Popular Science

Not every invasive species is as dramatic or fearsome as a Burmese python or a feral hog—but that doesn’t lessen their impact on native ecosystems. Coastlines across North America and Europe have contended with the spread of the Manila clam (Ruditapes philippinarum) for at least the last century. Although a favorite among seafood lovers, the shellfish is also taking over the habitats of local shellfish, and even hybridizing with similar species.

After decades of slow conquest, the delicious mollusk is finally setting up shop along the New England coastline. According to wildlife biologists writing in the journal Biological Invasions, the region marked the Northern Hemisphere’s last holdout against the Manila clam.

“Given that Manila clams are everywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere, it was only a matter of time before they showed up here, and we’ve been keeping an eye out for them,” Aly Putnam, a study co-author and University of Massachusetts Amherst ecologist, said in a statement.

The first tip off to the mollusk’s arrival came via a photo and a text message. Last summer, Putnam received a picture from colleague and study co-author El Fernekees Hartshorn depicting a suspected Manila clam shell. Putnam and fellow researcher Carolina Bastidas were leading a biodiversity workshop on Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor at the time, and began paying attention to the coastlines. It wasn’t long before they located many more Manila clams.

Coincidentally, an entirely separate team led by the Center for Coastal Studies had recently started investigating reports of “weird clams” near Provincetown, Massachusetts. They soon combined forces, confirming that Manila clams were definitely beginning to thrive in the area.

“I realized that this was a golden opportunity to not only combine forces, but also to catch a detailed snapshot of the moment a new invasive species establishes itself,” added study co-author and Williams College marine scientist James Carlton. 

The Manila clam’s origins are nowhere near Cape Cod. Instead, they’re native to Russia’s Sakhalin Islands and the coasts of Japan and southern China. The clams were introduced both intentionally and accidentally to North America and Europe during the early 20th century, where they quickly proliferated. The food industry also capitalized on the shellfish, turning them into a $7 billion-a-year industry.

While dense colonies can adversely impact local ecologies, they also offer nutritious food for crabs, small mammals, and seabirds. Now that they’re confirmed across the Northern Hemisphere, ecologists can begin to examine how the clams are spreading throughout New England, and how they will impact their new homes. Although they are likely here to stay, it’s not necessarily a terrible situation.

“On the positive side, because Manila clams can become a source of food for other animals, they can relieve pressure on native species—-for example, the predator pressure of green crabs on softshell clams,” explained Bastidas. “So, there could also be positive impacts.”

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The United States officially conducted 1,054 nuclear tests between 1945 and 1992, but only one of them is known to have satellites among its casualties. In 1962, the U.S. detonated the 1.4-megaton Starfish Prime thermonuclear warhead 250 miles above the planet. The resultant electromagnetic pulse (EMP) blast was vastly wider than expected, and even damaged an estimated 300 streetlights in Hawaii around 900 miles away. In space, Starfish Prime’s lingering artificial radiation belt also unintentionally destroyed many of the earliest satellites launched by the U.S., the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union.

“When you have a nuclear detonation in outer space, basically the whole body of the bomb becomes ionized, and nearly every single electron in the weapon’s mass becomes free,” Areg Danagoulian, a nuclear scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said in a statement.

Once free, these ions merge into the Van Allen radiation belt, where the electrons bombard everything in their path. This further ionizes particles while producing damaging radiation. To put it simply—detonating nuclear weapons in space can be as disastrous as detonating them on Earth.

In 1967, the U.S., U.K., and Soviet Union signed the Outer Space Treaty designating the cosmos as the “province of all mankind” while also banning the usage or testing of nuclear weapons beyond the planet’s atmosphere. Another 115 other nations including China have since entered into the agreement, which by all accounts kept space neutral and nuke-free for nearly 55 years—until the satellite called Cosmos2553.

In 2022, Russia launched their alleged surveillance and sensor satellite, but watchdogs and critics immediately raised suspicions about its true purpose. Cosmos2553 has an unusual orbit, routinely passing through some of the most radioactive regions above Earth.

“It goes through the most hostile environment possible around the planet,” said Danagoulian. “Why would you put a satellite in that orbit? Well, that location is likely the best point for trapping electrons if you were to detonate a thermonuclear weapon.”

Cosmos2553’s true purpose remains unclear, but the worst case scenario envisioned by Danagoulian would have devastating consequences. A nuclear anti-satellite weapon in its position hypothetically has the capability to destroy many international communication and internet satellites, GPS, and reconnaissance equipment.

To make matters worse, it’s still extremely difficult to confirm whether or not a satellite houses nuclear weapons. After reviewing the available unclassified research, Danagoulian realized there still weren’t even any proposed methods to assess suspicious orbiters. But that doesn’t mean the problem is unsolvable.

According to Danagoulian, there is a way forward for international monitoring against nuclear satellites. In a feasibility study published today in Nature, he describes a new satellite-based sensor system that could be launched near a suspected orbiter, then monitor it for signs of nuclear activity. The key lies in a type of atomic reaction called spallation that involves energized protons in radioactive conditions.

“When an energetic proton slams into elements with a high atomic number, like uranium and plutonium, each proton may knock out something like 40 neutrons. That’s a ridiculously large number,” said Danagoulian. “We’re talking about millions of protons per second per square centimeter, with many of them generating 40 neutrons.”

Basically, there are a lot of smoking guns—if you have the right equipment to find them. In his system, two neutron sensing panels called scintillators are installed between synthetic crystal diamond devices. The combined array allows it to differentiate between nuclear radioactive neutrons versus naturally occurring protons and electrons. From there, the device can estimate the neutrons’ direction of origin to determine if they’re natural atmospheric particles or those from a nuclear-bearing satellite.

Danagoulian calculated that his sensor system could flag an orbiting nuke with 99 percent accuracy if it spent a week orbiting within about 2.5 miles of the target. However, multiple sensor satellites within around 0.6 miles of the suspected weapon could get an answer after only a few hours.

“You can fake intelligence, but you can’t fake physics,” he added.

The MIT researcher stressed his system is currently purely hypothetical, and requires more development and real-world testing. At the same time, he hopes his feasibility study highlights that such solutions are not only realistic, but worth exploring.

“The goal right now is to get national labs to use this work for their own research, and to get policymakers to seriously consider this technology as a potential part of national technical means,” said Danagoulian.

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It’s no surprise how lovebirds got their name, and how that name became slang for an affectionate human couple. Mated pairs of these African parrots feed, cuddle, groom each other, and become distressed when separated. Their behavior is summed up even better by their Spanish name: inseparables.

Lovebirds are unusual not just because of their shameless PDA, but because they choose one mate for life. While more than 90 percent of birds pair up in the practice of “social monogamy,” most choose a new mate every year or every few years. Besides lovebirds and some other parrots, only a few birds actually mate for life, including swans, eagles (shout out to our favorite bald eagle team: Jackie and Shadow), and albatrosses. Mating for life is even less common in non-avian animals.

You might expect that it would be more practical to keep the same partner year after year than to have to find a new one every breeding season. But it’s not always the most effective plan, especially if the animal couple doesn’t stay together year-round. 

From an evolutionary standpoint, sticking with one mate is not in all animals’ best interests. Although some animals have lifelong partners, most prefer different breeding strategies. And far from the perfect picture of two lovebird soulmates, even monogamous animal relationships include just as many complications as human ones. 

Mating for life has many advantages

In birds, “social monogamy is linked to biparental care—the male and the female caring for the offspring together,” says Dr. Bart Kempenaers, Director of Ornithology at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence in Seewiesen, Germany. For bird parents, “it’s advantageous to stay together because you have to coordinate this care. With more experience breeding together, this coordination might be easier.” 

Teamwork for long-term partners isn’t limited to co-parenting. Kempenaers notes that some birds, such as cardinals, partner year-round, not just during the breeding season. When there’s no offspring to rear, the male and female cardinal defend their territory together. 

Mammals and other animals can also derive various benefits from a lifelong partnership. In addition to sharing parental care, wolves, coyotes, and foxes hunt and defend territory with their partners, while pairs of beavers maintain their dams and lodges together. Breeding pairs of French angelfish (one of the only fish that mate for life) don’t care for their young at all, but stick together to patrol their feeding grounds.

What makes some birds more likely to stay together

In birds, Kempenaers identifies longevity as one major influence on whether a species mates for life. “To stay together, both partners have to live to the next breeding season,” he says. And since “larger birds, like albatrosses, live much longer than a small bird like a chickadee” on average, says Kempenaers, the birds which mate for life are mostly large-bodied and long-lived. Albatrosses, which mate for life, can live over 50 years; chickadees, which do not, live only two or three years in the wild. 

Great blue herons do not mate for life. While they are monogamous during a single breeding season, they choose new partners every year. Image: NurPhoto / Contributor / Getty Images / Ronen Tivony

Small animals also have more predators to contend with than large ones, decreasing their chances of surviving from one breeding season to the next. Many of the birds and mammals that mate for life, such as eagles and wolves, have few natural predators. 

There are also other factors which influence mating habits. For two partners to stay together long-term, they have to be able to consistently find each other every breeding season. Birds that mate for life are generally those that either stay together year-round, or return to the same places at the same time every year. They may even use the same nesting site every year, which biologists call “site fidelity.” 

Bird couples can “divorce”

The breakup of a pair of birds is often called “divorce,” but Kempenaers cautions that this term “suggests that it’s a decision by one or both partners to stay together or not, and that’s not necessarily the case.” 

Some birds that mate for life, such as cranes and swans, migrate together in family units. However, in most migratory birds, partners travel separately. This can lead to birds choosing a new mate out of necessity more than incompatibility with the previous partner. 

“If one of the partners comes back [from migration] but the other partner isn’t back yet, then this individual faces a dilemma,” says Kempenaers. 

“It doesn’t know if its partner is still alive. The breeding season is happening, it’s ready to breed. So this bird might decide to mate with another individual rather than wait for the partner who might never show up.” Even if the previous year’s partner shows up late, Kempenaers notes, the one who got there first will typically stay with its new partner.

For birds, seizing the opportunity to breed comes before human notions of fidelity. A study of mute swans found that their low rate of “divorce” was three times higher in pairs that did not breed successfully than in pairs that did (nine percent versus three percent). 

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Animals also “cheat” on each other 

Social monogamy in animals doesn’t necessarily mean sexual monogamy. Even for species that mate for life, there may be survival benefits to teaming up with one partner while continuing to mate and have offspring with others. 

This behavior is common across bird species. In some cases, says Kempenaers, the “social father” cares for the offspring, “but he isn’t the father of any of them” genetically, or at least some of them. A study of black swan pairs found at least one baby fathered by a different male in up to 40 percent of nests. Similar behavior has been observed in socially monogamous mammals, such as wolves and gibbons.

“If you ask why it happens, or what the advantages are, it’s always important to distinguish between the male side and the female side,” says Kempenaers. Males who mate with many females might be trying to father as many offspring as possible.  However, says Kempenaers, “it is more difficult to understand” why female birds often take the initiative by leaving their nesting territory for liaisons with neighboring males. 

This might ensure that the female’s own genes get passed on, just in case her nesting partner is infertile. It might even bring in extra parental care from the other males, as has been observed in some birds, such as the blue tit. But the exact drivers for this behavior remain a mystery. 

There’s still much we don’t know about animal mating habits

Kempenaers explains that scientists are still working to define what better cooperation actually looks like in partners that stay together long-term. Other existing questions include how different mating systems evolve and why they can vary so much, even among species that have a lot in common. 

Kempenaers was part of a 2023 study on the Alaskan breeding grounds of a shorebird called the long-billed dowitcher. Dowitchers are relatively large, long-lived birds that practice social monogamy. “Both the male and the female are essential for reproduction,” says Kempenaers, sharing tasks like incubating eggs. 

One might expect a bird with these characteristics to return to the same mate and nesting site, at least for several years in a row. This is what similar birds in the same environment as the dowitchers do. Yet dowitchers choose a new mate and a new place to nest every year. “We found this really puzzling,” says Kempenaers. “If all the others come back to the same place, why don’t the dowitchers do this?” 

To find out, researchers put satellite trackers on dowitchers and followed their movements throughout the year. They found that “the females leave much earlier than the males from the breeding grounds, and they winter at different places,” says Kempenaers. Crucially, once they have mated, “they never meet up again.” But why dowitchers behave this way when other socially monogamous birds in the same environment do not “remains a bit of an enigma,” he adds. 

In nature, fidelity has benefits for some, but not for others, though what those benefits are is not always perfectly clear. And while it’s tempting to see animal relationships in human terms, monogamy in the animal kingdom often looks very different from human romance.

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

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Major clues to the origins of our planet—and life itself—are locked inside some three billion-year-old volcanic rocks from Western Australia. These ancient rocks show that water was likely already shaping Earth’s interior and driving volcanic activity over three billion years ago. 

The findings published today in the journal Nature Communications suggest that Earth was already running a version of the water-recycling processes that shape our planet today, even though our home planet was a dramatically different place billions of years ago. Geologists found signs that roughly three billion years ago water traveled deep beneath the Earth’s surface, helping to create the magmas that formed volcanoes like the ones found in the Pacific’s explosive Ring of Fire today. 

Every single day, Earth’s water is continually recycled through a process called plate tectonics. Ocean water is carried down into the Earth’s middle layer, or mantle. The water is then pulled down at subduction zones. In these zones, one tectonic plate slides beneath another, feeding volcanoes that are powerful enough to build continents. However, billions of years ago, that internal water recycling process worked completely differenly—if at all.

“The early Earth was too hot for plates to behave that way [pulling water down to the mantle],” Dr. Eric Vandenburg, a study co-author and geochemist at Australia’s Adelaide University, said in a statement. “So until now it has been unclear whether surface water could have made that journey more than three billion years ago, and if so, how.”

In other words, it may have been too hot for Earth’s early plates to move water down to the mantle the way it does today. 

To learn more, the team studied rocks from Western Australia’s Pilbara Craton. The rocks were formed between 3.6 billion and 2.8 billion years ago and are some of Earth’s oldest. The iron-rich rocks began forming before there was oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere—or even life itself. The Pilbara remains one of the few places where geologists can study the young Earth.

This image shows part of the Hamersley Basin in Western Australia, which lies on the southern Pilbara Craton. A craton is the stable, geologically inactive core of an ancient continent. The Pilbara Craton has remained intact, surviving the affronts of plate tectonics and erosion since the Archean Eon (four billion to 2.5 billion years ago). Image: NASA.

The team analyzed the chemical fingerprints preserved within the Pilbara Craton rocks and reconstructed events that occurred 3.1 billion years ago. Surprisingly, they found evidence that large amounts of water had already made its way deep into the Earth’s interior. All of that water also influenced the formation of volcanic rocks. The team believes that while modern plate tectonics may not have existed on Earth yet, a different process may have been bringing water into the mantle.

So, how was water getting so deep into the Earth without plate tectonics? The team proposes it was because of a mechanism they call dripduction. During dripduction, dense water-rich sections of the Earth’s cool outer crust sporadically sag and then collapse into the hotter mantle below. As these pieces of crust collapsed, they brought water down with them. The water was then released into the Earth’s mantle, creating magmas that fed volcanic eruptions.  When magma interacts with water, the intense heat turns that water into steam. The steam then expands and erupts along with the magma. That magma then solidified into rocks that geologists still study today. 

“The Earth wasn’t operating exactly as it does now, but it appears some of the key processes were already in place,” Vandenburg said.

For geologists, understanding when water first started moving deep underground helps explain one of our planet’s most critical processes. Plate tectonics influence everything from volcanic eruptions and continental growth. Shifting plates may even produce some of the chemical elements that are necessary for life to exist at all. These findings provide clues about how the Earth’s continents formed, and how our planet evolved into what we know today.

According to the team, these new findings suggest that Earth’s interior and surface may have been connected much earlier than we thought. Earth appears to have been a surprisingly dynamic young planet that was already recycling one of its most crucial ingredients: water.

The post Ancient rocks suggest water has shaped earth for 3.1 billion years appeared first on Popular Science.

For Luigi the lobster, it was simply time to grow. Literally. The spineless American lobster (Homarus americanus) recently molted—when a crustacean sheds its outer shell—in front of visitors to the New York Aquarium in Brooklyn. Luigi is an unusual shade of orange that is only seen in one in 30 million American lobsters.  

“On the morning in question, keeper staff discovered a molt in Luigi’s habitat,” William Hana, the Director of Animal Programs at New York Aquarium, tells Popular Science. 

“Based on our experience, molts typically occur during the evening hours and may continue overnight. Following the molt, Luigi displayed the bright coloration characteristic of a newly formed shell.”

During molting, crustaceans take in excess water. The water then pushes against the shell, and splits it. The lobster then takes the rest of its body out like taking a foot out of a shoe, as it sheds its old outer shell. A shiny new softshell then emerges as the animal’s exoskeleton. 

That new shell is soft and paper-thin, so crustaceans are more vulnerable after molting. Since Luigi was housed alone at the time, he did not have to worry about predators or aggressive behavior from other animals. 

Young lobsters tend to molt multiple times per year because they are growing more rapidly. Once they reach adulthood, lobsters tend to molt annually. Molting rates can vary between lobsters under human care like Luigi and those in the wild. Since aquarium lobsters live in a protected habitat with consistent feedings, they are typically able to devote more energy to growing instead of foraging and avoiding predators. However, one food source is consistent no matter where a lobster lives.

“Lobsters frequently consume their shed exoskeleton after molting,” Hana says. “This behavior allows them to reclaim calcium and other essential minerals needed to harden their new, soft shell. For this reason, our staff typically leave the shed shell in the habitat for several days following a molt so the animal has the opportunity to feed on it.”

American lobsters are typically a dark-blue green or greenish-brown color, but Luigi’s rare orange hue makes him look a little more like a lobster you may encounter on a dinner plate. 

He gets his color from a genetic mutation caused by the lack of proteins that help bond the pigments in his shell. The chances of finding an orange lobster like Luigi in the wild are about one in 30 million. He can also be viewed near a rare blue lobster (one in 200 million). Happy growing, crustaceans!

The post Super rare orange lobster molts at New York Aquarium appeared first on Popular Science.

Don’t expect a dramatic, AI-assisted sci-fi encounter if humanity ever definitively detects evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Scouring the stars for signs of aliens is less about waiting for giant unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) to fly into view, and more about pouring through mountains of complex data looking for delicate biosignatures. 

In recent years, many researchers—including some at NASA—have advocated incorporating machine learning and artificial intelligence in their search for organisms beyond Earth. Some of these approaches may show promise, but new research indicates much of today’s AI is even more easily duped by false positives than their human operators. 

“No matter what sequence of commands we started with, we were able to fool the AI 100 percent of the time,” Ankit Gupta, a Michigan State University (MSU) computer science engineer, said in a statement.

Gupta and colleague Christoph Adami recently ran an experiment to assess a specially designed AI program’s ability to identify hypothetical signs of biosignatures. To do this, they relied on a computer program developed at MSU called Avida, which simulates evolutionary processes with digital organisms. Avida treats replicating biological molecules like DNA as computer code, then uses these command strings to repeatedly copy themselves inside a “virtual Petri dish.” Importantly, each coding iteration is imperfect or contains fundamental changes—similar to how biological organisms reproduce.

Gupta and Adami then trained a neural network on tens of thousands of digital organisms inside Avida, some of which included the command to copy itself while others did not. After tasking their AI to classify the two organism types, the program achieved a nearly perfect accuracy rate. However, the AI quickly met its match once the researchers presented new examples it hadn’t previously encountered. In as few as 150 tiny shifts in organisms’ computer code, the AI began mistakenly identifying signs of life.

“AI has an Achilles’ heel. It can see a pattern and completely misclassify it,” Adami explained. “It’s a very serious vulnerability.”

Unlike here on Earth, it could be much harder to ensure a second set of (human) eyes on AI’s work aboard the next Mars rover or planetary probe. But similar AI false positives already affect far more than future space missions. Facial recognition software, self-driving cars, and medical scanners all rely on various machine learning programs to make their decisions. Putting too much faith in the technology’s reliability goes beyond misidentifying new lifeforms—it undermines existing life.

According to Adami, their findings aren’t an indictment of AI, but a reminder that people are still vital to any new field of scientific discovery.

“You need an independent way of checking [AI’s] work,” said Adami. “There needs to be a human in the loop.”

The post AI labels a lot of stuff as alien life appeared first on Popular Science.

Almost a decade ago, I finished my doctoral degree in archaeology with a thesis that investigated the hunting and gathering behavior of early Homo sapiens and our extinct relatives, the Neanderthals. 

To my non-archaeologist family members and friends, I was the Stone Age Expert, to whom all questions about anything Paleolithic should be directed. I developed some strong opinions about the viral “ancestral” or “Paleo” diet. I did my part to contribute to the rebranding of the Neanderthals’ image as a type of human and not a bunch of backwards, hairy brutes. To this day, my mom still emails me a link to any news article she finds on Neanderthals, Denisovans (another Paleolithic relative), or other ancient humans. 

When I explain my research interests to new acquaintances, I’m often asked questions like “what would you do if you met a Neanderthal?” or “do you think we’ll ever find a perfectly preserved frozen Neanderthal?” And, inevitably, “Could we clone a Neanderthal?” 

On the surface, that last question seems exciting. Considered more deeply, though, would we really want to bring back a species of human that hasn’t existed on Earth for tens of thousands of years? What gives us the right to decide? Would it be ethical to do so?

What even is “de-extinction?” 

In recent years, the idea of “de-extinction,” the re-engineering or cloning of extinct species, has gained a lot of media buzz. 

Colossal Biosciences, a biotechnology and genetic engineering firm, made headlines in 2024 claiming they had achieved the first de-extinction of the dire wolf. These are large, extinct canines (scientific name Aenocyon dirus) related to modern gray wolves (Canis lupus). 

Tens of thousands of years ago, dire wolves roamed grassland habitats in what is today North and South America. Visit the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles and you can see an entire exhibit wall lined with dire wolf skulls excavated from their sticky graves, their bones stained a glossy walnut from the tar. 

A case of 404 dire wolf skulls are on exhibit at The La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. It is thought that packs of dire wolves attempted to feed on animals trapped in the asphalt and became mired themselves. Image: Contributor / Getty Images / Mel Melcon

Dire wolves have been extinct for around 10,000 years, dying out around the same time as the mastodons, giant sloths, and other megafauna that once lived in the Americas. Colossal’s initial “de-extinction” claims received a lot of backlash from the scientific community. 

A project summary on the company website reads: “[Colossal Biosciences] produced three living dire wolves: Romulus and Remus, born October 1, 2024, and Khaleesi, born January 30, 2025, marking the first successful de-extinction of a large apex predator in scientific history.” A few lines further down the page, though, the summary states:

 “Colossal Biosciences brought back the dire wolves by making 20 targeted edits across 14 genes in the common gray wolf genome.” 

The gray wolf genome contains around 19,000 genes. Colossal Biosciences edited 14 of those genes, a minuscule 0.073 percent change in the whole package of wolf DNA. Compared to a standard gray wolf, Colossal’s experimental pups are a bit larger, and their coats are white instead of patterned gray. However, dire wolves are still a totally different species and genus from gray wolves. 

In other words, these groups last shared a common ancestor about 5.7 million years ago—far more distant than the relationship between wolves and dogs. Put another way, wolves and dire wolves are no more closely related than wolves and African jackals, or bison and gazelles. 

The two species are so genetically different from one another that they wouldn’t likely be able to have offspring together. Despite their bold claims, Colossal hasn’t done much more than to make a gray wolf dressed in a dire wolf overcoat.

How does cloning work? 

In 1996, a team of scientists at the University of Edinburgh took DNA from the nucleus of a cell from a sheep’s udder and implanted it in a different sheep’s egg cell. 

Normally, an egg or sperm cell contains only half of an animal’s chromosomes, i.e. half of their total genetic code. When the sperm fertilizes the egg, the two sets of half-chromosomes merge, creating a new, unique combination. A cell from any other part of the animal’s body, called a somatic cell, contains the full chromosomal complement. 

By swapping a somatic cell’s nucleus into an egg cell, the research team created an embryo that would develop exactly as a fertilized egg normally would but without any genetic contribution from a male parent. The resulting lamb, named Dolly, was an exact genetic copy of the sheep that the original udder-cell nucleus came from.

Dolly, the first-ever cloned mammal, shares a pen with twin sheep, Megan and Morag, the first mammals successfully cloned from differentiated cells. Image: Contributor / Getty Images / Mathieu Polak

After Dolly’s birth, cloning became a hugely exciting field of study, and it wasn’t long before people were asking questions like “if we can clone an existing animal, can we clone an extinct species?” 

Unfortunately, the answer is no, even with the leaps and bounds that genetic engineering has taken over the past decades. The issue is that to clone an extinct species requires a complete, intact DNA sample from that species, and that is something we don’t yet have. 

What would we actually need to create a true clone of a Neanderthal?

The Human Genome Project, an international effort to map out the individual genes on all 23 pairs of human chromosomes, formally kicked off in 1990. The project officially ended in 2003, but the final complete map of the human genome wasn’t finished until in 2022, with the Y chromosome completed in 2023.

DNA fragments from Neanderthal remains have also been pieced together and stitched into a genome map over the past couple of decades. DNA is a surprisingly stable, robust molecule for something that looks so thin and fragile, but DNA that sits in the ground for tens of thousands of years is still susceptible to damage from its environment. 

Barring any miraculous Encino Man-style discoveries of frozen Neanderthal remains, a complete genome would have to be engineered in a lab, not extracted from bone. 

Puzzling out the Neanderthal genome is a huge accomplishment, but knowing the locations of all of the genes is only part of the picture. It’s still not completely clear how many of those genes work with one another, and how environmental factors might affect them. 

To clone a Neanderthal by engineering the genome on a molecular level, scientists would need to recreate all the same kinds of complex relationships that allow our genes to tell every cell in our body what to do. 

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There are big ethical concerns

We Homo sapiens have been the only species of human on Earth for tens of thousands of years, and as a population, we’re quite used to the idea. But go back 60,000 years or so, and there were multiple members of the genus Homo living in different parts of the world. 

Neanderthals were one type of human. We know this because remnants of Neanderthal DNA still exist in our genome, meaning that our respective populations crossed paths and mingled gene pools in the past. Thus, the idea of cloning a Neanderthal raises the same kinds of ethical concerns that come along with the prospect of cloning humans today. 

Currently, the mortality rate for experimentally cloned animals is exceptionally high. Even when a cloned animal is born successfully, severe health problems often emerge. Would we allow a human infant to undergo these stresses for the sake of scientific curiosity?  

Human cloning also raises the issue of what happens when we challenge individuality. Would a cloned human always see themselves as a shadow of their cell donor? We can’t know for sure. This is why, whenever anyone asks me if I think we could clone a Neanderthal, I say no. For the time being, Paleolithic archaeologists will continue to ask and answer questions about the past by investigating the myriad materials that our early human relatives left behind. 

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

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Air quality is linked to a wide range of health issues including respiratory problems, cardiovascular complications, and cancer, and that list of concerns only continues to grow. According to researchers presenting this week at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), common pollutants may be fundamentally disrupting human sperm genetics—and these alterations may affect far more than male fertility.

One of the largest studies of its kind, the project took place from 2013 to2017 and included over 2,000 men in Salt Lake City, Utah. Volunteers provided researchers with semen samples initially after signing up, and then at two, four, and six month intervals. The researchers were particularly focused on examining changes to sperm DNA methylation. These chemical shifts regulate genetic activity without actually rewriting the DNA itself. Changes in methylation are already linked to genes utilized during chromosomal organization, cellular maintenance, and overall sperm development.

At the same time, the team also used regional data to estimate the men’s exposure to outdoor air pollutants during the roughly three-month window of sperm production known as spermatogenesis. These included common concerns like nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, fine particulates, and ozone. Although past studies already discovered evidence linking air pollution to semen quality, geneticists still do not fully understand how these adverse results occur at the molecular level.

The researchers flagged ozone and nitrogen dioxide as some of the most influential pollutants. The pair are frequently recorded at higher levels in urban areas like Salt Lake City due to natural gas combustion and traffic emissions.

“Our findings suggest that air pollution exposure during key stages of sperm development may be associated with changes in sperm DNA methylation, including in genes involved in spermatogenesis and early developmental processes,” Carrie Nobles, a study co-author and University of Massachusetts Amherst environmental health scientist, said in an accompanying statement.

Researchers pinpointed 39 DNA methylation changes associated with air pollution, especially in GNAS—an imprinted gene linked to poorer semen quality and fetal development. However, Nobles explained the GNAS implications are “particularly important.”

“Because imprinted genes can persist through early embryonic development, this raises important questions about whether fathers’ environmental exposures may influence not only fertility, but pregnancy and offspring health,” she said.

Since these are preliminary findings, Nobles stressed that it’s vital that researchers now work to replicate their results in future studies. She also explained that further investigations into measurable effects on men’s fertility and pregnancies are needed, as well as looking into other pollution sources.

“We know that couples exposed to air pollution often have difficulties becoming pregnant, and this may be one of the explanations amongst the myriad ways that pollution impacts our reproductive health,” former ESHRE chair Karen Sermon said of the study.

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It’s one of military history’s most exciting chapters. In 218 BCE, Carthaginian general Hannibal crossed the Alps with a squadron of 37 war elephants to invade Italy. 

While we can’t say which route he used to cross this rugged terrain, a new study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) offers some new clues. The new analysis shows which of Hannibal’s potential routes would have been less taxing on his 40,000 men, 7,000 horses and 37 war elephants. His best option likely would’ve been the Col de la Traversette, a pass with an altitude of 9,669 feet on the border between Italy and France. 

Why did Hannibal cross the alps?

Hannibal hailed from Carthage, a dominant ancient Phoenician city-state and empire in present-day Tunisia. During the Second Punic War, Carthage controlled North Africa’s coast and the Iberian peninsula (present-day Spain and Portugal). Rome sought to use its naval dominance to force its rival to surrender. 

To bring the war right to Rome’s doorstep, Hannibal led his army over the Alps from France into Italy. This was easier said than done, as it required traversing rugged terrain, snow, and ice, while surviving mountain passes that were controlled by local tribesmen who could attack them from above. However, going through the mountain range meant he could avoid Rome’s fearsome navy on the Mediterranean and its army garrisons on land. 

Only two primary sources of the event survive and were written 20 and 160 years after the event. And since no archaeological evidence is available, interpreting the events of the crossing is difficult. All modern theories depend on interpreting the three place names used by the writer Polybius (Island, Skaras, and Allobroges) and the wider range of tribe and place names written by Livy. Scholars then compare those locations with current geographical knowledge.

According to Livy’s account, Hannibal marched his army across the Alps in just 16 days. However, Hannibal’s entire military campaign took over roughly two months and ended up being very costly. Hannibal lost upwards of 20,000 men and Carthage ultimately lost the war.

Why he used elephants for the crossing is still unclear. He may have intended them to provide a tactical element of surprise during his first battles against the Romans. He also may have hoped that the wonder of seeing these elephants may help him help recruit the Celts of Northern Italy to his side.

Saving energy

In this new study, a team from the University of Oxford in the U.K., the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), and Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany evaluated the competing theories about which route over the mountains Hannibal took. Previously, historians believed that he may have taken the Col du Clapier, an 8,127 feet-high mountain pass between Savoy, France, and Piedmont, Italy. 

The team used route modelling and elevation data, to estimate the energy cost of each possible Alpine crossing. They used data collected on how much energy modern African elephants would use to make a crossing like this, based on their body mass and the terrain. 

Their results suggest that the Col de la Traversette would have been both the shortest and most energetically efficient route. When compared to the Travesette route, traveling via the Col de Montgenèvre would have required 11 percent more energy. Col du Clapier would have required 16 percent more, while Col du Mont Cenis needed 19 percent more energy. 

The team’s models also underscore what a physical challenge it was to move an army (and elephants) through the mountains. If they took the Traversette route, the men would have lost 19 percent of their body fat reserves, which may be one factor behind the high human mortality rate later in battle. Hannibal lost roughly 20,000 men by the end of the campaign. 

Surprisingly, the new analysis suggests that the war elephants would have fared better on the crossing. Elephants would have only lost four percent of their fat reserves, based on the team’s models. These high energy reserves likely explain why many, if not most, of the elephants survived.

“The question of Hannibal’s exact route has been debated for generations,” Dr. Emilio Berti, a study co-author and biologist at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, said in a statement. 

“The new analysis does not eliminate all ambiguity, but it does strengthen the case for the Traversette route by demonstrating that it would better accommodate the demands of moving a large army that included elephants through extremely difficult alpine terrain.”

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During last year’s brief visit from the comet 3I/ATLAS, astronomers got an extremely rare glimpse into the cosmos beyond our solar system. As only the third known interstellar object to pass by Earth, the frigid, dusty rock has already provided researchers with new and unexpected data about deep space. But in addition to recently learning about the comet’s surprisingly alcohol-laden, ice volcano-covered composition, astronomers now say they have a better sense of its age. According to chemical traces detailed in a study published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, 3I/ATLAS is very, very old.

“3I/ATLAS is a really exciting opportunity to probe the composition of another planetary system, one that formed long before our Sun and solar system even existed,” Rosemary Dorsey, an astrophysicist at the University of Helsinki and study co-author, said in a statement.

3I/ATLAS was extremely bright upon its approach to Earth in July 2025, unlike the previously documented interstellar objects 1I/ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov. This allowed Dorsey and colleagues a never-before-seen chance to examine details like its isotopic ratios—varying amounts of different forms of the same element. Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, they paid particular attention to the carbon and nitrogen isotopes inside cyanide molecules swirling within 3I/ATLAS’ gas cloud. These traces are very susceptible to conditions present during a comet’s formation period, but afterwards do not alter much while it spends eons traveling through space.

Unlike local comets, the interstellar tourist contains unusually high nitrogen and carbon isotopic ratios. Based on this and other examinations, the team believes the comet was born in an outer region surrounding an ancient, low-metallicity star. These stellar objects contain few elements heavier than helium, implying they originated during a much younger era of the universe before it became more chemically diverse. Combined with evidence from other recent studies, it now appears that 3I/ATLAS began its travels long before the sun existed. The comet may even be over twice our yellow star’s age, making it more than 9 billion years old.

“[Interstellar comets] are sort of fossils from a planetary formation process that happened very far away, but that we get the chance to study from much closer,” added University of Edinburgh astronomer and study co-author Cyrielle Opitom.

3I/ATLAS is rapidly becoming more difficult to observe as it continues its journey out of the solar system, but the vast amounts of data astronomers collected while they could will will keep them busy for years. At least, until our next interstellar visitor arrives.

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Every single day, we’re constantly looking at pixels. The tiny elements make up the displays on our phone screens and televisions, and allow us to capture images on digital cameras. Generally, a pixel works by either controlling light (think a computer) or analyzing it (like a camera sensor). Now, researchers writing in the journal Nature say they’ve created a pixel that can do both. 

Called a Fourier pixel, the new pixel tech is based on a fundamental principle of physics: interference. When light is scattered by a surface, the waves can overlap with each other, even if they originated from different points. When two or more light waves overlap, they reinforce each other. If the light waves are out of step, they cancel each other out. 

The new pixels use this phenomenon to control light with wave-shaped sculpted surfaces. The name Fourier pixel  comes from Fourier analysis—a mathematical process that the team used to break down and understand how the waves behaved. Each patterned area, or pixel, turns light into a surface wave that travels along the chip’s surface. Then, in a different place within the pixel, the surface wave is scattered back out as a light wave. These scattered lightwaves can be used to generate colored images. 

In other words, the researchers carved tiny patterns into a chip that allows them to control how light waves combine. These patterns allowed them to create pixels that both steer and analyze light. 

“Thanks to the fact that the relevant surface profiles of the pixels can be determined using Fourier analysis, we can combine the control and analysis of amplitude, phase and polarisation on a single pixel,” said Sander Vonk, a study co-author and postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich, in a statement. He added that Fourier analysis is mathematically simple, and does not require complex models.  

The findings could have far-ranging technological applications in the future. “Our new pixels for control and analysis could, therefore, become a useful tool in many areas,” said David Norris, a study co-author and materials engineer at ETH Zurich. 

One day, we might even have pixels that both capture an image and process it without needing a computer.

But in the short term, the team has more practical goals. They want to create a matrix of Fourier pixels that could be used to make more complex camera display devices. Still, you might have a future laptop screen capable of taking your photo. 

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It’s difficult to overstate just how much the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has helped advance our understanding of the universe. Since its debut in 2008, the 16.7-mile-wide subatomic smasher buried underneath Switzerland proved the existence of the Higgs boson particle (aka the God particle), highlighted the perplexing nature of muons, and even measured antimatter. Apocalyptic conspiracy theories to the contrary, it expanded on key concepts in quantum physics, while charting a path forward for researchers around the world.

Still, all good things must come to an end. On June 29, CERN announced that the LHC had officially entered “Long Shutdown 3,” thus ceasing operations after 18 years of remarkable work. But in keeping with some of the most mindbending quantum physics concepts, the LHC is technically both dead and not dead at all. 

Instead of a total decommission, the collider is now on schedule to begin receiving upgrades that will transform it into an even more powerful version of itself. The Large Hadron Collider is dead—long live the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HiLumi LHC).

“The LHC has exceeded every expectation,” CERN Director for Accelerators and Technology Oliver Brüning said in a recent statement. “Today we say goodbye to the LHC as we have known it, while preparing to welcome its successor…which will extend this scientific adventure far into the future.”

The LHC went dormant to receive upgrades and recalibrations during two prior Long Shutdowns in 2013–2015 and 2015–2018. However, these upcoming additions are major enough to usher in an entirely new phase of the atom smasher’s existence. Over the next four years, CERN and its collaborators will renovate the entire LHC complex and its facilities. These will include consolidating the North Area’s Super Proton Synchrotron, deconstructing the CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso target area, as well as overhauling a section called the Experimental North Cavern 3 into a high-intensity fixed-target section. Researchers estimate that around 0.75 miles of magnets and other components will be removed and replaced entirely with new technology.

“The LS3 represents a huge and complex logistical and engineering undertaking,” said LS3 Coordination Team director Jean-Philippe Tock.

Unsurprisingly, starting up the new HiLumi LHC won’t be as simple as flipping a switch. A gradual reboot will begin in 2028 before becoming fully operational in 2030. As its name implies, the HiLumi LHC will generate a luminosity ten times greater than its predecessor, allowing it to gather data on the subatomic world in much greater detail while investigating subjects like the Higgs boson. From there, the potential for new discoveries is as vast as the universe itself.

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There’s a particular kind of trance that takes hold when you gaze into a glowing, flickering campfire—the kind where you don’t even notice that your marshmallow has gone from toasty treat to active volcano to some kind of science experiment gone horribly wrong, all while you were looking right at it. 

Fire has mesmerized us for as long as we’ve known how to control it. It warms us, feeds us, and lights our homes. But something else is clearly going on: right alongside premium entertainment and live sports, streaming services like Netflix somehow find room in their lineup for hours of fireplace footage.

For humans, anyway, fire is more than just a practicality—it’s closer to a fixation.

Dr. Daniel M.T. Fessler, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has a theory about why. He maintains that kids who grow up building fires out of necessity actually lose interest in fire once they’ve mastered it. The fascination so many of us carry into adulthood, he argues, might just be unfinished business.

“Once people get good at building fire,” Fessler says, “they’re just not as interested in it anymore.”

Master it, and the magic disappears

Fessler’s original research on this dates back more than two decades, when he and his wife, an anthropologist, spent nearly three years conducting ethnographic research in Southwestern Sumatra, a large Indonesian island west of Java. They lived in a community where most households cooked over a wood fire, and only a few had transitioned to kerosene stoves. 

In these communities, Fessler observed, kids were around fire from the time they could walk, and often had more unsupervised free time than most American kids. Six-year-olds scooped embers from the family cooking fire so they could “bake” their mud pies—tiny imitations of the meals they watched the adults cook every day.

By age 10, Fessler says, kids in this community had complete mastery of fire, matching that of “any American outdoor guy.” And that was exactly when the fascination began to wane. 

Mentawai woman cooking in the kitchen of a traditional house in her village on Siberut island in western Sumatra, Indonesia. Children in these rural communities are often exposed to fire at a young age. Image: Getty Images / Nataliia Milko

Fessler sees this as an example of a concept evolutionary psychologists call “prepared learning,” the idea that evolution doesn’t always hardwire us with full instructions for things, but gives us a head start on learning the important stuff fast. In the case of fire, a natural fascination with fire drives the motivation to master it. Once kids master it, it no longer has the same powerful draw.

Conversely, kids whose curiosity about fire never finds a useful outlet may end up spending their adult lives staring into the firepit for hours on end. 

“The idea,” Fessler says, “is that if you don’t have the right developmental experiences, that motivation doesn’t shut off, because you never have enough input into the system for it to say, ‘Okay, we’ve done our job. We can step back now.’”

Not every piece of evidence fits neatly into Fessler’s theory, though. A 2015 study he co-authored tested college students in Anchorage, Alaska, a population with varying levels of fire exposure and mastery, and found something unexpected: People who’d grown up with more fire experience actually reported more enjoyment of it as adults, not less.

Fessler is careful not to overstate the case. “It’s possible that, even in our Anchorage sample, participants did not have sufficiently extensive daily experience with fire as a mundane tool during childhood,” he says. “Or, our hypothesis might just be wrong!”

More than a spark

Fessler’s theory isn’t the only research into the role of fire in the human story. Research led by Christopher Lynn, an anthropologist at the University of Alabama, has explored a related but separate question: Not why we’re drawn to fire, but what it actually does to us once we’re looking at it. 

In one study, he tracked blood pressure while volunteers watched fire under different conditions and found a measurable drop, particularly when the fire included its natural crackling sound. The effect grew stronger the longer people watched.

Lynn’s research also touches on dissociation—not in the clinical sense, but the same everyday kind of “zoning out” you’d experience getting lost in a good book or a movie. Fire, his research suggests, might trigger a mild version of that state, where attention narrows, and the mind quiets down.

The research points to something bigger than personal comfort, too. Evolutionarily, more easygoing people may have had a real advantage around the fire. Calmer group members tend to create less social conflict. They’re more cooperative, more willing to share food, more likely to watch each other’s backs. A fire that helped people relax might have rewarded those who were able to take advantage of that calm, not only in the moment, but in the alliances and solidarity it made possible. 

Fessler, for his part, is not surprised by any of this.

“It’s not surprising to me that we see these relaxation effects,” he says. “Part of it is probably due to the stimulus properties of fire itself, part of it is the emotional attraction to it, and part of it is clearly cultural.”

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Fessler admits he is a bit puzzled that fireplaces continue to be a selling point for modern homes, given their relative inefficiency, cost, and environmental impact.

“If you look at real estate listings, what do they describe? The number of bedrooms, the square footage, the number of bathrooms, whether it has a swimming pool and the number of fireplaces,” he says. “Which is completely absurd.”

Grown-ups may never shake the urge for a fireplace to stare into, irrational as it may seem. But there might be a smarter way to handle that same curiosity about fire in kids. 

Fessler points to fire safety programs in Germany that skip the usual “stay away” warnings American kids grow up hearing. Instead of telling children to avoid fire entirely, the programs teach them how to build and handle it safely. Fessler isn’t sure how the program’s designers arrived at this approach, but says it tracks with everything his research suggests.

“Instead of just saying ‘don’t,’” he says, “they’re saying, ‘here’s how you handle fire safely and responsibly.’”

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

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After a two week expedition off the coast of Brazil, an international team of researchers discovered 31 new marine species, including a fast-moving gossamer worm, a creepy fish, and other organisms that look straight out of outer space. Take a look and learn more about some of the newly-discovered creatures living deep in the southern Atlantic Ocean.  

This is a new species from the genus Tomopteris, commonly known as gossamer worms. Tomopterids spend their entire lives in the water column, living just below the surface to over 4000 meters. Little is known about their lives despite prior studies of their unusual, brilliant yellow bioluminescence. The expedition science team tested new technology that provides scientists with new, non-invasive ways to study these remarkable animals. Image: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute.

The mission focused on the ocean’s midwater, the part of the ocean below the water’s surface and above the seafloor. It is about 600 to 3,300 feet deep and is the least understood ecosystem on Earth, despite the fact that it’s teeming with life. The immense water pressure makes it extremely hard to study. 

This juvenile glass squid, collected by ROV SuBastian at 779 meters depth in the South Atlantic, was photographed on R/V Falkor (too) using a prototype multiview macro camera system developed through a collaboration between the Dr. Jan Hemmi (University of Western Australia, the Bioinspiration Lab at MBARI and Dr. Karen Osborn (Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History). The system allows scientists on the ship to quickly document the finest details of an animal from three directions at once. This data gathering reduces the disturbance to the animal and captures anatomical, color and posture details that are lost within minutes to hours once the animal is collected. Image: Emily Clark / MBARI via Schmidt Ocean Institute Emily Clark / MBARI via Schmidt Ocean Institute

“The largest habitat on Earth, the midwater, is filled with incredible animals we are only just starting to understand,” said Karen Osborn, the expedition’s chief scientist, in a statement. “I continue to be fascinated by the fantastic variety of solutions they have evolved to survive in this formidable environment, and that drives me to keep asking questions about our ocean.”

The science team documented this larval fish at a depth of 966 meters during a dive with the remotely operated vehicle SuBastian. Dr. Marcelo Melo of the Oceanographic Institute of the University of São Paulo in Brazil specializes in the taxonomy and evolution of deep-sea fishes; he will try to match this baby form with the adult form the animal will eventually grow into. Image ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute

The Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel (R/V) Falkor (too) tackled the problem with an array of high-tech tools: an underwater robot named SuBastian, a virtual reality chamber, and a gravity machine—a tracking microscope that studies microbes in a rotating wheel. They also used a spinning wheel confocal microscope nicknamed “the Squid” to image living cellular structures inside organisms for the first time. 

A female octopus (Haliphron atlanticus) consumes a jellyfish at 800 meters depth. This large pelagic octopus (her mantle is 40 to 50 cm long) spends her entire life in the open ocean. Males of this species only grow to 30 centimeters (approximately 12 inches). Females can grow up to four meters (13 feet) and weigh 75 kilograms (165 pounds). This species is rarely seen alive, and most of what is known about it has been determined from specimens caught in trawl nets. 
Image: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute

“This opens a new door for researching deep-sea physiology, linking cellular architectures to organism function. We can now witness live internal processes within these extreme organisms adapted to withstand immense pressure and darkness,” Manu Prakash, a bioengineer at Stanford University, said in a statement. 

This is a new species of lobed comb jelly, as identified by Dr. Dhugal Lindsay (JAMSTEC). These ctenophores are unlike comb jellies that trail long, sticky tentacles behind them to catch prey; lobates are characterized by two large, muscular oral lobes that extend beyond their mouths and are used to trap prey. ROV SuBastian pilots recorded this observation at a depth of 560 meters. Image: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute

These technologies allowed the researchers to rapidly identify new species onboard the vessel. Among them are a funky-looking glass squid, ethereal jellies, and tiny single-celled organisms. 

The team collected footage of this siphonophore at 552 meters depth. The imaging systems tested on R/V Falkor (too) allowed researchers to create millimeter-scale, 3D renderings of the creature in its natural habitat. Most species identifications take place ashore, using samples or small pieces, but these systems allow scientists to see and study the entire animal as it lives in the water. Based on images and measurements collected at sea, Dr. Dhugal Lindsay of JAMSTEC (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology) is confident that this animal belongs to an undescribed genus, perhaps even a new family of physonect siphonophores. Based on the detailed anatomical and genetic data collected in the water and on board, scientists will be able to compare this animal to those collected elsewhere around the globe and give this physonect a name. Image: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute.

“The novel suite of technologies on this cruise is a glimpse into the future of marine biological science,” added Jyotika Virmani, the executive director of the Schmidt Ocean Institute. “We look forward to a future in which scientists study marine life as elegantly as this team did—and in virtual reality.” 

A Solmissus, or dinner plate jellyfish, preys upon a ctenophore, commonly known as a comb jelly. Unlike most jellyfish that passively drag their tentacles behind them, Solmissus swims with their tentacles extended in front of their body to snare ctenophores before vibrations alert the prey. They are believed to be gelatinous apex predators that play a major role in regulating comb jelly populations in the Ocean’s twilight and midnight zones. Image: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute

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Today, we celebrate the United States’ semiquincentennial, marking 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. During reflective national moments like these, we tend to focus on the political ambitions and accomplishments of our nation’s founders and those that followed. However, American independence was not won through perseverance and politics alone. Many of our nation’s founders were also practitioners of “natural philosophy” or what we call science today. 

“America is America because of our prowess in science and innovation,” Darryl Williams, Senior Vice President of Science Education at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, tells Popular Science. “Benajamin Franklin [along with our other founders] saw the opportunity for this new nation to really have as part of its fabric this focus on science to enhance and improve the human condition.”

The need to create a distinct intellectual identity was not just appealing for the nation’s founders, but undoubtedly crucial for independence from England.

“I think the economic piece of it is really critical. The very practical need to assert economic independence from England really drove a lot of the early conversations,” Adrianna Link, Curator of History of Science at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, tells Popular Science.  “Questions like how could we increase crop efficiency or deal with agricultural pests [including the Hessian fly] were fundamental to our survival.”

Whether a purely intellectual or economic pursuit, science was not only fundamental to our independence and ability to thrive as a nation in 1776,  but remains so in 2026.

Ben Franklin with a key and a kite (and much more) 

Benjamin Franklin’s contributions to early American science are arguably the most widely known and celebrated. His numerous inventions included the odometer, the lightning rod, the flexible catheter, and bifocals, but Franklin also considered the very act of accumulating knowledge and sharing information to be the noblest of pursuits. In a letter to Sir Joseph Banks dated July 27, 1783, he wrote  “I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known a hundred years hence.”

To support this effort in the then American colonies, Franklin founded the The American Philosophical Society (APS) in Philadelphia in 1743. Its purpose was simply stated as“promoting useful knowledge.” APS is not only the oldest learned society in the United States,  but also the longest continually operating press in the country. APS’s flagship journal Transactions of the American Philosophical Society was first published in 1771 and continues through today.  

“Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky,” an artistic rendition of Franklin’s kite experiment painted by Benjamin West, c. 1816. Image: Public Domain via Google Art Project

“Franklin thought a lot about how best to allow people to have access to and share information,” says Williams. Franklin had previously founded the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1731, and donated books from his personal collection to what would become the Franklin Public Library. The library remains the oldest public lending library in the U.S.

Franklin was also one of our earliest and brightest science communicators. In 1752, he successfully demonstrated the electrical nature of lightning with his famed kite-in-a-thunderstorm experiment. Franklin recounted the event in the Pennsylvania Gazette on October 19, 1752, providing detailed instructions for, “drawing electric fire from clouds by means of pointed rods of iron,” so that others could replicate his experiment. His experiment was reproduced by many including an account published in the Pennsylvania Gazette in July 26, 1753. His findings were also celebrated across Europe. 

“Benjamin Franklin had all these incredible inventions that, again, have impacted society even through today, but I think his biggest legacy is really this idea around participatory science,” adds Williams.

David Rittenhouse and the Transit of Venus

By the 1760’s, the stars and planets literally and figuratively aligned for Franklin’s APS.  On June 3, 1769, Venus passed directly between the sun and the Earth, becoming visible against the solar disk. Called the Transit of Venus, the celestial event had also occurred in 1761, but attempts by the global scientific community to directly observe and document it were unsuccessful.

David Rittenhouse, astronomer, surveyor and inventor, joined APS in 1768, and used his skills to lead the American efforts to observe the 1769 Transit of Venus. Armed with his own homemade telescope, his team’s observations and measurements were later published in The Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions and helped French astronomer Jérôme Lalande accurately determine the precise distance between the Sun and the Earth. That measurement is still used today and called the astronomical unit (AU).

Under Franklin and later Rittenhouse and Thomas Jefferson’s leadership, APS showed how to mobilize a network of well-educated individuals and share their observations and data with counterparts across the colonies and Europe. 

“This kind of transatlantic exchange was as much part of the early identity of the APS as was the formation of something that one might think of as distinctly American science,” says Link.“If you think of Franklin as kind of creating the preconditions for America’s scientific success, it’s really Jefferson who establishes that close connection between the APS and the New Republic’s commitment to doing science.”

An account of the Transit of Venus over the sun, published in the APS Transactions (Vol. 1). This account was made by Reverend John Ewing in 1771. Image APS. Magnificent megafauna and America’s first science museums

To further promote and popularize science in the newly formed United States, public-facing natural history museums formed in the later 1700s. Early curators first had to establish and build natural history collections almost completely from scratch, while also improvising and experimenting with how to exhibit the scientific discoveries of the day. 

“It was very minimal storytelling [at first]. It was more along the lines of, this is what we have…very curiosity cabinet-style presentation,” Matt Gibson, Curator of Natural History at the Charleston Museum, tells Popular Science.

The Charleston Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, considered America’s First Museum, was founded by the Charleston Library Society at the eve of the American Revolution in 1773. Its early founders and contributors included distinguished South Carolinian Thomas Heyward Jr., a member of the Second Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

At first, the museum was open only for Charleston’s Elite. After a major fire in 1778 and dwindling funds in the decades that followed, the Library Society transferred all of its collections to the Literary and Philosophical Society of South Carolina in 1815. They opened to the general public in 1824, charging 25 cents for adult admission.

“When they opened, they had some 4,000 minerals [on display], prints and paintings, and numerous natural history specimens,” Jennifer McCormick, Chief Curator at The Charleston Museum, tells Popular Science. “We still have three objects from the [18th century collection] that includes a crested chief’s helmet from the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), a Cassava strainer, and three spears from Suriname.” 

Peale’s Museum opened in Philadelphia in 1784. Its founder Charles Wilson Peale was a painter, Revolutionary War officer, state assemblyman, scientist, and naturalist. His first exhibition was 44 portraits that he painted of early American heroes including Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. In 1786, his museum began showcasing natural curiosities alongside his portraits. In 1794, Peale accepted the role of APS librarian and moved the museum to their building. Rittenhouse’s famed telescope is among the surviving artifacts at APS.

“One of the things that Peale did very deliberately was thinking about this [connection] between science and American identity. He paired natural history specimens with portraiture. You’d have George Washington’s portrait alongside the mounted mastodon skeleton, which was a huge kind of wonder in the American imagination [at the time],” says Link. 

During the Pliocene, this region’s forests and waterways would have provided lush habitat for herds of mastodon. Image: Mural by Jay Matternes. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.

This push to showcase the biggest and fiercest animals that once roamed the continent, was not just about generating business or buzz. It was politically motivated as well. “After the revolution, there was all that conversation about how American flora and fauna were inferior to those found in Europe” says Link. “That’s why the mastodon discovery is such a critical one for [America] and the APS, too because that was an example of America actually having impressive megafauna.” 

The Charleston Museum maintained its own impressive collection of  extinct American megafauna over the centuries including the estuarine crocodile (Gavialosuchus carolinensis), a giant ground sloth (Eremotherium laurillardi), Jefferson’s ground sloth (Megalonyx jeffersonii), and the false-toothed bird Pelagornis sandersi, a bird species with a wingspan somewhere between 21 to 24 feet.

These early museums and their natural history displays not only captured the public’s imagination, but likely served as inspiration for countless 19th century natural history museums that followed, including The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia (1812), The Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. (1846), and The Field Museum in Chicago (1894). 

Us and the state of American science today 

Science has come a long way since the American Revolution—thank you, germ theory and vaccines. But the dogged pursuit of knowledge and scientific integrity that was among the earliest preoccupations of our nation’s founders remains vital to the continued success of our science and nation. 

Acquiring knowledge and using it to improve our new nation and the lives of its citizens remains something that we experience every day, through the use of weather and crop disease forecasting tools that saves lives, genetic research to improve and personalize medicine, and advanced computing and instrumentation to help decipher the complicated history of our planet and universe.  

While 18th Century practitioners of natural philosophy did not need the specialized skills, multimillion dollar instruments or the advanced degrees required of today’s scientists, science, at its very core, is still achieved through careful observation and critical thinking. And that’s something Franklin, Jefferson and other early scientific revolutionaries hoped to instill in every American.

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A juvenile humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) entangled in the opening to Alaska’s Endicott Arm was successfully freed after a multi-agency rescue mission. Endicott Arm is a narrow fjord located about 50 miles southeast of Juneau. While remote, it’s a major destination for cruise ships and commercial fishing vessels that can be a risk to whales and other marine wildlife. 

According to a statement from NOAA on June 24, several mariners noticed the entangled juvenile whale on the evening of May 10 and reported the sighting to the NOAA Fisheries Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Network 24-hour hotline. The whale was caught in lines from two commercial Tanner crab pots. Since each pot weighs around 800 pounds, they essentially acted as anchors on the animal, making it unable to move. 

The mariners’ alert allowed regional coordinators to develop their response plan in a timely manner. “We formed a network of eyes on the water—vessel crews coordinating real-time updates between one another and relaying them to us,” said NOAA Fisheries Marine Mammal Specialist Suzie Teerlink in a statement. “That communication was critical. It gave us insight into the nature of the entanglement, helped us build a safe response plan, and gave us confidence that we could relocate the whale.” 

A response team made up of biologists from NOAA Fisheries, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s Marine Mammal program, and local partners from Alaska Sea to Shore mobilized the very next day. They worked over five hours to make four precise cuts that freed the whale from the pots and most of the entangling lines. 

“Cutting gear off an animal of this size can be dangerous,” said John Moran, a NOAA research fisheries biologist and advanced responder on the team. “We use long poles fitted with specialized knives to extend our reach. That allows us to cut lines while reducing the risk of being injured by a 40-ton animal.”

The responders are hopeful the remaining will eventually fall off the whale.  

Entanglements are a major problem in Alaska. Since 1998, there have been more than 140 confirmed reports of entangled large whales. That number is likely far greater, since many entanglements go unreported. Unable to move, the animals can drown or starve, develop life-threatening infections, and may be hit by vessels.  

“We are incredibly grateful to the whale watch community and everyone who reported this entangled whale to the NOAA Fisheries hotline,” said Sadie Wright, Large Whale Entanglement Response Coordinator for the NOAA Fisheries Alaska Region. “The details provided by the public enabled our response team to prepare and execute a safe response to this life-threatening entanglement, leading to a successful outcome.” 

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With the United States’ 250th birthday coming up on July Fourth, it may seem like George Washington is everywhere, from a live PBS broadcast featuring Ken Burns at Colonial Williamsburg to two-part screenings of the musical Hamilton where actor Christopher Jackson plays the Revolutionary War hero.

But at the Morristown National Historical Park in New Jersey, visitors can almost touch the first president of the United States—or at least part of his jacket. In honor of the country’s semiquincentennial, the park that commemorates the Continental Army’s encampment from December 1779 to June 1780 has put together a special exhibit displaying items from early American history. George Washington’s very own overcoat is included, but this isn’t any ordinary suit jacket, though. It’s the overcoat that George Washington wore to the ball on his inauguration night in 1789. 

Originally known as his “golden suit” because of its bright gold-yellow color, a careful analysis of the garment conducted by the Smithsonian and Morristown National Historical Park revealed that it wasn’t golden at all.

Dr. Asher Newsome, a physical chemist at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute, used a special technique known as mass spectrometry to analyze a tiny amount of fibers from the coat. 

Smithsonian experts analyzed a tiny amount of fibers from the historic coat, but—don’t worry—the garment wasn’t harmed. Image: Asher Newsome, Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute

Don’t worry, the Founding Father’s priceless suit wasn’t touched. The fibers Newsome analyzed had just fallen off the coat thanks to Father Time. Curators usually refer to these types of specimens as “self-sampled.”

Once Newsome received these self-sampled fibers in the mail from Morristown, he got to work. Using a technique called Direct Analysis in Real Time Mass Spectrometry (or DART-MS), Newsome was able to figure out the exact natural dyes used in the famous coat. 

“Nowadays, there are untold thousands of synthetic dyes, but there’s a very small number, relatively, of natural dyes,” Newsome tells Popular Science.

After running a DART-MS analysis, Newsome could look at the chemical signatures present in the fibers. He then matched those signatures to the known chemical signatures of different natural dyes to figure exactly which dyes were present in Washington’s suit.

And Newsome didn’t just find one dye: He found a range of different natural dyes from across the colonial world. “There’s shellac, which comes from an insect. There’s madder,” he says, “that comes from a root. There’s Brazil wood, walnut, logwood. Those all are dyes that were identified positively.”

Each of these dyes create a range of different colors. Shellac, which comes from an insect Kerria lacca native to India and Southeast Asia, creates a crimson to deep purple color. Madder comes from the roots of flowering shrubs in the genus rubiaceae, and creates a strong red color. Similar to shellac, Brazil wood can create a red or purple color. Walnut creates browns and tans. And, finally, logwood produces a rich royal purple color.

Based on Newsome’s analysis, curators at Morristown National Historical Park created a replica of Washington’s suit using the exact natural dyes present in the original. The replica wasn’t a golden color at all, but a rich, vibrant plum color. 

In fact, when a patch of the dyed plum-colored silk was left in the sun, it turned a yellow-golden color. That might explain how Washington’s famous overcoat turned golden in the centuries since he partied on his inauguration.

Behold what George Washington partied in! Get down, Mr. President. Image: Philip DePaola

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America’s Time Capsule is about to go underground until 2276. In honor of the United States’ 250th birthday, America250 will bury the zombie-proof historical repository this Fourth of July at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And you do not need to be in the City of Brotherly Love to watch. A livestream of the event will begin on July 4 at 8:30 a.m. EDT.

Speakers will include Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, U.S. Semiquincentennial Commissioners Reginald Browne and Cathy Gillespie, America250 Executive Vice President Jennifer Condon,and Independence National Historical Park Superintendent Thomas Caramanico.

All 50 states, Washington, D.C., and five U.S. territories contributed items to the time capsule. Some notable objects include fabric from the Wright Brother’s plane, a North Atlantic right whale bone, a feather from a bald eagle that served in the Civil War, an Olympic gold medal, and an Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max. 

The time capsule is a multi-year collaboration among America250, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Library of Congress, the National Park Service, Independence Historical Trust, and additional project partners. The stainless steel capsule was built to withstand 250 years of water, and mainly consists of two sections. A tube-shaped container holds the capsule’s precious cargo, while a larger bell jar-like device seals it with an air pocket. That jar works similarly to pushing an upside-down bucket in a pool of water. 

The high-tech box will remain buried within Independence National Historical Park, the site where both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were debated and signed. It will remain sealed until July 4, 2276.

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NASA is ringing in the country’s 250th anniversary with a collection of Fourth of July themed images and videos highlighting cosmic wonders far beyond the United States. Researchers recently visualized a set of images across a spectrum of red, white, and blue hues compiled by the Chandra X-ray Observatory as well as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). To compliment the sights, NASA also produced new sonifications—a method to transform astronomical information into often ethereal soundscapes.

About 11,000 light-years away from Earth, the supernova Cassiopeia A’s X-rays (seen above) are rendered in blue and purple, while infrared wavelengths are shown in red and white using data from JWST. The X-ray overlays capture the destroyed star’s expansive blast wave of elements including calcium, iron, and oxygen. Meanwhile, the infrared components illustrate the explosion’s growing shell filled with cosmic dust.

NCG 3603, which contains a massive cluster of stars on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy. Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO

The gigantic star cluster inside the nebula NGC 3603 (about 20,000 light-years away) shines in a second image. 

The spiral galaxy is seen face on, with concentric pale violet cloud rings flecked with scores of stars in white, pale blue, soft red, and golden yellow. Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO

The third showcases the Messier 94 spiral galaxy. The luminous formation about 16 million light-years away visible around the galaxy is called a starburst ring, home to new stars. The new sonification subjects include Messier 94, with various pitched tones mapped to a glass marimba representing objects like neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes.

For the nebula NGC 3603, piano notes serve as stand ins for objects depending on their brightness.

To see and hear all of the seasonally appropriate offerings, click here.

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Viewers tuning into the 2026 World Cup may not realize it, but they are staring at a piece of high-tech equipment hundreds of years in the making with every single kick. The seemingly simple soccer cleat has progressed from a chunky leather work boot worn in factories to a marvel of modern engineering made with advanced synthetic materials and composites. Some of today’s cleats even weigh in at less than a pack of playing cards. The evolution of these soccer cleats, or “football boots,” as they’re often called, mirrors the evolution of the beautiful game and its players over time.

That progression essentially breaks down to a few key components: the shoe upper, the sole and toe guard, and, of course, the cleats. Each part looks radically different today than when players first started knocking balls around hundreds of years ago. The leather for the upper of the shoe once came from kangaroo hide (not cowhide). The cleats, now scrupulously modeled in 3D simulations, originated as sharp metal nails, the kind sold at a local hardware store. These changes are the result of fierce competition between a handful of major brands, each pushing the game, and the athletes’ speed, power, and physics-defying spin, forward.

The early years: leather work boots with sharp metal nails

Modern soccer as we know it began somewhere between the 18th and 19th centuries. Those first few hundred years were far less organized than the game millions around the world view on their screens today. People (most often middle- or lower-class workers) played for leisure, without formal leagues or professional teams. As a result, those hobbyists typically played with whatever equipment they had lying around. That often meant leather work boots or even their bare feet. Those early days are how soccer footwear earned the moniker it has almost everywhere outside the United States: football boots. The name certainly fits. Soccer shoes in the late 1800s and early 1900s were indistinguishable from the rugged, high leather boots seen on factory floors.

Vintage soccer boots and ball at the Beamish Open Air Museum in County Durham, England. Image: Dea/S. Vannini/Contributor via Getty Images.

But players started making modifications pretty quickly. Work boots lacked traction, which isn’t ideal when playing on British turf often muddied by rain or slicked by winter frosts. To compensate, early soccer players would hammer nails into the soles of their shoes, which would dig down into the grass and provide at least a bit more stability. That slight improvement came at a cost. Anyone caught on the receiving end of a DIY soccer cleat loaded with sharp, likely rusting metal nails probably wasn’t getting back up to finish the game.

Designs started to change in the late 1800s, as organizers attempted to standardize more parts of the game. In 1886, the then-newly formed Football Association in England released a document laying out a handful of equipment guidelines intended to make the game marginally safer. Importantly, shoes of some kind were now mandatory. The document also banned the use of nails in shoe soles, unless their edges were covered with leather. Relatively quickly, a new basic standard was formed: an all-leather, lace-up boot with six studs spread out along the sole. That stud layout would mutate into the cleats of today.

How a pair of German brothers changed the game

Soccer cleats saw occasional iteration during the early 20th century. However, a real turning point that would define the future of both the shoe’s sole and its support is the work of two brothers from a small German town. Rudolf and Adolf Dassler from Herzogenaurach (often referred to as Herzo) created the first fully specialized soccer shoes. Their company’s name, Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik, translates to Brothers Dassler Shoe Factory in English.

Theirs was the first company to specialize in optimizing design for performance, in both soccer and running. According to the Hulu documentary series Sneaker Wars, a series of odd events led the Dassler brothers to provide backup shoes for American sprinter Jesse Owens during his historic performance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The ensuing name recognition would make them the most sought-after athletic shoe, but it would also drive a wedge between the brothers. They eventually split and created two of the most important brands in soccer footwear: Adidas and Puma. More than a century later, both of those now-international companies still have their headquarters in the tiny German shoemaking town.

Not long after the company’s formation, Puma moved footwear forward by introducing the first boot with an interchangeable stud. That single part was important because it meant demanding players could swap out different-sized plastic and rubber studs to best suit different pitches and weather conditions. Meanwhile, shoe designs started becoming lower cut, resembling a modern sneaker more and more. Aside from aesthetics, this design change allowed for better player movement and agility. Players could run faster and change direction more quickly, which translated to better performance on the pitch.

The soccer cleat also had to adapt to changes in the way the game was played. By the 1960s, an increasing number of teams were adopting artificial grass. The longer, more traditional studs struggled to grip properly on the slicker surface, so shoe makers began using shorter, rubber cleats. Around the same time, in 1966, Puma introduced its Puma King model, which connected the upper part of the shoe to the sole. This design would go on to be copied by others for years.

George Cohen, right back for Fulham Football Club, sorting out a pair of football boots during a training session on July 26, 1967, at the Fulham training ground in Ewell, Surrey, England. Cohen was a squad member of the England team that won the 1966 World Cup. Image:  William Vanderson/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images. William Vanderson About that kangaroo leather…

About a decade later, Adidas made the more controversial design decision to use kangaroo leather in its 1979 Adidas Copa Mundial. The material was prized for its lightweight, uniquely soft texture, and durability. It was a big hit. 

That model would go on to become one of the best-selling shoes of all time. The kangaroo-based material came to be known as “K-leather” and became a gold standard in the industry. That’s only recently started to change. ESPN estimates the global commercial kangaroo product industry was worth $200 million in 2021, a figure propped up by K-leather shoes.

In 2023, both Puma and Nike announced they would cease production of any product made with kangaroo leather by the end of the year. That decision came on the heels of a handful of proposed state and federal bills in the U.S. aiming to make it illegal to sell kangaroo-based products. At the same time, advances in synthetic leathers were increasingly becoming more attractive for shoe makers in terms of both performance and production cost.

Cleats enter the television era

Since the 1990s and 2000s, soccer shoe design has iterated more rapidly. This breakneck pace of innovation is attributed to both rising viewership and participation among players around the world and to the rise of American shoe maker Nike as one of the biggest brands in the sport. Several models stand out during that period for advancing the shoe’s tech and science. Adidas’s 1994 Predator added strips of rubber on the shoe’s toe, which provided extra grip that the company and players say translated to bigger, curvier bends on the ball. Though the degree to which that was the shoe’s doing or the player’s skills remains up for debate.

In 1998, Nike’s Mercurial became one of the more influential shoes to use synthetic leather instead of the real thing. Fast forward 16 years, and Nike would go on to release its Magista line, crafted out of a single piece of fabric, which meant it essentially fit more like a sock than a shoe. Magista would go on to influence a number of other models, some of which are still trying to emulate that sock-like look. It took less than 100 years for the soccer shoe to evolve from a heavy leather work boot to a nearly weightless piece of synthetic fabric some might mistake for loungewear.

United States Women’s National Team striker Mia Hamm in action against Brazil during the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup semifinals on July 4. Image: Peter Read Miller /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images. Peter Read Miller The modern era: computer model, ultralightweight material, and bright colors 

Instead of cobblers working in dark rooms, making soccer shoes now is more likely to involve a team of engineers comfortable with 3D computer models. Today’s major manufacturers turn out new ideas in computer simulations and make fine adjustments to every part of the shoe, from upper size to cleat shape and positioning, to try to give players an edge.

Nike reportedly uses a tool called Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to test out plate positioning digitally prior to real-world testing. In a 2016 interview with Popular Mechanics, a Nike executive said data gleaned from FEA revealed that new chevron-shaped studs improved propulsion and multidirectional movement over previous blade-shaped studs. 3D modeling has also helped make overall shoe designs even lighter and better at gripping than before. This reduced weight and added grip complement the modern game, which often prioritizes outright speed and power above all else. Exemplifying that, Adidas made the world’s first soccer cleat weighing less than 100 grams in 2015. To put that in perspective, that’s about the same weight as a four-pack of AA batteries.

Cleat makers are also embracing new types of polymers and synthetic materials that early shoemakers couldn’t have dreamed of. Nike introduced what it calls Anti-Clogging Tech, which uses an adaptive polymer and hydrophobic solution that keep mud from getting stuck in plates, which can reduce grip and traction. Doing this reportedly required understanding the molecular structure of mud. More recently, the company has also introduced adaptive traction technology, which lets pegs in cleats automatically adjust to varying turf conditions, extending deeper into the ground on softer grass and acting more like a stable stud on harder pitches.

Nike boots with the flag of Brazil during the FIFA World Cup 2026 Round of 32 match between Brazil and Japan at Houston Stadium on June 29, 2026. Image: Hugo Rivera/Jam Media/Getty Images.

But maybe the most noticeable innovation in shoe tech that most fans will notice during matches at this year’s World Cup has little to do with tech at all. It’s the colors. For decades, soccer cleats were almost exclusively monochrome white or black. That’s certainly not the case today. The field is inundated with a full panorama of bright, bold colors, with hot pink being particularly popular. This shift to brighter colors is partly so T.V. viewers can more clearly spot the shoes at home, but it also has a more strategic, psychological component. It apparently makes elite players feel like they have an edge.

“What we’ve been hearing consistently from the athlete and the consumer, especially when it comes to big moments, is that bright colors give them confidence,” Nike Global Footwear Product Line Manager Odinga Nimako said in a recent interview with The Athletic. 

While the game’s massive stadiums and even bigger player personalities may attract the bulk of attention during this year’s World Cup, it might be worth taking a moment to look down and appreciate just how far those boots have traveled.

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

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