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Hacker Calls FBI's I.T. Department, Gains Access To Network

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Early Telephone Set Illustration

Adolphe Bitard, via Wikimedia Commons

Early Telephone Set Illustration

On Sunday, a hacker threatened to dump the contact information of thousands of FBI and Department of Homeland Security employees online. Then on Monday, the hacker made good on said threat and released the information, first from the DHS, then from the FBI. The hacker who released the information claimed to have had access to up to 200GB further of information, meaning there could be plenty more releases to come in the days ahead. So how did a person break into the systems of two of America’s most high-profile agencies? A phone call, it appears.

From Motherboard:

The data was obtained, the hacker told Motherboard, by first compromising the email account of a DoJ employee, although he would not elaborate on how that account was accessed in the first place. (On Monday, the hacker used the DoJ email account to contact this reporter). From there, he tried logging into a DoJ web portal, but when that didn't work, he phoned up the relevant department. “So I called up, told them I was new and I didn't understand how to get past [the portal],” the hacker told Motherboard. “They asked if I had a token code, I said no, they said that's fine—just use our one.”

As is so often the case, the easiest way into a secure system is by asking someone for the key. This is the same tactic that a teen hacker claims to have used to gain access to CIA chief John Brennan’s personal email. And it’s fairly similar to “spearphising” attacks, where emails with links to download malicious software are sent to specific people inside a network, in the hopes that they’ll open the email, follow the link, and compromise the system. This is reportedly how Russian hackers got into a Pentagon email server, Ukrainian power stations, and even less conspicious targets, like a German steel mill. Even as the Director of National Intelligence warns that the Internet of Things is a major threat, it appears IRL networks of people are at least as vulnerable. Fortunately for companies that want to find the vulnerabilities in their human networks, there’s an app for that.


How To Build Or Buy An Oculus Rift-Ready PC

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via Oculus

The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset will start to ship in March, but you won't be able to use it if you don't have a relatively powerful computer. If you've already pre-ordered one for $599, and haven't gotten the memo, or are interested in buying one and want to know how much the computer required would cost, this is your one-stop shop.

First thing's first: what's a "relatively powerful computer?"

In May 2015, Oculus released its minimum specifications that a computer would need to run games and applications displayed through the Rift.

  • Processor: Intel i5-4590

  • Graphics Card: Nvidia GTX 970 or AMD 290

  • RAM: 8GB

The processor and RAM required are pretty standard, actually, and can probably already be found in most modern PCs. The recommended processor, Intel's i5-4590, was released in May 2014, and can hardly be called cutting-edge. As for RAM, 8GB is pretty much the default in any laptop used for more than surfing the internet and Microsoft Word.

However, the graphics card is the most expensive part of the entire endeavor. The two suggested, Nvidia's GTX 970 and AMD's 290, run from $320 to $370, a little rich for the taste of most casual gamers. They both support 4GB of memory, dedicated to processing textures and graphics, and if they weren't powering the Rift, could easily support 4K gaming at a reasonable framerate.

Building your own PC

If you're building your own rig, three parts does not a computer make.

In addition to a CPU, RAM, and graphics card (also called a GPU), you need a case to put everything in, a power supply to distribute power to each part, and a motherboard to connect all the parts.

A great tool to compile your own build is PC Part Picker, a free site that walks you through every piece of the computer you might need. I made a quick build that came in under $1000, with the operating system and monitor included. (I've also personally used that model of monitor, it's a budget choice that still delivers great, accurate 1080p graphics. And it's bright.)

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

TypeItemPrice
CPUIntel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor$188.99 @ SuperBiiz
MotherboardASRock H97M PRO4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard$70.99 @ SuperBiiz
MemoryCrucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory$32.99 @ Amazon
StorageWestern Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive$49.89 @ OutletPC
Video CardGigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card$319.99 @ Amazon
CaseThermaltake Core V21 MicroATX Mini Tower Case$39.99 @ Newegg
Power SupplyEVGA SuperNOVA GS 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply$64.99 @ Newegg
Operating SystemMicrosoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit)$87.95 @ OutletPC
MonitorAsus VX238H 23.0" Monitor$129.99 @ Newegg
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total (before mail-in rebates)$1045.77
Mail-in rebates-$60.00
Total$985.77

I used all of Oculus' recommended specs for the CPU, graphics card, and RAM, and then got a 1 TB Western Digital hard drive to take care of storage, with a decent motherboard and more than sufficient power supply.

If I wanted to really speed things up, I could have added a 120 GB solid-state drive for the operating system and other choice files for about $45, and used the 1 TB hard drive for storage. I also didn't include a CPU cooler, because chances are you won't be pushing the CPU past the point of regular stock cooling. (Also, you have to be careful about how large of a cooler you can actually fit in the case.)

I actually overbuilt this a little, too. For instance, the power supply (which is not something to normally skimp on), is nearly twice as powerful as it needs to be. We have no idea about what the Oculus' power draw would be, but the USB ports that will power the head-mounted display can only provide 2.5 watts each, so even if the Rift used two, we're only talking a 5W bump. That's a far cry from the nearly 200W extra I budgeted.

You could also skimp a little more on the motherboard, and chances are you have an installation of Windows to upgrade for free. If you only wanted a VR machine as well, you could probably pay less for a monitor, or buy one used for much cheaper.

The Rift itself costs $599 through pre-order, so added to my projection, the real cost for both would be just under $1600. Of course, you would still need a mouse and keyboard, but who doesn't have a few of those lying around the house?

Buying a PC

Starting this week, Oculus has actually announced a few deals for computers bundled with the Rift itself.

These PC/Rift packages will start at $1500 (plus tax), and are guaranteed to meet the minimum specs. (However, they don't include a monitor like I did, and after tax comes out to more than $1600, depending on where you live.) But, you do get those guarantees, and you don't have to build it yourself (even though that's the fun part). Dell and Asus are the main manufacturers, as well as Alienware (which is owned by Dell). Oculus says that more manufacturers will be added later.

Oculus

The deals are available at Best Buy, Amazon, and the Microsoft Store. The package will still include all the Oculus goodies, like the headset, sensor, remote, an Xbox One controller, EVE: Valkyrie Founder’s Pack, and Lucky’s Tale.

The Oculus Rift officially ships in March, although pre-orders are reportedly backed up until July. However, these deals say that they ship in late April, so if you need a PC and don't want to wait until summer for an Oculus, this might be a smart move.

Animation: The Black Hole Collision That Created Today's Gravitational Wave Announcement

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Sketchfab

Black hole collision

Einstein was right. A hundred years ago, he predicted that really big objects in space can create ripples in the fabric of space-time. Today, scientists announced that these gravitational waves have been detected directly for the first time.

The confirmation came from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), based in Louisiana and Washington State.

The signal announced today came from the collision of two black holes. As Popular Science's Sophie Bushwick explains, the two black holes twirled around one another as they approached each other. The closer they got, the faster they spun, until they finally merged together into one giant black hole. The violent union released gravitational waves that LIGO detected as a "chirp" signal.

Below, this animation from Sketchfab user moroplogo explains what the black hole collision, and resulting gravity waves, may have looked like. Click around for a closer view.

Watch Ok Go's Gravity-Defying Music Video

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The band Ok Go is renowned for its amazing music videos, and today's glorious video for its song, "Upside Down and Inside Out" is no exception. The band takes to the sky, experiencing weightlessness in the belly of a jet. And of course, no Ok Go video would be the same without the amazing props, from paint-filled balloons to piñatas, and even ball-filled suitcases.

It's great, and you should watch it.

One small quibble. Contrary to the video's introduction, this was not shot in zero gravity. Gravity is everywhere, as today's big announcement about gravity waves made clear. We can't just get rid of it by flying in a plane. What we can do is make it so that we don't feel the effects of gravity. That's called zero-G, and while you're in it, you feel weightless, as though there is zero gravity.

SciShow has a great (and quick) explainer on the difference between zero-G and zero gravity:

In order to get zero G here on Earth, pilots can fly in a parabola, accelerating at a steep angle into the sky, then diving back downwards. For about thirty seconds at the top of each parabola, passengers will experience zero G, and are free to make amazing music videos. In order to get this video, BGRreports that the band went on 21 flights and were weightless for two hours and 15 minutes.

Gravitational Wave Announcement Breaks The Internet

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Paper Magazine/Photoshopped by Popular Science

Gravitational waves break the internet

Scientists have finally detected a phenomenon predicted by Einstein 100 years ago, and the news is exploding across Twitter and Facebook.

Far away, two black holes are colliding, and instruments here on Earth detected the gravitational waves that resulted. The discovery was a long time coming, and can tell us a lot about the nature of the universe. Do black holes exist? Yes, we know that now thanks to this discovery. Is the universe made of strings? Maybe we'll be able to find out now.

SXS, CC BY-ND

Oh hey, I heard ripples in space and time, generated as two black holes merged. Call me back.

Amidst all the excitement, the website for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), the project that detected the gravitational wave signal, went down temporarily. It may still be suffering intermittent access for some users.

Meanwhile, the site that published the scientific paper also crashed:

They're both back up and running now, though, it seems.

The world is a crazy place when a physics journal is getting 10,000 hits per minute. Take that, Kim Kardashian.

'Summon' Feature Lets Tesla Vehicles Park Themselves With No Driver In The Seat

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Tesla Model S P85D

Kristen Hall-Geisler

Tesla Model S P85D

Last fall, Tesla Version 7.0 was sent over the air to Tesla Model S computers as they were sleeping snug in their garages. When the cars woke up, they had Autopilot features that assisted their humans with highway driving, particularly lane keeping, lane changing, and active cruise control features. Version 7.0 had the ability to scan for an open parking space and parallel park on command.

Now, Tesla Version 7.1 for the Model S and Model X has a feature known as Summon. This is the first Autopilot software to allow a Tesla to take over a driving chore without a human in the driver’s seat.

In January, when the beta was released, Tesla noted that when you got home, you could step out of your car and let the Tesla put itself to bed. It could open the garage door, drive into the garage, park, and shut itself down. The car could reverse the operation to greet you outside the garage in the morning. Sadly, no Jarvis-like robot arm from the Iron Man movies plugs the car in for a recharge.

Tesla recommended that owners try the Summon beta out in private settings, but now with the full rollout, it’s ready to show off in public. The same trick that it could do in beta – pulling into and out of your garage – it can do in tight parking spaces, like those in a public parking garage.

When you can’t (or don’t want to) maneuver around poles and long trucks to get into a space only to find you can’t open your door more than two inches, Summon can pull in for you while you stand and watch. And just like at home, it can pull out of the space when you come back.

While Summon’s range now is only about 40 feet, Tesla has big plans for it in the future. A blog post announcing the beta version in January said, “Eventually, your Tesla will be able to drive anywhere across the country to meet you, charging itself along the way. It will sync with your calendar to know exactly when to arrive.”

DARPA Will Launch A 132-Foot-Long Robot Yacht In April

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ACTUV Concept Art

DARPA

ACTUV Concept Art

DARPA is the Pentagon’s future-looking technology projects wing, and it’s also the world’s foremost source of bad pun acronyms for military machines. Even if the President is turning down Death Stars, there’s still plenty more of the future to mine for upcoming wars. At a media roundtable in northern Virginia yesterday, DARPA director Dr. Arati Prabhakar and deputy director Dr. Steve Walker gave a glimpse of something new and strange: on April 7th, they’ll be christening a new ship that’s 132 feet long and features an onboard crew of exactly zero people.

The full name is “The Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel”, which collapses to the "ASW Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel," or ACTUV, pronounced “Active.” DARPA, c’mon. That’s quite a length to go to for a name that doesn’t even capture the coolest thing about this autonomous robot ship.

ACTUV is built with submarine fighting in mind. “Optimized to robustly track quiet diesel electric submarines,” in DARPA’s words. There are lots of ways to hunt submarines, and no particular reason a sub hunter is better without any people on it. But why not make it unmanned? DARPA estimates using an unmanned vessel instead of a similarly-sized manned one will be save an order of magnitude on the cost of daily operation.

In addition to anti-submarine work, Walker mentioned it could have a role in supplying other ships, logistics, and countering undersea mines. This last category is currently the most common application for unmanned boats, though often they’re much smaller vessels deployed from a larger ship. ACTUV will instead be, at 132 feet long and weighing 140 tons, will be larger than most unmanned ships (though still smaller than all but the tiniest U.S. Navy vessels).

And it’ll be autonomous.

“Imagine an unmanned surface vessel following all the laws of the sea on its own,” Walker told the assembled media, “and operating with manned surface and unmanned underwater vehicles.” That means they’re programming the laws of the sea into the very machine itself.

Watch a concept video about it below

How DARPA Is Prepping For The Next Cyberwar

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Unmanned Little Bird Helicopter

Keith A. Stevenson, USMC, via Wikimedia Commons

Unmanned Little Bird Helicopter

Situated behind a mall and next to an open pit of a construction site, the northern Virginia headquarters of DARPA, the military's most forward-looking appendage, aren’t so much nondescript as they are deliberately non-assuming--a shrine to technological triumph glistening like the infinite offices of suburbia. Inside, I joined a dozen or so other reporters for a meeting with DARPA director Arati Prabhakar and Steve Walker, DARPA’s deputy director. We were invited here to discuss a very elaborate game of guesswork: what threats will emerge in the future, and what investments now can protect against them?

While specifically geared toward the needs of defense, much of what DARPA creates ends up in civilian use. Perhaps the best known project is the one that lets you read this: the original internet, ARPANET, was a DARPA project. As Prabhakar quips, DARPA is the kind of place where “if you don’t invent the internet, you get a B.”

The internet, and the computing and data revolution that accompanied it, have proven themselves tremendously powerful engines of the modern world. This is overwhelmingly a good thing, with an accompanying, nagging, almost intractable problem: as more data is generated and collected each year, it’s a bigger and bigger area to try and secure from attackers. As Prabhakar put it, “the attack surface grows and grows.”

It is, to use a clumsy metaphor, like a king who builds a library, and then builds a moat around it. Moats, towers, and guards can keep it safe, allowing only the king to carry books in or out. The internet, instead, gives us thousands upon thousands of libraries, with people freely adding and copying books and traveling between libraries. At any moment, someone could submit a book that spontaneously combusts, or a book that, when opened, locks the librarians out until they pay a ransom. It is perhaps no wonder that this week the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper named the internet of things the greatest threat facing America today.

So how is DARPA trying to fix this? Prabhakar and Walker repeatedly stressed that perfect security is impossible: there is no unhackable code. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make less hackable code. For that, DARPA has the High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems project, or (HACMS). (It’s pronounced hack-ems. DARPA is the world leader in turning puns into weapons.) The project builds code from the ground up, using mathematical proofs for security. From its official description:

HACMS will adopt a clean-slate, formal methods-based approach to enable semi-automated code synthesis from executable, formal specifications. In addition to generating code, HACMS seeks a synthesizer capable of producing a machine-checkable proof that the generated code satisfies functional specifications as well as security and safety policies. A key technical challenge is the development of techniques to ensure that such proofs are composable, allowing the construction of high-assurance systems out of high-assurance components.

That’s... not terribly clear. “This is not my deep area of expertise,” Prabhakar prefaced her explanation to the room, “but [former HACMS program leader] John Launchbury describes it like mathematics. One might calculate right triangles and find that a2 + b2 seems to = c2 over and over again, and after a while you could prove a theorem that that’s true. You’d actually always know that you have a right triangle, that a right triangle is unhackable because you can’t make c2 not equal a2 + b2. It’s that kind of mathematical proof that’s captured in the code.

After the project launched and the team found a kernel of useful code, they put it on a drone and had a team of hackers try to break into it. They couldn’t. Then they put the code on a small attack helicopter, modified to fly unmanned. For that, they gave the hired hackers access to not just the source code, but even the code for a sensor on the camera. Despite getting into the camera system, the hackers were unable to break the code and get into the main systems of the helicopter.

HACMS continues, and is hardly a single answer to threats that come through code. When asked, Prabhakar denied that it was hack-proof, instead saying that HACMS is “not unhackable completely. There are certain obvious pathways for attackers that have all been shut down in a way that’s mathematically proven to be unhackable for those pathways.”


Climate Change Could Make Your Airplane Trips Take Longer

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That hop across the pond is about to get longer. A new paper published in Environmental Research Letters finds that climate change could make flying even worse.

A jet stream is a current of fast-moving air in the atmosphere. Just as you can swim faster and further when going along with a current of water, pilots can take advantage of jet streams when they happen to be flying in the same direction as the stream of air; they use less fuel and can get to their destination faster. But there is also a downside. When flying against a jet stream, flights can take much longer.

The researchers predicted the future patterns of the jet stream using a computer model, and assuming that the current levels of carbon dioxide ( a potent greenhouse gas) doubled. They found that under those circumstances, the jet stream would almost certainly strengthen, making flights from the U.K. to the U.S. twice as likely to take over 7 hours. Flights from the U.S. to the U.K. on the other hand would be twice as likely to be less than 5 hours and 20 minutes. That's just a few minutes slower than the record of 5 hours 16 minutes set by a jet last year when the jet stream was particularly strong. For comparison, a transatlantic flight today normally takes between 6 and 8 hours.

Unfortunately, the quick pace heading from the U.S. back towards Europe won't be enough to make up for the slower flight times on the way back, which has dire consequences for the 600 or so flights back and forth across the Atlantic that happen each day.

In the paper, the authors write: "Even assuming no future growth in aviation, the extrapolation of our results to all transatlantic traffic suggests that aircraft will collectively be airborne for an extra 2000 [hours] each year, burning an extra 7.2 million gallons of jet fuel at a cost of US$22 million, and emitting an extra 70 million kg of carbon dioxide, which is equivalent to the annual emissions of 7100 average British homes."

This study only looked at flights from North America to Europe (particularly between New York and London) but there are other jet streams in the southern hemisphere, and the news could be just as bad in other parts of the world. Future studies (and flights) will let us know how other routes might be affected.

The Tantalizing Quest For Gravity Waves

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Bill Bourne/ Popular Science archives

Laser antenna

Robert Forward's proposed free-space laser antenna to detect gravity waves from the Crab Nebula. Central satellite of three has laser and beam splitter. Two outer spacecraft have reflectors.

Today, February 11, 2016, LIGO scientists announced they had detected gravitational waves in September 2015—the first direct evidence of the cosmic inflation that created our universe. "The Tantalizing Quest For Gravity Waves," written by Arthur Fisher and originally published in the April 1981 issue of Popular Science, explores the international effort to detect these ripples in space-time.

In the vast reaches of the cosmos, cataclysms are a commonplace: Something momentous is always happening. Perhaps the blazing death of an exhausted sun, or the collision of two black holes, or a warble deep inside a neutron star. Such an event spews out a torrent of radiation bearing huge amounts of energy. The energy rushes through space, blankets our solar system, sweeps through the Earth . . . and no one notices.

But there is a small band of experimenters, perhaps 20 groups worldwide, scattered from California to Canton, determined that some day they will notice. Pushed to the edge of contemporary technology and beyond, battling the apparent limits of natural law itself, they are developing what will be the most sensitive antennas ever built. And eventually, they are sure, they will detect these maddeningly intangible phenomena—gravity waves.

Even though gravity waves (more formally called gravitational radiation) have never been directly detected, virtually the entire scientific community is convinced they exist. This assurance stems, in part, from the bedrock on which gravity-wave notions are founded: Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, which, though still being tested, remains untoppled. Says Caltech astrophysicist Kip Thorne, "I don't know of any respectable expert in gravitational theory who has any doubt that gravity waves exist. The only way we could be mistaken would be if Einstein's general relativity theory were wrong and if all the competing theories were also wrong, because they also predict gravity waves."

In 1916, Einstein predicted that when matter accelerated in a suitable way, the moving mass would launch ripples in the invisible mesh of space-time, tugging momentarily at each point in the universal sea as they passed by. The ripples—gravity waves—would carry energy and travel at the speed of light.

In many ways, this prediction was analogous to one made by James Clerk Maxwell, the brilliant British physicist who died in the year of Einstein's birth—1879. Maxwell stated that the acceleration of an electric charge would produce electromagnetic radiation—a whole gamut of waves, including light, that would all travel at the same constant velocity. His ideas were ridiculed by many of his contemporaries. But a mere decade after his death, he was vindicated when Heinrich Hertz both generated and detected radio waves in the laboratory.

Why, then, more than 60 years after Einstein's bold forecast, has no one seen a gravity wave? Why, despite incredible obstacles, are physicists still seeking them in a kind of modern quest for the Holy Grail, one of the most exciting in the whole history of science?

To find out, I visited experimenters who are building gravity-wave detectors and theoreticians whose esoteric calculations guide them. In the process, I learned about the problems, and how the attempts to solve them are already producing useful spinoffs. And I learned about the ultimate payoff if the quest is successful: a new and potent tool for penetrating, for the first time, what one physicist has called "the most overwhelming events in the universe."

A kiss blown across the Pacific

The fundamental problem in gravity-wave detection is that gravity as a force is feeble in the extreme, some 40 orders of magnitude weaker than the electromagnetic force. (That's 1040, or a 1 followed by 40 zeros.)

Partly for this reason, and partly because of other properties of gravity waves, they interact with matter very weakly, making their passage almost imperceptible. And unlike the dipole radiation of electromagnetism, gravitational radiation is quadrupole.

The fundamental problem in gravity-wave detection is that gravity as a force is feeble in the extreme.

If a gravity wave generated, for example, by a supernova in our galaxy passed through the page you are now reading, the quadrupole effect would first make the length expand and the width contract (or vice versa), and then the reverse. But the amount of energy deposited in the page would be so infinitesimal that the change in dimension would be less than the diameter of a proton. Trying to detect a gravity wave, then, is like standing in the surf at Big Sur and listening for a kiss blown across the Pacific.

As for generating detectable waves on Earth, a la Hertz, theoreticians long ago dismissed the possibility. "Sure, you make gravity waves every time you wave your fist," says Rainer Weiss, a professor of physics at MIT. "But anything you will ever be able to detect must be made by massive bodies moving very fast. That means events in space." Astrophysicists have worked up whole catalogs of such events, each associated with gravity waves of different energy, different characteristic frequencies, and different probabilities of occurrence. They include the supposed continuous background gravitational radiation of the "big bang" that began the universe, and periodic events like the regular pulses of radiation emitted by pulsars and binary systems consisting of superdense objects. And then there are the singular events: the births of black holes in globular clusters, galactic nuclei, and quasars; neutron-star quakes; and supernovas.

Probably the prime candidate for detection is what William Fairbank, professor of physics at Stanford University, calls "the most dramatic event in the history of the universe"—a supernova. As a star such as our sun ages, it converts parts of its mass into nuclear energy, perhaps one percent in five billion years. "The only reason a large star like the sun doesn't collapse," explains Fairbank, "is because the very high temperature in its core generates enough pressure to withstand gravitational forces. But as it cools from burning its fuel, the gravitational forces begin to overcome the electrical forces that keep its particles apart. It collapses faster and faster, and if it's a supernova, the star's outer shell blasts off. In the last thousandth of a second, it collapses to a neutron star, and if the original star exceeded three solar masses, maybe to a black hole."

One way of characterizing the energy of a gravity wave is the strain it induces in any matter it impinges on. If the mass has a dimension of a given length, then the strain equals the change in that length (produced by the gravity wave) divided by the length. Gravity waves have very, very tiny strains. A supernova occurring in our galaxy might produce a strain on Earth that would shrink or elongate a 100-cm-long detector only one one-hundredth the diameter of an atomic nucleus. (That is 10-15 cm, and physicists would label the strain as 10-17.) To the credit of tireless experimenters, there are detectors capable of sensing that iota of a minim of a scruple.

But there is a catch: Based on observations of other galaxies, a supernova can be expected to occur in the dense center of any given galaxy roughly about once in 30 years. That is a depressingly long interval. Over and over again, the scientists I spoke to despaired of doing meaningful work if it had to depend on such a rara avis. Professor David Douglass of the University of Rochester told me: "To build an experiment to detect an event once every 30 years—maybe—is not a very satisfying occupation. It's hardly a very good Ph.D. project for a graduate assistant; it's not even a good career project—you might be unlucky."

Gravity waves: powerful astronomical tools?

What if we don't confine ourselves to events in our own galaxy, but look farther afield? Instead of the "hopelessly rare" (in the words of one researcher) supernova in our galaxy, what if we looked for them in a really large arena— the Virgo cluster, which has some 2,500 galaxies, where supernovas ought to be popping from once every few days to once a month or so? That's Catch-222. The Virgo cluster is about 1,000 times farther away than the center of our own galaxy. So a supernova event from the cluster would dispatch gravity waves whose effect on Earth would be some million times weaker (1,000 times 1,000, according to the inverse-square law governing all radiative energy). And that means building a detector a million times more sensitive. "There is no field of science," says Ronald Drever of Caltech and the University of Glasgow, Scotland, "where such enormous increases in sensitivity are needed as they are here, in gravity-wave detection." Trying to detect a supernova in a distant galaxy means having to measure a displacement one-millionth the size of an atomic nucleus.

Paradoxically, it is this very quality that gives gravity waves the ability to be, as Kip Thorne says, "a very powerful tool for astronomy. True, they go through a gravity-wave detector with impunity. But that means the gravity waves generated during the birth of a black hole can also get away through all the surrounding matter with impunity." And neither light, nor gamma rays, nor radio waves can. During a supernova we can see the exploding shell via showers of electromagnetic radiation, but only hours or days after the initial massive implosion—the gravitational collapse. During the collapse, while a neutron star or black hole is being formed, nothing but gravity waves (and, theoretically, neutrinos) can escape.

Read the rest of the article in the April 1981 issue of Popular Science magazine.

HBO's 'Silicon Valley' Season 3 Teaser Is Here, Featuring Google's Big Dog Robot

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HBO's Silicon Valley is the best comedy about the tech industry in recent years (sorry Big Bang Theory— but not really). Actually, I would go as far as to say that Silicon Valley, created by former tech drone Mike Judge (of Office Space, Idiocracy and Beavis and Butthead fame), is actually one of the best comedies overall on TV these days. And now it's returning for a glorious third season on April 24.

The first teaser for the new season, which premiered today on YouTube (and which I first saw thanks to Entertainment Weekly), brings us back into the orbit of Pied Piper, the promising-yet-dysfunctional fictional startup company at the center of the show.

There are some mild spoilers if you're not all caught up yet, but more importantly, the brief clip contains a cameo of Big Dog, the powerful and often eerie robotic pack animal developed by Boston Dynamics, which has appeared numerous times here on Popular Science. (Boston Dynamics was acquired by Google in 2013.)

The poor robot, which has already received its share of abuse from its human masters, appears to be once again getting literally kicked around. Although this time, it has antlers, as it did when impersonating reindeer in a recent Boston Dynamics video. Perhaps for a winter holiday-themed episode? Whatever is going on, count me in.

Our Neanderthal DNA May Help Scientists Understand Depression And Addiction

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Neandertal vs human skulls

A human skull, left, and a Neandertal skull, right.

Around 60,000 years ago, modern humans left Africa to begin exploring other continents. Along the way they met other early humans, such as Neanderthals, and the different species periodically bred together. Scientists have known this for a few years—there’s evidence in our DNA, of which 1.5 to 4 percent in modern Europeans and Asians is Neanderthal. But scientists never knew if those bits of genetic code had a lasting effect on our health. After analyzing specific parts of DNA in 28,000 people, a team led by researchers at Vanderbilt University discovered correlations between Neanderthal DNA and 12 different health conditions, including depression and disorders of the skin and blood. The researchers published their work today in the journal Science.

The researchers identified 135,000 alleles, or variations in the genetic code, that some modern humans had inherited from Neanderthals. They then correlated the presence of those variations to more than 1,500 medical conditions listed in the patients’ electronic medical records.

Neanderthal DNA was correlated with a higher incidence of depression, addiction to tobacco, skin lesions caused by the sun, a slower metabolism, too much blood clotting, and a mutation connected to Parkinson’s disease.

Clearly, these genetic variations aren’t helping us be healthier these days. But that might not have always been the case. Back when humans and Neanderthals were roaming around Europe together, faster blood clotting would have been essential to quickly close open wounds to stave off infection. A slower metabolism would have been useful when food was more scarce or lower in calories than we have now.

The findings show how much can be gleaned from a huge dataset like the one the researchers used. Of course, it wasn’t all easy—some of the medical entries didn’t fit the right format, and not all the patients had genetic information available as well. But as clinicians hammer out some of the issues with electronic medical records and genetic testing becomes more common, this type of dataset will surely improve in the future.

In upcoming studies the researchers hope to continue to identify inherited genes that provide the underpinnings for contemporary diseases. If scientists can better understand the diseases themselves, they may also be able to develop more effective treatments.

Snake Hunt

Win Winter With These Jet-Powered Projects

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Illustration by Chris Philpot

Snowblower Train

Retire the reindeer—and fire up the jet engines. These three vehicles will put your average sleigh to shame.

Snowblower Train

When winter storms threaten to shut down commuter trains, New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority blasts snow off the switches with jet engines. Built and mounted on railroad vehicles by mechanic Olie M. Ericksen, so-called snow jets use old aircraft engines as heating units. Ericksen replaced the original ignition systems with acetylene ones, which use a lower-voltage spark to ignite the fuel. “It actually works much better than the high-voltage spark, especially in colder temperatures,” he says. The jets can even blow or melt ice from the third rail (which provides trains with electric power) with 700- to 900-degree exhaust. Ericksen isn’t the first to build snow jets—the oldest one still in use dates back to the 1960s. And some onboard engines are even older: Certain snow trains still use J57s, the first American jet engine to produce more than 10,000 pounds of thrust.

Snowboard

Illustration by Chris Philpot

Jude Gomila's Snowboard

Entrepreneur Jude Gomila was tired of having to push his snowboard across the flats by foot. To propel himself, he mounted a battery-powered jet engine to his board.

First, he 3-D-printed six separate parts and assembled them into the mount. Then he attached a ducted fan engine. “It sounds like 100 vacuum cleaners going off at the same time,” Gomila says. “But outdoors, it’s actually not that bad.” By connecting a handheld controller to the motor, he can gradually increase his speed up to 15 miles per hour.

RC Ice Car

Illustration by Chris Philpot

RC Ice Racer

When Mason Ferlic was a high school senior, his parents gave him a welder. He and his youngest brother, Evan, immediately began using the new tool to build valveless pulse jets. The Ferlics put the engines to good use on the frozen lakes that dot the landscape of their native Minnesota. They attached old ice-skate blades to a sturdy frame, and then added a jet, a propane fuel tank, and the control system from a remote-controlled car. The resulting RC ice racer zips across the surface at up to 20 miles per hour. Evan says he’s surprised it worked as well as it did. “It blew us out of the water,” he says. The car can skate for about five minutes straight before running out of fuel.

This article was originally published in the January/February 2016 issue of Popular Science, under the title “Win Winter with These Jet-Powered Projects.”

Watch: Could We Live On Mars?

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For as long as we've known about other planets, we have dreamed of living off-world. Some scientists argue that one of the best places to establish a human colony could be Mars—but there are some serious obstacles we'll have to tackle before sending astronauts to the red planet. In this video, a collaboration between animation studio Thought Café and Popular Science, we explore what it would take to live on Mars.


Welcome Three New National Monuments In The California Desert

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President Barack Obama announced today that his administration would add 1.8 million acres of public land to the list of protected national monuments. During his time in office, Obama has protected more than 265 million acres, both on land and water. Under this new designation, the public land will be closed to new mining and and oil extraction, and will be managed carefully, because of its historic and scientific significance.

The three new monuments--Mojave Trails National Monument, Sand to Snow National Monument, and Castle Mountains National Monument--are all a part of California's desert ecosystem. A White House fact sheet says that the new monuments "will link already protected lands, including Joshua Tree National Park, Mojave National Preserve, and fifteen congressionally-designated Wilderness areas, permanently protecting key wildlife corridors and providing plants and animals with the space and elevation range that they will need in order to adapt to the impacts of climate change."

Say hello to our newest national monuments in the gallery.

Why Google's Stand-Alone VR Headset Could Be A Game-Changer

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Google

Google VR

Unlike Google Cardboard, the company's actual VR headset could let the user enter a virtual world without attaching to a PC or inserting their smartphone

Current virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Playstation VR all require help.

While VR headsets get all the glory, the PC's behind them do all the heavy lifting. Even solutions like Samsung's Gear VR and Google Cardboard that don't need to be attached to a powerful computer require that you insert your smartphone. While the current situation works, Google is looking to change what we've come to know about VR helmets.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal (which followed on the heels of a Finacial Times report suggesting an upgraded Google Cardboard), Google plans on releasing a virtual reality headset that would contain all the required components within the unit.

There's no word on when we'll see a release date or what the device could look like, but device would reportedly "aim for the middle ground: a quality experience not tethered to an expensive PC or game console." Some type of Android-integration could also be expected with the upcoming Google VR. But with the company strongly supporting platforms they don't own, like iOS for example, we could see any of these features trickle out to non-Google users.

A device like this would compete directly with items like Samsung's Gear VR, as well as higher end sets like the HTC Vive. But also set Google's virtual reality offering apart as a device that didn't require your head to be tethered to a box. Which could lead to some interesting uses...

Not pictured: the computer your head will have to be attached to in order to use this

Fully-Wireless Movement Tracking

One of the coolest features of the HTC Vive is the ability to track which direction you're walking in as you're wearing the headset. This alone leads to some pretty immersive gameplay. While you can't expect to run through endless landscapes like in many of today's sprawling titles, simple experiences like exploring a sunken ship or walking around a level of Portal become that much more realistic. Unfortunately for HTC's Vive, having the headset physically attached to a PC affects the experience.

If Google's VR unit packs in the PC on its own, it could offer a better experience when moving around virtual worlds--if the search company chooses to pack in movement support. Though the device's inclusion of an outward-facing camera (a Vive inclusion) hints at the headset wanting to make sure you don't bump into any furniture. Assuming the device has its own built-in battery, the only cable required could be used for charging. Ready yourself for VR games that require you to do cartwheels.

Limits Fragmentation

Those who attach their VR headsets to a PC are probably used to the various configurations and results one can see from different hardware combinations. A higher-end PC means amazing results and a weaker setup means not exactly an optimal experience. For better or worse a PC attached to devices like the Oculus Rift can lead to some interesting gameplay.

But there is something to be said for the one-setup-to-rule-them-all approach. As we'll see sometime in "the first-half of 2016" with the Playstation VR, limiting selection can increase simplicity and still offer good performance. In the Playstation's case, anyone who owns Sony's latest consoles can go out and buy their VR solution and attach it to their console. For Google's rumored headset, not even the first step is required: simply buy the visor.

Xavier Harding

Playstation VR

The Playstation VR simply requires you buy a PS4. Google VR's configuration could be even simpler if it's all tucked inside the headset.

Limiting one's VR setup may not offer gamers the most cutting-edge graphical experience but it could limit cost for Google's preferred "middle ground users" and reduce headache for developers. Instead of, hypothetically, some being able to play a game for Oculus and others not able to, an app for Google VR will work across all of the company's headsets. Presumably, that is — few have seen the darned thing.

Overall Sleeker Design

A future where I can walk into a room and start using the VR headset on the table, no wires attached, is a future I want to live in.

We've seen time and time again that an all-in-one design is among the sleekest. Packing everything needed for a VR experience into one headset could drive mass adoption — at least for those who are too intimidated by PC gaming or don't happen to have a Playstation 4. Though it would be able to offer an easy way to get started with VR for those who simply wanted to put on the headset and press go. Which would only be bolstered developers having one configuration to develop for. The biggest drawback of packing a PC into a VR headset, however, is price.

Smaller and simpler tends to be the natural design progression of consumer-facing technology. With many of the virtual reality headsets we've come to know having not even been released to the public yet, we're still in the early days of virtualized worlds. If Google is able to make their all in one VR helmet affordable and still attractive, we could offer the competition a virtual kick in the pants for their products. Though we'll have to wait and see to know for sure if Google VR will go the way of Google Glass.

New Sea Legs For A Robot Firefighter

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Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR) In Testing

John Williams, U.S. Navy, via Wikimedia Commons

Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR) In Testing

Where there’s smoke, there should be firefighting robots. At least ,that’s the aim of the humanoid Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR, yes, pronounced “safer”) in development by the Office of Naval Research. The Navy demonstrated the robot last winter, and it was one of the competitors at DARPA’s robotics grand challenge last summer. To help SAFFiR walk a little better, the Navy just awarded a $600,000 grant to Worcester Polytechnic Institute to teach the robots how to walk better.

Says WPI:

WPI is testing its algorithms in a simulation of a complex, constrained environment using a virtual model of the SAFFiR robot. The team can plan a variety of movements for the robot and then see if it is able to walk correctly or if it falls down. "

Later this year, the WPI team will test its algorithms in the actual robot in controlled conditions within a ship environment mock-up at Virginia Tech. The robot will walk up stairs and perform other locomotion tasks "to ensure the algorithms are generating the correct motion," Berenson said.

The robot is made humanoid to fit into spaces built for humans, so it makes sense to give it sea legs. Yet there’s nothing inherent about the design of ships that necessitates a humanoid robot. In fact, making the firefighter person-sized and person-shaped might even get in the way. Here’s an alternate idea, from former U.S. Army technologist Jon Jeckell:

Until we get a wall-crawling spider-bot to fight fires on ships, a better-walking SAFFiR is probably our best bet. Watch a video on it below:

You Can Now Sense Earthquakes On Your Smartphone

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Your phone, yes, the one you're (probably) reading this on, can detect earthquakes. All you need is an app.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley announced today the release of a new app called MyShake, available as a free download for Android smartphones in the Google Play store.

It uses the accelerometer in your phone (the device that lets your phone adjust the screen when you turn it sideways) and GPS to measure how much shaking is happening in a given location. The hope is that eventually, if enough people download it, the app will allow your phone to function as both a personal seismometer and an early warning system.

When the app detects shaking that resembles an earthquake, the information is sent to a server. If enough phones detect shaking, that data is pooled together in a computer and analyzed. If it's a large earthquake, in the future alerts can be generated from the phones of people closest to the earthquake's epicenter, and sent out ahead of the shaking, giving people further away (also equipped with the app) the chance to drop, cover, and hold on.

But in order for the app to be effective as an early warning system, a decent number of people have to download it. The researchers estimate that in order to accurately detect the origin and start time of large earthquakes in a location, there need to be at least 300 phones equipped with the app in a roughly 4,761 square mile area. The more MyShake-equipped phones in an area, the faster the team can get accurate information.

"Currently, we have a network of 400 seismic stations in California, one of the densest in the world," project leader Richard Allen said in a statement. "Even if we get only a small fraction of the state's 16 million mobile phones participating in our program, that would be a many-orders-of-magnitude increase in the amount of data we can gather."

Dedicated seismometers are machines that measure shaking during an earthquake, but they can also pick up other signals like sonic blasts, fans cheering at football games, explosions and bear attacks. So how does a sensor in your smartphone (which moves around with you) detect the difference between everyday vibrations like your evening run, or commute on the train, and an earthquake?

The researchers simulated earthquakes by placing an array of smartphones loaded with the app onto a table that shook violently on command, just like it would in a real earthquake. The researchers then "trained" the app to recognize when the phone was undergoing an earthquake or just getting bounced around in a backpack.

Right now, MyShake is only available on Android through the Google Play store. The app doesn't use as much power as previous iterations (which required that the phone be dedicated almost entirely to earthquake detection) and can run in the background of your phone's normal activities.

The team looked at using iOS, the operating system on Apple's iPhones and iPads, but at the time they were developing the app, iOS didn't allow third-party software to run in the background, a feature MyShake needs in order to gather data.

In addition, there are far more people using Android smartphones around the world than iOS. One of the lead researchers on the project, Qingkai Kong told Popular Science in an e-mail that while the team is currently focused on the Android platform, they are also considering expanding MyShake to other platforms in the future.

The researchers who developed the app hope that it can expand earthquake monitoring and even early detection systems, augmenting areas with large numbers of seismometers (California) and essentially creating new seismic networks in areas with limited earthquake infrastructure, but plenty of mobile phones. There are 1 billion smartphones in the world, many in areas that don't have a high concentration of seismometers.

In a paper about the app, the researchers note that Nepal, which suffered a huge earthquake last year that killed over 8,000 people could have benefitted from an early warning system like the MyShake app. Nepal has only a few seismic stations, but 6 million smartphones.

Given that the huge earthquake last year was located about 50 miles from the capital city, Katmandu, the researchers estimate that a smartphone based early warning system could have given people in the city 20 seconds of notice before the shaking started, potentially saving lives.

http://cf.c.ooyala.com/hud2V0MDE60mATTqn5VcUMlj8Esnsdhs/3Gduepif0T1UGY8H4xMDoxOjBzMTt2bJ

Watch DARPA'S Drone Dodge Obstacles, Fly At High Speed

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DARPA Fast Drone

DARPA

DARPA Fast Drone

The drone revolution needs fewer pilots. Most small unmanned aerial vehicles need at least one human operating them to fly correctly, with the pilot simply removed. That’s fine for many things, but if we want drones to do new tasks, they need to fly on their own. Fast Lightweight Autonomy (FLA) is a program from the military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) with a very straightforward purpose: make drones that can fly fast, and navigate obstacles on their own.

How fast? In the GIF above, that’s a drone flying at 45 mph, or 20 meters per second. That's 10 miles-an-hour faster than the recent DJI Phantom 3 and just 5 mph slower than the new Parrot fixed-wing drone, the Disco. And it’s not just flying fast, it’s carrying with it a fairly functional payload of cameras and LIDAR.

While it’s not quite as fast dodging obstacles, it can still fly relatively well through a box maze. Why is DARPA looking for something like this? The better to scout the inside of buildings, of course.

From the official release:

FLA technologies could be especially useful to address a pressing surveillance shortfall: Military teams patrolling dangerous overseas urban environments and rescue teams responding to disasters such as earthquakes or floods currently can use remotely piloted unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to provide a bird’s-eye view of the situation, but to know what’s going on inside an unstable building or a threatening indoor space often requires physical entry, which can put troops or civilian response teams in danger. The FLA program is developing a new class of algorithms aimed at enabling small UAVs to quickly navigate a labyrinth of rooms, stairways and corridors or other obstacle-filled environments without a remote pilot.

Watch it fly below, and make sure to stick around for the blooper reel of crashes at the end:

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