popular science

In January, the

We´ve never known
more about the universe than we do right
now-and that´s precisely the problem.
Every significant astronomical discovery of
the past 50 years-afterglow from the
big bang, evidence of dark matter,
planets circling distant stars, just to name a few-has helped to create an ever-larger and more perplexing set of cosmic questions: Is there life on those faraway planets? How
did the first stars form after the big bang?

On the Las Vegas Strip, home of the biggest and most extravagant hotels in the world, shell-shocked tourists file past one stunningly ostentatious display after another. In the desert city, water says wealth like nothing else, and there’s a lake of it in front of the Bellagio, with fountains blasting 240 feet in the air in time to Broadway show tunes. Just up the street, the Mirage demonstrates that it has money to burn with a fiery volcano erupting from the top of a 119,000-gallon waterfall.

I’ve just stepped onto the factory floor at Segway world headquarters in Bedford, New Hampshire, when two engineers sporting matching jeans (tapered), shirts (plaid) and hairlines (receding) glide by and shoot me matching expressions (grins). “Doesn’t anyone walk around here?” I ask, as the distinctive, almost melodic hum of the Human Transporter (HT) trails off. Segway development engineer David Robinson responds with a different expression, this one more quizzical than the one on his colleagues’ faces. “Would you?” he asks.

H2.0 wants you.

Send us your favorite tech tips, tricks and mods, as well as your most pressing tech questions, and we'll publish the best in an upcoming issue.

"Powered by the air you breathe," OxiClean promises to "remove your stains like magic." Sure, it works-quite well, in fact. But we couldn't help thinking that the commercial's description of how OxiClean removes stains is unhelpful at best, misleading at worst. Does the cleaner somehow use air, the atmosphere, to remove stains? Seems unlikely. But what else could the very specific tag line mean?

Partial transcript of a recent interview with ex-astronaut Sidney Gutierrez, veteran of two shuttle missions and leading advocate of a shuttle escape system (see "Get Out Now").

Sidney Gutierrez: On an earlier flight a window was hit by a little piece of something, and they concluded afterwards it was a piece of chicken the Russians had ejected and was just floating around in space.

Popular Science: How'd they know that it was chicken?

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Hollywood has been described as a city of locusts, and that's just fine with Steven Kutcher. Kutcher is Tinsel Town's leading entomologist, a bug whisperer famous for wrangling creatures for films like Arachnophobia, The Exorcist II, and Jurassic Park. His calling card is an uncanny ability to coax bugs to his bidding. "Any fool can dump a bucket of cockroaches on a table," he explains. "But I make them work for the camera." We spoke with him about his most recent assignment, Spider-Man, which arrived in theaters on May 3.

PS Technology Quotient: 39 (out of 50)




Powertrain: 9

Road Manners: 8

Safety: 7

Electronics: 8

Design: 7

If you want to push the 2002 Porsche 911 Carrera 4 -- and this car begs to be pushed -- I suggest taking it home. Not your home; its home: Bavaria, where the original Porsche was conceived and hundreds of miles of wide open, speed-limit-free autobahn now lie. Simply point toward the Alps, slide into the left lane, and go.

Maybe E.T. is in the back seat. I'm trying hard to keep such thoughts out of my mind, but the fact is there's a strange orange glow coming from the rear of the car I'm driving, visible whenever I glance in the rearview mirror. That, along with the high-pitched whine of the drive motor and the intermittent thump of a tiny compressor replenishing the brakes, is making a simple crosstown trip feel somewhat surreal.

PS Technology Quotient: 34 (out of 50)




Powertrain: 8

Road Manners: 6

Safety: 6

Electronics: 7

Design: 7

An 18-inch crack in a 3,000-foot-thick glacier is small in the
greater scheme of things, but it's a formidable obstacle if your front wheels are stuck in it, as mine are.