EFFORTLESS THINKING Why Some Ideas Come Naturally to Us – and Why They’Re Usually Wrong
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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 No3156 £4.10 US/CAN$6.99 50 9 770262 407275 PLUS FASTING BRAINS / SCIENTISTS IN EXILE / CALIFORNIA BURNING / GRIEVING PIGS / PLANET TORTOISE / COMEDY COMPUTERS / FARAWAY QUASAR / EXPLODING EGGS AN DATA SCIENCE Research & Development | Real-World Value & Outcomes IMS Health and Quintiles are now IQVIA™ – created to advance your pursuits of human science by unleashing the power of data science and human ingenuity. Join the journey at iqvia.com/success Copyright © 2017 IQVIA. All rights reserved. Commercialization | Technologies CONTENTS newscientist.com/issue/3156 Management Executive chairman Bernard Gray Publishing director John MacFarlane Finance director Matthew O’Sullivan Strategy director Sumit Paul-Choudhury Human resources Shirley Spencer Non-executive director Louise Rogers Publishing and commercial Customer services manager Gavin Power Head of data science Kimberly Karman HR co-ordinator Serena Robinson Facilities manager Ricci Welch Management PA Emily Perry Display advertising Tel +44 (0)20 7611 1291 Email [email protected] FALCONER SAM /GETTY SAVATIER TRISTAN Commercial director Chris Martin Richard Holliman, Justin Viljoen, Volume 236 No 3156 News The biology of being gay 8 Henry Vowden, Helen Williams 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.