“Every time I went ‘boo’ at them, they would jump,” she explained in a statement. “And so I just sort of filed it away in the back of my head for many years. Finally, I said, ‘Let’s find out if they can hear and what they can hear and why.’” 

Miles and the team brought tobacco hornworm caterpillars (Manduca sexta) into a room that is among the world’s most silent—the university’s anechoic chamber. Inside of this silent room, the team could precisely control the sound environment, as they worked to pinpoint what sounds trigger the bugs.

The team understood that caterpillars had reactions, but were not sure if it was to airborne sounds or the base’s sound vibrations they can feel with their feet. Because caterpillars often hang out on plant stems, the team had speculated that perhaps they picked up on sounds because of the plant’s vibration.

In the anechoic chamber, researchers can deliver sound and vibration independently of each other and understand the kind of response they solicit. They studied the caterpillars’ response to airborne sounds and surface vibrations at high- (2000 hertz) and low-frequency (150 hertz) sounds. 

The researchers found that caterpillars perceive both, though they had a 10- to 100-fold greater reaction to airborne sound compared to the surface vibrations that they sensed through their feet. 

The next step was figuring out how they were hearing the sounds, and to do that, the team removed some of their hairs. While that might seem like an odd strategy, many insects perceive sound through hairs that detect how it moves the air. In fact, the team’s caterpillars were less sensitive to sounds after they lost hair on their abdomen and thorax. Miles and her colleagues’ theory is that the tobacco hornworm’s hearing might be evolutionarily tuned to detect the wing beats of predatory wasps. 

Back in the world of human hearing, their research could play a role in microphone technology. 

The findings were presented at a joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Acoustical Society of Japan in December 2025.

“There’s an enormous amount of effort and expense on technologies for detecting sound, and there are all kinds of microphones made in this world. We need to learn better ways to create them,” added Ronald Miles, a co-author of the study and a Binghamton University mechanical engineer. “And the way it’s always been done is to look at what animals do and learn how animals detect sound.”

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No pee or poop

Unlike bears, groundhogs are true hibernators. During hibernation, they don’t eat and rely on the fat stores they have built up and go into a deep and full sleep during the winter. 

“They don’t wake up and walk around, go to the bathroom or anything like that,” Karen McDonald, STEM program coordinator at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland tells Popular Science. “The waste is actually being recycled in their body.”

When they are awake in the spring, summer, and fall, groundhogs use restroom chambers in their burrows to limit odors and fecal contamination in their main chambers. They also reduce their metabolism, heart rate, and breathing rate. As a result, the little waste they create in their blood is recycled chemically into their body. 

During the winter, their body temperature also can drop from around 100 degrees Fahrenheit to around 40°F. Their heart rate slows from about 80 beats per minute to as low as four to five and about 16 breaths per minute. They also lose up to half their body weight. 

Move over, meerkats

In addition to a chamber for storing waste, a groundhog burrow system may include separate areas for sleeping, nesting, and raising young. It may also have multiple entrances for ventilation and rapid escape should a predator arrive. However, something is missing.

“Their burrows do not have the food storage or a kitchen, because they are the pantry. They’re the ones storing the food,” McDonald explains.

Groundhog burrows have the same configuration no matter the season and they are also considered important ecosystem engineers. 

“Their burrows can end up providing habitat for multiple apartment dwellers. You may find a box turtle or a rabbit family or other animals living there,” says McDonald. “It creates these habitats but also changes the soil chemistry because they’re digging and they’re mixing up the soil.”

The neighborhood watch

Groundhogs can build tunnels that are 20 to 45 feet-long thanks to their strong forelimbs and curved claws. When they make burrow tunnels, they will also create plenty of exits to escape potential predators–and warn others.

“They actually are sort of like an alarm system for the forest, because they keep watch for predators,” McDonald explains. “If groundhogs call other animals, they’ll know that the danger is nearby and will watch for predators too.”

Solitary creatures

Even though they make for pretty good neighbors, groundhogs lead fairly solitary lives. They live alone for most of the year and only come together briefly during the spring breeding season.

“They definitely like it alone, except when they have their babies. The females have the young, they rear them and they kick them out,” McDonald says.

Groundhogs are nature’s alarm clock, not weather forecaster

In the United States, the legend goes that various groundhogs can predict if spring will arrive early or if there will be six more weeks of winter weather. While there is no evidence that groundhogs can forecast the weather, they can use sunlight to tell when it is time to wake up closer to spring.

They rely on the photoperiod, or the number of consecutive hours of light in a 24-hour period, as an environmental cue. As the hours of sunlight increase towards the spring, it signals the end of winter.

“They rely on the photoperiod more than other animals to know when to wake up. And because they are so reliant, they’re like a clock,” says McDonald. “We know they’re going to emerge at that photoperiod when spring is coming.”

Ultimate survivors

Groundhogs are not considered endangered or threatened, partly because they have an incredibly varied diet. 

“They eat a lot of different types of plants,” says McDonald. “Instead of specializing, they have this broad diet that allows them to live in disturbed areas where humans are, where there’s a variety of plants. They eat different types of grasses, they might eat some clover. They like wild flowers because they’re tasty and pretty. They’ll eat leaves from plants. They might even, if there’s not a ton of food out, they might chew on some bark.”

Ancient roots

While Groundhog Day in the United States is on February 2, the celebration has deep European pagan roots. The origin likely lies in the Celtic festival of Imbolc, which marks the half-way point between the winter solstice and spring equinox. It is celebrated on February 1 and associated with the Celtic goddess of fertility (now known as St. Brigid) and celebrates longer days ahead. Groundhogs emerging from their dens were seen as a symbol that spring was on its way. 

Like many pagan traditions, Imbolc eventually merged with Christianity and became Candlemas (celebrated on February 2) in the 400s. In the Catholic Church, Candlemas commemorates the purification of the Virgin Mary and the presentation of Christ in the Temple and the candles needed for the year ahead are blessed.

As for why these lowly rodents continue to remain part of our end-of-winter celebrations, McDonald says it’s pretty simple. 

“Small woodland creatures are magnetic.”

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Researchers in the Netherlands studied the four Hogwarts houses as personality types. Typically, Gryffindors are known for bravery and courage; Slytherins are known for cunning and ambition; Hufflepuffs are loyal and friendly; and Ravenclaws are diligent and shrewd. The researchers found that people who identify as Gryffindor and Slytherin are more likely to be start-up founders.

“In the Harry Potter world itself, Gryffindor and Slytherin are quite different morally,” Martin Obschonka, the lead author and a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Amsterdam, tells Popular Science. “But they are similar in one important way—both houses are defined by a willingness to challenge rules and authority.” 

This kind of behavior, which researchers call “deviance,” is linked to entrepreneurship, the researchers say. The study was recently published in the journal Small Business Economics.

A bit of “scholarly mischief”

Researchers have long tried to understand what makes entrepreneurs tick, but most studies focus on just one trait at a time, such as creativity or risk-taking. Real people are more complex than that. Since it is very hard to measure someone’s whole character using standard surveys, Obschonka’s team decided to look beyond traditional science tools. 

At first, the idea of using fictional character types as personality profiles felt like a bit of “scholarly mischief,” Obschonka admits. However, the team used a very large dataset and results held up across two separate studies. Mischief managed. 

The link between Harry Potter houses and entrepreneurship

In the first study, the team used data from the TIME Magazine Harry Potter quiz. Nearly 800,000 people had taken the quiz online. The researchers grouped the results by U.S. regions, called Metropolitan Statistical Areas. They then compared the percentage share of each Hogwarts house in 338 regions with how many start-ups existed there.

It turned out that regions with more Gryffindors and Slytherins had more start-ups. On average, these regions showed about seven percent higher start-up density than others.

The second study focused on individuals instead of regions. Obschonka’s team surveyed a representative group of 820 U.S. residents who had taken the Harry Potter quiz, asking about their interest in becoming entrepreneurs.

The results revealed that people with Gryffindor or Slytherin personalities were more likely to say they wanted to start a business.

@clipseries90 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire#harrypotter #film #tiktok #voldemort #fypシ ♬ sonido original – ClipSeries

“Importantly, the findings held across two different levels of analysis, from large-scale regional patterns to individual psychology, which gives us greater confidence that these effects are meaningful,” Obschonka says.

‘Bright’ versus ‘dark’ deviance

Gryffindors show what the researchers call “bright deviance.” They “tend to break rules out of courage, moral conviction, and a desire to do what they believe is right,” Obschonka explains. 

Meanwhile, Slytherins show “dark deviance,” tending to “bend rules more strategically, driven by ambition, competitiveness, and calculated goal pursuit,” he says. 

Even though their reasons differ, both types of rule-breaking can lead to starting a business. This idea fits with an almost century-old theory of entrepreneurship, proposed by economist Joseph Schumpeter, which says that entrepreneurs often succeed by challenging rules and norms.

What about Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw?

Other Hogwarts houses showed weaker links to entrepreneurship. Based on earlier research, Obschonka and his team think that Hufflepuff traits like loyalty and hard work may actually make people less likely to take risks or try new ideas. 

And while some studies have found that creativity and knowledge—two key Ravenclaw traits—can help in business, researchers have not found clear evidence that being generally very intelligent automatically leads to becoming an entrepreneur.

So what?

According to Obschonka, “these findings matter because they challenge the idea that there is only one good entrepreneurial personality.” Instead, different character types can succeed, as long as they are willing to challenge rules in some way.

The study also suggests that “fiction is not just entertainment,” Obschonka says. While stories like Harry Potter are not explicitly about entrepreneurship, they explore deep questions about human character, motivation, and how people relate to rules and authority. Obschonka believes entrepreneurship researchers “should take popular fictional literature more seriously as a source of insight.”

Understanding entrepreneurial character matters beyond business, Obschonka says. People with rule-challenging personalities also appear in politics and public institutions, and their attitudes toward rules can shape decisions that affect society as a whole.

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 Sony World Photography Awards has announced the talented photographers shortlisted in the 2026 Student and Youth competitions. The Student competition features images from university students, while the Youth prize goes to photographers aged 19 and younger.

Aakash Gulzar, a finalist for Student Photographer of the Year, submitted a series of images titled “Kotar’baaz.” The series (seen below) documents the Indian-administered pigeon keepers of Kashmir across rooftops, shrines, and markets in Srinagar. “It’s a story of love, patience, and the enduring spirit of a place that refuses to lose its soul,” Gulzar says.

The Student Photographer of the Year and Youth Photographer of the Year will be announced on April 16, 2026, at ceremony in London.

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The earliest and tallest of these unique systems is the Lake Wales Ridge in central Florida. It’s home to the Florida scrub millipede (Floridobolus penneri), one of North America’s biggest millipedes. This rare and little-known arthropod is unique to the Sunshine State, and can reach up to four inches in length. It moves with over 100 legs and mostly lives underground and comes out at night.

Apparently, they’re also picky when it comes to making babies. At least, the ones in the care of Anne Sawl—a graduate student in conservation biology at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg—seemed to be. It wasn’t until she put them in a kiddie pool with plants from the ridge that she found an offspring.

“One day, I was moving dirt near the roots of the plant and noticed a tiny white speck,” Sawl explained in a statement. “It caught my eye. I picked it up and realized it was a baby millipede. After so much trial and error in the lab, I was completely flabbergasted that they had reproduced.”

Maybe the millipedes weren’t used to so much attention. After all, they hadn’t been scientifically surveyed in almost 20 years. Within this context, Sawl’s research into the Florida scrub millipede’s population numbers and spread is providing new information that could aid  future conservation endeavors.. 

The endemic species is believed to be threatened by major habitat loss. Researchers estimate that human activity has destroyed 85 percent of the Lake Wales Ridge’s natural habitat from before humans settled there, according to Sawl. 

“Anne has taken a group of animals most people overlook and produced multiple chapters of publishable research with brand new information,” added  Deby Cassill, a professor of integrative biology at the University of South Florida and Sawl’s adviser. “Millipedes might not be glamorous, but they are ecological champions in these fragile habitats.”

Florida scrub millipedes play an important role in nutrient recycling—or rather, their digestive system does. They turn their plant meals into a crucial source of nutrients, according to Sawl. Yes, we’re talking about their poop. 

However, Sawl has also found that these unique, many-legged arthropods prefer mushrooms and fungi instead of some plant material researchers previously thought. They might just be picky animals through and through.

The post These rare, giant millipedes only exist in Florida appeared first on Popular Science.

February: it’s a short month, and it’s also relatively short on stargazing highlights. Still, patient stargazers will be rewarded with a memorable planetary alignment. And for those readers joining us from the Southern Hemisphere, there’s also the Alpha Centaurids meteor shower to look forward to.

February 1: Full Snow Moon

This month’s full moon falls on the very first day of the month, which means we were only one day away from one of the rarest lunar phenomena: a month with no full moon at all! This can only happen in February—since it’s the only month shorter than a full lunar cycle—and last happened in 2018. There’s no agreed-upon name for this phenomenon, but since it’s the opposite of a blue moon—the second full moon in a month with two full moons—we rather like black moon.

But anyway, there is a full moon this month, and appropriately enough, it’s called the Snow Moon, a name that will resonate with a whole lot of people in North America right now. As per the Farmer’s Almanac, the Snow Moon will creep into the winter sky at 5:09 p.m. EST on February 1, casting its pale light over the frozen landscape.

February 8: Alpha Centaurids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

The only meteors on offer this month are the Alpha Centaurids, which are predicted to peak on February 8. Unfortunately for those of us in the frozen north, it’s the Southern Hemisphere that’ll get the best view of these meteors. That’s because from north of the equator, the radiant point (the point from which the meteors appear to originate) never rises above the horizon. Still, that’s not to say that you won’t get lucky, but we don’t recommend waiting out in the cold all night for a glimpse of a shooting star if you are not below the equator where summer is in full force.

February 28: Six Planets in Alignment

While the full moon fell on the first day of February, stargazers will have to wait until the very last day of the month for a genuine celestial highlight. But it’s one that’s worth waiting for: six planets in alignment! Four of the planets will be visible to the naked eye: gleaming Venus, fleeting Mercury, resplendent Saturn and, of course, big ol’ Jupiter. The remaining participants—distant cousins Neptune and Uranus—will be able to join the party via binoculars or a small telescope.

The planets will be strung low over the horizon about one hour after sunset, starting with Mercury in the west, hovering in the constellation Pisces. Venus will be visible nearby, with Saturn and Neptune clustered above. Jupiter will be visible just to the right of the moon, and Uranus will sit about halfway between Jupiter and the cluster of other planets, at the same elevation as the former.

All Month and Year

There’s one other sight that might await those looking to the sky this month—and, indeed, for the rest of 2026. This year promises to be a banner year for the auroras borealis and australis. As per Time and Date, the reason lies with a solar phenomenon known as the coronal hole, when  the sun’s magnetic field allows large amounts of plasma to escape into the solar system. There’s also a relatively high chance of coronal mass ejections, the powerful geomagnetic storms that can bathe  much of the world’s night sky in ghostly light in the right conditions.

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.

Until next month!

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In 2020, hobbyist Michael Barkowski was combing through aerial imagery available online, when he spotted an unusual formation near the town of Aken, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt in northwestern Germany. Barkowski suspected that the large rectangular outlines and apparent ditches he was seeing could be signs of marching camps that were commonly deployed by Roman legions. Although remains of such camps have been identified elsewhere in Germany, historians had not found evidence of any this far north.

After Barkowski reported the sightings, professional archaeologists from Germany’s State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt conducted their own aerial surveys. Their findings confirmed Barkowski’s hunch—and then some. Subsequent surveys revealed not just one, but four Roman marching camps spread across towns in the state dating back to the 200s CE, according to Germany’s State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony. 

The surprise findings, which the State Office calls an “archaeological sensation” carry major implications. Specifically, they suggest the Roman Empire may have advanced significantly further into Germanic territory than previously believed. They are also just the latest in a string of archaeological breakthroughs made possible by increased volunteer efforts and the widespread availability of modern aerial imagery.

Roman soldiers left behind a smattering of camps 

The Roman legion—the empire’s primary elite infantry unit—is often defined by its strict discipline and organization in battle.Their military camps weren’t any  different. Soldiers would establish the outposts at the end of a day’s march to serve as defensive positions during long military campaigns. Camps were typically rectangular with rounded corners and a gate adorning each side. Each camp was distinguished by titulum, (basically a low bank and ditch built just outside the main gate) to slow or stop an enemy’s advance. The camps varied in size, but a typical set up could house around 300 soldiers. A traveler walking through one of the camps would find the commanding officer’s tent located in the center.

Historians have documented Roman camps scattered throughout much of the empire’s border regions, where the military conducted the bulk of its campaigns. This included large parts of present-day Germany, which the Romans began conquering around 13 CE under Emperor Augustus. Fighting there continued there for the better part of 30 years, before a major defeat forced a prolonged Roman withdrawal. Fast forward nearly 200 years later to the 3rd century, and Romans returned to the region, launching a new military offensive aimed at disrupting Germanic tribes that had grown larger and more organized.

“The relationship between Romans and Germanic tribes was subsequently characterized by the defense against incursions into the Roman Empire, by punitive expeditions, but also by repeated contractual agreements and the settlement of Germanic tribes on Roman soil, as well as the payment of money in return for maintaining peace,” Germany’s State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony writes in a  press release. 

New camps sighting alter the historical record  

Although some historical records suggest that the late Roman advance may have reached as far north as the Elbe River, archaeologists had not found any physical remains to support those claims. That’s what made news of Barkowski’s initial finding so alluring to professional archaeologists. Once they confirmed the presence of the first camp in Aken, they expanded their search area and found a similar structure near Trabitz, roughly 170 miles to the south. A year later, follow-up aerial surveys identified another structure near Aken and one in Deersheim.

Those findings paved the way for a series of large, on-the-ground surveys conducted between 2024 and 2025. A team of archaeologists walked over the camps, metal detectors in hand, in search of artifacts. It was a scientific gold mine—or more accurately, an iron mine. The team documented over 1,500 individual objects, most made of iron. 

The artifacts include a variety of Roman coins and an unusually large number of nails and bolts. Researchers believe that the nails and bolts were likely attached to the soles of soldiers’ sandals to increase traction. Radiocarbon dating of the objects places them in the early third century, which just so happens to coincide with a military campaign in Germany launched by Emperor Caracalla.

The newly discovered camps bring concrete physical evidence to theories that were previously only suggested by letters and indirect artifacts. And none of that would have happened if it weren’t for a curious hobbyist looking through images.

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In a study recently published in the journal Biotropica, researchers from Museum Liebnitz in Bonn, Germany, analyzed available verified local cobra reports and rescue records made between 2002 and 2024 in the Goa region of southwestern India. In all, they identified 47 encounters with the Western Ghats king cobra (Ophiophagus kaalinga) over 22 years. Beyond the danger of such meetings, there was a larger problem: the Western Ghats isn’t endemic to Goa.

Herpetologist and firsthand volunteer king cobra rescuer Dikansh Parmar can personally attest to the issue. His 2017 encounter is one of his own study’s five separate snake sightings located on or near trains. Following additional interviews with local residents revealed the serpents were also spotted in villages and neighboring forests, but nowhere in the surrounding farmland.

“With the increased global availability of low-cost smartphones and social media in recent years, the number of reports of snakes on and around trains in India has increased, with three incidents recorded in a 30-day period, and many more emerging on social media,” Parmar and his co-authors wrote.

Based on these and other reports, the team developed a theory: Western Ghats cobras are hitching rides on trains to new locales. They suspect that the snakes are likely attracted to railway cars for a mixture of reasons, including prey like rodents and the lure of safe, secure shelters.

Their final destinations around Goa aren’t ideal, however. After conducting a species distribution model that integrated factors like human activity, vegetation, and climate, Parmar then compared hypothetically suitable habitats to the actual cobra rescue locations. His team discovered the snakes have the best chances for survival in Goa’s interior, away from the coast but close to rivers and streams in forests. More often, however, reports placed the snakes near railway sites that are drier, more exposed, and house fewer prey options. Instead of climate shifts forcing their migration, Parmar explained another factor is now at play.

“Our findings suggest a different, more passive mechanism: railways may act not just as corridors for active movement, but as high-speed conduits,” he wrote “This contrasts with the typically negative impact of roads, which often function as barriers or significant mortality sinks for snakes.”

Parmar’s team argued it’s very plausible that train migration routes are a vastly underreported method of travel—not only for king cobras, but other vulnerable species, as well. Only by better studying and understanding these situations can conservationists protect the animals, as well as any surprised commuters.

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In 2021, paleontologists discovered the extremely rare find while working in the famous Bromacker Permian dig site, about 155 miles southwest of Berlin. As they detail in a study published on January 30th in the journal Scientific Reports, the fossilized regurgitation is the oldest specimen of its kind, and contains a wealth of insights into the still frequently mysterious food chain of terrestrial dinosaurs.

What is a regurgitalite?

Bones tell researchers a lot about ancient species, but they can’t provide the whole picture. In addition to anatomical remains, paleontologists often focus on other biological samples such as coprolites, aka fossilized poop. But due to their composition, most coprolites are only preserved in aquatic settings like oceans and lakes, meaning it’s easier to reconstruct marine life menus compared to land dinosaur food webs.

This is partly why a team from Humboldt University of Berlin’s Natural History Museum and the French National Centre for Scientific Research initially suspected their fossil-in-question (known as MNG 17001) to be a coprolite. However, further analysis and morphological clues proved otherwise. Fossilized poop is usually preserved in comparatively regular cylindrical or conical shapes, with any residual bones suspended in an organic sedimentary matrix. This mineralized casing is also generally high in phosphorus—a consequence of bacterial bone digestion.

But MNG 17001 doesn’t look anything like a coprolite. The bone fragments aren’t housed in a sedimentary matrix, and it had very low phosphorus levels. Taken altogether, the team knew they were looking at a regurgitalite, or fossilized vomit, likely preserved due to the Bromacker site’s origins as a wet floodplain.

An ancient survival trick

Carnivorous dinosaurs are far from the only animals to ever regurgitate after a hefty meal. Even today, many predators frequently throw up harder-to-digest material like teeth, bones, and hair as a means to conserve overall energy. But MNG 17001 marks the first instance of a confirmed regurgitalite from a completely terrestrial Paleozoic predator.

Although paleontologists aren’t entirely sure about the identity of vomit’s creator, they have narrowed down the possibilities. Computed tomography scans allowed them to reconstruct the fossil’s dozens of half-digested bones in 3D, which they then matched to known species. These included the nearly complete maxilla (upper jawbone) of a small ancestor of today’s reptiles, Thuringothyris mahlendorffae, as well as the humerus belonging to the oldest known bipedal vertebrate, the bolosaurid Eudibamus cursoris. The final evidence—a bone from a diadectid—proved the most telling. Members of the Diadectidae were the first fully herbivorous tetrapods, as well as the first truly large land-based animals. Diadectes, for example, easily grew as big as 10-feet-long.

Potential suspects

Paleontologists aren’t sure about the specific diadectid species, but they do know that whatever feasted on it must have been equally sizable. In the Bromacker region, only two predators fit the bill. The first contender, Tambacarnifex unguifalcatus, isn’t widely known and likely resembled a huge monitor lizard. The second, Dimetrodon teutonis, is much more recognizable with its distinct sail-fin along its back.

No matter its true identity, the ancient predator’s upset stomach yielded a remarkable time capsule into Paleozoic life, death, and regurgitation. The first-of-its-kind fossilized vomit also hints at opportunistic hunting behaviors among apex land predators, and illustrates just how long carnivores have relied on the (admittedly unseemly) digestive trick to maximize their survival odds.

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In the six decades since, experts have argued at length about the pair’s relationship, sex, as well as an explanation for their unique physical features. Many have posited that the two exhibited some form of dwarfism, but direct evidence has eluded them. Now, researchers believe they have definitive answers. According to a study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Romito 1 and 2 were most likely a parent and child born with a rare genetic disorder called acromesomelic dysplasia.

AMD is one of the rarest documented genetic disorders. Only around 10 million people in the world carry the altered NPR2 gene, and of those, just 3,500 are estimated to display the physiological conditions including shortened limbs, spinal curvature, and stiff joints.

To reach their conclusions, the team collected samples from both subject’s temporal bones at the base of the skull, an area that is particularly well suited for preserving genetic material. Subsequent examination revealed a first-degree relationship between the two individuals. More specifically, Romito 1 was the mother and Romito 2 was her daughter.

“Identifying both individuals as female and closely related turns this burial into a familial genetic case,” said Daniel Fernandes, a study co-author and University of Coimbra anthropologist. “The older woman’s milder short stature likely reflects a heterozygous mutation, showing how the same gene affected members of a prehistoric family differently.”

Fernandes and colleagues also identified the homozygous variant of the NPR2 gene in Romito 2, which is critical to bone growth and likely explains her slightly taller stature. Taken altogether, the team concluded both Paleolithic women had acromesomelic dysplasia (AMD), Maroteaux type—a condition that stunts a person’s height and shortens their limbs.

Despite the physical limitations of shortened limbs, people with AMD generally maintain a normal life expectancy today. That said, it’s easy to imagine how the condition could severely hinder someone in a Paleolithic hunter-gatherer society—but that does not seem to be the case for Romito 1 and Romito 2. If anything, they experienced the exact opposite. Both survived well into late adolescence, if not full adulthood before they died. This implies a concerted, regular support system from those around them.

“We believe her survival would have required sustained support from her group, including help with food and mobility in a challenging environment,” explained study co-author Alfredo Coppa from Rome’s Sapienza University.

Beyond helping the contextualize ancient human societies, understanding and identifying genetic conditions in Paleolithic individuals could also help present-day medical research.

“Rare genetic diseases are not a modern phenomenon but have been present throughout human history,” said Adrian Daly, a study co-author from Liège University Hospital Center in Belgium. “Understanding their history may help [recognize] such conditions today.”

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“If you go to France, it’s skijoering, pronounced SKEE-zhor-ing. In German, it’s skijöring, pronounced SHEE-yuh-ring,” says Loren Zhimanskova, founder of Skijor International and Skijor USA. “In Norway, it’s skikjøring, pronounced SHEE-shuh-ring. Every culture has its own version, and that’s part of what makes the sport so special.” 

This changeability goes beyond umlauts and accents—it’s at the heart of the evolution and modern practice of this eclectic sport.

At its core, skijoring is a winter sport in which a skier is pulled across the snow by a horse. In European competitions, the horse typically runs riderless, while in Western-stye competitions a mounted rider steers the horse through a fast-paced obstacle course.

“It’s that free-flowing, wildhearted diversity that makes our sport so attractive,” Zhimanskova says. But that diversity is also why skijoring may never again grace the Olympic stage after being included as a demonstration event in the 1920s. 

What is skijoring?

The two main ways to skijor don’t have much in common. In Europe, a lone skier navigates a riderless horse around an oval track, racing shoulder-to-shoulder with other competitors. In the American West, a rider guides the horse through an obstacle course while the skier navigates gates, lands jumps, and sometimes catches rings, all while managing roughly 33 feet of rope at speeds that can reach 40 mph.

What does it feel like to travel on horse-drawn skis? Zhimanskova says the sensation is similar to waterskiing: sitting back slightly against the pull of the rope, keeping the knees flexed, and relying on arm and leg strength to stay upright.

“It might be a bit easier than water skiing, because with waterskiing, you have to go fast to stay afloat,” she says. “With a horse, you can go slower.”

Zhimanskova notes that skijoring has a very different sensation than horseback riding on snow. With the skier’s weight distributed across skis rather than concentrated in a saddle, the horse can move more efficiently over snowy terrain, while the rider and skier are able to navigate sharper turns without destabilizing the horse. 

From winter work to winter sport

Long before skijoring became a competitive sport, it was a practical form of winter transportation. The Sami people of Scandinavia used skis and reindeer to efficiently traverse snowy expanses, and Nordic militaries later adapted the practice to move troops and supplies through harsh winter conditions.

Over time, people began to appreciate a different aspect of this snowy time-saver—it was fun. By the early 1900s, skijoring had evolved into a recreational activity in the Alps, where it developed into an organized sporting activity. It eventually attracted some high-profile fans, including Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the Winter Olympics. His enthusiasm for the sport led to its inclusion as a demonstration event at the 1924 Games in Chamonix, France, and again in the 1928 Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

As the sport eventually made its way west, it evolved a distinctly American style. By around 1914, American tourists began bringing skijoring back from their European vacations, and it began appearing at resorts like Mirror Lake in Lake Placid, New York. These early U.S. iterations hewed closely to the European roots of the sport.

“The Western version started in towns like Jackson, Steamboat, and Banff, and was more free-spirited and rugged, more about testing your skills,” says Zhimanskova. “That’s how rodeo started. Cowboys roped as part of their jobs, but when they had time off they said, ‘Well, who can rope the best?’ It became a friendly competition, and then evolved into a structured sport, like rodeo.”

Skijoring continues to take many forms

In modern practice, skijoring has splintered into a wide range of styles—not even the horse is set in stone. Some skijorers are pulled by dogs or miniature ponies, others by snowmobiles, motorcycles, or cars, and at least one donkey has reportedly gotten in on the action. Still, the most common form of the sport involves a skier pulled by a galloping horse, either with a rider or without.

It’s uncertain whether skijoring will reappear in future Winter Olympics. Zhimanskova believes gaining approval from the International Olympic Committee would require a level of international standardization that might be at odds with the sport’s notoriously untamed nature. 

Still, some efforts have been made to add structure to the sport without sacrificing its freewheeling spirit. Zhiimanskova helped establish the SkijorCup, a standardized point system designed to connect competitions across events while preserving the sport’s culture and emphasis on equine safety.

“Skijoring races have always resisted a governing body because people involved in the sport are so inherently independent,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean they aren’t willing to work together to grow and improve. The trick is finding the right formula that unifies, allows for independence, and doesn’t involve governing or sanctioning.”

Beyond the competition itself, modern skijoring has developed a distinct visual culture that’s part of what makes it so magnetic. Modern skijoring events in the American West often look like a mashup of apres-ski attire and Yellowstone-esque Western flair.  

Fur coats, chaps, and cowboy hats add a renegade swagger to pristine snowscapes, and participants and spectators alike embrace the sport’s anything-goes aesthetic. Some competitions even celebrate skijor chic through organized “red carpet” events. 

“I always say it’s the Kentucky Derby, but on snow with a twist,” says Kylee Nielson, a competitive skijor rider who, together with skier Magnolia Neu, took home the first-ever Women’s Division championship buckle at PRO Skijor’s recent Frontier Tour in Heber City, Utah. 

“Tons of fur coats, cowboy hats, chaps—the crazier, the better.” 

“Three heartbeats” 

Beneath the chaps-clad pageantry, skijoring relies on an intimate partnership of timing and trust, leaving little room for error. Megan Smith, a novice skijorer married to seasoned competitor Patrick Smith, has come to understand that firsthand.

“It’s a sport of three athletes, not just the rider and the skier,” says Megan, a former restaurateur and photographer who connected with Patrick after posting her photos of his races. “Skijor is rider, skier, and horse.”

“They call it ‘three heartbeats,’” adds Patrick.

The phrase exemplifies how closely the sport binds this essential trio, who share very real consequences if one “heartbeat” should fall out of sync. 

This three-athlete interdependency was truly driven home recently for Patrick. During a two-day event, he was riding near the top of a stacked field when a turn went wrong. The horse, Lady Porcha, lost her footing on the icy course and went down, sending both of them sliding briefly across the track. 

Lady Porcha quickly got to her feet and finished the run uninjured, but Patrick was knocked to the ground as the skier’s rope caught his spur and pulled his boot free.

“You skipped like a stone on a pond,” Megan recalls.

The fall drew a collective gasp from the crowd, and people rushed in to help. Patrick walked away with a twisted ankle, shaken but intact—and relieved, above all, that the horse was okay.

Patrick and Megan participate in skijoring competitions throughout the winter. While Patrick approaches the sport as a serious contender, Megan—who picked up a win of her own recently—is more drawn to the fun of it all.

“He’s like ‘I’m here to win,’ and I’m there to see my friends,” says Megan. “We’ve found a really good community here.  Everyone is positive and roots for each other.”

The post The extreme sport of skijoring, where horses pull skiers at 40 mph appeared first on Popular Science.

For many ecologists, monitoring individual animals over long periods of time—even years—is crucial to conservation efforts. But even the experts easily get confused. This is especially true given a bear’s often dramatic, seasonal weight fluctuations, as well as how physically different they may look pre- and post-hibernation. To help wildlife biologists make sense of it all, a team at Switzerland’s EPFL and Alaska Pacific University (APU) has developed PoseSwin, a machine learning program capable of telling brown bears apart from one another. The technology was recently detailed in a study recently published in the journal Cell Current Biology.

PoseSwin was trained on over 72,000 photos of 109 different brown bears taken by APU researcher Beth Rosenberg between 2017 and 2022. Rosenberg captured the images at all times of day and night and in various weather conditions, while also making sure to document the bears in a variety of behaviors. She and her colleagues then relied on their existing knowledge of brown bear physiology to determine the handful of anatomical details that remain relatively constant over the animal’s life. These features include their brow bone angle, ear placement, and muzzle shape. Next, they incorporated data on how bears looked in different poses and at varying angles.

“Our biological intuition was that head features combined with pose would be more reliable than body shape alone, which changes dramatically with weight gain,” explained Alexander Mathis, a project collaborator and researcher at EPFL’s Brain Mind Institute and Neuro-X Institute. “The data proved us right—PoseSwin significantly outperformed models that used body images or ignored pose information.”

From there, the team took PoseSwin for a field test with help from citizen scientists. After amassing more brown bear portraits from visitors to Katmai National Park and Preserve (home of Fat Bear Week), researchers fed the photos into the machine learning program. In multiple cases, PoseSwin successfully matched individual bears to those already in its database. Already, PoseSwin’s designers could begin to track how and where these predators moved in search of seasonal food.

“This is a concrete example of the PoseSwin model’s potential,” said Rosenberg. “The technology could eventually be used to analyze the thousands of pictures that visitors take every year and help to build a map of how brown bears use this expansive area.”

Rosenberg and her colleagues are now using PoseSwin to monitor over 100 bears living around McNeil River State Game Sanctuary without disrupting their daily habits. In doing so, they should gain more accurate information on the bears’health and wellbeing, providing a much needed boost to conservation efforts.

“Bears are at the top of the food chain and ensure the proper functioning of their ecosystem. They are critical to maintaining healthy systems,” explained Rosenberg.

PoseSwin likely won’t remain so bear-centric. Early benchmark tests indicate it’s also incredibly accurate when trained on macaques, suggesting it could soon expand to handle many other species. The machine learning algorithm is also available open-source, so anyone can access it for their own subject—although there’s a good chance none of them will be harder for PoseSwin to identify.

“Bears are perhaps the hardest species to recognize individually,” said Mathis. “We focused on them first with the idea that our program could be adapted to other species, from mice to chimps.”

The post Facial recognition AI trained to work on bears appeared first on Popular Science.

The document is part of a collection of over 400 historic items scheduled for auction in May, and is set to coincide with the 250th anniversary of American independence. However, this isn’t necessarily a recognizable version of the Declaration of Independence. Instead of a carefully handwritten piece of parchment (what’s known as an engrossed copy), this variant is one of the few surviving broadside editions. A broadside is a large, single-sided page of printed material, and was one of the easiest and most popular ways to spread public information at the time.

In this case, Declaration of Independence broadsides were distributed throughout the colonies shortly after the original document was signed. The copies were then read at town gatherings and posted in public forums to raise awareness of their cause and win people over to the idea of breaking away from Britain.

Although the broadside headed to auction this year doesn’t include a specific printer’s mark, Goldin appraisers believe additional contextual details trace it back to a publisher in Exeter, New Hampshire. Around 125 July 1776 broadsides are known to still exist today, but only 10 examples remain of this specific edition.

Goldin didn’t offer a valuation estimate, but it will probably sell for a hefty price based on similar, recent auctions. On January 23rd, anExeter broadside in similar condition offered by Christie’s sold for nearly $5.7 million.

The Declaration of Independence is a remarkable historical document not only for its ambitions, but how it justified severing colonial ties with Britain. Its authors included a list of 27 specific grievances citing “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” These included obstructing the “Administration of Justice,” and “[keeping] among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.”

The post Rare copy of Declaration of Independence going to auction appeared first on Popular Science.

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Related reading from PopSci

• The best cordless drills
• The best circular saws, according to experts
• The best miter saws, according to experts
• The best table saws for any job, according to experts
• 9 power tools every home should have and when to use them
• A woodworker’s guide to choosing the right saw for each cut

Prices and availability are subject to change.

The post Amazon is clearing out Dewalt power tools and batteries: Get a battery 2-pack for just $91.46 shipped appeared first on Popular Science.

Like many bodies of water, Lake Lipno is no stranger to cyanobacteria. The photosynthetic blue-green algae typically flourishes during the warmer months of summer and autumn, particularly in an environment with excess nutrients—a process known as eutrophication. Cyanobacteria blooms are notoriously foul-smelling, but the real issue is the damage they wreak on local ecologies. Each bloom produces exponentially growing waves of cyanotoxins that can poison and even kill nearby aquatic organisms. Unfortunately, these algae incidents are increasing due to climate change and human pollution, particularly industrial phosphorus runoff.

In the Czech Republic, most freshwater reservoirs usually see cyanobacterial blooms dissipate by the end of September. However, Lake Lipno has long experienced longer algae seasons. Marine biologists have repeatedly recorded sizable cyanobacteria populations through November, and occasionally into December and even January. Similar conditions at the end of 2025 allowed a biomass of algae to linger near the lake’s surface until the water began to freeze. According to researchers, weeks of sunshine, calm weather, and fair wind conditions were likely to blame. They also confirmed that their field samples contained the common cyanobacteria species Woronichinia naegeliana.

While the thin ice cover was itself transparent, the cyanobacteria retained its telltale green color that could easily be seen from the shore and overhead. A brief warm spell near December 24th melted some of the ice, which then refroze . The differences in solar radiation absorption allowed these new patches of clear ice to develop over darker areas of algae, forming what are called “cyanobacterial eyes.” The bloom only dissipated after heavy snowfall finally blocked enough light from reaching it beneath the ice.

It’s unclear how these icy winter blooms will affect their ecosystems, but unfortunately, similar incidents will almost certainly become more common—both at Lake Lipno and in other waters around the world. In the United States, it’s possible that cyanobacteria sightings could soon stretch into December or even January.

“Green ice on Lake Lipno fits into the long-term changes we observe here in connection with eutrophication and ongoing climate change,” said hydrobiologist Petr Znachor. “It suggests that we may witness similar surprises more frequently in the future.”

The post Toxic algae turned a frozen lake green appeared first on Popular Science.

The Svalbard archipelago is located halfway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The remote region is home to a seed vault, about 2,100 people, and some unique wildlife—including the world’s smallest reindeer. There are also an estimated 3,000 polar bears and about 300 remain on Svalbard year-round, while others migrate. Internationally, polar bears have been protected from hunting since 1973, so their primary threats are increased temperatures due to climate change, habitat and food resource loss, and encroachment by humans. 

Since 1980, temperatures in the Barents Sea region surrounding Svalbard have increased up to two degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade. However, a 2004 census of the Barents Sea polar bear population counted approximately 2,650 individuals and that number did not shrink in size until recently. The reasons behind the decrease have been unclear.

In the new study, Norwegian Polar Institute polar bear ecologist Jon Aars and colleagues investigated why the Svalbard population has remained so stable. 

“Svalbard (and the Barents Sea area) has experienced a much faster loss of sea ice than other areas having polar bears,” Aars tells Popular Science. “The bears are not hunted, they have few competitors when on land, and they may have more alternative prey sources when on land than in most other areas.”

They poured over data from 1,188 body measurement records of 770 adult polar bears taken between 1992 and 2019. They specifically looked at the bears’ body composition index (BCI). BCI indicates the amount of fat reserves and body condition in the bears. The team compared BCI with the number of ice-free days in the Barents Sea region across the 27-year period. 

While there were roughly 100 more ice-free days (about four days per year), the sampled polar bears’ BCI increased after the year 2000. According to Aars, this surprising result indicates that their fat reserves increased as sea ice levels decreased.

These improvements in the body conditions might be due to a population increase in the reindeer and walrus that the polar bears eat. The sea ice loss may also lead to more ringed seals gathering in smaller areas of sea ice, which could make polar bear hunting more efficient. 

However, the team believes that further reductions in sea ice may negatively affect the Svalbard populations, as it could increase the distances they need to travel to access their hunting ground. This has already been observed in other polar bear populations. 

Aars is also interested in studying their land-based diet more and how much energy they have to burn when the sea ice is lower in the summer. He also stresses that more research—particularly long-term research— is needed to better understand how different polar bear populations will adapt to a warming Arctic.

“You need to study the population [if] you want to know how [it] is coping,” says Aaars. “You cannot extrapolate findings from other areas where things may be very different.”

The post Svalbard polar bears are doing surprisingly well (for now) appeared first on Popular Science.

First, an Olympic medal

By 1912, Noel-Baker had already earned honors in history and economics at Cambridge, and he was on the way to a graduate degree in international law.

But the 22-year-old was also president of the Cambridge Athletic Club, and that July he took some time off from his studies to join the British track and field team for the fifth modern Olympic Games in Stockholm.

It was an eventful Olympiad. The American multi-sport phenom Jim Thorpe easily won the pentathlon and decathlon, prompting an impressed King Gustav V of Sweden to declare Thorpe “the greatest athlete in the world.” That year saw the Olympic debuts of equestrian sports, women’s aquatics, and the nation of Japan.

Great Britain took home a silver in tug-of-war, just one of 41 medals British athletes won that year. Noel-Baker was not among them; he ran the 800 and 1500-meter races, taking sixth place in the latter. 

It may not have been his best showing, but Noel-Baker—who hyphenated his name when he married his wife, Irene Noel, in 1915—did better at the next Olympiad, held in Antwerp in 1920, after the 1916 Olympics were cancelled due to World War I.

That year, the 30-year-old won silver in the 1500 meter race, his only Olympic medal. But nearly four decades later Noel-Baker would return to Scandinavia for a gold one. 

Then, a Nobel Peace Prize

Noel-Baker’s father, a successful London businessman and dedicated pacifist, put his own belief in public service into action as a member of the London County Council and, later, in the House of Commons. Noel-Baker took after his father, and was dismayed when war came to Europe so soon after the jubilant spectacle of internationalism he had witnessed in Stockholm.

On August 4, 1914, Noel-Baker “listened to Big Ben strike midnight as the Horse Artillery thundered along the Embankment to Victoria to entrain for France,” he later recalled. “And we knew that the guns were already firing, that the First World War had come.”

A conscientious objector, he would devote his own war effort to organizing ambulance services for Allied soldiers injured on the front lines, earning multiple citations for valor. But like many who had seen the worst of the so-called Great War, Noel-Baker returned with an even greater zeal for peace. 

After the war, Noel-Baker served as principal assistant to Lord Robert Cecil, one of the architects of the League of Nations (and himself a future Nobel Laureate). He continued working for the League in various capacities throughout the 1920s and for most of the ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s and ’60s served in Parliament as a minister from the Labor Party.

After World War II, he joined the effort to replace the flawed League with what would become the United Nations, working tirelessly all the while for multilateral disarmament. 

While some of his contemporaries advocated a realpolitik approach, or even hewed to the idea that powerful weapons were the best deterrent against violence, Noel-Baker “believed fervently in the cause of peace and advocated disarmament as the only answer to war,” said Professor Michael E. Cox, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, in a 2024 lecture. “In other words, he was not a realist. He was what many called him at the time, a romanticist—dare I even use the word—a utopian.” 

Undeterred by Noel-Baker’s critics, the Norwegian Nobel Committee granted him the Peace Prize in 1959, shortly after the publication of his book, The Arms Race: A Programme for World Disarmament, which offered a detailed plan for getting rid of both nuclear and conventional weapons.

Philip Noel-Baker’s legacy

Eight more Olympics had taken place since Noel-Baker won his silver medal, the games interrupted by yet another world war. Meanwhile, new weapons had been developed, weapons more terrible than previous generations could have imagined. Noel-Baker, now nearing 70 years old, used his Nobel Lecture to look back on a dangerous half century, and to issue a warning to the future.

“The arms race still goes on; but now far more ferocious, far more costly, far more full of perils, than it was then,” he said. “It is the strangest paradox in history; every new weapon is produced for national defense; but all experts are agreed that the modern, mass-destruction, instantaneous delivery weapons have destroyed defense.”

Trying to curb war with rules and limits had come to nothing, he argued. Instead, he issued a challenge to the international community, the building of which had been his life’s work, from the track to the treaty table. Proudly utopian to the last, he declared, “I start with a forthright proposition: it makes no sense to talk about disarming unless you believe that war, all war, can be abolished.”

In That Time When, Popular Science tells the weirdest, surprising, and little-known stories that shaped science, engineering, and innovation.

The post The only person to win an Olympic medal and a Nobel Peace Prize appeared first on Popular Science.

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Editor’s picks

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Premium 1922 & waxed canvas

• Dickies 1922 Long Sleeve Shirt $75.18 with code SAVE20 (was $188.00)
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Kids’ picks

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Related reading on PopSci

• How to dress for cold-weather adventures
• Winter hiking tips for staying comfortable
• Our guide to the best winter jackets
• How to sleep warm when you’re outdoors in winter
• Tips for buying and caring for long-lasting fabrics

The post This Dickies winter clearance sale has pants, jackets, hoodies, flannels, and more up to 70% off appeared first on Popular Science.

The wreck of the Lawrence N. McKenzie

On March 21, 1890, a ship named the Lawrence N. McKenzie was nearing the end of an over 1,600 mile journey. The 98-foot-long schooner’s eight crewmembers expected to soon reach New York City with a cargo full of oranges, but they never reached their destination. 

Contemporary accounts reported the ship soon became stranded in a heavy fog near Barnegat, New Jersey. Although rescuers successfully saved the entire crew and their captain (who shared the schooner’s name), the vessel wasn’t so lucky. It had already taken on at least six feet of water by the time it was abandoned, and the McKenzie eventually succumbed to the Atlantic Ocean waters. 

The McKenzie didn’t have a particularly long career at sea. Constructed in 1883 in Essex, Massachusetts, it spent less than seven years in service. It was valued at around $9,000 at the time, and contained about $2,000 worth of citrus when it sank into the Atlantic in 1890.

Revealed by winter waves and wind

Not a single trace of the McKenzie was seen again for almost 136 years, but seasonal conditions in the area finally made it possible.

“Beach erosion during the winter months is common at Island Beach State Park and is part of a natural, cyclical process. Each year, high-energy waves and seasonal storms remove sand from the shoreline, resulting in narrower beaches and steeper profiles,” Island Beach State Park officials wrote on social media. “Most beaches recover from the erosion during the calmer summer months—but for now, this winter’s erosion has revealed a glimpse into the park’s maritime history.”

Island Beach State Park staff are keeping an eye on the weathered, wooden framework until maritime archaeologists can further examine the discovery. While they’re fine with admiring the unique find at a distance, they also issued a warning to any would-be historical plunderers.

“Touching or removing any part of these resources is prohibited. Violations are subject to summonses issued by the New Jersey State Park Police,” they cautioned.

The post Winter storms uncover 19th-century shipwreck on New Jersey beach appeared first on Popular Science.

A stable posture helps dogs (and humans) stand still, walk, and run without falling. In order to maintain stability, the muscles rely on visual cues and the body’s sense of its own position. For humans, external sounds may also influence our body’s stability, with high-pitched frequencies linked to destabilization and white noise linked with stabilization. However, not many studies have examined how sounds affect animals’ posture and stability.

In the new study, a team at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria, measured changes in balance in 23 pet dogs upon hearing both happy and angry human voices. To do this, they placed the dogs on a pressure-sensing platform that picked up the dogs’ small movements.

When the team tallied the individual changes of all 23 dogs, the responses varied. Happy voices were linked with destabilization for 57 percent of the dogs. Surprisingly, happy voices were also linked to destabilization for 43 percent of the dogs tested. Angry human voices were associated with the most severe destabilization in 30 percent of dogs, while 70 percent did not show any changes to their balance.

According to the team, these findings suggest that both happy and angry human voices can trigger an emotional response that affects a dog’s balance. However, the sample size is small, so additional research on a larger pool of dogs is needed to draw major conclusions. Future studies could explore if an animal’s prior experience affects its reactions, and if freezing in response to happy voices is related to waiting for their human to approach. 

The post Angry yelling can throw a dog off balance appeared first on Popular Science.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By: Jess Boddy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Early ice skates were made of bone

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

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

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

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

The first metal skates

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

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

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

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

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

Ice skates meet mass production

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

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

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

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

Ice skates keep developing

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

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

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

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

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

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

In The History of Every Thing, Popular Science uncovers the hidden stories and surprising origins behind everyday things.

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

We first met LEGO’s new SMART Play and Smart Blocks back at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. These enhanced sets use embedded SMART Tags, SMART Minifigures, and responsive SMART Bricks to add interactive digital elements to play sets without requiring the use of a screen. So, kids (or adults who still enjoy fun) don’t need to pair the Smart Bricks to a phone or tablet to take them out of the imaginative space. Now, LEGO has a total of eight SMART Play sets for pre-order and they’re Star Wars-themed. It looks like those credit card bills we racked up during the holidays are going to have to wait a little longer to get paid off.

What is LEGO SMART Play?

LEGO SMART Play is LEGO’s attempt to make physical bricks behave a little more like a game without putting a screen in front of a kid’s face. The sets use embedded RFID-style tags and simple motion sensors hidden inside certain bricks and Minifigs. When pieces move, tilt, or combine in specific ways, the system recognizes what’s happening and triggers built-in responses, like sounds or physical feedback, directly from the model. There’s no app running the show and no screen to stare at.

LEGO SMART Play Star Wars sets (pre-order now)

LEGO SMART Play: Luke’s Red Five X-Wing

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SMART Play: Luke’s Red Five X-Wing is one of the most important sets in the lineup because it’s a full All-In-One kit. That means it actually includes the electronics that make SMART Play work, not just the bricks around them. Inside the box you get a rechargeable SMART Brick, two SMART Minifigures, and a handful of SMART Tags that act like physical “instructions” the system can read.

The SMART Brick snaps directly into the X-Wing’s structure. When the ship is tilted, moved, or interacted with, the brick detects that motion and responds with sounds and feedback. It makes engine noise when you swoop it through the air, blasts when you pull a firing lever, and produces different reactions depending on which minifigure is placed nearby. The SMART Minifigures (including Luke and R2-D2) have embedded identifiers, so the brick knows who’s in the cockpit and changes its behavior accordingly.

The SMART Tags are flat, printed tiles that tell the system what role a section of the build is playing—fuel, repairs, weapons, communications, and so on. Move a tag, swap it, or combine it with a different action, and the brick responds. Because it includes the SMART Brick and charger, Luke’s Red Five X-Wing can also act as the hub for other SMART Play Compatible sets. Once you have this one, you can expand the collection by adding cheaper sets that don’t include electronics of their own but still plug into the same interactive system.

LEGO SMART Play: Throne Room Duel & A-Wing

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SMART Play: Throne Room Duel & A-Wing is the most complex—and most self-contained—set in the first wave. Unlike the smaller expansion kits, this one is an All-In-One package that includes two SMART Bricks, making it capable of running multiple interactive elements at the same time without relying on another set.

One SMART Brick anchors the Emperor’s throne room, where physical actions like swiveling Palpatine’s chair or staging a lightsaber duel trigger sound effects, music cues, and character reactions. The second brick lives in the A-Wing starfighter, adding motion-based audio feedback when the ship is flown, tilted, or maneuvered. Because each SMART Brick tracks nearby SMART Minifigures and tags independently, the set can juggle parallel play.

LEGO SMART Play: AT-ST Attack on Endor

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SMART Play: AT-ST Attack on Endor is a Compatible set, meaning it’s designed to extend LEGO’s interactive system rather than power it on its own. There’s no SMART Brick included here. Instead, the set relies on SMART Tags and a SMART Minifigure to feed information to a SMART Brick borrowed from an All-In-One kit. On its own, the set plays like a traditional LEGO Star Wars battle pack. Its real value shows up once it’s connected to an existing SMART Play system, where it functions as a reactive environment rather than a standalone toy.

LEGO SMART Play: Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter

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SMART Play: Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter is a smaller All-In-One set that includes a single SMART Brick, making it a self-contained way to try LEGO’s interactive system without committing to a larger build. The SMART Brick slots directly into the TIE Fighter and handles motion sensing, sound playback, and character recognition. Compared to the bigger All-In-One kits, this one is more focused and less theatrical. It’s primarily about vehicle play rather than scene-building, but it still pulls double duty: on its own, it works as an entry point into SMART Play, and later it can donate its SMART Brick to power larger Compatible sets once the collection grows.

LEGO SMART Play: Luke’s Landspeeder

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SMART Play: Luke’s Landspeeder is the most stripped-down set in the SMART Play lineup, and that’s by design. It’s a Compatible kit, meaning there’s no SMART Brick in the box. Instead, it includes a single SMART Tag and a SMART Minifigure meant to interact with a SMART Brick borrowed from one of LEGO’s All-In-One sets. When paired with a SMART Brick nearby, moving the vehicle or swapping tags can trigger sound effects and reactions.

LEGO SMART Play: Yoda’s Hut and Jedi Training

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SMART Play: Yoda’s Hut and Jedi Training is a Compatible scene-building set focused on character interaction rather than vehicles. It does not include a SMART Brick, instead relying on two SMART Minifigures and two SMART Tags to interact with a SMART Brick pulled from an All-In-One kit. When paired with a nearby SMART Brick, actions like repositioning Luke, flipping training components, or swapping tags can trigger contextual audio responses tied to Jedi training rather than combat. Don’t worry, it still leaves lots of room for you to do the Yoda impression you’ve been practicing since you were a kid.

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SMART Play: Mos Eisley Cantina is a Compatible set that does not include a SMART Brick, instead using two SMART Minifigures and three SMART Tags to feed information to a SMART Brick sourced from an All-In-One kit. When paired with a SMART Brick, moving characters in and out of the space or swapping tags can trigger layered audio responses like background chatter, music cues, or character-specific reactions.

LEGO SMART Play: Millennium Falcon

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SMART Play: Millennium Falcon is a Compatible set that leans into scale and ensemble play rather than introducing new hardware. It does not include a SMART Brick, but it does ship with four SMART Minifigures and four SMART Tags, making it the most technical expansion in the lineup.

The Falcon itself is a mid-sized, sturdy build designed to be played with. When paired with a SMART Brick from an All-In-One set, those movements translate into contextual feedback: hyperspace-style audio cues, character reactions, and environmental sounds triggered by proximity and tag placement.

How to pre-order LEGO SMART Play Star Wars sets

LEGO hasn’t announced an exact ship date yet, but all eight SMART Play Star Wars sets are available to pre-order now and will ship some time in March.

The post The first Lego Star Wars sets to support the SMART Brick start shipping in March, but you can pre-order them right now appeared first on Popular Science.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reddit is still going strong as the self-styled ‘front page of the internet’, and now Digg is back—led by original co-founder Kevin Rose, together with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. The idea is straightforward and largely the same as before: To be a place where users showcase the most interesting content on the internet.

The new Digg went live for a select number of testers in April 2025, and this month, the doors opened to the general public. The site does still have a ‘beta’ label and continues to be a work in progress. Here’s how to get started, and the features you can explore once you’ve signed up.

Signing up and diving in

Point your web browser at Digg.com, and you can see the basic layout of the relaunched site. You’ve got a feed of posts in the center, some featured posts and communities on the right, and more communities (represented by icons) on the left. Click anywhere you like to have a look around.

Digg is very much trying to emulate the success of Reddit (and the original 2000s Digg). Posts can be replied to, bookmarked, shared, and upvoted or downvoted. To get involved with these interactive features, and to submit posts of your own, you need to sign up for a free account.

There should be a big Signup / Login button at the top of the Digg interface, and if you click on this, you’ll be able to submit an email address and choose a username. You can add extra information (and an avatar image) to pad out your profile, and tell people more about yourself, but you only need an email address and username to get started.

You can then customize your Digg experience with content that you’re actually interested in. Open up any of the communities on the site, and you can click Join (on the right) to sign up for updates. You can see a list of posts in the communities you’re subscribed to by clicking the Digg icon (top left) then My Feed. Switch to All Digg to see posts from the site more generally.

Both the My Feed and All Digg buttons come with drop-down arrows just next to them—click either of these arrows to open up a small menu that lets you sort posts in chronological order, or based on their popularity on the site (as you join more and more communities, a chronological feed can feel a little overwhelming).

Interacting with Digg communities

If you see a post that deserves some promotion—a web link or a point of view that you’re interested in, for example—click the upvote button (the up arrow) underneath it. If you see something you’re not interested in, dislike, or feel is spammy, use the downvote button (the down arrow). Posts that get upvoted (or ‘dugg’) more than others will be promoted more widely on the site.

You can comment too, by clicking in the Add a comment box under any post. As well as text, you can add GIFs or other images using the icons on the right. Comments can be upvoted and downvoted as well, so if you’re not being helpful or respectful, be prepared for your contributions to be downranked (or even reported). You might also want to check out the Digg Community Guidelines.

It’s easy to submit posts of your own, though it’s probably a good idea to spend some time lurking and getting used to the vibe of a particular community before you add a post of your own. Click New post up at the top of the feed, and you’ll then need to choose the community you’re contributing to, and add a title and some text.

Further down the screen you can add images and link blocks—note that if you add a link block, then the title of the post will be automatically filled out for you based on what you’re linking to (though you can still edit it). When everything looks good, click Publish Post to put it live.

As the number of interactions you have on the site increases, the little notifications button (the bell icon, lower left) will come in handy. If you click your profile avatar (lower left) and then Account settings, you can configure how you want notifications to work on the site, as well as change up the Digg layout as it’s shown in your browser.

The post Digg is back to take on Reddit, and you can use it now appeared first on Popular Science.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ask Us Anything answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions—from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. So, yes, there’s a reason cats love boxes and no, hot workout classes usually aren’t better. If you have a question for us, send us a note. Nothing is too silly or simple.

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

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Full Episode Transcript

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

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

Newscaster: Schools already announcing closures for tomorrow… 

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

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

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

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

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

LB: No, silly question. 

SD: Thank you. 

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

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

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

SD: But it’s different from actual hail. 

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

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

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

SD: And then how about freezing rain? 

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

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

LB: Ouch. 

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

We may even feature your question in a future episode. 

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

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

LB: Welcome back. 

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

LB: Ooh. The plot thickens, 

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

LB: Go on. 

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

LB: Ooh, interesting. 

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

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

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

LB: Ooh. 

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

LB: Those are so many beautiful words. 

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

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

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

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

SD: Whoa, that’s so cool. 

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

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

SD: That’s so wild. 

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

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

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

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

SD: Gotcha. And then what about freezing rain? 

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

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

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

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

SD: Ooh, love a food analogy. 

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

SD: Yum. 

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

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

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

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

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

SD: Oh, I love local news. 

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

SD: Is it really hard to predict winter weather? 

LB: It can be, especially freezing rain. 

SD: Yeah. Why is that? 

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

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

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

LB: Absolutely. 

SD: What makes it so dangerous?

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

SD: Yikes. 

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

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

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

SD: I mean, I guess that makes sense. 

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

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

SD: That’s a great analogy. 

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

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

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

LB: Oh my goodness. What? 

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

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

The U.S. government censored the weather?

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

LB: Because clouds can be spies? 

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

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

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

LB: Whoa. 

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

LB: Even during dangerous storms? 

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

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

LB: Cryptic and terrifying. 

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

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

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

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

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

LB: Of course, we were involved. 

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

LB: So when did the weather get uncensored? 

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

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

SD: Exactly. Forecasts really save lives. 

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

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

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

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

This week’s episode was also co-produced by our very own Laura Baisis and is based on an article she wrote for Popular Science. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fruit of the Loom’s distinctive logo includes a delicious-looking assortment of fruit. Some people, including the reality-questioning posters on the r/Retconned subreddit, will swear on all that is dear to them that the logo once also included a horned bowl called a cornucopia.

A recent Snopes article summarized this confusion, explaining that misremembering around the logo dates back decades. The imagined cornucopia is just one of many examples of the Mandela effect, named for the once-common misconception that the South African civil rights leader had died in prison in the 1980s, when in fact he passed away at the age of 95 in 2013.  

The Mandela effect is a communal example of a false memory. False memories are recollections of events that didn’t occur or facts that aren’t real. They are a particularly strong type of memory error, and some researchers contend that false and true memories are indistinguishable. But shared false memories of global events are only one small example of the broader phenomenon of false memory.

Academics have strongly debated how common these memories are, but everyone agrees that they do happen. In this story, we’ll explore what false memories are, why they happen, and what experts still don’t understand about them.  

There are two kinds of memory: episodic and semantic

Our memory can be roughly divided into two subtypes: episodic and semantic. Episodic memory concerns autobiographical events that have happened to us: Think going to Disneyland, eating dessert last Wednesday, or feeling sick after eating too much dessert last Wednesday. 

Semantic memories are recollections of facts or general knowledge. There are more well-known examples of communal false memories, or the Mandela effect, for semantic memories. That’s likely because there are few shared autobiographical experiences that would create a communal, semantic memory—only so many people will remember your fifth birthday party, for example.

That said, false memories do occur in personal, episodic memory. In one study, researchers used manipulated images to present volunteers with false evidence that they had taken a hot air balloon ride as a child. Some participants later said they vividly remembered the ride, which never occurred, and described it in detail. 

False memories have also featured in court cases where testimony from childhood abuse survivors has been questioned as potentially false. Researchers acting as expert witnesses in these cases have engaged in fierce debate around how likely it is that trauma survivors may develop false memories of abuse that never happened. 

Misremembering v. a false memory

Our memories are not set in stone. Instead, they are built on shifting sands. Processes like re-encoding can update old memories over time, and memories may differ slightly each time we retrieve them. 

“Our memories are really like a filtered-down version of the original experience,” said Wilma Bainbridge, a psychologist at the University of Chicago who studies memory. “When you call that memory back to mind, you’re bringing back that compressed version.”

On top of this, our brains can’t store every single detail of our lives. Instead, they often add in missing details based on what we might expect from a given memory. We might add a set of beach umbrellas to a holiday scene from our childhood, because of how often the two appear together elsewhere. 

There isn’t a hard line differentiating a false memory and simply misremembering where you put your keys. But, in general, false memories are completely made up rather than a small memory error. In the above beach example, misremembering that there were umbrellas doesn’t make the entire memory false.

How do false memories form?

A classic psychology study that tests how false memories might form is the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) test. Volunteers will be presented with a list of words—for example, pupil, classroom, exam, teacher—that all have a key semantic “lure” word. The researchers will then test whether the participant misremembers the original list as featuring the lure—in this case, the word “school.”

Fuzzy trace theory (FTT) suggests that this confusion happens because we store two forms of memory. One is a direct representation of the original memory, and the other is based on a rough “gist” of the memory. Researchers think false memories tap into the “gist” version of the memory, especially when verbatim information is missing.

An alternative theory, called activation-monitoring theory (AMT), suggests that when a person studies a list of words, it activates a memory that “spreads” to related words, like the lure word. 

When the lure is linked closely enough to the list words, researchers believe that the memory of looking at the list and the memory of the lure word become entangled, which explains why people taking the DRM test often swear that they remember seeing the lure word in the original list. Psychologists also believe that repetition, age, and lack of sleep can influence how likely it is that false memories will form. 

Some false memories remain a mystery

Bainbridge’s own research into the Mandela effect couldn’t find a single satisfying explanation for how the effect forms, but did identify that some images are simply harder to accurately recall than others. 

“We think it’s something about how that image fits in with the map of all of the images we have seen or how our brain understands the visual world,” said Bainbridge.

Regardless of how false memories form, Bainbridge says that they are a natural part of the human experience and that forgetting things, especially traumatic memories, can be helpful. If you’re worried about false memories, remember one thing: while we might often have fuzzy or unclear memories, complete false memories of events that never occurred don’t happen very often.

“False memories are actually still very rare,” said Bainbridge. “But that’s why when we encounter these false memories in the wild, like the Mandela effect, that’s why they feel so jarring.”

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’s a false memory? Psychologists explain how your brain can lie. appeared first on Popular Science.

According to a study published in the journal ACS Nano, researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed an alternative solution that not only whitens teeth, but repairs them, too. Instead of harsh chemicals, the new method relies on vibrations.

The team swapped peroxide for their new ceramic powder creation called BSCT. To make it, they heated a solution of strontium and calcium ions as well as barium titanate. If shaken quickly enough (such as with an electric toothbrush), the mixture generates a tiny electric field through what’s called the piezoelectric effect. While commonly associated with guitar amplification and electric cigarette lighters, piezoelectricity also creates ROS chemical reactions that are similar to peroxide bleach.

After artificially staining human teeth with coffee and tea, researchers applied BSCT and saw visible whitening after four hours of utilizing an electric toothbrush. By 12 hours of brushing, the teeth were nearly 50 percent whiter than control teeth brushed with saline. Not only that, but BSCT actually regenerated damaged dentin and enamel thanks to healing deposits of barium, calcium, and strontium layered atop the teeth.

A second experiment involved rats fed with high-sugar diets. Researchers brushed the rodents’ teeth for one minute per day over four weeks, then measured their oral microbiomes. They discovered the BSCT powder killed common mouth bacteria such as Porphyromonas gingivalis and Staphylococcus aureus while also reducing inflammation.

The team hasn’t incorporated BSCT powder into an actual toothpaste yet, but hope to experiment with combinations in the future. In the meantime, they believe their alternative to harsh whitening products may soon find their way into dentist offices and stores.

The post New whitening powder activates with your electric toothbrush appeared first on Popular Science.

The random find occurred along the waterfront of Mettams Pool near the western Australian city of Perth. Local resident Elisha Blott noticed a broken shell fragment in the sand with an abalone’s telltale rough front and pearlescent back. The mollusk also included a strange accessory, however. Fused to the strong, calcium carbonate shell was a small, plastic tag with the number 5247 etched in red ink.

“I immediately saw the bright ID tag and was really intrigued. I’d never seen a shell with a tag before,” Blott told Yahoo News on January 24.

To help solve the mollusk mystery, Yahoo News contacted Western Australia’s Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD). There, DPIRD research scientist Jamin Brown quickly knew exactly what they were looking at—and what it meant for a multiyear scientific study. 

“The tag numbers are linked to records in our database that contain key information about each individual abalone,” Brown explained.

The abalone known as 5427 is only one of 7,000 originally raised as roe, then tagged and deposited across three locations near Perth beginning in 2023. Each four-digit tag corresponds to a sea snail’s record featuring its date of birth, length and age when it was tagged, as well the date and location of its release. To attach each tag, researchers mounted the plastic label to a stainless steel spring they then placed on the growing edge of an abalone shell. Over multiple months in hatchery tanks, the shell slowly grew to encase the spring and keep the tag in place.

After around three years growing in the warm Australian waters, many of the molluscs are now large enough for recreational fishers to catch. Or, in Blott’s case, to wash ashore for beachgoers to discover.

“The tagging and release of tagged abalone has ceased, but the monitoring of the abalone will continue into the future,” Brown added.

The DPIRD is now encouraging anyone in the area to report their own tagged abalone finds through an easy-to-use online portal.

“If people find a tagged abalone, we urge them to take a clear photo of the abalone shell next to a ruler, ensuring the numbered tag is visible, and send it to DPIRD, along with details of date capture/location found,” said Brown.

As DPIRD starts to amass its abalone updates, scientists will gain a better understanding of how the endangered species is growing and surviving in the wild.

The post Mysterious, numbered mollusk discovered on Australian beach appeared first on Popular Science.

Editor’s picks

ReadyWise Emergency Food Supply (120 servings) $74 (68% off)

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ReadyWise Emergency Food Supply (120 servings) is a great place to start. At 120 servings, it’s a straightforward way to add some redundancy to your household food plan without becoming the neighborhood bunker guy. $73.99 (68% off).

ReadyWise Powdered Eggs Bucket $114 (25% off)

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ReadyWise Powdered Eggs Bucket (144 servings, 25-year shelf life) is the kind of pantry staple that pays off in both emergencies, but it can also be useful during regular life. Powdered eggs pull double duty for baking and cooking, which is a nice upgrade over yet another pouch of mystery pasta. $114.45 (24% off).

ReadyWise Freeze-Dried Diced Chicken $70 (42% off)

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ReadyWise Freeze-Dried Diced Chicken (16 servings) is an easy way to make a stash feel like actual meals. Toss it into soup, rice, noodles, or whatever shelf-stable situation you’ve got going on, and suddenly dinner looks less bleak. $69.99 (42% off).

On-sale emergency food deals

Variety buckets and big kits

• ReadyWise Emergency Food Supply (120 servings) $73.99 (68% off)
• ReadyWise Emergency Food Supply (124 servings + bonus) $84.99 (31% off)

Protein and cooking staples

• ReadyWise Powdered Eggs Bucket (144 servings, 25-year shelf life) $114.45 (24% off)
• ReadyWise Freeze-Dried Diced Chicken (16 servings) $69.99 (42% off)
• ReadyWise Butter Powder (#10 can, 204 servings) $25.49 (15% off)

Fruits and veggies

• ReadyWise Freeze-Dried Fruit & Vegetable Bulk Storage (104 servings) $88.99 (11% off)
• ReadyWise Freeze-Dried Whole Blueberries (28 servings) $25.99 (21% off)
• ReadyWise Freeze-Dried Peas (17 servings) $24.56 (28% off)

Not on sale (regular price bulk options)

Soups, chili, and comfort meals

• ReadyWise Cream Base Soup (6-pack) $49.99
• ReadyWise Hearty Chili Soup Mix (6-count) $29.94
• ReadyWise Chicken Gumbo Mix (4-pack) $55.00
• ReadyWise Cream of Mushroom Soup (4-pack) $79.99
• ReadyWise Chicken With Rice Soup Mix (4-pack) $143.96
• ReadyWise Chicken Tortilla Soup (4-pack) $74.96
• ReadyWise Vegetable Beef & Barley Soup Mix (4-pack) $117.96
• ReadyWise Cheddar Potato Soup Mix (6-count) $29.94
• ReadyWise Creamy Potato Soup Mix (6-count) $29.94
• ReadyWise Tomato Basil Soup Mix (4-pack) $59.16
• ReadyWise Minestrone Soup Mix (4-pack) $61.96
• Minestrone Soup Mix (6-count) $24.99
• ReadyWise Broccoli Cheese Soup Mix (4-pack) $65.96
• ReadyWise French Onion Soup (4-pack) $59.96
• ReadyWise Macaroni & Cheese (4-pack) $77.96

Breakfast, grains, and drink mixes

• ReadyWise Breakfast Bucket (120 servings) $113.22
• ReadyWise Daybreak Coconut Blueberry Multi-Grain (6-count) $44.38
• ReadyWise Chocolate Royale Shake (6-pack) $72.99

Fruits, snacks, and desserts

• ReadyWise Cookie Dough Medley (6-pack) $36.88
• ReadyWise Freeze-Dried Cosmic Berries Candy Bites (6-pack) $36.99
• ReadyWise Old Fashioned Apple Crisp (6-pack) $24.98
• ReadyWise Dried Apple Chips (can) $43.98
• ReadyWise Freeze-Dried Bananas (6-ct case) $22.99
• ReadyWise Freeze-Dried Sweet Apples (6-pack) $24.99
• ReadyWise Freeze-Dried Raspberries (#10 can) $34.99
• ReadyWise Freeze-Dried Raspberry Chocolate Bites (6-pack) $24.99
• ReadyWise Organic Freeze-Dried Pineapples (6-pack) $41.79
• ReadyWise Freeze-Dried Peaches (6-pack) $29.89
• ReadyWise Freeze-Dried Sliced Strawberries (6-pack) $25.99

Outdoor meals and savory add-ons

• ReadyWise Switchback Spicy Asian Style Noodles (6-pack) $44.38
• ReadyWise Teriyaki & Chicken Meal (2-pack) $55.88
• Wise Company Teriyaki Chicken & Rice (2-pack, single-serve) $21.98
• ReadyWise Outdoor Pro Pasta Alla Vodka With Chicken (single pouch) $13.48
• ReadyWise Freeze-Dried Corn (23 servings) $24.99

Gear and extras

• ReadyWise Multi-Function Flashlight $32.99
• ReadyWise Emergency Food Supply (124 servings, 3-pack) $311.95

Related PopSci reading

• Build the ultimate natural disaster survival kit
• How to make a prepper go-bag
• How to build a bug-out bag (even if you’re not a prepper)
• Seven other ways to purify water in an emergency
• The best solar generators for 2026 (tested and reviewed)

The post Stock up on ReadyWise emergency food supplies during this Walmart flash clearance sale appeared first on Popular Science.

The most recent CSC update adds more than 400,000 unique compact and extended X-ray sources, as well over 1.3 million individual X-ray light detections collected through 2021. The latest examples from CSC include an image the Galactic Center, the area surrounding the supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A* that anchors our Milky Way galaxy home. The image encompasses around 60 light-years of space, which NASA describes as a “veritable pinprick” in the night sky. Despite its comparatively small size, the final result required combining 86 separate images totaling over 3 million seconds of observation time. Within this, Chandra detected more than 3,300 individual X-ray sources.

While the observatory’s information is indispensable for other ground and space telescopes to study new areas of the galaxy, much of the raw data is essentially invisible to the human eye. Similar to previous projects, NASA used “sonification” techniques to convert observations into ethereal audio clips to better illustrate their grandeur. To compliment the view of Sagittarius A*, NASA also provided a sonification of 22 years of space sounds. Repeat observations are given different notes, resulting in a cosmic choir of tones showcasing the vastness of Chandra’s capabilities. If that weren’t enough, the audio clip is also layered onto a map of the Milky Way. Over nearly two-and-a-half minutes, viewers can watch as each X-ray detection is pinpointed within the galaxy, with larger circles representing locations with more frequent observations.

Chandra’s initial mission was only scheduled to last five years, but has continued to surprise astronomers by outperforming their wildest expectations. Despite a period of funding uncertainty in 2024, it appears that the observatory will continue shedding light on the galaxy for years to come.

The post Gaze into the Milky Way’s black hole with NASA’s ‘back catalog’ of X-ray data appeared first on Popular Science.

There are currently more than 11 registered patents for backpack umbrellas, and their designs range from simple extendable parasols that reach out from standard backpacks to giant shell-like hoods that cover your entire head. There are full-body umbrellas that make you look like you’re walking around in a hamster ball, there are shoe umbrellas for keeping you dry when you’re wearing open-toe footwear, and even personal vehicles to escort you through inclement weather (at some point in the not-too-distant future). 

Despite the creativity, these attempts at innovation are still cumbersome and, well, frankly impractical. But John Tse, an engineer and filmmaker who runs the I Build Stuff YouTube channel, has really thought outside the box with his fascinating flying umbrella. 

The opposite of a cartoon character walking around with a tiny raincloud hovering over their head, Tse’s invention utilizes drone technology to keep your head covered without the need to hold anything, wear anything, or strap yourself into anything. 

Originally designed and prototyped in 2024, Tse provided a detailed behind-the-scenes update on the project just a few weeks ago to his audience of 160K+ subscribers (and beyond). In the video, Tse describes how his initial drone umbrella relied on a handheld controller, making it impractical and limited in its usability. Responding to customer suggestions, he set out to add a tracking system so that the flying umbrella could simply follow its user around, hovering just a few feet above their heads. 

The process involved testing different tracking systems, from cameras, LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) sensors and even, facetiously, a remote human operator. 

Tse is exhaustive in the details–explaining how flight controllers and Raspberry Pi single-board computers were used to test methods of identifying and eventually following specific targets. The inventor also manages to be skillful, clever, and funny in the storytelling. At one point, he lectures to himself in an empty classroom. 

Not to spoil the ending of a video titled “I Built a Fully Autonomous Flying Umbrella,” but Tse is able to achieve his goal…sort of. As he says at the end of the video, “I’d be lying if I said this project turned out perfect, but at the same time I would also be lying to say that this moment didn’t bring us joy.” 

Tse’s channel is sparse (he currently has 16 videos) but they clearly represent someone asking the questions no one else is. Apart from “wouldn’t it be cool to have a flying autonomous umbrella?” he ponders adding aimbots to a bow and arrow or building a working flight stick out of LEGO. 

Even in its imperfect state, Tse’s umbrella invention is fun, potentially practical, and certainly better than…whatever this is.

The post We may not have flying cars, but we have flying umbrellas appeared first on Popular Science.

Prepare to be captivated by a bald eagle family once again. Internet-famous duo Jackie and Shadow laid their first egg of 2026 on January 23. Fans can tune in 24/7 to the Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBBV) livestream on YouTube.

Jackie and Shadow returned to their California nest in October with the first stick delivery of the season. The stick and fluff delivery continued through fall as the pair reinforced their high-in-the-trees home in preparation for nesting season. They even set a record on November with at least 28 sticks delivered on the 22nd–the previous record was 25.

The bald eagle couple captivated the internet last year with a dramatic journey. Jackie laid three eggs that all hatched successfully in early March. On the evening of March 13, a strong snowstorm hit the area, dumping up to two feet of snow and battering the nest with strong winds. The next morning, only two of the chicks were visible on the live cam. FOBBV later confirmed the passing of one of the chicks. The surviving chicks were eventually named Sunny and Gizmo after 54,000 names were submitted by fans with the final names selected by students at a local elementary school.

Jackie’s first egg of the new year comes with many questions from viewers that FOBBV helpfully answered on Facebook.

Q: Why is Jackie not incubating her egg?

A: Jackie is practicing delayed incubation, like many Bald Eagles before her. She will not incubate full time until the whole clutch is laid. You may see her hovering over the egg for periods of time, protecting it from the elements and predators. Delayed incubation allows chicks to hatch closer together, meaning that the younger chick will have a better chance of survival.

Q: How long is too long to be off the egg?

A: The answer depends on ambient temperature, humidity, wind chill factor etc. In other words, we do not really know. We do know that eggs consist mostly of water, which has a high thermal capacity, meaning that they do not cool off very fast. Some eagles were observed leaving their eggs for hours in sub-freezing temperatures, their eggs hatched successfully. Incubation temperature for Bald Eagle eggs is about 98F, ideal storage temperature is about 55F, Jackie’s body temperature is about 105F.

Q: Where is fluff? Do we need more fluff?

A: Jackie and Shadow tend to bring soft nesting materials just before and after eggs are laid. They usually bring grasses and reeds from the shoreline or leaves and pine needles from the forest. Since Big Bear Valley consists primarily of mixed conifer forests and oak woodlands, our nest looks quite different from nests built in other ecosystems.

Tune into the FOBBV YouTube page to watch Jackie and Shadow anytime, but remember that nature is unpredictable.

The post Bald eagle chick watch 2026: Jackie lays first eggs appeared first on Popular Science.

“Many grandparents provide regular care for their grandchildren—care that supports families and society more broadly,” Flavia Chereches, a study co-author and Ph.D. candidate at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, said in a statement. “An open question, however, is whether caregiving for grandchildren may also benefit grandparents themselves. In this research, we wanted to see if providing grandchild care might benefit grandparents’ health, potentially slowing down cognitive decline.”

To take a deeper dive into how grandparenting affects the brain, Chereches and her team examined data from 2,887 grandparents. All of the participants were over the age of 50 (the average age was 67) and took part in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Between 2016 and 2022, the volunteers completed cognitive tests and answered survey questions three times.

The survey asked whether or not the participants had provided care for a grandchild at any point during the past year. It also asked them detailed questions about how frequently they provided childcare and what kinds of care they provided. Types of childcare included watching their grandchildren overnight, caring for grandchildren when they were sick, playing or engaging in leisure activities with them, helping with homework assignments, driving grandchildren to school and activities, and preparing meals.

Overall, the team found that those who spent time with their grandchildren scored higher on tests of memory and verbal fluency compared with those who didn’t. These results held even after adjusting for age, health, and other factors. More involved grandparents also scored higher on these tests regardless of the frequency and type of care they provided.

Additionally, they saw that grandmothers who provided care experienced less decline on cognitive tests over the course of their study compared with those who didn’t. 

“What stood out most to us was that being a caregiving grandparent seemed to matter more for cognitive functioning than how often grandparents provided care or what exactly they did with their grandchildren,” said Chereches. “More research is needed to replicate these findings, yet, if there are benefits associated with caregiving for grandparents, they might not depend on how often care is provided, or on the specific activities done with grandchildren, but rather on the broader experience of being involved with caregiving.”

Chereches added that future studies could explore the effects of family context and other variables on the aging brain. 

“Providing care voluntarily, within a supportive family environment, may have different effects for grandparents than caregiving in a more stressful environment where they feel unsupported or feel that the caregiving is not voluntary or a burden,” Chereches concluded. 

The post Babysitting grandkids can boost brain health appeared first on Popular Science.

A quick practical note: REI says members can return most items within 1 year, while non-members generally have 90 days, with some exceptions. Co-op gear is also a smart place to start if you want dependable layers that you can beat up, wash, and keep using.

Editor’s picks

REI Co-op Campwell Rain Jacket – Men's $59.83 (62% off)

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REI Co-op Campwell Rain Jacket – Men’s is the kind of shell you can grab for pretty much any trip outside, especially if you layer it. It uses a 2-layer waterproof, breathable nylon fabric with a PFAS-free DWR finish, and it is critically seam-sealed to help keep water from sneaking in.

REI Co-op Trailmade Pants – Men's $34.83 (56% off)

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REI Co-op Trailmade Pants – Men’s are tactical gear that you could wear on the regular. You get a durable nylon-and-spandex blend with UPF 50+ sun protection, a PFAS-free DWR finish for light drizzle, and a gusseted crotch for easier scrambling.

REI Co-op Trailmade Fleece Jacket $29.83 (57% off)

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For a midlayer you can throw on for camp, errands, or an overly aggressive office air conditioner, grab the REI Co-op Trailmade Fleece Jacket – Men’s. It’s a midweight fleece with a roomier cut for layering, plus zippered hand pockets and two interior drop-in pockets for gloves, snacks, or whatever you swore you weren’t going to carry.

Men’s REI Co-op deals

Jackets & warm layers

• REI Co-op XeroCloud 3L Rain Jacket – Men’s $129.93
• REI Co-op Campwell Rain Jacket – Men’s $59.83 (62% off)
• REI Co-op Powderbound 3-in-1 Jacket – Men’s $194.93 (30% off)
• REI Co-op Powderbound Anorak – Men’s $131.93 (30% off)
• REI Co-op Trailmade Rain Jacket – Men’s $48.93
• REI Co-op Rainier Rain Jacket – Men’s $69.93 (30% off)
• REI Co-op Teris GTX Rain Jacket – Men’s $119.83
• REI Co-op Trailmade Insulated Hoodie – Men’s $59.83 (40% off)
• REI Co-op Trailmade Fleece Jacket – Men’s $29.83 (57% off)
• REI Co-op Campwell Fleece Pullover – Men’s $62.93 (30% off)
• REI Co-op 650 Down Hoodie – Men’s $99.93 (33% off)
• REI Co-op 650 Down Jacket – Men’s $89.93 (30% off)
• REI Co-op Magma 850 Down Hoodie – Men’s $179.93 (31% off)
• REI Co-op Magma 850 Down Jacket – Men’s $159.93 (33% off)
• REI Co-op Stormhenge 850 Down Hybrid Jacket – Men’s $179.93 (36% off)
• REI Co-op Stormhenge 850 Down Hybrid Parka – Men’s $199.93 (33% off)
• REI Co-op Powderbound Insulated Jacket – Men’s $159.93 (30% off)
• REI Co-op Campwell Down Parka – Men’s $159.93 (30% off)

Pants & shorts

• REI Co-op Trailmade Pants – Men’s $34.83 (56% off)
• REI Co-op Campwell Pants – Men’s $38.83 (51% off)
• REI Co-op Sahara Stretch Convertible Pants – Men’s $49.83 (50% off)
• REI Co-op Sahara Convertible Pants – Men’s $44.83 (50% off)
• REI Co-op Powderbound Insulated Snow Pants – Men’s $110.93 (30% off)
• REI Co-op Powderbound Insulated Bib Snow Pants – Men’s $152.93 (30% off)
• REI Co-op Powderbound Cargo Snow Pants – Men’s $124.93 (30% off)
• REI Co-op Active Pursuits 7″ Shorts – Men’s $27.93+
• REI Co-op Sahara Cargo Shorts – Men’s $44.93+

Tops & base layers

• REI Co-op Lightweight Long-Sleeve Crew Base Layer Top – Men’s $19.83
• REI Co-op Lightweight Crew Base Layer Top – Men’s $14.83 (58% off)
• REI Co-op Campwell Flannel Shirt – Men’s $51.93 (31% off)
• REI Co-op Campwell Henley Shirt – Men’s $24.83 (50% off)
• REI Co-op Sahara Long-Sleeve Solid Shirt – Men’s $49.93 (29% off)
• REI Co-op Sahara Long-Sleeve T-Shirt – Men’s $19.83 (50% off)
• REI Co-op Sahara T-Shirt – Men’s $16.83 (52% off)
• REI Co-op Active Pursuits Long-Sleeve T-Shirt – Men’s $23.93
• REI Co-op Active Pursuits T-Shirt – Men’s $20.93 (40% off)
• REI Co-op Swiftland Long-Sleeve Running T-Shirt – Men’s $30.93

Running gear

• REI Co-op Swiftland 5″ Running Shorts – Men’s $17.83 (70% off)
• REI Co-op Swiftland 5″ Running Shorts – Men’s $41.93 (35% off)
• REI Co-op Swiftland 7″ Running Shorts – Men’s $41.93 (35% off)
• REI Co-op Swiftland Half-Zip Running Pullover – Men’s $62.93 (30% off)
• REI Co-op Swiftland Thermal Running Half-Zip Pullover – Men’s $62.93 (30% off)
• REI Co-op Swiftland Thermal Running Crew Pullover – Men’s $55.93 (30% off)
• REI Co-op Swiftland Windshell Running Jacket – Men’s $62.93+
• REI Co-op Swiftland Insulated Running Jacket – Men’s $69.93+
• REI Co-op Swiftland Running T-Shirt – Men’s $27.93
• REI Co-op Swiftland Grid Running T-Shirt – Men’s $30.93+
• REI Co-op Swiftland Grid Running Tank Top – Men’s $19.83 (56% off)
• REI Co-op Swiftland Running Vest – Men’s $48.93 (30% off)

Accessories

• REI Co-op Thindown Sorona GTX Gloves – Men’s $85.93 (31% off)

Gear and accessories (unisex and all-gender)

Packs & bags

• REI Co-op Flash 18 Pack $27.93+
• REI Co-op Flash 18 Print Pack $27.93+
• REI Co-op Flash 18 Pride Edition Pack $27.93 (30% off)
• REI Co-op Flash 22 Print Pack $41.93+
• REI Co-op Trail 2 Waist Pack $20.93+
• REI Co-op Trail 2 Print Waist Pack $20.93+
• REI Co-op Canvas Tote $13.93 (30% off)

Sleeping pads

• REI Co-op AirRail Plus Sleeping Pad $79.93 (31% off)
• REI Co-op Helix Insulated Air Sleeping Pad $103.93 (39% off)
• REI Co-op On x BEAMS x REI Co-op Helix Insulated Air Sleeping Pad $103.93 (39% off)

Accessories

• REI Co-op Active Pursuits 6″ Shorts $14.83 (70% off)
• REI Co-op Swiftland Run Quarter Socks $10.93 (31% off)
• REI Co-op Lightweight Logo Beanie $15.93 (36% off)
• REI Co-op Flash Power Stretch Gloves $27.93
• REI Co-op Campwell Down Mittens $37.93 (31% off)
• REI Co-op Thindown Sorona GTX Mittens $85.93 (31% off)
• REI Co-op Flash Merino Wool Lightweight Quarter Socks $11.93 (33% off)
• REI Co-op Flash COOLMAX EcoMade Lightweight Crew Socks $12.93 (32% off)
• REI Co-op Flash COOLMAX EcoMade Lightweight Quarter Socks $10.93 (36% off)
• REI Co-op COOLMAX EcoMade Lightweight Hiking Crew Socks $11.93+
• REI Co-op COOLMAX EcoMade Lightweight Hiking Quarter Socks $10.93+
• REI Co-op Norseland Merino Wool Crew Socks – 2 Pairs $22.93 (30% off)
• REI Co-op On The Trail Cap $22.93+
• REI Co-op Sahara Bucket Hat $29.93+
• REI Co-op Sahara 5-Panel Sun Hat $30.73 (38% off)
• REI Co-op Sahara Path Hat $36.73 (26% off)
• REI Co-op Sahara Paddler Hat $29.73 (26% off)
• REI Co-op Active Pursuits Cap $23.93+
• REI Co-op Expedition Cap $30.93 (31% off)
• REI Co-op Pride Cotton Ball Cap $20.93 (30% off)
• REI Co-op Swiftland TT Run Crew Socks – Seconds – 2 Pairs $22.73 (37% off)
• REI Co-op Swiftland TT Run Crew Socks $11.93 (34% off)
• REI Co-op Swiftland Run Low Socks – Seconds – 2 Pairs $22.73 (24% off)
• REI Co-op Logo Crew Sweatshirt $26.83 (51% off)
• REI Co-op Logo Sweatpants $26.83 (51% off)

More PopSci reads to pair with these deals

• The best packable rain jackets
• How to stay dry and safe while hiking in the rain
• Winter camping is a great way to see more nature and fewer people
• How to stay warm while sleeping in the frigid outdoors
• The right way to wash your waterproof clothes

The post REI is blowing out its branded jackets, fleeces pants, and more for clearance prices during this winter sale appeared first on Popular Science.

These fish and a number of other species are known as “walking sharks” for their ability to traverse both the seafloor and land with their fins. But as of now, that’s no longer the coolest thing about this rather adorable predator. Epaulette sharks’ energy use didn’t change during their reproduction cycle, as described in a study recently published in the journal Biology Open. 

“Reproduction is the ultimate investment … you are literally building new life from scratch,” Jodie Rummer, a marine biologist at James Cook University and co-author of the recent study, said in a university statement. “We expected that when sharks make this complex egg, their energy use would shoot up. But there was no uptick in energy use, it was completely flat,” she adds. They “appear to have adapted their physiology to be able to optimise their energy use.”  

Researchers broadly believe that reproduction is  a major  energy investment for a majority of species. The new study, however, represents the first time scientists have recorded sharks’ reproductive cycle’s direct energetic expenditure (or metabolic cost). The sharks in the new study were living in captivity, and the researchers analyzed the rates of their oxygen consumption as a way to track their metabolic rate. 

Furthermore, the team monitored shifts in blood and hormones while the mother  sharks laid eggs, explained lead-author Carolyn Wheeler, also from James Cook University.. The sharks proved to be, once again, unphased. 

“Everything was remarkably stable, so this research challenges our fundamental assumptions about chondrichthyan fishes (sharks, rays, skates and chimaeras),” Wheeler said. 

During times of environmental stress, many species will choose between reproduction and survival. However, the epaulette shark may still continue to produce eggs, even under major  stressors. According to the team, this is encouraging since healthy sharks equal healthy reefs and ecosystems. 

“This work challenges the narrative that when things go wrong—such as warming oceans—that reproduction will be the first thing to go,” Rummer explained. 

We need to understand the extent of this small shark’s apparent significant resilience in the face of the aforementioned issue, she added. 

“Sharks have been around since before the dinosaurs and have already shown incredible resilience to the earth’s changing climate,” Madoc Sheehan, media liaison officer and a senior lecturer at James Cook University, who is not one of the study’s authors , tells Popular Science, “these new observations reinforce [our understanding of] their capacity to endure change.”

Moving forward, the team plans to  investigate how much it takes wild epaulette sharks to produce eggs.

The post ‘Walking sharks’ lay eggs without breaking a sweat appeared first on Popular Science.

Now you can watch these brilliant snow-white birds while avoiding the actual snow with a 24/7 live cam. This live cam is run by Friends of Midway Atoll via memberships and donors.

Laysan albatrosses (or mōlī in Hawaiian) return to this same nesting site every year and will reunite with their mates. If all goes well, the pairs will lay a single egg and stay on the atoll to nest. 

As nesting progresses, you may see a single egg dotting some of the nests. In the distance, you may also catch a glimpse of ka‘upu (black-footed albatross), the endangered koloa pōhaka (Laysan duck), manu-o-Kū (white terns), kolea (Pacific golden plovers), and ʻakekeke (ruddy turnstones). Koaʻeʻula (red-tailed tropic birds) may also be seen doing their “magnificent aerial mating dance.”

In the evening hours on Midway Atoll—around 11 p.m. or midnight on the East Coast—nunulu (Bonin petrels) arrive by the thousands to take care of their nest sites in underground burrows. 

The nesting birds also include a record-breaker named Wisdom. The 75-year-old albatross is known as the world’s oldest breeding bird and was spotted on the atoll in November 2025. She was first identified and banded in 1956 by wildlife biologist Chandler Robbins after she laid one egg. Wisdom has since produced 50 to 60 eggs and as many as 30 chicks have fledged in her lifetime. In 2024, Wisdom became the world’s oldest known wild bird to successfully lay an egg at the estimated age of 74. 

The post Snowed in? Watch albatrosses nest on a sunny Pacific island instead appeared first on Popular Science.

Wherever human beings go, we introduce plants and animals from other places, both deliberately and accidentally. However, not all introduced species have the same impact on their new environments. 

An introduced species is only considered invasive if it poses a threat to native species, for example by competing with them for limited resources. In the absence of natural predators, invasive populations may swell far beyond what their new environment can support. Fortunately for those concerned about the ecological impact of these interloping plants and animals, it just so happens that a lot of them are pretty tasty. 

At the end of each semester, Barney challenges his students to bring dishes made with invasive ingredients to a class potluck. “I like to say it’s where we eat what we’ve been studying,” he says. 

Last semester’s banquet included cookies made with prickly pear cactus fruit, invasive in many desert regions, and sausage made from feral hogs, which Barney describes as “delicious.” Students voted on the most creative and best-tasting entries. This time, the winner in both categories was a riff on spinach-and-artichoke dip, using invasive kudzu vine leaves in place of spinach.

Many invasives have culinary value

In some cases, invasive species were introduced because they’re tasty. Barney points to the Mediterranean fig tree, introduced to California for cultivation and now invasive there, as one example. 

There are also many invasives that have a well-known culinary value in their place of origin, but were introduced for a different reason. Kudzu is one example. Introduced in the United States as an ornamental garden plant, it has since become known as the infamous “vine that ate the South” for its uncontrollable growth. But in its native Asia, kudzu’s leaves are eaten as a vegetable, and its potatoey roots provide starch for jellies such as Japanese kuzumochi. 

Barney notes that in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, where the invasive blue catfish has done damage, there’s currently an effort to industrialize harvesting catfish for food. “That’s the kind of scale that I think can have a meaningful impact,” he says. The effects of a large-scale commercial food operation on an invasive species would be far greater than occasional foraging by individuals. 

But such efforts are still relatively rare, and not all invasives are seen as a desirable food source, or even recognized as being edible. This has sometimes led environmentalists to get creative with marketing. In Illinois, invasive Asian carp meat has been sold under the name “copi” (for its copious numbers) since 2021, due to perceptions of carp as an inferior food fish. 

In Florida, the Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF) has been hosting “Lionfish Derbies” since 2009, in which divers compete to see how many invasive lionfish they can spear. These events culminate in free lionfish tastings. According to REEF, “tastings give the public a chance to see how delicious lionfish are and encourage the consumption of lionfish in local restaurants. Derbies also draw media attention to the Atlantic lionfish invasion and help promote development of the commercial lionfish market.”

Eating invasives teaches you about local ecology

Does this mean that if we all start eating invasives, it will completely get rid of them? Not exactly. “For the general, curious forager, or somebody looking to try something different, the impact [of eating invasives] on the environment is probably small to negligible,” says Barney. However, he adds, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t eat invasives. We just shouldn’t think of eradicating them as being the sole reason to do so.

While large-scale harvesting of an invasive species for food, such as blue catfish in the Chesapeake, can make a difference, eating invasives is not going to totally remove them any more than other strategies. Total elimination of an invasive species tends to only happen in more isolated environments, such as on small islands. Invasive zebra mussels have been successfully removed from Lake Waco, a manmade reservoir in Texas, as of 2021, but remain a problem in major bodies of water like the Mississippi River. In most cases, invasives are here to stay, and removal efforts focus on population management, minimizing impact by keeping numbers down. 

Barney describes eating invasives as “a really nice entry point into understanding the species in your surroundings, and a different perspective on the role that they can play in our lives.” To eat invasive species, you have to first learn what species are invasive in your area and how to identify them. This means that eating invasives is a way of learning more about your environment and the relationships between the organisms that live there—including you.

How to find edible invasives

Commercial sale of edible invasives is often small-scale and localized. Once you know what invasives there are in your area, you can keep an eye out for them on restaurant menus and in local markets. But your best bet for sampling an invasive might be to forage it yourself (where permitted). Experts like “Forager Chef” Alan Bergo offer information on how to incorporate both native and invasive species collected from the wild into your diet. 

Barney cautions beginning foragers that “anytime you’re harvesting something from the wild, identification is first and foremost.” He recommends resources like iNaturalist and its Seek app for species identification. Users of iNaturalist can also upload their species sightings to a collaborative global map. This serves as a valuable database for scientists like Barney who study the spread of invasives. 

When asked his personal favorite invasive to eat, Barney recommends autumn olive. This silvery shrub, native to Asia, is a common invader of open grassland in the eastern United States. “It makes these really tasty fruits,” says Barney. Autumn olive’s tiny red berries are bitter when fresh, but their pulp can be processed with sugar into jams and sauces.

Eating invasives is not so much about eradication as it is about awareness. “Once you have your eyes exposed to the number of invasive plants and animals in the environment there, you can’t not see them,” says Barney. We may never be able to eat every single invasive out of existence. But eating some of them can make us see our surroundings in a whole new way. 

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 Should you eat invasive species? We asked an ecologist. appeared first on Popular Science.

Ninja Foodi Smart XL 6-in-1 Indoor Grill with Air Fry (DG551) $149.99 (50% off)

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True kitchen people love a multitasker. With this single appliance, you can cook high-heat, grill-style food indoors, then instantly pivot to air-frying sides. It’s also built for cooking without babysitting. The probe makes it useful when you’re trying to nail doneness without hovering over the kitchen like it’s a science experiment.

More Ninja deals to pair with it

If you’re already upgrading your countertop arsenal, here are a few other Ninja discounts worth stacking underneath the main deal.

More cooking appliances

• Ninja 12-in-1 Smart Double Oven with FlexDoor (DCT451) $299.99 (30% off)
• Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker PRO 8.5-qt Multi-Cooker (MC1001) $109.99 (35% off)
• Ninja Foodi Everyday PossibleCooker Pro 6.5-qt (MC1101) $99.99 (23% off)
• Ninja XL Single Basket Air Fryer 5.5-qt (AF150AMZ) $99.99 (44% off)
• Ninja Crispi Pro 6-in-1 Glass Air Fryer (AS101LG) $249.99 (11% off)

Blenders and juicers

• Ninja Professional Blender 2.0 1200W (BR201AMZ) $89.99 (18% off)
• Ninja Compact Kitchen System 1200W (AMZ493BRN) $129.99 (28% off)
• Ninja BlendBOSS Personal Smoothie Blender + Tumbler (DB301CYBRN) $99.99 (29% off)
• Ninja NeverClog Cold Press Juicer, 2nd Gen (JC151SL) $129.99 (13% off)
• Ninja NeverClog Cold Press Juicer, 2nd Gen (JC151NV) $129.99 (13% off)

Frozen drinks

• Ninja SLUSHi Max XXL Smart Frozen Drink Maker (FS605) $349.99 (30% off)
• Ninja SLUSHi Professional Frozen Drink Maker (FS301OR) $269.99 (27% off)

Cookware and knives

• Ninja Foodi NeverDull Premium Knife System, 17-Piece (K32017) $299.99 (25% off)
• Ninja EverClad Stainless Steel Cookware Set, 7-Piece (C99007) $169.99 (15% off)
• Ninja Ceramic Pro Cookware Set, 10-Piece (CW39010MM) $249.99 (17% off)

The post Amazon just dropped this $300 Ninja indoor grill/air fryer down to $150 on clearance appeared first on Popular Science.

You can fight back through. Both Apple and Google have built anti-spam technologies. Apply some of these settings and features, and you should have fewer spam calls interrupting your day.

If you’re on an iPhone

Introduced in iOS 26, call screening will put a robot voice between you and unknown callers, asking them why they’re ringing. You’ll be able to see their response transcribed into text on your screen, and you can then decide whether or not to pick up.

You can set this up by heading into Settings in iOS, then tapping Apps > Phone. Under Screen Unknown Callers, you’ve got three options: Never (calls will ring as normal), Ask Reason for Calling (the call screening feature), and Silence (unknown callers don’t trigger a ring, and always go to voicemail).

There’s also the Unknown Callers toggle switch further down. With this enabled, a missed call from a number not in your contacts gets shifted to a separate list in your Phone app (these calls won’t appear on the main list of recent calls).

Of course this depends on you having all your known contacts up to date. If someone you know has a new number and you haven’t yet assigned it to a name in the Contacts app, now’s the time to do it. If you don’t, you risk calls from friends, family, and work colleagues being silenced or sent through to call screening.

Another step you can take is to block numbers once you know they’re spam. Scammers will often change up their numbers, but blocking can still help. In the Phone app, tap on any blank avatar from any spam caller (on the left), then choose Block Contact. 

You can also enlist the help of a third-party spam-blocking app. We don’t have space for a full round-up here, but some of the most popular include RoboKiller, Hiya, and Truecaller. It’s also worth checking with your carrier to see what security apps they provide, such as the ActiveArmor app offered by AT&T.

If you’re on an Android phone

On Pixel phones, open the Phone app, then click on the menu (three horizontal lines, top left) and choose Settings > Caller ID and spam. Enable the See caller and spam ID toggle switch, and incoming calls that Android recognizes as being from suspected scammers will be flagged as such before you answer.

There are a couple more options on the Settings screen worth checking out. Tap Scam Detection, and if you enable this feature, your phone will warn you during a call if it sounds like a scam—though Google warns this isn’t 100 percent foolproof. There’s a full description of how it works on the setting page.

Pixel phones also offer a screening feature—so you can get unknown callers to state their business, and see a transcript of their answer, before picking up. From the Settings screen inside the Phone app, tap either Spam and Call Screen or Call Screen. You can choose from three levels of protection, based on the descriptions given. Note that calls from saved contacts are never screened, unless you do this manually from the incoming call menu.

Samsung Galaxy phones also have a Caller ID and spam protection toggle switch you can enable in the Phone app (tap the three dots in the top right corner and pick Settings). This means potential spam calls will be flagged before you answer them, though (for now at least) the call screening feature remains a Pixel exclusive.

You can also block numbers on any Android phone, just as you can on an iPhone. Open Settings in the Phone app, then tap Blocked numbers (Pixel) or Block numbers (Galaxy): You can automatically block calls from unknown numbers here (numbers not in your contacts list), and block specific numbers that you know to be scammers.

And as on iOS, there are numerous third-party spam blockers you can turn to if you need extra help: They include Call Blocker, Should I Answer?, and CallApp. Your carrier might offer additional tools you can consider as well, including the Call Filter Plus package that’s available from Verizon.

The post How to stop annoying spam calls appeared first on Popular Science.

Meet the blue button jelly (Porpita porpita). It’s a cnidarian (a group of mainly marine invertebrates, like corals, jellyfish, and Portuguese man-of-war), grows to be around an inch wide, and calls l many tropical and subtropical oceans home. The funky little creature consists of a float—the round part featured in the photograph—and a number of tentacles, some of which have stinging cells. 

So far, so good. Researchers believe it’s a “quasi colonial organism,” Larry Madin, a jelly expert at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, tells Popular Science. 

“It’s considered sort of a colony because there are tentacles that some of them are for catching food, they have stinging cells on them. Some of them are defensive tentacles to sort of attack things that might attack this, and then it also has some reproductive structures that are suspended from the bottom of this float,” he explains. 

But the situation is far from certain. 

“People have been confused for a long time about is it really a colonial animal, you know, like a coral is, or is it just a single animal that has all these multiple parts?” Madin says. 

Blue button jellies appear to grow from a single larva that eventually changes into an adult. Unlike the Portuguese man-of-war, which have a number of parts that catch and digest food, the enigmatic blue button jellies secure prey with many tentacles and digest it in a central stomach area. 

On the topic of food, they themselves are also prey. One of their predators is a swimming snail called Glaucus, that looks like it popped straight out of a fantasy world, too (Avatar’s Pandora, specifically). Rather appropriately, it’s also known as the blue dragon. 

It remains to be seen if or when the blue button jelly’s status as a quasi colonial organism will be clarified. In the meantime, just keep floating…just keep floating…just keep floating, floating, floating.

The post Perplexing blue button jelly looks like something out of ‘Lord of the Rings’ appeared first on Popular Science.

Adam Mastroianni, writing in his newsletter Experimental History, put this elegantly: “If you booted up a super-smart AI in ancient Greece, fed it all human knowledge, and asked it how to land on the moon, it would respond, ‘You can’t land on the moon. The moon is a god floating in the sky.'” 

It’s an interesting thought experiment. What if you intentionally limited the training data? Could you create an AI system that responds as though it’s from a period in the past?  What could that reveal about the psychology or everyday experiences of the people from that era?

That’s exactly what Hayk Grigorian, a student at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, had in mind when he created TimeCapsuleLLM. This experimental AI system was trained entirely on texts from 19th century London. The current release is based on 90 gigabytes of text files originally published in the city of London between 1800 and 1875. 

This is, to be clear, very much a hobby project. The sample-generated text on GitHub isn’t consistently coherent, though Ars Technica did report that it has correctly surfaced names and events from the 1800s. When prompted to continue the sentence “It was the year of our Lord 1834,” the model recounted a protest: “the streets of London were filled with protest and petition,” going on to mention the policies of Lord Palmerston, who was the foreign secretary at the time. 

It’s an interesting experiment, but could such a thing actually be useful? Potentially.
An opinion piece published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) by collaborators including Michael E. W. Varnum, a professor of psychology from the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University, is an interesting read. It proposes that models like this could be a way to study psychology outside a modern context. The paper refers to such AI models as Historical Large Language Models, or HLLMs for short, and states that psychology researchers could use them to study the thinking of people in past civilizations. 

“In principle, responses from these faux individuals can reflect the psychology of past societies, allowing for a more robust and interdisciplinary science of human nature,” the paper says. “Researchers might, for example, compare the cooperative tendencies of Vikings, ancient Romans, and early modern Japanese in economic games. Or they could explore attitudes about gender roles that were typical among ancient Persians or medieval Europeans.”

It’s an interesting idea, though the paper does acknowledge this could be tricky. 

“All LLMs are a product of their training corpora, and HLLMs face challenges in terms of sampling, given that surviving historical texts are likely not representative samples of people who lived in a particular period,” the paper admits, stating that historical texts tend to be written by elites, not everyday people. “As a result, it could be hard to generalize from these models.” 

And there are other things to keep in mind. Research from Ghent University in Belgium shows that the ideology of the people who work on an LLM shows up in the text those models generate. There’s every reason to suspect the same problem will apply to LLMs designed to reflect past cultures. 

So there are difficulties. Only time will tell if such models end up being used in psychological research, or remain the domain of hobbyists. 

The post This AI thinks it’s the 1800s appeared first on Popular Science.

It turns out that stingrays gracefully gliding along waves near seabeds aren’t doing it to look cool. Instead, the fancy flapping is likely an evolutionary adaptation for stability and durability while swimming. The team behind the mechanical fin believes those same principles could one day be applied to designing energy-efficient underwater mapping robots. And they aren’t alone in admiration for rays. Other researchers are already attempting to use insights from stingray swimming to develop stealthier next-generation underwater vehicles. 

The robotic fin study was published this week in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Putting stingray swimming to the test  

When it comes to swimming, not all ray species are alike. Massive manta rays and other pelagic ray species tend to hover near the ocean surface using a flapping motion. Benthic rays, like stingrays who spend their time in more shallow waters, rely on a different undulating movement which often resembles the motion of the very waves they’re swimming in. This second wavy swimming style in particular has fascinated scientists for its apparent simplicity and efficiency. Past research on that swimming method has shown that the undulating motion used by stingrays actually appears to recycle energy from surrounding water more efficiently than brute-force fin flapping.

UCR mechanical engineer and paper co-author Yuanhang Zhu had a hunch that the divergence in swimming styles might stem from the different environments ray species inhabit. To test that theory in controlled environments, the team set out to create the robotic fin. By testing the fin under different conditions, the researchers could observe how physical forces in the water affected its movement. The final fin design measured only 9.5 millimeters (about 0.4 inches) thick and was molded from silicone rubber. They also constructed a large water tunnel designed to simulate ocean flow.

During their experiments, the team placed the robot both near the surface of the tunnel and lower, closer to the artificial sea floor. In both cases, they were looking to see how various levels of ocean flow impact the amount of lift imparted on the fins. Understanding lift is important because it  plays a key role in determining whether or not objects moving through space can stay level.  For example, birds flying close to the ground experience positive lift keeping them more level and steady. The researchers expected to see something similar occur for the robotic ray swimming near the sea floor. Instead, the exact opposite happened. Their robot was being sucked downwards.

“This wasn’t what we expected,” Zhu said in a UCR blog post. “Instead of gaining extra lift near the ground, the rays were pulled downward. 

Surprised by the findings, the team made slight adjustments to the robot to try compensate for the negative lift. They found that the downward force could be reduced simply by tilting the robot fin upward by a few degrees. Extrapolating out from that, the researchers suggest that stingrays and other benthic rays naturally swim with a slight upward fin angle, something that wasn’t clear before. During testing with, the stingray-like undulating motion also consistently maintained better clearance from the seafloor than the flapping motion used by pelagic ray species.

“Nature seems to have already solved the problem,” Zhu added. 

Robots and underwater vehicles of the future

This isn’t the first time engineers have tried to apply a ray’s unique biology to the world of robotics. In 2018, engineers from UCLA designed a 10 millimeter long tissue-based stingray-style robot made up of a mix of heart cells and flexible electrodes. Researchers from Harvard made an arguably even stranger stingray biohybrid robot in 2017, powered by rat muscles and propelled forward by a propulsion system triggered by light. 

Elsewhere, researchers at the University of Washington are already exploring ways to apply stingray swimming techniques to next generation underwater vehicles. Ultimately, they  hope to adapt rays’ structural characteristics to create vehicles that are both more energy-efficient and quieter than current submarines and submersibles.

When it comes to designing mechanisms of the future, the natural world remains undefeated. 

The post Stingray-inspired robot cracks the mystery of how rays swim appeared first on Popular Science.

Every 76 years, a comet from the depths of our solar system reaches its nearest point to Earth. Its orbit is anything but new, however. Chinese observers recorded the appearance of a bright light traveling from east to north in the night sky as far back as 240 BCE, while Roman historian Cassius Dio described a similar sounding event in 12 BCE. It wasn’t until 1705 that the English astronomer Edmond Halley concluded that these regularly returning sights weren’t different objects, but a single comet traveling along a predictable trajectory. Today, his discovery is reflected in both the comet’s everyday name as well as its official classification, 1P/Halley.

But if one really wanted to name the comet after the first person in England to note its significance, some astronomers recommend the honor goes to Aethelmaer of Malmesbury. Also known as Eilmer, the Benedictine monk was already an elderly resident of his abbey when Halley’s comet returned in 1066 CE. However, that particular sighting was of special importance because it’s documented on the famous (and bawdy) Bayeux tapestry. The 770-pound scroll depicts the events surrounding the Battle of Hastings, during which William II invaded England from Normandy, France. The embroidered art also illustrates William II’s victory, as well as his short-lived reign before the last Anglo-Saxon king died in battle.

King William should have seen his demise coming, according to the medieval omen experts of his era. Halley’s comet appeared not long after he assumed the throne, and everyone at the time knew such cosmic sightings warned of impending disaster. Everyone including the monk, Eilmer. 

Simon Zwart, an astronomer at the Leiden University in the Netherlands, realized this while reviewing the writings of the 12th century chronicler, William of Malmesbury. According to William, when Halley’s comet brightened the sky in 1066 CE, it also jotted Eilmer’s memory. The monk recalled first seeing the same event about 76 years earlier in 989 CE.

Based on this account, it technically wasn’t Edmond Halley who first proposed that the comet was making regular reappearances. Then again, it’s somewhat understandable why Eilmer’s claims didn’t gain more traction. After all, this was the monk who is otherwise best known for attempting to fly after reading the Greek myth of Daedalus as a child. To test his own theories, young Eilmer strapped a set of makeshift wings to his hands and feet, then jumped off a tower at Malmesbury Abbey. The confident—if misguided—leap of faith broke both his legs and incapacitated him for the rest of life.

“He used to relate as the cause of his failure, his forgetting to provide himself a tail,” his friend William later wrote.

The post Halley’s comet may need a new, medieval name appeared first on Popular Science.

If you want to keep shopping, there are also some surprisingly aggressive markdowns on other V20 tools (including a $39 high-velocity fan) and a bunch of garage/workshop gear. Everything we pulled from the sale pages is linked below.

Featured deal

Craftsman V20 20V Max 13-in cordless string trimmer kit (2Ah battery + charger) $29.00 (was $129.00, 78% off)

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Yard and seasonal gear

• Craftsman V20 13-in trimmer/edger kit + replacement spool 3-pack (bundle) $55.98 (was $155.98, 64% off)
• Craftsman 5-ft x 2-ft vertical resin storage shed (gray) $279.00 (was $399.00, 30% off)
• Craftsman SB650 28-in three-stage snow blower set + cab + cover (bundle) $1,494.98 (was $1,994.98, 25% off)
• Craftsman Performance 28 two-stage snow blower set (bundle) $1,594.98 (was $2,094.98, 24% off)
• Craftsman Select 24-in 2-stage snow blower set (bundle) $1,140.92 (was $1,240.92, 8% off)
• Craftsman Select 24-in 2-stage snow blower + leaf blower (bundle) $1,048.00 (was $1,148.00, 9% off)
• Craftsman Select 24-in 2-stage snow blower + V20 blower snow-cleanup set (bundle) $1,028.00 (was $1,128.00, 9% off)
• Craftsman Select 24-in 2-stage snow blower + V20 chainsaw (bundle) $1,058.00 (was $1,158.00, 9% off)
• Craftsman Select 24-in 2-stage snow blower + chainsaw (bundle) $1,148.00 (was $1,248.00, 8% off)

V20 power tools and kits

• Craftsman V20 12-in high-velocity industrial fan (3-speed) $39.00 (was $129.00, 70% off)
• Craftsman V20 RP brushless 7-1/4-in circular saw (tool only) $99.00 (was $189.00, 48% off)
• Craftsman V20 RP brushless 4.5-in angle grinder (tool only) $99.00 (was $149.00, 34% off)
• Craftsman V20 RP brushless 3-in cut-off tool (tool only) $99.00 (was $139.00, 29% off)
• Craftsman V20 brushless 1/2-in drill/driver kit (battery + charger) $99.00 (was $129.00, 23% off)
• Craftsman V20 RP brushless 1/2-in drill/driver kit (2 batteries + charger) $119.00 (was $149.00, 20% off)
• Craftsman V20 brushless 1/4-in impact driver kit (battery + charger) $99.00 (was $129.00, 23% off)
• Craftsman V20 4-tool combo kit (2 batteries + charger) $189.00 (was $239.00, 21% off)
• Craftsman V20 8-tool combo kit (2 batteries + charger) + soft case $459.00 (was $479.00, 4% off)
• Craftsman V20 cordless pet stick vacuum $149.99 (was $199.99, 25% off)
• Craftsman V20 RP brushless reciprocating saw (tool only) $99.00 (was $129.00, 23% off)
• Craftsman V20 RP brushless oscillating multi-tool (tool only) $99.00 (was $129.00, 23% off)
• Craftsman V20 cordless oscillating multi-tool kit (11-piece) $119.00 (was $139.00, 14% off)
• Craftsman V20 18-ga brad nailer (battery/charger not included) $129.00 (was $159.00, 19% off)
• Craftsman V20 16-ga finish nailer (battery/charger not included) $189.00 (was $219.00, 14% off)
• Craftsman V20 18-ga brad nailer kit (battery + charger) $219.00 (was $259.00, 15% off)
• Craftsman V20 16-ga finish nailer kit (battery + charger) $329.00 (was $379.00, 13% off)
• Craftsman V20 narrow crown stapler (battery/charger not included) $169.00 (was $189.00, 11% off)
• Craftsman 10-in variable-speed cordless polisher $49.00 (was $59.00, 17% off)
• Craftsman V20 4.0Ah battery + charger kit $99.00 (was $159.00, 38% off)
• Craftsman V20 6Ah battery $84.00 (was $139.00, 40% off)

Tool sets and hand tools

• Craftsman Versastack 242-piece mechanics tool set (SAE + metric) w/ hard case $99.00 (was $219.00, 55% off)
• Craftsman Overdrive 121-piece mechanics tool set (SAE + metric) w/ hard case $169.00 (was $199.00, 15% off)
• Craftsman Overdrive 80-piece mechanics tool set (SAE + metric) w/ hard case $109.00 (was $149.00, 27% off)
• Craftsman Overdrive 64-piece mechanics tool set (SAE + metric) w/ hard case $99.00 (was $119.00, 17% off)
• Craftsman Overdrive 11-piece metric combination wrench set (6-point) w/ hard case $69.98 (was $74.98, 7% off)
• Craftsman Overdrive 11-piece SAE combination wrench set (6-point) w/ hard case $69.98 (was $74.98, 7% off)
• Craftsman 7-piece 12-point metric combination wrench set w/ pouch $14.98 (was $25.98, 42% off)
• Craftsman Hi-Vis tape measure set (12 ft / 16 ft / 25 ft) $14.98 (was $24.98, 40% off)
• Craftsman ProReach 16-ft tape measure $13.98 (was $22.98, 39% off)
• Craftsman folding retractable utility knife (3-blade) $5.98 (was $10.98, 46% off)
• Craftsman 16-oz ball peen hammer $19.98 (was $24.98, 20% off)
• Craftsman 48-in aluminum box beam level (3-vial) $27.98 (was $39.98, 30% off)

Garage and workshop setup

• Craftsman 2000 Series 32-in freestanding steel garage cabinet (red) $259.00 (was $349.00, 26% off)
• Craftsman 2000 Series 28-in wall-mounted steel garage cabinet (red) $129.00 (was $179.00, 28% off)
• Craftsman Premium 2000 Series 52-in 8-drawer rolling tool cabinet (black) $579.00 (was $724.00, 20% off)
• Craftsman Premium 2000 Series 40.5-in 6-drawer tool chest (black) $369.00 (was $469.00, 21% off)
• Craftsman V-Series 41-in 11-drawer rolling tool cabinet (black) $1,199.00 (was $1,399.00, 14% off)
• Craftsman V-Series 41-in 8-drawer tool chest (E-Coat black) $849.00 (was $999.00, 15% off)
• Craftsman 52-in rolling work bench w/ butcher block top (7 drawers) $349.00 (was $549.01, 36% off)
• Craftsman 63-in rolling work bench w/ butcher block top (9 drawers) $649.00 (was $999.00, 35% off)
• Craftsman 37-in rolling work bench (4 drawers) $249.00 (was $399.15, 38% off)
• Craftsman VersaTrack 20-piece 48-in storage rail system $84.98 (was $100.00, 15% off)
• Craftsman Garage Storage System 2000 Series (bundle) $1,046.00 (was $1,286.00, 19% off)
• Craftsman Garage Storage Organization System (bundle) $2,313.89 (was $2,673.89, 13% off)
• Craftsman S2000 26-in open till tool storage collection (bundle) $558.00 (was $598.00, 7% off)
• Craftsman 13-in plastic toolbox (red/black) $11.87

Big-shop basics: saws, sanders, vacs, and more

• Craftsman 10-in jobsite table saw w/ folding stand $249.00 (was $279.00, 11% off)
• Craftsman 4-in x 36-in benchtop belt sander (5A) $149.00
• Craftsman 10A 6.3-in benchtop jointer $349.00
• Craftsman 5-gallon 4HP wet/dry shop vacuum (with accessories) $59.98 (was $69.98, 14% off)
• Craftsman small dry shop-vac filter bags (3-pack) $9.98 (was $14.98, 33% off)
• Craftsman 3A corded oscillating multi-tool kit (10-piece) w/ case $89.00 (was $109.00, 18% off)

Tankless water heaters

• Craftsman 24kW tankless electric water heater (240V, 4.8 GPM) $299.99 (was $549.99, 45% off)
• Craftsman 18kW Pro-Plus multi-application tankless electric water heater $249.99 (was $439.99, 43% off)
• Craftsman 29kW tankless electric water heater (240V, 5.7 GPM) $349.99 (was $604.99, 42% off)

The post Lowe’s is blowing out this Craftsman cordless string trimmer with battery and charger for just $29 while they last appeared first on Popular Science.

Who is Richard Rolle?

Most people today may not be familiar with Richard Rolle, but he was almost certainly the Late Medieval Era’s most widely read author. One of a handful of writers known as the Middle English Mystics, Rolle was born sometime around 1300 CE in Yorkshire, England, and spent the majority of his adult life as a hermit until his death in 1349, possibly due to the Black Death. 

To give a sense of Rolle’s popularity: over 650 surviving manuscripts contain his writings today. Compare that to around 144 similar archival pieces from Chaucer. His last work in English, The Form of Living, was his most popular at the time, but The Emending of Life would eventually become far more influential. Written in Latin, it was his most circulated book and detailed 12 stages of spiritual life. Think of it as a self-help book for the medieval reader.

“Medieval people struggled with distractions as we do today. They were trying to still their wandering minds,” Timothy Glover, a historian at the University of Bergen in Norway said in a recent profile. “Rolle offered practical strategies to help, and some people treated him like a saint for it.”

The misidentification of ‘MS 25’

Knowing there was likely more to learn about “Richard the hermit” (as he was known), Glover traveled to Shropshire, England, to visit the medieval archives at Shrewsbury School, a private educational institution founded in 1552.

“As a hermit, Rolle probably didn’t have a regular access to an institutional library and he rarely tells us what he’s been reading. To try to find out, I went looking for early copies of his work,” he explained.

After later reviewing his photographs of a manuscript catalogued as “MS 25,” Glover noticed a passage at the end explaining “six different kinds of dreams.”

“I’d seen something similar in one of Rolle’s English texts, The Form of Living, so I compared them and realised they were identical. That was my Eureka moment,” he said.

Scholars first formally described MS 25 during the 1920s, but the work had actually resided in Shrewsbury since its donation to the library in 1607. In 2009, a study of all known remaining copies of The Emending of Life concluded MS 25’s extra passages were added later by an unknown person. According to Glover, the forensic reanalysis detailed in his recent work published in the journal Mediaeval Studies proves otherwise.

Rolle definitely did not handwrite this edition of The Emending of Life himself. Instead, it was produced the same way as almost every other book of the era—by painstakingly copying the text onto new parchment. However, unlike every other remaining version, MS 25 features Rolle’s full, unaltered original draft. But how could experts like Glover be so sure?

Code word: melliphono

According to the historian, the “smoking gun” is a single word: melliphono. Or, more accurately, a single, completely made-up word. It’s also one that appeared in multiple of Rolle’s works and nowhere else at the time.

“Melliphono is a very Rolle word,” said Glover. “He’s all about this idea of spiritual song and experience of angelic heavenly music being the highest experience of God. He had an enormous Latin vocabulary and creatively deployed a huge range of very specific terms for music to explain his ultimate experience of God.”

While more people will likely soon race to examine the major historical discovery, for now the unique copy has only been reread by a single individual.

“I’m the only person since the Middle Ages to have read this knowing that it’s Rolle’s original,” said Glover. “It’s such an important manuscript and it offers a direct connection with an author who deserves far greater recognition.”

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The team from the University of Bath in England and the University of Waterloo in Canada analyzed data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). This long-scale survey of roughly 10,000 households in the United Kingdom measures several economic, social, and psychological variables. The team looked at roughly 14,000 individuals between 1991 and 2024, tracking emotional responses to real-world economic choices including investing, changing jobs, or making health decisions.

They found that this emotional imbalance of focusing more on the potential bad outcomes than the good ones plays a central role in shaping economic behavior. Survey participants who experience stronger negative than positive anticipatory emotions are significantly more likely to avoid risk. They found that the emotional impact of dread is more than six times stronger than the potential happiness they would feel from anticipating equivalent gains. Dread also makes people less likely to wait for delayed positive outcomes like a return on investment, even when that patience may lead to greater rewards.

“Put simply, the emotional pain from anticipating a £10 (about $13) loss is far stronger than savoring the thought of a £10 gain,” Chris Dawson, a study co-author at the University of Bath who researches economics and decision making, said in a statement. “This imbalance shapes how much risk people are willing to take and how long they are prepared to wait, potentially influencing decisions across everyday life, from money and careers to health and wellbeing.”

Additionally, the study confirms that when outcomes are experienced, the losses loom larger than gains. The emotional sting of a loss was roughly twice as strong as that of an equivalent gain. According to the team, this research advances a new psychological theory that links risk and time preferences. This could help explain why those who are more risk-averse also tend to be more impatient.

“We see that risk avoidance and impatience are psychologically connected,” added study co-author and University of Waterloo psychologist Dr. Sam Johnson. “People try to avoid choices with possible negative outcomes and also prefer outcomes to be resolved sooner, in order to minimise the emotional burden they experience – the dread of anticipating bad news.”

The team also found a lot of variation between individuals. Some experience these anticipatory emotions before making a decision far more vividly than others, helping to explain why attitudes about both risk and patience differ so widely. Notably, anticipatory dread’s effects remained significant even after personality traits, mental health, income, and education were accounted for.

The authors believe that the findings have implications for understanding financial decision making, long-term planning, health choices, and other real-world behaviors. 

“The study helps to explain why people often postpone or avoid choices that are objectively beneficial in the long run,” said Dawson. “For example, individuals may delay or avoid medical screening if results take a long time to arrive. Even when screening reduces health risks, the dread of waiting for potentially bad news can discourage testing. Similarly, long waits in areas such as investment decisions can deter engagement simply by prolonging the emotional burden of uncertainty.”

The post It’s not in your head. Fear drives decision making. appeared first on Popular Science.

Older adults can dramatically reduce the amount of ultraprocessed foods they eat while keeping a familiar, balanced diet – and this shift leads to improvements across several key markers related to how the body regulates appetite and metabolism. That’s the main finding of a new study my colleagues and I published in the journal Clinical Nutrition.

Ultraprocessed foods are made using industrial techniques and ingredients that aren’t typically used in home cooking. They often contain additives such as emulsifiers, flavorings, colors and preservatives. Common examples include packaged snacks, ready-to-eat meals and some processed meats. Studies have linked diets high in ultraprocessed foods to poorer health outcomes.

My team and I enrolled Americans ages 65 and older in our study, many of whom were overweight or had metabolic risk factors such as insulin resistance or high cholesterol. Participants followed two diets low in ultraprocessed foods for eight weeks each. One included lean red meat (pork); the other was vegetarian with milk and eggs. For two weeks in between, participants returned to their usual diets.

A total of 43 people began the dietary intervention, and 36 completed the full study.

In both diets, ultraprocessed foods made up less than 15% of the total calories – a significant reduction from the typical American diet, where more than 50% of total calories comes from ultraprocessed foods. The diets were designed to be realistic for everyday eating, and participants were not instructed to restrict calories, lose weight or change their physical activity.

We prepared, portioned and provided all meals and snacks for the study. Both diets emphasized minimally processed ingredients and aligned with the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the U.S. government’s nutrient-based recommendations for healthy eating, while providing similar calories and amounts of key nutrients.

The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released on Jan. 7, 2026, explicitly recommend eating less ultraprocessed food, but the previous versions of the guidelines did not specifically address food processing. Our feeding study design allowed us, for the first time, to examine the health effects of reducing ultraprocessed foods while keeping nutrient levels consistent with recommended targets.

We compared how participants fared while eating their habitual diets with how they responded to the two diets that were low in ultraprocessed foods. During the periods when participants ate fewer ultraprocessed foods, they naturally consumed fewer calories and lost weight, including total and abdominal body fat. Beyond weight loss, they also showed meaningful improvements in insulin sensitivity, healthier cholesterol levels, fewer signs of inflammation and favorable changes in hormones that help regulate appetite and metabolism.

These improvements were similar whether participants followed the meat-based or the vegetarian diet.

Why it matters

Ultraprocessed foods make up more than half the calories consumed by most U.S. adults. Although these foods are convenient and widely available, studies that track people’s diets over time increasingly link them with obesity and age-related chronic diseases such as Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. With older adults making up a growing share of the global population, strategies that preserve metabolic health could support healthy aging.

Most previous feeding studies testing how ultraprocessed foods affect people’s health haven’t reflected real-world eating, especially among Americans. For example, some studies have compared diets made up almost entirely of ultraprocessed foods with diets that contain little to none at all.

Our study aimed to more closely approximate people’s experience while still closely tracking the foods they consumed. It is the first to show that for older adults a realistic reduction in ultraprocessed foods, outside the lab, has measurable health benefits beyond just losing weight. For older adults especially, maintaining metabolic health helps preserve mobility, independence and quality of life.

What’s still unknown

Our study was small, reflecting the complexity of studies in which researchers tightly control what participants eat. It was not designed to show whether the metabolic improvements we observed can prevent or delay diseases such as diabetes or heart disease over time. Larger, longer studies will be needed to answer that.

On the practical side, it’s still unclear whether people can cut back on ultraprocessed foods in their daily lives without structured support, and what strategies would make it easier to do so. It’s also not fully understood which aspects of processing – for example, additives, emulsifiers or extrusion – matter more for health.

Answering these questions could help manufacturers produce foods that are healthier but still convenient – and make it easier for people to choose healthier food options.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

The post Eating less ultraprocessed food supports healthier aging, new research shows appeared first on Popular Science.

But there’s a lot these “aspirational” narratives leave out, like the fact that pre-dawn wake-ups only work if you’re wired for early rising—they can be downright unhealthy if you’re not. 

What is your chronotype?

Sleep and wake-up schedules are based on something called chronotype. Your chronotype is your biological inclination to fall asleep and wake up at certain times. And everyone has a different one: there are larks (early to bed, early to rise), doves (in the middle, this is most people), and owls (late to bed, late to rise). 

Chronotype is not only a blueprint for when you’ll get good sleep, but also for what time your brain works best, and the most appropriate times to eat meals. According to experts, schedules are far from one-size fits all. When we regularly go against our body clock, we end up with a condition called social jetlag.

What is social jetlag?

Social jetlag is the difference in sleep times between work/school days and free days. Coined in 2006 by Professor of Chronobiology Dr. Till Roenneberg at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, the term points to the idea of being between two time zones: that of your body clock and that of society’s clock. 

Social jetlag can arise from continually needing to wake up for work before your body is ready or from staying out too late because your friends are all late-night barflies. The consequences of social jetlag exceed just needing a cup of coffee. According to research, people with chronic social jetlag can suffer from a roster of health problems.

“[For] practically every pathology or health deficit that we look at, the more social jetlag you have, the higher your probability of developing it,” Roenneberg tells Popular Science.

Your biology determines your ideal wake/sleep schedule

Modern society is organized for early chronotypes, a subset of the population that only accounts for approximately 15 percent of people. For the rest of us (doves at 70 percent and owls at 15 percent), our alarm clocks go off in the middle of our biological night. Roenneberg describes this disparity as “biological discrimination.” He says late types have a significant disadvantage at school when they are young.

“The late types are not as good in high school and college as they are later when they can choose their own work times,” he says. And even if night owl students are able to function before their biological morning has even begun, they’re still at an academic disadvantage. They are cheated out of the essential part of their sleep in which their brains consolidate what they learned the day before.

Morning entrance exams for universities and medical schools also skew in favor of early types. And while larks excel in the morning hours, they too are negatively affected by traditional work hours, only later in the day. According to Roenneberg, research has shown that productivity and effectiveness can take a nosedive for early types in the afternoon.

“We have all these early type doctors who actually make a lot of mistakes when it gets to the afternoon,” he says, referencing a 2018 study that examined surgery mortality rates and time of day.

In addition to impacting sleep and alertness, living against your body clock can also cause you to do things at the wrong times. Mealtimes are a good example of this. If you’re an owl or a dove waking up at 5 a.m. for work, then having breakfast at 6 a.m., you’re eating a meal in the middle of your biological night, which can have a deleterious effect on your metabolism. 

This perpetual misalignment makes people with social jetlag more likely to become obese, as well as smoke and drink alcohol. Late chronotypes are dealt the most difficult hand in this way. “For very late types, the chances of developing type two diabetes are higher if they work in a nine-to-five job than if they do a night shift,” Roenneberg says. 

Experts recommend eating when you’re hungry, and not just because it’s “mealtime.” Like for sleep, your body will tell you when it’s time. For late types often forced to run around hours before their cells are awake, it’s okay to skip the lark’s early breakfast time and stash something in your bag for later when hunger strikes.

How to reduce your social jetlag

In an ideal world, all of us would schedule our lives around our chronotype. We wouldn’t use alarm clocks. Instead, we’d wake up with our body and go to work at a time when it’s healthiest to do so. Chronobiologists say the entire social schedule should be re-examined. Until then, however, there are things you can do to slightly adjust your chronotype.

“Light is the most important factor for setting the brain clock,” Roenneberg says. Natural light, to be specific. The human world has disrupted this signal with all the time we spend indoors and our ability to turn on artificial light whenever we want; not to mention our use of screens that emit blue light at all hours. Artificial light’s suppression of melatonin, at night or in the morning,  makes early types earlier and late types later. 

To remedy this, Roenneberg recommends spending time outside. “Get as much light as possible during the day and use as little light—especially blue light—as possible after sunset.” For all types, adhering to the natural light and darkness cycle can help sync your body clock to the sun and reduce your social jetlag.

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