BONUS FOLDOUT: A BOLD NEW PLAN TO SAVE THE TITANIC

WHAT’S NEW

» 51 HOT
PRODUCTS
p.13

Robot
warplane
TeA
THE UNMANNED
Digitally signed by
TeAM YYePG
DN: cn=TeAM
FUTURE OF YYePG, c=US,
AIR COMBAT
(p. 42) M o=TeAM YYePG,
ou=TeAM YYePG,
email=yyepg@msn.
com
YYeP Reason: I attest to
the accuracy and
integrity of this

Back to Mars!
The Next Orbiter
G document
Date: 2005.06.17
03:18:57 +08'00'
Readies for Launch Pilotless Prototype
Northrop Grumman’s
X-47B unmanned
Forget Fireworks combat air vehicle

Tr y a 15-Foot Rocket Stuffed US $3.99 CAN $4.99

JULY 2005 POPSCI.COM

with 50 Pounds of Explosives 0 7>

One Man + 80 Helium Balloons = Liftoff! 0 92567 10855 8

 VOLUME 267 #1
T
JULY 2005 CONTENTS

“If you were a fanatical risk analyst, you’d probably end up

staying in bed all day.” That, sadly, wouldn’t be a good idea.
FOUNDED IN 1872
Every year, around 400 people unintentionally suffocate or
strangle themselves in bed. CAR CRASHES . . . CRIMINALS . . .
tech CANCER . . . BLACK SWANS? AAAAAIIIEEEH!, p.56
13 | What’s New
PHOTOGRAPHY A tiny hi-def camcorder.
GADGETS Your cellphone, circa 2013.
AUTO Saab’s 184hp booze-powered ride.

75 | How 2.0
YOU BUILT WHAT?! Flying a pack of balloons.
MAXED OUT Blow $7,000 on gaming.
GRAY MATTER Forging a real silver bullet.
TECH LESSON DIY animated flicks.

news and views

29 | Headlines
O N T H E C O V E R : J O H N B . C A R N E T T; T H I S PA G E , C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P : H U G H K R E T S C H M E R ; L U I S B R U N O ; J O H N B . C A R N E T T; J O H N L AW T O N ; D E A N A . E K D A H L

BIOTECH Subterranean drug pharming.

SPACE An übercamera goes to Mars. 56
COMPUTERS The Darwinian police sketch.
MEDICAL TECH A supersonic vaccine gun.

36 | Soapbox
SCIENCE FRICTION When mortals gain super-
powers, science gets silly. By Gregory Mone
MEDIASCOPE Despite what you may have
heard, obesity kills. By Rebecca Skloot
75
stories
42 | Is This the Future of Air Combat?
The arrival of unmanned combat air vehi-
cles throws the fate of the fighter jet into
question. By Bill Sweetman
49 | Welcome to Museum Titanic
Two miles below the Atlantic, a fight is 13 29
brewing over the destiny of the world’s
most famous shipwreck. By Mark Schrope
56 |
Car Crashes . . . Criminals . . .
Cancer . . . Black Swans?
AAAAAIIIEEEH! How the science of
risk analysis can help you to judge better
and fear smarter. By James Vlahos

66 | The Biggest Bang At the Large

Dangerous Rocket Ship launch, even
(explosive) failure is fun. By Joseph Hooper

depts.
4 From the Editor 86 FYI
6 Contributors 108 Looking Back 42
8 Letters

P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5 3
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 Joe Brown, Jenny Everett,
Mike Haney, Martha Harbison
Assistant Editor Rena Marie Pacella
Deputy Art Director Christopher Chew
Designer Laura Konrad

Fear Factor
Photo Editor Kristine LaManna
Art/Photo Intern Jamie Beck
Staff Photographer John B.Carnett
Editorial Assistant Barbara Caraher
Web Producer Leslie Wong
Contributing Design Editor Chee Pearlman
IT’S SUMMERTIME, WHICH MEANS Contributing Automotive Editor Stephan Wilkinson
Contributing Editors Cory Doctorow, Theodore Gray, Joseph
that sharks are engaged in their an- Hooper, Preston Lerner, Gregory Mone, Jeffrey Rothfeder,
nual feeding frenzy—or at least that’s Jessica Snyder Sachs, Rebecca Skloot, Bill Sweetman, Phillip
Torrone, James Vlahos, Charles Wardell, William Speed Weed
the impression the hype masters of the evening news will be pitching us. Contributing Troubadour Jonathan Coulton
Contributing Futurist Andrew Zolli
In fact, in an average year only about 33 swimmers get chomped in the Contributing Artists Mika Grondahl, Jason Lee, John
U.S. (with fewer than one fatality) out of about two billion beach visits, but MacNeill, Garry Marshall, Stephen Rountree, Bob Sauls
Editorial Intern Matthew Olson
you’d be forgiven for thinking the threat is far more dire. I was working
at a different magazine a few years ago during a summer in which this tri- POPULAR SCIENCE PROPERTIES

umph of perception over probability was particularly egregious, and,
gleeful skeptic that I am, I proposed publishing an article puncturing
the shark-bite hysteria. My then-boss, though, was implacably squeamish
about the idea. He just couldn’t let the numbers wrest him from the hor-
rific mental image of a shark mauling one of his own daughters. So he
turned it on me: Would I really let my young son splash around in pos-
sibly shark-infested waters? “Sure!” I snapped back, blithely feeding my
boy to the theoretical sharks in order to make a point.
We never did run that article. But in this issue I get my vindication, in
the form of contributing editor James Vlahos’s exploration [page 56] of
what the science of risk analysis has to say about why most of us are so
bad at gauging the perils, real and imagined, that we face each day. One
of the insights Vlahos delivers involves how our brains are wired to re-
spond to fear. “The thalamus usually dominates, reacting quickly and pow-
erfully to potential threats by triggering behavioral, autonomic and
endocrine responses,” he writes. “The cortex, responsible for the thought-
ful consideration of danger, steps in later. We fear first and think second.”
Publisher Gregg R. Hano
Advertising Director John Tebeau
General Manager Robert Novick
Northeast Advertising Office: Manager Howard S. Mittman
(212) 779-5112, Jill Schiffman (212) 779-5007,
Michael Saperstein (212) 779-5030
Ad Assistant Christopher Graves
Midwest Advertising Office: Manager John Marquardt
(312) 832-0626, Megan Williams (312) 832-0624
Ad Assistant Nikki Schneider
Los Angeles Advertising Office: Manager Dana Hess
(310) 268-7484, Ad Assistant Mary Infantino
Detroit Advertising Office: Manager Edward A. Bartley
(248) 988-7723, Ad Assistant Diane Pahl
San Francisco Advertising Office: Manager Amy Cacciatore
(415) 434-5276, Ad Assistant Carly Petrone
Southern Regional Advertising Office: Manager Dave
Hady (404) 364-4090, Ad Assistant Christy Chapman
Classified Advertising Sales Joan Orth (212) 779-5555
Direct Response Sales Marie Isabelle (800) 280-2069
Business Manager Jacqueline L. Pappas
Director of Brand & Business Development
L. Dennett Robertson
Sales Development Director Michael Gallic
Sales Development Manager Daniel Vaughan
Senior Manager, Events and Promotions

BEN BAKER/REDUX; GROOMING BY MICHELLE CEGLIA FOR iGROUP;

Christy Chapin Ellinger
This will come as no surprise to the marketers, news directors, politi- Creative Services Designer Mary McGann
Marketing Coordinator Eshonda Caraway
cians and advocacy groups who prey on our fears to sell us their products Advertising Coordinator Evelyn Negron
and positions. (We at POPULAR SCIENCE are not entirely innocent, as our May Consumer Marketing Director Barbara Venturelli
Senior Planning Manager Margerita Catwell
STYLING BY NAILA RUECHEL FOR STOCKLAND MARTEL

“Earth Attacks!” cover demonstrates.) I anticipate that this nexus of fear Consumer Marketing Managers Adam Feifer, Kristen Shue
and flackery will be fertile ground for Rebecca Skloot, whose new Soap- Publicity Manager Hallie Deaktor
Senior Production Director Laurel Kurnides
box column, Mediascope, examines the coverage of big science stories. Production Assistant Shawn Glenn
Prepress Manager José Medina
Of course, sometimes it’s our irrational exuberance, not fear, that the Vice President, Production and Technology Sylvia Mueller
stories play to, as with the “fat is good” mania Skloot deconstructs on Manufacturing Business Mananger John Conboy
Prepress Director Robyn Koeppel
page 38. But if fear has a natural enemy, it’s information. And with Skloot
and Vlahos on the case, I believe we’re in good hands.
President Mark P. Ford
Senior Vice Presidents James F. Else,
MARK JANNOT Victor M. Sauerhoff, Steven Shure
Editorial Director Scott Mowbray
mark.jannot@time4.com Director, Corporate Communications Samara Farber Mormar
CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUBSCRIPTIONS
For 24/7 service, please use our Web site: popsci.com/
customerservice You can also call: 800-289-9399 or write to:
Popular Science P.O. Box 62456 Tampa, FL 33662-4568

4 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
T
CONTRIBUTORS YOUR GUIDE TO THIS
MONTH’S POPSCI
+ From “accidents, fatal” to “zealous minority”
ACCIDENTS, FATAL PAGE 58
AFFLECK, BEN 32
ANIMATION AUTEUR 82
BIG FREAKIN’ ROCKET 68
CATASTROPHIC AT TAKEOFF 69
CHAMPAGNE, BOTTLES OF 54
CLUSTER BALLOONING 75
CONTEXT CAMERA 31
DEATH BY VENDING MACHINE 63
DR. OTTO OCTAVIUS 36
EAR-SHATTERING ROAR 108
A gigantic picnic and incendiary devices—sounds like the perfect Fourth of July, right? In ELLAGIC ACID 41
fact, writer JOSEPH HOOPER [left] and photographer TOM TAVEE had a much more
ETHANOL-POWERED TURBO 22
rockin’ Fourth of July than many people can boast [“The Biggest Bang,” page 66]. They
joined a few hundred high-powered-rocketry enthusiasts in a field outside Rochester, New F/A-22 RAPTOR 44
York, and—kaboom!—enjoyed some real fireworks: 15-foot homebuilt rockets searing FALLING COCONUTS 94
the air—or blowing up in flight, depending on luck and the skill of the rocket builder.
Despite the occasional launchpad burn-up or midair explosion, injuries to bystanders FLAMING PYRAMID OF DEATH 70
were nonexistent, as far as Hooper could tell. “I didn’t see anyone missing any fingers,” GET FAT, LIVE LONGER! 38
he says. Adds Tavee, who travels widely for his work as a documentary photographer,
HEALTH NUTS 40
“The rocketeer culture is one of the coolest I’ve encountered. You just can’t believe that
somebody makes these rockets in their garage!” HI-DEF CAMCORDER, SMALLEST 13
HORSE TRAMPLING IS SO 1850 95
I ♥ GAS GUZZLERS 35
+ As millions of dollars’ worth of movie and museum receipts have
ICEBERG, COLLISION 51
shown, the public remains fascinated by the story of the Titanic.
On page 49, Florida-based oceanographer-turned-writer INTERSECTION OF DEATH 63
MARK SCHROPE examines a bold plan to make the ship into a JOSHUA TREE FORESTS 44
virtual museum—a notion that he says has generated animosity
between those who want to bring as much of the Titanic as KEY-RING REAL ESTATE 14
possible to the surface and those who want to leave it be. LOAD-BEARING CARABINER 76

+ In Headlines [page 29], JOSHUA TOMPKINS explains how MOONED THE BEASTS 76
pharming—growing pharmaceuticals in plants like corn and NO SMOKE, NO JOY 69
tobacco—is going underground. In response to concerns that
RMS TITANIC 49
bioengineered plants could contaminate food crops, companies
are cultivating the pharm plants in abandoned mines. “They don’t ROCKET GODS ARE NOT HAPPY 92
use a fluorescent grow light, like you see on college campuses,” RUSTICLES 53
Tompkins says. “The power bills must be huge.”
SCIENTIFIC MAD LIBS 86
+ Photographer LUIS BRUNO, who often shoots images for What’s STYGIAN DEPTHS 30
New, is something of a technophile. “I’m pretty impulsive when
LUIS BRUNO PHOTOGRAPHED BY JOHN B. CARNETT

TANK-BUSTING MUSTANG 108

it comes to tech,” he says, “but I always call [POPSCI staff photog-
rapher and resident early-adopter] John Carnett first to see what’s THIRD-WORLD ARMS BAZAAR 68
new.” This month he took the picture accompanying our bio- TIME TRAVELER CONVENTION 88
pharming story. Those colorful Advil and Sudafed pills didn’t go
to waste after the shoot. “I actually use them,” Bruno says. UNBALANCED LIFTOFF 68
UNDERGROUND DRUG FARM 29
+ Illustrator ALEX NABAUM drew a computer with writerly ambitions
WEREWOLF INFESTATIONS 81
for our FYI story about software that generates research papers
convincing enough to fool academic-conference organizers [page WORM GUILLOTINES 70
86]. Nabaum credits persistence as the key to his work; he elimi- X-45A UCAV 44
nates any elements in an image that distract from what he’s trying
to convey. “For every good idea,” he says, “I have 20 bad ones. YES, I AM A ROCKET SCIENTIST! 71
And the first idea I come up with is almost always bad.” ZEALOUS MINORITY 92

6 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR LETTERS@POPSCI.COM

Is It Safe?
I take issue with the accusations made against the
safety of the space shuttle [“NASA’s Fixer-Upper
Flies Again,” May]. NASA has had 113 space-shuttle
launches; there has been one launch failure and
one landing failure. In a business as risky as space
exploration, that is an incredibly good record. Also,
saying that one more failure will doom man’s
exploration of space is very shortsighted. Man’s
curiosity will always drive him to explore.
NASA does need to upgrade, but it does not need to
toss out the reliable. I keep an old pickup truck not for
vacations, but for picking up and delivering supplies.
Mike McKinzie
Bayfield, Colo.

Apparently, NASA still doesn’t get it past 50-plus years studied the Earth and Simian Suckers
when it comes to safety. Of the the processes that act upon it, I have to I was interested to read that male
five people I see in the large picture go with the historical facts about climate monkeys will give up some of their fruit
shown of Discovery’s engines being change. Climate models are very poor juice for a chance to look at a picture
installed, none of them are wearing estimation tools and contain many sig- of a female monkey’s bottom [“Primate
safety head- gear of any kind. nificant but ignored variables. Global Pay-Per-View,” FYI, May]. This is con-
Dale Intolubbe warming as Mone understands it is clusive proof of human intellectual
Hayden, Idaho absolutely not a “given.” Climate changes superiority: Every man knows you can
occur over such broad timescales that get porn for free on the Internet.
Defending Fear knowledge of only a few hundred years David Gochfeld
I was surprised that a purportedly cannot be reliably fit into an overall New York City
science-based magazine allowed an understanding of the mechanisms that
obvious nonscientist to critique Michael bring about global temperature fluctua- POPULAR SCIENCE ONLINE
Visit our Web site at
Crichton’s book State of Fear [“Tempers tions. Mone should review Crichton’s popsci.com, or check us out
Rising,” Science Friction, Soapbox, May]. research references next time, before on AOL at keyword: popsci
When columnist Gregory Mone states: he so casually accepts what he reads HOW TO CONTACT US NEW SUBSCRIPTIONS
Address: 2 Park Ave., To subscribe to POPULAR
“There isn't a single well-informed char- in the newspapers and then offers his 9th Floor SCIENCE, please contact
acter who supports the theory [of global slant on matters he is unfamiliar with. New York, NY 10016 Phone: 800-289-9399
Fax: 212-779-5103 Web: popsci.com/
warming],” he proves that he is not in- Jim Classen subscribe
LETTERS
formed on the topic. Boise, Idaho Comments may be edited SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES
for space and clarity. For subscription or delivery
The book is fiction. The graphs and Please include your problems, or to report
references are not. Crichton’s opinions Gregory Mone responds: For the record, address and a daytime a change of address,
phone number. We regret please contact
are shared by many of us scientists. As climate scientists whose work Crichton that we cannot answer POPULAR SCIENCE
a professional geologist who has for the cites to back his arguments, including unpublished letters. P.O. Box 60001
E-mail: letters@popsci.com Tampa, FL 33660-0001
the physicists Gregory Benford and Phone: 800-289-9399
QUESTIONS FOR FYI
CORRECTION Martin Hoffert, have publicly refuted We answer your science
Web: popsci.com/
manage
Crichton’s interpretations of their pub- questions in our FYI section.
We regret that only letters INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS
• In our May story “When Earth Attacks!” lished research. Footnotes and graphs considered for publication For inquiries regarding
we incorrectly identified Naragansett Bay can be answered. international licensing or
as being in the state of Connecticut. In fact, do not in themselves raise a work of fic- E-mail FYI questions to syndication, please contact
it is in Rhode Island. tion into the realm of fact. fyi@popsci.com syndication@popsci.com

8 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
 JULY 2005

[TWWW.POPSCI.COM ] YOUR GUIDE TO POPULAR SCIENCE ONLINE

»
THIS MONTH’S FEATURES

See the U.S. Air Force’s first unmanned combat

NO PILOT? air vehicle take flight from the Mojave Desert.

THE EVOLUTION OF BANG!

2 TRACE THE EXPLOSIVE HISTORY OF
ROCKETEERING, FROM CHINESE
“FIRE ARROWS” IN THE 13TH
CENTURY TO THE RECORD-SETTING
72-MILE-HIGH FLIGHT OF GO FAST.

» WHAT’S NEW Get a glimpse into ethanol’s dark past—the story behind the alt fuel.

» HEADLINES Take off! Watch the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter soar into martian orbit.

» HOW 2.0 Make your own animated movies with machinima. Get resources and tools.

WHAT’S YOUR
RISK IQ?

F R O M T O P : J O H N B . C A R N E T T; N A D I N E K I N N E Y / P H O T O S B Y N A D I N E ; H U G H K R E T S C H M E R
Where are you most
likely to suffer a dis-
3 abling injury? What
animal kills the most
Americans each year?
It took two weeks for
our writer to determine
his risk smarts. Test
yours in two minutes
in our online quiz.

A TITANIC EFFORT
READ OUR IN-DEPTH Q&A WITH THE MAN WHO
WOULD TURN THE WRECK INTO A VIRTUAL MUSEUM.

10 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
 WHAT’SNEW
POPULAR
T scıence

INSIDE THE CELLPHONE OF THE FUTURE 18 • ETHANOL’S BIG BREAKTHROUGH 22 • WORLD’S FIRST ROBOTIC FOOSBALL TABLE 26

PHOTOGRAPHY

High Def in Hand

A gutsy makeover proves that professional
power doesn’t require industrial-size bulk STILL CAMERA FEATURES
Snaps 1.2-megapixel stills
while taking video;

» WEIGHING IN AT AROUND 1.5 pounds and measuring about

the size of a beer stein, the bantam Sony HDR-HC1 is the
PictBridge allows for direct
connection to printers
world’s smallest and lightest camcorder capable of capturing your life
in brilliant high definition—1,080 lines of resolution. How did Sony
(sony.com) trim the size and weight of its previous model, HDR-FX1,
by half? More-efficient chips on better-laid-out circuit boards account
for 60 percent of the miniaturization. Other factors are a new lens
assembly and the camera’s single complementary metal oxide semi-
conductor (CMOS) sensor. By using just one sensor, Sony was able to
use a lens assembly that’s 90 millimeters smaller than the FX1’s LCD DISPLAY
2.7-inch
while maintaining nearly as much magnification (10x versus the widescreen
FX1’s 12x). CMOS sensors are significantly more power-efficient touch panel
than CCDs, so the HC1 can use an 8.5-watt-hour lithium-ion
battery good for about 80 minutes of recording; the FX1
requires a fat 15.8-watt-hour battery for 125 minutes of
operation. The no-compromise diet also makes the
HC1 less expensive: At an estimated $2,000,
it will cost about half that of any other
high-def model. Pay it off when your
documentary rocks Sundance.
—SUZANNE KANTRA KIRSCHNER

OUTPUT
Composite jacks can out-
put standard-definition
video even when the
recording is in high def

LENS
3.5''

10x optical zoom

enhanced with
image stabilization
J O H N L AW T O N

POPULAR SCIENCE J U LY 2 0 0 5 13
T
WHAT’S NEW | GADGETS

Lords of the Ringdical

w propeller
A bottle pullsPlease.
opener? ratherGet
than pushes boats through the
some
water
real key-chain gadgetryne

» OVER THE YEARS, your key chain has become a custodial

clump of assorted accessories and unidentified house, locker
and car keys. Time to free up some ringside real estate and make
room for the latest key-chain gadgets. Careful, though—losing your
keys has never been quite so expensive.—MICHAEL MYSER

IMATION MICRO
HARD DRIVE ($190)
New this summer, Imation’s
sub-one-inch, four-gigabyte
hard drive has double the
capacity of similar-size
flash drives. It’s secured
with 128-bit encryption
and plugs directly into a
USB port, like a good
thumb drive should. It’s
also Windows- and Mac-
3
TRANSCORE
SMARTWATCH
SECUREPASS (N/A)
You probably don’t need
this biometric fob, now in
use at U.S. military sites,
but be glad others have it.
As a driver approaches a
security gate, he places his
finger on the fob. This trig-
gers external readers at the
checkpoint to scan an RFID
EATON HOME
HEARTBEAT ($150)
Install sensors to monitor
appliances, windows and
doors, and a wireless base
station will beam alerts to
the fob’s LCD if, say, you
left the iron on. When
you’re out of the base
station’s 90-foot range,
MICROBEAM TIRE
GAUGE ($30)
Properly pressurized tires
can increase your gas
mileage by about 3.3
percent. With oil prices at
more than $50 a barrel,
consider this: an LED flash-
light and tire gauge in one.
Touch a button to activate
MANDYLION LABS
PASSWORD
MANAGEMENT
TOKEN ($270)
Replace the Post-its on
your monitor with this
password keeper. The
token’s processor can
store and manage up to
50 logins, each up to 14
characters in length. It also
uses algorithms to gener-
ate impossible-to-guess
passwords. The unfortu-
nate irony is that you have
MICHAEL KRAUS

compatible and automati-
cally backs up files for
quick recovery after a
computer crash.
imation.com
tag on his windshield and
send his personal data to
the guard’s computer for
rapid confirmation.
transcore.com
it text-messages your cell-
phone if something’s awry.
The fob shows the status
of the house as you left it.
homeheartbeat.com
the light and gauge, and
then place it over the tire
valve to get PSI readings
on the backlit digital LCD.
brookstone.com
to recall and punch in a
secret combination of the
device’s five buttons to
retrieve your passwords.
mandylionlabs.com

14 POPULAR SCIENCE J U LY 2 0 0 5
T
WHAT’S NEW | GADGETS
WHAT’S NEXT
The Future Is Calling THE GUTS
A lot of people wonder what the cellphone of tomorrow
COMMUNICATION
will look like. We decided to design it Within five years, phones with
multiple miniature antennas will

» WE ALL EXPECT THE CELLPHONE to get smaller while packing in an ever broaden-
ing array of functions. The real question is what it’ll look like—inside and out—
seamlessly roam all networks: cel-
lular, Wi-Fi, ultra wideband and
in several years. To find the answer, we investigated dozens of on-the-brink technologies, whatever’s yet to come. An Intel
picking the brains of cellphone product engineers, industry analysts and lab researchers. prototype selects the best option
They told us of cameras that zoom, screens that play Star Wars, and micro fuel cells that based on network speed and your
deliver days of continuous operation. Some of these breakthroughs are showing up à la application. Another approach
carte in today’s mobiles, but to picture how they’ll fit together in one slick device, we would use a software-defined
enlisted the help of Ecco Design (eccoid.com), an industrial design firm that develops radio, which would reconfigure
consumer electronics for the likes of Apple, LG, Motorola, Sharp and Siemens. Here’s itself to tune in multiple frequen-
what we came up with and how it will work.—MICHAEL MYSER cies with a single antenna, dra-
matically lowering the cost and
bulk of a multiband phone.
PHONEMODE
HIGH-CONTRAST,
STORAGE
ULTRA-RESPONSIVE By 2008 we’ll be storing eight
OLED SCREEN gigabytes on our cellphone’s 0.85-
inch hard drive. The key: Toshiba’s
magnetic recording technology,
which aligns magnets from top to
TOUCH- bottom rather than end-to-end, sav-
SENSITIVE ing space. With storage on track to
SCROLL PAD
increase 30 to 40 percent each
year, expect to be filling 60 gigs
with high-def movies, thousands of
songs and 10-megapixel pics within
eight years.

PROCESSING
The do-everything cellphone needs
a do-everything chip. Texas
Instruments and Qualcomm will

I L L U S T R AT I O N S : E C C O D E S I G N ; I N S E T: C O U RT E S Y L U C A S F I L M , D I G I TA L W O R K I L M
have single chips running basic cell-

«
ALUMINUM
STYLUS WITH phones in 2006. By 2010, single-
RUBBER FINISH
chip phones will surpass today’s
most advanced multi-chip models,
adding WiMax and TV tuners.

1.8 BY 3.4 BY
POWER
0.5 INCHES Manufacturers are looking to fuel
cells, which would provide about
five times the talk time per cycle
of today’s lithium-ion batteries. Hi-
tachi, Toshiba and Fujitsu are work-
ing on methanol-based versions for
chargers and PDAs by next year.
And Nippon Telegraph and Tele-
phone is developing an even more
TOUCH-SENSITIVE,
LED-BACKED KEYPAD powerful hydrogen fuel cell. Expect
it in three years if—and it’s a huge
if—they can devise a small, safe
way to store pressurized hydrogen.

18 POPULAR SCIENCE J U LY 2 0 0 5
CAMERAMODE VIDEOMODE
A tiny liquid lens with 3x optical zoom and auto-
focus will give handsets true digital-camera func-
tionality. An oil-and-water solution between two
glass plates changes shape and thus focal length
when electric current is applied. Varioptic has
shown a version of this lens that can focus on
objects as close as five centimeters. The autofocus
component will be in Samsung phones this year.

Tune in a local TV broadcast with the phone’s radio anywhere you

travel, or stream pay-per-view movies from the Web. This year Nokia
begins trials on Crown Castle’s terrestrial TV network, which broadcasts
a Digital Video Broadcast–Handheld (DVB-H) signal for cellphones
equipped with a 1,670-megahertz receiver and DVB-H tuner.
Streaming TV-quality video over cellphone networks is a few years
out, as carriers finish building out their high-speed data networks and
application developers iron out content deals.

TEXT-MESSAGINGMODE A thin layer of nonturbulent water

vapor (a by-product of the hydrogen
fuel cell) is captured inside the phone
and then shot out in a continuous
stream to fill the frame. A small projec-
tor inside the handset shines the
image onto the thin layer of vapor.
The idea isn’t as farfetched as it sounds:
FogScreen (fogscreen.com) currently
sells projection screens made of water
and ultrasonic waves for large-scale
displays at trade shows and events.

Holding the
phone horizon-
tally, the user
pulls a tab to
reveal a 3-by-
Transparent digitizer circuitry
1.5-inch metal
for handwriting recognition
frame with
no physical
screen.

LED backlit display reveals

numbers or letters,
depending on the applica-
OLED screen also tion that’s running. The
serves as a rocker- solid-state keys are heat-
style navigation pad. and touch-sensitive, so
there’s no need for a key-
lock function.

POPULAR SCIENCE J U LY 2 0 0 5 19
T
WHAT’S NEW | AUTO TECH

Liquor Does It Quicker

Saab’s BioPower engine gives ethanol a kick in the pants

» WITH ALL THE BUZZ ABOUT HYBRIDS, it’s easy to ignore our homegrown alternative
fuel: ethanol. Clean-burning and infinitely renewable—we’re talking grain alcohol— SAAB 9-5 2.0T
ethanol is dear to environmentalists and economists alike. The standard 85/15-percent BIOPOWER SEDAN
ethanol/gasoline blend (E85) is widely used in Sweden, but there are only 313 E85 fueling
2AUDI
SPECS A3 3.2
GASOLINE E85
stations in the U.S. And motorheads aren’t clamoring for more, because E85 typically delivers
POWER 148 hp 184 hp
inferior fuel economy; it has about 75 percent of the potential energy of gasoline, so it takes
up to 20 percent more hooch to keep horsepower on par. But E85 also has a high octane rating TORQUE 177 lb.-ft. 207 lb.-ft.
(around 110), and Saab realized that a turbocharger could harness it. Turbos push extra air MAX. BOOST 5.8 psi 13.8 psi
into the cylinder, and higher octane allows a fuel to better endure the increased pressure. 0–62 MPH 9.8 sec. 8.5 sec.
So Saab cranked up its fans and created the BioPower engine, the first commercially available
TOP SPEED 134 mph 140 mph
ethanol turbo. A computer samples the fuel mixture and adjusts boost pressure—from 5.8 psi
PRICE* $35,000 $35,000
for pure gasoline to 13.8 psi for E85. Running straight gasoline, the engine produces 148
*based on exchange rates at press time
horsepower, but E85 jacks it up to 184, with no penalty in fuel economy.—MATTHEW PHENIX

IMPORTED SPIRITS, SIR?

[ [
Saab’s first BioPower model,
the 9-5, is already available
in Sweden. It could hit these
shores next year.

STATS
THE NUMBERS

zero
HOW MUCH MORE YOU’LL CORN USED FOR FUEL EFFECT OF FEDERAL
THAT COUNT HAVE TO PAY FOR A PRODUCES ABOUT: TAXES ON ETHANOL,

-51.0
FLEXIBLE-FUEL VEHICLE IN CENTS PER GALLON
42.5%
NUMBER OF E85 REFUELING Animal feed
I L L U S T R AT I O N : L A U R A K O N R A D ; P H O T O G R A P H : C O U RT E S Y S A A B
STATIONS, BY STATE* 53%
Ethanol
Minn. 119
Ill. 51
Iowa 21 EFFECT OF FEDERAL
TAXES ON GAS, IN
S.D. 20 CENTS PER GALLON
AVERAGE PRICE PER GALLON IN THE U.S.*
Mo. 17

+18.4
Neb. 16 BIODIESEL $2.27

Wis. 11 DIESEL $2.24

Colo. 10 GASOLINE $2.11
S.C. 9 Based on information from: National Ethanol
ETHANOL $1.86
N.D. 9 Vehicle Coalition; U.S. Department of Energy;
4.5% National Highway Traffic Safety Administration;
NATURAL GAS $1.47
Other 30 *as of 5/12/05 *as of 3/21/05 Corn oil Internal Revenue Service

[ TP OPSCI
ON THE WEB What does Honest Abe have to do with ethanol? Read about this alternative fuel’s history at popsci.com/biopower. [
22 POPULAR SCIENCE J U LY 2 0 0 5
T
WHAT’S NEW | HOME TECH

Mow-by-Wire INSIDE THE ENGINE

Turning the engine on cranks the
starter to open the fuel valve and
Adding computer brains to power–equipment brawn activates the electronic control unit
(ECU) (A), which closes the choke (B)

» CAR ENGINES HAVE BEEN GOVERNED by computers for years, but Honda’s
iGX440 (honda.com) is the first power-equipment engine with a microchip.
before igniting the engine. When the
engine warms up, a temperature sen-
The electronically regulated iGX440—which will show up in lawn mowers, water sor (C) tells the ECU to open the
choke. The ECU receives an electric
pumps and pressure washers later this year—runs at a constant engine speed signal from the power coil (D) located
even under changing loads. Thick grass usually causes mower engines to slow, behind the flywheel (E) to calculate
bogging down whomever’s pushing the machine, but the revolutions per minute and monitors
iGX440 maintains speed, and thus power, by giving the angle of the throttle opening (F) to
determine the engine’s workload. It
the engine more gas and manipulating ignition tim-
maintains rpm at a preset level, keep-
ing. In pumps, a water-level sensor automatically ing power constant by adjusting the
starts the engine when water levels are too high; throttle and spark-plug (G) timing.
in power washers, squeezing the trigger handle
automatically starts and stops operation. Here’s
how the Detroit–inspired power plant works.
—SUZANNE KANTRA KIRSCHNER

( (
G

( D E

1 2
TALL FESCUE GRASS BARCLAY GRASS
Smart Grass
Genetic engineering yields
a cure for bald spots

I L L U S T R AT I O N S : J A S O N L E E ; P H O T O G R A P H : C O U RT E S Y H O N D A
Stolon

Original seed New sprout » THE GRASS SEED you pick up at your
local garden shop usually sprouts one
grass plant per seed—or at least that was the
case until the scientists at Vigoro (vigoro.com)
started tinkering with grass genetics. The result:
the first hybrid plants that self-replicate. Vigoro’s
modified Tall Fescue ($2 per pound), used across
the U.S., sends out underground runners called
rhizomes. The company’s hybrid Perennial
Ryegrass “Barclay” ($2.50 per pound), best
suited for cooler climates, shoots out above-
ground tendrils called stolons. The rhizomes and
New sprout stolons sprout filler grass plants between seeds.
Rhizome Tell your envious balding neighbor that, unfortu-
nately, there are no human applications.—S.K.K.
Original seed

24 POPULAR SCIENCE J U LY 2 0 0 5
T
WHAT’S NEW

THE GOODS [
20 HOT PRODUCTS
THAT (ALMOST) SPEAK FOR
THEMSELVES BY JOE BROWN

Keys as You Please CD Surgeon

Ergodex DX1
» This config-
urable auxiliary
keyboard comes
with 25 buttonlike
Port City keys, each of
Sunbeamtech 20 In 1 Superior Panel » Mount this which can be assigned a series of
in your Mac or PC’s extra CD drive bay to gain an commands. The reusable, long-
eight-in-one card reader, two USB 2.0 jacks, a Fire- strand polymer adhesive lets you
Wire port, stereo miniplug in/out and more. Also arrange them on the base pad
displays CPU temperature and allows you to adjust however you like. PC only.
fan speed. $35 » sunbeamtech.com $150 » ergodex.com
Disc-Go-Pod Plus
» DVD-rental stores’ disc
repair system is now
available to consumers.
Using two microfiber pads
and a 99 percent aluminum
oxide solution, it removes just enough
material (five to 10 micrometers) to buff
out scratches. $495 » discgotech.com

Ambi-Desktop You Can’t Win

RadTech BT-510
» Lefties and righties
who share a com-
puter will appreciate this
Bluetooth mouse. Hold down the
scroll wheel for three seconds to turn
the right button into the left and
vice versa. $60 »
radtech.us
So Long, Dirt Bag
HydraPak AS Trail » The
nonporous, 0.0001-inch-
thick fluoropolymer liner
inside the hydration pack’s
tube prevents bacteria
from sticking. To clean,
remove the bladder, turn
it inside out, and throw
it in the dishwasher.
$60 » hydrapak.com
Gauselmann StarKick
» Go ahead and try to beat
this robot foosball
table. Using infrared
cameras and Portable
optical sensors, it Paparazzo
checks the status of Nokia N90 » The first
the ball and your camera phone with
foos-guys 50 times a Carl Zeiss optics, this
second. Play it in two-megapixel GSM
European arcades. shutterbug is no joke:
» gauselmann.de macro mode, PictBridge
for easy printing, and
RS-MMC memory.
352x416-pixel screen.
Plug ’n’ Protect Price set by carrier
Kensington Personal Firewall » nokia.com
» Plug this USB key into your
Window’s XP notebook, and it’ll
instantly erect a firewall—good
for protecting your personal
information when you log onto
public computers and networks.
$50 » kensington.com

Headset, Jacked
Izon Bluetooth MP3 HeadPhone » This Flash-memory music
player’s Bluetooth capabilities let it function as a hands-free
cellphone device or as wireless headphones. FM tuner,
SD memory (128-meg card included). $220 » globalat.com

Micro Machine
Toshiba Libretto U100
» It’s the size of a DVD case,
and its widescreen is the first
notebook display with LED
backlighting, netting 220
nits of brightness—about 50
percent brighter than usual—
while reducing power
consumption. 1.2GHz.
$2,000 » toshiba.com

26 POPULAR SCIENCE J U LY 2 0 0 5
 Featherweight Tough Guy
Orvis Zero Gravity Fly Rod » Bolstering the graphite
rod shaft with a carbon-fiber mesh skeleton instead of
the standard fiberglass makes this four-piece, five-
weight rod 15 percent stronger and 10 percent lighter
than its predecessor. $655 » orvis.com

SIM Card Computer

Sony Vaio T350 » The first
consumer notebook with an
integrated cellphone transceiver,
this laptop will let you access
Cingular’s EDGE network
for high-speed Web access
wherever the service is sup-
Doubly Green
John Deere CS36LE » By delaying the ported. 1.2GHz Pentium M
introduction of fuel into the cylinder, this processor. $2,200
chainsaw’s two-stroke engine improves fuel economy » sonystyle.com
by about 25 percent and meets EPA emissions standards
without a catalytic converter. $250 » deere.com
Vinyl Fantasy
ELP Laser Turntable » Five lasers
An Entertaining Tour Guide read the grooves of the record, which
Dual XNAV 3500P » It’s a nav system and the player translates into
portable entertainment center in one. The in- sound. The lasers don’t
cluded one-gig SD card is filled with maps of physically touch the
the entire U.S., but swap the card, and the sys- record, so they won’t
tem plays audio and video. 16.7-million-color wear it down.
QVGA touchscreen. $1,000 » dualav.com $15,000
» audioturntable.com

Body Buzz The Wandering Grill

Soloflex WBV Floor Coleman RoadTrip LXE
Platform » For years, professional athletes » Here’s a grill that col-
have stood on vibrating platforms to increase lapses into its own dolly.
circulation, maximizing their workouts. Lift a handle and tow your
When Soloflex found that 26 hertz propane cooker like
is the optimum vibration frequency, it rolling luggage.
designed its motor to produce exactly It’ll connect to a
that, keeping the price of its portable canister or a
20-pound tank. $160
unit down (others cost
» coleman.com
thousands of dollars).
$395 » soloflex.com

Divide and Conquer
Samsung Four-Door
Convertible Refrigerator
» Each of four doors opens
to a separately temperature-
controlled compartment.
Deep-freeze that venison,
but keep your ice cream
soft; chill your beer, cool
your veggies. $3,000
» samsung.com
Password Protected
Staples WordLock » Memorize a word
instead of a five-digit code, because this
lock uses letters instead of numbers.
Choose from more than 1,000 words for
your combination. $6 » staples.com
Quiet or Riot
Bosendorfer VC7 Loudspeakers » Most speakers use electronic crossovers
to designate which frequencies the woofers produce. This one employs a
series of baffles to mechanically limit the woofers’ movements, increasing low-
volume sound quality and power handling. $25,000 » bosendorfernyc.com

POPULAR SCIENCE J U LY 2 0 0 5 27
 POPULAR

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

INSIDE RECON MISSION TO MARS 30 • CRIME-FIGHTING SOFTWARE 32 • SUPERSONIC VACCINES 35 • SIZING UP VOLCANO RISK 35

[BIOTECHNOLOGY]

Pharming
Underground
Can subterranean laboratories
ease safety woes over
crops that sprout medicine?

D
ON’T TELL ANYONE, BUT DOUG
Ausenbaugh has built an under-
ground drug farm—in bucolic
southern Indiana, no less. It’s cleverly
cached in an old limestone mine near the
hamlet of Marengo. There, carefully cul-
tivated stalks flourish under the glare of
artificial lights and the rainlike spatter of
drip irrigation.
The facility, run by Ausenbaugh’s bio-
tech startup firm, Controlled Pharming
Ventures, in cooperation with researchers
from Purdue University, is intended for
growing pharmaceutical crops—corn,
tomatoes, tobacco and other plants whose
DNA has been altered to produce a vaccine
or medicinal compound. Drug companies
have hailed this new field, known as bio-
L U I S B R U N O ; I N S E T: C O U RT E S Y T O M C A M P B E L L / P U R D U E A G R I C U LT U R A L C O M M U N I C AT I O N P H O T O

pharming, as a low-cost alternative to tradi-

tional manufacturing. But environmental-
ists, food-industry officials and other critics
have decried pharma crops—which aren’t
meant to be eaten and in some cases are
toxic to humans—because of the danger of
contaminating food supplies.

PSSST, WHERE’S THE CORN? Researcher Doug

Ausenbaugh [right] built the first underground
growth chamber for genetically modified plants
inside this abandoned mine in Marengo, Indiana.

TICKER 04.18.05 SAFER BUG BITES? THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES BEGINS TESTING AN EXPERIMENTAL WEST NILE VIRUS VACCINE ///

P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5 29
T
HEADLINES

[BIOTECHNOLOGY] CONTINUED [[SPACE

SPACE]]
The fears aren’t based on mere conjec-
ture. In 2000, evidence of a genetically
modified corn intended only for animal
consumption showed up in Taco Bell taco
Mars in Focus
shells. Aventis CropScience, the corn’s A flying camera bound for the Red Planet may
grower, quickly abandoned the product turn up water—and a lost spacecraft or two
and was forced to pay $2.4 million to peo-
ple who said they had suffered allergic THE
NASA’S
SEARCHREVAMPED
FOR WATERAPPROACH
ON MARS TO SPACE
WILL INTENSIFY
EXPLORATION
NEXT MONTH
reactions to it. Two years later, federal offi- when the Mars
puts two tasks Reconnaissance
atop its to-do list:Orbiter
Return, the
to the
largest,
moonmost
and powerful
save spacecraft
cials fined the biotech company ProdiGene ever
money.sentAto90-mile-long
the planet, launches
solar-powered
from Cape tether Canaveral.
spinning around
This marks the first
$3 million for allowing pharma corn carry- mission
Earth could
to Marshelpsince
the agency
the twincheck
rovers offSpirit
bothand Opportunity
items. Twirling like beamed home
ing an experimental pig vaccine to con- hard
a baton,
evidence
the bottom
of once-flowing
tip would water. The MROgrab
autonomously will hold
orbitof thea planet 12 times
taminate soybeans in Iowa and Nebraska. amanned
day, investigating
crew capsule whether
in low-Earth
signs oforbit
water and arecatapult
more widespread
it to the than just
Regulations have since been tightened, and the
moon,
approximately
flinging astronauts
two square toward
kilometers
their destination
examinedwithoutby the rovers. “If I investi-
the young industry suffered a huge blow
when biotech behemoth Monsanto aban-
gated
guzzling
entire
Los thousands
Theplanet
Angeles and
system, is like
called
of pounds
here
Yellowstone,
of rocket
would
theonMomentum-Exchange
fuelI be
Earth?” asks James Graf,
onable
the way.
to understand what the
the MRO’s project man-
Electrody-
MAR
doned its biopharming research in 2003. namic
ager at Reboost Tether, or MXER
the Jet Propulsion for short,
Laboratory is more than
in Pasadena, just a
California.

Drugmakers could
quirky
Afterphysics
NASA,
with six engineers
with scientists
launched
project.
its arrival in 2006,Withthe$1.5
at Tennesseeincluding
scientific instruments,
at Tethers
to another Unlimited
planet,
million
orbiter willinspend
Technological
a radarinsystem
the most
funding
twofrom
University,
Bothell,designed
powerful
Washington,
years scrutinizing Mars
along
camera ever
to image ice buried
TKTK
very well find them- successfully tested
underground, 1
/10-scalecamera
and aa weather model of to the
analyze
tether’s
thecapture
atmosphere. The craft’s

selves venturing into high-resolution

mechanism in acamera
next-generation
Tossing astronauts
laboratorywill also
roversmoonward
last March.
and possibly
run recon, tracking prime landing spots for
is the
turning
long-term
up clues
goal,
to thebutmysterious
at disap-
the stygian depths. pearance
first the system
of Britain’s
would Marsbe used
landerto Beagle 2. With
lift satellites backanyintoluck, the MRO will also
higher
confirm
orbits. According
new evidence to Tethers
indicating
Unlimited
that NASA’s
president Mars
RobPolar
Hoyt, Lander
this , missing since
Although several plant-produced biophar- 1999,
wouldcrashed
save $500 to themillion
ground in rocket
after itsfuel
thrusters
over 10malfunctioned.—
years for a MICHAEL MOYER
maceuticals are still under clinical evalua- 4,400-pound payload. Hoyt hopes to have the MXER spin-
tion, none have reached the market yet. ning in space by 2018.—GREGORY MONE
Going underground, Ausenbaugh says,
will resolve many of the sector’s problems.
The 60-acre mine in Indiana provides a SEARCH FOR LOST SPACECRAFT
formidable barrier between the grow Britain’s Beagle Tether
2 lander went silent •
room and the rest of the world, easing the shortly after entering Mars’s atmo- •
burden of containment in several ways. It sphere in late 2003. A yearlong
Beagle 2
makes pesticides unnecessary (the space independent investigation couldn’t wreckage?
is free of bugs), and it reduces the threat uncover a clear cause of the failure.
Scientists plan to search for the
of vandalism (the entrance is policed by
remains of Beagle 2 as well as NASA’s
armed guards). What’s more, the constant Catch
failed Mars Polar Lander using the
51°F air temperature in the cavern serves mechanism
MRO’s Hi-RISE camera. They hope
as a natural cooling system for the hot images of the craft will reveal what
grow lights. And there’s no danger of a doomed the spacecraft. Yet any
Midwestern storm unhinging Ausen- search would steal time from science
baugh’s creation and strewing hazardous operations. “We can detect [Beagle 2]
•
materials for miles. (A tornado flattened if we know where to look,” says
Alfred McEwen, director of the Plane-
1 PREPARE
Marengo just last spring.) Spooled into a capsule, the
All things considered, a properly run tary Image Research Laboratory at tether is launched into orbit,
the University of Arizona and the where it unfurls to its full 90-
underground facility “would probably be Boom
principal investigator on the• Hi-RISE mile length. To start spinning,
an order of magnitude safer” than a sur- camera. “But this could be a good
face operation for a typical crop such as a power node at the center of
way to burn a lot of data on a wild
BOB SAULS

the tether distributes electrical

corn, says geneticist Norman Ellstrand of goose chase, so I’m a little bit leery charge along its length.
the University of California at Riverside. of this whole business.”
• Masses on each end of the
As a result, it would let growers sidestep Crew
capsule tether pivot around the node
some of the regulatory rigmarole to which and keep the tether taut.
biopharming is usually subjected by the
y

(CONTINUED ON PAGE 32)

04.28.05 BRING IN THE DRILLS IN AN EFFORT TO EASE U.S. DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL, CONGRESS APPROVES AN ENERGY BUDGET WITH A PROVISION THAT PERMITS OIL

30 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
 THE CLEAREST EYES
Orbiting 255 to 320 kilometers above Mars’s surface, three cameras will
Communications • work together to image the planet’s terrain. In addition to the weather cam-
antenna
4 FLING
era, the Context camera will image 30-kilometer-wide swaths of the surface
at low resolution, targeting the most intriguing spots for further study. The
Solar
When the capsule is at the
Hi-RISE camera, on the other hand, will snap images detailed enough to spot
panels top of the tether’s arc—
a pizza box. Although it will be able to cover only one tenth of 1 percent of
and farthest from Earth—
the surface in its highest-resolution mode, its 1.5-meter telescopic lens will
the tether lets it go.
High-resolution give the MRO more than five times the resolution of its predecessors.
camera
•

Solar
panels
•
5 DROP
• After transferring its
momentum to the
UNDERGROUNDmoon-bound INVESTIGATIONS capsule,

RS RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER
Low-resolution The Mars Odyssey spacecraft
the tetherfound
dropsice justaa
into
camera few inches underground.
DIGITAL PIPELINE lowerRoger
orbit Phillips,
and uses the
team co-leader of the SHARAD radar experi-
Earth’s magnetic field to
TO EARTH
ment on the MRO, wonders if that
boost itself ice is
back literally
into a

KTKTKTKTKT
The instruments on the • the tip of a great iceberg. The SHARAD radar
higher orbit [see inset].
MRO will send back
beam will penetrate up to one kilometer
about 6,500 CDs’ worth
Radar beneath the surface. As it passes through, any
of data—more than
change in the ground composition—say, a
three times the amount
boundary between rock and ice—will reflect
returned by the com-
part of the beam back to the spacecraft. A map
bined missions of Mars
of these reflections will reveal not just where
Global Surveyor, Mars
Odyssey, Magellan, 3 SPIN
the top of the ice layer is, but the bottom as
well, allowing researchers to calculate the total
Deep Space 1 and The tether continues volume of water now trapped inside Mars.
Central
Cassini. The MRO will its rotation, swinging
power
also serve as an orbiting
node the capsule along at
relay station, beaming 3,600 mph, into ever
to Earth data from the higher orbits.
Phoenix lander, sched- •
uled to arrive in 2008,
and the Mars Science
2
Laboratory
CATCHin 2009. Phoenix Mars lander,
The tether speeds along its scheduled to touch
orbital path at 21,000 down in May 2008
mph, so the crew capsule is
programmed to be in the A MAGNETIC PUSH FROM BEHIND
right place at the right time. After flinging its payload, the tether loses speed, and its orbit shrinks.
The 550-pound catch mech- To climb back up for the next job, it takes advantage of Earth’s electri-
anism looks like a square cally charged magnetosphere. Using energy collected by its solar
lasso. When the capsule panels and an onboard avionics system, the tether ejects electrons
comes within range, sen- from its base that collide with the magnetosphere. The resulting force
sors trigger the lasso to pushes the tether farther from Earth.
• Imaging radar
cinch tight around the tar-
get’s 200-foot-long boom in Magnetosphere
•
a fraction of a second. Tether
reboost
1 km

Mars rover •
Spirit

Ice deposits
JASON LEE

Payload
pickup

TICKER ///ON
DRILLING 1.10.03 VIRAL ANNIVERSARY
THE COASTAL THE COMPUTER
PLAIN OF ALASKA’S VIRUS CELEBRATES
19-MILLION-ACRE ITSNATIONAL
ARCTIC 20-YEAR ANNIVERSARY; FORMER
WILDLIFE REFUGE, UNIVERSITY
HOME TO MORE OFTHAN
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
230 NATIVE GRADSPECIES
ANIMAL STUDENT FRED
///

P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5 31
T
HEADLINES

[ BIOTECHNOLOGY] CONTINUED [COMPUTERS]

U.S. Department of Agriculture—one of at
least three federal agencies that scrutinize
the various aspects of production, along
with the Environmental Protection Agency
and the Food and Drug Administration.
“We probably wouldn’t have regulatory
authority inside a contained facility such
as a mine,” says John Turner, director of
policy coordination in the USDA’s Biotech-
nology Regulatory Services branch.
BOUNTIFUL HARVEST Modified tobacco plants are
an efficient way to produce therapeutic proteins.
Best of all, the underground yield can be
surprisingly bountiful. Scientists at the
Marengo facility recently harvested their
first test crop (a modified but edible variety
of corn, not an actual pharma product), and
the output was prodigious—the equivalent
of 337 bushels per acre, more than twice
The Darwinian Police Sketch
With crime-fighting software inspired by evolution,
a picture is worth a thousand . . . other pictures
» AS OFTEN HAPPENS DURING A CRIME, a victim gets only a brief glance at the
assailant. Later, when police ask him for a description of the perpetrator, he
has trouble recalling details. But now, with new identification software developed by
two researchers in Scotland, victims no longer have to worry about describing their
assailants. A computer does it for them.
The software, called EvoFIT, exploits the fact that the human brain is much better at recog-
nizing a face than describing it. Unlike current identification systems, which require a wit-
ness to choose from a menu of features—say, a crooked mouth or a pointy nose—EvoFIT
simply offers up a gallery of faces on a computer screen and then, based on witness
choices, “evolves” a face that resembles the perp. “It’s just selective breeding,” says Univer-
sity of Stirling psychologist Peter Hancock, who developed the software with his colleague
Charlie Frowd. “You select the best faces and continually move toward your target.”
The program works like this: Detectives show the victim a series of 70 faces selected for
sex and race on a computer screen. Of these, the victim chooses the six that most resemble
the suspect. Using more than 80 variables that relate to either facial shape or texture, the
program merges, or “breeds,” the selected images and almost instantly comes up with 70
A diver
variations of the original six. The victim picks another six faces, and so on. After four films
or five
rounds, EvoFIT produces a portrait the victim recognizes. Then cops hit the streets.Cousteau
disguised as
So far, the new software has been used in just one actual police case, but Hancock and
a shark.
Frowd have teamed up with ABM, an identification-software firm in Nottingham, England,
to market EvoFIT to police in the U.S. and Europe. Purse snatchers take heed.—DAVID KOHN
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GUY?

F R O M T O P L E F T: C O U RT E S Y C O N T R O L L E D P H A R M I N G V E N T U R E S ; C O U RT E S Y E v o F I T / U N I V E R S I T Y O F S T I R L I N G
the typical amount for field corn. Each
plant was grown separately from a con- It’s Ben Affleck, envisioned by crime-fighting software called EvoFIT. The developers
tainer full of a claylike artificial soil used his famous mug to demonstrate how their facial-recognition program works.
designed for the underground conditions
and irrigated with fertilized water.
A computer maintains the room’s environ-
mental conditions, including temperature,
humidity and carbon dioxide level.
Considering the vast number of un-
used mines and other cavernous spaces in
many parts of the country, Ausenbaugh
sees potential for more facilities like
his. He’s built a second grow room and
RR RR
will spend the next few months working
with tomatoes, tobacco and other pharma
crop candidates to see whether they fare
as well as the corn. If the crops flourish,
drugmakers could very well find them- 1 2 3
selves venturing into the stygian depths.
Although no deals have been struck,
Ausenbaugh is hopeful that his idea A volunteer was shown 70 EvoFIT merged the six faces, The selection process
faces on a computer and combining about 80 vari- continued until the software
will help put the biopharming industry ables to generate another 70 evolved a composite bear-
then asked to choose the six
back on track, while keeping the meds out that most resembled Ben. headshots. The volunteer ing an acceptable likeness
of your cornflakes.—JOSHUA TOMPKINS This image is one of them. again selected six portraits. to Ben. It took two hours.

06.30.05 RELATIVITY TURNS 100 A CENTURY AGO TODAY, ALBERT EINSTEIN SUBMITTED HIS SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY, LEADING TO HIS FAMOUS EQUATION E = MC2 ///

32 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
T
HEADLINES

SHRINKAGE DEPT. Research updates on the quest to make really tiny things
Stealth Tags That Foil Counterfeiters A covert tag affixed to
a business card and
magnified 1,500 times
KNOCKOFFS ARE BIG BUSINESS. Last year consumers spent an estimated $500 billion
on counterfeit goods worldwide, according to the International AntiCounterfeiting Coali-
tion. Top-selling fakes included everything from Viagra and cellphone batteries to de-
signer kicks and baby formula. But making such phonies is about to get a lot tougher,
thanks to new microscopic tags from Adhesives Research in Glen Rock, Pennsylvania.
At about 50 microns in diameter—about half the width of a human hair—the tags
are invisible to the naked eye. “You can’t copy what you can’t see,” says Jeff Robert-
son, a general manager at Adhesives Research.
Once the tag is affixed to a product, finding it requires a handheld scanner, and
that’s just the first hurdle to forging it. Unlike holograms, bar codes and other visi-
ble authentication tags, the marker is virtually impossible to replicate, Robertson slice the ropes like loaves of bread to make individual
says. Each one is custom-designed for individual businesses and can be crafted tags. When a manufacturer scans a tagged item with

from any of dozens of materials. Heat-resistant plastic is well suited to airplane
parts, special polyester markers can be woven into clothing, and tags made of
edible cellulose can even be sprayed onto foods, enabling officials to trace tainted
beef, for example, back to its source.
To produce the markers, Adhesives Research employs a complex extrusion process
that works like a fancy Play-Doh machine. A device squeezes melted material through
a mold to yield microscopic ropes in shapes unique to a specific product. Knives then
C O U RT E S Y R I C F E LT E N / S M A RT E C H
the reader, it snaps a digital image of the marker,
and software matches the shape to a data file.
The markers will probably make a big, albeit
silent, splash in the pharmaceutical and electronics
worlds this year. Not that Robertson will name
specific customers. “If I told you,” he says, “then it
wouldn’t be covert.”—NICOLE DYER
 [THE POPSCI POLL]
BASED ON 3,921 VOTES
POSTED TO POPSCI.COM [STATISTICALLY SPEAKING]

LAST MONTH’S Volcanoes Need Better Chaperones

The U.S. is home to 169 potentially deadly volcanoes. A sobering
QUESTION: risk-assessment report calls for a nationwide early-warning system
WOULD YOU

169 (26)
WOULD YOU
61 Estimated AND THE
number of GOOD
WANT MEDICAL people killed
TECHNOLOGY TO by volcanoes
NEWS…
KEEP YOU ALIVE
IF YOU HAD LOST Active volcanoes
in recorded
U.S. history
[1]
THE ABILITY TO
INTERACT WITH
OTHER PEOPLE?
RR in the U.S.
300,000
Estimated
number of
people killed
U.S. VOLCANOES WITH LIMITED
OR NO REAL-TIME MONITORING

400,000
NUMBER
OF DEADLY
VOLCANIC
ERUPTIONS
worldwide NUMBER OF PEOPLE LIVING IN U.S.
R
YES since 1500 NEAR THOSE VOLCANOES HISTORY

29% 55
Number considered a
00:05:00 05:00:00
MINUTES Time it took scientists to HOURS Time it took to
notify authorities of the March 8 notify authorities of a 2003
high or very high threat eruption of Mount St. Helens, one eruption of the Anatahan

NO to nearby populations of the most monitored volcanoes volcano in the North Pacific

71%
compiled by Mike Haney; sources: U.S. Geological Survey

[THE EQUATION]

[ ][ ][ ]
F R O M L E F T: C O U RT E S Y T O Y O TA ; D AV I D B U T O W / C O R B I S ; C H R I S C O L L I N S / C O R B I S ; C O U RT E S Y P O W D E R M E D

THIS MONTH’S
QUESTION: + =
HYBRID VEHICLES:
[ HANDGUN ] [ VACCINES ] [SUPERSONIC DRUG GUN]
ALREADY
HAVE ONE
Just Shoot Me
MIGHT A supersonic gun takes the ouch out of vaccine drug delivery
BUY ONE
I ♥ GAS » TAKE YOUR MEDICATION with a gun made
by PowderMed in Oxford, England, and
shallow to strike nerve endings. Designed for the
administration of vaccines, the PMED has several
GUZZLERS the drugs will blast into your skin at 1,500 miles advantages over traditional needle injections. It
per hour. “You hear the sound, so you know it’s forces powdered DNA directly into immune cells,
gone off,” explains Mark Kendall, a mechanical so patients require as little as one thousandth the
engineer at the University of Oxford and co- dose used in needle injections. What’s more, the
inventor of the flashlight-shaped disposable device. gun eliminates needle sticks, and the vaccine
“But there’s absolutely no pain.” The gun, called doesn’t require refrigeration, a major contributor
the PMED (for DNA particle mediated epidermal to the high cost of distributing drugs in the devel-
delivery device), fires microscopic drug particles oping world. Trials for influenza and HIV are now
VOTE AT POPSCI.COM
just a hair’s width beneath the skin’s surface—too under way; next up is hepatitis B.—KALEE THOMPSON

07.03.05 WRECKING DAY FOR A COMET A NASA CRAFT DUBBED DEEP IMPACT IS SLATED TO CRASH INTO COMET TEMPEL 1 IN AN EFFORT TO EXPOSE ITS INTERIOR ■

P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5 35
 SOAPBOX
POPULAR
scıence T

INSIDE THE UNDERWATER LAB • MELTING NUKE WASTE • WILLIE NELSON, OILMAN? • DARPA ROBOT RACE PREVIEW

the science. The original comics kept it

SCIENCE FRICTION
THE MARKETING AND MANGLING
simple, chalking up heroes’ powers to
radiation or alien origins, but the recent
OF SCIENCE IN POPULAR CULTURE batch of remakes can’t seem to resist
BY GREGORY MONE tossing in some novel, or at least
complex-sounding, science. This doesn’t
make the story more plausible—it
makes it funnier. Maybe I need to get out
more, but I get bigger laughs from the
pseudoscientific gibberish spouted in
these films than I do from the tired one-
liners of standard summer comedies. It’s
a new genre, a kind of geek comedy.
Take last year’s Spider-Man 2.
Spidey’s webslinging is impressive,
but my favorite part is when Dr. Otto
Octavius, a nuclear physicist who

We may not
know more
science, but we
expect fancier

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 M A R C P E R E Z ; P H O T O G R A P H : J O H N B . C A R N E T T
terminology.
turns evil after one of his experiments
goes awry, explains that he needs
giant, artificially intelligent mechan-
ical arms fused to his spine with
nanowires and held in check by an
inhibitor chip to control the elements
of his homebuilt fusion reactor. Right.
A close second: a scene in The Hulk in
which mild-mannered Bruce Banner,
who has recently absorbed a lethal
dose of gamma radiation, sits up in his
It’s the Nanomeds, Stupid hospital bed and explains to a col-
league why he isn’t dead. Why, it’s the
THE ISSUE: The new comic-book movies take pains to update nanomeds. “I mean, I don’t know,”
science-speak. The lingo is nonsense, but it sure is a hoot Bruce says. “They must have, like . . .
fixed me.” And what are nanomeds?

F
IRST OFF, LET ME JUST SAY THAT I’LL ENJOY WATCHING THE THING, A 600-POUND I mean, I don’t know, but they must be
creature made of orange rock, stop an oncoming 18-wheeler with his shoulder like . . . scientific.
every bit as much as the next guy. But it’s not the action scenes that get me The reason for all this science-speak?
excited about a movie like The Fantastic Four, which premieres on July 8. Whenever a These days, biotech breakthroughs
new comic-book movie debuts, I get a kick out of seeing how the filmmakers finesse make headlines, theory-of-everything
books lead best-seller lists, and robots
WHERE SCIENCE AND POP CULTURE COLLIDE THIS MONTH

➤ THE ISLAND A guy named Lincoln Six- ➤ STEALTH A lightning bolt rewires the “brain” ➤ MASTER BLASTERS Premiering July 27 on
Echo learns he’s a clone whose body will be of a robotic fighter plane; old-fashioned human the Sci-Fi Channel: Burt Rutan meets Jackass.
harvested for parts. D‘oh! Opens July 22. pilots come to the rescue. Opens July 29. Amateurs launch La-Z-Boys and other oddities.

36 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
T
SOAPBOX |SCIENCE FRICTION
clean our rugs. We may not know more
science than we used to, but we certainly
MEDIASCOPE
EXAMINING THE SCIENCE BEHIND
expect fancier terminology. SCIENCE NEWS COVERAGE
The Fantastic Four filmmakers’ motto:
If you’re going to butcher the science, do BY REBECCA SKLOOT
it with flair. In one early scene in the
screenplay I read, the group’s leader,
Reed Richards, wonders if he’ll be able
to use his immersive visualization tech-
nology in combination with submolecu-
lar string theory to more precisely fix the

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 H N Z I B E L L ; P H O T O G R A P H S , F R O M L E F T: L U I S B R U N O ; T M A N D © M A R V E L C H A R A C T E R S / C O U RT E S Y N E A L P E T E R S C O L L E C T I O N
time and place of the big bang. (Why
didn’t you think of that, Hawking?)

ZAP! The Fantastic Four (with Jessica Alba as the

Invisible Woman) are empowered by cosmic rays.

Reed’s big ideas are what got the gang

into trouble in the first place. To test one
of his theories, he leads his ex-girlfriend,
Sue Storm, her younger brother,
Johnny, and an astronaut named Ben
Grimm into space, where they’re bom-
barded by cosmic rays—charged part-
icles careening through space at near-
light speeds. Back home, Reed finds he
can stretch his arm around a city block,
Sue can turn invisible, Ben is the afore-
mentioned Thing, and Johnny morphs
into a human flame when he gets upset.
NASA is concerned about how cosmic
rays will affect astronauts—prolonged
exposure could lead to a weakened
immune response, even cancer. But if

Flabby Coverage
there were a remote possibility that the
rays could turn people into superheroes,
by now surely some unscrupulous
baseball-team owner would have sent a THE ISSUE: Get fat, live longer! That’s the euphoric reaction
few players to the International Space to the media hyping of a CDC study. But put down that pie
Station for a little pre-spring training.

Perhaps Dr. Doom, the Fantastic Four’s
archrival, put it best. “A little scientific
double-talk can fool almost anyone,” he
says in a 1963 issue. Mind you, I’m not
complaining. My plan is to sit back, eat
my popcorn, and enjoy what looks to be
an action-packed romp. And if I chortle
at what others in the theater consider
inappropriate moments, so be it. Maybe
you’ll be laughing along with me. ■
A
FEW WEEKS AGO, I WAS EATING IN A RESTAURANT IN WEST VIRGINIA
(the second fattest state in the country), staring blankly at a television
and thinking, I really should join a gym; this sitting-on-my-butt-all-day-
occupation is showing. Suddenly the newscaster said, “Before you start that next
diet, you won’t want to miss this one! A new study suggests that those few extra
pounds may actually help you live longer.” To say there was a collective sigh of
relief in the restaurant—in the entire country—would be an understatement. I
found myself surrounded by strangers gaping at each other as if the newscaster
had just announced the end of a military occupation: Did you hear that? We’re
free! They joked about ordering more pie, and I half expected everyone to start

38 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
T
SOAPBOX |MEDIASCOPE
toasting one another with French fries.
The headlines read like a dream:
“Gov’t Overstated Danger of Obesity,”
“Fat May Be Good.” Two New York Times
columnists said that the fight against
obesity had “lost the scientific high
ground.” They taunted “people who
work out, eat responsibly,” those “salad-
munching health nuts” who, they gloated,
would die young because, according to a
Centers for Disease Control and Preven-
tion study, “overweight people actually
live longer than normal-weight people.”
But wait: Only a month earlier, the
Washington Post had reported a high-
profile University of Illinois study show-
ing that skyrocketing obesity rates are
shortening life spans “[more] than the
impact of car accidents, homicides and
suicides combined.” And major news
outlets said studies revealed that “obesity
triples the risk of dementia” and causes
Get on your own soapbox!
@ Write to sciencefriction@time4.com
or mediascope@time4.com.
breathing problems. So what’s the deal?
The deal is that the media didn’t push
to analyze the CDC report—they just
jumped on good headlines. The study is
titled “Excess Deaths Associated with
Underweight, Overweight, and Obesity.”
How anyone could read that and reduce
it to “Studies Show: Being Fat Is Not So
Bad” is beyond me. These results corrob-
orated an overwhelming body of
research: Obesity is linked to deadly
diseases. The CDC did find that fewer
The fast-food-industry-funded ads
declaring that obesity is “hype”
make me want to scream.
people died in 2000 from obesity-related
causes (111,909) than had been previ-
ously estimated (365,000). But estimat-
ing obesity deaths, as the study points
out, “raises complex methodologic
issues,” and its own methodology “has
important limitations.”
One of these is controlling for under-
lying disease. “Many diseases and med-
ications cause people to gain or lose
weight,” notes Tobias Kurth, a Harvard
University obesity researcher. “If you
don’t control for these and just look at
who’s dying and how big they are, you
can get a skewed view of the world.
Using this study to say being over-
weight is protective is simply overstat-
ing the scientific data.” There’s also the
well-known “obesity paradox,” that
being slightly overweight can offer pro-
tection for the elderly, though the truly
obese are less likely to grow old enough
to see any such benefit.
The study’s most obvious limitation is
its use of the unreliable “body mass
index” (BMI)—a number determined by
a person’s height and weight—to define
“normal” and “overweight.” A BMI of
between 18.5 and 24.9 is “normal,”
between 25 and 29.9 “overweight,” and
30 or more “obese.” But BMI doesn’t take
into account many important factors:
physical activity, fat versus muscle, gen-
der, diet. This means George W. Bush—
a nearly-six-foot-tall 200-pound guy who
eats well and works out regularly—has
the same BMI as a six-foot-tall 200-
pound guy who sits on the couch all day
eating junk. With a BMI of 27.1, they’re
both “overweight.” But President Bush is
in great cardiovascular health. I’d like to
body fat is 18.3, which is considered
excellent for his age. Not the case for
that out-of-shape guy on the couch.
Major-media coverage didn’t raise
these questions. Instead it tended to
compound the problem with fuzzy
math, often reporting that 25,814 Amer-
icans died from obesity, though the
actual number was 111,909. Because the
CDC study documented fewer deaths in
the “overweight” category than in the
“normal” category, the media subtracted
the number of overweight people who
pen somehow cancel out deaths that do.
A companion study did find that over-
weight and obese people have lower cho-
lesterol levels and blood pressure than
they did in the past. It didn’t show that
obesity is inherently less dangerous; it
showed that medicine has gotten better
at treating some of its effects. Obese peo-
ple may be living longer, but those extra
years are full of heavy medication, dia-
betes, sleep apnea, stroke, asthma, blood
clots, heart disease and cancer. And obe-
sity is still one of the top causes of pre-

➤
see the same study use some kind of didn’t die from the number of obese peo- ventable death, which is why the CDC
body fat index. Bush’s percentage of ple who did—as if deaths that don’t hap- cautioned that people shouldn’t use this
study as an excuse to be overweight.

2 OTHER RECENT HEADLINES THAT MAY HAVE MISLED YOU

It’s good news that people can live
longer with obesity, but that’s no excuse
to blow off exercise and order more
➤ “ANTIOXIDANTS A KEY TO LONG LIFE” Well, maybe. This study wasn’t about pie—precisely what the coverage has
antioxidants you buy at a store. It looked at mice that were genetically engineered to produce
antioxidants. Interesting, sure, but don’t gorge on supplements—they’re toxic at high doses. encouraged. And don’t get me started on
those huge fast-food-industry-funded ads
➤ “WHISKEY HELPS FIGHT CANCER” We wish. The truth: Whiskey contains ellagic declaring that obesity is officially “hype.”
acid, a plant-based antioxidant that’s been found to help decrease cancer risk. (It’s also in red
They make me want to scream. There is
wine.) But it’s present in much higher quantities in soft fruits. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of
research connecting booze to various kinds of cancer. no science saying that obesity is OK.
That’s not hype. It’s scientific fact. ■
{
Is this the
}
future of
air combat?

AIR TIME Air Force

pilot Capt. Jonathan
Gration prepares to take
one of the first operational
F/A-22s out for testing
and training at Langley Air
Force Base in Virginia.
 { Or is this?
}
A revolution is under way in aerial combat. Tomorrow’s fighter
pilots may be ceding the skies to robots
By Bill Sweetman Photographs by John B. Carnett

SHOW TIME In Palmdale,

California, Northrop
Grumman program director
Scott Winship shows off a
mock-up of the company’s
newest unmanned combat
air vehicle, the X-47B.
P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5 43
 or 65 years, the Mojave Desert has spawned the fastest,

f
highest-flying and most agile airplanes in the world.
This vast expanse of scrub and Joshua tree forests
encompasses the U.S. Air Force’s deadly-secret Area
51 in Nevada, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works in
Palmdale, California, and, at Mojave airfield itself,
Burt Rutan’s sci-fi enclave, Scaled Composites. At the heart of
it all is the flight-test center at Edwards Air Force Base—and
here is where a very nontraditional confrontation over the
future of air combat is beginning to play out.
In one corner of the base resides the USAF’s current star
project, the Lockheed Martin F/A-22 Raptor. The Raptor is
fast, cruising at speeds other fighters can attain only in short
sprints. It’s also agile, heavily armed, and stealthy. In tests
last year, the pilots of older F-15s that engaged the Raptors in
simulated combat never saw the airplane that “hit” them.
But this competition is not with those aging F-15s, nor even
with any new enemy fighters being developed by the Chinese
or the Russians. No, the adversary that the mighty Raptor is
staring down today takes the form of a tiny airplane, with no

Future UCAVs could

ignite sweeping
changes in air
combat tactics.
cockpit, that stands barely higher than the F/A-22’s belly.
Stingray 1 and 2, the Boeing X-45A prototypes, are slow, not
particularly maneuverable, and pack just one small bomb
apiece. But they’re first drafts, primitive unmanned combat
air vehicles (UCAVs), future versions of which could ignite
sweeping changes in air combat tactics. They could fly many
of the missions flown by manned vehicles—as well as some
their piloted counterparts can’t—for longer durations and at
substantially lower cost. A number of experts believe that it’s
these airplanes, and not the Raptor, that represent the future
of air warfare—a shocking potential shift for a military disci-
pline that’s been dominated by fighter pilots since bombs and
guns were first mounted on airplanes in World War I.
At Edwards, a sprawling, sun-blasted base with a seven-
mile-long runway etched onto a bone-dry lakebed, the Raptor
roars off into the mountains for supersonic tests, and the
X-45A prototypes snap smartly onto the runway centerline tries with potential access to modern fighter jets—the
after attacks on simulated mobile missile launchers. Although UCAVs will have to prove their effectiveness against these
the two programs are not yet competing for dollars, they are sophisticated weapons. Robotic fighters still have a long way
certainly jockeying for position as military planners grapple to go. After all, designers have only a few years’ experience
with the ever changing nature of armed conflict. If recent wars with their more basic predecessors, unmanned aerial vehicles
in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan—all bombing-intensive cam- such as the remotely controlled Predator and the fully
paigns that saw minimal air combat—are any indication of autonomous Global Hawk, which focus on the far simpler
what the future holds, then powerhouses like the F/A-22 will tasks of surveillance and reconnaissance.
see little of the type of action they excel at, their highly trained Still, autonomous robots such as the Stingrays are begin-
pilots never engaging in tricky close-range combat. Rather, less ning to proliferate worldwide, like so many tiny furry mam-
expensive vehicles that can loiter above battlefields for hours, mals scampering among the clawed feet of the dinosaurs.
armed with a menu of instantly deployable bombs, will serve
commanders much more effectively. At Laage Air Base, just south of Germany’s chilly Baltic coast, the
On the other hand, if future adversaries include the likes of country’s first squadron of very F/A-22-like Eurofighter
China or some remnant of the former Soviet Union—coun- Typhoon jets is gearing up. This is the former East Germany,

44 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5

and the rows of bunkers that once housed its MiGs and
Sukhois sit empty, their doors scabbed with rust, a vivid
reminder that the airplanes the Raptor and Typhoon were
designed to shoot down vanished years ago. Most of our cur-
rent adversaries haven’t invested in fighters at all. Instead,
they’ve bought surface-to-air missiles.
And therein lies the biggest challenge to face next-gen
fighter jets in their quest to secure their future. Late last year,
civilians in the office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
leaked a plan to slash Raptor production to 179 airplanes
from 381—already a step down from the 750 the Air Force
originally wanted. The problem, aside from the unexpectedly
high cost of each aircraft and significant program delays, is
that the Raptor, like Europe’s Typhoon, was conceived and
designed back in the 1980s to defeat the thousands of missile-
UCAV COUSINS Northrop
Grumman’s X-47B, shown with
its bomb doors open and aircraft
carrier tailhook deployed.
At left in hangar, the fully
autonomous Global Hawk
reconnaissance vehicle.
bristling supersonic fighters that the Soviet Union and its
satellites held on hair-triggers. The program’s opponents
argue that such a threat no longer exists, as the empty
bunkers at Laage demonstrate.
USAF chief of staff Gen. John Jumper, leading efforts to
save the airplane from more cuts, flew the F/A-22 in January
and sings its praises: “The F/A-22, some say, is built to dog-
fight old Soviet-era airplanes,” the combative commander has
said. “Well, yeah, it does that with one hand tied behind its
back, but it also does a whole lot of other things.”
No one doubts that the Raptor would be utterly dominant
in combat. The operational testing conducted last year
included a series of mock combats with F-15s. “We never got
close to them,” Lt. Col. Craig Fisher of the 64th Aggressor
Squadron said in a videotaped interview. “It was very much
P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5 45
 TWO PATHS TO AIR SUPERIORITY
U.S. AND EUROPEAN PLANNERS HAVE PARALLEL VISIONS FOR
FUTURE AIR COMBAT. THE QUESTION IS WHICH WILL DOMINATE
Wmanned
EUROPE xunmanned
The Eurofighter Typhoon isn’t as
stealthy as the Raptor, but it’s
nearly as quick—and nearly as
over-budget and behind sched-
ule, too. Also like the Raptor, it
is being positioned—amid
threats to its budget—as both a
bomber and a fighter.
The Dassault Neuron is intended to supplement
the air fleet in the absence of any other future
manned fighter programs after the Typhoon.
an unfair fight.” That, of course, was the idea. Stealth makes
the Raptor hard to find, and the F/A-22 “sees” better than any
predecessor. Its smoothly contoured nose contains “active,
electronically scanned array” (AESA) radar: The radar beam is
steered electronically, rather than by a moving antenna, so it
shifts instantaneously from target to target—identifying the
type of each aircraft along the way. A data link connects all
the Raptors in a flight, so every airplane can see what every
other airplane sees. A Raptor pilot can have missiles launched
before the opposing pilot has a clue what is happening.
But even in air-to-air combat, technological and tactical
changes may have already made the tremendous acceleration
and agility of the F/A-22 and the Typhoon less important. The
nature of air war has changed, and close-range visual combat
might never happen again. The proliferation of new, incredi-
bly agile short-range missiles now makes visual-range combat
extremely dangerous, and long-range air-to-air missiles have
improved significantly, allowing slower fighters to more eas-
ily shoot down opponents. As a result of these factors, fight-
ers in recent conflicts have mostly dropped bombs in support
46 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
Lockheed Martin’s
F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter, due to enter
service in 2012, will
serve more allies
and cost much less
than the F/A-22.
Wmanned
U.S. xunmanned
Boeing’s X-45As were the first UCAVs to fly. The two
that were built have conducted 50 missions and demon-
strated that unmanned aircraft can locate and attack
targets autonomously.
C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P R I G H T: C O U R T E S Y L O C K H E E D M A R T I N ; C O U R T E S Y J I M R O S S / N A S A ;
of forces on the ground. This is why the F/A-22’s cousin, the
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which specializes in ground-target
attack, sailed through Rumsfeld’s review. But the F-35 won’t
be much of a pilot’s airplane. It doesn’t fly as fast or as high as
the F/A-22. Like most stealth airplanes, it has a smaller radar
COURTESY SAAB AEROSYSTEMS; COURTESY EUROFIGHTER
image from the nose and tail than it does from the side,
which makes it crucial to steer the airplane so that it pres-
ents its least visible aspects to hostile radars. This is done by
computer, so for almost all of the time the airplane is over
hostile territory, it will be on autopilot. Yet despite the F-35’s
supposedly costing half as much as the Raptor, it is a year and
a half late and $7.5 billion over budget, raising concerns that
it will be just another capable but expensive manned fighter.
Meanwhile, Jumper and other Air Force leaders have
pushed the Raptor not only as a fighter but as an invulnera-
ble precision bomber that could knock out missile sites, “kick-
ing the door down” for slower B-2 bombers and F-35s. But
although Jumper “shot down” a lot of junior officers in F-15s,
nobody knows whether even he can win this fight. The bot-
tom line is that the F/A-22 was designed for air combat, and
there are less expensive airplanes that can drop bombs. And
soon there will be planes that can do it automatically.
For now, the UCAVs have yet to perform some very basic tasks,
such as plugging into a fueling tanker in flight, sharing air-
space with other military and civilian airplanes, or landing on
an aircraft carrier. Until they do, the big money in the U.S.
and elsewhere will remain budgeted for manned fighters, and
there’s no doubt that thousands more will be built.
But it may not be long before UCAVs overcome their limi-
tations. In early February, the Boeing pair took off from
Edwards, circled over the Mojave Desert, automatically
attacked a simulated missile site, and returned to their orbits.
Minutes later a second missile site, unknown to the UCAVs’
computers, advertised its presence by sending simulated
radar signals, and the UCAVs attacked it, too. The ground-
based operator’s only job was to OK the release of weapons.
Much more testing is needed—testing that will involve
half a dozen much larger prototypes, due to start flying in
early 2007. Next up are three Boeing X-45Cs and Northrop
Grumman’s X-47B prototypes, all being developed as part of a
$4-billion program launched last year by the Defense
The nature of air war has changed,
and close-range visual combat
might never happen again.
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The X-45C and
X-47B are much bigger, to accommodate more fuel and
weapons, than the four-ton X-45A. This is because DARPA
program manager Michael Francis and other researchers
believe that they have identified both an important advantage
of the UCAV—its endurance isn’t limited by the pilot—and
a mission that it can perform better than any current fighter.
Northrop Grumman’s UCAV manager, Scott Winship, calls it
“the supergap”: the ability to loiter for hours inside enemy ter-
ritory and attack moving targets, such as missile launchers.
“They can get in close and hit anything, up to 1,000 miles
deep,” Winship says. “It’s something we can’t go after today.”
But if the UCAV is going to unleash deadly force, will it do
so automatically? That’s an idea that makes people uneasy,
especially when civilians are at risk. If it needs to “ask” a
human operator for permission to launch a weapon, however,
the response may come too late—a fast-moving fighter jet
can vanish in seconds. And Jumper has raised concerns that
the UCAV might not be able to survive in combat because, as
currently conceived, it has no way to detect a fighter attack
and won’t be agile or fast enough to evade it. One UCAV pro-
ponent inside the industry, who prefers not to be identified,
interprets this position as a way for the Air Force to justify
more F-22s, as top cover for the vulnerable UCAVs.
UCAV visionaries see these issues not as deal breakers but
as challenges for the next few years. One of Francis’s goals is
to create software that allows a group of UCAVs to intelli-
gently, collectively attack a target or a threat—but never twice
in the same way. In action, the UCAVs would rarely operate
alone but as a wolfpack of four or more aircraft, collaborating
to locate targets. Only one airplane in the group would use
its radar at any time, making their signals very hard to track.
The aircraft would defend one another with jamming and
weapons. Winship suggests that one of the airplanes would
carry a battery of air-to-air missiles and engage any fighter as
soon as it got off the ground. (There may well be more than
one type of UCAV. Winship sees everything from a 20-ton
Naval version, the size of the X-47B, to a RoboBomber as big
as a B-2 bomber, capable of flying 100-hour missions. To save
money, they’d use common weapons, computers and radar.)
Ultimately, the answer to the UCAV-versus-fighter debate is that
we don’t know the answer yet—partly because the promise
of the UCAV technology has yet to be realized, and partly
because it’s impossible to know how internal Air Force poli-
tics will play out. The same Rumsfeld memo that cut back the
Raptor program also threw a major glitch into the UCAV: It
will be taken from DARPA and given to the Air Force, where
many suspect that the ruling elite of fighter pilots will throt-
tle it, or at least suppress it until the Air Force has secured its
fleet of F-35s and Raptors. “The fighter mafia that runs the
Air Force has made several runs at the program to kill it,” says
our unidentified source, who is close to the UCAV project.
Air Force leaders state in public that they support the
UCAV, but in a form that doesn’t directly threaten the fighter.
Says Jumper: “People ask me all the time, ‘Do you guys feel
your job is threatened?’ No. Because the things this is going to
do are going to be things you can’t do in a conventional air-
plane.” Jumper and former Air Force Secretary James Roche
raised the idea of a “flying Coke machine” UCAV that would
orbit high above the battlefield with a variety of bombs and
release them on command from ground observers.
Backers of autonomous combat aircraft are, for the time
being, willing to position the unmanned aircraft as a long-
range, heavy-payload complement to a fighter, rather than
an alternative—but privately they don’t expect to hold that
position forever. “We don’t want to get in a fight with any-
body,” our source says. “But when we get flying, someone will
say: ‘For crying out loud, this does 90 percent of the mission
at half the cost.’” ■
Bill Sweetman is a contributing editor to POPULAR SCIENCE.
[ ]
View the first flights of the Air Force’s
T POPSCI autonomous unmanned combat air-
ON THE WEB craft at popsci.com/ucav.
P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5 47
From the astounding tragedy of its maiden voyage, to the technological
triumphs of locating, visiting, and filming a wreck that lies more than two miles deep
in the frigid North Atlantic, the story of the Titanic is endlessly captivating. To date,
about 100 people have descended to the site in submersibles. Recent forays have
revealed signs of disintegration—most natural, others possibly caused by human
contact. What’s the best way to save the wreckage? Some argue for recovery:
raising as much of it as possible to be preserved and put on public view. But Robert
Ballard, the man who discovered the wreck in 1985, has a different plan . . .

WELCOME TO MUSEUM

TITANIC (PLEASE DON’T TOUCH)

BY MARK SCHROPE | ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN M AC NEILL

 SEE THE TITANIC
FROM YOUR
LIVING ROOM!
The most famous shipwreck
of all time could be equipped
for virtual, real-time visitation LONG-TERM DOCKING
When not in use, the ROVs would park in small
AS LEADER OF THE TEAM THAT FOUND THE metal “garages” that might be equipped with
Titanic two decades ago and a repeat visitor to brushes to clean the rovers’ video lenses. The pitch-
the 12,600-foot-deep site, Robert Ballard has black waters at the site make corrosion and plant
long been the public face of the famed wreck. growth on the ROVs minimal. The craft could oper-
He now has a plan to make the Titanic itself ate for years at a time without being cleaned.
even more public: wiring the ship for virtual
visits. A system of remotely operated vehicles
(ROVs) that follow a fixed route around the bow
would be installed on the ocean floor. They
would be equipped with video cameras and
powered by a moored buoy that would transmit •
broadband video from the ROVs via satellite to
Internet2 (the next-generation Internet). The first
audience for this live video would be museum-
goers. But eventually, once Internet2 became
widespread, Ballard expects that individual
families would book virtual vacations to the
Titanic, controlling the routes and camera angles
of the ROVs from their home theaters.
The plan builds on efforts under way at
several national marine sanctuaries. Monterey
Bay, in California, is equipped with a small
ROV that feeds video across the country to the
Institute for Exploration, founded by Ballard,
at the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut.
But that setup is near shore. Equipping the
Titanic site is a far more ambitious undertak-
ing—one that will cost about $10 million and
take at least a decade, by Ballard’s estimate.
Detractors call his vision nice but unrealistic
because of the cost and difficulty of setting up
complex electronics two miles beneath the
Southern limit of
surface. Some also find the idea unseemly. sea ice, 1912
“It would be sort of like making Titanic into
a videogame. I think it should be treated with •
a little more respect than that,” argues Arnie Southampton,
Geller, who, as president of RMS Titanic, Inc., Collision site England
the company that has salvage rights to the ship, •
has been criticized by Ballard, an outspoken New York
opponent of salvage operations. Ballard says he
would like to see the ship treated like Monticello
and the Acropolis and actively protected by North Atlantic Ocean
cleaning and painting, perhaps with techniques
now used on offshore oil platforms. “People FOR THOSE WHO’VE JOINED US LATE . . .
just have to get over the problem that it’s On April 14, 1912, midway through its maiden voyage, the Titanic struck an iceberg
underwater,” he says, and start managing the and sank 375 miles southeast of Newfoundland. There were not enough lifeboats
Titanic like any other significant historical site. for everyone, and two thirds of the more than 2,220 people on board drowned.
TITANIC TOUR GUIDES
Several titanium-framed ROVs, perhaps four
feet wide by three feet high, would enable
virtual visitors to tour both sides of the bow
section lengthwise and possibly even venture EXHIBITION LIGHTING
a short distance inside the wreck. The wreck would be illuminated
by powerful LED lights
anchored to the seafloor. The
lights would be timed to
theatrically highlight specific
sections as the ROVs passed.

DEEP VISION
Each ROV would be equipped with a
small, high-definition camera placed
• in a tough housing made of titanium
and capable of withstanding the 6,000
pounds per square inch of pressure
that exists at 12,600 feet. The video
from the ROVs would be sent to the
surface buoy via fiber-optic cable.

•
 BEST BUOY 1 Video from the ROVs would
3 travel by fiber-optic cable to the
The system’s buoy would be 60 surface buoy, which has a 25-ton
feet high and 15 feet wide, with a anchor (attached via steel cable)
tough steel double hull like those capable of withstanding 150,000
now required on oil tankers. More pounds of force.
than 10 tons of lead in the keel 2
would stabilize the buoy against 2 Radio-frequency signals would
violent seas, while a conical be sent through a Kevlar-like
dome to a geosynchronous satellite
shroud would deflect waves. In
23,000 miles above Earth.
addition to transmitting data, the
buoy would serve as the virtual
3 The satellite would bounce the
museum’s power source. A fuel-
video to a land station, where
cell-powered generator would run it would be routed onto Internet2,
both the Titanic’s lights and ROVs which would have the bandwidth
via a cable connecting the buoy 1 to pump high-resolution video to
to the seafloor array. computers in real time.

LINE OF SIGHT
The ROVs would mainly travel a
fixed cable path. They would
be propelled by electric thrusters in
housings filled with oil—which is
nearly incompressible—to combat
the pressure at depth.
•

RUST OF AGES
Hundreds of tons of “rusticles” give the Titanic
•
its Daliesque dripping-metal appearance. The
I L L U S T R AT I O N : J O H N M A C N E I L L ; P H O T O G R A P H S , C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P R I G H T:
C O U RT E S Y © R M S T I TA N I C ; C O U RT E S Y I N S T I T U T E F O R E X P L O R AT I O N / I N S T I T U T E

living layers are formed by microorganisms that

grow and multiply over time, scavenging iron
from the wreck to build their homes. The
growths are greatest at points where stress
F O R A R C H A E O L O G I C A L O C E A N O G R A P H Y; J O N AT H A N B L A I R / N G S

and cracks have made the metal more accessi-

ble. Ballard says he would ultimately like to DOOMED DECK
see technology now used to paint underwater Natural rusticle-driven deterioration
oil platforms applied to repainting the Titanic will probably cause the top deck of the
after it’s had a good scrubbing, a labor- Titanic to collapse by 2028, according
intensive idea that elicits more skepticism than to microbiologist Roy Cullimore, who
any he has yet proposed. has been studying the wreck’s disinte-
gration since 1996. Within 100 to
150 years, the whole ship will have
essentially imploded, save for the
thick outer shell of the hull.
 THE TOURIST BUS
Aboard MIR, a deep trip for a steep price
Only a handful of submersibles in the world can take
people to sites as deep as the Titanic. Since 1998, the
twin Russian MIR vessels have been available for hire
through Deep Ocean Expeditions, which has carried
about 70 adventure tourists on 10-hour, $36,650
dives aboard the three-man subs—a New York cou-
ple even got married at the bow. (The MIRs were also
used to film footage for the 1997 Oscar winner
Titanic and the 2002 IMAX film Ghosts of the Abyss.)
Ballard claims that tourist trips, in which subs often
land on the ship’s deck, are damaging the site—a
charge that those accused insist is unfounded. He has
lobbied for legislation that would outlaw the practice.
Tourists travel two
miles deep in a
Russian-made MIR.
• 15 million exhibit visitors are testament to the
• SUB SCAFFOLDING
THE RECOVERY PLAN
More than 5,000 artifacts are now on view
International admiralty law typically grants sal-
vage rights to the first group to appear in court
with a piece of a wreck. Although Ballard was the
first to identify and visit the Titanic, he opted not
to take anything from the site. As a result, the
Atlanta-based company RMS Titanic, which first
visited and recovered objects from the wreckage
The arm of a sub-
mersible retrieves
a leather bag.
in 1987, was later named by the courts exclusive
salvor-in-possession. To date, RMS Titanic has
recovered more than 5,000 artifacts—everything
from suitcases and champagne bottles to a cherub
from the grand staircase and the bell from the
crow’s nest—which are now on display as part of
seven for-profit traveling exhibits. “I think our job
is to continue doing what we’ve been doing and
rescue as many important objects from Titanic as
possible before it collapses on itself,” says com-
pany president Arnie Geller, who calls the concept
of raising the entire wreck “the most fantastic
thing ever.” Technological and legal hurdles make
that all but impossible, although RMS Titanic
intends to raise a 100-ton section of the ship
using cables and inflatable lift bags, as it did in
1998 with the 15-ton “Big Piece,” currently on
display in Las Vegas. Geller says that more than
public’s unquenched thirst for all things Titanic
and to the desire to see as much of it as possible
in person rather than through photos or video.
An 80-foot-tall steel scaffolding
system anchored to the ocean floor
would support the ROV cables.
[ T POPSCI Read our Q&A with
ON THE WEB museum mastermind
Robert Ballard at popsci.com/titanic.
]
 Sometimes our biggest fear is not knowing what to
fear most. Fortunately, it took our writer just two weeks of self-
experimentation for the weird science of risk analysis
to teach him to judge better, fear smarter—
and always keep the shower curtain clean

BY JAMES VLAHOS | PHOTOGRAPHS BY HUGH KRETSCHMER

P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5 57
 December 27, 2004, while the world was focused on the Indian Ocean tsunami,
a few astronomers were contemplating the possibility of an even deadlier dis-
aster: that of a massive asteroid striking Earth. A fifth of a mile wide—heftier
than the space rock that leveled a vast swath of Siberian forest in 1908—Near-
Earth Asteroid 2004 MN4 had grabbed the attention of NASA scientists just
before Christmas. They put the chance of an April 13, 2029, collision at 1 in 2,700
and two days later upped the odds to 1 in 165. On the morning of the 27th the
astronomers elevated their assessment again, this time to an alarming 1 in 38.
On the Torino scale, which measures the likelihood and potential severity1 of
an asteroid impact, they gave the asteroid a 4, the highest alert ever issued.

Like most people, I was oblivious to this maybe menace. These days, it can be do at the handlebars of a bike—provides
hard to keep your hazards straight. There are the usual suspects—car crashes, a false sense of security. In a 1989 study,
crime, cancer—and a seemingly endless parade of new threats. Breakneck global Hofstra University psychologist William
warming, bioengineered smallpox, gray goo? Sometimes my worst fear is not Sanderson had panic-prone patients
knowing what I should fear most. breathe air that was 5.5 percent carbon
Assessing and avoiding risk is a Darwinian imperative; mitigating risks that can’t dioxide, which is known to provoke
be dodged is ancient as well.2 With current science, medicine and technology, we panic attacks. Half of them were
know more and can do more about risk than ever before, and in the past century, informed that they could lower the car-
American life expectancy has jumped from 47 to 77 years. Somehow, though, the good bon dioxide concentration by twisting a
news hasn’t gotten out. A recent study showed that nearly 80 percent of us think the dial, and this group reported fewer and
world is more dangerous than it used to be, not less. milder attacks—even though the dial
Earlier this year, I launched a risk-research study with a subject pool of one: me. First was a dummy.
I kept a diary, recording and ranking every hazard I encountered for two weeks. Then Flatbush Avenue, my primary route to
I submerged myself in accident, mortality, epidemiological and toxicological data; pur- the park, is only partially plowed. I ride
chased a small library of scholarly books; and interviewed the country’s foremost risk over slush, a foot or two from buses and
experts. I sent them a copy of my diary for review. The key questions: How accurate cars, with slipping tires. The good news:
was I at rating risks, and how could I do better? Sure, I’ll never live risk-free, but maybe I’m not drunk. A recent Johns Hopkins
I could learn to live risk-smart. Did I? Let’s take a look. University study found that one in three
fatal bicycle accidents in Maryland was
linked to alcohol; a blood-alcohol level of
0.08 or higher was found to increase the
Biking the Urban Snowstorm risk of serious or fatal injury by 2,000 per-
Yesterday, New York was slammed by one of the worst January blizzards in a cent. The bad news: I’m a man. Of the
century, a frigid nor’easter that dumped a foot and a half of snow. After such an 800 bicyclists killed in accidents with cars
onslaught, there’s really only one sensible activity: sledding. Friends of mine are meet- each year, 90 percent are male; 80 percent
ing in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, and I’m running late. I decide to bike. “I’ll wear my of the 500,000 injured are men. Male
helmet,” I promise my girlfriend, Anne, as I rush out the door. cyclists do slightly outnumber female
In my diary, I record biking as being highly risky. But riding very carefully, I rea- ones, and men tend to bike more often,
son, offsets the danger. When the risk experts review my journal, however, they cry but these factors alone don’t account for
foul at this rationalization.3 “Sometimes we decide how we want to live our lives and the elevated death and injury rates. Men,
then invent reasons why certain things do or don’t worry us,” says George Gray, exec- it seems, simply take more risks. For any-
utive director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. It seems that I’ve fallen prey one, though, bikes can be dangerous:
to a couple common perceptual traps. Canadian psychologist Gerald Wilde might see Traveling a mile by bike is almost 14
my actions as an example of the risk-balancing process he calls homeostasis—the times as likely to be fatal as a mile by car.5
helmet makes me feel safe, so I engage in a more dangerous behavior than I would In the park, it’s a full Norman Rock-
have otherwise.4 Other researchers have demonstrated that feeling in control—as you well scene, with kids in mittens and

1. Imagine, for instance, that New
York’s Central Park was in the
crosshairs. The asteroid strike
would release the force of a
1,660-megaton bomb, triggering
a magnitude-6.8 earthquake,
blasting a two-and-a-half-mile-
wide crater and hurling trailer-size
rocks deep into Long Island and
New Jersey. The tri-state area
would be toast.
2. The world’s first known insur-
ance policies were issued 5,000
years ago to Mesopotamian
caravan operators.
3. “You dumbass!” was the assess-
ment of Harvard’s David Ropeik.
4. One example of risk homeo-
stasis cited by Wilde is that of a
German taxi fleet that was upgrad-
ed with antilock brakes. Afterward,
drivers felt safer and drove more
aggressively, and the rate of acci-
dents went up, not down.
5. This is the rate for Great Britain,
where the government tracks
deaths per billion passenger-
kilometers. Data from 1991–2000
showed the following rates: air-
plane, 0.02; boat, 0.4; bus, 0.4;
rail, 0.49; car, 3.1; bicycle, 42;
foot, 59; and motorcycle, 106.

58 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
 P R O P A N D S E T S T Y L I S T: C H R I S T I N A K R E T S C H M E R ; F O O D S T Y L I S T: S U S A N O T TAV I A N O

P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
59
scarves towing sleds across sparkling snow. I meet my friends, and we head to a As a risk-pro-in-training, though, I’m
crowded bunny slope. Some 33,000 Americans a year are injured while sledding, but learning to pause for consideration
the sport registered little concern in my diary. This time, the facts are with me—after before becoming alarmed about any-
all, millions of people go sledding every winter and don’t get hurt. thing. The U.S. population numbers
Risk assessors rip their hair out at the general public’s innumeracy; many people nearly 300 million, so the chance of any
jump to conclusions based only on absolute numbers and don’t consider ratios as one of these accidents happening to me
well. For example, the average number of people killed each year in hot-air balloon is remote. What’s more, home hazards
accidents is 2.6, while the number killed in hunting accidents is 600. But there are two aren’t equal-opportunity. Fatal falls, for
million hunters in the U.S. and just 3,000 hot-air balloonists, which makes balloon- instance, are 70 times as likely when
ing’s death rate 30 times as high as that of hunting. you’re 75 or older as when you’re 44 or
younger. Still, domestic risk isn’t in-
significant. In 2003, one in 37 people was
disabled for a day or more by an injury at
Home, Sweet Home? home; according to Injury Facts, dis-
Last year researchers at San Diego State University and the University of Colorado, abling injuries are more numerous in the
targeting a forgotten front in homeland security, decided to study soap scum. “Over home than in the workplace and in car
time, vinyl shower curtains accumulate . . . lush microbial biofilms,” they reported. crashes combined.
The films contain Sphingomonas spp. and Methylobacterium spp., opportunistic The headlines in the paper are grim,

pathogens that can lead to serious blood and urinary-tract infections. Although the and I take a deep breath and sigh. Oops,
scum is thought to threaten only people with weakened immune systems, biologist bad idea. In later risk research, I learn
Scott Kelley nonetheless advises caution. “I clean my shower curtain more frequently that exposure to air pollution is estimated
now and change it much more regularly,” he told the San Diego Union-Tribune. to be 10 to 50 times as high indoors as it
Finishing my shower, I step carefully around the dripping vinyl. In my journal, I is outdoors 7; most of us spend the major-
ranked being at home as the safest part of my life, but David Ropeik, the director of ity of our time inside, where poor venti-
risk communication at the Center for Risk Analysis, disagrees. “Home isn’t as sweet lation allows pollutants to accumulate.
as we think,” he tells me. A partial list of the toxins that might be
Consider my morning routine by the numbers. An estimated 280,190 toilet, in my lungs this morning: carbon
shower and bathtub accidents sent victims to the emergency room in 2002, according monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and gases
to Injury Facts, a gripping statistical compendium published annually by the Nation- from household products; mold, mites,
al Safety Council. (This article cites the latest available U.S. data unless otherwise indi- mildew and dander; traces of lead,
cated.) I shave with a razor (an implement linked to 33,532 injuries) with hot water asbestos, pesticides, arsenic, flame retar-
(involved in 42,077 injuries) at the sink (23,283 injuries). For breakfast, I slice a grape- dant and product packaging. Yuck.
fruit with a knife (441,250 injuries) and pour juice into a glass (86,909 injuries). Before The danger posed by some pollutants
sitting down to eat, I jog down two flights of stairs to fetch the newspaper. Easy, is well understood. For example, radon
champ. Falls are a significant danger, causing about 28 percent of the 30,000 acciden- gas—invisible, odorless and radioactive,
tal home deaths6 each year (poisoning and fires are the other top killers). seeping up naturally from the ground
Depressing stuff. “If you were a fanatical risk analyst and started to work through into homes—has been identified as the
all of the risks you’re facing, you’d be immobilized,” says Paul Slovic, a professor of number-two cause of lung cancer in the
psychology at the University of Oregon. “You’d probably end up staying in bed all U.S.8 For many other pollutants, though,
day.” That, sadly, wouldn’t be a good idea either. Every year, around 400 people unin- scientists simply aren’t sure of the health
tentionally suffocate or strangle themselves in bed. effects. More than 75,000 chemicals are

6. As a supplement to total-death
figures, some experts employ the
bleak measure of life-years lost.
For example, the drowning death
of a three-year-old results in 74
life-years lost (current U.S. life
expectancy is 77), making that
fatality worse than the cancer
death of a 75-year-old, which
results in only two life-years lost.
The top five killers in the U.S. are
heart disease, cancer, stroke,
chronic lower respiratory disease
and accidents. Ranked by life-
years lost, though, accidents
(including car crashes, which
account for 43 percent of the total)
are number one.
7. In 1997 the Presidential/
Congressional Commission on
Risk Assessment and Risk
Management named indoor air
pollution as a substantial national
health threat.
8. According to the Environmental
Protection Agency, radon proba-
bly causes 20,000 deaths a year,
primarily among smokers.

60 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
62 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
employed in U.S. industry and agriculture. So far, the Centers for Disease Control and subgroup tended to be better-educated,
Prevention’s National Biomonitoring Program has tested peoples’ bodies for the pres- wealthier and more politically conserva-
ence of just 157 of them. tive than the rest of the pool. Inoculated
An emerging area of concern is synthetically produced nanoparticles, which some by success in life, they were less pervious
scientists theorize might be dangerous because of their ability to accumulate in the to worry and expressed optimism about
body and penetrate cell membranes. Last year, Eva Oberdörster, a researcher at South- their own—and society’s—ability to deal
ern Methodist University, placed buckyballs—a type of carbon nanoparticle being with danger.
studied for use in drugs, computers and fuel cells—in a fish tank at a concentration
of 0.5 part per million. (One of the first consumer products to use buckyballs is, of all
things, a crack- and chip-resistant bowling ball.) Though preliminary, Oberdörster’s
results were troubling: Within two days, the nine largemouth bass in the tank had all Natural-Grown Killers
developed brain damage. It’s far too early to draw any conclusions about a human I’m hungry. I’m in a hurry. I know that a
health hazard, however, so what to make of nanoparticles? My risk-educated attitude high-fat diet can lead to heart disease, the
is to place uncertain dangers like this one on a mental watch list. I’m not going to lose number-one killer in America, and I
any sleep over buckyballs—not yet—but I will stay alert for more hard science. don’t care. I’m going to eat a Quarter
Pounder at McDonald’s, along with fries,
a Coke and cookies. The meal is delicious.
And in one sense at least, it’s healthier
Where the Streets Are Insane than a charbroiled burger I’d gobble at a
It’s midday, and, feeling sluggish in my home office, I step out to pick up a soda. The backyard BBQ. This month, the U.S.
nearest deli is just down the street, across the X-shaped intersection of Lafayette and Department of Health and Human Ser-
Fulton. This is a loathsome spot, crowded with some of the world’s worst drivers. vices added chemical compounds found
Speeding minivans run red lights. Lincoln Town Cars make unsignaled rights, obliv- in grilled meat—some of which are also
ious to pedestrians. Buses blaze past, inches from the curb. Ever since our first week found in cigarette smoke—to its official
in the neighborhood, Anne and I have called this the Intersection of Death. list of probable cancer-causing agents.11
In 2003, an estimated 80,000 pedestrians were injured and 5,600 were killed by I finish lunch feeling satisfied—and
cars. For men in my 25-to-34-year-old age bracket (I’m 34), the annual death rate is 5.5 vaguely queasy. In any given year, one in
per 100,000 people, which doesn’t seem too high. (By comparison, car accidents, the four Americans suffers from food poi-
leading cause of death for men my age, kill at a rate of 26 per 100,000.) The risk experts soning. Although most cases are rela-
later advise me, however, that statistical averages only hint at my personal danger tively mild, 325,000 result in hospitaliza-
level. Consider that New York streets are far busier than average and that New York- tion and 5,000 in death. I logged no food
ers spend more time walking than
typical Americans do. Also, I’m an
incorrigible jaywalker. You can get
your soda faster if you beeline across
the Intersection of Death.9
In the diary, I rate jaywalking as I
did snow-biking—as a significant
but manageable danger. Again I’m
guilty of making a common percep-
tual error: Studies show that people
significantly underrate everyday risks and overrate new ones. When the first cases of poisoning concern in my diary, and my
mad cow disease appeared in Germany, 85 percent of people polled thought the dis- unperturbed reaction is typical. “People
ease was a serious threat. Mad cow was a much bigger problem in the U.K., but it had are more concerned about risks that are
been around awhile; in polls conducted there at the same time, only 40 percent of the catastrophic and rare than those which
public indicated serious concern. involve fewer fatalities but are more fre-
Anne never jaywalks across the Intersection of Death.10 Studies have consis- quent,” write Richard Wilson and
tently concluded that women, on average, are considerably more apprehensive Edmund Crouch in Risk-Benefit Analysis.
about risk than men are. The theories as to why this is so run along predictable Crossing the street from McDonald’s
sociobiological lines: Women bear and nurture children and are therefore instinc- I enter the Union Square farmers’ mar-
tively protective of life, etc. ket. There are tables of apples—Empire,
It turns out, though, that risk-assessment differences aren’t just a man-woman Gala, Winesap, Macoun—and vendors
thing. In a 1994 study, James Flynn of Decision Research in Eugene, Oregon, found selling cider and whole-grain bread. I’m
that the gender difference in risk ranking was attributable to roughly 30 percent of drawn to a booth with an intriguing sign:
his subject pool’s white males, who ranked all risks as being very low. Members of this HAWTHORNE VALLEY FARM—DEMETER-

9. Buying a soda, meanwhile, is 10,000 people a year go to the 10. Darn Y chromosome. Men ing to the National Safety Council.
not without its own risks. By one emergency room for money-related between the ages of 25 and 34 are 11. Cookout char was joined by a
estimate, half of all bills and coins injuries. Five people a year are more than three times as likely as chemical used in moth repellant
carry infectious germs; more than killed by falling vending machines. women to die in accidents, accord- and toilet bowl deodorant.

P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5 63
CERTIFIED, BIODYNAMIC. Inside, a bearded man tells me that the farm’s crops are grown for anyone suspicious. I’ll rank crime
without the use of artificial fertilizers or pesticides; even the Hawthorne cows eat as only a moderate danger in my
organic feed. This eases the impact on the environment, but does it make the food diary—the city is the safest it has been
safer than the meal I just scarfed? “I’d say it’s at least 200 times safer,” he says. I plop for decades, right? Right. The number
down $20 for a skimpy T-bone steak. of murders, for instance, which hit an
Afterward, I wonder: Is an artificial-pesticide-free farmers’-market offering— all-time high of 2,245 in 1990, plunged
an apple, for instance—significantly safer than a standard grocery-store one? 75 percent to 575 in 2004. New York is
Before my risk education I would have said “yes”; now I’m less certain. The Food one of the safest large cities in the
and Drug Administration (in 1999) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (in country. Plus, as a relatively young
2000) each tested close to 10,000 food samples from grocery stores around the man, I must rank pretty low on the
country. They concluded that fewer than 2 percent of the samples had pesticide potential victim list, right? Wrong.
residues above allowable limits and that even then, most were well below the Andrew Karmen, a professor at John
amount thought to be unhealthy. Jay College who is one of the city’s
most respected criminologists, corrects
this faulty assumption. Many women,
he tells me, take anti-crime precautions
such as traveling in groups; older peo-
ple generally aren’t out late; and mar-
ried people usually travel together.
Who is most likely to be out at night,
alone and distracted, thus presenting
himself as an easy target? An overcon-
fident guy like me, strolling down the
street at midnight, listening to his iPod.

Research in the 1990s by Bruce Ames, a molecular biologist at the University of

California at Berkeley, indicated that 99.9 percent of the pesticides eaten by Ameri-
cans are natural. You can give lab rats cancer with substances found in cabbage, cau- High Stakes
liflower, broccoli and bananas. “I’m not saying that we should be avoiding broccoli,” Today I’m flying to Montana to begin a
Ames says. Consuming plenty of fruits and vegetables lowers your cancer risk. But weeklong skiing and driving vacation in
his work illuminates two common risk-perception errors. First, artificial risks are auto- the Rockies. Because the atmosphere is
matically assumed to be worse than natural ones. People fret about the radiation from thinner at 37,000 feet, my exposure to
their cellphones giving them cancer, then go to the beach without sunscreen. Second, ionizing radiation is 100 to 300 times as
people’s judgments are inappropriately polarized; they fail to recognize that most great as it would be at sea level. A study
things in the world present a mix of risks and benefits. in Great Britain found that flight-crew
members are exposed to significantly
more ionizing radiation per year
than workers at nuclear power plants
Urban Myths and Menaces are. Other studies have noted slightly
The off-off-Broadway show that I’m watching—The Top Ten People of the Millennium elevated cancer rates among crew mem-
Sing Their Favorite Schubert Lieder—has its moments. In slower stretches, though, I bers, but the health danger is negligible
find myself glancing around the cramped theater: at tangles of cable snaking between for less-frequent fliers like me. Dear
stage lights; at peeling black paint on the walls; at the nearest exit. Ever since that Diary: not worried. Suddenly, though, the
Rhode Island nightclub fire that killed 100 people two years ago, clubs and theaters plane jolts with turbulence, seeming to
have made me nervous. After the show, I walk carefully on the sidewalk. Last year, a drop 150 feet before catching itself. Dear
woman in the East Village was killed after stepping on a metal plate that had become Diary: freaked out.
electrified with what the papers disturbingly referred to as “stray voltage.”Waiting for I know this is senseless, and subse-
the subway home, I step behind a pillar when the train rushes into the station. Every- quent research supports me. Flying is the
one knows how people get pushed onto the tracks by deranged criminals. safest form of transportation around,
I will later place these urban fears midway up my risk list, but statistically speak- with an infinitesimal average annual
ing, even these rankings are unwarranted. The annual U.S. death rate from fires is a fatality rate of 0.03 deaths per 100 mil-
little higher than one person per 100,000. The rates for sidewalk zapping and platform lion passenger-miles. The rate for driving
pushing are far lower—in recent New York history, there have been one known elec- is almost 30 times as high. Irrational fear
trocution and a handful of pushing incidents in a city of eight million people who isn’t my fault, though—I’m just wired
walk and ride trains daily. It seems that I’m the victim of several closely related cog- that way. Joseph LeDoux, a neurobiolo-
nitive pranks: availability, which means that familiar, easily imagined risk scenarios gist at New York University, uses func-
are feared more than long-term, abstract threats; dread, the idea that rare but acutely tional MRI and (CONTINUED ON PAGE 94)
y

horrible fates (deadly spider, snake and shark attacks) are dwelt upon more than hum-

[ ]
drum ones (heart attacks); and disproportionate visibility, which causes people to
believe that if something is highly publicized, it must also be highly probable. T POPSCI Don’t have two weeks?
ON THE WEB Test your own risk IQ
Relaxing on the subway, I shift into iPod mode; I continue listening while walk- in two minutes at popsci.com/risk.
ing a couple blocks to my apartment. It’s nearly midnight, and I keep an eye out

64 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
OH NO, IT’S A CATO!
The “catastrophic at
takeoff” event is a
rocketeer’s worst fear—
unless it happens to
somebody else.
 us
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o th e Lar nch, wh
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ome ip la
Welc ocket Sh the ough
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f un , if ’s big en
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big the failu explos HOOPER
BY JO
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P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5 67
T
he visitor who pulls up to this
upstate New York hayfield on a
sunny July Saturday afternoon
might well wonder whether he’s
stumbled upon a 4-H Club event
or a third-world arms bazaar. There’s a
country-fair atmosphere—the fast-talking
voice over the PA system, kids eating ice
cream and hot dogs—but instead of leading
prize heifers to the judges’ table, participants
are lugging huge replicas of military missiles
(U.S., Russian, Chinese, take your pick) over to
the range-safety officer to get final clearance
to launch. The owners of the most massive
rockets have cleared their projects in advance
with the event’s BFR (that would be Big
Freakin’ Rocket) committee. “Bring ’em up
and we’ll burn ’em up,” the announcer says.
For six days over this extended July 4th
weekend, this field on the outskirts of the
college town of Geneseo is the setting for the Large Danger-
ous Rocket Ship launch. The event has been held annually
(each year at a different site) since the late 1980s, when sig-
nificant numbers of amateurs began building projectiles of
such size and muscularity that the term “model rocket” no
longer applied. This is “high-powered” rocketry. At East Coast
launch sites like this one, which tend to be situated close to
MANY HERE RECALL A TRIANGULAR
ROCKET FROM LDRS 19THAT IS NOW
AFFECTIONATELY KNOWN AS
”THE FLAMING PYRAMID OF DEATH.”
flight paths and population centers, participants are granted
temporary waivers that allow them to fly as high as 12,000
feet. But at desert launch sites in the West, the sky’s the limit.
In Black Rock, Nevada, last May, former Hollywood stunt-
man Ky Michaelson made history, launching a 21-foot, 700-
pound rocket called Go Fast that climbed some 70 miles into
the outer regions of Earth’s atmosphere—more than 20
miles higher than the previous unofficial amateur record.
At this, the 23rd annual Large Dangerous Rocket Ship
event (LDRS 23), Thursday through Sunday will be one big
explosive picnic. Kids and families will fly comparatively
modest kit-built rockets alongside passionate, not to say
obsessive, adult hobbyists who have installed large commer-
cially available motors inside massive balsa-wood or card-
board contraptions that can stand 15 feet tall, weigh a cou-
ple hundred pounds, and take months to build. On Monday
and Tuesday, the kids and the summer-picnic feel will evap-
orate, and the field will be turned over to experimental, or
“ex,” craft flying on high-powered propellant that the rocke-
teers have mixed and cured themselves.
To the uninitiated, even the first, relatively mellow days
are unsettling, like being dropped into the middle of a mini
Cape Canaveral gone haywire, with rockets firing off all
around you every minute. The little ones are zippy, ener-
gized darts; the big ones, powerful enough to make you
jump back if you’re not ready. They take off with throaty
68 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
roars, leaping from their pads and splitting the sky like
arrows shot by a god, leaving trails of smoke and flames.
“We’ve got all sizes of rockets here,” says Lloyd Wood, an
investment adviser by trade who, as the president (or “pre-
fect”) of the hosting Buffalo, New York, rocketry club, is the
weekend’s launch director. When Wood hasn’t parked his
ample frame on a folding chair under the organizers’ tent,
he is buzzing around the grounds in a canvas hat astride a
four-wheeled ATV, the 21st-century version of a British colo-
nial administrator inspecting the territories. His job is mak-
ing sure the 1,700 or so launches planned for the weekend
don’t backfire, thus intruding on the high spirits and per-
sonal safety of the perhaps 500 spectators milling about. As
a breed, the ex rockets in play on the last two days are prone
to dramatic failure; Lloyd and his team have to be ready to
put out fires. Literally. “If you had nothing but successful
launches, it wouldn’t be any fun,” he says.
On Saturday afternoon, the buzz is all about an upcoming
launch by Florida engineer Rick Boyette. He has assembled an
exquisitely detailed 1:17-scale model of the Chinese Long
March 2E that shot satellites into space in the early 1990s.
Authentic Chinese lettering, lovingly reproduced, runs down
the fiberglass body. “It says
‘China into Space,’ ” Boyette ex-
plains. “That’s what somebody
told me.” The propulsion comes THE FAITHFUL
REPRODUCTION
ROCKET Long March 2E
ROCKETEER Florida engi-
neer Rick Boyette
DESIGN Meticulous recon-
struction of Chinese rocket
INVESTMENT 100 hours,
$2,180
from four strap-on booster mo- LAUNCH It explodes mid-
air: a rocket piñata.
tors surrounding a larger central
one. Called a cluster configura-
tion, this can be notoriously dif-
ficult to pull off. Unless the boosters fire simultaneously and
with identical force, the rocket won’t go straight; an unbal-
anced liftoff can rip an airframe apart. Boyette is known in
rocketry circles for beautiful, ambitious projects that some-
times suffer from lack of attention to technical detail.
I catch up with Boyette as he and his team scurry around
attending to last-minute prelaunch routines. “You guys
wouldn’t happen to have some duct tape, would you?” some-
body asks. The two onboard parachutes have to be properly
folded and stowed inside, and connected to the rocket frame
with Kevlar cord. If the Long March launches as planned,
two parachutes, set off by a time-delay charge or an altime-
ter, will deploy when the rocket reaches its apogee. To pre-
vent the heavy nose cone from damaging the rest of the
body during landing, a small drogue parachute will inflate
to lower it; a larger chute will deliver the rest of the craft
gently to the ground. Ideally, the rocket will return
undinged, ready to be outfitted with a new motor and
launched all over again. Of course, Boyette has already
flown, crashed, and rebuilt the Long March three times.
Forty-five minutes pass before Boyette announces, “It’s
armed.” We all retreat 1,000 feet, as per regulations, to the
 vicinity of a few bales of hay. “Five, four, three, two, one . . .”
—and nothing. “No smoke, no joy,” as the phrase goes. An
inspection reveals that the problem is not Boyette’s: The igni-
tion box provided by the event organizers has malfunctioned.
A few quick repairs, and Boyette is ready for a second try.
This time the launch sequence goes without a hitch, and
the Long March, all its motors burning brightly and noisily
PA G E 6 6 : N A D I N E K I N N E Y / P H O T O S B Y N A D I N E ; T H I S PA G E : T O M TAV E E
in sync, lifts into the sky—for a few seconds. It rises 1,000
feet or so, then blows apart, a rocket piñata, casing, tubing
and parachutes raining down like party favors. Boyette looks
strangely calm; it’s as if he expected that something would
go wrong. “I have no idea what happened,” he says. “I was
watching it go up and thinking, ‘I’m home free, I’m home
free,’ and then . . . Maybe it was just too much force.”
This is what’s known in the trade as a garbage-bag recov-
ery, wherein the rocket returns to Earth in pieces, to be pored
over for forensic clues, then deposited in the nearest dump-
ster. It is but one of the many varieties of failed launch that
will take place over the course of the festival.
Sometimes a rocket fails to ignite; it sits on the pad refus-
ing to budge, like a disobedient dog. Or, on successful ignition,
hot gases burst through the motor’s combustion chamber,
escaping into the relatively delicate airframe, and the rocket
blows on the pad, leaving what is sometimes described as
“rocket confetti.” (This is a CATO, or “catastrophic at takeoff,”
event.) Or the rocket hurtles happily skyward but the forces
generated are too much for the frame to withstand and, like
Boyette’s Long March, it breaks apart in midair.
But most rockets that come to grief do so on the return trip.
You’ll hear the announcer say something like, “It’s coming
P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5 69
down hot” when the main chute or, worse,
both chutes fail to deploy. Rockets that hit the
ground at 100 to 300 miles an hour are
known as “lawn darts” or “worm guillotines.”
From the human spectator’s point of view,
though, the most worrisome kind of rocket is
an unstable one—one that’s flying under full
power in any direction other than straight up.
If a set of faulty calculations slips by
the launch-safety officer, a homemade
rocket may pinwheel out of control after
takeoff. As it burns fuel, its center of
gravity may shift, causing it to stabilize in a
horizontal position
and do a fair, if
short-lived, approxi-
mation of a cruise HIGH-DRAG
missile. “People can WHIMSY
see it coming,” says ROCKET The Mother Ship
Duane Wilkey, a
ROCKETEER Edward Miller,
middle-school sci- a chocolate-machine opera-
ence teacher who is tor from Pennsylvania
one of this year’s
DESIGN Hershey’s Kiss–
launch organizers. like; 2.5 feet, 50 pounds
“So there’s enough
INVESTMENT 60 hours,
time for them to get
$1,230
out of the way.”
Many here recall the LAUNCH Flawless
triangular rocket
that flew, briefly, at
LDRS 19 and that is affectionately remem-
bered as “the Flaming Pyramid of Death.”

Later that evening at the event’s banquet,

held in a Rochester hotel, I describe Boyette’s
launch to a bunch of rocketeers who didn’t
bother to wait around for it. “It was great,” I
say, and then, catching myself, “well, not
great for Rick or the rocket . . .” A rocketeer

FA C I N G PA G E : F R O M T O P : T O M TAV E E ; C O U R T E S Y PAT E A S T E R ; T O M TAV E E

puts me at ease: “You don’t have to explain
it to us. That’s why we’re all here. We love to

F R O M T O P : T O M TAV E E ; N A D I N E K I N N E Y / P H O T O S B Y N A D I N E ( 3 ) ;
watch rockets blow up—and it’s even better
when it’s someone else’s.”
Moments later, the man of the moment, a
dazed-looking Boyette, appears. “I had a fail-
ure of the tube coupler joint on my number-
two booster,” he says. “Either I didn’t put
enough glue [on it] when I was rebuilding it
or . . . But I will rebuild it again.” I ponder the
$2,000 and 100 hours that Boyette has sunk
into this 72-pound, 10-foot-long, essentially
useless object. Earlier in the day, Stephen Boy, to my knowl- other, and after a few dozen, enthusiasm can wane. But for the
edge the only rocketeer in attendance who is also a clinical psy- rocketeer, each launch is a thrill that might be likened to sex:
chologist, had given me his version of Zen and the Art of High- The arduousness of the preparation and the predictability and
Powered Rocketry: “You’ve got to be able to let go. You build brevity of the climax diminish the intensity of the experience
something, you put in the time and money and dedication, but not a bit. The phallic implications of this overwhelmingly
you also have to be willing to have things not work out.” male sport don’t escape anyone. “My wife, who is a clinical
To a spectator, one successful launch looks much like an- social worker, says it’s just about a bunch of guys comparing

THE NEXT BIG BANG THIS YEAR’S EVENT, LDRS 24, WILL BE HELD JULY 14–19 IN LETHBRIDGE,

70 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
the size of their rockets,” says Boy—who, it must be noted,
brought one of the largest, the 16.5-foot, 180-pound O’ Boy.
The banquet is a chance for the rocketeers to let their hair
A DROGUE’S GALLERY
down, have a few drinks, talk shop. Underneath the bon- OTHER CONTENDERS AND HOW THEY FARED
homie, it’s clear that distinct groups are mingling. There are
the guys like Boyette who build meticulous replicas of real-life
rockets. Then there are the guys who like to build outlandish,
bulky, un-aerodynamic rockets. A few examples this year: a PUMPED-UP MODEL
flying-saucer-shaped rocket, a rocketized industrial spool, and
a series of rockets meant to launch bowling balls into space.
ROCKET The Mosquito
(Admittedly, none of the conceptual rockets is creating the stir
that Ky Michaelson, of Go Fast fame, did when he sent up Our ROCKETEER Woody Hoburg,
Stinkin’ Rocket, an honest-to-god port-a-potty, at LDRS 22.) a student at MIT
This variety of rocketeer is having fun with the relatively DESIGN A scaled-up version
low FAA-imposed East Coast altitude ceiling while getting in (10 feet tall, 120 pounds) of a
touch with the machine-shop artist within, an impulse famil- model rocket Hoburg flew as a
kid. It has two large motors
iar to anyone who watches American Chopper or Monster
for liftoff and two small ones
Garage. At the banquet, I chat with Rich Kroboth, a computer meant to ignite in midair.
programmer from New Jersey who was in a valedictory mood
INVESTMENT 300 hours,
after his bowling ball, ingeniously perched atop a single fin,
$1,200
turned in a solid, if not quite record-breaking, performance. “It
took three months to build,” he says. “I owe my wife a lot.” LAUNCH The nose cone pops
open, the drogue chute shreds,
The third kind of rocketeer is the sort of person who might
and the rocket lands “hot”
be seen around the launch grounds wearing a button that between two parked cars.
reads “Yes, I am a rocket scientist!” These are the guys, usually
drawn from the technical professions, who get off on tinker-
ing with propellant chemistry. Some are bona fide aeronauti- HYBRID HOTSHOT

WHEN ROCKETS CRASH ROCKET GemiNOS

ROCKETEER Martin Dorociak,
AT 100 TO 300 MPH, an engineer from Ohio

THEY’RE KNOWN AS DESIGN The 7.5-foot, 24-

pound rocket sports not one
“WORM GUILLOTINES.” but two hybrid motors. These
finicky devices are powered by
nitrous oxide and solid plastic.
cal engineers on busman’s holiday, others just fanatics drawn
INVESTMENT 150 hours,
to high-wire chemistry projects. Representative of this group $1,190
are Alan Whitmore, an immunologist, and his co-conspirator
LAUNCH The two motors fail
Jim Livingston, a retired medical-products manufacturing
to light simultaneously, and
executive. The two North Carolina rocketeers make an intrigu- one overheats, breaking off
ing odd couple, Livingston the avid golfer with a country-club in midair. Still, the rocket
loosey-goosiness about him, Whitmore, techno-nerd author of reaches 2,932 feet.
the self-published paper “Performance Evaluation of Experi-
mental Rocket Propellant.” The two joined forces after dis- BOWLING-BALL
covering that Whitmore was building a breathtakingly large LAUNCH
motor and that Livingston had a rocket wide enough for it.
This is the biggest motor either of them has ever flown, and ROCKET Unnamed
they are feeling heady and slightly apprehensive. “I’m not just ROCKETEER Computer pro-
risking my motor but also wrecking Jim’s rocket,” Whitmore grammer Rich Kroboth of
says. “And you don’t like to mess up your friend’s rocket.” New Jersey
Another pair of experimentalists I run into are Dave DESIGN An eight-pound bowl-
Weber and Bob Utley, buddies from the Maryland chapter of ing ball perched on a “ring fin”
Tripoli, the national association of high-powered rocketry. INVESTMENT 300 hours, $800
These guys aren’t sweating it. Each is flying a motor of a size
LAUNCH The first launch flops
they’ve flown scores of times before. Weber, a civil engineer,
[see charred remains at right
has been into rockets since he was a kid in the ’60s. “I saw a in photo] when the ball fails
model-rockets advertisement in Boy’s Life magazine,” he to eject. The second reaches
1,754 feet—4,746 short of
the bowling-ball record but
ALBERTA. FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO LDRS24.ORG. an impressive showing for a
previously untested design.

P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5 71
recalls, “and I fell in love.” The
rocketry career of Utley, a com- SINCE 9/11, ANYTHING THAT
puter technician, follows a more
typical trajectory. He dabbled as
SMACKS OF DIY PYROTECHNICS
a boy, then “got back into it IS VIEWED WITH SUSPICION.
when my kid was 11 and
expressed an interest,” he says. “Like with just about every whether it’s because I’m exerting myself so much or I’m just
‘born-again’ rocketeer I know, my kid dropped it and I stayed excited being around this much propellant.” Before he slides
with it.” Both Weber’s and Utley’s rockets will be powered by the sleeve of propellant packets into an aluminum casing that
a batch of propellant that the two whipped up together. The will slip into place inside the rocket body just above the fins,
only wild card: Cooking rocket propellant is not unlike bak- he permits himself a final deep whiff. “Oh, yeah!” he exclaims.
ing cookies—no two batches come out exactly the same. “This is one of the most beautiful smells in the world.”
Until the late ’80s, the size of model rockets was limited A rocket is basically fuel ignited in a contained space with
by the standard propellant—black powder, better known as only one way out. The rapidly expanding gases and flaming
gunpowder. Brittle and highly flammable, the stuff is cum- particulate matter push against the walls of the combustion
bersome and dangerous to fabricate into large motors; man- chamber and are forced through a narrow nozzle that con-
ufacturers never considered it worth the trouble. That centrates their energy as forward thrust. Rocket guru Wern-
restraint went out the window when a handful of engineer- her von Braun once likened the process to continuously fir-
tinkerers figured out how to fly
model rockets with the same
solid composite fuel that NASA
uses in its boosters. Solid pro-

HOMEMADE
MOTOR #1
ROCKET The Viper
ROCKETEER Retired executive Jim
Livingston of North Carolina
[at left, with partner Alan Whitmore]
DESIGN 14 feet, 100 pounds
INVESTMENT 100 hours, $500
LAUNCH Successful, but return is a bit
troubled: The main chute only half-
opens, and Viper smacks down hard.

I L L U S T R AT I O N : 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 S : N A D I N E K I N N E Y / P H O T O S B Y N A D I N E
pellant is a two-part proposi-

tion: oxidant and fuel. Ammo-
nium perchlorate, the oxidant,
releases oxygen when ignited,
which feeds the burn of the synthetic rubber, a hydrocarbon
fuel that’s enhanced with finely ground, highly combustible
aluminum particles. The brew is three times as powerful,
gram for gram, as black powder, and far safer.
Jim Livingston happens to have a summer cottage on Lake
Conesus, N.Y., a stone’s throw from this year’s launch site, and
it is here that he and Whitmore prepare the motor for Liv-
ingston’s 14-foot-tall Viper rocket. On this sultry summer
afternoon, Whitmore is inspecting his high-test home brew.
“When I’m sweating like this,” he tells me, “I don’t know
F R O M L E F T: T O M TAV E E ; N A D I N E K I N N E Y / P H O T O S B Y N A D I N E ; FA C I N G PA G E :
ing a machine gun off the stern of a rowboat, pushing the
boat forward with the force of the recoil. The simplicity of
the mechanism, and the lack of moving parts in the finished
product, go a long way toward explaining how it is possible
to assemble a sizable rocket motor in a summer cottage.
Whitmore prepares to secure his motor inside the rocket
booster stage. He fits a steel compression, or snap, ring into
two retention bolts, so that at liftoff the motor won’t push
through the forward bulkhead or shoot out the nozzle
underneath. “When you see me begin to compress the snap
ring,” he says, “step slightly this way or that. If these things
slip off the groove, you have a bullet in the house.”
Obeying the first law of high-powered rocketry—“Big is

[ ]
Read about notorious moments in
good”—Whitmore has built a motor that, in the nomenclature
T POPSCI rocket history, from ancient China to of the hobby, is N class, meaning that over the course of its
ON THE WEB Ariane 5, at popsci.com/rocketeers. burn it will put out between 10,240 and 20,480 Newton-
seconds of thrust, the so-called “total impulse.” (A Newton-

72 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
second is the force applied over one second that would accel-
erate one kilogram of mass an additional meter per second.)
Every time you go up a letter, you double the total impulse, so
this N motor has twice the power of Whitmore’s recent M
motor projects—M being the standard attention-grabbing
muscle motor at an LDRS event—and 8,192 times the power
of the A motors that drive the small model kits. “Working with
these big motors really gets your heart rate up,” he says.
The other thing that agitates rocketeers: regulations.
To get permission to launch his record-setting Go Fast,
Michaelson underwent an epic two-and-a-half-year bureau-
cratic struggle with an obscure federal entity, the Office of
Commercial Space Transportation. The civil servant who held
up the launch for a year reportedly told him,“We’re not happy
unless you’re unhappy.” To which Michaelson replied (to the
enduring satisfaction of high-powered-rocketry enthusiasts
the world round), “We’re not happy unless you’re a little bit
worried.” And the feds are worried. In the fall of 2001, two
agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives paid a call to the Whitmore residence to exam-
ine his propellant-storage facilities.
Since 9/11, anything that smacks of do-it-yourself pyrotech-
nics is viewed with suspicion. Officials have suggested that a
homemade rocket could be used by terrorists. Rocketeers
retort that any terrorist who attempted to deliver a deadly pay-
load with a rocket, which doesn’t have a guidance system,
instead of a Stinger shoulder-to-air missile (or a rental truck or
suicide vest) would be a terrorist in the wrong line of work.
Still, officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives maintain that they have the authority to regu-
late rocket motors because the oxidant used in solid propellant,
ammonium perchlorate, has been on the official explosives list
since the 1970s. The government requires that high-powered
rocketeers get burdensome explosives permits. Rocketeers are
disgusted. “No one’s ever built a bomb with this stuff,” says
attorney Joe Egan, who represents
Tripoli and the National Associa-
tion of Rocketry, “but hundreds of
bombs a year are made from gun-

HOMEMADE
MOTOR #2
ROCKET Super Tuber
ROCKETEER Dave Weber, a civil
engineer from Maryland
DESIGN 13.5 feet, 70 pounds
INVESTMENT 180 hours, $1,500
LAUNCH Disastrous. Too much alu-
minum mixed in the homemade pro-
pellant creates excess pressure; the
rocket blows at takeoff.

powder, which is easy to obtain.”

Seconds Doug Pratt, a rocketeer
and hobby-industry consultant,
“We’re offended by the suggestion
that we’re doing something unpatriotic.” At the otherwise jolly
SOLID-FUEL ROCKET
ROCKET PLAN LDRS banquet, there are “council of war” moments, with a
passing of the hat for the legal defense fund.
An electric igniter in The feds’ attack on solid fuel has led some rocketeers to try
solid-fuel rockets sparks
the unstoppable burning
hybrid motors, which burn rubber or plastic using a liquid oxi-
Oxidizer dizer. Hybrids are nothing new, but until now they were a
of a fuel and oxidizer
mix. Hybrid rockets solution in search of a problem. Post-9/11, they became a way
Valve
keep their oxidizer and to legally sidestep federal oversight, since nothing in them can
fuel—typically nitrous be remotely considered an explosive. (Ironically, while one
Fuel oxide and PVC pipe—in arm of the government harasses rocketeers, another solicits
separate tanks. An ig-
them. NASA has purchased two launch systems—for its edu-
niter heats the combus-
tion chamber, burning
cational programs—from Doug Pratt, who makes them in his
Igniter off the valve that holds basement and sells them over the Internet in his spare time.)
back the oxidizer. Flow- Hybrids have a crucial safety edge, which derives from
Fuel/oxidizer ing nitrous and hot PVC their combustion of two components—an oxidizer, usually
mixture
combust to make thrust. nitrous oxide, and a fuel source, usually a machined chunk of
HYBRID ROCKET
PVC plastic (although most any- (CONTINUED ON PAGE 92)
y

P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5 73
 POPULAR

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

INSIDE ASSEMBLE A $7,700 GAMING PC 78 • BUILD SILVER BULLETS 80 • CREATE DIY ANIMATION 82 • FIX BROKEN PDA SCREENS 84

5 THINGS ...
YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU
COULD TRACK WITH RSS
To learn more about RSS, see
popsci.com/h20.

1 PACKAGE DELIVERIES
New to RSS? Get a free account
with Web-based RSS reader
Bloglines (bloglines.com). In
addition to tracking headlines
from your favorite sites, you can
now receive an RSS feed on
packages from UPS, FedEx or
the USPS—just enter the tracking
number, and the feed will update
at each stage of the delivery.

2 LIBRARY BOOKS
Avoid late fees and fruitless
trips to the library with ELF
(libraryelf.com), which generates
a feed to inform you when
books you’ve requested are
available at your local branch
(including a link to operating
hours) and when your checked-
out books are almost due.

3 LOCAL WEATHER
RSSWeather (rssweather.com)
sends updates on current and
DEPT: YOU BUILT WHAT?! INVESTIGATOR: JEFF WISE TECH: Cluster ballooning forecasted weather conditions
COST: $2,000 per flight for your city. You can even
Getting High on Helium TIME: 2 hours of prep
for a two-hour flight
customize the feed to notify you
only when certain changes occur
John Ninomiya regularly takes flight using a (temperature, forecast, etc.).
rig so simple it’s scary: a bunch of helium balloons PRACTICAL POPCORN
4 TV LISTINGS
Need to know when you can
Anyone who’s ever been eight years old has wondered the same thing: How many balloons would it next catch Deadwood on HBO?
take to carry me up into the sky? John Ninomiya knows the answer. He’s logged 32 flights—and Bootleg RSS (ktyp.com/rss/tv )
provides channel-specific feeds
ascended as high as 21,400 feet—dangling beneath clusters of between 40 and 120 helium balloons. (by time zone) with the day’s
An avid hot-air balloonist, Ninomiya first attempted his boyhood dream in 1997, when he teamed programming for dozens of
with ballooning pioneer Don Piccard to fly a cluster of seven custom-built Mylar helium balloons. The rig cable networks, including CNN,
worked, but it suffered from buoyancy-control problems. Later, Ninomiya switched to smaller balloons the Discovery Channel and ESPN.
made of latex, which were not only lighter and easier to pop, but also biodegradable and less expensive.
Ranging in size from four to seven feet in diameter, each balloon can lift as much as 10 pounds. Ninomiya 5 YOURSELF
Find out when your company,
varies the mix depending on the needs of each flight. Larger balloons are easier to fill, but the only way favorite sports team or even
he can descend is by selectively popping balloons, so using a larger number of smaller ones gives him your name is mentioned just
more control. He flies eight to 10 times a year; each flight lasts around two hours and costs about $2,000. about anywhere on the Web
As simple as it seems, you definitely shouldn’t try this at home. Ninomiya has little directional with PubSub (pubsub.com). The
DEAN A. EKDAHL

site trawls more than nine million

control of his rig—he pops balloons or lets out ballast to change altitude in hopes of catching an air
news and blog sites and lets you
current moving in the direction he wants to go. He also wears a parachute, although he expects never create an RSS feed that alerts
to use it. “Most of the things that can kill you happen at landing,” he says. Learn more at Ninomiya’s you when your specified key-
site, clusterballoon.org, and turn the page to see how he assembles an airworthy cluster. >> words appear.—MERLIN MANN

P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5 75

T
HOW 2.0| YOU BUILT WHAT?!
» A total of 8,000 cubic feet of
helium in 40 to 120 balloons
is required to lift the 180-pound
BUILDING A BUOYANT CLUSTER Ninomiya plus 180 pounds of
ballast and 120 pounds of gear
into the sky. It takes a team of
15 to 20 volunteers two hours
to inflate and rig the balloons.
» The neck of each balloon is
wrapped in masking tape, doubled
over to form a loop, and sealed
with cable ties. Braided #36 nylon
twine from Home Depot is tied to
the loop with a bowline knot.
» Ninomiya wears a stan-
dard paragliding harness and
an emergency parachute.
» For ballast, eight or more
16-pound CamelBak-type water
bladders attach to heavy webbing
straps connected to two main
load-bearing carabiners. To rise,
Ninomiya lets water run out.
More ballast allows greater
maneuverability, but more
balloons are needed to lift him.
» To prevent tangling, he ties
balloons in sets of four to a cara-
biner, which in turn is fastened to
» Ninomiya is attempting to fly a cluster of balloons in each of the a webbing strap connected to the
harness. Clusters are organized
50 states over the next 10 to 15 years—an ongoing project he calls States of
in three tiers, with the topmost
Enlightenment. Here’s where you can see him soar this summer:
four connected to 15-foot risers,
JULY 1: Ashland BalloonFest, Ashland, Ohio
the middle four to shorter risers,
JULY 23: Fun Fest Balloon Rally, Kingsport, Tenn.
and the remaining clusters
AUG. 5–6: North American Balloon Association Nationals, Baton Rouge, La.
directly to the harness.
AUG. 12–14: Summerfest Hot-Air Balloon Extravaganza, Pontiac, Ill.
AUG. 19: Ogden Valley Balloon Festival, Eden, Utah
AUG. 26: Flag City Balloon Fest, Findlay, Ohio
[ Procurement: PropertyRoom.com ] well, a steal at propertyroom.com, an auction site
Buying police-recovered stolen goods can be,
that lists everything from socks to real estate to gadgets from police departments all over the country.
Unlike eBay, auctions keep going until bidding stops, so the best stuff usually reaches prices similar to
those at Amazon.com and eBay. But there are bargains for those looking to buy in bulk or for spare
parts. The “Items Under $5” page recently listed “four VCRs, for parts only” at $1. These miscellaneous
collections are sold untested and nonreturnable. But hey, in a 25-pound box of cellphones and pagers
(final price: $352 plus shipping), at least a few have to work, right? —AMANDA MACMILLAN
76 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
[ ]
DUBIOUS
CLAIMS
We Test Gadgets That
Use Science to Sell
Claim: “Your best protec-
tion against deadly animal
related accidents . . . wave
variance tuning combines
reverberation . . . off the
road surface, creating a
virtual sonic echo effect.”
HORNET V-120
xp3hornet.com
TECH: Electronic deer-
avoidance device
RESULT: Deer didn’t notice
Reality: New York’s Hud-
son Highlands are infested
with deer. My wife recently
did her part, thinning the
herd by one in her Porsche,
but it cost us nearly $5,000
in bodywork. So I fell for
the Hornet V-120: $60 of
brackets, plugs, and a
“sonic generator” that
mounts under the car and
reflects a high-pitched
sound that should scare
away “highly skittish” deer.
Within 10 minutes of
installing my new weapon,
I found some deer grazing
at the roadside and eased
to within 20 feet. “Take this,
Bambi,” I thought as I hit
the Hornet’s switch.
I L L U S T R AT I O N S , F R O M L E F T: J A M E S O N S I M P S O N ; L - D O PA
Nothing. Not a raised
head, not a twitched tail,
not even a perked ear. I
might as well have mooned
the beasts for all the distrac-
tion the Hornet created.
Lesson: Listen to what all
the experts—veterinarians,
body shop guys, highway
patrolmen—told me:
Skittish though it may be,
nothing will stop a deer
from running into your car’s
path.—STEPHAN WILKINSON
T
HOW2.0| MAXED OUT
DEPT: MAXED OUT
The Deadliest Gaming Rig
PC gamers demand top-end performance from their
machine and its accessories. Here’s the best of the best
Neo’s recliner in The Matrix is my ideal gaming
rig: Sit back, jack in, and “whoah!”—total
mind-game integration. But until the machines
take over, the absolute best a gamer can do
is the $5,858 Alienware Area-51 ALX SLI
(alienware.com) [below], which sports an ultra-
fast Intel Xeon 3.4-gigahertz processor, one
gigabyte of RAM, a 148-gigabyte 10,000rpm
hard drive, silent liquid cooling and a 7.1-
channel soundcard. The neon-glowing rig even
employs a technology called Scalable Link
Interface, or SLI, in which two 256-megabyte
B ALIENWARE AREA-51 ALX SLI
A
E more modern stick, the Logitech
D
K controls that usually take two hands.
J 800-dpi scan rate and a trigger that
I
78 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
INVESTIGATOR: BEN ZACKHEIM TECH: PC gaming
BASE COST: $5,858
TOTAL COST: $7,693
STEAL SPLURGE
NVIDIA GeForce videocards share the graphics
duties, giving you the most detailed scenes pos-
sible (short of plugging directly into your skull).
Although today’s games are designed to take
advantage of such monstrous power, you don’t
need to spend six grand on a PC to play. Any
computer with a 256-megabyte graphics card,
one gigabyte of RAM and a two-gigahertz CPU
will keep you in the deathmatch. The key to
kicking butt is often in the accessories—super-
responsive controls, rich surround sound and a
fast monitor are all essentials for victory.
C
F prioritizes your network traffic for
H G
THE ULTIMATE GAMING GEAR
The 19-inch NEC Multisync GX LCD
[A] ($550; nec.com) has an eight-
millisecond response time, which
virtually eliminates “ghosting”—the
distracting trails often left behind fast-
moving objects on the screen. Clip on
an Eclipse Computer Light [B] ($30;
onetech.net )—its concave reflector and
10,000-hour bulb cast a soft, even
glow to minimize eyestrain during all-
night World of Warcraft sessions.
The Logitech Premium USB Headset
300 [C] ($50; logitech.com) lets you
speak clearly to the opponent you’re
about to frag. For big sound, the
Logitech Z-5500 speaker set [D]
($400; logitech.com) boasts five dual-
driver satellites and a 10-inch woofer.
The D-Link DGL-4300 108G Wireless
Gaming Router [E] ($170; dlink.com)
online gaming, so you can keep your
firewall and virus scanner running with-
out worrying about “death by lag.”
The X-Arcade Joystick [F] ($150;
x-arcade.com) replicates the old coin-
op controllers of your youth. For a
Freedom Cordless Joystick [G] ($70;
logitech.com) uses a high-frequency
2.4-gigahertz signal for fast wireless
communication and customizable
buttons and triggers for, say, the
warplane fighters in Battlefield 1942.
The Belkin Nostromo SpeedPad n52
[H] ($50; belkin.com)—with its pro-
grammable keys, scroll wheel and
thumbpad—gives one-hand access to
The Logitech MX1000 mouse [I] ($80;
logitech.com) uses a laser that is 20
times more sensitive than a traditional
optical beam. Use it on a smooth, solid
surface, such as the Flexiglow xRaider
Mouse Pad [J] ($20; flexiglow.com) for
the most precise aiming in Doom 3.
Or just use the Monster Gecko Pistol
JOHN B. CARNETT
Mouse [K] ($40; monstergecko.com)—
a gun-shaped optical mouse with an
acts as a fire button.
T
HOW2.0| GRAY MATTER
DEPT: GRAY MATTER INVESTIGATOR: THEODORE GRAY ELEMENT: Silver
PROJECT: Making
Calling Van Helsing silver bullets
COST: $50 (materials only)
A hands-on investigation into the myth and reality TIME: 5 hours
of the original anti-werewolf weapon: silver bullets DABBLER MASTER
Like darning socks, making
bullets is a dying art. Used to
be just about everyone with
a need for ammo poured their
own, using iron or even
wooden molds. These days
only a few diehard hobbyists
still do it, and they use alumi-
num molds. But even fewer
people still make silver bullets.
Actually, not many people
ever made silver bullets. It’s a
difficult process, and their effi-
THE PARTS: [left to right] Bullion
bars and rounds, the cheapest
source of pure silver; the bullet
mold, opened after casting a
bullet; the profile bit used to
machine the mold; silver bullets
as-cast, with the excess cut off,
and polished to a mirror finish.
cacy against werewolves has
never been scientifically proven.
I suppose their renown came
from the perception that silver
was a distinguished metal, often
spoken of in connection with
its higher-class cousin, gold.
But today silver is far more
common, and it tarnishes over
time, primarily because of sulfur
pollution from power plants.
(By and large, it didn’t tarnish
before the Industrial Age.)
I couldn’t find any references
describing real historical silver-
bullet-crafting techniques. At
1,764°F, molten silver would
ruin traditional and modern
bullet molds. They could have
been fashioned using jewelers’
methods, but that would require
a new plaster mold for every
bullet. Frankly, I think people
spent a lot more time talking
M I K E WA L K E R ( 3 )
about silver bullets than they
did turning them out.
I don’t like legends that are
all talk, so I decided to see
what it takes to produce a real
silver bullet: not plated, not
sterling—pure silver.
To create the mold, I first had
to construct a bit. I used a lathe
to turn a steel rod into a bullet-
like shape, then used a milling
machine to cut away a quarter-
circle wedge of the rod, leaving
a sharp cutting edge. Basically I
had built a router bit shaped
like a bullet. (I’ve fabricated bits
like this freehand with a file;
which works fine, it just takes
longer. Much longer.)
After using the bit to machine
the graphite bullet mold, I used
an electrically heated graphite
crucible to pour in 0.999 fine
liquid silver at about 2,000°F,
which is 230°F above its melt-
ing point. The mold must be
MELTING POINT: 1,764°F
1 2
preheated with a blowtorch to Would a silver bullet really
keep the silver from solidifying fire? Probably. (Though, not
before it fills the whole cavity. being an experienced gun-
One of the benefits of using smith, I would never be foolish
graphite is that it keeps the sil- enough to try my bullets in a
ver from oxidizing, so bullets real gun.) Bullets need to be
come out bright and shiny. fairly soft so that they can take
on the shape of spiral grooves
in the gun’s barrel, and pure
1. TURNING THE BIT
A lathe forms the bullet
shape, including its
sprue and pouring
funnel. The rounded tip
is smoothed with a
file and sandpaper after
rough cutting.
2. POURING THE AMMO
Four steel index pins
and a clamp hold
the two halves of the
graphite mold together
as silver is poured from
an electric crucible.
I’d guess silver would make a
very nice nontoxic substitute
for lead in bullets. Too bad
about the cost: These one-
ounce, large-caliber rifle
bullets use about $7 worth of
silver per shot—best reserved
for only the most severe were-
wolf infestations.

Ag KNOWN SINCE: At least 3000 B.C.

USES: Jewelry, electrical contacts, alloying in solder
NOTABLE QUALITIES: Has the highest electrical and thermal
silver is moderately soft. It’s
also similar in density to lead, Read more about Gray’s
Silver so it should have similar aero- scientific pursuits at
47 conductivity of all metals at room temperature
dynamics and muzzle velocity. periodictabletable.com.
 [ ]
T
HOW2.0| TECH LESSON
THE
DEPT: TECH LESSON INVESTIGATOR: ETHAN TODRAS-WHITEHILL TECH: Machinima
LUDDITE
moviemaking Diary of a Tech
Resister’s Temptation
Move Over, Pixar COST: Free
TIME: 1 hour and up
With machinima, anyone can be an amateur EPISODE 11:
animation auteur. Just play (and record) videogames DABBLER MASTER VIDEO MESSAGING
TUESDAY 5 PM Webcam
To every moviegoer who leaves the theater saying, “The camera angle in the final scene was all

I L L U S T R AT I O N S , F R O M T O P : C O U R T E S Y R O O S T E R T E E T H P R O D U C T I O N S ; C O U R T E S Y F O U N TA I N H E A D E N T E R TA I N M E N T; C O U R T E S Y R O O S T E R T E E T H P R O D U C T I O N S ; P H O T O G R A P H : J O H N B . C A R N E T T
and Messenger 7.0 setup is
wrong,” it’s time to put your PC where your mouth is. You don’t need Disney dough to make an ani- shockingly easy. Prepare
mated flick these days, not with machinima, an emerging cinematic medium that uses videogames to for a drop in productivity.
shoot short films in the computer-animated style of Toy Story and Shrek. The key word is “shoot.”
Unlike traditional animation—done frame by painstaking frame—machinima is recorded in real time
with the game’s players serving as actors and cameras (you see the game world from your charac-
ter’s point of view). Use software to capture the scene, then edit the shots and dub in dialogue later.
Machinima first appeared in 1997, when someone added witty subtitles to his Quake speed runs
(recorded demos where gamers show how fast they can complete levels of the game). Now the art
form is gaining serious indie-film cred: The 2005 Sundance Film Festival included a demonstration MSN MESSENGER 7.0
of machinima-making techniques. See the films yourself at machinima.com, and stay tuned for the Free; msn.com
fourth annual Machinima Film Festival (machinima.org), coming later this year. LOGITECH WEBCAM
$100; logitech.com
LUDDITE LIKES: Ease of
use, free conversations
BARRIER TO ENTRY:
Positioning, time suckage
VERDICT: Distracting, but
nice to see far-off friends

5:32 PM I can’t seem to get

How to » Machinima can be made with a variety of games (Half-Life 2,
ASSORTED ANIMATION
Anna [top] is an art film.
Red vs. Blue [bottom] is an
action-comedy Halo series.
the webcam positioned
correctly. Picture quality is
good, but I keep looking at
the screen, not the webcam,
so it’s all askew.
WEDNESDAY 8 AM Aha! I
was using the wrong stand.
There’s a clip for laptops
that lets the webcam sit just
THE NEXT SIMPSONS? above your line of sight.
The Strangerhood is a
five-minute sitcom made 8:16 AM That doesn’t work
using The Sims, about eight either. Maybe I have the
archetypes living together. wrong build for this.
THURSDAY 10 PM My
friend Matt in Los Angeles
Unreal Tournament, The Sims 2 ), but machinima.com provides has installed a twin camera,
a Machinima Production Kit (MPK) that includes a version of Quake II. The kit but he can’t get his posi-
is still in alpha stage and a little buggy, but it’s good for a first movie. tioned right either, so we’re
creepily looking past each
1. Open the version of Quake II included with the MPK and start a multiplayer net-
other. Also, the mics aren’t
worked session. Have your virtual cast join the game—you’ll need a player for each
working, so we’re mute.
character in the scene, plus one for the camera.
2. Record the action using Quake’s built-in demo recorder. Shoot as many times as FRIDAY 10:52 PM Finally,
you like from as many angles as you’d like; save a different demo for each shot. sound. There’s a Jetsons feel
3. Using film-editing software Keygrip II (included in the MPK), delete unnecessary to the conversation. “It’s like
frames and tweak the camerawork. one of us should be on
4. Record your demos to an .avi file with CaptureBatch (included). Add sound and Mars!” Matt says.
splice scenes using the MPK’s open-source A/V editing software. SATURDAY 11 PM After
5. For the dedicated filmmaker, the MPK includes texture and map editors to cus- another video chat, I recall
tomize scenery, props, characters, even facial expressions. Next stop: the Oscars!
my gripe with IM: I don’t
like talking this much.

[T ]
Somebody’s always online,
POPSCI Find detailed instructions and a host of machinima resources at popsci.com/h20.
ON THE WEB and now they can see me.
—GREGORY MONE

82 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
T
HOW2.0
TECH SUPPORT
HEY, READERS: Contribute to this page by sending your favorite tips, gear
suggestions, and questions for the Geek Chorus to h20@time4.com.
THE TIP SHEET
RESURRECT YOUR PDA
A broken screen no longer means
your PDA is junk. PDAparts.com sells
replacement screens for dozens of
models, including the Treo 600 and
most Cliés and iPaqs (from $25 to
$200), and offers how-to videos and
guides for the surprisingly easy DIY
operation.—H2.0 staff
T THIS IS BROKEN
IT’S NOT THE HEAT SO MUCH AS IT IS THE HUMIDITY
FIND LOST GADGETS
We intentionally “lost” an MP3 player
at a bookstore and an hour later got
an e-mail saying it had been found.
The trick: It had a sticker on it from
trackitback.com ($10) asking the
finder to go online and enter its ID
See more examples of things broken at thisisbroken.com.
number. The site then notified us and
arranged return shipping.—Joe Brown
YOUR GEAR
The iTalk from Griffin ($40; griffintechnology.com) is a voice recorder that attaches to the top
of your iPod and records memos as .wav files directly to the iPod’s hard drive. That’s not revo-
lutionary, but because iPods are so ubiquitous and unobtrusive, what people are doing with
JOHN B. CARNETT
them is. For instance, I use it to record talks at conferences and later post the talks online (with
the presenters’ permission). I even have friends in college who use the iTalk to record lectures
and then make them available on the campus network through iTunes’s sharing function.
—Matt Haughey, creative director at Creative Commons and creator of PVRblog.com
and a.wholelottanothing.org

POPULAR
scıence
FACTS, ANSWERS, ODDITIES & ENTERTAINMENTS FOR A MONTH OF SCIENCE
[DEPARTMENT OF SCIENTIFIC HOAXES]
Nerdy Mad Libs Fool the Experts
E-MAIL SPAM OFFERING LOWER MORT-
gage rates and prescription-free Cialis
regularly clogs up our inboxes, but
scientists and graduate students also
receive e-solicitation of a different kind:
calls for paper submissions to research
conferences. One conference’s constant
entreaties for papers—and the registra-
tion fees required to submit them—
led three grad students to suspect that
the hard-sell approach of the confer-
ence organizers would result in relaxed
academic standards. To test their theory,
they submitted two fake research
papers. But the students didn’t fake
the papers themselves—they designed
software to do it for them.
In early February, Jeremy Stribling,
Dan Aguayo and Max Krohn, all stu-
dents in the computer-science Ph.D.
program at MIT, constructed a paper-
generating computer program that they
dubbed SCIgen. For two weeks, they
86 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
FYI
T
PAPER EX MACHINA A scientific
treatise, written entirely by
a computer, was accepted to a
professional conference.
scribbled hundreds of sentences, any of
which could independently appear in a
scientific journal article. The group then
excised nouns, verbs and adjectives
from those sentences before entering the
truncated phrases into their computer
program. SCIgen not only arbitrarily
assigns scientific (or scientific-sounding)
words from a database to the blank
spaces, it also assembles every sentence
in a random order. The result is nothing
so brilliant and amusing as an incoher-
ently structured but readable paper
generated in less than 10 seconds.
The students submitted two SCIgen-
spawned papers and the registration fee
to the ninth annual Florida-based World
Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cyber-
netics and Informatics (WMSCI). They
ALEX NABAUM
targeted WMSCI specifically because
the conference’s incessant e-mails
addressing them as “Dear Doctor”
appeared to be essentially business
solicitations, in which one paid an
obligatory fee to help get a research
paper published. For each SCIgen
paper accepted to the conference, the
students would be out $390. And
because WMSCI asks for submissions
in topics covering everything under
the sun—and accepted 2,904 papers in
2004—the students had a hunch that
their 390 bucks would be but a small
drop in an ocean of lucre.
When WMSCI accepted the paper
—dubbed “Rooter: A Methodology
for the Typical Unification of Access
Points and Redundancy”—the trio
announced its success online and
posted a PDF of the paper. The intro-
duction begins:

Many scholars would agree that, had it

not been for active networks, the simu-
lation of Lamport clocks might never
have occurred. The notion that end-
users synchronize with the investiga-
tion of Markov models is rarely out-
dated. A theoretical grand challenge in
theory is the important unification of
virtual machines and real-time theory.

The report continues through five

more sections of text accompanied by
inexplicable diagrams and charts.
In response to the posting, the stu-
dents received hundreds of e-mails
from people around the world. Some
commended their efforts to expose the
conference’s relaxed standards, but
most just commented on “how hard
they laughed,” Jeremy Stribling recalls.
The pranksters quickly lobbied the
Web community to help them attend
the conference, eventually accumulat-
ing more than $2,400. They planned
to improvise a speech—more of a
rant—and incorporate never-before-
seen diagrams projected behind them.
“We would have gone up there and
just winged it,” Stribling says.
As word spread, the joke publicly
exposed the profit-generating inten-
tions of WMSCI, reigniting a debate
on academic integrity. When WMSCI
got wind of the prank, however, the
 T
FYI

students received notification of the

paper’s rejection, along with a refund.
Although Stribling is disappointed
that “Rooter” was ousted from the
conference, he says it’s time for him to
get back to his real research—making
more efficient information-sharing
networks. The students will probably
return the the donation money. But
with WMSCI’s big shindig later this
month, Stribling, Krohn and Aguayo
wonder if a bit of conference-crashing
in the Sunshine State may be in order
after all.—MATTHEW OLSON

[FOR THE ARCHIVES]

A Note to Future
Time Travelers
THE FIRST AND ONLY TIME TRAVELER
Convention (because, of course, you
need only one) was held at the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology
(42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W—
coordinates were supplied in case such
quaint notions as “Boston” and “MIT”
don’t exist 2,000 years from now), on
May 7, 2005, at 10 p.m. EDT.
“Unfortunately,” the organizers
report, “we had no confirmed time
travelers visit us. We did, however,
have a great series of lectures, awe-
some bands, and even a DeLorean."
If you currently have access to a
working time machine, please consider
stopping by and saying hello. We hear
the party was fab. And don’t forget to
tell organizers when you came from.
See web.mit.edu/adorai/timetraveler.
—MICHAEL MOYER

[THE FINE PRINT]

Suborbital Flight!
(If You’re Lucky)
EARLIER THIS YEAR AT THE NEW
York International Auto Show, Doug
Ramsburg of Northglenn, Colorado,
was awarded a trip into suborbit on a
Virgin Galactic spaceship—jovially
presented by a space-suit beclad
Richard Branson—courtesy of Volvo
Cars of North America. (Ramsburg
also won a Volvo XC90 V8 for his
terrestrial transportation needs.)

88 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
 Intrigued, we read the fine print—the
rules, regulations and restrictions that
govern how Ramsburg can claim his
prize. Considering that commercial
suborbital flights don’t yet exist, we sus-
pected that the legalese would be even
more exacting than usual. We were not
disappointed. For example, in the event
that Virgin Galactic’s spaceflight pro-
gram doesn’t exist by 2009, Volvo and
Virgin Galactic will recompense Rams-
burg to the sweet tune of $100,000—the
price for a ticket to suborbit today. Read
on for excerpts from the contest’s offi-
cial rules.—MARTHA HARBISON
VOLVO/VIRGIN GALACTIC
SWEEPSTAKES OFFICIAL RULES
POTENTIAL GRAND PRIZE UNAVAIL-
RICHARD DREW/AP PHOTO
Sweepstakes; and (b) neither Sponsor,
Virgin Galactic, nor any of their respec-
tive parents, subsidiaries or affiliates,
nor any of the officers, directors,
employees, agents or representatives of
any of the foregoing provide any kind
of guarantees or warranties that any
Virgin Galactic spacecraft will be built
nor that any space flights of any Virgin
Galactic spacecraft will take place in
the future.
ASSUMPTION OF RISKS OF SPACE
FLIGHT: By accepting Grand Prize,
Grand Prize Winner accepts the inher-
ently dangerous nature and risk in
traveling into Space, including the
risk of personal injury, disfigurement O CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN Richard Branson,
and/or death, acknowledges that dolled up for the sweepstakes award ceremony
his/her participation in the trip to

ABILITY: By participating in this Sweep-
stakes, entrants and Grand Prize Winner
understand and agree that (a) Virgin
Galactic is a company that is in develop-
ment and suborbital flights on the Vir-
gin Galactic spacecraft are in the
planning stages at the time of this
space is voluntary, acknowledges and
[sic] that there are natural and man-
made factors and occurrences which
may impact on or affect the safety of
the activities he/she is participating in,
and Grand Prize Winner assumes the
risk of such factors and occurrences
and agrees that Sponsor and all Related
Entities shall not be in any way respon-
sible for any resulting injury, disfigure-
ment and/or death. Grand Prize Winner
will be required to complete and sign
a Dangerous Activity Release or the
Grand Prize will be forfeited.
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 73)
thing, including a hard salami, has been
used)—both of which are chemically
inert at less than superhigh tempera-
tures. Within the high-powered-rocketry
community, a zealous minority sees
hybrids as the wave of the future, while
an as-yet-unpersuaded majority is
unconvinced because of the hybrids’
finicky resistance to ignition and their
hollow, flatulent sound (it’s hard to let go
of the solids’ manly roar).
The experimental days begin with a
whimper. Both the Whitmore-Livingston
and Weber-Utley teams have expected to
launch Monday, but the wind whips up,
and the rest of the day is scrapped. Tues-
day dawns cloudy, but as the morning
progresses, a blue hole opens that you
could shoot a fleet of rockets through.
“Morning, LDRS 23, this is Dave Weber,”
comes the impromptu announcer’s voice
over the PA. “This will be the eighth flight
of a rocket called Super Tuber. Motor
manufactured by Bozo Motorworks out
of the Maryland-Delaware Rocketry Asso-
ciation. We expect 3,600 feet. The range
is clear, the sky is clear, and launching in
five, four, three, two, one . . .”
The rocket gods are not happy. Super
Tuber lifts about a foot off the pad and
pauses. “As soon as you see that hesita-
tion,” Weber says, “you know something
bad is going to happen.” It’s a CATO, all
right. The motor’s combustion chamber
can’t contain the pressure, and Roman-
candle flames pour from the bulkhead
and the nozzle, sending Weber and
launch organizers sprinting to the scene
with buckets of water to douse the
charred remains.
Weber’s pal Utley now finds himself
between a rocket and a hard place. He’s
got a slim new craft on the pad, mod-
eled from a news photograph of a Russ-
ian SAM missile captured in the Iraq
war. Utley’s rocket is packed with pro-
pellant from the same batch that went
into the ill-fated Super Tuber. If Super
Tuber’s problem was mechanical, some-
thing to do with improperly fastened
snap rings, say, then Utley’s craft should
soar. But if the propellant was at fault—
if, for instance, bubbles formed in the
curing process, a common misstep that
increases surface area and speeds up
the burn—then for Utley, launching is
tantamount to rocket suicide.
“I could have taken the motor and
92 P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
[test]-fired it,” he tells me. “But I can’t do
that to my buddy. He lost his rocket, so I
had to push the button on mine.” The
explosion—“deflagration” is the pre-
ferred term of art—when it comes, is fab-
ulous. Utley, big, relaxed guy that he is,
merely says, “I pretty much knew what
was going to happen.” It turns out that
the top half of his rocket is salvageable, so
he’ll rebuild it with the burn marks
intact, a badge of honor.
Whitmore and Livingston’s launch has
a bittersweet tinge, for a fundamental rea-
son: Whitmore isn’t here. Two days
earlier, his wife, Sallie, was taken to the
hospital for emergency abdominal sur-
gery, and he has rushed back to Chapel
Hill to be with her. The N motor is moth-
balled, and Livingston installs his own M
motor, held in reserve, in the Viper. With
the drama uncomfortably prolonged, he’s
feeling antsy. One way or another, let it be
done. The countdown goes without a
hitch, and the liftoff is textbook—the
motor roar, the piercing straight shot.
There’s a moment of suspense when a
slightly malfunctioning parachute threat-
ens to land the Viper in the middle of a
nearby field of classic WWII planes, but
through sheer luck, disaster is averted.
LDRS 23 concludes soon afterward,
and for most rocketeers it’s time to start
plotting next year’s event. But for Liv-
ingston and Whitmore, there’s one more
chapter. Once Sallie Whitmore has
recovered and the Viper has been
touched up, the two decide to send their
mighty N motor up once and for all.
Rockets, Whitmore tells me over the
phone, were the last thing on his mind
during his wife’s illness. “But by August,
I started to get my head around my
hobby,” he says. The Whitmore intensity
was returning. I remember something
he told me when we first met: “Rocketry
contains four essential elements of little-
boy fun: smoke and fire, loud noise,
speed and flight. You wish you could go
along every time the rocket goes up.”
And so on a mild, sunny afternoon last
October, he and Livingston launched
their rocket from their home field off the
North Carolina coast. “It was special to
put it up together,” Livingston says. “An
altitude of 5,825 feet, 478 miles per hour.”
The moment, Whitmore says,“was every-
thing we wanted. A terrific noise.” ■
Joseph Hooper is a POPULAR SCIENCE
contributing editor.
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 64)
other brain-imaging studies to look at
how the brain processes fear. One of his
conclusions is that the thalamus usually
dominates, reacting quickly and power-
fully to potential threats by triggering
behavioral, autonomic and endocrine
responses. The cortex, responsible for the
thoughtful consideration of danger, steps
in later. We fear first and think second.
This may help to explain why it is that
if a risk evokes powerful emotions, your
fear level will be mostly unaffected by
the actual odds. This cognitive error,
known as probability neglect, has been
well documented. In one study, people
indicated that they were willing to pay
roughly the same insurance premiums
whether a catastrophic risk’s odds were 1
in 100,000 or 1 in 10,000,000. In another,
participants were asked to imagine that
they might be given a “short, painful, but
not dangerous electric shock” and asked
how much they would fork over to avoid
it. On average, people were willing to pay
$10 to avoid a 99 percent chance of
receiving a shock, and nearly as much—
$7—to avoid a 1 percent chance. The out-
come was sufficiently bad that the odds
didn’t really matter.
Driving to Distractions
I’m headed north on Highway 191
toward the Tetons, with a view of the
jagged range that gets more mesmeriz-
ing each minute. I crack the windows
and crank the stereo but avoid the coun-
try stations—because I feel like listening
to rock, not because of the alleged haz-
ard to mental health. For “The Effect of
Country Music on Suicide,” published in
1992 in the journal Social Forces,
researchers Steven Stack and Jim Gund-
lach analyzed the music played in
49 metropolitan areas and found that
the greater the airtime devoted to coun-
try music, the higher the suicide rate.
“Country music is hypothesized to nur-
ture a suicidal mood through its con-
cerns with . . . marital discord, alcohol
abuse and alienation from work,” the
authors wrote. I’m learning to interpret
research like this cautiously. The study
established a statistical correlation, not
definite causation, and noted that the
effect, if real, would only be on people
already at risk of committing suicide.
Cruising along at 65 mph, I pull out
my digital camera and snap a few pic-
94
tures through the windshield. The cell-
phone rings. It’s one of my editors, back
in New York, and we talk for 10 minutes
about an upcoming story.
In my journal, I correctly rank driving
as the riskiest thing I do—car crashes are
the leading cause of death for people
between the ages of 4 and 34. I didn’t,
however, appreciate how significantly
distractions increase the danger. Talk-
ing12 while driving can cause inatten-
tional blindness, a perceptual phenome-
non vividly illustrated in a 1999 study by
Harvard psychologists Daniel Simons
and Christopher Chabris. Their experi-
ment concluded that when you concen-
trate on one thing (the study’s subjects
counted basketball passes), you can miss
something completely obvious (many of
them didn’t see a person walking by in a
gorilla suit). In a study last year of inat-
tentional blindness that employed a driv-
ing simulator, University of Utah psy-
chologist David Strayer found that
drivers took 18 percent longer to hit the
brakes when they were talking on the
phone. Previously, he’d shown that cell-
phone users drive worse than people
who are legally drunk.
Extreme Behavior
I challenge myself while skiing; it’s the
only sport that I’m even remotely good
at. The runs at Grand Targhee in
Wyoming are pretty easy, so I go beyond
the resort’s boundaries to a bowl topped
by a semicircle of low cliffs. I get ready
to ski down.
I view resort skiing as pretty safe,
and for the most part, I’m right. During
the winter of 2003-2004, 41 people
were killed and 37 seriously injured at
U.S. ski resorts; overall, a person’s
chance of dying on any given visit is
less than one in a million. As a result of
improved binding technology, the rate
of broken legs has declined by 90 per-
cent since the 1970s.
Exposure, however, determines risk.
New Yorkers don’t fear getting smacked
by falling coconuts, whereas if you live in
Papua New Guinea, the problem is con-
siderable.13 Similarly, avalanches are a
non-issue for most Americans, but
they’re a big deal for anyone who ven-
tures outside the safety-regulated con-
fines of a resort—as I’ve done today. In
the past five years, an average of seven
backcountry skiers a year have been
P O P U L A R S C I E N C E J U LY 2 0 0 5
 12. Or listening, for that matter. A functional
MRI study done at Carnegie Mellon University
indicated that when you listen to a sentence,
visual-processing activity in your brain declines
by 29 percent. “Engaging in a demanding con-
versation could jeopardize judgment and reac-
tion time if an atypical or unusual driving
situation arose,” the researchers stated.
13. A four-year review of admissions to the
Provincial Hospital in Papua New Guinea, pub-
lished in 1984 in the Journal of Trauma,
showed that 2.5 percent of all head, back and
shoulder injuries were from falling coconuts,
which can strike with a force of more than
a ton and cause death.
14. The death rate for experienced whitewater
paddlers, for instance, is nearly four times as
high as it is for inexperienced ones.

killed in avalanches, making it a sizable denly heard a desperate “Watch out!” ical theories but involve events which
risk considering that there are fewer than from behind me. Jumping aside, I nar- have never been observed and probably
300,000 enthusiasts in the U.S. rowly missed being trampled by a gal- never will be observed.” For example, on
I know that backcountry skiing is loping horse, the man atop it pulling Long Island, the Brookhaven National
among the most dangerous things I do, helplessly at the reins. Laboratory operates a particle accelerator
but today I feel pretty safe. Maybe I suf- Horse trampling is so 1850. Who with the potential to seriously screw up
fer from what’s known as optimistic bias. knew to worry about the danger in con- my afternoon run. In theory, it could gen-
Most of us do. Surveys have revealed, for temporary New York? Risk pros have a erate quarks that would reassemble
instance, that the majority of people name for a hazard like this: “A black swan themselves into a “strangelet,” which
think that they’re better than average at is an outlier, an event that lies beyond the would in turn absorb matter until the
driving, a mathematical impossibility. realm of normal expectations,” wrote entire planet was transformed into a
For the sake of argument, though, let’s Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of hyperdense sphere 100 meters across. It
say that I am better than average at ski- Fooled by Randomness, in a 2004 op-ed sounds like sci-fi. Nevertheless, Brook-
ing. Does that make me safer? piece for the New York Times. A black haven’s director took the threat seriously
The short answer is “no,” for the reason swan is particularly troubling, he argued, enough to have physicists study the sce-
that experts at skiing and other risky because “its very unexpectedness helps nario before allowing the accelerator to
endeavors take bigger chances.14 create the conditions for it to occur.” begin operating in 2000.
Researcher Ian McCammon analyzed Hoping to avoid nasty surprises, cred- The strange-matter event and a host
information on 598 U.S. avalanches ible scientists speculate considerably of other doomsday scenarios—greatly
between 1972 and 2001 and found that about black swans. The most far-out of accelerated global warming; the engulf-
people with avalanche-assessment abili- these risks are, as Wilson and Crouch put ing of the world by self-replicating
ties severely undercut their skills by tak- it,“predictable by very well verified phys- nanobots (the so-called gray-goo
ing risk-assessment shortcuts. The acci-
dent victims relied on social proof—they
witnessed other people skiing where they
were going to ski and assumed that meant
the slope was safe. (Think: monkey see,
monkey do.) They were trapped by com-
mitment—the need to stick to a decision,
even a bad one, in order to appear con-
sistent and decisive to peers. And they
fell prey to a form of familiarity—the
belief that if you’ve done something in
the past and gotten away with it, you can
do it again with guaranteed safety.
Skiing down, I choose my line
carefully.

You Never Know

What Could Hit You
I’ve reached 10.8 mph on the treadmill,
a new personal record for (stationary)
land speed, and am experiencing run-
ner’s high tinged with anxiety. Under-
foot, the rubber belt is damp and slip-
pery, and I don’t need to know the
annual number of exercise equipment
injuries (nearly 40,000, as it happens) to
fear a nasty fall. Back in Brooklyn, I like
to jog in the park, and things can be
dicey there, too. On a run last fall, I sud-
problem); the engulfing of the world by
self-replicating nano-organisms (green
goo); severe bioterrorism—are detailed
in Richard Posner’s Catastrophe: Risk
and Response. Posner, a U.S. Court of
Appeals judge and a lecturer at the Uni-
versity of Chicago Law School, argues
that we should think more about these
low-probability, high-consequence risks.
“The probable costs of the catastrophic
risks, when compared with the proba-
ble costs of efforts to minimize them,
indicate that we are not doing enough,”
he writes.
So what about 2004 MN4, that hunk of rock
hell-bent for Earth? Don’t worry about it.
After reviewing earlier observations, sci-
entists determined that the asteroid will
swing 22,000 miles wide of Earth. Which
doesn’t mean that society is completely
safe. There are an estimated 1,100 major
near-Earth asteroids, 30 percent of which
haven’t been identified yet; any one of
them would impact with a force greater ter in the future. “Overall I’d give you a B-
than all of the world’s nuclear arsenals minus,” Ropeik says charitably.
detonated at the same time.15 I call Slovic for a wrap-up interview,
There’s nothing I can personally do and he attempts to cheer me up about
about the asteroid menace, so I’m glad the failures of my risk rankings.16 It’s
NASA is on the case. But exposure to easy to document faulty perception, he
most other hazards is at least partially says, and the serious behavioral mis-
dictated by my lifestyle and decisions— takes that result in injury and death.
and ability to assess danger. At the end of More difficult is demonstrating the pos-
the diary project, I tallied the box score to itive side of our judgment—we make
compare my risk ratings to those of the dozens, if not hundreds, of correct risk
experts and found—to my surprise— decisions daily. “You must have done
that I belong to a small subgroup of the something right in the two weeks,” he
population that chronically underesti- says. “After all, you survived.” ■
mates risks. I made cognitive blunders,
and my logic was overpowered by emo- Contributing editor James Vlahos reported
tion. But now I know enough to do bet- on the Sci-Tech Oscars in March.
15. In 2000 the [U.K.] Task years for a 75-meter- 16. At least I think he does.
Force on Potentially Haz- diameter asteroid that Risk experts, not surprisingly,
ardous Near Earth Objects could take out a city, to have a somewhat morbid
released an evaluation of once every 10 million years sense of humor. “The ultimate
the average interval for a seven-kilometer rock risk is life,” their joke goes,
between strikes, ranging that would probably lead “which has a 100 percent
from once every 1,000 to mass extinction. chance of leading to death.”
 POPULAR

LOOKINGBACK
scıence T

FROM THE POPULAR SCIENCE ARCHIVES

JANUARY1943 OTHER NEWS FROM THE JANUARY 1943 ISSUE

The Fight for Our Fleet

When a former Russian major attacked the combat utility
of America’s aircraft, POPSCI’s radar homed in on the debate
In a heated wartime editorial, POPSCI rebutted highly publicized claims that U.S. planes were
inferior in speed, range and armament to enemy fighters—claims made by Major Alexander
de Seversky, a WWI Russian pilot turned U.S. aircraft manufacturer. “It would be an insult to
the dictionary to designate as ‘military’ craft so deficient in the basic qualities necessary for
combat,” he wrote in his 1942 book Victory through Air Power. We argued that each plane
in the U.S. fleet—from the tank-busting Mustang [below] to the boat-sinking Mitchell—was
designed for a specific task. With the Air Force’s standard-issue Warhawks boasting three
enemy kills for each loss, fighter planes emerged as a dominant force in warfare, a trend
that has continued in every subsequent war. But the arrival of unmanned combat aircraft THE BEAUTY-SAVING
may bring the age of the fighters to an end [see page 42].—MATTHEW OLSON MASK
This shield, we wrote, protected the eyes,
throat and lungs from factory hazards and
could act as a “safeguard against disfigure-
ment” for the increased female workforce
during World War II.

DUCK AND COVER

YOUR EARS
Louder than a modern jet, the car-size Chrysler-
Bell Victory Siren used a new air-pressurized
sound system with a 140hp engine to signal
air raids. The “ear-shattering roar” could alert
residents within 50 miles of New York City.

THE QUICKER
PICKER-UPPER
The first reusable paper towel could clean up
spill after spill without ripping, thanks to a
“secret chemical” (what it was, we didn’t say)
that tightly fused individual pulp fibers. The
paper was widely used in hospitals to free up
cloth and burlap bags needed for the war.

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