THIS IS OUR TRUCK.
ALL NEW CHEVY SILVERADO This truck’s got game. A new, stronger frame. More intelligent engines that help you tow Powertrain Limited Warranty.† The 2007 Silverado. From Chevy.™ The most dependable, longest-lasting trucks on the road.**
more and stop at the pump less.* And now, every 2007 Silverado® is backed by the GM® 100,000 mile/5-year America, meet your truck at chevy.com THIS IS OUR COUNTRY. THIS IS OUR TRUCK.™
*Vortec MAX shown. EPA est. MPG 15 city/19 hwy. †Whichever comes first. See dealer for details. **Dependability based on longevity: 1981–July 2005 full-line light-duty truck company registrations. Excludes other GM divisions. ©2006 GM Corp. Buckle up, America!
THE NEXT-GENERATION FORMAT FOR HIGH-DEF ENTERTAINMENT With powerful capabilities like full 1080p resolution*, up to 7.1 channels of surround sound, 50 GB of storage capacity and backward compatibility with your existing DVDs, Blu-ray Disc will change the way you WATCH movies, ENJOY music, PLAY games, RECORD high-def content and STORE your favorite files. Best of all, since Blu-ray Disc has the broadest industry support of any high-def format, you’re assured of getting the best high-def content, product choices and overall viewing experience. It’s here! Get the hottest news on Blu-ray content and product availability right now at www.experiencebluray.com
JOB #: BRDCORY61684 spread ad
EMULSION/LINESCREEN: RR PDF/X-1a, SWOP Digital content proof
*HDTV required. As with other optical media devices, user factors and other circumstances may limit Blu-ray Disc playback. Some content may require HDMI-compatible TV for high-definition playback. © Copyright 2006 Blu-ray Disc Association. All rights reserved. Blu-ray DiscTM and the Blu-ray Disc logo are trademarks of the Blu-ray Disc Association. Spider-Man; Motion Picture © 2002 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. Spider-Man Character ® & © 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved. Resident Evil: Apocalypse; © 2004 Davis Films/Impact (Canada) Inc./Constantin Film (UK) Limited. All rights reserved. Underworld: © 2003 Subterranean Productions LLC. All rights reserved. Coming soon on Blu-ray Disc: THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA. NARNIA, and all book titles, characters and locales original thereto are trademarks of C.S. Lewis Pte Ltd. and are used with permission. © Disney/Walden, Fantasia © Disney, The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl © Disney, Finding Nemo © Disney/Pixar. “Scrat” TM & © 2006 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Fantastic 4 and X-MEN character likenesses: TM &© 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved. John Legend © 2006 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT. Harry Potter characters, names and related indicia are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Ent. All Rights Reserved. TM & © DC Comics. SUPERMAN and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © DC Comics. © 2006 Warner Bros. Ent. All Rights Reserved. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
COMING SOON TO BLU-RAY DISC
©2006 SOPUS Products. All rights reserved.
For motor oil, an engine is a complex, dangerous mechanism crammed with parts that move, grind and slam. Life inside its metallic shell is brutal. Fortunately, Pennzoil Platinumt is custom-built to stand up to that brutality.
Find out more about adaptive molecules at PennzoilPlatinum.com.
PS1206FOB_TOCS R1
10/19/06
THE FUTURE NOW
FOUNDED IN 1872
6:44 AM
Page 07
3354269527 p.07
CONTENTS THIS MONTH’S GUIDE TO INNOVATION AND DISCOVERY
DECEMBER ’06
VOLUME 269 #6
41
features
BEST OF WHAT’S NEW 2 0 0 6
BEST OF WHAT’S NEW 2006
Our annual guide to the year’s top 100 products.
41 HOME TECH 48 GADGETS 54 AVIATION & SPACE 62 RECREATION 71 AUTO TECH 80 HOME ENTERTAINMENT 84 ENGINEERING 92 GENERAL INNOVATION 96 HEALTH 102 COMPUTING
71
best of what’s new: POPSCI INNOVATORS
Call it the best of who’s new: The people behind five of this year’s winningest innovations.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: SATOSHI; COURTESY PORSCHE; BOB SAULS; LUIS BRUNO; COURTESY GOODYEAR; COURTESY CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; LUIS BRUNO; COURTESY TOM RILES/BRIAN J. NELSON; JOHN B. CARNETT
45 THE TOOL-DOCTORS ARE ON CALL Tool company Stanley’s R&D people live on job sites, listening to real workers complain. That’s how they knew it was time to reinvent the hammer. By Joe Brown
68 RAPID DEVELOPMENT
Visit Scott Shipley’s man-made rivers, perfectly designed for whitewater thrills. By Tom Colligan
91 THE TAILGATING ARCHITECT
To build the perfect football stadium, Peter Eisenman considered every aspect of the game—including the view from the nosebleed seats. By Gregory Mone
91
101 THE ORGAN FARMER
Anthony Atala has many bladders. No, not in his body—in a lab, made from scratch and ready for transplant to patients. By Elizabeth Svoboda
106 DR. NAIL VS. THE MONSTER
Who ever gave much thought to the simple nail? Ed Sutt did. His new design may keep houses from tearing apart during the next big hurricane. By Tom Clynes
62
84 71
54 48
96
DECEMBER 2006 POPULAR SCIENCE 07
PS1206FOB_TOCS R2 10/19/06 6:10 PM Page 08
338581445 p.08
CONTENTS
129
16
123
on the web
BEST OF WHAT’S NEW 2006
FLYING SOLO The Polecat surveillance plane hides from radar, no pilot required.
REGULARS MEGAPIXELS
16 THE MUST-SEE PHOTOS OF THE MONTH A supernova travels faster than expected. So does a speedboat powered by fat.
HEADLINES 21 ENERGY
Tapping black gold deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico.
24 BIGGER, BETTER, FASTER A 55,000-ton ship and other notable record-breakers. A Tesla coil that can unleash 20 million volts of lightning.
30 SHRINKAGE
Visit popsci.com to see the tech toys on display at our Best of What’s New showcase, plus exclusive behind-the-scenes videos and more!
The lastest weapon against counterfeiters is just one hundredth of an inch tall.
31 ASTRONOMY
A giant umbrella for space telescopes makes it easier to spot distant planets.
32 WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?
Why George Church wants to decode your DNA.
How 2.0
115 YOU BUILT WHAT?!
With a homemade disco floor, you can catch Saturday Night Fever in your basement any day of the week.
123 GRAY MATTER
Theodore Gray’s element-collecting obsession means a free periodic-table poster for you.
124 USE IT BETTER
Turn a pocket-size Internet tablet into a phone that makes calls over Wi-Fi.
127 ASK A GEEK
Dig yourself out from under your inbox.
FYI
129 The sound of genius, fat planets, and the risks of turning wind into watts.
OTHER STUFF
10 FROM THE EDITOR 12 LETTERS 162 THE FUTURE THEN
08 POPULAR SCIENCE DECEMBER 2006
GO TO POPSCI.COM/BOWN AND: Watch writer Tom Colligan brave the waves at the U.S. National Whitewater Center. See the editors test products at POPSCI HQ (warning— someone bleeds).
Catch a glimpse of the world’s fastest street-legal car in action. Download an audio tour of the BOWN Showcase. Enter a sweepstakes to win prizes fit for technophiles.
POPSCI.COM
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY NASA/ESA/THE HUBBLE HERITAGE; THE SIMPSONS TM 2006 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION; COURTESY LOCKHEED MARTIN; JOHN B. CARNETT; COURTESY BUGATTI; COURTESY THEODORE GRAY
COULDN’T MAKE IT TO OUR BIG EVENT IN NEW YORK’S GRAND CENTRAL STATION?
26 ODD INVENTIONS
AS REAL AS IT GETS
CONGRATULATIONS. YOU’VE RIGHTED YOUR PLANE. NEXT UP: EMERGENCY LANDING IN THE JUNGLES OF THE CONGO.
After that, let’s see you rescue an injured climber on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Or take on the world’s best pilots in the Red Bull Air Races. With 23 aircraft and over 50 real-world missions, it’s the most realistic version yet. Whole cities and airports have been faithfully recreated, with a 16X overall improvement in terrain graphics. Suddenly, calling it a “simulator” just doesn’t seem right.
(ACTUAL GAME SCREEN SHOT) © 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and the Microsoft Games Studios logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Intel, the Intel Inside logo, Intel Centrino, and the Intel Centrino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. Take flight with Intel Technology.
PS1206 EdLetter/Masthd 10/14/06 10:41 AM Page 10
1068577644 p.10
FROM THE EDITOR THE FUTURE NOW
Editorial Director Scott Mowbray
Editor Mark Jannot Design Director Sam Syed
SOMETIME IN MID-SEPTEMBER, the editors of this magazine locked ourselves in a poorly ventilated conference room to debate, harangue, expound, and ultimately forge a consensus. What we were doing—for the first time in our 19 years of anointing the year’s top 100 new technologies—was choosing a grand Grand Award winner from the pool of Best of What’s New innovations featured in this issue. It was a brutal exhortatory smackdown, let me tell you, with advocates passionately pleading the merits of some mighty dazzling contenders: the 253mph, 1,001-horsepower, $1.2-million Bugatti Veyron supercar; a $130 laptop designed to bring computing to children in developing countries; the first functional human organ grown in a lab. Tremendous, transformative technologies, all of them, but neither supercar nor simple computer nor synthesized bladder emerged triumphant from the scrum. No, this year’s winner of winners, the top new technology of 2006 is—actually, it’s sitting atop my computer as I type this, and at a glance it doesn’t look particularly special. Resting on its head, it rises to an elevation of about two and a half inches. It’s a nail. Ah, but what the HurriQuake nail lacks in visible high-tech glitz, it more than makes up for in potential influence. The surprising insight that inspired the HurriQuake’s development is that when wood-frame structures collapse in an earthquake or hurricane, it’s the nails that fail first—they pull out, or their heads pull through the wood, or they snap in half at a joint. Yet until engineer Ed Sutt came along, there hadn’t been a significant advance in nail technology in . . . well, pretty much ever. Sutt (a.k.a. “Dr. Nail”) and his team at Bostitch spent six years addressing that oversight. They increased the nail head’s size by 25 percent, added angled barbs to the shaft, twisted the top, and cooked up a high-carbon alloy designed to best balance stiffness and pliability. The finished product fits into existing nail guns and adds just $15 to the price of the average house, but it will double that house’s resistance to high winds and boost its sturdiness against earthquake forces by up to 50 percent. The HurriQuake may not look like much, but it’s a model of engineering ingenuity applied to an underrecognized problem— and it could, over time, save thousands of lives. That’s why it’s our 2006 Innovation MARK JANNOT of the Year.
Our dazzlingly humble 2006 grand Grand Award winner
[email protected] 10 POPULAR SCIENCE DECEMBER 2006
ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY Art Director Matthew Cokeley Photo Editor Kristine LaManna Staff Photographer John B.Carnett Senior Designer Stephanie Fehmel Contributing Artists Peter Bollinger, Bryan Christie, Kevin Hand, Nick Kaloterakis, John MacNeill, Graham Murdoch, Stephen Rountree, Bob Sauls, Nik Schulz, Paul Wootton Photo Intern Susan Sheeran POPSCI.COM Web Editor Megan Miller Assistant Web Editor John Mahoney Web Production Intern Fred Koschmann POPULAR SCIENCE PROPERTIES
Publisher Gregg R. Hano General Manager Robert Novick Northeast Advertising Office: Manager Devon Walsh 212-779-5322, Colleen Kassner 212-779-5007, John Campbell 212-779-5030, Ad Assistant Chase Girvin, Executive Assistant Christopher Graves Midwest Advertising Office: Manager John Marquardt 312-8320626, Amy Tinucci 312-832-0624, Ad Assistant Nikki Schneider Los Angeles Advertising Office: Manager Robert Hoeck 310-268-7484, Ad Assistant Mary Infantino Detroit Advertising Office: Manager Edward A. Bartley 248-988-7723, Ad Assistant Diane Pahl San Francisco Advertising Office: Matt Bouyea 415-925-6600, ext. 108 Southern Regional Advertising Office: Manager Dave Hady 404-364-4090, Ad Assistant Christy Chapman Classified Advertising Sales Joan Orth 212-779-5555 Direct Response Sales Marie Isabelle 800-280-2069 Interactive Sales Manager Andrew Maiorana Business Manager Frank Visone Creative Services Director Christy Chapin Ellinger Sales Development Director Michael Gallic Sales Development Manager Eric Bratten Marketing Art Director Mary McGann Promotions Manager Eshonda Caraway Advertising Coordinator Evelyn Negron Consumer Marketing Director John McCarthy Senior Planning Manager Margerita Catwell Consumer Marketing Managers Adam Feifer, Kristen Shue Publicity Manager Kendra Romagnola Senior Production Director Laurel Kurnides Production Assistant Yolanda Tribble Prepress Manager José Medina Vice President, Production and Technology Sylvia Mueller Manufacturing Business Manager John Conboy Prepress Director Robyn Koeppel
President Thomas F.X. Beusse Editorial Director Scott Mowbray President, Time4 Entertainment Paul Speaker Senior Vice President, Finance and Operations Victor M. Sauerhoff Senior Vice President, Consumer Marketing Monica Ray Senior Vice President, Time4 Digital Todd Unger Vice President, Time4 Media Solutions Bruce Revman Director of Communications Samara Farber Mormar Director, Technology Annabelle Soper Senior Manager, Technology Larry Corby Technology Support Joseph Lamothe, Andre Reddy CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUBSCRIPTIONS For service anytime, please use our Web site: popsci.com/ customerservice. You can also call 800-289-9399 or write to POPULAR SCIENCE P.O. Box 62456, Tampa, FL 33662-4568.
POPSCI.COM
JOHN B. CARNETT
INNOVATION NAILED
EDITORIAL Executive Editor Michael Moyer Editorial Production Manager Felicia Pardo Military, Aviation & Automotive Editor Eric Adams Senior Editors Nicole Dyer, Mike Haney, Kalee Thompson Copy Chief Rina Bander Associate Editors Joe Brown, Doug Cantor, Martha Harbison Assistant Editors Lauren Aaronson, Bjorn Carey Editorial Assistant Barbara Caraher Editor at Large Dawn Stover Contributing Automotive Editor Stephan Wilkinson Contributing Editors Theodore Gray, Eric Hagerman, Joseph Hooper, Suzanne Kantra Kirschner, Preston Lerner, Gregory Mone, Steve Morgenstern, Jeffrey Rothfeder, Jessica Snyder Sachs, Rebecca Skloot, Bill Sweetman, Phillip Torrone, James Vlahos, Charles Wardell, Speed Weed Contributing Troubadour Jonathan Coulton Contributing Futurist Andrew Zolli Intern Abby Seiff
Recycling that’s easy to wrap around.
Wrapping yourself around a plan that recycles your used rechargeable batteries is easy. Check the batteries in your cordless and cellular phones, camcorders, cordless power tools, laptop computers, digital cameras, and two-way radios. If they no longer hold a charge, recycle them by visiting one of many collection sites nationwide, including those retailers listed below. For a complete list of rechargeable battery drop-off locations, visit www.call2recycle.org or call toll free 877-2-RECYCLE.
Recycle your rechargeable batteries.
Recycle at one of these national retailers:
©2006 Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation. Founded in 1994, RBRC is a non-profit organization dedicated to recycling rechargeable batteries and cellular phones. For more information: www.rbrc.org or 1-800-8-BATTERY. To learn more about the animal featured in this ad, visit our web site.
PS1206 Readers Letters 10/13/06 4:50 PM Page 12
878865395 p.12
LETTERS
[email protected] COMMENTS FROM OUR BLOG Our story “New Secrets of Area 51” [October] started debate on our Web site about national security. Here’s what you said.
Bill Sweetman’s articles are always great fun. His informed speculation reminds me of NFL draft previews, which often diverge wildly from eventual reality. Is he correct? I hope so. Does his opinion compromise security? No. Even if the tech he
Brushes with Brilliance I read your article about the top young scientists of the year, called “The Brilliant 10” [Oct.]. Although I found nine of the profiles true to the title, the work presented for Luis von Ahn [“The Matrix Builder”] seemed significantly less so. Having a computer-science degree myself, I find his approach very defeatist. Rather than push the limits of what a computing platform is able to do so that the human doesn’t have to (which is kind of the point), von Ahn simply gives up and makes a clever game that uses human behavior to solve his problem. I’ll admit his approach is ingenious, but brilliant it is not. Chuck Ruffino Pittsford, N.Y. Your article on Nima Arkani-Hamed [“Inventor, Fifth Dimension”] was interesting, but I take exception to the concluding sentence: “As he explains, ‘The significance of our world within the multiverse will be no greater than one atom relative to all the matter in our universe.’ ” As our search of the heavens continues and we discover the everincreasing size of the universe, the human race becomes more valuable, not less. In all our searches, we have yet
12 POPULAR SCIENCE DECEMBER 2006
to find intelligent life elsewhere. We have no evidence that there is another Arkani-Hamed across the multiverse looking for us, which makes us unique in an expanding pool. Tom Sheppard Flat Rock, N.C. There was a bit of an error in the article about Fields Medal winner Terry Tao’s work with prime numbers [“Math’s Great Uniter”]. You stated that “The PAP [Prime Arithmetic Progression] ‘5,11,17, 23’ is just one of an infinite number of PAPs with four numbers in it.” Actually, that PAP has five numbers in it. The next number in the series is 29, since each of those numbers increases by six from the number before it, and 29 is also a prime number. Tom McClellan Lakewood, Wash. Assistant editor Lauren Aaronson replies: We received several letters on this topic, so we went straight to Terry Tao (who, shortly after our article hit newsstands, won a MacArthur “genius” grant, along with aforementioned Brilliant 10 researcher Luis von Ahn). Says Tao, “It is still correct to characterize ‘5, 11, 17, 23’ as a four-term prime arith-
describes does exist, our adversaries have no hope of countering or duplicating it. So where’s the harm? Posted by John You know, all this stuff is interesting, but really, security comes first in my list of priorities, and, well, it comes ahead of speculation. Posted by Matt
metic progression; it just happens that it is included in a larger five-term PAP. This means that it is not a maximal PAP, but it is still a PAP.”
Unlikely Invisibility Some sort of invisibility cloak [“Unveiling the First Invisibility Shield,” Instant Expert, Oct.] will no doubt be available to a few Special Ops units around 2050, but the average soldier could die of overconfidence if he were issued one. Even a fiber-optic or metamaterial
THE FUTURE NOW
HOW TO CONTACT US Address: 2 Park Ave., 9th Floor New York, NY 10016 Fax: 212-779-5108 LETTERS Comments may be edited for length and clarity. Please include your address and a daytime phone number. We regret that we cannot answer unpublished letters. E-mail:
[email protected] POPULAR SCIENCE ONLINE Check out our Web site at popsci.com. QUESTIONS FOR FYI We answer your science questions in our FYI sec-
tion. We regret that only letters considered for publication can be answered. E-mail FYI questions to
[email protected]. NEW SUBSCRIPTIONS To subscribe to POPULAR SCIENCE, please contact: Phone: 800-289-9399 Web: popsci.com/subscribe SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES For subscription or delivery problems, or to report a change of address, contact: POPULAR SCIENCE P.O. Box 60001 Tampa, FL 33660-0001 Phone: 800-289-9399 Web: popsci.com/manage INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS For inquiries regarding international licensing or syndication, please contact:
[email protected].
POPSCI.COM
©2006 Sony Electronics Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole in or part without written permission is prohibited. Sony, Sony logo, Alpha, and Like No Other are trademarks of Sony. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
The new Sony a with built-in Image Stabilization.
Steady your world.
Is this the end of blur? Introducing the new Sony® a (alpha) DSLR camera.
A 10 MP tour de force with Super SteadyShot® image stabilization built into the camera body to help steady every shot—including those from the 16 million A-mount lenses already in existence. The new Sony a . It’s creative freedom. Under your control. sony.com/dslr
Available at
LETTERS
[email protected] “INVISIBLE DOES NOT MEAN UNDETECTABLE. EVEN A HIGHTECH INVISIBILITY CLOAK COULD GET MUD SPLATTERED ON IT.” cloak could get mud splattered on it. On top of that, grass and bushes would part as you walked through them, and you would leave footprints or tank treads in the dirt. It would no doubt scare the living daylights out of an enemy soldier the first time he saw a set of footprints magically appear out of nowhere, or the grass mysteriously part, or leg holes appear in water. But after that, whenever he saw a pair of leg-shaped mud-splatters coming at him, he’d simply aim his gun a meter above the ground. Invisible does not mean undetectable. C. Allen Doudna Grand Island, Neb.
Antique Critique I have been a reader of POPULAR SCIENCE for many, many years, and now I am compelled to write to say that I was distressed and disappointed over the article on how to retrofit a collectible tube radio with modern speakers and amplification to use as a speaker system for an iPod [“Antique Geek Chic,” How 2.0, Oct.]. Radios of this vintage are highly prized by many collectors and hobbyists, who take great pains to locate, repair, and restore these artifacts of Americana to their original condition. To simply destroy a 60-year-old vintage radio by gutting it of its innards is a shame. Dennis G. Wesserling Sterling Heights, Mich.
Safe Surfing In “The Internet Is Sick . . . But We Can Make It Better” [Oct.], I was astounded to see no mention of better programming practices as a remedy. Yes, Internet infrastructure could be improved to allow for better packet tracing, helping us identify
spammers, phishers and crackers. But that only succeeds as a security measure if police can shut down criminal operations. You never touched on the most pervasive problem facing computer users today: poorly written software. A better strategy would be to switch to operating systems and applications that are written with security as a higher priority. The Firefox and Safari browsers, as well as Linux, BSD and Mac OS X operating systems, are all more secure than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Windows and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Open-source and open-source-derived software offers the best protection against nefarious Internet attackers today, not in a hypothetical future where Microsoft’s programmers have abandoned their current, insecure development techniques. Troy Davis Cincinnati
An Idea with Legs I would like to extend my esteem and congratulations to robotics engineers Atsuo Takanishi and Kotaro Fukui, as well as Eduardo Torres-Jara, for producing such humanistic robotic elements [“This Modern Robot” and “5 Paths to the Walking, Talking, Pie-Baking Humanoid Robot,” September]. Advances such as robots with hands and vocal cords are decidedly commendable for reverse-engineering human anatomy and physiology. By modeling robotic elements after their human counterparts, we may well accomplish two goals in one: We could better the dream of a more functional robot and might also further enormous advances in prosthetic design for our physically challenged citizens. Jenny Santiano Cedar Park, Tex
POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 15
PS1206 MPA_Cassiopeia 10/11/06 10:58 AM Page 16
2954353106 p.16
MEGAPIXELS
THE MUST-SEE PHOTOS OF THE MONTH
LIFE IN A BUBBLE
A Milky Way supernova is providing clues to the origins of planets—and people Cassiopeia A, the remnants of the most recent star to explode in our Milky Way galaxy, is only 10,000 lightyears away, close enough for astronomers to get a detailed look at it through the Hubble Space Telescope. By comparing this composite image of Cas A with one taken nine months earlier, scientists have discovered that the glowing cloud of debris left behind by the supernova is not expanding uniformly, as was once assumed. Instead two opposing jets of material are moving at 32 million mph, about 20 million mph faster than the rest of the debris [in this image, one stream extends from the upper left side of Cas A]. Another surprise: This view, which highlights different elements by color (for example, oxygen is shown as green), shows that materials of similar chemical composition remained clumped after the explosion. Supernovae are a major source of all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium and the primary source of heavy elements like iron. These scattered elements eventually coalesce into new stars and planets. They are also what we’re made of. BY DAWN STOVER
STAR BURST Renderings depict eight sequential moments of Cassiopeia A’s 325-year-long explosion.
16 POPULAR SCIENCE DECEMBER 2006
NASA, ESA AND THE HUBBLE HERITAGE (STSCI/AURA)-ESA/HUBBLE COLLABORATION; ROBERT A. FESEN/DARTMOUTH COLLEGE; JAMES LONG/ESA/HUBBLE
image by robert a. fesen and james long
PS1206 MPA_Cassiopeia 10/11/06 11:01 AM Page 17
362488916 p.17
POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 17
PS1206 MPB_Earthrace 10/11/06 10:18 AM Page 18
3061289198 p.18
MEGAPIXELS
FAST FUELED
Powered by vegetable oil and animal fat, a sleek new boat aims to circumnavigate the globe in record time
WAVE RIDER The biodiesel-fueled boat has a triple-hull design [above, a prototype] that allows it to pierce 50-foot waves.
OCEANFILMBOAT.COM; INSET: COURTESY JOHN KING
New Zealand engineer Pete Bethune had a grand plan: Bring attention to the potential of biodiesel by building an innovative powerboat capable of setting an overall speed record for world circumnavigation. And he had a gruesomely flamboyant first step: Suck fat out of his own body to provide some of the fuel. Unfortunately, the quarter of a pound Bethune had lipoed created only enough biodiesel to power his one-of-a-kind boat, christened Earthrace, about 300 feet. To make the trip around the world, the 78-foot tri-hull will need 35,000 gallons of fuel (at its cruising speed of 15 to 25 knots, it gets about a mile a gallon). If all goes as planned, Bethune will raise the remaining $400,000 he needs to fund the voyage by March and set off on his 65-day quest. “I look forward to getting on the water,” Bethune says, “and proving to the world that renewable fuels are synonymous with power and performance.” BY ABBY SEIFF photograph by Bruna Shidler
18 POPULAR SCIENCE DECEMBER 2006
PS1206 MPB_Earthrace 10/11/06 10:19 AM Page 19
3763637936 p.19
POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 19
PS1206 HL_01 Opener R1 10/14/06 10:59 AM Page 21
3557887950 p.21
HEADLINES D I S C O V E R I E S , A D VA N C E S & D E B AT E S I N S C I E N C E
THIS MONTH
22
A laser weapon for airports
24
26
Building a lightning lab in the desert
The largest cargo ship in the world
DOWN UNDER Parked 270 miles southwest of New Orleans, the deep-water oil rig Cajun Express can drill to 35,000 feet.
Rock layers
Salt Trapped hydrocarbons
THE MIDDLE WEST? A recent test for oil buried deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico’s seafloor drew 6,000 barrels a day.
ILLUSTRATION: NIK SCHULZ; PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY TRANSOCEAN INC.
ENERGY
DEEP-SEA FISHING FOR OIL Newly discovered wells in the Gulf of Mexico could ease U.S. oil woes—if we can tap them WHEN WILL THE OIL AGE END? Not anytime soon, if Chevron and its partners have their way. This September, the oil giants released test results from an underwater well about 270 miles off the coast of New Orleans suggesting that the region could hold the largest discovered cache of U.S. crude since Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay in 1967. If tapped, industry experts report, the 300 or so deposits in the area could boost U.S. oil reserves by up to 15 billion barrels, increasing domes-
POPSCI.COM
tic reserves by a staggering 50 percent. This may sound like good news, given our growing dependence on foreign oil, but don’t cancel that order for solar panels just yet. Buried beneath 2,000 to 10,000 feet of water and several more miles of rock and salt, the oil isn’t exactly gushing up from the ocean floor. Extracting it will require an unprecedented engineering effort, some of the largest, most expensive rigs ever built, and pumping technology that remains untested in
such extremes of temperature and pressure. That all adds up to a bill large enough to make even oil executives gasp. Whereas searching for and developing a new field on dry land costs about $8 a barrel, the price for tapping deep-water sources could run to four or more times that figure. In fact, energy experts say, exploiting the region makes sense only while the price of oil remains high. Translation: Forget about $2-a-gallon gasoline. Still, with U.S. reserves dwindling and
DECEMBER 2006 POPULAR SCIENCE 21
PS1206 HL_01 Opener R1 10/14/06 10:59 AM Page 22
1633404816 p.22
HEADLINES
security
MISSILE-PROOFING RUNWAYS Homeland Security eyes high-power lasers to shoot down shoulder-fired missiles aimed at commercial flights
Laser beam
Infrared tracking radar
STEP 1 FIND TARGET
An infrared camera on the laser continuously scans a 6- to 10-mile radius around the airport for suspicious heat emissions. When it finds a plume, it relays the coordinates to an identification-and-tracking system, which is also on the unit.
foreign countries shutting down access to their own stores, the Lower Tertiary, as the region of earth is known, may be the industry’s most promising source for oil. Paul Siegele, Chevron’s vice president of deepwater exploration and projects, says that Jack Field, the site of the recent headlinegrabbing test, is just one of numerous spots the company is exploring in the area. Siegele’s group is using new simulation software to model how the oil in Jack might flow and how best to get it out.
22 POPULAR SCIENCE DECEMBER 2006
Yet surveying is the easy part; setting up the equipment to actually extract the oil is another matter. For the Jack test alone, drilling down under the ocean floor required a pipe taller than 18 Sears Towers stacked one atop another. Accessing other, deeper fields in the area will demand even larger equipment. Companies will need to build or rent behemoth rigs just to anchor those drill pipes steady against wind, waves and undersea currents. One of these rigs, nearly the length of an aircraft carrier, rents
for $500,000 a day. And these monsters can explore only one field in the region at a time, so checking all of the 300 potential oil-stocked plots will be a costly endeavor. “Companies may spend several hundred million dollars before they see a drop of oil,” says Ken Gray, a drilling engineer at the University of Texas. Once the hole has been drilled and the production equipment put in place, the high-pressure environment should push the oil through tiny holes in the
PS1206 HL_01 Opener R1 10/14/06 11:00 AM Page 23
2088021170 p.23
STEP 4 DESTROY MISSILE
Missile
The laser-beam cannon emits a burst of intense light aimed at the missile’s most vulnerable spot, usually the explosives compartment. Simultaneously, it relays a wireless signal to a computer located in the airport control tower to give authorities a fix on the origin of the rocket.
Communication signal
STEP 2 CONFIRM THREAT
STEP 3 PREPARE TO FIRE
The onboard computer checks the object’s heat signature against a data bank, confirms that it’s a missile (and not a bird or a plane), and activates the laser.
JOHN MACNEILL
Control tower
Reactive gases in the laser’s fuel tanks are funneled through a vacuum tube to heat up atoms and send them cascading through resonator mirrors. This produces a tightly focused, high-energy beam.
THIS SUMMER’S WAR between Lebanon and Israel was the most recent demonstration of the deadly threat posed by shoulder-fired missiles. Lebanese Hezbollah fighters armed with portable rocket launchers fired more than 3,700 missiles into Israeli cities during the 34-day conflict. With a growing number of such weapons, referred to in military-speak as MANPADS—Man-Portable Air Defense Systems—showing up on the black market, U.S. officials are becoming increasingly concerned about their
risk to commercial aircraft. That’s why the Department of Homeland Security is nearly doubling its spending on countermeasure research to $110 million this year. One particularly notable technology under consideration is a laser called Skyguard that can make mincemeat out of a missile in a matter of seconds, according to its developer, defense contractor Northrop Grumman, which adapted the laser from a larger militarized version. Packed inside a unit the size of three school buses and stationed
close to the runways, Skyguard is essentially a giant laser gun with brains. It focuses a powerful energy beam with pinpoint accuracy on a missile, heating up the explosives inside to make them detonate before reaching their target. Of course, such Star Wars–grade protection carries a hefty price tag. Each unit costs about $150 million, although large-scale production could bring the price down to as low as $30 million. Northrop says its system could be deployed at major U.S. airports by 2008.
pipe, forcing it up toward the surface. From there, the hurdle becomes getting the oil to shore. Jack Field is roughly 100 miles from the nearest pipeline, and connecting directly to it may prove too costly. One alternative is a special tanker that would roll in after the drill ship has put the production infrastructure in place. It would drink up the oil by connecting to detachable hoses running down to pumping equipment sitting on the seafloor and then transfer the oil to an even bigger ship for transport.
As long as oil prices stay above $40 a barrel, deep-sea drilling will probably be profitable.
from the bottom of the sea worth it? “Absolutely,” Siegele says. As long as oil prices remain above $40 a barrel, industry experts say, Chevron’s deep-sea drilling efforts will probably be profitable. In fact, the company has already committed to leasing two brand-new $650-million drill ships. If all goes well, Chevron estimates that oil could flow as soon as 2010. “There are lots of challenges in the deep water,” Siegele says, “but we’re determined to overcome them.”—Gregory Mone
Given the multibillion-dollar cost of developing just one field, let alone the engineering risks of operating in such extreme conditions, is dredging up oil
—Stephen Handelman
POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 23
PS1206 HL BBF
10/10/06
8:23 PM
Page 24
548248239 p.24
HEADLINES
BIGGER, BETTER, FASTER
OVERACHIEVERS WE LOVE
A giant cargo ship, an ultra-green Antarctic abode and a truly super computer set new benchmarks
BIG AND BOXY Emma, the biggest cargo ship on the sea
BETTER
ECO-FRIENDLY The Princess Elisabeth, the greenest Antarctic research base
WHEN THE EMMA MÆRSK pulls into port, other cargo ships cower in her massive shadow. Measuring 1,303 feet from bow to stern, with a deck that towers 251 feet above the waterline, the behemoth boat’s official capacity is 11,000 standard 20-foot containers. That’s about 1,400 more than any other ship at sea. The 2,300-ton engine is nothing to sneeze at either: It cranks out 110,000 horsepower. All this, and Emma is still relatively easy on the environment. By feeding exhaust back into the engine and mixing it with outside air, the ship reduces emissions and boosts energy production by 12 percent. Plus, a new silicon-based paint keeps barnacles off the hull to cut down on drag, replacing the industry-standard biocides that leach into the oceans. Launched this September in Denmark, Emma is now en route to Hong Kong.–ADAM BRIGHT
FASTER
NO WINDOWS MDGrape-3, the fastest computer ever
IN 2007, Belgium will begin construction on the most environ-
MOVE OVER BLUE GENE/L, there’s a new supercomputer in
mentally friendly Antarctic research station ever. The $8-million Princess Elisabeth facility will be built with natural materials such as wood and granite, as well as nontoxic recyclable materials. Wind turbines and solar-energy collectors will supply 98 percent of the station’s power, and the facility will recycle 50 to 90 percent of its gray water to avoid contaminating the environment.—BJORN CAREY
town. The MDGrape-3, built by the Japanese research organization Riken to study protein folding, achieves a theoretical “petaflops” of processing power—that’s 1,000 trillion calculations per second, roughly three times as fast as IBM’s vaunted Blue Gene/L. The computer’s power comes from 200 processing units, each housing 24 MDGrape-3 chips running at around 200 gigaflops.—B.C.
24 POPULAR SCIENCE DECEMBER 2006
POPSCI.COM
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: COURTESY MAERSK LINE; COURTESY RIKEN; COURTESY DÉTROIS SA/IPF
BIGGER
EXPERIENCE THE INTENSITY, CARNAGE AND CHAOS OF THE WAR THAT DIVIDED A NATION!
Blood Violence
)''-8Zk`m`j`feGlYc`j_`e^#@eZ%Xe[`kjX]Ôc`Xk\j%8cci`^_kji\j\im\[%8Zk`m`j`fe`jXi\^`jk\i\[kiX[\dXibf]8Zk`m`j`fe#@eZ%Xe[`kjX]Ôc`Xk\j%K_\?`jkfip:_Xee\cXe[ k_\Ê?Ëcf^fXi\i\^`jk\i\[kiX[\dXibjf]8
