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When it comes to physical currency, it’s tough to beat Australia’s brightly colored paper bills. Those hues are also extending to special edition $1 coins commemorating the Australian winter athletes and parathletes competing in the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics in Italy.

Royal Australian Mint chief executive officer Emily Martin told Yahoo Finance Australia that these limited-edition coins honor the skill and perseverance of the nation’s athletes.

“Each coin beautifully captures the passion and resilience of both Australian teams, and we’re excited for collectors and fans to share in this journey with us,” Martin said.

This is not the first time that the Royal Australian Mint has struck colorful coins. In 2020, they struck a bright blue, pink, and yellow coin featuring a woman swinging a cricket bat in honor of the Women’s T20WorldCup. The blank coins are all struck with the design first and then the color is added after an inspector makes sure that the design is correct. The color is added by a UV printer. 

Seated para alpine skiers have inspired this design, the depicted figure’s fast movement a great example of determination and athleticism. In their speed, snow is seen splashing across the coin’s field and even extends into the printed segments. Sculpted snowflakes decorate the background, strengthening this coin’s connection to the winter aspect of the games. Image: Royal Australian Mint. Freestyle skiers have inspired this design, the figure depicted seen mid-pose, their striking position showcasing the agility and athleticism during a freestyle performance. Sculpted snowflakes decorate the background. Surrounding the figure, coloured print features the Australian Olympic Team logo and the aesthetics of the Australian 2026 Winter Olympics branding.Image: Royal Australian Mint.

The Royal Australian Mint produced 25,000 of each coin and they are available today. However, they won’t be put into circulation. They can be purchased for $20 directly through the Royal Australian Mint and its authorized distributors. Some have already appeared on eBay for over $150. 

Australia is sending 53 athletes to the 2026 Winter Olympics. Reigning moguls champion Jakara Anthony and four-time Olympian and snowboarder Matt Graham will be the nation’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony on February 6. Fifteen paralympians will represent Australia at the Winter Paralympics beginning on March 6, including two-time gold medal para-snowboarder Amanda Reid and six-time gold medal para-alpine skier Michael Milton. Flag bearers for the Winter Paralympics have not been announced.

The post Australia mints colorful $1 coins to honor Olympians and Paralympians appeared first on Popular Science.

In October 1914, as gas cars were tightening their grip on America’s roads, Frank W. Smith, president of the Electric Vehicle Association of America, stood before a convention in Philadelphia and declared victory. Electric cars, he said, were “absolutely and unquestionably the automobile of the future, both for business and pleasure.” With mass production and a wider network of charging stations just around the corner, “it is only a matter of time,” he promised, “when the electrically propelled automobile will predominate.”

The future Smith imagined would not show signs of life for nearly 100 years, but it might have come far sooner had America’s industrial leaders stopped treating automotive power as a binary choice between gasoline and electricity. A compelling alternative lay in between. Hybrid power was cleaner and capable of guiding transportation through a more climate-friendly century while batteries and charging infrastructure matured. But by the time a suitable hybrid arrived—just two years after Smith’s proclamation—the world had already committed itself to gas.

Henry Ford and Thomas Edison tried to electrify America’s cars

In 1914, Smith’s optimism seemed justified. All year, E. G. Liebold, Henry Ford’s influential private secretary, had been signaling to the press that Ford and Thomas Edison were teaming up to build a cheap electric car. Ford’s son, Edsel, was overseeing production and the car was set to be released in 1915. 

With the two most famous industrialists in America—the leading automobile manufacturer and the nation’s most celebrated inventor—joining forces to mass produce electric automobiles, how could electric cars fail? Earlier that year, Ford and Edison, who had been friends for more than a decade, had even purchased their own electric cars from leading car manufacturer Detroit Electric to publicly affirm their faith in electric power.

Henry Ford (left) and Thomas Edison (right) pose with their newly purchase electric cars from Detroit Electric. Image: Public Domain The early 20th century heyday of electric cars

At the turn of the 20th century, electric cars were symbols of refinement and technological progress, popular in wealthy urban neighborhoods. Companies like Rauch & Lang, Columbia, Detroit Electric, and Studebaker built electric cars that were meticulously engineered. They started at the flip of a switch. They were quiet and offered a smooth ride through busy city streets. 

Charging stations appeared in carriage houses, public garages, and even outside department stores. Popular Science featured such innovations, including a three-wheeled electric car designed to “glide through the shopping district” and a “flivverette”—a miniature electric car, small enough to be parked in a “dog-house.” Electric taxis competed with horse-drawn carriages to ferry passengers through dense urban cores. In an era when roads were still rough and driving was still novel, electric automobiles seemed civilized.

Gasoline cars, by contrast, were noisy and temperamental. To get them started required muscle to turn a stiff crank. They rattled, stalled, and belched exhaust. Early motorists often carried tools and spare parts, expecting breakdowns as part of the journey. 

A photo taken sometime between 1897 and 1900 of an electric motor cab and driver in London. Cars of any kind would have been a rare site at the time. The cab shown may be a Bersey electric cab, introduced to London in 1897. They weighed two tons and had a range of 30 miles before they needed recharging. They suffered from various faults and were taken off the road in 1900. Image: Heritage Images / Contributor / Getty Images Heritage Images

Thomas Edison, like many, believed electric cars would ultimately prevail over gas. Obsessed with improving battery technology, Edison saw the electric automobile as a natural extension of his life’s work in electricity. Even though he was friends with Henry Ford, and encouraged Ford to develop internal combustion engines, Edison reportedly dismissed gas cars as noisy and foul-smelling, praising electricity as cleaner and simpler. In the early years of the automobile age, the quiet hum of electric motors, not the explosion of gasoline, seemed inevitable.

The Ford-Edison electric car that never was

But by 1916, the Ford-Edison electric car still hadn’t materialized. There was some speculation—never proven—that oil tycoons, like John D. Rockefeller, had persuaded Ford to kill the project, but even without such pressure, electric car technology just wasn’t competitive with gas. 

Batteries, which were predominantly lead-acid or nickel-iron, were too inefficient, too heavy, and too slow to recharge for the kind of fast-paced, mass-market automotive world consumers were beginning to demand. Plus, in 1916, electricity was scant outside cities. 

Clinton Edgar Woods, the forgotten automobile inventor behind the first hybrid cars

But even as gas cars surged, an engineer named Clinton Edgar Woods offered a different solution. Instead of choosing between electricity and gas, he combined them, creating the first commercially viable hybrid vehicle.

Today, Woods has largely vanished from popular automotive history, but he was an important innovator in the early days of cars. Before he released his hybrid in 1916, Woods had already been at the forefront of electric vehicle design for nearly two decades. In 1899, he launched one of the first electric car companies, the Woods Motor Vehicle Company. 

Clinton Edgar Woods and his wife pose for a photograph taken between 1915 and 1920. Image: Library of Congress / LC-B2- 4845-8 / Public Domain

In 1900, before the Ford Motor Company even existed and more than a decade before Smith’s speech, Woods published The Electric Automobile: Its Construction, Care, and Operation. It was a user manual grounded in electric-car operational basics, approaching the subject as if electricity were a foregone conclusion. He explained how to maintain batteries, how to drive efficiently, and how to care for motors. It was not a do-it-yourself guide for a fringe technology; it was a seminal handbook for the automotive future.

The 1916 debut of Clinton Edgar Woods’s first hybrid car

Popular Science announced Woods’s new hybrid car with fascination in 1916. “The power plan of this unique vehicle,” the magazine explained, “consists of a small gasoline motor and an electric-motor generator combined in one unit under the hood forward of the dash, and a storage battery beneath the rear seats.” Woods named the car the Dual Power, referring to its twin power sources. Today, we call it a hybrid.

Woods’s car did not threaten gasoline’s emergence; it promised to leverage it. Where Ford, Edison, and Smith were focused on pure electric, Woods offered a compromise. His hybrid was designed to preserve the elegance and smooth operation of electric motors while conceding the practical power and range that fuel offered. His car offered dynamic braking with regenerative capabilities, using the motor to slow the car and recharge its battery, a feature that would not be seen in cars for another century. It also eliminated the need for a clutch, simplifying operation of the gas engine, just like an automatic transmission. And his design used gas power to recharge the batteries, a must where electricity was unavailable. 

In 1916, the Woods Motor Vehicle Company debuted the first commercially viable hybrid automobile, the Dual Power (shown here). Image: Buch-t / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Woods’s hybrid was not the first dual-powered car—that claim likely goes to Ferdinand Porsche, who developed a hybrid in 1900, the Lohner-Porsche Semper Vivus—but it was the first attempt to build a mass-producible hybrid. By the time it arrived, however, the market had already made its choice. 

In 1916, Ford alone sold more than 700,000 gas cars, while electric car sales collapsed to less than one percent of all cars sold, sliding from the leader in 1900 to a mere niche. Woods’s Dual Power car was one of the last serious efforts to salvage an electric future that was slipping away.

Oil, gas, and our love affair with internal combustion

The world did not abandon electric cars because they weren’t reliable or well-engineered; it abandoned them because gasoline solved immediate problems electricity could not, chiefly speed, range, and fuel distribution. At a time when the competition between electricity and gas was at an inflection point, infrastructure sealed the outcome. It wasn’t until the 1930s that electricity began to spread reliably into rural areas.

By contrast, even in the early 1900s gasoline could be transported in barrels and cans. A gasoline car owner could find gas anywhere from a general store to one of the new fueling stations. Electric cars, on the other hand, were bound to their urban grids, and charging them took much longer than topping off a gas tank.

Woods’s hybrid addressed the recharging limitation, and it offered much greater fuel efficiency than gas-only cars, but it was nearly four times the price of a Ford Model T: $2,600 in 1916 (about $79,000 today) whereas a Model T cost $700 (about $21,000 today). Plus, the Dual Power’s top speed was 35 mph compared to the Model T’s 45 mph. 

Had Woods possessed Ford’s mass-production capability, the price gap might have narrowed. Even so, the hybrid’s inherent complexity would have added cost and compromised speed. And yet, such disadvantages might have been overcome, especially in urban settings, had there been the vision and will among America’s industrialists. 

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The road not taken

If we had chosen hybrid designs in the formative years of automotive power, would we have long ago solved the limitations of electric vehicle technology and significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions? It’s impossible to know, but even today the outlook remains mixed. 

In the U.S., electric vehicles accounted for less than eight percent of the passenger car market in 2025, while gas-only vehicles still made up more than 75 percent of the roughly 16.2 million cars sold. Hybrids, meanwhile, have gained steadily—sales surged 36 percent in the second half of 2025, reaching nearly 15 percent of all passenger car purchases. Globally, electric vehicle sales continue to rise, with more than 20 million electrified cars in 2025, mostly in China and Europe. But electric vehicles still represent less than a quarter of all cars sold, a figure that shows signs of plateauing.

As America’s politics swing between looking forward to sustainable power and falling back on our century-long love affair with oil and gas, the hybrid may yet have a role to play in transitioning automotive technology back to electricity—where it started. 

Just as Clinton Edgar Woods saw the wisdom of combining the advantages of gasoline and electric power, so today’s hybrids could serve as a bridge while battery technology and charging infrastructure continue to mature. In that sense, Woods’s hybrid is more than a historical footnote; it is a compass pointing us toward the road not taken.

In A Century in Motion, Popular Science revisits fascinating transportation stories from our archives, from hybrid cars to moving sidewalks, and explores how these inventions are re-emerging today in surprising ways.

The post In 1916, hybrid cars could’ve changed history. But Ford wouldn’t allow it. appeared first on Popular Science.

There are several reason why the Tesla and SpaceX merger will not happen and definitely not this year. It would be the largest merger deal involving a global public company ever. It would be the largest by several times. This makes it risky and complex. It will involve EU approval and if the EU rejected ...

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There was a youtube video with a clickbait title of – Megaconstellations May Be Just 2 Days Away From Causing a Kessler Syndrome. The video was made over a month ago. So the specific title NEVER happened. The CRASH Clock asks what is the expected time for a collision in LEO between tracked artificial objects, ...

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Washington, DC, 4th February 2026, CyberNewsWire

You like some people, food, and TV shows more than you do others. When those likes change over time, you can often notice changes in context, i.e., in the details of those things and your interactions with them. Allowing you to attribute your choice changes to such context. You might see that you tend to like people who are friendly, food that is spicy, or TV shows that are sexy. You conclude that you don’t just directly like particular people, food, or shows, but instead your preferences are about more deeper features, and you make particular choices to better obtain those fundamentals.

However, for other things that you choose, you made your first related choice early in life, and haven’t changed your choices much in a long time. Like being really into music. For example, you may have forgotten that you initially weren’t so into music, but then got into music more soon after associates praised and noticed you more when you were musical. Yes, today you get a lot of respect and attention for your music, but you tell yourself that those are incidental; music is now one of your fundamental values.

If all that attention were to go away, your interest would plausibly eventually decline greatly. But as the chance of that is low, you can easily deny or ignore such undermining counterfactuals. And maybe you have worked to “commit” to this choice, by making it harder to imagine ever liking music any less than you now do. Which would in fact slow such a decline, if it were to come.

The habits that you acquired early in life were also influenced by the community in which you were embedded. Had that community been different, those habits would also have been different. But you won’t notice that context dependence much unless you study how different communities vary in their habits.

Other than re timescale and visibility, I don’t see a fundamental difference here. Between the processes by which you make the kinds of choices where you can see yourself changing often, and so can attribute them to deeper values, and the choices you made long ago, and see as intrinsic to “who you are”, where you don’t notice that you would have made different choices had contexts been different. Yes, at each level we can distinguish influences that come from info at that level, and deeper influences. But all the levels make that distinction.

Yes, people like this idea that they have a “core value identity” which lets them see themselves as moral and connected to particular communities. But this makes them neglect and deny their actual past and potential future context-dependencies.

If we look as deeply as we can at the slowest and largest scale processes by which we change our choices, what we will find is evolution, both of DNA and of culture. Maladaptive choices are suppressed, while adaptive choices are enhanced. And so if there if anything that deserves the name of “your deepest value”, it is adaption. Whether you like the self-image of that statement or not, adaption is in fact what most deeply shapes your deepest personal choice processes, which shape your more shallow mental structures that you notice as the “values” that guide your most frequently changing particular choices.

Our universe is vast and mysterious. There is so much we don’t understand about what it holds, where it all came from, when or where advanced powers might have arise, and how they might travel. So I cannot confidently rule out vast powers out there somewhere, maybe even powers that are aware of and not entirely indifferent to humans. In this sense I am an agnostic, not an atheist.

I can’t even exclude the possibility that some such powers hang around our planet, keeping their existence mostly hidden, but weakly influencing the human trajectory through minor interventions that may add up to big changes in the long run. That is, after all, my best guess of what UFOs as aliens would imply.

But the common hypothesis that some of these powers listen to unspoken thoughts in human heads, and then tend to on average favorably change the local world around those humans to “answer their prayers”, that hypothesis I find far harder to swallow.

This practice of answering prayer seems to require far more knowledge and efforts than would be required to more strongly direct the overall human trajectory, which they apparently choose not to do. So what gains could result from all this extra effort?

By assumption, these powers could favorably change the world around those who pray, but instead tend to choose not to do so in the absence of appropriately “sincere” prayers. This gives advantages to humans who are more popular, and also to those who are richer, as it seems quite possible to pay money to induce more sincere prayers.

The act of prayer may cut stress in those who pray, make them more willing to cooperate, and give them joys of submission. But such gains seem also available if such people would just put similar faith into their local human powers. Which most humans in fact did through most of the farming era.

Such vast powers themselves could in principle just enjoy the praise and submission of humans, but then why not make themselves clearly known and get far more praise and submission? And why care so much about the opinions of such small creatures?

Yes, if you try hard enough you can probably come up with some scenario in which it all makes sense. But you will have to make a great many a priori unlikely assumptions to make all that work. As a result, I assign a very low prior to such scenarios.

In contrast, the idea of great powers who answer prayer seems quite likely to arise via superstitious wishful thinking, even if no such great powers existed. This seems to me a far more likely origin of this practice. Especially in light of the fact that randomized trials find no gains for people unaware that they are being prayed for.

(Yes there’s a vast literature on this, little of which have I read.)

We are parts of many social units. In those we see as “thick”, we are more okay being partisan and wanting other members to share many loyalties and cultural features with us. In “thin” units, we are instead more tolerant and tend to allow everyone who doesn’t violate basic norms.

Bryan Caplan has a new book You Have No Right To Your Culture, wherein he seems to me to say that we should see nations as relatively “thin” social units, and so be open to more immigration into them. Which made me curious about which kinds of units we see as how thick, and what unit features predict this view.

So I listed nine types of social units: families, clubs, firms, professions, churches, neighborhoods, cities, nations, and world. And I came up with three plausible factors that might predict thickness:

• Power - How much power a social unit has over its members.

• Competition - How easily might this unit be killed by competition. Which correlates with how many alternative units compete with each one, with how easy it is to leave the unit, and with voluntary entry to the unit. This tends to be stronger for smaller scale units.

• Dependence - How much unit members depend on each other, and so have externalities due to other member choices. Which creates more coordination gains within such units. Which induces such units to manage a wider range of aspects of member lives. Which results in members gaining deeper identities from such units, seeing these units as more sacred, discouraging internal diversity, and encouraging equal treatment.

To estimate which factors matter more, I asked six LLMs to give 0-10 scores for each of these nine units re levels of thickness, power, competition, and dependence, and then to do a regression estimating thickness from the three factors.

The next table shows all their coefficients, together with the median across all the LLMs. I also asked for the predicted thickness for nations from their regression model, which is the last row. (The median of those happens to equal the median of nation thickness scores.)

The medians tell a simple story: social unit thickness, i.e.., how okay we are with requiring unit members to share loyalties and cultures, as opposed to tolerating differences, depends little on how much power those units have over us, nor on how much competition those units face, including how easy units are to leave or how voluntary to enter. Thickness is instead mainly seen as resulting from dependence, i.e., feeling that member outcomes depend a lot on choices made by other members. Nations are seen as ~2/3 toward thick on a thin-to-thick scale.

So people wanting to be more careful than tolerant re nation immigrants seems quite predictable, given that people think that nation member outcomes often depend a lot on what other nation members do. Which suggests three ways to change their minds:

1. Show them that nation member outcomes do not in fact depend so much on what other nation members do.

2. Convince them to set unit thickness levels on something other than how much unit member outcomes depend on other member actions.

3. Convince them that the immigrants they worry about are in fact likely to take actions that will give them good outcomes.

Roadkill isn’t the most pleasant of subjects. As much as people try to avoid it (and not contribute to it), the untimely animal deaths are an unfortunate, inevitable byproduct of a society reliant on cars. In Brazil alone, it’s estimated that anywhere between two and eight million birds and mammals are killed on roadways every year. In Europe, the potential tally may climb as high as 194 million.

While viral headlines occasionally highlight various roadkill gourmands, the expired creatures actually have many other benefits. A team of biologists at Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) investigated what happens when scientists frequently use these natural cadavers in their own work. According to their findings recently published in the journal Biology Letters, roadkill is being tapped for a wide array of investigations—but the possibilities are even greater and more sustainable than most people realize.

“Because the animals are already dead, researchers can often avoid live capture and handling, aligning perfectly with global animal-ethics principles that encourage replacing invasive methods wherever possible,” study co-author and RMIT biologist Christa Beckmann explained in a statement.

Along with colleagues from Western Sydney University, Deakin University, and Trent University, Beckmann evaluated 312 peer-reviewed studies from 67 countries around the world that focused on goals “other than enumerating or mitigating roadkill.” They tallied at least 650 species—mostly mammals,followed by reptiles, birds, amphibians, and invertebrates. In total, the team identified around 117 different use cases for roadkill in various scientific projects.

“We found examples of successfully using roadkill to map species distributions, monitor disease and environmental pollution, study diets, track invasive species, [and] supply museum collections,” Beckmann said. In some instances, she added that roadkill also helped identify local populations previously believed extinct and even included species “previously unknown to science.”

Beckmann knows the streetside casualties aren’t appropriate for all research projects and come with their own biosafety considerations, but still believes there are far more uses for them waiting to be explored.

“While roadkill will always be tragic, using these losses wisely could help drive scientific discovery and conservation forward, rather than letting valuable information decompose by the roadside,” she said. 

The post Roadkill is a surprising and untapped source for scientists appeared first on Popular Science.

In a state better known for its delicious seafood and as the home of the United States Navy, there’s a new effort to create the country’s first state shark. Earlier this month, Maryland State Senator Jack Bailey and House Delegate Todd Morgan filed SB135 to designate the megalodon (Otodus megalodon) as the official state shark. 

While the mighty megalodon is not swimming along the shores of the Bay State now, the enormous prehistoric shark relative once dominated the shallow seas that covered Maryland and the rest of the Atlantic coastal plain. They lived about 23 million years ago (during the Miocene Epoch), before going extinct about 3.6 million years ago. They were about three times bigger than a modern great white shark. Some estimates put them upwards of 82 feet long and 66,000 pounds. They primarily ate whales and the ancestors of dolphins and manatees, while their young hunted seals.

But why should “the meg” be the state shark of Maryland? The beaches along southern Maryland are full of megalodon fossils—particularly their giant teeth. Megalodon teeth have been found in several counties including Anne Arundel, Caroline, Calvert, Charles, Dorchester, Prince George’s, and St. Mary’s. Citizen scientists and paleontologists alike have also uncovered teeth from other non-megalodon prehistoric shark species including Galeocerdo contortus and Galeocerdo triqueter (similar to modern day tiger sharks) and Sphyrma prisca (a relative of the hammer head shark).

An assortment of fossilized shark teeth, as photographed by Dennis Garcia and submitted to the 2013 DNR Photo Contest. Image: Dennis Garcia / Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Calvert Cliffs State Park in southern Maryland is a common spot for digging up teeth and the Calvert Marine Museum has a number of fossils on display. Paleontologists believe that Maryland was once a whale and dolphin calving ground and nursery for hungry megalodons. A roughly 15-million-year-old fractured whale vertebrae and tooth uncovered in Calvert Cliffs even shows evidence of a possible megalodon attack. 

“Turns out no state has a state shark, so we’re hoping Maryland is the first,” Dr. Stephen Godfrey, curator of paleontology at southern Maryland’s Calvert Marine Museum, told WMAR Baltimore. “To me, this is such an iconic animal. I think it’s time for megalodon to take center stage as the first shark designated as a state shark.”

If the bill is approved by Maryland’s General Assembly and signed by Governor Wes Moore, the designation would take effect October 1, 2026. The megalodon would join Maryland’s other state symbols, including the Baltimore oriole (state bird), jousting (state sport), and walking (state exercise).

The post Megalodon could become Maryland’s official state shark appeared first on Popular Science.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACTS: Beaver Skull Obsession, Aussie Widowmakers, Koalas Eating $#!%

By: Jess Boddy

This week on Weirdest Thing (and for the next few episodes), I’ll be hosting the show without Rachel while she’s away on parental leave. That means I’m bringing on pairs of my favorite creator friends to host the show with me!

This week, we’ve got two of the funniest people I know—rickypeacock and MattyisTalking. These two are members of the Goo Crew stream team, have RP walked across all of Azeroth, and made YouTube essays about Charlie Brown’s capitalist nightmare. I asked these two certified weirdos to research their favorite science-adjacent topics for the show, and I think we ended up with a pretty dang good episode.

Matty explained how, after seeing Zootopia 2, he simply could NOT stop thinking about beaver skulls. He was finding moments to steal away and Google them. So when I asked him to dig deeper into something for Weirdest Thing, of course it was beavers.

And what he found was fascinating. Sure, we already know beaver butt glands secrete vanilla-scented substance. But now there are new revelations on how they change the environments they live in for the better. Some researchers are even calling them ecosystem engineers and climate heroes for how their work can help prevent or lessen the intensity of wildfires. 

My fact for this week also had to do with wildfires, specifically those on the west coast that are fueled by eucalyptus trees. It turns out, none of those are native to the United States—they all came from Australia. Back in the mid 1800s, folks in the US thought eucalyptus was the solution to some major timber shortages. Those mattered a lot when we were building heaps of railroads, for instance. But introducing the trees didn’t exactly go as planned. While they did offer some environmental benefits (like windbreaks, shade, and soil quality improvements), they turned out to be completely useless for timber you’d use to build railroads. But there were already forests full of them out west (if you live in California, you’ve seen them). And they’re also saturated with very flammable eucalyptus oil, turning them into tree bombs when set ablaze. That’s not a great combo with a biome known for wildfires. And that’s not the only reason they’re dangerous—listen to the full episode to hear how they got their Aussie nickname, the “widowmaker.”

I learned all about these trees on my recent trip to the Blue Mountains, which is about two hours west of Sydney and totally blanketed in eucalyptus forests. In fact, they’re why the Blue Mountains are blue. Ricky also visited Sydney a few weeks ago, and decided to regale us with all of his strangest koala facts. Tune into Weirdest Thing this week to hear all about how they run on the ground at “full” speed (it’s not very fast), have brains as smooth as marbles, and grow to the size of 35,000 jellybeans.

The post Americans planted entire forests of exploding Australian trees appeared first on Popular Science.

From figure skating to ice hockey, many of the most popular winter sports stem from a long history of people simply playing around on ice skates. Part of what makes a good skater so fun to watch is the juxtaposition of their clear technical skill and the seeming effortlessness with which they glide across the ice. They make it seem so natural. But if you step back and think about it, strapping what are in a sense thin knives to your feet and charging out onto a field of slick ice seems like an objectively wild thing to do. So when and why did humans first create ice skates? And how did they become a ubiquitous and beloved staple of winter fun?  

These questions are surprisingly hard to answer, both because we don’t have a ton of archaeological or historical sources on early ice skates and because only a few researchers have explored them. Popular accounts of the history of ice skating are riddled with errors, Bev Thurber, one of the rare specialists in the field, tells Popular Science. And experts differ in their interpretations of the artifacts and accounts we do have.

But we know a few things about the evolution of ice skates with relative certainty. Such as the fact that the earliest ice skates weren’t made of sharpened metal, but instead of smooth bone. 

Early ice skates were made of bone

Although pop histories often claim that ice skates emerged around 3,000 BCE in what is now Scandinavia, there’s actually no clear historical basis for that claim. In reality, no one is sure when the practice of ice skating emerged. The best we can say is that, over the course of the second millennium BCE peoples from Central Europe to the Eurasian step cut long bones from animals like sheep and cows to fit the size of their feet. These early innovators then drilled holes through the bones and threaded leather straps through them. They tied these simple devices to the bottom of their general-use footwear, and set off onto the ice. 

Many historians assume that these ancient “bone skates” were utilitarian devices, used for fast transit along frozen rivers and lakes. In 2007, two biophysicists experimenting with replica bone skates concluded that they did require less energy expenditure than walking on the same ice. 

A pair of Viking ice skates made from bone. They were strapped to feet and the skater propelled themselves with a pole. With the flat bottom, they were pretty much useless for figure skating. Image: Contributor / Star Tribune via Getty Images

However, Thurber, who made and experimented with her own bone skates, says they’re not the most practical mobility tools. For starters, they only work well on clear ice, which is not easy to find in nature. Even then, smooth and slick with residual fats and oils, the bones slide around too easily to allow people to simply push off with their feet alone. So users likely relied on sticks for propulsion. But even with sticks, Thurber says, “It’s almost impossible to stop or turn.”

“The evidence for practical use is pretty weak,” she argues. Instead, she thinks people mainly used them for fun. In 1180, William Fitzstephen, a former secretary to the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket, recorded one of the earliest accounts in English of people using bone skates. He describes people using them to play on frozen marshes, rather than make their way to work. 

The first metal skates

In the 13th century, craftspeople in what is now the Netherlands swapped out bone for strips of wood embedded with iron blades. These wood-and-iron skates were then likewise strapped to people’s shoes. No one’s sure why artisans made the shift. They may have been building on a prior innovation, since lost to history.

“There are a lot of unknowns surrounding the transition from bone to metal skates and the development of edge-pushing,” says Thurber.

Niko Mulder, another early skating expert, speculates that these early metal skates may have started out as a status symbol. But if that was the case initially, by the 1300s, even the common folk used them. 

The rapid adoption of metal blades likely reflects the superior control and mobility they offered. While bones slide over clean ice, blades actually liquify the ice directly below them, creating a sort of track for the skate. The water fills imperfections in the ice, allowing for a smooth glide, and then freezes over again as the skate moves on. This meant not only a drastic increase in speed, but the development of techniques for propulsion without the aid of a stick and for making rapid, fluid turns—that is to say, the birth of ice skating as we know it. 

These metal ice skates were made in the U.S. sometime between 1840 and 1859. Image: Heritage Images / Contributor / Getty Images Unknown

Over the next few centuries, craftspeople developed little improvements, like the addition of small spikes and later curves or wedges on the toe of a blade for added stability. But as metal skates spread across Europe and beyond, the basic design remained fairly consistent—likely because it was relatively cheap and efficient, and many people just wanted to use skates for idle fun. 

Ice skates meet mass production

The next big jump in skate technology comes with the popularization of skating in England and America. Skates already had a long history in these countries, but clubs dedicated to skating emerged in the former in the 18th century and the latter in the 19th century.  As Sean Maw, a sports engineer who works on speed skate design, points out, the early industrial revolution changed the way people saw and used their leisure time. Sports in particular grew more organized and specialized. And people were eager to apply new materials and mass manufacturing techniques to equipment.

As organized speed skating emerged, it created demand for longer, thinner blades that would spread a skater’s weight out so they wouldn’t cut as deep into the ice—and would allow for a longer push on each stride to build up momentum. As hockey professionalized, it created new demand for tweaks to blades that’d allow for fast stops and quick turns. And as figure skating evolved from competitions where contestants literally etched a set of designs into the ice into a balletic display involving jumps and spins, it created demand for the development of “toe picks,” the jagged tip you see on some ice skates that help with takeoff and landing. 

This vintage photograph taken in February 1909 shows a group of ice skaters in Graz, Austria. Image: Public Domain

Dig around in 19th century patents, as Thurber has, and you’ll also find some wild ideas that never made it to production, like skates that convert into roller blades. However, you’ll also find spikes and clamps that allow for a more stable attachment between shoes and skates, and metal frames that slowly displaced wood slats. 

Look at old skates from this period and you’ll also notice a ton of subtle adjustments to the curve of the bottom of the blade, which determines how long it stays in contact with the ice over the course of each stride, and to the grinding and etching of the metal’s edge. By the early 20th century, decades of experimentation and incremental adjustment gave birth to the activity-specific boots-with-built-in-skates most of us are familiar with. 

Ice skates keep developing

Dedicated sports engineers and tinkerers alike continue to fine tune specialized skate designs. But biomechanics expert and skate designer Dustin Bruening tells Popular Science that “the most interesting thing about skate development over the past century is the lack of development.” 

The last major change in design was the “clap skate,” developed through the 1970s and ‘80s and popularized among speed skaters in the ‘90s. These skates’ blades are not fully attached to their boots, with a hinge at the front allowing the heel to lift away and the metal edge to remain on the ice. 

However, the idea for clap skates notably dates back to the 19th century, Maw points out, and just languished until an engineer finally found the right materials and design adjustments to make the concept work. Although some grumbled about the shift, speed skaters adopted this innovation because it gave users a clear acceleration advantage. 

German speedskater Monique Angermüller wears clap skates while competing at the 2008 speedskating world cup in Heerenveen, the Netherlands. Image: McSmit / CC BY-SA 3.0

Other innovative designs, like a figure skate with a hinged ankle, which Bruening and his colleagues developed to better absorb the harsh impact of jumps, have struggled to gain traction. Bruening believes the market for specific skate types is just too small, the cost of development and rollout too high, and the cultural inertia too strong for some changes. But Maw points out that big innovations also run into resistance because, like the shift from bone to metal, they can alter the nature of skating. 

“Claps changed who was a good speed skater,” he says. “They took away an emphasis on technique and instead emphasized power.” Clap skates are also more expensive than other skates, he adds, so they changed the calculus for getting into the sport. 

None of this means skates have stopped evolving, Maw explains. Most modern innovation just focuses on fine-tuning materials and designs—and the prospect of developing bespoke blades for each athlete’s body. But Maw hopes that experimentation will also lead to the development of cheaper skates as well, so that more people get a chance to glide across a field of ice. 

In The History of Every Thing, Popular Science uncovers the hidden stories and surprising origins behind the things we use every day.

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The post From bones to steel: Why ice skates were a terrible idea that worked appeared first on Popular Science.

, the Maia 200 packs 140+ billion transistors, 216 GB of HBM3E, and a massive 272 MB of on-chip SRAM to tackle the efficiency crisis in real-time inference. Hyperscalers prioritize inference efficiency and cost (40-50% reductions). By 2028, custom ASICs could capture 20-30% market from Nvidia’s ~90%, with total AI chip sales ~$975B in 2026. ...

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World GDP has been doubling every 25 years for last 100 years even after adjusting for inflation. This means we would be expecting 3 doublings from 2025-2100. However, the world appear to be seeing changing and accelerating technology. Doubling every 25 years is 3% real GDP growth each year. There is already Atlanta Fed reserve ...

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Our dominant world monoculture seems to be drifting into maladaption, and if we don’t fix this it will have much less influence over the future. When natural selection controls future change, one must package features one values with adaptive packages if one wants a hope of their lasting into that future. And I want some of our unusual monoculture features, like open abstract inquiry, to last.

One big cause of our modern cultural drift into maladaption is: a weakening of selection pressures. Compared to centuries ago, cultures (as units) today just don’t die much due to wars, famines, or pandemics. But one “selection” pressure remains strong: people want to join and copy cultures that seem to be “winning”, to gain the respect that comes from being and associating with “winners”.

So maybe if we could get more of us to see (natural selection type) adaption as “winning”, our behaviors might get more adaptive faster. Yes, one big obstacle is that after WWII many (somewhat falsely) blamed “social Darwinism” for Nazism, creating a taboo against trying to consciously win at adaption. But even if we can overcome that, a perhaps bigger obstacle is that we find it hard to see clearly who is winning in this sense, or which policies would help win, and so find it hard to encourage our leaders to help us so win. (Nazi strategies worked out quite badly, for example.) Thus even if we could raise the status of adaption, people might instead pursue other ends while giving lip service to adaption.

I have a solution idea: use speculative markets to create clear well-informed estimates of the future adaptive success of groups who could plausible coordinate to adapt better. That is, create “adaption futures.” With visible, focal, respected market estimates of group adaption, groups could reward leaders who improved their adaptation, or use conditional adaption estimates to pick policies that would so improve. And if we could get down to N=1 “groups”, we might even advise personal decisions re adaption.

To make this work, the main thing we need is good-enough ex-post measures of group adaptive success. With that, we could create assets which pay monotonically in such measures, and subsidize trading in such assets. After which the market prices of such assets can give our desired clear estimates of group adaption. And prices in conditional-called-off adaption markets could give us estimates of which policies promote group adaption.

Now if all we wanted was a measure of DNA adaption success, we’d only need to count the number of descendants of each group perhaps a century or two later. For example, we might measure the DNA of later folks and compare those to DNA measures of current folk. Or maybe just use records of who parents whom. We might also want to weigh final descendant counts by estimates of the future adaptive success of those later descendants, such as from their health, wealth, or status. These could give groups clear signals of how well a group did in the adaption competition.

However, once we realize that most natural selection of humans today is done via cultural evolution, not via DNA evolution, we will want a way to also count cultural descendants, not just DNA descendants. These are counts of how many people later inherited how much of the culture of a group. How can we measure that? Not only accurately, but also canonically, to avoid suspicions that those who define our measures, or who implement their measurement, might do so in ways that favor some groups or policies over others?

I suggest that we take detailed surveys of current cultural behaviors and markers, described in ways that we hope could also apply well to people in the future. Maybe hundreds or even thousands of diverse cultural features per person. And also surveys of who is how much in what groups today. Do such surveys now for a big random sample of people around the world, and also commit to later (say in a century or two) doing such a survey again, of people then. If we see the possible cultures of a person as a big vector space of points x, these surveys could allow us to estimate two normalized distributions over x, n(x) for now, and f(x) for the future. And for each group g, a normalized distribution g(x) of how that group is distributed over x today.

One simple approach would be to define cultural adaptive success per x as a(x) = f(x)/n(x), i.e., how many future people there are at each “culture” x, per each current person with that culture. Then the average success of group g could be the group average of a(x) over x, i.e., a_g = Int_x g(x) a(x) dx. Group market assets m_g might pay according to some monotonic transform of a_g, such as m_g = m(a_g) = ln(a_g). A more advanced sort of combinatorial market might even produce consensus functions that estimate a(x) for all x, not just for particular groups g. That actually seems technically feasible to me.

This approach assumes that the main way that cultural behaviors x change over time is that the people now at x create and influence more future people to be at x later. But what if there are also ways that behaviors x tend to change over time due to internal processes, or due to ways that behaviors depend on changed shared external factors, such as world wealth, peace, health, or tech? If so, the above approach would credit people at x that happen to be toward where the world moves with unusual cultural influence, when in fact such folks needn’t of had much influence at all.

To deal with this, I suggest that we also collect whatever data we can on such systematic cultural change processes, and estimate a change function c(x) that says how points x today tend to change into points y = c(x) later, independent of cultural influence from others, and then estimate cultural adaptive success via a(x) = |Det Dc(x)| f(c(x))/n(x). That first term with a matrix determinant of derivatives corrects for x volume changes due to a complex change function c(x). But keep the analysis to find c(x) simple, so we can stay canonical; when in doubt, attribute change to f/n, not c.

Okay, that’s the basic idea. Now let’s consider some pesky details. We need to make this adaption measure a(x) canonical, so as to avoid suspicions of biases re groups or policies. This is a key problem and I don’t claim to have solved it. But here is a plausible start. First, include as many cultural behavior variables as people are willing to pay to measure. Transform such variables to be more normally distributed, then use mean-zero unit-variance transforms of those. If stat and market methods prefer low dimensionality, do a factor analysis of all these culture variables and focus on the largest factors. Then use standard normality-based stat methods to build best fit models of g(x), n(x), f(x) from the collected data.

As n(x), f(x) are normalized, the above method only estimate relative cultural success. But they can easily be combined with any other estimates, market or otherwise, re the overall future success of humanity. If AI descendants later matter re future success of groups today, then cultures of such future AIs can be included in the later surveys.

As discussed above re estimates of DNA adaptive success, we might improve cultural success estimates via estimates of adaptive success of the population after the time of the future survey, using parameters like individual wealth or status. We might even commit to making a new set of markets then, and use their prices for such estimates.

There might be big disputes re the relative weighting of key culture factors, or of culture vs DNA vs org influence. In this case it seems okay if we just estimate up to a dozen different dimensions of adaption separately. People can then use different functions to combine these into their preferred adaption estimates. There could still be strong incentives to increase these dozen measures of “winning”.

Markets might find it easier to use assets with bounded asset values, obtained via using payoff functions m(a) that are also bounded.

To pay for all this, group representatives might pay survey owners for the right to create and trade assets based on group adaption estimates a_g from the surveys. Such representatives might also pay for market maker subsidies to make those markets more informative, and also for conditional markets to advise particular group decisions. Other funding might come from philanthropy.

You might worry about the long time scales. But stock prices can reveal expectations about commerce issues decades into the future even if individual traders don't hold each stock for more than a year. They just have to expect to sell to other traders with similar expectations.

A strong criticism of this proposal is that firms with a market price do in fact have an estimate of their long term adaptiveness, but this doesn’t stop cultural decay from consistently killing them, even when CEOs have great incentives, powers, and knowledge re preventing this. So without enough macro culture variety, markets estimating the adaptive success of each one might still not be enough to prevent maladaptive macro culture drift.

But let’s turn this critique around: working to prevent firm cultural decay is quite economically valuable in its own right, and succeeding more at that should raise our hopes for also succeeding with analogous efforts for macro cultures.

Amazon is racing to catch up to Starlink in the battle for satellite internet dominance, and it’s creating problems for everyone else. Only 180 of the proposed 3,236 Amazon Leo satellites are currently in low Earth orbit, but they’re already routinely bright enough to disrupt astronomical research, according to a forthcoming study. And of the nearly 2,000 observations conducted during the assessment, 25 percent were determined to “distract from aesthetic appreciation of the night sky.”

Amazon announced its satellite broadband internet company, originally called Project Kuiper, in 2019, but struggled for years to get the endeavor up and running. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Starlink has made huge strides in its own satellite internet constellation—while also garnering many of its own criticisms. Amazon finally launched its first equipment into orbit in April 2025 before swapping the Project Kuiper name for Leo last November. Service is expected to begin after 578 satellites reach orbit, and Leo’s current licensing agreement stipulates it must have half of its constellation deployed by July 30, 2026.

Representatives of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) don’t sound very pleased by the progress so far, however. As the leading global consortium of astronomy experts, the IAU helps shape public space policy while also serving as the organization officially responsible for naming and classifying all celestial objects. Its Center for the Protection of a Dark and Quiet Sky also has long maintained two clearly established brightness limits for orbiting objects—one to ensure astronomical research isn’t impeded, and another to conserve the “natural beauty of the stars.”

“The International Astronomical Union recommended an acceptable brightness limit which states that satellites in operational orbits should not be visible to the unaided eye,” the IAU authors explained in their study. “The IAU statement also defined a brightness limit for interference with professional astronomy which we call the research limit.”

The IAU has repeatedly voiced its concerns about night sky light pollution, especially as multiple companies vow to send thousands of additional satellites into an already crowded low Earth orbit. So it’s particularly concerning when only 180 of Leo’s deployments are raising red flags for both the acceptable brightness and research limits. After conducting 1,938 observations of Leo satellites currently deployed, the IAU determined the equipment exhibits an average brightness magnitude of 6.28. For reference, the faintest stars seen in a perfectly dark evening sky register a 6.0 magnitude. Although that makes them faint enough to often miss with the naked eye, the satellites still frequently reflect flaring light that’s discernible without a telescope. The IAU also previously stated all satellites should be below a 7.15 magnitude, but some of Leo’s satellites were “consistently brighter.” The overall findings weren’t any better, either. 

“For spacecraft in their operational mode, 92 percent exceeded the brightness limit recommended by the IAU for interference with research, while 25 percent distract from aesthetic appreciation of the night sky,” they concluded.

The IAU notes that “based on private communication, Amazon is working on reducing satellite brightness,” including the development of a specialized dark exterior coating. At the same time, the study authors cautioned these remedies may not be enough. Leo’s current satellites all orbit at an average altitude of 391 miles, but Amazon possesses a Federal Communications Commission approval to operate at heights as low as 366 miles. That could make for an even brighter constellation—one that may drown out the constellations humans have gazed at for hundreds of thousands of years.

The post Amazon’s 180 internet satellites are already too bright. It wants 3,000 more. appeared first on Popular Science.

If you are interested in talking about SpaceX and AI data centers in space as deep tech trends you can sign up or book a calendly. Full disclosure: I’m working with a wealth management firm and will soon be a certified advisor (Series 65 pending). This is not investment advice, solicitation, or an offer to ...

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The casket industry may soon require life support in the United States. According to analysis from the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA), cremation is by far the more popular option compared to the traditional burial method. The NFDA estimates around 63 percent of all funerary requests were for cremation in 2025, compared to about 31 percent for casket burials. There’s no indication that the shift will level off anytime soon, either. By 2045, as many as 80 percent of bodies in the United States will be cremated instead of interred in the ground.

As Axios noted, no single reason explains the shifting preferences. Instead, the transition likely reflects a combination of factors, including evolving religious beliefs, environmental concerns, as well as the simple issue of economics. In 2023, the NFDA estimated the average cost of a casket burial, accompanying viewing, and memorial service to cost about $8,300. Meanwhile, the median cost that same year for cremation by itself was only around $2,750. Similar to the continued rise in cremation numbers, inflation issues will almost assuredly keep prices rising for both options in coming years.

Unfortunately, some of cremation’s growing popularity may be a bit misguided. Although often cited as a “greener” or more environmentally sustainable alternative to casket burials, the fire-based process isn’t without its own ecological impacts. The 1,400–1,900 degree Fahrenheit temperatures required to properly reduce a body to ash is usually achieved using either natural gas- or oil-fueled flames. And aside from CO2 emissions, the fires also release mercury thanks to people’s incinerated dental fillings.

Alternatives to cremation offering similar results are gaining traction, however. Aquamation, as the name implies, swaps out the flames for heated water and alkali that break down a body over the course of around 12 hours. The method itself emits about 20 percent less carbon, but simultaneously produces  between 100 and 300 gallons of liquid waste that puts a strain on municipal treatment facilities.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for a final resting place, but given that everyone eventually shuffles off this mortal coil, it’s a decision that deserves thoughtful consideration. But if you want to go out as green as possible, experts agree one option stands out from all the rest: natural burials, aka “human composting” is probably the best bet.

The post 80% of Americans may opt for cremation by 2045 appeared first on Popular Science.

As much of the country contends with an unprecedented winter storm, understanding the difference between sleet, snow, and freezing rain has never been more important. 

In a new episode of Popular Science’s Ask Us Anything podcast, we get into all the nitty gritty details of what makes each of these winter weather events different from one another. It may surprise you just which one is the most dangerous. (Clue: It’s not snow.)

Ask Us Anything answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions—from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. So, yes, there’s a reason cats love boxes and no, hot workout classes usually aren’t better. If you have a question for us, send us a note. Nothing is too silly or simple.

This episode is based on the Popular Science article “What does ‘chance of precipitation’ really mean? A meteorologist explains.”

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Full Episode Transcript

Laura Baisis: Let’s say you’re 10 years old. The weather outside is, as they say, frightful. Fluffy, white snow is falling and the roads are glistening, and you are wishing and hoping that it will be enough to cancel school. 

You turn on your local weather to get a more detailed forecast, and hear the meteorologist throwing around words like “sleet” and “freezing rain,” and wonder if either of them will crush your snow day dream. You hold your breath as the school closings are finally announced. 

Newscaster: Schools already announcing closures for tomorrow… 

LB: Your school is closed, but not just from snow. The snow combined with freezing rain has turned the roads into a skating rink, and everyone should stay put and pour that second cup of hot cocoa.

Welcome to Ask Us Anything from the editors of Popular Science, where we answer your questions about our weird world. From “Why does your dog gets so excited to see you?” To “Is the universe really infinite?” No question is too outlandish or mundane. I’m Laura Baisis, the news editor at Popular Science. 

Sarah Durn: And I’m Sarah Durn, features editor at PopSci.

LB: For all of us here, we can’t help but chase down wonder inducing questions. We’re hardwired to be curious. And this week our curiosity has led us to decoding wintry precipitation. 

SD: Okay, so potentially silly question here, but what exactly is precipitation? And what causes the different types of precipitation to form?

LB: No, silly question. 

SD: Thank you. 

LB: So precipitation is any water falling down to Earth’s surface. A lot of times this is rain, but precipitation is also a broader category that includes snow, sleet, and freezing rain. 

SD: Alright, gotcha. Obviously we all know snow, pretty flakes and all that, but what exactly are sleet and freezing rain? How are they different from snow? 

LB: So sleet is tiny little ice pellets, basically like winter hail. 

SD: But it’s different from actual hail. 

LB: Yeah, it is. Sleet forms as the snow melts to rain in the atmosphere, but then refreezes right before hitting the ground. Hail forms during summer thunderstorms and can be a lot bigger than sleet. Some can even be the size of golf balls.

SD: So if you have ice pellets in winter, it’s sleet. And if you have them in summer, it’s hail? 

LB: Yep. That’s generally what’s happening. 

SD: And then how about freezing rain? 

LB: That’s precipitation that freezes when it hits the ground. Freezing rain is actually the most dangerous kind of winter precipitation because it coats everything in black ice.

SD: Yikes. The amount of times I have slipped on black ice growing up in northeast Ohio. Not fun. 

LB: Ouch. 

SD: Now, before we dive into all things winter weather… Listeners, we want to know: what questions are keeping you curious? If there’s something you’ve always wondered, submit your questions through popsci.com/ask.

We may even feature your question in a future episode. 

LB: Can’t wait to hear all your ideas! Up next, we’re going to dive into how snow, freezing rain, and sleet actually get created in the atmosphere. 

SD: With a pretty sweet analogy that’s coming up after this quick break. 

LB: Welcome back. 

SD: Yes, welcome. Okay, so I was doing some research during the break and it turns out that in the UK sleet actually refers to a mix of rain and snow.

LB: Ooh. The plot thickens, 

SD: And in some languages there are even more terms to describe different kinds of winter weather. 

LB: Go on. 

SD: It’s something you’ve likely heard before, but Inuit languages do in fact have a ton of terms for snow. For instance, and please excuse any mispronunciations here, in Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, they have words like apingaut, which means “first snowfall.” 

LB: Ooh, interesting. 

SD: Other languages with a bunch of terms for snow are Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Scots. 

LB: Honestly wouldn’t have guessed those, but that makes sense. 

SD: Yeah. Especially because far northern Japan is actually the snowiest inhabited place on Earth. So in Japanese you have words like miyuki, which means “beautiful snow” and shinshin which is the sound snow makes, or “the sound of no sound.”

LB: Ooh. 

SD: And in Scots you have doon-lay, which is just fun to say, and means a heavy snowfall. 

LB: Those are so many beautiful words. 

SD: So, Laura, you actually wrote a whole story about precipitation, not to mention basically like all of our weather stories. 

LB: Guilty. I wanted to be a meteorologist when I was eight. So weather stories are basically my way of making that little weirdo proud without needing calculus and physics.

SD: Oh my gosh, adorable. So let’s start at the beginning. How do sleet, freezing rain and snow form in the atmosphere? 

LB: So, as we said earlier, these are all types of precipitation, and all precipitation actually starts out as snow. 

SD: Whoa, that’s so cool. 

LB: Right? Even that muggy summer afternoon downpour begins as snow.

It just melts and turns to rain as it falls through the atmosphere. 

SD: That’s so wild. 

LB: Now, if it’s cold enough closer to the ground, the snow that forms in the clouds will simply remain as snow as it comes down to Earth. Variations in the atmosphere’s temperatures, like a layer of warmer air, can affect whether the snow becomes sleet or freezing rain.

SD: So what makes it hit the ground as sleet? 

LB: Good and important question. Sleet happens when snowflakes falling to the ground partially melt as they fall through a shallow layer of warm air in the atmosphere. Those more slushy drops than refreeze when they fall through a deeper layer of colder air just above the Earth.

They then reach the ground as those little frozen raindrops that bounce basically like ice pellets. 

SD: Gotcha. And then what about freezing rain? 

LB: So this one is a little more tricky, especially to forecast. Unlike sleet, freezing rain doesn’t hit the ground as little ice pellets. It begins as snow, but then melts when the water droplet falls through a warmer and more shallow pocket of air.

That water drop will then expand and freeze as it hits a colder pocket of air or if the temperature on the ground is below freezing. So instead of falling as that nice little ice pellet, the water drop freezes upon contact with the ground. 

SD: And this is what makes that icy layer, which is so dangerous for drivers, pedestrians, and anyone outside.

LB: Yeah, exactly. One way to think about the difference is to imagine a box of fresh donuts. 

SD: Ooh, love a food analogy. 

LB: Right? Freezing rain is like that glazed donut with a nice, clear coating of icing on top. 

SD: Yum. 

LB: Kind of my favorite. Now, freezing rain gives the ground a similar clear coating that is very slippery.

On the other hand, sleet is like a donut with sprinkles, rainbow or chocolate. It covers the ground in these little crunchy pellets that aren’t quite as slippery. 

SD: You know, I never thought that donuts would help us explain the weather. 

LB: I mean, honestly, meteorology is so complex, so having analogies like these are really, really helpful.

And a big shout out to the team at KETV in Omaha, Nebraska for this delicious analogy. 

SD: Oh, I love local news. 

LB: Same. And please, PSA be kind to your local meteorologist. They don’t have an easy job. 

SD: Is it really hard to predict winter weather? 

LB: It can be, especially freezing rain. 

SD: Yeah. Why is that? 

LB: Even a slight change in the atmosphere can mean a completely different forecast.

So if there’s a pocket of warm air in the right place, a snowy day can become a sleet or freezing rain day. Or vice versa, and those atmospheric changes can happen really quickly changing forecasts on a dime.

SD: And freezing rain is probably the most dreaded winter weather forecast, right?

LB: Absolutely. 

SD: What makes it so dangerous?

LB: It usually causes the most damage. Freezing rain can bring down tree limbs, power lines, and cause car accidents. In fact, only 100th of an inch of freezing rain is enough to make walking and driving unsafe. 

SD: Yikes. 

LB: It also might look safer to drive because it doesn’t look like a blinding blizzard or raging snowstorm outside, but a storm with freezing rain can make invisible black ice, which is what makes driving so risky.

SD: So in general, when are weather forecasts most accurate? 

LB: Basically the closer you are to the day you’re trying to predict the better. 

SD: I mean, I guess that makes sense. 

LB: Yeah. So meteorologist Cyrena Arnold told me that it’s like driving down a long dirt road. Imagine you see a swirl of dust indicating that something is approaching, but you don’t know if it’s another car, a large truck, or maybe a cow.

Once the swirl of dust gets closer, you notice it’s blue. Then you see that it’s a compact car and eventually you can tell it’s the make and model. Forecasting is really similar. The closer we get, the better picture we have. 

SD: That’s a great analogy. 

LB: Right? And remember whether forecasting is really hard. It combines some serious high level math and physics that most of us can’t even compute, myself included, with constantly changing variables. It’s incredibly nuanced and difficult. So remember that most legitimate forecasters are just doing their best. 

SD: And if you wanna dive deeper into the world of precipitation, check out Laura’s full story on Popular Science. It’s amazing. We’ll link it in the show notes.

And with that, we’ll be back shortly with a brief history of when the U.S. government actually outlawed the weather. 

LB: Oh my goodness. What? 

SD: Well, technically censored, but it’s still wild. That’s coming up after this short break. 

LB: And welcome back. Okay, Sarah, I still can’t believe you dropped that bomb right before the break.

The U.S. government censored the weather?

SD: I know it sounds fake, but it’s real. During World War II, the U.S. government decided weather forecasts were basically military secrets. 

LB: Because clouds can be spies? 

SD: Pretty much. Officials worried that if enemy submarines heard things like wind directions, storms, or fog reports, they could then predict conditions along the U.S. coast.

LB: So instead of partly cloudy Americans, just got…nothing? 

SD: Exactly. After Pearl Harbor, weather maps literally went blank. 

LB: Whoa. 

SD: Radio stations weren’t allowed to talk about the weather unless they got special permission. 

LB: Even during dangerous storms? 

SD: Yeah, and sometimes there were really bad consequences for that silence.

In 1942, for example, a massive tornado outbreak tore through Mississippi and Tennessee, but radio stations couldn’t warn people about it. One station in Memphis was only allowed to say doctors and nurses are urgently needed without explaining why. 

LB: Cryptic and terrifying. 

SD: Yeah. Can you imagine? And without weather forecasts, everyday life got weird too.

Baseball announcers couldn’t announce rain delays. Farmers were caught off guard by freezes. Even Eleanor Roosevelt got scolded for casually mentioning clouds in her newspaper column. 

LB: How dare they scold America’s best First Lady. 

SD: I know, but people obviously still needed to know what the weather was like, so they turned to almanacs, rumors, and DIY gadgets.

Even a Popular Science approved weather glass, basically a thermometer you hang outside your home and read from inside. 

LB: Of course, we were involved. 

SD: I mean, of course. Eventually after a surprise hurricane barreled into Galveston Bay, Texas, in 1943, the government admitted the downsides outweighed the benefits of keeping the weather censored.

LB: So when did the weather get uncensored? 

SD: Later that year. So in October 1943, weather forecast returned after almost two years. 

LB: Which feels like another great reminder that weather isn’t just small talk, it’s a public safety issue. 

SD: Exactly. Forecasts really save lives. 

LB: Honestly, after learning about this, I’ll never complain about a bad forecast the same way again. Not that I usually complain because I love meteorology, but now I really won’t. 

SD: Yeah, same. Better to know about a bad weather day than be surprised by it.

LB: And that’s it for this episode, but don’t worry, we’ve got more fun Ask Us Anything episodes live in our feed right now. Follow or subscribe to Ask Us Anything by Popular Science, wherever you enjoy your podcasts. And if you like our show, leave us a rating and review. 

SD: We care what you think. Our theme music is from Kenneth Michael Reagan, and our producer is Alan Haburchak.

This week’s episode was also co-produced by our very own Laura Baisis and is based on an article she wrote for Popular Science. 

LB: Thanks, Sarah. A big thank you to the whole Ask Us Anything team, and to you, our listeners, for tuning in. 

SD: And one more time. If you want to have your own wonderment explained on a future episode, go to popsci.com/ask. Until next time, keep the questions coming.

The post The most dangerous type of precipitation isn’t snow appeared first on Popular Science.

A tiny tropical flower is challenging a longstanding model for plant evolution. According to researchers at the Field Museum in Chicago, an oddball member of the lipstick vine family evolved to attract more pollinators before spreading to other parts of the world, and not the other way around.

“It was really exciting to get these results, because they don’t follow the classic ideas of how we would have imagined the species evolved,” explained Jing-Yi Lu, a botanist and coauthor of a study published today in the journal New Phytologist.

Most lipstick vines look like their name implies: lengthy plants featuring vibrantly red, tubular flowers. Identifiable across Southeast Asia, their nectar primarily attracts longbeaked sunbirds, who in turn help spread pollen for propagation. In Taiwan, however, one lipstick vine species known as Aeschynanthus acuminatu looks dramatically different from its relatives. Instead of crimson flowers, A. acuminatu possesses much shorter, wider flowers with a greenish-yellow coloration.

“Compared to the rest of its genus, this species has weird, unique flowers,” said Lu.

Female Black-throated Sunbird (Aethopyga saturata) visiting the typical sunbird-pollinated Aeschynanthus bracteatus in Pingbian, southeastern Yunnan, China. Credit: Jing-Yi Lu

Because of this, A. acuminatu is far more suited for Taiwan’s shorter-beaked birds. It’s a good thing, too—sunbirds aren’t found anywhere on the island. That said, the yellow-green lipstick vines are also found on the mainland. Knowing this, Lu and his colleagues began to wonder where the plant evolved first.

“At the heart of our study is a question of where species originate,” said Rick Ree, a study coauthor and curator of the Field Museum’s Negaunee Integrative Research Center. “There must have been a switch when this species evolved, when it went from having narrow flowers for sunbirds to wider flowers for more generalist birds. Where and when did the switch occur?”

Many botanists might assume the answer could be found in the Grant-Stebbins model. Utilized in the field for over half a century, the Grant-Stebbins model asserts that plants usually evolve different species after they migrate into new regions featuring different types of pollinators. With this in mind, it stood to reason that A. acuminatus originated in Taiwan to accommodate the island’s short-beaked birds. However, the researchers were surprised by what they saw after using lipstick vine DNA samples to assemble a series of family trees.

“The branching patterns on the family trees we made revealed that the A. acuminatus plants on Taiwan descended from other A. acuminatus plants from the mainland,” said Ree.

This means that for some reason, the shorter, greener lipstick vines evolved in a region with plenty of sunbird pollinators. If true, then this contradicts the Grant-Stebbins model—but researchers have a theory about how this could happen.

“Our hypothesis is that at some point in the past, sunbirds stopped being optimal or sufficient pollinators for some of the plants on the mainland,” explained Ree. “There must have been circumstances under which natural selection favored this transition toward generalist passerine birds with shorter beaks as pollinators.”

Ree stressed that their unexpected conclusions were only reached after botanists like Lu took time to travel into the field themselves.

“This study shows the importance of natural history, of actually going out into nature and observing ecological interactions,” he said. “It takes a lot of human effort that cannot be replicated by AI, it can’t be sped up by computers—there’s no substitute for getting out there like Jing-Yi did…”

The post This odd vine contradicts long-standing evolutionary theory appeared first on Popular Science.