THE TOP TECH CITIES IN AMERICA: HOW DOES YOUR TOWN RATE?

WHAT’S NEW
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PRODUCTS
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ZONE NEAR YOU?
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 VOLUME 266 #3
T
MARCH 2005 CONTENTS

As the beefy guards wearing desert fatigues and .45s check your ID,
maybe you’ll notice their black shoulder patches, which feature
FOUNDED IN 1872 a classically oval-eyed alien face outlined in silver and gold.

tech THE FIVE-BILLION-STAR HOTEL, p. 50

13 | What’s New
Volvo’s ultra-efficient boat engine.
VoIP phones go cordless. Flight of the
FanWing. Carbon-fiber laptops. Souped-
up cars hit the showroom.
73 | How 2.0
GEEK GUIDE Disaster-proof your data.
DIY Build a portable game console.
GRAY MATTER See subatomic particles.
TECH SUPPORT Eavesdrop on your engine.

news and views

27 | Headlines
SPACE NASA’s new prize patrol.
ARCHITECTURE The eco-friendly skyscraper.
CHEMISTRY Slob-proof clothing. 50
DIY ASTRONOMY Make your own nebulae.

36 | Soapbox
PLUGGED IN When ISPs secretly sort your
e-mail, nobody wins. By Cory Doctorow
SCIENCE FRICTION Popular culture lauds the
wrong Einstein. By Gregory Mone
O N T H E C O V E R : K E N N B R O W N ; I N S E T: H O L LY L I N D E M ; T H I S PA G E , C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P : J O H N B . C A R N E T T ( 2 ) ;

stories 41
41 | Technopolis Found POPSCI identi-
fies the most high-tech U.S. cities. How
does yours rate? By Matthew Power
50 | The Five-Billion-Star Hotel
An exclusive first glimpse at Las Vegas
developer Robert Bigelow’s $500-million
inflatable orbital retreat. By Michael Belfiore 64 14

58 | “And Finally, I’d Like to Thank

My High School Physics Teacher. . .”
An insider’s view of the movie tech-
J O H N L AW T O N ; C O U RT E S Y N A S A ; B R E N T H U M P H R E Y S

nologies nominated for this year’s Sci-

Tech Academy Awards. By James Vlahos
64 | Biological Warfare The U.S. is
spending $22 billion on germ research and
high-security bioterror labs. But will these
efforts make us safer? By Jeffrey Rothfeder

depts.
6 From the Editor 80 FYI
7 Contributors 104 Looking Back
27
10 Letters

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 5

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, Martha Harbison
Assistant Editor Rena Marie Pacella
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

Taxicab
Web Producer Peter Noah
Contributing Design Editor Chee Pearlman
Contributing Automotive Editor Stephan Wilkinson
Contributing Editors Cory Doctorow, Theodore Gray, Joseph

Confessions Hooper, Preston Lerner, Gregory Mone, 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
THE CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW IS AN OVERWHELMING EXPERIENCE MacNeill, Garry Marshall, Stephen Rountree, Bob Sauls
for every one of the 140,000 engineers, marketers, buyers, journalists and Editorial Intern Sarah Goforth
Art Intern Dana Stratton
other tech-obsessed individuals who throng the Las Vegas Convention Center
POPULAR SCIENCE PROPERTIES
in early January—but the editor of POPULAR SCIENCE experiences a different Publisher Gregg R. Hano
brand of overwhelm. Not for me the standard overload brought on by prowl- Advertising Director John Tebeau
General Manager Robert Novick
ing 1.5 million square feet of exhibit space occupied by 2,550 companies un- Executive Assistant Chandra Dwhaj
veiling thousands of new products and technologies. No, in my case, CES is Northeast Advertising Office: Manager Howard S. Mittman
(212) 779-5112, Jill Schiffman (212) 779-5007,
mostly an extended opportunity to bounce from booth to booth handing out

BEN BAKER/REDUX; GROOMING BY MICHELLE CEGLIA FOR iGROUP; STYLING BY NAILA RUECHEL FOR STOCKLAND MARTEL
Mike Schoenbrun (212) 779-5148, Missy Dye Radin
prizes to the richly deserving winners of our annual Best of What’s New (212) 779-5030
Ad Assistant Christopher Graves
awards. When making my rounds, I relish the chance to chat with the engineers Midwest Advertising Office: Manager John Marquardt
(312) 832-0626, Megan Williams (312) 832-0624
who created the technology, because they really get it—these innovators are con- Ad Assistant Sindy Sonshine
tinually telling their marketing people that this is the award that truly matters. Los Angeles Advertising Office: Manager Dana Hess
(310) 268-7484, Ad Assistant Mary Infantino
As you might expect, hearing that sort of thing a dozen times or more a Detroit Advertising Office: Manager Donna Christensen
day is a mighty fine way to spend a trade show. But my happy bubble was (248) 988-7723, Ad Assistant Diane Pahl
San Francisco Advertising Office: Manager Amy
burst one night when, riding in a taxi, I heard this bit of devil’s advocacy Cacciatore (415) 434-5276, Ad Assistant Carly Petrone
from one of my cabmates: “Has anyone here seen a single thing at this Southern Regional Advertising Office: Manager Dave
Hady (404) 364-4090, Ad Assistant Christy Chapman
show that is really going to change the world for the better?” Classified Advertising Sales Joan Orth (212) 779-5555
Direct Response Sales Marie Isabelle (800) 280-2069
This was just after the Indian Ocean tsunami took well over 150,000 lives, Business Manager Jacqueline L. Pappas
a great many of whom might have been saved if early-warning technology were Director of Brand & Business Development L. Dennett
Robertson
better distributed. In the context of the moment, my companion’s remark Sales Development Managers Mike Saperstein,
seems a reasonable provocation. My retort was something to the effect that he Daniel Vaughan
Senior Manager, Events and Promotions Christy Chapin
was at the wrong trade show. No one, after all, is making grand claims of social Ellinger
relevance for remote-access TiVo or the latest flat-panel television. However eye- Creative Services Designer Mary McGann
Marketing Coordinator Eshonda Caraway
popping and awe-inspiring, this stuff represents just a slice of the spectrum of Advertising Coordinator Evelyn Negron
Consumer Marketing Director Barbara Venturelli
what technology can and should do, and it ought to be judged accordingly. Senior Planning Manager Margerita Catwell
In this issue, we attempt to illuminate that area of the social/tech spectrum Consumer Marketing Managers Adam Feifer, Kristen Shue
Senior Production Director Laurel Kurnides
that falls somewhere between the lifesaving innovations and the tech candy— Production Assistant Shawn Glenn
specifically, that territory defined by the question, “What does it mean for a city Prepress Director Robyn Koeppel
Prepress Manager José Medina
to be high-tech?” Our tech-city rankings do take into account the extent to Publicity Manager Hallie Deaktor
which a population embraces technology. But we’ve gone much further by
quantifying the extent to which a city’s policymakers and private sector use tech-
nology to improve quality of life—from innovative traffic systems to pioneer-
ing medical care to energy-efficient building codes. When we crunched all the President Mark P. Ford
Senior Vice Presidents James F. Else,
data, our top technopolis turned out to be . . . well, turn to page 41 to find out. Victor M. Sauerhoff, Steven Shure
As for me, I’m just happy that I get to deliver another award. 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

6 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

 T
CONTRIBUTORS

If hotelier Robert Bigelow has his way, well-heeled adventurers will be able to see the world
in comfort—and from a distance. He wants to rocket them up to a $1-million-a-night, Earth-
orbiting space hotel. Writer MICHAEL BELFIORE [left] was one of the first journalists to visit
the top-secret Bigelow Aerospace hangar in Las Vegas, which houses the inflatable space
modules that are to become Bigelow’s otherworldly resort. A space junkie, Belfiore has
written a children’s book about life on the International Space Station, wire stories for
Reuters about last fall’s Ansari X Prize flights, and a one-man play about alien abductions.
Whereas Belfiore traces his extraterrestrial enthusiasms to the science fiction he read as
a kid, artist KRIS HOLLAND [right] got his start in science-related illustration when, as a
university student majoring in physics and geology, he entered a computer-modeling contest
and won third place. Holland’s science background helps him create realistic images like
the one on page 55 that shows how a rocket will get tourists to habitations situated in low-
Earth orbit. “I know what a launch profile is supposed to look like,” he explains.
M I C H A E L B E L F I O R E P H O T O G R A P H E D B Y J O H N B . C A R N E T T; S T E P H E N R O U N T R E E P H O T O G R A P H E D B Y D O U G S T E R N

We sent photographer BRENT HUMPHREYS to Galveston, Texas,

to capture the essence of daily work in a new high-security Bio-
Safety Level 4 laboratory, where the most lethal and intractable
diseases, such as Ebola, can be studied in safety [page 64].
“The suits were the most difficult element to deal with, hot and
cumbersome,” says Humphreys, adding, “I tried to convey the
isolation of the researchers while they were wearing them.”

To experience the glories of the city anointed by POPSCI as the most

high-tech in the U.S., writer MATTHEW POWER packed his bags
and traveled to . . . What, you think we’re going to give it away
here? [See page 41.] Power was impressed by the city in question’s
embrace of environmentally sustainable technologies and its “intel-
lectual ferment.” Not to mention the multilingual ticket machines.
Power’s work has also appeared in Harper’s and Discover.

Contributing editor JAMES VLAHOS traveled to L.A. to get the low-

down on the special Academy Awards given to recognize technical
achievement [page 58]. While investigating the digital cloning used
to render vampires in Blade: Trinity, he had his own face scanned.
Innocuous, but the research scarred him in other ways: He has be-
come an effects pedant, scrutinizing CG hair and skin for realism.
“I’ve become annoying to go to the movies with,” he acknowledges.

Longtime POPSCI contributor STEPHEN ROUNTREE is a film buff,

so he was happy to create images of the Oscar statuette in various
poses for Vlahos’s story on the Sci-Tech Oscars. As an illustrator
who renders objects in 3-D, is he envious of the guys who work
with the latest CG effects? “I wish I had their equipment,” he
says. “But I don’t have the animation chops to do what they do.”
Rountree is the graphics director at U.S. News and World Report.

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 7

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR [email protected]

Editor’s Note:
When we titled our January cover story “The Daring
Visionaries of Crackpot Aviation,” we in no way meant
to suggest that any of the five innovators we profiled
are crackpots themselves. By calling them daring
visionaries in the headline and “audacious” on the
cover, we intended to convey the spirit of invention that
has characterized aviation pioneers since before the
Wright brothers. Ever since, much scorn has been
heaped upon aviation visionaries, and we didn’t intend
to pile on—just the opposite. In keeping with the long
tradition of this magazine, we were singling out and
celebrating those envelope-pushing folks on the fringe
who, fueled by personal passion and engineering
expertise, are doing the most interesting work today
on the personal aircraft of tomorrow. The word choice
generated some negative impressions, though, so
we’d like to set the record straight.—Mark Jannot

A Revolution on the Runway things are essential, but they will not Inventors like those profiled in your
With the exception of a most unfortu- crystallize into something truly revolu- article follow personal visions that
nate choice of title, Jeff Wise’s aviation tionary without an injection of uncon- drive them to persist where large
piece does a reasonable job of present- ventional thinking about the aircraft organizations give up. It takes a deep,
ing some interesting projects, including themselves. Individual innovators pro- almost illogical level of optimism to
my own Facetmobile. There is, how- vide what large corporations and gov- keep pushing forward in the face of
ever, a deeper significance to the story. ernment entities, who must answer to skepticism and the technical and
We are on the verge of a historic oppor- shareholders and the public, likely will financial obstacles inherent in advanc-
tunity to revolutionize personal flight. not: revolutionary concepts that are at ing the state of the art. Many fail,
Advances in avionics and navigation odds with conventional thinking. but those who succeed enrich us all.
technology will soon afford individual My own work has demonstrated an Barnaby Wainfan
pilots a level of safety comparable to airframe configuration that is simpler Long Beach, Calif.
that of major airlines. Advances in and safer than the conventional wing-
materials, computer-aided design and body-tail. The Facetmobile flew 130 POPULAR SCIENCE ONLINE
Visit our Web site at
computer-controlled manufacturing hours of testing, demonstrating per- popsci.com, or check us out
on AOL at keyword: popsci
can dramatically reduce aircraft cost. formance equal to or better than con-
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Wainfan’s Facetmobile in the past. ration program that showed that this that we cannot answer POPULAR SCIENCE
in flight All of these concept could cut the cost of a two-seat unpublished letters. P.O. Box 60001
E-mail: [email protected] Tampa, FL 33660-0001
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QUESTIONS FOR FYI
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CORRECTION price comparable to a luxury car rather We answer your science manage
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We regret that only letters INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS
• We incorrectly credited the photograph of the work on a NASA contract to develop and considered for publication For inquiries regarding
CarterCopter in the January story “The Daring can be answered. international licensing or
Visionaries of Crackpot Aviation“ to Jay Carter. test the structural and manufacturing E-mail FYI questions to syndication, please contact
It was taken by Jason Bynum. technology needed to bring this about. [email protected] [email protected]

10 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

 WHAT’SNEW
POPULAR
T scıence

INSIDE INTERNET PHONES GET REAL 14 • SOUPED-UP CARS STRAIGHT FROM THE SHOWROOM 16 • REINVENTING AIR HOCKEY 25

Reverse
Engineering
A radical new propeller
pulls rather than pushes
boats through the water

» DROP THE SAILOR’S CAP and put

on some racing goggles. With its
new Inboard Performance System (IPS),
Volvo Penta (volvo.com/volvopenta) is
boosting the comfort and white-knuckle
fun of yachting. Volvo engineers built
forward-facing propellers—like those in
prop-driven airplanes—and stacked
them side-by-side directly beneath the
engines. Instead of pushing on water
that’s already been chopped up by the
engine, the blades pull on undisturbed
drink, increasing efficiency and thrust.
The IPS should be able to squeeze out 30
percent more horsepower; in tests, Volvo
reported, it’s 20 percent faster. But it’s
not all about speed. The entire pro-
pulsion system can turn like a rudder, so
parking your 45-footer in a slinky slip
won’t be nerve-wracking. Progressive
electronic steering—a first in boating—
will make it easy to turn the wheel at
low speed, hard at high speed. And
boaters will have a more civilized ride,
thanks to vibration-dampening seals
swaddling the drive unit, and submerged
exhaust outlets that reduce rumbling. The
good life just got better.—GREGORY MONE

Propeller Diesel engine

Exhaust
C O U R T E S Y V O LV O P E N TA

PULLING IT OFF The Volvo IPS can be

installed on any new boat. For now,
it’s available on models from Cruisers
Yachts, Four Winns, Regal and Tiara.

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 13

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WHAT’S NEW | GADGETS

Sounds Like Inevitability

The first wave of full-featured
Internet phones sends Ma Bell packing
» THEY DON’T EVEN
call it Voice over
Internet Protocol (VoIP)
anymore—it’s just broad-
band phone service. And
although the dirt-cheap
all-you-can-gab plans
made possible by routing
calls over the Internet are
a financial no-brainer, a
raft of new phones makes
VoIP truly practical. Now
broadband callers can
choose models with the
functionality we take for
NIMBLE VR MOBILE VOIP SPEAKERPHONE
granted on land lines, like About the size of a coaster, this speakerphone attaches to your computer with
cordless handsets. a USB cable to provide high-quality VoIP conference calling—great for
—SUZANNE KANTRA road warriors. Requires a separate service plan. $80 » nimblemicro.com

VTECH IP8100 LEADTEK BVP8882

The VTech ip8100 VIDEOPHONE
5.8GHz base station A swiveling five-inch LCD with a
powers up to four VoIP built-in camera is handy for
handsets (with speaker- videoconferencing. Using its USB
phone), so you can plant port, you can plug in a wireless
them in various rooms. adapter and chat from any
Includes two handsets; room, record videocalls on a
extras are $50. Only storage key, or text message
available with a Vonage from a keyboard. Requires
service plan. a separate service plan.
$150 » vtech.com $600 » leadtek.com

LINKSYS PHONE ADAPTER PAP2

C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P : J O H N L AW T O N ( 3 ) ; C O U RT E S Y J A S C O P R O D U C T S ;
Love your traditional phone? Pair it with this VoIP
adapter, and you can keep using it. The device plugs
into your broadband router or modem and has two
UTSTARCOM F-1000 standard telephone jacks for connecting a phone or
WI-FI PHONE fax machine. Requires a separate service plan.
Whether you’re at home $60 » linksys.com
or a Starbucks in Tokyo,
UTStarcom’s F-1000
uses any Wi-Fi network
to place your VoIP call.
On the road, input new
J O H N B . C A R N E T T; J O H N L AW T O N

hotspots with the phone’s

keypad. Available this
summer with a Vonage GE 5.1 BASSSHAKER HEADSET
service plan. Price not One headset, multiple uses. The BassShaker’s
set. » utstarcom.com built-in subwoofer and eight speaker drivers
deliver 5.1 channels of audiophile sound. When
you’re ready to call, plug in the headset’s micro-
phone and dial with your computer. Requires a
separate service plan. $80 » jascoproducts.com

14 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

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WHAT’S NEW | AUTOMOTIVE TECH

Tricks Come Standard

2
Drop the wrench and back away from the vehicle. Driving a
highway hotdog is as easy as stepping onto the showroom floor

» DRIVERS LOOKING TO DISTINGUISH THEMSELVES on the road cough up $30 billion a year for
superchargers, spoilers, chrome tailpipes and other aftermarket goodies. Recognizing this trend,
automakers are building seriously souped-up editions of base-model vehicles across a spectrum broader
than we’ve ever seen. These so-called factory tuners feature macho permutations of powertrain, chassis
and looks seamlessly executed on the assembly line; they’re sold and serviced by dealers; and they’re
covered under warranty. Rolling out this year, these three steroidal iterations of subtler siblings represent
the range of prices and options. Turns out you don’t need MTV to pimp your ride.—MATTHEW PHENIX

1
C O U RT E S Y B M W; FA C I N G PA G E , C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P : C O U RT E S Y M A Z D A ; C O U RT E S Y M I C H E L I N ; C O U RT E S Y C H E V R O L E T

POWER SURGE
BMW M5 How factory tuners stack up against their base models
Yes, the M-series has been around for 20-odd years, but the 2005
M5’s F1-inspired engine—25 percent more powerful than its predeces-
sor—makes it BMW’s most outrageous factory tuner yet. It has a 5.0- SPECS BMW 525i BMW M5
liter V10 with a heady 8,250-rpm redline, a trait it owes to its short-
stroke engine (the cylinders have little distance to travel, allowing rpm to BASE PRICE $42,000 $85,000 (EST.)
climb quickly). Turn the key and the big 10 blasts to life with 400 horse-
power and 384 pound-feet of torque. Hit the “M” on the steering POWER 184 HP 500 HP
wheel, and the computer jacks up horsepower to 500. The engine is TORQUE 175 LB.-FT. 384 LB.-FT.
matched to BMW’s paddle-operated Sequential Manual Gearbox with
seven—yes, seven—forward gears and six shift speeds. It’ll be easy to 0 – 60 MPH 7.8 SEC. 4.5 SEC.
spot this fall with its 19-inch alloy wheels, quad exhaust and low-slung TOP SPEED 146 MPH* 155 MPH*
stance. $85,000 (estimated) » bmwusa.com
* Electronically limited

16 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

2
PIPE
LINE
Concepts, ideas and
emerging technology
coming to your future
Mazdaspeed6
Derived from the acclaimed 6 sedan, the all-wheel-drive Mazdaspeed6 eclipses even the flagship RX-8
as the company’s most fearsome offering. Its 2.3-liter turbocharged direct-injection system is a miracle of » GM’s fuel-cell-powered
SUV-cum-minivan concept, the
mechanical micromanagement. Direct injection, which fires gas straight into the combustion chamber Sequel, has three carbon-fiber
instead of mixing it with air beforehand, allows the engine’s computer to precisely tune the air/fuel ratio. tanks that carry eight kilograms
The result is efficient speed: 280 pound-feet of torque from 2,000 to 6,000 rpm and 274 horsepower at of hydrogen at 10,000 psi. This
5,500 rpm. That’s a staggering 119 hp/liter. Call it a family car with a mean streak, evident in the gape- makes for an unprecedented
mouthed front fascia, 18-inch alloy wheels, and fat dual pipes. It’s coming this summer, though only 300-mile range. GM could offer
about 6,000 will be imported from Japan. $28,000 » mazdausa.com a fuel-cell vehicle by 2010.

» No, the paint on the new

3
Benzes at the Detroit Auto Show
was not wet. Called Alu-Beam,
its pigments are between 100
and 300 nanometers in diame-
ter and so tightly packed that
the paint looks like molten metal
even when dry. It’s about two
years away from your driveway.

Chevrolet Cobalt SS Supercharged

The Cobalt line is a successor to the sad old Cavalier. Onto its two-liter, four-cylinder engine, Chevy strapped » Michelin says no more to
pneumatics. Its new airless
a supercharger, a belt-driven pump that boosts power by force-feeding air into the cylinders. Pair this com- tire, called the Tweel, gets its
pact power plant with a four-wheel independent suspension developed on Germany’s legendary Nürburgring bounce from polyurethane
circuit, and you’re looking at a machine that can put down 205 horsepower through a five-speed manual spokes and a glass-reinforced
transmission. The performance package offers a limited-slip differential that maximizes speed by transferring wheel. The Tweel will be avail-
power from a wheel that’s losing its grip to one that is in full contact with the road. (The Cobalt is front-wheel able for light-duty applications
drive.) Rounding out the super ’tude: 17-inch aluminum five-spoke wheels, Corvette-inspired round taillights this spring, though it won’t
and an enormous—not to say obnoxious—rear wing. Available this spring. $22,000 » chevrolet.com show up on cars for least 10
years. Why the wait? It’s noisy
when loaded down.

MAZDA 6i MAZDASPEED6 CHEVROLET CHEVROLET » British engineer Glynne

Bowsher will attempt to break the
COBALT COBALT SS
U.S. land-speed record for a
$19,500 $28,000 $14,200 $22,000 steam-powered car at Bonneville
this summer. His Steam Car
160 HP 274 HP 145 HP 205 HP Challenge team’s 300hp, steam-
155 LB.-FT. 280 LB.-FT. 155 LB.-FT. 200 LB.-FT. turbine-driven vehicle should top
200 mph but is not viable for
N/A** 6.5 SEC. N/A** 6.1 SEC. passenger cars, as it has only two
speeds: on and off.—JOE BROWN
N/A** 150 MPH* N/A** 142 MPH

** Manufacturer testing not performed

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 17

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WHAT’S NEW | AVIATION

Flight of Fancy
It looks more arts-and-crafts than aircraft,
but could it be the future of commuting?

» AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERS LIVE BY THE CREDO “If it looks right,

it flies right.” Luckily, Patrick Peebles is no engineer. He’s a former
ice-cream-machine repairman who has built what he calls the FanWing—
a conspicuously odd bird whose genealogy lies somewhere between a hel-
icopter and an airplane. It eschews rotor and propeller for a cylinder of
horizontal blades that generates exceptionally high lift and safe low-speed
performance. It’s the first horizontal-rotor aircraft to sustain controlled
flight, which Peebles demonstrated with a radio-controlled prototype last
summer at the Farnborough International Airshow in England. Other
designs channeled air through ducts and internal fans, which couldn’t gen-
erate lift. Peebles’s exposed-fan design requires less power than a helicop-
ter or airplane to achieve similar lift and flight (respectively), and it oper-
ates more quietly. Its ability to take off vertically is especially promising,
but Peebles still has hurdles to clear. “We’re faced with every aircraft’s
challenges: ice, foreign-object damage—including birds—and what hap-
pens if the engine shuts down,” he explains. U.S. and U.K. governments
are studying the FanWing (fanwing.com) as a possible unmanned aerial
vehicle for surveillance and reconnaissance. A manned version, which
would cost about $8 million, could be tested in three years.—ERIC ADAMS

HOW IT WORKS

C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P : C O U RT E S Y D A N I E L P E E B L E S ; C O U RT E S Y J O N L I N N E Y, O P E N U N I V E R S I T Y, K M I U K ; J A S O N L E E
The fan pulls air in at the front, compresses it, and accel-
erates it over the trailing edge of the wing to produce
both lift and thrust. The key is the large volume of air the
fan can move because the blades are exposed.

Slow Rotor The fans on each

wing spin slowly—less than High Tail The rear tail assembly is
1,000 rpm—permitting light- mounted high to keep it out of the path
weight blade construction and of turbulent air generated by the fan.
low-horsepower engines.

Wing Lift The fan pushes air faster

over the top of the wing than the air-
flow beneath it, lowering pressure
above the wing and thus generating lift.
Control Flaps on the leading edge of the wing direct airflow
into the fan. Altering the angle of the flaps steers the aircraft.

18 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

T
WHAT’S NEW | COMPUTING

Two Words: Forget Plastic

Carbon fiber makes a bold case for laptop lust

» IT’S WHAT’S OUTSIDE that counts,

at least when it comes to Voodoo’s
12-inch Envy m:50 laptop. The 3.4-pound
wafer can attribute a chunk of its premium
performance to its chassis. While most
manufacturers opt for inexpensive, easy-
to-manufacture plastic or metal skins,

T O P : J O H N L AW T O N ; B O T T O M , F R O M L E F T: C O U RT E S Y S H A R P S Y S T E M S O F A M E R I C A ; C O U RT E S Y A P P L E ; C O U RT E S Y I N C L O S I A ; C O U RT E S Y PA N A S O N I C ; C O U RT E S Y I B M ; C O U RT E S Y A L I E N WA R E
Voodoo (voodoopc.com) chose pricey car-
bon fiber—typically restricted to aero-
space, automotive and recreational appli-
cations—for its unique strength-to-weight
ratio. Were the m:50 made of plastic, it
would weigh nearly a pound and a half
more, and it wouldn’t be as sturdy.
But benefits go beyond athleticism. Less
material between the wireless antenna
and Wi-Fi source speeds downloads by up
to 20 percent, and because carbon fiber
isn’t as conductive as plastic or metal, this
laptop’s fan is small and quiet. Although
it’s rumored that Apple might release a
carbon-fiber Powerbook, manufacturing
the material is still too expensive for it to
become ubiquitous. The 40GB Voodoo
base model, with 256 megabytes of
memory and a Pentium M 1.6-gigahertz
processor, costs $1,865.—JOHN BIGGS

The Periodic Table of Laptop Elements

$1,400
A sampling of notable notebook $2,240
materials from manufacturers’ palettes
Pl Ru
15 in.|6.5 lbs. 17 in.|7.5 lbs.
$2,800 $2,100

Al Mg $1,500

Ti
17 in.|6.9 lbs. 12.1 in.|2.8 lbs.

Wo*
12.1 in.|3.2 lbs.

Plastic Aluminum Wood Magnesium Rubber Titanium

M.O.|Long-lasting M.O.|Strong resist- M.O.|Luxury appeal M.O.|Laid-back tem- M.O.|Strength and M.O.|Featherweight
looks Unlike textured ance to corrosion Next winter, manufactur- perament The easy-to- resiliency Grippy rubber beauty Brute titanium in
metals, the Actius Aluminum’s oxide skin ers will add wood to manufacture, ductile swatches on Alienware’s the Thinkpad X40’s
AL27’s smooth plastic protects the Powerbook laptops using tech- magnesium encasing the Area-51m 7700 keep chassis has the best
surface accepts a glossy G4 from chemicals and nology developed by Toughbook W2 is one sweaty palms from strength-to-weight ratio
stain-resistant finish. nasty weather. Inclosia Solutions. of the lightest metals. fumbling it. among the metals.
» sharpusa.com » apple.com » inclosia.com » panasonic.com » alienware.com » ibm.com
* Price and weight not set

22 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

T
WHAT’S NEW

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

Impressive
Display
Ovideon
AVIAh
» Watch digital
videos on the16- Split-Second
million-color OLED Decision Cardio Caddy
(organic LED) dis- Power Blocker 2 Mio Elite Golf
play—a first for portable » Surge protectors » Why make a golf-
players—or, thanks to its convert excess elec- score-keeping watch
built-in TV and cable tuners, tricity into heat— with integrated heart-
rip a show directly to its five- great for spikes, but rate monitor? Because
gig hard drive. Plays MP3 and they wear out with the pros keep tabs on
WMA audio. $600 » aviah.com sustained overages. their ticker during play
This one also has a to distinguish between
circuit breaker that feeling calm and
Freeze Frame turns it off before being calm, to regu-
Eastman Outfitters it fries. $130 late consistency.
Tundra Tuff » newpoint.com $200 » miowatch.com
» At 18 pounds, it’s
the lightest two-man
ice-fishing shanty. It
folds up into a back-
pack, sheds wind Juice Concentrate
and water, and Sakar
absorbs sunlight to Supersonic Charger
increase the inside » By chemically altering
temperature. $150 » the nickel-metal hydride
eastmanoutdoors.com inside its rechargeable
AA cells, Sakar made
Straight from the Silicon Boot batteries that can with-
Oncinema Teatro D1 » A media-center PC free from the monitor’s stand 8.5 amps of cur-
Long-Distance tether, this Italian job lets you control movies, music and pictures rent, so they charge in
Relationship from its 1,280x620-pixel touchscreen. 3.2 gigahertz. 8.5 minutes.
Cobra PR 4700
$6,540 » oncinema.it $60 » sakar.com
» To give this GMRS
radio its 12-mile
range, Cobra spent
six months refining The Disc Drives
the electrical path Estone Ripper 510 » Put a CD into this
between the antenna in-dash car stereo, and rip it to the 20-gig
and transceiver. $80 hard drive at 8x, or pop the drive out and copy your MP3s from
a pair » cobra.com your PC via USB 2.0. $650 » estone-tech.com

Sound Swapper
Tivoli Music System
» By taking information
from one audio channel
and moving it to the other,
Tivoli simulates true stereo
sound (physically impossi-
ble from speakers less than
six feet apart) in a 14-inch-
wide system. Operates on
12 or 120 volts.
$500 » tivoliaudio.com

24 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

Drown Out Thy Neighbor
Yamaha YSP-1 » Using 40 1.5-inch speakers, each with a two-watt digital amplifier, and two 43/8 -inch woofers driven by 20-watt amps, this one
speaker delivers five channels of Dolby surround. Sound, focused into beams, is bounced off the walls to perfect the illusion. $1,500 » yamaha.com

Cellular Symbiote Online Grapevine

PocketSurfer » Pair this candy-bar-size key- eSommelier » This Internet-enabled wine
board and screen with your Bluetooth phone, manager lets you log-in new bottles, check
and actually use your mobile Internet connec- tasting notes, scan in labels, and see
tion. The VGA-width screen displays the what’s ready to drink. Reviews added
entire Web page, and the Qwerty keyboard monthly. $5,000 » esommelier.net
speeds typing. $200 » datawind.com

Cinema Shades Phone Dome

eMagin z800 » The visor’s BMW Motorrad System 5
twin 0.59-inch 800x600- Helmet » The first motorcy-
line OLED screens simulate cle helmet with built-in
the view you’d get watch- Bluetooth can link to
ing a 105-inch display your mobile phone or
from 12 feet back. OLEDs’ a sibling helmet.
rapid refresh rate means Speakers and mics
no flicker. USB-powered, are in the lining,
weighs eight ounces. and a mic on the
$900 » emagin.com outside feeds
data to a noise-
canceling pro-
cessor. $1,000 »
bmw-motorrad.de

Pucker Up
DMI Sports
Chemistry- GoalFlex Hockey
Class Coffee » Air hockey with no slots. Rows
Desktop Photo Shop
OnTech Self-Heating Can » A com- Epson Stylus Photo RX620
of light sensors at the ends of the
partment in the bottom segregates » Scans photos in 2,400 x
eight-foot table detect when the
calcium oxide and water. Break the 4,800 dpi—the highest reso-
puck scores. Adjust the width and
seal, and the reaction heats Wolf- lution available on a combi-
location of the goals to up the
gang Puck’s coffee to 145°F in six nation printer/scanner—and
challenge, or make them moving
minutes flat. $2.25 » ontech.com prints pics up to 8 x10 inches.
targets. $1,000 » dmisports.com
Mac- and PC-compatible,
although the seven-in-one card
Straight reader makes a computer
to Video unnecessary. $300 »
Sony DCR-DVD7 epson.com
» Slightly bigger than
a portable CD player,
this camcorder writes Soft White Handy Upgrade
directly to a blank Fox Fury Signature Pro Rotozip Jigsaw Handle
DVD in its native » This LED headlamp mini- » This attachment turns a
format, MPEG-2.10x mizes eyestrain by emitting Rotozip into a new kind of
optical zoom. Takes photo-optic light, which jigsaw. Except, unlike its flat-
VGA stills. Works with matches the spectrum the bladed cousin, a Rotozip’s
DVD-R, DVD-RW and human eye can detect. cylindrical blade lets you
DVD+RW discs. Water resistant. $120 turn as sharply as you want.
$700 » sonystyle.com » foxfury.com $40 » rotozip.com

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 25

 POPULAR

HEADLINES scıence
T
MARCH 2005
DISCOVERIES, ADVANCES & DEBATES IN SCIENCE AND THE WORLD

INSIDE THE GREENEST SKYSCRAPER 28 • WILL BROADBAND AIRSHIPS FLY? 30 • NEVER-WASH CLOTHES! 32 • THE 3-D FAX MACHINE 34

HELP WANTED As part of its new

Centennial Challenges Program,
NASA could offer up to $50
million in prize money to the first
privately funded team to develop
a moon lander, as depicted
in these illustrations.

[SPACE POLICY]

Game On
Upstaged by private inventors such as Burt Rutan,
NASA hopes its cash-award contests will spur innovation not proposals, the Centennial Challenges sig-
nal a paradigm shift in NASA’s approach to

I
N 1999, THE 12-PERSON HOLLYWOOD FIRM GLOBAL EFFECTS, WHICH CRAFTS commercial contracting, which could slash
replica space suits for movies and plans to make a real one for the private aero- costs while letting upstart tech firms find
space industry this year, sent a replica of NASA’s Advanced Crew Escape Suit hel- their niche alongside aerospace behemoths
met to the agency. Its perfect likeness fooled many of the technicians who saw it. like Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Even the reflective tape on the back was arranged perfectly—a feat the space agency The timing of the program—announced
had never achieved, a NASA manager told Global Effects president Chris Gilman. last year as Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne, the
“NASA can out-organize me to the nth degree,” Gilman says, “but when it came to X Prize winner, was preparing to endear the
something simple like coming up with a pattern to lay tape out on the back of a hel- world to low-cost private spaceflight—seems
met, it just never occurred to them.” less like a coincidence and more like a mea
This is a perfect example of the practical ingenuity NASA is hoping to tap with culpa. NASA, after all, spent $23.4 million on
its new Centennial Challenges program, which will hand out Ansari X Prize–style a single space-shuttle toilet. (SpaceShipOne
jackpots for achievements in a range of yet-to-be-defined categories. A new lunar cost an estimated $20 million.)
C O U RT E S Y N A S A

rover might fetch $5 million. A reentry vehicle for bringing back small payloads Aside from some brainstorming sessions,
from the International Space Station could earn $50 million. By rewarding results, not much has happened, in large part because

TICKER /// 12.15.04 BOTCHED DEFENSE AN INTERCEPTOR MISSILE FAILS TO LAUNCH FROM THE RONALD REAGAN TEST SITE AT KWAJALEIN ATOLL IN THE WEST CENTRAL PACIFIC

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 27

T
HEADLINES

[SPACE POLICY] CONTINUED [ARCHITECTURE]

NASA is stuck waiting for congressional
approval of its fiscal 2005 budget, which so
far includes $20 million for the Challenges.
Meanwhile, many contest rules remain
The 54-Story Air Filter
unannounced. Will competitors have to New York City is hatching the world’s greenest
maintain the same strict bookkeeping skyscraper. Recycling has never looked so swank
demanded of traditional NASA contrac-
tors? How will safety and quality issues be
overseen? And who will judge the entries? » WITH MANDATORY COMPOSTING, recycled rainwater, and abundant fresh
air, it sounds like a hippie commune, not a sleek New York high-rise. But
Perhaps the biggest challenge of the when it’s completed in 2008, the Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park, on the
Challenges will be finding contestants rich corner of 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue, should be the most environmentally friendly
enough to participate. No money is paid up skyscraper in the world. By combining new technologies—vertical-
front, and in many cases (as with Space- axis wind turbine, waterless urinals, LED lighting—with old tricks
ShipOne), the project’s development cost such as composting, ice-based air conditioning, and rainwater col-
would exceed the prize amount. Histori- lection, the building’s designers expect it to be the largest structure
cally, the only successful private sector of to earn a top-level “platinum” rating for efficiency from the U.S.
space tech has been communications satel- Green Building Council, the nation’s foremost coalition to promote
lites. “There’s a lot of talk about space environmentally sustainable architecture and construction.
tourism, but I’m very skeptical that there’s To make One Bryant Park a model of extreme energy-efficiency,
the $1-billion structure is being built with as many recycled materi-

The Challenges als as possible. Some 45 percent of its concrete, for instance, will
consist of blast-furnace slag—leftover waste generated from iron
could slash costs processing—which means cement manufacturers won’t have to
while letting upstart make new aggregate, avoiding the release of more than 50,000
tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And an estimated 75
firms find their niche percent of the tower’s construction debris will be recycled.
alongside aero- Although the eco-features will boost construction costs by about
6.5 percent, the building will save its occupants about $3 million a year in energy
space behemoths. costs, and increase productivity by $7 million annually, according to Cook+Fox, the
architectural firm designing the skyscraper. If that’s the case, the green features will
a commercial market there,” says Louis have paid for themselves just seven years after the building opens.—PATRICK DI JUSTO
Friedman, executive director of the Plane-
tary Society, a leading nonprofit space

J O H N M A C N E I L L ; P H O T O G R A P H : C O U RT E S Y D B O X S T U D I O F O R C O O K + F O X A R C H I T E C T S
advocacy group. “The government is going
1 2
LET IT RAIN New York City receives HOME-GROWN JUICE An on-site
to be the biggest customer for a long time.” an average of 49 inches of rain a 5.1-megawatt electrical generator—
Not necessarily, as long as contests are year. Over the building’s two-acre the largest ever installed in a New
limited to practical technologies that the footprint, that adds up to 2.6 mil- York City office building—will pro-
private sector might pay to own, contends lion gallons of free water. Collec- vide for all of the building’s base
Edward Wright, president of X-Rocket, a tors on the building’s rooftops will electrical needs (lights, elevators,
Bothell, Washington, company that plans pipe rainwater into four storage pumps). Only office equipment will
tanks, where it will be treated and be powered by the city’s electrical
to conduct suborbital flights for tourists
used to flush toilets, irrigate green grid. The generator can also output
and might compete in the Challenges space, and cool the air. power to the city’s grid if needed.
should an applicable category arise. If the
technology is useful only to NASA, then the
HOW GROUNDWATER WILL
3
prize has to be big enough to pay for R&D GROUNDWATER The city’s ground-
COOL THE BUILDING IN SUMMER
costs but not so big that deep-pocket con- water, buried in bedrock, maintains a
Warming fluid
Cooling fluid

Rainwater

tractors will muscle in and grab it. near-constant temperature of 53°F.

To toilets

For a new low-cost space suit like the one A heat exchanger in the basement pulls
Global Effects is planning, $500,000 would this residual heat out of the ground in
motivate the right entrepreneurs, Wright winter and uses it to warm the building.
says. Half a million surely will inspire In summer, it pumps excess building
Graywater heat into the bedrock.
Gilman, whose suits will sell for less than tank
$100,000. “I’ve been described as the Burt Groundwater
Rutan of space suits,” he says. Just the type
Geothermal heat pump Bedrock
NASA is banking on.—JOSHUA TOMPKINS

OCEAN DURING THE FIRST FULL TEST OF THE U.S. BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM /// 12.26.04 THE UNFATHOMABLE A 9.0 EARTHQUAKE IN THE INDIAN OCEAN KICKS UP ONE OF

28 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

 THE ECO-FRIENDLY
SKYSCRAPER Wind
turbine
Rainwater
collector

4 SKY-HIGH TURBINE
An estimated 50 percent
of the building’s electrical
One Bryant Park
ventilation system
Conventional
ventilation system

6
power may be purchased DREAM CUBICLES Unlike many office towers, which
from green sources, such recirculate air so that one person’s exhale is another’s
as wind farms in upstate inhale (giving rise to so-called sick-building syn-
New York. In addition, drome), One Bryant Park’s ventilation system sucks in
the building’s smaller outside air through vents at the eighth floor. This air is
spire may house a filtered to remove particulates, circulated throughout
vertical-axis wind turbine the building, refiltered, and then released outside
(VAWT) to generate auxil- cleaner than when it came in.
iary power. (The Freedom
Tower, to be built on the
site of the World Trade
Center, is also expected to
make use of a VAWT.) Reflected
Visible UV light
light only

5 A BETTER JOHN
Each of the building’s
200 waterless urinals
Water tank

saves an estimated Sunlight

40,000 gallons of
water a year. Urine ECO-WINDOW
flows through a funnel-
shaped cartridge
installed just above the
drain. A fluid sealant
7 A SMARTER VIEW An all-glass skyscraper can
quickly turn into a vertical greenhouse during a
steamy New York summer. One Bryant Park will be
inside the cartridge faced with 20,825 square feet of double-insulated
traps odors, leaving a glass that reflects 100 percent of ultraviolet rays
fresh-smelling latrine. but lets in 73 percent of visible light. This design
No flushing necessary. keeps the interior cooler in summer and reduces
heat loss in winter.
8th-floor
air vents

Rainwater
collector 8 TRASH DIGESTION Every day, two tons of waste,
including shredded paper and food scraps from the
building’s cafeteria, will be dumped into a 1,000-
gallon vat of organic waste seeded with bacteria.
One-acre green roof
The bacteria will digest the slurry and turn it into
methane or biodiesel fuel. This is then fed to a turbine,
which produces an additional 75 kilowatts—enough
Electrical to power the on-site Bank of America branch.
generator

Composting vat

CLIMATE CONTROL Human bodies and office equipment can quickly

Water storage make a well-insulated building uncomfortably warm. To cool the build-
Ice storage
ing, fresh air is passed through tanks of ice made by the building’s
Groundwater-
Bedrock
(Manhattan
schist)
capture system
9 electrical generator each night and then gently blown throughout the
building during the day. The air emerges through floor vents, which
can be individually controlled at each office cubicle. A conventional
A/C draws most of its power during peak daytime hours.
Water table

TICKER ///MOST
HISTORY’S 1.10.03 VIRAL ANNIVERSARY
DESTRUCTIVE TSUNAMIS,THE COMPUTER VIRUS
DEVASTATING CELEBRATES
COASTLINES AND ITS 20-YEAR
KILLING ANNIVERSARY;
MORE FORMER
THAN 150,000 UNIVERSITY
PEOPLE OF SOUTHERN
IN 13 COUNTRIES CALIFORNIA
/// 01.03.05 GRAD
STILL STUDENTTHE
TRUCKING FRED
MARS

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 29

 T
HEADLINES

[COMMUNICATIONS]

Blue Skies for Broadband

Airships parked near the edge of space could turn your
entire town into a wireless hotspot. Will they float?

» BY WINTER’S END, A LITTLE-KNOWN

telecom company called Sanswire Net-
than with patchy Wi-Fi hotspots (no more mys-
terious dead zones) and cheaper, faster broad-
works plans to launch a 90-foot-long prototype band service than with cable or DSL. Unlike a
communications airship from the Edwards Air satellite, an airship is reusable and relatively
Force base near Los Angeles and float it to the cheap; Huff estimates that the stratellite will
stratosphere, more than 50,000 feet above cost $5 to $10 million—less than a tenth the
Earth—a feat never done before. price of most satellites.
If the launch proves successful, the company Still, major technical issues remain, and many
plans to follow up with a commercial version, in the industry doubt that Sanswire has resolved
the size of a football field and nine stories high, them. “For a company to come from nowhere
by the end of the year. The helium-filled airship, and make an airship—well, I’d give them a one-
or “stratellite,” would hover 12 miles (65,000 in-a-million chance,” says Hokan Colting, CEO
feet) above Earth for as long as two years at a of 21st Century Airships, which plans to launch
time, beaming broadband Internet and phone a prototype craft of its own in 2006. One of the
service to subscribers in an area 400 miles thorniest problems is power. An airship must be
across, says Timothy Huff, CEO of Sanswire’s light enough to sail into the stratosphere yet
parent company, GlobeTel Communications. powerful enough to tote and operate several
The concept of a communications airship is thousand pounds of equipment for months on
nothing new. Several companies, including end without refueling. Sanswire’s solution is a
21st Century Airships and Worldwide Aeros, giant blanket of solar panels that it says will
along with the U.S. military, are racing to bring generate around 400,000 kilowatts an hour—
it to reality. Closer to Earth than a satellite, enough energy to power 200 homes—and will
a stratellite could beam line-of-sight signals draw power from stars and moonlight at night.
directly to an antenna attached to a subscriber’s Fanciful claim? Probably, says Colin Murchie,
home or business, circumventing cellphone a spokesperson for the Solar Energy Industries
towers and pricey cable infrastructures. For the Association: “You just can’t get a usable amount
consumer, that means better signal coverage of energy from moonbeams.”—MIKE FADEN

245 FEET

87 FEET

THE SANSWIRE
STRATELLITE
[ FOUR RUDDERS ] [ 54,000 SQUARE FEET
OF SOLAR PANELS ]
C O U RT E S Y S A N S W I R E N E T W O R K S

[ TWO FAN MOTORS ]

[ LIGHT-WEIGHT SPECTRA SHELL HOLDS

[ 18-WHEELER ]
1.3 MILLION CUBIC FEET OF HELIUM ]
12 FEET

[ GONDOLA HOUSES SOLAR-POWERED

ELECTRICAL MOTORS, COMMUNICATIONS
EQUIPMENT AND ANTENNAS ] 70 FEET

ROVER SPIRIT CELEBRATES ITS ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY ON THE RED PLANET /// 02.16.05 POLLUTION POLICE

30 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

T
HEADLINES [THE POPSCI POLL]
BASED ON 3,962 VOTES
STATISTICALLY SPEAKING. . . POSTED TO POPSCI.COM

Nature’s weapon of mass destruction

Just how brutal was the tsunami? A-bombs would have hit with less force LAST MONTH’S
2.5 Energy, in exajoules (exa=1018), released by Indonesia’s
December 26 earthquake, in four minutes
QUESTION:
2 Energy, in exajoules, consumed by the U.S. in one week
NUCLEAR FUSION
REACTORS
600 Megatons of TNT needed to generate the energy equivalent of WILL POWER
the Indonesian earthquake HOMES WITHIN:
Number of 20-kiloton atomic bombs needed to generate the energy
28,500 equivalent of the Indonesian earthquake 50 YEARS

4.4 Estimated impact force, in tons, on a person of average height

and weight hit by the tsunami
4
4
Estimated impact force, in tons, on a driver of average
height and weight crashing into a tree at 40 mph
0
Number of 20-kiloton atomic bombs needed to generate the energy %
95 equivalent of the tsunami

Years’ worth of tectonic-plate shifting that occurred during the 100 YEARS
300 four-minute quake
3
SOURCES: Steven N. Ward, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California at Santa Cruz; U.S. Geological Survey
Earthquake Hazards Program; U.S. Department of Energy; European Commission Joint Research Center
2
[THE EQUATION] %

[ ][ ][ ]
NEVER
2
+ = 8
%
[ LOTUS FLOWER ] [ DIRT, GUNK, GRIME ] [ CLEAN CLOTHES ]
THIS MONTH’S
A BACHELOR’S DREAM COME TRUE QUESTION:
Bedeviled by laundry? Chemists have a solution: self-cleaning duds
WOULD YOU
» THE WHITE LOTUS grows in muddy swamps
across Asia, yet its leaves stay squeaky
mixture bonded to the test fabric, forming an invis-
ible coating with lotus-like repellant properties. FAVOR EFFORTS
clean. Now a Clemson University research team is Best of all, your clothes will still feel like clothes, TO REDUCE
attempting to mimic the plant’s dirt-resistant powers not like a vinyl-covered sofa, notes Brown. GREENHOUSE-
to keep your clothes spot-free. North Carolina-based Nano-Tex already sells a GAS EMISSIONS
The secret to the lotus plant’s superior hygiene is slob-proof treatment that’s showing up on brand-
the billions of microscopic moguls dotting its waxy name labels, such as Dockers, L.L.Bean, Gap and
EVEN IF THEY
surface, says Clemson textile chemist Phil Brown. Old Navy. But Clemson’s coating could do more
COULD HURT THE
F R O M L E F T: C O R B I S ; G E T T Y I M A G E S ( 3 )

These bumps reduce the contact area on the leaf than just repel dirt. Silver, notes Brown, has anti- ECONOMY?
and thus prevent anything from clinging to its bacterial properties, so their treatment could also
surface. “Water and dirt just fly off,” Brown says. ward off body odor. “Wouldn’t it be great to just
To mimic this effect in the lab, Brown and his shower your jacket with a little water and know it’s • YES NO
team mixed a liquid polymer with silver particles clean?” he muses. But don’t toss the detergent just
100 nanometers in diameter—about the size of a yet. Brown says the invention won’t go commercial
VOTE AT POPSCI.COM
small virus. When applied to a cotton swatch, the for another four years.—MICHAEL STROH

SEVEN YEARS AFTER ITS INITIAL NEGOTIATION, THE KYOTO PROTOCOL BECOMES A LEGALLY BINDING TREATY, COMMITTING 55 INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS TO CUTTING

32 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

T
HEADLINES

[DIY ASTRONOMY]

How to
Photoshop
the Universe
New software gives
amateur stargazers a
chance to shine

» THIS COMPOSITE PANORAMA OF THE

Tarantula nebula, an interstellar kaleido-
scope of gas and dust, is one of the most beauti-
ful and detailed images ever produced by the
Hubble Space Telescope. The Tarantula cobweb
lies more than 170,000 light-years away in the
Milky Way’s satellite galaxy, the Large Magel-
lanic Cloud, and is arguably the largest known
star factory in the universe.
The artist is amateur astronomer Danny
LaCrue, a 23-year-old graphic-design student
at Cuyamaca College near San Diego. Last fall,
LaCrue scrutinized hundreds of images from
Hubble’s online archive and spent more than
60 hours stitching together 15 shots using his
two-gigahertz PC. The result: a dramatic 200-
megabyte mosaic.
The key to LaCrue’s pro-quality beauty shot
is a free software plug-in from the European
Space Agency’s Hubble Information Center that
converts bulky professional files to a user-
friendly format. Now anyone with a desktop
computer, a broadband connection and Adobe
Photoshop can turn raw Hubble data into a
digital masterpiece. To download software, visit

P H O T O G R A P H : E S A / N A S A , E S O A N D D A N N Y L A C R U E ; I L L U S T R AT I O N : R O B K E L LY
spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator.
—ANDREW FAZEKAS

HEADLINE FROM THE FUTURE SETH COPEN GOLDSTEIN

2029 THE 3-D FAX MACHINE BRINGS BACK THE HOUSE CALL
A new communication medium known as programmable matter or “claytronics” is enabling doctors
to visit patients without ever having to leave their offices. An assembly of millions of catoms—
micron-size mobile computers—form a 3-D facsimile of a doctor in a patient’s home and a
patient in the exam room. As the doctor interacts with the claytronic patient in his office, the
claytronic doctor mimics the real doctor’s movements, performing a checkup on the real patient.
Each catom is loaded with sensors that relay information on the patient’s pulse, temperature,
reflexes and other vital signs. It’s small-town medicine with a high-tech twist.
Associate professor of computer science Seth Copen Goldstein heads claytronics research with Todd Mowry at Carnegie Mellon University.
They’re now experimenting with 2-D prototypes.

GREENHOUSE EMISSIONS BY 2012 /// 03.01.05 SPACE SAILING COSMOS 1, THE FIRST SOLAR-SAIL SPACECRAFT, IS SLATED TO LAUNCH FROM A SUBMARINE IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN ■

34 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

 SOAPBOX
POPULAR
scıence T

times without your even asking for it.

PLUGGED IN Suspicious messages are not just shuffled
THE INSIDE STORY ON THE FORCES into a Junk folder, but deleted before you
THAT RULE PERSONAL TECH ever see them, leaving in your mailbox
BY CORY DOCTOROW
only legit messages and the few spams
that slip through. While the result sounds
appealing, I don’t like the idea of my mail
being sorted by someone else’s algo-
rithm, especially when I don’t know what
it is. I get lots of paper junk mail too, but
that doesn’t mean I want my mailman
deciding what should be thrown away.
Yet that’s exactly what several major
ISPs, including AOL and Earthlink, are
doing. They tout their spam-filtering but
refuse to say how those filters work.
Why all the secrecy? ISPs fear that
revealing the criteria used to identify
spam will give spammers a road map for
bypassing the filters. Likewise, they’re
loath to notify recipients that a message
has been blocked. What’s the point of
deleting the spam if doing so generates
another e-mail you have to deal with?

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
Sending discard, or “bounce” notices
back to the spammers sounds like a good
idea, but it opens the door to a dirty trick
known as a “joe job”: A spammer hijacks
your e-mail address and uses it as the
return address on a few million spams,
then sits back and laughs while your
mail server, instead of his, drowns under
bounce notices. (The name comes from
the first victim, Joe Doll. In 1996 he
ran a Web-hosting service and deleted
the page of a known spammer, who retal-
iated by inventing this attack. I still get
joe-jobbed a couple times a month, and
the subsequent flood is truly terrifying.)
On these grounds, secret spam filter-
ing seems defensible. But although it
does stop much spam and many viruses,
the Orwellian consequence is that e-mail
Kill Spam Locally is divided into the deliverable and the
nondeliverable, and not always correctly.
When Internet service providers secretly sort your e-mail Individuals and organizations frequently
behind the scenes, you’ll never know what you’re missing find themselves on the wrong side of
the spam-filter black hole, with no help

I
T’S NOT OFTEN THAT I TAKE A HOLIDAY FROM E-MAIL. AN OVERNIGHT FLIGHT OR A DAY in sight. If the rules for filtering spam
in a connectivity-free hotel is about the extent of my fasts. Good thing, too: I get are kept secret, how does a political
around 20,000 messages every day—about 19,500 of them spam—and if I don’t organization know if its urgent cam-
download and delete all that junk regularly, it can take days to sort it out. paign e-mail is bouncing because of a
But I just got back from two and a half weeks with only three e-mail stops, and the hyperactive spam filter, or because
deluge was insane. Part of the reason is that I refuse to have my mail filtered upstream, someone at the ISP disagrees with the
at the server level. This “feature” is offered by many Internet service providers, some- group and has intentionally flagged it, or

36 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

T
SOAPBOX
just because the recipient is too lazy to
unsubscribe and has marked it as spam? SCIENCE FRICTION
“You don’t,” says John Gilmore, founder THE MARKETING AND MANGLING
of The Little Garden, one of the first dial- OF SCIENCE IN POPULAR CULTURE
up ISPs. “I put a notice at the top of my BY GREGORY MONE
Web page [warning of the practice], but
people don’t believe me. They say, ‘How
could my e-mail be censored? I’m get-
ting it all, even the spam.’ ”
It sounds like conspiracy theory,
but these are real-world problems.
MoveOn.org regularly found its election-
related fundraising and call-to-action
e-mails blocked. Even where it could
detect this action, getting off the black-
list often took precious days while the
issues referenced in its messages cooled
to irrelevance. The same thing undoubt-
edly occurred to Republican groups, and
regularly happens to all manner of

FA C I N G PA G E , C L O C K W I S E F R O M L E F T: B E T T M A N / C O R B I S ; C A S E Y H A L L / e M A R K E T G R O U P ; A R C H I E M c P H E E / A C C O U T R E M E N T S ; T H E B A B Y E I N S T E I N C O M PA N Y
e-mail lists, including the Electronic
Frontier Foundation’s weekly EFFector.
Misclassification is getting so rampant

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 : I M A G E A R C H I V E E T H - B I B L I O T H E K , Z U R I C H ;
that several ISPs are realizing that this
isn’t a sustainable way to fight spam.
“It’s more expensive for them to handle a
customer-support call from someone
whose mail isn’t getting through than
to pay the bandwidth and storage to
deliver it all,” says Vipul Ved Prakash,
founder of Cloudmark, which provides
anti-spam software to thousands of net-
work operators, including PayPal.
Is there a better way? I think so. First,
all filtering has to take place on your
desktop or in your Web mail account so
that you see everything. Second, we need
filters that learn, and apply what they
learn to the mail they’ve already classi-
fied. When you reply to an e-mail from
me, it should realize that I’m not a spam-
mer and then dig through your junk box
for all my previously discarded messages.
This is going to take a lot of storage, but
storage is cheap. And without this learn-
ing, we’ll just keep putting ever smaller
needles of misclassified e-mail into ever-
growing haystacks of auto-filtered spam.
I don’t want to come home to a couple
The Two Faces of Einstein
hundred thousand e-mails again. But I’m In the centennial year of his breakthrough work, amid all
still not willing to turn my mail sorting the kitschy paraphernalia, which Albert do we celebrate?
over to some opaque process, and neither

I
should you. If your ISP filters upstream, WISH I HAD BEEN THERE ON THAT DAY IN 1951 SO THAT I COULD HAVE GRABBED
ask it to stop and instead use a desktop- the camera, ripped out the film, and kept that silly picture of the 20th centu-
level tool, such as SafetyBar ($40 a year; ry’s greatest scientist, tongue out, from ornamenting so many posters, T-shirts
cloudmark.com). Next month we’ll look and coffee mugs. Then again, it probably wouldn’t have done much good. That,
at ways to shut down spammers for good after all, is only the most famous of the oft-marketed photographs of the elderly,
and to guard your inbox from viruses. ■ white-haired Albert Einstein. The inescapable fact is that since his death in 1955,

38 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

Einstein has moved past intellectual emi- anti-consumerist crank, let me be clear: stronger emotional attachment to the
nence to something even more culturally My problem isn’t that Albert ended up lovable absent-minded professor than
transcendent: He is a brand, his face on a pair of underpants, but that it’s the the 26-year-old working 24 hours a day,”
every bit as recognizable as the Nike wrong Albert on those underpants. says Stephen Root, a marketing consult-
swoosh or the Coca-Cola cursive. There’s a big difference between the ant at Sterling Brands in San Francisco.
As a result, he’s used to hawk every- white-haired sage and the unknown the- Even so, for the sake of scientific revo-

My problem isn’t that Albert

ended up on a pair of underpants,
but that it’s the wrong Albert
on those underpants.
orist who, in a six-month span in 1905, lutions, we ought for once to celebrate
published four papers that changed sci- the monomaniacal, coffee-swilling rebel
entific thought forever. The sage was an who dressed and looked like everyone
international celebrity. He had tenure. else while his thoughts raced alongside
The Einstein we’re commemorating this light beams. In the process, we might
year, on the 100th anniversary of those even inspire a few new radicals. It may
four great papers, had no such luxury. He seem impossible that there could be
had to make a living, dress appropriately, another Einstein out there, slaving away
and trim his moustache. On the outside at night while earning his keep by day,
he must have seemed fairly normal. The but it probably seemed impossible in
difference between him and his contem- 1905, too. It’s been almost half a century
poraries was that, although he couldn’t since his death, and quantum mechan-
even secure a Ph.D., he believed he could ics and relativity still aren’t on speaking
SENIOR MOMENT Images of the older, irrever- understand the workings of the universe. terms. We’re due for another Einstein. ■
ent Einstein don’t convey the outwardly proper, The Albert that emerges in his letters
quietly daring thinker who pioneered relativity.
to Mileva Marić, his first wife, is a
thing from self-help books to the Baby supremely focused young man who can CASHING IN
Einstein line of parental-guilt-soothing, scarcely write more than a paragraph ON ALBERT
infant-brain-boosting DVDs, a $170- without mentioning science. He comes The Roger Richman agency in L.A.
million-a-year business. I’ve got an eight- across as a worker, not a natural genius. is gatekeeper to the Einstein industry
inch toy version of him, chalk in hand, He flips quickly from professions of love
on my desk. Worldwide, 14 law firms —calling Mileva his kitten, rascal, witch, INSPIRATION
police his image, ensuring that its appli- street urchin and, in what is either a mis- Einstein is end-
cation is consistent with the wishes translation or a very odd pet name, his lessly quotable.
of his estate’s executor, the Hebrew veranda—to summaries of James Clerk Richman ensures
that reprints of
University in Jerusalem. That means Maxwell’s study of electrodynamics. Sur- his pithy sayings
no tobacco, no feminine-hygiene prod- prisingly, he even has a sense of style: use only his
ucts—a stipulation that surely needs In one letter, he critiques the decor of exact words.
little monitoring—and no alcoholic his friend Michele Besso’s home. A
beverages. Still, violators occasionally detail like this is so antithetical to the COLLECTIBLES
slip through. A bar in Katy, Texas, called pop culture version of Einstein that it Accoutrements
EinStein’s Pub sports on its Web site an makes me wonder if the whole eccentric- makes this action
image of the old man in a sailor’s cap. professor guise is a ruse, a clever mar- figure. It sells
(Thankfully, there are no Wormhole keting ploy devised to enrich his estate. better than
Freud and Shake-
Wings or Bose-Einstein Burgers on the Maybe he really went over to Gödel’s speare, but Jesus
menu.) And as part of its “Smarty Pants” place at Princeton and, in between small tops all three.
line, a Vancouver clothing manufacturer talk about grand-unification theories,
recently sold boxers bearing his picture. pestered Kurt about his curtains. ADVERTISING
If you think that’s an ignominious fate, Interior decorating aside, if we have The Einstein
imagine how fast René Descartes’s corpse this young, romantic rebel to thank for name helps
must be spinning: His likeness appears relativity and E=mc2, why the preference sell children’s
on a male G-string. Lest I be branded an for the septuagenarian? “People have a enrichment
products. Richman regularly rejects
beauty salons hoping to lure the
Get on your own soapbox! Write to [email protected] or [email protected]. unkempt with the wild-haired icon.

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 39

 TECHNO-
POLIS
FOUND
WE WEIGHED DOZENS OF VARIABLES,
FROM THE NUMBER OF HOMES WITH WIRELESS
INTERNET TO THE NUMBER OF ROBOTIC
SURGERIES PERFORMED AT LOCAL HOSPITALS,
TO RANK U.S. CITIES BY TECH QUOTIENT.
AND THE WINNERS ARE . . .

9
4
6 7
3

2
5

10

MINNEAPOLIS, MN 1 What makes a place high-tech? When POPULAR SCIENCE set out to determine
ATLANTA, GA 2 America’s top cities for technology, that was naturally the first question we had
to answer. We surveyed experts—academics, scientists, government officials,
WASHINGTON, DC 3 think-tank intelligentsia, market researchers—to determine the key indicators of
BOSTON , MA 4 a tech-embracing metropolis. We polled our own staff, pondering what we
SAN DIEGO, CA 5 value most about the ways in which technology and innovation affect our daily
lives. Then we gathered information from such sources as the Census Bureau,

➤
CHICAGO, IL 6 the National Science Foundation, the Department of Transportation, private
COLUMBUS, OH 7 foundations and medical institutes, collecting thousands of
8 data points in six broad categories.
RALEIGH, NC
In our first category, we looked at the way city residents
SEATTLE, WA 9 experience technology, considering such markers as use of
HOUSTON, TX 10 cellphones, HDTVs, computers and satellite cable. We called

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 41

 ➤TECH➤CITIES
TOP
this category “connected citizenry” and weighted it as the single most important
one. We also considered transportation innovation (including the efficient use of
mass transit and the prevalence of alternative fueling stations); the number of high-
tech job opportunities per capita; and the use of technology in education (including
R&D spending by local universities and the number of students using computers
in school). We looked at the smart use of energy and, finally, at hospitals and in
emergency response, including the number of clinical trials and the use of GPS by
emergency-medical personnel. Then we crunched the numbers.
The results were at times obvious (Boston ranked highest in education), at times
surprising (San Diego was the medical champ). But all the cities that rose to the top
of our list share a broad-based embrace of technology. The winner: unassuming
yet consistently innovative Minneapolis. Read on for a high-tech tour.

MINNEAPOLIS, MN
1 BY MATTHEW POWER
We restarted the computer,
and it still said Minneapolis. And
so it was that I was told to pack my
bags for a mission: I was to “test
drive” the city, to immerse myself
in this technopolis, to divine

➤
firsthand the ways in which
our winner expresses its technological
AS A KID GROWING UP SEVERAL preeminence. Now, obviously there is
hundred miles from the something rather artificial about such an
nearest metropolis, I used to draw assignment. The technological accom-
fantastical visions of the great cities of plishments that define Minneapolis pro-
the future. There would be moving side- vide benefits designed primarily for the
walks on every surface. (“Walking” was city’s residents, not tourists. I’d be in
over.) Hover-taxis, hover-skateboards, the city for less than a week. But such
hover-buses. (Hovering was a central ele- limitations only made my quest to under-
ment of my urban planning.) Also, sleek stand this place that much more delec-
monorails conducted by robots, zipping table: I would visit its most visionary
noiselessly between glittering towers that structures, meet its most plugged-in
vanished into cloudbanks and reap- citizens, experience the very cream of its
peared above them, miles in the sky. Peo- technological offerings.
ple would dress in jumpsuits like Mork, Living in New York, my associa-
and there would be a vast dome over the tions with Minneapolis quite frankly
city, which would have its own computer- amounted to an ignorant pop-cultural
controlled weather. (Domes were easy to stew of Coen brothers movies, pro-
draw.) The Jetsonian future was clear. wrestler politicians, Wobegon lakes, and
In the real world, of course, where artists now and again known as Prince. America where a culture of high technol-
urban centers are composed of layers of This, my editors assured me, provided ogy has a more pervasive presence.
development and decay, constructing me with the advantage of an unpreju- I knew I should keep my hopes in
the city of the future is not so simple. diced mind. Still, I needed to ground check, but as I set off for the airport, I
What makes a city cutting-edge? And myself in the city’s bona fides. couldn’t help wondering: Would Min-
which American metropolis can rightly What made Minneapolis our high- neapolis be the city of the future I’d
claim the title of top tech city? More tech champ? It ranked first among U.S. fantasized about since childhood?
than a year ago, a crack team of editors cities in innovative transportation solu-
and researchers here at POPULAR SCIENCE tions, fourth in energy technology. The THE FIRST VOICE I HEAR UPON ARRIVING IS
launched an exhaustive effort to find city fell above the 50th percentile in computerized. The stop announcements
out. We input reams of data from every category measured, a broad-based on the airport monorail have a British
dozens of private and government showing of tech savvy that set it apart accent, as though the pilotless shuttle has
sources, tabulated our results, and came from the competition. With everything been commandeered by a Bond girl.
up with . . . Minneapolis. averaged together, there is no city in (They’re big on computerized voices in

42 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

 SPEED OF LIGHTS Sensors
at Minneapolis intersections
measure traffic density and
automatically adjust traffic-
light timing to compensate.

Minneapolis. Later, walking by a parking

garage, I am warned in robot monotone THE NUMBERS A SAMPLING OF THE STATS THAT ADD UP TO #1
“Caution. Vehicle. Exiting.”) My taxi dri- ➤ NUMBER OF HIGH- ➤ PERCENT DEPLOYMENT ➤ ANNUAL NUMBER OF
ver from the airport is a very friendly TECH COMPANIES: OF “INTELLIGENT CLINICAL MEDICAL
Somali with an advanced degree in com- 3,939 (national TRANSPORTATION TRIALS: 333 (national
puter programming. I pay for the ride average: 1,260) SOLUTIONS”: 61 average: 206)
with a credit card, a rarity in New York’s (national average: 34)
➤ PERCENT OF WORK- ➤ ANNUAL UNIVERSITY
yellow cabs and one of many small ways FORCE WITH ADVANCED ➤ PERCENT OF TRANSIT R&D EXPENDITURES:
in which I’ll find my city to be behind the DEGREES: 10 SYSTEM ACCEPTING $462 million (national
times. The cabbie thinks my surprise at (national average: 9) ELECTRONIC FARE average: $200 million)
card-reading taxis is hilariously yokelish. PAYMENT: 100
➤ NUMBER OF WI-FI (national average: 44) ➤ EPA-LAUDED ENERGY-
If I had been nervous about giving out HOTSPOTS: 110 STAR BUILDINGS: 8
my card number, I could have asked (national average: 61) (national average: 4)
to see his counterfeit-proof Minnesota

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN B. CARNETT POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 43

 ➤TECH➤CITIES
TOP effect of suburban sprawl. To ease the
gridlock, the city has spent $715 million
to construct a light-rail line that connects
the downtown with outposts including
HIGH-TECH
HOTSPOT 1 the airport and the Mall of America. The
rail is time-coordinated with the bus sys-
THE SUPERMARKET tem, which has another advance on New
CHARLOTTE, NC
York: The bus stops are kept toasty with
At Food Lion’s new pilot store, Bloom,
electric heaters.
shoppers get an RFID scanner along My hotel is downtown, in the forest of
with their cart and total up their gro- glass-and-steel skyscrapers that makes up
ceries on the go. Changed your mind the dense center of Minneapolis. The
about the frozen pizza? Just press streets are clean enough to eat off, and
“delete” and your tally will automati- seem curiously devoid of pedestrians—a
cally adjust. Can’t find your favorite
marinade? Stop at one of Bloom’s
ghost-town ambience that can be attrib- IN THE HOT SEAT The
eight information stations and get a uted to the Minneapolis Skyway system simple genius of heated
map pinpointing your item’s location. running overhead. Back in 1962, city bus stops was an early
Paying at the self-service checkout planners gave up trying to deal with the clue to Minneapolis’s
takes about 60 seconds.—R.M.P.—R.P. pervasive techiness.
northern winters, where temperatures
have bottomed out at 34 below, and
began turning the entire center of the very nice fair-trade organic, and the pro-
city into a giant human Habitrail. The prietor takes time from his roasting to
driver’s license, featuring a 3-D hologram Skyway is a series of sealed bridges above opine that for all its futuristic climate-
of a loon (the state bird) that appears to street level that winds for mile after dis- controlled benefits, the Skyway is miss-
float above and below the card when it’s orienting mile through arcades of shops ing the vibrant life of a real city. And
tilted. The novel design was invented by and plazas, opening on vast atriums with what does he make of his city’s top tech
locally-based 3M. indoor waterfalls and trees to remind the ranking? “I would have guessed Silicon
Traffic is pretty heavy moving into the tunnel-dwellers of the outside world. It’s Valley,” he says. “But I guess I’m not that
center of the city. The U.S. Department of not a dome over the entire city, but it surprised. Minneapolis is a progressive
Transportation gives Minneapolis top strikes me as being admirably close. place, always looking at what’s next. It’s
scores for its use of such “intelligent I enter, and all sense of time and direc- just not in our nature to brag about it.”
transportation solutions” as closed-loop tion are quickly lost. It could be cold
traffic control, in which sensors placed enough on the street to hammer a nail MINNEAPOLITANS MAY BE KNOWN FOR THEIR
below the pavement at intersections with a banana, but I wander for hours in humility, but they are seriously proud of
collect traffic-density data on given road- my shirtsleeves, hounded by Muzak, their city. If you come to town to find out
ways and adjust the timing of traffic grabbing stray Wi-Fi signals, and drink- what’s so high-tech about the place,
lights to compensate. This belies the fact ing lattes, as hermetically sealed as an the mayor will pick you up in his
that traffic congestion in Minneapolis is astronaut. I have to return to the freezing gas-electric hybrid car and personally
increasing at a rate surpassed by only street and a coffee shop to regain my per- drive you around. (Well, he did it for me,
eight other cities in the country, a side spective. Dunn Bros. has free Wi-Fi and a anyway.) R.T. Rybak, the hyperkinetic,

➤off aIFremote
YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE A HEART ATTACK, you don’t want to do it while surfing
beach with no road access. “My chances of survival were 1,000 to 1,” says

SAN DIEGO Steven Ludwig. So how was it that by dinnertime that day last August, Ludwig, 53, was
watching an account of his own rescue on the six o’clock news? The answer: Ludwig
was in San Diego, whose medical-tech innovations include making defibrillators as
1 MEDICAL & EMERGENCY TECH
common as fire extinguishers; a nearby rescue boat had just been equipped with one.
In San Diego, 911 calls enter a GPS-
equipped system that can immediately
2. SPOKANE, WA
mobilize any of the city’s 125 fire engines,
3. OKLAHOMA CITY, OK
ambulances, rescue boats and helicopters.
4. KANSAS CITY, MO
And because rescue vehicles carry Wi-Fi-
5. CHICAGO, IL
enabled laptops and PDAs, medics docu-
6. BURLINGTON, VT
menting patient vitals and any procedures administered beam the data
7. DES MOINES, IA
straight to the hospital, where doctors seamlessly pick up the case. At many local hospitals, patient charts, includ-
8. SEATTLE, WA
ing data from heart-rate and oxygen monitors, are also electronic. The newscast of Ludwig’s rescue showed a
9. LANSING, MI
brave paramedic lowered from a helicopter to whisk him away. But behind the scenes, a carefully orchestrated
10. INDIANAPOLIS, IN
system of protocols and technologies—and people aided by them—were the unseen heroes.—RENA MARIE PACELLA

THE NUMBERS ➤ OVERALL RANK: 5 [NUMBER OF HOSPITALS AND HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS WITH ADVANCED INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY:
14] [PERCENT OF EMERGENCY VEHICLES UNDER COMPUTER-AIDED DISPATCH:100] [PERCENT OF EMERGENCY VEHICLES THAT ARE GPS-EQUIPPED: 46]

44 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

 VIP TOUR GUIDE
Minneapolis mayor
R.T. Rybak with his
hybrid Prius

triathalon-running, cross-country-skiing, HIGH-TECH JOBS 1

49-year-old mayor of Minneapolis,
drives his city-owned Toyota Prius,
points out landmarks, and simultane-
ously gives me a historic overview.
SAN JOSE
The car is no self-righteous prop. Even
as traffic congestion has increased ➤ IN SAN JOSE, THE UNOFFICIAL CAPITAL of Silicon Valley,
during Rybak’s tenure, Minneapolis has technology companies employ more than 300,000 people—practically a third of the populace.
become one of the first cities in the The city generates 30 percent more patents than its closest competitor (Boise, Idaho, home to
nation to bring emissions down below Micron) and receives more than a third of the nation’s venture capital: $5 billion. Headquartered
the levels prescribed by the Kyoto Pro- in Silicon Valley are Google, eBay and Cisco Systems; the world’s leading biotech company,
tocol. Vehicle emissions are still increas- Genentech, is up the road. The area also boasts five top research centers, including SRI Interna-
ing, but greenhouse-gas emissions from tional and Stanford University—institutions that spawn high-tech start-ups almost reflexively.
other sources have been reduced 15 per- Google began as a Stanford spin-off. Indeed, Stanford researchers have founded more than
cent in the past decade, by making 1,200 tech companies to date, including117 biomedical companies (23 of them launched just last
buildings, factories and streetlights year). Long known for semiconductors and software, San Jose is quickly shifting to biotech, thanks
more energy-efficient and by increasing in part to the state’s Proposition 71, which grants $3 billion to stem-cell research.
recycling. Rybak is also encouraging The average San Jose salary, $62,400, is 60 percent higher than the national average. But
more, and greener, mass transit. The to earn it, people work really, really hard. Employee productivity—the value a company
city’s transit commission is testing derives from each worker—is at $180,000 in the valley;
hybrid buses that will cut emissions 2. ORANGE, CA the national average is $87,000. “When your average
even further. 3. GAINESVILLE, FL co-worker is probably in the top 5 percent of the most
The mayor isn’t surprised that Min- 4. BOULDER, CO intelligent people in the nation,” says molecular geneticist
neapolis ranks so high in tech, just that 5. MADISON, WI Wendy Mahler, a local biotech consultant, “it definitely
someone finally noticed. “The city has 6. OAKLAND, CA makes you kick it up a notch.”—R.M.P.
undergone a series of rebirths,” he tells 7. WASHINGTON, DC
me as the car sits silently at a traffic 8. NASHUA, NH THE NUMBERS ➤ OVERALL RANK: 17 [NUMBER
light. Built next to the only waterfall OF HIGH-TECH COMPANIES: 7,300] [PERCENT OF
9. RALEIGH, NC WORKERS IN HIGH-TECH FIELDS: 33] [PERCENT WITH
on the Mississippi River, Minneapolis 10. SANTA FE, NM ADVANCED DEGREES: 17]
has been a center of industry and tech-

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 45

 ➤TECH➤CITIES
TOP
nological innovation from its inception.
General Mills was a milling company;
3M was in mining. Today 3M is a giant,
one of the most diverse technology and
materials-science innovators around.
Rybak tells me that when the mills
declined in the early 1900s, the city was
forced to adapt to a service-based econ-
omy, leaving it in much better shape than
industrial centers like Pittsburgh, Cleve-
land and Detroit, which had to reinvent
themselves in the 1980s. Minneapolis
adapted to postindustrialism early,
becoming a brain trust of the region. A
2004 University of Wisconsin study
found Minneapolis to be America’s most
literate city, and I find out later that its list
of contributions to various branches of
technology is rich: 3M introduced mag-
netic tape, Scotch tape and the Post-it
note. The airplane black box, the Nerf
football and even the proprietary
controlled-foam-extrusion process for
creating “marbits”—the pink hearts, yel-
low moons, orange stars, green clovers,
blue diamonds and purple horseshoes
found in Lucky Charms cereal—were
developed here. Medtronic, now the
world’s largest medical technology com-
pany, was started in a Minneapolis garage
in 1949. The company’s founder, Earl
Bakken, went on to invent the first tran-
sistorized cardiac pacemaker in 1957.
Indeed, some of the city’s most
prominent advances are in life sciences
and medicine. The formerly run-down
WHERE THE GRASS IS GREENER

STEPHEN ROUNTREE; PHOTOGRAPHS, FROM TOP: COURTESY CORRIE ZOLL/GREEN INSTITUTE;

Philips neighborhood, whose high Michael Krause’s Green Institute
crime rate had helped get the city

C O U R T E S Y A M E R I C A N M U S E U M O F N AT U R A L H I S T O R Y; FA C I N G PA G E : I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y
develops and tests environmental tech-
dubbed “Murderapolis” during the nologies that can be used in homes.
crack epidemic of the 1990s, is being

HIGH-TECH recast as a center of medical research

HOTSPOT 2 and innovation. The neighborhood was
THE PLANETARIUM NEW YORK, NY cleaned up with a program of comput-
erized crime-fighting. The location and
The five-story-tall Space Theater at the type of every crime was statistically
American Museum of Natural History’s analyzed, with trouble spots identified
Hayden Planetarium has the most techno- and targeted for police attention. Today
logically advanced projector in the world. It
local residents are given training and
simulates 9,100 stars—the number visible
in both hemispheres, with binoculars, on a employment opportunities in the new
C O U R T E S Y T H E S E AT T L E P U B L I C L I B R A R Y

clear night. A shield with 9,100 tiny holes is medical facilities. “The paradigm in the
located between the light source and the 1980s and ’90s was the Edge City,”
lens of the Zeiss Mark IX projector. Rather Rybak says—“the faceless office parks
than beaming light to the entire inner sur- built far out in the suburbs. That was
face of the projector, glass fibers conduct a overbuilt and unsustainable. We’re try-
concentrated beam to each perforation. The
result is a white light with 10 times the inten-
ing to pull it back, recognize the value
sity of the conventional 4,000-watt projec- in density, in a dynamic urban setting.
tors used in most planetariums—and Everything we need is right here.” As he
sharper, more realistic stars.—R.M.P. sees it, returning to a compact core,
with research labs, hospitals and uni-

46 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

 THE GREEN MACHINE
The Philips Eco-Enterprise Center was built by Minneapolis’s Green Institute
as a testing ground for energy-saving and eco-friendly designs. It is
furnished with no-emission paints, recycled-glass tiles and the world’s
first 100 percent recyclable carpet. It’s lit with sun-tracking mirrors that
deflect up to 10 times more sunlight through skylights and into the building.

THE LIVING ROOF

A roof planted with [ GRASS
natural grasses saves [ GROWING MEDIUM
on heating and cooling
bills, and manages [ ROOF ACCESS [ FILTER FABRIC
rainwater. [ WALKWAY [ DRAINAGE LAYER
PATHWAY ]
[ INSULATION
[ ROOT BARRIER
DRAIN ]
[ ROOF MEMBRANE
[ ROOF DECK

40° F

HOT HOUSE
The Eco-Center doesn’t have a furnace. Instead, a closed loop
SUN SEEKER of water and antifreeze cycles from the building through the
Solar-tracking panels deflect ground, extracting heat from the soil. The fluid returns to the
extra light through skylights. building and transfers the energy to heat pumps.

versities in close proximity, provides vide R&D. Minnesota has more than 500 into a computer. This allows the patient
fertile ground for high-tech innovation. med-tech companies, many of which are to use biofeedback, in which, say, a
In a 1.5-mile corridor stretching from small and prize independent thinking. stroke victim improves strength and
downtown, there are 19 medical institu- I later visit a group of physical thera- coordination by using muscle move-
tions, 61 research and clinical labs, and pists at Abbott Northwestern Hospital ment to play a game on a video monitor.
2,300 physicians. A government-funded who since 1995 have run a program I play computer pinball with sensors
small-business “incubator” promotes called Advanced Rehabilitative Techno- attached to my forearms: When I flex,
medical technology start-ups, uniting logies (ART) that makes use of virtual the paddles bat the ball around on the
inventors and venture capital, while hos- reality in patient rehabilitation. Sensors screen. In another exercise, I stand in
pitals provide patients for clinical trials, attached to patients’ muscles detect the front of a blue screen trying to manipu-
and huge companies like Medtronic pro- tiniest movements and feed the data late myself as a little soccer goalie on a

HIGH-TECH
HOTSPOT 3
THE LIBRARY SEATTLE, WA

The catalog in Seattle’s Central Library is more Mapquest than Dewey Decimal. Plug in the name
of a book, and you get a diagram of its exact location. Returned books travel by conveyor belt to
a machine that scans their RFID tags and groups them. A vacuum-powered rotator faces the books
in a single direction, and another machine puts them on carts for manual stacking. Librarians
wear wireless transmitters so that they can communicate from anywhere in the building, which is
made of a material never before used in the U.S.: aluminum mesh sandwiched between layers of
coated glass, which lets light through but minimizes heat and glare. And while visitors are re-
charging their mental batteries, their electric cars can do the same in the library’s garage.—R.M.P.

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 47

 ➤TECH➤CITIES
TOP toxic antifreeze (so green you could actu-
ally drink it) circulating through a series
of geothermal wells dug into the bedrock
below. Mirrors above skylights follow
the sun to reflect it inside, and sensors
lower all electric light correspondingly,
hibernating when people leave the
room. Reused steel forms the bulk of the
support beams, and the building has an
insulating living roof planted with Min-
nesota prairie species. The electrical sys-
tem, run partly from an array of solar
panels on the roof, kicks power back to
the grid when it overproduces. Shelving
consists of pressure-treated boards of
soy and newspaper that look just like
shiny black marble.
Michael Krause, the institute’s direc-
tor, tells me that they’ve incorporated
more than 200 green-technology ele-
SPRY IN THE SKY The city’s ments into the construction. The idea is
pervasive Skyway system allows for the building to serve as an example
workers and shoppers to dodge and proving ground for green tech on a
both traffic and bad weather. larger, more complex scale. Rybak says
that the city hopes to build a new base-
ball stadium for the Twins, with a
“biomass” heating system—an energy-
efficient trash incinerator.
I take the slick new light rail back
downtown (its automated ticket machine
speaks Spanish, Hmong and Somali, in
addition to English), but I’m flummoxed
by the routes of the bus system. So I take
a cab (the drivers all listen to National
Public Radio) out to the University of
Minnesota to meet with mathematician
Andrew Odlyzko, head of the school’s
Digital Technology Center. In what is
emerging as a theme of the city’s innova-
tive mindset, he holds forth on the value
of interdisciplinary research and coopera-
tion: between industry and the university
and between engineering and computer
science. The clustering of disciplines
encourages interesting avenues of explo-
RAIL RIDERS Minneapolis recently ration. Odlyzko is researching the history
invested over $700 million in of railroads’ psychological effects in the
a state-of-the-art light rail line.
19th century, teasing out the parallels
with the spread of the Internet, our own
monitor. These therapeutic solutions AFTER SHOWING ME THE 19TH-CENTURY MILLS century’s “disruptive technology.”
keep patients entertained as they per- by the river, now being retrofitted as The university is home to quite a
form the often-monotonous exercises luxury condos and pricey offices for tech roster of innovative thinkers, which has
involved in their recovery. At the same companies, Mayor Rybak drops me earned it a reputation as an invention
time, the sensors allow doctors to collect off at the Green Institute, a nonprofit factory and a ranking as one of the top
reams of data on their subjects’ response that promotes environmental tech- three public research universities in the
times, changes in muscle strength, and nology and sustainable energy use— country. Seymour Cray, father of the
overall progress. It is one of the only such another area in which Minneapolis supercomputer, and several of the Nobel-
programs in the country. The therapists scored high points, with its eight EPA- winning creators of the transistor (ar-
are also pioneering what they call tele- rated EnergyStar buildings. The insti- guably the most important invention of
clinics: Internet videoconferencing rehab tute’s building is a textbook on green the 20th century) studied here. Today, in
sessions conducted with patients as far technologies. It has no furnace but is the same library where Cray crammed as
away as Samoa. kept at a constant temperature by a non- an undergraduate, an astrophysicist uses

48 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

the spare processing time of hundreds
HIGH-TECH
of networked computers in the student 4
SEATTLE
HOTSPOT
PC lab to construct two-terabyte 3-D THE GARAGE HOBOKEN, NJ
animations of the internal combustion
At the Garden Street Garage,
of stars. The Center for Distributed
there are no attendants, and CONNECTED CITIZENRY 1
Robotics has developed a soda-can-size parking takes less than a minute.
spy robot that can be shot from a grenade
launcher, which could have practical
Drivers don’t even enter the
building. They simply pull into a ➤ IN SEATTLE, IT SEEMS,
citizens have the right to
applications in urban warfare. And the docking bay, turn off their engines,
swipe their credit cards, and walk life, liberty and the pur-
university recently won a contract from
away. The 324-car garage does suit of connectivity. The most
the Department of Homeland Security to wired (and wireless) city in the nation,
the rest. Vehicles are lifted by an
design a smart video-monitoring system automated elevator and hoisted Seattle has 57 Wi-Fi hotspots per 100,000
that would call attention to suspicious sit- onto steel pallets by an electro- people; the national average is more like
uations, such as abandoned packages left mechanically driven carrier 18. A full 83 percent of Seattle homes
on railway platforms. system. Custom software works in have at least one computer, and almost all
In another lab, I stumble around in a conjunction with Cimplicity, the those homes are online, surpassing the
virtual-reality helmet, running into real automation program used by national average by 21 percent.
many General Motors manufactur- Seattle’s tech-centeredness has been
walls as I navigate a digitized room. As
ing plants and NASA facilities. attributed to the “Microsoft effect,” the
my bruised shins attest, the era of the Because the garage does not have software behemoth’s influence on its host
functional Holodeck has not yet arrived. to provide circular ramps or space city’s economy, culture and lifestyle.
A “Web usability lab” has a computer sta- for drivers to maneuver, it fits three Microsoft is the second-largest employer in
tion at which the patterns of a user’s Web times as many vehicles as conven-
Seattle (after Boeing), providing work for
navigation are monitored through a one- tional garages. An added plus:
more than 20,000 people. And since the
The absence of ramps saves
way mirror; the data collected will be company’s founding in 1975, it has
thousands of gallons of gas
used to facilitate more efficient Web page every year.—R.M.P. created at least 8,000 tech-savvy million-
aires, most of whom still live in the area.
y

(CONTINUED ON PAGE 90)

Microsoft chief Bill Gates’s foundation has
given nearly $12 million to state tech
charities, including local community-
➤ ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL invented the
telephone here. Bill Gates studied here
technology centers and programs that
provide computer training for Seattle’s

BOSTON (before dropping out). The sewing machine,

vulcanized rubber, the Polaroid camera, the
microwave oven, artificial limbs, synthetic
poor and disabled youths.
Seattle resident Matt Westervelt, 33,
has worked for Microsoft, twice, but he’s
1 HIGH-TECH EDUCATION penicillin, the first computers, Arpanet, currently an avid blogger who runs his
e-mail, inertial guidance systems—all are own computer company. Nearly five years
products of Boston ingenuity. Not so surprising when you consider ago he created the Seattle Wireless
that the city boasts more than 60 colleges and universities. Ten Network, which links apartment buildings,
Nobel laureates currently teach at MIT, 39 at Harvard; Boston’s businesses, coffeehouses, schools and
universities spend $2.3 billion annually on R&D, almost twice as parks throughout the city. An all-volunteer
much as the next biggest spender, Baltimore. effort, the network not only provides free
This abundance of talent and resources trickles down to the city’s wireless access, it enables people to send
public schools. Boston University and Northeastern professors coach e-mail and data files without ever logging
high school teams competing in an international robotics competition, and on to the Internet. “You can do things like
MIT engineering students mentor kids interested in tech careers. When video conferencing between coffee shops
Boston opened a technology-based high school, Harvard, MIT at speeds faster than broadband,” says
and the University of Massachusetts, along with companies member Joe Towner.—R.M.P.
including Dell, IBM and Microsoft, donated expertise,
manpower and more than a million dollars’ worth of
high-tech equipment. Every student at TechBoston Academy is 2. OLYMPIA, WA
given a wireless laptop, and every classroom has an interactive 3. AUSTIN, TX
2. HOUSTON, TX
Smart Board, a touch-sensitive display linked to the teacher’s 4. SAN FRANCISCO, CA
3. RALEIGH, NC
computer. In 1998, Boston became the first major school 5. ORLANDO, FL
4. PHILADELPHIA, PA
district to connect all its schools to the Internet. 6. DANBURY, CT
5. WASHINGTON, DC Meanwhile, the legacy of invention continues. B.U. grad 7. HONOLULU, HI
6. ATLANTA, GA student Matt Heverly helped design the robotic arms for Mars
8. WASHINGTON, DC
7. BALTIMORE, MD rovers Spirit and Opportunity and is now working on technology
9. GAINESVILLE, FL
8. NEW YORK, NY to enable image-guided fetal heart surgery. And a low-cost
rocket-powered surveillance system that MIT grad Andrew Heafitz 10. BOISE, ID
9. CHICAGO, IL
10. SAN DIEGO, CA originally created for a science fair at Boston-area Newton South
High School is now in development with the U.S. Air Force.—R.M.P.
THE NUMBERS ➤ OVERALL
RANK:11 [NUMBER OF WI-FI HOT-
THE NUMBERS ➤ OVERALL RANK: 4 [PERCENT OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS WITH INTERNET SPOTS: 319] [PERCENT OF HOMES
ACCESS: 100] [ANNUAL UNIVERSITY R&D EXPENDITURES: $2.3 BILLION] [PERCENT OF STUDENTS WITH INTERNET ACCESS: 76] [PERCENT
EQUIPPED WITH A COMPUTER AT SCHOOL: 80] [NUMBER OF SCIENCE MUSEUMS: 3] WITH CABLE/SATELLITE SERVICE: 86]

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 49

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AWAY FROM IT
ALL? POPULAR
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AN EXCLUSIVE
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PHOTOGRAPHS
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50 ★★★★★
POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2002

★★★★★
★★★★★
 STARLIGHT INN Former NASA
engineer William Schneider
[left] designed the modules that
Las Vegas mogul Robert Bigelow
hopes will constitute the
world’s first orbital hotel.

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 51

 ★★★★★
★★★★★

O
★★★★★

ON THE LAS VEGAS STRIP, HOME OF THE BIGGEST AND MOST

extravagant hotels in the world, shell-shocked tourists file past
one stunningly ostentatious display after another. In the desert
city, water says wealth like nothing else, and there’s a lake of it
in front of the Bellagio, with fountains blasting 240 feet in the
air in time to Broadway show tunes. Just up the street, the
Mirage demonstrates that it has money to burn with a fiery vol-
cano erupting from the top of a 119,000-gallon waterfall.
Tucked away on the service roads behind the Strip, the hum-
ble Budget Suites of America hotels are, in contrast, nearly
invisible to tourists. Catering not to revelers but to the hordes
of migrants looking for quick work in America’s tourism epi-
center, Budget Suites eschews flashy displays of any sort, flaunt-
ing instead affordable weekly rates and the homely comforts of
laundry rooms and kitchenettes.
Still, when it comes to grand ambition, the impresarios of the
Strip are mere pikers next to Budget Suites owner Robert
Bigelow. For his next hotel enterprise, Bigelow is looking beyond
the bright lights of Las Vegas—beyond Earth’s atmosphere, in
fact. He is actively engaged in an effort to build the planet’s first
orbiting space hotel. Bargain-basement room rate: $1 million a
night. For its water show, this hotel will have all of Earth’s blue
oceans flying past its windows at 17,500 miles an hour. Guests
on board the 330-cubic-meter station (about the size of a three-
bedroom house) will learn weightless acrobatics, marvel at the
ever-changing face of the home planet, and, for half of every
90-minute orbit, gaze deep into a galaxy ablaze with stars.
The public has seen this vision for decades—another hope-
less dreamer’s space fantasy. But here there’s a difference:
Bigelow is betting $500 million of his personal fortune that he spaceflights, Bigelow’s project provides an intriguing new twist
can make it come true. He has hired veteran space-travel engi- in the development of a commercial spaceflight industry.
neers to perfect the technology, he has produced nearly launch- Robert Bigelow is a trim 60 years old with a full head of
ready hardware for testing, and he’s floating a $50-million prize salt-and-pepper hair and a matching mustache. He shepherds
to entice other companies to create a safe, reliable orbital space visitors through his 50-acre, three-building, 56-employee R&D
vehicle to transport guests to the front door—or rather, the air- facility, Bigelow Aerospace, on the outskirts of Las Vegas with
lock. Even five years ago, this plot would have seemed utterly the quiet confidence of a man who knows exactly what he is
implausible. But with Burt Rutan’s recent Ansari X Prize tri- doing. “It’s a gamble,” he says of his project, the world’s first
umph—his company, Scaled Composites, won a $10-million private space station. “It’s a huge gamble.” He smiles faintly
competition for the successful, repeated launch of a manned as he says it, as though he enjoys the sheer outrageousness of
suborbital space vehicle—and the subsequent creation of Vir- his own project. Then, too, he’s no stranger to high-stakes
gin Galactic to capitalize on Rutan’s technology for tourist gambling; he was raised in Las Vegas, after all, surrounded by

52 ★★★★★
POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

★★★★★
 SPACE LOBBY Fiber-
glass panels will cover
the fabric webbing,
visually dividing the
module’s living areas.
Open passages will
connect the levels.

the city’s kitschy, instant-gratification, money-fixated culture. grandparents even had a UFO experience. He couldn’t guess
Yet he’s also insatiably curious about spirituality and the what it all meant, but he developed a burning desire to find out.
nature of the universe, and he possesses an unearthly patience. What was our place in the universe? Were we alone in it?
Las Vegas may be an unlikely incubator for these qualities, but Bigelow was just 15 years old when he vowed to devote his
that’s exactly what it was for Bigelow as he grew up. In the life to helping establish a permanent human presence in space.
1950s, nuclear explosions at the nearby Nevada Test Site lit his It would take money, he knew—lots of it. And so he began to
street at night with artificial daylight—casting light on his mor- build a very practical foundation for his fantastic idea: He fol-
tality, as well. In later years, rumors circulated of a secret gov- lowed his father into real estate, studying that and banking at
ernment program to study a crashed extraterrestrial spaceship Arizona State University. After graduating in 1967, he launched
and its occupants. And although he never saw anything him- his career first as a broker, and soon began buying small rental
self, Bigelow knew people who swore that they had had unex- properties. His first construction project, in 1970, was a 40-unit
plainable encounters with possible extraterrestrials; his own apartment house. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s he built

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 53

 ★★★★★
★★★★★

HIGH-WIRE ACT
Above the glow of Las
Vegas, Robert Bigelow
shrouds his work in
secrecy and security.

dozens of apartment buildings and motels in and around Las looking the Strip 10 miles away, the small parking lot is
Vegas, and in 1988 he founded Budget Suites of America. bounded by chain-link fencing wrapped with razor wire. As the
At about the same time, he began pouring millions of dol- beefy guards wearing desert fatigues and .45s check your ID,
lars into UFO and paranormal research, eventually creating maybe you’ll notice their black shoulder patches, which feature
his National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) in 1995. a classically oval-eyed alien face outlined in silver and gold.
None of this activity was a secret, but he did keep mum about Bigelow—who generally shuns media attention and rarely
his ultimate goal, the driving motivation behind his expand- grants interviews—kept his spacefaring efforts largely under
ing empire—telling no one until the time came to set the plan wraps for five years after founding Bigelow Aerospace. But he
in motion. “I didn’t even tell my wife,” he says. “She never began showing his work last fall, after announcing his
knew. Because it’s possible that that kind of dream would $50-million orbital-vehicle prize amid the positive press sur-
never happen.” The ideal moment arrived in 1999 when rounding Rutan’s SpaceShipOne. The top-secret, Skunk
Bigelow, now sitting on a fortune, got wind of a NASA pro- Works–style aura persists, and visitors are only slowly being
gram for a radical new space station. admitted to Building B, the semipublic face of Bigelow Aero-
space. Built last year, the windowless, 80,000-square-foot
LIKE THE HOTELS ON THE STRIP, BIGELOW AEROSPACE IS WRAPPED facility houses full-scale mock-ups of Bigelow’s baby: the Nau-
in layers of illusion. Viewed from West Brooks Avenue in North tilus space-station module. Two 45-foot-long, 22-foot-diameter
Las Vegas, it resembles most other industrial complexes in the modules, brilliant white and draped with the American flag,
neighborhood, down to the beer distributor right across the loom out of the darkness at the back of the building. A stair-
street. Such similarity ends, however, as you drive past a reas- way invites visitors to climb on board to see for themselves
suringly corporate Bigelow logo and through the gate. Over- what it might be like to live in the biggest space-station mod-
ules ever built. Their large volume is the result of an unusual
design feature—they are inflatable.
THE MODULES’ LARGE Developed at NASA as part of a project called TransHab,

VOLUME IS THE RESULT inflatable space-station modules have some important advan-
tages over their tin-can counterparts. They weigh significantly
OF AN UNUSUAL less, and they launch in a compressed state, with their fabric
hulls wrapped tightly around their rigid cores like a roll of
DESIGN FEATURE: THEY paper towels. This allows them to use less-powerful launch vehi-

ARE INFLATABLE. cles and makes for roomier space stations. After a rocket fires a
Nautilus into space, explosive bolts will release the girdle secur-
ing the compressed hull, and then the station’s life support

54 ★★★★★
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★★★★★
 IT’S GOING TO TAKE A LOT MORE THAN Rutan is typically cagey about his work on an
A Ford Econoline to deliver guests to the door of orbital craft, beyond saying that it might be a
a space hotel. That’s why Robert Bigelow has “small, cheap and cramped transfer van.” He
ORBITAL established America’s Space Prize. Like the
Ansari X Prize that Burt Rutan’s suborbital Space-
has suggested that his White Knight carrier air-
plane could be scaled up to bigger-than-747 size
HOLIDAYS ShipOne claimed last October, the Space Prize to launch future rockets and that SpaceShipOne’s

THAT
has simple rules. The craft must reach a 250-mile unique “feather” design might play a role.
orbit twice in 60 days and demonstrate its ability The most detailed plan comes from Space-

START
to dock with a Bigelow module, and the second Dev, which built SpaceShipOne’s rocket engine.
flight must carry five crew and passengers. No The design for SpaceDev’s Dream Chaser com-

WITH A government funding is permitted, and only U.S.

companies may enter. The deadline is January
bines enhanced versions of that craft’s hybrid
rocket motors—burning rubber and nitrous

BANG 10, 2010. The prize is $50 million in cash.

The rules may be simple, but winning will be
oxide—with a winged rocketplane based on the
X-34 that was designed by Orbital Sciences and
hard. Achieving orbital altitudes and speeds is NASA. SpaceDev likes the X-34 because NASA
LAUNCHING what makes spaceflight expensive. It starts with already has a huge database on its aerody-
TOURISTS INTO making a five-person vehicle move more than six namic performance; for NASA, it could be a
ORBIT SAFELY times as fast as SpaceShipOne, which demands chance to fly a useful research vehicle using
WILL REQUIRE exponentially more energy and fuel: Rutan’s SpaceDev’s proprietary rocket engines. CEO Jim
entire combo weighed less than 10 tons at take- Benson says the vehicle would be strapped to
LOTS OF off, but Russia’s three-person Soyuz spacecraft three million-pound hybrid boosters to go all the
CASH, LOTS requires a 300-ton rocket to loft it into orbit. way to orbit. The key to this five-year, $150-
OF SPEED, What comes up must come down, and New- million project, he says, is that hybrid rockets
AND LOTS OF ton insists that it must come down with the same are “almost embarrassingly cheap” when pro-
SMARTS amount of energy it took to get it up there. The duced in quantity. Benson hasn’t committed to
spacecraft must decelerate in the atmosphere, a try for Bigelow’s prize, however, and actually
and its kinetic energy turns into steel-melting might not do so. He doesn’t think the private
superheated air. Safe re-entry is a huge chal- sector will fully fund an orbital project, which is
lenge; so far it has been done only with a glider why he’s working with NASA. “Who cares who
like the space shuttle—which is expensive—or a pays for it,” he asks, “as long as we get a safe,
parachute-recovered capsule. affordable vehicle?”—BILL SWEETMAN
I L L U S T R AT I O N S : K R I S H O L L A N D / M A F I C S T U D I O S , I N C .

HOTEL SHUTTLE SpaceDev’s orbital vehicle will be a scaled-up version of NASA’s X-34. It will take off LIFTOFF Inexpensive hybrid
vertically, reaching 17,500 mph on its way to orbit, and then land on a runway. boosters will be expendable.

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 55

 ★★★★★
★★★★★
system, housed in the core, will inflate the structure with building and launching the actual modules into space, have yet
breathable air, expanding it from 15 feet in diameter to 22 feet. to be made. But here again, he plans to spend carefully, hiring
Power comes from solar panels that unfold from the rigid bulk- rides on relatively low-cost commercial SpaceX and Russian
heads at each end of the module. Each bulkhead also houses an Dneper launch vehicles, and sourcing off-the-shelf components
airlock and a docking adaptor. Astronauts arriving later enter a from reasonably priced vendors whenever possible. It’s this
shirtsleeve environment in which they can go to work unpack- careful approach to spending, honed on countless construction
ing removable panels, equipment and supplies from the core projects, that Bigelow feels sets him apart from NASA, which
to create three levels of living and working space. A docked rock- relies on high-priced defense contractors.
et engine called a multi-directional propulsion bus (MDPB) will After TransHab was cancelled, Bigelow bought the exclusive
eventually allow the station—the first one is tentatively called development rights from NASA and entered into a Space Act
CSS [Commercial Space Station] Skywalker—to maneuver Agreement with the agency to allow him to work with former
within Earth’s orbit or even leave it, for, say, a trip to the moon. TransHab engineers still employed there. And he tracked down
This basic architecture was created by NASA senior engi- Schneider, by then retired from NASA and teaching at Texas
neer William Schneider, in an effort that began in 1997. A&M University. Schneider was surprised when he got the call,
The design won numerous converts at NASA, with then- but he agreed to see for himself what Bigelow was up to. The

BIG PLANS
Bigelow
Aerospace’s
unprepossess-
ingly corporate
identity camou-
flages the bold
undertakings
within [far left].
The elusive
Robert Bigelow
pursues his
childhood vision
with unmistak-
ably grown-up
determination
[left].

administrator Daniel Goldin calling it a major breakthrough. modules Bigelow has on display, though empty except for floors
For a while, it was seriously considered as an alternative to the and structural elements, had their intended effect on Schneider.
International Space Station (ISS) Habitation Module under “And god,” he recalls now, “when I walked in here, boom! It was
development at the time by Boeing. But TransHab was can- mind-boggling, because this is the vision that I really wanted.
celled without explanation in 2000, before it could produce Here’s these things, all sitting there, and of course some of them
flight-ready hardware. Its demise is an example of what are mock-ups, but the rest were inflatable, and I said, ‘Man, he’s
Bigelow sees as NASA’s monumental inefficiency. Here was a serious. He’s not playing around.’ ”These days Schneider and his
perfectly good program to develop a technology that was less former TransHab colleagues visit the plant every few weeks to
expensive and tougher than conventional designs, but, as far provide guidance to Bigelow’s engineers. For Schneider, it’s a

BIGELOW SAYS HE STANDS A BETTER-THAN-

EVEN CHANCE OF LOSING A BIG CHUNK OF
HIS FORTUNE ON THIS $500-MILLION GAMBLE.
as Bigelow could tell, it got axed for purely political reasons. chance to follow through on some unfinished business. “It’s kind
Bigelow thinks he can do better with a traditional business of like you want to see your child grow up to maturity,” he says,
model. “I’ve put together many, many projects involving a lot of “not be stopped in its adolescence.”
money and a lot of people,” he says, and unlike NASA,“I’m used
to doing things pretty darn well on budget and pretty darn well THE REAL WORK AT BIGELOW AEROSPACE GOES ON IN BUILDING A,
on time.” Although he’s circumspect about just how he will with its expansive shop floor. Here machinists and technicians
spend his $500-million commitment, it is clear that he budgets turn out aluminum parts on state-of-the art computer-driven
carefully. His expenditures so far run only into the tens of mil- milling machines and assemble them into test modules. On a
lions, mostly for building the Bigelow Aerospace physical plant, recent day, a welding torch flared in the darkness of a full-scale
for patents obtained from NASA, and for building and testing mock-up being converted into a vacuum chamber for testing
prototypes of space station modules. His biggest outlays, for the inflation of modules under reduced atmospheric pressure.

56 ★★★★★
POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

★★★★★
 Bigelow patrols the shop floor, wearing his customary color- awaited evaluation. The verdict? Go with the safer 3/16-inchers.
ful shirt and spotless white sneakers. Even to many of his long- On this day, Bigelow checks up on Lardizabal and two of his
time employees he is known as Mr. Bigelow, yet he’s often assistants working in the assembly area of the shop floor,
greeted with smiles and good-natured ribbing. He’s involved in installing the straps in question. Lardizabal, a talkative Filipino
every aspect of the operation, keeping a close eye on the work who was laid off from Boeing after 9/11, grins at Bigelow’s
of the machinists and signing off on all of his engineers’ approach: “It’s the boss!” Bigelow joins him beside an inflated
designs. He has to feel with his own hands the heft of each pre- quarter-scale module whose crisscrossing restraint-layer straps
cision part, to hear the satisfying click of them fitting together. lie exposed like the musculature of a flayed horse. He watches
His reluctance to deal in intangibles extends to other areas as intently as Lardizabal picks up a pair of loose straps dangling
well. He has never sent an e-mail. “E-mail,” he says, “is a very from their clevis fittings at one end of the module and lays
sloppy medium. It’s not pristine at all.” Instead he prefers phone them across the module’s side. This is how the outer layer of
calls or the physical contact of faxes and letters. Last summer, straps will go on now, he explains to Bigelow. A couple inches
rather than endure abstract discussion in a meeting on whether apart, instead of the previous, wider configuration.
to use the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for It seems like a small detail, but the minutiae of how the straps
vibration tests, he abruptly took the entire meeting to the air- of the restraint layer will fit together is critical. Especially since

FREE-FALL AMENITIES
When launched and inflated, the IMPACT SHIELD
22-by-45-foot hotel module [left]
RESTRAINT
YOUR GUIDE TO ROBERT BIGELOW’S can be easily arranged in many LAYER
INFLATABLE SPACE HOTEL configurations. Here, the top level
(1) is reserved for lounging. The
middle level (2) will hold sleeping
1 areas and perhaps a work space.
The bottom level (3) holds bath-
rooms and water recycling equip-
ment. Airlocks (4) permit vehicle
2 docking or access to other mod-
ules. The hull has three key layers
4 [right]: a membrane to keep air in,
3 a woven restraint layer to protect
the membrane, and an 18-inch-
thick shield of alternating woven
graphite composite and foam to
AIR
protect against orbital debris. BLADDER

port and put the flabbergasted team on his private jet. They flew the straps must be woven through and around the aluminum
to Pasadena to evaluate the facility firsthand, had lunch, and frames of the windows. This presents a particular challenge on
flew back to North Las Vegas to continue the meeting. the third-scale test module that will be launched on a SpaceX
And then there was the case of the clevis fittings. During one rocket this November. On the third-scale module, there will be
design meeting, engineers Edwin Lardizabal and Jay Ingham no room for the window, so the window installation procedure
and project manager Brian Aiken found themselves arguing is one of the areas on which Lardizabal and his colleagues seek
with Schneider and a visiting NASA engineer about the size of the advice of the former TransHab engineers.
the fittings holding the restraint-layer straps. The restraint layer The matter of how the MicroMeteoroid and Orbital Debris
is perhaps the most crucial part of the three layers of fabric that (MMOD) shield will fold for launch and then deploy in space is
make up the Nautilus’s hull. The hull’s innermost layer, a plastic another. Composed of five layers of graphite-fiber composites
film called the air bladder, keeps the internal atmosphere from separated by foam spacers, the MMOD is the outermost section
escaping into space, but it’s up to the restraint layer to ensure of Nautilus’s hull. Schneider’s crew’s original TransHab design
that the air bladder keeps its shape and doesn’t burst. It consists had more stopping power than did aluminum three inches
I L L U S T R AT I O N S : K R I S H O L L A N D / M A F I C S T U D I O S , I N C .

of a web of interwoven straps made of high-strength fiber. The thick. Ground-testing of Bigelow’s MMOD has shown that it can
straps attach to the bulkheads at either end of the module by stop impacts by 5/8-inch-diameter aluminum pellets fired at it at
means of clevis fittings and rollers. 6.4 kilometers a second, several times as fast as a rifle bullet. No
Lardizabal, Schneider and the others couldn’t agree on rigid spacecraft design can match this performance, and it’s one
whether to keep the 1/8-inch diameter rollers they had already of the reasons Nautilus has an expected life span of at least 15
decided on, or up the size to 3/16 for added safety. Finally years. But getting the MMOD to fold properly for launch is a
Bigelow had had enough. As Franklin E. Gibbs, Bigelow’s major engineering headache. “It’s challenging because it is such
patent attorney, recalled later: “We’ve got a room full of engi- a robust and thick material,” Lardizabal says.
neers, and everybody is worried about figuring it to the nth Lardizabal admits that he and his colleagues may not be able
degree, and Robert just says, ‘Wait. Build it. Let’s see what it to overcome these and other formidable obstacles that will arise
does.’ ” Bigelow called the manufacturing manager up from before Bigelow’s $500-million commitment runs out in 2015.
the shop floor and told him to get to work: “Build both of He puts the project’s chances for success at 60 percent. “This
them. I want a dozen of these ready after lunch.” By the time will be the first time,” he explains. “That’s the problem. You can’t
the meeting reconvened, a dozen shiny rollers of each type foresee everything. Just like when we (CONTINUED ON PAGE 87)
y

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 57

 ‘‘ AND FINALLY, I’D
LIKE TO THANK
MY HIGH SCHOOL
PHYSICS TEACHER . . .

THE SCI-TECH OSCAR WINNERS WON’T BE GETTING

TEARY-EYED ON PRIME TIME. BUT FOR SPECIAL-
EFFECTS LOVERS, THESE TECHIE BRAINIACS
ARE HOLLYWOOD’S LITTLE-HERALDED HEROES
’’
BY JAMES VLAHOS | PHOTOGRAPH BY HOLLY LINDEM

58 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

 ˇ
CUE THE CLIMATE

E
CONTROL!
TECHNOLOGY: Volumetric Effects
NOMINEE: Alan Kapler |
Digital Domain Storm
CREDITS: The Day after Tomorrow,
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship
of the Ring, XXX

Each February at a modest, Joan Rivers–free

ceremony in Los Angeles, the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bestows a
cherished set of honors: the Scientific and Tech-
nical Awards. These aren’t the Oscars of Tom,
Brad, Charlize and Nicole, and that’s OK—let
the jocks ride the homecoming float while the
whiz kids play Dungeons & Dragons in the
The Day after Tomorrow
basement. Who needs superficial red-carpet
glory when you’re leading nothing less than a

I
revolution in filmmaking? Call it Revenge of the N 2004’S THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, THE SCIENCE IS SILLY—AN ICE AGE
Nerds V: Brainiacs Take Hollywood. descending in days?—but the climatic havoc is sublime. Grapefruits
In the past decade, the effects budget for of hail bombard Tokyo. Floods ravage New York. Out-twistering
a typical blockbuster has ballooned from Twister and out-storming The Perfect Storm, the movie wowed audi-
$5 million to $50 million. As digital effects (DFX) ences as it established a new benchmark for disaster on film.
have become more complex and accessible, the The Zeus behind much of the mayhem was Sci-Tech Award winner
barriers between fanciful computer-animated Alan Kapler. As a technical director at Venice, California–based
films and ostensibly realistic ones have crumbled. special-effects house Digital Domain, he invented Storm, software that
DFX now allow filmmakers to not only manipu- aids designers in generating some of the trickiest visual effects in the
late reality, but to build it from scratch. business: volumetrics. “Things with hard and defined surfaces, like
“If film directors are painters, the awards are monsters, are fairly easy to represent in a computer using geometry,”
for the people who supply the brushes,” says Kapler says. “But wispier things like clouds, mist and water are
Richard Edlund, chair of the Sci-Tech committee. incredibly difficult.” Storm excels at rendering these ethereal forms
An invention must be novel to win. Depending with high-resolution depth, shadowing and lighting. The program
on how substantial its influence, it can be also helps to simulate natural events such as avalanches—like the
F R O M T O P : C O U RT E S Y A L A N K A P L E R ; C O U RT E S Y T W E N T I E T H C E N T U RY F O X

awarded a certificate, a plaque or, most glori- one in the 2002 Vin Diesel action fest XXX—with a real-world mix
ous of all, an Oscar statuette. The Academy of control and chaos. The result is bigger thrills for moviegoers, and
honors technologies rather than specific films fewer ulcers for effects gurus.
and doesn’t favor the latest innovations but “Everything I do in computer graphics tends to be nature-based,”
instead the ones that have proved themselves in Kapler says. For fun, he creates programs to generate seashells,
the industry. Historically, the awards have gone snowflakes and leaves; between movies, he sets off in his van for
to mechanical breakthroughs (lenses, films, set northwestern Canada or Alaska to hike and fish. In The Day after
lights), but since 2002, digital technology has Tomorrow, his passion for natural phenomena paid off.
held the edge. The Academy has no fixed num- To produce the flood sequences, the Digital Domain crew shot
ber of honors to allot, no specific categories like 40,000 photographs of Manhattan streets and buildings, assembled
Costume Design or Best Picture. They may pass them digitally, and then used the company’s hydrodynamic simulation
out one Sci-Tech Oscar or five, laud three com- program to bombard the city with the electronic equivalent of Noah’s
puter-animation programs or none. flood. And that, in some ways, was the easy part.
Here, we focus on five key technologies from The key to making the big flow believable, Kapler says, was the
the 2004 contestants. A couple won awards, the little details—whitewater surging forward, tendrils of liquid explod-
others didn’t [see page 62], but together they tell ing skyward, thousands of droplets of spray and mist. To sketch out
the story of filmmaking’s latest evolution. So join this aquatic action, the effects team ran “particle” simulations,
the Academy in a Sally Field–style salute: We generating flows of dots that moved semi-randomly, with parameters
like you, Sci-Tech stars. We really like you. to govern water current and velocity and to mimic the effects of wind
and gravity. The results were then plugged into Storm, which

ILLUSTRATIONS BY STEPHEN ROUNTREE POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 59

transformed each particle into a

ˇ
cluster of larger 3-D pixels called
voxels. This alchemy is the soft- SOME ASSEMBLY
ware’s essential breakthrough.
Computers can handle only a few REQUIRED
hundred thousand particles TECHNOLOGY: Compositing Software
before overloading; Storm’s NOMINEE: David Simons| Adobe After Effects
voxels conjure an image with CREDITS: The Aviator, The Incredibles,
billions of apparent particles. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Kapler didn’t invent voxels,
but he devised the memory- Photoshop, but for moving
saving compression routines that imagery. Before After Effects, the
first allowed them to be used on compositing process was
the scale necessary for big-screen handled on supercomputers that
effects. He also made Storm user- cost $200,000-plus. Priced at
friendly. After the artist feeds a around $1,000, After Effects
few rough instructions into the democratized the business. Soon
computer, it uses Kapler’s algo- after the program’s release,
rithms to create a seeming infin- CoSA was snapped up by Aldus,
ity of interconnected droplets, which then merged with Adobe
each with its own color, shape Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Systems. Over the next decade,
and internal movement. And he the power of desktop machines

A
made Storm intelligent, capable NNALS OF LIVING-ROOM INGENUITY, PART ONE— exploded, and today supercom-
of determining where each voxel 1990: Providence, Rhode Island. Four recent Brown puter compositors are in decline.
of water stands in relation to the University graduates establish CoSA, a multimedia For Sky Captain, After Effects
light source and which other vox- company, in their apartment. Subsisting largely on doughnuts helped Conran pull off cinematic
els stand in the way. In The Day and Vietnamese takeout, they work around the clock and, in thrift-store chic: a pieced-together
after Tomorrow floods, water in 1993, release After Effects. The revolutionary software helps look inspired by Technicolor seri-
the main channel appears dark, to bring “compositing”—the ability to marry separately als of the 1930s and ’40s, film
churning whitewater semi- created live-action and computer-generated visual elements— noir, comic books and vintage
opaque, and airborne mist virtu- within the grasp of desktop-computer users. sci-fi. Early on, Sky Captain (Jude
ally transparent. Manually mak- Annals of Living-Room Ingenuity, Part Two—1995: Sher- Law) flies down a Manhattan
ing such lighting and shadowing man Oaks, California. Fledgling filmmaker Kerry Conran, skyscraper canyon dodging ’bots
determinations for each water inspired by After Effects, blacks out his windows with alu- gone bad. The close-ups were
speck would be like relocating minum foil, jury-rigs a bluescreen studio, and films a short shot on a giant bluescreen-
the Sahara with tweezers. about New York under serious robot attack. Eight scripts and backed soundstage, with Law in

F R O M T O P : C O U R T E S Y R E B E C C A S I M O N S ; C O U R T E S Y PA R A M O U N T ( 5 ) ; C O U R T E S Y D I G I TA L D O M A I N
All of this illustrates the irony nine years later, Paramount Pictures releases Conran’s Sky a model of a P-40 fighter. The
of visual effects—that some of Captain and the World of Tomorrow, produced with the help robots were computer-animated,
the simplest things in nature are of the Sci-Tech Award–nominated program. the street-level details 3-D digital
some of the most complex to When you’re watching an effects-intensive movie, what models, and the background a
synthesize. “We’ve spent our you’re seeing at any given moment is a patchwork quilt of 2-D collage of modern and archi-
whole lives exposed to water, individually produced visuals. A single frame may have been val photography. The entire movie
snow, smoke and dust,” Kapler built from up to 500 distinct components, from filmed sets and was produced this way—no
says. “If they aren’t shaped right, performances to CG characters and landscapes. Compositing locations, no sets, minimal props.
don’t move right, or the shadows software is the tool for assembling all the pieces; it’s like After Effects assembles and
aren’t correct, your brain sends also manipulates:
you a subconscious message: stretching, shrinking,
bad special effect.” and cloning elements;
causing objects to
glow, disappear, or
morph; and simulat-
1 2 ing explosions and
lightning. It is an
artistic tool as much
as it is a mechanical
one. Using the pro-
gram, says Sky Cap-
tain compositing
3 4
supervisor Stephen
Storm software uses 3-D pixels called A CG streetscape (1), photographic 2-D background (2) and bluescreened Lawes, “was akin to
voxels to create the billowing, edgeless actor (3) are combined to create a final scene (4). oil painting.”
forms found in nature.

60 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

 Blade: Trinity
ˇ
ATTACK OF THE
3-D CLONES
TECHNOLOGY: 3-D Scanning
NOMINEE: Dirk Callaerts [left], Mark Proesman| Eyetronics Shapeware
CREDITS: Blade: Trinity, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

P
FROM TOP: COURTESY NEW LINE PRODUCTIONS; COURTESY MM STUDIOS (2); COURTESY NEW LINE PRODUCTIONS (3)

ITY THE EVIL VAMPIRES OF saved the team thousands of digital camera—a 6.4-mega-
the horror flick Blade: hours of design work. pixel Canon EOS 10D—
Trinity. In the film, Scanning allows you to mounted to one end of a
released late last year and quickly transport something metal frame. On the other
starring Wesley Snipes, their from the real world to the dig- end is a flash, which projects
skin boils, they are shot and ital one; the process is similar a fine grid of light. Holding
stabbed, they turn into skele- to using a flatbed scanner to the frame, the operator
tons and explode into ashes. make digital dupes of photo- directs the lens and the flash
Blade’s vampires were graphs or slides, but it works toward the scanning subject.
living actors, with computer- for 3-D objects. Ubiquitous in Beamed onto a wall, the grid
animated clones substituted modern film production, the would be flat, but around a
in for the many gory death technique is used to decorate face or object, the lines
sequences. For the movie’s digital sets with realistic- contour. You take a picture,
computer artists to design the looking art and furniture, to recording the warped mesh,
film’s 50-odd vampires from create CG characters based on which the Eyetronics soft-
scratch, and to make each of handcrafted models, and ware translates into a set of x,
them match an individual even to construct virtual y and z coordinates. (Rigged
actor precisely, would have terrain derived from real- with a video camera instead
been practically impossible. world landscapes. of a still one, the system can
Instead, Joe Conmy, Blade: First-generation 3-D scan- also be used for facial-
Trinity’s visual-effects pro- ners are large and cumber- performance capture.) After
ducer, made 3-D scans of all some. Actors have to be a dozen shots have been
the actors using technology brought into a scanning taken from multiple angles,
from Sci-Tech Award nomi- facility (not easy to coordi- Eyetronics assembles the
nee Eyetronics. The resulting nate when working with A- data to create a single 3-D
“digital doubles” still needed list stars), or the equipment model or, in the case of
to be computer-animated has to be built onto a semi Blade: Trinity, 55 3-D models
before they were able to and transported to the set. that could be dressed, manip-
Computerized stunt doubles created
move onscreen, but Conmy The Eyetronics system is ulated, made to perform with 3-D scanning technology
estimates that the head start handheld and portable. It fantastical feats—and to die allowed Blade: Trinity’s vampires to
provided by the 3-D scans consists of an off-the-shelf horrible deaths—at will. burn and disintegrate seamlessly.

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 61

 tards fitted with 80 reflective

ˇ
THE ENVELOPE THE DOT MATRIX markers; an additional 152
markers were glued to their
PLEASE... faces. Performances for the
entire film were captured on
ON FEBRUARY 12, THE
ACADEMY HONORED TECHNOLOGY: a 10-foot-by-10-foot stage
A DOZEN SCI-TECH Motion Capture flanked by 72 Vicon cameras,
BREAKTHROUGHS more than twice as many as in
NOMINEE: Julian Morris |
Vicon Motion Systems any previous system. Rings
CREDITS: The Polar Express, around each of the lenses
ˇ

OSCARS
Spider-Man 2, Titanic beamed infrared light, and as
Horst Burbella, inventor of
the actors performed, the
the Technocrane telescoping
camera crane reflections from their markers
were recorded at 120 frames
Jean-Marie Lavalou, David
per second and fed into a
Samuelson and Alain Mass-
computer network. Vicon
eron for the remotely oper-
ated Louma Camera Crane then assembled 3-D data sets
of moving points, providing a
ˇ

PLAQUES detailed framework for subse-

Lindsay Arnold, Guy Grif- quent computer animation.
fiths, David Hodson, Charlie To enable natural interplay,
Lawrence and David Mann Zemeckis wanted as many as
for the Cineon Digital Film
four actors to perform at once.
compositing workstation The Polar Express This meant that the reflec-
Gyula Mester and Keith Ed- tions of up to 926 markers
wards for their design con-

T
O MAKE THE MOVIE VERSION OF CHRIS VAN ALLSBURG’S would have to be captured,
tributions to the Technocrane
best-selling book The Polar Express, director Robert each with an accuracy of
ˇ

CERTIFICATES Zemeckis knew that standard computer animation about one millimeter. Vicon’s
Greg Cannom and Wesley wouldn’t cut it. Too cartoonish. Neither would live-action film- iQ software was trained to dis-
Wofford for a silicone mate- ing. Too restricted by reality. To tell the story of a boy’s Christ- cern discrete bodies from an
rial used to create fake flesh mas Eve train ride to the North Pole, Zemeckis envisioned wild overlapping flood of points,
Jerry Cotts and Anthony Sea- action set against a backdrop of “moving paintings”—the like spotting constellations in
man for the ultra-compact book’s lush illustrations brought to life. And so he decided to a sky full of stars.
Satellight-X HMI Softlight make a CG film based entirely on the performances of human The finished motion-
Steven E. Boze for the DNF actors, a movie starring realistic humans who were CG from capture data sets were then
001 multi-band digital head to toe. He wanted digital flesh and blood. handed off to artists, who ran
audio noise suppressor Zemeckis and digital-effects supervisor Alberto Menache the information through a
turned to Vicon Motion Systems, whose pioneering series of simulators and
Christopher Hicks and Dave
Betts for the Cedar DNS achievements with “motion capture” have won a Sci-Tech animated it to create muscle
1000 multi-band digital- Award. Zemeckis wanted a setup with the unprecedented movements, skin, clothing
noise suppressor ability to capture entire actors (faces and bodies simultane- and hair until, voilà, they had
ously) as they moved around a stage. The technology wouldn’t computer-generated Hanks
Nelson Tyler for the
Gyroplatform stabilizing be used just as a special-effects enhancement in a particular as, among other characters, a

F R O M T O P : C O U R T E S Y W I L L W E N Z E L ; C O U R T E S Y WA R N E R B R O S . E N T. ( 3 )
camera mount for boats scene but as the basis for an entire movie. “We were risking little boy, a train conductor
a lot on this idea, and we weren’t sure if it was going to and Santa Claus. The finished
Julian Morris, Michael Birch,
work,” Menache says. “Vicon said, ‘Let’s give it a shot.’ ” movie had the storybook look
Paul Smyth and Paul Tate for
Vicon motion capture The company’s technology, which dates back to the early and breathtaking action that
1980s, was initially used to analyze the gait of cerebral palsy Zemeckis had sought, and at
John Greaves, Ned Phipps,
patients. Vicon released the film industry’s first motion- times, the characters were
Antonie van den Bogert and
capture system in the mid-1990s, and since then it has been unnervingly real. At other
William Hayes for motion-
capture cameras used to help generate CG-human stunt shots in many movies, moments, though, their faces
including Titanic and Spider-Man 2, and to generate monsters looked gray and lifeless. “The
Nels Madsen, Vaughn Cato,
like those in the recent films The Hulk and The Mummy. For results were very good, but we
Matthew Madden and Bill
The Polar Express, Tom Hanks and other actors donned uni- had a lot of volume,” Menache
Lorton for biometric motion-
capture software explains. “If we had one char-
acter to work on, it would be
Alan Kapler for Storm
absolutely perfect, but we had
volumetrics software
28. We will definitely be
trying this again.”
A hall of fame of past
Sci-Tech Oscar winners More than 200 reflective markers
is at popsci.com/oscars04. were used to record Hanks’s
movements for later animation.

62 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

 ˇ
STEADY
SHOOTER
TECHNOLOGY: Camera Stabilization
NOMINEE: David Grober | Perfect Horizon
CREDITS: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,
Step into Liquid, Blue Crush, Die Another Day

Step into Liquid

F
OR THE 2003 SURF DOCUMENTARY STEP INTO LIQUID, below it, the camera platform Perfect Horizon lets filmmakers get
Director Dana Brown set out to record the best footage ever remains level with the horizon. smooth footage, even when shoot-
of big-wave surfing at Cortez Bank, 100 miles off the shore Finessing the twin electric motors ing the world’s biggest waves.
of California. The results were arresting: Witness the likes of Ken that power the mount’s correc-
“Skindog” Collins ripping down the faces of 65-foot giants. Action- tional movements was Grober’s
sports eye candy? Sure. But it was filmed with an elegance biggest challenge. “If you have
approaching that of poetry—no mean feat, considering that the any sort of backlash, you’ll see
camera boat was riding the same swells. Capturing steady shots it onscreen,” he says. Perfect
required fistfuls of Dramamine and an innovative, Sci-Tech Horizon has evolved substan-
Award–nominated camera mount known as Perfect Horizon. tially since its debut. The latest
F R O M T O P : C O U R T E S Y A . FA R B E R ; R O B E R T B R O W N ; C O U R T E S Y S T E V E WAT E R F O R D

Even in filmmaking’s digital age, many problems must still be version is waterproof, housed in
solved mechanically, with gears, grease, bolts, cables, and years of carbon fiber and aluminum, and
an obscure inventor’s passion. Need to show racehorses charging lightweight (30 pounds, versus
into the camera? Use the Sci-Tech Oscar-winning Technocrane, the 130 of the original). It can be
which swivels, swoops, and extends 50 feet. Need a shot from a perched atop a tripod with the
motorcycle at 150 mph? Try nominee Doggicam System’s Sparrow camera mounted directly above, which Harry takes a manic
Head, an ultra-steady, wirelessly operated remote camera head. or be suspended beneath a journey on board a triple-decker
Perfect Horizon is the brainchild of David Grober, a veteran crane; the camera is controlled bus. For shots of the interior
marine-production coordinator for films and the founder of a as it would normally be, with full havoc—sliding beds, a swinging
company called Motion Picture Marine. “Throughout the years, I pan and tilt abilities. chandelier—filmmakers built a
saw that it would have been really helpful to have a small, easily Perfect Horizon’s sea legs full-scale model of the bus and
transportable camera-stabilization system,” he says. Some earlier have also proved effective on positioned it on top of a swaying
devices employed gyros to counteract aquatic motion but also tend- land. It has been deployed on platform. Inside, the camera was
ed to fight intentional movements by the camera operator, and sys- cars (Seabiscuit) and golf carts placed on a Perfect Horizon
tems powered by hydraulics were heavy and messy. In 1999, after (Spanglish)—as well as on boats mount. With the visual perspec-
years of tinkering, Grober released his own invention. (Die Another Day) and jet skis tive level, audiences were able
His key breakthroughs: electronic sensors to detect motion and (the upcoming Hitch). Perhaps to grasp that the bus was
a computer to calculate the appropriate stabilizing reactions. The the most imaginative use was tipping back and forth. “That
core of the unit is a gimbal that swivels nimbly from side to side for a scene in Harry Potter and was the only way they could do
and forward and backward so that no matter what happens the Prisoner of Azkaban in that shot,” Grober says.

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 63

 b
i
b
biioi l o
b
i
b

o o
l o
o
l o o
l
o

A post-9/11, post-anthrax
funding boom has made
the nation’s “hot zones” a
the hottest research

i
i g
oo g c a a a

g
areas around. Is this

a
a good thing? a a

i
g
By Jeffrey Rothfeder
Photographs by
Brent Humphreys c
i c l
l a a
c
g g
c
ii i
g
g l
g i
i
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ll
WARFARE

64 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

 FOG OF WAR Ramon Flick,
director of the Biosafety Level 4 lab
at the University of Texas Medical
Branch, suits up for a date with
Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 65

B
EFORE ENTERING HIS LAB, RAMON FLICK But that’s not what Flick told the National Institutes of
puts on a 10-pound plastic space suit Health when he received the grant to fund his research, because
with a bubble helmet, a double pair of that’s not what U.S. agencies want to hear. “They ask for spe-
rubber gloves sealed to the suit at the cific goals in the direction of biodefense,” he says. “So I, of
wrists, and boots. The 35-year-old direc- course, said that my aim was to be sure we’re prepared for
tor of the Biosafety Level 4 lab at the Crimean-Congo terror. I am interested in developing the vaccine
University of Texas Medical Branch that they want, just perhaps for a different anticipated purpose.
at Galveston walks past a chemical “I’m fortunate—that’s probably not the best word—that
shower and into the lab space, a 2,000- my life’s work has coincided with what the policymakers
square-foot sterilized white room. An believe is a mortal threat.”
airtight door slams shut behind him.
Underneath the floor of this room, in contrast to the stillness VIEWED BROADLY, THE ACTIVITIES AT UTMB’S CONTAINMENT LAB
of the lab above, is a mosaic of pipes that noisily suck out air are perhaps the most vivid illustration of the lockstep rela-
through doubled-up HEPA filters engineered to trap micro- tionship between the nation’s infectious-disease scientists and
organisms as small as any yet discovered. Next to the pipes are the current U.S. bioweapons effort. In 2001, biodefense-
a series of drains that monitor and sterilize each drop of waste- related research consumed 2 percent of the budget of the
water leaving the lab before channeling it to sewers. The lab is National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID),
negatively pressurized; even if there was a leak in the door seal the nation’s primary support arm for infectious-disease
when contamination occurred inside the room, air would rush research. By 2005, that figure jumped to 40 percent. The agency
into the room, not out from polluted areas. will dispense $1.65 billion this year in research grants to study
Flick attaches an air tube to his suit. It blows up and stabi- those germs that the agency contends are most likely to be used
lizes at about 70°F. Under the biosafety hood, Flick chemically in a bioattack—deadly, exotic bugs such as Lassa fever, Ebola
freezes cells infected with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and Crimean-Congo. That’s an eye-opening amount of money,
virus and examines the deadly bugs through an electron outdistancing the funds the agency has set aside for HIV
microscope. The virus, which breeds in livestock and is carried research ($1.5 billion) and influenza ($58 million).
by ticks, kills hundreds of people a year, mostly slaughter-yard The perceived threat of bioterrorism has provided justifi-

“ONE DISGRUNTLED OR MALICIOUS EMPLOYEE

AMONG THE THOUSANDS BEING HIRED, AND THE U.S.
COULD SUFFER IN WAYS IT HASN’T SEEN BEFORE.”
workers and shepherds in the Middle East, central Asia, cation for the Manhattan Project–like urgency and cost of
Africa, Turkey and Greece. The first symptoms—high fever, the biodefense program, but NIAID director Anthony Fauci
headache, vomiting, and pain throughout the lower torso— argues that the effort could ultimately generate significant
are followed three to five days later by internal bleeding from secondary benefits as well. As he told a congressional com-
multiple organs and hemorrhages in the hands and feet. Thirty mittee in 2002, the program could lead to the development
percent of those infected will die. of a series of broad-spectrum antibiotics—drugs that are effec-
“Of course you’re nervous at the beginning,” Flick says. “But tive against many bacteria, including those that are more
as you work with the viruses, it gets routine, concentrating on common in North America. The research will also almost cer-
the experiment takes over, and the only limiting factor is not tainly engender a greater understanding of the molecular and
your nerves but how soon you’ll need to use the bathroom.” cellular mechanisms of the immune system, findings that will
Flick’s experiments and those of his Galveston colleagues— help in treating and diagnosing cancers, lupus, rheumatoid
including C.J. Peters, the veteran virus hunter who inspired arthritis and certain neurological diseases, Fauci added.
the book The Hot Zone—target a breed of germs with a par- But as the program expands, so does the controversy sur-
ticularly intractable reproduction mechanism. Crimean- rounding it. A growing number of scientists and biodefense
Congo, Ebola, Marburg virus and their ilk are composed solely policy analysts charge that the plan dangerously skews the
of RNA, the chemical that converts the genetic information in nation’s research priorities, myopically emphasizing experi-
DNA into instructions to make proteins. To design an antidote mentation on microbes that can potentially be made into bio-
to Crimean-Congo, Flick must first create a DNA copy of the weapons at the expense of other, perhaps more troublesome
RNA virus, alter the germ to make it less virulent, and then disease threats. “If it’s not bioweapons,” Peters says, “it’s not on
restore the virus to its RNA form. the table.” Moreover, the expansion of bioterror research has
The trick is to change the virus enough to render it harm- occurred so quickly that it may grow hard to police, providing
less, but not enough to kill the virus entirely. Flick must inca- opportunities for the very terrorists we’re defending ourselves
pacitate Crimean-Congo to create a vaccine, not destroy it. against. And perhaps worst of all, the aggressiveness of some of
Because this borderline is thin and poorly understood, a vac- the research may veer uncomfortably close to violating interna-
cine is still a distant hope. Flick’s motivation, though, is tional bioweapons covenants, possibly encouraging other coun-
uncomplicated: He wants to eradicate a disease that kills hun- tries to do the same. “In the rush to protect ourselves, we’re
dreds of people a year worldwide, particularly in communities putting ourselves in more danger,” warns Mark Wheelis, a bio-
that get no publicity for their plight. weapons policy specialist at the University of California at Davis.

66 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

IT ALL BEGAN WITH THE ANTHRAX ATTACKS IN 2001. THE Point taken. Within months of the first letter, dated Septem-
aerosolized strain of the microbe used in the incidents was ber 18, the administration hurriedly lobbied for new funds for
even more toxic and concentrated than the public has yet been a comprehensive bioterror plan that included a building spree
told, according to government and private-sector experts to erect the equivalent of about six football fields in additional
closely connected with the FBI investigation, and its sheer biosafety laboratories, medical research grants to study the
potency sent shock waves throughout the Bush administra- deadliest foreign bugs, and special incentives for pharmaceu-
tion. It became obvious that had the terrorist chosen to assault tical companies to develop vaccines for such germs as botu-
lism, plague and Ebola. In May
2002, Congress approved the first
expenditures: $4.6 billion, divvied
up among more than a dozen fed-
eral agencies. In all, five times that
amount has been allocated since
then, according to a study by the
Center for Biosecurity at the
University of Pittsburgh Medical
Center. NIAID’s budget for bio-
defense research is now 40 times
what it was in 2001.
Few experts deny that a bioter-
ror threat exists. In a 1987 study,
former Federal Emergency Man-
agement Agency director Louis
Giuffrida estimated that it would
take eight grams of anthrax spores
to inflict the same number of casu-
alties as a 5,000-gram nuclear
device or 800,000 grams of nerve
gas. Biological agents are tiny;
microbes can be smuggled into
the country by overnight mail.
What’s more, the know-how to
weaponize bioagents is widely
available, with upward of 200
scientists from the former Soviet
Union’s bioweapons program
unaccounted for.
“Biological warfare is too good
a weapon system to ignore,”
says Bill Patrick, who was chief
of product development for the
pre-1969 American bioweapons
program and is now a govern-
ment biodefense consultant. “Bio-
weapons are easier to get and
PEER PURVIEW “I don’t have hide than nuclear or chemical
concerns about us having a secret [weapons] and potentially more
offensive biological-warfare pro- disruptive in small, targeted hits.”
gram,” says veteran virus hunter Yet although it may be possible
C.J. Peters. “I’m concerned that for terrorists to obtain anthrax,
everybody else thinks we do.”
plague or Ebola through microbe
banks or rogue nations, weapon-
izing germs is a delicate process
that requires access to proprietary
thousands of people at once—by depositing the anthrax into equipment. “It’s not that easy to release biological agents so that
air vents at multiple sites, for instance, instead of announcing they are infective,” says Dean Wilkening, director of the science
its presence in crude envelopes dripping white powder—the program at Stanford University’s Center for International Secu-
authorities weren’t prepared to stop him. The consensus rity and Cooperation. Thus far, only sophisticated government
among policymakers is that the anthrax killer, most likely an research efforts with thousands of scientists, like the now
insider in the nation’s then relatively small biodefense pro- defunct programs in the U.S. and the Soviet Union, have
gram, was using the incident as a warning to the government succeeded in consistently developing bioweapons in large
that it had better get serious about bioterror. enough amounts to be used in an attack.

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 67

 IN FEBRUARY 2002, IN RESPONSE TO THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S

USUAL SUSPECTS
THESE SEVEN BACTERIAL AND VIRAL AGENTS
pledge to make bioterror a priority, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention held a two-day meeting at which sci-
entists from academia as well as the public and private sectors
FORM A DEADLY BIOTERROR LINEUP were asked to identify the most important research initiatives
for NIAID’s new biodefense agenda. By the end of the meet-
CRIMEAN-CONGO HEMORRHAGIC
➤ ing, the scientists had created three categories of potential
FEVER | Nairovirus Crimean-Congo hemor- bioterrorism agents—A, B and C—and had sorted microbes
rhagic fever most often infects goats and sheep,
into the categories based on the level of bioterror threat they
but people can contract the virus from ticks or the
bodily fluids of infected animals. The fever is marked by the
posed. The “A” list of germs was deemed to deserve the most
quick onset of gruesome symptoms, beginning with nausea and attention as potential bioweapons and, in turn, would receive
headache, and followed by bleeding within internal organs and the lion’s share of research funding.
underneath the skin as the virus attacks the body’s tissues. In this “smoke-filled room,” as C.J. Peters jokingly calls it, six
microbes made the cut: anthrax, smallpox, plague, botulism,
➤ ANTHRAX | Bacillus anthracis tularemia and viral hemorrhagic fevers, including Ebola and
The anthrax bacterium has had a long and rela- Marburg virus. “We came up with a list that we thought was
tively successful history as a tool of bioterrorism. In
absolutely rock-solid,” Peters says. “Every one of these agents
World War I, German agents in the U.S. report-
has been weaponized by the U.S. or the Soviets or both. Each
edly infected American battleground-bound horses with it. In
2001, a series of contaminated letters killed five people in the
one of them is known to have been aerosolized, and each has a
U.S. and paralyzed the postal service. Anthrax spores are high morbidity rate and mortality rate.”
hardy, surviving for long periods in almost any environment. But some researchers are surprised by the speed with

P H O T O R E S E A R C H E R S ; D E N N I S K U N K E L M I C R O S C O P Y; B S I P / P H O T O R E S E A R C H E R S ; E Y E O F S C I E N C E / P H O T O R E S E A R C H E R S ; P R . C O U RT I E U / P H O T O R E S E A R C H E R S
which the CDC essentially set its docket for the next decade—
➤ BOTULISM | Clostridium botulinum especially since some of the bugs don’t seem to deserve the

F R O M T O P : L O N D O N S C H O O L O F H Y G I E N E & T R O P I C A L M E D I C I N E / P H O T O R E S E A R C H E R S ; A L F R E D PA S I E K A / P H O T O R E S E A R C H E R S ; D R . G A RY G A U G L E R /
Botulinum toxin, produced by common soil- urgency given to them. For example, tularemia is indeed
dwelling bacteria, is one of the most poisonous lethal, but the bacterium has infected few humans and
known substances—as little as 100 nanograms
responds well to antibiotics. “A two-day meeting two years
can kill an adult by disrupting nerve impulses. The U.S. sees
sporadic outbreaks of foodborne botulism, usually caused
ago has refocused the entire research community,” says a
by eating improperly canned foods, but terrorists could leading physician in infectious-disease research (who asked
intentionally contaminate the food supply with the toxin. not to be identified). “Ninety percent of the projects we pro-
posed got eliminated in that session.”
➤ GLANDERS | Burkholderia mallei That sentiment raises the question of whether the diseases
In a single year in the 1980s, the Soviet Union’s on the CDC’s list should automatically be first in line for
bioweapons program reportedly produced more
federal research funding. The flu, for instance, would make a
than 2,000 tons of the bacteria. Ordinarily, glan-
poor bioweapon and thus is not a priority. Yet it kills 36,000
ders resides in horses and rarely infects people. But if dispersed
as an aerosol, it is a dangerous weapon. Even with antibiotic
people a year in the U.S. and hospitalizes more than 200,000
treatment, glanders has a 50 percent mortality rate; only a few others. More distressing, a particularly deadly strain of avian
bacteria are needed to trigger a deadly respiratory infection. influenza is currently running unfettered through poultry
farms in southeast Asia. It occasionally jumps to humans—
➤ EBOLA | Filoviridae ebolavirus last year it infected 45 people, killing 32 of them. In Novem-
Thanks in part to sensationalist Hollywood fare ber, Shigeru Omi, the World Health Organization’s director
such as Outbreak, but no doubt also because of
of the Western Pacific region, warned that a human pan-
the disease’s incredible near-80 percent mortality
demic based on the avian flu was “highly likely, unless inten-
rate, Ebola is one of the best known and most feared bioterror-
ism threats. Since it first appeared in 1976, it has caused epi-
sified international efforts are made to take control of the sit-
demics across Africa. Ebola effects a total meltdown of the uation.” Estimates for the death toll from such a pandemic
victim’s internal organs. There is no vaccine. begin at two million and reach, in the most extreme scenar-
ios, well over 50 million.
➤ SMALLPOX | Variola major “We have no answer for the avian flu, and not enough
One of the deadliest infectious diseases, smallpox money to find the answer,” says Robert Lamb, a professor of
killed some 500 million people in the 20th century molecular biology at Northwestern University. “If it spreads to
alone before it was eradicated by a worldwide
humans and kills people at the rate at which it is killing
vaccination campaign. Today only frozen samples of the virus
exist. If smallpox were ever to get out into the human population
birds—80 percent—that, indeed, will be true bioterror.”
again, victims would experience a suffocating rash of pus-filled
lesions, and as many as half of them would die. MOST RESEARCHERS AGREE THAT THE U.S. HAS SUFFERED THROUGH
a shortage of Biosafety Level 4 laboratories, the highest-security
➤ TYPHOID FEVER | Salmonella typhi research sites where scientists study the most lethal bugs—
In the early 1900s, New York cook Typhoid Mary those that are contagious, fatal and untreatable. Only five such
sickened at least 51 people by refusing to wash labs exist in the U.S. today, employing around 100 researchers
her hands before handling food. Since then, anti-
(the precise number is classified). Yet the combination of the
biotics and hygiene have largely eradicated the disease in the
U.S. But typhoid fever remains common in the developing world,
300,000 additional square feet of BSL-4 facilities and the antici-
causing 16 million illnesses and 600,000 deaths every year. pated 20-fold increase in employees working there will offer
The bacterium is now resistant to most drugs.—SARAH GOFORTH access to germ warfare knowledge, recipes and agents to a haz-
ardously large group of individuals. Although the FBI requires

68 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

 BIOTERROR BOOM
Flick at work in Galveston.
Though it’s only a year
old, by 2008 this BSL-4
lab will be joined by a
$167-million facility the
size of two football fields.

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 69

 “IF IT SPREADS TO HUMANS
an extensive background methods and the possible
check for any researcher means to steal something
working at a BSL-4 facility, AND KILLS AT THE RATE IT’S out of the labs,” says U.C.
Richard Ebright, a professor
of biochemistry at Rutgers BEEN KILLING BIRDS—THAT Davis’s Wheelis. “One well-
placed graduate student with
University, asserts that “the
CDC, or any government
WILL BE TRUE BIOTERROR.” connections to Al Qaeda or
who defects to Syria, one
agency, is not in a position disgruntled or malicious em-
to manage such an explosion of activity.” ployee among the thousands of new people being hired, and
With multiple federal agencies handling such a vast net- the U.S. could suffer in ways it hasn’t seen before.”
work of labs and deadly bioagents, it’s inevitable that some
sloppiness will pollute the system. In late 2002, the General THERE IS NO CLEAR ROAD MAP DESCRIBING HOW TO CREATE A
Accounting Office chastised the CDC for “significant man- vaccine or antidote for a deadly microbe. The work is trial and
agement weaknesses” in overseeing shipments of “select error. In Ramon Flick’s case, once he has created a copy of
agents”—the 42 most lethal microbes and toxins, many of Crimean-Congo in DNA form, he modifies sections of its genetic
which are included in the biodefense code in ways that he suspects may ren-
agenda. According to the GAO, the der the virus impotent. He must change
CDC’s databases lost track of certain the gene to cripple the virus.
agents as they were distributed Unfortunately, not all mutations
throughout the country, and the GAO make a germ benign. Researchers may
charged the agency with doing a poor alter the genetic code of a pathogen in
job of inspecting and approving bio- the hopes of creating a vaccine, only to
lab facilities for safety and security find that they have inadvertently
controls. The CDC agreed with these designed a fresh germ, a more potent
findings and said it was taking steps and deadly microbe. Does this consti-
to improve its oversight. tute bioweapons development?
The implications of such short- That question is at the heart of a
comings were illustrated last June recent NIH-backed experiment by Mark
when researchers at Children’s Hos- Buller, a professor of molecular micro-
pital & Research Center in Oakland, biology and immunology at St. Louis
California, were exposed to anthrax DEVIL INSIDE University, that led to the creation of an
after a shipping error led them to C.J. Peters’s lab ultravirulent strain of mousepox virus.
believe that they were working with in Galveston Buller’s experiment had its roots in an
dead rather than live bacteria. The Australian study published in February
mix-up was discovered only when 2001, in which scientists spliced a for-
mice, which the scientists were using in their experiments to eign gene into a mild mousepox virus in an attempt to produce
develop an anthrax vaccine for children, began to die. The a sterilization treatment for mice. They picked the wrong gene:
researchers were immediately given the antibiotic Cipro as a The pathogen the Australians created was so lethal that it killed
precaution; none showed signs of infection. Officials from even those mice immunized against the virus.
the CDC and the supplier of the bacterium said they were per- Because mousepox is a close relative of smallpox, the Aus-
plexed as to how this confusion occurred. tralian experiment raised the possibility that terrorists might
But the deeper worry is that one of the new Level 4 labs will use its findings to engineer a super-smallpox bug that was
unwittingly employ someone who intends harm. “In the rush unaffected by current vaccines. As a result, Buller and his team
to protect ourselves, we’re creating a large population of peo- re-created the killer mousepox—in fact, they made a strain of
ple who have expertise about microbes and dissemination mousepox that is probably twice as (CONTINUED ON PAGE 88)
y

➤ KLUDGING A KILLER HOW SCIENTISTS RE-CREATED ULTRA-LETHAL INFLUENZA

AT THE HEIGHT OF WORLD WAR I, NATURE Level 4 lab, Yoshihiro Kawaoka and his team hailed the discovery, which they said will make
unleashed the most effective bioweapon ever isolated two of the genes that they thought might it easier to identify early signs of an emerging
known. The 1918 influenza pandemic killed be responsible for the 1918 flu’s deadliness. superbug and prevent its return. Other, less san-
more than 20 million people. Then it disap- They inserted each gene into a relatively benign guine scientists point out that the 1918 strain
peared, leaving behind corpses and lingering strain of flu, then exposed mice to these new might never reappear and that re-creating it has
anxieties. Why was this particular flu so severe? viruses. The two genes they chose each code for put humanity at risk. Although most influenza
Would it recur? Could we stop it if it did? a different protein on the surface of the flu virus. strains are unlikely bioweapons, this extra-lethal
Last year, virologists from the University of When mice were exposed to one of these one might be turned to that purpose. It now
Wisconsin investigated some of those questions. lab-created überbugs, they contracted the mas- resides in a high-security lab in Madison, Wis-
The 1918 strain’s genetic blueprint had been sive lung infections and hemorrhages typical of consin. One accident, or one lab worker bent on
gleaned from RNA in the preserved lung tissues the 1918 flu. The lethal ingredient turned out to sabotage, and we could have another epidemic
of American soldiers who had died of the dis- be hemagglutinin, a protein that helps the virus —sparked this time not by nature but by our
ease. In the confines of a Canadian Biosafety attach to cells during infection. Some scientists desire to outsmart it.—GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

70 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

 POPULAR

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

INSIDE PERMANENT CONTACTS 73 • HOMEMADE PORTABLE GAMES 76 • CLOUD CHAMBERS 77 • TIVO FOR RADIO 78 • ENGINE SECRETS 78

5 THINGS...
TO KNOW BEFORE YOU GET
IMPLANTABLE CONTACT LENSES
1 YOU NEVER HAVE
TO TAKE THEM OUT
This new alternative to laser sur-
gery (LASIK) uses tiny incisions
on the eye to implant a plastic
lens about a third the size of a
normal contact lens between the
cornea and the iris, giving most
patients 20/40 or better vision.
The lenses are designed to stay
in forever but can be surgically
removed with no damage done.

2 IT’S NOT CHEAP

The surgery costs $3,000 to
$4,000 per eye, on average,
and is elective, so don’t look for
insurance to foot the bill. Laser
surgery is often half that, but
people too nearsighted to get
LASIK can get ICLs. (Find an ICL
surgeon at verisyse.com.)

3 IT’S NOT FOR EVERYONE

Right now the surgery is FDA-
approved only for people with
pretty bad nearsightedness: –5
to –20 diopters. But if you’re
farsighted or have an astigma-
DEPT: GEEK GUIDE INVESTIGATOR: NIGEL POWELL TECH: Backup software
and hardware tism, hang tight—clinical trials

Archive Your Drive COST: $30 and up

TIME: 15 minutes
of ICLs for you are in progress.

PCs crash and viruses happen. But such data-destroying 4 YOU HAVE TO BE PATIENT
Surgeons generally do one eye
events needn’t be a nightmare if you saved a spare copy BETA FINAL at a time, with about a month
between eyes, because it takes
a bit longer than with laser
Come on, own up. When was the last time you backed up the files on your PC? If it’s within the past 24
surgery for your vision to clear
hours, give yourself a gold star. The rest of you should hang your heads and consider that, according to up—a few days to a few
a Pepperdine University study, every year computer users experience around five million incidents of weeks. But the healing process
significant data loss through equipment breakdown, viruses, and random acts of God and nature. In isn’t uncomfortable, so you can
other words, someday your files are going to go bye-bye. Yet even with the plummeting price of stor- be back at work the next day.
age, most of us back up like we visit the dentist—infrequently and reluctantly.
But protecting your digital life against permanent erasure doesn’t have to feel like a root canal if you 5 IT’S NOT A MAGIC BULLET
Although you can achieve
follow some simple tips. First, decide whether you want to back up your whole drive (often called imaging 20/20 vision or better with
or mirroring) or just a few personal files. The former saves you the trouble of reinstalling your operating the implant, you may still need
system and all your applications but requires more space. Second, archive your most vital documents to bifocals later on. (Your eyes’
more than one type of media, and keep them in multiple locations—say, an online storage site and a CD lenses harden as you age,
stashed at work. (And since many programs compress data into a proprietary format, make a second weakening your reading
HARRY CAMPBELL

vision.) In development: an
copy of oft-used files manually so you can recover them quickly without the backup software.) Finally,
implantable contact lens that
automate as much as you can. Most software offers set-and-forget routines as well as incremental archiv- can be adjusted by shining an
ing, which saves only those files that have changed since last backup. Turn the page to find the tools that ultraviolet light on it while it’s
best fit your needs, and rest easy knowing that even if your hard drive dies, your data will live on. >> still in your eye.—KATE ASHFORD

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 73

T
HOW2.0|GEEK GUIDE
THE
TWO DATA-SAVING SCENARIOS
LUDDITE
Diary of a Tech
Diary Tech
Resister’s Temptation
Resister’s Temptation
on the front to launch a backup your PC, just insert the emer-
anytime, or use the included gency CD, follow the prompts, EPISODE 9, PART II
Dantz Retrospect Express soft- and watch amazed as your MEDIA CENTER PC
ware to schedule future sessions. system returns to life as good TUESDAY 1 PM I attempt
You can’t boot your computer as new in a matter of minutes. to transfer some photos
directly from the drive, however, A close second is Handy and home movies from my
so if you have a catastrophic Backup (handybackup.com; PC. The HP doesn’t recog-
nize the movie file format.
meltdown, you’ll have to re- $30), which gives you a simple
So much for that.
install your operating system step-by-step wizard to set up WEDNESDAY 9 AM I can’t
before you can restore your your automatic archiving rou- get the screen resolution
data—no quick task. tines. Options include 128-bit right to read text on my
BACKING UP THE A more sophisticated and encryption and password pro- decade-old TV. Manage to
1 WHOLE DRIVE reliable alternative is to pair any tection on your saved files, enlarge it; that helps a little.
The simplest backup system is USB, Firewire or networked zipped or as-is archiving, and
just dragging files to an external hard drive with a dedicated the ability to upload data to a
hard drive. But that’s a tedious backup program. My favorite is server using FTP. You can also
way to keep track of several True Image (acronis.com; $50). schedule multiple sessions, so
gigs of music, video or docu- In addition to saving individual files that change often, such as
ments. A step above is a drive files and folders, it stores a com- Quicken data, can be copied to HP z545-b DIGITAL
with built-in archiving capability, plete snapshot of your hard disk a flash drive every few hours, ENTERTAINMENT
CENTER
such as the Maxtor OneTouch II and allows you to create a while your digital photo collec-
$1,900; hp.com
(maxtor.com; from $300 for special bootable recovery CD. tion can be updated on an
BARRIER TO ENTRY:
250 gigabytes). Press the button If Windows goes kaplooey on external drive once a week. Freezes often; hard to
read text on a TV
THE LUDDITE LIKES:
overkill. Instead try Windows sion, automatic scheduling and Slideshows, TV recording
VERDICT: Nice idea, but
XP’s built-in program Backup intelligent incremental archiving
for me, it’s a glorified TiVo
Utility (or Backup for Mac OSX from $10 a month for 200
users) with an inexpensive micro megabytes of space. WEDNESDAY 3 PM The
hard drive, such as the palm-size For e-mail-specific backup, I included keyboard takes
USB Monstor Drive (usmodular. love the program Express Assist up half the coffee table, but
its built-in mouse is easier
com; around $100 for two (ajsystems.com; $30). It creates
to use than the remote.
gigabytes), or a USB flash drive, compressed and searchable THURSDAY 7 PM Photo
which, with no moving parts, archives of your Outlook slideshows look amazing
is more durable. Simpletech’s Express messages, address full-screen. Sample pics are

I L L U S T R AT I O N S : H A R R Y C A M P B E L L ; 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
Bonzai drives (simpletech.com; books and a host of other per- better than mine, and great
ARCHIVING A FEW around $22 for 128 megabytes) sonal settings at scheduled for showing off to friends:
2 VITAL FILES include backup software. times. You can even recover “Ah, yes, that’s the time I
ran with the lions in Africa.”
If you’ve only got a handful of As an added safeguard individual e-mails without doing
FRIDAY 8 AM Still amused
files you’d hate to lose, such as against lost or broken hard- a full restore. If you use a client by the fact that there’s a
a novel-in-progress or a list of ware, check out the online other than Outlook, try the real PC in there, though I
contacts, a large hard drive backup service CapSure.com, equally capable Backup E-mail rarely use regular Windows
and complex software may be which offers excellent compres- (backup-email.com; $25). programs. My couch is too
far from the TV to read
Web pages or Word docs.
SATURDAY 9 AM Antenna
Keep it in the background. A common
[ Backup Tips ] mistake: scheduling automatic backups for [ Archival Life ] for FM seems superfluous
with Internet radio. One
the middle of the night and then forgetting to leave the PC turned These are estimated life spans problem: The music stops
on. Instead look for software that runs in the background with min- of standard storage media. To when I switch programs.
imal CPU usage, and set it to archive when you know the machine be safe, transfer your data to SUNDAY 9 PM The TV feed
will be on and the necessary drives will be connected. new media every few years. freezes, again. This happens
often when I pause a pro-
Check yourself. There’s nothing more sickening than a system CD/DVD+/-R: 2–15 years gram, and it’s really, really
crash, followed by the realization that your backup software hasn’t CD/DVD+/-RW: 25–30 years frustrating. Now I have to
been working for the past two months. Open your archives every HARD DRIVES: 3–6 years figure out how to disconnect
few weeks to make sure everything you expect to be there is there. FLASH DRIVES: 10 years this beast.—GREGORY MONE

74 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

T
HOW2.0 | DIY | GRAY MATTER

DEPT: DIY INVESTIGATOR: MIKE HANEY TECH: Hand-built PEERING INTO THE
portable games SNES PORTABLE
Handcrafted Handhelds COST: $150–$400
TIME: 18 hours
A. Power on/off slide switch
B. Directional pad and buttons,
Benjamin Heckendorn turns old-school game consoles from original NES controller
into custom-designed portable units. Now you can too PRACTICAL POPCORN C. Front plate of unit, cut from
1
/16-inch textured gray engraving
plastic and hand-painted
D. Stereo speakers taken from a
PlayStation One console
E. Custom-built circuit boards with
A
push-button tact switches under
the controls
B FRONT F. Five-inch screen from the PS
One console modified to be
C illuminated with three white LEDs
G. Motherboard from the small-
style Super Nintendo (circa 1997)
H. Rear plate of unit, also cut from
engraving plastic
I. Game cartridge slot
J. Battery compartment cut from
block of balsa wood
D BACK
K. Six AA nickel-metal hydride
Dimensions: 8.25" x 5.6" x 1.25" rechargeable batteries, good for
E Weight: 14 ounces about three hours of playing time

Like any good hacker, Benjamin Heckendorn knows that the best
way to pay homage to a beloved piece of gear—say, a classic
Atari 2600—is to rip it apart and transform it into something
else, preferably something portable, with wood grain. So when
the sign shop he was working at got a Computer Numerical
Control (CNC) milling machine—an industrial device that cuts

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 , FA C I N G PA G E : C O U R T E S Y B E N J A M I N H E C K E N D O R N ;
F
three-dimensional parts from solid blocks of metal or plastic—he
used it to craft a custom-designed handheld case from two one-
inch-thick slabs of acrylic. Then he stuffed in a 2.5-inch screen

T H I S PA G E , F R O M T O P : C H A R L E S S H O T W E L L ; T H E O D O R E G R AY; C H A R L E S S H O T W E L L
G
from a portable TV and the guts of an Atari 2600, which he’d
chopped up and resoldered to make more compact. Powered
H
by three AAs and a nine-volt, that first portable system came
complete with a brightness switch, speakers, buttons from an
old Nintendo controller, and the signature faux-wood-grain trim.
Heckendorn, a part-time filmmaker and graphic artist, has
since created several more portable Ataris, including one with a
solid oak case, as well as portable PlayStations and Nintendos.
Most of the newer systems run on rechargeable batteries and
are more energy-efficient, thanks to active-matrix screens modi-
I fied to be lit by white LEDs. As soon as Heckendorn finishes a
system, he puts it up for sale on his site, benheck.com, to pay
J
rent and fund his films.
But why buy when you can build? Heckendorn has just
written a how-to book, Hacking Video Game Consoles (Wiley,
$30), with detailed instructions for eight different portables.
K And because few people have milling machines in their base-
ments, half of the projects use hand-cut engraving plastic for the
body, including the SNES system illustrated at left. Find the com-
plete chapter on creating this portable at popsci.com/h20, and
preview all the systems in the book at Heckendorn’s site.

76 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

 THE THORIUM FOIL triggers
condensation from convection
currents and from alpha particles
radiating out in all directions.
Cloud chambers are usually viewed
from above, but this side angle
allows you to see the three-
dimensional nature of the trails.

Building one of these miracle

chambers is simple in principle
but finicky in practice. The idea
is to make a well-sealed box
that is room temperature at the
top and very cold at the bot-
tom. Felt soaked with alcohol is
placed inside to supply the
vapor. Balancing the apparatus
on a block of dry ice cools the
bottom. (Watch out: Many
kinds of glass and some kinds
of plastic will shatter when
placed in contact with dry ice; I
made mine from Plexiglas glued
together with silicone.)
After a while—could be min-
utes, could be never—the inside
DEPT: GRAY MATTER INVESTIGATOR: THEODORE GRAY ELEMENT: Thorium of the case will settle into a pat-
PROJECT: Cloud chambers tern in which warm alcohol
Seeing the Subatomic COST: $100
TIME: 3–30 hours
vapor slowly cools and sinks
toward the cold bottom. A
With a cloud chamber, you can actually watch fraction of an inch above the
the subatomic radioactive particles all around you DABBLER MASTER bottom, the supersaturated con-
dition will be created . . . or
Sometimes, in an alcoholic fog, I can see individual subatomic which allows you to see, in not. It took me days and the
particles zipping by in front of my eyes. It takes pretty strong stuff plain sight, products of radioac- help of Jonathan Sweedler and
to make this happen—pure 200-proof grain alcohol, denatured tive decay—the paths of zoom- Bernard Dick of the University
alcohol from the hardware store, or 100 percent isopropyl. Rum ing subatomic particles—in a of Illinois to get mine to work.
and vodka are too watered-down. dense fog of alcohol. Even with no radioactive
Before someone stages an intervention, I should mention that the Cloud chambers work by cre- source in place, you’ll see occa-
alcohol is not in me, it’s in a sealed case called a cloud chamber, ating a layer of supersaturated sional tracks going in random
vapor: a space where gaseous directions. This is the result of
MELTING POINT: 1,750°C alcohol has been cooled below cosmic rays, radon gas and the
Th
Thorium
DISCOVERED: 1829
NAMED FOR: Thor, the Scandinavian god of thunder
USES: Lantern mantles, welding rods,
the point where it should con-
dense back into liquid but
various other radioactive sub-
stances that occur naturally.
90 heating the interior of the Earth hasn’t, because nothing has To boost the action, we
triggered the condensation. placed a bit of thorium foil in
In this environment, a high- the chamber, which greatly
speed alpha particle (helium increased the visible alpha par-
nucleus), beta particle (elec- ticles. You could get the same
tron), or gamma ray can agi- effect with common radioactive
tate the vapor enough to trigger sources, such as the americium
condensation along its path. found in smoke detectors or the
The result is a spectacular polonium in antistatic brushes.
amplification of the tiny distur- For all the materials needed to
1 2 bance into a trace easily visible build your own, including the
to the naked eye. In these pic- radioactive substance, you can
1. The cloud chamber being placed on a bed of dry ice, showing the
positioning of the light source, which is critical for seeing any tracks.
tures, single alpha particles buy a cloud chamber kit from
2. Alpha-particle trails and a single background track photographed as they have created trails of bubbles one of the sources at theodore
appear from directly above, illuminated from the side by a slide projector. about 1038 times their volume. gray.com/cloudchambers.

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 77

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.

ASK A GEEK JOE BROWN

YOUR GEAR
Pipe hot and cold running
radio (of the AM/FM variety)
into your Mac or PC through
the Griffin RadioShark, the
sleek and sexy complement to
any geek desktop. Jack it into
your USB port and tune in your
local airwaves. More impres-
sive, the RadioShark can pause
and record live broadcasts or
schedule recordings (griffintech
nology.com; $70).—Rael Dorn-
fest, chief technology officer
of O’Reilly Media and editor
of the blog mobilewhack.com

THE TIP SHEET

WHY PAY FOR SORRY, I’M
PHOTOSHOP? AWAY FROM THE PC
Picasa (picasa.com) is a RIGHT NOW . . .

Q: Is there a way for me to see free photo-editing program

with killer features such as
A must-have for PC Skype
users, the free Skype

what my “check engine” light Fill Light, which brightens a

backlit or dark photo while
Answering Machine (free
webs.com/skypeanswering

means before I go to a mechanic? preserving the details in

lighter areas of the picture.
Another great freebie:
machine) is currently in
beta, built by a hobbyist
programmer accepting

A: You bet. Your new car is constantly talking to itself. And with the
right tools, you can listen in just like the guys at the shop do.
A modern car contains dozens of sensors, measuring everything from
IrfanView (irfanview.com),
which offers batch process-
donations. It saves mes-
sages as .wav files and lists
ing and a dozen filter who called and when, and
engine temperature to the chemical composition of your exhaust. These effects.—Sree Sreenivasan, how long the message is.
continuously report back to the engine control unit (ECU), which uses the

I L L U S T R AT I O N : H A D L E Y H O O P E R ; P H O T O G R A P H : J O H N B . C A R N E T T
whose new blog is You can even record your
information to adjust system settings—air/fuel ratio, engine timing, and sreetips.com/new own greeting.—H2.0 Staff
so on—or to warn you if something is wrong. Unfortunately, the warning
is far less sophisticated than the data. Although some higher-end cars
indicate specific problems, most just flash the “check engine” light, which
could mean that you need an oil change or that your engine temperature
is way too high and total failure is imminent.
T THIS IS BROKEN
THE LATEST IRRESISTIBLE RENEWAL OFFER FROM POPSCI
Your mechanic deciphers this data by plugging a handheld computer
into the OBDII port (standard on all post-1995 cars). But you can also
access your car’s hidden info using a device called a code puller. If your
car won’t start, plug the PocketScan Code Reader (actron.com; $70) into
your OBDII port, and look up the displayed code in the accompanying
book to find out if it’s an ignition problem or a fuel injection issue. The
Pocket OBD Professional (autologicco.com; $295) works with your
Pocket PC and interprets the code onscreen and provides suggested fixes.
JOE BROWN, a certified auto mechanic and self-confessed car geek,
is POPSCI’s Best of What’s New assistant editor. See more examples of things broken at thisisbroken.com.

78 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

 FYI
POPULAR
scıence T

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

TUNEFUL TITAN Four songs

on board the Huygens probe
bring Earth music to Saturn.

[MUSIC OF THE SPHERES]

Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music
THERE ARE STOWAWAYS ON BOARD search for life beyond Earth. A noble
the Huygens probe. Along with the spec- goal, to be sure. But if it takes French
trometers and cameras and shielding for pop to engage the public in a mission
the 13,000-mile-an-hour descent into the that has flown 2.5 billion miles to reach
atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon, a nitrogen-covered world that may
the spacecraft that arrived at Titan in resemble a young Earth, then the space
January held a curious guest within its program has a serious p.r. problem
aluminum-and-silica-clad exterior: a CD indeed. Judge the music’s inspirational
with four rock songs from French musi- value yourself at music2titan.com.
cians Julien Civange and Louis Haéri. (Editors’ note: This issue went to press
Why, one might reasonably ask, was before Huygens’s scheduled arrival at
pop music occupying valuable storage Titan on January 14.)
space on an interplanetary mission? If While the European Space Agency is
you trudge past all the mystical rhetoric sending music to the outer planets, Don
on the project’s Web site about “the will Gurnett is bringing it back. Gurnett, a
to embellish Earth and space with revo- professor of physics at the University of
lutionary art projects,” you’ll find that Iowa, has flown plasma-wave detectors
N I K S C H U L Z / L - D O PA

the project is pure public relations by on 22 space missions. The instruments

the European Space Agency, builders act like giant microphones, picking up
of the Huygens probe, an effort to sell the tremblings of the thin, electrically
European youth on the grand project charged gas called plasma. Gurnett’s
of interplanetary exploration and the work, which has led to the discovery of

80 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

T
FYI
lightning on Jupiter, has inspired a Museum) and Amiens (where he spent [BIRD WATCH]
modern classical music composition. his later years) are co-hosting a Jules
Sun Rings, written by Terry Riley and Verne festival of epic proportions. The And Then There Were Two
performed by the Kronos Quartet, inte- revelry includes specially commissioned THE CHANCES OF SURVIVAL JUST GOT
grates an ethereal landscape of space elaborate street theater by Royal de a lot slimmer for the shy Hawaiian
sounds from Gurnett’s old recordings, Luxe (May 19–22, Nantes; June 16–19, forest bird called the po’ouli, which was
including the “whistlers” caused by far- Amiens), expositions on space explo- first discovered in 1973. One of the
off lightning and the “chorus” that ration and Verne (April–December, three known po’ouli—and the only one
arises from synchronized emissions of Museum of Natural History, Nantes), in captivity—recently died, casting a
electrons in the Van Allen Belt. Perfor- a comparison of modern comic books decided pall over the hopes that scien-
mances of the piece are sporadically to themes in Verne’s books (September, tists might be able to save the entire
given around the world, and a DVD is Nantes), films about Verne (March 21, species from extinction. The bird, a
planned for release later this year. For Nantes; March 24, Amiens). See male, had been captured in September
more information, see kronosquartet.org cijv.fr/index_eng.php or, in French, www. and transferred to the Maui Bird Con-
or www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/space- nantes.fr/detente/culture/art_564.asp. servation Center, a facility that breeds
audio.—MICHAEL MOYER Hardcore Verne-ophiles will converge rare birds. The deceased wasn’t the
on the Jules Verne World Event—a halest of fellows. At more than seven
[THE LITERARY TOURIST]

COURTESY DLNR-FORESTRY AND WILDLIFE

mixed French/English-language confer-
ence sponsored by the Centre Interna-
20,000 Leagues to the Party tional Jules Verne. The seven-day con-
THIS MARCH 24 MARKS THE 100TH clave features symposia, sightseeing,
anniversary of the death of Jules Verne, a visit to the “Imaginaire Jules Verne”
the father of science fiction and creator exhibition, and viewing the writer’s
of such works as Around the World in original works at the Jules Verne House.
Eighty Days and 20,000 Leagues under The Jules Verne World Event will take
the Sea. Throughout this year, the place in Amiens and Nantes March 20
French cities of Nantes (Verne’s child- through 26 (cijv.fr/mondial_eng.html). REST IN PEACE, PO’OULI The demise of the
hood home, and host to the Jules Verne —MARTHA HARBISON captured po’ouli reduces their number to two.
 T
FYI
years old, he was elderly for a po’ouli;
he was missing an eye, had a tumor,
and was beset by organ failure.
It’s hard to say if the remaining two
po’ouli—believed to be a male and a
female—are faring any better: They
are both nearing the end of their
reproductive age and haven’t been
spotted in some months. Ornithologist
Eric VanderWerf of the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service remains cautiously
optimistic, though. “They’ve gone
missing for months before,” he
explains. In the past, the female
po’ouli has been seen tending a nest
of fledglings of a related bird, the
Maui parrotbill. “I think the po’ouli is
going through something of a species
identity crisis,” VanderWerf says. But
even if the worst comes to pass, and
the efforts of scientists can’t save the
po’ouli while it is still alive, perhaps
they can do so once the bird is extinct.
The Maui center saved tissue samples
of the bird that died in captivity, and
when the science of genetic engineer-
ing matures, perhaps the po’ouli will
enjoy a renaissance.—MARTHA HARBISON
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 57) Columbia accident, though, Bigelow
rolled out the 747 the first time.” Schnei- found himself in competition with
der, though, has no doubt that Nautilus NASA for rides on the Soyuz—a dis-
will be in orbit by 2010, as planned—in tinctly untenable position.
large part because Bigelow is in charge. The success of the X Prize pointed
He compares Bigelow with another the way toward a potential solution:
wildly successful Las Vegas real-estate Bigelow decided to launch his own com-
mogul who had aerospace interests: petition. America’s Space Prize will
“Bob is like Howard Hughes reincarnat- award $50 million for the first privately
ed. He’s not just a financial person; he’s funded spacecraft that can send five
in the middle of everything that we do.” people into orbit and dock with a
It could be argued that Bigelow’s Bigelow Aerospace habitat [see page 55].
space station is on the way to becoming The deadline is January 10, 2010, the
his own Spruce Goose, the monumen- date Bigelow wants his hotel to open.
tally ambitious Hughes aircraft that The prospects for orbital tourism
could barely get airborne. But whereas look good. Already two tourists have
the freewheeling Hughes inherited a paid $20 million each for weeklong
fortune with which to make a bigger vacations on the ISS. At $7.9 million,
fortune, Bigelow is a self-made man, and Bigelow’s tickets will be a relative bar-
therein lies a key difference. Beginning gain. At that price, says Eric Anderson,
with his first apartment house, Bigelow whose company, Space Adventures, bro-
has developed a clear-headed and kered the $20-million flights, Bigelow
methodical approach to all his projects: could see 20 to 30 customers a year. But
Hire the best engineers and tradespeo- Bigelow says he’ll offer his station to any
ple, source the best materials, and stay commercial enterprise that’s interested.
on time and on budget. “They’re taking He hopes to find a market among drug
a very down-to-earth approach to what companies and other manufacturers
they’re doing in terms of building and who want to take advantage of the
testing,” Taber MacCallum says of increased efficiencies afforded by micro-
Bigelow Aerospace. Starting in 1991, gravity, as well as researchers and Holly-
MacCallum lived for two years with wood producers eager to shoot movies,
seven other people in a sealed, self- TV shows and commercials in space.
contained environment as part of the Still, Bigelow says he stands a better-
Biosphere 2 research project. He now than-even chance of losing a big chunk
heads Paragon Space Development, a of his fortune on this $500-million
NASA contractor. “They’re very much gamble. “But you know,” he says, “the
along the same philosophical lines as faint of heart never won a fair maiden,
Burt Rutan and his SpaceShipOne,” he never won wars.” Besides, “I think what
says, “and we all know how successful we’re doing has some national value,
that’s been.” Bigelow’s approach, he win or lose.” That notion is a powerful
adds, is aggressive, but “he’s very safety- motivation for Bigelow, says Gibbs,
conscious, much like Rutan.” his patent attorney: “He feels like the
Another convert to the Bigelow United States should be taking the lead
cause, John M. Logsdon, cites the com- in this and that we really need to get
pany’s close relationship with NASA as more private industry involved if
a winning factor. “I have little doubt that we’re going to jump forward with any
the basic technology is likely to work,” real spectacular moves.”
says Logsdon, who directs George Wash- “Where’s the inspiration in Ameri-
ington University’s Space Policy Insti- ca?” Bigelow asks. “If you asked 50 peo-
tute. “The issue is whether there’s a ple or 500 people, ‘What is America’s
transportation system that can get peo- inspiration today?’ what would they
ple or things, or both, up there.” say? To win the war in Iraq? That
doesn’t create a dream in some kid’s
BEFORE COLUMBIA WAS LOST IN 2003 mind. An inspiration has to be some-
and the remaining space shuttles thing you carry with you 24/7.” ■
grounded, Bigelow was in talks with the
Russians to supply his stations with Michael Belfiore is a freelance writer
three-person Soyuz capsules. After the based in Woodstock, New York.

Preview Bigelow’s moon cruiser and corporate space yacht at popsci.com/bigelow.

POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005 87

 (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 70) for the U.S. Army, then at the CDC—
strong as the Australian version—in and gained fame in a 1989 inci-
order to develop a way to destroy it. dent when he destroyed hundreds of
This knowledge, Buller says, could be imported Ebola-stricken monkeys in a
critical if a similarly supercharged Reston, Virginia, quarantine center. By
smallpox virus was used in a bioattack. repudiating inspections, he says, the
“My interest is pathogenesis: How U.S. is placing suspicion on unclassified
does a virus cause disease?” Buller says. Level 4 facilities around the country. It
“So every experiment that I do can be makes them appear as though they con-
seen as dual-use,” producing either duct illicit research and encourages the
genetically altered germs that could be possibility that, in reaction, other coun-
considered bioweapons or a means to tries will become just as shrouded
devise a deterrent. “To design a defense about their biodefense operations.
against an exotic germ, you have to “That could lead to an arms race
have the virus that you are trying to based on secrecy. Smaller, anti-U.S.
defend against.” countries might create bioweapons to
Buller and his colleagues have devel- protect themselves against us because
oped a highly specific antidote to their they believe we’re doing the same
mousepox virus, which they plan to thing,” Peters says. “Maybe I’m naive,
publish this fall. “I’m only publishing but I don’t have concerns about us
because I have a therapeutic option,” he having a secret offensive biological-
explains. “Disclosure when we have a warfare program. I’m concerned that
mitigating treatment to an altered everybody else thinks we do.”
virus is important. This way, if terror- The government’s nebulous des-
ists were thinking about weaponizing cription of planned activities at the
the virus, they would think twice.” new National Biodefense Analysis and
Critics are concerned, however, that Countermeasures Center in Fort
this type of research may be inter- Detrick, Maryland, the centerpiece of
preted not as bioweapons defense but the biodefense effort, does not help to
development, which is strictly pro- allay any fears that the U.S. may violate
hibited by the Biological Weapons the Biological Weapons Convention.
Convention of 1972. This pact, which When completed in 2008, the center
has been ratified by 144 countries, bars will house new, top-secret Level 4 labs
nations from developing or stockpiling (the Department of Homeland Security
bioweapons and allows scientists to will not confirm how many). According
produce bioagents only in small quan- to a DHS document, lab researchers at
tities to investigate defensive measures the site will characterize “genetically
against bioterror. engineered pathogens for their bio-
Other than a few small, embarrass- threat agent potential” and analyze how
ing incidents, the U.S. has remained easily those germs could be spread by
faithful to its Biological Weapons Con- air or other delivery mechanisms. They
vention commitment. But lately, it has will also use computer models to see
softened on some of its support for the whether specific germs could be pro-
accord. In 2001 the Bush administra- duced in great enough quantity to be
tion surprised biowarfare negotiators weaponized. “Creating new agents and
in Geneva by rejecting an enforcement new ways to disperse them may consti-
plan, backed by the European Union tute development in the guise of threat
and most other nations, that would assessment,” says Milton Leitenberg, a
require “no-knock” inspections of a senior research scholar at the Center for
country’s biosafety facilities if there International and Security Studies at
was widespread suspicion that bio- the University of Maryland.
weapons development was taking Homeland Security officials defend
place. The U.S. maintained that other the biodefense program, saying that it
nations would use this codicil to openly will be as open as possible and will not
spy on American sites. breach the biowarfare agreement. But
C.J. Peters thinks this stance was a they concede that biodefense today, by
mistake. Peters has tackled infectious necessity, requires stretching research
diseases for more than 30 years—first boundaries beyond what would have

Deadly bugs infect books and films. See highlights at popsci.com/bioterror.

88 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005

been acceptable before the anthrax
attacks. “If you have a bad guy who is
trying to hurt you with a bioweapon,
you have to understand how much
material it will take to do harm, what
kinds of packages he’ll use to keep it
stable, how he might deliver it, and
how effective it will be,” says Maureen
McCarthy, director of the Office of
Research and Development in the
Homeland Security department’s sci-
ence and technology division. “Those
are hard questions. You can’t answer
them in a vacuum.”

IN THE NINE MONTHS SINCE I FIRST

visited him in Galveston, Ramon Flick’s
work on Crimean-Congo has begun to
bear some fruit. He separated out
mini genomes—small subsegments of
genetic material—from the virus when
it was in DNA form. After altering frag-
ments of these mini genomes, Flick
transcribed the individual segments
from DNA back into RNA. So far,
though, he has failed to convert this
RNA back to an altered virus. As a
result, he has not yet reconstituted a
working Crimean-Congo virus in RNA
form to test whether his attenuation
strategies could produce a vaccine.
That effort could take a few years, but
as long as the government’s biodefense
agenda remains aggressive, Flick will
probably have more than enough back-
ing to see his project through. Some
researchers, seeing the opportunities
on the bioterror side of the budget,
would love to get in on the action. Doris
Bucher is an example. Bucher, an associ-
ate professor of microbiology and im-
munology at New York Medical College,
has made some strides toward design-
ing a more effective flu vaccine. Know-
ing the government’s proclivities
toward bioterror research, she applied
for NIAID funding using a ploy that she
admits was probably too transparent.
“I tried to get a grant by portraying
influenza as a potential bioweapon,
using the scary language and loaded
scenarios that they like to hear, but it
didn’t work,” Bucher says. “They just
laughed at me.”
Here’s hoping that the nation’s very
serious bet on biodefense doesn’t turn
out to be the much costlier joke. ■

Jeffrey Rothfeder is a POPULAR SCIENCE

contributing editor. His sixth book is
due out in early 2006.
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 49) stores seems to be a fair indicator of the Piercing Pagoda, Wallet World and
designs. Odlyzko appreciates the synergy Minneapolitans’ technophilia. the Smoothie Authority. But then it hits
he’s witnessing (such as the recent One of the truisms about good high- me: It’s this mall that most truly repli-
biotech-focused research partnership tech design is knowing when low-tech cates the domed City of the Future I had
between the university and the Mayo will suffice. There is no heating system in sketched as a kid. It’s got the insularity,
Clinic in nearby Rochester) but still feels the 4.2-million-square-foot building; the the utterly synthesized environment—
that venture capital for tech start-ups is entire place is heated by the lighting although I certainly wouldn’t have char-
disproportionately allocated to Silicon system and the body heat of tens of thou- acterized it this way back when I was
Valley and Route 128 in Boston. Min- sands of bustling shoppers. It is a bio- dreaming up these visions, it is the final
neapolis, out in a sea of corn and soy- sphere of consumers. The 400 trees in the triumph of techno-kitsch.
beans, has not yet been given its proper mall’s vast atrium are kept pest-free by The mall, like my childhood drawing,
recognition as a tech capital. tens of thousands of ladybugs. There is a I realize, is an artificial city.
1.2-million-gallon aquarium and a whole But a truly great tech city—messy,
THE CITY’S HIGH-TECH PERSONA IS STARTING amusement park under a roof big organic, evolving—is defined by its peo-
to take shape for me, but there is one last enough to dock the Hindenburg. (This ple and by its ideas, not by its neat con-
place I want to see before I leave. If Min- may be the only place on Earth one could tainment beneath futuristic domes. And
neapolis and St. Paul are the Twin Cities, feasibly pick up Wi-Fi on a roller coaster.) so, after spending a couple hours in my
the Mall of America is their mutant con- The completed light rail slithers from childhood City of the Future, I walk back
joined triplet, a self-contained city on the Skyway in downtown Minneapolis out through the vast atrium, board the
their periphery. It is the largest mall in straight into the belly of the beast. light rail, and head back downtown,
the country, with 520 stores, 86 places to My first thought is that the Mall of to the city that far more legitimately
eat and 12,550 parking spaces. The mall’s America is like the Death Star—that is, if deserves that crown. ■
2:1 ratio of electronics stores to book- Storm Troopers shopped at places like
Matthew Power has lived in the mega-
metropolises of New York City and
For more on our methods, and to see how your city stacks up, visit popsci.com/techcities.
New Delhi, India.
 POPULAR

LOOKINGBACK
scıence T

FROM THE POPULAR SCIENCE ARCHIVES

APRIL1926 OTHER NEWS FROM THE

APRIL 1926 ISSUE

Terror behind the Lens!

Sure, stunt doubles have their share of scrapes and danger,
but the real daredevils of early cinema were the cameramen
The mid-1920s were exhilarating years in film—Valentino made the ladies swoon, films
like The Lost World featured the latest in special effects, such as stop-motion animation,
FPO
and the era of “talkies” was launched with the debut of Movietone, the first commer-
cially successful sound-on-film process. In 1926 POPSCI commended the death-defying
existence of the movie cameraman. “Think of the sort of stunts that make the rest of us
say, ‘Not me! Not for a million dollars!’—roll them all into one, and you have the
cameraman’s job,” we wrote. “Stunt flying? Submarine diving? Old-time routine stuff
for the crank-grinders!” These days, technology has eased the physical danger of being 22 MILES AN HOUR
a “crank-grinder.” Many of the nail-biting shots seen in modern films are crafted inside ON ROLLER-SKATES
a computer or shot on a relatively placid soundstage fitted with a bluescreen. Read about One engineer’s tinkering with midget motors
this year’s Academy Award–nominated movie tech on page 58.—MARTHA HARBISON yielded these unlikely commuter aids: motor-
ized roller-skates. The water-cooled motor used
acetylene gas as fuel and was capable of
speeds of 18 to 22 mph.

CONVICT SAVES OIL

INDUSTRY MILLIONS
While incarcerated at California’s San Quentin
prison, oilman C.L. Skinner invented a new kind
of rotary drill for use in oil-well drilling. Skinner’s
invention ran a cable to the drill bit, so the tool
wouldn’t be lost in the bore shaft, saving oil
companies an estimated $10 million a year.

AND NOW, THE

SAXOPHONE-FIDDLE!
“The jazz craze is responsible for some queer
melodies,” we lamented. “If that were not bad
enough, now a new jazz instrument has been
invented.” We remarked that the instrument
looked “like an opium pipe” and noted that
a musician would play its single string with a
violin bow. It never caught on.

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104 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2005