Fresh eyes can transform the world, and a world beset by pandemics, climate change, and unfairness is primed for change like none we’ve ever seen. That’s why, after a five-year hiatus, Popular Science is reintroducing the Brilliant 10: an annual list of early-career scientists and engineers who are coming up with novel solutions to issues…
Wade into the gently lapping waves late at night Wade into the gently lapping surf at Boca Chica Beach, a pristine stretch of beach about 20 miles east of Brownsville, Texas, and you’ll see nothing but Gulf seas meeting sky—endless, dark but for the stars and lazy whitecaps. A contemplative, antique vista that makes you…
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is working on an interdisciplinary project to recreate the scents of plant species that have been lost due to human colonial destruction of their habitat. Whereas others might try to reconstruct a woolly mammoth from centuries-old sequences, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is working on recreating the scents of plant species that have been…
Since 2002, biologist Jeff Sikich has been employed at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. He’s dealt with a variety of strange situations, including a call to bring his dart gun to tranquilize what turned out to be a three-foot-tall statue of a mountain lion rather than a real mountain lion on one memorable…
I stood in front of the Career Services building near the conclusion of my senior year at Dartmouth, watching my classmates line up. Everyone seemed to be dressed the same as they waited for their corporate job interviews, the men in navy jackets and the women in dark skirts. I remembered my first day on…
The rapid evolution of Hurricane Ida from category 1 status in the Gulf of Mexico to category 4 classification at landfall was a frightening element of the storm, which devastated Louisiana on Sunday. The storm’s sustained winds accelerated from 85 miles per hour on Saturday to 150 miles per hour the next day as it…
The Shasta Valley, nestled between two mountain ranges in Northern California’s Siskiyou County, is as intricate as it is beautiful. Nearly four years after initially visiting the area, hydrogeologist Brad Gooch is still awestruck by the scenery. It’s not because of Mount Shasta, a 14,000-foot volcano that towers over forest and farming. Gooch, on the…
Tropical Storm Warning Henri made landfall in Rhode Island yesterday afternoon with 60 mph winds, marking it the state’s first named storm in 30 years. In the Northeast, where most hurricane-force storms fade over cooler waters or are pushed into the Atlantic by easterly winds, this was an uncommon occurrence. By the time they approach…
Installed in people’s living rooms, gardens, and businesses across Haiti, a network of low-cost seismometers is assisting scientists in deciphering the inner workings of the magnitude-7.2 earthquake that struck the country’s southern region earlier this month. After the country’s most recent significant earthquake, a magnitude-7 tremor that killed more than 100,000 people in 2010, the…
According to US climate envoy John Kerry, we’ll need “technology we don’t now have” to achieve net zero emission objectives by 2045. He’s half-right, to be sure. Fighting climate change does necessitate inventive, technologically driven concepts that can be tested, copied, and scaled at breakneck speed. But creating entirely new technology isn’t always the answer,…