Popular Science

Bow, nerds, and greet your king. Before this week, Richard Garriott was already geek royalty. The son of an astronaut, Garriott grew up in a NASA village, started writing best-selling videogames in high school, and has voyaged to the bottom of the ocean. Now Garriott has achieved the crown jewel of nerdom: he's in space.

Two disparate concepts can sometimes join together to create a perfectly harmonious third. Few people would have thought that peanut butter and jelly would taste good together, but they do. No one would have guessed that combining two gases -- hydrogen and oxygen -- would produce the liquid called water. But they do.

The verdict is still out on what exactly will be the outcome of a paleontologist, Sankar Chatterjee, putting his scientific head together with that of an aeronautical engineer named Rick Lind. But so far the results have been intriguing. The object of their collaboration is a project called the pterodrone, an unmanned aerial vehicle modeled on the flying prowess of an early Cretaceous pterosaur, Tapejara wellnhoferi.

Submit a 5 Minute Project for Popular Science! Each month we feature a cool and handy new project, and we're excited to showcase some ideas from the inventive Instructables.com community, and our own.

It's just after sunset in Long Beach, California, and John Dabiri stands on the end of a wooden dock, peering down at the water. In his white sneakers and striped polo shirt, Dabiri might be just another boater checking out a well-known local spectacle: a pulsing mass of hundreds of softball-size moon jellyfish that regularly gather here.

The southern coast of Spain is known for hot parties, hot food, and hot people. But one thing it may soon be known for is cooling the climate. The southeastern region of Almeria is home not only to paella and flamenco but also to the world's largest expanse of greenhouses. The roofs on these "hot houses" reflect incredible amounts of sunlight – so much, in fact, that scientists now say they could be responsible for lowering the local temperature.

To follow up on its famed Aeron office chair, Herman Miller gave its engineers a challenge: Create a seat that offers a custom fit for anyone, no matter how big or small, round-shouldered or straight-backed. The engineers’ solution was to construct the frame from dozens of small, flexible pieces that bend precisely to your contours.