Science, Spoken

The internet loves videos of motorcyclists doing crazy things on the autobahn. This one seems especially popular. From what I can gather, the rider is hauling along when a car cuts him off, requiring some sudden emergency braking. Let me show you how out of control I can get with the physics in this video. And don't worry—I've got a homework question for you at the end. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The robot is building a tesseract. He motions at a glowing cube floating before him, and an identical cube emerges. He drags it to the left, but the two cubes stay connected, strung together by glowing lines radiating from their corners. The robot lowers its hands, and the cubes coalesce into a single shape—with 24 square faces, 16 vertices, and eight connected cubes existing in four dimensions. A tesseract. This isn’t a video game. It’s a classroom. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A metronome ticks time. Not for the student, but for the teacher, who plays a short piano melody. Without missing a measure, the student follows with an improvised, yet derivative, cello run. The student plays the same run again, and then again. “I have it looping, actually, so you can hear the response over and over again,” says the teacher, Jesse Engel, a computer scientist with Google Brain. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

I must admit to being pretty excited about Wonder Woman.Although I read a lot of comic books when I was younger, I favored Marvel over DC, so everything I know about Wonder Woman came from the TV show starring Linda Carter. It sounds likeWonder Woman might be the best superhero movie so far. Like all superhero movies, Wonder Woman provides an opportunity to do a littlephysics. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When it comes toCrispr, the bacterial wünderenzyme that allows scientists to precisely edit DNA, no news is too small to stir up some drama. On Tuesday morning, doctors from Columbia, Stanford, and the University of Iowa published a one-page letterto the editor of Nature Methods—an obscure but high-profile journal—describing something downright peculiar. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Internet of Animals has arrived. No, not like cat-stalking zucchini gifs and skateboarding bulldog snaps (those are so 2015). Across the country, farmers are building actual connected networks of cows, pigs, and chickens. Using everything from microphones, accelerometers, and GPS trackers totemperature, glucose, and skin conductivity sensors, farmers can now track and monitor their flocks and herds with the flick of a finger. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It started with vomiting and a fever. But a few days later, five-month old Liam was in the emergency room, his tiny body gripped by hourly waves of seizures. X-rays and MRIs showed deep swelling in his brain. When an infectious disease specialist at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center diagnosed Liam with Powassan virus in November, he became the first recorded case in state history. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

President Trump’s proposed 2018 budget will never actually determine how the government spends your money: Potus proposes and Congress disposes. But that’s no reason for relief. In fact, it makes this document even more of a nightmare. It doesn’t direct funding, but it does put the Trump administration’s underlying philosophy of governance on display. And it’s a harsh one. The science cuts make this most visible. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

All good things must come to an end, and Eruptions on WIRED ends today. It has been a great 5-plus years of reporting on volcanoes here, but nothing lasts forever (even geologically). There are a pile of people to thank at WIRED for all the help I’ve gotten over the years: Nick Stockton, Nadia Drake, David Mosher, Katie Palmer, all the former WIRED Science bloggers, all the great folks at WIRED’s photo department, Katie Davies, and Adam Rogers. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

From the outside, the Lost Spirits Distillery is just another boxy, early-20th-century building along the frayed edge of downtown Los Angeles. At first the inside appears similarly uninspired: deep and unfinished, littered with cardboard boxes, plumbing fittings, spools of wire, inscrutable items made of copper, a forklift. The usual crap. But what’s this then? A heavy black curtain bisects the industrial space from floor to ceiling, nearly from the front door to the back. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices