TechnologyMetric

DIY TV ANTENNA You could make your own TV antenna to watch the Super Bowl. There are easier ways, too. Jonathon Kambouris Whether you’re a football fan or not, it’s hard to deny that the Super Bowl is one of the biggest collective cultural events of the year. Last year, 111.9 million people tuned in to watch the chaotic mix of slick commercials, Madonna, and the occasional bit of actual football. But, having the big game in your home isn’t a given anymore. By the end of 2016, 16.7 million people in total had ditched cable. Estimates put that number around 22.2 million at the end of 2017. The typical TV route isn’t for everyone anymore, but there are other options for tuning into this year’s Super Bowl. Here’s a breakdown of your choices. Use a dedicated app Since NBC is broadcasting the game this year, the network would love for you to stream it through the NBC Sports App on various platforms like Roku, but that requires a login from a TV provider, which defeats our whol...

SMALL AND LARGE The M100 galaxy, which is about 60 percent larger than the Milky Way, next to the M97 galaxy. From "Galaxy Size Comparison Chart" by Rhys Taylor Think the Milky Way is big? It's puny compared to M87, an elliptical galaxy 980,000 light years in diameter. The Milky Way is only 100,000 light years in diameter. Let's not even get into Hercules A, which is 1.5 million light years across. Astronomer and artist Rhys Taylor has made such comparisons easier and much more fun with his new infographics ("which is what I gather is now the cool term for 'posters,'" he writes) comparing the sizes of different galaxies. The graphics are well worth exploring. They show the diversity in sizes and shapes of galaxies and offer interesting facts, like that some galaxies emit jets, powered by black holes in their centers. See them in their full glory at Taylor's website.. Read More at : https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/c...

You can count on the deep ocean to spawn surreal creatures that, depending on your point of view, look very beautiful or very unnerving. A deep-sea fisherman in Murmansk, Russia, has taken to sharing some of his most striking catches on Twitter. The animals featured in Roman Fedortsov’s pictures have recently inspired comparisons to the movie Alien and Jim Henson’s fantastical creations. But don't take these fish at face value. Some of them may actually be a bit deformed in the pictures because their swim bladders—the gas-filled organ that helps them move up and down through the water—expanded at surface pressure, distending their bellies. “Fishes with swim bladders become distorted when brought up to the surface if they live at depth, and that certainly appears to be the case here,” Paul Snelgrove, a marine biologist at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada, told Popular Science in an email. Other stars of Fedortsov’s Twitter feed don’t use swim bladders to contr...

PRICEY ORGANS Victor de Schwanberg/Photo Researchers First, a disclaimer: Selling your organs is illegal in the United States. It's also very dangerous. Handing off an organ is risky enough when done in a top hospital, even more so if you're doing it for cash in a back alley. No, really: Don't do this. OK? OK. There are many organs one can theoretically do without, or for which there's a backup. Most folks can spare a kidney, a portion of their liver, a lung, some intestines, and an eyeball, and still live a long life. That said, donating a lung, a piece of liver or a section of intestines is a very complicated surgery, so it's not done frequently on the black market. And no one's going to make much cash on an eyeball. "In the U.S., there's a fairly steady supply of donated corneas from corpses," says Sean Fitzpatrick, director of public affairs at the New England Organ Bank. "There's pretty much no market demand for eyes." ...