Gina Barton | Vox

Astronauts left poop on the moon. We should go get it.

2019-06-18T11:58:18-04:00

Human feces can be disgusting, but it’s also teeming with life. Around 50 percent of its mass is made up of bacteria, representing some of the 1,000-plus species of microbes that live in our guts. In a piece of poop lives a whole wondrous ecosystem.

With the Apollo 11 moon landing, astronauts took that microbial life to the most extreme environment it has ever been in. Which means the human feces on the moon — along with bags of urine, food waste, vomit, and other waste that also might contain microbial life — represents a natural, though unintended, experiment.

The question the experiment will answer: How resilient is life in the face of the brutal environment of the moon? And for that matter, if microbes can survive on the moon, can they survive interstellar travel, making them capable of seeding life across the universe, including on places like Mars?

To learn more, check out the video above on our YouTube channel. Or read our feature story: Apollo astronauts left their poop on the moon. We gotta go back for that shit.

How Game of Thrones uses costume design to show power

2019-05-13T11:12:03-04:00

Sansa Stark and Cersei Lannister are two of Game of Thrones’ most recognizable enemies. But despite being on opposite sides of Westeros, their costumes have a lot in common.

From the very beginning of the show, their outfits have been mirrors. When both women are oppressed and weak in the show’s earlier seasons, they’re dressed in loose pastel clothing signaling their lack of power. As their plots become more complicated, they don “survival camouflage” — clothes used to mask secrets and blend in with surrounding enemies. And when Cersei and Sansa begin to assert the power of their houses in later seasons, Lannister lions and Stark wolves become the focal point of their clothes.

In the show’s final season, the costume design for both women defaults to military-style accents on their gowns as they prep for battle. Those high-necked dresses evoke images of each family’s armor, full of defensive details like epaulets and draped chains. And while both leaders have learned different lessons about war and family, it’s safe to say their outfit parallels are there for a reason.

To learn more Game of Thrones’ costume design, check out the video above. And for more Vox videos, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

How Norway designed a more humane prison

2019-04-12T13:56:10-04:00

Halden Prison in Norway looks sort of like a fancy dorm room or a hotel — much different from the barbed wire and cramped cells we often associate with prison design. Its look is all part of a plan to create a more humane prison, one where the architecture isn’t part of the punishment.

Most prisons around the world are consolidated into one single building. This style makes it easy and efficient for inmates to move around, but the design is monotonous and full of visually unappealing materials, like steel and concrete. Plus, tight quarters inside these spaces can foster conflict.

Halden has a different structure: a campus design, where inmates move from one building to another and are surrounded by lots of windows; construction materials help muffle noise and take advantage of natural light.

The prison’s layout also encourages guards to interact with inmates face to face, which fosters better relationships and reduces security-related incidents.

Halden’s design style is expensive — which is why we mostly see it implemented in places with good social support systems, like Western Europe and Scandinavia. Still, the design is setting new standards for what prisons could be like in the future.

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The design tricks that keep skyscrapers from swaying

2019-03-08T15:22:47-05:00

At 1,396 feet, 432 Park Avenue isn’t the tallest building in New York. But with a height-to-width ratio of 15 to 1, it is one of the skinniest. On windy days, that ratio can cause one little problem: swaying.

Back-and-forth movement on top floors can cause serious discomfort for people inside. To deal with that, modern skyscrapers use a slew of architectural tricks to confuse the wind. Details that might look like decorative flair — like twisted sides, tapered pointy tips, and gaping holes — are actually carefully designed wind reduction techniques that keep buildings still.

We’re in the middle of a super-tall skyscraper boom. And that means more and more people are going to rely on tools like these to live comfortably as we keep building into the sky.

Watch the video above to learn how the insides and outsides of tall buildings are designed to redirect wind. You can find this video and all of Vox’s By Design series on YouTube.

Why safe playgrounds aren’t great for kids

2019-03-05T12:35:50-05:00

The stereotypical modern playground — with its bright colors and rubberized flooring — is designed to be clean, safe, and lawsuit-proof. But it isn’t necessarily the best design for kids.

For decades, US playground designers have worked on minimizing risk by reducing heights, softening surfaces, and limiting loose parts. But now, some are starting to experiment with creating risk: A growing body of research has found that risky outdoor play is a key part of children’s health, promoting social interactions, creativity, problem-solving, and resilience.

The most extreme departure from safety-first design is “adventure playgrounds,” which originated in World War II Denmark, where bomb sites became impromptu playgrounds. Filled with props like nails, hammers, saws, paint, tires, and wood planks, these spaces look more like junkyards than playgrounds, and parents are often kept outside the playground while children are chaperoned by staff. These layouts are now at the center of a big debate in playground design: How do you create environments that promote creativity while keeping kids safe?

Watch the video above to learn where the risky playground design philosophy comes from — and how it’s shaping play architecture today. You can find this video and all of Vox’s By Design series on YouTube. And if you’re interested in supporting our video journalism, you can become a member of the Vox Video Lab on YouTube.

The NFL’s virtual first-down line, explained

2020-01-29T15:45:13-05:00

Sports broadcasts are wallpapered with gratuitous graphics. They’re moving, they’re shiny, they sound like Transformers. Take them or leave them, the experience of watching football doesn’t really change.

With one exception: The yellow first-down line. Since the late 1990s, the virtual yellow line has been quietly enhancing football broadcasts by giving viewers a live, intuitive guide to the state of play. The graphic is engineered to appear painted on the field, rather than simply plopped on top of the players, so it doesn’t distract from the game at all.

The line debuted during a September 27, 1998, game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Cincinnati Bengals. It was developed by a company called Sportvision Inc. and operated by six people in a 48-foot semi-truck parked outside the stadium. J.R. Gloudemans, one of Sportvision’s founding engineers, recalled the early days of the yellow line in an interview with the Engineering and Technology History Wiki:

We got lucky the first season because we only did night games (ESPN Sunday Night Football) so the lighting was consistent. Snow and rain caused problems and on one occasion, there was torrential downpour at a Kansas City game.… Another tough stadium was Candlestick in San Francisco. The Niners wear that sort of brownish pants. Back then when baseball was also played on that field, the dirt from the infield was a close color match to the uniforms. So keying in those circumstances was very tricky.

(To understand how dirt and weather affect the yellow line, check out the video above.)

ESPN was the only network that immediately agreed to pay the steep price of $25,000 per game. Before long, other companies began offering the yellow line to the other networks, and now you won’t see a football game without it.

In fact, when Fox Sports tried to save money by cutting the line from its broadcasts 15 years ago, there was an outcry from fans. Sportvision set up a website for comments (available now thanks to the WaybackMachine):

10/22/01 10:34:53 AM — Bonnie: Lose the fancy broadcast desks, the fake field floor, the flying statistic graphics and the sound effects and bring back the line! … $1,000,000 / a year? Come on – what’s that? One more Superbowl ad? I’d be willing to watch another one and make the game another minute longer to save the line.

About a month later, Fox brought back the line, having found a sponsor (Intel) to cover the cost.

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Why your Netflix thumbnails don’t look like mine

2018-11-21T15:07:40-05:00

Netflix has a catalog of thousands of videos to watch, from shows like The Office to original series like Stranger Things. With so much content to choose from, it can be difficult to settle on even just one thing to watch. Netflix helps viewers whittle down those choices through personalization of the website. One particularly effective way the company does this is through customized thumbnails.

Netflix doesn’t just use a film or show’s original art; it employs an algorithm with the daunting task of sourcing high-quality images from those videos. Then it does more testing to determine what individual subscribers are most likely to click on.

Netflix’s goal is to get viewers to stream its content for as long as possible, and customizing thumbnails is just one of the ways it does this. Check out the video above to learn about how Netflix regularly changes its cover art to suit your tastes.

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Mercury retrograde, explained without astrology

2018-11-16T13:02:26-05:00

Astrologers regularly blame Mercury retrograde for a variety of everyday communication problems. But underneath those interpretations lies a much more interesting story about the limits of our Earth-bound perspective and the discovery of the solar system.

Every four months or so, the planet Mercury goes into apparent retrograde motion. This isn’t significant for astronomers, who have understood this phenomenon as a basic fact of the solar system for some 400 years. But it’s a religious holiday of sorts in astrology, and an increasingly popular topic on the internet.

Maybe Taylor Swift has something to do with that:

But don’t be spooked if you’re a science-minded person. There’s an interesting story for you here too. Apparent retrograde motion of planets is an illusion generated by the combined movements of Earth and the observed planet (in this case, Mercury, but it could be any planet).

For reasons that are much easier to explain in the video above than in text descriptions, planets appear to temporarily reverse the direction of their orbit, from the point of view of Earth, whenever they pass by Earth or when Earth passes by them.

This is clearest with Mars, which we lap every two years. The image in the thumbnail of the video above, captured by astrophotographer Tunç Tezel, is actually Mars retrograde, not Mercury. I couldn’t find any images of Mercury retrograde, and I suspect they’re nearly impossible to make since the planet is so often obscured by sunlight. If a planet makes an illusory loop and no one sees it, is it an illusion at all? If so, Mercury retrograde happens three or four times each year.

So why do astrologers think the fake backward motion of a rock 48 million miles away could make you get into a fight with your mom or break your iPhone? I’ve searched on astrology websites for some claim to a physical mechanism, but, refreshingly, they don’t bother. The scheme appears to require belief in Roman mythology, which assigned communication to the god Mercury. He has since undergone a bit of mission creep. From Astrologyzone.com:

Mercury rules all types of communication, including listening, speaking, learning, reading, editing, researching, negotiating, selling, and buying. Mercury also rules all formal contracts and agreements, as well as important documents such as book manuscripts or term papers, agreements, deeds, contracts, leases, wills, and so forth. Included under this planet’s domain are all types of code, including computer codes, as well as transportation, shipping, and travel.

I’ll let you decide what that means for your life, but for an astrology-free explanation of retrograde motion and its role in the history of astronomy, watch the full video on the Vox YouTube channel.

The skincare acid craze, explained

2018-10-04T17:48:14-04:00

The pursuit of beautiful skin has been deeply rooted in human culture. And while skincare acids have been used for decades, they’ve surged in popularity in recent years.

You see them advertised on products in stores and across the internet. Glycolic acid. Lactic acid. Hyaluronic acid. Salicylic acid. Even though they all have one word in common, they all serve different purposes in skincare regimens. Acids like glycolic and lactic acid are used for exfoliation, azelaic acid is known for fighting inflammation, and salicylic acid for treating acne-prone skin.

With so many acids to choose from, it can be overwhelming to decipher what should be included in a skincare routine — no one wants to end up in a Samantha Jones situation.

Check out the video above to learn more about the acids used in skincare, and what they can or cannot do for you.

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Stop peeing in the pool. Chlorine doesn’t work like you think.

2018-08-27T08:04:38-04:00

Have you ever peed in a pool? Not everyone will readily cop to it, though an anonymous 2012 survey found that 19 percent of adults admitted they’d done it at least once. Sadly, there aren’t chemicals to turn the water a darker color to signal someone is peeing in the pool.

With more than 89 million people swimming in public pools in the US each summer, there’s plenty of potential for urine and feces to make it into those waters. And these contain some of the nastiest bacteria and parasites, including norovirus, shigella, E. coli, and cryptosporidium. In even a well-maintained pool, chlorine and other disinfectants can’t immediately kill germs. Some of these pathogens still take more time than you think to be neutralized.

This means that peeing in pools isn’t just gross; it can also make you sick. Between 2000 and 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 493 outbreaks from treated recreational waters. Common symptoms included watery diarrhea, stomach cramps, nausea and vomiting, respiratory illness, and skin rashes.

So how can you protect yourself from germs when going swimming? Not swallowing the water is one way; to learn about the others, watch the video above. And subscribe to our channel to catch up on Vox’s latest videos.