Guy Gives Up Lucrative Career to Build Whimsical Treehouse in the Middle of Nature

Unhappy with his high flying career in fashion, New Yorker Foster Huntington gave it all up to live life on his own terms. He is now in the news for building ‘Bro-topia’, an outlandish dwelling made up of two treehouses connected by a swinging rope bridge, on a grassy hilltop in southwest Washington state. 

It all started in 2011, when Foster quit his job at Ralph Lauren, sold all his belongings, and lived in a mobile van for months. He was working as a men’s fashion designer and although he initially found the job exciting and challenging, Huntington realized he didn’t care that much about clothing. “I remember looking at photos of bush pilots in Alaska and their ruggedly stylish world and thinking: ‘I can take photos. I don’t want to live my life in the city. I want to go do something else,’” he told New York Times.

So he pursued photography for a while, making money creating photo books, but in 2014 he decided that he wanted to spend his time fulfilling his childhood dream of building an epic tree house. So he pooled his life savings, got a few friends on board, and started working on the project on his family’s property in Skamania, Washington.

Photo: Foster Huntington

“I’d saved money and I’d always wanted to build a treehouse and decided just to do it,” he told ABC News. “We’d always go to my family’s property and camp and it has great trees and was kind of just begging for a treehouse. I called up one of my best friends from college who is a carpenter and designer and we started scheming and planning.”

The duo got in touch with other friends and until they finally had a group of 20 working on the two houses. “We started bolting things to trees in June 2014,” Foster explained, adding that they didn’t have a concrete plan when they started, but made things up as they went along. “We had to figure out solutions the entire time. It was a constant problem-solving experience, which is what’s fun about building.”

Photo: Foster Huntington

“We were doing the roof wrong in one part and we lost about two to three weeks. It all goes according to plan until you have to start working on it, and from there it just comes down to maintaining momentum and being flexible.”

They eventually built two beautiful houses overlooking a relaxing hot tub and a skatebowl.. Both houses are under 200 square feet, perched at heights of 20 feet and 30 feet above the ground. They mostly used reclaimed Douglas fir and western red cedar to make the all-wood dwellings. “The interior is rustic,” Foster said. “Nothing fancy but [has] nice custom woodworkings, like built-ins.”

Photo: Foster Huntington

Foster now lives and works out of the treehouses, which, he admits, is much more convenient than his previous stint with living on the road. One of the houses serves as his studio, while the other, named ‘Octagon’, is his bedroom. New York Times describes his studio as “toasty and light-filled”, sparsely furnished with a shelf that holds his cameras and lenses and a desk for his computer. The small house his mother built, located on the property about 100 feet away, serves as his source of electricity and plumbing.

Being a photographer, Foster took plenty of pictures of the construction process, which he used to make his own photo book titled The Cinder Cone. He ran a Kickstarter campaign in 2015 to raise funds to produce the book, collecting nearly $80,000 from 1,951 backers.

Photo: Foster Huntington

“Since finishing the houses, I’ve been organizing these images, drawings, and notes into a book,” the 27-year-old wrote on the Kickstarter page. “Think of it as one part instructional book, one part photo book, and one part tiny homes book. My goal is to make something that shows the process from dreaming up a seemingly outlandish idea to the final result after thousands of hours of hard work and the moments that happened in between. I hope that the result ignites the imagination of people’s inner kid and gets ideas going for their own projects.”

“I could have bought a house,” he said, speaking to New York Times. “But this is so much better. For me, it’s realizing a childhood dream.”

Reference:http://www.odditycentral.com/architecture/guy-gives-up-lucrative-career-to-build-whimsical-treehouse-in-the-middle-of-nature.html#more-50728

Thrill-Seekers Could Soon Ride the Clouds with This New Sky Surfing Board

‘Wingboarding’ is a new type of adventure sport that will soon be made available to thrill-mongers around the world. Developed by Wyp Aviation, a startup company trying to “take aviation to the next level”, the WingBoard provides riders with a stable platform that flies through the air rather than falling towards the ground.

It’s sort of a cross between skysurfing and wakeboarding and involves surfing through the sky on a board while being towed by a plane. The daredevil stunt is meant to emulate the comic book superhero Silver Surfer, who can travel through space on his surfboard-shaped craft. “The WingBoard is like a wakeboard, but instead of slicing through waves behind a boat, you’re being towed by a plane, carving through clouds,” said founder and lead engineer Aaron Wypyszynski.

31-year-old Aaron, a flight test engineer by profession, has been passionate about aviation since he started building lego aeroplanes at the age of four. He spends all his spare time in his workshop, trying to make all his aviation dreams come true and says that his inspiration to develop the WingBoard came from Talespin, a cartoon he used to watch as a kid. In the series, an animated bear named Kit Cloudkicker would jump out of his airborne plane and ride through the clouds.

For now, Aaron has built a scale model of the WingBoard, which “combines the ability of a wakeboard or a snowboard and brings it to three dimensions.” It works with a system of cables that allow it to be towed behind an aircraft, while remaining stable enough to withstand the weight of one person. Wheels at the bottom of the board will help it get airborne, and the rider would need a parachute to get back safely to the ground. The board will contain a separate parachute as well, to help it hit the Earth gently.

The mock-up version has successfully performed barrel rolls behind an aircraft in the test run, and Aaron is currently trying to raise funds ($275,000) to make the first prototype. If everything goes according to plan, he believes that Wingboarding may become a popular spectator sport in the future. “There has been no way to truly fly behind an aircraft,” he said. “You can strap on a snowboard to your feet and go surfing, but really what you are doing is falling.”

Reference:http://www.odditycentral.com/?s=Thrill+seekers

This Rock Is Actually Fire-Powered Wi-Fi Router

At first glance, this rock, placed strategically in a small clearing in the woods part of an outdoor museum in Germany, seems like an ordinary boulder. But a closer look will reveal that the inconspicuous 1.5-ton boulder is far from ordinary. It’s actually an art installation with a fire-powered WiFi router and USB drive hidden inside !

Created by Berlin artist Aram Bartholl, the rock, named ‘Keepalive’, tries to highlight the contrast between ancient and modern survival techniques. Bartholl revealed that his inspiration to merge the concepts of primitive and modern survival came from the sight of people selling BioLite stoves during Hurricane Sandy. In the absence of electricity, people were actually using the flame-powered stoves to power their devices and stay connected. “It was funny – the power goes out, and people would buy these little stoves and make a fire to charge their phone,” he said.

So he created a rock that runs exclusively on the energy generated by a thermoelectric generator that converts heat into electricity. Visitors at the Springhornhof museum need to return to the basics of survival and make a fire next to the rock in order to use the installation. When a sufficient amount of heat is produced, they can connect to the router using their smartphones.

The network runs on Piratebox, a DIY-software that creates offline wireless networks. Using this network, visitors can access, browse and download files stored on a USB drive, bored into a different section of the rock. The drive contains a range of interesting, bizarre PDF survival guides for the modern world, including a Do it yourself Divorce Guide’, a ‘Drone Survival Guide’, a ‘Single Woman’s Sassy Survival Guide’, and ‘A Steampunk Guide to Sex’.

Some of these weird uploads might have been the work of mischievous visitors, but Bartholl doesn’t mind. In fact, he’s all about public data-sharing, having created Dead Drops, the world’s most epic file sharing network consisting of USB flash drives embedded into walls all over the world. But Keepalive, named after the technical term for a message sent between devices to check connectivity, is meant to be more obscure.

“It’s not about easy access,” Bartholl said, speaking to Hyperallergic. “It has a whole dystopian idea to it, like, will we need something like this in the future? Or somebody finding this in a hundred years – is it still working and they figure something out and they make a fire, or is there going to be a moment where we’re going to need to make fire again to get access to the data?”

Reference:http://www.odditycentral.com/technology/this-rock-is-actually-fire-powered-wi-fi-router.html#more-50730

Everything you want to know about Rs 251 Make In India smartphone

When Steve Jobs launched the iPod, it was one of the biggest launches in history. He very elegantly pulled it out of his pocket and used the tagline “1,000 songs in your pocket”.

Ringing bells, a smartphone company which was unheard of till date, was suddenly in news this week for promoting the idea of a smartphone with a price tag of Rs 251. Now the fact that the phone is subsidised or does it really cost this less to make a smartphone so cheap is quite debatable.

However, at present, screen replacement costs about Rs 2000. While the debate on the manufacturing costs will go on forever, we have to admit that a smartphone at a cost of Rs 251 is definitely a steal deal.

Here are few things which you should know about the Freedom 251.

1. One of the best features of the device is that it comes with dual camera. It has a 3.2MP rear camera and a 0.3MP front camera. A quick search online will reveal that even the cheapest dual camera phone will cost a minimum of INR 4,000.

2. One of biggest issues faced by users is that the most low cost Android smartphones don’t come with the latest operating system. However, Ringing Bells has solved this problem by releasing the phone with Android Lollipop. Will it support future updates is something will all need to wait and see.

3. Freedom 251 does not disappoint in terms of connectivity. When you get both 3G and 802.11 b/g/n wifi along with GPS one cannot ask for more.

4. The phone comes with 1GB ram and 8GB internal memory, which is expandable to 32GB.

5. Another big boost are the preinstalled apps for farmers and women safety. Most women do not have any safety app downloaded on their phone. Having such preinstalled will help increase women safety and decrease the rate of crimes against women.

6. Considering a smartphone, the 1450mAh battery is small and would be enough to last around half day. But do we have the right to complain when you get a smartphone for INR 251?

7. Bookings for Freedom 251 will start tomorrow, February 18, at 6.00 am. So set your alarms for 5.55 am tomorrow and keep your fingers ready.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2016/02/ringing-bells-freedom-251-smartphone/

Phanindra Sama confirms redBus acquisition; says best is yet to come

RedBus founder Phanindra Sama has confirmed to YourStory.in that South African based media and internet group, Nasper, has acquired them via their India subsidiary, IbiboGroup. The particulars of the deal are undisclosed. A press release regarding the same has stated that –

All the travel entities of ibiboGroup (MIH India), including redBus.in, will continue to run independently and operate as separate businesses to drive deep focus. The founders and management teams of each of these entities will continue to build out their businesses.

We at YourStory.in have had a great relationship with redBus and have been associated with them since the beginning. Having seen the company’s meteoric growth in the past few years, it was interesting to know what founder Phanidra Sama thought about the deal and what is in store for redBus’s future –

YS: During the early days, did you ever think that redBus would become so big?

Phani: Not really. In the initial days, our focus was to solve a problem with technology. None of us ever thought of how big this would become or where this company would go 5 years from now. But halfway through, we began to think that we’re onto something. All the constituents of the travel industry were happy with what we were providing and that’s always a good measure of how good you’re doing. However, the best from redBus is yet to come. We’re working on some great ideas and I think we are a long way off from our full potential.

YS: How has this acquisition changed things at redBus?

Phani: Almost everything is exactly the same. Especially within the company; Charan and me will continue to work as we always have. The company’s composition is exactly the

YS: What are your expectations going into this deal with the Nasper Group?

Phani: If you look at the Nasper Group, they have a lot of amazing internet companies across the world. Almost all of them are either first or second in their respective geographies and markets. I also spoke to other CEOs of companies that exited with the Nasper Group and all of them shared that they embarked upon a phenomenal learning curve, because of the experience that they’ve got with internet businesses.

Furthermore, with our association with the IbiboGroup, the understanding of the Indian travel customer will become much better. They’ve got experience with the Airline and Hotelindustry which I think will be of great value to us. If and when we choose to go international, this would be a great platform for us.

YS: What are some of the immediate things that you’re working on at redBus? 

Phani: We’ve ventured recently into the B2B space with our agent platform, which is doing extremely well. We will continue to work on that and develop it further. On the B2C front, we’ve pretty much figured out how things work and we will continue to dominate in the space as we have. But we’re seeing some good early success in the B2B front and we’ll be looking to work on that in the coming months. We are market leaders in the B2B space as well and I think we’re getting on the track of exponential growth here as well.

YS: As someone who’s started redBus, what does this deal mean to you?

Phani: Honestly, nothing. Nothing has changed in the organization and hopefully I will continue to live the way that I have been doing so in the past years. I will continue to work harder and better every day as I have been doing so long.

Phani’s humility and hardwork has been the hallmark of redBus’s success so far and we at YourStory.in wish them all the best with their future endeavors.

Dalit woman makes history in Rajasthan

From a stone cutter in Puharu village to a sarpanch of Rajasthan’s Harmada gram panchayat, Narouti has waged an unrelenting battle for empowering the marginalised.

Four kilometers from the famous village of Tilonia is Harmada. A land of freedom fighters, Harmada today has a dalit woman sarpanch -- Nauroti.

This plucky woman had earned a name in the region for her struggle against injustice long before she was elected to this post a few years back. As she walks towards you, bare foot and clad in a simple, inexpensive sari, Nauroti is a picture of humility but the moment you start talking to her you know that she is no ordinary woman and no ordinary sarpanch either.

GUTSY AND WISE: Nauroti believes in action.

Nauroti was born in an extremely poor dalit family in Kishangarh district of Rajasthan and had to work on a road construction site for a living as a stone cutter. But despite the toil, she and many fellow labourers were not paid full wages on the pretext that they had not performed work according to the wages. It was like putting salt on fresh wounds, she felt. Nauroti raised her voice against this injustice, mobilised labourers and became the voice of the agitation. Finally they got justice when their case was taken to a court by an NGO.

That was more than three decades ago. From then till now, Nauroti has continued her unrelenting battle for empowerment of the marginalised and her journey from a stone cutter in Puharu village to a sarpanch of gram Panchayat in Harmada is the story of unflinching courage and impeccable honesty in the face of every adversity.

It was in the early 1980s that she joined the barefoot college in Tilonia founded by Bunker Roy. What made her stand apart from other women was her boldness, her ability to learn fast and above all the leadership qualities she displayed when she mobilised the construction workers. She became a sathin for women’s empowerment and would travel to villages in the region and educate them about their rights. She also joined adult literacy classes and later learnt to work on computers. Later, she trained many other women who had never gone to school like her. She has also had the chance to go to the US and China.

Above everything else, it is working amongst the people that gives her real satisfaction, she says. Nauroti first became member of her gram panchyat – Harmada -- and about three year back was elected as its sarpanch with an overwhelming majority.

As sarpanch, she waged a battle against the daru (alcohol) mafia and stopped encroachment of the graveyard in Harmara. She has been working tirelessly to get approval for development projects in the region and has achieved a lot in the past two and a half years. Nauroti says that there are two things she can never tolerate -- injustice and dishonesty. When it came to her notice that a mate working for a project of the Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was committing fraud, she immediately took action. Despite resistance from many quarters, she did not stop till the person was jailed.

It is the villagers who talk about what she has done for them and the development of the village, whether it is the construction of water bodies, hand pumps, toilets, houses for those below poverty line, but when you ask her, she speaks about her unfinished agenda. “There is a lot more to be done before my tenure is over”, she says and lists a number of projects that remain to be completed.

Birdly – A Unique Virtual Simulator That Lets You Fly Like a Bird

If you’ve always dreamed of soaring the skies like a bird, here’s your chance. You can’t fly for real, of course, but you can experience what it feels like thanks to a futuristic virtual simulator called Birdly.

According to the inventor, Swiss artist and software developer Max Rheiner, Birdly stimulates all the user’s senses to give the user a sense of flying, based on human dreams. “People who have dreams about flying, they can just fly without training and they have great feelings,” he said. “We tried to model this experience like those dreams.”

To use the machine, users are required to lie flat on their stomachs with their hands sprawled out. They also strap on special VR goggles that are programmed with real skylines and landscapes of American cities. Tilting the body up and down produces the effect of ascending or diving. The machine even blows wind with the appropriate force and recreates smells that relate to the landscape below. So users experience a salt-air aroma as they fly over the sea, and and industrial odors while gliding over cities.

Birdly started as a research project at the Zurich University of Arts, with Rheiner leading a small group of students. They began experimenting with the virtual reality setup last November, with a simple goal: to embody the experience of flying like a bird through a full-motion simulator. Their biggest challenge was starting with motion-control equipment built from scratch, and tuning it to intuitively match the human understanding of a bird’s flight.

Over six months, Rheiner and his team built and tested several prototypes before finally coming up with the Birdly system. It might go into production pretty soon, although the pricing has not yet been finalized. The makers hope it won’t be used only for entertainment, but during therapy for the disabled as well.

The flying experience Birldy offers is said to be so real that Carrie Fitzsimmons, executive director of Le Laboratoire Cambridge, where the device was on display earlier this month, suffered vertigo while using it. “It’s an immersive experience,” she later said, “and different from any other flight simulators that you would typically use with a joystick. You are actually fulfilling the dream of what it would feel like to be flying.”

The technology is currently touring cities in America, and the response from testers has so far been very positive. Over a 100 waited people stood in line to test the simulator in New York, and organizers actually had to book appointments to manage the crowd. “I’ve always wanted to fly,” said Kip Fenton, an excited tester. “It’s sort of one of those fantasy things where, if I could be an animal, I would be a bird.” His only complaint was that he couldn’t use the machine for long. “I might have been more adventurous if I had known it was going to be that quick. I would pay a hundred bucks to do this for a half-hour.”

“The simulation completely immersed me in the experience of flying, or what my mind believed flying like a bird would be like,” wrote Norman Chang of Tested magazine. “It was almost dream-like. Immersion is achieved through the combination of low-latency head tracking, full-motion feedback (the bed actually tilts on several axes).”

Let’s face it, we all dreamed of flying at least once in our lives, and even though it may never happen in real life, unless you know how to build a working Iron Man suit, at least we may soon have a slightly less pleasurable but still thrilling alternative, thanks to Birdly and virtual reality technology.

Reference:http://www.odditycentral.com/technology/birdly-a-unique-virtual-simulator-that-lets-you-fly-like-a-bird.html#more-49649

Bicimaquinas – The Amazingly Useful Low-Tech Bicycle Machines of Guatemala

Cheap, eco-friendly machines, made from discarded bicycle parts and powered by pedalling, are all the rage in rural Guatemala. They’re called ‘bicimaquinas’, and they are used for various purposes in the community – right from simple food processing to making shampoos and soaps.

The unique device is the brainchild of ‘Maya Pedal’, a locally-run non-profit in the rural town of San Adrés Itzapa. Founded in 1997 as a collaboration between Canadian organisation ‘Pedal’ and local mechanic Carlos Marroquín, the organisation is credited with the invention of several devices that make use of spare parts from bikes and harness the power of human energy.

Each bicimaquina (bike-machine) is handcrafted at the Maya Pedal workshop, using a combination of old bikes, concrete, wood, and metal. Their designs are 100 percent original, and are both functional and economical. Priced at about $40 apiece, the machines come in several variations for different purposes.

Photo: YouTube caption

The bicycle mill, for instance, is adapted to fit a hand powered grinding mill or a corn thresher, but is operated by pedaling. This bicimaquina has the capacity to mill 3 lbs. per minute of any type of grain, most commonly yellow maize, soybeans and coffee.

The bicycle blender, on the other hand, looks like a stationary bike with a blender attached above the front tire. But instead of an electric motor to spin the blade, it uses a rotor attached to the wheel. The faster you pedal, the faster the blade spins – it is capable of speeds of up to 6,400 RPM.

Photo: Maya Peda/Facebook

Other devices include a bicycle rope water pump, a mobile water pump, a bicycle nut sheller, coffee depulper, washing machines, generators, and water pumps. Most of the machines were built to meet the needs of communities of indigenous women, helping to take the load off labor-intensive tasks. Thanks to the machines, they are able to bring more products to the market, hence putting more food on the table.

“Each bicimaquina has its own distinct design. Its heart is the pedal, but each uses its own tools and propels itself differently,” explained Maya Pedal director Mario Juarez, in a documentary by Makeshift Magazine. “The designs come from experience, from making, failing, breaking, and doing it all again.”

Photo: Maya Peda/Facebook

Bicimaquinas are highly useful in Guatemalan villages where there are no paved roads, underground pipes or electricity lines. “It was necessary to find a path and an alternative that would meet the needs of the locals and we researched and invested all that we could to do so,” Marroquín explained.

“At the start, Maya Pedal’s biggest challenge was getting people to accept the bicimaquina a tool,’ Juarez explained. “The communities rejected us. They said, ‘Hey, bring us something electric or something with more powerful with a diesel motor.’ We said no, here’s a tool with the appropriate technology. Technology that’s adapted to your needs.”

Photo: Maya Peda/Facebook

“This first hurdle was really hard for us,” Juarez added. But slowly, as people began to see the various benefits that the machines offered, the began to get interested. Now, the machines are selling quite well in the community.

“We have people coming in all the time to ask about the blenders,” said Maya Pedal coordinator Johanna Mesa Montuba. “They are one of the most popular machines. Women buy these machines to start a business. They can take them out to the soccer game, or set them up in the plaza, and sell fresh juice anywhere.”

Reference:http://www.odditycentral.com/technology/bicimaquinas-the-amazingly-useful-low-tech-bicycle-machines-of-guatemala.html#more-4515

This High-Tech Travel Suitcase Follows You Around Like a Puppy

Thanks to this new hands free suitcase, carrying around heavy luggage may soon become a thing of the past. Designed by Israeli company NUA Robotics, this ‘smart’ suitcase is the technological equivalent of Mary’s little lamb – it’ll follow you everywhere you go.

The carry-on suitcase, currently a prototype, connects to a smartphone app via bluetooth. It has a built-in camera sensor that can ‘see’ you and follow you around on flat surfaces like airport floors. It comes with an anti-theft alarm to prevent someone snatching it away when you’re not looking, and, for the icing on the cake, it has a backup battery that you can use to charge all your devices.

NUA Robotics

“It can follow and carry things for people around while communicating with their smartphone, and avoiding obstacles,” explained Alex Libman, founder of NUA Robotics. “We’re combining sensor network, computer vision, and robotics. So if you download our app, press the ‘follow me’ button, the luggage recognizes the specific user and knows to follow and communicate.”

NUA Robotics

NUA is still testing the device and trying improve features like speed and customization, but they hope to make the suitcase available to customers in a year’s time. If it proves successful, they want to use the Bluetooth pairing technology to automate lots of other devices, like shopping carts at the supermarket. These devices are especially meant to be useful to the physically disabled and elderly. “Any object can be smart and robotic,” Libman told Mashable. “We want to bring robots into everyday life.”

Mashable

The Israeli tech company made it clear that the smart suitcase they recently unveiled is just a prototype, and that the finished product will look just like a regular suitcase. They’re planning to partner with a carry-on luggage maker, since the device that makes it ‘smart’ weighs just 2.5 pounds and can be fitted on old-fashion luggage.

Reference:http://www.odditycentral.com/technology/this-high-tech-travel-suitcase-follows-you-around-like-a-puppy.html#more-49994

The World’s Longest-Running Experiment Started in 1879 and Will End in 2100

Since the late 19th century, botanists at the Michigan State University have been collaborating on a single seed-germination experiment. Now in its 137th year, it is turning out to be the world’s longest recurrently monitored scientific study. It will end in the year 2100, which means most of us won’t even be around for the final result.

The world’s longest-running experiment started out in the fall of 1879, when Dr. William James Beal, a botanist, set-out to find a conclusive answer to the one question that farmers have been asking for centuries: How many times do you have to pull out weeds before they entirely stop growing back? Beal realised that to answer the question, he needed to work it out for real – by finding out exactly how long seeds could remain dormant in soil while still remaining viable.

So he devised an experiment that would, in centuries, provide the answer he was looking for. He put together a collection of seeds of 23 different plant types and decided to leave them dormant for years, before checking if they would still germinate. He placed 50 seeds of each variety in each of 20 narrow-necked glass bottles filled with moist sand, and buried them in a secret spot on the university campus.

Kurt Stepnitz/Michigan State University

According to Beal’s own writings, each bottle was “left uncorked and placed with the mouth slanting downward so that water could not accumulate about the seeds.” He also wrote that “these bottles were buried on a sandy knoll in a row running east and west.” His plan was to take out one bottle every five years and see which seeds would grow.

Beal managed to open six bottles before he retired, passing on the experiment to a younger colleague, Henry Darlington, who then passed it on to other scientists including Robert Bandurski and Jan Zeevaart. It is currently being managed by Frank Telewski, who is also the curator of the university’s botanical garden named after Dr. WJ Beal.

Dr. William James Beal/Photo: Internet Archive

Under Beal’s original plan, the experiment should have been completed in 100 years, in 1979. But a decade after his retirement, in 1920, his successor realised that the experiment seemed to be stabilizing, with the same seeds sprouting each time. So he decided to wait a decade between excavations, and his successor extended that to two decades. The latest bottle was opened by Telewski in the spring of 2000, at night, trying not to draw attention to the spot that to this day, remains a secret.

“We don’t advertise where they’re buried because we don’t want anybody poking around and digging up souvenirs,” Telewski said, speaking to Atlas Obscura. “I’m always a little nervous when there’s construction on campus. You know: ‘Don’t put a building up there!’ ‘Why not?’ ‘I can’t tell you, just don’t!’”

Dr. Telewski/ Photo: Frank Telewski

From the bottle that Telewski unearthed, only two plant species out of 23 sprouted successfully. And out of the 15 bottles removed so far, the winning species has been Verbascum blattaria, or moth mullein, a common weed in the US. 23 of its 50 seeds from Telewski’s bottle germinated, which he considers a “phenomenal” result. The other plant – Malva rotundifolia, was nowhere close, with only one sprouted seed.

While the experiment was definitely relevant in Beal’s time, when farmers didn’t have herbicides and had to resort to manual weeding, the results may not be commercially ground-breaking any more, given that modern farmers have access to several anti-weed tools. But conservationists are still interested in what the experiment has to reveal. “Many species of plants that are locally extinct may actually still be viable in the soils of those particular environments that have been disturbed,” Telewski explained. So these sleeping seeds could indeed restart populations that have been extinct for decades.

Verbascum blattaria/Photo: Arria Belli

If everything goes according to plan, the last bottle will be unearthed in 2100, but Telewski thinks it might be stretched even further. “We don’t want to lose continuity where people might forget about the study,” he said. “There’s that living memory thing that’s really important.” For now, he’s gearing up for the next excavation in 2020, only four years away, which might be the year that nothing germinates. Or, something that hasn’t germinated in the past 30 or 40 years could sprout all of a sudden. Either way, he’s excited about the possibilities.

“In 1980, I was a graduate student in plant physiology, and we learned about the experiment,” he said. “I had absolutely no idea that I would ever be the person to dig up the next bottle. And lo and behold, 20 years later, there I was… I have this wonderful opportunity to continue this historically important and significant experiment.” Meanwhile, he’s also picked out the person who could potentially inherit the experiment from him when he retires. “There’s one particular person I’ve been speaking with, and I think she’s going to be very excited to pick it up,” he told National Public Radio.

Dr. William James Beal/Photo: Michigan State University

Telewski often thinks of Beal, and other great scientists who have inspired him – Charles Darwin, Asa Gray, and even the Native American corn hybridizers. “All of us basically stand on the shoulders of giants,” he said. “It is kind of neat to be a part of that history.”

“Isn’t it wonderful that somebody, somewhere, thought forward enough to say, ‘Let’s hold onto this, let’s keep this experiment going, let’s design this experiment to go on and see where it takes us.”

Reference:http://www.odditycentral.com/news/the-worlds-longest-running-experiment-started-in-1879-and-will-end-in-2100.html#more-50564