July 17, 2024: We're covering real-life storm chasers, animals that are physics whizzes and a new consideration of the Fermi Paradox. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | | A meteorologist hired as a science advisor for Twisters, a sequel to the 1996 tornado-chasers cult classic Twister, says that the new movie's makers were keen to latch onto cutting-edge technology that's actually used in the field. Sean Waugh and his colleagues at the National Severe Storm Laboratory, along with Kevin Kelleher, an advisor for the 1996 movie and former deputy director of the NSSL, served "as a touchstone for all aspects of the movie's realism," reports Max Springer, a AAAS Mass Media Fellow this summer at Scientific American. While visiting the NSSL, the Twisters crew studied real equipment, radar imagery and other procedures at the lab to create props and some of the movie's narrative, sound and visual elements.
What the experts say: "The entire production was a concerted effort to ensure the movie's authenticity. The whole team relied on me and Kevin Kelleher to maintain that authenticity," says Waugh, who spoke with Scientific American while out in his specialized storm-chasing truck.
Nifty nugget: Storm-chasing meteorologists really do rely on gut feelings at times to forecast storms, Waugh says, as Bill Paxton's character did in the original Twister. "People joke that meteorologists are wrong all the time—but we're trying to predict the future here! I ask anybody to show me what their March Madness bracket looks like on any given year and tell me if they can predict the future." | | | A scene from the movie Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung. This image has been cropped for display purposes. FlixPix/Universal Pictures/Alamy Stock Photo | | | Scientists have suspended tiny, deformable silicone rubber spheres in liquid to create a "tunable" fluid, reports freelance science journalist Simon Makin. In a recent paper, researchers write that engineers potentially could tweak the compressibility, transparency and viscosity of the new "meta fluid" to make it useful for smart shock absorbers, more sensitive gripping mechanisms for robots and programmable acoustic baffles.
How it works: The liquid's silicone rubber spheres buckle at certain pressures, enabling more compression. The size, softness and number of spheres can be modified to achieve desired properties under pressure.
What the experts say: In a demonstration of the fluid's versatility, the researchers loaded equal volumes of the liquid into a robot's hydraulic gripper and tested its performance on objects ranging from a glass bottle to a blueberry. "We tuned the springiness of our fluid so that whether it's something big and rigid or small and fragile, the gripper can safely grab it," says applied physicist Adel Djellouli, who helped develop the material. | | | • Our failure so far to find alien life or technology near Earth or anywhere in our solar system could be due to insufficient "sampling depth," that is, not looking as thoroughly or keenly for it as we might, writes microbial evolution researcher Jacob Wilde. Given the methods used to try to resolve the so-called Fermi Paradox, any claims that we haven't found alien life yet near Earth are "a bit like declaring the entire ocean free of fish when none appear in a scooped-up bucket of seawater," Wilde adds. The essay advocates for improved sampling depth in future efforts to detect nearby alien life, as well as searching for "sophisticated and compact alien spacecraft, rather than motherships spewing misused energy." | 5 min read | | | • Horses, guns and swords: How cumbersome equipment gets to the Olympics. | The Washington Post | | | • I went to Death Valley to experience 129 degrees. | The Atlantic | | | • The best books of 2024, so far. | Book Riot | | | Today is National Hot Dog Day. Would Scientific American cover such a topic? Thank goodness, yes. Check out this piece about how many hot dogs a person theoretically can eat. (Connoisseurs probably heard that Joey Chestnut was banned from participating in this month's Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in New York City.) If you are curious as to what's inside a hot dog, here's a podcast episode with the unsavory details. Finally, do I eat them? Yes. Occasionally. I have no strong defense. But they go well with baseball games.
| Please send any comments, questions or amazing food-science stories: newsletters@sciam.com. We enjoy hearing from you. | —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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