Dd dfdfvfdv by 333bigbob10

ROBOT FARMERS: Taking job

DRONE PILOT FRO M T H E A RC H I V ES How Po pular Science Cove red H i ro sh i m a i n 194 5

THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Is the threat of nuclear attack still something we need to worry about? + THE LATEST IN MILITARY NUKE TECH

Could Your Genes Make You a Killer?

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Feed Editor’s Letter Issue #90, May 2016 EDITORIAL Editor Anthony Fordham afordham@nextmedia.com.au Contributors Lindsay Handmer DESIGN Group Art Director Malcolm Campbell Art Director Tim Frawley ADVERTISING Divisional Manager Jim Preece jpreece@nextmedia.com.au ph: 02 9901 6150 National Advertising Sales Manager Lewis Preece lpreece@nextmedia.com.au ph: 02 9901 6175 Production Manager Peter Ryman Circulation Director Carole Jones US EDITION Editor-in-Chief Cliff Ransom Executive Editor Jennifer Bogo Managing Editor Jill C. Shomer EDITORIAL Editorial Production Manager Felicia Pardo Articles Editor Kevin Gray Information Editor Katie Peek, PhD. Technology Editor Michael Nunez Projects Editor Sophie Bushwick Associate Editors Breanna Draxler, Lois Parshley Assistant Editor Lindsey Kratochwill ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY Design Director Todd Detwiler Photo Director Thomas Payne POPSCI.COM Online Director Carl Franzen Senior Editor Paul Adams Assistant Editors Sarah Fecht, Loren Grush BONNIER’S TECHNOLOGY GROUP Group Editorial Director Anthony Licata Group Publisher Gregory D Gatto BONNIER Chairman Tomas Franzen Chief Executive Officer Eric Zinczenko Chief Content Officer David Ritchie Chief Operating Officer Lisa Earlywine Senior Vice President, Digital Bruno Sousa Vice President, Consumer Marketing John Reese

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Maybe What Fusion Needs is a Good War Say what you like about World War II, it furthered the cause of nuclear physics like nothing else. But only a certain kind of nuclear physics, sadly. In the decades after Einstein (and others let’s not forget) published on the subject of mass-energy equivalence, scientists had theorised about “atomic energy” and “atomic weapons”. But the challenge of actually creating such technology in the 1930s seemed almost insurmountable. Naysayers at the time said it would take over 190 YEARS to enrich enough uranium to build a useful reactor. And even when the Manhattan project made it possible to build a small nuclear pile in 1942 (see this edition’s Retro Invention, p80) it remained little more than a science experiment. Sound familiar? Nuclear fission tech in the early 1940s is where fusion technology is today. Well-understood, supported by the science, even observed in nature (thanks, The Sun), but impracticable to actually use. Everyone knows what happened to fission next. The US poured the 1940s equivalent of billions of dollars into and focused their finest scientific minds on the problem - as well as a few minds they’d smuggled out of Germany. Even then, cracking “the bomb” was touch and go for a while. Fusion has become a scientific pariah. Cynical types who want the future to be all about coal-fired power stations, scoff and say “Fusion has been 20 years away... for the last 50 years.” That’s true. It’s a very, very difficult problem to solve. Fusion is to fission what fission is to, well, coal-fired power. It promises way more energy, and no (or almost no) radioactive waste. It uses abundant materials and has by-products that cannot be turned into weapons of mass destruction. You could, theoretically, fuel a fusion reactor with (specially prepared) water. Fusion is real. You give a physicist a bunch of lasers and a endless supply of electricity, they’ll fuse hydrogen for you, no problem. What is a problem, is that at the moment

most of the techniques we use to sustain a fusion reactor require an input of far more energy than the reaction can produce. With fission, all you need to do is pile a bunch of radioactively unstable material together, surround it with neutron shielding to bounce neutrons back into the system and accelerate decay, and try not to let the whole thing melt through the floor and irradiate the environment for the next few centuries (we’re still working on that last part). Fusion, at the moment, can’t just be “set off ” and then left to run in a self-sustaining critical mass. It needs massive magnetic fields, lasers, all kinds of exotic, higher-thanhigh-tech stuff. And lots of electricity. We’re currently building ITER, or the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor as it’s best friends call it. This “tokamak” reactor is basically a giant magnetic donut that SHOULD (emphasis on the should) be able to output 500 megawatts of power from a 50 megawatt input. For several seconds. And it’s the most expensive and complicated machine humans have ever built. But fusion’s real problem isn’t that it’s impossible or impracticable. It’s that we don’t currently NEED it. Not really. Not a “build this or our nation will fall to fascist invaders” need. But if we somehow convinced the world to divert 10% of the global GDP to fusion research, I think we’d have fusion reactors pretty sharpish. The dark side of that? Fusion power could lead to true fusion weapons. And those with their massive destructive yield and no fallout - would be far too tempting to use. So the old joke about fusion having been “20 years away for the last 50 years” isn’t a sign of failed science. It’s a sign that we’re living in peace. And long may it reign. ANTHONY FORDHAM afordham@nextmedia.com.au

P OP S C I . C O M. AU

#91

AN UNCLEAR WAR

Please refer to page 68 for details

PO P U L A R S CI E NCE

P H OTO G R AP H BY ST EV E J U RV ETS O N

The Cold War is over and the focus is now on international terrorism. So are nuclear weapons even still a thing? They sure are...

J UNE 2 0 1 6 For daily updates: www.popsci.com.au

36 46 54 60 LAND OF DRONES

SWARMED ON THE FARM

To make robotic farming economically viable, we have to think... smaller?

The US state of North Dakota wants to be the Silicon Valley of unmanned aerial systems. Here’s why.

PROGRAMMED FOR MURDER

ENERGY FIELDS

Should a genetically predisposed killer be held responsible for his terrible crimes?

New power generation technology is creating new landscapes around the world. Let’s take a stroll.

NOW

MANUAL

06 A tiny cube with big sound 08 The Hit List 10 Sony tackles VR 12 Bespoke 360-degree audio 14 PC unlocks 4K gaming 16 Beartooth mobile phone 18 Lexus knows interiors 20 Be a mobile music producer 22 Extreme underwater cameraman

24 A tower comes crashing down 26 Geeking out with E Snowden 28 A superyacht that’s an island? 29 Fake milk is useful 30 amuse.bouch controls VR 32 Rethink: Game of Thrones 34 Bees distribute pesticides? 34 Humans hate being hot 36 Down on the (swarm)farm

70 Make your own thermonuclear deterrent! 72 Meet a Maker 73 A drill with an app? 74 Make your camera see in infrared 75 Paint a picture with gross bacteria 75 Cheap iPhone speakers!

Pre-boarding the future

The state of the art

THE OTHER BITS Now in techno-colour!

Build tomorrow, yourself

03 A word from the editor | 78 Ask Anything: Are electric cars actually very polluting? 80 Retro Invention: The first nuclear reactor | 82 Lab Rats P OP SC I . C O M. AU

EDIT ED BY MICH A EL N UÑ EZ + XAVIER HA RD I NG JUN E 201 6

HOLOGRAPHIC SOUND The problem with even the best of the mini Bluetooth speakers is stereo separation...

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by A N T H O N Y FO RDH A M

There’s smarts: An ARM-based CPU analyses music and manipulates the timing to create a “holographic sound” effect. What does this mean? It means drop the Core on your kitchen bench, squirt your favourite Spotify playlist to it via your smartphone, and it will sound like a pair of properly-arranged goodquality bookshelf speakers. Mass Fidelity calls this “advanced acoustic rendering” and it definitely works. Try it out with famous MASS FIDELITY CORE stereo-effect tracks like Power: 120 watts Frequency response: Pink Floyd’s Money or the 44Hz - 20kHz Propellerhead’s On Her Inputs: Optical, 3.5mm, Majesty’s Secret Service. It’s USB (+ subwoofer out) surprisingly effective. Codecs: aptX, AAC, SBC Of course you have to pay Network: 5GHz the big dollars for this kind Battery life: 12 hours of tech - almost twice what Dimensions: an equivalent BT speaker 150 x 150 x 100mm will set you back. But that’s Web: massf idelity.com always been the price of true Price: $999 minimalism, right?

You can have all the mid-range clarity and rich rolling bass in the world, but the music still sounds like it’s coming from one specific point in the corner of the room. Mass Fidelity’s Core aims to change that. There’s more inside this tiny box than speaker cones and drivers.

one of the fathers of the personal computer

August 23 / Auckland, ASB Theatre August 24 / Perth, HBF Stadium August 26 / Brisbane, BCEC August 27 / Melbourne, Margaret Court Arena August 28

/ Sydney, Australian Technology Park

Tickets available now / www.thinkinc.org.au

JU N E 201 6

Now Goods

HIT LIST 10 Great Ideas in Gear (Prices are in US dollars because it makes us feel like we’re part of the international community, or something, right? You’ll have to order most of these from the US anyway...)

2 FIX IT STICKS Midcommute bike repairs are no fun. And few of us carry the tools needed for a quick fix. Fix It Sticks are a tiny multitool with various-size screwdriver bits. And a foldable T-shaped handle fits in your pocket, so you’ll never get stuck again. $30 3 AMAZON ECHO DOT Amazon’s Echo the size of a hockey puck: That’s Echo Dot. The voice-activated assistant still answers queries, spins Spotify, and summons your Uber. But it’s got a new trick: support for wired or Bluetooth speakers. $90 4 ROOST SMOKEDETECTORALARM BATTERY Make your old smoke detector smart. The Roost plugs into any off-the-shelf model and sends alerts to your smartphone if the alarm rings or when the battery gets low. $35

by XAVI ER HARDING

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5 BRITA INFINITY JUG What good is a Britta if you never change the water filter? This one senses when your filter is nearing its end and pings Amazon via Wi-Fi. A new one arrives just in time. $45, $6/filter 6 URBAN EARS HELLAS What’s a commute without proper cans? A cord and in-line remote is replaced by Bluetooth, and a discreet ear touchpad lets you pick a song or change volume. Keep the party going. $120 7 RINGLY ARIES Wearables don’t all look like tiny computers. Ringly’s smart bracelet riffs on the company’s ring idea. The Aries collection’s striking gold band wraps around your wrist and offers a step tracker, in addition to vibrate and a notification light. $275 8 SAMSUNG GEAR 360 Great VR needs great content. The Gear 360 shoots using two 195-degree cameras, then stitches together near-4K quality images, viewable on Samsung’s Gear VR headset. Video recording comes full circle. $TBD 9 MIGHTY Combine iPod Shuffle design with Spotify functionality and you get greatness. Take that eerily on-point Discover Weekly playlist to the gym or on a hike without worry of wrecking your iPhone. $80

10 LG G5 LG’s latest smartphone focuses on modularity. Slide the battery tray out to affix a camera add-on with physical controls, a DAC for better music, or a larger battery for those long days. Fill your utility belt to the brim. AU$999

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY STARRY STATION; COURTESY FIX IT STICKS; COURTESY ROOST; COURTESY URBAN EARS; COURTESY RINGLY; COURTESY MIGHTY; COURTESY LG; COURTESY SAMSUNG; COURTESY BRITTA; COURTESY AMAZON

1 STARRY STATION Wi-Fi routers are finally cool. Starry Station’s touchscreen shows your gadgets in a galaxy of orbs, depicting which devices use the most data, and letting you cut the kiddies’ connection at bedtime. The “best” feature: displaying your way-too-complicated Wi-Fi password. $350

JU N E 201 6

Now Standout

Virtual reality is poised to alter modern gaming as we know it, and Sony wants in on the action.

GAME CHANGER by XAVIER HARDING

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In the race for virtual-reality dominance, Sony’s PlayStation is about to win a critical lap: In October 2016, its VR headset will be the ﬁrst tied to a videogame console. That’s important because the PS VR, as it’s known, can take advantage of the 36

million PS4 consoles already in homes across the planet. And, for those starting from scratch, the $400 price tag of the PlayStation 4 is far less than the $1500-plus PC required to run competing products. It’s VR gaming made easy. Like other virtual-reality headsets, the PS VR helmet tracks head position: Look left, right, up, and down to fully take in a videogame’s world. Not being able to walk in VR by

physically moving forward, as with HTC’s Vive or the Oculus Rift, is a glaring omission. But will couch-potato gamers care? Hey, it’s console, and console means compromise. So far, Sony expects more than 50 games to launch for the VR helmet in 2016, including space-shooter EVE: Valkyrie and robot-ﬁghter RIGS. But with such a huge user base, even more developer support is virtually a guarantee.

P HOTOG R AP H BY

Jonathon Kambouris

JU N E 201 6

Now How It Works

Your ea rs are a s d i sti n c tive as f ingerprints. Your headphones should be to o.

OSSIC X WEIGHT: 349 grams P RI CE: US$299 (preorder) AVA I LABL E : Late 2016

BESPOKE 360 AUDIO In a virtual world, hearing is as important as seeing. When you walk on a moon, you want to hear footsteps in the dust. So it’s no wonder virtualreality headset-makers like HTC, Oculus, and Sony have invested in 3D audio engines that immerse the user in location-specific sounds. San Diego headphone-maker Ossic, however, says that’s not enough. “To get accurate 3D audio, you have to take the individual ear into account,” says Ossic co-founder and CEO Jason Riggs. Because no two sets of ears are alike, Ossic created headphones calibrated to a user’s physiology, delivering the most true-to-life sounds in VR yet.

HEAD SHAPE

E AR S H AP E

MOV E ME N T

Sound reaches each ear at diﬀerent times, depending on proximity to the source. Head size greatly changes the length of that perceived delay. Ossic put sensors in the ear cups and headband that measure the distance between your ears, allowing an onboard processor to re-create those delays.

The external curves of the human ear helps our brains ﬁgure out where sounds come from: above, below, in front, behind. Ossic engineers surround each ear with a group of four drivers, and use motion sensors to tell onboard software which drivers to use, creating a true to life illusion.

Virtual reality requires that we look around the world we’re immersed in. So the location of noises needs to update as quickly as the images. Onboard accelerometers, gyroscopes, and a compass keep track of head movement to update audio within milliseconds of your slightest twitch.

by CO RI N N E I OZZ I O

P O PUL A R SC IENC E

P HOTOGR A P H BY

Jonathon Kambouris

Now Generation Gap

FOR 4K GAMING, YOU HAVE TO GO PC

Virtual reality might be getting all the attention right now, but in the last six months or so PC gaming has reached another milestone - it's now more-orless affordable to build a machine that can handle 4K resolution. Unlike a 4K movie, where your TV simply has to show a 3840 x 2160 stream at 30 frames per second, playing games at 4K requires a little more grunt. A gaming PC must be able to calculate and render an eight-megapixel image 60 times a second. Or ideally more. Most PC gamers have monitors that use either full HD (1920 x 1080) or the slightly higher 2560 x 1440 standard. Until late in 2015, 4K monitors were very expensive, and the PC hardware needed to run them even more so. A few key tech releases have made 4K gaming possible at last. First is Intel's new range of Skylake processors. The Core i5-6600K costs less than $350 but can be "overclocked" to 4.4GHz with very little effort, giving it enough power to handle the most demanding games. Meanwhile, videocard manufacturers NVIDIA and AMD continue to release increasingly powerful "graphics processing units" - NVIDIA has just announced the GTX 1080 as I'm writing this - which can be doubled-up in multicard configurations to provide incredibly capable graphics processing. Add in new DDR4 memory, fast solidstate hard drives (though these aren't a factor in graphics performance) and 4K monitors that now cost $750 instead of $1750, and you can build a 4K-capable gaming PC for just about $3000. Yes, it's a lot more than an Xbox One, but the results speak for themselves. Once you go 4K, you won't want to go back. Full HD (1080p) in particular by ANTH ON Y makes scenes look blurry FO R DHAM and indistinct, especially

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

in the deep background. And it's not just the raw resolution that a power PC unlocks, either. The latest games have "post processing" effects, from fog and flames to more esoteric stuff like film grain or chromatic aberration (simulating a camera lens). But perhaps one of the most compelling arguments for building a 4K PC is that it can finally give your expensive 4K TV a work out. Ultra HD TVs have been on the market for the best part of two years now, and there's still only a few limited ways to get true 4K content onto one. There's digital, and Samsung has just released a 4K Bluray player, but you have to buy new discs. A gaming PC capable of 4K will have a videocard that supports HDMI 2.0 and can squirt the full resolution to a TV. Pair it with a gamepad, and you've got the ultimate lounge room console. Be aware though - some of the earlier 4K TVs can only display 4K content at 30 frames per second, and that's a waste of PC's 60fps+ capability. Newer TVs should be able to support 60fps though. While the PC will scale up any game to 4K, not every title supports this ultrahigh resolution natively. Older games may look blurry or strangely "muddy" at 4K, with some notable exceptions, such as GTA V which has been "upcycled" for PC with new textures and effects. If you're looking at buying a new gaming PC, or are doing a serious upgrade, and have a decent budget, you should want full 4K capability. Yes it costs a bit extra, and most of the cash will go toward those videocards, but the results will change the way you play.

GTA V came out in 2013, but was converted to PC in 2015, adding 4K graphics

NVIDIA's new videocard, the GeForce GTX 1080 boosts performance over the earlier 980 Ti by 50%, while considerably dropping the price.

Now Generation Gap

4K SHOPPING LIST

Top: Elite Dangerous lets you seek your fortune in space. Middle: A rebooted DOOM looks amazing at 3840 x 2160. Bottom: Dark Souls III is so hard, you might end up punching your nice new 4K monitor

Putting together a 4K PC is no more complex than a normal build, especially since NVIDIA has announced the GTX 1080 which should enable 4K gaming with a single videocard (configuring dual cards can sometimes get fiddly). Here's a basic shopping list, though the joy of a PC is as always, in finding your ideal build: CPU: I nte l C or e i 5 6 6 0 0K / $ 3 5 0 - c a n b e o ve r c lo c k e d to 4 . 4 GH z R A M: 16 GB / <$ 1 0 0 MO T H E R B OA R D: G i g ab y te Z 17 0 X-U D 3 / $ 2 5 0 - o ve r c lo c k you r C PU w it h a s i n g le c l ic k V I DEO C A R D S: 2 x M SI G e For c e GT X 9 8 0T i / $ 2 0 0 0 - t he bi g ite m t h at m a k e s it a l l p o s s ible . But w e ad v i s e w a it i n g for t he GT X 1 0 8 0 , wh ic h w i l l b e le s s t h a n h a l f t he c o s t w it h t he s a me p e r for m a nc e . A M D a l s o h a s a lte r n at ive s . C A SE , P OW E R SU PPLY, H DD E T C: G a me r ' s c hoic e ! / <$ 5 0 0 - a l l t he r e s t of t he bit s . C ho o s e f r om hu nd r e d s of op t ion s to c r e ate a m ac h i ne t h at ' s u n ique ly you . No wonde r P C g a me r s a r e ob s e s s e d . . . T O TA L : A ppr ox $ 3 0 0 0 , a nd mone y w e l l s p e nt

P OPS C I . C O M

JU N E 201 6

Now Out There

SERVICE WITHOUT A SIGNAL Music festivals are great until you try to phone your friends up front, and your mobile connection gets denied by thousands of other people already on the cell. Enter Beartooth: It’s an off-grid transmitter that pairs with your smartphone—via Bluetooth, naturally—turning it into a twoway radio for texting and calling.

B EA RTO OT H PRI C E: US $198 /two pack ; for iOS and Android.

by B E R N E BRO U DY

Beartooth’s signal uses a public-radio frequency that goes over the crowd like an umbrella. Nearly the size of a deck of cards, it weighs less than 140g, looks like a thin hard drive, and has enough range to cover about 3 km. It links only to other Beartooth users (which is why the company sells it in pairs). Bushwalkers and skiers use it too, which makes sense since its two founders are Montanabased skiers. In case you get lost or stuck on a ridge, Beartooth locates you, pinpoints nearby landmarks, assists you with navigation, and sends SOS signals to others. The 3,000 mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery also holds enough power to charge your phone and still have leftover juice for a full day of operations.

B ea r toot h connects two phones, and ignores network congestion.

POPUL A R S CI E NCE

P HOTOG R AP H BY

Jonathon Kambouris

JU N E 201 6

Now Speed Lab

LEXUS R X 450H F-SPORT Powertrain: 3 .5L V6 + 50kW electric Total System Power: 2 30kW Total System Torque: 370Nm Transmission: CV T Drive: FWD (petrol) + RWD (electric) Extras: Panoramic sunroof, Mark Levinson audio Price: $110, 256 drive away (as tested) www.lexus.com.au

Car manufacturers put a lot of effort into the exterior styling of cars, so that you, the automobilist, can cut a dashing figure as you cruise by. But of course, when used properly, a car’s exterior is probably what its owner sees the least. While driving, anyway. Yet in the past, all too often the shine was taken off performance and driving engagement, simply because the driver didn’t have a nice place to sit. While Lexus is far from alone in doubling-down on interior design, the new RX does give the well-heeled luxury SUV owner just the right mix of futuristic concept whackiness and restrained sophistication via leather, metallic highgrade plastics, and a smattering of LCDs and LEDs. As luxury cars become increasingly complex and offer the driver more and more configuration options - from the distance the car keeps behind traffic via the radar cruise, to how long the interior lights stay on when you close the door - legibility and user-friendliness are becoming more important. The fonts, we’re saying, must be easy to read. And in here they are. Lexus’ not-quite-a-trackball central controller receives another upgrade in the new RX, further refining a system that keeps the driver’s hand near the wheel and their by eyes largely on the road. A NTH ONY The steering wheel is getting FOR DH AM

POPUL A R S CI E NCE

increasingly encrusted with buttons, but Lexus has hit a good compromise between Tesla’s “do it all through the touchscreen and damn the small children and animals” and Porsche’s “ve must haff a svitch fur everysink!” to put most important functions under the driver’s thumbs. Weirdly, the heads-up display that projects onto the windscreen not only shows speed, compass and GPS directions, it also shows a linear RPM meter. Which is odd since with its CVT gearbox and (in our hybrid test vehicle) 50kW rear-wheel-only electric motor, the RX gives the driver very little opportunity to directly control revs. Or at least, in a way that means you need a tacho to keep an eye on. Anyway, if you like clean crisp design with just a hint of hover car from a high tech Japanese future that never was, the Lexus RX definitely has you covered.

DIGITAL DASH On the higher-spec F-Sport and Sports Luxury versions, the RX has a fully digital dash (except for the fuel gauge). Rather than just being a ﬂat LCD display though, a plastic ring creates a central “dial” that shows a fairly standard tachometer in Sport or Sport+ mode, but a complicated charging vs power dial in Eco. The left side of the display can be set to show everything from digital radio to GPS guidance, and even a G-force meter. You know, should you feel like taking this 2100+ kg, 230kW SUV to the track...

C O U RT ESY L E XU S

LEXUS REMEMBERS WHICH PART OF THE CAR YOU SEE THE MOST

JU N E 201 6

Now Ask an Expert

TIPS FROM MOHAWKE KEEP IT LIGHT “I invested in a lot of gear before realising I didn’t need it—synths from the ’70s, drum machines from the ’80s. These are undeniably incredible pieces of equipment, but there is no carrying these boxes around the world. Plug-ins are becoming very good. Purists will say they can’t match the sound of the original unit, but that’s not true.”

NO STUDIO REQUIRED (featuring Hudson Mohawke) When you’re Kanye West’s secret weapon and you’ve got a day to turn around a track, you do it no matter where you are. Hudson Mohawke, one of the most sought-after and well-travelled music producers, has a dream rig that ﬁts in a backpack, so he can drop hits between inﬂight meals. These tools from his on-the-go arsenal won’t put you on Kanye’s riser, but they will make it sound like you worked in a real studio—even if you cut your track at a Hungry Jacks. by M ATT G ILE S

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ASUS ROG LAPTOP Mohawke used to travel with a desktop tower—solely for the added memory. The Republic of Gamers laptop gives him 16GB of RAM with dedicated NVIDIA graphics. And Thunderbolt support connects lightning-fast to his vast sample library.

AKAI MPK MINI KEYBOARD A lot of mini keyboards are actually too bulky for travel. The MPK Mini crams 25 keys, eight pads, and eight assignable knobs into the slim footprint of a 13-inch MacBook. That means Mohawke can work in tight quarters, even 30,000 feet in the sky.

P HOTOG R AP H BY

TEENAGE ENGINEERING OP-1 It’s a synth, sampler, sequencer, and four-track recorder. Mohawke previously used another MIDI keyboard but went to OP-1 for compact, all-in-one versatility. A 16-hour battery means it won’t die on the ﬂight from Chicago to Scotland.

Jonathon Kambouris

I NS ET : DAN I E L B O CZA RS K I / G E TTY I MAG ES FO R K E TEL O N E

NEVER STOP EXPERIMENTING “I am still an aspiring producer. When you stop messing around with new means and structures of production, you become stagnant. If you start every song the same way, or on the same software, it becomes boring. This sounds cheesy, but if you don’t feel invigorated by what you are creating, it’s not worth it.”

JU N E 201 6

Now Toolbox

MILITARY TECH MAKES DIVING DOABLE by ANT HON Y FO R DHAM

When you settle back on your couch to watch David Attenborough’s new Great Barrier Reef documentary, you’ll meet the high tech star of the show: a submersible called the Nadir. In it, Attenborough travels to some of the reef’s most inaccessible spots, observes the creatures that live there, and tells the three-part series’ other story, which is essentially a personal history of diving. Which is appropriate because many of the macro shots and other scenes for the film weren’t captured via the submersible’s cameras, but by cameramen returning to the same spots later and doing extensive filming. And for this long dives, they didn’t wear traditional open-circuit SCUBA gear, but rather mil-spec rebreathers. “These rebreathers make it possible to stay down much longer,” says underwater cameraman Michael Pitts (in main image, with large camera), “but they require training. People have killed themselves using them, but they are enormously effective pieces of equipment.” Pitts says he uses an AP Diving Evolution Plus, which gives him up to four hours at 20 metres, on two litres of oxygen. “Compare that to a 12 litre tank on an open-circuit system, which might only give me 40 minutes,” he says. Pitt says the documentary was shot on both 4K and 6K cameras, including

3D. “It’s for future-proofing,” he says. “Obviously it won’t be broadcast in 6K any time soon. We use 4K in situations where there isn’t an appropriate lens for a 6K camera.” As a freelance cinematographer, Pitt says he’s lucky enough to be at a stage in his career where he “doesn’t have to take every job on offer.” But when he started out, back in the mid-1980s, “a good camera and underwater housing cost as much as an apartment.” Great Barrier Reef With David Attenborough is available now on DVD and via digital.

Cost, in thousands of pounds, of a 16mm Arriflex f ilm camera and underwater housing in 1985, about the same price as a nice flat in Bath, England.

A rebreather similar to the one used by underwater ca mera ma n M ich a e l P itt . It costs around $10,500.

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ZAPPITI 4K PLAYERS A CINEMA REVOLUTION IN YOUR HOME

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ED I TED BY BREANNA DRAXLER + MATT G ILES

Standing 432 metres high, the Woodside Omega Transmitter tower was the tallest structure in the entire southern hemisphere. That’s over 100m taller than the tallest building in Australia - the Q1 Tower on the Gold Coast. We say “was the tallest” because in 2015, carefully placed explosives turned it into a pile of twisted wreckage. This cold war structure was built back in 1978, in Woodside, Victoria. It was originally going to be built in New Zealand, but was relocated to Australia after protests from Kiwi anti-war activists. The tower was part of the Omega navigation system, and one of nine around the world, which used very low frequency radio signals (10 - 14 KHz) to help ships and planes determine their position. It was a kind of terrestrial forerunner to GPS, and so was eventually replaced by the satellite network in 1997. The Omega Tower stood undisturbed until 2014, when an illegal BASE jumper, 23-year-old Ash Cosgriff, died after attempting to parachute from the top. (His body was discovered the next day, and a 33-year-old Queensland man was later charged for failing to report Cosgriff’s death.) by The tower itself was constructed as LINDSAY HANDME R a guyed mast, rather than being selfsupporting like a building. The central

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steel latticework was not strong enough on its own to resist much sideways force, and only took the compression load. For lateral stability, the tower used an array of cables connected along its length. The uppermost guy wires were cleverly electrically insulated from the tower itself, allowing them to operate as active radio antenna elements. The demolition was managed by explosively severing critical guy wires, creating uneven tension on the tower. These forces buckled the structure, and it folded in on itself as tonnes of steel were pulled to the ground. Whipped rapidly through the air, the remaining guy wires howled along to a background noise of crumpling steel. Want to see and listen to the destruction yourself? Head to youtu.be/4YhZp4n1xys and enjoy the mayhem!

829.8

Height in metres of current tallest man made object, the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai (a skyscraper). The second tallest ever built was the Warsaw Radio Mast, at 646.38m. In 1991, that tower collapsed, snapping in half, due to an error in swapping out the highest level guy wires.

P HOTOG R AP H BY

Tom Blachford

J U N E 201 6

Unlike a building demolition where explosives must be placed throughout the structure, all it took to destroy the Omega Tower was cutting certain guy wires. The tension forces on the remaining wires were enough to do the rest.

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

JU N E 201 6

The Internet Is Broken EXCLUSIVE

Edward Snowden on our digital naiveté

In 2013, a now-infamous government contractor named Edward Snowden shined a stark light on the USA’s vulnerable communications infrastructure by leaking 10,000 classiﬁed documents to the world. One by one, they detailed a mass surveillance program in which the National Security Administration and others gathered information on citizens—via phone tracking and tapping undersea Internet cables. Three years after igniting a controversy over personal privacy, public security, and online rights that he is still very much a part of, Snowden shares his thoughts on what’s still wrong and how to ﬁx it. Ë

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Even if you don’t use the Internet or a smartphone, your information is handled by tax authorities and healthcare providers who route it over the Internet. This is a force for good, but it can also be abused— by small-time actors, criminals, and nations. During the Oﬃce of Personnel Management hack last summer, the government—arguably the world’s most well-resourced actor—was compromised. They weren’t even using encryption. There’s a great paper called ‘Keys Under Doormats.’ It says if you weaken security for an individual or for a class of individuals, you weaken it for everyone. Security based on trust is, by its very nature, insecure. Trust isn’t permanent. It changes based on situations and administrations. And this is not just an

American thing; this happens in every country worldwide. Think about the governments you fear the most, whether it is China, Russia, or North Korea. These spying capabilities exist for everyone. Before 2013, we were electronically exposed. We had to trust the people handling our communication not to abuse it—be it iMessage or Facebook. We no longer have to give it to them. We have other options. There is Tor [the free software that allows for anonymous online communication] and Signal [which does the same for smartphones]. We have WhatsApp, which is an end-to-end encrypted system—the only ones who can read and access the messages are the sender and the recipient. This is much safer against abuse than having AT&T hold a record of every text message you’ve ever sent. Security in the digital world is not something that can be selective. Technologists now share an obligation to clothe users— ways to ‘tokenise’ access to the Internet that divorces it from identity and doesn’t create trails. We should all be using it. If you want to call a cab, the cab doesn’t need to know who you are or your payment details. Today we create activity records of everything we do in our daily business. It’s a byproduct of living life. This is what has to change.

P H OTO G R A P H BY P L ATO N / T R U N K A R C H I V E

Geeking Out

Pe rcentage, according to a 2015 Pew study, o f A mer icans wh o bel ieve t he Fed s sho uldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t m o n i to r t hei r co m municat io ns

As told to M ATT G ILE S

Next Concepts & Prototypes

An Island Fit for a Bond Villain by CO RI NN E IOZZIO

Thanks to climate change, the one per cent now have a new problem to worry about. As sea levels rise, their private islands are imperilled. With a new concept from Swiss submarine-maker Migaloo, islands no longer have to be so annoyingly stationary. Kokomo Ailand is a custom-built multistorey mega-yacht that comes complete with a penthouse, submarine bays, a beach club, and a shark elevator.

Footprint: 9,132 square metres (117 m long by 78 m wide)

Hull depth: 20 metres Build time: Five to eight years Cost: TBD (What’s your Forbes rank?) Top speed: 7 knots (13 km/h)

1. SOLID GROUND

2. RESORT SETTING

3. TRILLION DOLLAR VIEW

4. DEEP DIVES

5. ESCAPE ROUTES

6. FLIGHT PLAN

Like a cruise ship, Kokomo Ailand is a series of decks. They sit atop two massive pontoons, which remain submerged to keep the craft level. Four submersible towers extend below the pontoons; they house storage, service decks, and the four anchor lines that keep the Ailand in place.

At the edge of the superstructure, an artiﬁcial beachfront leads to a pool and an elevator-accessible oceanfront beach club. Above that, there’s a garden deck for sightseeing and outdoor dining, a spa deck with a gym and salon, and a jungle deck with palm trees and waterfalls. So, nothing over the top.

The owner’s penthouse sits 26 storeys above sea level, and includes a private gym and glass-bottom hot tub. His (or her) entourage can enjoy the 10 or more suites on the decks below, and viciously ﬁght over how room assignment aﬀects their ever-changing pecking order.

An elevator drops from the main deck to a viewing pod 3 m below the ocean’s surface; pressureproof glass protects those inside from swarming sharks and other sea life. For those who prefer more of a safety net, a glassed-in dining room in one of the support towers also provides underwater views.

The Ailand can accommodate up to four docking bays, custom-built for craft such as sailboats, subs, or even a ﬂeet of totally gauche jetskis. For those Hollywoodstyle getaways, a helipad large enough for an 18-m, 30-passenger Sikorsky S-61 sits just oﬀ the main deck, where Bond can steal it.

Below each tower is a thruster called an azipod, developed for icebreakers and tankers. Unlike propellers, which push the water, azipod blades pull it. This reduces resistance for a smoother (and moreeﬃcient) ride. The pods also rotate 360 degrees, eliminating the need for rudders.

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CO URT ESY M I GA LOO

MIGALOO SUBMARINES: KOKOMO AILAND

J UNE 2 0 1 6

Next Tech Trend

The Synthetic Butcher Shop We depend on cows for food, clothing, and sometimes even insulin. Cattle, though, are expensive and inefficient—each cow drinks a bathtub’s worth of water and emits three times that volume of methane daily. There are also the ethics of animal slaughter to consider. But we might no longer need the cow. Scientists are synthesising the substances we normally get from cows by using bovine cells, yeast, and even bacteria.

by HE ATHE R HANSMAN

325,000

Cost, i n US d o l l a rs, to bioengineer the f irst lab - grow n hamburge r

MEAT Since tissue engineer Mark Post debuted an in vitro burger in 2013, several companies have tried to create tasty, scalable test-tube meat. Though Memphis Meats recently unveiled a cultured meatball, two challenges—chewability and cost—have derailed other attempts.

LEATHER To make lab-grown leather, Modern Meadow uses bovine cells to grow sheets of collagen, which are then tanned and cut into leather goods, such as jackets. A bonus: Workers don’t have deal with the hair or subcutaneous fat that comes with animal skin.

MILK

S H U TT ERSTO C K

INSULIN Cow insulin moderates diabetics’ blood-sugar levels but can cause allergic reactions, and synthetic analog insulin must be carefully dosed. Now, researchers at MIT are synthesising a new form of insulin that stays in the blood and activates only when sugar levels are too high.

Muufri, a bioengineering startup, makes milk that’s more dairylike than almond or soy. The company adds 3D-printed cow DNA into yeast cells, then harvests the milk protein it produces—like making penicillin or beer. Adding calcium and potassium, the mixture emulsifies, and gives it the same nutritional and textural qualities as milk.

COLLAGEN Foreign antibodies can prevent animal tissue from being used on human injuries. But KOD— a synthetically derived collagen, stops bleeding, promotes tissue regrowth—and, because it lacks bovine genes, won’t be rejected.

CARTILAGE Biologists in Sweden are engineering cartilage tissue for human joints using cells from cow knees. Cartilage is tricky—it has to bend and stretch, but it regenerates slowly. “If we can make the process work with bovine cells, we can one day do the same with human cells,” says team member Janne Ylärinne.

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

JUN E 201 6

Next amuse.bouche

Control Freak hat VR is going to be the next big revolution in entertainment is all but a given, considering the number of companies and developers backing the technology. So far, Facebook’s Oculus Rift, HTC/Valve’s Vive, Google’s Cardboard and Samsung’s Gear VR have already hit the market, and Sony, Microsoft, Merge VR, Razer OSVR, Sulon Cortex and more are set for release in upcoming months. But despite the breadth of choice just now cresting the horizon, the VR revolution - as far as gaming currently stands - isn’t quite going to be the paradigm shift it’s lauded as being. And that’s thanks to the way games are controlled. When it comes to VR gaming, there are essentially three ways for the player to actually interact with those virtual worlds;:head control, traditional control, and motion control. Head control is the most restrictive type, utilising the player’s head movement and motion tracking to manipulate the viewpoint and action in game. While this approach doesn’t separate the visual experience from control, it severely limits the amount of input a player can have in the game, turning the interactive experience into little more than active looking. This might work in the context of simple ﬂight exploration games, such as Ubisoft’s upcoming Eagle Flight (a game that sees players exploring Paris as an eagle), but outside of this context the control scheme has little practical use.

You’re supposed to stand in this thing and run around. It’s like a digital treadmill, see.

FOR MOTION CONTROLS TO WORK, PLAYERS NEED A GOOD AMOUNT OF FREE SPACE TO MOVE ABOUT IN. THE MINIMUM RECOMMENDED IS 2M X 1.5M, AND A POSITIVELY GENEROUS 3.5M X 3.5M SUGGESTED FOR THE BEST EXPERIENCE.

Traditional controls are utilised by most VR games. Using a mouse and keyboard or gamepad, this gives players the most familiar gaming experience in VR, but also causes a kind of disconnect between eyes and hands, especially in games that show the character’s hands and arms in game, as the player’s hands will be doing something far different to what is being shown in their field of vision. This problem of disconnect can be solved for the most part through motion control, but that system comes with its own drawbacks when it comes to the space needed to play a game. The HTC Vive is, at the moment at least, the only VR headset that includes motion controls for gaming. These controls allow for the movement of the player’s hands to be accurately tracked and mapped in game, making it, within the limitations of these first generation devices, the most “realistic” system. But for motion controls to work, players need a good amount of free space to move about in. The minimum recommended is 2m x 1.5m - and a positively generous 3.5m x 3.5m suggested for the best experience. Without an expensive piece of equipment like the upcoming Virtuix Omni treadmill (pictured left), having enough space to roam in a virtual environment may be beyond a number of users. It’s not all doom and gloom of course. The more prevalent VR becomes, the more solutions to the newfound problems of VR control will be discovered. What form these new controls will take is as yet unknown, but seeing their development and implementation will be fascinating.

by DA N I EL W I L KS

Daniel Wilks is the editor of PC PowerPlay, Australia’s best videogame magazine. Like “a l l” gam i ng jo ur n a l i sts, he’s looking forward to the VR future, a n d un d erstands t h at when it comes to “jacking” the preposition that fo l l ows i s ver y impor ta nt.*

*For the uninitiated, the correct preposition is “in”.

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Next Rethink

Actually, You Don’t Have a Right to Game of Thrones by A N T H O NY FO R DH A M

o HBO’s fantasy soap-opera is back for Season 6 and that means endless whining about how much it sucks that Foxtel bought an exclusive license and we can’t watch it on iTunes or whatever. It also means dozens of online articles where a person employed to promote entertainment products like games and movies, openly admits to pirating Game of Thrones because they made a bona fide attempt to purchase it... but refused to do so via the one way that’s actually available. It’s very odd, this whole GoT argument, and it’s probably a foretaste of the shape of things to come as we move into a post-scarcity economy. What’s post-scarcity? Basically, it’s a vision of a future where the cost of making and transporting stuff - you know, products - is so low, there’s no real prospect of running out of anything. Supply will always vastly outstrip demand and that means the pricing models we use today won’t really work. While most of our economy in 2016 still operates on the principles of scarcity in many areas - food and fuel can only be made at a finite rate, products cost money to transport - that doesn’t apply to some sectors. Digital entertainment does indeed cost money to produce. But thanks to digitisation, it can be replicated millions of times for almost no cost. And then thanks to the internet, it can be transported around the world, not exactly for free, but for a cost that is negligible. So for entertainment companies to make money at all, they have to create a sort of fake scarcity. They basically have to refuse to disseminate their products at the “top speed” technology allows. Consider HBO. In many ways, it has been conducting itself as entertainment distributors have always done. It went to a region (Australia) and asked if anyone wanted to buy the rights to distribute Game of Thrones. Foxtel did, it signed a contract, and it was done. So far so normal. But this deal became a problem because Foxtel decided to use GoT to stimulate flagging subscriptions to its pay TV service, by only making GoT available as part of a package. The company created “scarcity” of the show. In a world without the Internet, we’d probably

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FERVENT GAME OF THRONES FANS WHO DON’T WANT FOXTEL RAIL AGAINST THE INJUSTICE, BUT REALLY THIS IS THE PRICE WE PAY FOR LIVING IN A DISTANT CORNER OF THE PLANET WITH A LOW POPULATION.

grumble and suck this down. Or rather, we’d probably thank Foxtel for bringing the show into Australia and happily stump up the subscription fee. But because we know the show could be distributed via iTunes or Google Play or whatever, we feel like somehow our “rights” to access the content are being unfairly curtailed. “It’s unfair that Foxtel gets an exclusive license to the show just because they paid the most,” say the kinds of people who, let’s be honest, probably oppose the TPP and think Australia should still have a car industry. Fervent GoT fans who don’t want Foxtel rail against the injustice, but really this is the price we pay for living in a distant corner of the planet with a low population. If there were 100 million of us all insisting to HBO that it would make more money streaming the show, well, you can bet Foxtel would never have been offered that contract. But the fact is the number of people who watch GoT (and many other shows too) in Australia is little more than a rounding error for HBO, and the number of people who pirate it is even lower (even if it seems high per capita). Yet because we’re so used to being able to click on a link, it drives us crazy to read that OTHER PEOPLE have access to content we can’t get. In some ways, in a post-scarcity economy, the content producers will have even more power. They can endlessly tweak pricing models and distribution rates until they achieve maximum profit, unaffected by realworld stuff like shipping lanes and freight schedules, or the physical size of a standard container. Game of Thrones is merely the beginning of this debate. And the positively Byzantine contortions that will soon consume this issue would flummox even one of those self-proclaimed Kings of Westeros.

Fo rdham i s the editor of Austral i an Po pular Science, which is licensed f ro m B o nnier Corporation in t h e US. That’s right. The website has a geowall and eve r y t h i n g. Please se n d angr y, t h reateni ng e m a i l s to t he usual address.

Next Insane Study

Science Confirms the Obvious

Meet the Tiniest Crop Duster by ANNABE L E DWAR DS

To keep harmful pathogens, molds, and fungi at bay, farmers often spray crops with chemicals. But a company called Bee Vectoring Technology has developed an environmentally friendly alternative in which bees carry and deliver a fungus that kills off the bad stuff. Normally, a farmer with an acre of apples sprays about six kilograms of streptomycin to protect the fruit from fire blight, which can destroy entire orchards. But with the new bee system, a tray at the hive entrance coats the bees’ hairy legs with a natural powderised fungus called BVT-CR7. The fungus acts as an endophyte, and grows harmlessly on the plant. It also prevents parasites and bacteria from taking hold.

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As the bees forage for nectar and pollen, they deposit the powderised fungus—of which only 18g is needed—on individual apple blossoms. The delivery method is extremely efficient: A hive of 300 can cover 10 million flowers. Michael Collinson, CEO of Bee Vectoring Technology, says field tests have shown the method is harmless to the bees. It might offer some relief by limiting the amount of pesticides they would normally encounter. Last May, the USDA said pesticides could be contributing to Colony Collapse Disorder, a phenomenon that wipes out a large percentage of a hive’s worker bees. “If you reduce pesticides,” Collinson says, “you’re going to help bee populations by putting less pressure on them.”

As if the climate-change debate weren’t heated enough, it turns out that as global temperatures rise, human tempers shorten. A UC Berkeley researcher has gathered a dataset from social media that links warmer weather and general crankiness. –CORINNE IOZZIO

HOT T EMPERS Environmental economist Patrick Baylis wanted to quantify what the incremental effects of climate change mean for the average person, so he fed a billion geo-located tweets from 2014 and 2015 into a computer model. It scored each post’s sentiment based on factors such as profanity and word choice (e.g., “furious” meant a greater displeasure than “hate”).

HOT T ER T EMPERAT URES Baylis then mapped sentiments against the average temperature where each tweet originated. The increase in misery between a 21-degree day and a 32-degree day was equivalent to the drop between the end of a weekend and the start of a work week. And that’s after he compensated for factors such as income, location, and humidity.

HOT T EST T REND Baylis paired his results with climate projections up to 2099. As Earth warms, he predicts unfavourable mood swings—largely in cool places like Wisconsin and Minnesota. Since people might crank up the air conditioner to counteract rising temps, he hinted at climate change’s broader cost. “Would I be willing to pay a buck to have it be a 21-degree day?” Baylis wonders. It could be that in the future, you’ll be paying for psychological, not just physical, comfort.

FR O M R IG H T: I L LU STR ATI O N BY M I K EY B U RTO N; P H OTO G R A PH BY D EJ EN ME NGI S /U S GS B E E I NV E NTORY AND M ONI TORI NG L AB

Bees can deliver fungus control to strawberry and tomato plants, apple trees, and other crops.

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J U NE 2 0 1 6

The Secret to Robotic Farming? Think Small When GPS first reached the public consciousness, one of the most obvious applications every futurist excitedly predicted was automated farming. This would take the form of the planting, weeding and harvesting of crops by roboticised versions of farming equipment. We were shown 3D renders of giant headers without windscreens, crawling back and forth across a vast field under the light of the moon. No sleep for the cybernetic, after all. But it turns out automating a $500,000 tractor might not be the most effective way to deploy today’s sensors and positioning technology. Which is perhaps why it took an actual farmer to come up with a system that makes economic, not just technological, sense. SwarmFarm Robotics was founded in 2011 by grain and cattle farmer Andrew Bate. The story goes he was sitting out on his tractor, trundling back and forth across a field, and wondering exactly why he was Relatively cheap and relatively small, the robot can communicate w it h others to create the eponymous swarm, and perform a wide range of tasks.

there. After all, the only thing a human does on a modern piece of farming equipment is push a few buttons and then make sure it doesn’t drive into a ditch. He, like so many others, thought there had to be a better way. But unlike so many others, he didn’t just bolt a GPS unit and some steering servos onto his giant tractor. Instead, he considered what robotic technology was available on the market and how it could be applied to farming. The result is an agricultural robot that’s about the size of a hatchback with long legs. This platform

WHY A SMALLER ROBOT MAKES SENSE

Giant robot headers look cool, but they’re not always the best solution, especially for smaller farms. Here are some of the advantages of scaling down to a medium-sized robot.

or a limited number of other alternatives. Robots could make it possible for vast areas of land to be unlocked and made much more profitable.

1. A smaller robot can farm smaller parcels of land, including awkwardly-shaped plots that today are just hobby farms, horse studs

2. Allows for much greater flexibility in the types of land farmed, in terms of soils, water and more. Because the robot can be

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

by A N T H O N Y FO R DH A M

can navigate around a field and communicate with the farmer and other robots. Tools bolt onto this basic frame - right now the robot can navigate a field in a team, and drive around for 36 hours with millimetre accuracy. Eventually it will be able to prepare the field, plant seeds, apply fertiliser, kill weeds and bugs and even harvest. As of mid-2016, SwarmFarm is completing its development phase and is seeking expressions of commercial interest. According to SwarmFarm chairman (and former Queensland Premier) Campbell Newman, the company is ready to take orders. “Our current business model is that this technology is still under development,” he says. “So you need the lab coats around to make sure it runs properly.” In other words, the first farmers to use the robots will be buying more of a service than a product - they’ll be beta testers. But Newman believes the advantages are compelling.

adapted to any plot, farms no longer have to satisfy the “economics equation” that favours huge farms of only a few types today. 3. Reduces reliance on “blanket spraying” of pesticides and herbicides. The robots can target and remove individual weeds. That means less chemical spraying which not only saves the environment, it saves the farmer money too.

Next Aussie Innovation

Where knowledge of the land, engineering know-how and robotics exper tise meet: the SwarmFarm team

“Once upon a time commodity prices were much higher, so it was feasible to farm a small plot using traditional methods,” he says. “Today, you need a huge farm of a certain size, certain soil type, so costs will be very low compared to production. “A hundred years ago, all these small properties in south-east Queensland farmed wheat. Today they’re hobby farms and horse studs. This technology could open up all that land again.” Usually when the conversation is about automation and robotics, the fear is the “little people” will get squeezed out. But SwarmFarm actually offers the opposite. It makes it possible for families to stay on small farms and makes

4. Better employment of capital, because a single robot will be a farming “Swiss Army knife” able to do multiple tasks throughout the season, from preparing to planting to weeding to sowing and more. That’s very different to that to today’s expensive specialised machinery, some of which spends all but a few days a year sitting in a shed depreciating.

them profitable again. “Selling a crop like wheat is very demanding,” says Newman. “You need to have the highest possible amount of protein to get a good price, you’re paid on the level of impurities in the grain. Today, a farmer has to decide when to cut an entire field based on his knowledge and intuition. “But within a decade we could have drones flying over the field, creating a yield map which tells the farmer what

part of the paddock is ready to harvest. Then the robot goes out and takes out just the wheat that is ready.” So rather than have that millennia-old tradition of “harvest day”, a SwarmFarm future will see robots selectively snipping parts of the field over, say, a week or so. Really what companies like SwarmFarm and new drones-as-a-service provider Measure Australia (watch this space for more on them) are giving farmers is data. And data means certainty. So much of farming, even today, is metaphorically chewing your knuckles and wondering if the decision you’re about to make is the right one. Harvest now or wait another day? Spend big on a pesticide spray or hope last year’s rainfall means hardly any bugs will hatch this time? With small-footprint farming robots and drones, combined with “bigger” data about weather, farmers will be able to make those decisions with greater confidence. That means more money for their survival and, ironicallyin-a-good-way, cheaper food for us. Of course, as an ex-politician, Newman makes sure to round out our chat with a few other pro-robot points - and to highlight how development of SwarmFarm is providing jobs in sectors perhaps not traditionally associated with agriculture. “With this technology, I see a tidal wave of generational change coming to hit us,” he says. “We need to be leading the way. This isn’t just about farmers, it’s about giving young people the opportunity to be involved in this innovation and have jobs in it, rather than just be subject to what’s happening overseas.” The past of small-scale farming was a poor farmer on a tractor in the dust. The future is a rich farmer sitting on his veranda with a laptop, while tireless robots work the fields.

“Within a decade we could have drones ﬂying over the ﬁeld, creating a yield map which tells the farmer what to harvest next”

5. Scalability makes smaller farms viable. A farm might only need 3-4 robots to be productive, but if the farmer buys more land they can just add another couple of robots. 6. The robots can be upgraded as new sensor or tool packages are developed. Amazing new technology hits the market? Don’t

sell that $500,000 obsolete tractor, just bolt a module onto an existing robot. 7. Environmental benefits from robots are considerable, from reduced emissions from the smaller diesel motors (though Popular Science forsees a future where these systems are totally electric), to less soil compaction because the robot is so much lighter than a big burly tractor.

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UN CLEAR WAR SEVENTY-ONE YEARS AFTER THE FIRST AND LAST ATOMIC WEAPONS WERE USED AGAINST HUMAN TARGETS, WEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;VE MANAGED TO AVOID A NUCLEAR ATTACK. WHY? IS IT DUMB LUCK, OR DOES THE VERY NATURE OF THESE WEAPONS MAKE IT ALL BUT CERTAIN THEY WILL NEVER BE USED?

BY ANTHONY FORDHAM

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Steve Jurvetson

UNCLEAR WAR

The USAF’s “leg” of the socalled “nuclear triad”, the Strategic Air Command, was disbanded in 1992 after the fall of the USSR. Then, in 2009, it was reborn as the Air Force Global Strike Command. Nukes fly again.

y parents were in their teens during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And over the course of that tense fortnight, there was a real feeling among ordinary people that the world could end at any moment. This was the spectre of Mutually Assured Destruction and Nuclear Armageddon. A second Holocaust, not even 20 years after the end of the ﬁrst. The indelible image of children ducking under their desks, covering their heads, and being atomised anyway. The nightmare of a planet shrouded in ash. The black fantasy of Nuclear Winter. Compared to that experience, the modern fear of terrorism and the maybe-rekindling of a “new Cold War” centred on US bluster and Putin’s fading cult of personality seems much less frightening. Say what you

TIMELINE:

A BRIEF AND UNPLEASANT HISTORY OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS 40

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and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists justified in setting the Doomsday Clock at three minutes to midnight? Nuclear war is essentially unique in that it’s the only highly-studied and endlessly gamed-out form of warfare that’s never actually happened. Before nuclear weapons, there are few examples of a general saying “maybe I shouldn’t deploy my vastly superior army against my enemy”. Nuclear weapons redefined the whole concept of “victory”, and made us realise that vanquishing a foe does not necessarily lead to a happy ending. And how we deal with them over the next few decades could come to define our civilisation. The debate over whether nukes are good or bad is long, getting longer and verging on the tedious (Did “the Bomb” save lives in WW2? Do nuclear arsenals prevent large scale war? Does the nuclear deterrent even do anything, or is the low level of confl ict between major powers all down to diplomacy? And so on). The fact is, nukes are here, they have existed for 70 years, and it is in our best interests not to use them. Certainly for the last 25 or so years, since the breakup of the Soviet Union, society at large has become largely complacent about our remaining nuclear stockpiles.

“RUSSIA HAS ANNOUNCED TESTS OF A NEW NUCLEAR DELIVERY SYSTEM WHICH IT CALLS THE RS-28 SARMAT, BUT NATO CALLS SATAN II. ” like about ISIS. They have very little capacity to instantly wipe Sydney oﬀ the face of the Earth. Or do they? This is the great uncertainty that some pundits would have you live under today. Is the threat of a large-scale nuclear attack more real than ever? Has Russia lost control of hundreds - maybe thousands - of warheads in the ruins of former USSR client states? Does the US have a hair-trigger on 450 launchready ICBMs and is it building and deploying a vast new radar network to detect an early launch by Russia? Is the Science

1939

Manhattan project begins, eventually swelling to 130,000 people and an equivalent cost of $35 billion. Volunteer spies funnel information to the Soviets throughout the course of the project, helping the USSR develop its own bomb.

1945

“The gadget” explodes at Trinity, with a yield of 20 kilotons. It uses $1 billion worth of plutonium.

1945

August 6 - The US destroys Hiroshima with a uranium gun-type bomb called Little Boy. 16 kilotons. Up to 140,000 dead.

1945

August 9 - US bombs Nagasaki after diverting from Kokura due to smoke from conventional bombs. The city is hit with a plutonium implosion bomb called Fat Man. 21 kiloton yield. Up to 75,000 are killed in the ﬁrestorm.

JUNE 2016

DIRTY BOMBS While the chances of a terrorist group getting a hold of and successful detonating a fission nuclear (let alone thermonuclear) device may be fairly low, there’s another type of “nuclear” bomb that’s much easier to build and deploy. Called a dirty bomb, it contains radioactive material and conventional explosives. The idea is that on detonation, it scatters radioactive waste over a wide area, contaminating the environment. Obviously the world’s militaries have considered this kind of device and tests have shown that the harmful effects of this radioactive material pale into insignificance compared to the other, easier-to-obtain options available to terrorists.

Chechnyan separatists remain the only group known to have tried using dirty bombs, and neither of the two caesium-137 based devices they built were detonated. While a dirty bomb might not have the kind of physical effects your regular psycho reprobate is looking for, the psychological effect of telling a city that its streets are full of radioactive gas might be considerable. For now though we can rely on terrorism’s obsession with blood, dismemberment and confirmable death and rest assured that, given the opportunity, these guys will choose conventional explosives and guaranteed mayhem over mind games. After all, most of them only get one shot.

The US has slowly reduced its 1980s stack of 1500+ launch-ready warheads to a mere 450, and promises to reduce them further. Russia’s Duma refused to ratify the Non Proliferation Treaty in the early part of the century, but has since signed up. These are positive steps. Yet in the last ﬁve years or so, as the situation in Syria and to some extent Ukraine continues to deteriorate, Russia and the US are restarting some of that old Cold War rhetoric. In an odd and almost creepy co-incidence, the week before this issue went to print (and some time after I’d written the bulk of this feature), Russia announced tests of a new nuclear delivery system - if not a new warhead - which it calls the RS-28 Sarmat, but NATO calls, helpfully, Satan II. Above-ground nuclear tests are not allowed anymore, but countries can certainly build new rockets, and Satan II is such a machine. It looks like one of those classic Soviet ICBM-on-a-truck weapons systems, has a reported range of 10,000km, and could be equipped with course-changing warheads to make interception diﬃcult. In the good old days, the USSR’s fearsome propaganda machine would have made sure the West knew just enough about this fearsome new weapon to remember who it was dealing with, comrade. Today, Russia lets its national media do the dirty work. News network Zvezda gleefully reported that the Satan II could destroy an area the size of - just pulling examples out at random here - Texas or France. But why? What possible situation could arise that would see Russia launch an ICBM at the continental US?

1949

August 29 - Helped by US data released after Nagasaki, the USSR successfully detonates its ﬁrst nuclear device, a ﬁssion bomb called Joe-1.

1952

November 1 - The US tests the world’s ﬁrst thermonuclear device, “Mike”, at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Though the bomb was too physically large to load onto any existing areoplane, it yielded 10.5 megatons, 450 times more powerful than Nagasaki’s Fat Man.

The answer is that there is no such situation, or at least none credible - this is about making Russia look strong, about rebalancing power in the world. It is, in other words, politics. What historians have long since known about the Cold War, and been keen to tell us, is that the nuclear arms race has always been ridiculously lopsided. The US, with its by-global-standards rich and united population could always massively outspend and outbuild any other bloc, including the USSR, especially when it came to nuclear weapons. There was an arms race, yes. But the real winners were the government contractors in the US, not stateowned Soviet factories. Then there’s the history of nuclear non-proliferation, which is more than half as long as the history of nukes themselves. Opening for signature in 1968 and entering into force in 1970, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons has more

1953

August 12 - The Soviet Union detonates its own thermonuclear device, which the West calls Joe-4. While less destructive than Mike, it is actually deliverable as a weapon. Tensions between the two nuclear powers begin to intensify, and the pace of nuclear development speeds up.

1954

The mighty Titan II ICBM struck fear into the hearts of Soviet schoolchildren for decades. But this platform also launched scientific space probes, including Cassini/Huygens.

signatories than any other disarmament agreement. Today, only the US, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, Pakistan, India, North Korea (they claim), and almost deﬁnitely Israel have nuclear weapons. An astounding 191 states have signed the treaty. Even North Korea signed it in 1985, and stayed in until 2003. That’s astonishing, if you think about it. A hugely destructive weapons system the possession of which, on the face of it, seems to create a huge disincentive to other countries invading you, and the vast majority of the world has said “no thanks.” The thing is, the history of the atomic bomb has never

March 1 - The US detonates the ﬁrst deployable thermonuclear weapon, cynically called “Shrimp” at Bikini Atoll. The 15 megaton explosion, much larger than expected, is now considered the word radiological accident in US history. Hundreds die in the aftermath of the tests.

1955

The USSR tests its ﬁrst megatonyield device, and the world begins to realise that nuclear war could destroy civilisation. Concepts like “fallout” and “nuclear winter” became public knowledge. Children are trained in how to respond to attacks with the pitiful “duck and cover” technique.

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UNCLEAR WAR

been about “we want this thing to secure a military victory”. It’s always been about “we need to get this thing before the other guy does”. You can spend entire dinner parties arguing over whether the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was instrumental in Japan’s surrender (or whether it was actually Russia co-incidentally invading Manchuria at basically the same time). But the development of an atomic weapon by one of the great powers of World War II was all

but inevitable. When nuclear ﬁssion was discovered in 1938, it became almost immediately obvious to physicists that, theoretically, it should be possible to create a weapon that “annihilated” matter and converted at least a small percentage into pure destructive energy. The unstable atoms of radioactive elements such as uranium and plutonium seemed likely candidates, and research began in Germany and the UK. Perhaps luckily for the world,

“PERHAPS LUCKILY FOR THE WORLD, THE NAZIS DID NOT POUR MONEY INTO A NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM IN THE SAME WAY THE US DID” the Nazis decided that nuclear ﬁssion had only limited military application, and although research continued, the Germans did not pour minds and money into a nuclear weapons program in the same way the US did, and by the time they reconsidered this position their cities had been reduced to rubble and their best scientists killed or stolen away by the Allies. The US, on the other hand, was indeed very determined to develop the bomb. By the time the Manhattan Project had produced Little Boy and Fat This North Korean launcher probably doesn’t work. But would you bet a South Korean city on it?

1957

August 1 - The US announces the creation of NORAD, the North American Air Defence Command, to serve as an early warning system against nuclear attack.

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1958

Realising the potential for ecological disaster, the US, USSR and UK establish a moratorium on nuclear testing, but the Soviet Union breaks it almost immediately, conducting several thermonuclear tests.

1961

October - The USSR tests the largest known thermonuclear device, the Tsar Bomba, which yields 50 megatons in a reduced state. Fully enabled, it could have yielded 100 megatons.

1962

October 22 - October 28 - The most intense phase of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Soviet ships eventually decide not to run the blockade, both parties agree to remove missiles from key locations, and the Crisis is defused (and the world saved).

1963

All nuclear states (and many other countries) sign the Limited Test Ban Treaty which bans nuclear testing in the atmosphere, underwater or in space. Underground testing continues.

JUNE 2016

NOTABLE NUKES 1

US: T H E M I N U T E M A N SE R I E S As the Cold War deepened, it became necessary for the US to maintain ICBMs at launch-readiness for months and eventually years on end. This made liquid-fuelled missiles impractical, so a solid-fuel rocket was needed. Enter the LGM-30 Minuteman, a silo-launched ICBM that’s probably what you’re thinking of whenever you picture the Judgement Day scene in one of the Terminator movies. The main benefit of this series of missiles, which has endured for over 50 years, is that it can stand ready to launch for long periods, and doesn’t need much maintenance. The current model is the LGM-30G Minuteman III, and it deals with enemy anti-ballistic missile systems by using Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs). As the warhead approaches the poor bastards at ground zero, it splits into three warheads, each of which has a yield of up to 500 kilotons. Only one needs to get through. While Russian stockpiles aren’t precisely known, we do know the US currently maintains 450 Minuteman-III ICBMs in silos, which might sound crazy but it’s an improvement on the 1000+ during the 1980s. By 2018 this will be reduced to 400, but there’s no indication the US plans to retire its doomsday collection any time before the 2030s.

THE GAP INTO MADNESS

“BY 1996, THE US HAD SPENT OVER $8 TRILLION AND BUILT MORE THAN 70,000 NUCLEAR WARHEADS OF VARIOUS YIELDS” Man (the bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki), the US had spent the modern equivalent of $26 billion (AUD $35bn) to get “the Bomb” before its enemies... one of which had already surrendered, and the other had been bottled up in its home islands. Perhaps it did take the Russian declaration of war to spur Imperial Japan into action and formal surrender. The Japanese certainly ignored US President Harry Truman’s August 7, 1945 promise that Japan could “expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of

1964

October 16 - China tests its ﬁrst nuclear weapon. Today, it remains the only nuclear state to declare it will never use its nuclear arsenal to attack another country in a“ﬁrst strike”, only for defence.

1970

which has never been seen on this earth.” But the fact the US could now wipe out a city, not with a hundred plans and thousands of tonnes of bombs but with a single plane and a single bomb, could not have gone unnoticed. Stalin certainly noticed it. Already infamously paranoid and commanding a sophisticated network of international spies, he was equally determined that Russia should have the bomb too. The rest, as they say, is history. By 1996, the US had spent over $8 trillion and built more than 70,000 nuclear warheads of various yields, more than all the other countries with nuclear weapons combined. The USSR built 55,000. France, the UK and China had stockpiles measured in the hundreds. South Africa dismantled its nukes. Israel maintains a “policy of opacity” about its nuclear program. India and Pakistan mostly point their missiles at each other. And North Korea is 99%

The US deploys the Minuteman III, the ﬁrst MIRV-equipped missile. It can strike up to three targets at once, with a yield of 170 kilotons. The Soviets also develop MIRVequipped missiles, raising the nuclear stakes again.

1974

India detonates “Smiling Buddha” in what it calls a “peaceful nuclear explosion”, and reveals it now has nuclear capability. Pakistan follows.

1979

There can be few readers of this magazine who don’t know of US paranoia that the USSR was set to oustrip it, in terms of technological and military sophistication in the 1950s and 1960s. Sputnik, anyone? Kennedy used the idea of a “missile gap” to win an election, and much like they would do decades later in Iraq, US hawks massively overstated the number of “WMDs” its enemy had ready to deploy. US media in the late 1950s put it about that the USSR had over 1500 ICBMs ready to go, while the US had just 130. In fact the size of the Soviet force was a little exaggerated. They didn’t have 1500 missiles. They had four. By the late 1970s, it was generally accepted that the US had a 6:1 missile superiority over the USSR. Of course, given the destructive nature of these weapons, that barely mattered.

November 9 - A NORAD technician loads a test tape into a nuclear weapons control system but forgets to set the system’s status to “test”, which sends attack warnings to command posts around the world. The error is realised.

1983

March 23 - US President Ronald Reagan announces SDI, the Strategic Defence Initiative, which will use orbital platforms to shield the US against nuclear strike. It is quickly nicknamed “Star Wars” but ultimately comes to deﬁne crazy military spending.

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UNCLEAR WAR

NOTABLE NUKES 2

US SR / RUS SI A : T H E T OP OL SE R I E S Russia continues to develop ICBMs to carry nuclear payloads, and unlike the silo-launched US weapons, these are often designed to be deployed from “roadless” locations (basically a truck drives off into the woods to find a secluded clearing from which it can end the world). One of the latest Topol ICBMs, designated SS-27 “Sickle B” by NATO, is specifically designed to defeat missile defence systems. It has a short “burn time” on launch to make it hard to detect from satellites, flies in a very flat trajectory to stymie radar, and the warhead can change course after separating from the launcher, making it extremely difficult to track. Topol means “white poplar” which sounds nice enough, but this hellish thing is made of carbon fibre, which is excitingly modern, and has an 800 kiloton yield - thus evoking the very worst excesses of the Cold War.

1983

September 26 - The Soviet Union’s early warning system reports the launch of US Minuteman ICBMs. Thanks to ofﬁcer Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, the false alarm is identiﬁed and large-scale nuclear war narrowly avoided.

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1986

The existence of an Israeli nuclear weapons facility, Dimona, is conﬁrmed, but the country will not reveal the size or nature of its nuclear arsenal.

1989

South Africa ends its nuclear program and dismantles seven nuclear devices by 1991, after signing the Non Proliferation Treaty. It is the only former nuclear state, and the only country to voluntarily fully disarm.

1991

The US deploys Patriot antiballistic missile (ABM) defence systems in the ﬁrst Gulf War. Though they only have to shoot down Iraq’s SCUDs, not nuclear weapons, they prove to be not especially effective. ABM research continues.

1995

January 25 - Russian president Boris Yeltin has to decide whether or not to activate his “Nuclear Briefcase” after a Norwegian sounding-rocket trips early warning systems. He chooses life.

JUNE 2016

IGNORANCE IS BLISS

One of the problems with writing an article like this for a magazine is lead time. After I finished this article, this edition of Australian Popular Science had to be sent to the printers, distributed, and put on sale. So there’s a small but non-zero chance a nuclear attack occurred in the fortnight or so between me writing this and you reading it. So with that in mind:

SI T UAT ION 1 : I F A N UC L E A R AT TAC K O C C U R R E D ON OR A F T E R 17 M AY 2 016 Top, the first nuke- equipped air craft, the Enola Gay, which dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Right, the F-35 may carry nuclear warheads

bluster with 1% not-a-bet-anyone-wants-to-take on them actually having a deliverable warhead of some kind. The planet has been, perhaps indelibly, altered by the nuclear tests of the 1950s and 1960s. Irradiated atolls dot the Pacific, and the atmosphere itself still holds evidence of the massive high-altitude detonations of tests like Starfish Prime (a 1.4 megaton explosion at 400km altitude that disabled a third of the world’s satellites). The prospect of a terrorist group getting a hold of a nuclear device is the kind of thing that gets certain segments of the media excited, but seems fairly remote. Nuclear weapons are among the most complex machines humans have ever built, and are necessarily encrusted with safeguards. They are hard to set off, hard to deliver to a target, and injudicious messing about with their contents will quickly expose an IED auteur to a lethal dose of ionising radiation. Maybe if we lived in a world where every nation had furiously chased “the bomb” for itself, and where failed states had hundreds of warheads lying around, the risk of nuclear terrorist attack might be greater. In our reality though, terrorism relies on cheap, simple and easy to deploy weapons. And a nuclear bomb is none of these. So the greatest threat remains where it has always been: in the hands of the United States, its allies, and Russia. While the handful of “non-sanctioned” nuclear states could get themselves into a limited exchange, a proper world-ending nuke slinging match still needs those traditional Cold War partners. Is it impossible? Of course not. Is Nuclear Armageddon any more likely that it was in the 1980s?

1996

Former Soviet bloc countries complete the return of their nuclear warheads to Russia following the collapse of the USSR. Are all accounted for?

2003

North Korea claims it has nuclear weapons and says it has successfully tested several devices. The rogue state continues testing in deﬁance of international bans, but is probably wildly overstating its nuclear capability.

Probably not. Because even back then, with the world militarised, the propaganda flowing and everyone so clear about which side was “good” and which was “bad”, when it came down to those few heartstopping moments where a launch was only seconds away, something always happened. The people with their fingers on the actual buttons stayed their hands. Geese did not destroy civilisation in 1984 because, on the day, warriors chose life. Nuclear weapons do not offer victory. This is their great flaw and their great promise. They force the hawks to think again. The world might indeed be safer without them. But they exist, and so they make us do what we must keeping on doing. Choosing life.

2004

Pakistani nuclear scientist A Q Khan confesses to attempting to proliferate nuclear weapons internationally, including selling secrets and machines to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Subsequent fall of Gaddaﬁ removes Libya from the equation, for now.

2005

My naive optimism wasn’t enough. The world is a very different place now. Following the events of [INSERT DATE AND LOCATION], we can no longer afford to be complacent about this destructive technology. The world must move toward total disarmament and destruction of all nuclear weapons. What this attack shows is that all governments, not just the government of [INSERT SOURCE OF NUCLEAR DEVICE] can’t guarantee these weapons won’t fall into the wrong hands. The arguments of “deterrent” and “security” have been shown to be what they always were: hollow. And this terrible event proves that the biggest issue surrounding nuclear weapons technology is what it has always been: uncertainty.

SI T UAT ION 2 : I F A N UC L E A R AT TAC K H A S NO T Y E T O C C U R R E D Until an actual attack happens, be it terrorist or state-sanctioned, it’s unlikely we’ll see all nuclear weapons phased out. The big players continue to reduce their stockpiles, but the fear of the “other guy” keeping just one device as the ultimate insurance policy is too philosophically intractable. And the nature of this technology is that it indeed only takes one bomb, one juryrigged warhead, one finger-press on a button in the name of retaliation or a misguided desire for “justice”, to create an event like nothing our civilisation has yet experienced.

August 9 - The Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issues a fatwa against his country producing or stockpiling nuclear weapons. The international community is not convinced. A deal with the US to lift sanctions continues to generate much controversy.

2016

The US and UK continue to develop laser weapons and 360 degree laser shields, which could be ready for deployment by 2020. These systems could make current nuclear weapons all but obsolete. The US continues to reduce its stockpile of warheads.

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KOTA 46

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MARK SUNDEEN

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J O N AT H O N K A M B O U R I S

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IN D R O N E- KOTA

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NOBODY CALLS IT A DRONE. THAT’S A FOURLETTER WORD AROUND THESE PARTS

laid it on grass, and fired up the rotors. But something wasn’t meshing with the smartphone, so an engineer named Tandy bent over to shut it down. When he reached into the rotors, he yelped—blood shot through the air. He sucked on his finger and spat red, and finally someone asked, “Do you need a bandage, dude?” The question was moot because nobody had a bandage, but one guy offered a wadded-up napkin from his jeans pocket. It was quickly soaked red. No matter. The drone again whirred to life and soared skyward. Before it could cross the lawn, the pilot detected that the app was not communicating with the drone—an earlier crash broke the antenna—so he landed the thing manually, packed it up, and we drove back to the office. It was not exactly the sort of tech disruption I had imagined. But my tour of North Dakota had just begun—and even the Wright Brothers crashed a few planes, right?

THANKS TO the shale oil boom, North Dakota’s economy and population has led the US in growth—the state leapfrogged Alaska to become the 47th largest. Just as crude is fracked to the surface, so is money fracked to the east, where roughnecks deposit wives and children in the leafy lanes and solid schools of Fargo and Grand Forks, far from the oily man-camps. Now, as oil prices plummet and production drops off, North Dakota sees drones as its chance to develop a bust-proof tech sector. It is worth noting here that nobody official calls them drones. They say unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), and remotely piloted aircraft (RPA). Drone, as one pilot told me, is a four-letter word around these parts. Another conceded the word had a “delicate public perception.” Grand Forks exudes warmth and trust—a tidy little city: not too rich, not too poor. As I cruised its broad streets listening to Polka Hour on the radio, I saw evidence everywhere of prosperity. As just one informal yardstick, the city of 56,000 boasts three sushi joints. I stayed in a brand-new motel out by the interstate, in a cluster of similar motels plunked down like Monopoly pieces on freshly poured concrete. Upon registration I was required to sign a paper promising not to smuggle a hockey stick into my room. A sign in the elevator read: “We suggest that if your plans are to ‘PARTY’ after midnight, that you please take it to somewhere else. Be respectful of others and everyone will have a great stay.” That could be the state’s motto. The North Dakotans I met are pursuing their quixotic quest with archetypal Midwestern pluck. A professor of aviation gifted me a school medallion stamped “VENTURUM TEMPUS PROSPECTUS: Looking to the Future.” A brigadier general said that folks here were not just nice, but North Dakota nice. This flat state’s chief selling point as a nascent drone industry, though, might not be what it has, but what it lacks: There are fewer people and things to collide

PR O P STY L I NG BY L I N DA K E I L FO R H A L L E Y RES O UR C ES

the downtown Fargo office of the startup Botlink, engineers, code writers, and executives huddled around me, thrusting a tablet to show off their app, an air traffic control interface that allows even the least skilled to fly a drone without crashing it into a plane. “Real-time data distribution,” said one. “The orange circles show restricted airspace around airports. You want a beer? A Coke?” With the exception of the executives, all sharp smiles and good hair, the entourage was pure geek: sneakers and hoodies that limited exposure to sunlight and, in the Zuckerberg era, seemed to suggest imminent innovation and subsequent riches. I had arrived in North Dakota last June, in the same week MarketWatch declared it the “Silicon Valley of drones.” At each stop I was regaled with the vocabulary of promise— disruptive tech, green fields, incubators, and accelerators.

In the booming economy of drone technology, North Dakota has been an early and enthusiastic adopter. The US Federal Aviation Administration chose it as one of six official drone test sites, and the entire state permits unmanned flights at night and at altitudes of 360 metres (as opposed to daylight and up to 120 metre, as per new rules in Australia). The US Air Force, Air National Guard, and border patrol all pilot drones from Grand Forks Air Force Base. Adjacent to that, Northrup Grumman is building a facility as the anchor tenant at the Grand Sky unmanned aerial systems business and aviation park—the first in the US. Another first: the University of North Dakota launched an undergraduate program in drone piloting in 2009. The state Department of Commerce pointed me to Botlink as an example of “the vibrancy of the sector,” so I followed the team of coders into the creaky elevator of their prewar building and drove with them to a city park. There, they hefted a quadcopter from the boot,

JUN E 201 6

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with should your craft, as one airman put it, “come into contact with the ground.” Indeed, one of the first things you’ll see, speeding away from Grand Forks airport, is a red, white, and blue building that screams GENEROUS GERRY’S FIREWORKS SUPERSTORE. It should make you think, “Ah yes, come here to do dangerous stuff that is elsewhere banned.” For many years the only drone users were the military and hobbyists, who were largely unregulated. Then in 2014, the FAA began to issue special exemptions to existing regulations. By the time I got to Grand Forks, 664 companies across the nation had been granted exemptions (the figure has since reached 3,000 and continues to climb). But while the companies are allowed to fly—say, for aerial photography or pipeline inspections—they are not allowed to fly out of the pilot’s line of sight. Amazon, for example, can’t make deliveries here. To test experimental delivery aircraft and techniques, Amazon has been working in Canada, the UK, and Denmark. Smaller companies with fewer resources would probably have to partner with one of the six FAA-

approved test sites, such as the Northern Plains Unmanned Aerial Systems Test Site in Grand Forks. “Until recently, there was no way for a civilian entity to ﬂy an unmanned aircraft,” the site’s executive director, Robert Becklund, told me. Now that’s changing, and North Dakota is eager to help it along. Becklund—a lean pilot who’s all ﬁghter-jet competence with clipped hair and a crisp black polo— seized my hand. “My suspicion,” he said, “is that by the end of the week, you’ll be pretty enamoured with the place.”

Future pilots in th e Un iversi ty o f No r th Dakota’s drone -flying progra m (above). Pilot f ield tra i n i n g, l i tera l ly, n ea r gra z i n g cattl e (left).

THE SPEEDWAY 805 Grill & Bar

is a brick block on shadeless 42nd Street in Grand Forks. On the day I was there, the parking lot smelled like bacon. Inside, Matt Dunlevy and Jack Wilcox gulped dark beer from glass steins as big as their heads. They were from SkySkopes, a startup specialising in aerial photography that recently won a commercial exemption from the FAA. Dunlevy wore basketball shorts, a T-shirt, and rubber sandals. Sitting across from him, obscured by a plastic tumbler of Coke, sat SkySkopes’ pilot, Connor Grafius, dressed in an Oxford shirt buttoned to the neck. He had a phone against one ear and a finger in the other. “We are looking for a range extension,” Grafius said into the phone. “A blanket COA to 200 feet. You have to exclude the military installations.” “We’re on the phone with the FAA now,” Dunlevy told me. Two days from now, SkySkopes would fly its first commercial mission: to inspect a cell tower 480 km west of here in the Oil Patch. “Your phone sucks,” Grafius said, passing it back to Dunlevy. He sipped from his straw. He was drinking soda because he was 20 years old. The founders were just a few years older. I liked these guys. They had vision and were starting from nowhere, or close to it. Whereas another flight I was supposed to witness had been scrubbed due to high winds, the SkySkopes team pulled an octocopter from their car when I met them and launched it in about five minutes. Then they let me fly a cheap drone. If their plan panned out, SkySkopes could prevent linemen or pilots from risking their lives to study skybound cables—and make a bucket of money. Their

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smarts and ambition and enthusiasm made me think they were going to succeed. Forget journalistic objectivity, I wanted them to succeed. Because drones are evolving quicker than the regulations, Grafius had to explain to the FAA what he was trying to do in order to get permission to do it. They had no precedent for inspecting cell towers with drones—at least no legal precedent. “There’s really no one to ask for advice,” Dunlevy told me. While Dunlevy was the businessman, Grafius was the ace. A junior in the UAS program at the University of North Dakota, Grafius began flying and building remote-controlled aircraft when he was 15. Then he mounted cameras on his planes and piloted them by feel while wearing a pair of video goggles. Passersby might have been perplexed to come upon this wispy teen, seemingly blindfolded, operating a stick and throttle, enraptured by his high-tech headset. “It’s the greatest thing I’d ever seen,” Grafius told me as he ate French fries. “The sensation, the peripherals—it’s like you’re flying. When people asked what I was doing, I’d say, ‘ Just look into these goggles and you’ll freak out.’” I asked why other companies weren’t angling for the same business. “We’re hungry,” Dunlevy said. “They’re not.”

LIKE EVERYONE ELSE I met in

North Dakota, the guys from SkySkopes found nothing controversial about drones. It was just another industry, and if someone was going to carve out a piece, it might as well be them. Yet outside the state, opinion is split. Some see the personal aircraft you can

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streamlined as a bottlenose dolphin, it is capable of ﬂying all the way to Panama and back on a single tank of avgas. The pilot was all smiles. “I’ve launched an aircraft, gone home, had dinner with my wife,” he said, “then gone to sleep, come back the next morning, and landed the same aircraft.” Military drones inspire their share of anxiety: Like many Americans, I was taken aback when the FBI director admitted to Congress that drones had been used for surveillance on US soil. Then-senator Lindsey Graham said, “If I’m president of the United States, and you’re thinking about joining al-Qaeda

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or ISIL, I’m not gonna call a judge; I’m gonna call a drone, and we will kill you.” I was allowed to sit at a drone simulator and pretend to launch it, but when I peered down on a building, I did not imagine myself the patriot gathering intel, but rather the mope in the crosshairs. Everywhere, my fears were met with upbeat assurances. Back at the Test Site, Becklund had said: “Privacy concerns will be handled by the courts. Will drones get into the hands of the wrong people? Sure they will. But from a government point of view, privacy is not a big issue.”

A DX 9 tra n smi tter (used to fly a quadcopte r) alongside a student pilot’s notebook.

“If you’re not doing anything wrong, what’s the big deal?” agreed a colleague. I had reached the limits of Midwestern openness. The Global Hawk pilot declined to divulge the purpose of ﬂights over North America. Because of non-disclosure agreements, Becklund could not tell me what kind of research companies were conducting

TWO DAYS LATER, I drove west with the SkySkopes team. Flare stacks from the oil field threw yellow fire into the sky. At the service station in an outpost called Ray, they donned yellow safety vests. Grafius in particular did not look much like a roughneck. He wore a checked Oxford, tan Levis, and unlaced boat shoes. At the pump, he nearly collided with a man packing two firearms. “He looked me right in the eye,” Grafius reported, “and was like, ‘What are you doing out here?’” The story I’d been told about North Dakota’s entrepreneurial blossoming was not quite holding together. I learned that of the 664 commercial drone operators in the US, only three were based in North Dakota. That struck me as a small market share for

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buy for a few hundred bucks as a neat way to film your kid’s soccer game; others fear it’s a means to deliver anthrax and stalk your ex. I fall in the latter camp. So when a professor of aeronautics suggested my visit might “dispel some myths,” I hoped he was right. The first unmanned aircraft in North Dakota were military; their arrival followed the decommissioning of fighter jets and nuclear missiles. One morning, a toothsome trio of camo-clad handlers chauffeured me around Grand Forks Air Force Base, where the remotely piloted Global Hawk lurked in its hangar. Sleek and

at the Test Site. Two Botlink guys told me they piloted Predator drones from the Air National Guard base in Fargo but weren’t supposed to reveal specifics. This impenetrability was further tangled by a Gordian Knot of agencies. The Test Site is not actually a brick-and-mortar proving ground with hangars and runways, but rather an amorphous entity mandated by the FAA, in partnership with UND Aerospace, ND State University, ND Aeronautics Commission, ND Aviation Council, and the Adjutant General of the ND National Guard, but largely funded by the ND Department of Commerce, which also funds Grand Sky business park. The Test Site is housed adjacent to, but not inside, UND’s Centre for UAS Research, Education, and Training, and both are connected by tunnel-bridge to the Centre for Innovation, a project of InnovateND, also partially funded by the Department of Commerce. Both the Air National Guard and Customs and Border Protection operate various types of Predators at the Grand Forks Air Force Base, where UND researchers have been developing a drone flight simulator. Got it? The more I asked, the less I learned. I eventually found out that the unarmed border-patrol drone introduced as an MQ-9 Predator B was referred to by the USAF as the MQ-9 “Reaper.” It made me wonder: Why are we droning Canada anyway? Customs and Border Protection deployed a Predator B to resolve a standoff with a North Dakota rancher. Another border-patrol pilot told me he’d assisted with “some meth, some gun cases, some pot.” Department of Homeland Security reported that border drones cost $12,000 per hour to fly—five times the original estimate—and that the agency “cannot demonstrate how much the program has improved border security.” North Dakota was beginning to feel more like the Pentagon than Palo Alto. Yet even Grand Forks Air Force Base was disarmingly pleasant. Looking out the truck window to take in the verdant view, I asked my camouflaged handlers, “Is that really a golf course?” “Yes.” “Eighteen holes?” “I want to say it’s nine.”

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a place lauding itself as the upstart of the startups. What’s more, two of them were existing companies; only SkySkopes started up recently. Nonetheless, I felt a thrill heading out to a job with the SkySkopes team. In their hands, drones didn’t seem like sinister weapons, but brilliant gadgets to make life fun and easy. That day I read about California lifeguards who, using a drone, had spotted a shark and cleared swimmers from the water. Johns Hopkins was investigating the transport of human blood for transfusions in Uganda. I could get behind this. We drove down a gravel road to where a cell tower rose from the fields. A tattooed tech with a ponytail held up a waiver that I signed without reading. Two older men arrived in a pickup. The problem, they explained, was water. Strands of black cable snaked to the top of the tower. Rainwater had entered the plastic sheath and poured into the circuits below. Was it faulty weatherstripping? Or had the cable been nicked through careless installation? Thousands of towers—millions of dollars—hinged on the answer. It would cost $1,500 to send up a climber who might not figure it out. Grafius hefted a black case from the back of the car, wheeled it across the gravel, and opened the lid, revealing the octocopter. He straightened its spindly legs, tipped in red. SkySkopes did not build the drone; they bought it online. Grafius’ talent was mounting and interfacing the camera, gimbal, and software. “You have done towers before, right?” one of the workmen asked. “Yeah,” said Grafius. “Is it easy to fly one of these things?” “Not by a tower.” “How close can you get?” “Very close,” Grafius said. “Does this tower produce any frequency in the spectrum of 2.4 gigahertz?” “You guys have insurance in case something goes wrong?” the man asked in return. “Up to two million,” Dunlevy interjected. As the workmen beheld the eight-legged creature, their skepticism softened. That’s the thing about drones: They’re cool. Everyone stooped to examine it. “That’s a pretty mean gadget,” said the tech. Grafius powered the drone and a melody beeped. “Clear,” he said. “Powering up.” The thing whirred like a hummingbird as its eight rotors spun. Then it lifted off. As Grafius slipped on his sunglasses and piloted it upward, the rest of us did the only thing humans can do upon encountering an unmanned craft: We took pictures. Grafius’ gaze alternated between the drone and a realtime video feed. Wilcox operated the camera. Grafius gave commands. “I want you to look down at those guy wires. Look straight. Now look up.” “I always get scared,” said Dunlevy, pacing. Grafius was as cool and crisp as a mint hundreddollar bill. A workman peered at the video and said: “There. Right there. That’s what I need.” Grafius held the drone steady, and Wilcox zoomed in on the junction where the cable entered the steel housing. “Yes, that’s it.” There was a sense of wonder, the marvel of technology— the magic really—that we could be seeing in such detail

THE DRONE WOVE BETWEEN STEEL CELL-TOWER WIRES. AND THEN I HEARD A THWACK. 20 storeys off the ground. These magnificent lads and their flying machines! The drone wove between steel wires as it climbed. Depth perception was impossible. Grafius propped his Ray Bans on his forehead and studied the monitor, saying to Wilcox: “Look up. OK, look level.” He lowered the glasses and held up a hand to block the sun. Then I heard a thwack way up high. My head snapped up just in time to see the octocopter spinning out of control. “Uh-oh,” said Grafius. He throttled up and pulled it away from the tower. The drone lurched and swivelled. Rotors whined, landing gear deployed. Before I could count to five, the thing slammed down in the wheat, bounced, and toppled in a heap.

BACK ON THE ROAD, we had lunch at a pizza place in Minot. SkySkopes was unfazed, as was my faith in them. No one was hurt, the tower and wheat ﬁeld were not harmed, and the damage to the drone amounted to

only $35. If they’d packed more spare parts, they could have repaired the thing on the spot. They scheduled to finish the job a month later. “Another thing,” said Grafius, sipping a Coke. “We need parachutes.” From what I’d seen, the North Dakota drone industry had lots of promise. In fact, since my visit last year, the Botlink guys said they had perfected their software, quadrupled their staff of engineers, and had moved from glitchy prototype to actual app-controlled devices shipped to real customers. But I had also found the state oddly insulated from the international debate over drones. Activists have protested Northrup Grumman and General Atomics in California, but not here. The chair of a committee that regulates drone use around Grand Forks told me there had been little conflict. Anyway, she said, we are constantly photographed in banks and malls, and our smartphones track us better than any aircraft could. “Well, yeah,” I sputtered, “but we choose to purchase a smartphone, same as we choose to use the Internet or drive a car. No one ever chose to be looked at from the sky.” She looked at me as if I were an Amish person explaining why suspenders were godly but belts were of the devil. There’s a sense in the north country, as the elevator sign said, that if we respect one another, we’ll have a great stay. On my trip home in the airport shuttle, a mounted camera winked at me. I had come north afraid drones would enable my country to invade my privacy, only to learn my privacy was already compromised—usually with my consent. Octocopter ads flooded my Facebook feed. Someone may well be watching, but it’s not them—it’s us.

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for the Roots of Violence

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The killer read his Bible. He drank. Heavily. It was an autumn night in 2006, when Bradley Waldroup walked out of his rural trailer in southeastern Tennessee, carrying his .22 calibre hunting rifle. His estranged wife and her friend, Leslie Bradshaw, had just pulled up to drop off the Waldroups’ four children. Waldroup began arguing with his wife and Bradshaw, who was unloading the car. Drawing his gun, Waldroup shot Bradshaw eight times, killing her. He used a knife to cut her head open. He then chased his wife with the knife and a machete, managing to slice off one of her pinky fingers before dragging her into the trailer. There, he told their frightened children, “Come tell your mama goodbye” because it was the last time they’d ever see her. Miraculously, his wife managed to slip his grasp and escape. Three years later, in a county court, Waldroup confessed. He said he had “snapped.” “I’m not proud of none of it,” he told the judge. Convicted of felony murder, he faced the death penalty. To save his life, his legal team took an unusual approach, never before admitted in a capital-murder case. They sent a sample of Waldroup’s blood to the molecular genetics lab at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Lab techs there were told to look at a specific gene. Sure enough, they found Waldroup had

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a genetic variant on his X chromosome, one that coded the enzyme monoamine oxidase-A (MAOA). MAOA’s job is to break down crucial neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and serotonin. If left unchecked, these potent chemicals can build up in the brain and cause a loss of impulse control and an increase in violence and rage. In part, Waldroup’s lawyers were claiming, his genes made him do it. It’s been more than two decades since geneticists linked MAOA deficiency to violent behaviour. And it’s been a decade since the media dubbed one of the genes that causes the deficiency “the warrior gene.” It is among the most controversial of several genes linked to violence and psychopathic behaviours. Mental illnesses have also been linked to genetic causes. In January, Harvard scientists jolted the mental-health field when they identified a gene that might lie at the root of schizophrenia. During adolescence and early adulthood, a variant of the gene causes the overpruning of synapses in the brain’s decision-making frontal lobe, impairing things like attention and impulse control. While only a fraction of the 2 .2 million Americans suffering from schizophrenia turn violent—a point that mentalhealth workers are careful to point out—people with serious mental illnesses are two to three times more likely to become violent than those who are not. As each mass shooting and road-rage murder fi lls our daily newsfeeds, scientists, law-enforcement officials, politicians, mental-health experts, and the public ask what we can do to stop the next one. Can we identify violent people before they hurt someone? Is there a genetic link among serial killers like Ted Bundy, mass murderers like Adam Lanza, and roadside shooters like the Uber driver, Jason Dalton, who police charged with killing six people in a random rampage in Michigan this past February? These are uncomfortable questions, ones that conjure the quackery of phrenology and the eugenics of the Nazis. But as geneticists come closer to unlocking the doors of personality traits and pathologies, we seem to be stepping beyond behaviourism to embrace genetic determinism. We accept science has found a gene that increases the risk for alcoholism, a condition once associated with weakness of character. We accept that genes can alter brain function and may trigger anxiety behaviours. Now there is evidence that the same could be said for violence.

Kent Kiehl works inside a portable trailer on Jurors ruled out the death penalty for killer Bradley Waldroup (above) after lawyers argued a gene variant helped predispose him to violence.

the grounds of the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility, home to 440 inmates in the small town of Grants. He sits at a cramped desk in front of computer screens that monitor activity in a nearby and loudly humming cylindrical tube. It is a $2.2 million functional magnetic-resonance-imaging scanner

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Is there a genetic link between Ted Bundy and Adam Lanza? It’s an uncomfortable question that conjures up eugenics. (fMRI). One by one, Kiehl slots in murderers, rapists, arsonists, and other violent criminals, and then peers into their brains. He has become a top expert on the neuroscience of schizophrenia and psychopathy. Kiehl has a unique and personal perspective on the subject he studies. His family had lived down the street from Ted Bundy in a quiet Tacoma neighbourhood. When Bundy was arrested in 1975 and later accused of killing more than 36 women over nearly two decades, it sent a collective shiver through that neighbourhood. Kiehl wondered, “How could someone like that grew up in our sleepy little suburb?” As a neuroscientist at the University of New Mexico, he has spent the past 25 years looking for an answer. Psychopaths suffer from severe emotional detachment. They lack both empathy and remorse. Kiehl has found that they make up about 16 per cent of the US prison population. Such people also comprise about one per cent of the general population. To put that in perspective, it is about as common as bulimia, but much more difficult to diagnose. That’s troublesome because psychopaths are inclined to violence. On average, a criminal psychopath will be convicted of four violent offenses before age 40. Twin studies have pointed out a genetic component to psychopathic traits, but few experts agree on an exact cause for the disorder. Kiehl believes it can be traced to defects in the limbic and paralimbic cortex, used in generating emotions, controlling impulses, and paying attention. During an exam, an inmate lays his head beneath a coil that sends and receives magnetic signals. Kiehl displays phrases, like “stealing from your job site,” or images, like that of a car crash, on a screen. He asks the inmate to rate the moral offensiveness of each. As the inmate makes decisions, his or her neurons fire, and the computer records the response time and the area of the brain activated. A non-psychopath will show activity in regions, such as the almond-shaped amygdala, related to empathy and emotion. Psychopaths will not. Depending on which region is active, Kiehl can determine how the inmate processes the material. A psychopath might show little activity in the amygdala and instead

Brain scans, like those below, have shown that psychopaths might have defects in regions related to impulse control and emotional processing.

be processing the material in a logical portion of the brain, in some cases trying to trick Kiehl or give Kiehl answers he thinks are appropriate or that he thinks Kiehl wants to hear. Altogether, Kiehl has collected brain-imaging data from more than 4,000 criminals at eight prisons in two states, building what amounts to the largest forensic neuroscience library in the world. He has found that psychopaths tend to have less gray matter in the region that he’s targeting, as well as smaller amygdalas. In short, he says, “they have different brains.” And those differences are “at least 50 per cent caused by genetics,” he says, adding, “That shouldn’t surprise people with neuroscience knowledge.” Kiehl’s work has become so well-known that parents of troubled kids frequently seek his advice. It’s a situation he finds depressing because he doesn’t yet have answers for them. “I get an email at least once a week from a parent whose child is struggling. And it’s heartbreaking,” Kiehl says. “‘Is my child a psychopath?’ I’m the last guy they want to call.”

The modern search for the genetic roots of

violence began when a woman walked into a university hospital in Nijmegen, Netherlands, in 1978. She had come to seek help for the men in her family.

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Men in one Dutch family with a history of violent rape, assault and arson shared the same genetic disorder. She suspected several brothers and her own son might have been suffering from the same mental disability. Two had committed arson. One had tried to rape his sister. Another tried to kill his boss by ramming him with a car. Another had drawn a knife against his sisters and forced them to undress. In fact, the family violence appeared to stretch as far back as the 1870s, according to a detailed family tree of violent offenders that a concerned uncle drew up in 1962. More than a decade after the woman appeared at the Nijmegen hospital, researchers there finally figured out what was wrong. The violent men possessed a mutation on their X chromosome. That defect turned

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In 2015, a Finnish study concluded that a genetic variant of the CDH13 gene was a “plausible factor” for violent criminal behaviour.

out to be a flaw in the MAOA gene. Since the gene is on the X chromosome, men—who have only one X chromosome—are more likely to suffer its effects than women, in whom a second, normally functioning X chromosome can compensate for the problems of the defect. Women can, however, pass the defect to their sons. Soon the women in the family were coming in to be tested to figure out if they were carriers. Since then, several projects have found other genetic risk factors for violent behaviour. In 2011, a German researcher canvassing the field, found a connection between homicidal behaviour and a variant in a gene that codes for a protein called atechol-Omethlytransferase (COMT). Like MAOA, it regulates dopamine. Four years later, Finnish researchers studying prison inmates found that violent offenders often possessed MAOA variants or variants of genes that code for CDH13—a protein that assists in braincell signalling. Previous studies linked those same variants to autism, schizophrenia, and attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder. The inmate study, which appeared in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, concluded that the CDH13 variant, and the cellular dysfunction that it contributes to, was indeed a “plausible factor” for a specific range of violent criminal behaviours. The notion that a biological basis to aggression might exist troubles many scientists and ethicists. They are quick to note that environmental factors play a huge role in how genes are expressed. Having a gene that increases the risk for breast cancer doesn’t mean a woman will get breast cancer—and having a gene linked to schizophrenia doesn’t mean you will develop it. “Genes are programs that run every activity of every cell in your body every second you are alive,” says Daniel Weinberger, director of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development at Johns Hopkins University. “If you inherit small glitches, little pieces of noise, this sets you on a path. But it doesn’t determine you will end up with mental illness. These glitches aren’t fate. They are for risk. Environmental factors are at play too.” In other words, nurture still matters. After all, plenty of people carry the same gene variant as Bradley Waldroup, the man who killed his wife’s friend, and they’ll never kill anybody. But courts have proved ready grounds for the genesmade-me-do-it ethical and science debate. Criminal defence cases have cited genetics nearly 80 times in the US between 1994 and 2011. “Attorneys are getting more sophisticated in looking for explanations for behaviour,” says Deborah Denno, director of the Fordham University Neuroscience and Law Centre. In the case of Waldroup, the jury spared him the death penalty and found instead that he should spend his life in prison. The killer-gene defence worked.

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After, when asked if Waldroup’s genetics informed her decision, one juror said, “Oh, I’m sure.” But Denno says the role of gene variants, and links to increased risks of violence, has been misunderstood in the courts and by the media. Behavioural genetics seeks to study genetic as well as environmental sources for clues to behaviour. It is interdisciplinary, incorporating psychology, sociology, statistics, and other fields. “While genes influence behaviour,” Denno has noted, “they do not govern nor determine it.” In fact, environmental factors—as varied as malnutrition, social and economic strife, and poor education—remain some of the strongest predictors of behavioural pathologies in adulthood. Psychologists have long known that childhood abuse alone is a risk factor for violence. Boys exposed to erratic, coercive, and punitive parenting are at risk of developing antisocial personalities and becoming violent offenders, according to a 2002 study in Science. Of course, not all abused boys become violent. The idea that gene variants—like those leading to neural disruption or hyperactivity in the brain—might put them at increased risk for violence is an intriguing one. But it is by no means the sole cause or even a root cause.

One afternoon last northern autumn, the

University of Connecticut Health Centre campus in Farmington stood nearly flooded after a late-season downpour. Julian Ford, a clinical psychologist who specializes in children and adolescents with PTSD, sat in his book-lined fourth-floor office. Ford helped write the official 114-page investigative report on Adam Lanza and the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. After Lanza killed 20 schoolchildren, six staffers, his mother, and himself, the state’s medical examiner sent a piece of his brain to UConn geneticists and asked them to analyse his DNA. It was the first time a mass murderer’s genome had ever been studied. Despite formal requests from Popular Science, neither the medical examiner, UConn, nor its geneticists would release the report’s findings or even discuss what they were looking for. But they most likely searched for gene variants linked to mental illnesses. During his early life, Lanza suffered from insomnia and struggled with speech. Shy, quiet, and a social outsider, he wrote a story for a fifth-grade project called “The Big Book of Granny.” In it, an old woman shoots children and talks about preserving a boy for her mantle. Lanza was eventually diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. While Asperger’s is not associated with violence, it might have masked his violent thoughts and behaviours. On the basis of a recommendation by a psychiatrist, his mother took him out of school to teach

Would genetic testing have stopped killers like (top to bottom): Ted Bundy, Michigan shooting spree suspect Jason Dalton, and Adam Lanza? As of now, no. And researchers doubt it ever could.

him at home. While various people had noted Lanza’s challenges, “What was apparently missed,” says Ford, “was his emotional turmoil.” Adolescence is a vulnerable period, and not just because of mood swings caused by surging hormones. It is a time when mental illness is most likely to manifest. With schizophrenia, for example, symptoms often appear suddenly during this period and in early adulthood. In their landmark study at Harvard this past January, scientists identified a gene potentially responsible for this timing: The natural process of synaptic pruning, during which the brain deletes ineffective connections between neurons, occurs as the brain matures. This takes place in the prefrontal cortex, where thinking and planning are based. People who carry a gene variant that accelerates the pruning have a higher risk of developing schizophrenia. That’s why it’s critical that adolescents get care, says Steven McCarroll, a Harvard geneticist and senior author of the study. “Often when teenagers manifest symptoms, they’re seen by pediatricians without psychiatric specialisation,” he says. One success story he cites is an ongoing Australian mental-health program for adolescents, started in 2006, called headspace, which runs more than 80 clinics in some unusual and convenient places. “Some are in shopping malls,” he says. “They have warm colours and welcoming furniture to avoid a clinical feel. It’d be wonderful to have something like that here.” But what about kids like Adam Lanza who fell through the healthcare-system cracks? Would genetic screening have helped? As of now, no. And researchers are sceptical that it ever could in the future. “We don’t know enough about genetics yet to use genetics as part of diagnosis,” says McCarroll. There are plenty of reservations about what we would look for and what we’d find—worries over privacy and stigmatisation, the question of what to do once you know someone has a genetic risk of violence. But learning about genetic markers, even if it doesn’t entail screening for criminals, still helps us better understand violence and its origins. The more we understand, the more we can do to prevent it. So it’s hard to stop looking for genetic clues. Daniel Weinberger, the Johns Hopkins neuroscientist, has the world’s largest collection of brains from deceased PTSD sufferers. He studies them for molecular clues to mental illness. “For a century, we knew what mental illness looked like, sounded like, what it felt like,” he says. “But we didn’t know the basic underlying cause. Today, thanks to genetics, we’re able to explore things that were science fiction 10 years ago.” But even he worries about what science will find and how society will act on it. After all, he says, “everyone’s genome has a different level of risk for different disorders. Everyone’s got something.”

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Located in California’s Mojave Desert, it’s the largest solar farm in the world—with 8.8 million photovoltaic modules that produce enough clean energy each year to displace about 300,000 tonnes of CO2 that would otherwise be produced by burning coal.

Our quest to turn the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s natural resources into energy for our homes, our economies, and our commutes has left indelible marks on the landscape.

ENERGY FIELDS PHOTOGRAPHY BY SPENCER LOWELL

Some of it is profoundly beautiful, some quite bleak. Nearly all of it is fascinating. From massive solar arrays in the desert to the innards of a hydrodam to the arabesque tyre tracks left in coal ash outside a power plant, our planet is a mosaic of industrial striving. In the following pages, photographer Spencer Lowell oďŹ&#x20AC;ers us a tour of our engines of energy, with new vantages on their epic scale.

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D E WA J E B E L A L I P OW E R P L A N T

The pipes at this power plant in Dubai suck in up to 3.8 billion litres of seawater a day, producing 2,060 megawatts of electricity. The steam generated from turbines creates 530 million litres of drinkable water.

POPUL A R S CI E NCE

K I N G STO N FO SS I L P L A N T

Trucks haul ash slurry to nearby piles outside this coal-burning plant in Harriman, Tennessee. Once the largest such facility in the world, it still burns through about 4.5 million tonnes of coal a year and outputs as much as 10 billion kilowatts, enough for 700,000 homes.

EX P O SU R E

W H I T I N G P E T R O L EU M P L A N T

It isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always easy to liberate crude from the earth. This facility in west Texas uses CO2-enhanced oil-recovery technology, injecting high-pressure CO2 into water underground, which helps lower oilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s viscosity and push it toward production wells.

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EX P O SU R E

PO P U L A R S CI E NCE

TH E N O R R I S DAM

Sluice gates control the ďŹ&#x201A;ow of water inside this 80-year-old hydroelectric dam in north-eastern Tennessee. About 26 storeys high, the dam spans 567 metres across the winding Clinch River and holds back 13,700 hectares of water.

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BY LINDSAY HAN DM E R

The effects of US testi n g i n th e Pa c if ic l i n ger to d ay, i n t he form of ruined atolls and the people who used to live on them

Build Your Own Thermonuclear Deterrent We don’t hide the fact that Australian Popular Science gets 50% of its content from the famous American magazine, established way back in 1872. So we absolutely support an American’s right to defend themselves in any way they see fit, up to and including the construction of a nuclear deterrent to prevent acts of aggression from neighbouring dictatorships. Not for one second would we expect any reader to use the instructions provided in this article to build any sort of first strike weapon. We’re confident that our readership loves democracy and the Second Amendment of the US Constitution in equal measure, and so this is not a weapon of war, but rather an instrument of peace. Okay enough disclaiming, let’s get on with it. Actually building a nuke is both easier and harder than you might think. Even the best-equipped Men’s Shed or makerspace workshop won’t be enough. But the issue is materials rather than methodology. Let’s take a look. THERMONUCLEAR WEAPON 101 A quick definition here. We’re not talking about building the kind of fission bomb used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Because for the average backyard tinkerer with access to weapons-grade plutonium or enriched uranium, building a fissile nuke is “easy”. It’s simply a matter of smacking some radioactive material together hard enough to achieve criticality and a big bomb.

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

But it won’t be the kind of mountain-shattering boom you get from the very pinnacle of nuclear weapons technology - the thermonuclear bomb. This kind of device is so fantastically destructive, it uses the huge amount of energy released from a plain old fission reaction merely as a first stage, on the way to fusing hydrogen. For clarity in the limited space available, and for ease of construction, we have gone with the tried and true Teller-Ulam design, and stuck to just two stages. Keep it simple, we say. Nature itself can produce a pretty neat mushroom cloud, such as during a volcanic eruption...

ADVANCED BUILDERS The largest human-generated explosion was the Russian Tsar Bomba, at 50 megatons. Unlike our build here, it used a three stage Trutnev-Babaev design. It’s a little more complex to build, and it might be worth enlisting the help of some Russian scientists. The Tsar Bomba had a potential yield of up

to 100 megatons, but instead was scaled back to reduce fallout. It actually produced 97% of its energy from fusion, rather than fission, making it relatively ‘clean’, rads-wise, as nuclear explosions go. Practical uses include clearing out very stubborn insect* infestations without losing your security deposit. *Except cockroaches, obviously.

J U N E 2 01 6

IN STR UCTIO N S

TIME 6 months COST $50 million (plus legal costs etc) DIFFICULTY DEFCON 1

M AT E R I A L S 1 F iss ion Bomb (or DIY equivalent) uranium-235: 1 4 0 kg plutonium-239: 1 00 kg Lithium- 6 Deuteride: 1 50 kg Beryllium: 200 kg Steel: 1 0,000 kg Lead: 300 kg High Explosives: 500 kg

TRUE FUSION Despite the many impressive advances in nuclear weapon technology humans have achieved in the decades since 1945, we’re yet to build a “true” fusion bomb that doesn’t first need a fission reaction to start the process. Hypothetical designs exist - including one that could be made for just a few million dollars and create a very manageable yield of just three tonnes of TNT and negligible fallout - but the challenge goes unanswered. In the meantime, the diagram below shows how a traditional thermonuclear device works. Neat, isn’t it?

Step 1: Going Shopping After obtaining a standard fission bomb, make sure to give it a thorough checking over before continuing. For best effect, buy two or three, and test one. Once confident with its explosive potential, skip straight to Step 4: The Second Stage (uh... it makes sense when you read it). If you don’t have the necessary contacts on the nuclear black market, continue on to Step 2. Step 2: DIY Fission There are two main ways to create a critical fission reaction: a “gun” or an implosion assembly. The gun method is simpler, but is less efficient. Start with conventional high yield chemical explosives and shoot a hollow bullet of uranium-235 into another chunk of the material. Make sure the containment system can handle the pressure (try an artillery gun barrel), to ensure the two sections combine into one supercritical mass. A collision speed of around 300m/s a second is ideal to facilitate an explosion. One important note: plutonium is not suitable for use in a gun style fission bomb and the uranium-235 used must be very pure, to avoid stray neutrons causing premature detonations. Step 3: Implosion For those with a little more demolitions experience, the implosion method can give higher yields (using plutonium or uranium), but is more difficult to set up right. Form the plutonium-239 into a sphere, and cover it in lensed high explosive charges. When detonated, the resulting force will compress the plutonium into a supercritical mass, creating a... large explosion. If unsure if the DIY fusion device is working correctly, don’t hesitate to test it in a protected wilderness zone (to avoid human casualities).

A: Implosion Fission Primary Stage B: Fusion Secondary Stage 1: High explosives 2: Uranium 3 : Vacuum layer 4: Plutonium core 5: Hard foam suppor t 6: Uranium tamper 7: Lithium fusion fuel 8: Plutonium core 9: Steel outer casing

Step 4: The Second Stage In this case, we will be using lithium-6 deuteride as our fusion fuel of choice, as it’s simpler than other options such as cryogenic hydrogen gas. At the centre of the second stage is a long hollow rod of either uranium or plutonium, surrounded by a larger cylinder of lithium. The entire stage is then sealed in a uranium tamper. Pressure and radiation from the exploding primary stage of the weapon causes the

uranium and plutonium to undergo fission, releasing further energy and neutrons. This causes the lithium-6 deuteride to produce tritium (a hydrogen isotope), which then undergoes fusion with the deuterium present. The result is an... extremely large explosion. Step 5: The Interstage The tricky part of a building a thermonuclear explosive is channelling enough of the first stage energy into the second stage to cause fusion. It can’t be allowed to heat too fast, or it might explode without fusion - only fission. If it absorbs energy too slowly, the device can blow itself apart without properly exploding, and fizzle. The exact arrangement of materials is classified, so some experimentation will be needed - but that’s what the maker movement is all about, right? To get started building the interstage, you need a steel outer shell, with hard foam to support the primary and secondary stages. Beryllium can be used to moderate neutron flux, to again avoid premature detonation. Other elements, such as a neutron focus lens are also useful to control the final yield. Step 6: Testing and Upgrades Look for an uninhabited island to test the fusion bomb, or perhaps invest in a space program for orbital explosions. If you want an extra challenge, there are a number of bomb upgrades that could be useful. Seeding the primary stage fission device with tritium can release extra neutrons during the explosion, improving yield. This is called a boosted fission bomb. While fusion does play a role in the explosion, a large amount of the energy released is actually from fission in the second stage materials. More fissionable materials will create extra fallout, which can be useful for irradiating a large area. Alternatively, replace the outer layer of uranium in the secondary stage of the bomb with a material such as lead, to reduce the amount of fission (and overall yield), but create significantly less fallout. Another option is a neutron bomb, which kills people but leaves valuable infrastructure intact. The trick here is to reduce the shielding on the bomb, to allow more of the neutrons out, while minimising the explosive yield.

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

Manual Meet a Maker

Real Man of Steel realistic,” he says. He thought he could make a simpler version that actually worked in real life. Hobson started by attaching some leftover pneumatic cylinders to a brace made of perforated tubing. The resulting upper-body exoskeleton allowed him to curl 125 kilos with relative ease. “But my back was still taking most of the load,” he says, “so we wanted to start from the ground up.” That meant building legs to match. Hobson designed the pneumatic legs with a stronger steel frame, and in January, he used them to lift the back end of a Mini Cooper—approximately

THESE LEGS WERE MADE FOR LIFTING Hobson built his exoskeleton’s legs from lengths of steel, anchored in steel-sole boots, and pneumatic cylinders that stretch from the foot mounts to a hip mount. External loads can be hitched to this steel mount, which connects to a work belt worn at the waist, and holds an air compressor and battery pack. Air flows from the compressor to the pneumatic cylinders via supply lines, elongating the leg pieces and lifting the weight. Eventually, Hobson plans to attach the upper body to the legs, and lift things with the arms as well. Learn more on his YouTube channel, the Hacksmith.

363 kilograms

POPUL A R S CI E NCE

363 kilos. In February, he lifted an estimated 680 kg, raising a pickup truck by its hitch. Hobson quit his job this past November to focus full time on side projects like his exoskeleton work. Now he and his friends are designing a new upper-body exoskeleton to attach to the superstrong legs. Eventually, they hope their designs will be used to help people who are disabled. Strong and lightweight exoskeletons could also do the heavy lifting for firefighters, search-and-rescue operators, and industrial workers. by SA R A H F EC H T

C O U RT ESY JA MES H O B SO N/ H AC KS M IT H YO U TU B E/ I L LU ST RAT IO N BY C H R I S PHI L POT

Until recently, James Hobson spent his days designing products for a digital-projector company. But at night, he pursued a very particular dream: to build exoskeletons that give him superhuman strength. Hobson, a 26-year-old Canadian engineer, got the idea to build an exoskeleton after watching the movie Elysium. “It was the first time I saw an exoskeleton that was depicted in a way that was somewhat

J UNE 2 0 1 6

Manual Toolbox

Your Drill Is Calling Power tools are designed for professional users and typical applications. Deviate from the norm, as makers and DIYers often do, and you no longer have the best tool for the job. For power-tool users who crave ﬂexibility, Milwaukee’s new One-Key line can connect to a smartphone via Bluetooth, allowing users to adjust their tool settings (and keep an inventory of their tools) through an app. The initial One-Key launch includes a cordless drill, hammer drill, impact driver, and two impact wrench sizes. Users can modify nearly every aspect of their drills and drivers. In addition to setting the desired torque ceiling and speed range, advanced options let anyone tinker with variables such as trigger rampup time and the duration and brightness of your work light. Once you’ve chosen your custom settings, you can save

Users of the Milwaukee One -Key hammer dr ill can customise its settings through a smar tp hone app.

PHOTO G RA P H BY

Jonathon Kambouris

by STUART D EU TS C H

them as one of four “profiles.” Or you can pick an existing preset profile, tailored to a specific application. Milwaukee One-Key won’t be right for everyone. Custom tool settings will be most beneficial to those who work on many different types of projects and want repeatable performance and optimal results for each one—without having to master the feel of new drill-bit and fastener styles every time. For these makers, One-Key could be a real game-changer.

STUART’S DRILL TEST When I work with wood, plastic, metal, and other materials, it can be difficult to keep track of the best speeds for different sizes and styles of drill bits. If I’m drilling a 3/8-inch hole into acrylic, for example, I first look up the recommended speed. Then I pick a speed range, and zero in

on the ideal trigger pressure by trial and error. But when I reached for a One-Key drill, I simply set the desired speed range and trigger ramp-up, and got to work. When I moved on to drilling aluminium, I didn’t have to look up the settings again. I just switched to another preset mode.

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JU N E 201 6

Manual Enviable Project

Set Your Filter to Infra-RAD

Most photographers rely on the light that humans can see, known as the visible spectrum. But photojournalist Steven Saphore thinks they could do a lot more with the light our eyes can’t detect. By hacking cameras, he says, photographers can take pictures in the infrared spectrum—just as he does in his World in Infrared project. While we can’t see infrared light, we experience it all the time in the form of heat, which almost every object on Earth emits. Dark objects tend to radiate more heat than pale ones because they can absorb more light energy. This makes them appear brighter in infrared. In that way, Saphore’s photography flips expectations: Leaves on a tree, for example, might look muted and dark in visible light, but through his lens, they become

by C L A I R E M A L DA R EL L I

glowing and vibrant. “It’s mentally challenging because you are forced to see beyond your perception,” says Saphore. “You can’t detect infrared with your own senses, but you have a tool in front of you that can.” Saphore’s favourite demonstration is to create infrared images of people with varying skin tones. In the presence of infrared light, the pigment melanin is more transparent. “Differences in skin tone are less obvious,” says Saphore. “It’s hard to make a snap decision based on what you see.”

HOW TO HACK YOUR CAMERA Infrared cameras are often expensive and specialised. But with a few tweaks, any camera, from a point-andshoot to a DSLR, can snap infrared images. All cameras can capture infrared light, but a filter allows only visible light through. To photograph both, first open up the camera so you can see the lens and the glass filter over it. Carefully remove that filter. (Note: This might permanently void your camera warranty.) To give your images a more washed-out look, you can add a relatively inexpensive (ranging from $50 to $100 and up) filter that will block visible light, leaving only infrared. Saphore snapped this photograph in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2014, with a camera that captures only infrared light.

POPSCI . CO M

P HOTOGR A P H BY

Steven Saphore

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Manual Biohacks

PAINTING WITH BACTERIA

SARAH BE RMAN

by ST EP H YIN

Medical illustrator Sarah Berman was in a bio-art class at Parsons School of Design in New York when she learned about fluorescent proteins. When genetically modified to produce them, bacteria glow various colours under ultraviolet light. Inspired, Berman decided to cultivate her own bacteria—and use them to make art. “As an artist, I enjoy producing work that makes people want to learn more about something they weren’t interested in before,” she says. Berman created her “paint” at Genspace, a community biolab in Brooklyn, by injecting DNA that codes for fluorescent proteins into a nonpathogenic strain of E. coli. She found that by mixing her

genetically modiﬁed bacteria, she could produce diﬀerent hues. After four months of daily experimentation, Berman chose a palette that included green, red, yellow, and cyan. She smeared the bacteria onto large plastic sheets to create images of the

human endocrine system, which she displayed at her senior thesis show in May 2015. But unlike real paint, Berman’s bacteria begin to die once they leave the petri dish—now, her art has become entirely invisible.

B e r m a n pa i nted t h e human brain’s pineal and pituitary glands using red- and cyanproducing bacteria o n a po lys ty re n e s h e e t .

TO O LS + M AT E R I A LS

Pipe Up the Volume

• 10-inch-by-2-inch PVC pipe • Miter saw • Dremel or milling machine • Drill

• 1½-inch-long, ¼-inch-diameter s e l f- t h read i n g screw • Sp ray paint ( o p t io n al )

P H OTO G R AP H BY J O NATH O N K AM B O UR I S

I N ST R U CT I O N S

by JERE MY S. COOK

Your smartphone crushes it when ordering pizza, snapping photos, or displaying YouTube videos. But playing the audio that goes with those videos? Not so much. You could overcome the problem with a pricy speaker or some headphones—but that’s the boring route. Instead, use a PVC pipe or a sturdy cardboard tube to make a simple passive amplifier.

TIME 1 hour COST $10 DIFFICULTY •

••••

1 Cut the PVC pipe at 45 degrees on both ends. It should be symmetrical, with the shortest part about 8 inches long. 2 Rotate the tube so the shortest side faces you. Along the top center of the pipe, use the Dremel to make a slot that’s slightly wider and thicker than your phone in its case. 3 To prevent rolling, drill a pilot hole for the

screw in the center of the pipe’s longest side, at a 90-degree angle to the phone’s position. 4 Secure the screw in the hole. 5 Optionally, decorate the amplifier with spray paint. Once it dries, put on some tunes and insert your phone speaker-first. If you have an iPhone with speakers in the bottom, prop it up with a spacer.

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

Archives September 1945

Is This the Most Naive Editorial We Ever Published? by ANTHONY FORDHAM

While researching our cover feature this month, it occurred to me to consult the Popular Science archive for the magazine’s response to the world’s only state-sanctioned nuclear attacks: the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on, respectively, the 6th and 9th of August 1945. Today, it’s hard to imagine what trying to meaningfully respond to this event would have been like for the editors of Popular Science Monthly (as it was known back then). In 2016’s world of hyper-coverage, we would have first heard about the attack from an “embedded journalist” on Twitter, moments after it occurred (followed by thousands of tweets from ordinary people at ground zero), then read poorly-considered in-possessionof-half-the-facts accounts of it on every news website a hundred times, before the survivors in Hiroshima sat down to that first miserable dinner after the early-morning air raid. But at the time, even the Japanese government itself didn’t get confirmation of the unique nature of the bombing until US President Harry Truman announced it, sixteen hours after the detonation. Popular Science, a mere magazine, of course could not report on what it called the “annihilation bomb” in the August 1945 edition that issue had been sent to the printers in July (or possibly even late June, since this was wartime). But the editors were able to include this statement (see panel) in the September 1945 issue. Today, it seems laughably naive, maybe even borderline offensive. Of course, they had to write it in a fog of almost perfect ignorance. There would have been

Despite the editorial on atomic weapons, the publishers still went with an Invasion Japan themed cover. Still, it’s an improvement on the August 1945 cover which, even as Hiroshima was being destroyed in nuclear ﬁre, simply asked:

J U N E 2 01 6

Annihilation Bomb - Friend or Foe? A Statement by the Editors of Popular Science Monthly

[NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: We’ve snipped some of the more rambling paragraphs about White Dwarf (sic) stars and fertiliser explosions in pre-war Germany in order to... uh... focus more clearly on the central message. Certain passages are highlighted so you can shake your head and make tut-tut noises.] ...On August 6, 1945, an atomic explosion occurred within an annihilation bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Popular Science Monthly has looked forward to such a scientific triumph for many years; its editors are confident now that this discovery will create many more opportunities - not only for warriors, but also for physicists, chemists, astronomers, engineers, and all other men interested in the physical sciences. Dr. Albert Einstein suggested many years ago that “E equals M times C squared.” By this he meant that the energy in a unit of mass could be computed by multiplying the mass by the velocity of light squared. Such computations spurred scientists throughout the world to find a way to release the atom’s tremendous energy. A way has now been found. Even the biggest and the mightiest bombs developed previously could only hurl about familiar kinds of matter; the new atomic bomb is capable of changing minute quantities of matter into more concentrated energy than can be obtained by any of the world’s mightiest machines... We all know the Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, but it also provided weather recon for the Kokura attack - which was diverted to Nagasaki, ironically due to smoke from conventional f ire bombing.

no press release, no detailed government brieﬁng. Just newspaper reports and Truman’s own statement. They didn’t even know for sure (though as you will read, they did correctly guess) that the bomb used uranium-238 as the ﬁssile material. They did their best with limited information, but comments about how

...”No one knows how to halt disintegrations of matter,” Dr. Jean Thibaud of the University of Paris said only four years ago - but the world did not disintegrate when the atomic bomb burst on Hiroshima. Hence, it is clear that ways have been found to release predetermined amounts of atomic energy. Conceivably, the subjection of some materials to an intensely hot atomic explosion may make them radioactive. How long this radioactivity continues depends on the nature of the material and the force to which it is subjected. Radiations are known to affect living matter. Radium and X rays, for example, have been used in treating cancer. Hence, some of the biophysical effects of atomic explosions may be beneficial. But others may be gruesome. Persons far enough from an atomic explosion to escape instant death may be fatally injured internally; rescue workers hastening to the scene may also be injured, unless ways are found to decontaminate such areas. Popular Science Monthly’s editors are confident, nevertheless, that scientists can learn to control this new source of power as they have controlled fire and electricity. “We have been able to harness this tremendous energy in a small bomb,” says Sir John Anderson, who supervised British atomic-bomb research as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Churchill. “That is for war. The first thing now is for the scientists to discover how it can be harnessed for the beneficial purposes of peace. That will be a long job.” As recently as June 1940, authorities estimated that it would take 191 years to make a single gram of concentrated uranium 238, the source of energy reported to have been used in the production of the annihilation bomb. How much has been produced is still a top secret, but this can be said: Much more than 191 years’ work has been done in five years. The combined efforts of the leaders in many scientific fields, from many nations, and facilities of many great American industries have made the employment of atomic energy to shorten this war possible. Those same efforts and facilities can contribute much more to the world. “A door has been opened in the world of science, and what may be on the other side is still to be seen,” says Sir John Anderson. Popular Science Monthly hopes to describe that scene to its readers as rapidly as developments make this possible. Its editors hope, too, that readers of this magazine will be stimulated to contribute to the new era of science that dawned on August 6, 1945. By splitting the atom, man may have united the world.

the radiation might be “beneﬁcial” seem hilariously optimistic, but the paragraphs musing over how “by splitting the atom, man may have united the world” come across as almost tragically mistaken. Today, we know that no nuclear war ever took place. But that was far from certain in the decades following those ﬁrst (and

thankfully still only) nuclear attacks. Because unbeknownst to the editors of Popular Science and the world at large, 6th August 1945 began not a new era of peace, but a terrifying chapter in human history: the mad race for nuclear armament, the tenets of Mutally Assured Destruction, and the long diplomatic nightmare of the Cold War.

P OP S C I . C O M. AU

Ask Us Anything AN SWERS BY

Jack Kulyk

Q: ARE THE EFFECTS OF RADIATION (AFTER AN ATOMIC EXPLOSION, NUCLEAR ACCIDENT ETC) EXAGGERATED? Short answer No, but it’s complicated.

At any dinner party, if the subject of Hiroshima or Chernobyl or, these days, Fukushima comes up, there’ll almost invariably be present one of those people who insists the “after effects” of radiation aren’t that bad. “Actually Chernobyl killed very few people,” they’ll say. “Hiroshima is a thriving city,” they’ll say. “Fukushima only killed people in fires and explosions, not from radiation or fallout or anything.” Um... no. While it’s true that Hiroshima is indeed a thriving city today, the “dose” of radiation it received as a result of Little Boy detonating 580 metres above the city was - not to diminish the terrible effects of the bomb itself - pretty small. That bomb had Chernobyl’s reactor is still so toxic and radioactive, a gigantic cement sarcophagus is being constructed to seal it off. It has to last for centuries.

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

just 64 kg of uranium-235 in it. Chernobyl’s core had 3600 kg. Both the Fukushima and Chernobyl meltdowns are classified as “level 7” the maximum - and they pumped truly enormous amounts of radiation into the surrounding environment. Chernobyl is the best studied. The accident killed 31 people directly and the area around Pripyat was evacuated. Without that evacuation, thousands would have died from radiation poisoning. As it is, studies of how these survivors have gone on to develop unusual rates of cancer, or had children with unusually high rates of birth defects, remain inconclusive. This is mostly because they rely on statistics, and statistics can be bent pretty much however you want. It doesn’t help that nature appears to have rebounded in the Chernobyl region. Without humans in the exclusion zone, life has flourished... or so it seems. Yes, plants and animals “live” among the ruins

of Pripyat, but it’s hardly a normal life. Mutations are common. Reproductive rates are very low. Larger animals like wolves are observed going into the zone... but rarely observed coming out again. As for Hiroshima, it all depends what you’re looking for. Widespread death, sterility, mutation and worse? Not so much. About 1900 cancer deaths directly attributable to the bombing and a higher than usual incidence of stillbirth and infant mortality for years afterwards? Yes. The point of all this is that, compared to what we could unleash with our reactors and nukes, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings involved very low amounts of radiation and the effects are still observable 70 years later. Chernobyl and Fukushima are just two power plants whose grim legacies will last for centuries. There are 444 still operating around the world. Radiation kills people and ruins everything. Don’t let a smug neocon tell you otherwise.

J U N E 2 01 6

Have a burning question? Email it to letters@popsci.com.au

Q: IS BUYING AN ELECTRIC CAR IN AUSTRALIA POINTLESS, BECAUSE ALL OUR ELECTRICITY IS COAL-FIRED? Short answer No. There’s more to pollution than CO2. T h i s ca r i s fa st a n d co o l and carries four adults in comfor t. So why are so many people so keen to say it sucks?

When a car company releases a new model with a smaller engine that puts out more power, car enthusiasts say “cool”. When a car company puts out a car that uses no petrol at all and accelerates faster than almost anything below a Porsche 911 Turbo, they start looking for ways that car is bad. One of the biggest arguments “against” electric cars in Australia is that the electricity used to charge up their batteries comes from coal-fired power stations, thus making your shiny new Tesla Model S P90D “just as polluting” as a six-litre V8 Commodore. It isn’t. It just isn’t. For a start, if you bother figuring out how many kilograms of CO2 are generated to make 90kWh of electricity, you’ll find it’s less than the equivalent amount of energy used by the

Holden to travel the same distance at the same speed. And that’s before you get into whether the power station was going to generate than juice anyway (unused electricity is simply wasted otherwise) versus the petrol only being burned if someone actually buys it. Yes, there are petrol cars that have a lower total resource footprint than a Model S, but if you’re basing your argument on the fact the Tesla needs more energy than a Ford Fiesta to build, well you’re not really comparing apples with apples, are you? We won’t even mention people who have solar panels, because no matter where the juice comes from, the fact is that the Tesla does not create any local pollution. When you sit in your P90D with the aircon running waiting for your kids to get out of

school, you have precisely zero effect on the atmosphere in your immediate area (okay, except for a little heat). And let’s not forget that CO2 isn’t the only pollutant in ICE exhaust. The Commodore and Fiesta alike also put out carbon-monoxide, various hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, and a little soot too, just to mess up the grass on the median strip. You can see how cars are bad for your neighbourhood. Plants on the verge will struggle in the high-pollutant environment. The air stinks. The gutters are dirty. And so it goes. There aren’t many EV owners who strut about claiming their cars are 100% zero emission and have no negative effect on the environment. But suggesting that an electric car has no benefit or is somehow worse is just stupid.

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The First Nuclear Reactor As early as 1942, boffins at the University of Chicago in the US built the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first atomic pile, a sort of primitive reactor, as an important part of the Manhattan Project. Their research led not just to atomic weapons, but also nuclear power plants. Chicago Pile-1 The first nuclear reactor was designed and built by a team of scientists, including Enrico Fermi (often called the architect of the nuclear age) and Leo Silar, who first conceived the idea of the nuclear reaction in 1933. The team believed that creating a nuclear explosion (and harnessing it as a useful weapon) would require vast quantities of radioactive materials, so felt safe generating power and performing experiments with a small reactor. Chicago Pile-1 was built of 45,000 graphite blocks, which weighed 360 tons. Half the blocks had holes drilled in them, and contained small pieces of uranium and uranium oxide fuel, totalling 5.4 and 45 tons respectively. The reactor also had cadmium sheets nailed to wooden strips, which were used as control rods. It was primitive stuff, but it worked. More or less.

In Operation Uranium naturally releases neutrons as it decays. These mostly escape the material, or are absorbed by the cadmium control rods. Some neutrons hit other uranium atoms, stimulating more decay, and releasing further neutrons. When uranium just sits on a bench, not enough neutrons are released to maintain a higher-than-normal level of decay. Graphite blocks in the pile act as a neutron moderator, slowing down the released neutrons, and making it easier for them to by hit uranium atoms, and release LINDSAY more neutrons. So it goes. H A NDME R

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Amazing to think all the woes of the modern world were, in some ways, born inside this unassuming structure made of graphite blocks.

CHICAGO PILE-1 SPECS Maximum Power Output: 200W Typical Power Output: 0.5W Air Cooled 45,000 Graphite Blocks 19,000 Uranium Pellets Cadmium Control Rods

Then Retro Invention

THE DEMON CORE This excitingly-named object was a 6.2 kg sphere of plutonium used for a series of, it turned out, very dangerous experiments. This chunk of highly radioactive material was formed into two half spheres, and sat just 5% below the point of criticality. In other words, it was just a bit too small to start heating up and spewing ionising radiation its own. That didn’t stop it being involved in not one, but two small super-criticality events, killing two scientists and so justifiably earning its name. The first incident occurred on the 21st August 1945, when scientist Harry K Daghlian Jr. dropped a neutron-reflecting brick onto the core, which caused it to briefly go critical before the brick could be removed. Daghlian received a lethal dose of radiation, and died 25 days later. Private Robert J. Hemmerly, who was working as a security guard at a desk about 10 metre away at the time, died of leukaemia 33 years later. The second incident occurred during another neutron reflector test, where an “unapproved protocol” involved using a screwdriver to keep the two halves of the Demon Core apart. Physicist Louis Slotin, despite warnings from Enrico Fermi, performed this test several times until, one day, the screwdriver slipped, the halves came in contact and Slotin received a lethal dose of radiation - even though it only took him a fraction of a second to flip the top half of the Core onto the floor. He died nine days later.

Graphite blocks as neutron moderators, bits of uranium as fuel, cadmiun nailed to planks as control rods. Makerspace extreme.

In CP-1, the cadmium control rods absorbed enough neutrons so the reaction was still not self-sustaining. During testing, as the control rods were slowly withdrawn, the level of free neutrons rose, until the reaction could go critical. Lowering the control rod damps the reaction, stopping the reactor. It’s how a modern reactor works too - it’s just that these days we user fancier materials and have much finer control of the process. The first time Chicago Pile-1 went critical, it was run for 4.5 minutes, and generated 0.5 watts. Later tests increased the power to around 200 watts, but since the reactor had no shielding, too much radiation was released for it to be safe to do sustained testing at this level. Due to the low power output, the reactor didn’t need any cooling - though there was a scientist standing by with a bucket of Cadmium Nitride (a neutron absorber) to throw on the pile as an emergency shutdown. Sophisticated stuff! The pile was eventually dismantled, and rebuilt in a new location as CP-2. The new version had some radiation shielding, and could run at a power level of a few kilowatts. Later on in 1944, CP-3 was built, which incorporated water cooling. The two piles were run for around 10 years, performing experiments, helping develop nuclear weapons, and studying the neutron-absorbing properties of different materials.

A NATURAL NUCLEAR REACTOR? While Chicago Pile-1 was the first man-made nuclear reactor, it may not have been the first on Earth. It turns out that it’s possible for a sustained reaction to occur naturally, if all the conditions are just right. The only place where there’s evidence suggesting this has happened is in Oklo, Gabon, in Africa - around 1.7 billion years ago. While the exact nature of the site is still debated, if it was a natural reactor, it formed when water made its way into an underground deposit of uranium, acting as a neutron moderator. The slowed neutrons increased the rate of nuclear decay above the critical, self-sustaining point, and a reactor was born. As hundreds of degrees of heat was generated from the process, the water was boiled away, and without a neutron moderator, the reaction slowed. Then the uranium cooled, water flowed back in, and the process started again, in a t hour cycle. The reactor may have kept running in this way for hundreds of thou of years, until eventually there was not enough radioactive material left to su Nearly two billion years later, all naturally occurring uranium-235 has dec point where a natural reactor could not start itself up. The main evidence sup existence of the ancient reactor is the unexpectedly low levels of uranium-235 ore mined at the site. Of course, we’d rather believe it was aliens.

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Labrats

STO RY BY

Subject Zero

Drone Pilot Genetic Aptitude Test After all, it is not the drone, but he who ﬂies it As usual I’m in the middle of an argument about the point of a drug test. Specifically, whether I should have to take one if the results - as the person I’m arguing with assures me don’t even matter. “It’s to establish a baseline,” says drone pilot trainer Bernoulli StahlWorning. “And call me Bern.” “What I don’t understand, Bern,” I repeat, still refusing to take the little specimen cup from his slightly clammy-looking hand, “is how whatever chemicals I may or may not have in my system at the moment could possibly affect what you say is going to be a genetic profile.” Stahl-Worning rubs his temple with his other hand. “Look,” he says. “This whole thing is just to test the gene sequencer. You’re not actually going to be a drone pilot, I just need you to wee into this cup.” I shake my head again. “And I’m telling you, I don’t provide biological samples unless they’re relevant. And in this case they aren’t relevant.” Stahl-Worning looks at me and chews on his moustache. He sighs. “Okay, I get it,” he says. “You’re a businessman. What do I need to do to get you to give me a urine sample?” I hold up my hand and rub my thumb against my forefinger. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll pay you an extra five bucks.” “A pleasure doing business!” I say brightly, grab the specimen cup, shove him out of the bathroom stall, close and lock the door, and TCB. Afterwards, I find him standing in the abandoned warehouse proper, with the rest of the candidates. Twitching Simon twitches. The Mistake scowls. Atalanta looks bored, but she always looks

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bored when I’m around. Courtship behaviour. Or so I keep telling myself. I hand the cup to Stahl-Worning, he flips off the lid, and pours the contents into some kind of portable drug testing machine he has set up on a trestle-table. After a second or two a light turns red and the machine beeps. Rather histrionically if you ask me. “Oh God,” says Atalanta, and continues to refuse to look at me. Stahl-Worning pushes buttons and consults the LCD display. “Morphine?” he says, puzzled. “That’s... that’s quite a high morphine level. How are you still awake?” “Tolerance,” I say. “And anyway it’s actually codeine. The body just metabolises it into morphine.” “I know that,” snaps Stahl-Worning. He retrieves my, uh, sample from the drug testing machine’s overflow tank and pours it instead into a MinION DNA sequencer. All of this stuff looks incredibly expensive. “Right,” he says. “While that sample is percolating through the nanopores, let’s talk about what we’re doing here. We’re testing each of you on your genetic predisposition to being a good drone pilot.” I glance at Atalanta but she’s staring at the floor, so I glance at The Mistake but he’s staring at the ceiling so I glance at Twitching Simon but he twitches so I can’t be sure if he’s even paying attention. “I already have some results here from those of you who were less,” Stahl-Worning blinks, “precious about biological samples.” He points at Atalanta. “You would make a good pilot.” He points at The Mistake. “You would be okay.” He points at Twitching Simon. “You would not be good at all.” Twitching Simon twitches and The

Mistake says, “You needed a genetic test to figure that one out, did you?” Stahl-Worning looks at him coldly. “There is such a thing as direct neural interfacing, you know,” he says. “The issue with Mr... uh... Simon? Anyway, the issue with him, you, sorry, uh... yes, the issue is that he lacks the cold callous killer’s disposition to pull the Hellfire trigger over and over and over.” Twitching Simon lets out a sort of choked sob. And twitches, obviously. “See?” says Stahl-Worning. “Now you my dear,” he beams at Atalanta, “have absolutely no sense of empathy at all. There’s a gene for empathy, you know, and you don’t have it. Total atrophy. Amazing. You could kill thousands of people and suffer no ill-effects whatsoever.” Atalanta fixes Stahl-Worning with the coldest of her cold stares. He beams. “Exactly!” he says. He tosses $125 cash at her and then turns back to the MinION sequencer. It buzzes and rattles, rattles and buzzes. Then rattles again. “Weird,” says Stahl-Worning. “It shouldn’t be able to make a noise like that. That’s not how it works at all. I wonder...” The MinION sparks, and thin curl of black smoke winds its way out of the sample tray. “What the hell?” splutters Stahl-Worning. “Yeah,” I say. “My DNA does that sometimes. Probably from the simian rage virus or the nuclear testing. I did a lot of nuclear testing, you know, in the Rudd-Gillard years.” Just then my agent [C]Kurt Blockade smashes through the upper windows of the warehouse on the end of a zipline. “Found you!” he screams as he rappels to the floor. “Stop what you’re doing immediately! No experimentation without representation!” I raise my finger and open my mouth to retort, but the MinION gene sequencer bursts into flames. “Oh man,” says Stahl-Worning. “The CIA is going break my knees. Again.”

NEXT ISSUE! Issue #92, July 2016 On sale 30th June 2016 ORION: INSIDE NASA’S MEGABUDGET CREWED MISSION TO MARS // Suspended animation // UBER FOR BLOOD? // Olympic tech // MAKING DRUGS IN SPACE // Disaster theme park + MORE!

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