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READY FOR ANYTHING How to train your brain to survive disaster ROBO-SHERLOCK AI detective hunts for clues BY JUPITER! Gas giant springs some big surprises WEEKLY May 13-19, 2017 WORKIN’NINETOFOURThesurprisingbenefitsofa6-hourday WHAT’S THE POINT OF CONSCIOUSNESS? The accidental evolution of our unique minds No3125 US$6.50 CAN$6.50 19 Science and technology news www.newscientist.com 0 70992 30690 9 US jobs in science ODDS ON Ten unlikely breakthroughs that are worth a flutter Intellectual indulgence Subscribe and save up to 76% Visit newscientist.com/9942 or call 1-888-822-3242 and quote 9942 FEEDING MINDS FOR 60 YEARS CONTENTS Volume 234 No 3125 This issue online newscientist.com/issue/3125 News Leaders 5 The stakes are growing for scientific wagers. 8 Less work, more school? News RoboCop gets 6 UPFRONT on the case Measles outbreak. Rocket watches the sun. An AI is helping police Citymapper bus. EPA’s science sackings 8 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY hunt for clues in Do old brains get a boost from cannabis? crime scene data Most complete Homo naledi skeleton found. Why we turn mean online. Turtle-riding robots. Nanofridge for quantum computers. New York rats on the pill. Jupiter’s massive ASHLEY COOPER/GETTY ASHLEY storms and magnetism. Synth proteins that work. Mini masterpieces pack in pixels. Atlas of the underworld. Robot bridge inspector. On the cover Radiotherapy colours man’s dreams 18 IN BRIEF 32 Ready for anything Snowball Earth’s freshwater seas. Eyeball 28 Disaster brain training fluke is fish controller. Baby mind reader 8 Robo-Sherlock What’s the point AI turns detective Analysis 12 By Jupiter! of consciousness? 22 The optimum working day Shorter hours Gas giant surprises are inevitable, but is that good? 22 Workin’ nine to four The accidental 24 COMMENT Benefits of a 6-hour day evolution of our Why SETI should look closer to home. 36 Odds on unique minds Space-nuke terror talk more fiction than fact Ten breakthroughs that 25 INSIGHT are worth a flutter Can a small lawsuit stop an opioid epidemic? Cover image Aperture Credit is Richard Wilkinson 26 The gargoyle of the sea Features Features 28 What’s the point of consciousness? (see above left) 32 32 Ready for anything (see left) 36 Odds on Ten breakthroughs worth a flutter Ready for 40 PEOPLE anything Shunichi Yamashita and Fukushima’s psychological fallout How to train your brain to survive disaster Culture 42 Real deal As millions queue to see art, will tech help or hinder access to originals? 44 Wall to end all walls Ridiculing Trump’s border plan might make it more likely PAOLO PELLEGRIN/MAGNUM PHOTOS PELLEGRIN/MAGNUM PAOLO Regulars Coming next week… 52 LETTERS Light of our lives Concentrate! 55 CROSSWORD 56 FEEDBACK Retronyms, okay? Take control of your wandering mind 57 THE LAST WORD Mossies with muscle Zombie microbes The life forms resurrected after millions of years 13 May 2017 | NewScientist | 3 Where did we come from? How did it all begin? And where does belly-button fluff come from? Find the answers in our latest book. On sale now. Introduction by Professor Stephen Hawking LEADERS LOCATIONS USA 45 Prospect St Cambridge, MA 02139 Please direct telephone enquiries to our UK office +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 UK 110 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6EU Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 LUKE SHARRETT/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES Australia Level 11, Suite 3, 100 Walker Street, North Sydney, NSW 2060 Tel +61 2 9422 8559 Fax +61 2 9422 8552 SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Care to make it interesting? Telephone 1-888-822-3242 Email [email protected] Web newscientist.com/subscribe The stakes are rising for scientific wagers Mail New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953 USA One year subscription (51 issues) $154 THE Plataeans were besieged: Science has a long tradition of Now others are raising the walled in by their enemies, turning to wagers when facts are stakes for scientific wagers. The CONTACTS the Spartans. They could make hard to come by: for example, Long Now Foundation’s Long Bets Contact us newscientist.com/contact ladders to climb out, but how Stephen Hawking has famously project, for instance, highlights Who’s who tall should they be? Citizens were made several bets with his fellow issues that will resonate beyond newscientist.com/people asked to guess the wall’s height by theoretical physicists over various our lifetimes. And researchers at General & media enquiries [email protected] counting its bricks, with the most abstruse properties of black holes. hedge fund Winton Capital and Editorial popular estimate taken as correct. Other celebrated (or notorious) the London School of Economics Tel 781 734 8770 It worked: 212 duly escaped. wagers have been placed over recently proposed that the UK [email protected] [email protected] This episode from 428 BC is the artificial intelligence and the host a“prediction market”in [email protected] first known use of the wisdom of abundance of important metals. which bets could be placed on Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 crowds – collating estimates to The stakes are often pretty aspects of climate change. That Display advertising arrive at an answer more accurate low in such bets. But the ethos of could help gather information Tel 781 734 8770 [email protected] than any individual can manage. crowd wisdom still applies: the that’s currently widely dispersed – Recruitment advertising That lies at the heart of a variety of point is to encourage both bettors and perhaps even build consensus Tel 781 734 8770 tools used to run our society, from and onlookers to gather facts and around the most likely scenarios. [email protected] opinion polls to financial markets. hone arguments. It’s in that spirit Given the frequent failures of Newsstand Tel 212 237 7987 Adding an incentive – in other that we asked a bookie to quote gamblers, pollsters and traders to Distributed by Time/Warner Retail Sales and Marketing, 260 Cherry Hill words, allowing people to bet odds on possible breakthroughs, predict real outcomes, it’s unclear Road, Parsippany, NJ 07054 on the outcome – encourages as ranging from a Martian colony how desirable or plausible that is. Syndication much participation as possible. to human cloning (see page 32). But would you bet against it? ■ Tribune Content Agency Tel 800 637 4082 [email protected] New Scientist Live Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1273 In the longer term, however, the [email protected] Work smarter, not longer forces reshaping work today will © 2017 Reed Business be joined by another: longevity. Information Ltd, England. HOW many hours a day do you pressurised too, demanding Those working today can expect New Scientist ISSN 0262 4079 is published weekly except for the last work? For many of us, that’s a unhealthy amounts of overtime. to work for decades longer than week in December by Reed Business surprisingly hard question to The quality of work has become our predecessors, even as ongoing Information Ltd, England. New Scientist (Online) ISSN 2059 5387 answer. Those employed in the a talking point: three quarters of automation erodes the value of New Scientist at Reed Business so-called “gig economy”, or on those in a recent UK survey felt our skills. That’s led to talk of Information 360 Park Avenue South, 12th floor, New York, NY 10010. zero-hours contracts, may not improving it should be a national lifelong training and multiple Periodicals postage paid at New York, know how much they will work (or priority. The good news is that careers. So perhaps those shorter NY and other mailing offices Postmaster: Send address changes get paid) from one day to the next. serious efforts are now being hours in work will be offset to New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Other employees may never made in that direction. We might by hours spent back at school. Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953, USA. Registered at the Post Office as a really stop working, being tied to even end up cutting working That prospect will delight some newspaper and printed in USA by their jobs by phones and email. hours without harming and dismay others. But better Fry Communications Inc, Mechanicsburg, PA 17055 And highly paid jobs can be highly productivity (see page 22). homework than no work. ■ 13 May 2017 | NewScientist | 5 UPFRONT Measles after MMR ‘scare’ THE state of Minnesota is in the targeting Somalis in Minnesota. throes of its biggest measles Former doctor Andrew Wakefield, outbreak in 27 years. As of 5 May, who lives in Texas, visited 44 cases had been confirmed. Of Somali communities in Minnesota these, 42 people were unvaccinated, several times, speaking to parents. and 38 belonged to the state’s Wakefield’s discredited 1998 study Somali-American community. suggested a link between autism In 2008, some Somali parents and the measles, mumps and rubella COURTNEY PERRY/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY raised concerns over what they (MMR) vaccine. perceived to be a high rate of autism Between 2004 and 2014, the MMR in Somali-American children. immunisation rate among 2-year-old A subsequent study by the Somali-Americans born in Minnesota University of Minnesota, the Centers dropped from 92 to 42 per cent. for Disease Control, and the National State officials are now Institutes of Health found that recommending that every Somali- autism rates among Somalis in born child across the state receives Minneapolis were in fact similar to the MMR booster shot as soon as those of the city’s white population.