the gravity vector. Professor Kim points out that “Terrestrial navigation algorithms are designed based on gravity, making them difficult to apply directly in space where reference points are missing.“ As a result, tiny errors compound over time causing the robot to completely lose its sense of direction.

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To counter this, the team turned to Visual-Based Navigation (VBN), enabling the robot to deduce its orientation by seeing its surroundings through cameras. At first, the team presumed that simply adopting established technology would be sufficient. They were wrong.

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The station’s interior is a chaotic jumble of cables, experimental rigs, and floating personal items. A view available one minute might be blocked by a drifting tablet the next. This unpredictability confounded standard navigation systems. “We thought we could apply Earth-based technology,“ recalls Professor Kim. “It did not perform reliably in the ISS environments.“

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Unlike the cluttered reality of the International Space Station (left), the digital twin (right) is free of visual distractions. Image: KimPyoJin. GIST

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The breakthrough came in the form of ’digital twins’, precise 3D replicas of the physical space. Using NASA’s blueprints, the team constructed a sanitized virtual model of the ISS, stripped of all transient clutter. The robot was programmed to cross-reference the messy real-time footage from its cameras with the pristine images generated from the digital twin.

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Professor Kim explains, “The digital twin serves as a ground truth, enabling the robot to filter out visual noise and recalibrate its position.“

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With this corrected data, the robot interprets its environment as a collection of lines and planes. These extracted geometric features serve as a ’visual compass,’ providing an absolute directional reference. The system leverages the ’Manhattan World Assumption’, a principle positing that man-made environments consist primarily of orthogonal surfaces such as walls and floors meeting at right angles. The boxy modules of the ISS are an ideal testbed for this approach. By locking onto these structural geometries, the robot can triangulate its position with minimal error.

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The team achieved a ’drift-free’ navigation capability. Upon applying the new technology, the average rotational error was reduced to 1.43 degrees—a figure that does not increase over time. The robot no longer requires a human hand to guide it.

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Professor Kim anticipates that this technology will be valuable on Earth, not just in space. It could serve as a guide for drones and robots in indoor environments where GPS signals cannot reach. The system relies on visual data to detect structural patterns, making it ideal for buildings filled with lines and planes. Professor Kim notes that “orientation techniques based on these structural features are applicable not only to space stations but also to typical urban settings.“

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Insights from the NASA collaboration

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Ask Professor Kim why humanity should venture into orbit, and his answer is refreshingly blunt: “Because space now holds real economic and industrial value, showing commercial potential.“

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With SpaceX proving that space can be a business rather than just a frontier, a wave of startups has emerged, targeting everything from lunar mining to satellite assembly. Yet, NASA remains the silent partner behind this private-sector explosion. Its decades of accumulated technology and talent form the bedrock upon which these new enterprises are built.

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It was this ecosystem that drew Professor Kim, originally a drone specialist, into the fold. His journey began with an internship at the NASA Ames Research Center during his doctoral studies. The center was then in the thick of developing Astrobee. To mimic microgravity, researchers floated the robot on air-bearing tables using carbon dioxide jets, manipulating the lighting to rigorously test its ability to locate itself.

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Professor Kim Pyo Jin of GIST collaborated with NASA to develop navigation technology for Astrobee, the autonomous free-flying robot aboard the International Space Station. Image: Popular Science Korea

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This research was a natural fit for Professor Kim’s expertise. His time at the agency revealed that terrestrial drones and space robots share the same theoretical foundation, despite their vastly different environments. The logic behind mapping an environment and determining location is universal, differing in its application.

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The connections made then have lasted nearly a decade, evolving into the current joint research. Kim expressed his gratitude: “This research would have been impossible without the help of my mentor at the time, Dr. Brian Coltin, my NASA colleagues, my current co-researcher Dr. Ryan Soussan, and Dr. Terry Fong, who provided the opportunities for the internship and joint research.“

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Professor Kim was particularly struck by the agency’s attitude toward failure. During his time there, he witnessed NASA pursuing bold experiments, backed by substantial budgets and exceptional talent. “Because only successful projects are publicized, it appears as though they never fail,“ Professor Kim said. “But behind every public triumph lie dozens of quiet failures.“ He notes the agency’s strength lies in its willingness to endure those setbacks to achieve a single breakthrough.

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This focus on real impact shaped their assessment standards as well. Beyond conventional academic metrics, NASA placed particular emphasis on the real-world impact and practical significance of the research. While it is common practice to submit two papers upon completing a Ph.D, some researchers submitted only one, or opted to share their results on preprint servers like arXiv rather than in formal journals.

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“Despite its conservative nature as a government agency, NASA is surprisingly open in its approach to research,“ Kim recalled. “I was impressed by the culture of valuing the intrinsic value and contribution of the research over mere outcomes.“

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Sustained investment in science has paved the way for a vast industrial infrastructure and countless space startups led by NASA alumni. Professor Kim points to the robust U.S. ecosystem of manufacturers specializing in ’space-grade’ components capable of withstanding extreme conditions. It has created a virtuous cycle where government investment nurtures talent and technology, fueling a wave of startups that drive the private sector.

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For those aspiring to join the agency, Professor Kim offers advice grounded in realism.

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“I want to give you some realistic advice. The researchers I met at NASA were all from the world’s top universities. It may sound cliché, but you must excel at mathematics and your studies in general. While it is good to dream big, making that dream a reality requires overwhelming competence. The door to the global stage is always open. If you work hard to build your skills, the opportunity will surely follow.“

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This article was produced as part of the NASA Impact Series by Popular Science Korea.

The post Lost in space: How ’digital twins’ saved NASA’s robots appeared first on Popular Science.