COMPUTERS INVADE THE LIVING ROOM!

HOW TO BUY A MEDIA CENTER PC

WHAT’S NEW
HOT ➤
35 PRODUCTS

p.17

RR HYPERSONIC JET RR MISSILE RR ELECTRIC CAR

RR ROLLER COASTER RR TECTONIC PLATE
RR LEVITATING TRAIN

WE ♥ INKJETS
+29
MORE
RECORD
SETTERS
THE AMAZING UNTOLD US $3.99 CAN $4.99

STORY OF THE PRINTER THAT’S FEBRUARY 2005 POPSCI.COM

REMAKING THE WORLD

PAGING DR. FRANKENSTEIN
THE RACE TO CREATE NEW LIFE IN THE LAB
 VOLUME 266 #2
T
FEBRUARY 2005 CONTENTS

“He’s willing to stick his neck out. Once in a

while it gets chopped off, but he just picks
FOUNDED IN 1872 it back up and screws it on again.”
tech LIFE BUILT TO ORDER p. 64
17 | What’s New
Volvo’s eco-friendly concept car.
High-tech hydraulics. Slimmed-down
cathode-ray-tube TVs. Biometric
sensors that secure your gadgets.
79 | How 2.0
GEEK GUIDE Put your digital pics online.
DIY Build a home-theater PC.
GRAY MATTER Make spoons that dissolve.
TECH LESSON Draw with GPS devices.

news and views

31 | Headlines
ENERGY Solar power captured in a dish.
SPACE Sailing into space with microwaves.
MEDICINE Do stem cells fuel tumors? 64
PREDICTION Personal germ detectors.

42 | Soapbox
PLUGGED IN Buy a smartphone, and
stop getting bilked. By Cory Doctorow
SCIENCE FRICTION James Cameron’s recipe
D AV I D B A R RY; C H A R L E S M A S T E R S ; C O U RT E S Y S I X F L A G S G R E AT A D V E N T U R E ; D AV I D D E W H U R S T; L A M B E RT / G E T T Y I M A G E S

for selling science. By Gregory Mone

O N T H E C O V E R : L E T T E R I N G B Y C H R I S T O P H N I E M A N N ; I N S E T: D AV I D D E W H U R S T. T H I S PA G E , C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P :

stories 72
46 | Maximum Velocity The world’s
fastest planes, people, particles
and tectonic plates. By Gabriel Sherman

53 | There’s a Hero on Your Desktop

The inkjet printer’s offspring will build
houses, organs and more. By Jason Daley 46
58
58 | Can Terrorists Build the Bomb?
How to prevent our worst fear: a nuclear
attack on U.S. soil. By Michael Crowley
64 | Life Built to Order A rebel scientist
plans to create an artificial life-form
in his Los Alamos lab. By Michael Stroh

72 | The POPSCI Buyer’s Guide:

Media Center PCs Meet your new
remote-controlled PC. By Steve Morgenstern

depts.
8 From the Editor 88 FYI
10 Contributors 112 Looking Back
17
12 Letters

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 7

T
FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial Director Scott Mowbray

Editor Mark Jannot
Art Director Nathalie Kirsheh
Executive Editor, Features Emily Laber-Warren
Science Editor Dawn Stover
Senior Technology Editor Suzanne Kantra Kirschner
Senior Editor, What’s New Eric Hagerman
Aviation & Automotive Editor Eric Adams
Senior Editors Michael Moyer, Kalee Thompson
Managing Editor Jill C. Shomer
Senior Associate Editor Nicole Dyer
Copy Chief Rina Bander
Associate Editors Jenny Everett, Mike Haney, Gregory Mone
Assistant Editor Martha Harbison
Assistant Editor, Best of What’s New Joe Brown
Designer April Bell
Photo Editor Kristine LaManna
Staff Photographer John B.Carnett
Editorial Assistant Barbara Caraher

A Sweet
Web Producer Peter Noah
Contributing Design Editor Chee Pearlman
Contributing Automotive Editor Stephan Wilkinson
Contributing Editors Theodore Gray, Joseph Hooper,

Spot, Indeed
Preston Lerner, Jeffrey Rothfeder, Jessica Snyder Sachs,
Rebecca Skloot, Bill Sweetman, Phillip Torrone, James Vlahos,
Charles Wardell, William Speed Weed
Contributing Troubadour Jonathan Coulton
Contributing Futurist Andrew Zolli
Contributing Artists Mika Grondahl, Jason Lee, John
“I FEEL THE SAME JOY TODAY IN THESE EXPLORATORY TRIUMPHS THAT MacNeill, Garry Marshall, Stephen Rountree, Bob Sauls
Editorial Intern Sarah Goforth
I did when Sputnik 1 first circumnavigated Earth, when our expectations of Art Intern Dana Stratton
what technology could do for us were nearly boundless.”
POPULAR SCIENCE PROPERTIES
That’s a quote from a 1987 essay by Carl Sagan. I happened upon it while Publisher Gregg R. Hano
doing a little Sagan-oriented Web research, a surfing expedition that was in- Advertising Director John Tebeau
General Manager Robert Novick
spired, in turn, by a nifty bit of recognition that recently came our way: In early Executive Assistant Chandra Dwhaj
Northeast Advertising Office: Manager Howard S. Mittman
December, the Council of Scientific Society Presidents bestowed its annual (212) 779-5112, Jill Schiffman (212) 779-5007,
Sagan Award (“for outstanding achievement in improving the public under- Mike Schoenbrun (212) 779-5148, Missy Dye Radin

BEN BAKER/REDUX; GROOMING BY MICHELLE CEGLIA FOR iGROUP; STYLING BY NAILA RUECHEL FOR STOCKLAND MARTEL
(212) 779-5030
standing and appreciation of science”) on none other than POPULAR SCIENCE. It’s Ad Assistant Christopher Graves
a true honor when the presidents past and present of some 60 scientific or- Midwest Advertising Office: Manager John Marquardt
(312) 832-0626, Megan Williams (312) 832-0624
ganizations choose to laud your work for “stellar and enduring achievements Ad Assistant Sindy Sonshine
Los Angeles Advertising Office: Manager Dana Hess
in building the appreciation of seven million diverse readers about the ex- (310) 268-7484, Ad Assistant Mary Infantino
citement, importance and significance of science, discovery and research.” Detroit Advertising Office: Manager Donna Christensen
(248) 988-7723, Ad Assistant Diane Pahl
I’ll happily embrace that as a resonant description of what the editors of San Francisco Advertising Office: Manager Amy
POPULAR SCIENCE have always tried to do, though it must be said that the mag- Cacciatore (415) 434-5276, Ad Assistant Carly Petrone
Southern Regional Advertising Office: Manager Dave
azine’s balance of the pure and applied sciences has gone through dramatic Hady (404) 364-4090, Ad Assistant Christy Chapman
Classified Advertising Sales Joan Orth (212) 779-5555
swings over the years. When Edward L. Youmans founded this magazine in Direct Response Sales Marie Isabelle (800) 280-2069
1872, he did so in part as a reaction against a prevailing attitude that Alexis de Business Manager Jacqueline L. Pappas
Director of Brand & Business Development L. Dennett
Tocqueville had observed several decades prior: “Americans were naturally Robertson
inclined to require nothing of science but its special applications to the useful Sales Development Managers Mike Saperstein,
Daniel Vaughan
arts and the means of rendering life comfortable.” To which a reader today might Senior Manager, Events and Promotions Christy Chapin
Ellinger
legitimately reply: “And what, exactly, is wrong with that?” After all, we like to Creative Services Designer Mary McGann
say that the sweet spot for this magazine is that place where science and tech- Marketing Coordinator Eshonda Caraway
Advertising Coordinator Evelyn Negron
nology meet in the lives of our readers; those “special applications” of science Consumer Marketing Director Barbara Venturelli
are a fundamental part of what POPULAR SCIENCE is about. Senior Planning Manager Margerita Catwell
Consumer Marketing Managers James Cahn,
Still, we do require more of science, and I think our readers require more of Sara O’Connor
Senior Production Director Laurel Kurnides
us. That’s why I’m proud to publish articles like “Can Terrorists Build the Production Assistant Shawn Glenn
Bomb?” [page 58], a sober accounting of what would have to happen for our Prepress Director Robyn Koeppel
Prepress Manager José Medina
worst nightmare to be realized, and what is being done to prevent it. Publicity Manager Hallie Deaktor
Which brings us back to Carl Sagan, the greatest popularizer of science in
the second half of the 20th century. Just a bit later in that same essay, he cham-
pioned the importance of an unflinching examination of the dark. “The visions
we present to our children shape the future,” he wrote. “It matters what those President Mark P. Ford
Senior Vice Presidents James F. Else,
visions are. . . . I do not think it irresponsible to portray even the direst futures; Victor M. Sauerhoff, Steven Shure
if we are to avoid them, we must understand that they are possible.” Editorial Director Scott Mowbray
Director, Corporate Communications Samara Farber Mormar
CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUBSCRIPTIONS
MARK JANNOT For 24/7 service, please use our Web site: popsci.com/
[email protected] customerservice
You can also call: 800-289-9399 or write to:
Popular Science P.O. Box 62456 Tampa, FL 33662-4568

8 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

 T
CONTRIBUTORS

“It’s alive! It’s alive!!” shrieked Dr. Frankenstein—words that theorist Steen Rasmussen
hopes to utter himself someday. Rasmussen is trying to build, from spare molecular parts,
a brand-new life-form. MICHAEL STROH [left] visited Rasmussen at his lab in Los Alamos,
New Mexico, to report “Life Built to Order” [page 64]. Stroh, a science writer for the
Baltimore Sun, thinks Rasmussen’s physics background serves the quest well. “There is a
long tradition of physicists breaking into biology and making significant discoveries by
coming at it in a different way—more of an engineering approach,” he says. To accom-
pany our story, Texas-based artist HOLLY LINDEM [right] crafted her own vision of man-
made life: a patched-together egg. Like Rasmussen’s project, Lindem’s required patience
and improvisation. “I wanted to use plastic, but I couldn’t find the right kind. So I had
to change to latex,” says Lindem, who painstakingly applied liquid latex to Plexiglas,
affixed the latex sheets to an egg-shaped form with tacks, and then spray-painted the
resultant Franken-egg before photographing it in her studio.

As a skier and marathon runner, writer GABRIEL SHERMAN has

long been obsessed with pushing his own speed limits. So it’s only
natural that he would want to explore speed in a larger arena,
examining such fleet objects as the world’s fastest aircraft, super-
computer and roller coaster, the latter being the Kingda Ka at Six
Flags, New Jersey, set to open this spring [see “Maximum Velocity,”
page 46]. “I’ve already scheduled a trip,” Sherman says.

“It’s a matter of being a problem solver,” says photographer

MICHAEL KRAUS of the logistic and creative challenge of making
great images of inanimate objects, like the group of accessories
featured in the POPSCI Buyer’s Guide to media PCs [page 77].
“Color matching—what’s on the screen versus what comes out
of the printer—is the hardest to manage.” Kraus also shot the
scratch-built computer featured in How 2.0 [page 82].

A bulldog stares out from pictures in an online album, on a T-shirt

and on a mug in DAN PAGE’s illustrations for How 2.0’s tips on
choosing among the myriad online and peer-to-peer photo-
sharing applications [page 79]. “I had a cat on there first,” says
Page. “But I was informed that cats weren’t ‘manly’ enough for
POPULAR SCIENCE, so I went out and found the manliest dog I could.”
His work has also appeared in Forbes and in Time Canada.

MICHAEL CROWLEY has been fascinated by nuclear weapons

since he first saw Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, Dr. Strangelove, as a
kid. “I watched it when I was much too young to really understand
it,” he says. “It’s the ‘Rosebud’ of my life.” In “Can Terrorists Build
the Bomb?” [page 58], Crowley, an editor at The New Republic
who writes often about nuclear policy, examines the likelihood that
terrorists could detonate a fissile nuclear weapon on American soil.

10 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

T
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR [email protected]

Bravo to “Best Of”

Your “Best of What’s New” section [December
2004] was ne plus excellent. It epitomizes what
POPULAR SCIENCE should be about: timely, color-
ful, and featuring products that combine cutting-
edge technology with style and utility. Please
keep up the good work.
Edward J. Pyatt
Hampton, Va.
I was disheartened to see that you nally found it—in the “Recreation” be written about “What Happens when
would even consider any product that section. Speaking as someone who Engineers Don’t Do Market Research.”
utilizes any form of digital rights has commuted on a motorcycle daily Oliver Hoopes
management (DRM) when compiling for the past 12 years, year-round, rain Ithaca, N.Y.
a top-100 list. Giving such a product or shine, and who puts more yearly
the Grand Award [“Best of What’s mileage on his bike than on his car, Debating Stem Cells
New: Gadgets,” Microsoft Windows I’d like to humbly suggest that motor- I just read your article on stem cells,
Media DRM 10] takes the cake. cycles deserve to be considered more “Banking on Biotechnology” [Headlines,
DRM restricts the rights that every- than mere toys. Maybe next year you December], and I was appalled by the
one should be entitled to when it should create a new category, “Trans- lack of any real ethical debate on the
comes to digital media. If I buy a DVD portation,” and put motorcycles in issue. You seem to be treating ethics as
or CD, I have every legal right to copy it there with the cars, trucks, trains and
for my personal use, and I can do so an planes. Then other people would come
infinite number of times. I don’t have to realize that bikes aren’t just for POPULAR SCIENCE ONLINE
Visit our Web site at
to pay a monthly fee or anything of the weekends anymore. popsci.com, or check us out
on AOL at keyword: popsci
sort, aside from the initial cost, to do so. Steve Jordan
HOW TO CONTACT US NEW SUBSCRIPTIONS
DRM, on the other hand, usually Germantown, Md. Address: 2 Park Ave., To subscribe to POPULAR
restricts how, when and if a file can 9th Floor SCIENCE, please contact
New York, NY 10016 Phone: 800-289-9399
be duplicated, even if the would-be It never ceases to amaze me whenever a Fax: 212-779-5103 Web: popsci.com/
dupe would be entirely legal. Also, shoe company comes out with another LETTERS
subscribe

such files have restrictions as to what extremely high-tech running shoe like Comments may be edited SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES
for space and clarity. For subscription or delivery
devices they can be played on. And the Adidas 1 [Grand Award Winner, Please include your problems, or to report
you had the nerve not only to praise “Recreation”]. Runners know that the address and a daytime a change of address,
phone number. We regret please contact
this technology but tout it as the best soles on even a great pair of shoes wear that we cannot answer POPULAR SCIENCE
new technology of the year! out after a couple months. Having a unpublished letters. P.O. Box 60001
E-mail: [email protected] Tampa, FL 33660-0001
Scot Halverson shoe with a regulating motor inside Phone: 800-289-9399
QUESTIONS FOR FYI
Sauk Centre, Minn. won’t do much good when the sole is Web: popsci.com/
We answer your science
manage
as hard as a board. Who is this product questions in our FYI section.
We regret that only letters INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS
When I saw the Triumph motorcycle marketed for, anyway? Serious runners considered for publication For inquiries regarding
can be answered. international licensing or
on your December cover, I immedi- could never afford to continually re- E-mail FYI questions to syndication, please contact
ately went looking for it inside. I fi- place them. Perhaps an article should [email protected] [email protected]

12 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

YOUR GUIDE TO THIS merely a stumbling block. Any mention
MONTH’S POPSCI of debate appeared to be limited to one
sentence that said, “The government
_FROM THE BLOGS
From “artificial life” to “zillions” Last month, more than 650 Web logs
ban—established in 2001 over ethical
linked to popsci.com. A sample:
ARTIFICIAL LIFE PAGE 68 concerns about destroying embryos—
limits federal funding to research Best of What’s New_
ATOMIZER 56 All I want for Christmas . . . is this awe-
involving about 60 human stem-cell
CELL-SPITTING ROBOTS 54 some pogo stick [December]. Yeah, I want
colonies created before 2001.” The only
a pogo stick. But this isn’t any old pogo
DIRTY BOMB 62 other significant dissenting discussion stick—it’s a pogo stick that can send you
involved the critics who charged “that eight feet into the air. It’s called the Flybar
DUAL-FLUSH TOILET 27
such measures siphon money away 1200. It’s only $300, so feel free to buy me
EVOLUTION DISCLAIMER 89 from equally deserving fields into a one. (Broken bones and concussions at no
relatively unproven area. The stem-cell extra charge.) This is seriously one of the
FINGERPRINT SCANNERS 18
panacea, they contend, is overhyped.” coolest toy improvements in recent history.
FRANKENSTEIN 68 Did I mention that you can get it to produce
This article did not give a voice to 1,200 pounds of thrust? That is just insane.
FRANK LANDS ON MARS! 33 those who ethically oppose embryonic- posted by Jack Zucker,
FUSION REACTOR 34 stem-cell research, and I am responding Sunlight Is the Best Disinfectant
to help remedy this. Life should be sunlightdisinfectant.blogspot.com
GALINSTAN 84
respected at all stages. There are alterna-
GIGAPASCALS, 600 51 Man & Machine_
tives, such as adult stem cells, and, pos- Two factors to consider: I lived in Saratoga
HOMES, PRINTED 56 sibly, cells from umbilical cords, which Springs, New York, from 1976 to
offer promise without crossing this 1978, and I’ve been an avid bicyclist since
HOME-THEATER PC DIY 82
ethical boundary. I was old enough to ride one. Hence,
HOWITZER 63 Following ethical principles has when the December POPULAR SCIENCE
brought much justice to our world, and mentioned that the best-engineered high-
HYDRAULIC LAWNMOWER 20
performance bicycles in the world are
we daily benefit from that. Please, in manufactured in Saratoga Springs by
INDIUM 84
the future, present a more balanced the local company Serotta, I expressed
LINDEN DOLLARS 79 debate on this and other issues. many thanks that my wife would pop me
LITTLE BOY 61 Mike Lupo in the head with a cricket bat if I thought
Huntsville, Ala. about buying one of these bikes unless
MACH 10 112 all of the bills were paid and we had a
MEDIA CENTER PC 72 few hundred thousand dollars in the bank.
Headlines editor Nicole Dyer responds:
Otherwise, the temptation to pick up a
MICELLES 70 We agree that stem cells derived from bicycle of this caliber and spend the rest
MICRONOZZLES 54
adult tissues and umbilical cords hold of my days flipping the bird at Dallas’s
remarkable medical potential and should notoriously bicycle-unfriendly drivers
MYCOPLASMA GENITALIUM 69 be researched thoroughly. The vast would just be too much.
NASCAR 112 majority of scientific groups, however, posted by Paul Riddell,
including the National Academy of The Esoteric Science Resource Center
PHI X 69 livejournal.com/users/sclerotic_rings
Sciences, the American Association for
PHOTO-ADORNED SWAG 79 the Advancement of Science and the
PRANK SPOONS 84 American Medical Association, contend set a one-hour record of 50 kilometers
QORI KALIS 48 that embryonic stem cells hold greater on a recumbent that remained unbroken
promise. The primary reason is that stem until 1984, when Francesco Moser rode
SOLAR SAIL 32 cells derived from embryos possess aston- for 51.1 kilometers on a “wedgie” bike.
SPOUSAL APPROVAL FACTOR 82 ishing versatility—they can potentially The superior efficiency of the recumbent
STIRLING ENGINE, SOLAR 31 form any tissue type in the body. Current is clearly shown by the fact that it took
research shows that adult and cord cells 46 years for the wedgie to catch up.
SYNTHETIC BUG 70 are less plastic and that their ability to All absolute human-powered speed
TELEPHONE, ILLEGAL 30 regenerate damaged tissue is limited. records are held by recumbents. Why
TELEPORTATION REPORT 88 don’t we see more of them? I attribute
Rah Rah for Recumbents it to two factors: the outlawing of the
THRUST SSC 50 In “In Praise of the Bespoke Bicycle” better bike for competition, and the
TRIBUTYL PHOSPHATE 62 [Man & Machine, December] Stephan human desire to fit in. When I ride my
URANIUM, HIGHLY ENRICHED 60 Wilkinson states, in describing the recumbent, people look at me as if I am
diamond-frame racing bicycle, “The some kind of alien creature. But I can
UR-GENE 70 world hasn’t come up with a more ride farther, faster, have better visibility
VOLVO’S ECO CAR 17 efficient human-powered vehicle.” It and much more comfort than I ever
“WE ARE NOT CRAZY” 66 certainly has: the recumbent racing did on a diamond-frame bike.
bicycle, which was invented in the late Gene Bennett
WORLD'S FASTEST TURTLE 48
19th century. In 1938 Marcel Berthet Everett, Wash.
ZILLIONS 70

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 15

WHAT’SNEW
POPULAR
T scıence

INSIDE MOBILE GADGETS GET FINGERPRINT SECURITY 18 • TUBE TVs SLIM DOWN 24 • THE FIRST BLUETOOTH HEADSET WITH AN LCD 28

Evergreen Machine
Volvo’s new eco-friendly concept coupe
promises to make obsolescence obsolete
» MAYBE YOU’RE UNIMPRESSED by the Volvo 3CC’s top speed of 85 mph and 0–60
time of less than 10 seconds. Before turning up your nose, consider that it runs
on 3,000 lithium-ion batteries—not unlike those found in most laptops. They send 400
SWITCHBLADE Scissor doors prevent
volts to an 80-kilowatt electric motor that drives the front wheels. Consider, too, that the parking-lot dings and cyclist trauma.
3CC’s Formula One–style horizontal front suspension earned it top slalom marks at last
October’s Michelin Challenge Bibendum, the world’s largest environmental-vehicle expo,
in Shanghai, China. But batteries are just one way of powering what Volvo engineers are
calling a future-proof platform. They wanted a car that could easily house any propulsion
system conceivable, from gas to diesel to fuel cell and beyond. So instead of building the
frame for a specific engine, they designed it around the space requirements for any small-
car power plant. As for the carbon-fiber body, the rear end is tapered so dramatically
that it allows for only one backseat, but the design reduces drag by 12 percent. Yes, it’s
a three-seater, but there’s enough room in back for two child car seats. The driver pushes a
button to make his seat, steering wheel and pedals slide forward six inches so he doesn’t DASH BORG Buttons are triggered
have to get out to let a hitchhiker climb in. Hey, that’s still safe in Sweden.—JOE BROWN when your finger comes within 5 mm.

SPECS
0 – 60 <10 SECONDS
TOP SPEED 85 MPH
MAX POWER 105 HP
RANGE 300 KM (186 MI)
FUEL ELECTRIC
WEIGHT 2,300 LBS (EST.)

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID DEWHURST POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 17

T
WHAT’S NEW | GADGETS

Forget Your Password?

Try Your Finger
Improved sensor technology delivers big
biometric security to wee gadgets

» BIOMETRIC SCANNERS THAT ANALYZE your fingerprint have existed for

decades. But the widely used optical approach—which, to take a picture of your
print, must scan the entire pad of your finger—is too bulky for most portable electronics.
The mobile goods on this page take advantage of newer sensors that scan only thin
slices of your finger at a time yet are more accurate than the optical variety, which can
be fooled by a photo or tripped up by a dirty finger. They’re quick and secure, and
you’ll never have to remember a password again. —SUZANNE KANTRA KIRSCHNER

IBM ThinkPad T42

To keep your private documents under lock and key, this
laptop requires a positive scan before it will finish booting.
Once it’s up and running, the capacitive scanner [see illus-
HP iPaq hx2700
tration below] also provides one-touch access to password-
A chunk of the 128
protected documents and Web sites. $1,700 » ibm.com
megabytes in this
Wi-Fi- and Bluetooth-
enabled PDA probably
contains intimate info.
To maximize security,
HP’s thermal sensor
images and accepts Lexar JumpDrive TouchGuard
only fingers at body A 256-megabyte USB drive? Big deal. But this one stores 200
temperature, thus lock- user names and passwords so that you can access Web sites
ing out fake digits simply by swiping your finger across its capacitive sensor.
(molds or [see illustration below]. $70 » lexarmedia.com
photos). $550 »
hp.com
REFINED PRINTS
[ CAPACITIVE SCANNER ] [ RADIO-FREQUENCY SCANNER ]
I L L U S T R AT I O N S : J A S O N L E E ; P H O T O G R A P H S : J O H N B . C A R N E T T

LG LP3800 Live skin

Most scanners can be Electrical field Radio signals
thrown off by oil and
Dead skin
dirt. Radio-frequency
readers, however,
cut through the crud, Storage sensor Sensor
which is why LG chose Transfer sensor
the technology for Swipe your finger, and voltage Radio signals pierce the dead skin
its wireless banking- passes from the transfer sensor to the layer and bounce off the ridges and
enabled 1.3-megapixel storage sensor via your skin. Ridges valleys of live skin because it con-
camera phone (Korea return more voltage than valleys do tains water, which reflects the signals.
only). Expect radio- because they’re closer to the sensors. The resulting radio-frequency field,
frequency scanners to Software verifies the print pattern and reconstructed by algorithms, mimics
go mainstream within then gives the green light. the shape of your unique digit.
the next two years.

18 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

T
WHAT’S NEW | GENERAL INNOVATION

Get Pumped
Pirouette the lawn mower. Ring in a home run.
Lower the roof. Anything hydraulics can’t do?

» HYDRAULICS DATE BACK TO DA VINCI, but they show up in

new products year after year for a reason. An incompressible
fluid—oils of varying viscosities—routed through reinforced hoses
easily transfers force without complex gears, levers, belts or pulleys.
Hydraulics may seem low-tech, but these examples of modern inno-
vation prove that they’re still cutting edge.—JONATHAN BLUM

CROP CIRCLER
Lawn-Boy’s zero-radius-
turning (ZRT) mower uses
independently rotating rear-
drive wheels to spin around a
single point. The engine runs
hydraulic motors at each rear
axle, and the steering handles
manage how much fluid goes
to each motor. Pushing the
handle increases flow and,

M A N U FA C T U R I N G ; C O U RT E S Y YA K I M A ; C O U RT E S Y C A P I TA L M A N U FA C T U R I N G
proportionally, speed.
$3,800 » lawnboy.com

C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P : C O U RT E S Y L AW N - B O Y; C O U RT E S Y C A P I TA L
DINGER RINGER
A new fixture at the Philadelphia Phillies’ stadium, this 6,250-pound
neon Liberty Bell relies on hydraulics to swing after home runs. The
tricky part was keeping the bell from wobbling at the end of its 7.5-
degree arc. When not loaded, the fluids collected at the low points
in the lines and stayed there until pressurized; when reloaded, they
sloshed around, shaking the piston and, in turn, the bell. Since the
last thing Philly needed was two broken Liberty Bells, engineers pro-
grammed the hydraulic cylinder to stop midcycle so that the pistons
remain under constant load. Bleacher seat: $22 » phillies.com

GEAR LIFTER
The Yakima E-Z Load delivers equipment from a vehicle’s
roof to its side with minimal effort. The articulating arms that swing the apparatus
down are controlled by two matching gas shocks that are hardier versions of those
found in a car’s trunk lid. On the descent, the shocks—filled with nitrogen and
sealed by a jacket of hydraulic fluid that changes shape as the piston moves but
never changes volume—compress to check the rack’s movement. Push the rack back
up, and the shocks kick in with 20 pounds each of assist. $400 » yakima.com

20 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

T
WHAT’S NEW | AUTOMOTIVE TECH

A
B

1
Roll Stability Control helps drivers manage
sharp changes in driving conditions.
Here, the red axes illustrate the degree of
roll, as measured by a gyroscopic body-
roll sensor [A]. The computer [B] pulses the right
front brake [C] to prevent a skid as the driver
begins to swerve to his left of the ball.

NO PUSHOVER
The 2005
Ford Explorer

Putting the Brakes on Rollovers D

A new take on stability control keeps all four wheels planted

» ALTHOUGH CARMAKERS HAVE WORKED in the past 15 years to prevent SUVs and
vans from rolling over—primarily by lowering their centers of gravity and broadening

2
their wheel bases—they can’t stop drivers from overloading vehicles and overcorrecting at the As the driver steers around the ball,
wheel. The problem is particularly acute with 15-passenger vans: Between 1990 and 2002, the body-roll sensor detects that the
349 of them were involved in fatal rollovers. right front wheel is about to leave
Now Ford has instituted Roll Stability Control on most of its 2005 SUVs and the 2006 the ground. Then the computer
Econoline 15-passenger van, taking its Electronic Stability Control one step further—into the activates the left front brake [D] to check
third dimension. ESC evaluates the discrepancy between where the driver wants the car to go momentum and prevent a potential skid.
(as measured by the steering wheel angle) and where it’s actually going (as measured by An SUV without RSC [ghosted above] could
wheel-speed sensors, a lateral accelerome- continue tipping and roll over.
ter and a yaw-rate sensor). If a threshold
is exceeded, the computer slows the car by
braking the appropriate wheel or wheels
and reducing engine torque. Ford’s first-of-
its-kind Roll Stability Control system adds I L L U S T R AT I O N S : J A S O N L E E ; P H O T O G R A P H : C O U RT E S Y F O R D

a gyroscopic sensor that measures body

1 roll to determine whether a tire is about
to leave the ground, so it can brake the
appropriate wheels and slow momentum.
It keeps the vehicle on the right path and
3 the wheels on the ground.—ERIC ADAMS

STICKING TO THE SAFE ROUTE

3
2 Electronic stability systems keep vehicles on The calculated, selective braking
their intended paths [1]. In an understeer- stops the vehicle from swaying dan-
ing situation [2], the computer brakes the gerously out of control. As the SUV
inside rear tire to pull the vehicle back in returns to a level plane, the RSC’s
line. When oversteering [3], outside front computer releases the brakes and hands
braking corrects the slide. control back over to the driver.

22 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

T
WHAT’S NEW | HOME ENTERTAINMENT

I Want My Thin TV Samsung’s

Trimming the fat breathes new life SlimFit 30-inch
HDTV, available
into old-school cathode-ray tubes next month, is
15.5 inches
» EXCESSIVE WEIGHT AND BULK seem to have doomed the 76-year-
old cathode-ray boob tube to obsolescence, especially with prices
deep. $1,200 »
samsung.com
coming down on its sleek flat-panel brethren. Or so we thought. This year,
LG and Samsung will release CRTs one third smaller than existing sets.
They’ll work a lot like their portly predecessors: A cathode “gun” shoots a
beam of electrons from the base of a Y-shaped tube toward the screen to
make the embedded layer of red, green and blue phosphors glow. Electro-
magnetic coils at the neck of the tube bend the beam, steering it as it
sweeps across the screen, painting the picture line by line. (Fact: This pro-
cess still generates the best picture.)
To shed girth, the new guns sweep
at a wider angle, 125 degrees ver-
sus 110 degrees. To get the whole
thing to work, engineers stretched
out the magnetic field to push the
beam into the corners. The first TVs
with the new tubes will cost about
half as much as a flat panel of the
same size, and 30 percent more
than a traditional CRT.
—SUZANNE KANTRA KIRSCHNER

LG’s 30-inch Direct-View Slim CRT HDTV is 14 inches

deep. Available this summer. $1,200 » us.lge.com

THE FRESH FACES OF FLAT SCREENS

Emerging technologies stir up competition among the supermodel sets. Meet the new waifs
PRICE
TV TECH 101 THE GOOD THE BAD THE BULK GET IT PER INCH

Think of a mini CRT: Excellent contrast, Slight burn-in Maximum Fall $180*
SED A “gun” at each pixel brightness, color screen size 55
(Surface-conduction emits electrons that saturation and inches; about
Electron-emitter make red, green or response time 3 inches thick
Display) blue phosphor glow

Organic materials Good contrast; One sixth the life- Maximum 2007 Unknown
OLED sandwiched between exceptional bright- span of other tech- screen size
I L L U S T R AT I O N S : P E T E R S T E M M L E R ; P H O T O G R A P H S , F R O M L E F T:

(Organic Light- a transparent anode ness; very saturated nologies; blue not deter-
Emitting Diode) and a metallic cathode colors; excellent organic material mined; about
glow under voltage response time tends to die out first 1 inch thick

Charged gas at each Very good contrast Slight burn-in Maximum Now $80**
Plasma pixel creates ultraviolet and brightness; screen size 80
light, which causes the good color inches; about
C O U RT E S Y L G ; C O U RT E S Y S A M S U N G

red, green or blue saturation 3 inches thick

phosphor to glow

Voltage pivots crystals Good contrast; Slowest response Maximum Late $217†
LED- suspended in liquid to average brightness; time; color not screen size 46 spring
Backed regulate LED light pass- good color as rich inches; about
ing through red, green saturation 5 inches thick
LCD or blue filters

RESEARCH BY GARY MERSON *based on 55-inch model **based on 50-inch model †based on 46-inch model

24 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

 T
HOME TECH | WHAT’S NEW

All Hail the Split Button

Eco-Throne The left half delivers a
1.6-gallon flush; the right
When Mother Nature calls, side 0.8 gallon
show her a little respect

» A GOOD TOILET is one you don’t have

to worry about. But given that toilets Calibrated Plunger
The bucketlike float in the
consume a third of a household’s water, they
flush tower fills up when the
merit some consideration. In 30 years, their
right button is pushed, driv-
gallons-per-flush (gpf) rating in the U.S. fell
ing it down to cut off water
from 7 to 5 to 3.5 to 1.6 in 1992, when fed- halfway through the flush
eral law mandated that builders use low-flush
toilets. The problem was, they didn’t flush well.
Manufacturers found a solution in their Silicon Gasket
efforts to perfect a toilet that uses even less
water: the dual flush. It’s a two-button job that
dispenses, at your discretion, either 0.8 gallon
or 1.6 gallons. The Australian company Ca- Water Management
roma started bringing them to the U.S. in the All of the flushed water flows
late 1990s, and since then, the Environmental through the rim; conven-
Protection Agency judged this type more effec- tional toilets divert some of
the water through a jet at
tive and more efficient than the old standard.
the mouth of the trapway
Most of the new models replace the rubber
I L L U S T R AT I O N S : C O U RT E S Y S T E R L I N G ; P H O T O G R A P H S , F R O M L E F T: C O U RT E S Y C A R O M A ; C O U RT E S Y M A N S F I E L D ; C O U RT E S Y V O RT E N S

flapper, which is prone to degrading, with a

silicon gasket and calibrated plunger. Their
bowls and trapways have been redesigned to Wash-Down Bowl
work better. There’s still debate over whether The bowl’s sides are steeply
the “wash-down” flush, which relies on gravity pitched to force water
and a wide trapway, or the “siphonic,” which toward the trapway
uses suction and a narrow passage, works
best. But there’s no arguing with the water
savings of these four commodes: They’ll save
the average flusher more than 3,000 gallons a Siphonic Trapway
year. How do people like them? “I have repeat The kinked path
sales on these,” says Terry Love, a plumber in creates a strong
Bellevue, Washington. “One customer took his vacuum to
siphon waste
when he moved.”—ALAN J. HEAVENS
through a two-
inch passage
Sterling Rockton is a dual-flush, 0.8/1.6-gpf,
two-button toilet that combines wash-down and
siphonic flow to move waste through a two-inch
trapway. $275 » sterlingplumbing.com

Caroma Caravelle
Vortens
One Piece is a seamless
Vienna DF
Australian wash-down model
is a Mexican
with a four-inch trapway.
siphonic dual-
The quick-release
flush 1.0/1.6-
seat makes
gpf toilet with
for easy
a 2.13-inch
cleaning.
Mansfield EcoQuantum is a pressure-assist trapway and
0.8/1.6
1.0/1.6-gpf. It has a two-inch trapway and, an intuitive
gpf.
instead of buttons, a dual-action lever flush button
$600 »
[shown]—down for a partial flush, up for a [shown]. $150 »
caromausa.com
full one. $328 » mansfieldplumbing.com vortens.com

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 27

T
WHAT’S NEW

THE GOODS [
20 SERIOUSLY HOT
PRODUCTS THAT (ALMOST)
SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES

Hands-Free Roadkill
Caller ID Keeper
Jabra BT800 » The Rubbermaid
first Bluetooth head- Thermoelectric
set with an LCD Cooler Freezer
shows who’s call- » Plug it into
ing. Set it to vibrate your car’s
or ring. Recharge- cigarette lighter, and load up with
able battery allows Ben & Jerry’s. The large aluminum
six hours of talk cooling plate and insulated walls
time and 125 of allow the bottom compartment of this
standby. 0.9 ounce. 12-volt fridge to work as a freezer.
$120 » jabra.com $60 » vectormfg.com

Future Forehand
Prince 03 Arch
» The large ports in the
frame let the strings
near the perimeter react
more dynamically than
small holes would,
shrinking the dead zone
in that area by 54
percent. $250–$300 »
princetennis.com

Dual Citizen Juice

Acoustic Research Digital MediaBridge Caboose
» What’s new about wirelessly sending audio, pictures Charge 2 Go
and high-definition video from your computer to your Baby Got » The charger’s
TV? You can do it with a Mac and a PC, thanks to slick Backroads power-control chip
software. 802.11b/g. $300 » acoustic-research.com BOB Revolution amplifies the volt-
Video Presidio » The only jogging age of a normal
Samsung SC-X105L stroller we’ve seen AA cell to match
X-Cam » Mount the remote Neutral Colors with suspension and your phone’s
lens to your helmet, and get Kodak EasyShare Printer Dock a front caster wheel. specs. It charges
first-person footage of your Series 3 » Place your Kodak, Lock it to take your for two hours on
derring-do. The rubber- Konica Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, tot on the trail. an alkaline bat-
shod body is tough, and Pentax, Ricoh or Sanyo digicam in Unlock the wheel in tery, three on a
because it’s a flash video this dock for one-touch printing. the city, and you lithium-ion. $20 »
recorder (512 megs inter- All seven companies support its can pivot the rig charge2go.com
nal, Memory Stick), there’s ImageLink plug, which debuts without lifting
no tape to get jarred. in this 4-by-6-inch thermal the nose. $350 »
$650 » samsung.com printer. $150 » kodak.com bobgear.com

Trick Daddy
Wherify G550 GPS Phone » Slap in any data-capable GSM sim card, program it with five
important numbers, and let Junior go wild—he can’t dial anyone else. If he doesn’t pick up
when you call, the embedded GPS lets you locate him over the Internet. $120 » wherify.com

28 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

 Time. And A Little off the Top
Time Again Black & Decker 18V Pole Hedge
Tag Heuer Trimmer » The head swivels to
Monaco 69 any of five different positions. Set
» One side shows it at a right angle so you can cut
the classic Monaco the top of a tall hedge, not just the
face and runs off sides. The NiCad battery is good
an equally classic for 1,200 square feet per charge.
mechanical pinion $120 » blackanddecker.com
drive, while the flip
side reveals Tag’s
digital Microtimer
chronographer,
accurate to one
thousandth of a
second. $5,900 »
tagheuer.com
Smooth Operator
Alpine CDA 9855
» To ease access to more infor-
mation—such as the contents
Use What You’ve Got Broadband of your iPod—this new car CD
Energizer Quick Switch » Spring- Baby Grand player uses a trackpad-style
loaded clamps inside this torch Yamaha DGC1 Mark IV touch strip. It lets you scroll
hold various-size cells, so you can » A player piano for the through menus instead of fuss-
use AA, C or D batteries. The only 21st century, this concert- ing with a million tiny buttons.
difference is runtime: 1.7 hours on quality performer plays $450 » alpine.com
two AA’s, 4.5 on two C’s and 10.1 MIDI digital audio files
on two D’s. $13 » energizer.com acoustically. Upload
them onto its 80-gigabyte
hard drive over your
802.11b network.
$35,000 » yamaha.com

It’s Back
Micro Manager Reebok Pump 2.0
Samsung YP-MT6 » The size of a pack of gum, The Nose Knows » An actuator in the
this flash music player runs 45 hours on a single Canary Wireless Wi-Fi heel responds to
AA battery. Supports Microsoft’s rights manage- Detector » Find out if your foot’s pressure,
ment for MP3 and WMA. $120 for 256 megs, you can actually use the automatically inflat-
$150 for 512, and $200 for a gig » samsung.com Wi-Fi signal this sniffer ing the shoe within
detects: The LCD displays five steps to snug it
the name and strength up. A regulator on
Free Your Photos of each network and the side keeps it
Concord Wireless Image Transfer » To copy images to a computer whether it’s encrypted steady at 5 psi, to
without your cable, plug this into your digicam’s USB port and send against public use. $50 » avoid oversqueez-
pics at up to 54 megabits a second. $50 » concord-camera.com canarywireless.com ing. Press that same
valve to release
the air. $100 »
Best Seat in the House reebok.com
Family Inada W.1 Massage Chair » Reading
the audio track of a DVD or CD, this lounger
synchronizes the sound and your massage.
Rollers target your back for treble, your legs
for midrange, and the bass works your booty.
$4,500 » inada-chair.com

Clearly
Superior
Zeiss Victory FL » Fluoride-
impregnated glass, typically
found in telescopes, is now
in binoculars. Its chemical
composition keeps light
waves largely intact, so col-
ors are truer than in standard
optics. $1,450 » zeiss.com

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 29

 POPULAR

HEADLINES
T scıence

FEBRUARY 2005 DISCOVERIES, ADVANCES & DEBATES IN SCIENCE AND THE WORLD

INSIDE MICROWAVING COSMOS 1 32 • CAN STEM CELLS SEED CANCER? 34 • THE ULTIMATE FUSION REACTOR 36 • OBESITY IN FLIGHT 39

[ALTERNATIVE ENERGY]

Dishing Out
Real Power
Costs are down, interest is up,
and the Stirling solar system is
ready to flick the switch

T
HE WAY ROBERT LIDEN SEES IT, HIS
company is simply building an odd-
looking car. It’s made mostly of steel
and glass, after all, and it has an engine
with a radiator and a water pump. It just
doesn’t have wheels, seats or a Blaupunkt.
What it does have is a generator that
can power up to eight homes. No, the
device isn’t a car; it’s a Stirling solar dish,
and Sandia National Laboratories in Albu-
querque, New Mexico, has recently com-
pleted a mini power plant composed of
six of Liden’s dishes.
The dish, made by Stirling Energy Sys-
tems in Phoenix, is the world’s most effi-
cient solar generator. It uses an old princi-
ple—that concentrated light is a great heat
source—to achieve a level of efficiency on
par with conventional power sources and
far higher than traditional solar cells.
Instead of converting sunlight directly into
electricity, as those familiar rooftop solar
panels do, it uses a concave array of mirrors
to focus light on a central point, where the
resulting heat causes compressed hydrogen
to expand, driving a four-cylinder engine
that turns a 25-kilowatt generator.
Measuring 38 feet across and costing
$250,000, this is no residential add-on. It’s
meant for the opposite end of the power
chain—that is, for utilities seeking extra
C O U RT E S Y S T I R L I N G E N E R G Y S Y S T E M S

juice for the grid, not for consumers hoping

to reduce their household energy bill.
Liden, Stirling’s chief administrative offi-
cer, says the company will install a 40-dish,

Left: One of six prototype solar dishes installed near

Albuquerque by Sandia National Laboratories. The
plant will produce up to 150 kilowatts of grid-ready
electrical power. Inset: A 10,000-square-mile farm
could meet the energy needs of the entire country.

TICKER /// 10.07.04 PREHISTORIC PELTING FRENCH AND EGYPTIAN GEOLOGISTS UNEARTH THE LARGEST KNOWN METEORITE CRATER FIELD, BURIED IN THE SAHARA DESERT

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 31

T
HEADLINES

[ALTERNATIVE ENERGY] CONTINUED [SPACE]

one-megawatt demonstration project in
California by early next year. Then, with
manufacturing ramped up, Liden wants to
get really serious, erecting a 20,000-dish
Nuking the Sail
facility somewhere in the Southwest to A blast of microwave power could give
supply the region with 500 new megawatts, the world’s first solar sail a boost
more energy than many nuclear or fossil-
fuel plants crank out.
For decades, solar power has been hin- » ON MARCH 1, THE CALIFORNIA-BASED nonprofit Planetary
Society will attempt for the third time (or is it the fourth? we’ve
dered by high costs. Now, however, with lost count) to launch its privately funded Cosmos 1 solar sail. A Russ-
coal-fired plants struggling to clean up their ian ballistic missile will deliver the 30-meter-wide sail, which is made
emissions, natural-gas plants beset by high of Mylar and looks like a giant pinwheel, into an 825-kilometer near-
fuel prices, and nuclear plants still anath- polar orbit. Like a sailboat coasting with the wind, the craft won’t
ema because of disposal woes, people are need an engine: Pressure from the sun’s photons, striking the sail’s
reexamining the solar option. The energy surface at various angles, will boost its orbital velocity. If the concept
source has gotten steadily more affordable, is successful, more-developed solar sails might one day cruise among
and the U.S. Department of Energy says that the planets of the inner solar system. And they’ll never need to refuel.
solar-dish power could be cost-competitive To get out of Earth’s orbit quickly, however, a solar sail would
with conventional sources by 2011. require more than a gust of sunlight. Physicist and science-fiction
author Gregory Benford thinks he has a solution. When the Plane-
Dish power could tary Society gives them the go-ahead, he and his brother James,
the CEO of Microwave Sciences, will use a 70-meter antenna in
become the go-to Goldstone, California, to fire a 500-kilowatt beam of microwave
stopgap source energy at Cosmos 1. The influx of high-energy photons will produce

during periods at best a tiny change in the sail’s velocity—not enough to kick it
out of orbit, but enough to measure—and it will stand as an impor-
of high demand. tant test. “We know the physics will work,” James Benford says.
“We’re now trying to find the best approach to get us out of the
The concept behind the solar dish dates solar system.”—PATRICK DI JUSTO
back to 1816, when Scottish engineer
Robert Stirling invented a workable alter-
native to the explosion-prone steam
engines of the day. His version was fueled
by wood, not light, and produced mechani-
cal power, not electricity, but his closed-
cycle regenerative gas engine is at the heart

1
of the Stirling solar system.
If dish power catches on, it will boost the
nation’s lagging solar industry, which now
generates less than 1 percent of the total Volna rocket
power supply. Sandia engineer Chuck
Andraka says the dish’s modular appeal
(you can chain together as many as you
want) reduces the amount of start-up capi-
tal needed for commercialization. But, he
adds, the price per dish needs to fall below LAUNCH BLASTING OFF Because the
$50,000 to be cost-effective. Cosmos 1 project is privately
Once that happens, dish power could funded, the Planetary Society
become the go-to stopgap source during had to do some price hunting,
periods of high daytime demand, especially and Russia is best for space dis-
JOHN MACNEILL

during the summer months, when air con- counts. A Volna rocket carrying
ditioners strain the power grid. “The U.S. the spacecraft will launch from
has plenty of baseload power,” Andraka a submarine in the Barents Sea.
says. “It’s the peak that we’ve got to worry
about.”—JOSHUA TOMPKINS

/// 11.02.04 STEM-CELL GOLD RUSH? CALIFORNIA VOTERS PASS PROPOSITION 71, A BALLOT MEASURE THAT GREENLIGHTS THE STATE TO SELL $3 BILLION IN BONDS TO FUND 10 YEARS

32 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

 RIDING SUNLIGHT
*
MICROWAVE POWER After two to four
AND MICROWAVES weeks of solar sailing, Planetary Society
AROUND THE WORLD engineers will give the Benford brothers their
chance. They hope to test two microwave-beam
techniques: impulse and tracking. In impulse
mode, the beam fires at a fixed spot in the orbit,
Mylar sail hitting the sail for about 0.07 second—just long
enough to detect a change in velocity. Tracking

2
Protective covering
mode is more difficult but more forceful; the
antenna trains its beam on the sail as it rises in

3 the sky, giving it a sustained, 3.3-minute jolt.

Cosmos 1 4
1 ASCENT The three-stage, 14-meter-long
Volna rocket lifts the Cosmos 1 space-
craft—with its sails safely folded up inside
—into orbit 825 kilometers above the Earth.

2 SEPARATION After the third stage is

exhausted, explosives blow off the pro-
tective covering that houses the spacecraft.

3 TESTING Before deploying the sail,

Planetary Society engineers will per-
form tests to see if everything is running
smoothly. This phase could last a week.

4 DEPLOYMENT The sail is made up of

eight separate triangular Mylar blades,
each of which is only five microns thick.
To unfurl the sails, tubes running the length Microwave beam
of each blade are inflated with nitrogen,
expanding each one to its full, 15-meter
length and holding it rigid. When photons
from the sun bounce off the reflective sur-
FACING THE SUN
face, they impart a force in the opposite
direction, accelerating the craft. While in Coasting
orbit, the spacecraft will send radio signals
to various tracking stations on Earth so that
engineers can follow its position.

Accelerating

Cosmos 1 will speed up only when the sunlight

hitting the sail is heading in the same direction
as the craft. The sail blades, which can be
rotated like Venetian blinds, will turn their
Goldstone Antenna edges to the sun when moving toward it,
allowing the photons to fly past, and then turn
their faces into the sun, getting a boost.

TICKER
OF /// 1.10.03 VIRALRESEARCH
EMBRYONIC-STEM-CELL ANNIVERSARY THE COMPUTER
/// 11.08.04 VIRUS
EXTREME CELEBRATES
ROBOTS SPRAY, AITS 20-YEAR ANNIVERSARY;
SIX-FOOT-LONG FORMER OCEAN
BATTERY-POWERED UNIVERSITY OFFINISHES
GLIDER, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GRAD
A TWO-MONTH SWIM STUDENT FRED
FROM CAPE COD

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 33

T
HEADLINES

[MEDICAL RESEARCH] SHRINKAGE

DEPT. Research updates on
Why Tumors Won’t Die the quest to make really tiny things
Stem cells heal the body by replenishing damaged cells.
What happens when they go to work for cancer?

» PEDIATRIC BRAIN SURGEON Peter

Dirks of the Hospital for Sick Children
cancer stem cells are thought to work in the
same way, cranking out diseased tissue types
in Toronto remembers well the cancers that instead of healthy ones. Although scientists
have evaded his knife, withstood chemo- first isolated cancer stem cells in the early
therapy and radiation, and somehow 1990s, Dirks and his group are the first to
reemerged to end a patient’s life. Now he show that the cells can rebirth entire brain SCIENTISTS HAVE LONG dreamed of cre-
and Michael Clarke of the University of tumors inside a living animal. ating microscopic swimmers capable of
Michigan Medical School say they have In their study, investigators extracted ferrying drugs to precise locations in a
learned the secret to cancer’s tenacity: a cancer stem cells from human brain-tumor cell or helping assemble infinitesimal
cluster of mutant stem cells that continuously tissue and injected about 100 of them into machines. Now Iranian physicists have
regenerates tumors. Their discovery could the brains of healthy mice. The cells, which proposed a simple design modeled on
lead to a powerful new therapeutic were tagged with a fluorescent marker, the slow-moving earthworm. Their
approach, one that targets the source of the sprouted clones of the original human tumors. “nano-swimmer” would consist of three
disease, spares healthy tissue, and may Researchers injected up to 100,000 non- spheres connected in a row by two rods.

C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P : C O U RT E S Y D R . S . R . S T U R Z E N B A U M A N D D R . A . J . M O R G A N ; C O U RT E S Y Z H I S O N G WA N G ; M E H A U K U LY K / P H O T O R E S E A R C H E R S
even knock out brain cancer for good. stem-cell cancer types as well, but in all those When moving, the rods would contract
Stem cells can replicate indefinitely and cases, the mice brains remained tumor-free. in sequence—first the rear one, then
give rise to more than 200 kinds of tissue What’s more, Dirks noticed that aggressive the front; next they would expand in
types found in the human body. So-called brain-tumor types contained the most stem reverse order. This might sound ineffi-
cells, suggesting that cient for a fluid environment, but on the
A BRAIN the number of stem molecular scale, water acts much like
UNDER SIEGE
This MRI scan shows a cells in a tumor molasses: it would actually grip the
brain tumor [pink] might predict a swimmer’s leading sphere as the rods
made of cancerous cancer’s severity. contracted. As they expanded, the
connective tissue. Dirks says that water would hold on to the back of the
the ultimate goal hind sphere, allowing the front of the
is to develop a machine to lurch forward—similar to a
therapy that targets competitive swimmer pushing off the
cancer stem cells. wall after a turn. One group is already
But first he and his trying to build a prototype from mole-
team must identify cules that inch forward in response to
a marker that can light, says co-designer Ramin Golestan-
better distinguish ian of the Institute for Advanced Studies
healthy stem cells in Basic Sciences in Zanjan, Iran, but the
from rogue ones first applications are still about 20 to 30
(the protein tagged years away.—JR MINKEL
in the study is native
to both). RRR
In the meantime,
he hopes to use the
mice bearing human
tumors to personal-
ize cancer treat-
ment, determining
which therapy is
likely to work best
before prescribing A theoretical nano-swimmer crawls
through viscous fluids like an earth-
it to a patient.
worm, pushing and pulling on nearby
—INGRID WICKEL- molecules to stretch forward.
GREN

TO BERMUDA, BECOMING THE FIRST AUTONOMOUS UNDERWATER VEHICLE TO CROSS THE GULF STREAM /// 11.16.04 HYPERFAST NASA’S EXPERIMENTAL UNMANNED JET

34 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

T
HEADLINES

[PHYSICS]

A Miniature
Star on Earth
Scientists hope to build an
experimental fusion reactor

» DOC OCK, THE TENTACLED VILLAIN

at the heart of the movie Spider-Man 2,
nearly succeeded where thousands of scientists
and 50 years of work have so far failed: in 3
2
building a nuclear fusion reactor. But nonvillain-
ous scientists may be about to save their repu-
tation. This year a multinational team is sched- 1

uled to begin constructing ITER, the International

Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, a project 4
designed to demonstrate that fusion can gener-
ate almost limitless amounts of electricity with-
out the risks and long-lived radioactive waste
linked with nuclear fission reactors.
5
Fusion reactions power the sun and stars.
ITER aims to re-create that energy here on Earth
by heating hydrogen gas to 100 million˚C.
In this inferno, hydrogen ions smash together,
fuse into a larger ion—helium—and release
energy. Physicists have already built reactors
that can achieve fusion, but none has yet pro-
duced more energy than it consumes. 4 Supercon-
If all goes as planned, ITER will change that. ducting magnetic
By building a bigger, more powerful reactor, [ ITER ] coils Forty-three
scientists hope to produce 500 megawatts of electromagnets,
power from just 50 megawatts input. Fuel in 1 Plasma The 2 Torus This weighing 11,200 5 Bioshield
the form of the hydrogen isotope deuterium is reactor fuses hydro- 5.4-meter-wide tons in total, wrap A two-meter-thick
extracted from water, and the small amount of gen isotopes in a doughnut-shaped around the torus and concrete shell
radioactive waste it yields decays to a safe level searing mass of elec- vessel made of hold the plasma in around the entire
in decades. In contrast, today’s nuclear fission trons and ions. At stainless steel holds place with a field reactor absorbs
reactors generate waste that can stay hot for 100 million˚C, the the plasma. 100,000 times as most of the remain-
thousands of years. plasma is hotter than strong as Earth’s. ing neutrons to pro-
The project will take 10 years and cost $6 the sun. It is corralled 3 Blankets The magnets are tect employees and
billion to complete, with the goal of producing by two magnetic Beryllium-coated enclosed in a vast equipment
fusion electricity by the middle of the century. fields: one created stainless-steel panels cryostat and chilled on the outside.
There’s just one holdup. As we went to press, by the superconduct- line the torus and to –270˚C with
the international collaboration backing ITER— ing magnets, the absorb neutrons and supercritical helium,
China, the European Union, Japan, South other by a current heat produced in the enabling the current
Korea, Russia and the U.S.—was still arguing flowing around fusion reactions. to flow with zero
over where to build it. For the past year it the torus. resistance.
has been split between sites in France and
Deuterium
Japan (China and Russia favor France; the
Free HOW TO MAKE A SYNTHETIC STAR
U.S. and South Korea back Japan), and no neutron
Helium Fusion powers nearly every star in the universe.
amount of negotiation seems able to break
In ITER, the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and
the impasse. It’s an inauspicious start to a
tritium slam together so hard that they fuse, creat-
collaborative endeavor second in scope only
JOHN MACNEILL

Energy
ing a helium nucleus, a spare neutron and energy.
to the International Space Station.—DAN CLERY
Tritium

PLANE BREAKS ITS OWN SPEED RECORD, BECOMING THE FIRST AIRCRAFT TO REACH 6,800 MPH /// 11.19.04 DIGGING UP DADDY SCIENTISTS UNEARTH THE FOSSIL REMAINS OF

36 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

 T
[THE POPSCI POLL] HEADLINES
BASED ON 4,914 VOTES
POSTED TO POPSCI.COM STATISTICALLY SPEAKING. . .

Obesity Weighs Heavily on Airlines

LAST MONTH’S The Federal Aviation Administration has finally revised its 66-year-old
QUESTION: assumptions about U.S. passenger weight. Here are a few reasons why:

THE FLU SHOT: 8.5 Pounds the average U.S. adult male weight increased, 1991 to 2000

Pounds the FAA assumed an average male passenger weighed,

GOT WANT NO 170 1938 to 2003
ONE ONE THANKS
Pounds the FAA currently expects an average male passenger to
184 weigh, according to an August 2004 revision of weight assumptions

14.8 BILLION Gallons of jet fuel consumed by domestic air travel in 2000

Gallons that could have been spared in 2000 if the average

350 MILLION U.S. adult weight remained at 1991 average
Tons of carbon dioxide emissions generated by burning
3.8 MILLION 350 million gallons of jet fuel

$275 MILLION Cost of 350 million gallons of jet fuel in 2000

Additional gallons of fuel required if every domestic-flight passenger in

23.5 MILLION 2000 was served the Hardee’s 2/3-pound Monster Thickburger en route

SOURCES: Bureau of Transportation Statistics; U.S. Department of Transportation; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention;
Federal Aviation Administration; Hardee’s Food Systems; National Academy of Sciences; National Research Council

15% 17% 68%

[THE EQUATION]

THIS MONTH’S

[ ][ ][ ] + =
C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P L E F T: G E T T Y I M A G E S ; M E S A ; 3 D C L I N I C / G E T T Y I M A G E S ; C O U RT E S Y S O H O , N A S A / E S A

QUESTION:
NUCLEAR
FUSION
REACTORS
WILL POWER [ LATISSIMUS DORSI ] [ ENERGY CONVERTER ] [ BEATING HEART ]

HOMES WITHIN:
THE BODY TURNED BATTERY
50 YEARS Ditch the extension cord. A new implant draws power from back muscles
100 YEARS
NEVER » FOR MANY OF THE NATION’S five million
people suffering from congestive heart
the device turns skeletal muscles into living batter-
ies, harnessing their vast stores of mechanical
failure, treatment options are grim. When weak energy to power an implant.
heart muscles stop pumping blood efficiently, Once situated in the chest, the nine-ounce
many patients require cumbersome cardiac- titanium device is fastened to the rib cage. An arti-
assist devices driven by heavy external battery ficial tendon connects an actuator arm on the
packs. Some even plug into an outlet, ruling out device to a back muscle, which is stimulated by
treks beyond the hospital. implanted electrodes. When the muscle contracts, it
Now a wireless alternative is on the way. moves the actuator arm, which then rotates a cam
Researchers at Allegheny General Hospital in Pitts- and generates hydraulic power for the implant.
burgh have invented a completely self-contained The MEC by itself works well in canines. Next
hydraulic pump that requires no external power up: attaching it to a heart implant. Expect muscle
VOTE AT POPSCI.COM
source. Called a muscle energy converter, or MEC, batteries for humans by 2010.—LINDA MARSA

A 13-MILLION-YEAR-OLD MALE PRIMATE NEAR BARCELONA THAT MAY BE THE LAST KNOWN COMMON ANCESTOR OF HUMANS, CHIMPS AND GORILLAS /// 01.14.05 TITANPALOOZA

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 39

T
HEADLINES

[EMERGING TECHNOLOGY]

T-rays hard to handle? Not anymore

Why terahertz radiation is the new golden child of the electromagnetic spectrum

» Microwaves have revolutionized

cooking, x-rays help doctors diagnose
nology from the theoretical to the practical.
Like x-rays, t-rays can penetrate—or see
solution is simple: A metal rod that picks up
a t-ray signal at one end and emits the
broken bones, and near-infrared light has through—nonmetallic materials such as card- same signal at the other end. The research,
given us night-vision goggles. As for tera- board and plastic, but without the harmful which could soon yield the first t-ray endo-
hertz radiation, sandwiched neatly between ionizing radiation. This makes them ideal for scope, has proponents buzzing. “Just five
infrared and microwaves on the electro- imaging, whether it’s the inside of the diges- years ago,” says t-ray pioneer Charles
magnetic spectrum, it’s been all talk. T-rays, tive tract or a suspicious package. Schmuttenmaer of Yale University, “people
as they’re called, have proved difficult to For years t-rays were deemed commer- were saying ‘Terahertz, schmerahertz—
generate, detect, and direct at a target. cially useless because no one could figure what’s the big deal?’ But it turns out there
Now Rice University physicist Daniel Mittle- out how to guide them. Scientists tried are a lot of things you can do with this
man and his colleagues have discovered hollow metal tubes, which work well with radiation that can’t be done any other
a simple but powerful way to harness microwaves, and the optical fibers that way.” Like what? Have a look at this handy
them, a finding that could move the tech- channel infrared, but both failed. Mittleman’s guide, and see for yourself.—NICOLE DAVIS

FIELD WHAT IT DOES HOW IT WORKS THE BENEFITS STATUS CHECK

Sees through clothes, Some molecules asso- Convenience: Say The U.S. Dept. of Home-
searching for weapons ciated with hazardous goodbye to the hassle land Security just inked
Security or traces of explosives— materials resonate at the of sending shoes a deal with the U.K.’s
minus the ionizing radia- same frequency as and coats through the Teraview to develop a
tion of x-ray machines terahertz radiation x-ray machine t-ray wand for airport use

Because t-rays are T-ray imaging

Distinguishes cancerous Clinical trial with skin-
readily absorbed by devices, which could
cells from healthy ones and breast-cancer
Medicine water, scientists will be in hospitals in three
while using less harmful patients in Cambridge,
distinguish water-heavy years, would make
radiation England, are under way
tumors from healthy cells biopsies obsolete

A t-ray emitter broad- Devices are still 10 to

Enables secure, high- Could transfer data
casts signals directly to a 15 years away.
Communi- bandwidth wireless 1,000 times as fast,
receiver. Won’t penetrate Researchers are still
cation communications over on the order of one
walls, which limits range searching for good t-ray
short distances billion bits per second
but prevents listening in sources and receivers

Atmospheric moisture Higher-resolution In 2012, ALMA, an

Allows scientists
absorbs t-rays flooding in images of interstellar observatory in the
to better study
Astronomy from space, so antennas gas and dust could tell high and dry Chilean
interstellar gas,
in arid, high-altitude astronomers how stars desert, should start
dust and young stars
areas get the best data and planets form listening for t-rays

HEADLINE FROM THE FUTURE PIETER STROEVE

2015 WEARABLE TOXIN DETECTORS TURN CITIZENS INTO

HOMELAND-SECURITY FOOT SOLDIERS
Personal microbe detectors enable public health officials to respond faster to bioterror attacks. The
electronic badges, pinned to clothing or jewelry, continuously sample air for noxious microbes,
such as anthrax and smallpox. Acting as mini laboratories, each badge employs an array of metal
F R O M T O P : J A S O N L E E ; R O B K E L LY

nanocables, which are coated with proteins. When a toxin binds to a protein, the array emits a
unique electrical signal. Your cellphone analyzes the signal, transmits the germ data to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, and dials your doctor for a pronto prescription. With 20 mil-
lion badges sold, the CDC now tracks outbreaks in real time and coordinates care in a flash.
Pieter Stroeve is a chemical engineer at the University of California at Davis. He recently discovered a novel way to make nanocables.

THE HUYGENS SPACE PROBE IS EXPECTED TO TOUCH DOWN ON SATURN’S MOON TITAN, WHERE IT WILL BROADCAST ROCK TUNES COMPOSED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE MISSION ■

40 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

 SOAPBOX
POPULAR
scıence T

PLUGGED IN
THE INSIDE STORY ON
THE FORCES THAT RULE
PERSONAL TECH
BY CORY DOCTOROW

Take Back
Your Cell
How I learned to
stop worrying and love
the smartphone

I
LOVE THE INTERNET BECAUSE I CAN PLUG
anything I want into it. No ISP tells
me what computer I can use or what
software it can run. Contrast that with
the phone networks. Until 1968, it was
illegal to even attach a non-Bell phone.

C O L U M N I S T I L L U S T R AT I O N : R O B K E L LY; C O L U M N I S T P H O T O G R A P H : J O N AT H A N W O RT H ; P H O T O I L L U S T R AT I O N : D AV I D P L U N K E RT
Even today, phone companies charge for
services like Caller ID. Imagine if your
ISP charged you for seeing the “From”
line in your e-mail.
Mobile-phone companies have inher-
ited this arrogance, building their busi-
ness models around nickel-and-diming
customers. They sell you phones that
can play musical ringtones and then
force you to buy the song snippets you
want to use, even if you already own the
CD. They give you color screens for
better gaming but charge you $7 for
Tetris. They give you data but lock you
into their Web browsers and charge you
by the second to use them. Unlike my How significant is this? Ringtones The P900 and Nokia 6620 use an
PC, there’s no freeware and no choice. are currently a multimillion-dollar operating system called Symbian that,
Yet I’m a net-head who learned to love market. But my P900 shipped with a like the Treo’s PalmOS, allows anyone to
phones again—specifically, smartphones built-in utility for playing any MP3s as write and publish software for it. With
such as the Sony Ericsson P900, the ringtones (and even if it hadn’t, there smartphones, as with PCs, hundreds of
Nokia 6620 and the Treo 650. All come are several third-party players available third-party apps exist—both homemade
with operating systems ready to run soft- that I could have used). Instead of sell- and commercial—and you can install
ware of your choosing because they’re ing me out to some record company anything you want.
made by manufacturers who treat you, that wants me to buy my music all over “The hackability of the current crop
not your carrier, as the real customer. If again, in five-second chunks, the P900 of smartphones means not being stuck
there’s something you want your phone empowers me to create my own rings. with what the manufacturers and carri-
to do, chances are that someone has built This week, I use Looney Tunes samples ers deemed necessary or acceptable for
an app to do it that you can download I found online. Next week, it might be your day-to-day,” agrees Rael Dornfest,
and install, without paying the carrier’s Star Wars clips or bits of TV theme chief technology officer of O’Reilly
monopoly pricing. When you can do songs from my boyhood. It’s my phone, Media and editor in chief of the cell-
that, the phone is truly yours. and I’m in charge. phone blog mobilewhack.com. R

42 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 Get on your own soapbox! Write to [email protected] or [email protected].
T
SOAPBOX
Here’s an example of what he’s talk-
ing about: One thing net-heads hate is SCIENCE
long-distance calling. (When was the last
time you paid for a “long-distance”
FRICTION
THE MARKETING AND MANGLING
e-mail?) I’m an expat who lives in OF SCIENCE IN POPULAR CULTURE BY GREGORY MONE
London, and my long-distance bills could
be nearly as high as my rent. Those
scratch-off cards sold in convenience
stores allow me to call anywhere on the
globe for as little as a penny a minute, a
tiny fraction of what my carrier charges,
by dialing a local number and a PIN
before making the call. But these things
are a pain to use with mobile phones, in
which numbers (especially those 14-digit
overseas ones) are committed to the
address book instead of your memory.
You have to dial the call-in number and
the PIN, pull the phone away from your
head, quickly look up the number you’re
calling and write it down, and then go
back to the phone and dial it in.
With the right programming, my P900
could automate all those steps. I could tell
it my current PIN, and every time I hit an
international number in the phone book,
or even started to dial one, it would auto-

C O L U M N I S T I L L U S T R AT I O N : R O B K E L LY; C O L U M N I S T P H O T O G R A P H : H E N RY P E R E Z ; P H O T O G R A P H S : N E A L P E T E R S C O L L E C T I O N
matically route the call through my card,
shaving a fortune off my long-distance
bills. No carrier is ever going to give me
the application to do that, but as long as
one other person deemed it useful and
built it, I could have it too. Or I could buy
a “Symbian for Dummies” book and
create the app myself.
The good news is that this, more than
the carriers’ current pickpocket scheme,
represents the future of mobiles. “More
Nokia smartphones are already sold
than all PDAs combined, and very soon
smartphones will surpass personal com-
puters in sales volumes,” says Antti
Vasara, vice president of technology
marketing and sales at Nokia. “Smart-
phones will be for the next decade what
the PC was for the ’90s.”
For the first time in a long time,
phones are getting me excited again—
and they should be exciting you. When
Director of PR
you go shopping for your next phone, Titanic honcho James Cameron has some advice for NASA
get one that you can install software on. on how to both seduce and educate a jaded public
Not because you’re going to write any

A
code yourself, but because the freedom FTER EXUBERANTLY DECLARING HIMSELF KING OF THE WORLD AT THE 1998
to install someone else’s code is the Oscars, you’d think James Cameron might sit back, relax, and survey
freedom to break out of the phone- his kingdom. Instead, having conquered Hollywood, the Termina-
company strongbox, to choose what tor/Titanic auteur has been busily turning his passion, salesmanship and eye
your phone does and when, and how for the spectacular to the worthy end of securing nothing less than the future
much it’ll cost you. ■ of science and exploration.

44 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

THE PORTFOLIO From Aliens to The Abyss to the have actually hurt real-world exploration dends by allowing people to connect
first two Terminator movies to Titanic, James by infecting the public with unrealistic with the rovers on a deeper level. “You’re
Cameron has a well-established knack for creat- expectations. He cited the aftereffects of not going to sustain public interest if
ing spectacles that keep audiences in their seats. the Viking and Mariner missions of the you don’t see a character up there doing
1970s, when the reality of a lifeless, deso- something,” he maintains.
It’s not an outrageous leap, actually. late martian surface proved a letdown If Aliens of the Deep is any indica-
Cameron has been a science buff since after so many stories about grand canals, tion, this technique can’t miss. At one
his childhood in Kapukasing, Ontario little green men and enlightened civiliza- point, when Jake ventures too close to
(he once sent a few doomed mice over tions. The solution, he said, is to educate the superheated water rushing out of
Niagara Falls in a homebuilt sub- people so that they don’t have to be told the vents, I found myself seized with
mersible). Since dispatching his first why they should be excited about the worry about him/it—a contraption that
remotely operated vehicles down to the discovery of, say, hematite on Mars, or a looks like a toaster oven. My sympa-
sunken ocean liner during the filming new species of squid kicking around a thetic response probably arose as much
of Titanic, he’s transformed himself hydrothermal vent. from the dramatic narration of these
into a dedicated undersea explorer. He’s But there’s education, and there’s events as it did from the robot’s human
also a member of the Mars Society and education. Aliens of the Deep features name, but just in case, I suggest that
sits on the NASA advisory council. And brief tutorials on seafloor spreading and NASA dub its planned 2009 Mars rover
he believes he can help the space the origins of vents, but it never lingers Frank. (Imagine the headlines: “Frank
agency sell its missions to an overstim- too long on the lessons. Cameron spends Lands on Mars!”)
ulated and underinformed public. much more time on his characters. For Naturally, Cameron pushes powerful
imagery, too. Thanks to the enormous
IMAX screen and 3-D scenes, Aliens of
In a speech to the Mars Society, the Deep puts you right down on the
Cameron suggested that science seafloor. Exotic creatures seem to float
within a few feet of your seat. Eventually
fiction has actually hurt real-world Cameron hopes to apply these tech-
exploration by infecting the public niques to a realistic 3-D film about a
manned mission to Mars, a kind of fic-
with unrealistic expectations. tional documentary. He and his group
have designed a mission protocol, transit
Exhibit A in Cameron’s pro-science the expeditions featured in the film—a and surface habitats, and a pressurized
public-relations offensive is his new total of 40 dives to nine hydrothermal rover. Yet he won’t move forward with
IMAX 3-D documentary about the vent sites—he brought along young the project because big questions remain
unusual life-forms that thrive near scientists like Kevin Hand, a juggling about how an actual mission would be
hydrothermal vents, Aliens of the Deep, astrobiologist from Stanford University, conducted—such as whether NASA
which premieres January 28. Having and space advocate Loretta Hidalgo, would use chemical or nuclear propul-
gotten an early look, I have one thing to who reacts to the deep-ocean sights sion—and he doesn’t want to get it
say: Watch and learn, NASA. with the glee of a kid, shouting, “This wrong. “I want a better idea of exactly
Before seeing the movie, I was just as is the bomb!” how we’re going to do it,” he says.
prone as the next science-steeped skep- He also made a star out of the film’s This devotion to accuracy is certainly
tic to reflexively dismiss the Hollywood nonhuman character, Jake, a remotely a laudable one, which makes the ending
fantasist’s white-knight impulse. What, operated vehicle steered in and around of Aliens of the Deep all the more dis-
I wondered, is his plan to inspire a new the vents by Cameron’s brother, Mike. maying. In its final act, the movie ven-
generation of scientists and science- Characters, after all, do not have to be tures beyond Earth for a stirring anima-
supportive taxpayers? Outfit the next people. Consider the twin Mars Explo- tion of a mission to the surface of
set of rovers with rocket launchers? Set ration rovers: Cameron thinks NASA Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, including a
a reality show on the International has done a nice job of selling the mis- sequence in which a nuclear-powered
Space Station? (“Two cosmonettes and sion, but he believes there would be drill penetrates the ice and deploys a
a rugged American male put the spice even more interest if the rovers were tethered probe. A few scenes later, on
back in science! Tune in to find out who sending back self-portraits. As it is, the an unspecified planet, we find—well, I
gets ejected into the vacuum!”) most striking images are the ones that won’t give it away, but suffice it to say
But no, it turns out that Cameron’s show the rovers’ tracks, or even their that Cameron is hardly reducing his
strategy for sexing up science calls for shadows. He envisions a small camera audience’s unrealistic expectations.
strong characters, vivid images and eye- that a rover would drop in the sand to But no matter. The rest of the film
popping animation, all while remaining snap photos of itself at work and later validates the director’s conviction that
faithful to the facts. Indeed, in a 1999 retrieve. The scientists would have to real science, rendered by a consummate
speech to the Mars Society, Cameron sacrifice precious payload, Cameron showman, can be a breathtaking, inspir-
suggested that science-fiction movies says, but they would reap huge divi- ing spectacle. ■

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 45

 A RO
LLER
AT 1 AT BCOASTE
TH
28 LAS R
AN MILES TS OFF
HO
AN UR!
THA ELEV
AT 5 T ROCK ATO
5 FE ETS R

M
A A SECO T E UP

M
M
THA TECTON

MA
N
TM IC D!
FOU IGRATE PLATE

A
AAX
R IN S
CHE

XX
SA

X
YEA

II
R!

V
V
VVEEEELLLLOM
IM
IM
M UU U U MM
A CO

O
OOCCC M
M
CIIITITTTY
MPE
NDI
A CEUM OF T
LEBR H

Y
ATIO E FASTE

YY
N OF ST TH
THE T ING
Both ECHN S THE
man OLO WOR
acce GICA LD H
lerat and ma L BRE AS TO
This ing c c h AKTH
lip. A i ne a O
near
past
fall, lmos re a
p ROU FFER, A
the X t ever p roac GHS N
befo
ly M
ac -43 y ye
re. T h 10, be A scramj ar, our v g the fu
hin THAT D
oday a e e tu FEED
450,
000 ’s fa ting a re t-powere hicles bre re at a THE R
twice times s test c
supe ord of M aircraft
d ak sp
eed
n ever USH
as as spee - r
seng
er
fleet
as th dy a rcomput ach 6.8 eached a records.
s the er, IB set o
the s trains th e fastest rulin M’s nly s speed of
pe at tra m g ma Blue ix
logic ed of so vel 2 achine o c hine o G ene, months
al un und. 67 m f just f is a
benc de M ile on 3 0
hma rstanding eanwhile s an hou e year a years a bout
ble t rk s in r allow , impr r a go go
o e u ovem nd rock . We bui and
natu more ac cord time s to surp ents et ca
rs
ld pa
s-
re. H c a in
old o urately m , and tech ss our ow training that bre
BY G n to e asu no log n phy andp ak
ABRI your
EL SH seat— re the b ical adva sical-perf hysio-
ERM we’r reak nces ma o rman
AN | e no ne ce
ILLUS t slow ck spee ke it
poss
TRAT ing d ds a i-
IONS own chi
BY C anyt eved in
HRIS ime s
TOP oon.
H NI
EMA
NN

00
46 PO
POPU
PULA
LAR RS C
SCI EI N
ENCC
E E F EMBARRUCAHR Y2 0
202
05
 .00000000709 mph
PACIFIC PLATE_WORLD’S FASTEST TECTONIC PLATE
Drifting northwest at the lightning pace of four inches a year, the
Pacific Plate, which stretches from California to Japan below the
ocean floor, clocks in at 24 times as fast as the slowest of the
dozen rocky sheets that compose the Earth’s crust.

.0000237 mph
BAMBOO_WORLD’S FASTEST-GROWING PLANT 5.17 mph
Bamboo grows up to three feet a day, more than 30 percent ALEXANDER POPOV_WORLD’S FASTEST SWIMMER
faster than any other plant. Parenchymal cells within the stem Popov swam the 50-meter freestyle in 21.64 seconds at the sum-
divide at a rapid rate to provide structural support for the mer 2000 Russian national championships. The 6'6" swimmer’s
woody grass. The result? Bamboo has one of the highest disproportionately large feet enable his tremendous kick.
strength-to-weight ratios of any plant species.
37.6 mph
SECRETARIAT_WORLD’S
FASTEST THOROUGHBRED
In the 1973 Kentucky Derby,
Secretariat set a record that has
remained unbroken for 30 years.
Autopsy records show that the
horse’s heart weighed a hefty 21
pounds, three times the average
for a thoroughbred his size.

22 MPH_PACIFIC LEATHERBACK_WORLD’S FASTEST TURTLE 35 MPH_JACKRABBIT_WORLD’S FASTEST RABBIT

22.9 MPH_TIM MONTGOMERY, IN THE 100-METER DASH_WORLD’S FASTEST RUNNER

THE U.S.’S FASTEST

RECORDED . . .
TEMPERATURE SWING Loma, Montana

C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P R I G H T: M A N U E L B L O N D E A U / C O R B I S ; B E T T M A N / C O R B I S ;
RAPID RETREAT saw a rise of 103˚F between January
The Qori Kalis glacier 14 and 15, 1972. The low was –54˚,

C O U R T E S Y P R O F E S S O R L O N N I E G . T H O M P S O N , O H I O S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y;
in Peru is melting at an the high 49˚. The change was caused by
ever-increasing rate. a rapid shift in fronts: An arctic high-
pressure system was replaced by milder
westerly winds that warmed significantly
as they moved east of the mountains.
.0000151 mph RAINFALL Between July 25 and 26, 1979,
QORI KALIS_WORLD’S FASTEST-RECEDING TROPICAL GLACIER tropical storm Claudette dropped 43 inches
of rain near Alvin, Texas. Claudette’s
Qori Kalis, a glacier that lies at above 18,000 feet in the Peruvian Andes, is melting at a
proximity to the coast fed the system
rate of nearly 700 feet a year. In 2002, Ohio State University paleoclimatologist Lonnie
K E N N E T H M U R R AY / P H O T O R E S E A R C H E R S

with moisture, boosting its strength as it

Thompson discovered a perfectly preserved Distichia muscoides, a moss-type plant that formed a tight weather loop over south-
carbon dating measured as 5,200 years old, on the Qori Kalis. “The find was remark- eastern Texas that ultimately caused $700
able,” he says. “This tells us the glacier hasn’t been this small for more than 5,000 years.” million in damage. SNOWFALL 75.8
Part of the 17-square-mile Quelccaya, the world’s largest tropical ice sheet, the Qori inches of snow fell in Silver Lake, Colo-
Kalis is now shrinking 40 times as fast as rates witnessed in the mid-1970s, when Thomp- rado, between April 14 and 15, 1921.
son first traveled there. “We’re seeing an exponential acceleration in the melting trend,” The more than six feet were dumped by
he says, noting that every tropical glacier studied with time-lapse photography is melting. a slow-moving storm system that rolled
By current rates of retreat, the entire Quelccaya will be gone in 50 years. If the world’s eastward over Silver Lake and was stalled
by the bulk of the Rocky Mountains.
mountain glaciers melt completely, he says, the resulting half-meter rise in sea level would
displace up to 100 million people in coastal areas around the globe.

48 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

 37.6 mph
TAIPEI 101_WORLD’S FASTEST ELEVATOR
Two 24-passenger cars zip at a rate of up to
55 feet a second up Taiwan’s new 1,667-foot
Taipei 101 tower. Spoilers that control noise
levels, tuned weights that damp vibrations,
and computer-controlled air pressure make
the quarter-mile, 39-second trip bearable.

WORLD’S FASTEST ELECTRIC STRIDE

The new Fetish travels
COMPUTER VIRUS 200 miles on a charge.
MyDoom surfaced on January 26,
2004, racing across the Internet at a
rate of up to 12,000 computers an
hour and striking more than
105.6 mph
500,000 machines within a week. THE FETISH_WORLD’S FASTEST PRODUCTION ELECTRIC CAR
The virus e-mailed itself to addresses Released last September from Monaco-based Venturi Automobiles, the low-slung Fetish
stored on the user’s machine and is the world’s first commercially available electric-powered sports coupe. The two-seater
created a “back door” on the user’s
has an air-cooled 180-kilowatt engine that generates the equivalent of 300 horsepower
hard drive, which allowed its
and revs instantly to 14,000 rpm, allowing the car to accelerate from 0 to 60 in 4.5
unidentified creators to remotely
broadcast spam over the Internet. seconds, performance that trumps a Porsche Boxster.
When MyDoom peaked three days Although electric-powered research cars have traveled faster—Ohio State Univer-
after its initial outbreak, one of sity’s student-designed Buckeye Bullet set a new electric land-speed record of 314.96
every 10 e-mails circulating on the mph last October —the Fetish is built for everyday driving. The car uses the latest
Internet carried the virus—nearly generation of lithium-ion batteries to power it for more than 200 miles on a single
twice as many as had been affected charge. The price tag: $660,000.
by any previous computer bug.
68 MPH_SAILFISH_WORLD’S FASTEST AQUATIC ANIMAL

➤
➤
60 MPH_CHEETAH_WORLD’S FASTEST LAND ANIMAL

11.6 mph
PAULA RADCLIFFE_WORLD’S FASTEST FEMALE MARATHON RUNNER
In 2002, English track star Paula Radcliffe won the Chicago Marathon with a world-record-
breaking time of two hours, 17 minutes and 18 seconds. Then, less than a year later, she
FROM TOP: COURTESY VENTURI; DON EMMERT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; JOHN CASSIDY

ran the 2003 Flora London Marathon and finished in 2:15:25—beating her own record by
nearly two minutes and slicing an unprecedented three minutes off her closest competitor.
In a sport where speed improvements are marked in seconds, not minutes, Radcliffe rede-
fines the rate of human performance gains. Prior to her record-smashing run, it had taken
16 years for women to knock a minute and 20 seconds off the world record.
Radcliffe, 31, combines extreme training with breakthrough technology. Most of her
practice sessions are logged at altitude near Font Romeu in the French Pyrenees or in
Flagstaff, Arizona, where running in the thin alpine air boosts the oxygen-transporting red
blood cells that are crucial to endurance. And two years ago, she began working with Nike
engineers to design a marathon shoe. In Nike’s Beaverton, Oregon, design lab, she ran on
a specialized treadmill coupled with high-speed 3-D cameras that analyze foot strike, pres-
sure and alignment. The result, the 6.8-ounce Zoom, is also available to mortals ($85).

81 mph
SAM WHITTINGHAM_WORLD’S FASTEST
RUN, PAULA, SELF-PROPELLED MAN
RUN In two
The self-propelled land-speed record was set in October
years, Radcliffe
shaved more
2002, when Canadian Sam Whittingham reached 81 mph
than four minutes inside a bullet-shaped recumbent bicycle on a flat course in
off the record. Battle Mountain, Nevada. Whittingham’s victory was attrib-
uted to his low body weight and particularly low-riding bike.

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 49

 128 mph
KINGDA KA _WORLD’S FASTEST ROLLER COASTER
When it debuts at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson,
New Jersey, this April, the Kingda Ka will blast from a
standstill to 128 mph in 3.5 seconds, ousting Cedar
Point’s Top Thrill Dragster in Sandusky, Ohio, for brag-
ging rights as the world’s fastest thrill ride. Maryland-
based coaster maker Intamin developed the $25-million
ride with a hydraulic catapult rated at 12,000 horse-
power, a technology inspired by a previous generation of
steam catapults used to hurtle U.S. Navy jets off the decks
of aircraft carriers. The Kingda Ka’s launch catapult pro-
duces explosive acceleration by releasing compressed
hydraulic fluid and nitrogen gas stored in small tanks at
pressures of up to 4,500 pounds per square inch. The sys-
tem consumes three megawatts of power and can be fired
and reloaded every 45 seconds, enabling the coaster to
carry 1,400 riders an hour.
After blasting out of the station and reaching maximum
speed, the ride tips skyward and ascends to a record
height of 456 feet before nosing more than 90 degrees
into a 41-story plunge embellished by a 270-degree
spiral twist. The Ka then careens up a second 129-foot
READY FOR BLASTOFF hill, allowing riders to experience a few seconds of
The Kingda Ka is powered weightlessness before sweeping back to Earth. From
by a hydraulic catapult. beginning to end, the G-force madness lasts 50 seconds.

217 MPH_FERRARI ENZO_WORLD’S FASTEST PRODUCTION CAR 761 MPH_SPEED OF SOUND 2,400 MPH_SPEEDING BULLET

➤
➤
600 MPH_CITATION X_WORLD’S FASTEST CIVILIAN AIRPLANE NOW IN OPERATION

267 mph
WORLD’S FASTEST
MAGLEV_WORLD’S FASTEST TRAIN

COURTESY COVENTRY TRANSPORT MUSEUM; EUGENE HOSHIKO/AP PHOTO; COURTESY IBM

SUPERCOMPUTER
Since December 29, 2003, Transrapid’s
Every person on Earth would need
Shanghai Maglev has traveled the 19 miles to perform 100,000 calculations a
between the Chinese city’s financial district second in order to equal the power
and its airport in less than eight minutes, of IBM’s Blue Gene, which posted a
hitting a maximum speed of 267 mph. new record speed last November.
Levitated on a magnetic field, the train Since 1976, when the original
floats half an inch above its track and 763 mph supercomputer, the Cray-1, debuted,
supercomputer speed has increased
frictionlessly rides a magnetic wave.
THRUST SSC_WORLD’S FASTEST CAR by a factor of 450,000. When fully
Roaring down a mile of desert in 4.7 complete this June, Blue Gene’s pro-
F R O M T O P : C O U R T E S Y S I X F L A G S G R E AT A D V E N T U R E ;

seconds in 1997, the Thrust became jected speed will be almost five
million times that of the Cray-1.
the first land vehicle to break the sound
Blue Gene’s power—achieved by
barrier. The 10-ton car was powered by
131,072 IBM PowerPC 440 proces-
two 25,000-pound-thrust Rolls-Royce sors—is already twice as great as
Spey Mk205 jet engines built for a British the previous record set just last May.
variant on the F-4 Phantom fighter plane.

3,409 mph
LOCKHEED MARTIN LOSAT_WORLD’S FASTEST MISSILE
Fired from a Humvee, the LOSAT (Line-of-Sight Anti-Tank weapon) tops out at more than
5,000 feet a second—twice as fast as most ground- and air-launched missiles. The weapon,
which will debut next year, has a five-mile range and is propelled by a solid-rocket motor.
It employs no explosives; kinetic energy alone drives a penetrator rod into an enemy tank.

50 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

To see a video of the fastest plane flight ever, visit www.popsci.com/speed.
 BREAKNECK BUGS
WORLD’S FASTEST INSECT LIFE CYCLE Bird cherry-oat aphids (Rhopalosiphum pady) take 4.7 days
to complete one full generation, from the birth of one insect to the birth of that insect’s offspring.
Instead of laying eggs, aphids, like vertebrates, spawn live young, which allows the species to
reproduce faster than any other insect. WORLD’S FASTEST BITE Trap-jaw ants (Odontomachus
bauri) can open and close their microscopic jaws in 0.33 millisecond, clenching their teeth 1,000
times as fast as the blink of an eye. Tiny muscles within the jaw operate like loaded springs and
THE FAST LIFE give the bug a biomechanical advantage in preying on fast-moving insects. The ant’s bite is faster
An aphid generation than any other recorded animal movement, including the jellyfish’s infamous 0.5-millisecond
lasts about five days. stinger release. WORLD’S FASTEST WINGBEAT The midge (genus Forcipomyia) beats its wings
1,046 times a second. Hummingbirds, in comparison, flap their wings about 100 times a second.

6,800 mph
X-43A SCRAMJET_WORLD’S FASTEST AIRCRAFT
MACH MADNESS On November 16, 2004, NASA’s dart-shaped, X-43A scramjet
NASA’s X-43A streaked above the Pacific at Mach 9.8, shattering the existing world
approaches Mach 10. aviation speed record of Mach 6.8, set last March by another
X-43A scramjet flight. Carried aloft under the wings of a B-52B
bomber, the X-43A was launched at an altitude of 40,000 feet.
The 12-foot, unmanned research plane was the swan song of
NASA’s $230-million, eight-year-long Hyper-X program, which
tested the alternative engines that will propel the next generation of
space vehicles and, perhaps, civilian airliners. Scramjets—engines
that generate combustion from compressed supersonic air and gas-
eous hydrogen fuel—could power aircraft up to Mach 15, potentially
cutting an 18-hour flight from New York to Tokyo down to two hours.

670,616,629 MPH_SPEED OF LIGHT

1,450 MPH_RUSSIAN TU-144D_WORLD’S FASTEST CIVILIAN AIRPLANE EVER IN OPERATION

17,895 mph 131,979 mph 158,000 mph

FROM TOP: NIGEL CATTLIN/HOLT STUDIOS/PHOTO RESEARCHERS; NASA; COURTESY LLNL PHOTO;

THE JASPER_WORLD’S FASTEST MERCURY_FASTEST HELIOS PROBES_

LAND-BASED PROJECTILE SOLAR SYSTEM WORLD’S FASTEST MAN-
Last year, researchers studying how OBJECT MADE SPACE OBJECTS
America’s nuclear stockpile will age Like the last few rapid Launched into narrow ellipti-
began testing the properties of pluto- spins of a dropped ring cal orbits in 1974 and 1976,
nium with a gas gun capable of firing before it disappears the Helios 1 and 2 probes
a 25-gram projectile that flies 36 times as fast as a typical bullet. down the sink drain, move fastest as they skim
The 30-meter JASPER, operated by Lawrence Livermore National Mercury is whipping the sun slightly
Laboratory, fires in two stages. A powdered propellant provides the around an ellipse deep inside Mercury’s
initial propulsion, and then a blast of compressed hydrogen triggers inside the sun’s gravity orbit. At their
the extreme velocity. Projectiles 28 millimeters in diameter are shot well. The fastest of all farthest out, they
into nickel-size plutonium targets linked with sensors that measure large objects in our solar reach nearly to the
the material’s reaction. The pressure of the impact exceeds 600 system, Mercury’s speed Earth’s orbit and
gigapascals—six million times the pressure of surface air, and is greatest when it is slow to one fifth
COURTESY DEUTSCHES MUSEUM/NASA

representative of conditions that would exist in a nuclear detonation. closest to the sun. of their top speed.

24,759 mph 670,616,628.99... mph

APOLLO 10_WORLD’S FASTEST MANNED SPACECRAFT COSMIC RAY_FASTEST KNOWN OBJECT IN THE UNIVERSE
In May, 1969, returning from a dress rehearsal for the first moon A cosmic ray detected by the Fly’s Eye I detector near Salt Lake
landing, Tom Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan rode the City on October 15, 1991, was traveling so fast that if it raced
command module of Apollo 10 as it entered the atmosphere at a a beam of light across the galaxy, it would lose by only five milli-
steeper angle than any other spaceship before or since. Their top meters. Fifteen similar, but slightly slower, cosmic rays have been
speed of 25,000 mph is the fastest any human has ever traveled. detected since, but scientists still don’t know how they are formed.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY ERIC ADAMS, SARAH GOFORTH AND WILLIAM JACOBS POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 51
 THERE’S
A HERO ON
YOUR
DESKTOP

To most, it’s just a printer. But to tissue

engineers, rocket scientists and architects,
the good old inkjet is
the secret to grand innovation
BY JASON DALEY
PHOTOGRAPH BY CHARLES MASTERS

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 53

if
THE DESKTOP
1 ORGAN FACTORY

GROWING REPLACEMENT BODY PARTS IN

the lab is a grand idea, but researchers
YOU WERE TO TOAST THE MOST haven’t had much luck doing it. For one
dazzling gadget in your home, you might thing, manually stitching together billions of
compose an ode to your plasma TV, cells to form a nose or a liver involves labor
recite a limerick about your computer- so tedious that it’s been impossible to finish
controlled telescope, or maybe sing the the job before the cells die. A perfect task
praises of your video conferencing, nose- for the you-know-what, thought Clemson
hair-trimming espresso maker. But the University chemical engineer Thomas Boland
invention most deserving of your adora- in 2001 when he scrounged scrap inkjet
tion, the contraption that will one day printers from campus surplus and pressed
sit in the pantheon of great American them into service as cell-spitting robots.
machines alongside the telephone and By rewriting software drivers, modifying
the transistor radio, is something far the output tray to drop a tiny notch with
more prosaic. It is the inkjet printer, and it is much more than a periph- each pass of the print head to build up 3-D
eral. Its core technology may seem simple—an array of nozzles that structures, and swapping ink for hamster
moves back and forth, depositing tiny droplets of ink on paper—but its ovary cells and growth factor, Boland intro-
breadth of uses has turned out to be nothing short of astonishing, so duced the inkjet to the world of tissue engi-
much so that the humble inkjet is driving innovation in disciplines from neering. To date, he’s used his printers to
aerospace engineering to pharmacology. create half of a cat’s heart that beat in
How does a printer go from spitting out pictures of Uncle Bob to pow- a petri dish and tubes of cells that he hopes
ering jet planes? The secret of the inkjet’s unheralded versatility lies in its to one day coax into viable blood vessels.
print head—a silicon or composite plate a tenth of an inch wide Constructing the vascular system is a crucial
studded with as many micro-nozzles as a manufacturer can cram onto it. hurdle he’ll have to clear to meet his ultimate
The nozzles fill with ink, and either heat or an electric charge forces out goal, which is to print custom organs on
uniform droplets [see “Inkjet 101,” right]. Refined over the past 20 years demand. In the next decade, Boland says
from heads with 12 nozzles to ones with more than 3,000, the inkjet is the we’ll see the printing of simpler tissues,
first cheap, mass-produced machine to control minute pearls of fluids—it including bits of cartilage for plastic surgery
ultimately jump-started the field of microfluidics. This precise control of and cell sheets for skin grafts.
ever-smaller droplets (some now a small fraction the size of a pinpoint),
coupled with faster printing speeds has opened up dozens of new and
decidedly more glamorous applications: printing cellphones and human
livers, delivering drugs more efficiently and without side effects, produc-
Inkjet 101

FA C I N G PA G E , C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P L E F T: C O U R T E S Y T H O M A S B O L A N D ( 2 ) ; C O U R T E S Y 3 D

COURTESY SEIKO EPSON; COURTESY PLASTIC LOGIC LIMITED; COURTESY PHILIPS RESEARCH;
ing fuels without nasty by-products.

S Y S T E M S ; C O U R T E S Y Z C O R P O R AT I O N ; F O L L O W I N G PA G E S , C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P L E F T:
You may marvel at such a notion, but it’s no real surprise to the inkjet’s
innovators. They never intended it for the menial task of churning out term
papers and memoranda. In fact, when Hewlett-Packard Laboratories engi-
neers developed the first nozzle array in 1979, they kicked around the idea of Piezo-
electric
using the device for medicine and materials science before deciding that the crystal
printing biz would net more profits. Their first machine hit the market in
1984, and more than 20 years later—now that the inkjet dominates the indus- Ink from
try—big players like HP, Epson and Canon can afford to take a step back and reservoir
figure out ways to squeeze new uses out of the machine. “Most people don’t Nozzle
realize how sophisticated the system has become,” says Stephen Nigro, vice
president of HP’s technology platforms organization. “Millions of drops a sec-
ond come from the print head. It’s really an incredible technology.”
There are two common types of inkjet
Corporate bosses aren’t the only ones smitten. Piggybacking on industry
systems: piezoelectric and thermal. A
C O U R T E S Y M I C R O FA B T E C H N O L O G I E S

advances in printing speed and nozzle size, some researchers are using piezoelectric nozzle [above] works when
souped-up inkjets to print full-scale homes, others to stamp out skin grafts. a current bends a piezoelectric crystal,
In the future, scientists may deliver inkjet-printed nanomachines, targeted forcing the fluid down and out of the
cancer treatments and, who knows, maybe even inkjet-printed pets. nozzle. To heat and expand the fluid,
So go ahead and worship your shiny new MP3 player, your ionizing hair instead of a crystal, thermal systems use
dryer, your remote-controlled ottoman—whichever machine has you mes- a small hot plate, which shoots it onto
merized this month. But then please take a moment to give props to your the page. Piezoelectric nozzles create
workaday inkjet, which has thrived in near anonymity lo these many years. smaller droplets and don’t alter the
Accolades or no, it’s sure to keep spitting out impressive results with elegant temperature of the fluid, making them
increasingly popular for exotic uses.
simplicity for decades to come.

54 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

 ONE NEW
Human tissue
HONKER,
COMING UP!

NASAL NOZZLE Swapping

ink for human cells could
allow researchers to con- Nozzle
struct replacement body
parts with inkjet technology.
Specialized print heads
drop cells and a biodegrad-
able gel into place. The
gel holds the cells together
long enough for the cells
to fuse. Thomas Boland’s
tissue printer [top left] has
already created a beating
half of a cat’s heart [top
Cells
right] using this method.
Biodegradable gel

THE SANTA CLAUS MAKE IT QUICK Z Corporation’s 3-D printer

2 MACHINE transforms computer models into realistic phys-
ical replicas—such as this prototype sneaker
and pair of cellphone casings—in hours.
SHOPPING IS DEAD—OR AT LEAST IT
will be if 3-D CAD printing catches on
and you’re able to download and print toys,
dishes, even cellphone covers right at
your desk. Companies such as 3D Systems,
Z Corporation and Stratasys already have
high-resolution 3-D inkjet printers. The
$39,900 InVision printer from Valencia,
California’s 3D Systems uses a 448-nozzle
print head to deposit photosensitive acrylic
and wax onto an aluminum plate in micro-
scopically thin layers, slowly building up
whatever its engineers have commanded:
a prototype engine part, direct-mail figurines
or a mock-up gadget. Melt off the wax
molding, and you’re left with a hard acrylic
object. With these and other companies
fighting for market share, commercial
replicators are closing in on a range that a
typical consumer could afford, with rumors
of a $1,000 home model on the horizon.

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 55

 PUTTING ELECTRONICS
3 ON THE INKJET DIET
RESEARCHERS AT THE UNIVER-
sity of California at Berkeley are
shooting for more than just plas-
tic tchotchkes. They want to print
complete digital devices—MP3
players, PDAs, cellphones—in SLIM BUILD Seiko-Epson credits their propri-
etary inkjet printer with making the world’s
one fell swoop, rather than thinnest circuit board, shown here.
assembling a gadget’s body
and then adding its electronic components. Engineering professor John Canny
is integrating polymers—plastics able to conduct electricity—into a 3-D inkjet
that could someday print out electronic devices in one simple step, bypassing
the timely fabrication of circuit boards and other components. Meanwhile,
engineers at Seiko-Epson in Japan have proved that inkjet-printing at least the
guts of a gadget is viable. Last November they printed a 20-layer circuit board
only 200 microns thick, the smallest ever, by swapping copper and silicon for
conductive and insulating inks, respectively. Instead of building a Dagwood
sandwich of bulky materials, they use a piezoelectric print head with micro-
scopic nozzles to lay down conductive silver-infused beads of ink measuring
tens of nanometers in diameter alongside strips of a newly developed insulat-
ing ink. The lower volume of materials allows for tight patterns with very little
dead space. The company estimates that the skinny
boards will show up in gadgets by 2007, but competition
from Hewlett-Packard and others experimenting with
circuit printing may bring the boards to stores earlier.
ANY SIZE YOU WANT IT The inkjet nozzle can be customized
to print a variety of different fluids in droplets of almost
any size. Berkeley researchers loaded these two tiny
piezoelectric nozzles with semiconductor polymers to
DREAM HOMES
print plastic electronic parts. 5 ON DEMAND
THE INKJET IS GREAT AT MICROMANAGING
the small stuff, but with a few steroidal
modifications, it can work wonders on a
THE FINEST ATOMIZER, macroscale too. Engineer Behrokh Khoshnevis
4 BAR NONE of the University of Southern California is
experimenting with oversize inkjet printers that,
BEFORE LONG, YOU job. Researchers at is designed to harness with the press of a button, can build custom
may find inkjets Hewlett-Packard aren’t the energy of a vio- housing from electronic blueprints. The auto-
under the hood of divulging details, but lent fuel explosion mated system, which Khoshnevis calls Contour
your car or inside the they say that they’re and power a jet air- Crafting, consists of an overhanging carriage
engine of a fighter jet figuring out how to craft to Mach 3. The on which a nozzle slides back and forth,
serving as exquisitely replace single-injector detonation depends streaming layers of quick-setting concrete into
controlled fuel injec- systems with hun- on atomized droplets walls [illustration, right]. “It’s much like printing
tors. A conventional dreds of tiny inkjet of fuel just 50 microns on paper,” the engineer says of his $30,000
injector atomizes gaso- nozzles, each with its in width, which is brainchild. “But unlike an inkjet print head that
line or diesel into tiny own actuator, as a way why Jim Nabity, a just moves sideways, our nozzle can move in
droplets, much the to create even tinier senior researcher at all directions, like old vector plotters.” He is
way a bottle of Win- drops for increased TDA Research, turned partnering with architects, construction com-
dex sprays out a mist fuel efficiency. to the inkjet nozzle. panies and real-estate specialists to create
of fluid. The more Microscopic inkjet- Its microscopic fuel a Contour Crafting center at U.S.C., and he
completely the drop- based fuel-injection dots vaporize so fast predicts that the system will soon erect a
lets vaporize and mix systems are already that they ignite, gen- 2,000-square-foot home in a single day,
with air, the more effi- an indispensable com- erating a thrust per including the roof and conduits for plumbing
ciently the hydrocar- ponent of the U.S. pound of fuel compa- and electricity. Later this year he plans to
bons burn. The inkjet Navy’s experimental rable to any other demonstrate a prototype capable of putting
(being the inkjet) is pulse detonation supersonic engine, up 500-square-foot emergency shelters.
best equipped for the engine (PDE), which Nabity says.

56 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

 GUMBY-LIKE TAKING DRUGS,
6 GADGETS 7 THE SMART WAY
THREE YEARS FROM NOW, WHEN YOU UNROLL CONVENTIONAL company InJet Digital
your e-newspaper from its pencil-case-size tote for inhalers tend to spray Aerosols and being
the latest headlines or show off your vacation a sloppy mist of large, licensed to Canon,
snapshots on a 17-inch high-definition screen that uneven drops, and looks like a battery-
folds up like a yoga mat, you can thank, yes, the that’s fine for applica- powered inhaler. It
inkjet. Dozens of companies worldwide are in a tions like asthma med- delivers a mist of
sprint to commercialize the technology of flexible ications, which simply droplets between
plastic screens. Philips, for instance, is using a need to be dumped two and 20 microns
four-headed industrial-size inkjet with 256 piezo- into the lungs. But it’s in diameter, small
electric nozzles to print organic light-emitting less than ideal for enough to be absorbed
diodes—materials that glow when a current is delivering most other through the lungs and
applied—onto computer and television screens. drugs, which need to in some cases directly
HP engineers in Bristol, England, are using inkjets make it into the blood- into the bloodstream.
to print tiny liquid-crystal dots onto a plastic sub- stream. That could InJet expects its
strate, where they serve as pixels. Electrodes in change when digital inhaler to deliver
the bendable plastic turn the crystals on and off aerosols—thermal drugs faster than pills
for a full-color display that could finally rival the print heads inside or patches and with
printed page in resolution. Plastic Logic in Cam- inhalers that squirt less pain than needles.
NOW WE’RE ROLLING
In the near future, flexible bridge, England, hopes to release flexible displays tiny, perfectly uniform Clinical trials are
electronic displays, such as by 2007. As an alternative to liquid crystals, the droplets—hit the mar- under way to test
this prototype made by company is using industrial inkjets to print elec- ket late this year. The nicotine-filled
Plastic Logic in Cambridge,
England, will bend tronic inks on flexible plastic to produce an image aerosol, being devel- inhalers as smoking-
without breaking or that can be viewed from all angles and in any oped by the Australian cessation devices.
distorting image quality. type of light without distortion.

THE INKJET PRINTER

DONS A HARD HAT

Concrete
reservoir

Nozzle

Filler
material

Trowel

Outer layers

WRITING THE WALLS Contour Crafting “prints” layers of

concrete on top of one another. A nozzle first deposits
quick-dry concrete to form the outer layers of each wall.
As it’s deposited, trowels shape this concrete into a smooth
edge. On the next pass, the nozzle pours a filler material—
perhaps another variety of concrete—between the edges.

See an animation of home printing at www.contourcrafting.org.

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 57

 CAN
BUILD
TERRORISTS

THE

BOMB? IT’S THE ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE:

A NUCLEAR ATTACK IN THE U.S.
MASTERMINDED BY TERRORISTS.
HERE’S HOW THAT COULD HAPPEN—
AND HOW WE CAN PREVENT IT
BY MICHAEL CROWLEY

58 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

LAST FALL, THE RACE TO STOP TERRORISTS FROM ACQUIRING A NUCLEAR BOMB
PASSED THROUGH TASHKENT, UZBEKISTAN. THERE, ON THE MORNING OF
SEPTEMBER 19, A RUSSIAN ANTONOV 12 CARGO PLANE TOUCHED DOWN
CARRYING TWO NEARLY INDESTRUCTIBLE STEEL CANISTERS. UNDER THE WATCH
OF ELITE SECURITY FORCES ARMED WITH MACHINE GUNS, UZBEK OFFICIALS
UNLOADED THE CANISTERS AND DROVE THEM TO A REMOTE, WOODED AREA
ABOUT 20 MILES FROM THE CENTRAL ASIAN CAPITAL. WAITING THERE AT THE
INSTITUTE OF NUCLEAR PHYSICS, WHICH HOUSES A SMALL NUCLEAR REACTOR
USED FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, WAS A TEAM OF AMERICANS, RUSSIANS AND

officials from the International Atomic later that year, crude sketches of nuclear STEP
Energy Agency. With extreme care, they weapons were found in Al Qaeda train- ACQUIRE RAW MATERIALS
filled the canisters with 24 pounds of ing camps in Afghanistan. Scheuer told
1
reactor fuel containing highly enriched CBS’s 60 Minutes last year that bin Buying or stealing an entire bomb would
uranium, the ideal ingredient for a ter- Laden even sought a religious edict from be extremely difficult, because most
rorist nuke. Area roads were closed off as a Saudi cleric on whether he could use a countries guard their nuclear weapons
an armed convoy rushed the cargo back nuclear weapon against America. The zealously and outfit them with mechani-
to the airport. The canisters were loaded cleric’s answer: Go for it. cal locks or electronic codes to prevent
back onto the Antonov 12 and flown to Intent isn’t the same as capability, of tampering. Nuclear material, on the
Russia, where their contents were sent to course. But of more than a dozen nuclear- other hand, is at least in theory a lot eas-
a secure facility and blended with less- arms experts I interviewed, almost all ier to get. And, says Laura Holgate of the
potent materials to create a mixture that agreed that assembling a crude nuclear nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative in
is of little use to aspiring terrorists. bomb, though extremely difficult, is by Washington, D.C., “Once you have mate-
Amid the conflict in Iraq and the hunt no means impossible. rial, everything is easier. Our mantra is,
for Osama bin Laden, this is a side of the Just ask Graham Allison. In his recent ‘It’s the material, stupid.’”

ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; TIME LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES; CORBIS; LAMBERT/GETTY IMAGES; TIME LIFE PICTURES/
P R E C E D I N G PA G E S , C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P L E F T: A P P H O T O ; C O R B I S ; D I M I T R Y B E L I A K O V / G A M M A P R E S S E ; H U LT O N
war on terrorism you rarely hear about: book Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Two metals can produce a mushroom

G E T T Y I M A G E S ; U . S . S I G N A L C O R P S / A P P H O T O ; H U LT O N A R C H I V E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ; A F P / G E T T Y I M A G E S ; C O R B I S
the drive to prevent terrorists from Preventable Catastrophe, he concludes cloud: uranium and plutonium. Uranium
acquiring the ingredients for a nuclear that a terrorist nuke attack is “inevitable” can be found in nature, though not in
bomb. In recent years, operations similar unless the U.S. works much harder and bomb-grade form. Uranium ore mined
to the one in Uzbekistan have been con- faster to safeguard nuclear material. A from the earth consists almost entirely of
ducted in Libya, Serbia, Romania and former assistant secretary of defense the relatively stable isotope U-238 and
Bulgaria. These efforts reflect an intense who served under President Bill Clinton has only tiny amounts of the isotope
and growing concern within the U.S. and now teaches government at Harvard U-235, which is highly fissile—it splits
government about the specter of nuclear University, Allison is actually taking easily, releasing large amounts of energy.
terrorism. It is one of the few issues on small bets from colleagues that terrorists Before it can be used in a bomb, ura-
which President George W. Bush agreed will detonate a crude nuclear bomb in a nium must be “enriched,” a process that
with his former rival, John Kerry, who U.S. city within a decade. “If this hap- sifts out nonfissile U-238 to increase the
called nuclear terrorism the greatest pened tomorrow,” he says, “I could proportion of fissile U-235. The more the
threat that we face in the world today. almost explain it more easily than I uranium has been enriched, the more fis-
That threat comes not just from sus- could explain why it hasn’t happened.” sile it becomes and the less is required to
pected weapons programs in Iran and Not everyone is as alarmist as Alli- make a bomb. Scientists generally con-
North Korea, but also from Al Qaeda son. Most experts with whom I spoke sider uranium consisting of more than
and other terrorist groups. Last year said that a nuclear terror attack is plau- 20 percent U-235 to be “highly enriched”
Michael Scheuer, who ran the CIA’s sible but not inevitable, and that there’s and suitable for a bomb, although ura-
Osama bin Laden unit for several years no way to precisely gauge the odds. “I nium used in advanced nuclear-weapons
in the late 1990s, wrote a letter to the don’t think the public ought to lose a lot programs and some nuclear reactors is
Senate Intelligence Committee warning of sleep over the issue,” says nuclear enriched as much as 90 percent.
of the “careful, professional manner in physicist Tom Cochran of the Natural Enriching uranium is a vastly compli-
which al-Qaeda was seeking nuclear Resources Defense Council. cated and expensive process well beyond
weapons . . . in deadly earnest.” More than There is a consensus, though, about a terrorist group’s reach. It requires the
a decade ago, bin Laden allegedly tried to how such a nightmare would unfold. use of expensive centrifuges whose pro-
buy a canister of uranium in Sudan for What follows is an examination of each duction and export is closely monitored
$1.5 million. (He appears to have been step a terrorist organization would need and which require sophisticated expertise
scammed.) In August 2001, he met with to take to pull off a nuclear attack, and to operate. Iraq tried in vain for years to
two Pakistani nuclear scientists. And what is being done to raise the hurdles. enrich uranium, and Iran is approaching

60 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

 success only after decades of effort. “Iran Given its greater potency, you might crude [nuclear] device” from uranium.
has poured hundreds of millions—some expect terrorists to covet plutonium for That makes highly enriched uranium
would say billions—into their program, their bomb. Plutonium is so radioactive, the ultimate attainment for a nuke-
and as far as we know, they’re not there though—far more so than uranium— building terrorist. Unfortunately, there
yet,” says Charles Ferguson, a science that handling it can be quickly fatal. For are about two thousand tons of it stored
and technology fellow at the Council on the same reason, it makes radiation worldwide. “Russia is the mother lode,”
Foreign Relations. Manufacturing pluto- detectors go wild. Detonating plutonium Holgate says. Huge military budget cuts
nium is even more daunting. Plutonium requires a complex bomb design, with in post-Soviet Russia allowed nuclear
is produced by irradiating uranium in multiple explosive charges timed to safeguards to lapse badly in the 1990s.
a nuclear reactor—hardly a practical exquisite precision. Finally, it tends to be The U.S. has been working with Russia
option for most terrorists. stored at military installations and com- to improve security at its nuclear facili-
But while Iran and other nations are mercial power reactors, where security is ties, but less than a quarter of Russia’s
seeking full-fledged production capabili- generally very tight. sites have been upgraded to meet stan-
dards set by investigators from the U.S.
Government Accountability Office who
visited several Russian nuclear facilities
in 2000 and 2001. At one site, they
discovered a gate to the main nuclear-
storage area wide open and unattended.
At another, no guards responded when
the visitors set off metal detectors. Not
much nuclear material seems to have
leaked from Russian military facilities,
however, and although there have been
numerous reports of attempted sales of
stolen material, most have been frauds
or “involve extremely small quantities
of material,” Cochran says.
A more worrisome source of nuclear
material is the civilian world, including
research reactors such as the one at the
Institute of Nuclear Physics in Uzbek-
istan. Some 130 reactors powered by
highly enriched uranium operate in
more than 40 countries, the product of
an early Cold War–era program in which
the U.S. and U.S.S.R. helped their allies
obtain nuclear technology. Several more
reactors are shuttered but may still
A N T U P I T; T O M A S M U N I TA / A P P H O T O ; U . S . D E PA R T M E N T O F D E F E N S E / A P P H O T O

RECIPE FOR DISASTER Compared with the Cold War ethos of mutually assured destruction,
keep fuel onsite. Collectively, the world’s
today’s nuclear threat seems frighteningly complex. A crowd rallies in support of A.Q. research reactors contain 22 tons of
C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P L E F T: S H A K I L A D I L / A P P H O T O ; C O U R T E S Y F R A N C E S

Khan [top left], who led Pakistan’s nuke program while selling nuclear technology to Iran, highly enriched uranium, enough to
Libya and North Korea. A terrorist group would probably model a bomb after the simple build hundreds of nuclear bombs.
design of Little Boy [bottom] and smuggle it via cargo container [top right]. In his new book Research-reactor fuel tends to be
[top center], Graham Allison argues that a strike on a U.S. city is likely within 10 years. stored under notoriously light security.
A later GAO report, published last year,
found that “the fence surrounding the
ties, a terrorist group simply has to get its Uranium is an easier target. “Highly [unnamed foreign research reactor] facil-
hands on enough material for a single enriched uranium is more plentiful and ity was in poor condition, security guards
bomb. All the next Mohammed Atta more dispersed,” Cochran explains. at the front gate were unarmed, and
would need to make a bomb big enough “It’s less well-guarded in the commercial there were no guards at the reactor build-
to instantly obliterate everything within sector. It’s easier to handle in terms of ing, which we entered without escort.”
a third of a mile is about 100 pounds of toxicity.” Even prolonged exposure to And security often amounts to little more
uranium enriched to 90 percent: a lump uranium brings no short-term health than a couple of lightly armed guards—
about the size of a bowling ball, or a effects. It can increase long-term cancer no match for a team of terrorists like the
bigger lump if the enrichment level is risks, but that wouldn’t deter a sui- group that seized an elementary school
lower. It takes even less plutonium, cide jihadist. Uranium’s relatively low in Beslan, Russia, last summer.
which is far more fissile than uranium, to radioactivity also makes it harder to Unlike the bulky, extremely radio-
build an equally destructive bomb: about detect than plutonium. And crucially, active fuel rods used in commercial
35 pounds, a grapefruit-size hunk. Cochran says, “it’s easier to construct a nuclear power plants, research-reactor

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 61

fuel usually consists of small pellets that in recent months, security has been Assembling a bomb requires metal-
weigh only a few pounds each and improving at many civilian research reac- lurgy and engineering skills, as well as
aren’t too hot to handle. “[A] thief could tors. With the Global Threat Reduction some familiarity with conventional ex-
easily put several of them at a time into Initiative (GTRI), a program begun by the plosives. A terrorist group would surely
a backpack,” wrote Matthew Bunn, a Energy Department last year with a love the help of a nuclear scientist, but
nuclear-proliferation expert who works budget of $450 million over 10 years, the such expertise is not a prerequisite. No
with Graham Allison at Harvard, in a U.S. hopes to secure vulnerable nuclear stage of the process requires classified
2004 report. material around the globe. That means knowledge. The relevant chemistry for-
Despite all this potential, virtually no cataloguing nuclear material, increasing mulas, for instance, are in graduate-
nuclear material is known to have been security at research reactors and, in some school textbooks. It might not even take
smuggled out of research reactors. Which cases, removing uranium from places a big team. A study done by the federal
raises the question: If highly enriched like Uzbekistan’s Institute of Nuclear Office of Technology Assessment in
1977 concluded that such
a project could be done

DIRTY DESTRUCTION
ALTHOUGH EXPERTS DEBATE THE EASE of building a crude nuclear bomb, no one disputes that it is far
with “at a minimum, one
person capable of re-
searching the literature in
several fields, and a jack-
easier to build a simpler weapon known as a dirty bomb—a conventional bomb that scatters radioactive of-all-trades technician.”
material. A dirty bomb produces no nuclear chain reaction, no mushroom cloud. Yet its aftereffects could The first step in build-
be devastating. In a 2002 computer simulation run by the Federation of American Scientists, a single foot- ing a bomb is to process
long piece of radioactive cobalt of the type commonly used in food-irradiation plants was blown up with
reactor fuel—typically a
TNT in lower Manhattan. The simulation found that a 300-square-block area would become as contami-
uranium-aluminum alloy
nated as the permanently closed zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, and that cancer caused by
residual radiation could be expected to kill one in 10 residents over the next 40 years. Under current —into pure uranium.
U.S. safety standards, the entire island would have to be evacuated. (Terrorists could skip this
Unlike a nuclear bomb, a dirty bomb can be made from radio- part if they managed to
active materials such as cesium, strontium and iridium, commonly get hold of bomb-ready
found in hospitals and construction sites. Experts fret about security uranium from a military
at such sites, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that installation.) “You can use
because these materials decay quickly and only negligible amounts nitric acid,” Ferguson ex-
have been lost or stolen in the U.S., it’s doubtful that terrorists could plains, which is cheap
have accumulated enough to make even a single dirty bomb.
and available even in
Dangerous amounts of material have gone missing elsewhere,
high-school labs. A terror-
however, and the U.S. is working with the International Atomic Energy
Agency to inventory existing sources and, when possible, remove ist chemist would cut up
or lock them up. It’s a monumental task, but the possibility of the fuel and dissolve it in
Manhattan becoming another Chernobyl makes it essential.—M.C. a vat of boiling acid, then

T H I S PA G E : C O U R T E S Y FA S ; FA C I N G PA G E , F R O M L E F T: C O U R T E S Y N AT I O N A L N U C L E A R S E C U R I T Y
use an organic compound
Radiation scattered by the explosion of a dirty bomb in Lower
to isolate the uranium.
Manhattan could cause one cancer death per 100 people in an area
half the size of Manhattan [inner ring], one per 1,000 over a bigger Ferguson says the ideal
area [middle ring], and one per 10,000 within the 386-square- compound for this is
tributyl phosphate (TBP),

A D M I N I S T R AT I O N N E VA D A ; T H E R M O E L E C T R O N ; C O U R T E S Y S M I T H S D E T E C T I O N
mile area where decontamination would be advised under current
Environmental Protection Agency standards [outer ring]. although other com-
pounds may also do the
job. TBP has commercial
uranium is so poorly protected, why Physics. Also under the GTRI, the U.S. is uses, such as the production of plastics
hasn’t more material gone missing? Pro- working to convert research reactors to and ink, which might provide cover for a
liferation experts cite two reasons for this run on uranium with an enrichment terrorist ordering large quantities (prob-
happy surprise. In Russia, they say, the level below 20 percent, which is virtually ably in the hundreds of gallons.)
loyalty of underpaid military officials and useless for bomb-making. If all goes well, the TBP should attach
nuclear scientists appears to be stronger itself to the uranium and, like oil and
than expected. Second, fears that organ- STEP water, separate from the acid. “You stir,
EXTRACT URANIUM
ized crime syndicates would try to reap 2 and you have TBP and uranium floating
huge profits through nuclear smuggling on top. The bottom is acid and alu-
have not yet been borne out, Holgate says. If a terrorist does manage to acquire fuel minum. So you basically just skim [the
Why not? “Other activities of organized from a research reactor, preparing it for top] off,” Ferguson explains. All that’s
crime are way less hassle,” she suggests. use in a bomb requires expertise, chem- left is to wash away the TBP. Given ura-
Fortunately, it’s only getting harder icals, industrial equipment, explosives nium’s low radioactivity, this work
for terrorists to steal nuclear material. and a clandestine workspace. None of could be done in lab coats and goggles
During the 1990s, a joint U.S.-Russian these, however, is beyond the reach of a in a small warehouse.
program upgraded security at dozens of well-organized and well-funded terrorist Regulators can’t do much to make this
former Soviet nuclear installations. And group such as Al Qaeda. step more difficult. One possibility is to

62 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

restrict the sale of TBP. “Some countries separate pieces is a relatively straight- make mistakes. A bomb made from 100
track it, some don’t,” says Michael Levi, a forward machine-tool task. Slightly more pounds of 90 percent highly enriched
nuclear-terrorism expert at King’s Col- complicated is devising the cannon that uranium could deliver an explosive
lege at the University of London. will fire the uranium. Terrorists could yield of about 10 kilotons, or slightly less
If a terrorist group obtained the nec- either fashion their own cannon or than the force of the 1945 Hiroshima
essary chemicals, extracting enough ura- acquire a military cannon like a How- blast. A smaller blast would occur if the
nium for a bomb could take only a few itzer. This choice would depend some- uranium were of a lower enrichment
weeks. The bomb-makers could then get what on the quality of uranium they had grade or if the cannon misfired because
down to the grunt work of construction. acquired. The more highly enriched the of design flaws. But even a one-kiloton
“I think the hardest step in the process is uranium, the less powerful the cannon explosion would level a city block, killing
the extraction of uranium,” Ferguson that would be required to create a chain everyone in the vicinity and igniting
says. “Once they do that, then it becomes reaction. Although you can’t buy a mod- huge fires. Radiation would kill perhaps
very simple.” ern Howitzer on eBay, it’s not impossi- thousands more. Mass panic would
ble to get heavy conventional military ensue. In other words, even a relative
STEP equipment. As the NRDC’s Tom Cochran dud would be an absolute catastrophe.
ASSEMBLE THE BOMB
3 notes, military hardware of every type is
currently “lying around all over Iraq.” STEP
DELIVER THE BOMB
The nuclear weapons stockpiled by the Actually detonating such a bomb may 4
U.S. and Russian governments are far be the easiest step of all. Basic gunpow-
more sophisticated and lethal than any- der is ideal for firing the cannon, Levi Of course, terrorists couldn’t simply air-
thing a terrorist could build. Instead a explains. The bomb could be triggered mail their bomb to the White House
terrorist would most likely opt for the with a cellphone or a garage door opener mailroom. Transporting it would be
simplest nuclear weapon, called a gun —technology no more sophisticated than the final challenge. And depending on
bomb. Like a rifle, a gun bomb uses a con- that used in Iraqi roadside bombs. its design, a crude nuke might weigh
ventional explosive charge to fire a bullet. Last year Senator Joseph Biden asked between half a ton and a few tons. Deliv-
But in this case, the bullet is a lump of scientists at three national laboratories to ering the bomb to its target is “not trivial,”
uranium that slams into a second piece see if they could assemble the mechani- Levi says. “It’s one thing to smuggle a
of uranium at the other end of the barrel. cal components of a gun-style bomb with small piece of uranium into the country.
The impact compresses the two pieces, commercially available equipment alone. It’s another thing to smuggle a fully built
creating a “supercritical mass” that sets A few months later, they reported back several-ton hunk of steel.”
off a nuclear chain reaction. It’s a simple that they had done it. Nevertheless, a huge cannon would
but proven method. “The Hiroshima The process of building a crude bomb still fit easily into a cargo-shipping
bomb was literally a cannon barrel that is made even easier by the fact that— container, more than 23 million of
slammed two pieces of highly enriched unlike state-run nuclear programs, which arrive in the U.S. every year.
uranium together,” Bunn explains. which are typically held to strict safety Approximately 5 percent of these
Casting the bomb’s uranium into two standards—terrorists can afford to are inspected by (CONTINUED ON PAGE 96)

y
LOOKING FOR TROUBLE The search is on for nukes in the U.S. Here are the tools
With the threat of
nuclear terrorism present
in so many forms—
from suitcase-size dirty
Ø Ø Ø
bombs to full-size
weapons transported in
trucks or cargo contain-
ers—detection technolo- AERIAL MEASURING ORTEC DETECTIVE-EX SMITHS DETECTION HCV
gies have to do more SYSTEM The aircraft-mounted Ortec’s handheld radiation MOBILE 2 The stationary x-ray
than just scan for radia- Aerial Measuring System scans detector and analyzer, the systems used to inspect cargo
tion in urban centers or wide areas for anomalous sources $68,250 Detective-EX, uses a containers arriving at U.S. ports
of radioactivity. Developed by the germanium crystal to detect the can’t detect radiation. But a new
along major transit corri-
Bechtel Nevada Remote Sensing gamma rays and neutrons emit- truck-mounted system from Smiths
dors, as many perma-
Laboratory, it sweeps potential ted by plutonium and highly Detection, the HCV Mobile 2, not
nently mounted detectors
terrorist targets such as football enriched uranium. Engineers have only x-rays containers to ascer-
do now. The latest sys- stadiums and political conven- tain that their contents match the
miniaturized the technology to fit
tems are mobile and far tions. Baseline radiation levels can inside a 20-pound unit, which declared manifests but also looks
more sensitive than sim- be compared with measurements includes both the germanium for nuclear materials using up to
ple Geiger counters. taken when officials suspect an crystal and a battery-operated five gamma-ray detectors. First
They’re on the front lines undetonated weapon may have refrigeration system that cools it employed during last summer’s
of the effort to prevent been smuggled in—ideally, help- to –262°F. At that temperature, Olympic games, the $3-million
a nuclear attack and, ing to locate the bomb or, in the gamma rays absorbed by the scanner began testing in the U.S.
if necessary, to mount worst case, aiding emergency crystal can be distinguished this winter as a prelude to its
an effective emergency response by tracking radiation from ambient heat—and thus be delivery to U.S. ports and border
response.—ERIC ADAMS following an actual detonation. detectable in very small doses. crossings later this year.

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 63

 BUILT TO ORDER
LOS ALAMOS SCIENTIST STEEN RASMUSSEN PLANS
TO ONE-UP NATURE BY COBBLING TOGETHER A BRAND-
NEW CREATURE THAT REPRODUCES AND EVOLVES.
IS HE MAKING A BIOTECH MARVEL THAT WILL DO OUR
BIDDING, OR A TEST-TUBE-SIZE FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER?
BY MICHAEL STROH | PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY HOLLY LINDEM

00 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 65
 ONE
MORNING LAST FALL, atmosphere—methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water
a dozen or so govern- vapor—and arced a spark of electricity through them to sim-
ment scientists shuffle ulate lightning. In a week, amino acids, the building blocks
into a small confer- of proteins—and thus life—appeared. It was evidence that
ence room on the haphazard chemical interactions could lead to living things.
sprawling grounds of Chen finishes his presentation, and Rasmussen leans for-
Los Alamos National Laboratory to kick off an unusual ward. “If we can just make a system that’s able to replicate a
research project. The room, tucked away in the basement of few times,” he says gravely, “we’re going to change the
an old physics building known as SM-40, has paint-flaked world.” It’s the kind of boast few scientists would dare make
cinderblock walls and a tangle of exposed plumbing over- aloud, especially when their grant check has only recently
head. The only decorative touch, a cheap potted floor plant, cleared. Several of the veterans in the room chuckle and
is slumped half-dead in the corner. Eventually a tall man shake their heads—there he goes again.
with a sculpted Scandinavian jawline hurries in. Steen Ras- But Rasmussen’s team isn’t the only one attempting to
mussen apologizes for running late. He shakes a few hands create new organisms. By some estimates, more than 100
and then cues the team’s lead chemist, Liaohai Chen, to labs are chipping away at the problem, including one
begin. Someone flips off the lights, and a PowerPoint slide headed by superstar biologist Craig Venter, whose innova-
flashes onto a projector screen. tive DNA-sequencing technology led to the decoding of the
The slide reads: “We are not crazy.” human genome four years ahead of schedule. Last April the
For an instant the scientists seem unsure how to react. European Union launched the $10-million Programmable
Some laugh, others look uneasy. And who could blame Artificial Cell Evolution project, and when I visited
them? Los Alamos, famed birthplace of the atomic bomb, Rasmussen in October, he had caught wind of a Japanese
has just awarded Rasmussen nearly $5 million to attempt an effort about to get under way. “There’s no doubt that this is
experiment as bold as the one that drew scientists to this going to happen,” he says. “It’s no longer a question of ‘if,’
pine-dotted New Mexico mesa back in the 1940s: He intends but of who is going to do it and when.”
to create a brand-new life-form. If any scientific enterprise Many of these scientists are trying to solve the oldest
demands a sanity check at the outset, surely this is it. puzzle in science: How did we get here? What combination
Flipping though slides thick with chemical equations, of inanimate molecules led, four billion years ago, to the first
Chen explains how Rasmussen’s team of chemists and microscopic creature, and from there to the riot of diversity

“THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN. IT’S NO LONGER A QUESTION

OF ‘IF,’ BUT OF WHO IS GOING TO DO IT AND WHEN.”
physicists, who are gathered together here for the first time, that is life on Earth? “One of the major questions [this work]
will build their bug. They aren’t going to simply transform could answer is, Was life an accident or inevitable?” says
an existing organism by tweaking its DNA. No, Chen Peter Nielsen, a chemist at the University of Copenhagen
explains, they’re going to create their being from scratch, lit- who is collaborating with Rasmussen.
erally breathing life into a beaker full of inanimate mole- Still other investigators are betting that custom-built
cules. It is a Frankensteinian vision—though, granted, one organisms will spark a biotech boom. Already genetic-
that will unfold on the nano scale. The team’s “protocell” engineering techniques such as gene splicing have made
will be thousands of times as small as a typical bacterium it possible to create everything from fungus-resistant corn
and far more primitive. But if all goes as planned, it will pos- to cows that churn out medicines in their milk. But some
sess the defining characteristics of life: It will spawn off- researchers would rather not limit their handiwork to the
spring, generate its own energy, even evolve. Left unspoken raw materials around them. They want to make com-
was this: If Rasmussen, who first started contemplating pletely new creatures. “You want more than a plumper
protocells seven years ago, and his colleagues succeed, they pig. You want something outside the realm of what nature
will have crossed a threshold, bestowing on humankind can ever conceivably provide,” says University of Florida
powers that now belong exclusively to nature (or to God, biophysicist Steven Benner.
depending on your beliefs). To accomplish this, though, most scientists are sticking
The desire to create life is nothing new. In the Renais- close to nature’s script. They’re trying to create cells much
sance, scientists would put a hunk of raw meat in a jar, set it like the ones that exist today—cells, that is, that are
aside, come back in a few weeks, and observe the “sponta- surrounded by double-layered membranes and stuffed with
neous generation” of life—maggots and the like. In the genetic material in the form of DNA or RNA. Not
1790s, Italian physician Luigi Galvani observed movement Rasmussen. For most of his 49 years, the Danish-born
when he jolted the severed legs of frogs with electricity; his theoretical physicist has been obsessed with understanding
experiments inspired Mary Shelley in the writing of what makes life possible. In attempting to make his own ver-
Frankenstein nearly three decades later. In 1953 Stanley sion, he tossed aside biology textbooks and asked himself,
D AV I D B A R R Y

Miller and Harold Urey of the University of Chicago con- What’s the simplest living system I can imagine? The result
ducted a landmark investigation: They tossed together is that his protocell looks like no life-form anyone has ever
molecules thought to have been present in the Earth’s early seen. “I’m sort of out in the extreme,” he confesses.

66 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

 CHICKEN OR EGG? At his com-
PHOTO CREDIT TK

pound in Jacona, New Mexico,

Steen Rasmussen grows tomatoes
and herbs and harvests fresh eggs.
Amid this profusion of plants
and animals, he contemplates
the elements common to all life.
POPU-
 Howard Hanson, who oversees a Los Alamos grant pro-
gram for high-risk research, says Rasmussen’s proposal is
one of the most radical his office has ever bankrolled.
According to chemist David Deamer, an origins-of-life
A-LIFE, B MOVIES
Artificially created life is a perennial science-
researcher at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Ras- fiction theme. What makes it so compelling?
mussen is one of the gutsiest and most original scientists in
the field. “He’s willing to stick his neck out,” Deamer says. Young Frankenstein
“Once in a while it gets chopped off, but he just picks it back
up and screws it on again.”

ON A WARM SATURDAY LAST JUNE I GAVE RASMUSSEN

a lift to Santa Fe in my rental car to meet up with his wife,
Jenny, a German-born painter who often spends weekends
at an outdoor market space in the state capital selling her
abstract landscapes. As we drove past weather-sculpted rock
outcroppings and dry arroyos dotted with piñon and
juniper, it struck me that New Mexico is a pretty good place
to contemplate the origins of life. Staring out at the stark,
rocky landscape, I began to imagine primitive, prebiological
molecules dancing in some murky primordial puddle off the Since the publication of fallibility is often at the root
side of the road—until the neon glow of an Indian casino on Frankenstein in 1818, the of life-run-amok scenarios. In
architects of science fiction Greg Bear’s 2001 short story
the horizon broke the spell. have mused over the implica- “Blood Music,” the protago-
Rasmussen was apparently thinking similar thoughts, tions of man-made (or man- nist hides a project to design
because as he looked out at the landscape rolling past he muddled) life. Outcomes vary “intelligent cells” from his
mused, “All your experiences completely contradict the abil- from Blade Runner–style superiors at a big biotech
ity for us to be here. You see the mountains crumble, the mayhem to worlds inhabited company. When they find out
landscape erode. If you don’t maintain your house, it falls by harmonious puddles of and close the lab, he risks his
gray cellular goo, but there’s life to save his creation, inject-
apart. Your car has to go in for repair all the time.” He turned a common theme: When we ing the cells into his arm.
to face me. “So how did we come about? What is it in nature tinker with the natural order, (Surprise! Havoc erupts.)
that creates complexity? That has sort of been my driver.” something always goes If meddling with life is such
Rasmussen grew up in Munkerup, a small coastal town wrong. In Michael Crichton’s a chilling prospect, why does
that’s a 45-minute drive from Copenhagen. One of his earli- Jurassic Park, an entrepre- it so fascinate? It goes back
est memories is dragging his father, a mason turned entre- neur dreams of an amuse- to the primordial urge to pro-
ment park but instead create, suggests Don Hassler,
preneur, out into the evening air so that he could scramble
unleashes a race of blood- a Kent State English professor
atop his shoulders and “be closer to the stars.” There the thirsty carnivores. In Stanley and editor of the sci-fi journal
future scientist and the former bricklayer debated cosmic Kubrick’s dystopian 2001: A Extrapolation. Trying though
questions: Was there an end to the universe? If so, what lay Space Odyssey, the computer children can be, they are
on the other side? Rasmussen was four years old. designed to keep people alive cherished because they
Later, as a physics student in the late 1970s at the Techni- in space destroys them. promise to enhance their
cal University of Denmark, Rasmussen’s interest in life’s ori- Behind every wayward parents’ legacy. “It’s that great
life-form, there seems to be a image of the little kid who is
gins led him to the papers of Belgian physical chemist Ilya person in a lab coat with a a monster for the parents but
Prigogine and German biophysicist Manfred Eigen, Nobel sentimental attachment to also the wave of the future,”
laureates known for their pioneering work on self-organizing the beast. Indeed, human he says.—SARAH GOFORTH
systems. Perched at the crossroads of physics, chemistry and
biology, self-organization is a phenomenon visible every-
where, from the undulating grains of sand dunes to the syn- their hands, but Rasmussen couldn’t stop thinking about
chronized gyrations of schools of fish. In each case, order these questions. (“There is no ‘off’ button,” his wife told me
and pattern arise seemingly spontaneously from chaos and with a playful eye roll after we met up with her in Santa Fe.)
TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX/NEAL PETERS COLLECTION

randomness. Rasmussen became transfixed by these phe- In 1987 Rasmussen was finishing a postdoc at the Tech-
nomena and how they might apply to inanimate organic nical University and feeling conflicted about whether to stay
molecules bobbing in the early oceans, molecules that some- in science. Then a friend and colleague handed him a flier
how organized themselves into increasingly complex living for a conference in the U.S. on a new interdisciplinary field
systems—eventually resulting in us. called artificial life, or A-life. “I read it three or four times,”
He began spending long hours in the computer lab mod- Rasmussen says. “Then I grabbed the telephone.”
eling lifelike processes, much to the dismay of department His call led to an invitation not only to attend the con-
elders. “My physics professors said, ‘These are computer ference—which was held at Los Alamos—but to give a
games! What are you doing?’ ” he recalls. They gave him an talk about the various computer simulations he had
ultimatum: Keep fiddling with origins-of-life research, and created to predict when the first genes and other early bio-
you can forget about getting a job as a physicist. But by then molecules may have emerged. A year later he had landed
Rasmussen was hooked. When it came time to choose a dis- himself a full-time job at Los Alamos studying self-
sertation topic, he announced that he would tackle the prob- organizing complex systems, which over the years has led
lem of how and when genes arose. His advisers threw up him to investigate topics as seemingly far from the origins

68 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

of life as urban sprawl and the dynamics of traffic jams. determined that as many as 215 genes might be extraneous.
Today Rasmussen’s office is a short walk from where that The next step, which the group is sweating over now, is con-
first A-life gathering took place. It was a watershed moment. structing an artificial, Cliffs Notes version of the original
Eighteen years ago, artificial life was fringe science; some of genetic code, installing it in an organism stripped of its DNA
the people who traveled to that first meeting to discuss and then seeing if they can coax this new creature to life.
everything from life’s origins to how one could create life- Even Venter, a scientist accustomed to mega-challenges,
like robots, computer viruses and even biological entities has admitted that getting his synthetic bug to “boot up” will
kept their participation hidden from scientific colleagues. be no small feat. So far, the record for a scratch-built genome
Today all that has changed, and now Rasmussen and other is 7,500 chemical bases, assembled in 2002 by researchers at
founding fathers find themselves tackling questions that are the State University of New York to create a polio virus. Ven-
among the most cutting-edge in science. One day Ras- ter’s bug will require a synthetic DNA strand 40 times as
mussen leads me across the campus to a small, bland build- long. Even if his team succeeds in constructing it, nobody
ing called the J. Robert Oppenheimer Study Center. Once knows whether it’s possible to swap the entire genetic code
inside, we climb the stairs to the second floor. “This is it,” he of a living creature for an artificial version without killing
says. It’s not much to look at—your basic carpeted ballroom the organism. Still, Venter and his colleagues are making
with a podium in front. But for Rasmussen and a handful of headway. In 2003 they reported that they had sewn together
other true believers, it might as well be the Vatican. a harmless virus known as phi-X (although some scientists
From the earliest days of A-life, people have contemplated derided the feat as little more than a publicity stunt). In the
its wider implications. In 1999 ethicist Mildred Cho of Stan- months since, Venter has been tight-lipped about his group’s
ford University headed a panel to weigh the risks of emerg- progress but not about the potential promise of the Energy
ing efforts to create synthetic life-forms. The panel backed Department–funded project. One possibility: loading his
the research but cautioned that such an organism had the synthetic organism with genetic instructions to convert
potential to “wreak ecological havoc” or become the engine atmospheric carbon dioxide to methane for use as fuel.
for a fearsome new biological weapon. Rasmussen agrees. As ambitious as Venter’s plans are, they hardly compare
“Let’s be clear,” he says. “There are clouds on the horizon. with what Rasmussen and other bottom-uppers are trying
We don’t want to pollute either ourselves or our environ- to accomplish, building an organism from scratch. Sitting in

“THERE’S NO CONTRADICTION IN BEING RELIGIOUS AND

THE WORK WE’RE DOING. WE’RE PEELING THE ONION.
WE’RE JUST PUNY HUMANS, TRYING TO UNDERSTAND.”
ment with renegade processes.” But, he thinks, in the end the living room of his adobe-style house, Rasmussen and I
the technology may wind up being safer than the geneti- discuss his protocell. An impressive variety of creatures
cally altered crops being created today. His protocells would roam the grounds—horses, chickens, mosquito fish, a dog, a
probably die if they strayed from the environment for cat, two kids, and who knows what else. As we talk, Ras-
which they were designed. Initially they’ll be lucky to sur- mussen’s 13-year-old son Leif appears, plucks a parakeet
vive even inside the carefully controlled conditions of the from a nearby cage, and places it on his dad’s shoulder. But
lab. “Just shake the beaker,” he says, “and they fall apart.” Rasmussen is too wrapped up in the notion of creating life
I ask him if he worries about a backlash from people to pay heed to the life-form twittering into his ear.
who might condemn these efforts as overreaching, playing When he began this project, he compiled a list of the min-
God. Rasmussen, who studied philosophy for three years imum necessary parts for an artificial organism, then
before committing to physics, quickly dismisses the pruned it to three: a metabolism to generate energy, a DNA-
notion. “I think there’s no contradiction whatsoever in like molecule to store operating instructions, and a mem-
being spiritual or religious and the work we’re doing,” he brane to serve as sausage casing and hold all the parts
says. “We’re peeling the onion, taking layer by layer off and together. But he soon realized that he needed to simplify fur-
figuring out how the world is put together. We’re just puny ther. Even primitive single-celled organisms are works of
humans that are trying to understand.” sophisticated engineering, their membranes studded with
channels for transporting nutrients in and waste out. These
THERE ARE TWO MAIN APPROACHES TO CREATING natural structures would be tough to duplicate.
artificial cells, dubbed “top down” and “bottom up.” Genome Along with chemist Chen, who works at Argonne Nation-
guru Craig Venter is the most prominent top-downer. Start- al Laboratory, Rasmussen pared down his design,
ing with the simplest known bacterium on the planet, a creating computer simulations to test his ideas as he went.
harmless 517-gene organism called Mycoplasma genitalium “We turned things completely upside down,” he says. Or, to
that inhabits the human genital tract, Venter’s team at the be precise, inside out. For starters, Rasmussen and Chen put
Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives in Rockville, some of the molecular machinery on the outside of their
Maryland, is attempting to replace the organism’s natural synthetic cell, thus doing away with the need for a fancy
genetic code with a stripped-down synthetic one. channel-studded membrane. Instead the protocell is glued
That, of course, requires knowing which genes are essen- together by a clump of fatty-acid molecules (“kind of like
tial to keeping the bug alive and which aren’t. By pruning a used wad of chewing gum,” Rasmussen explains). This
genes from the bacterium one at a time, the team has already molecular blob—known in the chemistry trade as a micelle

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 69

 —is about as primitive a membrane as you can make. imentation. But the basic recipe for protocells starts with
The beauty of the plan is that the micelle should assem- throwing a fatty-acid surfactant into a beaker of water. In the
ble itself. When I ask how, Rasmussen bolts up. “Let me blink of an eye, there should be, as Rasmussen puts it,
show you something,” he says, scurrying off barefoot into “zillions” of blobby micelles swirling inside.
the kitchen, where he bangs around before returning with a Next, the genetic material. Most organisms operate with
sloshing glass of water, a stainless-steel dish-soap dispenser, DNA or RNA. But Rasmussen and his group plan to try a
and an unreadable glint in his ice-blue eyes. I realize that he’s man-made nucleic acid called PNA, or peptide nucleic acid.
about to perform an impromptu experiment—and I briefly Synthesized by Nielsen and his colleagues in the early 1990s,
wonder if I should duck for cover. Rasmussen has confessed PNA looks and acts much like DNA—same double-helix
that he’s more comfortable at a computer than a chemistry shape, same four chemical bases. But rather than a backbone
bench. Years ago Peter Nielsen, the Danish chemist who is composed of sugar-phosphate molecules, PNA has one made
collaborating on the protocell project, invited Rasmussen to of peptides, the building blocks of proteins.
his lab to “get his hands wet,” as experimentalists like to Rasmussen’s PNA-based protocell might help solve a
say. Rasmussen did, and then some. Neither man will reveal long-standing riddle: What was the ur-gene? One leading
precisely what happened, just that it involved the accidental theory is that the earliest organism relied on a self-replicating
spilling of a certain radioactive substance and the ruining of version of RNA. But in 2000, Stanley Miller, the father of
an experiment. In fact, when Rasmussen first asked Nielsen origins-of-life research, suggested that PNA ingredients were

TOP- Bacterium

DOWN
BIOTECH WHIZ
Unnecessary
genes
New
genes

CRAIG VENTER IS
PARING DOWN AN STAGE 1 Scientists comb the entire STAGE 2 Once the extraneous STAGE 3 To create a never-before-
EXISTING BUG TO genome of M. genitalium, remov- genes have been eliminated, the seen bug with new abilities, scien-
CREATE A BRAND- ing all genes that are not required remaining DNA is stitched together tists add genes of their choice—for,
NEW ONE to keep the bacterium alive. into a new, minimal genome. say, heat tolerance—and “boot up.”

BOTTOM-UP THEORIST STEEN RASMUSSEN IS BUILDING HIS “PROTOCELL” FROM SCRATCH

Rasmussen starts with basic building blocks: fatty acids,
Fatty Light
acid a DNA variant called PNA, and a light-sensitive molecule (1).
Part of each fatty acid is attracted to water, and part is repelled,
so when placed in water, they organize into a clump called a
micelle. The sensitizer migrates inside, PNA embeds itself in the
Metabolism exterior, and a protocell is born (2). When light hits the proto-
PNA Sensitizer products cell, a chemical reaction makes new fatty acids and PNA (3).
1 2 3 4 5 The micelle grows until it becomes unstable (4) and splits (5).

to help with the protocell, Nielsen agreed, but only after jok- also present on the early Earth. Could the first life-form
ing that Rasmussen must promise not to touch anything. have been weirder than we thought, a PNA-based creature?
Back in Rasmussen’s living room, I watch him pump a Rasmussen’s protocell will test that notion.
few shots of soap into the water glass, cup his hand over the The main advantage of PNA, though, is that it is electri-
rim, and shake as if he were mixing a cocktail. Liquid erupts cally conductive, so in addition to acting as genetic material,
from between his fingers, splattering his shirt. Rasmussen it jump-starts the protocell’s metabolism. In the initial blue-
curses under his breath, then holds out the glass for me to print, a photosensitive molecule—the alcohol pinacol is one
inspect. Delicate bubbles swirl in the cloudy water. OK, so? option—and short PNA strands are thrown into the mix [see
So, he explains, looking slightly deflated that his Mr. Wiz- illustration above]. After running a series of simulations in
ard bit didn’t suffice, soap is what chemists call a surfactant. November, Rasmussen and Chen conceived of attaching the
On a sheet of paper, he sketches something that looks like pinacol to the ends of PNA strands before throwing it into
a sperm. The head of the soap molecule, he explains, is the beaker. When light strikes the pinacol, it will cause the
attracted to water, the tail repelled by it. Spritz enough of compound to throw off an electron, which will streak down
these part-hydrophilic, part-hydrophobic structures into the PNA bases. When it reaches the other end, scientists
GARRY MARSHALL

water, and the molecules automatically ball up into micelles. expect it to trigger a chemical reaction with the final ingre-
Rasmussen and his team won’t use dish soap, of course, but dient they plan to throw into the mix: food.
some other surfactant; like many details of the protocell’s The food consists of precursor molecules that the proto-
design, they will know which one only after intensive exper- cell’s PNA-pinacol metabolism will (CONTINUED ON PAGE 98)
y

70 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

 THE

RR
POPSCI MEDIA CENTERPCs
BUYER’S
GUIDE
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR NEXT
PERSONAL COMPUTER, A DIGITAL-MEDIA WUNDERKIND YOU
CAN CONTROL WITHOUT EVER LEAVING THE COUCH
BY STEVE MORGENSTERN • PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHARLES MASTERS

72 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

T
HE REASON YOU OWN SPECS CHEAT SHEET
a personal computer
has changed. These MICROSOFT HAS MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS FOR THE SPECS ON A PC RUNNING
days, it’s far more Media Center Edition 2005, but the minimum would make for a pretty weak machine.
likely to pump out That said, not all components need to be top-of-the-line to turn a PC into a digital-
music, photos and media powerhouse. Unless you’re into processor- and video-intensive tasks such
video than spread- as gaming or video editing, don’t pay extra for stuff you won’t use. Direct your
sheets and text docu- dough instead at things like storage and RAM, where more is always better.
ments. Yet the way you interact with
it hasn’t caught up: alone in an office, TV TUNERS If you see a surprisingly low advertised price for a Media Center
two feet from the screen, clicking
away with a mouse and keyboard.
There ought to be a better way.
R
RR PC, make sure it includes a TV tuner and remote control. In the past, Micro-
soft required both for a certified Media Center system, but with this latest
version, they’re officially optional. The system software supports up to three TV tuners,
Companies have nibbled at the two standard-definition and one high-def (over-the-air HD only), although single- and
entertainment-focused PC interface dual-tuner setups are more common (each additional tuner allows you to record another
before, but it took Microsoft to finally program simultaneously). The tuner card’s job is to take the incoming signal and encode
nail it, with the recently released it into MPEG-2 video for display and storage. Less-expensive cards pawn that work off
Windows XP Media Center Edition on the CPU (a process called software encoding), leading to choppy, low-quality video;
2005, the third and best iteration of a card that handles it with a dedicated onboard processor (called hardware encoding)
a special version of XP that looks and will give you better overall system performance.
acts like a standard PC—until you
unleash its alter ego. VIDEO CARD Whereas the tuner captures the signal, the video card displays
Push a button on the remote con-
trol, and suddenly you’re looking at
a full-screen large-type menu with
R
RR it. But the resolution and color-depth requirements for doing so aren’t very
demanding—the standard for American broadcast resolution was set back
in 1941. Pretty much any video card with at least 128 megabytes of onboard memory
choices such as My Pictures, My will suffice. If you’re a cinephile or gamer who demands ultimate video quality with
Music and Play DVD. This so-called minimal noise and pixelation, ATI’s Theater 550 Pro and several of Nvidia’s GeFORCE
“10-foot user interface” is readable cards offer chips specially designed for the best TV and DVD reproduction.
from across the room and easily nav-
igated with the remote, so you can AUDIO CARD If you plan to connect your Media Center PC to a surround-
start a playlist or slideshow without
leaving the couch. Most Media Cen-
ter PCs also include a built-in TV
R
RR sound receiver, you’ll want an audio card with at least 5.1-channel support
and a digital-audio port. Many lower-cost systems skip the sound card, relying
instead on audio circuitry built into the motherboard. The resulting quality is fine for
tuner, allowing you to watch, many listeners, but audiophiles should look for something like the Audigy series from
rewind, and record live TV on your Creative, which supports 24-bit audio and up to eight surround-sound channels.
monitor or a connected set. There’s
even a free onscreen guide to sched- PROCESSOR The official processor requirement for the vast majority of
ule recordings.
Want more? How about Internet
and FM radio, and movie and music
R
RR Media Center PCs with hardware-encoding TV tuner cards is a measly
1.6 gigahertz, but the sweet spot for performance and price is closer to the
2.8-gigahertz Pentium 4. If you plan to use the system for gaming or video editing, go

R
downloads from vendors such as with something faster—say, a 3.4-gigahertz P4 or AMD Athlon 64 3400+.
CinemaNow and Napster, all from
the same interface. Then there are RAM The minimum RAM required for a Media Center PC is 256 megabytes,
the optional Media Center Extenders
that stream all the content on your
Media Center PC to any TV in the
R
RR but at today’s prices, it definitely pays to buy a system with more, or save a
few bucks by upgrading one yourself. Going to 512 megabytes will produce
a noticeable improvement, but a gigabyte is best, especially if you’re planning to run
house, not to mention the new the Media Center in a window while using the computer for other tasks.
Portable Media Centers that sync
with your PC so you can take HARD DRIVE The only hard-drive feature really worth paying extra for is
recorded shows or ripped MP3s on
the go. Perhaps the most impressive
feature: Media Center PCs typically
R
RR RAID 1, which constantly maintains a backup copy of all your files. Beyond that,
just buy as much hard-drive space as you can afford. Each hour of recorded
video eats up about three gigabytes, on top of whatever the standard system files and
cost only around $50 more than a applications use, plus all of your digital music and photo files. Desktop-computer buyers
similar box sporting plain XP. can upgrade from an 80-gigabyte drive to a 160-gigabyte one for less than $50. Laptop
Ready to buy? Start with our owners can pick up a 160-gigabyte external drive for around $200.
Specs Cheat Sheet for an anatomy of
the Media Center PC, then browse OPTICAL DRIVE Nearly all Media Center PCs (and all of those shown on
our nine favorite machines on the
following pages, as well as a few
devices that can approximate the
R
RR the following pages) have drives that read and write both CDs and DVDs.
For about $30 more, consider upgrading to a dual-layer DVD burner. Blank
dual-layer DVD discs are becoming less expensive and more common, and the option to
Media Center Edition experience on store twice the video, or the same amount at twice the quality, will be well worth having.
your current rig.

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 73

THE
R LIVING ROOM
R
POPSCI
BUYER’S
GUIDE
MEDIA
CENTER
RR
A Media Center PC designed to pull full-time duty in your living room needs to play nice with your existing entertainment
system, both aesthetically—with a sleek horizontal case that disguises its PC-ness—and with high-quality video
outputs for connecting it to your TV, such as DVI or component video, and a digital-audio port for piping surround sound
to your receiver. Speaking of sound, the familiar whir of computer fans in desktop machines is unacceptable when savor-
ing the subtleties of a jazz piano solo or straining to hear whispered dialogue in a movie, so a good living-room PC will
PCs employ silencing technology such as large, slow-turning fans or a special case—often an added, but worthwhile, cost.

1 2
3
1. THE SILENT ONE 2. THE WELL-ROUNDED 3. THE TV BUFF
Niveus Rainier WORKHORSE Alienware DHS 5 Series
The Rainier uses no internal fans at all, HP Digital Entertainment Center z545-b Serious TV watchers will appreciate
relying instead on its unique finned The z545-b has everything you’d expect the 5 Series’s optional three tuners, so
case to dissipate heat. The company in a high-end receiver—DVI, VGA, you can have picture-in-picture while
even had ATI design a fanless version component-video out, optical-audio out, you record another show. For gamers,
of the 9600XT graphics card. The dual TV tuners and an FM tuner— there’s drop-in installation and loading,
silence comes at a golden price, how- but adds integrated 802.11g wireless which automatically optimizes the
ever, especially considering the unit’s networking and an extra two channels game for your system. And Raid 1 real-
middle-of-the-road specs. Niveus also of sound for a full 7.1-channel surround time backup technology reconstructs
offers several more-expensive models system. Included software lets you your movies and music if the hard
with HDTV tuners and similar cases. pause and replay live FM radio. drive is damaged.

R
RRSPECS
Niveus Rainier
TV TUNERS

Two
PROCESSOR

2.8GHz Intel
RAM

512 MB
HARD DRIVE

160 GB
OPTICAL DRIVE

4x DVD+/-RW
DIMENSIONS

17.5 x 15 x 4 in.
PRICE

$3,000
Pentium 4
PHOTO CREDIT TK

HP z545-b Two 3.0GHz Intel 512 MB 200 GB 16x dual-layer 17 x 16.6 x 4.4 in. $1,900
Pentium 4 DVD+/-RW
Alienware Two AMD Athlon 64 512 MB 250 GB 4x DVD+/-RW, 17 x 18.1 x 5.9 in. $2,200
DHS 5 Series 3000+ DVD-RAM

74 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

1 RLAPTOP
RR
Media Center laptops fall into the increasingly popular category of
desktop replacements: seven-pound-plus big-screen beasts that will
rarely, if ever, sit on your lap. Why go with a laptop if it’s not going to
hit the road? Because they take up very little space, move easily from
room to room, and stow away completely when not in use. The ideal
choice is a widescreen model (the better to watch 16x9 DVDs) with
digital-audio output for connecting to surround-sound speakers. Instant-
on capability is another nice touch, allowing you to enjoy TV, CD
and DVD entertainment without booting the entire Windows operating
system. The downside to laptops, though, is their limited capacity
for upgrades. Any add-ons—a bigger hard drive, more TV tuners,
a faster DVD drive—will most likely have to be external.

1. THE VIDEOPHILE
HP Pavilion zd8000
The zd8000 is one of the first laptops to use a PCI Express
graphics card, the ATI Mobility Radeon x600, which pumps
data twice as fast as a standard PCI card—you’ll notice the

2
bump most in gaming and video editing. Another perk: The
6-in-1 media-card reader easily transfers photos and MP3 files.

2. THE INSTANT GRATIFIER

Toshiba Qosmio G15-AV501
No need to boot up the Qosmio to watch movies or listen to
CDs. Its Linux kernel powers up the machine within a few
seconds of pressing the QosmioPlayer button, just like a
stand-alone DVD player. The SuperMulti DVD drive also reads
and writes just about any disc you throw in: +/-RW or RAM.

3. THE DOCK STAR

Sony VAIO VGN-A290
If you’re willing to get up close and personal with your
machine, Sony’s A290 uses its own capable software instead
of MCE for navigating TV, video and music playback—
you get a remote, but no 10-foot interface. The included AV
Entertainment Dock houses the TV tuner and all the A/V
connections, so you don’t have to unplug everything when
you go mobile. It also delivers an exceptionally bright, crisp
picture on the high-res (1,920-by-1,200-pixel) 17-inch screen.

HP Pavilion Toshiba Qosmio Sony VAIO

R
RRSPECS zd8000 G15-AV501 VGN-A290

3
One, external One One
TV TUNER
USB (optional)

PROCESSOR
3.6GHz Intel 1.8GHz Intel 1.7GHz Intel
Pentium 4 Pentium M Pentium M

RAM 1 GB 512 MB 1 GB

HARD DRIVE 80 GB 100 GB 100 GB

OPTICAL
8x DVD+/-RW 8x DVD+/-RW, 4x dual-layer
DRIVE DVD-RAM DVD+/-RW

DIMENSIONS 15.7 x 11.3 x 2 in. 16 x 11.2 x 1.7 in. 16 x 11 x 1.8 in.

WEIGHT 9.3 lbs. 9.7 lbs. 8.6 lbs.

PRICE $3,000 $3,000 $3,000*

*Price includes AV Entertainment Dock

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 75

THE
RDESKTOP
R
POPSCI
BUYER’S
GUIDE
MEDIA
CENTER
RR
Whether it’s relegated to a den, a dorm room or an office with enough privacy to sneak the occasional TV show
or movie, a desktop Media Center PC can be tailored to your primary computing interests—be they gaming, graphic
design or novel-writing—with media capability added on for dessert. For example, if you’re a hardcore gamer, you’ll
still want to max out your machine with high-end graphics and audio; running the Media Center Edition of Windows
XP (instead of plain XP) won’t affect your ogre-slaying activities. If your desktop is used mostly for less-demanding tasks,
PCs such as e-mailing, word processing, and surfing the Web, there’s no need to soup up the system just for the Media

3
Center software. Save your pennies for an enhanced speaker system or a bigger display, all the better to watch
The West Wing in one window while balancing your checkbook in another.

1. THE QUIET VALUE

Gateway 820GM
Although Niveus [page 74] achieves
absolute silence with its fanless
design, Gateway comes amazingly
2
2. THE TOTAL PACKAGE
Dell Dimension XPS Gen 4
The XPS Gen 4 targets gamers and
video junkies with its superfast proces-
sors and RAM and the latest PCI
3. THE FLASHY GAMER
VooDoo PC Vibe
VooDoo is best known for custom high-
end gaming rigs, so it’s no surprise that
the company has given the same unique
close, using two large-bladed, slow- Express graphics card. But everyone style (see-through case, internal neon
turning fans to achieve a system so will appreciate the Klipsch 5.1-channel lights) and top-of-the-line parts (silent
quiet, you’ll have to check the power speaker package and stunning 20-inch fan) to its Media Center PC. The optional
light to see if it’s on. Better yet, it does widescreen display, which will trans- matching Xbox is also a Media Center
so at less than half the Niveus’s price, form your office into a private theater Extender, so it can stream all the files
with superior system components. in one fell swoop. on your PC to any TV in the house.

R
RRSPECS
Gateway
TV TUNERS

One
PROCESSOR

3.0GHz Intel Pentium 4

RAM

1 GB
HARD DRIVE

250 GB
OPTICAL DRIVE

4x Dual-layer
DIMENSIONS

16.8 x 8 x 17.5 in.

PRICE

$1,250
820GM DVD+/-RW
Dell XPS Gen 4 Two 3.46GHz Intel Pentium 4 1 GB 2x 250 GB 16x DVD+/-RW 16.8 x 8 x 17.5 in. $4,660*
Extreme Edition
VooDoo PC Vibe Two AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 1 GB 160 GB 16x DVD+/-RW 18.5 x 9 x 19.75 in. $3,112**

*Price includes Linksys Media Center Extender and router, 20-inch widescreen monitor and Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1 speakers
**Price includes Xbox and Xbox Media Center Xtender

76 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

 ANYTIME, ANYWHERE
ENTERTAINING ADD-ONS
Unfortunately, the only way to get the Media Center Edition of Windows is to buy a new
computer, but it’s simple and inexpensive to add any or all of the key benefits—the large-
type 10-foot menus, remote control and TV-recording capability—to an existing desktop or
STORAGE
laptop computer with one of these aftermarket add-ons. (If you’d like to create a PC from
scratch that has these features, see “Build Your Own HTPC” on page 82 in How 2.0.)

1. Snapstream 2. Pinnacle included software pro-

Firefly Remote MediaCenter 100e vides a full-screen inter-
Snapstream instantly For laptop owners (or face for music, pictures,
makes your PC couch- those who don’t want to video and Musicmatch
potato-friendly with its open their desktop PC Internet radio.
well-designed remote case lest the digital $50; logitech.com
and customizable magic leak out), Pinna-
onscreen menu soft- cle’s external USB tuner 4. ATI HDTV Wonder
ware. Out of the box box lets your computer With a TV tuner card
you get music, photo, receive broadcast or that supports both over-
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGE
video and DVD play- cable TV. It also has the-air high-definition
STASHES ALL YOUR FILES OUT OF
back, but you can easily S-video and composite- and standard-definition
SIGHT YET MAKES THEM AVAILABLE
configure the remote to video inputs for import- broadcasts, an easy-to- TO ANY COMPUTER, ANYTIME
control other media ing footage from a VCR use remote and free
As your media collection grows from
players as well, includ- or digital-video recorder. electronic program
bite-size to terabyte-size, it’s easy to
ing Musicmatch Juke- $130; pinnaclesys.com guide for TV listings,
box and iTunes. Snap- ATI delivers a complete run out of hard-drive space. Adding
stream’s Beyond TV 3. Logitech MediaPlay home-entertainment internal or external drives to a PC is
software ($70) provides Cordless Mouse package (the company simple enough, but what if you want
a free onscreen program Run it across your desk, even throws in an HD several computers in your home to
guide, plus recording and it’s a first-class tabletop antenna). You have access to the files? The ideal solu-
and pause/rewind capa- cordless mouse. Pick get TiVo-style pause/ tion is network-attached storage, or
bilities when used with it up, though, and it rewind capabilities, and NAS. As the name implies, NAS
a compatible TV tuner transforms into a wire- you can record shows consists of one or more hard drives
card, such as the Haup- less remote control for broadcast in standard connected to your router and available
pauge PVR-250BTV your PC, with backlit or high definition and
to any computer on the network. Unlike
($90), also available on buttons for play, pause, burn them to DVD with
a shared drive on one of the PCs, files
Snapstream’s Web site. forward, back and the included software.
$50; snapstream.com volume control. The $200; ati.com on NAS are accessible no matter which
computers are running.
1 2 3 It may sound like a pocket-protector
project, but installing NAS is actually
very simple (plug it in and it shows up
as a drive in Windows Explorer), and
the boxes are reasonably priced. For
example, Buffalo’s LinkStation Network
Storage Center includes a built-in print
server, so anyone on the network can
access a shared printer, in addition to
120 ($280), 160 ($300), 250 ($400)
or 300 gigabytes ($500) of built-in
storage, and USB ports that let you add
two more hard drives if needed. The
Iomega NAS 100d shown above has
built-in wireless 802.11g networking in
160- ($500) and 250-gigabyte ($600)
sizes. If you already have an external
USB hard drive you’d like to share, just
plug it into the $100 Linksys Network
MICHAEL KRAUS

4 Storage Link, which can turn one or

two drives of any size into NAS.—S.M.

Read about all the third-party plug-ins for Media Center Edition 2005 at popsci.com/mce. POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 77
 POPULAR

HOW 2.0
HACKS, UPGRADES, PROJECTS, GRIPES, TIPS & TRICKS
T scıence

INSIDE DIY HOME-THEATER PC 82 • PRANK UTENSILS 84 • DRAWING WITH GPS 85 • INHALED ALCOHOL 85 • GAME EMULATORS 87

5 THINGS...
YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT
GETTING A SECOND LIFE
ANYTHING GOES
1 Unlike other multiplayer online
games before it, the popular
Second Life (secondlife.com)
allows players, or “Residents,”
to create everything, from
characters to buildings, using
the game’s simple 3-D building
tools. And there are no limits—
fashion a flying moose or give
yourself superpowers.

THE VIRTUAL MONEY’S

2 WORTH REAL MONEY
For a $10 sign-up fee, you get a
weekly allowance of “Linden
dollars.” Use them to purchase
items (clothes, land) or to enter-
tain yourself (take a skydive, bet
on a horse). Sell extra money
for real cash on ige.com.

YOU CAN’T DIE

3 Spend time in a dangerous
locale, such as combat area
Jessie, and your “health rating”
will decline. (Not to mention that
there are Residents who seek
and destroy other players just
DEPT: GEEK GUIDE INVESTIGATOR: MIKKEL AALAND TECH: Online for fun.) But even if you hit 0
photo sharing percent health, the game’s not
Share Your Shots COST: Free–$100
BEST: Snapfish,
over: You’re teleported to your
home base and resurrected.
Don’t hide your digital photos away. Put ’em online Smugmug, Hello
for everyone to see, without spending a dime BETA FINAL
4
YOU CAN’T WIN
You’re not out to slay dragons,
and there’s no way to “beat”
What happened to all those digital pictures you took over the holidays? Maybe you printed a few the game. Nor are you playing
frame-worthy shots and e-mailed some low-res files to relatives, but the rest are most likely languishing God, as in The Sims. The point is
on your hard drive, no different than the Polaroids stuffed into dusty albums in the closet. just to explore the world, inter-
act with other players, and
It doesn’t have to be this way. Using any of the new crop of photo-sharing services, you can shoot
construct your own reality.
your daughter’s birthday party, and 15 minutes later, across the country, Grandma can browse an online
slide show, order prints of the photos she likes best (on archival paper up to poster size), or, if Granny YOU CAN GET PAID
is especially tech-savvy, even download a high-res version to edit on her computer. 5 You have to rent land with real
A number of free sites provide all these capabilities and more, as long as you keep your account money to build things (parcels
active by occasionally ordering prints or other photo-adorned swag (T-shirts, books, key chains, calen- start at $10), but there’s an
dars). For a monthly or annual fee, other sites will give you unlimited storage that never expires, more- incentive. Every month, the San
Francisco–based company gives
powerful editing software and highly customizable albums. Advanced users who want to trade a lot
a percentage of its profits (up to
of high-res shots can check out the handful of new peer-to-peer sharing services that skip the Web several hundred real dollars) to
altogether and let you authorize other people to download photos directly from your computer. the Residents who create the
Ofoto pioneered online photo sharing five years ago and is still the juggernaut, but a number of most popular attractions, such
D A N PA G E

scrappy upstarts (and a few Goliath chain stores) are proving worthy competitors. Turn the page to see as the recent Spitoonie Island
our favorites, then get an account and show the world what you’ve shot. >> theme park.—KATE ASHFORD

POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005 79

T
HOW2.0|GEEK GUIDE
THE
TWO WAYS TO SHOW OFF YOUR DIGITAL PORTFOLIO
LUDDITE
Diary of a Tech
Diary Tech
Resister’s Temptation
Resister’s Temptation
desktop and add entire albums feature is the ability to order
at once. Where they differ is in one-hour prints online. Most EPISODE 9, PART 1
what you can do next. sites offer photo books, but MEDIA CENTER PC
Ofoto.com is competent in PhotoWorks.com has the most FRIDAY 1 PM After hearing
every respect, but its one frus- options, from $10 paperbacks about all its wonders—TV,
DVDs, Internet, something
trating aspect is that recipients to $100 foil-embossed tomes.
to do with photos and
of your shared albums can’t The downside? Free sites music—I’m most impressed
download a high-res copy of a make their money when you with the HP’s weight.
photo; they can only send it to buy stuff, so they blanket every Carrying the beast home
a home printer. With Snap- album page with ads and exhausts me. Must rest
fish.com, on the other hand, order buttons. And they’ll shut before unpacking.
you can authorize someone to down your account if you don’t
download a high-res image or buy something at least once a
WEB SERVICES restrict them to viewing alone. year. Photosite.com, Smug-
1 Today’s photo sites are Snapfish also offers glossy, mug.com and Clubphoto.com
so simple and powerful, you’ll matte or heavyweight paper for have paid plans from $15 to
feel guilty using them free of prints; Ofoto is glossy only. $100 a year that include per- HP z545-b DIGITAL
charge. Just sign up for an Shutterfly.com lets you write a manent storage, larger ENTERTAINMENT
account and start uploading short message on the back of onscreen images, dozens of CENTER
$1,900; hp.com
photos, either in small batches ordered prints and has editing album templates you can
BARRIER TO ENTRY:
through a Web page or with software for Mac and Linux as customize, and unique Web Getting it on the network
free software that lets you well as Windows. addresses for your photos (i.e., THE LUDDITE LIKES: Looks
organize and edit shots on your Wal-Mart.com’s sole standout yoursite.smugmug.com). good in my living room
VERDICT: Tune in next
month, after I’ve used it
software, which looks like a file- generate albums for you. The
TUESDAY 9 AM After staring
management tool with “picture true peer-to-peer services, Hello it down for days, I open the
preview” turned on. To send and Pixpo, require you to leave box and find enough cables
photos, just drag and drop them your computer on for others to and components to outfit an
into albums and hit “share.” fetch your photos. Mediated electronics store.
If your recipients have the same peer-to-peer services such as TUESDAY 3 PM Setup is like
connecting a VCR, only with
software, the pictures will arrive ShareALot, OurPictures and
four times the plugs. A few
on their desktop, no Web surf- PhotoPeer retain a low-res copy hours in, a start-up page
ing required; if not, they’ll of your photos on their server. appears on my TV, but the
PEER-TO-PEER receive an e-mail invitation to You connect to the other user wireless keyboard doesn’t
2 Online services are great download the software. only to retrieve high-res copies. work, so I’m stuck.
WEDNESDAY 11 AM Darn

I L L U S T R AT I O N S : D A N PA G E ; P H O T O G R A P H : C O U R T E S Y H E W L E T T- PA C K A R D
for showing off your photos, but All services provide a basic The peer-to-peer services are
if someone really wants to work means of organizing your pho- all free—to a point. For unlimited those “quick start” guides.
The key is on page 132 of
with them—color-correcting the tos into albums. For more robust sharing, OurPictures charges $3 the full user’s manual: Sync
full-resolution RAW or TIFF file in organization, PhotoPeer also a month and Pixpo a one-time the keyboard by pressing a
Photoshop, for instance—the works with iPhoto and Hello fee of $30. Right now, Hello, button on the PC. Success!
new peer-to-peer services make with Picasa. Pixpo will scan your ShareALot and PhotoPeer have WEDNESDAY 1 PM Correc-
more sense. Just download the computer and automatically no strings attached. tion: fleeting success. The
HP fails to recognize my
Internet connection, which
• Photoblogs. Typically more spartan than albums from means it can’t download
[ A Few More Ways to Share ] sharing services, photoblogs are a more artistic way to show the TV guide necessary to
schedule recordings.
off your work. See photoblogs.org for examples, and get your own at fotolog.net or blogger.com. MONDAY 10 AM For a
• Flickr. Somewhere between a photoblog and a sharing site, flickr.com doesn’t do prints and lets you year, I’ve been avoiding
share only 100 images free, but your collection can be made “public” so that anyone can browse it. setting up a wireless net-
• Digital frames. Instead of buying Aunt Em a computer just to share pics, give her a digital photo work, but it proves incredi-
frame, such as the Ceiva Digital Photo Receiver ($150, plus $8 a month). When plugged into a phone bly simple, and the HP finds
line, it automatically dials in to download new images you’ve placed on the Ceiva Web site. it right away. Now that it’s
up and running, I’ll have to
• File-storage services. Free Yahoo accounts come with 30 megabytes of storage. At Xdrive.com, $10
figure out how to use the
a month buys you five gigabytes. Use it to trade a few high-res pics and save backup copies. thing.—GREGORY MONE

80 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

T
HOW2.0| DIY

DEPT: DIY INVESTIGATOR: MIKE HANEY TECH: Home-theater PC HTPC SHOPPING LIST
I chose these parts to build a rock-
COST: $2,006
Build Your Own HTPC TIME: 9 hours
WHY DIY? More choice,
solid-reliable and near-silent machine
for around $2,000—the same as an
You don’t have to be a tech jock to make a sleek and prettier end product HP z545-b with comparable specs.
For more on each component and the
silent home-theater PC, but everyone will think you are DABBLER MASTER
build, see popsci.com/h20. Visit
htpcnews.com for forums and reviews.
With all the off-the-shelf options for buying a home-theater PC [see POPSCI Buyer’s Guide,
>Case SilverStone LaScala LC03,
page 72], why would anyone but a basement-dwelling Linux nerd bother to build one him- sundialmicro.com, $121
self? That’s what I wondered as I looked at roughly two grand in raw PC parts scattered >Motherboard Intel D915PBL,
around my living room, with only an illustrated guide from Intel to direct me. But here’s the zipzoomfly.com, $154
secret about building your own HTPC: It’s easy. Motherboards these days are so clearly >Processor Intel 2.8GHz Pentium 4
labeled and parts are so standardized that, armed with a single Phillips screwdriver, I had 775, newegg.com, $159
the hardware assembled and Windows XP running in the time between dinner and Conan. >RAM Two sticks of Crucial 512MB
Setting up the machine to fulfill its full home-theater destiny—showing and recording TV, PC2-4200, crucial.com, $276
playing and burning DVDs and CDs, handling digital music, photos and movies—well, that’s >CPU cooler Zalman CNPS7700-
AlCu, quietpcusa.com, $45
where it got a little sticky. Before everything finally jibed (a week after my initial triumph),
>Power supply Zalman 400W
there were forgotten audio drivers, wrong tuner-card drivers, several software reinstalls, one
ZM400B-APS, zipzoomfly.com, $87
full system wiping, and a few cryptic error messages that I’m just chalking up to angry gods. >Hard drive Seagate Barracuda
So why DIY? HTPC hobbyists will say it’s because the “spousal approval factor” is easier 160GB S-ATA, newegg.com, $115
when you can choose a brushed aluminum case that matches the living-room carpet and fill it >Optical drive LG 16X DVD+/–RW,
with silent parts. But there’s also the cost savings: RAM and hard drives are so cheap online mwave.com, $76
that you can crank up your specs without paying the premium that PC companies charge for >Video card ABIT ATI x700 Pro
such upgrades. But mostly it’s for bragging rights. Just don’t let anyone else see this article. PCI Express, newegg.com, $168
>Tuner card Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-
500MCE, hauppauge.com, $200
[ WIRELESS CARD >Wireless card D-Link Xtreme
802.11g PCI, ecost.com, $50
>Card reader In Win 10-in-1
CR-I530-B, iocombo.com, $21
>Case fan AcoustiFan 80mm
Noiseless, quietpcusa.com, $17
>OS Windows XP, staples.com, $200
>Software Snapstream
BeyondTV and BeyondMedia,
[ CPU COOLER
snapstream.com, $120
>IR receiver USB-UIRT,
pcalchemy.com, $47
[ VIDEO CARD
>Remote Snapstream Firefly,
TUNER CARD ] snapstream.com, $50
>Keyboard/mouse Gyration Ultra
CARD READER ] [ RAM GT Compact Keyboard Suite,
pcalchemy.com, $100
TOTAL: $2,006

[ PROCESSOR
I L L U S T R AT I O N : M C K I B I L L O ; P H O T O G R A P H : M I C H A E L K R A U S

[ MOTHERBOARD

[ POWER SUPPLY

[ OPTICAL DRIVE

CASE FAN ]
[ HARD DRIVE

82 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

T
HOW2.0| GRAY MATTER | TECH LESSON
THE AUTHOR CREATED the spoons
by pouring molten alloy into a
clear rubber mold. Next to it are
the pure ingredients—from left to
right: bismuth, indium and tin.
again over a cup of hot water,
pour it into the mold, and
make new ones—the trick-
spoon circle of life.
So why can’t you buy these
nontoxic prank utensils in toy
stores, as you could the toxic
versions of years past? Price.
Indium costs about three times
as much as silver. (I get
mine from a bulk supplier in
China.) Using gallium, you
can make alloys that melt
in lukewarm water or even
in your hand, but it’s more
expensive than indium, and it
tends to stain the glass and
discolor skin. Unfortunately,
no alloy replicates the low
cost, bright shine and non-
stick fun of mercury. Too bad
we know now that playing
DEPT: GRAY MATTER INVESTIGATOR: THEODORE GRAY ELEMENT: Indium with it for too long can give
PROJECT: Prank spoons you brain damage.
Gag with a Spoon COST: $100
TIME: 6 hours
With the right mix of metals, you can make an alloy Read more about Gray’s
scientific pursuits at
that turns to liquid at any temperature you choose DABBLER MASTER
periodictabletable.com.

Mention liquid metal, and people immediately think of mercury.

After all, it is the only metal that isn’t solid at room temperature. MELTING POINT: 315°F (157°C)
Well, not quite—it’s the only pure metal, but there are many
alloys (mixtures of metals) that will melt well below that point. For
In
Indium
BOILING POINT: 3,776°F (2,080°C)
DISCOVERED: 1863
NAMED FOR: Its indigo-colored spectral line
49 USES: Semiconductors, solders, photoconductors
example, the mercury-filled fever thermometers that children were
told not to play with in the 1950s and ’60s have been replaced
by virtually identical ones containing the far less toxic Galinstan,
a patented liquid alloy of gallium, indium and tin. A STEAMING CUP of water
liquefies the spoon in about
Those who were kids in that era may also remember playing with 15 seconds—notice the puddle
another low-melting-point alloy: trick spoons that melted when you at the bottom of the cup.
tried to stir your coffee with them. These were made with a blend
that, no surprise, was highly toxic; it typically contained cadmium,
lead, mercury or all three. But, as it happens, it’s possible to make
alloys that liquefy in a hot drink using safer components.
A few months ago I created a batch of these prank spoons as
a gift for my friend and fellow element buff Oliver Sacks (author
of Awakenings and Uncle Tungsten). I cast jewelers’ molding
rubber around a fancy spoon to form the mold. Then I looked up
the formula for an alloy that would melt at 140°F, roughly the
temperature of a cup of hot coffee, and found this one: 51
percent indium, 32.5 percent bismuth and 16.5 percent tin.
After the spoon turns to a puddle at the bottom of the cup, you
can pour off the liquid and touch the metal, feeling the weird sen-
sation of it hardening around your fingertip. When Sacks has
used up all his spoons, he can easily recover the metal, melt it

84 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

T
HOW2.0

TECH SUPPORT
ATTENTION H2.0 READERS: This is your page, full of the feedback we get from you
at [email protected] and through the forums at popsci.com/h20. ASK A GEEK is your chance to
pick the brains of the Geek Chorus, H2.0’s panel of advisers and tech wizards. THE TIP SHEET is a
sampling of your best tips, tricks and hacks. YOUR GEAR features the gadgets you can’t live
without. And THIS IS BROKEN gives you a preview of one of our favorite sites, thisisbroken.com.

THE TIP SHEET

POP ANY MAIL ONLINE LETTER-WRITING
• Most Web-based e-mail providers, • At l-mail.com, you can type and ad-
including Yahoo and Hotmail, charge a fee for
POP3 access, which lets you check messages
dress a letter online, and the company will
print it out at one of several locations in the TYOUR GEAR
The iPod is so compact that it sits
from programs such as Microsoft Outlook. U.S., Europe and Australia and send it to the
in your shirt pocket just fine, but
Mr. Postman is a free application that will POP recipient just about anywhere on the planet, that exacerbates the problem of
mail from half a dozen providers; more are usually faster and for less money than if you too-long earbud cords, which
being added all the time. Download it at sent it by post. You can even upload your own dangle, tangle, and annoy. The
mrpostman.sourceforge.net.—Nigel Powell digital signature.—H2.0 Staff Smartwrap from design house
Sumajin helps by allowing you to
wrap excess cord around a color-
ful notched bit of plastic that
T THIS IS BROKEN
WHEN CLASSMATES.COM TARGETS THE FRIENDLESS
hangs in plain sight, attracting
envious stares from iPodsters who
lack this ingenious accessory.
Voilà: cords exactly as long as you
need them.—Scott Mowbray,
POPSCI editorial director
See more examples of things broken at thisisbroken.com.
 ASK A GEEK BEN ZACKHEIM
Q: Can I back up my console
games to CD or hard drive
and play them on my PC?
FA C I N G PA G E : P H O T O G R A P H : J O H N B . C A R N E T T; T H I S PA G E : I L L U S T R AT I O N : D A N PA G E

—Cole Schweigert, Girard, Penn.

A: Short answer? Yes. Long answer: Yes, but the road may get
bumpy. The underworld of game emulation is ruled by
cliquish bands of code geeks loyal to beta-at-best homebrew
applications. That said, the process is fairly straightforward.
First, back up your games on your PC with Game Copy Pro
(dvdwizardpro.com). You can burn a title to another CD or DVD,
or just keep the ripped file on your hard drive. The handy utility
tackles Xbox, PSOne, PS2, Dreamcast, Gameboy and GBA.
Next you’ll need an emulator, which lets you play the ripped
game on your computer. Emulator-zone.com has a comprehensive
selection of emulators for most consoles, from the Atari 2600 to
Xbox, and often there are versions for Windows, Mac or Linux
systems. Just remember that these are all amateur apps. If one
seems too buggy, try another.
Finally, a word of caution. The emulator scene walks a fine line
between hobby and misdemeanor. Naturally, you just want to
play your own games at work. But the tools can also be used to
BEN ZACKHEIM is the managing editor of the gaming blog joystiq.com. trade games you don’t own or to play pirated titles, and the game
His interests include games, gaming and gamer culture. He’s been known to giants—Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony—take that pretty seriously.
take game manuals to the beach. Stay straight, and emulate only games that belong to you.
 FYI
POPULAR
scıence T

FACTS, ANSWERS, ODDITIES & ENTERTAINMENTS FOR A MONTH OF SCIENCE

BEAM ME UP Star Trek made it all seem so easy. The Air Force has run into some problems.

[SPURIOUS SCIENCE]
Forget Rocket Ships. TELEPORT!
APPARENTLY, A FEW PEOPLE AT THE teleported into the other remote space-

PA R A M O U N T / N E A L P E T E R S C O L L E C T I O N ; FA C I N G PA G E : C O U R T E S Y C . L A C K N E R
U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory for- time region or another universe (note:
got to turn on their crackpot detectors. the Einstein equation does not fix the
The lab-commissioned “Teleportation spacetime topology, so it is possible
Physics Study,” which was recently that wormholes are inter-universe as
released on the Federation of American well as intra-universe tunnels).”
Scientists Web site, makes for some Clearly, this wormhole-stargate would
of the most inane and entertaining be immensely useful: “Future space ex-
science reading of the year. Although plorers and their equipment will need
scientists have only just teleported the to easily and quickly travel from an
properties of an atom, the author of orbiting spacecraft to the surface of
the report, Eric W. Davis, a physicist some remote planet in order to get their
affiliated with a company called Warp work done, or military personnel in the
Drive Metrics, writes as if the techno- United States need to easily and quickly
logy for moving people is already here. travel from their military base to another
For example: “We can now build a remote location on Earth in order to par-
wormhole-stargate. . . . This means that ticipate in a military operation, or space
a traveler encountering and going colonists will need quick transport to get
through such a wormhole will feel no from Earth to their new home planet.”
tidal gravitational forces and see no One of the stranger qualities of the
exotic matter-energy. . . . A traveler step- paper is that the same concept seems
ping through the throat will simply be realistic on one page and distant on

88 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005

the next. From another part of the report:
“There are a lot of important little
details that were left out of the telepor-
tation process because we simply do
not know what they are. This technology
does not yet exist.”

REALITY CHECK This real-world teleportation

device (ion trap shown here) just moves atoms.

Oh, those important little details. They

always seem to get in the way of poten-
tially revolutionary technologies. Still,
despite the very large hurdles, the author
—who is something of a mystery him-
self, as his company, Warp Drive Metrics,
is not actually registered as a business in
Nevada, and he has not returned phone
calls or e-mails from POPULAR SCIENCE—
recommends spending $7.5 million for
further study. Air Force Research Labora-
tory spokesman Ranney Adams says
there are no plans to take his advice.
—SARAH GOFORTH

[BOOK OF THE MONTH]

(Not Quite a) Rumble
in the Theoretical Jungle
THE PHILOSOPHER KARL POPPER
is fast becoming the best-known loser in
modern intellectual history. Three years
ago, in the book Wittgenstein’s Poker,
which recounts a famous battle between
Popper and his contemporary, Ludwig
Wittgenstein, authors David Edmonds
and John Eidinow clearly gave the latter
the upper hand. Now, in Kuhn vs. Popper:
The Struggle for the Soul of Science
(Columbia University Press, $24), Steve
Fuller recounts Popper’s debate with the
Harvard physicist turned historian
of science Thomas Kuhn. Although
T
FYI
Fuller bills the showdown, which took
place on July 13, 1965, at the University
of London, as the intellectual equiva-
lent of Ali-Frazier, he also admits that
it was something of a nonevent. Kuhn
didn’t like to debate, and Popper, an
established thinker two decades his
senior, didn’t want to share the stage
with an upstart. There may have been
no clear winner that day, but Kuhn’s
ideas enjoyed more popularity in the
long run. His book The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions has since sold
more than a million copies and been
translated into 20 languages.
Popper described a kind of demo-
cratic model for science, one with per-
petual elections in which incumbent
theories are constantly under attack.

He thought the best scientists were

the Newtons and Einsteins, constantly
trying to overthrow the established
ideas. Fuller describes Kuhn’s model
as more of a monarchy, each domi-
nant paradigm a regime immune to
criticism. “If an argument were to be
had,” Fuller writes of Kuhn, “it would
be over how to legitimate what scien-
tists were already doing, not over
whether they should be doing it.”
Fuller clearly sides with Popper—at
one point he calls Kuhn “an intellectu-
al coward”—and this opinionated take
gives the story life. The book is a little
academic in places, so a familiarity
with philosophy of science would suit
a reader well (for example, define a
“post-leftist postmodernist”). That said,
it’s a fascinating and, at 132 pages,
delightfully concise work. In the end,
Fuller urges the reader to study fur-
ther. As he writes: “The soul of science
depends on it.”—GREGORY MONE
T
FYI

[SCIENCE DEBATES] es evolutionary biology at Swarthmore

College, often encounters students who
scientific theory, and very few scientists
fully understand it. This material should be
Stickers Darwin Would Love have little schooling in the basic theory approached with an open mind, studied
“This textbook contains material on of how life developed on Earth. “I get carefully, and critically considered.
evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, students in my classes who never
regarding the origin of living things. This
material should be approached with
learned evolution,” he says, “or who » This textbook suggests that Earth
is spherical. The shape of Earth is a
had a high school teacher say, ‘I have
an open mind, studied carefully, and to teach you this, but I don’t buy it.’ ” controversial topic, and not all people
critically considered.” Frustrated, Purrington felt that he accept the theory. This material should
IN 2002, OFFICIALS IN COBB COUNTY, had to do something. So, borrowing be approached carefully, and critically
Georgia, slapped the above disclaimer the creationists’ tactic, he crafted alter- considered.
on biology textbooks after more than native “disclaimer” stickers to be
2,000 parents protested that evolution affixed to science textbooks. “I made » This textbook claims that evolution is
not fully accepted by scientists because it is
was being treated as a fact, not a theory. the stickers for the ACLU to give to the
The American Civil Liberties Union parents who brought the suit against just a theory. The author hopes to confuse
and the parents of five students filed a Cobb County, for their enjoyment,” he you into equating “scientific theory” with
lawsuit in response, stating that the says. And for your enjoyment, we’ve “cockamamie theory.” To read a short
stickers were unconstitutional, violating excerpted a few below.—MARTHA HARBISON blurb on what a scientific theory is, go to:
the separation of church and state. At http://wilstar.com/theories.htm.
press time, the suit was before a U.S. » This book was anonymously donated
district court in Georgia. to your school library to discreetly pro-
mote religious alternatives to the theory of
» This book does not contain the word
evolution, the unifying principle in biology
The growing debate over the inclusion
of such “alternative creation theories” as evolution. When you are finished with it, and an important component of the
Intelligent Design has alarmed many sci- please refile the book in the fiction section. National Science Standards and the
entists, who see these proposals as the Scholastic Achievement Test. For an
first step to teaching creationism in sci- » This textbook contains material about
special relativity. Special relativity is a
overview of what your class is missing,
go to: http://evolution.berkeley.edu.
ence classes. Colin Purrington, who teach-
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 63) simple lead shielding can block gamma Even efficacious scanners might
customs officials on arrival. All customs rays. More sophisticated radiation detec- overlook nuclear materials that were
workers now wear radiation detectors tors are being installed at all ports of smuggled into the U.S. in small
clipped to their belts, which sniff the air entry, though these might miss a lead- amounts and then assembled into a
for gamma rays given off by uranium shielded bomb. The limitations of these weapon in the very city that the terror-
and plutonium. A uranium bomb, how- scanners are one reason that the federal ists had targeted. That’s why most
ever, would be hard to detect. A 2002 government gave up on a “Ring around experts strongly agree that the best
GAO report found that the belt detectors Washington” project, which would have strategy is to stop terrorists at step one,
had “limited range” and “may be inap- placed radiation sensors on major land by preventing nuclear material from
propriate for the task.” What’s more, and water approaches to the capital. being stolen in the first place.
After years of relative inattention,
September 11 made this mission a
Volunteer scientists search for rogue nukes inside the U.S.—see popsci.com/prevention.
higher priority for the federal govern-
ment. In the past three years, Congress
has increased funding for the Nunn-
Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction
program, which now spends more than
$1 billion a year upgrading security
at former Soviet nuclear sites such
as weapons factories and nuclear
submarine bases, reprocessing Russian
nuclear material into a form that can’t
readily be used for bombs, and employ-
ing 40,000 nuclear scientists who might
otherwise work for “states of concern”
or terrorists. The Global Threat Reduc-
tion Initiative and operations such as
the one in Uzbekistan signal a new
aggressiveness by policymakers who,
like the president, are all too aware of
the threat of nuclear terrorism.
Critics insist that these programs
aren’t moving with enough urgency. At
the current speed, Bunn notes, our
efforts to secure Russian nuclear mate-
rial will take close to a decade. Under
the GTRI, the U.S. is working to remove
unused uranium fuel from the former
Eastern Bloc by the end of this year. But
given that each operation has taken
months to plan, that date seems overly
optimistic. And the Energy Department
isn’t likely to retrieve spent fuel—
which can also just as easily be made
into a bomb—until after 2010.
The good news is that, given enough
time and resources, sensitive material
can be secured. “Nuclear terrorism is
preventable,” says Graham Allison. “If
you don’t have highly enriched uranium
or plutonium, you can’t make a bomb.
No highly enriched uranium, no mush-
room cloud, no nuclear explosion,
that’s it. Locking down things that we
don’t want people to steal is not brain
surgery.” Unfortunately, neither is
building a nuclear bomb. ■

Michael Crowley is a senior editor at The

New Republic who writes frequently
about terrorism and homeland security.
This is his first article for POPULAR SCIENCE.
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 70)
convert into new fatty acids and PNA
molecules. Without the addition of these
precursors, Rasmussen explains, the pro-
tocells “would pretty much just sit there
doing nothing.” The newly created fatty
acids will be incorporated into existing
micelles, causing them to grow until they
become unstable and pinch in two—pro-
tocell procreation. An adult protocell will
measure merely five to 10 nanometers
across; in comparison, M. genitalium, the
organism Venter and his team are work-
ing with, is between 200 and 250
nanometers. “We couldn’t imagine any-
thing that’s simpler,” Rasmussen says.
With only three basic parts, the proto-
cell itself may be simple, but the chem-
istry that brings it to life is wildly com-
plex. On paper, at least, the micelles
should soak up the precursor molecules,
providing a ready store of “food” for the
light-powered metabolism to act on.
Single-stranded PNA molecules, mean-
while, should cling to the micelle’s
exterior and pair with complementary
strands of PNA that have been created
by the organism’s own metabolism. But
who knows? Rasmussen says it remains
to be seen how all these molecules will
actually behave in solution. “If we really
knew ahead of time how to do this,”
notes William “Woody” Woodruff, a Los
Alamos chemist on Rasmussen’s team,
“we would have created life already.”
Some of the experts who have seen
Rasmussen’s blueprint have serious
doubts that this Rube Goldbergian organ-
ism will work. When Rasmussen talks
about his protocells at astrobiology con-
ferences and other such gatherings, his
work isn’t always warmly received. The
words “abstract” and “weird” pop up a lot.
“It’s too far-fetched,” argues chemist Pier
Luigi Luisi of the University of Rome.
Luisi says he wants to see experimental
data before he buys into Rasmussen’s
approach: “You cannot convince any-
body with calculations on a blackboard.”
Other scientists emphasize that it’s not
yet clear what route—top-down, bottom-
up or something in between—may ulti-
mately lead to artificial life, so it would be
premature to dismiss Rasmussen. Bio-
physicist Andrew Pohorille of the NASA
Ames Research Center in California con-
tends that Rasmussen has as much
chance of creating life as anybody—
maybe more, since few researchers out
there have put as much thought into it:
“He is definitely way ahead of the curve.”
RASMUSSEN THINKS HIS CRITICS EXAGGERATE. “IT SOUNDS isms—as many scientists are already doing. But he says that
mind-boggling,” he says, “mostly because we have a pretty the option to build entirely new creatures will give scientists
rigid idea of what life is.” He won the three-year Los Alamos a fresh palette to work with.
grant in part because of computer models he devised that One day when Rasmussen was busy, I asked someone in the
show that the protocell could work. More important, he and Los Alamos public relations office to show me the lab where the
Chen have been able to demonstrate in the lab that their first artificial life-form might be created. Driving on a private
primitive light-sensitive metabolism can create the chewing- road, my guide, Nancy, and I passed TA-55, the place where plu-
gum-like membrane molecules. tonium is sculpted into grapefruit-size bulbs for thermonuclear
When Rasmussen looks a decade or more into the future, bombs. Nancy remarked that it’s the most heavily guarded com-
he sees a host of commercial possibilities for his protocells. plex on the mesa. Then, glancing in her rearview mirror, she
One option might be to turn them into drug-delivery ve- noticed that a white SUV with government plates was driving
hicles. They could be designed, he says, to sense when they close behind us. Not until we pulled into the driveway of the lab
encounter a particular type of tissue in the body and then to where the protocell work would take place did the SUV’s
dump their cargo. He also envisions making protocells that driver, apparently convinced that we weren’t a threat, peel away.
are capable of withstanding high toxicity levels. Such “Ter- Even when you’re not being followed, it’s impossible to
minator” cells could be used to sop up nasty contaminants wander Los Alamos, where street signs carry names like
such as perchlorate or plutonium, something existing reme- Bikini Atoll Road and Trinity Drive, without pondering the
diation systems don’t do well. double-sided nature of novel technologies or the irony that a
If you really get Rasmussen going, he’ll rhapsodize about place identified with the most fearsome killing machine in his-
far-out stuff like self-healing coatings for aircraft. And why tory might one day spawn a new kind of life. For now, though,
not? All organisms have evolved mechanisms to repair them- Rasmussen says he’s just concerned with getting something to
selves, and he thinks that protocells should ultimately be happen inside his team’s shiny glass beakers.
capable of doing the same, opening the door to all kinds of “Just one fricking life cycle,” he tells me later, sliding his
exotic applications. True, a more practical approach to such hand through his hair, “would be wonderful.”
problems would be to fiddle with the DNA of existing organ-
Michael Stroh is a staff science writer at the Baltimore Sun.
He recently got hands-on experience with creating life:
Making life to find out how it all began—see popsci.com/origins.
His first child, Yoshi, was born last June.
 POPULAR

LOOKINGBACK
scıence T

FROM THE POPULAR SCIENCE ARCHIVES

JULY1927 OTHER NEWS FROM THE JULY 1927 ISSUE

Hollow concrete

Racing for Answers spans the Seine.

Sending cars careening around a track wasn’t just for sport—

it helped the science of auto design, too
“Everyday cars flash along the track in thrilling tests of speed and endurance,” we wrote
in July 1927 of a developing craze: stock car racing. We gushed that ordinary cars
would hit a knuckle-whitening 80 miles an hour. Not bad, considering that in the 1920s,
most planes puttered along at a stately 90 to 120 mph and even the fleetest aircraft
reached only 200 mph. Clearly, the idea of speed is relative. Today a Boeing 777 cruises
at 560 mph, NASA’s X43-A just approached Mach 10, and a Nascar “stock” racer
tops 210 mph. (For more of the world’s fastest things, turn to page 46.) Striving for speed,
it turns out, isn’t just about thrills; it also spurs the development of new technologies. The point A NEW ERA
of the stock car race, we explained, was that “grueling racing conditions will reveal weak- OF HUGE BRIDGES
nesses in present fueling systems and steering mechanisms.” In addition, tire technology The 1920s fostered chasm-spanning bridges,
blossomed as companies such as Michelin devised rubbers that didn’t melt on the race- including the Golden Gate in California, the
track—and eventually became high-performance consumer treads.—MARTHA HARBISON George Washington in New York, and an
elegant hollow concrete bridge over the Seine
in France. Designed by Eugene Freyssinet,
the St. Pierre du Vauvray Bridge was completed
in 1922, destroyed during World War II, and
rebuilt in 1946.

THE WOULD-BE 16-MILE

ELEVATED TRAFFIC AID
To alleviate congestion, engineer John K.
Hencken proposed a “system of roof-top boule-
vards” for auto traffic that would run more
than 16 miles through the heart of Manhattan.

WORLD’S LARGEST
VACUUM TUBE
The General Electric Co. manufactured and
installed a 100-kilowatt vacuum tube at a radio
station in Schenectady, N.Y. Fitted with a tung-
sten filament as thick as a pencil, the seven-foot-
high amplifier would, we wrote, “hurl a radio
wave of unheard-of power” to the masses.
Photocopy Permission: Permission is granted by POPULAR SCIENCE® for libraries and others registered with
the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) to photocopy articles in this issue for the flat fee of $1 per copy of
each article or any part of an article. Send correspondence and payment to CCC (21 Congress St.,
Salem, MA 01970); specify CCC code 0161-7370/85/$1.00—0.00. Copying done for other
than personal or reference use without the written permission of POPULAR SCIENCE® is prohibited. Address
requests for permission on bulk orders to Time4 Media, Inc., 2 Park Ave., New York, NY 10016 for
foreign requests. For domestic requests, write or call Reprint Management Services, 1811 Olde
Homestead Lane, Lancaster, PA 17601; 717-399-1900, ext. 109; www.reprintbuyer.com (FOR ARTICLE
REPRINTS ONLY). POPULAR SCIENCE® is a registered trademark of Time4 Media, Inc. Occasionally we make
our subscriber list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services we believe
would interest our readers. If you do not want to receive these offers and/or information, please advise us
at P.O. Box 51286, Boulder, CO 80322-1286. POPULAR SCIENCE Business and Executive Offices: 2 Park
Ave., New York, NY 10016. Editorial Offices: Address contributions to POPULAR SCIENCE, Editorial Dept.,
2 Park Ave., New York, NY 10016. We are not responsible for loss of unsolicited materials; they will not
be returned unless accompanied by return postage. Microfilm editions are available from Xerox University
Microfilms Serial Bid Coordinator, 300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Subscription Inquiries: Send
new or renewal subscriptions or changes of address (send both new and old addresses) to POPULAR SCIENCE,
Box 62456, Tampa, FL 33662-4568. Allow six to eight weeks for change of address. If you have a
subscription problem, please write to the above address. Subscriptions: U.S. and its possessions, 1 year
$19.95; 2 years, $26.95; 3 years, $32.95. For Canada, add $10 per year (includes GST). For foreign
destinations, add $30 per year. Subscriptions processed electronically. Subscribers: If the post office
alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive
a corrected address within two years. Postmaster: Send change-of-address notices to POPULAR SCIENCE,
Box 60001, Tampa, FL 33660-0001. POPULAR SCIENCE entered as periodical postage paid at New York,
NY and additional mailing offices. POPULAR SCIENCE new Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement
No. 40110178. Return undeliverable Canada addresses to Postal Stn. A, P.O. Box 4015,
Toronto, ON, M5W 2T2 GST # R-122988066. POPULAR SCIENCE (ISSN 0161-7370) is published
monthly by Time4 Media, 2 Park Ave., New York, NY 10016. Printed in U.S.A. © 2005 Time4 Media, Inc.

112 POPULAR SCIENCE FEBRUARY 2005