EFFORTLESS THINKING Why Some Ideas Come Naturally to Us – and Why They’Re Usually Wrong

URANUS II Is there another ice giant lurking in our solar system? BORN NOT MADE Genes and antibodies shape male sexuality before birth END OF PREHISTORY How Bronze-Age civilisation came crashing down WEEKLY 16 December 2017

HEARTTOHEART We need to talk about organ shortages EFFORTLESS THINKING Why some ideas come naturally to us – and why they’re usually wrong

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Recruitment advertising Tel +44 (0)20 8652 4444 On the cover Leader Features Email [email protected] Recruitment sales manager Mike Black 36 Uranus II 5 The world urgently needs critical 28 Thoughtlessly thoughtless Key account managers Is there another ice giant lurking thinking, not gut feelings Why the ideas that come so Martin Cheng, Reiss Higgins, Viren Vadgama US sales manager Jeanne Shapiro in our solar system? naturally to us are often misguided 36 The invisible hand Is there Marketing News Head of marketing Lucy Dunwell 8 Born not made another ice giant lurking in our David Hunt, Chloe Thompson, Andrew Wilkinson Genes and antibodies shape 6 UPFRONT A nature reserve solar system? Web development male sexuality before birth burns. Terrorists target iconic 40 PEOPLE Eberhard Zangger and Director of technology Steve Shinn animals. US aims for the moon the end of the Bronze Age Maria Moreno Garrido, Tuhin Sheikh, Amardeep Sian 40 End of prehistory How Bronze-Age civilisation 8 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY New Scientist Live Culture Tel +44 (0)20 7611 1273 came crashing down How male sexuality can be shaped Email [email protected] before birth. Fasting boosts 44 Coming at you! Think the Event director Mike Sherrard 22 Heart to heart brainpower. Mega Mars storm is near-real worlds of CGI and motion Creative director Valerie Jamieson Sales director Jacqui McCarron We need to talk about organ on the way. The strange history capture are as good as it gets? Event manager Henry Gomm shortages of giant tortoises. LIGO hasn’t Just wait for a new kind of video Conference producer Natalie Gorohova found dark matter after all. 46 Refugee scientists reshape UK Newsstand 28 Effortless thinking Global warming 3.5 billion years the world A film explores what Tel +44 (0)20 3787 9001 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, Why some ideas come naturally to ago. “Pigs” that grieve. Can AI happens to the researchers 2nd Floor, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, us - and why they’re usually wrong make us laugh? Most distant fleeing war and conflict London E14 5HU quasar ever found. Boy can see Syndication Plus Fasting brains (9). Scientists in despite lacking the vision bit of Tribune Content Agency Regulars Tel +44 (0)20 7588 7588 exile (46). California burning (26). his brain. Beware exploding eggs Email [email protected] Grieving pigs (12). Planet tortoise 26 APERTURE Subscriptions (10). Comedy computers (14). 19 IN BRIEF Food delivery robots. California burning newscientist.com/subscribe Faraway quasar (14). Exploding ‘Oumuamua may be a planet shard. 52 LETTERS Tel +44 (0)330 333 9470 Email [email protected] eggs (16) Your breath gives you away. Glue Critical geologists Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, rapidly patches up injured eyes 55 SIGNAL BOOST Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, Put vaccination on the map West Sussex RH16 3DH 56 FEEDBACK Analysis Sparkly supplements 22 Organ donors We need more 57 THE LAST WORD organs for transplants. How far Let’s be blunt should doctors go? 24 COMMENT Smart cities must put privacy first. Try a radical cure for the UK’s healthcare crisis 25 INSIGHT Festive Christmas science isn’t very funny

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 3

LEADER

Editorial Acting editor Graham Lawton Managing editor Rowan Hooper Head of production Julian Richards Art editor Craig Mackie Editor at large Jeremy Webb

News Chief news editor Niall Firth Editors Jacob Aron, Penny Sarchet, Jon White, Chelsea Whyte Reporters (UK) Andy Coghlan, Jessica Hamzelou, Michael Le Page, Timothy Revell, Clare Wilson, Sam Wong, (US) Leah Crane, Aylin Woodward, (Aus) Alice Klein

Features Chief features editor Richard Webb Editors Catherine de Lange, Gilead Amit, KRISTIAN BUUS/IN PICTURES GETTY VIA KRISTIAN BUUS/IN Catherine Brahic, Julia Brown, Daniel Cossins, Kate Douglas, Alison George, Joshua Howgego, Tiffany O’Callaghan, Sean O’Neill Culture and Community Mission critical thinking Editors Liz Else, Mike Holderness, Simon Ings, Frank Swain The world urgently needs deep thought, not gut feeling Subeditors Managing subeditor Eleanor Parsons Vivienne Greig, Tom Campbell, Hannah Joshua, Chris Simms IN A classic episode of The But at huge cost. Our mental This couldn’t be further from Simpsons, Marge and Homer’s shortcuts work fine at the level the truth. Everybody is capable Design Kathryn Brazier, Joe Hetzel, night out at a class reunion ends of individuals and small-scale of gut thinking, but also of Dave Johnston, Ryan Wills in humiliation when one of societies, but in an increasingly the careful deliberation that is Picture desk Homer’s guilty secrets is exposed: interconnected and globalised required to solve problems and Chief picture editor Adam Goff he never graduated from high world, they are a danger to society. override our basest instincts. Kirstin Kidd, David Stock school. To get his diploma, he Effortless thinking is at the root of Both thinking styles are needed Production must pass a science test. As he sits many of the modern world’s most to make the world go round. Mick O’Hare, Alan Blagrove, Anne Marie Conlon, Melanie Green down to retake the exam, he holds serious problems: xenophobia, Unfortunately, the latter requires one of his trademark dialogues terrorism, hatred, inequality, training that is unavailable or Contact us with his brain.“Allright, brain. newscientist.com/contact defence of injustice, religious unappealing to many people. General & media enquiries You don’t like me and I don’t like fanaticism and our shocking Put simply, effortless thinking Tel +44 (0)20 7611 1202 you. But let’s just do this and I can susceptibility to fake news and is born, critical thinking is made. [email protected] get back to killing you with beer.” conspiracy theories. All are Research tells us that a scientific UK 25 Bedford Street, London, WC2E 9ES Many a true word is spoken in facilitated by people disengaging education is especially good at Tel +44 (0)20 7611 1200 jest. Homer Simpson’s Everyman their critical faculties and going developing critical thought. AUSTRALIA character really is an Everyman. But too many people take the Level 11, Suite 3, 100 Walker Street, For most people, engaging in the “In an increasingly Homerian view of science: boring, North Sydney, NSW 2060 kind of effortful thinking that is interconnected world, hard, irrelevant and dispensable. Tel +61 (0)2 9422 8559 required to pass a science test our mental shortcuts It would be naive to suggest that US 45 Prospect Street, feels too much like hard work. It are a danger to society” science education is the answer to Cambridge, MA 02139 is so much easier to kick back and all our problems: Homer passed Tel +1 781 734 8773 let the brain’s autopilot take over. with their gut – and being the exam, but then reverted to And no wonder. Even when encouraged to do so by populist type. But it isn’t naive to suggest lubricated with beer, the autopilot politicians channelling anger that it can help make the world a is a pretty impressive piece of kit. at the liberal establishment. better place. One of the bright Evolution has endowed the This is a potent political spots of a miserable 2017 was the human brain with all kinds of message because it both elevates start of a movement called the mental shortcuts that make life common sense and exploits March For Science. Those who © 2017 New Scientist Ltd, England manageable. If we had to think our instinctive tribalism by believe in the transformative New Scientist is published weekly about every action or weigh up suggesting that the world is power of science and rationality by New Scientist Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. every decision, we would be divided into two mutually need to keep on marching, or cede New Scientist (Online) ISSN 2059 5387 paralysed. As a result, certain antagonistic tribes – the no- yet more power to people who Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England ideas and modes of thinking nonsense masses and the don’t much like their own brains – by Williams Gibbons (Wolverhampton) come naturally to us (see page 28). pointy headed elite. or other people’s. ■

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 5 UPFRONT

US plans moon visit

DONALD TRUMP wants NASA Trump and vice-president to shoot for the moon. On Mike Pence both emphasised the 11 December, the 45th anniversary importance of a US military presence of the Apollo 17 lunar landing, the on the moon. Pence said it will US president signed a directive “enhance our national security telling NASA to focus on human and our capacity to provide for the exploration, with an eye to getting common defence of the people of back to the moon. the United States of America”. “This time, we will not only plant Trump signed Space Policy our flag and leave our footprint. Directive 1 following a We will establish a foundation for recommendation by the National an eventual mission to Mars and Space Council, re-established this perhaps, some day, to many worlds June after 24 years of inactivity beyond,” Trump said in a press and led by Pence. conference before the signing. Details of the directive remain Under President Obama, murky, but Pence has shown NASA’s main target for crewed enthusiasm for partnerships with missions was the Red Planet. commercial space firms. How it will It isn’t clear how this shift in focus be funded is also not clear. The Apollo will affect NASA’s timeline for an programme cost NASA an estimated eventual mission to Mars. $200 billion in today’s money. DOUG MILLS/NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINE

Crimes against life The report says the key threats Microwave attack? acoustic shock wave is perceived are the LRA, corruption in the DRC as sound. The microwave beam JOSEPH KONY and his notorious state military, armed pastoralists WERE US diplomats in Cuba could affect individuals indoors Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) called the Fulani and many microwaved? Those affected and could cause brain tissue haven’t gone away. They have militias, like the Janjaweed, earlier this year reported damage from a combination of moved to an unstable belt of from the chaos in South Sudan. experiencing bursts of painful, heating and shock waves. countries near their former base “In terms of quantity, the highly localised sound at home Not everyone is convinced. of Uganda. There, they and other pastoralists and the militias from or in hotel rooms. After-effects “That theory is a real stretch,” lawless militias are decimating Sudan and South Sudan are the included headaches, nausea and says Kenneth Foster at the iconic animals like elephants for hearing loss. Cuba denied that University of Pennsylvania, food and ivory, plus terrorising “Giraffes are reportedly any such attacks took place. who investigates the effects of villages and kidnapping children. being killed to provide the Medical checks suggested that microwaves on the body. The That is the grim message from Lord’s Resistance Army some of these people have signs peak power levels needed would a report by TRAFFIC, a wildlife with tails to deter flies” of brain damage. That, in turn, involve a rather conspicuous trade monitoring network. Based suggests the attacks weren’t transmitter, he says. on interviews with 700 people biggest problem,”says author Liz imagined, but isn’t consistent from Sudan, the Central African Williamson at the University of with a sonic device being used. Republic and the Democratic Stirling, UK.“They hop back and Now James Lin at the University Republic of the Congo (DRC), forth over the border, and most of Illinois at Chicago says the the report exposes the threat to trading of wildlife products… goes localised sounds and health effects elephants and species like giant through Sudan.” might both be the result of a beam elands and eastern chimpanzees. The groups are professional and of pulsed microwaves. Lin has Giraffes are reportedly being well equipped. Some even poach been working with this microwave killed simply to provide the LRA elephants using helicopters. auditory effect for decades, with tails for deterring flies. But people are fighting back. and says it could explain the Only 47 now survive in the DRC’s In October, conservation body Cuban reports (IEEE Microwave protected “Garamba complex”, African Parks began using satellite Magazine, doi.org/chbd). where there had been 350. imagery to track poaching. “Aminuscule but rapid rise Elephants here totalled 22,000 The real problem is the chronic in tissue temperature, resulting in the 1970s, but are now down to instability, says Williamson. from the absorption of pulsed between 1100 and 1400. Rhinos, “Without peace agreements to microwave energy, creates a of which there were once about tackle ongoing insecurity, the thermoelastic expansion of brain

500, are gone entirely. problems will continue,” she says. matter,”says Lin. The ensuing JOE AMON/THE DENVER POST VIA GETTY

6 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news 60 SECONDS

Bettingonbitcoin Facebook under fire Social media companies should be BITCOIN has taken another step liable for illegal content posted on towards financial respectability. their platforms, says a new report Chicago-based Cboe Global from the UK’s Committee on Markets launched a futures Standards in Public Life. If the market for the cryptocurrency recommendations become law, on Monday. firms could be fined for hosting Futures are a financial content that is racist, extremist instrument that let traders bet or related to child sex abuse. on the future price of something. Commodity traders use them to Gym bunnies limit the risks of buying or selling Living near a gym helps keep you things like oil or metals and allow trim, according to a study of around more sophisticated trading 40,000 UK adults. People with at strategies. least six physical activity facilities Trading had to be halted twice as within 1 kilometre of their home demand surged after the bitcoin PHOTO STOCK ALAMY / LIBRARY PICTURE NATURE have 0.8 per cent less body fat and a futures market launched. Bets on waist 1.2 centimetres smaller than bitcoin’s price one month from Hutovo Blato’s underlying Wetlands burn average. Living near a fast-food now started at $15,460, rose to problem is that it is drying due to outlet, in contrast, boosts waist size $18,700 and ended at $17,800 A PROTECTED wetland has caught hydropower plants that cut water by 0.2 centimetres (The Lancet, DOI: when trading closed. The price fire for the ninth time since 2011. flow, says Zoran Mateljak of WWF. 10.1016/S2468-2667(17)30212-8). of bitcoin itself was at $16,200, The fires threaten hundreds of In 2014, WWF drew up a plan to fix suggesting investors see a rosy species, some of them unique. this, but little has been done. future for the currency, which has The wetland of Hutovo Blato If the drying continues Hutovo Little Foot steps out soared in value in recent weeks. spans 7411 hectares in Bosnia and Blato will be gone by 2050, WWF The near-complete skeleton of an “It is rare that you see Herzegovina. It is one of Europe’s says. Mateljak says it might be extinct hominin found in South something more volatile than richest sites for migratory birds. sooner if a big enough fire hits. Africa’s Sterkfontein caves in the bitcoin, but we found it: bitcoin However, in October, 1000 1990s has finally gone on display futures,”Zennon Kapron of hectares were destroyed by fire. after 20 years of study. Little Foot Shanghai-based consulting firm The cost of repairs is estimated Huntington’s hope is an Australopithecus from Kapronasia told Bloomberg. at €500,000. 3.67 million years ago. Detailed Nearly 4000 futures contracts Most of the previous fires were AN INCURABLE inherited illness findings will be released next year. swapped hands on the first day minor, but one in 2011 burned that kills many of those affected of trading, although trading much of the wetland, says Nikola by their 40s may be slowed by Penguins’ new heights volumes fell on Tuesday as the Zovko, a director of the site. a novel drug injected into fluid An extinct species of giant penguin market calmed. Other exchanges Big fires release nutrients into surrounding the spine and brain. was as tall as an average man, are expected to launch their own the water. This boosts the growth Although the results of a trial reaching 1.77 metres. Kumamanu bitcoin futures markets in the of algae, causing blooms that in 46 people with Huntington’s biceae lived in New Zealand more coming months. remove oxygen and kill animals. disease in the UK, Germany and than 55 million years ago. It is one Canada were only preliminary, of the largest and oldest penguins independent neurologists were ever found, and probably evolved Executioners turn to opioids still cautiously optimistic. its stature independently of other The drug is designed to stop giant penguins. TWO US states are considering using way as heroin, but is 50 to 100 times production of the huntingtin the synthetic painkiller fentanyl as more potent – making it very easy protein, which is mutated in Icy pinnacle resized part of the cocktail of drugs used to to accidentally take a fatal dose. those with the condition and kills execute prisoners on death row. The drug has been blamed for tens brain cells, causing gradual loss Mount Hope is the highest peak on Many pharmaceutical firms have of thousands of opioid overdose of mobility and brain activity. the Antarctic Peninsula, not Mount stopped supplying prisons with the deaths in the US in recent years. Before it can be produced, the Jackson as we thought. According to drugs used in lethal injections. Nevada But it hasn’t been used in treatment intercepts and destroys new satellite data, Mount Hope is and Nebraska are both proposing to executions before, and critics warn RNA that carries the instructions 3239 metres tall, 55 metres higher add fentanyl to the mix to get around that fentanyl-assisted executions to make the protein. It is the first than Mount Jackson. As the Antarctic this, as it is much easier to access. are essentially an experiment. time a drug has cut levels of the Peninsula is claimed by the UK, The opioid drug is used clinically The first execution could happen toxic version of huntingtin in the Mount Hope is now also the tallest to treat severe pain, such as that of in Nevada as soon as January, nervous system of people. A larger British mountain, surpassing the advanced cancer. It works in the same according to The Washington Post. trial will be needed to see if this 1345-metre Ben Nevis. slows disease progression.

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 7 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY

The biology of being gay Genes and antibodies identified that may shape male sexuality, says Andy Coghlan

WE’RE homing in on the pathways colleagues compared DNA from chromosome 14 and helps control birth order effect. that shape sexual orientation – in 1077 gay and 1231 straight men. thyroid function. TSHR function is The team collected blood from men, at least. The latest findings Scanning the men’s entire known to be disrupted in a genetic 142 women, and screened it for reveal genes and antibodies that genomes, the team spotted two thyroid condition called Grave’s antibodies to a particular brain seem to be part of the complex genes whose variants seem to disease, and this disorder is more protein that is made only in biology behind homosexuality. be linked to sexual orientation common in gay men. males. They thought this would Studies of sexuality have (Nature Scientific Reports, Not all men who have these be a good candidate, because it largely tended to focus on men, doi.org/cg94). genetic variants will be gay, says affects how neurons communicate and for decades there has been One of the genes sits on Sanders, because many other with each other, and it is produced evidence that sexual orientation chromosome 13. Other research factors play a role, including the on the surface of brain cells, is partly heritable in men. Genetic has found that this gene, environment.“There are probably making it relatively easy for variations in regions of the called SLITRK6, is active in the multiple genes involved, each antibodies to find and detect it. X chromosome and chromosome hypothalamus brain region a with a fairly low effect,”he says. 8 were linked to homosexuality few days before male mice fetuses Anthony Bogaert at Brock Maternal effect in the mid-1990s, but no specific University, Canada, and his team genes had been found. There was “It takes us a step closer to think that the maternal immune The mothers of gay sons with also no explanation for why men understanding one of the system may also influence sexual older brothers had the highest are more likely to be gay if they most fascinating features orientation. levels of antibodies against this have older brothers, known as of human beings” Our bodies make antibodies protein, followed by the mothers the “fraternal birth order effect”. to recognise molecules from of gay sons with no older brothers. Now, for the first time, two are born.“This is thought to infectious agents. But pregnant Women who had straight sons had genes that may influence how be a crucial time for sexual women can sometimes also less, while women with no sons sexual orientation develops have differentiation in this part of the produce antibodies against fetal had the least (PNAS, doi.org/cg93). been identified, while another brain,” says neuroscientist Simon molecules – for example, if their The team suggests these team’s work may explain the LeVay, who in 1991 discovered fetus has a different blood group. antibodies build up in some fraternal birth order effect. that hypothalamus size differs Bogaert’s team has found women’s bodies with every Alan Sanders at NorthShore between straight and gay men. evidence that maternal antibodies male baby they have. At higher University, Illinois, and his The other gene, TSHR, is on may be involved in the fraternal concentrations, it is possible that the effect of these antibodies on the protein they target leads to changes in brain development that can have an influence on sexual orientation. The study was small, so the finding is only preliminary. But it “could pave the way to a detailed understanding of this fascinating aspect of human development”, says Dean Hamer at the US National Institutes of Health, who was the first to pinpoint a genetic region linked to homosexuality in 1993. The genetic finding adds “yet more evidence that sexual orientation is not a‘lifestyle choice’”, says Hamer. “But the real significance is that it takes us one step closer to understanding the origins of one of the most fascinating and important

TRISTAN SAVATIER/GETTY TRISTAN features of human beings.” ■

8 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 In this section ■ “Pigs” that grieve, page 12 ■ Can AI make us laugh? page 14 ■ How far should doctors go to get organs for transplant? page 22

Temperature differences spawned How fasting this storm at Mars’s north pole may boost up into anything more menacing. brainpower Regional storms, on the other hand, especially ones that last for COULD regular fasting make you more than a few days, can boost smarter? People following regimes winds or raise the temperature far like the 5:2 diet usually do so for from their location. The increased weight loss, but some who try it say dust absorbs more sunlight and it makes them mentally sharper too. heats the atmosphere, driving If this is true, experiments in mice large-scale dynamics across the may offer an explanation. In these planet, similar to how heating at animals, enforced fasting has been Earth’s equator causes the jet found to cause changes in the brain streams. Such changes might that are likely to give neurons more create spin-off storms across Mars energy, and enable them to grow and could explain how regional more connections. storms combine to form global Mark Mattson of the National ones (Icarus, doi.org/cg82). Institute on Aging in Maryland and “Regional dust storms occur his team looked at 40 mice that with some frequency on Mars – so consumed the same total calories, the fact that they can influence the but either ate normally every day global atmospheric condition on or ate nothing every other day. Mars is pretty striking,”says Brian The team found that fasting Jackson at Boise State University caused a 50 per cent increase in a MALIN SPACE SCIENCE SYSTEMS, MGS, JPL, NASA in Idaho. That could mean that brain chemical called BDNF. Previous future human colonies will need studies have shown that such a rise to worry about distant regional is likely to boost the number of Mars storms snowball storms as well as local ones. mitochondria, which provide a cell’s Although dust storms are energy, inside neurons by 20 per cent. and can turn humongous nowhere near as damaging as BDNF also promotes the growth the one depicted in the film of new connections – or synapses – LARGE dust storms on Mars might unanswered questions,”says The Martian, they produce between brain cells, which helps in have far-reaching effects. They Anthony Toigo at Johns Hopkins enough static electricity to short- learning and memory, says Mattson. can affect the entire atmosphere, University in Maryland. Should circuit electronics. They also leave The finding makes sense from an possibly seeding new weather researchers find out, they might enough dust in the atmosphere to evolutionary perspective, as animals systems that can combine to be able to forecast these mega- hinder solar energy generation. that are hungry would benefit from form planet-wide storms unlike storms. That could in turn help That’s a big concern for Jennifer more intellectual resources to find anything we see on Earth. ensure the safety of rovers and Herman, the power subsystem food, he says. “If human ancestors Dust storms are not future astronauts alike. operations team lead for the hadn’t been able to find food, they uncommon on Mars. Local ones Toigo and his colleagues Opportunity rover at NASA’s had better be able to function at a are those that cover an area less applied a weather model designed Jet Propulsion Laboratory in high level to chase down some prey.” than 100,000 square kilometres – for Earth to Mars, simulating Pasadena, California. And it’s The team’s results were roughly half the size of the UK – not her only worry. Once storms presented at the Society for and these occur several hundred “Future human colonies dissipate, the dust rains down on Neuroscience conference in times every year, although they will need to worry about the rover’s solar panel, blocking Washington DC last month. last less than a Martian day. distant regional storms the sun’s rays until cleared away However, results in mice don’t Regional ones can be as large as as well as local ones” by the wind.“It’s kind of like a always translate to people. Other 1 million square kilometres – double whammy,”Herman says. studies have found that living on a roughly the size of Alaska – and several local and regional storms. The last global dust storm permanent low-calorie diet can allow happen a dozen times every year. They wanted to study how those on Mars happened in 2007, mice to live as much as 50 per cent They are also more persistent. affect the atmosphere elsewhere so one is overdue. Some scientists longer, although the effect seems Global storms blanket Mars on the planet and test a long- speculate that the next one will smaller in primates. in a thick haze and can last for standing prediction: that smaller occur in 2018, although Toigo Mattson is currently testing the hundreds of days. Luckily these storms cascade into larger ones. points out that this is a statistical 5:2 diet in obese older people in a only come about every three to The team found that local guess. He says his study and randomised trial to see if it really four Martian years. But how storms have little to no effect on others will help better forecast does make them mentally sharper. do they form? the atmosphere beyond their when the next mega Martian dust Clare Wilson ■ “That is one of the great borders, so probably do not swell storm may hit. Shannon Hall Q

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 9 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY

If not in black holes, where is dark matter?

DARK matter may not be found in primordial black holes after all. After the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) watched a pair of black holes collide for the first time in 2015, speculation swirled that the black holes might be the source of the strange gravitational effects we attribute to dark matter. But Miguel Zumalacárregui and Uros Seljak at the University of

FRANS LANTING/FLPA California, Berkeley, think differently. They measured a type of gravitational Its ancestors roamed the lensing – light from a supernova that When Earth was planet continents for millions of years warps as it passes a black hole on its way to Earth. This should be common of the giant tortoises North America within the past if primordial black holes make up all 2 million years. the dark matter. But they saw little TORTOISES evolved into giants suggesting tortoises don’t need All other giant tortoises belong sign of it. They say this means there on at least seven occasions and islands to evolve to be larger. to a second group. Its members are not enough black holes out there on four continents. The finding Evangelos Vlachos at the evolved into giants on at least four to explain all the effects of dark undermines the long-standing Museum of Paleontology Egidio occasions – including an extinct matter (arxiv.org/abs/1712.02240). idea that tortoises become Feruglio in Trelew, Argentina, Asian species, today’s island- Zumalacárregui and Seljak are enormous only if they are and Márton Rabi at the University dwellers and the African spurred assuming that dark matter takes one stranded on remote islands. of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, tortoise (Cladistics, doi.org/cg8k). form only – either all black holes or There are more than 40 species wanted to clarify the history of In other words, says Vlachos, some other form of matter altogether. of tortoise, the most spectacular gigantism. They drew the tortoise tortoises tended to become giant LIGO’s black holes had masses that being the giant tortoises. On the family tree using data from on continents. He thinks the giant made them a plausible candidate for Galapagos islands in the Pacific extinct and living species. tortoises on remote islands today primordial black holes, the kind we and Seychelles islands in the That is key, says Yuval Itescu at were big before they arrived, think formed just after the big bang. Indian Ocean, these animals Tel Aviv University, Israel.“There something that may have helped But Zumalacárregui and Seljak found can have shells more than are two competing hypotheses them get there.“Large tortoises that primordial black holes can 120 centimetres long. about why we find giant tortoises have more fat, so they can survive account for no more than about These islands cover just a few on remote oceanic islands,”he [at sea] longer,”he says. 35 per cent of dark matter. So, they thousand square kilometres. says.“They either got there giant, “We don’t need an island rule to say it must be something else. In contrast, Earth’s continents or became giant on the island.” explain the giant tortoises,”says LIGO team member Nelson cover 150 million square Knowing what their ancestors Lucienne Wilmé at the University Christensen at Carleton College in kilometres. Yet they are home of Antananarivo, Madagascar. Last Minnesota disagrees. “Just because to just one truly large tortoise: “We find giant tortoises year, her team suggested that dark matter can’t be entirely the African spurred tortoise. on remote islands. They Austronesian sailors purposely composed of primordial black holes This implies that tortoises are either got there giant, brought Seychelles giant tortoises doesn’t mean they can’t exist,” he most likely to become huge when or became giant there” to their present home in antiquity. says. LIGO is gearing up to look for they live on islands, in line with a That’s consistent with gigantism small black holes with masses lighter famous but controversial concept, were like should sort that out. evolving on continents. than stars, he says, which would be the “island rule”. This states that, The tree suggests the first However, with island origins primordial because the conditions for on islands, small animals tend to giant tortoises – with shells at seemingly ruled out by the new their birth only lasted for moments evolve larger bodies while large least 80 centimetres long – evolutionary tree, it is now even after the big bang. “Even if primordial animals evolve to be smaller. evolved 37 million years ago in less clear why tortoises black holes weren’t all of the dark But tortoise biologists suspect Africa and Europe. They belonged sometimes evolve into giants. matter, even if they just existed, that otherwise. Fossils show giant to an extinct group that gave Gigantism seems to have evolved would be a huge deal for explaining tortoises once roamed Africa, rise to continental giants at least on different continents at wildly the beginning of the universe,” Eurasia and the Americas, twice more. One of those lived in different times. Colin Barras ■ says Christensen. Leah Crane ■

10 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news

producing or“anoxygenic” For example, there is evidence photosynthesis evolved at least of 3.5-billion-year-old methane- The first bout of 3.5 billion years ago during the producing microbes in the Pilbara Archaean aeon. region in Western Australia, global warming At this time, the atmosphere home to some of the oldest- was rich in hydrogen and the known microbial fossils. oceans rich in dissolved iron. Nowadays, few anoxygenic Alice Klein Now, Chris Reinhard and These two elements provided photosynthetic organisms Kazumi Ozaki at the Georgia electrons that microbes could remain. They include green WE’RE not the first living beings Institute of Technology in Atlanta use to transform carbon dioxide sulphur bacteria and purple to drastically alter Earth’s climate. and their colleagues suggest into methane fuel. bacteria, which can’t tolerate The earliest photosynthetic that a major contributor to The researchers modelled the oxygen and live in anaerobic microorganisms belched out this greenhouse effect was microbes and their primitive enough methane to warm the methane – generated by primitive biosphere by including factors “Microbes may have planet by 15°C. This spell of microorganisms that had such as the amount of hydrogen emitted enough methane global warming may have saved evolved to photosynthesise. spewed from volcanoes, carbon to raise the temperature Earth from freezing over, and Photosynthesis is the process dioxide levels in the atmosphere, from about 4 to 19°C” created a comfortable climate by which green plants and many the burial rate of iron and organic for early organisms. microbes sustain themselves. matter on the sea floor, and the environments like Lake Matano When Earth formed 4.5 billion It involves using the sun’s breakdown of methane by the in Indonesia and Lake Fryxell years ago, the sun was 25 per cent energy to convert carbon into sun’s ultraviolet rays. in Antarctica. dimmer than it is today. This carbohydrates like sugars, They calculated that these Oxygenic and anoxygenic suggests the early planet should which can be used as fuel. It interlocking processes would photosynthetic bacteria probably have been a frozen snowball for requires sunlight and a source have generated enough methane battled it out for millions of millions of years. But geological of electrons to“fix”the carbon. to increase the average surface years before oxygenic species evidence indicates it was just as Today’s photosynthetic temperature of the planet eventually won, says Reinhard. warm as it is now, if not warmer. organisms, which date back at from about 4 to 19°C (Nature The tipping point may have been One explanation for this least 2.5 billion years, mostly use Geoscience, doi.org/cg8c). when these microbes produced “faint young sun paradox” water as this source of electrons. The findings are consistent enough oxygen to“rust out”the is that greenhouse gases like The reaction between water and with the fossil record, says dissolved iron that anoxygenic carbon dioxide warmed Earth carbon dioxide produces Malcolm Walter at the University microbes depended on, he says. by trapping the sun’s heat. But carbohydrate fuel and releases of New South Wales in Australia. Because they are so scarce, carbon dioxide levels probably oxygen as a waste product. anoxygenic photosynthetic weren’t high enough to fully But this wasn’t always the case. Simple microbes may have heated microbes no longer have a account for the balmy climate. A simpler form of non-oxygen- our planet 3 billion years ago– significant effect on Earth’s climate, says Ozaki. He says this may help explain why the average surface temperature is now 15°C, slightly cooler than it was more than 3 billion years ago. The findings suggest we should widen the search for extraterrestrial life, says Walter. “We’ve mostly been looking for life in places that have a similar climate to ours, but this suggests life can evolve in hydrogen- dominated atmospheres too.” It may even be easier for hydrogen-based anoxygenic microorganisms to evolve because they don’t require complex enzymes to get electrons out of water, says Ozaki. “The Archaean anoxic biosphere is therefore expected to be an extremely useful analogue for the primitive biospheres of

TOM MURPHY/GETTYTOM other Earth-like planets.” ■

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 11 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY

Grief is not just for the clever

Elizabeth Preston his mother, and told them his findings might be a big deal.“They PIG-LIKE animals called peccaries were very excited, and from then have been seen apparently on I took on the project,”says mourning their dead. The Altrichter.“I watched all the discovery adds to the growing list 100 videos he had taken.”The of species that have exhibited work has now been published, signs of grief. It came from a with Dante listed as first author science fair project. (Ethology, doi.org/cg7x). Peccaries are hoofed mammals In the days after the peccary’s found in the Americas. Also death, the other members of her known as javelinas or skunk pigs, herd visited her body repeatedly, they resemble pigs and wild boar. usually alone or in pairs. However, the two actually belong Sometimes they simply walked

to different, albeit closely related, or stood near her.“Other activities ALTRICHTER/SARADANTE KORT/MARIANA DE MICAELA CORTEZ& CAMINO included pushing at the dead “It is heartbreaking to see individual, nuzzling it, smelling just returning to the locale. Social bonds in peccaries appear two peccaries trying to it, staring at it, biting it, and trying On the 10th day after the to survive beyond death pick up the dead one, as to pick it up by putting their peccary died, a group of coyotes if they wanted to help it” snout under the corpse and approached. The other peccaries responses to death among pushing it up,”the authors write. repeatedly chased them off. But monkeys, pair-bonded birds and families. Peccaries are social Sometimes, the other peccaries later that night, the coyotes various pets and farm animals. animals and often live in groups. slept next to the body or snuggled returned and ate the remains. Behaviours that resemble In January, 8-year-old Dante de up against it. “The behaviours observed in mourning might help animals Kort was watching a herd of five “It is heartbreaking to the surviving peccaries are quite recover from a loss before making collared peccaries (Pecari tajacu) observe two [peccaries] trying to fascinating,”says Barbara King at new social bonds. However, just behind his house in Arizona. One pick up the dead one, as if they the College of William & Mary in because these responses are of them seemed to be ill. The next wanted to help it to get up,”says Virginia, author of the 2013 book widespread doesn’t mean they day, he found a dead adult female Altrichter.“The herd reacted in How Animals Grieve. She says the have an evolutionary benefit. and the rest of the herd nearby. a way that resembles mourning peccaries’responses to death King says they may just be Dante was intrigued, and he and grieving.” were similar to those of chimps, “an emotional by-product of had a school science fair coming The peccaries visited the elephants and cetaceans. While friendship or love”. up. So on the third day after the corpse after it was moved up the the study of animal grief is new, When the peccaries pushed, animal’s death, he approached the hill, showing that they weren’t King says researchers have seen nuzzled or bit the body of the body – now up a hill from the dead female, they may have been house, where it had been moved NATURAL GRIEF trying to revive her, says King. because of the smell – and set up a And they may have been camera trap. Whenever an animal Many animals behave in ways that from March, for instance, described expressing curiosity by staring at approached the body, the motion- suggest they are grieving. a chimp cleaning the teeth of a fallen the dead body, or possessiveness sensitive camera took a video. African elephants get agitated comrade using a firm stem of grass. by defending it against coyotes, Dante captured footage over if they find a dead member of their Several monkey species also she says. When they slept the next two weeks and put his species. They even look at the skulls respond to death. In one case, a touching the body, and refused to findings onto a poster. At the and ivory of long-dead elephants. female snub-nosed monkey fell abandon it for over a week, they regional science fair, his poster Chimpanzees will sit with the body and cracked her head on a rock, and may have been displaying grief, caught the attention of Mariana of a newly deceased troupe member. her partner spent an hour tenderly King says. Altrichter at the nearby Prescott They have been seen subsequently touching her until she died. “We know that many social College. Altrichter is co-chair avoiding the place where the animal Bottlenose dolphins have been animals have profound of the Peccary Specialist Group died. Females sometimes carry the seen carrying the bodies of dead social relationships with at the International Union for mummified bodies of dead offspring infants, sometimes lifting them to other individuals,” says King. Conservation of Nature. She left for days or weeks. Chimps have also the surface of the water as if helping “Individuals may feel it deeply, Dante a note asking to talk. been seen cleaning corpses. A study them to breathe. Michael Marshall and visibly express those feelings, Altrichter met with Dante and when the bonds are broken.” ■

12 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017

NEWS & TECHNOLOGY

of Technology in Atlanta, who 50,000 words by reading the works on AIs that generate stories. subtitles from some 100,000 Robot stand-up Riedl considers making up tales films. A.L.Ex has to understand to be one of the grand challenges what its human sidekicks are shows funny side for AI. Adding humour raises the saying and generate a response as bar even higher. “Humour is hard quickly as possible, which it then even for humans,” he says. delivers using a voice synthesiser. Douglas Heaven understanding and creating During the shows, Mathewson, Things don’t always work out. comedy involves high-level Mirowski and their robot called At a show in January, the robot MAKING up jokes on the spot intelligence. A.L.Ex – short for Artificial started talking gibberish, is a real test of wits. Yet, in an Humour goes to the heart Language Experiment – improvise according to one reviewer. unlikely comedy trio known as of what it is to be human, so to using topics suggested by the Even when A.L.Ex got its words HumanMachine, many of the mimic us, AIs will have to master audience. A.L.Ex’s lines are out, the results were often more ad-libbed gags are delivered by it. “If one were to attempt the provided by a neural network that nonsensical than funny. a robot. The improv group has Turing test, I find it hard to has learned a vocabulary of about Even so, many audiences performed 30 times to nearly envision success without an AI respond warmly. When AI provides 3000 people at comedy festivals that understands humour,”says Piotr Mirowski on stage with the robot’s words, people are never in the UK and Canada. Mark Riedl at the Georgia Institute a robot that attempts improv fooled into thinking the AI is really It isn’t all played for laughs, a human. But when the robot is however. Kory Mathewson at secretly controlled by Mathewson, the University of Alberta in half of the people who see the Canada and Piotr Mirowski – show say they thought they were both artificial intelligence watching an AI perform flawlessly. researchers in their day jobs – That says more about the set-up are also exploring how audiences than the robot’s smarts, and the respond to a robot that is trying pair point out that at comedy to be funny. gigs the audience is primed to Comedy typically happens find anything funny. The pair when the perceptions and presented their work at the intuitions of the performer and conference on Neural Information the audience are challenged by Processing Systems in Long Beach, surprise or novelty. It also involves California, last week. They also the most sophisticated stage of plan to hit the road again next human interaction, including year, performing at the Edinburgh non-verbal communication, Fringe Festival and elsewhere.“We allusions to shared cultural are hard at work thinking about references, social satire, irony other ways to involve humans and empathy. In other words, HUMANMACHINE in the show,”says Mirowski. ■

surveys that covered nearly the entire These seeds could have been huge Journal Letters, doi.org/cg6b). The most sky, and confirmed possible instances early stars, or gas clouds thousands or Bañados and his colleagues also distant quasar of distant quasars with new images. millions of times the mass of the sun spotted something strange about the The quasar they have uncovered is that collapsed and formed black holes. quasar’s light: on its way to us, some ever seen one of the most distant objects ever Eracleous says this distant quasar of it was absorbed by non-ionised seen. That we can even see it means might rule out the first of these ideas hydrogen. Most of the gas in A QUASAR has been spotted 13 billion it is also one of the brightest objects because it was formed too early in interstellar space today is ionised. So, light years away from us. It is the most ever spotted (Nature, doi.org/cg59). the universe’s history to allow stars the quasar must have lived during the distant of these supermassive black It is more than 800 million times the to grow large enough. early universe’s epoch of reionisation, holes encircled by a bright disc of mass of the sun, which presents a The galaxy that hosts the quasar when stars and galaxies began to material that we have ever seen. That problem. Theory tells us it should take is full of bright dust, stars and metals form and remove electrons from the great distance tells us it is very old billions of years for such a huge object that also needed time to form, which hydrogen gas that pervades space. and that huge black holes must have to form, but it existed just 690 million is more evidence for a fast evolution Only after reionisation did the formed fast in the universe’s youth. years after the universe formed. of the early universe (Astrophysical universe start to resemble the one we Eduardo Bañados at the To grow to the size we see today, live in today. We aren’t sure when this Observatories of the Carnegie “they have to start out at masses “Such a huge object should transformation happened, but this is Institution for Science in Pasadena, about 1000 times that of the sun”, take billions of years to a clue that it was still going on about California, and his colleagues have says Michael Eracleous at form,butitexistedina 690 million years after the big bang. pored over telescope data from three Pennsylvania State University. cosmos younger than that” Leah Crane ■

14 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 n"hn=Q1 Qaa="hų n8" I"Q1n8h ~"ƃII 1V nV /Vc "nn"c =Q}"hnO"Qnų I"mƂhmIG8V}Ų

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The eggsplosive dangers of microwaves

IT’S enough to give you shell shock. A shell-less hard-boiled egg that is reheated in a microwave can explode when you bite into it or prick it with a fork, and this may happen up to a third of the time. Anthony Nash at consultancy Charles M. Salter Associates in San Francisco was an expert witness after a restaurant customer allegedly suffered hearing damage and burns when a hard-boiled egg exploded in

MUNDINANO, I.-C., NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA (2017) I.-C., MUNDINANO, his mouth. The case was settled out of court, but not before Nash and his A normal brain (left) and the boy colleague Lauren von Blohn reheated missing a visual cortex (right) almost 100 eggs as the restaurant had Boy missing visual done: microwaving them in a water He probably has his sight bath for 3 minutes. bit of brain can see because he lost his visual cortex Some ruptured or exploded. The in the first two weeks of his life, eggs that survived heating were when his brain was still highly taken out and pricked, and 28 of these Alice Klein objects, identify colours and malleable and adaptable, says exploded. “It’s like playing Russian discriminate between images Mundiñano. roulette with an egg – egg roulette,” A BOY missing the visual of faces. He could also identify Using MRI brain scanning, the says Nash. processing centre of his brain happy, fearful and neutral faces, team found that another area of Foods with a skin, such as potatoes, has baffled doctors by seeming and grasp different-sized blocks the boy’s brain appears to have can also explode when microwaved to have near-normal sight. placed in front of him. taken over the role of seeing. because steam pressure builds up The 7-year-old Australian, The only major problem with Compared with other boys his inside. But the shells of these boiled known as BI, lost his primary BI’s vision was strong shortage, he had more connections eggs had been removed. Nash and visual cortex shortly after birth sightedness. He was only able between two spots near the visual von Blohn speculate that tiny pockets due to a rare metabolic disorder to read the top letter on an eye cortex, called the pulvinar and of water within the yolk become called medium-chain acyl-CoA chart from 3 metres away. middle temporal area. The superheated and then start boiling, dehydrogenase deficiency. The Some people with damaged pulvinar is normally involved violently releasing steam, when disorder means certain fats can’t visual cortices have previously in relaying sensory signals, while punctured by a fork – or your teeth. be converted into energy, and this been found to have a degree of the middle temporal area helps These “eggsplosions” make a can cause brain damage. unconscious visual awareness, detect motion. sound that can reach 133 decibels Normally, the primary visual known as blindsight. For example, Previous experiments have from 30 centimetres away – louder cortex is crucial for sight because some can navigate an obstacle found that monkeys also retain than a chainsaw running 1 metre from it processes electrical signals many of their visual abilities you. One exposure to this level of relayed from the eyes. People “He navigates his way if their primary visual cortex noise would be unlikely to damage with damage to this area are said around without any is damaged when they are in your hearing, but the effects may be to have“cortical blindness”. problems and plays early infancy. As with BI, this different if you bite into the egg and However, BI has remarkably soccer and video games” retention is associated with extra it explodes in your mouth, says Nash. well-preserved vision, says Iñaki- connections between the pulvinar The heat of the explosion could Carril Mundiñano at Monash course even though they don’t and middle temporal area. certainly hurt your face, too. University in Melbourne.“You consciously feel able to see. Together, these findings The pair shared their results at a wouldn’t think he is blind,”he BI is the first person with no suggest that newborn brains meeting of the Acoustical Society of says.“He navigates his way around visual cortex to be identified as can learn to reroute visual America that took last week in New without any problems and plays having near-normal conscious information via other centres Orleans, Louisiana. soccer and video games.” vision, says Mundiñano, who if the primary visual cortex is “Don’t put any eggs in the In a series of tests run by presented the case at a meeting missing, says Mundiñano. microwave,” Nash says. “They’re to Mundiñano’s team, BI scored of the Australasian Neuroscience “Younger brains just tend to be respected, those machines.” perfectly when asked to name Society in Sydney last week. recover and adapt much better.” ■ Leah Crane ■

16 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 COMING NEXT ISSUE... NEW SCIENTIST’S BUMPER HOLIDAY SPECIAL

LIFE IN THE SLOTH LANE The hidden upsides of slowing down DIRTY SECRETS Your earwax knows where you’ve been ACCEPT SNOW SUBSTITUTES Are fake flakes a slippery slope? DECK THE HALLS The quest to save our holly BLASTS FROM THE PAST Explosive Victorian home experiments THE OWL AND THE GUCCI TAT When birds really feather their nests and much more

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Want grandkids? Be a younger mum

THE older your mother was when HASAMA PARK UNDERWATER you were born, the less likely you are to have children – but we don’t yet know why. Olga Basso of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and her team analysed data on more than 43,000 women in the US born between 1930 and 1964. More than 19 per cent whose mothers were aged 30 or over when they gave birth had no children of their own. That compares with about 15 per cent of women whose mothers were aged 20 to 24 at the time of their birth. Only 13 per cent of women born to teenagers had no children (Human Reproduction, doi.org/cg5x). Women with a postgraduate degree were the most likely never to have any children, followed by women who never married. But neither social factors nor Record-breaking fish was when viewed head-on. They have a curved lobe at the wealth could fully account for the rear, where most other fish have a tail fin. effect, suggesting there might be misidentified for 20 years Etsuro Sawai at Hiroshima University in Japan and his some biological cause. colleagues reviewed the species in the Mola genus. They GIVEN that it is 3 metres long, weighs 2300 kilograms and examined specimens and trawled accounts going back looks like a severed head, the heaviest bony fish should 500 years (Ichthyological Research, doi.org/cg55). A glue to spray onto be easy to spot. But in fact we misnamed it for years. When Sawai looked at photos of the monster catch, The ocean sunfish (Mola mola) is listed in Guinness he realised it was not M. mola after all, but M. alexandrini. injured eyeballs World Records as the heaviest bony fish. Some sharks are Unlike the other species, M. alexandrini (pictured) larger, but their skeletons are made of cartilage not bone. has a bump on its forehead, hence its name: bump-head A SMART glue could fill cuts in the The record has stood since 2002, thanks to a specimen sunfish. It also has a distinctive bump on its chin and outer eyeball sustained during caught off Japan in 1996. But now a study of photographs a differently shaped “tail”. battle, protecting the eye until and information on the specimen has revealed that it Sawai thinks the record will be beaten. In 2004, a the wound can be stitched by wasn’t an ocean sunfish, but a relative: Mola alexandrini. female sunfish measuring 3.32 metres long was caught someone skilled in microsurgery. Sunfish look almost circular from the side and narrow off Japan’s Aji Island, but it wasn’t weighed. “Each day that no intervention is taken, the risk of permanent vision loss increases,” says Jack Shredded planet behind mystery visitor once, says Cuk. And if the asteroid Whalen of the University of is not the only one out there Southern California, Los Angeles. THE first known interstellar Matija Cuk at the SETI Institute travelling from star to star and is His team has a solution: an visitor to our solar system may be thinks it may have been born typical of this population of rocks, isopropylacrylamide glue that is a a shard from a planet shredded by when a planet about 10 times the Cuk says this mechanism could liquid at temperatures lower than its star. Astronomers spotted the size of Earth got too close to its account for all of them. 25°C, but when it is squirted into fast-moving cigar-shaped rock in small, dense star and was ripped ‘Oumuamua is unlikely to have an eyeball wound, the higher body October. Named‘Oumuamua, it apart (arxiv.org/abs/1712.01823). formed from a cosmic collision temperature solidifies it within seems to have tumbled into our The debris could have been as these don’t tend to produce 2 minutes. neighbourhood from around punted away by the gravitational elongated objects. That is because When the injured person gets another star. tug of a second orbiting star. the resulting debris often to a surgeon, the glue can be Now, researchers are trying If a large planet is torn apart continues to crash together, and a removed by cooling it down with to figure out where ‘Oumuamua by a dwarf star, many objects like long, thin rock like ‘Oumuamua is water (Science Translational came from and how it formed. ‘Oumuamua could be created at likely to crack down the middle. Medicine, doi.org/cg5z).

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 19 IN BRIEF For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news

Meals on wheels Supernova’sheartburnmayhavekeptitburningbright

get smart upgrade THE“impossible”supernova with the Multiple Mirror This ring may have been hidden that kept on exploding may owe Telescope in Arizona. They saw by the edge of the explosion. But DING dong! That’ll be the robot its weirdness to a doughnut of evidence that a disc of material as the shell of gas and plasma with my pizza. Kiwi, a company debris that circles it. around the exploding star was from the supernova expands based at the University of California, Most supernovae flare up moving much slower than the and cools over time, it becomes Berkeley, is using machine learning once then fade away, but a star ejecta from the explosion itself transparent and we can catch to teach its delivery robots how to first spotted three years ago has (arxiv.org/abs/1712.00514). hints of what is going on inside. cross the road safely. It launched brightened five times and only This ring of gas and dust could Still, the supernova hasn’t in April and lets students order recently started to dim. Was it a have been causing the explosion divulged all its secrets. Chinese food from campus restaurants via new type of explosion, perhaps? to repeatedly brighten and dim. researchers recently detected a an app, to be delivered by its small Observations seem to suggest As the ejected material rammed source of gamma radiation near fleet of robots. it is a regular supernova – only into the cloud, some energy the dying star that didn’t exist Human operators monitor the supercharged with nearby debris. from its motion could have been before the explosion. We have robots at all times, making sure they Jennifer Andrews and Nathan converted into light and heat, never seen gamma rays coming are safe, and intervening if they Smith at the University of Arizona powering the dying star’s extreme from a supernova in this way go off course. Until now, they have in Tucson looked at the starlight and persistent brightness. before (arxiv.org/abs/1712.01043). always had to step in when the robots need to cross a road. This limits how many robots can be out Your breath could taking deliveries at any one time. To solve this problem, since last give you away month, Kiwi has been using a BABOON SPIDER ATLAS SPIDER BABOON simulation of a busy road that a HOW you breathe might betray computer Kiwi robot will try to cross. you. The pattern of inhalations As the robot repeatedly tries to people make when they speak cross the road, it uses machine seem to be unique to each learning to gradually teach itself individual – which means an the best techniques to get across algorithm can be used to identify unscathed. After a few thousand the speaker. attempts, the model was able to The telltale sounds are come up with a technique that determined by many factors, helped it dodge between the including lung capacity and the oncoming traffic, shuffling back shape of the oral passageways. All and forth to keep itself safe. of these cause turbulence known After running successful tests in as“intervocalic breath sounds”. which real robots were allowed to Rita Singh at Carnegie Mellon cross the road on their own using University in Pennsylvania this method, the firm now plans to and her colleagues analysed roll the software out across its fleet thousands of recordings of TV Spiders are hiding on social media of 25 robots. news anchors and interviewees. The researchers found that when “SCARY” photos of big spiders on range more widely than thought, and KIWI analysing inhalations only, their Facebook may reveal new species. some assumed to stay in burrows system could identify the correct “When people see an animal that actually wander (Insect Conservation speaker out of a group of 50 with they think is frightening… the most and Diversity, doi.org/cg57). What’s nearly 75 per cent accuracy (arxiv. common response is to take a photo more, Campbell says they may have org/abs/1712.00171). and post it to social media,” says found 20 to 30 new species. This Singh has been working with Heather Campbell at Harper Adams needs to be confirmed, but some law enforcement on ways to University, UK, who studies baboon spiders in the atlas are novel sizes identify people who have made spiders, a group of African tarantulas. or have novel patterns or colours. One hoax or threatening phone calls. Campbell and her team have built in Mozambique was bright purple, Even if a hoax caller scrambled the Baboon Spider Atlas based on unknown in African tarantulas. their voice electronically to avoid photos and information they found Another had an odd horn on its back. giving themselves away, their after combing social media and Baboon spiders are collected for breathing might provide enough online forums. People also send in the pet trade, threatening their information to allow them to be photos of spiders they find. survival. Learning where they live identified. “We’re looking more The team found that many species will protect them, says Campbell. deeply into this now,” says Singh.

20 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 See the world differently

Subscribe or give as a gift and save up to 54% Visit newscientist.com/11102 or call 0330 333 9470 and quote 11102 ANALYSIS ORGAN DONORS

Dying to save a life How far should doctors push the boundaries between life and death in order to transplant organs, asks Clare Wilson

ORGAN transplants may seem caused catastrophic and ventilator is turned off and within surgery, keeping their organs well almost routine procedures irreversible brain damage. They minutes the lack of oxygen stops oxygenated and better prepared nowadays, but they remain mired effectively have no brain function, the heart too. for transplant. in anxieties and ethical challenges. which can be confirmed with People certified as brain-dead But as so few lives end in brain The number of people needing some simple tests. have, with their family’s death, transplant surgeons a new organ vastly outweighs the These people cannot breathe permission, been the source of needed to expand the donor supply, because less than 1 per for themselves – only the most transplant organs for many pool. In the 1990s, they began cent of all deaths take place in rhythmic actions of a ventilator decades – with the exception of considering people who were a manner that makes organ pushing air into their lungs keeps organs that can be safely taken also dying from irreversible donation medically possible. their blood supplied with oxygen. from live donors such as single brain damage, often from That’s why some doctors are Legally this is the equivalent of kidneys and small parts of the physical trauma or a stroke, now seeking ways to allow more being “traditionally” dead. liver. Crucially, with donors who but who were not brain-dead. dying patients become donors, Usually, once the tests are done are brain-dead, ventilation isn’t Unlike the previous group, even challenging long-held ethical and goodbyes have been said, the turned off until the middle of surgeons cannot start to retrieve principles about the boundary between life and death. Others say the methods being explored go too far, and could jeopardise organ donation all together. After all, most transplants happen only when a family, in the middle of what is often a sudden and untimely bereavement, consent to their loved one’s body being treated in ways that could

“What we are doing is terribly important. But people are worried that families will get upset”

be seen as unnatural and brutal. Is it ethical to push such families further, if it could save lives? “What we are doing is terribly important. But people are worried that families will get upset,”says Stephen Large of Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, UK. For most of human history, life ended when the heart stopped beating. That still applies to the majority of deaths, but as intensive care progressed in the mid-20th century, a new definition evolved: brain death. It applies to just a few people who end up in a strange twilight zone, often after a head injury or lack of oxygen. Their heart still

beats; but their injuries have IMAGES MARCOU/AFP/GETTY PIERRE-PHILIPPE

22 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news

their organs before the ventilator School of Medicine at Dartmouth As medical science has progressed, the pool of donors has expanded is turned off because they aren’t in New Hampshire. 1954 1968 1990s yet dead. Instead, doctors have to The heart-restarting technique First successful US recommends Organ shortage means doctors turn withdraw ventilation and wait for works. Since 2015, heart transplants kidney transplant adopting legal to “non-heart-beating donors” – the heart to stop. Then they wait have increased by 15 per cent in definition of people who aren’t brain dead but for an extra period of time – in the the three hospitals where it was brain death will die without a ventilator UK it is 5 minutes, in some US approved to take place by NHS hospitals it is less – and only then Blood and Transplant, the UK 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 do the surgeons begin their work. body that oversees organ 1967 2008 2015 Using this group of patients, donation. Permission is always First successful First heart New approach in which known as non-heart-beating sought from the families.“As heart transplant transplant from hearts are restarted in the donors, has raised the number of long as people are happy with non-heart-beating donor body of non-heart-beating organs available for transplant by the idea of this happening to donors before transplant as much as 25 per cent in some their relatives so they can be the hospitals. But hearts from such best possible donor, I think it Bernat thinks this idea risks suffocation in a freak accident. people aren’t usable, because makes sense,”says John Dark,of losing public support for the Her family chose to donate her these organs are particularly Newcastle University in the UK. whole concept of organ organs, but after ventilation was vulnerable to the lack of oxygen in In the US, restarting the heart transplants. He says some stopped, she took too long to die the period between the ventilator while it is in the donor’s body is families already mistakenly for her organs to be usable, adding being switched off and the organ seen as too controversial. But a suspect hospitals of being more to her family’s distress. being transplanted. few doctors there have proposed interested in their relative’s “This was almost a secondary a step that is more radical still. It organs than in saving their life. loss for her family,”Truog says. Restart the heart stems from a potential problem As a neurologist who has cared for “Her father said:‘I just don’t with non-heart-beating donors. many patients with brain injuries, understand why we could not So, for the past two years, Large’s Transplant surgery often has to be have given her an anaesthetic to team has been doing something called off, because the potential “Organ donation may be the make sure she saves the lives of not done anywhere else in the donor takes too long to die after last wish of the donor. If so, other children’.” world. After a donor is declared the ventilator is withdrawn. They we have a moral duty to try At the moment there are no dead, they restart the heart while continue breathing unevenly for to realise it” signs of a change in the rules to it is still in the body. In effect, many hours before their heart allow donation under anaesthetic, they use the donor’s body as an finally stops and the long period he has heard this directly from but the fact that doctors are incubator, preserving the heart of low oxygen levels leaves their some families, he says. debating it in journals and at and other organs. major organs unusable. Such live donor transplants conferences suggests opinions The team doesn’t jolt the This could be avoided by taking haven’t taken place, but Robert may one day change. heart back to life with electricity. the patient’s organs while they Truog of Boston Children’s In the UK, the approach of Instead, they hook the body’s are still alive, under a general Hospital, who is one of those restarting the heart in the body circulation to a machine that anaesthetic. But it would be a clear proposing the idea, says it could remains a pilot scheme while pumps and oxygenates the blood, breach of the“dead donor rule”, help bereaved families. public reactions and the medical setting the heart beating again. that no one’s death may ever be He recalls one such case results are assessed.“To date, An artery is blocked off to stop caused by taking their organs (see involving an 8-year-old girl, who families have had no problem blood reaching the brain, both to “Living donors”,below). was severely brain-damaged from with Papworth protocol,”says prevent harmful substances from Paul Murphy of NHS Blood and the damaged brain entering the LIVING DONORS Transplant.“Indeed, knowledge blood, and to reassure families that the heart is likely to be used that their relative won’t wake up – Taking organs from a patient who To allow organ retrieval, the person for transplantation becomes very although Large says that could is still alive would be a clear breach choosing euthanasia gets their lethal important for them.” never happen anyway because of of doctor’s ethics – but what if injection in a hospital and, as soon as An initial analysis suggests the the severity of the brain damage. that patient is about to undergo death is declared, they are whisked hearts perform as well as when Some have reservations. Many euthanasia? In Belgium and the into an operating room for the they are taken from donors who people instinctively see death Netherlands, where euthanasia is surgery. But their heart is unusable are brain-dead, although longer- as when the heart stops – if it is legal and organ donation after such because it will have spent too long term follow-up is still needed. restarted, will people understand deaths has recently gained approval, without oxygen. For Large, there’s another that their loved one has not come it is a question some are asking. When patients learn this benefit of pushing boundaries back to life? Most people who die by euthanasia beforehand, sometimes they ask in this way – it’s to do what the “The whole rationale of are not suitable organ donors because for their organs to be taken under dying patient would have wanted. declaring a person dead is they have cancer, which could be anaesthetic, says Dirk Van Raemdonck “Organ donation may be the last that absence of circulation is passed on to the recipient. But a few of University Hospitals Leuven in wish of the donor,” he says. “When permanent – here you’re restoring are dying from other conditions that Belgium. “We have to explain we can’t that’s the case, we have a moral it,”says James Bernat of the Geisel can’t be transmitted. take organs while you are still alive.” duty to try to realise it.” ■

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 23 COMMENT

City of dreams

Privacy, security and transparency must be centre stage or the urban revolution may turn into a nightmare, says Paul Marks

HAVE you ever felt destined to New York. There are many more. become a supplicant whose The premise goes like this: chief purpose is to be sensed we are told that, if we are to fight electronically, generate data and climate change while embracing have it processed by intelligent mass urbanisation, we need to live machines for somebody else’s in sensor-stuffed places designed benefit? If not, you are probably to make our lives hyper-efficient. lucky enough to have been spared The reason, ostensibly, is to hype from the smart-city lobby. make cities more sustainable, Not for long though. That hype with services such as energy, is hitting fever pitch. Examples water and transport run by AI, include an investment group, in turn informed by all-seeing, backed by Microsoft founder Bill all-hearing 5G wireless networks. Gates, pledging $80 million to Fine. Except there is too little kick-start Belmont, an 80,000- talk of who will govern such cities. home smart city near Phoenix, And many of the plans seem to Arizona, to feature driverless rely heavily on technologies, such cars, superfast internet, as driverless cars, that are far from autonomous deliveries and jobs mature. But the biggest problem in advanced manufacturing. In is that smart cities sound about as Canada, Google owner Alphabet digitally secure as that boat full of has partnered with Toronto to holes, the internet of things. Data develop a smart district. In Saudi stores will multiply as will the Arabia, the government plans a chances for disruption. And what $500 billion smart, solar-powered about algorithmic transparency megacity 33 times bigger than to ensure the AI systems that run

is a growing, greying cohort tackle this definitively, with a with multiple chronic conditions, focus on keeping people well. There is a cure whose needs put pressure on In the UK, a quarter of deaths family doctors. Exacerbating this are preventable, many of them Solutions to crises in the NHS exist, if only we is a failure to keep funding and related to factors such as smoking, recruitment in step with demand. drinking alcohol, poor diet and are brave enough to try them, says Luke Allen This has led to a crisis of GP lack of exercise. Only £1 is spent retention and recruitment. As on prevention for every £20 that 90 per cent of all patient contact is is spent on treating disease. THE boring predictability of drowning in a river. I save as many in general practice, major hold-ups The sustainability of the NHS winter crises in the UK’s National as I can, but they keep coming. result. Waiting times top three depends on a GP-led prevention Health Service has complex roots, It’s exhausting. Eventually you weeks in 40 per cent of practices, revolution. They already offer but a paradoxically simple just want to get out, walk so people head straight to A&E. lifestyle advice and medication, solution: shift the focus of our upstream and stop the bastard We need to go well upstream to but could be more effective if health system“upstream”. who keeps pushing them in.” they spent time addressing local This term has its origins in In one sense, the NHS is a victim “The sustainability of factors that shape behaviour and the lament of an accident and of its own success: survival rates the UK’s National Health seed chronic conditions. These emergency doctor:“I feel like for childhood illness, heart attacks Service depends on a may include a lack of affordable I spend every day rescuing people and cancers have risen. The result GP-led revolution” fruit and veg, the availability of

24 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion

your city are accountable? INSIGHT Satirical science Having been exposed to smart- city lobbying for years, I would suggest these projects are more often focused on things other than privacy, transparency and accountability. Such as creating markets for products – computers, sensors and wireless links – and the services that run on them. And perhaps on feeding egos. After achieving business success, the giants of commerce have long sought to dabble in our domestic circumstances. In mid-19th- century England, mill owner Titus Salt created Saltaire, a beer-free village for his god-fearing staff. In

1928, Henry Ford started to build PAUL QUAYLE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO Fordlandia, a town in the Brazilian rainforest that ultimately failed. example, in a Cochrane review, a When today’s corporations get thorough analysis of existing research involved, it doesn’t always go well. The BMJ ’s festive jokes that influences medical practice. The laying on of private coaches Putting such problems aside, the from costly employee housing in joke is starting to wear thin. One paper San Francisco to Silicon Valley labs arenolongerfunny this year complains that the children’s and offices sparked protests over TV programme Peppa Pig gives UK displacement and gentrification. parents unrealistic expectations of Before cities and districts on the Jessica Hamzelou databases, these papers get cited like medical treatment. Another looks at drawing boards go further, tech any other. They are even used as the whether pride really does come before corporations and municipalities CHRISTMAS is coming, and so are the basis for future studies. After all, why a fall, by assessing how many people must engage with people a whole cheesy seasonal science stories. For wouldn’t you take the BMJ seriously? aged around 60 had said that they lot more so we can work out what most of the year, the BMJ publishes Maryam Ronagh and Lawrence were both proud and had a fall in the they mean by smart and just who some of the most important medical Souder at Drexel University in recent past. Ha ha. the plans are smart for. ■ research conducted today. But at the Philadelphia have criticised the We are also being treated to a paper end of the year, it turns to what it scientific impact one of these papers on “the science of man flu”. The author Paul Marks is a science and technology calls “light-hearted fare and satire” – has had. A few years ago, they looked of the paper complains he is “tired of writer based in London also known as silly tabloid fodder. at the impact of a study from the 2001 being accused of overreacting”. The work, while “real” according to BMJ Christmas edition. It purported to He cites studies that suggest the BMJ, has at times been impossible find out whether retroactively praying female mice and women have stronger cheap contraband cigarettes, to test or based on fictional characters for a group of people who had blood immune responses to viruses than a dearth of safe spaces to exercise, and traits. The journal has previously infections years ago was associated males, and that men are more likely derelict play equipment, cheap published a paper looking at whether with better outcomes for those people to die from the flu. He concludes that alcohol, an overabundance of the magical skills possessed by the in the past. Clearly, this is impossible. men may experience worse flu takeaways and poor active travel fictional Harry Potter were heritable symptoms than women, and so should options. None of these fall into the and why Rudolph the reindeer’s “Papers published in the lie on a couch watching TV and being traditional purview of “health”, nose is red. BMJ’s Christmas issue are assisted when they are ill. yet they are behind a lot of rising Sure, it is all a bit of fun. But not often impossible to test If this is meant to be a joke, it’s not demand and cyclical crises, so why everyone is in on the joke – and in an or based on fiction” a very good one. And how might it be not empower GPs to act on them? era of fake news, maybe it is time for read in the future? Months or years This would be a radical change, a rethink. The BMJ tells journalists The author concluded that “this down the line, devoid of the context requiring an overhaul of training, reporting its papers, including these intervention is cost effective, probably of Christmas, who is to say this paper funding, incentives and oversight, daft ones, to “please remember to has no adverse effects, and should be won’t be cited seriously? Could it plus major investment. But do credit the BMJ - this assures your considered for clinical practice”. influence the study of flu? Or our we have a choice? It is clear that audience it is from a reputable source”. So far, so funny. But Ronagh and understanding of sex differences in business as usual isn’t working. ■ And indeed, this silly science often Souder found that since publication, health, which have been confounded receives straight-faced coverage from the paper has been repeatedly cited by bias and sexism for decades? Luke Allen researches health policy at influential media outlets. What’s more, by other researchers – and not as a Maybe it is time for journals to leave the University of Oxford once it is archived in scientific joke. It has been referenced, for the bad jokes to Christmas crackers. ■

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 25 APERTURE

26 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 Stoking the embers

A STRING of wildfires is raging in California. Six separate blazes have together scorched more than 55,000 hectares of land. As of 8 December, nearly 200,000 people had been evacuated. The largest blaze is the Thomas fire (pictured), which has burned around 45,000 hectares. The long exposure in this photo shows how strong winds are spreading the embers between trees. California is prone to wildfires, but 2017 may end up being the worst year on record, with enormous fires also breaking out in October. A new analysis by Alexandra Syphard of the Conservation Biology Institute in Oregon and her colleagues examined the factors that have triggered US wildfires from 1972 to 2010. The team found that both climate and human activities have played significant roles in Californian wildfires over the years (PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1713885114). Climate is a key factor in California’s wildfire risk, agrees Stefan Doerr of Swansea University in the UK. “Superimpose a rather prolonged drought and the strong seasonal winds”, both of which have happened this year, he says, and “these fires are not unexpected”. Humans have also exacerbated the problem in places, Doerr says, for example “by planting highly flammable alien tree species that produce very effective embers, such as palms”. Michael Marshall

Photographer David McNew Reuters

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 27 COVER STORY

Why are the ideas that come most effortlessly to us often misguided, asks Graham Lawton THOUGHTLESSLY THOUGHTLESS

We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so

HESE words are still as true Zero sum today as when Bertrand Russell Twrote them in 1925. You might We see life as a win-lose game even argue that our predilection for such as food and mates were finite and often fake news, conspiracy theories and scarce, so more for one person meant less for common sense politics suggests Children often bicker over who got the most another. Today, however, things are different. we are less inclined to think than cake or pop. But even as adults, we are acutely A good example is international trade. ever. Our mental lassitude is sensitive to the fair allocation of resources. Say Treaties between nations are usually designed particularly shocking given that there are 500 places at a local school, dished to be win-win: the more trade that happens, we pride ourselves on being Homo out according to who lives closest. Just before the more resources there are for everybody. sapiens, the thinking ape. How did it term starts, a large immigrant family is moved The basis of this is“comparative advantage”, come to this? into a council house near the school and takes whereby trade benefits even less productive The truth is, we are simply doing five of the places. No matter how liberal you countries provided they concentrate their what people have always done. The are, it is hard not to think“Not fair!”Plenty of efforts on the goods they are most efficient at human brain has been honed by evidence suggests that immigrants contribute producing (see“Win-win”,page 30). Yet the millions of years of evolution – and more to an economy than they take out. Yet bias persists. People find it hard to believe that it is extraordinary. However, the intuitive belief that they are extracting a trading“win”for a foreign partner doesn’t thinking is costly in terms of time an unfair share of resources is hard to shake. lead to a loss for them. This, says Meegan, and energy, so our ancestors evolved Blame it on our zero-sum bias. is one reason why free trade is politically a whole range of cognitive shortcuts. In a classic zero-sum situation, resources unpopular among people it would benefit. These helped them survive and are finite and your loss is my gain. Many Of course, sometimes our instincts are thrive in a hazardous world. The situations in life follow this pattern – but not right.“For some people, free trade really is a problem is that the modern milieu all. Unfortunately, this subtlety tends to pass zero-sum game,”says Meegan.“Even if the is very different. As a result, the us by. At best, seeing competition where none nation benefits – GDP is bigger – individual ideas and ways of thinking that exists can blind us to opportunity. At worst, it people may not. They had a great job, now a come to us most effortlessly can has very unpleasant consequences. Mexican has their great job.”The same can get us into a lot of trouble. The first Zero-sum thinking was an evolutionary happen with immigration: if school places, step to avoiding these pitfalls is adaptation to a time when we lived in small doctors’appointments and decent social to identify them. To that end, we bands of hunter-gatherers, says neuroscientist housing are already in short supply, then bring you the New Scientist guide Dan Meegan at the University of Guelph in an influx of outsiders wanting all of these to sloppy thinking… Canada. Under those circumstances, resources things will squeeze supply even further. >

28 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 GASTON MENDIETA

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 29 Win-win Trade deals often look like a zero-sum game, but they can benefit both parties. The reason is a counter-intuitive idea called “comparative advantage”

Consider a trading partnership between Portugal and Britain. Both produce wine and cloth The trouble is, distinguishing between zero-sum and non-zero-sum situations is Portugal difficult. And even when the sum is non-zero, 170 hours’ labour 1 unit of wine + 1 unit of cloth (80 hours) (90 hours) persuading people so is hard. “It is often easier to quantify what you’re contributing than what you’re getting back,” says Meegan. “So it’s really easy to get people upset about something when you say, ‘Look at all we’re putting in, but what exactly are we gaining?’ ” Britain Brexit campaigners exploited this with the 220 hours’ labour 1 unit of wine + 1 unit of cloth notorious £350 million a week the UK would (120 hours) (100 hours) save by leaving the European Union. In the US, President Trump capitalises on our zero-sum bias too, through constant carping about “bad” trade deals. It has also been blamed for the resurgence of white supremacy there. As early as 2011, during President Obama’s first term, there were signs that many white Americans perceived growing “anti-white You might assume that Portugal is better off going prejudice” despite overwhelming evidence HUDSON/MILLENNIUM UK IMAGES, KELVIN it alone, but this is not so that they still enjoyed privileged access to If Portugal concentrates on wine jobs, education and justice. Research indicated 170 hours’ labour 2.125 units of wine that this was at least partly based on the Our innate ideas about the natural world are misperception that discrimination is a zero- very unscientific and very hard to dislodge sum game – that less of it against minorities necessarily means more against white people. purpose everywhere: birds are“for”flying, With so much riding on it, just being aware rocks are for animals to scratch themselves on of zero-sum thinking could go a long way to and rain falls so flowers can drink. In physics, If Britain concentrates on clothth improving social relations. children conclude that heat is a substance that 220 hours’ labour 2.2 units of cloth flows from one place to another, that the sun moves across the sky, and so on. For most everyday purposes, these ideas are serviceable. Folk knowledge Nevertheless, they aren’t true. Children cling to their folk theories, and Our childish intuitions haunt us when they encounter difficult concepts, they cling even harder. For example, many By trading their surrplus,plus both countries can end intuitively see evolution as a purposeful force up better off Children, it is often said, are like little that strives to endow animals and plants with e.g. Britain offers 1.1 units of cloth in exchange scientists. What looks like play is actually the traits they need to survive. Folk theories for 1 unit of wine and Portugal accepts experimentation. They formulate hypotheses, do get knocked back as we move through test them, analyse the results and revise their education, but they never go away. “They Portugal world view accordingly. can be suppressed by a more scientific world 170 hours’ labour 1.125 units of wiwine+ That may be true, but if kids are like view, but cannot be eradicated altogether,” 1.1 units of cloth scientists, they are rubbish ones. By the says Andrew Shtulman, a psychologist at time they enter school, they have filled their Occidental College in Los Angeles. “Intuition heads with utter nonsense about how the can be overridden but not overwritten.” world works. The job of education – especially Shtulman’s group has revealed this Britain science education – is to unlearn these “folk resilience by presenting people with a variety theories” and replace them with evidence- of statements about the natural world and 220 hours’ labour 1 unitt oof wine+1.1units off cloth based ones. For most people, it doesn’t work, asking them to say which were true and which and even for those who go on to become false. Some were designed to be intuitively scientists, it is only partially successful. true but scientifically false, such as “fire is No wonder the world is so full of nonsense. composed of matter”; others were intuitively Folk theories – also known as naive false but scientifically true, such as “air is theories – have been documented across all composed of matter”. People who got the Portugal is more efficientve ov rall, but its cloth industry domains of science. In biology, for example, right answer still took significantly longer to is less efficient than its ewin ndustry, whereash young children often conflate life with process an intuitively false but scientifically Britain’s cloth industry is more efficient than its wine movement, seeing the sun and wind as alive, true statement. This was even the case for industry. This is comparative advantage but trees and mushrooms as not. They also see those who had been scientists for decades.

30 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 “We jump to conclusions about a person’s character after just a tenth of a second”

Stereotyping her colleagues has shown that group stereotypes, too, are based on levels of We can’t help pigeonholing people trustworthiness and status – or“warmth” and“competence”as they label them. The researchers have plotted these categories on We are born to judge others by how they look: a two-by-two grid (see“Four kinds of people”, our brains come hardwired with a specific below), each quarter of which is associated face-processing area, and even shortly after with a particular emotion: pity, disgust, pride birth, babies would rather look at a human or envy. This, they have found, informs our face than anything else. Within their first year, behaviour towards people in the group. they become more discerning, and are more Their findings don’t paint us in a great light. likely to crawl towards friendly looking faces We tend to dehumanise groups we judge to than those who look a bit shifty. By the time be lacking in warmth, and react violently to we reach adulthood, we are snap-judgement those with high status.“Historically, many specialists, jumping to conclusions about a genocides have been directed towards groups person’s character and status after seeing their that fall into the envy quadrant,”says Fiske. face for just a tenth of a second. And we shun Even our relatively positive reactions have considered assessments of others in favour downsides: we may pity those of low status, of simple shortcuts – for example, we judge a but react by patronising them, and the pride baby-faced individual as more trustworthy, we feel towards our own group can spill over and associate a chiselled jaw with dominance. into nepotism. Unfair, it may be, but it makes good If you think you are above this kind of thing, Similar results come from brain scans. evolutionary sense. Ours is an ultra-social think again. Even if you consciously reject When people watch videos that are consistent species, so being able to quickly assess stereotypes, the culture you live in does not, with the laws of physics but intuitively whether someone is friend or foe and and experiments suggest that you are likely to wrong – such as light and heavy objects falling whether they have the power to help or hurt share its biases. One study, for example, found at the same rate – the error-detecting parts of us is important survival information. But that white Americans who showed no sign of their brains light up, suggesting that they are there is a problem. As psychologist Alexander racism on a standard test subconsciously struggling to reconcile two competing beliefs. Todorov of Princeton University points out, dehumanise black people. The persistence of folk theory is revealed in more often than not, our first impressions are The best way to escape this evolutionary people with Alzheimer’s disease too. Tests of wrong. It’s not clear why, but he suggests that trap is to really get to know people from their science knowledge show that they often poor feedback and the fact that we meet many outside your echo chamber. Working revert to folk theories as their higher executive more strangers than our prehistoric ancestors together on a joint project is ideal because functions decline. would have, both play a part. relying on someone forces you to look The upshot is that scientific thinking is Another problem is that we don’t stick to beyond simplistic first impressions. And hard-won and easily lost, and that persuading stereotyping faces one at a time. We are just don’t trust social stereotypes – even your own most people of the validity of things like as quick to categorise groups of people – and national stereotype. The evidence suggests evolution, climate change and vaccination then discriminate against them as a result. that we are not even accurate when it comes will always be an uphill struggle. Research by Susan Fiske, also of Princeton, and to judging ourselves.

Four kinds of people We instinctively categorise others according to whether or not we perceive them to be in competition with us for resources, and whether or not they have the status to help or harm us. These social stereotypes Sycophancy trigger emotional responses that influence our behaviour We’re suckers for a celebrity

High status competitors, for example Jews, rich people If you ever meet the queen of England, there and professionals, trigger are certain rules you are advised to follow. Do feelings of envy not speak until spoken to. Bow your head, or Low status competitors, High status non-competitors, curtsey. Address her first as“your majesty”, for example welfare for example our in-group and then“ma’am”,but“your majesty”again upon recipients, homeless people close allies, trigger feelings and immigrants, trigger of pride leaving. Don’t make the mistake of calling her feelings of “your royal highness”– that is for other disgust Low status non-competitors, members of the royal family, pleb! And don’t for example housewives, elderly expect her to thank you for the £40 million people and those who are plus she gets every year from the public purse, disabled, trigger feelings or for paying to have her house done up. of pity Apply some rational thought and this is >

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 31 “Whatever people’s political views when sober, alcohol shifts them to the right”

all very puzzling. What has the queen done Other primates defer to dominant individuals to deserve such treatment? What makes her but what makes the queen so “majestic”? “majestic”? Why is her family“higher”than yours? If humans were a wild species of alcohol shifted their views to the right. primate, you would conclude that the queen Why might that be? The researchers, led by must be the dominant female. But dominance Scott Eidelmanat the University of Arkansas has to be earned and kept, often by physical in Fayetteville, point out that alcohol strips aggression and threats, and is always up for away complex reasoning to reveal the negotiation. Nobody defers to the queen out of default state of the mind. And that is why fear that she will beat them up if they don’t, they were chatting to drunks: they were and nobody is secretly plotting a leadership using drunkenness to test the hypothesis challenge. Human societies do have dominant that low-effort, automatic thought promotes individuals, but what the queen possesses is political conservatism. something quite different: prestige. And we The team also found that they could

are suckers for it. PANOS / BONESS STEFAN push people to the right by distracting According to biologists, this prestige bias is them, putting them under time pressure or an evolved feature of human cognition that Conservatism simply telling them not to think too hard. goes back to the time when our ancestors were Participants who were asked to deliberate nomads living in small bands. Humans are Deep down, we’re all status quo fans more deeply, in contrast, shifted their political social learners, which means we copy the thinking to the left. Similar effects have been behaviour of other people rather than figuring seen with the three core components of everything out from scratch. People who copy If you’ve ever talked politics in the pub conservative ideology: preference for the successful individuals can acquire useful, near closing time, chances are it wasn’t status quo, acceptance of hierarchy and survival-enhancing skills – how to hunt, for an especially enlightened or right-on belief in personal responsibility. All three, example. But to do so requires sustained and discussion. When researchers in the US the researchers say, come naturally to the close contact with the skilled, without getting loitered outside a bar in New England human mind. We think that way without on their nerves. The best way to do this is to and asked customers about their political trying, without even noticing. More liberal “kiss up”,as psychologist Francisco Gil-White views, they found that the drunker the punter, views, in contrast, require effortful deliberation. at the University of Pennsylvania puts it. Pay the more right wing their leanings. That Lots of research points in the same them compliments, do them favours, sing wasn’t because right-wing people drink more, direction. Our political views are shaped their virtues and exempt them from certain or get pissed more easily. Wherever people by many factors, including personality, social obligations. Those of our ancestors who stood on the political spectrum when sober, upbringing and education. However, as early kissed up to talented individuals advanced as the 1950s, psychologists probing the appeal their own interests, making them more likely It requires effortful thought to overturn our of fascism found that right-wing ideology was to survive and reproduce. Evolution thus natural acceptance of hierarchy associated with dislike of ambiguity and favoured sycophants. This can backfire in the modern world. Now we don’t just judge the prestige of people we encounter directly, but also those we only know vicariously. To do this, we follow our natural tendency to watch others and conform. If certain people are routinely fawned over, we assume that they are skilled and prestigious individuals who we would be wise to kiss up to ourselves. Hence we show deference to the queen, and any number of celebrities who are famous for being famous. Prestige exerts such a strong pull on the human mind that the construction and perpetuation of hierarchies is hard to resist. In lab experiments, people find it easier to understand social situations where there is a clear pecking order, and they express preferences for hierarchies, even if they are at the wrong end of them. But we can at least be more discerning about whom we place at the top. If we base prestige on skill and genuine achievement, then those we kiss up to won’t

be the only ones to benefit. Yes ma’am. MICHAEL CHRISTOPHER BROWN/MAGNUM PHOTOS

32 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 cognitive complexity. That’s not to say that conservatives are less intelligent. The relationship between IQ and political leanings is complex. Broadly speaking, people with lower-than-average IQs tend to be lefties, probably out of economic self-interest. People of moderately above-average intelligence lean right for the same reason. And the top 20 per cent swing left again – although highly intelligent people are also over-represented in the libertarian camp, which defies simple left-right categorisation. Nonetheless, dislike of – or lack of training in – analytical thinking is strongly associated with preference for the status quo. Conversely, people who are politically liberal tend to think more analytically than their conservative peers, and having studied science is strongly associated with progressive views. This has led to the suggestion that left-wing political ideas are more complex and counter-intuitive than right-wing ones. Of course, not everyone agrees. “In some areas they are, in some they aren’t,”says Noah Carl, a sociologist at the

University of Oxford.“Market allocation COURT/GETTY CARL of resources is less intuitive than having somebody do it from the top, for example.” Whether you think our intuitive England v Russia: the clash of football fans in to perform, and quickly bonded, developing conservatism is good or bad probably Marseille last year was fuelled by tribalism hierarchies and cultural norms. Then, towards depends on your personal politics. With the end of the week, the experimenters around 85 per cent of the world population the players, directors and, above all, the fans. engineered a fleeting encounter between largely untrained in critical thinking, Four years later, he published his conclusions the groups. Hostility flared, despite the boys preference for the status quo is the clear in The Soccer Tribe, which argued that football having been chosen for their similarities. winner. Nevertheless, progressive change is essentially tribal. Each club is a tribe, with Soon the camp descended into a sort of tribal does usually happen eventually. territory, elders, doctors, heroes, foot soldiers, warfare, with derogatory insults, land grabs, modes of dress, allies and mortal enemies. nocturnal raids, flag burning and, eventually, Morris saw this as a modern expression a mass brawl. Hostilities only ended when the of a deep-rooted evolutionary instinct. For experimenters introduced a common enemy Tribalism thousands of years, our ancestors lived in in the form of fictitious vandals. small nomadic bands of mostly related Since then, numerous experiments Everybody wants to be in the gang individuals in frequent conflict – and have revealed how the flimsiest and most occasional alliance – with neighbours transient badges of cultural identity can over scarce resources. Tribes made up of trigger people to divide themselves into“us” Desmond Morris was 45 when he went to individuals prepared to fight for a common and“them”– even the colour of randomly his first ever football match–aclubgamein good had a competitive edge over those that assigned T-shirts can do it. Malta, where he lived at the time. He had no weren’t, so tribalism was selected for by Tribalism can be a useful motivating interest in football, but had been pestered into evolution. We are one species, but we force in the modern world: rivalry between it by his young son. For the elder Morris, it was instinctively and effortlessly identify with scientific teams working on the same problem, an awesome experience. Fighting between smaller groups. for example. It also underpins some deeply rival fans caused the match to be abandoned Tribalism and the hostility it engenders unedifying behaviours including racism, before half-time. Most people would have are frighteningly easy to induce. More than xenophobia and homophobia. But there’s been put off for life, but Morris – the author 60 years ago, Muzafer Sharif at the University hope that we can reduce these negative of the bestselling books Manwatching and of Oklahoma took 22 adolescent boys to repercussions. Our saving grace is that the The Naked Ape – was captivated. What had Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma. The trip boundaries between“us”and“them”are caused people to behave so passionately over had all the trappings of a traditional summer fluid. Fans of rival football clubs can forge an something as meaningless as a football game? camp, but in truth it was a psychology alliance as supporters of the national team. On his return to England in 1977, Morris experiment. Sharif had divided the boys If we can extend our definition of the tribe became a director of Oxford United FC so he into two groups, each unaware of the other’s in football, why not in other, more could closely observe the culture of football – existence. They were given cooperative tasks meaningful, areas of life? >

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 33 Religion that death is not the end of existence. This helps explain why religious ideas were The god-shaped hole inside us widely accepted and disseminated once they got started. It has even been argued that religion was the key to civilisation because it If God designed the human brain, he (or she) was the social glue that held large groups of did a lousy job. Dogged by glitches and biases, strangers together as societies expanded. No requiring routine shutdown for maintenance doubt it still has much of its original appeal. for 8 hours a day, and highly susceptible to But these days, religion’s downsides are more serious malfunction, a product recall would apparent. Conflict, misogyny, prejudice and seem to be in order. But in one respect at least, terrorism all happen in the name of religion. God played a blinder: our brains are almost However, as the rise of atheism attests, it is perfectly designed to believe in him/her. possible to override our deep-seated religious Almost everybody who has ever lived has tendencies with rational deliberation – it just believed in some kind of deity. Even in today’s takes some mental effort. enlightened and materialistic times, atheism remains a minority pursuit requiring hard intellectual graft. Even committed atheists easily fall prey to supernatural ideas. Religious Revenge belief, in contrast, appears to be intuitive. Cognitive scientists talk about us being born We all want to get our own back with a“god-shaped hole”in our heads. As a result, when children encounter religious claims, they instinctively find them plausible It is, according to popular wisdom, a dish best and attractive, and the hole is rapidly filled by served cold. However you like yours, there’s no the details of whatever religious culture they denying that revenge is tasty. We get a hunger happen to be born into. When told that there for it, and feel satisfied once we’ve had our fill. is an invisible entity that watches over them, You can see why if you look at what’s going KYODO NEWS VIA GETTY intervenes in their lives and passes moral on in your head. Brain scanning reveals the judgement on them, most unthinkingly neural pathway of the revenge process, accept it. Ditto the idea that the same entity according to criminologist Manuel Eisner Finally, the brain’s pleasure centre, the nucleus is directing events and that everything that of the University of Cambridge. The initial accumbens, swings into action to judge happens, happens for a reason. humiliation fires up the brain’s emotional whether the revenge is satisfactory. This is not brainwashing. The“cognitive by- centres, the amygdalae and hypothalamus. Revenge appears to be a universal human product theory”argues that religious belief is They inform the anterior insular cortex, trait. A study of 10 hunter-gatherer groups a side effect of cognitive skills that evolved for which evaluates whether you have been found that all of them had a culture of other reasons. It pays, for example, to assume treated unfairly. If so, the prefrontal cortex vengeance. The list of wrongs that need to be that all events are caused by agents. The rustle steps in to plan and execute retaliation. avenged is also common across all societies. in the dark could be the wind, but it could also be a predator. Running away from the wind has no existential consequences, but not running away from a predator does. Humans who ran lived to pass on their genes; those who did not became carrion. Then there’s“theory of mind”,which evolved so that we could infer the mental states and intentions of others, even when they aren’t physically present. This is very useful for group living. However, it makes the idea of invisible entities with minds capable of seeing into yours, quite plausible. Religion also piggybacks on feelings of existential insecurity, which must have been common for our ancestors. Randomness, loss of control and knowledge of death are soothed by the idea that somebody is watching over you and

Cognitive skills that evolved to promote our

survival also underpin key religious beliefs JONAS BENDIKSEN/MAGNUM PHOTOS

34 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017

Could a bizarre hidden planet be manipulating the solar system, asks Richard A. Lovett

HERE’S something odd going on in the disturbing the cosmic balance, he suggested. Neptune and even further out. One, Eris, solar system. Our once settled and But Mercury’s orbital oddity was eventually was nearly as big as Pluto – although all are Tpeaceful home is looking increasingly revealed to be down to something completely too puny to be full planets as now defined (see disturbed and deranged. Bits of it are flying different, exposing flaws in the underlying “How to make a planet”,below). And some of about in eccentric and inexplicable ways. theory of gravity that only Einstein’s these objects follow truly bizarre paths. Take Other bits seemingly shouldn’t be there at general theory of relativity would correct. Sedna. This 1000-kilometre-wide body takes all. Meanwhile, the sun is rotating at a rakish Still, the principle remained: interesting more than 11,000 years to revolve around the angle we are hard-pressed to explain. things come to those who take note of sun, and does so on a highly elliptical, or Mike Brown, a planetary scientist at planetary irregularities. eccentric, trajectory. Where 1 astronomical the California Institute of Technology in We have a few to take note of now. In 2006, unit, or AU, is Earth’s distance from the sun, Pasadena, thinks he can explain these strange Pluto was controversially declassified as a Sedna varies between 76 AU, about double goings on. There is an unsettling influence in planet, largely because of the discovery of Pluto’s average distance, and a wild 940 AU. the room: something big and distinctly a swarm of other trans-Neptunian objects Sedna and a handful of other“extreme” mobile. Not a poltergeist – but another planet. (TNOs) orbiting in the Kuiper belt beyond TNOs also orbit at distinct angles to the It is a controversial claim that, if true, ecliptic, the plane around the sun’s midriff would revolutionise our view of the solar on which all the major planets lie. There are system and go some way to explaining why it HOW TO MAKE A PLANET other similarities in their orbits that are hard looks so peculiar when compared with other to explain with our current models of solar solar systems. Brown and other proponents of The International Astronomical system dynamics. “Planet Nine”say they now have enough clues Union’s definition of a planet, adopted Many explanations have been put forward to pin down its existence once and for all – or in 2006, controversially demoted for these oddballs. Some suggest, for example, show we must seek another explanation for Pluto to a dwarf planet. To be a fully that they are interlopers forced into the solar the solar system’s eccentricities. blown planet, a solar-system body system by an interaction with a passing star It wouldn’t be the first time a planetary must now fulfil three criteria: (New Scientist, 8 June 2016, p 36). And in 2012, interloper had been unmasked in this way. 1. It must orbit the sun; Rodney Gomes of the National Observatory Back in the 1840s, astronomers couldn’t 2. Its mass and gravity must be large in Rio de Janeiro proposed that they might explain the wobbling orbit of Uranus, then the enough to mould it into an almost be influenced by an as-yet undiscovered solar system’s seventh and outermost planet. round shape; “planetary mass solar companion”lurking The French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier 3. It must have cleared its surrounds hundreds of AU out. Each time one of the cracked the nut, suggesting the wobbles of bodies other than those bound to extreme TNOs came close to it, its orbit would revealed a hitherto unseen eighth planet, it by direct gravitational influence be altered, eventually causing them all to skew and pinpointed where it must be. Just a few (such as moons). in a similar manner (see diagram, page 39). months later, astronomers found Neptune As just one of many “trans-Neptunian Gomes didn’t get much attention, but in pretty much just at the right spot. objects” orbiting in a similar space, 2014, Chadwick Trujillo of the Gemini It’s no sure-fire winner, mind: a decade Pluto fell foul of the third criterion. Observatory in Hawaii and Scott Sheppard or so later, Mercury had the collywobbles, Planet Nine, if it exists, is almost of the Carnegie Institution for Science in and Le Verrier issued the same prescription. certainly sufficiently larger than Washington DC published a similar argument An unnoticed planet, dubbed Vulcan, was Pluto for none of the conditions to in Nature. In January 2016, Brown and his orbiting between Mercury and the sun and be a roadblock. Caltech colleague Konstantin Batygin used >

36 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 DARREN HOPES DARREN

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 37 SUN SKEW SHIFT AND ADD the orbits of six extreme TNOs to pin down how big Planet Nine must be and what its orbit Planet Nine, if it exists, could help Could a small telescope and a large must look like. explain a long-standing mystery supercomputer help the hunt for They came up with a Neptune-sized world about the sun. Since the 1850s, we Planet Nine? That’s the hope of Michael in a highly elliptical orbit at an average of have known that our star rotates on Medford, a graduate student at the 400 to 500 AU from the sun. If this planet an axis tilted six degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. exists, in an orbit tilted from the ecliptic by average plane of its retinue of planets. Specks of light corresponding to about 18 to 25 degrees, it has probably not yet With the exception of Mercury, Planet Nine would ordinarily be too completed a single revolution of the sun since however, those planets are not offset faint to show up in snaps taken by the woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers from each other by more than about a 1.23-metre telescope at the Palomar roamed Earth 10,000 years ago. degree. “It’s this small, little-known Observatory on the outskirts of San Such a misaligned giant might not be so mystery,” says Elizabeth Bailey at the Diego in California. But by using shocking, given what we have learned about California Institute of Technology. hundreds of thousands of images planets orbiting other suns in the past couple Over the years, astronomers taken over almost a decade, and of decades. In exoplanetary systems, inclined, have proposed explanations ranging laying those that feature the same eccentric orbits are the rule rather than the from magnetic interactions with the parts of the sky on top of each other, exception. Our sun, with its retinue of planets primordial disc from which the sun Medford hopes to bring them out. orbiting on neat, near-circular orbits all in the and planets formed to the disruptive A similar “stacking” method is used same plane, looks rather anomalous. influence of an ancient stellar to find faint, unmoving stars or Even another long-standing mystery, that of companion that somehow got lost galaxies. The difference is that Planet the sun’s misaligned spin axis (see“Sun skew”, to interstellar space. Nine would be moving in our field of left), is less perplexing if we expect in our own But Planet Nine might also have vision. Instead of stacking, Medford solar system something we see in others: that done it. In 2016, Bailey and her must “shift and add”, moving each planets orbit not just in two dimensions, but supervisor, Mike Brown, showed that image by a few pixels along every three.“With exoplanets we have a wide variety gravitational torque from Planet Nine, possible trajectory along which Planet of alignments,”says Kathryn Volk, a planetary in its inclined orbit, would have slowly Nine could be travelling, looking for the scientist at the University of Arizona.“It was tilted the orbits of the other planets magic formula that causes a planet to when it was just our solar system that we by just the right amount until, from suddenly hop out of the data. thought everything is aligned.” our perspective, it looks like it is the This is, to put it mildly, That still doesn’t mean Planet Nine exists. sun that’s leaning sideways. “The sun a staggeringly difficult task, one that Because we don’t know where exactly on its hasn’t tilted, the solar system has tests the limits of the US Department wide orbit it might be, the planet hunters tilted,” says Brown. “But if you live of Energy’s supercomputers at the must still search a several-degree-wide swathe on Earth, you think the solar system Lawrence Berkeley National amounting to about 8 per cent of the sky. is straight.” Laboratory. But Medford thinks he That’s a lot less than the whole sky, admittedly, is on the cusp of pushing the “go” but it is still a challenge. button, with results possible soon. Planet Nine’s highly elliptical orbit means it is also statistically much more likely to be at the far end, a long way from the sun, so you “Planet Nine wouldn’t have completed an orbit since woolly mammoths CALTECH/R. HURT (IPAC) roamed Earth”

would need a big telescope to see it. Brown and his team have just collected what he describes as a“nice data set”,which they are currently evaluating using the 8-metre Subaru Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Others have joined the hunt, too. One team is looking at images from a smaller telescope in Chile that were collected for the international Dark Energy Survey. The goal of that study is to patrol the sky for far-off supernovae and measure the distance to them, the better to understand how the

38 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 Cosmic alignment

The discovery of a slew of small bodies orbiting the sun on similar highly elliptical orbits inclined to the ecliptic Sun Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune plane holding the sun and planets has fuelled suspicions of a ninth planet upsetting the cosmic balance

Inset

2014 FE72

2015 RX245 2013 FT28 2015 GT50 2013 ST99 2015 KG163

Ecliptic plane 2010 GB174 2014 SR349

Sedna 2012 VP113 (discovered 2003) 2004 VN112 POSSIBLE ORBIT OF PLANET NINE 2013 RF98 2007 TG442

universe is expanding. But you can also spot outer solar system bodies, the centaurs, whose orbital nodes shouldn’t be subject to the type things closer by as they trundle across the orbits cross those of one or more of the giant of observation biases exposed by the OSSOS foreground of the images. planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. team. And at the Division of Planetary So far, the Dark Energy Survey team has In the hope that they too might strike lucky in Sciences meeting, the Dark Energy Survey found a tidy 200 or so TNOs besides the the hunt, Payne’s group is combing data from team presented an analysis of the distribution 1867 currently listed by the International the two 1.8-metre telescopes of the Pan-STARRS of eight extreme TNO orbits using a procedure Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center. system in Hawaii, which were primarily similar to that used by the OSSOS team, Most of these new discoveries aren’t in orbits designed to find near-Earth asteroids. finding only a 4 per cent chance that the relevant to the search for Planet Nine, and apparent clustering is due to selection bias. none is big enough to be the suspected planet. All I want for Christmas... While that’s far from a definitive statement At the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting either way, as long as there is any hope that of the American Astronomical Society this Not everyone is leaping on the bandwagon, Planet Nine is out there, astronomers are October, however, Juliette Becker at the however. In July, a team involved in a decade- going to hunt for it any way they can (see University of Michigan in Ann Arbor long sky survey called the Outer Solar System “Shift and add”, left). It could, admittedly, announced that the team had found another Origins Survey (OSSOS), which has discovered be a never-ending quest. If no one sees it, data point in the hunt for Planet Nine: more than 800 TNOs, published a statistical is that because it doesn’t exist or because we a 500-kilometre-diameter misfit TNO her analysis. This showed that if you point your somehow missed it again – we were looking in team nicknamed “Caju”, after the Portuguese telescope in certain directions – to avoid the the wrong direction, perhaps, or it happened for cashew. “We’ll fold it into our predictions,” clutter of known planets and asteroids in the to be so close to a bright star in the sky that it says Brown. “That will inevitably move our ecliptic, for example, or away from the disappeared into the glare? search region a little bit.” brightness of the Milky Way – at times of the That’s a tad problematic, says Brett Becker’s team has also found some TNOs year when important telescopes are likely to Gladman of the University of British in orbits so elongated that at their closest have the best viewing conditions, you are Columbia, Vancouver, who leads the approach to the sun they come close to disproportionately likely to spot TNOs OSSOS team. Science works by disproving Neptune’s orbit – so close that the planet’s clustered on oddball orbits that might hypotheses, and it is unclear how the Planet gravity should long ago have sent them make you think Planet Nine exists. Nine hypothesis could ever definitively be plunging into the sun, crashing into another “Every time you observe the Kuiper belt, proved incorrect. “But don’t get me wrong,” planet or on a fast-track exit from the solar you are subject to selection effects,” says Volk, he says. “I’d love there to be another planet system. Becker thinks they are still there who is a member of the OSSOS team. “For our out there. It would be cool and exciting.” because of Planet Nine. “Instead of getting data, the clustering is completely explainable Brown, for his part, is bullish. He has more kicked out, they hop into a new orbit,” she by observation biases.” telescope viewing time scheduled this month. says. “Planet Nine enhances the dynamic On the other hand, a team of Spanish “If we find it in this chunk of data, I would not stability of these objects.” astronomers concluded this October that the be surprised,” he says. “I’m thinking it would Meanwhile, Matthew Payne, an nodes of 28 TNO orbits – the points at which make a nice Christmas present.” ■ astrophysicist at Harvard University, thinks they cross the plane of the ecliptic – are non- Planet Nine could also help to explain the randomly distributed in a way consistent with Richard A. Lovett is a freelance writer based in elongated trajectories of another class of Planet Nine’s existence. The distribution of Portland, Oregon

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 39 PEOPLE

The champion of World War Zero

The collapse of three civilisations in the Bronze Age has long been a puzzle. Now Eberhard Zangger thinks he knows what happened

N JUNE, Eberhard Zangger had an experience non-profit group set up to promote his “I spent years working on archaeological most archaeologists only dream of: his idea that the Luwian civilisation in western sites all around the eastern Mediterranean – Ivery own Tutankhamun moment. Just as Anatolia – in what is now Turkey – was but never in Turkey,” says Zangger. He found Howard Carter had done in 1922 when he responsible for the Bronze Age collapse. this striking, particularly because western entered the boy king’s intact tomb, Zangger To many archaeologists, this idea is fanciful Turkey is home to one of the most iconic of was exploring a chamber with the potential at best. But Zangger is certain he is right. all Bronze Age cities: Troy. to revolutionise archaeology. Zangger began his research career in The mainstream archaeological community But Zangger wasn’t in Egypt. He was in conventional fashion. He gained a PhD in had – and still has – a simple answer for the north London, in the home of the late, great geoarchaeology in the mid-1980s and became omission: nothing much happened in western archaeologist James Mellaart. The treasures he an expert in interpreting the way landscapes Anatolia during the Bronze Age. Forget the uncovered were reams of documents relating might have looked during the Bronze Age. ancient stories of Trojan wars, the great to one of the most important events in prehistory: the near-simultaneous collapse of PROFILE three great Bronze Age civilisations. One text Eberhard Zangger is a in particular, Zangger says, points to a crucial geoarchaeologist based missing piece of the puzzle, the existence of a in Zurich, Switzerland, previously unknown civilisation that Zangger and president of the believes played a pivotal role in the downfall Luwian Studies of the others. foundation This month, Zangger will publish an analysis of that document. It is a 3200-year-old text telling the story of a warlike king and his conquests around the eastern Mediterranean. Zangger has staked his reputation on the claim that this solves one of archaeology’s biggest mysteries. His critics have a different story to tell. They say that Zangger may be the victim of an elaborate hoax. Zangger, a Swiss citizen who will turn 60 Eberhard Zangger in next year, freely admits he is a controversial Hattusa, the ancient figure. He is the head of an international LUWIAN STUDIES Hittite capital

40 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 A.D. RIDDLE/BIBLEPLACES.COM A.D.

civilisations lay elsewhere. In particular, reviewed the book for New Scientist. A stone from Bronze Age central Turkey there were the Mycenaeans to the west and Last year, Zangger published an even more showing Luwian hieroglyphs (top left) the Hittites further east (see map, page 43). ambitious idea. He claimed to have uncovered Far to the south, of course, were the Egyptians. evidence that the people living in western epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Zangger was unconvinced. He could see that Turkey during the Bronze Age – known as the both written centuries after the Bronze Age western Turkey was rich in resources, from Luwians – had their own civilisation, separate collapse. But there are some less contentious mineral deposits to natural harbours. It is to that of the Hittites or Mycenaeans. What’s lines of evidence too. simply inconceivable that the region wasn’t more, he said, the presence of the Luwians Luwian raids are described in Hittite texts important during the Bronze Age, he says. explains why the surrounding civilisations from around that time, for instance. And This debate would perhaps have remained crumbled within decades of one another. Zangger had commissioned a Turkish student civil and low key, had Zangger not taken Zangger’s narrative runs something like to trawl through the archaeological literature, matters into his own hands. He began using this: late in the Bronze Age, the Luwians pulling out references to Bronze Age the accepted evidence as a foundation for ceased squabbling among themselves and settlements in western Turkey. theories that his critics argue belong in the came together in a powerful coalition. They “We found about 400 sites. A few are realm of fiction rather than science. swept eastwards, destabilising the Hittite 500 metres to 1000 metres in diameter – For instance, in the 1990s, Zangger’s research empire, and also launched ambitious overseas and they are virtually untouched by science,” at Tiryns, a Mycenaean site, uncovered raids that helped sow turmoil in Egypt. Zangger says. The new database makes it evidence of a flash flood triggered by a Bronze clear that the region is far from being the Age earthquake. He realised that just such a Attack on Troy insignificant Bronze Age backwater scenario was described centuries later in one archaeologists believe it to be. Many of Plato’s dialogues – a work that is famous for The Mycenaeans viewed these developments archaeologists welcomed the database, carrying the earliest description of Atlantis. with alarm. Forming their own coalition, they but were dismissive of his story. To convince Zangger argued that Plato’s text could be sailed across the Aegean to attack Luwian the sceptics, he needed stronger evidence. reinterpreted: his account of Atlantis was strongholds including Troy. The Mycenaeans Which brings us back to that moment in actually a distorted description of Troy, ultimately brought down the Luwians – but June when Zangger visited Mellaart’s home. and therefore evidence of the significance later began fighting among themselves, The two had corresponded in the 1990s – of western Anatolia at that time. The idea, set destroying their own civilisation. Zangger both shared a passion for Bronze Age western out in a 1992 book, gained fans – but few in the dubbed the whole episode “World War Zero”. Turkey. Mellaart revealed that he had copies academic community. It read “like an exercise It reads like a plot from epic literature, and of Bronze Age texts found at a site called in shoe-horning awkward evidence into a not without reason: some of the backing for Beyköy. They might hold evidence of the reluctant mould”, according to a historian who this chain of events comes from Homer’s two Luwians’military prowess, Zangger learned. >

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 41 The Beyköy text: copied in 1878 from a 29-metre monument?

STRANGER THINGS The Beyköy text is not the first to have a controversial past

THE GROLIER CODEX GOSPEL OF JESUS’S WIFE THE WALAM OLUM

In the 1960s, Michael Coe at Yale University In September 2012, Karen King at the Harvard In 1836, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque heard that an antiquities collector from Mexico Divinity School made international headlines published a translation of a series of wooden called Josué Sáenz had acquired a vanishingly by announcing the discovery of a document she tablets covered in hieroglyphs. The “Walam rare Maya codex. One expert had already said it dubbed “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife”. It was a Olum” was a history of the Lenape people of was fake, but Coe was convinced it was genuine. papyrus fragment with 14 lines of Coptic script North America. Or so Rafinesque claimed: By 1971, the Grolier Codex was on public – and referred to Jesus and his “wife”. somehow he had lost the tablets, and his copies display in New York. Coe said he was willing to Many scholars sounded the alarm and one were the only record. Among other things, stake his reputation on its authenticity, and highlighted a typographical error that could be the translation tells of the Lenape reaching published an analysis of the codex. By then dated to a 2002 translation of another Coptic the Americas via the frozen Bering Strait. carbon dating had confirmed the pages dated gospel. But after radiocarbon dating and ink Scholars expressed doubts, but as the years back about 800 years. Coe insisted the analysis, King concluded in a peer-reviewed passed, the Walam Olum gained supporters. content – a never-before-seen mix of Maya and article that it was the real deal. A 1950s report concluded it was authentic, and as non-Maya styles – sealed the matter, as a forger An investigation by journalist Ariel Sabar recently as the 1980s several historians agreed. would not risk experimenting in such a way. finally led King to think otherwise, however. But in the 1990s, David Oestreicher found Others disagreed: the document was so Sabar tracked down the owner of the text, a turns of phrase that hinted the text had been confusing it would “make any Maya priest tear former archaeology student called Walter Fritz. conceived in English. Worse, he realised that the his long hair”, according to one researcher. He said he had bought the papyrus from an East hieroglyphs were a mixture of ancient symbols Many still say it’s a forgery. Last year Coe and German defector but then could only provide a from Egypt, China and America. Most his colleagues responded. Among other things, copy of a purchase order as evidence. researchers now consider the Walam Olum a a 2007 chemical analysis suggests the blue Conveniently, Sabar noted, both the defector hoax orchestrated by Rafinesque. pigment used contains palygorskite. This mineral and a scholar who had apparently studied the But there’s an epilogue. During the 20th was only identified as a component of Maya text were dead by then. Fritz eventually century, evidence grew that early Americans blue pigment in 1964, the team say. A 1960s admitted that he probably had the skills to forge did arrive by crossing the Bering Strait. forger would have to be very knowledgeable the document – though he still insisted he Recent genetic studies concluded as much too. about the latest scientific findings to know to hadn’t. When King read Sabar’s report, The idea had been speculative in Rafinesque’s use it. They concluded the Grolier Codex is published in The Atlantic, she accepted that the day – but sometimes even a fraudulent text can

LUWIAN STUDIES genuine – but the debate is not over. text is probably a forgery. inadvertently contain a kernel of truth.

42 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 Mellaart died in 2012, but last year The great Bronze Age collapse Zangger ran into his son, Alan, in Istanbul. aeans, the the Egyptians – mysteriously “I mentioned that in the estate there might e another. s by a previously unknown be a pile of documents on Beyköy. And a year use? later he wrote back to tell me: I’ve found it,” BLACK SEA says Zangger. Alan Mellaart granted Zangger access to his father’s London flat, which still contained stacks of documents. His eye was Hattusa instantly drawn to one written in an ancient köy HITTITE Turkey script: Luwian hieroglyphics. EMPIRE Zangger sent a copy of the text to one of the few scholars able to read Luwian hieroglyphs, Dutch researcher Fred Woudhuizen. The text turned out to be all Zangger might have hoped for. It was a history of events covering about a MYCENA decade right at the end of the Bronze Age, some A tt ac 3200 years ago. The text told how Kupanta- kin MEDITERRANEAANSEA g f Kurunta, king of a Luwian territory called Mira o had strengthened his kingdom and gained the elon support of other Luwian leaders before conquering Hittite territory to the east. He then launched a fleet that conquered land as EGYPTIAN MPIR far away as Ashqelon, a coastal city near Egypt. SOURCE: EBERHARD ZANGGER/LUWIAN STUDIES In other words, the Beyköy text is powerful supporting evidence for Zangger’s World War Zero hypothesis. Zangger and Woudhuizen’s paper should be published imminently. some still suspect Mellaart was a smuggler. as we know the only living person aware that it Or so Zangger hopes. He claims that since Others think he was a fantasist who dreamed had ever existed. The story does seem to have he went public with his findings in October up the whole Dorak episode. To them, the echoes of the Dorak affair. several archaeologists have been working Beyköy text is another invented treasure. But Zangger is convinced the Beyköy text is behind the scenes to prevent publication. Most damning as far as the sceptics are genuine. He says it contains far more detail The Beyköy text is not, they say, dramatic concerned is the disappearance of the original about Bronze Age Anatolia than a forger would proof that Zangger is correct. They claim it is text. According to Mellaart’s notes, it was be comfortable including, for fear of making a hoax probably forged by Mellaart, who was inscribed on a 29-metre-long stone errors that would expose the deception. Even previously involved in an event that was monument unearthed in 1878 at Beyköy. An more significantly, Zangger says, Mellaart was to become notorious – the Dorak affair. archaeologist carefully copied the hieroglyphs apparently unable to read Luwian hieroglyphs, One of the most important but inscrutable on to paper at the time. But, by the time the let alone use the writing system to forge such of 20th-century archaeologists, Mellaart made authorities arrived to preserve the structure, an ambitious document. several finds in Turkey that transformed our the locals had dismantled it and used the As things stand Zangger admits it is understanding of the agricultural revolution, impossible to know for sure whether the a step on the road to civilisation. Most “ The 3200-year-old text Beyköy text is genuine. But publicising it is the significant of all was his discovery in 1958 turned out to be all Zangger only way to find out, he says, and he has little of Çatalhöyük, a 9000-year-old proto-city. time for those who would stand in the way. But that same year, on a train journey might have hoped for” “Is it right that certain scholars decide for the across Turkey, he claimed to have met a young rest of us if something like this is published?” woman wearing what was clearly a Bronze Age stone in the foundations of their mosque. Already, he says, some researchers have bracelet. She invited him to her home in Izmir It was lost, the only evidence of its existence begun examining the text and investigating where she had a large collection of such being the archaeologist’s illustration, which Mellaart’s story. Of course, Zangger hopes they artefacts, all apparently taken from two royal ended up in Turkey’s government collections. will conclude the text is genuine support for tombs at Dorak, in north-west Turkey. By the 1950s, Luwian hieroglyphs could be his ideas. But if the upshot is simply added She gave Mellaart permission to publish read and Turkish archaeologists led an impetus for excavating western Turkey’s illustrations of them, but then disappeared – international project to decipher the Beyköy Bronze Age sites, he will still view that as a along with the treasure. A few years later, the text, along with several others. Mellaart victory.“I don’t think there’s any place in the Turkish media accused Mellaart of helping to became involved – which is how, according to world where discoveries can be made so easily smuggle the artefacts out of the country, and his notes, he obtained copies of the material. as they can in western Anatolia.” One way or he lost his permit to excavate at Çatalhöyük. But the project stalled and publications never another, the story of the Bronze Age collapse To this day no one knows the truth of the materialised. By the time Zangger and seems to be falling into place. ■ Dorak affair. Zangger stresses there is no Mellaart corresponded in the 1990s, Mellaart evidence Mellaart is guilty of wrongdoing, but was the sole survivor of the project, and as far By Colin Barras

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 43 CULTURE

It’s coming at you!

Think the near-real worlds created by CGI and motion capture are as good as it gets? Just wait for a new kind of video, says Simon Ings

OUTSIDE Dimension Studios in outside the US. Still, I’m sceptical. pioneering Soviet physiologist Wimbledon, south London, is one It has been clear for a while that Nikolai Bernstein invented the of those tiny wood-framed snack truly immersive media won’t technique in the early 1920s, bars that served commercial spring from a single“light-bulb” while developing training travellers in the days before moment. The technologies programmes for factory workers. motorways. The hut is guarded involved are, in conceptual terms, Truly immersive media will be by old shop dummies dressed in surprisingly old. Volumetric achieved not through magic fishnet tights and pirate hats. If capture is a good example. bullets, but through thugging – the UK made its own dilapidated MacMillan is considered the the application of ever more version of Westworld, the cyborg godfather of this tech, having computer power, and the ever- rebellion would surely begin here. invented the“bullet time”effect faster processing of more and Steve Jelley orders us breakfast. more data points. Impressive, Years ago he left film production “Engineer Masahiro Mori but where’s the breakthrough? to pursue a career developing new says his ‘uncanny valley’ “Well,” Jelley begins, handing media. He’s of the generation for idea was never meant to me what may be the largest bacon whom the next big thing is always be taken scientifically” sandwich in London, “you know just around the corner. Most of this business of the ‘uncanny them perished in the dot-com central to The Matrix.ButThe valley’…?” My heart sinks slightly. bust of 2001, but Jelley clung to Matrix is 18 years old, and besides, Most New Scientist readers will the dream, and now Microsoft MacMillan reckons that pioneer be familiar with Masahiro Mori’s has come calling. photographer Eadweard concept of the uncanny valley. DIMENSION STUDIOS/SKY His company, Hammerhead, Muybridge got to the idea years It’s a curiously anglophone makes 360-degree videos for before him – in fact, decades obsession. In the 30 years since at a time when humanoid robots commercial clients. Its partner before cinema was invented. the Japanese engineer published didn’t exist that the closer their in this current venture, Then there’s motion capture his paper in 1970, it has been works came to resemble people, Timeslice Films, is best known (or mocap): recording the referred to in Japanese academic the creepier we would find them. for volumetric capture of still movement of points attached to literature only once. Mori himself In the West, discussions of the images – the business of an actor, and from those points, says the idea was never meant to uncanny valley have grown to a cinematographically recording constructing the performance of be taken scientifically. He was sizeable cottage industry. There forms in three dimensions – a a three-dimensional model. The merely warning robot designers have been expensive studies practice that goes back to founder done with PET scans to prove the Tim MacMillan’s art-school existence of the effect. But as Mori experiments of the early 1980s. commented in an interview in Steve Sullivan, director of 2012: “I think that the brainwaves the Holographic Video initiative act that way because we feel eerie. at Microsoft, is fusing both It still doesn’t explain why we companies’technical expertise feel eerie to begin with.” to create volumetric video: Our discomfort extends immersive entertainment that’s beyond encounters with physical indistinguishable from reality robots to include some cinematic There are only three studios experiences. Many are the in the world that can do this with animated movies that have any degree of conviction, and employed mocap to achieve Wimbledon is the only one something like cinematic realism, only to plummet without trace Andy Serkis, motion captured to into the valley. play Caesar in Planet of the Apes PHOTO STOCK ALAMY / 12 PHOTO Elsewhere, actor Andy Serkis

44 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 For more books and arts coverage, visit newscientist.com/culture

Is this real? No, this whole scene is created by the latest movie tech

ready to watch on a Vive VR headset. There are three sets of performances for me to observe, all looping in a grey, gridded, unadorned virtual space: the digital future as a filing cabinet. There are two experiments from Sullivan’s early days at Microsoft. Thomas Jefferson is pure animatronic; the two Maori haka dancers are engaging, if unhuman. The circus gymnast swinging on her hoop is different. I recognise her, or think I do. My body-language must be giving the game away, because Jelley laughs. “Go up to her,” he says. I can’t place where I’ve seen her before. I try and catch her eye. “Closer.” I’m invading her space, and I’m not comfortable with this. I can see the individual threads, securing the sequins to her costume. More than that: I can smell her. I can feel the heat coming from her skin. I know she’s not real, but my body doesn’t. Every bit of me that might have rejected a digitised face as uncanny has fallen hook, line and sinker for this super-real gymnast. And this, presumably, famously uses mocap to There are 106 cameras: are no fluorescent sticky dots or is why the bit of my mind that transform himself into characters half of them recording in the sliced-through ping-pong balls enables me to communicate likeGolluminThe Lord of the infrared spectrum to capture attached to actors here. As far freely and easily with my fellow Rings, or the chimpanzee Caesar depth information, half of them as the audience is concerned, humans is in overdrive, trying to in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, recording visible light. Plus, volumetric video is essentially plug the gaps in my experience, and we are carried along well a number of ultraviolet cameras. just that, video, and as close to as if to say, “Of course her skin is enough by these films. The one “We use ultraviolet paint to a true record as anything piped hot. Of course she has a scent.” creature this technology can’t mask areas for effects work,” through a basement full of Mori’s uncanny valley effect emulate, however, is Serkis Jelley explains, “so we record is not quantifiable, and I don’t himself. Though mocap now the UV spectrum, too. Basically “I know she’s not real, but suppose my experience is any renders human body movement we use every glimmer of light my body doesn’t. Every more measurable than the one with impressive realism, the we can get short of asking you bit of me has fallen for Mori identified. But I’d bet the human face remains a machine to swallow radium.” this super-real gymnast” farm that, had you scanned me, far too complex to be seamlessly The cameras shoot between you would have seen all manner emulated even by the best system. 30 and 60 times a second. computers is ever going to get. of pretty lights. This hasn’t been Jelley reckons he and his “We have a directional map of the So what kind of films are made an eerie experience. Quite the partners have“solved the configuration of those cameras, in such studios? Right now, the reverse. It’s terrifyingly ordinary. problem”of the uncanny valley. and we overlay that with a depth education company Pearson is Almost, I might say, human. He leads me into the studio. map that we’ve captured from creating virtual consultations for Jelley walks me back to the There’s a small, circular, curtained- the IR cameras. Then we can do trainee nurses. Fashion brands main road. Neither of us says off area – a sort of human-scale all the pixel interpolation.” and car companies have shot a word. He knows what he has. birdcage. Rings of lights and This is a big step up from adverts here. TV companies want He knows what he has done. cameras are mounted on scaffolds mocap. Volumetric video captures to use them for fully immersive Outside the snack shack, three and hang from a moveable and real-time depth information and interactive dramas. shop dummies in pirate gear very heavy-looking ceiling rig. from surfaces themselves: there On a table nearby, a demo is wobble in the wind. Q

16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 45 CULTURE

Bringing it all home

Refugee scientists can change the world, finds Sandrine Ceurstemont

Science in Exile, directed by Nicole Leghissa

GHANYA NAJI AL-NAQEB left Yemen because she felt her life was at risk. “In my faculty, a few people disappeared. We don’t know anything about them,” she says. Her story isn’t unique. Millions fled Africa and the Middle East when conflict and war closed in. But as a scientist, Naji Al-Naqeb may have been in greater danger since authoritarian regimes often target this group because of their knowledge and influence. Although it is hard to get exact numbers, thousands of science students and professionals are thought to be among those seeking refuge. Now they are the NICOLE LEGHISSA/SCIENCE EXILE IN focus of a documentary by Italian artist and film-maker Nicole Even job offers are rarely for now works at the UN Food and Ghanya Naji Al-Naqeb now has Leghissa. Her Science in Exile permanent posts, adding to Agriculture Organization, where a new life in another country recently premiered at the World feelings of instability. After being he is gaining an international Science Forum in Jordan, and will uprooted, refugee scientists worry perspective to complement his developing a labour force skilled be shown globally in 2018. about what will happen if their role as a national adviser in Syria. in science and technology will The film explores the journey host country can no longer But previous experience helps play a part in repairing Syria’s of Naji Al-Naqeb and three other accommodate them. too. Sadiddin’s knowledge of the destruction. Before the war, he refugee scientists from Syria and Ahmad Sadiddin is a Syrian Middle East, where there are says, there were only five public Iraq, now pursuing careers far agricultural economist featured already water and food shortages universities for 23 million people. from their homes. “It was hard to in the film. He relocated to Italy, due to climate change, has been Scientists were not paid well and find displaced scientists who want and for him the lack of stability an asset when working on models there was no freedom of to talk,” says Leghissa. “Many are was the hardest part.“I was of the financial impact of global expression, two things he thinks scared.” They were also hard to offered a position at a university warming in some countries in the are necessary for science to grow. find physically because they may for two years and it was obvious Middle East and North Africa. Refugee scientists have a lot to live in camps or not work in their Many refugees hope to return contribute, but they need more own field of science. “Loneliness is a big issue to their countries eventually. For support too. Several organisations Even when refugee scientists for the refugee scientists Leghissa, they are bridges: having and scholarship funds offer receive a fellowship or are offered who left families behind. worked in very different cultures, financial help, but less emotional a job, the transition can be tough. Then there’s racism” they bring a unique knowledge. support is available, and many Many struggle to get a visa or may She says:“They are big resources institutions aren’t clued up about find their knowledge isn’t up to that it was just a transitional for their countries economically, refugees’experiences. Leghissa scratch because of different phase,” he says. “I was anxious.” and socially.” thinks ongoing assistance should educational standards. Loneliness There are upsides, of course. If she is able to return to Yemen, be available, including help if they is also a big issue for those who Naji Al-Naqeb, now in Germany Naji Al-Naqeb may be able to opt to resettle. Meanwhile, raising leave families behind. Then there’s studying Yemeni plants used in boost her country’s economy by awareness is a big step forward. Q racism. “It’s especially an issue for traditional medicine, has access setting up a lab to develop women wearing veils who are on to expertise and technology not medicines from Yemeni plants. Sandrine Ceurstemont is a writer their own,” says Leghissa. available at home. And Sadiddin And Sadiddin thinks that based in Morocco

46 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 Chemistry and Our Universe: How It All Works Taught by Professor Ron B. Davis Jr. TIME GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ED OF IT F E LECTURE TITLES IM R L Save up to 1. Is Chemistry the Science 32. Reaction Mechanisms of Everything? and Catalysis 2. Matter and Measurement 33. The Back and Forth R O of Equilibrium 55% E 3. Wave Nature of Light R 34. Manipulating Chemical B 4. Particle Nature of Light D Equilibrium E M 5. Basic Structure of the Atom R E 35. Acids, Bases, and B EC 6. Electronic Structure the pH Scale Y 24 D of the Atom 36. Weak Acids and Bases 7. Periodic Trends: 37. Acid-Base Reactions Navigating the Table and Buffers 8. Compounds and Chemical Formulas 38. Polyprotic Acids 9. Joining Atoms: 39. Structural Basis for Acidity The Chemical Bond 40. Electron Exchange: 10. Mapping Molecules: Redox Reactions Lewis Structures 41. Electromotive Force 11. VSEPR Theory and and Free Energy Molecular Geometry 42. Storing Electrical 12. Hybridization of Orbitals Potential: Batteries 43. Nuclear Chemistry 13. Molecular Orbital Theory and Radiation 14. Communicating 44. Binding Energy and Chemical Reactions the Mass Defect 15. Chemical Accounting: 45. Breaking Things Down: Stoichiometry Nuclear Fission 16. Enthalpy and Calorimetry 46. Building Things Up: 17. Hess’s Law and Heats Nuclear Fusion of Formation 47. Introduction to 18. Entropy: The Role Organic Chemistry of Randomness 48. Heteroatoms and 19. Influence of Free Energy Functional Groups 20. Intermolecular Forces 49. Reactions in Organic 21. Phase Changes in Matter Chemistry 22. Behaviour of Gases: 50. Synthetic Polymers Gas Laws 51. Biological Polymers 23. Kinetic Molecular Theory 52. Medicinal Chemistry 24. Liquids and Their Properties 53. Poisons, Toxins, and Venoms 25. Metals and Ionic Solids 54. Chemical Weapons 26. Covalent Solids 55. Tapping Chemical 27. Mixing It Up: Solutions Energy: Fuels 56. Unleashing Chemical 28. Solubility and Saturation Energy: Explosives 29. Colligative Properties Understand Chemistry of Solutions 57. Chemistry of the Earth 30. Modelling Reaction Rates 58. Chemistry of Our Oceans 31. Temperature and 59. Atmospheric Chemistry Reaction Rates 60. Chemistry, Life, and from Particles to Polymers the Cosmos Our world is ruled by chemistry. It is the study of matter and energy at the scale of atoms and molecules. As the most all-embracing discipline Chemistry and Our Universe: How It All Works there is, it should be at the top of everyone’s list of must-learn subjects. Course no. 1350 | 60 lectures (30 minutes/lecture)

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EDITOR’S PICK From local change comes of the way living organisms aglobaltippingpoint interact with the climate system Fellow geologists were critical to a fault to regulate overall stability of From Katherine Richardson, the Earth system. Erosion of year-old formation being offset Center for Macroecology, biodiversity can be expected to some 80 miles by the San Andreas Evolution and Climate, Denmark, reduce Earth resilience, which fault. Fellow scientists said my ideas and Johan Rockström and Will in turn can increase the risk of were “absurd” and “impossible”, that Steffen, Stockholm Resilience crossing a climate tipping point, ”faults cannot possibly have that Centre, Sweden for example. much displacement”, and “I suggest We welcome critique of the Human pressures on the that you do your fieldwork again”. planetary boundaries framework, planet now influence interactions The hostile reception my paper yet Stuart Pimm seems to have between the climate system and engendered resulted in me leaving misunderstood the concept biosphere at the global scale. The the conference abruptly, very bitter (9 December, p 24). planetary boundaries framework over its rebuff. Pimm wrongly interprets the attempts to identify levels of this A few years later, McKenzie and framework as if it assumes and perturbation where the risk of the his colleagues proved plate tectonics, relies on the fact that biodiversity Earth system as a whole changing From Rob Gibson, the San Andreas was recognised as a has a tipping point at the global state is increased. Irvine, California, US major plate boundary, my paper was scale. This is not the case. The framework is certainly not Your article on Dan McKenzie’s vindicated and suddenly I became an Tipping points exist in meant to replace any methods of contribution to plate tectonics dredged authority on the San Andreas fault. individual ecosystems, but there is ecosystem management at the up a very unpleasant memory With some 6 to 9 metres of currently no established evidence local or regional levels. On the (25 November, p 41). displacement, this fault is long of a global tipping point for contrary, planetary boundaries In 1964, I presented an address overdue for a huge quake that, when biodiversity. The reason we include offer a complement by framing to the Geological Society of America it comes, will be the greatest natural biodiversity in the planetary local sustainable management showing evidence for a 10-million- disaster in the history of the US. boundaries framework is because approaches in a global context. 'LVMWXQEWSRXLIWXVIIXW – or a new start with St Mungo’s? A warm bed and a hot meal are just the start of long-term support St Mungo’s offers every night of the year, to help people who are homeless to turn their lives around. We provide everything from specialist drug, alcohol and mental health support to job skills and employment programmes. Please give £25 to offer a warm welcome to someone sleepingrough–andachancetogetoffthestreets for good. HELP US TODAY St Mungo Community Housing Association Reg Charity No 1149085. mungos.org/new-start

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GPEMQIHSREPPQ]HSREXMSRWMXMWQ]VIWTSRWMFMPMX] XS TE] ER] HMJJIVIRGI 23:%'546)7727 7XEVX HEXI )\T HEXI -WWYI 2S 1EIWXVS SRP] 4PIEWIRSXMJ]7X1YRKS´WMJ]SY[ERXXS GERGIP XLMW HIGPEVEXMSR GLERKI ]SYV REQISVLSQIEHHVIWWSVRSPSRKIV TE] WYJ½GMIRX XE\ 7MKREXYVI(EXI ;I´HPSZIXSOIIT]SYYTXSHEXI[MXL SYV RI[W EGXMZMXMIW ERH JYRHVEMWMRK 8MXPI*MVWX2EQI =SYVHIXEMPW[MPPSRP]FIYWIHF]7X1YRKS´W ¯ [I [MPP RIZIV WIPP XLIQ -J ]SY EPVIEH]WYTTSVX7X1YRKS´W[I[MPPGLERKI LS[ [I 7YVREQI OIITMRXSYGL EGGSVHMRK XS ]SYV GLSMGIW FIPS[ %HHVIWW =IW-´HPMOI7X1YRKS´WXSGSRXEGXQIF] )QEMP =IW 4LSRI =IW 717 =IW 4SWXGSHI ;I[SYPHPMOIXSGSRXEGX]SYZMETSWX Don’t forget to include your name and address MRXLIJYXYVI4PIEWIXMGOLIVIMJ]SYHS to allow us to claim Gift Aid. RSX[MWLXSFIGSRXEGXIHF]4SWX2S Post to: Freepost RSYJ–HGEK–RGBX, St Mungo’s (NS), 126 Fairlie Road, SLOUGH SL1 4PY

52 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 “ I’m not going to Mars if all they brew is Budweiser!” Simon Morris isn’t won over by our online comment piece about the US beer maker’s plans to expand into space

Speaking in tongues can be able to attribute the result. But enfolds the end of the fallopian The following night, we help you evade detection unfortunately, that was because it tubes and the ovaries. This is very decided to fully inflate this was meaningless drivel. No doubt rich in blood vessels, being the balloon. I changed the suck end From Steve Swift, if I repeated my experiment now, bane of transferring eggs between of my vacuum cleaner to blow, Alton, Hampshire, UK with Google’s much improved these transgenic mice. It is likely and the balloon quickly inflated. I was fascinated by your article on translators, the obfuscated text that this is an adaptation to I took my foot off the power how your personal writing style would be almost perfect. prevent ectopic pregnancy, given button, but my flatmate said: betrays identity (25 November, the amount of eggs a mouse can “Inflate it even more” – then an p 36). Over a decade ago, while Of mice and produce per ovulation – often almighty explosion. working for IBM, I created a menstruation over a dozen. The lack of When I had stopped the cleaner, website where employees could endometriosis is a side effect. the hydrogen had fed back into submit complaints anonymously. From Peter Ashby, the machine and sparked the These were usually forwarded Broughty Ferry, Dundee, UK The right and wrong way blast. Some of my flatmates to the person’s manager. While I In your article discussing the to blow up a balloon had burns on their faces and “guaranteed” that the system was link between endometriosis and we rushed them to the public anonymous, it was obvious to me depression, you write that mice From Brian Collins, hospital. How foolhardy we were. that my manager could always don’t menstruate like people do Wellington, New Zealand In our defence, we were law and detect something I had written. (25 November, p 16). It is not only Douglas Heaven asks if internet not science students. So I experimented with that mice do not menstruate, but balloons will help hurricane- obfuscation mechanisms. I took a also that endometrial cells can’t ravaged Puerto Rico (14 October, Nobody will shed a tear complaint and passed it through enter the abdominal cavity as p 4). In the 1960s, when I was for polio’s extinction Google’s nascent English-to- easily as in humans. studying law in Wellington, a French translation. Then I passed As someone who has made a fellow student and I found a From Bruce Denness, the French back through the small mountain of genetically partially filled weather balloon Whitwell, Isle of Wight, UK French-to-English translator. modified mice, I can attest that on our way back from the law Michael Le Page rightly cites Perfect! No manager would there is a fibrous capsule that library late one evening. several reasons why care >

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16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 53 LETTERS [email protected] @newscientist newscientist

should be taken to avoid clever assemblages of binary resulting in a crash when the than current computers – could unwelcome consequences of digits, has absolutely no intrinsic money is revalued. have on the blockchain and mining using genetic“extinction” value, despite any apparent system of these cryptocurrencies. drives to tackle invaders difficulties associated with From Bill Summers, (25 November, p 25). This includes producing it. Money is only ever Sturminster Newton, Dorset, UK Time we voted for a how its proposed application to a symbol or representative of true Your article on cryptocurrencies fairer voting system possums in New Zealand might wealth, which may be tangible was an opportunity to clarify endanger them in neighbouring such as food, clothing and what money actually is. It gets From Ron Baker, Australia, where they are a housing, or intangible such as close to asking that question Colchester, Essex, UK protected species. healthcare, education, justice when it states that bitcoin“won’t Timothy Revell says there is However, that surely does not or security. Money needs to be become a form of currency until no perfect electoral system apply to its potential application backed not by governments, people are paid in it”. (18 November, p 35). But some are to the eradication of the polio but by goods. Both Buckminster Fuller and far better than others. Among the virus, for example. The whole Currency only has real practical Karl Marx as philosophers held worst is the first-past-the-post world would like to see this value when it is exchanged for that currency is the mechanism system used in the UK and US. extinct, not least those of us goods or services. The problem by which we put our labour into The best so far devised is that who are affected by it. with our current systems is that storage. Coal in the ground is known as the single transferable they permit the trading of money worth nothing until the labour of vote (STV). It is proportional The price of everything itself as if it were a commodity many people has put it into the between parties. It involves voting and value of nothing with intrinsic value. It is claimed hearth. If this labour can be stored for individuals, not party lists. It that value can be added to money as a currency in the blockchain, allows for third parties and for From Bryn Glover, Kirkby by increasing the amount of it we must ask if it is secure, if it is independents. It is just about Malzeard, North Yorkshire, UK in circulation – such as through stable in value and who owns it. impossible to gerrymander. Douglas Heaven’s explanation of interest payments – but unless Revell says that fairness sounds the workings of bitcoin and the the supply of real wealth happens From Adrin Neatrour, like a proportional system: so it blockchain was very helpful and to keep pace, devaluation is Newcastle upon Tyne, UK does. Why not use the best, STV? illuminating (2 December, p 36). inevitable. Douglas Heaven’s primer on Details on how STV works can be There were, however, two Money dealers would cite bitcoin and virtual currencies was obtained from the UK’s Electoral assertions with which I would “growth”as the source of new informative and welcome. One Reform Society. disagree. money, but whereas money area of interest he did not consider Money, in whatever form it markets always seem to expand, is the effect that quantum Might we have too much may take, as lumps of metal, real markets have a nasty habit of computers – which can crunch of a good thing? sheets of paper, conch shells or stagnating or actually reducing, data orders of magnitude faster From Jon Hinwood, Melbourne, Australia TOM GAULD Your leader and cover story supported medical use of psychedelic drugs (25 November, p 28). But you did not discuss the legitimate concerns that easier access to such drugs is likely to facilitate and increase non- medical use and abuse.

For the record

Q We need a pinch more salt in our sea water, which contains about 30 grams per litre (11 November, p 36).

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54 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 SIGNAL BOOST Offering your projects a helping hand

Put vaccination on the map

RABIES in Nepal is a serious issue. Canine vaccination is a key constituent of any rabies elimination strategy, and according to World Health Organization guidelines, at least 70 per cent of dogs in an area must be covered. Regular revaccination is also needed as unprotected animals migrate into areas. There are several animal welfare organisations and societies in Nepal undertaking vaccination campaigns. However, there is no way of easily knowing who has vaccinated dogs, where and when. Hence the Dog Data website was created to offer a more coordinated approach, with obvious benefits for Nepal’s human population. Launched by Jim Pearson of the Himalayan Animal Treatment Centre charity, it has been working in animal welfare in Nepal for 10 years, creating a central record of all vaccinations. Pearson had previously made smartphone apps that record dog vaccinations and upload the data to a server, allowing the Dog Data site to show individual vaccination locations on a map. Markers change colour when revaccination is due. The recording apps are freely available to organisations wishing to use them and publicly share their results. The site currently also shows dog census information, and there are plans to add other kinds of data too. Data on neutering campaigns will be added when the details of these upcoming efforts are finalised. There is no legal requirement to report rabies to government authorities in Nepal, making surveillance difficult. So a further target is collaboration with relevant sources to display information on canine and human rabies cases. Public information websites are a new concept in Nepal but internet connectivity is good and the ambition is that Dog Data will evolve to become a widely used public health tool. Dog Data would welcome suggestions, advice and finance. Barbara Webb, Dog Data UK For more information, please visitdogdata.uk or email [email protected]

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16 December 2017 | NewScientist | 55 FEEDBACK For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedback

teeth some people might have. I was STIRRING the depths of our told by the undertaker that the gold imagination, the occasional was sent to some government agency.” explanation of a mysterious Undertakers among you, is eight- legged structure found this true? It harks of taxation in the sea off Rhode Island without representation. Surely this still bubbles to the surface silent majority will be spinning in (30 September). their graves. “Donkey feeder, drag anchor, or the remains of a paddle wheel LASTLY, Peter says he was also off a paddle steamer?”asks asked whether his wife had a Rodney Tapp. Meanwhile, we pacemaker.Paul Dorner might suspect Peter Scott has been have a clue as to why:“This is bingeing on too much family mentioned in Iain Banks’s 1992 sci-fi drama.“This metal hoop novel The Crow Road, which and its spokes are the remains begins with the immortal line, of the flop TV show ‘Seagate SG1’,” ‘It was the day my grandmother he claims. exploded’.” SOME rules are made to be broken – FOLLOWING on from the cyberpunk but not all. Richard King recalls that terms and conditions attached to while training with the Royal Canadian Greater Anglia trains’ Wi-Fi services Air Force, “the station at Portage la (4 November), Carol Conkey writes Prairie had the usual ‘No Smoking’ in with more odd legalese. During a recent medical procedure SEQUINNED dresses might be a staple collected during one’s lifetime in Nevada, she was handed a patient’s of ballroom game show Strictly Come (18 November). rights statement that included Dancing, but one contestant could be Michael Zehse writes: “I’ve got assurances that she had the right accused of taking the idea of glittery a titanium aortic valve, worth “not to be required to perform work showbiz a little too far. around £1000, so a registrar for the facility”, and that “no beliefs Various outlets report that Debbie told me.” Off the peg, perhaps, or practices, or any attendance at McGee’s prowess on the dance floor Michael, but be sure to check the religious services, shall be imposed”. is down to her daily supplement of Parkers guide price for that year’s “I certainly would have objected it colloidal silver, a sparkly cure-all model to avoid disappointment. they had asked me to mop the floors tolerated, but not encouraged, by “If it now belongs to me, maybe or wash equipment,” says Carol. And medical professionals. And for good I could sign it up for some sort of while you might expect to encounter a reason – an overdose will turn one’s equity release so I get £200 cash mass during a colonoscopy, Feedback signs where you would expect, except skin permanently blue, which might now and a firm can have the valve thinks it isn’t normally the type with in the hangars. Here there were fully clash with your next ballgown. upon my demise,” says Michael, candles and a liturgy. fuelled aircraft, and signs that read Perhaps it’s only natural that “although I’ve pre-donated my ‘Positively No Smoking’.” people assume the long-time body to the London anatomy THE prospect of lab-grown partner of magician Paul Daniels office, so presumably they will burgers is so close we could taste CUTTING everything but the cost? must be using magical potions to want to remove and recycle it if it, if we had a million dollars to Michael Bisson discovers that his achieve success. Feedback timidly I die in hospital.” Let’s hope the spend on lunch. Thankfully Tony chicken noodle soup is claiming suggests her limber moves may be anatomy office doesn’t try to Lang finds a cheaper alternative to contain 30 per cent less salt. down to the fact that before she collect early. thriving in south London. “When I got home from the became a Mrs, McGee was a Shoppers in Mitcham can grocery store, I compared it with professional ballet dancer. AND the mystery deepens. “When pop down to Jovan Foods, my older package and noticed that arranging the cremation and funeral which, according to the signage it was actually 30 per cent less of FEEDBACK has previously service for my wife about five years outside, bills itself as a“meat everything. Even the recipe on the pondered the final destination ago,” says Peter Ray, “out of curiosity, manufacturer”. back said to add a third less water

PAUL MCDEVITT of various biomedical implants I asked what happened to the gold to each package.” IN LOCAL news, the Nottingham Post reports the recent appearance of the Oliver Moody says the Beehive pub in Marylebone Northern Lights over the city, says You can send stories to Feedback by has some pretty totalitarian ambitions. A sign Perry Bebbington. Readers are email at [email protected]. informed that “a rare scientific Please include your home address. warns “only food and drink purchased on these reaction will cause the skies above This week’s and past Feedbacks can premises might be consumed” the UK to turn green”. be seen on our website.

56 | NewScientist | 16 December 2017 THE LAST WORD Last words past and present at newscientist.com/lastword

Let’s be blunt Q It is sound economics to go on using deteriorating equipment An earlier questioner asked how until the cost of continued usage metal blades in wet shavers lost their equals or exceeds (just) the cost sharpness so easily on human hair. of replacement. When you use One answer said that alternating two razors in turn, the cost of a blades in a razor made each one “replacement decision” doubles, last longer than if left in place until so will be delayed until both they became blunt. So subsequently have got worse. This also helps the Last Word posed a second us understand how a set of seven question. Does any reader know why expensive cutthroat razors might alternating blades makes each one easily last a lifetime, by achieving last longer? an equilibrium where the owner has neither the latest sunrise nor weather is over, to start our days can neither bear to use any of earliest sunset. The earliest sunset earlier again.

QKeeping razors away from them nor afford seven new ones. occurs around 14 December Hillary Shaw water will stop the cutting edge John McCrea and latest sunrise is around Newport, Shropshire, UK corroding, so this might explain Banstead, Surrey, UK 30 December, and hence the why alternating blades extends mornings in late January are as each one’s life. dark as those in early December. This week’s Rust consists of hydrated ferric The art of timing As for icy weather, the coldest questions oxides with varying quantities of part of the year trails behind the water, meaning rust is a poorly Why are the dates when we switch shortest day because of thermal MIXED LEAF SALAD defined chemical. Rust will form between summer and winter times This tree (see photos above) has on a wet blade edge and the water (for example, swapping between “Mornings in late January both variegated and normal content in the rust will increase Greenwich Mean Time and British in the northern leaves, with leaves of both types the longer the edge stays wet, so Summer Time in the UK) placed so hemisphere are as dark as on the same branch. Can anyone the rust will become bulkier and asymmetrically around the solstices? those in early December” explain this distribution of the blade blunter. different leaves on the same plant?

If the blade is placed in a dry Q British Summer Time enables lag, the same reason the hottest John MacFarlane environment, for example, under us to enjoy lighter summer part of the day is not at noon but London, UK evenings while minimising late afternoon. At 3 pm the sun is “Keeping razors away from accidents caused by travelling getting lower, but is still adding CRACKED IT water stops corrosion, in the dark in winter, as result of more heat to the day. Why do I, or any other explaining why alternating poorer visibility and colder icy In January and February, human, get sore and cracked blades extends their life” conditions. We tend to be more although days are lengthening, heels? I understand it’s less rushed on the morning commute there is still insufficient sunshine common in men than women – a so-called“magic pyramid” and may also be more tired and to warm the day between the long presumably this is down to or perhaps more usefully in less alert. Therefore, we change night hours, so February is often footwear choices? The cream a cupboard drawer, then the the clocks primarily to avoid a colder than November. Therefore, product I use to cure it works very amount of water could decrease, dark icy morning rush. in late October, with sunrise at well, but its active ingredient the rust will subsequently become So why does it end fewer than nearly 8 am, we change clocks appears to be urea. How does less bulky and so the blade will two months before the shortest to lighten the morning, and then this react with my skin to cure feel sharper. day (21 December) but not restart we wait until late March, when the problem? David Muir until more than three months sunrise has advanced to just Peter Lloyd Edinburgh, UK later? That’s because 21 December after 6 am and most of the icy London, UK

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