march 2009

Elastic Eyesight: For the 314 million people around the world with blurry vision, just put on a pair of Joshua Silver’s AdSpecs and inject light-bending silicon oil into the plastic lenses until the world comes back into focus. Since winning a POPULAR SCIENCE Best of What’s New Award in 2000, Silver has been perfecting his $20 adjustable-prescription specs and, with help from the U.S. military, has handed out 20,000 pairs around the world.

A Category 4 hurricane approaches New Orleans, yet “When the Saints Go Marching In” continues to spill out of clubs on Bourbon Street. No one’s worried, because two F4 Phantom fighter jets have just taken off from the nearby Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base to kill the storm before it hits land.

Like most visitors to Hawaii, David Wettergreen spent his two-week trip there in the sand. But instead of sunbathing, he was busy putting Scarab, his robotic moon rover, through rigorous test drives in the lunar-like volcanic ash-filled crater at Mauna Kea.

Cave Junction, Oregon, was once, long ago, the center of a gold rush boom that, like so many booms, ultimately consumed its host. Prospectors mined the land around the towns in an ever-tightening circle, until the only gold left was below the saloons, assayers and burlesque halls. Those fell next. The towns were mined right out from under themselves—with no trace left of the old frontier burgs but scars in the earth.

In this episode of Cocktail Party Science, host Chuck Cage sits down with Popular Science writer Rena Pacella, author of Extreme Engineering and Executive Editor Mike Haney to get the inside scoop on all six of the Extreme Engineering projects featured in the March issue. From the tallest skyscraper to the deepest oil well, today's most ambitious projects are bigger and wilder than ever. Prepare to be amazed.

Download the episode here, or subscribe to the iTunes feed.

Name: Oasis of the Seas
Where: Florida
Cost: $1.2 billion
Estimated Completion: This year
The Challenge: Build an 18-story-tall superliner with more outdoor space

When the Oasis of the Seas sets sail later this year, it will claim the record for biggest passenger ship, with space for 6,300 passengers, 2,000 more than any other ship. But it will also claim the most rooms with balconies, the biggest onboard swimming pool, and the first at-sea, tree-filled, outdoor park.