What Are the Odds of Another “500-year-old” Flood? Super-soaker Hurricane Harvey has already dumped 9 trillion gallons of water on Texas and may leave even more before it backs up to the Gulf of Mexico. Starting as a category 4 hurricane as it made landfall on Friday night, Harvey, which has since been downgraded to …
How Can a Cat Survive a High-Rise Fall? Physics! Sometimes a cat will fall out of a window or balcony—a byproduct, no doubt, of a cat doing cat things. If you have a house cat, your feline’s propensity for aerial shenanigans probably doesn’t worry you that much: Cats falling from low windows can use their righting …
How Can a Cat Survive a High-Rise Fall? Physics! Sometimes a cat will fall out of a window or balcony—a byproduct, no doubt, of a cat doing cat things. If you have a house cat, your feline’s propensity for aerial shenanigans probably doesn’t worry you that much: Cats falling from low windows can use their righting …
The Cadillac of First Aid Kits Could Turn Civilians into Life-Savers Earlier this year, Collin Smith came into possession of an “intelligent” first aid kit. When he did, the first thing he did was try to outsmart it. The kit in question was the Comprehensive Rescue System, a sturdy, gray, 17-pound case of supplies custom-built by …
High-Res Satellites Want to Track Human Activity From Space Hopkinsville, Kentucky, is normally a mid-size town, home to 32,000 people and a big bowling ball manufacturer. But on August 21, its human density more than tripled, as around 100,000 people swarmed toward the total solar eclipse. Hundreds of miles above the crowd, high-resolution satellites stared down, …
What Ligers, Grolar Bears, and Mules Show Scientists About Evolution In 2006, a hunter shot what he thought was a polar bear in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Closer examination, however, revealed brown patches on its white fur, uncharacteristically long claws and a slightly hunched back. The creature was in fact a hybrid, its mother a …
How Will Houston Handle the Deluge of Hurricane Harvey? Hurricanes are ranked according to their wind speed. But a truer measure of their destructive potential would also include their moisture level. Just before making landfall on Friday night, Hurricane Harvey jumped up to become a category 4 hurricane, with sustained winds of 130 miles per hour. …
The IUD That Gives Women Options In a taupe-walled exam room at the Women’s Community Clinic in San Francisco, lead clinician Lisa Mihaly plucks a small laminated card from a cabinet. Tethered to the card are three T-shaped IUDs, or intrauterine devices—forms of birth control that are, as the name implies, inserted into a woman’s uterus …
What Is a Robot? Editor’s note: This is the first entry in a new video series, HardWIRED: Welcome to the Robotic Future, in which we explore the many fascinating machines that are transforming society. And we can’t do that without first defining what a robot even is. When you hear the word “robot,” the first thing …
What Is a Robot? Editor’s note: This is the first entry in a new video series, HardWIRED: Welcome to the Robotic Future, in which we explore the many fascinating machines that are transforming society. And we can’t do that without first defining what a robot even is. When you hear the word “robot,” the first thing …