Jeanette Moreland | The Verge

Your airplane hits an animal — now what?

2025-01-28T10:39:43-05:00

Every summer, hundreds of diamondback terrapins crawl over to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to lay their eggs. In past years, the turtles have been so obstructive, they’ve caused flight delays. To manage situations like these, airports like JFK have entire departments dedicated to keeping wildlife and planes out of each other’s way.

While keeping the tarmac clear of turtles allows airports to operate smoothly, the real danger looms in the skies. On average, over 10,000 wildlife strikes are reported each year to the Federal Aviation Administration, most of them birds. As more planes take to the skies the number of bird strikes has trended upward at an alarming rate, threatening to damage planes, or worse, cause catastrophic engine failure during takeoff, like the infamous US Airways Flight 1549.

To keep interactions between planes and wildlife from turning deadly, specialists employ a range of tactics from habitat management to sequencing bird DNA. But can they keep up with the pace of travel? The Verge joined a wildlife biologist on the runway at JFK, and an expert in feather forensics at the Smithsonian, to find out. Check out our latest video to see what we found — and learn what the word “snarge” means.

Correction July 29th, 5:50PM ET: A previous version of this post misstated American Airlines flight 1549. It has been updated to US Airways flight 1549. We regret the error.

Making music from neurons

2025-01-28T10:39:44-05:00

Looking through a microscope, doctoral candidate Simón(e) Sun takes a tiny glass pipette and gently attaches it to a neuron in a petri dish. She’s taking recordings of synaptic activity, the electrochemical signals neurons use to communicate with each other. The data Sun gathers will be used to understand microprocesses in the brain.

It will also be turned into music.

Bridging science and art, Sun wrote a computer program that takes her data and converts it into song. And the ethereal MIDI sounds aren’t just nice to listen to — they can actually teach us a lot about how the brain works.

Sun is studying something called “homeostatic plasticity,” which is how neurons regulate their activity. Her research has broad implications for the field of neuroscience. It might eventually help researchers better understand neuropsychiatric conditions like autism or help build better brain-computer interfaces.

The Verge Science video team joined Sun in the Tsien Lab at NYU Langone Health’s Neuroscience Institute to record some neurons and create an original song. Check out our latest video to see what we learned and experience the sounds of synapses.

This alien-like metal may one day power your electronics

2025-01-28T10:39:45-05:00

Bismuth is a heavy, brittle metal that forms colorful geometric crystals when melted and then slowly cooled. It’s most commonly known as a main ingredient in Pepto Bismol — less commonly known as bismuth subsalicylate. And someday soon, it might be used to help power your electronics.

Scientists like Robert Hoye, a lecturer in the department of materials at Imperial College London, are using bismuth-based compounds in photovoltaics — materials that convert light into energy. Bismuth has unique electronic properties that not only make it a good candidate for solar cells, but make it great for indoor use — a place where traditional photovoltaics don’t perform too well. That means it might one day replace the need for batteries in billions of indoor electronics, like home sensors and health monitors, says Hoye.

Aside from its ability to absorb light, bismuth makes for an ideal battery replacement because it’s completely nontoxic. Unlike other metals which can harm people and the environment, bismuth is benign. If it ends up in a landfill, it won’t leach toxic metals into soil and water — a real problem with current electronics that contain metals such as lead, cadmium, and tellurium.

Verge Science brought some raw bismuth to Staten Island’s MakerSpace to grow some other-worldly crystals, and we spoke to Robert Hoye about the exciting future possibilities for this unique and often under-appreciated element. Watch our latest video above to see what we discovered.

This scientist shoots trees to study how they migrate

2025-01-28T10:39:47-05:00

In Black Rock Forest, just north of New York City, Angie Patterson aims a shotgun at a northern red oak tree. Patterson is a plant ecophysiologist, and the leaves that she’s shooting out of the canopy will give her data to understand how and why trees migrate.

Trees have been on the move since at least the last ice age. As their native habitats become inhospitable, tree ranges shift, slowly, to areas they can thrive. But climate change is disrupting the process, scientists say. As of 2019, the IUCN Red List categorized more than 20,000 tree species as threatened, and upward of 1,400 as critically endangered.

As scientists scramble to learn more about what drives tree migration, others are planning for the future. To preserve biodiversity, both citizens and researchers are employing interventionist tactics once steeped in controversy like “assisted migration” — taking tree seedlings and planting them in new locations. Rising global temperatures may force wildlife agencies and forest managers to decide what to save and what to leave behind.

The Verge Science video team trekked into the woods with “the shotgun scientist” to learn how and why trees move to new locations. Can we do anything to help the trees? And what tough calls will we have to make if we can’t? Watch our latest video to see what we discovered.