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 ISSUE #113, APRIL 2018

EDITORIAL
Editor Anthony Fordham afordham@nextmedia.com.au

DESIGN
Group Art Director Malcolm Campbell
Art Director Danny McGonigle
Emergent Necessity
ADVERTISING
Advertising Sales
Lewis Preece lpreece@nextmedia.com.au
What will the development of quantum computers mean for
Advertising Traffic
our civilisation? Oh sure, better cryptography, “more powerful”
Diane Preece dpreece@nextmedia.com.au processing, but bottom line, we just don’t know... yet.
Division General Manager
Jim Preece jpreece@nextmedia.com.au
This phenomenon isn’t unique to little video in your browser, today
Production Manager Peter Ryman
quantum computing, of course. It’s Netlix can serve you a TV show in 4K,
Circulation Director Carole Jones something we see time and again with as long as you have 25Mbps connection.
US EDITION all new world-changing technology. Which millions of people now have
Editor in Chief Joe Brown
Articles Editor Kevin Gray
In some ways, it’s how we can deine a (though statistically, as an Australian,
Managing Editor Jill C. Shomer technology as world-changing: everyone you probably don’t, sorry).
Senior Editor Sophie Bushwick
Technology Editor Xavier Harding agrees it’s going to be hugely important, More or less the same thing happened
ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY but nobody can predict exactly what all over again for mobile phones.
Acting Design Director Chris Mueller
Photo Director Thomas Payne
impact it will have. Who carries a phone everywhere it’s
Digital Associate Art Director Michael Moreno The internet remains the classic ridiculous! Then smartphones - who
Associate Art Director Russ Smith
Acting Production Manager Paul Catalano example. Although invented in the is does email web on a tiny screen like
POPSCI.COM 1960s, even by the late 1990s, the that, it’s ridiculous!
Online Director Carl Franzen
internet was still being dismissed as Quantum computing isn’t a consumer
BONNIER’S TECHNOLOGY GROUP a fad. Most commentators thought it technology, of course. It’s a much
Group Editorial Director Anthony Licata
Group Publisher Gregory D Gatto nothing more than a curiosity. bigger deal than that. Quantum
BONNIER There’s a famous 1999 interview computing is more like the invention
Chairman Tomas Franzen between David Bowie and BBC of the transistor. Sure, most people
Chief Executive Officer Eric Zinczenko
Chief Content Officer David Ritchie journalist Jeremy Paxman. In it, have heard of it, but few understand it.
Chief Operating Officer Lisa Earlywine
Senior Vice President, Digital Bruno Sousa Bowie predicts that the internet will Heck, we don’t even really understand
Vice President, Consumer Marketing John Reese
change the nature of music, and it. But we’re reasonably comfortable
erode the “barriers between creator that when a lab has that many scanning
and audience”. The longer he spoke, electron microscopes, it must be doing
the more Paxman spluttered with something important, right?
Chief Executive Officer David Gardiner
indignation that Bowie could possibly Quantum computing is still at
Commercial Director Bruce Duncan believe this about the internet. the stage of “hit it with a hammer
Popular Science is published 12 times a year by To be fair to Paxman, in 1999, until it works”. Sure the hammer
nextmedia Pty Ltd ACN: 128 805 970
Building A, 207 Pacific Highway internet at home meant accessing it is microscopic, and also a laser or
St Leonards, NSW 2065 over a dial-up modem. Concepts like magnetic ield of some kind, but the
Under license from Bonnier International Magazines. © 2014 Bonnier YouTube, Facebook, Netlix and more point is we’re going through the process
Corporation and nextmedia Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in
whole or part without written permission is prohibited. Popular Science is simply could not work over such limited of turning the idea into reality.
a trademark of Bonnier Corporation and is used under limited license.
The Australian edition contains material originally published in the US
bandwidth. But the few people whose Sooner than you think, though,
edition reprinted with permission of Bonnier Corporation. Articles express predictions were at least a little close qubit-based computers are going to
the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Publisher,
Editor or nextmedia Pty Ltd. ISSN 1835-9876. to reality, all assumed that bandwidth get applied to stuf. What stuf? Like
Privacy Notice
would increase and that streaming always, it will be super secret stuf irst.
We value the integrity of your personal information. If you provide personal music and video would be possible soon Then it will ilter down to the rest of us.
information through your participation in any competitions, surveys or offers
featured in this issue of Popular Science, this will be used to provide the enough. They were laughed at. And then the world will shift again
products or services that you have requested and to improve the content of
our magazines. Your details may be provided to third parties who assist us Oddly enough, as the dot-com boom and I’ll be writing an editorial about
in this purpose. In the event of organisations providing prizes or offers to our
readers, we may pass your details on to them. From time to time, we may
intensiied, many lipped from doubters “remember when nobody realised the
use the information you provide us to inform you of other products, services to hopeless optimists, and lost serious impact quantum computing was going
and events our company has to offer. We may also give your information to
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www.popsci.com.au the 21st century: critical mass. work behind the scenes.
To subscribe, call 1300 361 146
or visit www.mymagazines.com.au
Bandwidth increased massively, then ANTHONY FORDHAM
exponentially. Forget showing a nice afordham@nextmedia.com.au

P O P S C I .CO M . AU 3
 APRIL 2018

Contents For daily updates: www.popsci.com.au

36
Once it was a fringe theory. Then
The Quest for the world started to take notice.
We’ve been anticipating the first
a Quantum quantum computer for years
now. Scientists and engineers are
Computer getting closer by the day.

04 POPULAR SCIENCE
08

Update
Events of Interest

08 Bitcoin struck by lightning

10 Self-driving car kills pedestrian
12 Lasers turn light into matter
18 State of the Art
Your guide to everything

14 Optane: Intel’s big bet

18 Smarten up your home
20 Puzzles to melt your brain
23 A robot to ask: why am I?

Insight
26 Important stuff for futurists

25 How flu kills

62 30 Why kids are smarter than you
think, and why that’s good for AI

Features
Read, think, read some more

36 Historical IQ tests were... hard

46 Quantum computing

Charted
Data in digestible form

58 How much data is there?

59 Worst recipe ever
60 Monkeys writing Shakespeare
61 How weak is your password?
62 Head trip!

How 2.0
Made for you, by you

68 You Built a tiny gaming PC?

72 Tales from the field

The Other Stuf

Bonus Extra Material!

03 Our Editor Rants

74 From the Archives
78 Retro Invention
80 Lab Rats!
82 Next Issue

P O P S C I .CO M . AU 05
The Business World
is Shifting to
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Epson’s NEW
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*Based on Epson WorkForce Enterprise WF-C20590 max power consumption of 320W, and comparable speed model Fuji
Xerox Color 1000i Press max power consumption of 7600W, based on manufacturers own specifications.
 UPDATE

Bitcoin Struck
By Lightning
So-called “second layer” tech aims to solve cryptocurrency’s
biggest challenge - scaling

All the science and
tech news that’s worth
reallocating to your
forebrain or whatever.
Compiled by Anthony Fordham
and Staff Writers.
W
hen Bitcoin soared to US$19,783
on 17th December 2017, not
all holders of the world’s most
prominent cryptocurrency were celebrating.
That’s because the cost to send Bitcoin
between users sky-rocketed along with the
spot price. Worse, because so many people
wanted a piece of that sweet crypto action,
the network became congested, creating a
perfect storm: slow transactions and extreme
fees, as long as 17 hours and as high as $50.
It’s a problem long anticipated, but
fortunately the solution is almost here.
Originally proposed in late 2014, by Bitcoin
developers Joseph Poon and Thaddeus
Dryja, the Lightning Network will run
alongside the main Bitcoin blockchain, and
allow smaller transactions to be sent almost
instantly, and - from the point of view of
many end-users - for free.
 Update

Rather than wait hours for dozens of

$1.18
$3 coffee transactions to be confirmed
on the blockchain, a coffee shop can offer
customers a Lightning Network channel,
for a pre-committed amount of funds, say a
week or month’s worth of coffee.
This channel incurs the normal
network fee, but its users can do as many
transactions within it as they want, for no
extra cost, and almost instantly.
Why not just buy a $90 monthly coffee
subscription? Because the Lightning
The average network fee, in March 2018, to
Network allows users to contest send any amount of Bitcoin on the network, in
transactions. If a customer think the shop
charged them for two coffees instead of USD. Network costs are paid to miners, in
one, they can send a code that demands the
coffee shop sort out the problem or forfeit
Bitcoin, and are calculated not on how much
the value of one coffee back to the customer.
More importantly than this though,
Bitcoin is being moved, but rather on the file
Lightning Network should restore Bitcoin’s size of the transaction, and how quickly the
capacity to handle small, near-instant
transactions between people oceans apart. sender wants the transaction confirmed.
P O P S C I .CO M . AU 9
 FUTURE SHOCK:
FLAT FARMING
Do you miss having to grow your
own food in your little patch of
farmland near your house? No?
Oh, well that’s a shame because
Vincent Callebaut Architectures
has conceptualised this new
“biophilic” building. Be a
permaculture hippy on the
terrace of your own exclusive
million-dollar apartment!

S9 Camera
Knows What
Matters
The problem with capturing super-low-
light images quickly is simple: the sensor
needs to boost power to grab photons fast,
and that power creates noise in the image.
The solution involves a combination of
variable-aperture optics, taking three
images in quick succession and combining
them, and a whole lot of processing.
The resulting low-light images from
the Samsung Galaxy S9 won’t impress
if blown up to poster size - there’s still
noise. But on your Facebook feed or seen
through the Instagram app, they look
amazing. Tripod deprecated.
Self-Drive Uber Kills Pedestrian
ON A 435-acre tract
on the Ohio River near
Major US news outlets reported in late ability, even when
Sh ppingport, Pa.,investigators rule them
March that an autonomous car struck “not ata fault”
stands majorin an accident.
triumph
and killed a pedestrian, while undergoing This
of the accident,
Western Woralong
d — with several fatal
testing by Uber. crashes that
America’s firstoccurred
full-scalewhile drivers
Arizona woman Elaine Herzberg died were using
nuclear Tesla’s
power Autopilot feature,
plant.
after she wheeled her bicycle into the road demonstrates
There, only 15 yearsthatafter
the public won’t accept
and was hit. Uber’s vehicle had a human cars
the that
first are merely
chain reaction “as good as” humans in
backup driver, who was also unable to react avoiding
in accidents.
the historic Chicago
quickly enough to prevent the impact. Self-drive
squash court,systems
atoms will need to be
The accident has highlighted a challenge preternaturally
silently splittingaware
in a and able to react
that autonomous vehicles will need to with literallydustless
smokeless, superhuman speed, to protect
overcome: public opinion of their safety and pedestrians from their own fatal mistakes.

10 POPULAR SCIENCE
 Update

Hardcore
(But Friendly)
Hardware
Wallet

The biggest risk to cryptocurrency users

GOLD IN remains having their coins or tokens stolen.
THEM THAR Cryptocurrency management systems are
called wallets, but function more like a keyring,
NEUTRON STARS allowing the user to authorise transactions.
Software wallets running on a PC can be
compromised via keyloggers. Hardware wallets,
Stars are mostly hydrogen, in contrast, are single-purpose computers that
helium and maybe a few “air gap” a user’s cryptocurreny private keys.
specks of other elements Prague-based Satoshi Labs created the Trezor While it’s pricey at $250, the Trezor T is also
no heavier than iron. So hardware wallet a couple of years ago, but its essentially uncrackable, thanks to sophisticated
how does gold ever get interface is more “hacker” than “home user”. USB management, and it supports eight
made? New research Now the company has launched the different cryptocurrencies so far.
suggests via neutron star Trezor T, a full-colour touchscreen device its Still not convinced? Satoshi Labs won’t
collisions. How much developers hope will bring Bitcoin and other mind: the first production run is already sold
gold? Three to 13 Earth cryptocurrencies to (even more of) the masses. out. preorder.trezor.io
masses of gold. Bling.

A VERY HIGH PERSPECTIVE

CULLING
PREDATORS:
DOESN’T WORK

Recent studies in
Washington State,
US, have been unable
to show a significant
correlation between
culling wolf populations,
and reducing attacks on
livestock. Non-lethal
deterrence - fences, dogs,
flapping red flags - are Thanks to farming software business Granular, farmers will soon be able to monitor
more effective. Of course, their crops from space. Satellite imagery provider Planet will give Granular’s customers
the claims are being access to daily images from 200 satellites. It’s enormously valuable data that can give
disputed. new insight into crop management.

P O P S C I .CO M . AU 11
 Update
Turning Laser Light Into Real Matter
Everyone knows E=mc2 but what about m=E/
c2? That’s the equation for the amount of
energy required to create mass - or matter -
from, well, energy itself.
It’s an important part of confirming
Einstein’s theories and the work done by
other physicists after him, and scientists at
the Imperial College London are trying to
actually do it.
The idea is simple enough. Proposed in
1934 and called the Breit-Wheeler process,
TOP 5
Greatest rocket launches
on YouTube
12 POPULAR SCIENCE
it hypothesises that it should be possible to
smash two photons together hard enough
to create an electron and a positron (an
anti-electron). Electrons don’t have a LOT
of mass, sure, and if the electron and the
positron touch each other they’ll convert
back into energy via an matter-antimatter
annihilation, but that’s not the point. The
point is to demonstrate that energy can be
converted into matter.
That the Breit-Wheeler process wasn’t
5
ROUTINE SOYUZ LAUNCH
Spectacular in its no-fuss
simplicity. Plus onboard shots!
youtu.be/fW2EhH1xRrY
confirmed back in 1934 had a lot to do with
the unavailability of extremely powerful
lasers. Now though, the Gemini laser at
STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory’s
Central Laser facility might be up to the job.
If the experiment is a success and the Breit-
Wheeler process confirmed, it will add one
more piece, perhaps the final piece, to the
puzzle of quantum electrodynamics and give
us new insight into such things as gamma ray
bursters, and even the Big Bang itself.
4
IMAX SHUTTLE LAUNCH
Atlantis’ was filmed in 2009 for an
IMAX doco. It’s like being there.
youtu.be/uuYoYl5ky
 Paint an
Asteroid
to Save
the Earth

All those brave totally unqualified oil rig

workers who saved the Earth by blowing
up asteroids with nuclear weapons in
films from the late 1990s, maybe have
unnecessarily risked their lives.
Instead, it may be possible to divert
an asteroid by simply painting part of it
a different colour. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx
probe (pictured) will visit possibly-Earth-
impacting asteroid Bennu to investigate. By
painting one side of the asteroid, say, white,
it will change the rock’s thermals properties
as the sun heats that side slightly more. This
can lead to a change in its “orbital dynamics”
and turn a direct-hit into a near-miss.
Not that there’s any rush: Bennu, which is

$10,000
about the size of a large skyscraper, has a 1 in
2700 chance of hitting Earth... in 2135.

Claimed total cost of the world’s first mass-

produceed, 3D-printed electric car. Italian
car maker XEV and Chinese 3D printing
material maker Polymaker say the LSEV cuts
typical car production costs by 70%, and part
counts from over 2000 to just 57. LSEV should
hit the road in late 2019.

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landing at the end is even cooler. bass and rattle the windows! A true 20th century legend!
youtu.be/sB_nEtZxPog youtu.be/OnoNITE-CLc youtu.be/4cOhZy7dhTo

P O P S C I .CO M . AU 13
 A New Way
State
of the to Remember
Art by ANTHONY FORDHAM

FOR MOST OF THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING

science, there has been a distinct divide between a
computer’s CPU, its RAM, and its storage system.
To complete its calculations, a CPU must rapidly
store and retrieve mathematical results from
temporary memory. The fastest memory is
the CPU’s built-in cache. The next fastest is
the system RAM. And the slowest is the hard
drive, be it a magnetically-recorded diskette
or the somewhat faster (but still slow by
CPU standards) solid-state-drive.
The divide is partly due to design,
but mostly due to cost. The faster the
memory, the higher the price, and
the smaller the affordable capacity.
That’s why a typical PC has a CPU
with 12 megabytes of cache, but 16
gigabytes of RAM, and two, five,

14 POPULAR SCIENCE
Optane tech is making
its way into a range of
products, from
enterprise kit to ultra
fast SSDs for gamers.

P O P S C I .CO M . AU 15
 State
of the
Art

10 even 12 terabytes of hard d

Another factor is the way ca
RAM aren’t “persistent”. Whe
off the power, they get erased
memory, like a hard drive, has
a separate thing.
Now Intel wants to break dow
with a radical new kind of mem
At the chip level, it’s called 3D X
(pronounced: cross-point) but f
type purposes it’s branded Opt
The first Optane-equipped s
drives came out in 2016, but 20
launch of a substantial update. While Optane
will load your games faster on a home PC, it’s
real benefit will be for those workhorses of
the internet itself: data centres.
Having a fast hard drive in a data centre
server means more than just being able to
read and write files quickly. The hard drive
needs to be able to respond to a request for
a file quickly too.
With NAND- or flash-memory based SSDs,
as the number of requests for data increases,
so does the wait-time for each new request.
Being able to grab a file in a microsecond isn’t
that great if you have to wait a whole second
to even get your turn to ask for the file.
Intel’s enterprise Optane drives - such
as the DC P4800X we tested - maintain
responsiveness even as the load on their
server ramps up. It keeps the data moving.
This can be applied to situations rather
more important than just browsing funny
cat pictures. An example Intel gave us
was an MRI development project at the
Unviersity of Pisa.
One of the problems with MRI is it
requires patients to lie inside a gigantic
magnet, which makes weird clanking noises,
sometimes for as long as 40 minutes. This
isn’t great for anyone who, for instance,
suffers from claustrophobia.
An experimental new MRI system
End users will most Enterprise-grade
likely first encounter drives have a special
Optane in the form of form-factor with ultra-
a high-end SSD fast connections.
equipped with Optane memory (among
other innovations) is able to do what’s
called “in-memory computing”, and hold
vast amounts of data close to the CPU for
extremely fast access.
Early results show with this system, a
typical MRI could be completed in just two
minutes. Apart from being good for patients,
that’s great for hospitals too. More tests,
faster results, better patient outcomes.
Right now enterprise-grade Optane
memory is still very expensive. But Intel says
it’s still an easy sell. Organisations like Ali Bab,
IBM, Digital Ocean and more all recognise the
benefits and are keen to see the technology
rolled out. In Ali Baba’s case, a new “database
as a service” called Polar DB, and built around
Optane, is already proving to be six times
faster than a traditional MySQL database.
That’s a big deal.
Right now Optane is still kind of esoteric,
for regular end users. But within a matter
of years, the idea of having separate RAM
and storage in your device - phone, tablet,
PC whatever - might just be as obsolete as
vacuum tubes and punch-cards.
 SUPPORTED BY

National Science Week

11–19 August 2018
F E S T I VA L S – A C T I V I T I E S – E V E N T S & M O R E A L L A C R O S S A U S T R A L I A !

NASA scientists and Australia in space,
Australia’s lost beasts back from the dead,
the doctor’s diet, the search for Australia’s next
top junior weather presenter — and more!
It’s all part of National Science Week,
with around 2000 events and activities held
throughout Australia — from HealthLab visiting
the Tiwi Islands, to corals in the Outback, to
astronomy in the Apple Isle. Activities include
festivals, music and comedy shows, panel
discussions, film nights, open days, interactive
displays, and online activities.
Key events include the Perth and
Sydney Science Festivals, the Festival of
Bright Ideas in Hobart, Science in ACTion,
Adelaide’s Science Alive!, desertSMART
EcoFair in Alice Springs and the Innovation
Games at Sydney Olympic Park.

ABOUT NATIONAL
SCIENCE WEEK
National Science Week is Australia’s
annual celebration of science and
technology. It’s designed for everyone,
with events and activities, talks and
shows for every age group. Thousands
of individuals get involved – from
students to scientists to chefs and
musicians – taking part in more than
1000 science events across the nation.

National Science Week provides an

opportunity to acknowledge the
contributions of Australian scientists to
the world of knowledge, and also aims
to encourage an interest in science
among the general public, and to
encourage younger people to become
fascinated by the world we live in.

FOR COMPETITIONS
& THE EVENT DIARY,
SCAN HERE!

National Science
Week 2018
images: National Science Week; top left: Jayne Ion,

11–19 August 2018

courtesy of Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences

scienceweek.net.au
facebook.com/nationalscienceweek
twitter.com/Aus_ScienceWeek
instagram.com/nationalscienceweek
 Get the
State
1 of the Party Started
Art by STAN HORACZEK

SMART HOMES CAN MAKE

coffee, but do they know how to
party? Yes, and no. You can set up
a system like this one, which
starts a barnburner at the cry
“Alexa, let’s party,” but making
the connections among bulbs,
speakers, and virtual assistants
takes some doing. Banding your
gadgets together into a raucous
gang of party animals requires
using the app If This Then That
(IFTTT) as glue. Once that’s done,
2
you’re ready to rage on.

1 The host
Amazon’s Alexa-enabled Echo Dot
hears your rallying cry and sends
the signal to the rest of its party
people—er, gadgets. Using IFTTT,
your initial voice command can also
tweet out the invite to friends and
order pizza to keep ‘em fed.

2 The party planner

Alexa relays the shindig-starting
message to the Logitech Harmony
Hub, which connects to all your
devices—from appliances to home
theatres—via Wi-Fi. The console is

PHOTOGRAPH BY TRAVIS RATHBONE / PROP STYLING BY WENDY SCHELAH FOR HALLEY RESOURCES
what gets your lights in sync with
your speakers, and so on.

3 The mood setter

In party mode, the LIFX bulbs cycle
through 16 million colours in a pat-
tern that makes your living room
look like a Dat Punk concert. An
end-of-night action called “party’s
over” can reset the lights to max
5 brightness and whiteness.

4 The DJ
Spread out as many as 32 Sonos
One Wi-Fi speakers, and they’ll
create a mesh network that kicks
out jams in every room. The smart-
4 phone-controlled gadgets are also
Alexa-friendly, so you can shout to
skip a track mid lip-cup battle.

5 The entertainment
Smart fog machines aren’t a thing
(yet!), but the D-Link Wi-Fi Plug
can ill in. Hooked into a power-
point, the socket controls the low
of electricity to whatever it powers.
Turn on a bubble machine—or a fan
for when it’s “getting hot in here.”

18 POPULAR SCIENCE
 4

Gleaming
State
of the the Cuboids
Art by CORINNE IOZZIO

20 POPULAR SCIENCE
 6
5
7

P O P S C I .CO M . AU
21
PHOTOGRAPH BY TRAVIS RATHBONE / PROP STYLING BY WENDY SCHELAH FOR HALLEY RESOURCES
 Robot Without
State
of the a Cause
Art by STAN HORACZEK

BEFORE ANDROIDS CAN DREAM of

electric sheep, they need humans to
do some dreaming for them. Such is
the case of Misty 1. While it started
as a project within Sphero—the com-
pany that created the BB-8 toys and
other rolling robotic critters—Misty
is no plaything. Only a few dozen
programmers will be able to buy one
of these 400-mm-tall bots in the
hope it will answer an existential
question: “What is my purpose?”
Misty’s hardware offers coders
plenty to tinker with as they work
on that puzzle. Collision-avoid-
ance equipment helps it navigate
domestic clutter like dropped toys
and discarded clothing, and far-
field microphones listen for voice
commands. It can even map and
remember its surroundings, just like
a self-driving car does. The more
skills programmers create, the closer
Misty gets to discovering a reason
for being. Imagine that.

COURTESY SPHERO

P O P S C I .CO M . AU 23
fine mechanical watchmaking, from japan.

Trimatic symbolises three Seiko inventions

that ensure the highest levels of reliability
and durability in its mechanical watches.

seiko.com.au
 INSIGHT
ISSUE APRIL
113 2018

26
HOW NOT TO DIE OF THE
FLU (PLUS TIPS ON HOW TO
DIE OF THE FLU)

30
WHY WE NEED TO BUILD
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
WITH A BABY-LIKE BRAIN
 YOU’VE GONE VIRAL!
How (Not) to Die
of Influenza
Insight by CL AIRE MALDARELLI
T H I S Y E A R’S N O RT H E R N F L U
season is pretty scary. To try to combat and
minimise the effects, public health officials in
US are still urging anyone who hasn’t yet gotten
their flu shot to get one as soon as possible. Yet
with 36 per cent effectiveness (considered
good, the shot can’t prevent everyone from
getting infected with the notorious virus.
Unlike most common colds, strains of
the influenza virus can cause symptoms all
throughout the body. And when you’ve got
them, they can be pretty alarming. Knowledge
is power, so here’s what goes on in your body
when you come down with the flu.
ANGLE OF ATTACK
The influenza virus primarily attacks your
respiratory tract: your nose, throat, and the
tubes that lead to your lungs. So symptoms
like a runny nose, a phlegmy cough, and a sore
throat all make a lot of sense. But the flu is so
much more than that. Though other organs in
the body are not the primary target, the virus
still has an effect on them. Your muscles ache,
your head hurts, and your appetite goes down.
Ironically, almost all of these symptoms
have less to do with the virus itself than with
your immune response to them.
The virus usually enters through your
mouth, typically by way of your hands: You
touch your face more often than you think. But
it takes a few days for symptoms to set in.
Avian Influenza is a more deadly and virulent relative
of seasonal flu. The first to suffer when it breaks out
are the thousands of chickens that must be culled.
26 POPULAR SCIENCE
Once inside you, the virus makes a beeline
for your respiratory system and binds to the
cells that line those areas. The virus then
hijacks those cells’ natural mechanisms for
replicating and uses them to create even more
flu viruses in your body.
While this process might cause some harm
to your respiratory tract, it’s nothing major,
and nothing like the symptoms that typically
accompany a bad or even mild case of the flu.
The real fun starts when your immune
system begins to fight. This begins as soon as
the flu virus starts to replicate.
CTRL-C CTRL-V
Your immune system comes in two parts: the
innate system and the adaptive. The innate
immune system is essentially an all-purpose
tool. As soon as your body senses the presence
of any injury or invader, the innate immune
system launches into action by producing tiny
proteins called cytokines and chemokines. The
cytokines reproduce almost immediately and
start to attack the virus. This increase in immune
cells creates an overwhelming inflammation
throughout the body that makes you start to feel
funny. But the worst is still to come.
Simultaneously, the chemokines work with
the adaptive immune system to help create
T cells. These cells are a special type of white
blood cell that work in a much more specific
way: They find the influenza virus, identify
 Insight
what’s special about it, and create a unique
molecule on their surface that finds and
destroys similar invaders.
The influenza virus has already started its
own rapid replication by the time this process
gets started, so the adaptive immune system
must generate a lot of T cells to wage a proper
war. This massive production of T cells that
infiltrate your lungs, throat, and nose cause
inflammation, swelling, and pain. In your
lungs, the mucus that accumulates from
the inflammation itself causes you to cough
constantly as your body works to clear airways.
And because your lungs are now damaged
and vulnerable, you have a greater chance of
acquiring pneumonia from an opportunistic
strain of bacteria.
FEEL THE BURN
What about the aches and pains, and especially
the lethargy that sets flu apart from a mere
cold? That’s also your immune system at work.
All those proteins—the cytokines and
chemokines—travel through the bloodstream,
which makes its way to every organ system
in the body. Once they get there, the
inflammatory proteins affect the way many
of those organ systems function, causing
symptoms of the flu.
For example, the aches and pains that
make you feel like you just rain an endurance
run, researchers believe, occur because the
cytokines induce the breakdown of muscle
proteins. Researchers think this breakdown is
likely beneficial, because many of the resulting
amino acids help to create and strengthen
parts of the immune system.
28 POPULAR SCIENCE
As for the awful fever and chills, you can
thank those cytokines again. And one specific
type, interleukin-1, might be the main culprit.
These cytokines are seemingly able to cross
the semipermeable network of capillaries that
connect the brain to the rest of the body (known
as the blood-brain barrier). Inside the brain the
cytokines reach the hypothalamus, your body’s
thermostat, and interfere with its functioning
to crank up the temperature. Once an increased
temperature is induced, the hypothalamus
responds by telling the body to shiver and
restricting blood vessels, as well as creating an
overall feeling of chilliness.
A fever is rare in adults with mere colds, but
almost certain in a person with the flu. This isn’t
true for young children however, especially
infants, in which at least a mild fever frequently
accompanies a cold. Researchers are still pretty
unclear on whether a higher body temperature
itself actually provides any benefit, but it’s at
least a sign that your body is fighting its invaders.
Researchers think this systemic release
of cytokines into the bloodstream directly
influences other flu symptoms, like severe
headache and a lack of appetite, though their
mechanisms aren’t as clear.
CYTOKINE STORM
Influenza can be killer (see: 1918), but mostly
its a secondary infection that does the killing.
Sure, the virus can give you pneumonia
directly, but often it just weakens you enough
to allow some other bug to take hold.
But in some cases the mere presence of flu
can cause the immune system to basically
break your blood. It’s called Cytokine Release
Syndrome (CRS), or a cytokine storm.
CRS occurs when white blood cells release
inflammatory cytokines, which in turn
The efficacy of drugs like Tamiflu - which chemically
interfere with the virus’ ability to reproduce - is
debated. But that doesn’t stop Tamiflu selling out
every time the media calls for a “killer flu season”.
SIDE EFFECTS
It’s strange to think that almost every awful
symptom you feel during the flu is the result of
your own body attempting to attack it.
On the other hand, consider what would
happen if your body didn’t react this way. You
wouldn’t get the nagging cough, the aches and
pains, or even the persistent fever. Instead, the
flu virus would continue to replicate and slowly
destroy the lining of the respiratory tract—or
worse, allow bacteria to cause pneumonia and
destroy it first.
And since you need your respiratory tract to
live, you might not survive to tell the tale. So if
you do end up coming down with the flu and
feel those aches and pains coming on, know
that it’s the only way to get better.
Don’t count your (non-viral) chickens yet,
though. Keep an eye out for a steady recovery
followed by a sudden downturn; that’s a
common sign of pneumonia, which is how
most flu fatalities occur.
activate more white blood cells. It’s a sort of
chain reaction, which leads to an almost
literal meltdown of the body’s ability to
manage blood oxygen properly.
The result is a cascade of increasingly
severe issues - all caused by the immune
system messing up, rather than the flu - and
it can most definitely be fatal.
Fortunately, CRS is more usually associated
with avian influenza, or bird flu. Even so it’s an
extremely serious condition that, even in a mild
form, can put you in intensive care.
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Insight
Building
a Baby-
Brained AI A psychologist's work inspires autonomous car designers to think young.
ALISON GOPNIK’S CAREER BEGAN WITH
a psychology experiment she
now considers ridiculous. Aiming
to understand how 15-month-
olds connect words with abstract
concepts (daddy = caregiver), she decided to visit
nine kids once a week for a year. The then Oxford
graduate student would record everything they
said as part of her dissertation. “It was absurd
for a million reasons,” says Gopnik, holed up on
a winter Friday in her office at the University of
California at Berkeley, where she is a professor of
developmental psychology. “If a child had moved
away, if there weren’t any take-aways after the year,
or any number of things, all that work would have
been gone,” she says, before adding, “I would never
allowastudentofminetodoanythinglikethattoday.”
30 POPULAR SCIENCE
IN PROFILE / A L I S O N G O P N I K
by Bryan Gardiner
Though her experiment didn’t solve
any language-acquisition mysteries, it did
overturn her assumptions about childhood
learning and intelligence—and it altered her
career path. Now her research has drawn the
interest of artificial-intelligence scientists who
want to adapt her insights to their machine-
learning algorithms. What she learned about
kids’ smarts while a grad student still holds
sway—for her field and possibly theirs. “Instead
of thinking about children as these kind of
starter adults, I realised they were profoundly
different,” says Gopnik, now 62, and with
her own grown children and grandchildren.
“The way they use words, the meanings they
express, the way they express them—none of it
matched how adults think or speak.”
Today, Gopnik oversees her own cognitive
development lab at UC Berkeley, and is the
author of several books on early childhood
learning and development. She’s a TED
alum, a Wall Street Journal columnist, and
has attained that singular intellectual
 Insight
inventive, and better at learning than adults.”
The reason: size and shape matter. Research shows that
the bulk and structure of a child’s brain confer cognitive
strengths and weaknesses. Same goes for adults. For
example, a developed prefrontal cortex allows grown-ups
to focus, plan, and control our impulses: valuable skills
that let us write magazine articles and avoid jail time. But
evidence suggests a developed cortex can also make it hard
to learn new or surprising concepts and can impede creative
thinking. Toddler brains, constantly abuzz with fresh neural
connections, are more plastic and adaptive. This makes
them bad at remembering to put on pants but surprisingly
good at solving abstract puzzles and extracting unlikely
principles from extremely small amounts of information.

Baby Talk height— crossing over into pop culture,
Kids, Gopnik tells
by appearing on shows like Good Morning
people, are the R&D
unit of our species. America and The Colbert Report. Gopnik’s
message: Adult cognitive primacy is an
illusion. Kids, her research shows, are not
proto-adults with fruit-fly-like attention
spans, but in fact our occasional superiors.
“Children, even very young children,” she
says, “are in many ways smarter, more
T
HESE ARE HANDY SKILL S. IT
turns out a lot of smart people want to think
this way—or want to build machines that
do. Artificial-intelligence researchers at
places like Google and Uber hope to use
this unique understanding of the world’s most powerful
neural-learning apparatus—the one between a toddler's
ears—to create smarter self-driving cars. Coders can create
software that beats us at board games, but it’s harder to
apply those skills to a different task—say, traffic-pattern
analysis. Kids on the other hand, are genius at this kind of
generalised learning. “It’s not just that they figure out how
one game or machine works,” says Gopnik. Once they’ve
figured out how your iPhone works, she says, they’re
able to take that information and use it to figure out the
childproof sliding lock on the front door.
Cracking the codes of these little code breakers wasn’t
Gopnik’s original career plan. As an undergrad, she
began studying life’s big problems, toiling in the field
of analytic philosophy. Back then, none of her peers

YOUR BRAIN, Infant Toddler

FROM CRADLE TO 0-18 months 2-5 years
ROCKING CHAIR
We’re born helpless and dumb. As we mature, An infant brain forms a million When it comes to learning
experience and schooling teach us useful things, new neural connections each abstract concepts, preschoolers
and we get wise. Then, year by year, we slip back second, helping her to develop beat adults. At 4 years old, 66 per
into feeblemindedness. That’s the picture most emotions, motor skills, cent of calories are headed to her
of us have of intelligence. Ironically, it’s dumb. attachments, and working brain—fuel for the exploration
Research reveals that each period of cognitive memory. At 11 months, she can and creative thinking that define
development offers learning strategies as well as already form hypotheses about this period. By the time she finish-
trade-offs. It’s that combo of aha and duh that how the world works. At 18 es preschool, her gray matter has
actually makes humans truly intelligent. months, she has a sense of self. quadrupled in size.

32 POPULAR SCIENCE
 IN PROFILE / A L I S O N G O P N I K

pondered the thinking of kids. But Gopnik became
convinced kids were key to unlocking one of the oldest
epistemological queries: How do we know stuff about the
world around us? Borrowing the brain-as-computer model,
Gopnik sought to ask questions about the software
running this little human machine, allowing it to perform
complicated functions. “Kids are the ones doing more
generalised learning than anybody else,” she says, “so why
wouldn’t you want to understand why they’re so good at it?”
The advantages of installing a preschool perspective
into machines, she says, can be understood by considering
two popular, but opposing, AI strategies: bottom-up and
top-down learning. The former works the way you expect:
Say you want a computer to learn to recognize a cat. With
a bottom-up or “deep-learning” strategy, you’d feed it
50,000 photos of furry felines and let it extract statistics
from those examples. A top-down strategy, on the other
hand, requires just one example of a cat. A system using
this strategy takes that single picture, builds a model of
“catness” (whiskers, fur, vertical pupils, etc.), and then uses
it to try to identify other cats, revising its cat hypothesis as it
goes, much like a scientist would.
Children employ both methods at once. They’re good at
figuring out things and extracting statistics, says Gopnik.
And they use that data to come up with new theories and
“that everything else is just leading up to or
deteriorating from that cognitive peak.”
That model doesn’t make sense for a
variety of reasons. Studies from fields like
evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and
developmental psychology suggest we
simply have different cognitive strengths and
strategies at different stages of our lives.
“Children will have one set of ideas
about how people and the world work when
they’re two, and then another set when
they’re three, and another set when they’re
five,” says Gopnik. “It’s like they’re actively
trying to think up a coherent picture of the
Fields like evolutionary biology, neuroscience,
and developmental psychology suggest that
we simply have different cognitive strengths
and strategies at different stages of our lives.
world around them, and then constantly

structured pictures of the world. Successfully distilling both
knowledge-building approaches into algorithms might
produce artificial intelligence that can finally do more than
just beat us at Go and recognise animals.
T M IG H T A L S O, G OP N I K HOP E S,
CO U R T E S Y T E D TA L K S/ YO U T U B E .CO M
ch a n g i n g t h a t p i c t u r e b a s e d o n t h e
observations they make.”
That frenetic hypothesis formation—and
ongoing reformation—isn’t a bug; it’s a highly
desired feature. And if we want our machines
to possess anything approximating human
intelligence, maybe we should think about

I change outmoded ideas that we all seem to

share about intelligence. “We still tend to
think that a 35-year-old male professor is the
ultimate goal of human cognition,” she says,
giving them a childhood too.

Bryan Gardiner is a contributing editor at Popular

Science. He last wrote about ubiquitous computing.

School-age Adolescence Adulthood Senior

6-11 years 12-24 years 25-59 years 60+ years

The brain of a 6-year-old has
reached 90 per cent of its adult
size. Neural pruning ramps up as
the brain discards unused
connections. The prefrontal
cortex starts to develop more,
resulting in longer attention
spans, and an increased reliance
on language and logic to learn.
Adolescence marks a return to
the neural flexibility and plasticity
that characterised her preschool
years. But she’s not living in a
protected context. A reliance on
the amygdala—a centre for
emotions, impulses, and
instinctive behaviours—might
result in “risk-taking.”
By the time she reaches
adulthood, prefrontal control is
at its peak. A developed frontal
lobe helps her plan for the future
and control her impulses, but
there’s evidence that creativity
and cognitive flexibility takes a
big hit. Learning anything
surprising? Also a lot harder.
Bring on short-term-memory
loss, neurodegenerative
diseases, and declines in
conceptual reasoning. Still, other
cognitive abilities continue to
grow. Skills involving vocabulary,
maths, verbal comprehension—
what’s known as crystallised
intelligence—are among them.

P O P S C I .CO M . AU 33
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 FEATURES
ISSUE APRIL
113 2018

36 46
WILL YOU BE STUMPED BY A RARE TOUR OF THE
THE SCIENCE BEHIND DEPTHS OF A QUANTUM
THESE CLASSIC IQ TESTS? COMPUTING LAB
 E
DE
Since the turn of the 20th century,
psychologists have tried to pin down
what it means to be smart. More than 100
years later, they’re still arguing about
the best methods to spot intelligence.
But that squishiness hasn’t stopped
organisations from NASA to Mensa from
adapting psych assessments into some
of the trickiest exams ever to meet an
HB pencil. Ready to give ’em a go? Time
starts... well, whenever you want.

R E S E A RC H BY E L E A N O R
CUMMINS AND CORINNE IOZZIO
PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRIAN KLUTCH
ILLU STRATIONS BY TED KINYAK
1959

NASA
PROJECT MERCURY
In 1958, the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
launched a search for the first US spacemen. Of the 508 military candidates the

1 agency considered, only seven would become Mercury astronauts. In early 1959, 31 top
contenders arrived at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio to endure what’s still perhaps
the most exhaustive battery of psychological, intellectual, and physical work-ups in modern
history. Hopefuls sat in extreme heat and cold, did maths in 145-decibel rooms (normal
conversation is 60 dB), and spent hours in isolation chambers. On top of all that, candidates
took 12 intelligence tests. These exams sought to predict a wealth of unknowns: how
the men would manoeuvre spacecraft, if they could problem-solve mid-flight, and
whether they grasped the science that would keep them aloft. What follows
is a subset of those brain teasers for you to try. May John Glenn be with you.

S PAT I A L V I S UA L I Z AT I O N

INSTRUCTIONS on the sphere move one is its What it tests: relative to one
alongside it starting position Developed in the another. Though
The first image indicate. If for move two). late 1940s by the military no
shows a clock in a there are Mark the answer psychologists longer uses this
set position. multiple arrows, that shows how J.P. Guilford and test, similar
From that spot, make the turns the clock will Wayne Zimmerman, ones show how
visualise the sequentially look once it this exam checks well pilots might
timepiece moving (so, the clock’s has finished how well subjects stay oriented
as the arrow(s) position after rotating. picture objects in midair.

#1

[A] [B] [C] [D] [E]

#2

[A] [B] [C] [D] [E]

#3

[A] [B] [C] [D] [E]

[PAGE 38]

H A N I C A L CO M P R E H E N S I O N
tests: This still-current
y exam rates a subject’s grasp of
and mechanics. It assesses how
tential pilots and other recruits
bstract concepts to practical,
rld scenarios.
ng the reach of the above crane
ift its ————————.:
l weight [C]centre of gravity
wable speed [D]centre of buoyancy
h direction does friction act on
ier?
[C]
[D]
s the intake valve open on this
en the piston goes down?
pressure at X < air pressure at Y
pressure at Z < air pressure at X
pressure at X > air pressure at Y
ressure at Y > air pressure at Z
NUED ON PAGE 41
[SPRING 2018]
1920s
EDISON
2 LAB
THE TEST
[1] In what US state is Pikes Peak?
[2] To what is the disease so-called
beriberi due?
[3] From what do we obtain iodine?
[4] Who wrote the story “The Murders
in the Rue Morgue?”
[5] Name the chemist who discovered
oxygen.
[6] Who built the first steamboat?
[7] How many square feet in an acre?
[8] What is 210 degrees F on the
centigrade scale?
[9] Give the approximate population of
each of the five largest cities in
the U.S., per 1920 census numbers.
[10] What countries boundary France?
[11] What city and country produce the
finest china?
[12] In what country other than
Australia are kangaroos found?
[13] Who invented logarithms?
[14] Rhode Island is the smallest state.
What is the next and the next?
[15] What is the distance between
Earth and the sun?
[16] What cereal is used in all
parts of the world?
[17] Who made The Thinker?
[18] What is copra?
[19] What is the lightest wood?
19 17- 19 18

U.S. ARMY
During World War I, the U.S. Army needed a system that would quickly
sort recruits into their ideal roles. Psychologist and noted eugenicist Robert
3 Yerkes developed several tests that, among other things, would identify those
capable of holding leadership positions, such as officers or intelligence specialists.
Literate recruits took the written Alpha test, while illiterate applicants faced the visual
Beta. Military psychiatrists evaluated individuals who struggled with the tests, often
marking those who failed as having naturally inferior intellect. In hindsight, it’s clear
that cultural background (how many people in the 1910s got to play tennis?) and the
ethnic biases baked into the questions could sway the final outcome.

ALPHA TEST

[1] A dealer bought B. Fires more rapidly [4] Identify the next D. Penny
some mules for $1,200. C. Can be used with two numbers in the
He sold them for less training sequence. [6] Select the
$1,500, making $50 on 3 4 5 6 7 8 —— —— appropriate word
each mule. How many [3] Unscramble the to complete the
mules were there? words to form a [5] Select the sentence.
sentence. Is that appropriate word to The apple grows
[2] A machine gun sentence true or false? complete the analogy. on a ——————
is deadlier than a happy is man sick shoe — foot. hat — ——— A. Shrub
rifle, because it: always a A. Kitten B. Vine
A. Was invented more B. Head C. Bush
recently C. Knife D. Tree

BETA TEST

INSTRUCTIONS

To be read aloud:
Study the
everyday objects
[1] [2] [3] [4] in the nine line
drawings to the
left. There’s a
key piece
missing in each
illustration.
[5] [6] [7]
Identify it.

[8] [9]

[PAGE 40]
 C T MERCURY (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 39)
INSTRUCTIONS
are five simple shapes,
ed A through E, followed
e complex drawings,
ons 7 through 15. Locate
the shapes in each
ng. The polygons will
PLE
A B
MPLEX
SHAPE__________________________
SHAPE________________________
SHAPE________________________
HIDDEN FIGURES
always take the same size and
orientation as the original.
Answers may be repeated.
What it tests: Although there
have been many adaptations of
German psychologist Kurt
Gottschaldt’s original 1926
test, every version (including
C D
#8: SHAPE__________________________
#11: SHAPE________________________
#14: SHAPE________________________
[SPRING 2018]
the one adapted here) endeav-
oured to assess the same trait:
field independence, or the
ability to isolate simple forms
in complex ones. Those who spot
the shapes might be less likely
to get distracted by irrelevant
details in a scene.
E
#9: SHAPE__________________________
#12: SHAPE________________________
#15: SHAPE________________________
CONTINUED ON PAGE 42
PROJEC T MERCURY (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 41)

#16

P R O G R E SS I V E M AT R I C E S

INSTRUCTIONS nonverbal exam to

measure so-called
Each question eductive ability—
to the right the facility to
contains three make sense of
rows of images. complex data.
The first two Unlike many early
establish a assessments, this
pattern, but the 1936 exercise in
last item in the pattern recogni- A B C D
third row is tion has no known
missing. From the cultural or
eight choices, linguistic
select the image biases. Today,
that completes the matrices are E F G H
the pattern. still among the
What it tests: most common
Psychologist J.C. question types to
Raven developed appear on intel-
this simple, ligence tests.

19 14

THE MAZE

MENTAL
4 ASYLUM

Instructions: Place your pencil at the

“S.” Without pausing or backtracking,
trace a line to exit the maze. If you get
stuck, return to the S and try again.

[PAGE 42]
 #18

B C D A B C D

F G H E F G H

CONTINUED ON PAGE 44

IBM
5

] Adrian buys [2] Present ages [3] In a lottery, Questions 4-6: [5] 2, 9, 5, 49,
cooter for of John and Mandy tickets numbered Select the 11, 169, ?
,600 and are in the ratio 1 to 20 are number that best A. 29
nds $500 on of 7:5 respec- balloted. What completes the B. 21
airing it. tively. Four is the probabil- sequence. C. 17
he sells the years later, the ity that the D. 19
oter for ratio of their ticket drawn has [4] 4, 2, -4, -8,
,000, what ages will become a number that is 32, 26, -15, ? [6] 2, 13, 2, 4,
his profit 15:11. What is a multiple of 3 A. -3 8, 3, 8, 3, 5,
rgin? John’s present or 5? B. -42 16, ?
6 percent age in years? A. 0.7 C. -32 A. 3
21 percent A. 52 years B. 0.25 D. -23 B. -2
18 percent B. 14 years C. 0.82 C. -1
7 percent C. 56 years D. 0.45 D. 4
D. 63 years

[SPRING 2018]
 PROJEC T MERCURY (CONT ’D FROM PAGE 43)
1 9 46 –2 01 8

A N A LO G I E S MENSA
INSTRUCTIONS
6
relationships
between concepts.
In the analogies Its broad-ranging
below, one colon vocabulary might
(:) means “is to,” present problems
and a double colon for those not
(::) means “as.” equally versed in,
Using this logic, say, grammar and
select the word chemistry. Though
from the choices they’re an imper-
provided that fect marker of
best completes inherent intelli-
each analogy. gence, the analo-
What it tests: gies are a mainstay
This challenge of tests that value
checks a person’s both logical
analytical reasoning and
thinking by broad knowledge—
identifying their like grad-school
ability to parse admissions exams.

[QUESTION 19]
Metabolism : (A. Engine B. Train C. Human
D. Anabolism) :: Combustion : Locomotive

[QUESTION 20]
Adolescence : (A. Asylum B. Youth
ANSWERS
C. Orphanage D. High School) :: Infancy :
Nursery NASA Project Mercury
1. B 2. C 3. C 4. C 5. D 6. C
[QUESTION 21]
Objective : Subjective :: Science :
(A. Physics B. Standard C. Genuine
D. Literature)

[QUESTION 22]
Chess : Golf :: (A. Pawn B. Game C. Mate
D. Ball) : Niblick 7. B 8. D 9. A

[QUESTION 23]
Parallelogram : Octagon :: (A. Four
B. Biped C. Eight D. Animal) : Quadruped

[QUESTION 24]
Antisepsis : Circulation :: Pasteur : (A.
Scientist B. Harvey C. Galen D. Smallpox) 10. E 11. E 12. A

[QUESTION 25]
Irrigate : Land :: Dessicate : (A. Fruit
B. Sabbath C. Truth D. Angles)

[QUESTION 26]
Amphibia : Tadpole :: Lepidoptera : (A.
Frogs B. Caterpillar C. Leopards D. Ants) 13. D 14. C 15. B

[QUESTION 27] 16. D 17. F 18. D 19. C 20. D 21. D 22. A

Achromatic : (A. Music B. Blue C. Grey 23. B 24. B 25. A 26. B 27. C
D. Complex) :: Chromatic : Red

[PAGE 44]
 steers A. He should head 3 inches high? A. Whim
e land, he for the sea. A. 60 B. Action
recked; if B. The coast is B. 23 C. Capture
toward the dangerous for ships. C. 12 D. Tact
he will be C. He will be wrecked. D. 100
But he must [4] Identify the
her toward [2] How many 1-inch [3] Which word below drawing below that is
or toward cubes can be placed means the same or a different view of
Therefore, in a box 5 inches long, about the same as the object in the
orrect: 4 inches wide, and “caprice”? drawing at the left.

A B C D

Lab Luxembourg, U.S. Army — Mental Asylum

rado 2. Belgium 11. Alpha Test
vitamins Limoges, France; 1. 6 mules 2. B
ody Sevres, France; 3. False: A sick
eed and Dresden, Germany; man is always
iodine or Copenhagen, happy. (Ed: or “A
4. Edgar Denmark 12. happy man is
e 5. New Guinea always sick.”)
Priestley 13. John Napier 4. 9, 10 5. B 6. D
rt Fulton 14. Delaware,
60 8. 98.9 Connecticut 15. U.S. Army —
C 9. New 92,900,000 miles Beta Test
.6 mil- 16. No cereal is 1. Chimney IBM Mensa
hicago used in all parts 2. Ear 1. C 2. C 3. D 1. C 2. A 3. A 4. A
llion), of the world. 3. Filament 4. D 5. C 6. B
lphia (1.8 Wheat is used 4. Return address
), Detroit most extensively, (Ed: or “Stamp”)
8), with rice and 5. Strings Tests Courtesy: Mechanical comprehension,
nd corn next. 6. Corkscrew Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB);
1) 10. 17. Auguste Rodin 7. Trigger hidden figures (modified), Educational Testing Services;
ndorra, 18. The dried 8. Ball matrices and analogies, Pearson; Edison Lab, National
Italy, kernel of the 9. Net Parks Service; Alpha and Beta, ASVAB; maze
land, coconut 19. Balsa (modified), Stoelting Co.; IBM, Master IBM IPAT;
, Mensa, American Mensa

[SPRING 2018]
 NEITHER
N EITHER
HERE
HHER
NOR
N OR
THER E
T THER

INSIDE THE LAB

WHERE COMPUTING MAKES
A QUANTUM LEAP
BY C O R I N N E I O Z Z I O

PHOTOGRAPHS BY
SPENCER LOWELL

46 POPULAR SCIENCE
 FOR DECADES, THE PROMISE OF QUANTUM
computing has tickled the neurons of drug-makers, spies,
and tech CEOs. Such a machine, if perfected, would speed
up drug discoveries, decode ciphers, and help AIs parse our
digital data. This new brain hinges on the bendy concept of
superposition, the idea that an object can be in two states
at once—a coin spinning so fast, it’s both heads and tails.
48 POPULAR SCIENCE
Conventional computer chips, whether in your phone
or a supercomputer, hold transistors that process informa-
tion as binary code: Everything is either a 0 or a 1. Quantum
computers use qubits ( “cue-bits”), which can be both a 0 and
a 1. The machines they inhabit can crack problems faster.
But there’s a rub: Qubits are fragile. Any interference can
muddy computations. Yale University applied physicists
Robert Schoelkopf and Michel Devoret pioneered a way
to stabilise them. By building qubits out of superconduc-
tors—materials with no resistance to electrical current
at extremely low temperatures—they create a space
in which quantum algorithms can flow undisturbed.
As a look inside their lab reveals, it takes a huge operation—
and a very cold fridge—to help these tiny wafers think big.
Think Tank
Qubits rely on many components. A
wall of microwave generators
(previous spread) create electromag-
netic pulses that travel through a
maze of coaxial cables (image at left)
and send the qubits—deep in the 1.5
metre tall blue fridge—into action.
Mr. Freeze
To create a climate colder than outer
space, external pumps drive helium-3
refrigerant into copper tubing (above).
As the helium circulates, it compress-
es, liquefies, and chills. It takes a day
to hit the lowest low: 0.01 degrees
Kelvin, or minus 272 degrees C.
P O P S C I .CO M . AU 49
Not a Chip
Behold the qubit,
the cold and elegant
heart of quantum
computing. This
25mm-long wafer is
made of synthetic
sapphire topped with a
100-nanometre-thin
layer of printed
aluminium. At insanely
low temperatures,
microwave photons
send the junction point
of the Y into super-
position. The wavy
strips below transmit
the qubit’s results.

50 POPULAR SCIENCE
Meet-Up
It takes groups of
qubits to puzzle out
anything more complex
than a coin-flip.
Modules like this one
connect them. The Yale
team designs these
units for specific
purposes. Some
process data, some
read it, others amplify
it. Mastering this
scalable, Lego-like
approach could be
more vital to perfecting
quantum computers
than piling on qubits.

P O P S C I .CO M . AU 51
Shhhh
It’s quiet inside the fridge. Any static
can incite computing errors, so
scientists must protect the qubits. A
one-way valve, called a circulator (the
four rectangles seen midframe, oppo-
site page), filters out interference,
such as ambient lab noise.
Ground Control
Not all work happens in the cooler.
A network analyser (foreground)
ensures that the microwave cabling
needed to transmit signals is working
properly. The tall grey cabinet directly
behind it manages the refrigeration
pumps and valves.
P O P S C I .CO M . AU 53
54 POPULAR SCIENCE
Tear-Down
Graduate students
and postdocs are
constantly building
custom configurations
to accomplish specific
experiments. That can
require piecing
together dozens of
qubits and qubit-
nesting modules for
new functions. Here,
older modules (bottom
left and middle right)
sit among coaxial wires
and signal filters.

P O P S C I .CO M . AU 55
Tall Boy
Old quants work less.
At 15 years old, this
2.7-m-tall fridge is one
of the lab’s elders. It
doesn’t get the
attention younger kids
do. The narrow frame
makes wiring it tricky,
and chilling it requires
lifting a huge cooling
vat from a manhole in
the floor. Still, if there’s
no vacancy in the
newer setups, students
will pull this out for
quick research.

56 POPULAR SCIENCE
P O P S C I .CO M . AU 57
 CHARTED
KNOW-IT-ALL

How Big Is
Humanity’s
Knowledge? CANON OF
MEDICINE
NO ONE CAN KNOW
7.5 MB
everything all the Persian Polymath
time—but we humans NATURAL Avicenna’s
HISTORY compendium
sure like to pretend served as the
w e d o . S o i t ’s n o 3.06 MB definitive medical
textbook from its
Over 37 volumes,
wonder our species Pliny chronicled publication in 1025
all the way through
has a long-standing the natural world, ORIGINAL the beginning of
including quite a ENCYCLOPEDIA
tendency to compile few fundamental BRITANNICA
the 18th century.
information. What misunderstand-
started with some old
ings. Did you know 3.59 MB
that fennel root The first edition,
dudes writing down somehow helps published in 1768,
snakes shed their comprised just
their own observations skin? It doesn’t. three volumes,
morphed through the Sorry, Pliny. released in weekly ENCARTA
instalments. It
years into compendia, included such 1,600 MB
libraries, and now vast scintillating Microsoft’s brush
six-word articles with CD-ROM
repositories of digitally as “Woman: the encyclopedias
gathered knowledge. female of man, lasted from 1993
see homo.” to 2009, but ironic
H e r e’s h o w m u ch cyber-hipsters can
space our worldly still buy the full set
of compact discs
understanding took on eBay.
up, in bits and bytes, as
WIKIPEDIA (ENGLISH)
we chewed off bigger
and bigger chunks. 27,000 MB
The internet’s proverbial
monkeys have tapped out more
than 5.5 million articles in QE2’s
native tongue alone, showing no
signs of stopping.

THE INTERNET (IN 2014)

1,000,000,000,000,000,000 MB
We can only estimate the Web’s total size, and it’s growing too fast to keep up. But some experts think it’s zipping along at about 1.1 zettabytes
(1,100,000,000,000,000 MB) per year. A 2015 study estimated it would take two per cent of the Amazon rainforest to print out the whole thing.

58 POPULAR SCIENCE by Sara Chodosh / infographic by Pete Sucheski

 WHEN COMPUTERS TRY TO IMITATE HUMANS, THEY OFTEN GET
confused. But simulated brain cells in so-called neural networks can
mimic our problem-solving skills. An AI will look at a dataset, igure
LIGHT BYTES
out its governing rules, and use those instructions to make some-
thing new. We already employ these bots to recognise faces, drive
Just Add A cars, and caption images for the blind. But can a computer cook? I
Charted fed a neural network thousands of recipes and asked it to whip up
Dash Of Data something of its own. It spat out an...interesting dish.

CHO COLATE BUTT ERBR OTH BLAC K PUDD ING

cheese/eg
1
4 oz cocoa; finely ground
1 teaspoon butter
1/2 cup milk
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup rice cream, chopped
1 lb cream 2
1 sesame peel
3
----DATE HOLY----
1 large egg
1 powdered sugar serving barme
1/4 cup butter or margarine, melted

Brown sugar, chocolate; baking powd beer, lemon juice and

salt in chunk in greased 9 x 2 inch cak 4. Chill until
il golden
ld b brown
and d bubbly.
b bbl PlPlace serve garlic
li hhalf
lf b
by pieoun
i on top
t tto makek
more use bay. Place in frying pan in preheated oven. Sprinkle
with fresh parsley for cooking. Eating dish to hect in pot of the
oil, pull over half-and half. Place in a bowl. Pat thetings on a
strip of calaparo and wanned cooking in butter by cooking the
seasoning. Sprinkle with onions. & Pull when bubbles and carrot
is cooked, about 5 minutes. On a 15 inch hour a blender or
paper mix to by dried roughes to boil ((which h is discovered.)
d
5

Yield: 1 cak 6
The Popular Science recipe card library
©Copyright 2018 by Bonnier. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

1 Amnesiac AI 2 Word salad 3 Date holy 4 Sweet defeat 5 Feedback 6 Yum?

To keep processing Title, category, in- Sounds like frosting! The ingredient list is The confused net- Words like “frost”
fast, the network gredients, directions. We’re staying in already forgotten. work is spitting out or “serve” can cue
recalls only 65 It gets this format dessert territory. Chocolate is just a random words—cre- a network to inish;
characters at a time. every time because of But what’s with the lucky guess pulled from ating more confusion, many recipes in our
It adds cocoa just consistency across all name? Capital letters an average cookbook. leading to more dataset end this way.
before it would oth- the recipes we pulled are tough; they’re “Until golden brown” random words. But Ours just happened
erwise forget we’re from. But my AI treated as unrelated could mean sweet or it remembered to to give up—it could
making “chocolate.” hasn’t seen as many to lowercase. A neu- savoury, and close its parenthesis. have kept going
Hopefully it forgets examples of how to ral net has to learn ambiguity confuses There’s probably a forever. We were
that black puddings use rare ingredients these from scratch the network. Garlic? neuron solely devoted making cake, right?
usually feature blood. like sesame. with few examples. Game over. to parentheses. Let’s say it’s cake.

Number of recipes that TRAINING TIME: Number of recipes

24,044 begin with “chocolate”: containing blood:

INTERNET RECIPES 647 ro EIGHT

by Janelle Shane / illustration by eboy P O P S C I .CO M . AU 59
 PERCHANCE “TO BE”

Could Infinite
Monkeys
Really Write
Shakespeare?
YOU’VE PROBABLY HEARD THAT
if you were to unleash an infinite number
of monkeys on an equal abundance of
typewriters, they would eventually re-
produce the entire works of Shakespeare.
This famous thought experiment doesn’t
mean to suggest the Bard was no bet-
ter than a busy capuchin; it’s designed
to show a mathematical truism about
the concept of infinity (and how it’s,
like, literally infinite). Once we stopped
trying to wrap our heads around an
ever- expanding universe crammed with
endlessly replicating mandrills and mar-
mosets, we decided to crunch the num-
bers. What are the odds of mimicking
acts of genius by totally random chance?

ALL LIKELIHOODS

1 in 58
SEPTILLION 1 in 14,000,000 1in518
OCTILLION
(OR 58 x 1024) (OR 518 x 1027)

The odds of randomly “To be” is a lot easier. Randomly The New York Times’
typing “To be or not to
be.” A 2003 experi-
writing Shakespeare takes time, okay? mini crossword puzzle
has about 21 squares.
ment aimed at testing Programmers once mirrored his works Since each puzzle is
the theory suggests
it might help to start
in mere months using millions of bots, available online for
only 24 hours, you’d
by teaching the but they saved each little fragment as have to try 21 octillion
monkeys not to pee it appeared—in no particular order— letters per hour in
LEFT TO RIGHT: GUVENDEMIR/GETTY IMAGES; JANA LEON/GETTY IMAGES

on their keyboards. each spot to crack it.

which is definitely cheating.

1 in 521 NOVEMVIGINTILLION
Skipped out on studying? You have an infinitesimal chance (1-in-521 x 1090)
of correctly guessing all 154 multiple choice questions on the SAT. Maybe
you’ll score bonus points for using “novemvigintillion” in the essay.
1 in 9.2
QUINTILLION

(OR 9.2 x 1018)

51 100
The SAT makes
in randomlyfilling out a
perfect bracket for
March Madness, the
Nothing more random than a coin flip, right? One
63-game basketball 1 in 1,083,000
championship, look
study found that a toss is actually slightly biased easy. But it couldn’t Want to win the Powerball?
in favor of whichever side you start out on. hurt to up your odds by You’re 270 times as likely to
following the sport. get hit by lightning. This year.

60 POPULAR SCIENCE by Amal Ahmed / illustrations by Hubert Tereszkiewicz

 E A S Y A S 1, 2, 3 YOU MIGHT THINK YOUR INFORMATION IS SAFE, BUT YOU’RE PROBABLY
wrong. Your password is pitted against malevolent computers capable of
Your crunchingbillionsofcharacterconigurationsaminute.Andwhatusedto
bethebesttricksarenowsocommonlyused,they’reuseless.Mom’sname
Password followedbydigitsanddollarsigns?That’ssoturn-of-the-century.Youcan’t
Sucks beat every potential hack, but these tips will help ight of four common
methods of attack—as long as you never use the same code twice.

EASY TO GUESS

smart
IT’S PERSONAL
Guessing: the original
hack. If someone popsci01 lol
knows certain things
about you—your date
of birth, your dog’s
name, your home-
SIZE MATTERS
In a brute-force
town—cracking your
attack, computers will
codes can be
process every possible
criminally simple.
character combo in
the English language
(aa, ab, ac) until they
ILoveLaika hit your jackpot. You’re

SMASHED BY BRUTE FORCE

tfm105010535100 especially vulnerable
to this if you pick
sciencesince1872! something short.
TOO COMMON

PASSWORD
PERFECTION
Intelligence01
SmartSecurity99
SERIOUSLY?
Common words are Science
like a welcome mat
for hackers. Malicious
programs can quickly
cycle through
Magazine 1O$W0RDZ
everyday English A slightly slower
vocab until they find a method involves ol’
match. Just one more Merriam-Webster.
reason why your From aardvark all the
password should way to zyzzogeton, a
never be “password.” cybersleuth can work
through every word in
the dictionary. Tacking Charted
digits to the end won’t
help—hackers caught
Love! on to this long ago.
Aardvark420
DICTIONARY DISASTER
PHOTOGRAPH BY THE VOORHES

THE TWO OPTIONS TO THE RIGHT AREN’T INDESTRUCTIBLE, Password:

but certain characteristics make them hard to crack. Sprinkling numbers
and capital letters throughout ensures the first option is somewhat popUlar1872SCIence!
secured. Our second pick uses three or more uncommon words—
unrelated to our lives!—for a solid, simple Plan B. Ridley Scott fans who
PoopButterflyPrometheus
study bug faeces for a living will obviously need to workshop other options.

by Eleanor Cummins / illustration by Hubert Tereszkiewicz P O P S C I .CO M . AU 61

 HEAD TRIP
DOOR PRIZE
FROM THE 1960S TO THE ’80S, MONTY
Hall, host of Let’s Make a Deal, presented this
When Should puzzle: Players had to choose among three
doors. Two hid a gag gift (like a goat); the third,
You Change a prize (say, a car). Simple, but the game preys
Your Mind? on how we handle predictions and outcomes.
After the contestant chooses a door—say,
door one—the all-knowing host would often
open a remaining door. Say he picks #2: a goat.
Then he asks: Would you like to switch?
What most folks don’t realise is that Hall’s
1 2 3 meddling swayed the odds: You now have a
better chance of victory if you switch to door
three. Each portal started with an equal, 1-in-3
shot. Door one, with no tampering, retains
62 POPULAR SCIENCE
trip real world westworld
meter
that chance. Monty knows what’s behind
the other two, and he wouldn’t reveal the
car. So by knowingly choosing door two, he
ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES/ABC VIA GETTY IMAGES
destroys that doors’ one-third chance. Door
three now takes on door two’s odds, creating
a two-thirds probability the car is there.
Math or no math, people don’t switch.
John Petrocelli, a psychologist at Wake Forest
University, had subjects repeat the game hun-
dreds of times. On recall, they remembered
when they switched and lost more strongly
than when they switched and won. It’s not
about math, he says. The emotional angst that
almost winning incites is just too painful. So
they stay put, and lose two-thirds of the time.
by Claire Maldarelli / photograph by Brian Klutch
 P/S
EYE GOT IT
SCI
6:55 PM
Messag 89%
es
Pete
Details Reading Isn’t Always
Hey, an
yw
meet ea ay we can
rleir? I'm
Straightforward
and wn starving
at food
moviie befroe th
e
HUMANS ARE SMEARTR THAN THEY TNHIK.
I can pro
Since the early aughts, Internet memes have hyped the
b
seomhtn ably do notion that the order of letters in a word doesn’t matter as
ig
pziza. C quick, like long as the first and last ones are correctly placed. It’s true:
ould mk
there a ae it We are keen enough to decipher jumbled words.
half huo
r early
Perfect. But it comes at a cost, warns Rebecca Johnson, a psy-
Movie s chologist at Skidmore College. In a 2006 study, John-
8, so le ta
t's meet rts at

meter
trip
at 7:30 at domn
ios son used an eye tracker to measure participants’ reading
speeds. A paragraph with fully scrambled words took folks
Domino 40 per cent longer to read than the original. Muddling just

real world
s? Sreu the middle letters still held them up, but only by 11 per cent.
oisly?
Delivered
Johnson and others posit that the bookends have more
importance than just their placement. The first letter often
iMessag
e corresponds with the word’s sound, which plays a key role
in how our brains identify written terms. A blank space usu-
ally follows the last letter, making it visually stand out.

westworld
In modern life, this means we have a better chance at
reading a hastily typed, scrambled text message than an
autocorrected one. We can decipher “I dn’ot” as “I don’t”
far easier than when the phone changes it to “idiot.”

by Mary Beth Griggs / illustration by John Kuehn

SEARCH PARTY

The Lost Words

COUNT THE F ’S IN THE SENTENCE ON THE RIGHT.
Spot three? There are six. Don’t worry. Even David Rapp, a cogni-
tive expert at Northwestern University, couldn’t spot them all. Our FINISHED
FILES ARE THE
brains decipher more than we are aware of.
Brains that have mastered reading don’t necessarily read sen-

R E S U LT O F
tences in a linear way, stopping at every word. Instead, our eyes
bounce through, skipping some terms and landing hard on others.
When scanning a sentence, we’ll skip high-frequency words
like “of,” “and,” or “the.” Linguists call these function words;
they have little meaning or importance, and require less process- YEARS OF
S CIE N T IFIC
ing time for our grey matter. Ignoring them frees our noggins to
spend more time crunching so-called content words—terms like
“files” or “scientific”—which are better indicators of what this
sentence is about.
No amount of repetition would help us catch all those elusive
S T U DY
F’s. Perhaps the only way you might have found all six, Rapp
says, is if something forced you to read in a way that wasn’t rou- C OM B I N E D
WITH THE
tine. For example, if someone promised you a dollar—or 20—for
every F you found, that could shift your focus, and you might
earn yourself some cash. (Or if you were a sub-editor, because
we never mis a mistake.)
EXPERIENCE
trip
meter
real world westworld
O F Y E A R S .”
by Sara Kiley Watson
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 HOW 2.0
ISSUE APRIL
113 2018
 How 2.
A Tiny
Gaming
PC... Aga
by ANTHONY FORDHAM

T here are two types of gamer in this

world. PC gamers, and everyone els
Despite billions in investment by Microso
Xbox), Sony (on PlayStation), and Ninte
(the Switch and 3DS), console gaming h
always been... just a bit more limited.
It’s not that PC necessarily has the mo
technically impressive games, or the big
multiplayer communities. It’s more than
has endless variety, almost total compa
with its own back catalogue, and of cour
role as testbench and pioneering platfor
revolutionary new kinds of games. Plus y
can do non-gaming stuff, if you want.
Indeed, a decent gaming PC can do
everything... except play games on the go
an ultrabook-class notebook has to be
balanced awkwardly on the lap as you gr
with a controller, or flail at the trackpad.
But recently, Intel’s latest system-on-
packages, which combine a powerful CP
with decent 3D graphics, are helping PC
down that final barrier, and become a m
gaming powerhouse, too.

PC Master Race
Whether or not a PC game is “better” th
Xbox game is a matter of opinion, espec
since high profile titles are available on b
platforms these days.
That a PC game is better than the ave
mobile game though, is less contentious
Mobile games, delivered via dedicated a
are mostly pretty basic, or unduly focuse
extracting endless cash from the player v
insidious microtransactions.

68 POPULAR SCIENCE
 Enthusiast devices
simply must have a
microSD card slot. No headphone jack
We suspect most controversy here.
owners never use it. Gamers love
The secret weapon: headphones.
a full-spec USB -C
port that charges
the unit and can
send 4K video at
30Hz to a full
sized monitor.

A full-sized USB-A port

looks awkward in this tiny
package, but it provides
huge utility. Being able to
plug a normal thumbdrive
mini-HDMI out means straight in is something
sy connection to a TV many high end notebooks
or cheap monitor. no longer support.

GPD Win
Materials and specs: Plastic body,
aluminium lid. 5.5-inch 1280x720
e GPD Win underwent
series of hardware touchscreen. Gaming controls.
visions after release, QWERTY keyboard. Intel Atom
cluding a slightly faster x7-Z8750, 4GB RAM, 64GB storage,
CPU, and a metal lid.
802.11ac Wi-Fi, USB-C, 155mm x 97mm
Awesome Factor:
Price: $500
More info: www.gearbest.com

P O P S C I .CO M . AU 69

How 2.0
Nintendo’s 3DS clamshell-style handheld
games console is a robust alternative with a
huge catalogue of excellent games. But its
low price means it has to go easy on the high
tech. Graphics and sound are basic, and only
the bottom screen has touch capability.
Sony’s PlayStation Vita is essentially
abandoned, and the Nintendo Switch also
lags behind modern consoles when it comes
to graphics - though not by much.
Indeed it’s the Switch that inspired Hong
70 POPULAR SCIENCE
Kong outfit Gamepad Digital to take the
latest ultracompact PC components and jam
them into a teeny tiny case.
The company’s first result, the GPD Win
(main image previous spread), is only a little
fatter and about the same weight as the
Nintendo Switch. But its clamshell design,
with a folding 5.5-inch display, makes it much
more compact and pocketable than
Nintendo’s latest indulgence.
Like the Switch, the display resolution is
1280x720. That’s low compared to a hardcore
gamer’s preferred 2560x1440 or 4K monitor,
but tiny pixels mean excellent image clarity.
Unlike the Switch, and a mobile phone (and
many full-size notebook PCs come to think of
it) the GPD Win has a serious collection of
ports on the back.
There’s a full USB-A port, mini HDMI out, a
stereo headphone jack, microSD card slot, and
even a USB-C port.
This last is what really separates the GPD
Win from a games console. Plug the Win into a
monitor that supports power and video over
USB-C, and this tiny PC becomes a full
Windows 10 desktop, outputting 4K at 30Hz.
So what makes it a gaming device rather
than just a really tiny PC? The integrated
controller. Two thumbsticks, four face buttons,
a direction-pad and four shoulder buttons on
the back take care of most games.
Extra buttons next to the keyboard take
care of the rest, including substitutes for
clicking the thumbsticks (a function on all PC
gamepads), start/select, and more.
Oh the technical specs? You want to know
how powerful the GPD Win is? Yeah... we were
kind of avoiding that.
Good Idea But...
There’s no point trying to claim the GPD Win is
something it isn’t. GPD itself admits this first
GPD Win 2
Materials and specs: Aluminium
and plastic. 6.0-inch 1280x720
touchscreen. Gaming controls.
QWERTY keyboard. Intel Core
m3-7y30, 8GB RAM, 128GB
upgradeable storage, 802.11ac
Wi-Fi, USB-C, 162mm x 99mm
Awesome Factor:
Price: $1200
More info: www.gearbest.com

version of its visionary device “had limitations”.
The cooling fan is too loud. The position of the
speaker grilles gets blocked by your hands when
you hold it. The shoulder buttons aren’t
amazing, quality-wise.
Worst of all, GPD’s chosen price point - the
GPD Win costs less than $500 these days -
means having to use an Intel Atom CPU,
specifically the x7-Z7850.
In a device like the base model Microsoft
Surface 3, the Atom is fantastic, and it sips
power. When it comes to gaming though, the
included Intel HD 405 graphics processor just
can’t handle modern 3D games.
There’s also only 4GB of RAM, which is tough
when the machine has to run a full version of
Windows 10 Home at the same time.
Games with 2D graphics, and of course every
retro-style title or any actual retro game from
the last thirty years, these all run perfectly.
The real party piece is using the GPD as a
home streamer for the PC’s digital distribution
service for games, Steam.
If you have a powerful gaming PC, Steam
makes it do the actual number crunching,
while you play on the GPD Win. Steam
sends graphics over WiFi, and the GPD
Win sends your control input in return. If
you have a decent Wi-Fi setup - 802.11ac
ideally - it’s uncanny to seeing, say, the
Witcher 3 running on a handheld device
with full graphics.
Meanwhile in the Future
So if the GPD Win is too slow to actually run the
kinds of PC games that showcase PC’s
advantage over other gaming platforms, what
are we even talking about here?
The answer: the GPD Win 2 (images this
spread). Regardless of the original’s
shortcomings, GPD is pressing onward with its
vision for a powerful, pocketable gaming PC
Indeed, the GPD Win 2 has just finished an
extraordinarily successful Indiegogo campaign,
raising US$2.6 million and selling over 4000 units.
The GPD Win 2 is a more serious machine by
far. It uses Intel’s new Core M3-7Y30 running at
up to 2.6GHz, which packages HD 615 graphics
onboard. There’s 8GB of RAM now, and a fast
128GB SSD (the GPD Win only had 64GB).
It also has dual batteries - 4900mAh lithium
Former BlackBerry users remember the
advantages of a proper hardware keyboard
The GPD Win 2 gets
a bigger display,
and more carefully
thought out
ergonomics.
polymer cells with fast-charge capability.
GamePad Digital claims a gaming time of six
hours. That might not sound like much, but the
Switch struggles to do four hours. Even mobile
games will chew your phone’s battery like
nothing else. Gaming is very energy intensive.
The Win 2’s display is 6.0 inches, and still has
full 10-point capacitive touch, and since it’s still
under 9-inches, that means Windows 10 Home
is still included for free.
GamePad Digital claims it brought outside
designers in to improve the ergonomics -
especially for the shoulder buttons - and the
whole package will hopefully be able to run most
of the latest games (albeit at lower graphics
settings). And yes, you can browse the web and
watch Netflix and do anything else you want.
The catch? This ain’t a $500 PC anymore.
Indiegogo early birds were able to secure a GPD
Win 2 for US$649, but the retail version will be
US$899. We’ve seen pre-orders priced at about
AUD$1200. That’s proper laptop money.
Still, anyone who buys a genuinely pocket-sized
gaming PC right now is still a pioneer, suffering
the limitations of the present for a taste of the
future. The GPD Win 2 is about potential.
Intel has already hinted it will soon be
building CPUs with integrated third party,
gaming-grade graphics. And its Optane
memory technology is blurring the line between
RAM and storage (see p.14).
For older PC gamers, sitting in front of a
keyboard and monitor for hours isn’t as appealing
as it once was. Relaxing on the couch (or in bed)
with a proper, hardcore PC strategy game or RPG
though? Sounds like gaming heaven.
P O P S C I .CO M . AU 71
 TALES
F R O M T H E
FIELD
READ MY MIND
Proving
Precognition
DA RY L B E M, P R O F E S S O R E M E R I T U S
AT C O R N E L L U N I V E R S I T Y
As a social psychologist for more than 50 years, I’ve studied topics
including sexual orientation and personality theory. But I became
known for my work on precognition, anticipating the future. I got
hooked on this stuff as a kid when I saw a “mind reader” named Joseph
Dunninger on TV. In high school, I started performing my own
mentalism shows. When I became a professor, I showed my students
the same tricks to demonstrate why witnesses make mistakes.
In 1985, the Parapsychological Association, researchers who study
extrasensory perception, asked me to perform at a conference. On
stage, I correctly listed the contents of a packed box without opening it.
It was pure swindle, but the point was not to demonstrate that I could
read minds; it was to show how easily fraud could ruin their tests.
One of the scientists asked me to make his lab’s telepathy experiments
cheat-proof. He got real results—unexplained communication between
subjects in separate rooms—so I helped him get published in an academic
journal. But he died nine days before our write-up was accepted.
Suddenly, I was known for paranormal research.
Starting in 2000, I’d found existence of precognition in nine
experiments, by reversing the chronology of psychological tests. In one
classic study, people take longer to recognise an image as pleasant when
the word “ugly” flashes by before it. I flipped the order of events, so
subjects viewed the image before seeing the subliminal word. I still found
the same effect, showing they could “feel” the future. Eight of my
experiments are replicable, and I’m redesigning the ninth one so everyone
can get results from it too. In a way, I’m betting my career on it.
72 POPULAR SCIENCE as told to Amy Schellenbaum
NO PHONE HOME
Looking for Life in All
The Wrong Places
J I L L TA R T E R , A S T R O N O M E R A N D B E R N A R D
M . O L I V E R C H A I R AT T H E S E T I I N S T I T U T E
Since the 1970s, I’ve been pointing optical and radio
telescopes at the sky to look for engineered signals
from other planets—signs of extraterrestrial
intelligence. In 1984, I broadened that search when I
helped found the SETI Institute.
At SETI, we built tools to look for signals we don’t
think nature can produce. One time, in 1997, at West
Virginia’s Green Bank Observatory, my team noticed
a strange signal from a distant star. On a graph of
frequencies over time, it looked like a picket fence:
spikes with equal spacing between each one.
It was such an adrenaline rush. When you think
you’ve found an alien transmission, it’s heart-stop-
ping. I wrote a computer program to take another look
at the data—but I didn’t take the time toformat it
properly. Because of that, I misinterpreted the results.
Hours later, we realised our telescope was picking up
transmissions from the European Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory passing in front of the sun. If
I had been more level-headed and read the output
correctly, I could have saved all that time and
frustration. A BBC crew was filming us that day, and I
think they were more crushed than we were.
To make it worse, we had alerted
some colleagues in California to watch that same
star. We had gone off to bed after we sussed out it
wasn’t a signal. But we forgot to tell them! They
called back at 2 a.m., and they didn’t think it was
funny at all when we told them it was a false positive.
I had a number of fences to mend.
as told to Mary Beth Griggs / illustrations by Peter Oumanski
 Learning Writing
To train a neural network Benjamin churned out a
that writes text one jabberwocky of a script.
letter at a time, Goodwin Although it contained no
fed it nearly 1,000 sci-fi character information,
scripts, including The the actors interpreted the
X-Files and Blade Runner. tale as a love triangle.

1 2

THE BENJAMIN BUTTON

How to Program a Screenwriter

O S C A R S H A R P, D I R E C T O R ; R O S S G O O D W I N , T E C H N O L O G I S T

When director Oscar Sharp entered Sci-Fi-London’s 48 Hours Film Challenge in 2016, he
had to write, shoot, and edit a movie in two days. To up his creative game, Sharp enlisted
technologist Ross Goodwin to build what might be the first script-writing artificial intelli-
gence. This recurrent neural network, which eventually named itself Benjamin, spat out the
four-page screenplay that became the seven-minute Sunspring. Then things got weird.

3 4 5
Staging Screening Walking and talking
Sharp needed to make sense Audiences loved that an AI For Sharp’s next project,
of some very odd actions: had written the script— Goodwin trained Benjamin
For a character “taking though some considered it to write like screenwriter
his eyes from his mouth,” mere word salad. Out of Aaron Sorkin. Its latest
the director had the actor more than 100 competitors, line: “The president wants
spit out a prop eyeball. Sunspring made the top 10. to do it for me.”

as told to Jason Lederman / illustration by Peter Oumanski P O P S C I .CO M . AU 73


APRIL
1948
From The
Archives
The Ultimate
Post-War Tech
Feature?
THE HEADLINE OF THIS ARTICLE
jumped out during the monthly visit to the
(vast) PopSci archives, but as we read deeper
we realised this seemingly dry piece on how
scientists measure microseconds is actually
something a bit special.
In a scant 1500 words, writer Carl Dreher
name-checks pretty much every major
technology of the 20th century - radar,
X-rays, computing, “atomic” power, radio
broadcasting, navigation, communications
in general, and photography.
It’s astonishing to think it was written just
three years after the end of World War II.
by ANTHONY FORDHAM
74 POPULAR SCIENCE
POPULAR SCIENCE - APRIL 1948 - PAGE 163
Measuring the split flashes of time that are
microseconds makes possible many modern
miracles of science.
By Carl Dreher
I
T TOOK you about one second, or 1,000,000 microseconds, to
read the title of this article. On that basis one microsecond may
seem short enough to satisfy everyone, but to the modem
electronics engineer it is a fairly long time. Describing a new
electronic gadget, its inventor informs us that each dial division
corresponds to 0.0132 microseconds; in other words, he is measuring
down to a ten-thousandth of a millionth of a second.
That’s slicing it rather fine, but if it is worth a few dollars to you, you
can buy a pulse generator that will deliver bursts of power adjustable
down to 0.1 microsecond. You can order it from an advertisement—
nothing special about it—plug it into a wall socket like an electric iron,
and you’re a member of the microsecond-splitting fraternity yourself.
It’s economical to operate, too—consumes only 40 watts.
Is all this just a scientific stunt? Hardly, unless the major part of
radio and electronic development during the last war and be-tween
the two wars is to be so regarded. Actually it represents a major
technological revolution. If some Rip Van Winkle radio engineer
awoke today he would hardly recognize the science he pioneered.
Where he figured mainly in kilocycles, he would hear his younger
colleagues talking megacycles and thousands of megacycles. Where
he was concerned with the production of continuous waves, he would
find bursts or pulses of energy playing as important a role.
The technique of producing these pulses would seem especially odd
to him, for if he worked with vacuum tubes before his long sleep he
would remember that the first rule was to avoid overloading and
This has to be some
kind of parody, right?
APRIL 1948
In the late 1940s, the US economy was still shifting over from a
war-footing and just gearing up for the great boom of consumer
spending in the 1950s and on. That meant people still had to be
thrifty and “clever” Such as by turning their homes into horrible
rat-mazes just so they could say they had an extra bedroom.
Want to know why so many postwar renovation projects involve
knocking out crappy, non-load-bearing walls? This is why.

consequent distortion. Many circui
names—clipping, blocking, slicing, li
etc.—show that they are designed to
to preserve them. Finally, he would d
manipulated with a split-microse
time. The most important practical
is radar. We usually think of radar
obstacle detection. Basically radar
of exquisite precision, and wh
derivative of what we measure
square-shaped pulses, usually of
the reflection from a target, mea
and automatically, convert it in
tube, and that’s radar.
Used in Navigation Aids
Another application of microsecond technique is the Loran
navigation system (PS, Feb. ‘48, p. 78). Like radar, it uses
ry rectangular pulses, but they are transmitted on a comparatively long
ave, wave length from a number of widely separated locations. Thus they
r than cover a much greater range than radar, which, like television, is
contours limited to the optical horizon. The method is to measure the time of
own in his transmission from each transmitter and thus to obtain a fix by
techniques triangulation. The individual pulses are relatively long—about 40
nd bombing or microseconds—but it is a split-microsecond technique, for the
me measurement transmitters are synchronized to within 0.5 microsecond.
he scope is only a Another field for pulse-transmitting devices lies in guided-missile
onds. We send out control. The problem here is to feed data to a built-in radio receiver,
econd duration, pick up which will guide the missile to a target. Continuous waves may be
lapsed time electronically used for this purpose, but pulse control offers the advantage of
nce, dis-play the result on a coding, so that the receiver will respond only to friendly emissions
and the enemy will be unable to take over control of the missile for
P O P S C I .CO M . AU 75
 APRIL
194

Fro
A

d for a single revolution, and the timing of the

g impulses must be of the same order.
example takes us back into the field of radio
nication. It is the system of multiplexing, or sending
l messages simultaneously over a single circuit. Its
plexity is one of its advantages. In military use, for which it
was originally developed, it affords a high order of security
precisely because it involves a complex interlacing of pulses on
which it is difficult to eavesdrop.
The underlying principle, however, is simple. Even the shortest
single sound of speech or music is comparatively long. It lasts for
his own ends. thousands of microseconds. Why, then, once we have learned how
Guided-missile applications are only in the experimental stage, to divide time into microsecond slices, must we send all of a given
but another field, that of industrial controls, was already highly sound over a circuit on which time represents money?
developed before the war and now stands to benefit by the advances
of radar and allied techniques. The devices used are manifold, but Sampling Sections of Sound
their common purpose is to supply self-correcting means in
industrial processing in place of imperfect manual controls. All we eed to do is to isten to small sections of the sound for a
A typical problem is automatic register control in the printing fraction a microsecond, and all the information in the original
industry. One solution involves the use of a phototube that detects wave wi e retaine Moreover, by that method we can sample a
any misregister and promptly triggers a square-wav ircuit, which number onversa ns or musical r nditions and send them over
in turn operates a correcting motor. One of these d ices will e sam cuit si ltaneously.
control a large printing press at any speed between 300 an 000 he m ary on of thi genious system was developed by
feet a minute, and maintain register to within a thousandth ri h . Arm nal Corps, RCA, and Bell Telephone
inch at all times.
High-speed photography is also a field in w h microsecond
timing is required. One system uses microflash bul a
control circuit with a period of about two micro-seconds. This
the lower limit: the GE General Engineering and Consulting
Laboratory is reported to have a fully automatic
camera, with a speed of one micro ec , p
finished transparency within 30 seconds; the Navy has anoth
type, utilizing a Kerr cell as the shutter, for which a speed of
microsecond is claimed.
In the development of the atomic bomb, X-ray pho graphs were
made using high-voltage pulses to create peak currents as high a
2,000 amperes, but lasting only a microsecond or so. These devi
are used for observation of machinery in motion, the passag of
bullets through gun barrels, and for the study of motion that n be
re-corded only by microsecond techniques.
Particle accelerators used in atomic research may in o e respect
be considered microsecond devices. Whether the particles move in
linear or closed paths, they must be kicked ahead electrically at the
right in-tervals. At the high speeds at which they move, this
normally involves microsecond timing. In the FM cyclotron, for
example, the particles circle the chamber at the rate of 0.1

76 POPULAR SCIENCE
 Laboratories. It has eight two-way telephone channels that can also
serve as telegraph or facsimile channels. Bell is now using this type
of equipment in several civilian installations, such as the one linking
Awesome Ad of the Month!
Catalina Island to the California mainland. Half the fun of old magazines is old ads. Like this one, which
A similar system developed by International Telephone and promises you Total Knowledge of home maintenance from a single
book. Mess up in a catastrophic way? Just use the knowledge from
Telegraph is capable of accommodating eight broadcast channels
the free second book to build a new house!
on a single frequency, with only one transmitting and one receiving
antenna. Such microsecond technique may provide economical
radio reception in hotels and institutions.
How do they split seconds into a million or more pieces? For
transmission and control it is done by means of pulse-generating
circuits. Some of these generate square or peaked waves directly,
while others start with a standard vacuum-tube oscillator producing
the conventional sine wave and distort it into a series of square-
shaped pulses. This is done by overloading the tubes, and is called
the brute-force method. Using crystal-control, such circuits can be
stabilized with microsecond accuracy.
For reception and measurement, cathode-ray oscilloscopes are
used. In a cathode-ray tube electrons fly out of the cathode and are
focused into a beam that makes a spot of light on a fluorescent
screen. Deflecting apparatus in the throat bends the beam when a
suitable voltage is applied. Amplitude (voltage or current) is
represented on the face of the tube by vertical distances, time by
horizontal distances. The voltage that produces the horizontal
movement is called a time base ant the circuit that produces the
voltage is called a sweep circuit. A cathode-ray ‘scope may have a
sweep of 20 inches per microsecond.
Accuracy depends largely on the frequency standards available.
The Bureau of Standards has a number of transmitters constantly
on the air to provide a check. Its primary frequency standards are
accurate to better than one part in ten million. Its broadcast time
signals are constantly compared with absolute time data from the U.
S. Naval Observatory. Some of its equipment will measure a rate of
change equivalent to one second in 50 years. This remarkable
accuracy can be plucked out of the air for nothing. END

TOP 4: AUTO INNOVATIONS OF 1948

Think space-savers are bad? Imagine being forced to bolt part of a
spare wheel to your car, just to get home. Think people don’t use their
indicators enough? Imagine a light that says “Okay Pass” and when
you pass, it’s right into an oncoming truck. Innovations!

P O P S C I .CO M . AU 77
 Paying the Iron Price
The Iron Lung is a truly terrifying thing. A great chunk of primitive technology that
traps you, but on which you depend totally for survival. The worst part? It works.
by ANTHONY FORDHAM
WHAT’S YOUR ULTIMATE MEDICAL-
emergency-based, full-on existential-dread-
inspiring, total-body-horror nightmare? All
over body third degree burns, of course, but
right behind that has to be something that robs
you of your ability to breathe for yourself.
Today, tracheotomies and intubation are
pretty scary, but it could be worse. You could
have had polio in the 1950s and ended up in one
of these things: an iron lung.
While there are bunch of pathogens and
poisons that can cause respiratory paralysis, the
most “popular” way to wind up in an iron lung
was via a disease called poliomyelitis.
This is the cause of the infamous polio-
paralysis which left so many kids with limited
mobility. Future US President Franklin D
Roosevelt was also a victim... or at least, that’s
what his doctors thought at the time, though
subsequent research has suggested he probably
had the autoimmune condition Guillian-Barre
Syndrome. But that’s another story.
Anyway, losing the ability to walk thanks to
polio is pretty terrible, but losing control of your
diaphragm is probably worse. Unable to draw
breath, victims would simply suffocate.
Today we mainly use “positive pressure
ventilation”. We intubate the patient, and then
push air into their lungs. After each pump, the
lungs deflate naturally...
...except that’s not actually how human
respiration works. We don’t force air into our
lungs, we force it out, then open up the lungs
again. With less air inside, they are at a lower
The iron lung was refined over the years, to give doctors finer control of air pressure and to make it
more comfortable (or at least, less uncomfortable) for patients. A few people in the US still use them.
78 POPULAR SCIENCE
pressure than the surrounding atmosphere,
and so air rushes in. Iron lungs saved many children
during polio outbreaks. Most only
This is called negative pressure breathing, had to spend days or a few weeks in
and it’s also how an iron lung works. the lung, until the paralysis passed.
AND EXHALE
The earliest example of the idea of assisted
negative pressure breathing comes from as far
back as 1670. English scientist John Mayvow
built a fairly terrifying model with bellows and
bladders as part of his general obsession with
trying to figure out how respiration worked.
But this was just to demonstrate the idea of
negative pressure breathing.
Actual use of such devices as medical
therapy, didn’t start until the 1830s, and the
first mass production of a machine we’d
recognise as an iron lung came along in 1928.
Invented - and patented - by US Harvard
professor of industrial hygiene (actual title)
Philip Drinker, it was powered by pumps from
vacuum cleaners and an electric motor.
The idea is straightforward. The iron
lung is an airtight chamber in which
the patient lies, with their head
sticking out one end. An airtight
scary rubber seal goes
around their neck, and
then air is pumped out
of the chamber.
This causes the
patient’s chest to rise, the
lungs to expand, and air
from outside the chamber to

be drawn into the lungs. Then the pressure in the
chamber is ramped up, the chest compresses,
and the air rushes out again. Simple!
The Drinker Respirator was very expensive,
however, and so US inventor John Emerson
came up with a cheaper version. Harvard
University sued him, saying he’d infringed on
Drinker’s patents. Emerson argued that life
saving devices should be freely available to all.
This didn’t seem to impress the mercenary
US legal system, but Emerson had also
demonstrated that every aspect of Drinker’s
device had been used or published earlier by
researchers and inventors going all the way back
to, as mentioned, 1670. Drinker’s iron lung was
ruled “not novel” and his patents invalidated.
CHEAPER TUBES
Meanwhile in Australia, a brutal polio epidemic
in 1937 saw demand for the iron lung sky-rocket.
The Drinker lung was huge and expensive. So
The Both Respirator is a proud
Aussie invention that, while still
an “iron lung” is actually made
of wood. Cheaper, and quicker to
build, it was a vital, and effective,
weapon in the fight against polio.
South Australia’s Health Department asked
biomedical engineer Edward Both to come up
with something cheaper.
He invented a wooden version called a
cabinet respirator (and eventually, a Both
Respirator) that worked so well and was so cheap
to make, patients could find themselves shoved
into one mere hours after it had been built.
By the 1950s, iron lungs were anything but
uncommon. Hospitals wards were filled with
the things. Some patients only had to spend a
few hours a day inside, others were pretty much
suck in there permanently.
Because of the way the iron lung traps the
body, and because of the cost and bulk of the
machines, and most of all because the polio
vaccine has massively reduced the number of
poliomyelitis cases each year, these devices
aren’t used much anymore.
More than all of these though, is that positive
pressure ventilation has become the go-to
solution for patients who can’t breathe for
themselves. Mouth-to-mouth, bag valve masks,
positive airway pressure ventilators, intubation
and more are now universal and effective.
The irony though? Despite its “medieval
torture device” look, negative pressure
ventilation is actually better at replicating
normal air flow through the lungs. It makes
sense: that’s how we breathe. We don’t force
air into our bodies, we let it flow in there
thanks to air pressure.
Modern ventilation reverses the process: it
forces air in, and lets it just waft out passively.
It’s not ideal, but on the plus side a hospital
can have a cabinet full of hundreds of tubes
and masks, and of course if you have to stay on
ventilation for days or weeks, you don’t need
to be sealed inside a giant metal can.
That’s probably the worst aspect of the iron
lung, this obsolete piece of medical ingenuity
that looks so awful yet saved countless
thousands of lives. It works really, really well.

AUSSIE RECORD HOLDER!

Because Australians are the best at everything, it should come as
no surprise that an Australian woman holds the world record for
time spent in an iron lung. June Middleton was unlucky enough to
get polio at 22. She first used an iron lung on 5th April 1949, and kept
using the device for the next 60 years, until her death at in 2009.
She lived in Fairfield Hospital in Melbourne for over 40 years,
spending 21 hours a day in the iron lung. However, she was able to
spend her final years at home, thanks to the Yooralla Ventilator
Accommodation Support Service. Guinness World Records put her
in the book in 2006. Go Aussie.

P O P S C I .CO M . AU 79
 L A B R AT S
In Defence of the Coma
There are worse ways to get a year off, all expenses paid
WHEN I WAKE UP I DON’T ASK “WHERE AM I?”
because it’s obvious I’m in hospital, and also there’s a
tube down my throat. After a bunch of spluttering and
convulsing, and beeping, and nurses rushing around,
and doctors explaining things that I don’t understand
or, in my analgesically- bluntened state, care about,
everything eventually falls into place.
One of the good things about a “medically-
induced” coma is that no matter what anyone says, it’s
fundamentally not your fault. Sure, whatever you did
that meant the doctors had to put you into a medically-
induced coma might be your fault, but the coma itself is
not. It is, as they say, medically-induced.
I lie in the hospital and think about this. Then I think
about how much my throat hurts, you know, from the
tube. Then I think about how hospitals have to feed you,
like, several times a day and I feel pretty happy.
When you’re an itinerate scientific test subject
working for $125 (ish) a weak, the constant barrage
of allergenic chemicals, random toxins, and the
occasional barcore tattoo, make it very hard to augment
your meagre income, in any way. So you have to make
adjustments. Like adjusting to the idea that not everyone
can afford more than one meal a day.
Eventually after just the right amount of anticipation,
a nurse brings me a tray full of coloured materials that
don’t resemble any food I can remember, but after a
year in a medically-induced coma, everything tastes
absolutely amazing.
The nurse seems somewhat surprised when she
returns four and a half minutes later and see my tray is
completely empty. I reach out to grab her arm and she
flinches away. She raises an admonishing finger.
“Please,” I say. “Why was my coma medically-
induced?” She puts the finger away, looks aside, seems
embarrassed or ashamed or something. She opens her
mouth, closes it again, opens it, seems to reconsider,
opens it, and with the swiftness of years of practice,
suddenly injects me with a powerful sedative.
When I wake up again, my agent Curt “Definitely
a C” Blockade is sitting on my bed and looking at all
the life support equipment in a way that suggests he’s
trying to figure out how much he could get for it at Cash
Converters. He notices me twitch.
“Maaaate!” he says, in the way he does. “What’s going
on mate? Here you are all sitting up like jacky, and it’s
only March mate. What’s the story?”
“Well first,” I rasp, “that expression is actually racist.
And second, what are you talking about?”
Blockade looks confused, a subtly different
expression from the look of bafflement that sits on his
dough-like face at all other times. “Mate?” he asks. “I’m
talking about the deal mate, the plan. The agreement.
The ‘experiment’, you know?” He puts air quotes
80 POPULAR SCIENCE
BY
around “experiment” in a way that’s either ominously SUBJECT
conspiratorial, or an indication that he doesn’t really ZERO
know what the word means.
“I uh...” I say and Blockade grins with relief. “That’s
right mate,” he says. “Eier Labs, the Big Egg, the Whole
Omelette, the Fry-up from Hell, the -” He trails off,
seemingly transfixed by the CTG monitor next to my
bedside. Then he blinks. “Anyway, good job, keep it up.
Having a break mate, I get it, having a break is good.
Here, the goodies so far,” he hands me an envelope.
“Minus my cut, of course.” Then he climbs out the
window, but that’s nothing especially unusual.
I look at the envelope. It has a vaguely egg-shaped
logo in the corner, with EIER LABS written underneath.
The envelope contains approximately four thousand
dollars. As far as I can tell anyway, I’m not really used to
counting that much money.
“What the f--” I begin, and then a clipped German “She opens
voice from the other side of the bed says: “We trust the
retainer is still to your satisfaction?” her mouth,
“Blargh!” I say and flinch away while turning to see closes it
who it is, which gets my cords tangled up. Things are
starting to fade to black until I realise a man in a dark
again, opens
suit is tut-tutting and untangling them. The cords I it, seems to
mean. The world comes back. “You really must take reconsider,
more care,” the man is saying. “You are a considerable
investment. Well, not considerable, but an investment.
opens it,
Well, not an investment but we at Eier Labs cannot abide and with the
waste.” He has very short blonde hair, very bright blue swiftness
eyes, and a very thin mouth.
“Okay,” I say, and then the nurse who’d injected me of years of
with the sedative bursts into the room with a panicky- practice,
looking doctor. “Oh NO!” cries the doctor, then covers suddenly
his mouth, then looks at the nurse who is shaking her
head. She pulls an ampoule out of her pocket, looks at injects
it, then claps her hand to her forehead and shows the me with a
ampoule to the doctor. He glares at her and winds up like
he’s going to punch her out, but then they both freeze,
powerful
turn and look at the German guy, look at each other, sedative.”
and then run for it. As they go, another nurse comes in
wheeling a gurney and whistling.
“Alright!” he says, smiling. “Just here to pick up the
body, isn’t it?” He stops, sees me staring at him wild-
eyed, and the German guy staring at him with a raised
eyebrow. Then he smoothly wheels the gurney out
again. I hear him go whistling up the corridor.
The German guy blinks. “Clearly, our protocols have
developed an unfortunate permeability,” he says. He
snatches the envelope from my hand, peels off what
looks depressingly like $125, and drops it in my lap.
“Good luck with...” he waves one manicured hand.
“Whatever it is that will next happen, to you.”
Then he leaves and I’m left wondering which one of
these machines can put me back into that coma.
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