From the moment tyrone timms pulled up outside his father's Arizona home on Veterans Day 2019, he knew something was wrong. John Gause, a Vietnam War veteran, hadn't picked up the phone. The blinds were drawn. Mailers littered the porch. When Timms cracked the door, the scent was overpowering. A body was lying in the hallway-his father's, now unrecognizable due to decomposition.
Gause's remains were turned over to the Maricopa Medical Examiner for autopsy. The results indicated he died of natural causes, roughly four days before Timms found him. Their investigation complete, the medical examiner released Gause's body to a local funeral home. In a tiny planning room at Thompson Funeral Chapel, Timms and his family asked for the seemingly impossible: Could they have an open-casket service?
That's how Timms met Monica Torres, a Phoenix-based embalmer, funeral director, and reconstruction specialist. Torres, a 5-foot-2 Latina in her 40s, stands out in her colorful dresses and partially shaved head in a field still dominated by older white male funeral home owners in three-piece suits. When funeral homes have a tough case, it's Torres who picks up the call.
Torres is a visionary in the end-of-life industry and a specialist in traumatic deaths: miscarriages and murders, car crashes and suicides. Over the last decade, Torres has launched what she calls her "dark arts" into an internationally recognized brand with more than 27,000 Instagram followers who know her as "Cold Hands." By day, Torres leads continuing education classes for embalmers around the world. By night, she drives from one funeral home to another with her wheeled embalming kit, restoring bodies in the perfect quiet.
Esta historia es de la edición March - April 2023 de Popular Mechanics US.
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Esta historia es de la edición March - April 2023 de Popular Mechanics US.
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Henrietta Lacks - It's not surprising that Henrietta Lacks-whose
It's not surprising that Henrietta Lacks-whose "immortal" HeLa cells were pivotal in developing treatments for diseases such as polio, HIV/AIDS, and COVID19-is referred to as "the mother of modern medicine." But Lacks's legacy is complicated due to the ethical concerns surrounding the use of her special cells. Lacks, who died of cancer at age 31 in 1951, was never aware that her cells led to significant medical advancements or that they had been taken without her consent. And even now, her strange case raises questions about the morally dubious methods through which we achieved unquestionably positive breakthroughs in medicine.
Chasing an Asteroid - How NASA defied incredible odds to get its asteroid-hunting osiris-rex mission off the ground and in the process upended what we know about our solar system.
Dante Lauretta sat in the backseat of a helicopter hovering high above a remote patch of Utah desert, waiting for a small, twinkling speck in the sky to plunge toward earth.If you didn't know better, you might think what was beginning to burn through the skies above the American southwest in the early hours of September 24, 2023, was a shooting star. But it wasn't a shooting star. Or a meteor. It was a dishwasher-size capsule filled with bits of ancient asteroid-priceless matter from the dawn of the solar system. In other words, it was a treasure chest moving at 27,000 miles per hour and sizzling at a temperature half that of the sun's surface.
Whether We Live in a Simulation - scientist Melvin Vopson, PhD, studies this exact thing- the possibility that the universe might indeed be a digital facsimile. And he claims to have evidence.
In the 1999 film the Matrix, Neo discovers A truth to end all truths-the universe is a simulation. While this premise provides fantastic sci-fi fodder, the idea isn't quite as relegated to the fiction section as one might expect. . In fact, University of Portsmouth scientist Melvin Vopson, PhD, studies this exact thing- the possibility that the universe might indeed be a digital facsimile. And he claims to have evidence.
The Ancient Language of Easter Island - Today, humans inhabit- or have, at the very least, explored- pretty much every corner of the planet. But that immense proliferation of Homo sapiens across the globe was a slow process.
With the first humans leaving Africa between 60,000 and 120,000 years ago, the species slowly spread across the Earth over many millennia. And one of the last places these ancient humans made their way to was the southeastern Pacific island of Rapa Nui, known more broadly as Easter Island.Located 2,360 miles off the coast of Chile, Rapa Nui is one of the most isolated places in the world. Its native people, who are also named the Rapa Nui, first arrived on the island's shores between A.D. 1150 and 1280, and lived in isolation until the arrival of Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen in 1722.
Underwater UFOs - A retired U.S. Navy admiral believes that the government should look to the oceans to help solve a mystery in the skies.
A retired U.S. Navy admiral believes that the government should look to the oceans to help solve a mystery in the skies. Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet, former Oceanographer of the U.S. Navy, recently published a paper arguing that unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP, more commonly referred to as UFO) and unidentified submersible objects (USO) are linked, and should be studied further.
Synching Up Our Circadian Rhythms - If you've ever done any kind of long-distance travel, or just woken up feeling under-rested thanks to daylight saving time, you know how important your circadian clock is.
If you've ever done any kind of long-distance travel, or just woken up feeling under-rested thanks to daylight saving time, you know how important your circadian clock is. Like many things in your body, your circadian rhythm is more complicated than it might seem on the surface. Rather than being entirely brain-based, it's actually controlled by a collection of several circadian clocks (central and peripheral) that all work together to keep your gears turning like a well-oiled machine.
SKINWALKER RANCH REVEALED
The 512-acre ranch has captivated real-estate tycoons, TV producers, and the U.S. government. What are they searching for?
Upgrade Your Living Room With This DIY - MID-CENTURY COFFEE TABLE
This project is easy to build and customize to fit your space.
INDISPENSABLE LESSONS FROM A POP MECH LEGEND
With people moving around so much these days, it's perfectly natural to wonder how an editor can just come along and stick like a barnacle to the hull of Popular Mechanics, lasting for 35 years.
SAVING THE SUGAR BUSH
A technological revolution has transformed the ancient tradition of sugar making-with big implications for local economies and ecosystems imperiled by climate change.
