Discover

WHERE CONSCIOUSNESS STARTS P.40

SCIENCE FOR THE CURIOUS

The Secret
History
of the

VIKINGS
PLUS Revealing Invasion Going Gonzo
March 2018

BONUS
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CONTENT
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 Contents
MARCH 2018
Website access code: DSD1803
Enter this code at: www.DiscoverMagazine.com/code
to gain access to exclusive subscriber content.

VOL. 39, NO. 2 FEATURES

24 The Secret
History of
the Vikings
DNA evidence shows
there’s more to these
notable northerners
than sailing, trading
and conquering.
BY GEMMA TARLACH

32 Taking a
Dim View
Astronomers look past
shiny galaxies to the faint
ones, which have
their own intrigue.
BY ADAM HADHAZY

40 Down the
Rabbit Hole
An anesthesiologist
develops a fringe theory
about quantum physics
and consciousness. Now,
his work is catching
the ear of some serious
neuroscientists.
BY STEVE VOLK

50 Where Wild
Things Aren’t
A writer and illustrator go
gonzo over animals on the
endangered species list.
BY CERI LEVY AND RALPH STEADMAN

Endangered animals are

given the “Ralphschach test”
in the new book Critical
Critters, written by Ceri
Levy and illustrated by the
RALPH STEADMAN

legendary Ralph Steadman.

Read an excerpt beginning
on page 50.

March 2018 DISCOVER 3

 Contents
COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS

6 EDITOR’S NOTE
Beneath the Surface
Advances in science reveal
mysteries that have eluded
researchers for years.

9 THE CRUX
An anthropologist designs
a cost-efficient spacesuit;
experts debate whether or
not to finish your antibiotic
prescription; and more.

16 VITAL SIGNS While enormous volcanic zones are

suspected in several mass extinctions,
No Easy Fix it’s also the type of rock burned up
that counts. Read more on page 10.
Thanks to gastric bypass surgery,
a woman loses a dramatic amount
of weight. So why, three years later,
are the pounds gradually returning?
BY DOUGLAS G. ADLER

70 HISTORY LESSONS
Discover
WHERE CONSCIOUSNESS STARTS P.40

20 NOTES FROM EARTH

SCIENCE FOR THE CURIOUS

A Deadly Diet
The Beetle, the Bird Diarrhea, rashes, dementia and March 2018
®

and the Tamarisk Tree sometimes even death: All symptoms

In the American Southwest, two of a mysterious disease that swept the
non-native species impact a native bird, South in the early 20th century, until
for better and for worse. one doctor found an unlikely remedy.
BY KATHERINE MAST BY KRISTIN BAIRD RATTINI The Secret
History
of the
66 PROGNOSIS
Quest for a Peaceful Death
74 20 THINGS YOU DIDN’T
KNOW ABOUT …
VIKINGS Revealing Invasion Going Gonzo
A physician digs deep for the Engines PLUS
Hidden of the
Galaxies Beetles
P.32 P.20
on Endangered
SpeciesP.50

connection between the physical What do catapults, black holes

and the spiritual in end-of-life patients.
BY JEFF WHEELWRIGHT
57 OUT THERE: SPECIAL BONUS SECTION
and panda poop have in common?
BY GEMMA TARLACH
ON THE COVER
Where Consciousness Starts p.40
The Secret History of the Vikings p.24
Revealing Hidden Galaxies p.32
MICROSTOCKER2/123RF

In the very distant future, a Martian moon will fall apart, and the Invasion of the Beetles p.20
Red Planet will take on a new look. And if you know anything about Going Gonzo on
our solar system’s planetary giants, the makeover will look familiar. Endangered Species p.50
Cover illustration by Shane Rebenschied

4 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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 Discover
SCIENCE FOR THE CURIOUS

Editor's Note ®

BECKY LANG Editor In Chief

DAN BISHOP Design Director

EDITORIAL

Beneath the Surface KATHI KUBE Managing Editor

GEMMA TARLACH Senior Editor
BILL ANDREWS Senior Associate Editor
MARK BARNA Associate Editor
ERIC BETZ Associate Editor
LACY SCHLEY Assistant Editor
As kids who grew up skiing in DAVE LEE Copy Editor
the mountains of Montana, my ELISA R. NECKAR Copy Editor
brother and I were always on AMY KLINKHAMMER Editorial Assistant

guard for those pesky and elusive Contributing Editors

TIM FOLGER, JONATHON KEATS,
snow snakes. The little rascals LINDA MARSA, KENNETH MILLER,
were masters at hiding beneath the STEVE NADIS, ADAM PIORE,
COREY S. POWELL, JULIE REHMEYER,
chopped-up powder, lying in wait STEVE VOLK, PAMELA WEINTRAUB,
to snag your ski edge and knock JEFF WHEELWRIGHT,
DARLENE CAVALIER (SPECIAL PROJECTS)
you off balance.
They weren’t actual snakes, ART
ERNIE MASTROIANNI Photo Editor
of course. But I was more than ALISON MACKEY Associate Art Director
happy to shift blame onto these
DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
imaginary creatures that had CARL ENGELKING Web Editor
nabbed my metal edges and sent LAUREN SIGFUSSON Associate Editor
NATHANIEL SCHARPING Assistant Editor
me tumbling. For the daughter of
Bloggers
a ski racing coach, that dose of MEREDITH CARPENTER, LILLIAN FRITZ-LAYLIN,
humor helped curb the frustration JEREMY HSU, ERIK KLEMETTI, REBECCA KRESTON,
NEUROSKEPTIC, ELIZABETH PRESTON,
of keeping Dad’s long list of SCISTARTER, AMY SHIRA TEITEL,
things to do in your head as you CHRISTIE WILCOX, TOM YULSMAN
carved, and slid, down a run.
ADVERTISING
The fictional snow snakes were STEVE MENI Advertising Sales Manager
888 558 1544
a way for a kid to push through something difficult. In this issue, smeni@discovermagazine.com
we focus on very real, and difficult, hidden mysteries that Rummel Media Connections
researchers are working to reveal. KRISTI RUMMEL Consulting and Media Sales
608 435 6220
Geneticists, biologists and anthropologists are taking different kristi@rummelmedia.com

tacks to figure out exactly who the Vikings were. Discover senior MELANIE DECARLI Marketing Architect
BOB RATTNER Research
editor Gemma Tarlach finds it’s a tricky proposition, even with DARYL PAGEL Advertising Services
DNA evidence at hand. Contributing editor Steve Volk dives
KALMBACH PUBLISHING CO.
into the quantum underpinnings of our very thoughts through DAN HICKEY CEO
a profile of Stuart Hameroff, a controversial figure in the study DANIEL R. LANCE Senior V.P., Sales & Marketing
STEPHEN C. GEORGE Vice President, Content
of consciousness. We also shine a light on dim galaxies that lurk JAMES R. MCCANN Vice President, Finance
in the background of our bright universe. And famed illustrator NICOLE MCGUIRE Vice President, Consumer Marketing
Ralph Steadman brings the gonzo to a collection of wild and ANN E. SMITH Corporate Advertising Director
LIZ RUNYON Circulation Director
endangered species. MICHAEL SOLIDAY Art and Production Manager
Scientists are gradually uncovering these hidden finds, blasting CATHY DANIELS New Business Manager
KATHY STEELE Retention Manager
right by those sneaky snow snakes. KIM REDMOND Single Copy Specialist

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THE CRUX TH E L ATEST S C I E N C E N E WS A N D N O T ES

SENSING A MATCH
Perched on a branch in Australia, a male feather-horned beetle, Rhipicera femorata, searches for companionship. A 2015 paper suggests that
during the beetle’s mating season, sight and hearing don’t come into play when a male is looking for a partner. Instead, the aptly named insect
uses chemical receptors on its large, bushy antennae to sense the mating pheromones of nearby females, which have fewer receptors.
ERNIE MASTROIANNI; PHOTOGRAPH BY RON AND BETH KINSEY

March 2018 DISCOVER 9

THE CRUX

10 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 BIG IDEA
A Killer Connection?
New research ties mass extinctions
THE TRANSANTARCTIC MOUNTAINS SPLIT
our planet’s southernmost continent
into east and west, at times rising more
than 14,000 feet high. Today, it’s a
barren landscape of inhospitable rock
and ice. But for the scientists who hike
and camp this rocky spine, it’s also a
portal to another Earth.
Park University paleobotanist
Patty Ryberg and her colleagues are
uncovering the fossilized remains of a
lush forest that thrived in the Antarctic
Circle some 260 million years ago
during the Permian period. One type
of tree, called glossopterids, dominated
much of a supercontinent. Then they
vanished in a geological instant.
The glossopterids didn’t die alone.
About 90 percent of life on Earth was
snuffed out in our planet’s biggest
known extinction, called the Great
Dying. What killed everything?
Scientists have long debated the
causes of this event and Earth’s four
other major extinctions, usually
pointing to various volcanoes or
asteroids. But it’s tough to precisely date
rocks that old, so connecting a mass
extinction with one particular impact or
eruption is often controversial.
Now, a global campaign to map
Earth’s ancient mega-eruptions,
paired with advances in rock dating,
is pushing us closer than ever to
explaining why some volcanoes
and asteroids kill and others don’t.
Those results show that the size of an
eruption or asteroid isn’t as important
as the type of rocks incinerated.
One suspect behind several mass
MICROSTOCKER2/123RF
extinctions is a kind of enormous
volcanic zone called a large igneous
province, or LIP. Picture a flattish,
layer cake-like volcano big enough
Ernst says. His team and others can
now pinpoint LIPs to within 100,000
years of their eruptions.
These new discoveries also help
explain what was happening at
LIPs during mass extinctions. For
example, as the Siberian Traps
to the rocks beneath our feet. formed, huge ponds of lava pooled
deep underground. This magma
cooked surrounding sedimentary
to cover a country — or a continent. rocks as well as enormous seams of
Amid the seemingly endless oozing coal. As they burned, those organic
lava, its internal plumbing system rips matter-rich rocks released gases like
open miles-deep cracks like something sulfur and carbon dioxide. Once the
from a bombastic action flick. pressure below was too much, miles-
Every major extinction coincides deep cracks ripped open on Earth’s
with one of these eruptions. An LIP surface, freeing the greenhouse gases.
called the Siberian Traps formed Our planetary thermostat likely rose
just as the ancient forests Ryberg dozens of degrees Fahrenheit. These
studies disappeared in Antarctica. same organics were burned and
Some 50 million years later, an LIP released in eruptions that wiped out
called the Central Atlantic Triassic life and gave rise
Magmatic Province coincided to the dinosaurs, according
with another mass extinction About 90 to a Nature study last May.
— one that eventually led percent of life “It’s a very short period
to the rise of the dinosaurs. of time for this to build
But while those eruptions on Earth was up and have such a kill
lasted for perhaps a million snuffed out mechanism for a lot of
years, the extinctions
in our planet’s life on the planet,” Ernst
says. “These things have a
happened in much shorter
time periods. Why? biggest wicked climatic effect.”
Carleton University known The type of rocks
geoscientist Richard Ernst, burned isn’t just important
who has studied LIPs for extinction, for mega-eruptions. A
two decades, launched a called the recent drilling expedition
large-scale effort in 2010 to Mexico’s dino-killing
Great Dying.
to find answers. Although Chicxulub crater — the
ancient LIPs are now only mass extinction
eroded and often hard to spot, Ernst conclusively linked to an impact —
found he could map the behemoths found the asteroid hit sedimentary
by examining their ancient magma rock rich in sulfurs. And a November
plumbing systems. Nature study showed such rocks
His results were surprising: 20 cover just 13 percent of Earth’s
previously undiscovered LIPs, all over surface. The dinosaurs might’ve
the world. Incredibly, many formed survived if the space rock hit
billions of years ago and left no signs elsewhere.
of a mass extinction. By using high- So, really, mass extinctions often
tech dating techniques to examine just boil down to bad luck.
crystals in the rock, Ernst’s team has “My lesson from this is that the
also narrowed down the timelines of Earth can go through dramatic
these eruptions. changes,” Ernst says. “The planet
“Once we were able to start dating doesn’t particularly care about the
them — and to date them very biology on it, including humans.”
precisely — then it was just stunning,”  ERIC BETZ
March 2018 DISCOVER 11
THE CRUX
SCIENCE SMACKDOWN

Stay the Course?

Researchers debate whether we should finish our antibiotic prescription.

YOU’VE HEARD IT FOR YEARS: When you get antibiotics,

finish the prescription even if you feel better. Otherwise,
the bug might develop antibiotic resistance — a growing
problem that’s making infections harder to treat. But
a recent commentary in The BMJ argues that advice
needs updating; stopping the meds might be better.
In Science Smackdown, we invite experts to debate both
sides of the issue.  TEAL BURRELL

The Claim The Counterpoint

TIME TO CHANGE NOT JUST YET
THE MESSAGE
Advising patients
It’s been known for to stop their
decades that stopping meds early is
antibiotics early doesn’t premature,
cause resistance, says William
says Martin Schaffner,
Llewelyn, a preventive
author of medicine and
The BMJ infectious diseases
paper professor at Vanderbilt
and an University School of
infectious Medicine. He cites a
diseases 2016 study of children’s
professor at ear infections where
Brighton and Sussex a shorter antibiotic

Medical School in the U.K.
For most of the bacteria
posing threats today, it’s
just the opposite: Longer
exposure to antibiotics
increases the risk they’ll
develop a resistance.
To curb this, Llewelyn
and colleagues urge
doctors to drop the
“complete the course”
rhetoric and instead advise
patients to stop when they
feel better. “Many of the
course durations that we
recommend for antibiotics
are probably too long for
most patients,” he says.
FROM LEFT: COURTESY OF MARTIN LLEWELYN; VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER; MARCTRAN/123RF
course led to relapse.
“Just because they were
feeling better didn’t
mean that their infections
were sufficiently treated
to stop therapy,” he says.
He agrees with the
goal of using fewer
antibiotics, but he thinks
rigorous studies need
to be performed for
each and every kind
of infection before
doctors change their
recommendations.
Rather than suggesting
patients quit when they
feel better, “this is a call
to the profession to do
better studies,” Schaffner
says.

12 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 CELEBRATE THE
TIMELESS GLORY
OF AN ANCIENT WORLD...
An icon of unwavering strength,
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THE CRUX
Q&A
Q  What’s an anthropologist doing
designing a spacesuit?

A  I grew up in Texas when the culture

A DIY Spacesuit
Cameron Smith will put his suit — and his life —
of the Apollo missions was still
reverberating. But in those days, the
path to space was military flying, and
my eyesight wasn’t perfect. So I turned
to archaeology and anthropology, which
took me to really wild, remote places. I
built sails for ships as part of my research
on the line at 50,000 feet. and became comfortable working with
textiles. And in the last decade, the
proliferation of the private space industry
ANTHROPOLOGIST CAMERON SMITH usually digs prompted me to think about participating
into the past, but these days, he does a lot of forward in some way. Many space exploration
thinking. The Portland State University professor spends technologies can benefit from reinvention
his spare time and money designing and building a and rethinking — a lot of this hardware
hasn’t been re-evaluated since the 1960s.
spacesuit. He wants to make one with a price
that’s about 1 percent of a comparable NASA
getup, which costs roughly $70,000.
 
Q  Tell us about your upcoming
balloon flights.
This year, he’ll put his life on the line to
test his design by piloting a hot air balloon
by himself to about 50,000 feet, far above
A  Some of my trained volunteers
and I have done a handful of test
flights, and we’re now pulling together
the altitude of commercial jetliners. the resources — money, an RV, a pickup
Smith’s designs have attracted the truck — to stay in the field for weeks
attention of SpaceX, but the at a time in a “mobile flying camp.”
We’ll be pushing into the 20,000- to
51-year-old isn’t interested in
30,000-foot range this year. There may
profits. He’s committed to be things going on with a spacesuit
making his spacesuit plans that you don’t notice until someone is
freely available online. looking at it from the outside. But I’ll
Discover joined Smith have to go up to the really high altitudes
at his downtown alone because my balloon’s volume
Portland condo- provides enough buoyancy to lift only
me and a lightweight life-support system
and-workshop
through that thin air. I’m going to be
to learn very cautious. You’ve got only about five
more about to 15 seconds of useful consciousness up
what drives there without a spacesuit. I don’t want to
this explorer. get injured or killed.
 KATHERINE KORNEI
 
Q  Why not just test the spacesuit
in a pressure chamber?

A  Space-equivalent conditions,
like those at 50,000 feet, include
a major problem that’s hard to
replicate in pressure chambers: very low
temperatures. Imagine what metals
and adhesives do at minus 100 degrees
Fahrenheit. I want to have my invention
keep me alive in those conditions.

Q  How many other people

do you know of who are taking
this DIY approach to spacewear?

A  Every couple of months, I get an

email from someone who wants to
design a spacesuit. I’m happy to share
a lot of what I know, but after a while,
TRAVIS STANTON

most people start to realize it’s a lot

of work. I don’t know of anyone else
designing a spacesuit privately.

14 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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 Vital
Signs

No Easy
Fix
A 40-year-old woman
transforms her life after
weight-loss surgery, only to
see the pounds return and
her life spiral downward.
BY DOUGLAS G. ADLER

→ Rebecca came to my clinic

complaining of weight gain.
This wasn’t my usual case. As a
gastroenterologist, I typically hear
concerns over weight loss, which
suggests a serious medical condition.
Since adolescence, the 40-year-
old had struggled physically and
emotionally with obesity and eating
issues. About three years before
she landed in my office, she had a
gastric bypass procedure to help
her lose weight. The surgery was an
unqualified success, and Rebecca,
who had weighed 280 pounds, lost
120 pounds in one year and was
maintaining her new weight. She had
a slimmer appearance and a positive
outlook on life.
When I saw her at my clinic,
however, she was depressed and near
panic. She had gained 3 to 5 pounds
each month over the past six months.
The physical transformation she had
made was literally vanishing before her
eyes. She was struggling emotionally
because of it.
SURGERY COMPLICATIONS
Bariatric surgeries, which reduce
how much food someone can eat,
have become more common in recent
years. Three of the procedures are an
adjustable banded gastroplasty, which
constricts the stomach with a flexible
“belt”; sleeve gastrectomy, which cuts
away part of the stomach; and the
popular Roux-en-Y gastric bypass,
which involves tying off of the stomach
to make it smaller.
The surgeries can be quite successful.
Still, the complex procedures typically
involve reconstruction and rerouting of
the stomach and intestines. As a result,
the new connections can leak food or
be too tight and block food passage.
Both can lead to complications,
including life-threatening infections.
Moreover, patients must adopt a
major lifestyle change, committing
to regular exercise and a healthful
diet to maintain a reduced weight.
And the physical changes can set

TOP: WESTEND61/GETTY IMAGES. BOTTOM: ALILA MEDICAL MEDIA/SHUTTERSTOCK

off complicated emotions, which
Adjustable banded gastroplasty Sleeve gastrectomy Roux-en-Y gastric bypass is in part why patients undergo
Stomach Gastric sleeve Bypassed portion psychological screening.
pouch Adjustable band (new stomach) of stomach Rebecca had a Roux-en-Y gastric
bypass; her stomach was tied off to
Stomach create a pouch. Now the de facto
pouch stomach, the pouch was surgically
connected to the middle of her small
intestine. People who have had this
surgery can eat only small meals and
Port placed Removed portion don’t feel as hungry. And since the
of stomach Food
under skin
Digestive food bypasses part of the intestines,
juice fewer nutrients are absorbed. The result
Three common forms of bariatric surgery help obese people lose weight,
though the procedures are not without complications. is dramatic weight loss.

16 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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 Vital
Signs
Sometimes I’m called upon to look
for and treat problems after bariatric
surgeries. Rebecca’s weight gain
suggested that a complication had
developed from her procedure.
I threaded a flexible fiber-optic
camera down through her esophagus
and into her stomach pouch. I
discovered a hole, or fistula, between
her pouch and the rest of her stomach.
Food was leaking through the fistula
into the larger stomach, then passing
through her entire small intestine. She
was able to eat much more than her
pouch would have allowed, and her
body was absorbing everything she ate.
Her weight gain made perfect sense.
The procedure to fix the problem was
performed the next day. Using tools
passed through the endoscope and into
her stomach, I closed Rebecca’s fistula
with metallic clips.
Then we did the leak test. In the
radiology department, she drank a
special liquid visible under X-ray. The
liquid flowed through her pouch and
intestines in real time on the X-ray
screen. There was no leak. I discharged
Rebecca with instructions to follow up
as needed.
FAT REDUX
Two months later, she was back and
more anxious than before.
Rebecca had gained 15 pounds since
I last saw her. Assuming my closure
of her fistula had come undone, I did
another endoscopic investigation. I
found no fistula, so I arranged to have
Rebecca drink the X-ray-visible liquid
to find any other structural problems
that could explain her weight gain.
I found nothing.
A week later on a follow-up visit,
Rebecca was still upset and had gained
3 more pounds.
“Are you sticking to your bariatric
diet?” I asked.
“Yes, for sure,” she told me.
“Are you still exercising like you have
been?”
“I go for a long walk every day.”
18 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
She felt she was
losing control
over her body and
appearance.
After bariatric surgery, patients
need to follow a highly regimented diet
with appropriate vitamin supplements.
Most of them eat significantly less than
people who haven’t had the surgery.
They might consume 800 to 1,500
calories per day, with many averaging
about 1,000 calories a day. (Typical
adult women consume about 2,000
calories a day to maintain weight.)
This enables them to stay at their lower
weight. Patients must avoid high-fat
and calorie-dense foods, which include
most junk foods.
Despite her denials, I remained
concerned that Rebecca was way off
her diet plan. She had told me during
earlier visits that binge eating was one
way she dealt with stress when she was
younger. I instructed her to keep a
food journal and scheduled a follow-up
in a month.
MILKSHAKE RENDEZVOUS
Two weeks later, on a Saturday, I was
at a local shopping mall with family.
We were standing in line at an ice
cream vendor in a food court when I
spotted Rebecca a few people ahead.
I overheard her order a chocolate
milkshake. After paying, she turned
and saw me. I nodded, and she
quickly averted her eyes, visibly upset.
When it was my turn to order, I asked
the counter person how many calories
were in the milkshake. I was stunned:
over 1,300.
On Monday, Rebecca showed up at
my clinic. In tears, she revealed that the
weight gain caused by her fistula had
triggered behaviors from years ago,
before her bypass surgery. She felt she
was losing control over her body and
appearance. Her anxiety drove her to
binge eating.
First, she overate solid food, but
it caused her to vomit because her
stomach pouch couldn’t hold it all.
Then she got creative. Rebecca learned
she could eat high-fat and high-calorie
foods that were either liquid (such as a
milkshake) or that melted in her mouth
(such as cheese puffs). Her stomach
pouch could handle them.
After talking with Rebecca,
checking an online calorie counter and
making several back-of-the-envelope
calculations, I deduced that most days
she was consuming over 3,500 calories.
This clearly explained her weight gain.
I made appointments for
Rebecca with a nutritionist and a
psychotherapist. With time and hard
work, she was able to resume her
healthful post-bariatric diet plan. The
pounds started dropping off.
Bariatric surgeries can truly change
people’s lives. But there is more to
losing weight than going under the
knife. “I’m very disappointed with
myself,” she told me. “I never thought
I would be in this situation again. But
I’m glad I’m back to losing weight.” D
VALERII__DEX/SHUTTERSTOCK
Douglas G. Adler is a professor in the
Department of Internal Medicine at the
University of Utah School of Medicine. The
cases described in Vital Signs are real, but
names and certain details have been changed.
 CHRISTIAN TAYLOR
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 Notes
From
Earth

The Beetle, the Bird

and the Tamarisk Tree Tamarisk
beetle

Ecologists seek balance as one non-native species eradicates another.

BY KATHERINE MAST

→ It’s a hazy Sunday morning in

early July as Levi Jamison pulls
to the side of the road in central New
Mexico. He grabs a camera, clipboard
and thick canvas insect net from the
blue Volkswagen van that is his travel-
ing home and office, and begins to hike
along an irrigation ditch just east of
the Rio Grande. A seemingly unending
thicket of tall, shrubby tamarisk trees
parallels the ditch. He stops just a few
feet in, picks a tree at random, and
sweeps the net over the dusty-green
leaves exactly five times. Then, he peers
into the canvas, quickly counting a
mass of tiny Diorhabda beetles already
crawling up the fabric to escape.
He scribbles the number — “160,”
he says — and the GPS coordinates in
his notes. That’s a drop from the 200
or 300 per net he’s seen here before.
Jamison, a biologist now with the
says, these trees dripped with beetles.
Whether that’s a good thing depends
on whom you ask. These Old World
beetles were imported and released in
the early 2000s as a biological control
for tamarisk, a once-beloved Eurasian
tree that now monopolizes vast
stretches of western waterways.
And the beetles are doing their
jobs, munching away at tamarisk
leaves — their only food — and leaving
swaths of brown, defoliated trees
in their wake. A single feast doesn’t
usually kill the trees; it just weakens
them and temporarily halts their
summerlong seed production. But
repeated attacks year after year have
reduced tamarisk cover by up to 50 to
90 percent in some places. Everyone
was surprised how quickly the beetles
adapted to their new home, and how
quickly they spread.
monster. And by the 1950s, federal and
state agencies had galvanized to bring
the monster down.
But tamarisk isn’t quite the monster
it’s been made out to be. Sure, it’s highly
flammable, and it may salinate the soil
when it drops its salty leaves. But water
hog? Turns out, it uses roughly the
same amount of water as native ripar-
ian trees like willows and cottonwoods.
Since the middle of the 20th century,
humans have dramatically altered west-
ern rivers and made it harder for native
trees to compete. We’ve built dams and
diverted water, and we’ve tamed the
periodic floods that once spilled over
riverbanks to sprout new generations
of willows and cottonwoods. As we
engineered the rivers, tamarisk increas-
ingly had the upper hand.
In response, some native birds — like
the Southwestern willow flycatcher,

Colorado Plateau Research Station
at Northern Arizona University, has A WATER HOG?
long tracked the tamarisk leaf beetle The pretty, wispy tamarisk with its
through the Southwest. One trip, he scalelike leaves and delicate white or
pink flowers is thought
Levi Jamison nets and
counts tamarisk beetles in to have arrived in North
New Mexico. The biologist America as a decorative
is tracking the insects as
they move through the plant sometime in the
Southwest and threaten early 1800s. Toward
habitats of native species,
like the Southwestern
the end of that century,
willow flycatcher (below). federal agencies were
celebrating the success of
the tree — also called salt
cedar — as a riverbank
stabilizer that could
tolerate drought.
In 1930, it was a cure-all
for erosion concerns in the
West. Before long, it was
vilified as a water-hogging
FROM TOP: JAMES TRACY/TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY/USGS; KATHERINE MAST; RICK AND NORA BOWERS/KAC PRODUCTIONS
which loves dense shrubs along desert
waterways — turned to tamarisk trees
to make their nests.
And for vast swaths of western rivers,
tamarisks are now the only tree. They
are the third most prevalent riparian
tree in the West and can grow as a
monoculture. And that decreases
biodiversity of other plants, wildlife
and even fungi. “What’s problematic
is that when it grows aggressively, it
dramatically changes the landscape in
ways that negatively affect native fauna
and flora,” says University of Denver
ecologist Anna Sher, who studies
tamarisk and riparian restoration.
CREEPING IN ON FLYCATCHERS
Controlling tamarisk is a herculean
task. Bulldozing just creates a Hydra,

20 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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 Notes
From
Earth

do it again somewhere else,”

with multiple shoots resprouting
from the roots left behind. Tamarisk
survives, and even thrives, in fire.
Manual removal with chain saws
and local herbicide application is
prohibitively labor-intensive for
landscape-scale control, and aerial
herbicide sprays are expensive and kill
desired vegetation.
A biological control agent — four
species of Diorhabda beetles in this case
— offers another tool.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture
began searching for a tamarisk biocon-
trol in the mid-1980s. By 2001, they’d
launched the tamarisk beetle program,
Jamison says. A month later,
those eggs hatch into larvae,
which munch on the leaves.
When they pupate into adults,
they fly off to find fresh,
green tamarisk.
Jamison finishes his sweep
of the roadside site, then
heads back to his van with
a few beetles he’ll keep as
Tamarisk beetles feast
on a young tree (above). samples for genetic analysis.
The bugs kill these plants Sitting on the cooler that
(left) by feeding on the
same ones year after serves as his workbench, food
year, leaving many dead refrigerator and beetle storage,
tamarisk trees along the
Colorado River and other he fills a glass vial with ethanol
western waterways. to preserve the insects. “Right
now, there are two species on
like all biocontrols, the insect has abso- the Rio Grande that look identical,” he
lutely no respect for state boundaries.” says. One, Diorhabda elongate, which
hails from central Asia, has been mov-
RUSH HOUR ing south from Colorado. The other,
The federal government has stopped Diorhabda sublineata, from Tunisia,
supporting the beetle program, but has been working its way north. Just
the beetles continue to adapt to their south of here, near Bosque del Apache
North American home. They’ve National Wildlife Refuge, he expected
evolved to have life cycles better suited to find the two species overlapping for
to lower latitudes, and they’re still the first time in the New World.
expanding into new watersheds. In Tamarisk and the tamarisk beetle are
some places, like central New Mexico, now permanent features of our western
different Diorhabda species overlapped waterways, says Ben Bloodworth,
for the first time this summer. who coordinates beetle-monitoring
As Jamison peers into his insect net, programs across the western U.S. and
he’s not worried about getting an exact Mexico for the nonprofit Tamarisk

releasing the insects at 10 different sites
with the caveat that no releases would
be permitted within 200 miles of a
known flycatcher nest.
But by 2008, after an unsanctioned
beetle release in southern Utah,
Diorhabda carinulata reached the Virgin
River: flycatcher habitat. Ecologists
worried the beetles would destroy the
tamarisks that this unique bird had
come to rely on for nesting. And in
2010, the USDA ended the program.
“Since 2010, it’s been impossible to
transport them across state lines,” says
Dan Bean, an insect physiologist who’s
worked on the beetle release program
since it began and is now director of
Colorado’s Palisade Insectary. “But
count. “I don’t care how many beetles
are on this tree versus that tree,” he
says. “I just want to know if there are
none, a few, or a ton of them, and the
impact they’re having.” He wants to
know if there are enough here to eat all
the leaves on the trees, and there are.
The beetles work in big, migrating
groups and produce multiple genera-
tions in a season. “Right about five
o’clock in the afternoon — we call it
the rush hour — the beetles climb to
the top of the trees and release a sex
pheromone that travels on the wind.
You get all these beetles following the
smell, and they congregate and have
a big party and have a ton of sex and
lay eggs all over the tree, and then go
LEFT: COURTESY OF THE TAMARISK COALITION. RIGHT: DAN BEAN/COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Coalition. There was never an expecta-
tion that the tree would be eradicated,
he says. Rather, the goal is balance —
revegetating the riversides with native
riparian willows and cottonwoods
or, if current hydrology and a chang-
ing climate just won’t support those
flood-adapted plants, perhaps relying
on native grasses and shrubs.
“The name of the game now is
restoration,” says Jamison. “Let’s get
these ecosystems to where the balance
is tipped toward the natives doing
really well and non-natives not taking
over.” D
Katherine Mast is a science writer in Santa Fe,
New Mexico.

22 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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 The
Secret History
of the

Vikings
New DNA-driven research reveals
untold stories — and stirs controversy.
BY GEMMA TARLACH
ILLUSTRATION BY SHANE REBENSCHIED

M
ore than a thousand years ago,
the Vikings arrived on the world
stage as swiftly as their longships
cut through the waves. They raided and
traded, conquered and colonized. They left
their mark on four continents — not just at
archaeological sites, but also in the flora and
fauna, the languages and local populations.
The Viking Age did not last long — it’s
generally defined as beginning in the late
eighth century and ending in most areas by
the early 12th century — but the explorers
still capture our imagination today.

March 2018 DISCOVER 25

 “The Vikings epitomized the freedom and
strength we like in our heroes,” says Judith Jesch,
professor of Viking studies at the University of
Nottingham. “They were enterprising and bold;
they were certainly violent, but so was everyone
else at the time — and still are.”
But despite their well-documented spirit
of adventure, warrior culture and innovative
shipbuilding, the Vikings still have their secrets.
Questions remain about how they lived, where
they traveled and who they really were.
Now, like ship captains setting sail to untouched
shores, scientists are exploring a new age of Viking
research. On this adventure, DNA is their map.
Genetic studies have made stunning claims
recently, ranging from who’s buried in a famous
Viking grave to just how far across the Atlantic
Ocean the Vikings may have traveled. Even
more research is underway, though results may
disappoint anyone expecting tidy answers.
“Viking is not a genetic term,” says University
of Bergen geneticist Ellen Røyrvik, who was part
of a landmark 2015 genetic study of populations
in the British Isles. “It’s a cultural and historical
label we’ve given them.”
There was also no single Viking identity. Viking
Age populations from Denmark, Norway and
Sweden each had different genetic signatures. As
Vikings settled Iceland, or mixed with populations
in Ireland, the British Isles and beyond, those
genetic patterns evolved. Untangling the different
threads can be difficult and open to numerous
interpretations.

“DNA can give you a

picture of more average
people. . . . it can provide
a real cross section
of a population,” says
A geneticist. “but you
won’t get as much as
people want from DNA.”

DNA can, however, give us details we would

otherwise never learn. For example, in contrast
to well-known boat burials, in which high-status
individuals were laid to rest in a hull with lavish
grave goods, animals and even slaves, “DNA can
give you a picture of more average people, who
wouldn’t have been able to afford the richest
burials,” says Røyrvik. “It can provide a real cross
section of a population.
JAY SMITH

“But you won’t get as much as people want

from DNA,” she cautions. “All it does is give you

someone’s biological identity.” And even that can
raise more questions than it answers.
Grave Concerns
Last September, researchers publishing a study in
the American Journal of Physical Anthropology
thought they were putting to rest a decades-old
question about the individual buried in one of the
FROM TOP: ILLUSTRATION BY ÞÓRHALLUR ÞRÁINSSON (© NEIL PRICE); EVALD HANSEN/STOLPE 1889; UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN; UPPSALA UNIVERSITY
most famous Viking Age graves. They had no idea
that, on the contrary, they were reigniting a debate
that quickly grew to a firestorm.
The grave at the heart of the controversy is
known academically as Bj 581. It’s in Birka, one
of Sweden’s greatest Viking Age archaeological
sites: In addition to being a trading center, the
town saw more than 3,000 burials. Bj 581 in
particular stands out. Unearthed in the late 19th
century, the grave held remains of a single human,
two horses, a mini-arsenal of weaponry and other
warrior goods.
The original excavators assumed that the
individual who’d been buried armed to the teeth
was a man. In the 1970s, however, archaeologists
re-examining the remains noted that certain
anatomical features, including the shape of the
pelvis, suggested the skeleton belonged to a woman.
Such osteological analysis is not always conclusive,
and the claim stirred up controversy over whether
the Viking warrior ranks included women.
To resolve the matter, Charlotte Hedenstierna-
Jonson, an archaeologist now at Uppsala
University, and colleagues analyzed ancient DNA
from Bj 581’s remains. The results, published in the
A 19th-century
illustration
(above) and
2017 paper, were conclusive: Bj 581 was female. a 21st-century
In addition to determining her sex, however, rendering (inset)
the study went a step further — and a step too depict Bj 581,
a Viking Age
far, say critics, who spoke out via online forums warrior grave in
and social media, often anonymously. Many took Birka, Sweden.
The individual,
exception with the study’s published title: “A confirmed in
female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics.” 2017 as female,
was buried
All genomics had really confirmed, charged with weaponry
skeptics, was that Bj 581 was female — and, and horses.
some added, one buried without physiological
hints of being a warrior, such as healed battle
wounds or the thickening of bone associated with
intense physical activity, like years of swinging
a sword or ax.
Uppsala University archaeologist Neil Price, a
co-author of the study, reacted to the critics with
a mix of irritation and disbelief. “This particular
grave has long been held up as the type-example Ellen Røyrvik
of a high-status male warrior,” Price noted via
email. “So the fact that the body is actually
female has obvious implications, not least in
undermining assumptions.”
Price added: “One of the most important
qualities of a good researcher is the willingness
to be wrong, but critique has to be constructive
and it has to be informed, which was unfortunately
not the case with much of what was posted on Charlotte
social media.” Hedenstierna-Jonson
One of the critics to weigh in without
anonymity was the University of Nottingham’s
Jesch, who took exception to the results in part
because some of her previous research was cited
— and, she says, misrepresented — in the paper.
March 2018 DISCOVER 27
 Scandinavian
Sojourns
Viking influence expanded
as traders and raiders typically
followed coasts and riverways
across much of Europe and beyond.
Eighth century
Ninth century
10th century
11th century
Subject to frequent
Viking raids
“Because I deal with ‘just’ words and sometimes
pictures, scientists don’t think the work is as
rigorous as theirs,” says Jesch, adding that, as
someone who studies languages and literature,
she follows scientists’ work but doesn’t count
herself among them.
“These scientific advances are very exciting,”
she says, “and shed light on the past, but you
are doing historical inquiry; you need to include
archaeology and the study of language and texts.
The geneticists wouldn’t even be asking these
questions if archaeologists and historians hadn’t
already considered them.”
The continuing controversy over Bj 581
illustrates a larger issue for DNA-driven research:
how to resolve contradictions between results
of genomic research and evidence from more
traditional disciplines.
Danelaw(lessness)
Beginning in the ninth century and continuing for
much of the Viking Age, a large swath of what’s
now England was under the Danelaw: the rule
of the Danes, specifically Danish Vikings. Even
28 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
today, Colby, Skeyton and dozens of other English
villages have place names derived from Old Norse.
In 2015 in Nature, researchers published results
from the People of the British Isles (PoBI) project,
which sought to map the modern population’s
genetic makeup in unprecedented fine scale. The
project had collected genetic samples from more
than 2,000 people living in the same rural areas
that their grandparents had called home. The idea
was to collect DNA from geographically stable
populations to find clusters of genetic similarities
that predated the post-Industrial Revolution world
of heightened mobility. And the team did find 17
of these clusters.
Most of the paper’s conclusions were not
surprising, but one became a lightning rod:
There was no obvious genetic evidence of Danish
occupation, suggesting “relatively limited” Danish
Viking influence. For many archaeologists and
historians, the finding seemed to flout their
extensive research documenting a substantial and
long-term Danish Viking presence, in the Danelaw
JAY SMITH
area and beyond.
In late 2016, University of Bergen geneticist
 Røyrvik, one of the authors of the 2015 Nature
study, took the unusual step of publishing a different
interpretation of her own paper. “When you write
a paper with 15 different people, not everyone’s
perspective can be included,” Røyrvik says.
The response, published in Antiquity and
co-authored with Oxford University archaeologist
Jane Kershaw, offered an “alternate interpretation”
of the PoBI data regarding Danish Vikings — one
that integrated archaeological evidence as well
as historical and linguistic clues. For example,
Kershaw and Røyrvik noted the scores of Viking
Age brooches unearthed in rural England. These
brooches were more than family heirlooms or
status-associated jewelry: They were basic wardrobe
necessities, worn daily to keep a woman’s outer,
apron-like dress from falling off. The number of
brooches found points to whole families, not just an
occupying force, present across the area.
Røyrvik stresses that she stands by the bulk of
the Nature paper. “On the basis of one sentence
being incorrect, it doesn’t mean the entire paper
is incorrect,” she says. The story behind the 2015
paper’s conclusions about Danish influence
provides a cautionary tale of how DNA-based
studies of historical populations can go awry.
The trouble began when researchers sought
non-British populations to compare with their
samples. “We collected a lot of very well-sourced
samples from British people,” Røyrvik says. “Quite
late in the day, the comparison with European
populations was done. We tried to get funding but
the EU didn’t go for it.”
Without the European Union’s financial support,
the team pulled together data from previous studies,
some of them with a very different focus. Danish
genetic signatures, for example, came from the
DNA of multiple sclerosis patients at a Copenhagen
hospital who had participated in an earlier MS
study. There was no genetic material from a control
FROM TOP: DE AGOSTINI/C. BALOSSINI/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; JAY SMITH; COURTESY JEREMY SEARLE
population of healthy Danes, nor was there any
information about the patients’ hometowns.
“It wasn’t ideal. It was the endpoint of a lot of
different processes,” Røyrvik says.
The lack of carefully sourced modern Danish
DNA meant that the Danish genetic signature was
not as well-defined as it would have been had the
researchers sampled a population in Denmark with
the same methodology they used for participants
in Britain. It may seem like splitting hairs, but
without a clear Danish signal, it was much harder
to separate Danish Viking patterns from those of
another northern European population present
in Britain: Just a few hundred years before the
Vikings, Anglo-Saxons from northern Germany
had landed in England, and many had settled.
“There is an overlap of geography, and they’re
also very close temporally,” Røyrvik says
of the two northern European groups.
She believes that genetic signatures
interpreted as Anglo-Saxon in the Nature
paper may have been at least partly from
Danish Vikings.
“With any given scientific paper, you
hope the data is correct, and ours was
excellent. You hope the analysis of the
data is correct, and I believe ours was. The
interpretation is the issue,” Røyrvik says. Viking women
often wore
The Littlest Vikings ornate brooches
as part of
While unraveling the genomes of the Vikings and their everyday
clothing; scores
their descendants makes headlines, a humbler of the brooches
source of DNA is providing some of the most have been found
in England.
intriguing clues to their lost history. Just ask
Cornell University’s Jeremy Searle, an evolutionary
biologist whose team uses small mammals —
particularly mice — to track historical human
movement.
Because it’s especially difficult to obtain
ancient mouse DNA — genetic matter in the
small bones degrades faster than in that of
larger animals, and there’s often not enough left
to sample — Searle and his team compare the
DNA from modern, geographically diverse mice.
Much of their work focuses on the house mouse Jeremy Searle
(Mus musculus), which evolved to be commensal
with humans: The mice are not domesticated like
dogs or sheep, but they are dependent on living in
and around a human settlement.
Searle’s Viking research began with a startling
discovery more than a decade ago, while helping a
student analyze mouse DNA from the Portuguese
island of Madeira, more than 400 miles off the
coast of Morocco. Searle was initially comparing
the genetic signatures of the Madeira sample
with other mouse DNA by hand, a slow and
March 2018 DISCOVER 29
 painstaking process that has since been largely
replaced by computer programs.
“I expected [the Madeira mouse DNA] would
match with sequences from Portugal — Madeira
was discovered by the Portuguese, colonized by
the Portuguese, and the bulk of movement via
ports was with Portugal,” says Searle. “When
I compared the sequences by eye, they didn’t
link up with Iberia at all, but were identical to
northern Europe.”
Further analysis, including ancient DNA
sequencing published by a second team in 2014,
confirmed a strong link in the genetic signatures of
Madeira mice with mice that lived among Danish
Viking Age populations. Although there is no
archaeological or historical record of the Vikings
landing on Madeira, Searle believes one of their
ships may have been blown off course, ending up
“We can sequence DNA,
but without knowing
the stories, the context,
it’s meaningless,” says an
evolutionary biologist.
on the remote Atlantic island. The Vikings’ stay on
the island was apparently brief, just long enough
for a few stowaway rodents to take some shore
leave that ended up being permanent.
Similar research since has found what may be
the genetic signatures of Norwegian Viking Age
mice in modern populations on the Azores, an
island chain more than 900 miles west of Portugal.
Mice, says Searle, make particularly good
30 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
surrogates, or bioproxies, for human movement.
“Apart from humans and some domestics that
humans brought with them, mice are the most
globally distributed mammals,” he says. “They
reproduce quickly and can get onto vehicles and
boats. And when you’re trying to understand
human history and movement, you’re talking
about boats and caravans.”
Despite the occasional unintentional global
hitchhiking, mice are relative homebodies. They
generally stay within a territory of a few hundred
feet, so they’re unlikely to colonize new areas
unless human movement takes them there.
“Mice were accidentally dropped, left like a
pottery shard,” says Searle. “But unlike a pottery
shard, these living artifacts have DNA, which is
an extraordinary encyclopedia of information that
you can now use in a very sophisticated way.”
And using mice as bioproxies can tell us not only
where the Vikings traveled, but also how many of
them occupied a place. Says Searle: “Where you have
more people, you’re likely going to have more mice.”
The Viking Cods
University of Oslo evolutionary biologist Sanne
Boessenkool and her botanist colleague Anneleen
Kool are three years into exploring a question that
flips Searle’s research on its head.
“We’re not using plants and animals to figure
out where the Vikings went,” says Boessenkool.
“We’re using where the Vikings went to find out
what they did with the plants and animals.”
At the outset of their multiyear project, Kool
and Boessenkool planned to base their research
exclusively on ancient flora and fauna DNA
samples from museum collections and some fresh
excavations. But all ancient DNA is prone to
degradation and contamination from both microbes
in the environment and modern human handling —
and ancient plant DNA is even more fragile.
“We wondered, are we going to get any DNA?”
recalls Boessenkool. “The answer was no.”
Instead of abandoning the Viking flora project
altogether, Kool is now working with linguists
to use plant names as a kind of substitute for
DNA to trace the spread of their use, and how
that use evolved.
Their work on ancient DNA from Viking Age
horses is more promising: Kool and Boessenkool
have collected about 100 samples, in different
states of preservation, from which they hope to
build a detailed picture of how equine populations
moved and changed.
“We have no idea what story will be told, but
we’re going to have a good data set to tell it with,”
JAY SMITH
says Boessenkool.
University of Oslo biologist Bastiaan Star

relied on ancient DNA from a different animal
to chart Viking ingenuity in a 2017 PNAS study.
Through genetic material preserved in fish bones
from archaeological sites, Star and colleagues
uncovered the apparent origin of a trade route
that continues today.
The team’s research showed that Vikings
initially caught cod in the arctic waters off
Norway’s Lofoten Islands, whose climate allows
for preservation through air drying, rather than
more expensive salting. After preservation, the
fish were then shipped south for consumption in
Germany and elsewhere.
“The Vikings were very smart about their
surroundings,” says Star. “They went to the
Lofotens because they knew there was a massive
LEFT: DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY/GRANGER, NYC. RIGHT: OMAR MARQUES/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
cod spawn and they could dry the fish without salt,
making it an extremely cheap protein. They used
their environment to its maximum potential.”
Onward!
Aside from the occasional academic skirmish
and setbacks due to DNA degradation, genomic-
driven studies of the Viking Age are gathering
momentum and, promisingly, are including more
input from other disciplines.
“We can sequence DNA, but without knowing
the stories, the context, it’s meaningless,” says
Boessenkool. She notes that, despite DNA’s popular
image of objective precision, the data often requires
interpretation, which is based on a researcher’s
assumptions. “Sometimes the [genetic] signals are
very clear, but sometimes they’re not.”
She adds: “The geneticists publish the DNA
data, but too often they don’t actually listen to what
The Vikings
left behind
the archaeologists are saying. We’re very aware of many burial
sites (left)
that, and trying not to be that way. But also, we’re and artifacts,
biologists. We’re from different worlds [than the such as the
magnificent
archaeologists] and speak a different language.” Oseberg ship
The current body of DNA-derived research on (right), now
the Vikings is just the tip of the spear. Uppsala on display in
Oslo. But the
archaeologist Price is two years into a decade-long, biggest clues
$6 million project to reveal the economic, social and to who they
were may be
environmental factors that led to the Viking Age. found in their
Paleogeneticist Eske Willerslev, who gained DNA. Multiple
high-profile
fame for using ancient DNA to revise our projects are
understanding of First Americans, is working on underway
a separate project involving genetic material from to uncover
more of the
the Viking Age. Scandinavian
Willerslev’s team declined to comment ahead adventurers’
genetic saga.
of any published work, but among the expected
early results: a DNA-based study of multiple men
found buried in two Scandinavian boats on the
Estonian coast. The boats, excavated between
2008 and 2012, have been dated to the mid-eighth
century and are from the Late Vendel Period, the
Viking Age precursor.
Excavation head and Tallinn University
archaeologist Jüri Peets hopes DNA will determine
kinship between the men, which could provide
another clue to how the Viking Age evolved.
As Uppsala University’s Hedenstierna-Jonson,
lead author of the controversial Bj 581 study,
explains, “We need as many pieces as we can get
to get closer to the actual truth, although I don’t
believe we will ever be able to know everything.
After all, it’s all about people and they were — and
are — wonderfully complex and unpredictable.” D
Gemma Tarlach is senior editor at Discover.
March 2018 DISCOVER 31
32 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Taking
T k ga
Dim View
V

Astronomers learned to see

beyond the Milky Way’s glare into
a hidden realm of faint galaxies.
BY ADAM HADHAZY
ILLUSTRATION BY ROEN KELLY
 O
ne winter night in 1969, at an
observatory atop Kitt Peak in
Arizona, Michael Disney had
a funny thought. As he peered
into a huge, superluminous
galaxy, he wondered: What
if an alien astronomer there
were staring right back? At the
eyepiece of its own telescope,
the intelligent extraterrestrial might likewise be
ogling Disney’s smaller, fainter home galaxy, the
Milky Way.
Then another thought cut through the whimsy.
The young Welsh astronomer realized the alien had
no chance of seeing the Milky Way, let alone the
universe’s oodles of dimmer galaxies. Overwhelmed
by the glare of all the stars stuffed into its resident
galaxy, the alien would unknowingly be blinded to
most of the cosmos.
Disney wondered if we might be similarly deceived,
awash in the inescapable glow of our own surroundings.
“It occurred to me there could be a whole universe up
there of hidden galaxies, just a little dimmer than those
we can detect from Earth,” says Disney, an emeritus
professor at Cardiff University in Wales.
“We truly are imprisoned in our lighted
cell,” says Michael Disney. “It’s like you’re
in the middle of a lighted room at night
and you look out the window.” Your room’s
light drowns out anything less bright.
Since that revelation in the desert nearly a half-
century ago, Disney, now 80, has searched for a
shadow galactic realm. His hunch gained momentum
in the 1980s and 1990s, but at the turn of the century,
the trail ran cold. Disheartened and defeated, Disney
relinquished the hunt.
But recently, serendipitous sightings and new
technology have reinvigorated the concept of a
hidden cosmos. “Most of the universe is likely
undiscovered,” says Greg Bothun, an astrophysicist at
the University of Oregon who has long studied faint
galaxies. The emerging population of dim galaxies
likely outnumbers, and is strikingly different from, the
34 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
typical bright galaxies we know and love, challenging
our conventional theories of galaxy formation and
evolution. Dim galaxies may also solve an old mystery
about missing matter in the universe.
By these reckonings, hidden galaxies are the cosmic
norm, not our garish Milky Way and its ilk. Long
overlooked, the dominion of dim galaxies may finally
be getting its due.
BLINDED BY THE LIGHT
Our universe is suffused with luminous galaxies. We
can see the nearest few of these great collections of
stars, gas (mostly hydrogen) and dust with our eyes
from Earth. Telescope surveys suggest as many as
2 trillion are out there, albeit mostly of a small, faint,
“dwarf ” variety. Tidily, these galactic hordes come in
stereotypical shapes and sizes, such as large spirals like
the Milky Way, even bigger football-shaped ellipticals
and those dime-a-dozen dwarf galaxies. They follow
typical life cycles, making abundant stars in their
youths and slowing down as they age.
For all we’ve learned about galaxies and the
wider cosmos, though, astronomers have struggled
with human limitations as heavenly observers. Our
instruments can only readily perceive objects whose
brightness contrasts enough with the glow of the night
sky. For sure, night looks dark — around 50 million
times darker than day — but that’s still just relatively
dark. “We live right next to this bloody luminous star
called the sun,” says Disney. “That’s always going to
make it difficult for us to find this hidden universe.”
The sun’s brilliance affects astronomical viewing
in two roughly equal ways. At night, an “airglow”
lingers in our atmosphere as molecules radiate away
the heat they soaked up during the day. To avoid
airglow, we can send instruments into orbit, like the
Hubble Space Telescope (for which Disney designed
instruments). But these spacecraft still must squint
through the second of the sun’s impacts, its bright
illumination of icy and dusty particles around
it, known as the zodiacal light. Add this to the
copious light generated by all the other stars in our
galaxy, and you get quite a glare. This natural “light
pollution” extends to the entire electromagnetic
spectrum, beyond visible light.
“We truly are imprisoned in our lighted cell,” says
Disney. “It’s like you’re in the middle of a lighted room
at night and you look out the window.” Your room’s
light drowns out anything less bright. In 1976, seven
years after his experience in Arizona, Disney wrote
in a paper in Nature that our catalogs of galaxies
are probably an unrepresentative subset of the true
galactic population. A great number of dimmer and
potentially sizable galaxies likely awaited discovery,
 The spiral galaxy M101 takes center stage in this photo from the Dragonfly telescope, but astronomers are also interested
in the fainter galaxies lurking in the background.
he proposed. Yet with little in the way of supporting
data, the prophecy gained little traction.
That changed a decade later, when astronomers
stumbled upon a galaxy unlike anything they’d ever seen.
A GIANT GALACTIC GHOST
ROBERTO ABRAHAM
Intrigued by faint blurs on old photographic plates of
the Virgo galaxy cluster, a nearby region teeming with
galaxies, Oregon’s Bothun and colleagues wondered if
the apparitions might be smallish galaxies with “low
surface brightness” — astronomer-speak for emitting
less light per unit area than typical galaxies.
Using Puerto Rico’s Arecibo radio telescope in
1986 to detect galactic hydrogen gas clouds, Bothun
and colleagues uncovered a vast game changer of a
galaxy a billion light-years away. Dubbed Malin 1,
it’s been heavily studied ever since, and it remains the
largest known spiral galaxy, seven times wider than
March 2018 DISCOVER 35

Despite being
the largest
known the Milky Way with 50 times its mass. Yet, bizarrely,
spiral galaxy, the galactic titan is rendered profoundly dim by its
Malin 1 is
so dim and wispy spiral arms, spaced 10 times farther apart than
its arms so in conventional spiral galaxies.
faint that
it remained
“It’s impossible to understand how that object
undetected exists,” says Bothun. “All our models do not produce
until the objects anywhere near Malin 1.” The dim giant proved
1980s.
there might be more to the universe’s galaxies than
anyone suspected.
FOUND AND LOST
Galvanized by the discovery of Malin 1, astronomers
pored over the previous decades’ photographic
plates for hints of unnoticed, low-surface-brightness
galaxies. (In fact, they still do — there are a lot of
plates.) Although less grand than Malin 1, thousands
more materialized throughout the 1990s.
Further aiding in the search were charge-coupled
devices (CCDs), a far more light-sensitive imaging
technology that took off in the 1980s and dominates
astronomy today. “Discovering low-surface-brightness
galaxies was a thrilling thing to do,” says Karen
O’Neil, then a student of Bothun’s and now the
director of Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia.
“It’s always fun to go out and look for the unknown.”
Though intriguing, next to the billions of known
luminous galaxies, these hundreds of dim ones
still didn’t amount to a hill of beans, cosmically
speaking. The phantom universe, so far, was just a
phantom niche.
But ironically, it was work by Disney himself
that ended up slamming the door shut on the field.
He helped install a powerful receiver at the Parkes
36 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
Observatory radio dish in Australia in 1997, hoping
to wrangle many Malin 1-esque galaxies and finally
blow the lid off the dim universe. In data collected
over several years, more than 4,000 concentrations of
hydrogen gas turned up — promising candidates as
low-surface-brightness galaxies.
By 2005, however, optical telescope follow-ups
on these sources suggested they were almost all just
hydrogen clouds in normal galaxies. “Not one looked
to be a hidden galaxy,” says Disney. The discovery was
a crushing result, seeming to prove beyond doubt that
Malin 1 and its ilk were just bizarre freaks, not part of
a larger phantom universe.
“That killed the subject off,” says Disney. “Even
I gave up.”
. . . AND FOUND AGAIN?
But the subject did not give up on him, for other
skygazers thought Disney was on to something.
At a 2009 conference in the Caucasus region, Disney
met Ukrainian astronomer Valentina Karachentseva,
who suggested some of those thousands of hydrogen
clouds in the Parkes survey were indeed galaxies. Over
her career, through keen eyesight alone, Karachentseva
has identified numerous dim galaxies on photographic
plates. She told Disney she’d spotted standalone
galaxy-like objects right where the Parkes survey had
found gas clouds identified as merely extended parts
of nearby bright galaxies.
Thunderstruck, Disney returned to Wales and tried
something new. He went over calculations affirming
just how clustered the universe’s galaxies are. They’re
fundamentally social creatures, piling up practically
on top of each other, leaving immense, desolate
voids between clusters. Could his unseen galaxies
be hidden among these huddled galactic herds, with
their separate gas clouds mistaken as belonging to the
closest, resplendent galactic neighbor?
Disney came to realize that the Parkes observations
lacked the resolution, the fineness of detail, to make
out dim galaxies tightly bunched with luminous
galaxies. He tried to convince study colleagues and an
astronomical journal of the possible error, but none
was receptive. “I was a bit of a figure crying in the THIS PAGE: BOISSIER/A&A/ESO/CFHT. OPPOSITE: P. VAN DOKKUM/YALE UNIVERSITY (2)
darkness,” says Disney, “literally.”
He eventually found a way to settle the matter. In
early 2015 Disney was awarded time on the upgraded,
exquisitely sensitive Karl G. Jansky Very Large
Array (VLA) of radio dishes in New Mexico. He
rescanned a sample of 19 hydrogen clouds from the
4,000 candidates in the Parkes survey. Fourteen of
the clouds, it turned out, had no visible counterpart
galaxy in the new data.
“Bingo,” says Disney. Straightaway, it was clear that
the gas cloud radio wave sources shouldn’t have been
lumped together with nearby, optically bright galaxies.
He was onto something.
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
Disney didn’t know what these clandestine objects
might be like, and he immediately wanted to follow up
with new observations, which are now taking place. In
late 2016, using the William Herschel Telescope in the
Canary Islands, he spied hints of a dozen newfound,
unmistakable dim galaxies.
These objects will increasingly have ample new
company, it seems. In a 2015 study, Pieter van Dokkum
of Yale University and colleagues announced they
had unearthed 47 never-before-seen, Milky Way-sized
yet extremely diffuse (spread out, so relatively dim)
galaxies in the Coma Cluster of galaxies, among the
most studied in astronomy. “This was a complete
surprise,” says van Dokkum.
It was not some mammoth new telescope that sussed
out these faint objects. The ever-larger telescopes
the astronomical community usually clamors for
are actually bad at revealing low-surface-brightness
objects. These telescopes typically use mirrors, which
capture more random, unwanted light, burying any
faintly emitting objects. Instead, van Dokkum found
his galaxies by grouping eight 400-millimeter lenses
into a contraption resembling an insect’s compound
eye. Indeed, the project’s name, Dragonfly, comes from
van Dokkum’s hobby of taking pictures of the insect.

The novel Dragonfly telescope in New Mexico has helped researchers find dozens of previously
unknown ultra-diffuse galaxies. Its current setup groups 24 large camera lenses in a cluster
resembling a dragonfly eye. The lenses are actually commercially available 400mm telephoto lenses.
 Dragonfly’s multiple lenses serve as checks on one
another for stray light, and their internal surfaces
are treated with an anti-reflective coating. The lenses
are hooked up to CCDs, which van Dokkum says
are finally getting good enough to distinguish the
universe’s mostly ghostly galaxies. “Even now,” he
says, “we’re only scratching the surface.”
Traditional mirrored telescopes can still help.
Inspired by van Dokkum’s find, Stony Brook
University’s Jin Koda and colleagues looked through
recent Coma Cluster observations from the 8.2-meter
Subaru telescope in Hawaii. The researchers found
854 ultra-diffuse galaxies, with over 300 stretching
to the Milky Way’s size. This boatload had gone
unnoticed because astronomers previously assumed
luminous traces of the galaxies in Coma indicated
small, insignificant bodies, and not just the most
visible central regions of otherwise very dim objects
— the tips of galactic icebergs, as it were.

GRASPING IN THE DARK

The newfound dim galaxies in Coma are Dragonfly CFHT Telescope
strange beasts, and they hark back to
some of the faint galaxies first uncovered
in the late 1980s. Almost entirely gasless,
round and thinly stocked with old red
stars, they have apparently survived
for eons in a dense environment of
visible galaxies. Those comparatively
gas- and mass-rich conspicuous
galaxies and their environs should have
gravitationally pulled the inconspicuous
galaxies to shreds by now — why they
haven’t is a mystery.
Astronomers also are not sure how
the universe made these sorts of objects
in the first place. “That’s why this field
is so exciting at this moment,” says
Koda. “We don’t really know what these Red squares mark the location of 47
dim galaxies in the Coma Cluster.
galaxies are.” They might represent The inset shows Dragonfly’s clear
a population of “failed” galaxies. detection of the objects (left column)
and their confirmation as diffuse
Although expansive, such failure-to- objects as imaged by the much larger
launch galaxies might have started out Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.
with insufficient amounts of normal
matter, or somehow lost it, stifling the
formation of new stars. either way, the universe’s faint galaxies don’t mesh
Assuming that’s the case, the Coma Cluster’s with conventional theory.
population of diffuse galaxies might be the opposite Dim galaxies also could force some rethinking
of galaxies like Malin 1. Those in the latter’s class of about large-scale cosmic structure and its relation to
low-surface-brightness galaxies are oddly bluish in dark matter. First theorized in the 1930s, dark matter
color, thanks to the presence of newly made stars that does not emit any light, betraying its existence solely
are azure in color. These galaxies could be cosmic through gravity. Its true identity remains a mystery,
late bloomers, a kind of slowly evolving galaxy just but astronomers know it outnumbers regular matter
now producing plentiful stars, billions of years after 5 to 1 and acts as gravitational glue, holding galaxies
the Milky Way and others went through their peak together. According to recent studies, dim galaxies
periods of star-making. Arrested development, like like those strangely hardy ones in Coma look to be
in Coma, or delayed development à la Malin 1 — almost entirely made of the stuff. Astronomers suspect

38 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM

galaxies began as accumulations of dark matter in the
early universe that acted as seedbeds for normal matter.
As the universe expanded, those dark matter seeds
P. VAN DOKKUM ET AL./ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS/VOL. 798, NO. 2/JANUARY 7 2015 (2)
spread out into a “cosmic web,” linking galaxy clusters
at the densest points with thin filaments of dark
matter. If we have only seen the brightest galaxies
in the universe, we don’t have the full picture about
how matter and dark matter are truly distributed.
“Low-surface-brightness galaxies are one of the keys
to figuring out what the clumpiness of the cosmic
web looks like,” says NRAO’s O’Neil. “They’ll help
us understand how the universe really did grow to
be what it is.”
Finally, by allowing for a more proper accounting of
the matter content of the universe, dim galaxies could
also help solve the long-standing “missing baryon
problem.” Although few cosmologists seriously doubt
that normal matter, made of particles called baryons,
makes up only about 5 percent of the universe’s total
mass-energy budget, the observable matter we know
of is still only about half what we’d expect. “There
could be a hell of a lot of stuff missing,” says Disney,
“and it could be in the form of hidden galaxies.”
A SCANNER DARKLY
Increasingly, astronomers are, in a sense, seeing
the dark. In July 2016, a team reported finding a
humongous low-surface-brightness spiral galaxy, the
first unearthed to rival Malin 1’s size. Van Dokkum,
meanwhile, is expanding the Dragonfly Telephoto
Array to dig up more secretive galaxies. Stony Brook’s
Koda is optimistic. “There will be a lot of discoveries
in the low-surface-brightness universe,” he says,
“because many people are now looking into it and
trying to develop new techniques to find what’s there.”
Arrested development, like in Coma,
or delayed development à la Malin 1 —
either way, the universe’s faint galaxies
don’t mesh with conventional theory.
Disney, for one, thinks a huge observing campaign
with the upgraded VLA in New Mexico could finally
give us a handle on the true population of invisible
galaxies. Some dark galaxies, like those in the Coma
cluster but with even less hydrogen, will be tougher
to bring into the fold. While Bothun is skeptical
that human technology could ever detect the darkest
of galaxies, he is confident they are out there. “The
logical extension of a low-surface-brightness galaxy is
a dark galaxy,” he says. “There is no reason to think
they don’t exist.”
Looking back on the failed radio observations at
the turn of the millennium, Disney is eager to make up
for lost time and continue the search for the phantom
universe’s elusive galaxies. “I was the person who did
more to get things wrong than anyone,” says Disney.
“I’ve just literally spent 40 years of my life on this, and
I’d like to know the answer, one way or the other.”
Disney considers it a real gift that we earthlings
might one day be so lucky to behold the cosmos,
flooded as we are in sun- and starlight. “In such a
glare,” says Disney, “it is a wonder we can do any
astronomy at all.” D
Adam Hadhazy, a freelance science writer based in New Jersey,
also writes for BBC Future and New Scientist, among other
publications.
March 2018 DISCOVER 39
40 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
DOWN THE
QUANTUM
RABBIT HOLE
Fellow scientists labeled
him a crackpot. Now
STUART HAMEROFF’S
quantum consciousness
theories are getting
support from unlikely
places.
BY STEVE VOLK
PHOTO BY STEVE CRAFT

Anesthesiologist Stuart
Hameroff believes tiny
structures in our cells
called microtubules could
explain consciousness.

March 2018 DISCOVER 41

S STUART HAMEROFF is an impish figure
— short, round, with gray hair and a broad,
gnomic face. His voice is smoke — deep and
granular, rumbling with the weight of his
70 years. For more than two decades, he’s run a
scientific conference on consciousness research.
He turns up each day in rumpled jeans and short-
sleeved shirts. The effect is casual bordering on
slovenly. But up close, he is in charge, and to his
critics, he comes off as pugnacious.
He may not care so much about how he’s
dressed. He cares a great deal about how he and
his theories are addressed.
Hameroff is best known for serving as a kind of gadfly
in the fields of neuroscience and philosophy. He emerged in
1994 from the windowless bowels of the Arizona hospital
where he still works as an anesthesiologist to put forward
what seemed — at the time — some of the more outlandish
ideas about the human brain.
Most neuroscientists say thoughts are born from brain
cells called neurons. Hameroff suggests the most mean-
ingful action happens at the impossibly small quantum
level, where subatomic particles like photons and electrons
exhibit bizarre behavior. Quantum physics drives
consciousness, he believes.
If Hameroff proposed these ideas him-
self, he might have been ignored, but his
co-theorist was Sir Roger Penrose, an
esteemed figure in mathematical phys-
ics. Their theory, dubbed “orchestrated
objective reduction,” or Orch-OR,
suggests that structures called micro-
tubules, which transport material inside
Deepak Chopra, an author and New Age
guru of quantum consciousness theories.
He was also featured in What the Bleep Do
We Know?, a film that angered scientists
for pushing a quantum mysticism that
underlies our nuts-and-bolts existence.
Along the way in 2006, Hameroff gave
a talk that encapsulated his relationship
with the scientific community. At a con-
ference called “Beyond Belief ” that was

Quantum physics
packed with leading luminaries from

might be vital to
our awareness,
cognition and
many disciplines, he presented his
theories on everything from
consciousness to a quantum
mechanics-based “spiritual-
ity.” At the end, prominent
physicist Lawrence Krauss
spoke from his seat in the
audience. “From a phys-
ics perspective,” he said,
cells, underlie our conscious thinking. even memory. “everything you said is
But the Penrose-Hameroff model of nonsense.”
what you’d call quantum consciousness Many regard Hameroff as
was a scientific non-starter. Leading experts nonsensical, a creature from a Lewis
dismissed the new model outright. Quantum effects, the Carroll story calling out from under a
criticism went, are notoriously difficult to maintain in toadstool that we’ve got it all wrong, that
the lab, requiring ultracold temperatures and shielding to some kind of quantum magic undergirds
protect against even the mildest interference. Critics said our brain function.
living things are simply too “warm, wet and noisy” to But just four years later, a shift was
allow significant quantum effects to persist. What’s more, underway. In 2010, Hameroff was invited
neuroscientists argued, the Penrose-Hameroff model to speak at a less public meeting, at
offered no testable hypotheses. Google’s campus in Mountain View,
The pair disagreed unequivocally, churning out more California. His presentation suggested he
papers over the years. But while Penrose’s reputation is too might have a firmer view of reality than
BRAD BUHR (3)

towering to destroy, Hameroff seemed to find his firmest some may have thought.
footing through pop culture. He embraced support from Hameroff and several other scientists

42 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM

were invited by Hartmut Neven, a Google
researcher in visual search technologies.
By then, scientists were already try-
ing to tap the laws of quantum physics
to build smaller, smarter computers.
And biologists had begun to suspect
quantum physics could be important to
processes like photosynthesis and migra-
tion using Earth’s magnetic field. Neven
says he was interested in Hameroff’s
research because understanding the
brain’s efficiencies could bring huge cost
savings for Google.
“I think it is rather remarkable that the
human brain is able to accomplish its tre-
mendous feats on just a spoonful of sugar
a day,” Neven says.
A funny thing happened on Hameroff’s
trip through the weedy fields of scientific
derision: Data appeared.
The data isn’t enough to confirm
Orch-OR, but the new findings suggest
some of Hameroff’s claims are more
plausible than previously supposed.
Furthermore, the microtubule — the tiny
structures that Hameroff thinks house
quantum operations in the brain — is sud-
denly a hot subject. And two researchers
are finding that the old anesthesiologist
might be right: Quantum physics might
be vital to our awareness, cognition and
even memory.
THE HARD PROBLEM
Despite Hameroff ’s controversial stand-
ing in the scientific community, the
From left, Stuart
Hameroff,
conferences he hosts remain a good get for neuroscience mathematical
researchers and philosophers. At his first consciousness physicist Sir Roger
Penrose and Google
conference in Tucson, Arizona, in 1994, a young phi- researcher Hartmut
losopher named David Chalmers — a leather-jacketed Neven speak at
the 2017 Science
Australian, then topped by the long, shaggy hair of a of Consciousness
heavy metal fan — made waves with a new interpretation conference.
of an ancient question.
Chalmers argued that some problems associated with
cognitive studies are relatively “easy” to solve. Most
information processing, such as driving a car, is mere com-
putation. And for this, firing neurons suffice. The “hard
problem,” he says, is the existence of consciousness itself.
The same wiring in our brain lets us enjoy eating an apple
and also lets us imagine eating one when no actual apple
is around. Science can’t explain precisely how. Theories
already abounded, and researchers like neuroscientist
Christof Koch — partnered with Francis Crick, the co-
discoverer of the DNA molecule — sought what he called
the neural correlates of consciousness.
But where most stuck to orthodox understandings of
physics and neuroscience, Hameroff came in touting his
more out-there ideas.
During the 2016 Tucson Science of Consciousness
Conference, Hameroff was treated with the respect accorded
a conference organizer and also made the butt of occasional
jokes. Audible groans could be heard in the audience, for
instance, when Hameroff took the microphone and related
whatever was just presented back to his own theory.
But over lunch, on a particularly hot day at the confer-
ence’s midpoint, Hameroff sought a seat in the shade and
argued that he merely gives as good as he gets: His crit-
ics may couch their judgments in academic niceties, he
says, but essentially they’re saying he wasted his career in
a wrong-headed attempt to steer neuroscience into sheer
speculation and quantum woo.
“Roger is still on board,” he says of Penrose. “To be
March 2018 DISCOVER 43
 honest, we kind of feel like we’re riding high.” grandfather Abraham was a huge influ-
Penrose remains committed to what the pair has ence on him. He’d buy the young Stuart
co-published over the years — the theoretical science. They books on science and teach him about
differ off the page. Penrose has been mostly mum on the Einstein. “He was kind of an intellectual
philosophical implications of their theory. Hameroff has dilettante,” says Hameroff. “He knew a
freely speculated on what it all means. For instance, he lot about a lot.”
posited that near-death experiences might reflect something When it was time to pursue a higher
real: a potentially short-lived quantum afterlife. education, Hameroff was already deeply
The challenge, then, is to set aside Hameroff ’s specu- interested in the “mind-body problem”—
lations and look instead at what he and Penrose have in essence, Chalmers’ “hard problem”
published, and how this odd couple came to be partners before he coined the term.
in the first place. Hameroff chose medical school, but
Hameroff’s biography, and at least some of his claims, are finding a specialty eluded him. Neurology?
more firmly rooted in science than his critics normally allow. Psychiatry? During an internship at the
Tucson Medical Center, the chairman of
CARNIVAL BARKER’S SON the anesthesiology department told him
Hameroff was born in 1947 in Buffalo, New York. His that anesthesiology was key to under-
father, Harry, performed as a carnival barker and as standing consciousness. So Hameroff
a comedian in burlesque theater and vaudeville. His investigated, and his career in anesthesiol-
ogy quickly took shape.
Hameroff says that a patient under
anesthesia exhibits relatively normal
brain function save one thing: conscious-
Microtubules -Tubulin ness. Neurons keep firing, and even pain
These hollow, cylindrical structures signals travel their normal routes. But that
-Tubulin 25 nanometers pain is never felt, never experienced. The
are made up of two types of
tubulin protein — dubbed alpha science of anesthesia sits right at the heart
and beta — which bond together Bonded of the hard problem — allowing “easy”
into a single unit. These units protein pairs MICROTUBULE CROSS SECTION
computational processes to continue
assemble themselves into chains, while selectively eliminating subjective
forming the microtubule. Found
experience. But no one knows quite how.
in every plant and animal cell,
microtubules serve a variety of Early on in his career, Hameroff sus-
purposes, from support structures pected microtubules might provide an
to conveyor belts, and perhaps answer. Microtubules were discovered
even the seat of consciousness. SIDE VIEW by accident in the 1960s. Over the com-
ing decades, they proved to be among
the most versatile biological structures
in nature. Tubulin, a flexible protein,
assembles into a long chain to create
microtubules. These 25-nanometer-wide
tubes — thousands of times smaller than
a red blood cell — are found in every cell
in plants and animals.
Microtubules act as the crucial cytoskel-
eton, supporting the structure of living
cells; as conveyor belts, moving chemical
FROM TOP: ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER; GOPAL MURTI/SCIENCE SOURCE

Microtubules components from one cell to another; and

as movers themselves, taking on different
formations and dividing chromosomes.
Nucleus
During cell division, microtubules move
chromosomes from one end of the cell to
the other, then position the chromosomes
in the new daughter cells. Microtubules
even come into play on the outside of
cells, forming into cilia and flagella that
allow for cell movement. That makes
A special fluorescence microscope reveals the cytoskeletal structures that help give shape
and mechanical support to cells. This cytoskeleton is largely made from the tubulin proteins these structures something like the
that form microtubule filaments. Transformers of biology.

44 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Cilia
Single-celled organisms like this paramecium appear to process
information even without a brain or neurons. Hameroff thinks
microtubules might explain how.
Hameroff came to believe the micro-
tubule plays a defining role in anesthesia
effects — in consciousness. He points to
the single-celled paramecium as evidence.
“The paramecium has no central nervous
system,” he says. “No brain, no neurons,
but it swims around, finds food, finds a
mate and avoids danger. It seems to make
choices, and it definitely seems to process
information.”
How? Or more to Hameroff ’s point,
where? In what part of the paramecium
does this crude kind of cognition take
place? Hameroff believed he could find
the answers in the paramecium’s only
internal structure: microtubules, the
paramecium’s cytoskeleton. And since
these are nanoscale structures, he also
began thinking that quantum phys-
ics might play a role. But throughout
the 1980s, his research got nowhere
in terms of public recognition. Then,
FROM LEFT: TED KINSMAN/SCIENCE SOURCE; DENNIS KUNKEL MICROSCOPY/SCIENCE SOURCE (2); ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER
one night in 1990, he sat down to read
Penrose’s book The Emperor’s New
Mind, a surprising best-seller that winds
through physics, cosmology, mathemat-
ics and philosophy before marking a
final, slam-bang stop at consciousness.
In his concluding pages, Penrose
wonders how firing neurons generate
experience. He opines that quantum
physics might be necessary to understand
consciousness.
But where in the body — an inhos-
pitable place for delicate quantum
perturbations — could such happenings
take place? Hameroff felt an immediate
connection to Penrose. And of course, he
thought microtubules held the answer.
From afar, the two seemed like an
odd pairing: Penrose is one of the more
respected scientists of the last half-
century, and his work in cosmology and
Microtubule bundles
line the cilia — tiny,
general relativity has garnered him high honors. Hameroff hairlike structures
was a relative unknown, shouting about an obscure — of a paramecium,
shown here both
biological structure. But within a few years, they were from the side and
co-authoring papers together, and drawing the scorn of a in cross section.
generation of fellow scientists.
Cell wall
DATA ARRIVES
In sum, Orch-OR proposes that consciousness originates
from microtubules and actions inside neurons, rather
than the connections between neurons. Whack a tennis
ball with a racket, and afterward you can use traditional
physics to predict where it is at any particular point.
But in the quantum realm, such expectations go out the
window. Movements are unknown until they’re observed, Microtubule
cross sections
according to the traditional interpretation of quantum
mechanics. Physicists refer to this final observation, which
determines what happened, as a wave “collapsing” into
a single state.
In quantum systems inside the neuron, Hameroff and
Penrose argue that it’s each collapse of the wave function
that yields a conscious moment.
Hameroff and Penrose were guilty of invoking one mys-
tery to solve another: We don’t understand consciousness,
and we don’t understand quantum physics, so maybe they
explain each other?
So Orch-OR was and remains vulnerable to attack —
and many do so with tremendous gusto. Two decades
ago, neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland and physi-
cist Max Tegmark were among those who launched
outright broadsides. Hameroff and Penrose responded,
and Hameroff published a list of 20 testable predictions
yielded by Orch-OR.
However, the greater theory serves as something of a
distraction from some of Hameroff’s ideas: that quantum
physics might play a non-trivial role in human cognition
and consciousness, and that microtubules — activity inside
the neuron — could house these quantum happenings.
“If you would have speculated in this direction, say,
10 years ago, you would have been labeled a crackpot,”
says Google’s Neven.
But researchers recently have found quantum effects
are important for certain biological processes, like photo-
synthesis. When a photon strikes an electron in a leaf, the
March 2018 DISCOVER 45
 electron delivers it to another molecule
Orch-OR Theory dubbed the reaction center, which con-
"Orchestrated Objective Reduction" verts that light into chemical energy to
This theory of quantum consciousness developed by Stuart Hameroff feed the plant. Scientists always thought
and Sir Roger Penrose suggests that tiny cellular structures called the process looked almost too efficient
microtubules underlie conscious thought. because very little excess energy is lost in
the process.
The human brain is packed with cells Then in 2007, researchers started to
Axon suspect quantum physics was behind
called neurons that connect via networks
of axons and dendrites. These pass signals this efficiency. The electron could use the
NEURON
across minute spaces called synaptic quantum effect of superposition, where a
gaps. The classical view says thought is particle can be in two places at once, to
born from these connections test several routes to the reaction center
between neurons.
where photosynthesis takes place, and
take the most efficient one. The concept
isn’t yet proven, but it has gained traction.
Neven says scientists are now careful not
Dendrites to dismiss such ideas outright.
SYNAPSE
For example, in a recent Nature Physics
paper, physicist Neill Lambert of the
Microtubules
Advanced Science Institute in Japan
called out new photosynthesis research as
Cell body
remarkable just for suggesting quantum
Orch-OR, on the other hand, suggests that effects can happen in biological systems at
consciousness originates from quantum room temperature.
interactions in the microtubules inside each cell. And most recently, Rod Eckenhoff, a
University of Pennsylvania researcher and
Hameroff critic, gave tadpoles anesthetics
So What Is Objective Reduction? to tease out what molecules they bind
Traditional quantum mechanics says that a physical system doesn’t have
definite properties until it’s observed — an act known as collapsing a wave
function. For example, in Erwin Schrödinger’s classic thought experiment,
a cat in a box is both dead and alive — known as superposition
— until observed as one or the other. So an observation, or
consciousness itself, causes the wave to collapse. OR proposes
the opposite: The collapse gives rise to consciousness.

Space
A particle
exists in
Time

multiple places
at once —
superposition
Two possible particle paths through
— until it's
space-time
observed.

SUPERPOSITION
FROM LEFT: ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER; PASIEKA/SCIENCE SOURCE

Wave form collapses

Ceases to exist Becomes reality

Source: “Consciousness in the Universe: A Review of the ‘Orch OR’

Theory,” Physics of Life Reviews, 2014.
 to. His team discovered that tubulin proteins were among
them, and then found that if a kind of reverse agent were
administered — a microtubule-stabilizing drug — so were
the anesthetic effects. He remains a critic of Hameroff’s
“speculative” theories, but says his research suggests micro-
tubules might play “some role” in consciousness.
Yet Hameroff remains controversial. Koch, the brain
researcher and consciousness expert, declined to comment,
saying he doesn’t want to be the “eternal critic” everyone
goes to for takedowns of the Hameroff-Penrose theory. But
some are coming around.
“I was always quite skeptical of Stuart’s claims about
microtubules,” says Anthony Hudetz, a neuroscientist in the
anesthesiology department at the University of Michigan.
“But now there is data. And I have to say, I think Stuart
does have some momentum now.” Anirban
Bandyopadhyay,
Hudetz sees microtubules as a good potential mechanism current scientific understanding, wasn’t a physicist who
for explaining anesthesia. “I have the feeling that this whole the essential, or first cause of the human studies both
artificial and natural
microtubule theory has matured actually quite nicely,” he thought process. brains, has been
says. For Hudetz, the key going forward is testing whether “[Neuroscientists] need to go deeper — applying currents to
microtubules to see
molecular events inside microtubules actually relate to the into the microtubule,” he says. how they react.
quantum events as Hameroff proposes. To Bandyopadhyay, modern brain
And now, two scientists working independently of one science’s emphasis on the neuron is
another, yet both openly inspired by Hameroff, are taking misguided. Brash at times, he refers to
microtubule research to a whole new level. neuroscience as akin to dermatology.
“The neuron is the skin,” he says. “It’s
INSIDE THE NEURON important, yes, but not everything.”
Anirban Bandyopadhyay summarized his research in a talk
at Hameroff ’s 2016 Science of Consciousness conference. FRINGE OR FRONTIER?
Six feet tall and slim with dark, black hair and a broad, Bandyopadhyay’s 2013 work on the
joyful smile, Bandyopadhyay enjoys a plum job for a microtubule required refitting a special
scientist in his early 40s, leading his own research group microscope and contracting with an out-
at the National Institute for Materials Science side firm to create a needle with a
(NIMS) in Japan. As a physicist, he’s studied 1-by-1-nanometer point — the
the inner workings of both natural and smallest ever constructed,
artificial brains. To understand brain The neuron, he Bandyopadhyay says.
function, Bandyopadhyay believes His team used it
scientists must understand the work-
thought, contrary to to peer inside the
ings inside the neuron, including the all current scientific microtubule with
microtubule. incredible precision.
The conventional view is that neu-
understanding, wasn’t the B a n dyo p a d hyay
rons fire when a channel within the essential, or first cause inserted the needle
cell membrane opens, flooding the of the human thought into a rat neuron to
neuron with positively charged ions. view the microtubule.
Once a specific threshold is reached, an process. As he did, monitors
electrical signal travels down the axon — on one wall in the room
the nerve fibers within the neuron — and flickered with images from
the neuron fires. Axons are long wires that con- the tiniest level of animal biol-
nect neurons to other cells. And inside each axon is a ogy. The next set of experiments was
bundle of nanowires, including the microtubule. to apply various electrical charges and
Bandyopadhyay found that he could apply one of these watch the “skin” of the neuron as well
specific charges to the microtubule, causing activity to as the inside of the microtubule. At first,
build up in the neuron. By allowing the current to con- nothing happened. But when he began
tinue, he could cause the neuron to fire, or — by cutting applying specific energy charges to the
the signal off — stop it from firing altogether. microtubule, it responded, vibrating and
He says this bundle of nanowire resonates like a guitar conducting the electricity. This was curi-
BRAD BUHR

string, firing thousands of times faster than normal activ- ous, and exciting.
ity in a neuron. The neuron, he thought, contrary to all A microtubule is composed of many

March 2018 DISCOVER 47

 individual subunits. If they operated in a purely classical
fashion, as insulators — like wood, glass and other com-
mon materials that stop electrical current from flowing
freely — the amount of resistance across the microtubule
should increase. But Bandyopadhyay found something
very different when he applied specific charges of alter-
nating current. Resistance levels jumped by a factor of
1 billion. The microtubule was acting something like a
semiconductor, one of the most important developments
in electronics. He stood there in wonder at his own results.
“When you get results like this,” he says, “you are
scared. Am I wrong somehow?”
But he checked, even having colleagues outside
his lab at NIMS look over his results. In subsequent
experiments, he saw that this conducting activity in the
microtubule preceded neuronal, or membrane-level, fir-
ing. His microtubules research appeared in the journal
Biosensors and Bioelectronics. And he has another study
still under peer review.
The findings still need to be replicated by other scien-
tists. But those touting Bandyopadhyay’s findings are
philosophical about his standing.
“If you’re looking for frontier science, you have to drive
out to the edge of what’s known,” says David Sonntag, a
toxicologist who formerly worked in Tokyo for the U.S.
Air Force’s research and development wing and helped
fund some of Bandyopadhyay’s research.
“If you take a wrong turn,” he says, “you’ll run into
its crazy next-door neighbor, fringe science. The issue is
understanding when you’re at the bifurcation point. When
does the fringe become the frontier?”
For now, Bandyopadhyay remains clearly on the fringe.
But he has brought something new to the debate: an
experiment that can be replicated, or not, and a different
perspective on Hameroff.
He is careful to distance himself from Hameroff ’s
larger theory of consciousness. “This is not my concern,”
he says. Still, he describes Hameroff as a father to his own
Memristor Voltage Charge
Electrical circuits use four
fundamental variables —
current, voltage, charge CAPACITOR
and magnetic flux-linkage.
Relationships between these
variables led to the classic
components of a circuit —
resistor, capacitor, inductor RESISTOR MEMRISTOR
— with the exception of one
pairing: charge + flux. The
memristor fills this hole, creating
a fourth circuit element that
would operate like a resistor INDUCTOR
with memory.
Current Flux
48 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
research. “This man was talking about
microtubules back in 1982,” he says. “Just
thinking about them, unable to study them
as I have, he knew, and so far ahead of
everyone else. I wondered, ‘What kind of
brain has he got?’”
A CIRCUIT’S MISSING ELEMENT
There is also another far more experi-
enced scientist working the same vein
of research and seeing dramatic results
regarding the microtubule.
Jack Tuszynski, a biophysicist at the
University of Alberta, is a longtime
Hameroff collaborator who creates
cancer drugs. His latest findings suggest
microtubules have interesting conductive
properties, but indicate they could also
be what are called “memristors.” The
memristor is the much sought-after fourth
element in an electrical circuit, first theo-
rized by Leon Chua, an electrical engineer
at the University of California, Berkeley.
Chua spotted something obvious. The
three existing circuit elements — resistor,
capacitor and inductor — depend on
relationships between pairs that control
how electricity flows, how it gets stored
and how it changes as it moves through
a circuit:
• resistor (voltage + current)
• capacitor (voltage + charge)
• inductor (magnetic flux + current)
By studying the pairs, Chua theorized
there should be a fourth circuit element
governing the relationship between the
“missing” pair — charge and flux. Chua
coined the term memristor, playing off
the words memory and resistor, and from
there his work was strictly mathematical.
If such a circuit element existed, what
would it do? Chua’s equations suggested
that a memristor’s electrical resistance,
or conductivity, would not be constant,
like a lightbulb’s, but dynamic, and deter-
mined by the history of the current that
had flowed through the device.
What’s the big deal? In transistors,
any interruption in the flow of electrons
results in data loss. Memristors, however,
incorporate both electron flow and ions
— electrically charged atoms.
Because they remember the charge that
ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER
previously passed through the material,
information could be retained even when
turned off. In computers, the innovation
means no more rebooting. Computers
would turn on like lightbulbs, and hard
 drives would become a thing of the past.
The race is on to build memristor chips
at a cost scalable to consumer computers,
and for good reason: Memristors require
perhaps 1 percent of the energy of a stan-
dard chip. And while standard computer
chips are limited to the binary code of 0s
and 1s, memristors deal in fractional units
of information — a development consid-
ered key in building computers that behave
like the human brain.
Tuszynski wasn’t familiar with mem-
ristors until he met Chua at a 2015
conference in India. “I think microtubules
are memristors,” Chua told him, reveal-
ing a longstanding interest in Hameroff’s
work. Chua was particularly struck, he
says, when he once heard Hameroff point
out that microtubules are ubiquitous
in nature, while neurons are not. This
insight — really, a simple statement of
fact — struck Chua as crucial. “All of
these biological systems engage in a kind
of information processing,” he says. “So
how do they do it?”
He thought Hameroff had found the
answer in microtubules.
Tuszynski is very different from
Hameroff, his longtime research collabo-
rator. Stolid and practical, he’s published
more than 400 papers in peer-reviewed
publications, toiling in the earthy fields
of precision medicine and computational
biology. “Stuart, I think, is very prone to
speculation,” he says. “In many respects,
he is his own worst enemy and would be
better off if he limited himself a bit. But
Stuart is a genius. His work on microtu-
bules, prior even to ever getting involved
with Penrose, is brilliant, and it is the rea-
son I work on microtubules today.”
To test the memristor theory, Tuszynski’s
team filled a dish with microtubules,
tubulin proteins and a buffer solution,
then added electricity. Over the course of
many weeks, he found a fascinating result.
The more he replaced the buffer solution
with more microtubules, the better the
conductance.
“The conductance increased by two- or
threefold with the increased presence of
microtubules,” says Tuszynski, suggesting
the microtubules were better at conducting
energy than the buffer solution.
Further, he found the signature memris-
tor effect: When he reversed the flow of
BRAD BUHR (2)
electricity, as in an alternating current, the
efficiency of the conductance increased, as
Leon Chua, left, first
theorized about
if the microtubule had remembered the current that previ- circuit elements
ously passed through it. called memristors,
which could be
Tuszynski’s lab published a paper last summer on the like resistors with
conductive properties of microtubules in Nature Scientific memory. Jack
Tuszynski, right,
Reports, and it is preparing a paper on microtubules as thinks microtubules
memristors. If these results hold up, it could support could be memristors.
Hameroff’s case.
THE QUANTUM REALM
The last morning of the conference in Tucson, Hameroff
slowly rolls a suitcase out to the lobby and plops down in
a lounge chair to handle a few more administrative duties.
“I think it went well,” he says. “People are telling me they
enjoyed it. I organized this, so that could be bullshit. But I
think they mean it.”
This being a Hameroff production, there was a fair
amount of combat. Chalmers accused Hameroff of taking
the conference too far into the quantum realm.
Hameroff has a ready response. He was able to include
so many quantum-oriented conference sessions, he says,
because quantum biology is a growing field.
Of course, none of this is to say that Hameroff wins this
debate. He has yet to reframe fringe as frontier, and he may
never. But in this moment, with scientific success being in
part a simple function of math — is an idea gaining or los-
ing adherents? — he is clearly on the way up, and that is
perhaps never so apparent as when he gets up to leave.
With one hand on the handle to his luggage, he is imme-
diately stopped. Hudetz, the anesthesiologist who was once
dismissive of Hameroff, walks over to say hello. He tells his
host, with seeming earnestness, “It was a very good confer-
ence, Stuart. I had a great time.”
Hameroff thanks him. They banter a bit, and Hudetz
turns to walk away. “You know,” says Hameroff, stopping
him, “you ought to do some research on microtubules.”
“It’s funny you should say that,” Hudetz replies. “Because
we’re talking about it in my lab. There’s some interest. We
might just do that.” D
Steve Volk is a contributing editor at Discover.
March 2018 DISCOVER 49
 WHERE
THE WILD
THINGS
AREN’T
WRITER CERI LEVY AND LEGENDARY
ARTIST RALPH STEADMAN GO GONZO
WITH ANIMALS ON THE BRINK.

Thanks to humans, our planet is facing its sixth great extinction. As

their habitats dwindle or are destroyed altogether, many plants and
animals are disappearing. That’s not much fun to think about. So,
with that in mind, writer Ceri Levy sought out legendary illustrator
Ralph Steadman. Among his many accolades, the British artist
co-invented gonzo journalism — where the storyteller becomes
the story — as an illustrator for the various works of lifelong friend
Hunter S. Thompson, including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Levy asked Steadman to draw one particular endangered bird
for an art exhibition. He agreed. But Steadman couldn’t stop at
just one; he’s now drawn hundreds of endangered species. The
pair have published three books together, including their latest,
Critical Critters, excerpted here.
Steadman starts the process by spilling dirty ink water on
a page, and then uses a “Ralphschach test” with Levy to see
which endangered species jumps off the page. By blending
hallucinogenic illustrations with often humorous prose, Steadman
and Levy seek to bring levity to an otherwise bleak subject.
 ERIC BETZ

50 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
BORNEAN ORANGUTAN
Pongo pygmaeus

SUMATRAN ORANGUTAN
Pongo abelii
The orangutan is the only great ape
in Asia. It was once widespread
across the continent, but today its
range has shrunk to the threatened
rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo
in Southeast Asia, where they are
critically endangered.
Orangutans can live up to 50
years. Females don’t start to
reproduce until between 10 and
12 years old, and they give birth
every three to five years at most.
Such a low birth rate makes it
hard for the species to recover
from sharp population declines.
Much of their tropical rainforest
homelands are being cleared to
make way for oil palm plantations.
The race is on to protect the
50 percent of orangutans that live
outside of protected areas and find
themselves living in the path of
industry, machines and chain saws.

March 2018 DISCOVER 51

 PRZEWALSKI’S HORSE
Equus przewalskii
Przewalski’s Horse is almost unbelievably the last true wild species
of horse left in the world. All other supposed “wild horses” are
descended from escapees of domesticated herds. The P-Horse, as
it is known in rarefied scientific circles, has never been domesti-
cated. How’s that for a wild thing? How to pronounce it? Easy, it’s
a Polish name and is apparently pronounced shuh-VAL-skee; the
“Pr” is silent. Simple enough?
This horse’s downfall began when German merchant Carl
Hagenbeck, who specialized in selling wild animals to zoos as well
as to P.T. Barnum, captured pretty much all the wild populations
of the horse. By 1945, just 31 P-Horses remained in two zoos in
Munich and Prague.
Today, more than 1,500 individual P-Horses exist. Thanks to a
reintroduction program, this horse is now found on the steppes
of Central Asia, and up to 300 horses gambol around in Mongo-
lia. China’s own captive breeding program has also successfully
reintroduced a herd of horses into the wild. Small bands of horses
in Russia and Hungary are doing well.
Przewalski’s Horse is now considered endangered, which is an
incredible turnaround considering it had been deemed extinct in
the wild up until 2008.

52 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM

LORD HOWE ISLAND STICK INSECT
Dryococelus australis
The Lord Howe Island stick insect
was believed to have become extinct
sometime around 1920 due to the
introduction of black rats. In the 1960s,
there were various reports of sightings
of large stick insects on Balls Pyramid,
a rat-free rocky outcrop 14 miles from
Lord Howe Island, which is off the
eastern coast of Australia. In 2001, a
scientific research team visited the rock
and ascertained that the Lord Howe
Island stick insect really was alive.
Melbourne Zoo is now researching
the insect’s lifestyle, behavior, biology
and diet. The ultimate goal is to rein-
troduce the stick insect to Lord Howe
Island, but the rats must be eradicated
first. Then, and only then, does this
particular critter have a chance of
returning home.
AYE-AYE
Daubentonia madagascariensis
Coded message or not, there is a perfectly reasonable
explanation for why the aye-aye has a middle finger
that is so much longer, thinner and gnarlier than any of
the others: It’s a percussive forager.
The aye-aye, a lemur from Madagascar, taps out a
little rhythm on a wooden surface to determine where
cavities are inside. Then, listening with its large disk-
shaped ears and probably using echolocation, it decides
exactly where the grubs are for grub time. It uses its
incisors to make a small hole in the surface, and then it
inserts its especially extended digit into said hole and
presto — it pulls its dinner out of the opening, thus giv-
ing the invertebrates inside it the actual finger. And this
finger is articulated by sitting on a ball-and-socket joint,
allowing it to move and swivel a full 360 degrees. So
watch out, the aye-aye can get ahold of you wherever
you are.
Dexterity aside, hunting and superstition have left
it endangered. This odd lemur is considered evil: Dead
aye-ayes are often hung upside down outside a vil-
lage to ward off evil spirits. Several ongoing captive
breeding programs have not proved successful with
second-generation creatures, and the work continues.
Solutions need to be found — otherwise, we may have
to say bye-bye to the aye-aye.
March 2018 DISCOVER 53
 TARZAN’S CHAMELEON
Calumma tarzan
Why is this called Tarzan’s chameleon? Did Tarzan discover
it? No, it is so named because it was discovered in Tarzan’s
Forest just outside the village of Tarzanville (now renamed
Ambodimeloka) in Madagascar in 2009. It was immediately
categorized as critically endangered because slash-and-burn
agriculture and illegal logging have fragmented its habitat.
Illustrations by Ralph Steadman, from
CRITICAL CRITTERS by Ralph Steadman
and Ceri Levy. Copyright © illustrations
by Ralph Steadman, 2017. Copyright
© by Ceri Levy, 2017. Published by
Bloomsbury Natural History. Used with
permission.
54 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
ANGELSHARK Squatina squatina
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the
angelshark was common from Scandinavia to
Africa and all points in between. But what a
difference a hundred years or so can make. It has
lost an estimated 80 percent of its population over
three generations, and its range has shrunk to
a small area around the Canary Islands. Because
the angelshark lives on the bottom of the sea,
it is more prone to being accidentally caught by
fishing trawlers.
In 2016, the Angel Shark Project developed a
plan to steer the next 10 years of conservation
work to ensure the future of the angelshark and
its relatives, collectively (if slightly confusingly)
known as the angel sharks. The project’s vision is to
safeguard the angelshark’s last stronghold in the
Canaries, stabilize the population and eventually
increase angelshark numbers.
March 2018 DISCOVER 55
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OUT THERE P OW E R E D BY ASTRONOMY M AGA Z I N E

PUT A RING ON IT
It’s no Saturn, but one day Mars may have rings of its own. Researchers predict that gravitational forces will tear the tiny moon Phobos apart as
it spirals closer to the Red Planet. From this violent end, a serene set of rings (albeit darker and less spectacular than Saturn’s) could emerge as
soon as 25 million years from now. Read about how this will happen, starting on page 58.  ERNIE MASTROIANNI; ILLUSTRATION BY TUSHAR MITTAL

March 2018 DISCOVER 57

OUT THERE

58 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM

Someday, Mars’ moon Phobos
will slip past a certain point
in its degrading orbit and
get ripped apart by tidal
forces, forming a ring. This
illustration depicts Phobos
midway through that process,
RON MILLER
overlooking the Red Planet.
How Moon Dust
Will Put a Ring
Around Mars
Phobos, a moon of Mars, is destined to be
shredded, changing the Red Planet forever.
BY JOEL DAVIS
PHOBOS, IT SEEMS, is not long for this universe — at least on
the large cosmic timescale.
Astronomers have long known that Phobos, the larger and
nearer of the two martian moons, is slowly spiraling inward
to eventual destruction. The end result won’t be pretty:
Phobos will slip closer and closer toward Mars, then strike a
gravitational line where the planet’s tidal forces will be strong
enough to rip it apart. The rubble pile-like moon will break
into smaller boulders, rocks, and dust, and will spread out in
orbit around Mars.
Mars will join the gas giants in having a spectacular feature:
a ring system.
It could be 25 million years from now. It could be up to
75 million years. Recent discoveries about the little moon’s
composition and density, however, make it far more likely that
its death dive will happen sooner. The pieces that don’t form
a ring will fall to the surface, smashing with enough force to
pockmark Mars with new craters.
“A lot of planetary science focuses on what happened in
the past and what’s happening now,” says planetary scientist
Benjamin A. Black. “It’s not often that we look at the future,
at what will happen.” Black, a City University of New York
professor, and graduate student Tushar Mittal from the
University of California, Berkeley, have carried out a detailed
examination of the eventual fate of Phobos.
It appears the process of coming apart at the seams has
already begun. Images of Phobos taken by the Viking orbiters
and other spacecraft show a network of grooves in the tiny
moon’s surface. At first they appeared to radiate from near
Stickney Crater, and geologists assumed that the grooves were
cracks caused by the ancient impact. Some certainly are just
that, but not all. In 2015, Terry Hurford of NASA’s Goddard
Space Flight Center and his colleagues reported a new analysis
of the grooves. Most of them actually radiate from the side
of Phobos that constantly faces Mars; tidal forces caused by
March 2018 DISCOVER 59
OUT THERE
Lord of the Rings
While we know of thousands of exoplanets, only one exoring system has been found.
J1407b is a massive planet with rings so large they block out their parent star’s light. It
has a total of 30 systems in its rings, and the system has a diameter of 74 million miles
(119 million kilometers). To put that in perspective, if the ring system were around our
Sun, it would stretch all the way past Venus and fall a bit short of Earth’s orbit. J1407b
is massive enough that it may not technically qualify as a planet, and may instead be a
brown dwarf, a class of objects encompassing “failed stars.” The object is estimated to be
20 times more massive than Jupiter.

Mars’ gravitational pull are deforming
Phobos. Hurford believes the grooves
are stretch marks, a visible sign of the
inexorable grip of tidal forces on the
moon.
The future martian ring will not
be the only one in the solar system,
of course. Nor will it be the only ring
whose existence depends on a moon.
There are rings across the giant planets:
the four dusty rings of Jupiter; Uranus’
13 dark, thin rings; and Neptune’s five
faint rings and four enigmatic ring arcs
are — like the future ring around
Mars — all intimately
linked to moons and
moonlets. And of course,
the most familiar ringed
planet is Saturn, whose
icy surrounding matter can
be seen even through a small
telescope. Phobos
1655 that Christiaan Huygens identified
them as an entire system of icy rings.
In 1856, famed physicist James Clerk
Maxwell showed that the rings must
be composed of a huge number of tiny
particles (he called them “brick-bats”),
each independently orbiting Saturn.
Since then, debate has raged over the
origin, age, and composition of Saturn’s
rings. Are they leftovers from the forma-
tion of Saturn, or the remains of a shat-
tered moon? As old as Saturn itself, or a
relatively new addition? And why so
much ice? Planetary scientist Robin
M. Canup of the Southwest
Research Institute in Boulder,
Colorado, recently published
a proposal that answers these
questions. Canup suggests
that Saturn’s rings are the
very ancient remains of a
Titan-sized moon.
four larger moons of Jupiter. When the
large moons spiraled inward as Saturn
finished its accretion, Canup says, the
outer icy layers of at least one were
stripped away. The core plunged into
Saturn, and the icy remains eventually
formed the planet’s main rings. This,
she says, explains why the particles
making up the rings are 99.9 percent
pure water ice. It also explains the
striking difference between Jupiter’s
and Saturn’s rings and satellites.
“The existence of Saturn’s much
more massive ring system is linked to
Saturn having lost its large primordial
inner moons,” Canup explains. “Jupiter
retained its large inner moons, [while] its
dusty ring system is vastly less massive
than the ring system at Saturn.”
CREATING A MARTIAN RING
Phobos isn’t nearly the size of a planet,
TOP: RON MILLER. BOTTOM: NASA

SATURN’S MAGNIFICENT RINGS
Galileo Galilei saw what turned out
to be Saturn’s spectacular ring system
in 1610. (He said the features looked
like ears or handles.) But it wasn’t until
“Saturn originally had mul-
tiple massive moons like Jupiter,” says
Canup. These moons were large enough
for their interiors to differentiate into
layers of ices and a rocky core — less
like a large comet and more like the
but many of the same mechanisms will
drive its destruction. Its companion
moon Deimos is about 7.8 miles
(12.6 kilometers) in diameter and
orbits Mars at an average distance of
14,580 miles (23,460 km), far enough

60 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 JUPITER

Main Thebe Thebe

Halo
Rings of the Giant Planets gossamer extension
Jupiter’s four faint and dusty rings probably formed by a
different mechanism — and more recently — than Saturn’s, but
Amalthea 50,000 km
its moons still play a vital role. Amalthea and Thebe are the
gossamer
likely sources of the material in Jupiter’s outer two “gossamer”
rings. Thebe orbits within the outer gossamer ring, while 30,000 miles
Amalthea lies near the outer edge of the inner gossamer ring.
Metis and Adrastea, two other small moons, orbit near the
outer edge of Jupiter’s main ring, and are the sources of the
SATURN
Janus/Epimetheus
dust grains making up the main and innermost halo rings. D B
Some forces work against the rings, keeping them A
relatively thin. Electromagnetic forces, a phenomenon called
plasma drag, and even pressure from sunlight (called the G Pallene E
Poynting-Robertson effect) continually remove the micron-
sized particles from the rings. But particles sputtered off the F
moons by meteoroid impacts create dust and continually 50,000 km
replenish the rings.
C Cassini Division 30,000 miles
The 13 known rings of Uranus are unlike those of Jupiter
or Saturn. All but the innermost and two outermost of the
rings are quite narrow, ranging from just 0.6 to 59.6 miles (1 ηγ δ
URANUS 6 54 _ β λ ε
to 96 kilometers) wide. Their particles are larger than those in
Jupiter’s rings, but there’s little dust. Instead, they’re largely
made up of ice with organic chemicals mixed in to give the
dark appearances, unique among the outer solar system rings.
But there are similarities: Like Jupiter’s and Saturn’s ν μ
rings, Uranus’ rings are intimately associated with moons
and moonlets. Primordial moons the size of Puck, 100 miles
(162 km) in diameter, or larger would have had a good chance
of surviving for several billion years. But not all would escape 1986U2R/ζ 50,000 km
a devastating fate. Computer simulations show that the 11 30,000 miles
inner moons of Uranus are likely the remains of original larger
moons broken up by cometary impacts. What’s more, the
current rate of meteoroid impacts among moons and other icy NEPTUNE
bodies at Uranus’ distance is enough to create all the observed
rings and dust bands circling that planet. Le Verrier
Because the rings appear to be young, probably not Galle Arago
more than 600 million years old, the material in the rings Adams
must be continually renewed. Particles blasted off the tiny
moons and still-unseen moonlets by collisions and meteoroid
strikes continually add material to the rings, while the dust Arcs
continues to dissipate. Lassell 50,000 km
Neptune’s five rings and various dust bands are probably 30,000 miles
even younger than those of Uranus, and the same processes
are likely responsible for them and the moons that orbit in All four giant planets — gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, and ice
or near them. Naiad and Thalassa orbit in the gap between giants Uranus and Neptune — have ring systems. But each one is
the innermost Galle and Le Verrier rings, and Despina orbits very different.
just inside the Le Verrier ring. Galatea lies slightly inside the
outermost Adams ring. These tiny moons are likely rubble-pile The Adams ring also has five distinct clumps or arcs of dust
objects, agglomerations of fragments from earlier neptunian spanning about 40° in longitude. How they can exist for any
moons, weakly held together by gravity. The ring particles length of time is a mystery, as these tenuous rings should
are material continually blasted off the moons by meteoroid have faded away. One explanation, by planetary ring expert
impacts. Unlike the uranian rings, the rings of Neptune are Carolyn Porco, leader of the Cassini orbiter’s imaging team,
quite dusty, thanks to the destruction of a satellite; at least is that a resonance effect caused by Galatea’s eccentric orbit
20 percent of the material is the size of smoke particles, and may act to keep the particles in the arcs from spreading out
in some of the rings, that rises to 70 percent. and dissipating. — J.D.

away to avoid Phobos’ fate. Phobos the 181 known moons in the solar Mittal. “The tidal force of Mars; the
is 13.8 miles (22.2 km) in diameter. It system whose orbital period is less centrifugal forces on Phobos, which
ROEN KELLY/ASTRONOMY

circles the planet at an average distance than its planet’s rotation period. is rotating; the gravity of Phobos;
of 5,827 miles (9,377 km). With an That’s one of a few reasons why and the strength of Phobos. There’s
orbital period of just 7 hours, 39.2 Phobos is doomed. “There are a balance among these. Tidal and
minutes, Phobos is one of only 18 of four factors in action,” explains rotational stresses act to pull Phobos

March 2018 DISCOVER 61

OUT THERE
The white object in the center of Saturn’s diffuse E ring is Enceladus, a tiny
moon with a liquid ocean. Geysers at the moon’s south pole eject water
into space, forming the ring.
apart; self-gravity and [tensile] strength
act to hold Phobos together.”
Just as our own Moon’s gravity
raises tides in both Earth’s oceans
and landmasses, Phobos creates a tiny
tidal bulge in Mars. The bulge moves
as the moon circles Mars, just as the
Moon-caused tidal bulge moves around
Earth. Because Phobos has an orbital
period faster than the martian day, the
tidal bulge lags behind Phobos and acts
to gradually slow it in its orbit, sending
Phobos slowly spiraling in toward
the martian surface. The rate is about
0.79 inch (2 centimeters) per year. It’s
not much, but there is nothing to stop it.
“As Phobos gets closer to Mars,” says
Mittal, “the tidal stresses increase.” The
moon’s self-gravity and tensile strength
oppose the tidal forces, but eventually
Phobos will drop to a distance — called
the Roche limit — where the martian
gravity will win the tug-of-war. Several
studies confirm that Phobos’ inward
spiral will lead to its destruction in
25 million to 75 million years.
Phobos could stave off obliteration if
it were a dense body, more able to resist
the pull of gravity past the Roche limit.
Unfortunately, data from the European
Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter
show that the moon has a density of
just 1.9 grams per cubic centimeter.
By comparison, our Moon has a
density of 3.3 g per cubic centimeter.
Even tiny Themisto, Jupiter’s smallest
regular moon at just 4.9 miles (8 km) in
62 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
The lines cutting across Phobos are caused by tidal stresses from the
gravity of Mars slowly ripping its largest moon apart.
diameter, has an estimated density of
about 2.6 g per cubic centimeter. Mars
Express also revealed that Phobos is
porous, likely containing large voids, so
it is probably a rubble pile, like many of
Uranus’ and Neptune’s tiny moons.
In addition, Phobos’ makeup is
similar to carbonaceous chondrite
meteorites like the ones that fell on
Canada’s Tagish Lake in 2000. These
primitive meteorites are made of a
bevy of loose, easily broken materials,
including magnetite, olivine crystals,
phyllosilicates, and complex organic
molecules such as amino acids, and
are about 10 percent water, formed in
oxygen-rich regions of the early solar
system. Phobos is not only a rubble pile
with a weak gravitational field, but the
rubble itself is somewhat brittle.
Then there’s Stickney Crater,
the giant impact basin on Phobos.
Sometime in its past, Phobos was hit
by an object that left a crater 5.6 miles
(9 km) wide — nearly half the moon’s
diameter. The impact surely
fractured much of Phobos’
interior, leaving it even Phobos
weaker. From there,
billions of years
of meteoroid
impacts have
churned the
surface of
Phobos into a
layer of fine dust
about a hundred
meters deep. Given the extremely weak
surface gravity (escape velocity for
Phobos is a mere 4.56 feet per second),
the rock making up the rubble pile just
barely stays put.
Black and Mittal used a numerical
geotechnical model designed for large
underground construction projects
to estimate what they call the moon’s
“rock mass strength.” The results place
the finale for Phobos between 20 million
and 40 million years from now, and give
more details on its violent end.
As Phobos reaches its Roche limit,
about 3,400 miles (5,470 km) from
the martian surface, tidal forces will
start pulling Phobos apart. Just as
Saturn’s tidal forces may have peeled
away the icy mantle of a Titan-sized
moon billions of years ago, the
hundred meters or so of regolith will
be stripped off Phobos. It will happen
quickly: In as little as a week, the dust
will spread into a ring circling Mars,
the moon no more.
As Phobos spirals
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: NASA (2); ROEN KELLY/ASTRONOMY
inward, it will reach
a distance, called
Roche limit the Roche limit,
where the
moon will be
Mars pulled apart
by Mars’
gravity. The
end result
will be a
temporary
ring around
Mars.
 ASTRONOMY E XCLUSIVE

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OUT THERE
Small System
You don’t have to be a planet to have a ring. An object known as
Chariklo (classified as a centaur, or outer solar system minor planet)
has a thin ring system around it. Chariklo’s diameter of 144 miles
(232 kilometers) puts it at the lower limits of the size of dwarf planets.
The formation mechanism of the rings, and indeed much information
beyond their existence, is not yet known. Chariklo was the first minor
planet or asteroid to have a known ring system. Another centaur,
Chiron, may have one as well. The rings were discovered in 2014.
Chariklo orbits in a highly inclined orbit between Saturn and Uranus.

Depending on how much material
is stripped off Phobos, the ring could
initially have a mass density similar
to that of today’s rings of Saturn.
The martian ring will be very dark,
unlike Saturn’s bright icy rings, more
like the dusty rings of Jupiter that
are darker, thinner, and more diffuse.
It will practically hug Mars, closer
in relative terms to the planet than
the other planetary rings in the solar
system. And the ring, say Black and
Mittal, will not last long; they estimate
its lifetime at between 1 million and
100 million years.
Eventually, the rocky rubble
left behind will meet a quicker but
equally dramatic end. It will plum-
met down along slanting paths to
impact the surface of Mars and leave
a string of elongated craters along
the planet’s equator.
OTHER ONCE AND FUTURE RINGS
Is it possible that Mars possessed a
ring system in its distant past? “We’re
not certain,” says Black, “but it would
be worth investigating whether past
inwardly migrating moons may have
existed. Some fraction of moons
might be expected to have an orbital
258 elliptical craters formed by objects
hitting the surface at grazing angles.
At least some of them could well have
been made by oblique impacts of
ancient martian moons. If so, others
may have broken up before hitting the
atmosphere, leaving short-lived rings
of rocks and dust around Mars.
There’s no evidence that Mercury or
Venus ever possessed ring systems.
Earth did, though, for an extremely
brief period during the formation of the
Moon 4.5 billion years ago, when our
planet was struck by a Mars-sized body
dubbed Theia. Much of Theia merged
with Earth, but the “Big Splash” would
have blown the remaining material into
space. Computer simulations indicate
about 20 percent of Theia’s mass would
have gone into orbit around Earth as a
ring. About 10 percent of the ring’s
material then quickly coalesced into the
Moon, with the rest eventually falling
back to Earth. The ring would not have
lasted long, perhaps as little as a month
but probably no more than 100 years.
Curiously, our Moon also could end
as it began, according to astronomer
Lee Anne Willson, university professor
emerita at Iowa State University. As
part of her research on the fate of Earth
year. Left unchecked, the Moon will
eventually migrate out to a distance
where it will take 47 days to orbit
Earth. By then, Earth’s rotation also
will have slowed to 47 days. The two
will then keep the same face to each
other, as Pluto and its moon
Charon do today.
Before this happens, though, some
5 billion years from now, the Sun will
enter its red giant phase. It will start
expanding in size, and swallow up
Mercury and Venus. As the Earth-
Moon system orbits through the Sun’s
expanded outer atmosphere, drag forces
will cause the Moon’s orbit to begin
decaying. The Sun probably will con-
tinue to expand, and destroy both Earth
and the Moon. On the other hand, if the
Sun should blow off about 20 percent
of its mass first, the Moon will con-
tinue to spiral down to its Roche limit.
Tidal forces will tear it apart, just as
they will destroy Phobos.
And then, 9 billion years after the
Moon’s birth from a ring of molten
impact ejecta, and nearly 5 billion years
after the birth and death of the ring
around Mars, Earth will once again
have a ring. D
ESO/L. CALÇADA/NICK RISINGER

configuration similar to that of
Phobos and Mars.”
Some planetary scientists think
Mars once did have more than two
moons. Researchers have identified
as the Sun expands into a red giant, she
found that the Moon stood a chance of
becoming a ring around Earth.
The Moon is receding from Earth
at a rate of about 1.6 inches (4 cm) per
Joel Davis is a freelance science writer
and editor living in Bellevue, Washington.
His books include Flyby: The Interplanetary
Odyssey of Voyager 2 and Journey to the
Center of Our Galaxy.

64 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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 Prognosis

Quest for a Study participants answered lots of

questions about treatments, about

Peaceful Death
doctors’ and nurses’ communication
skills, about religious and spiritual
beliefs. The investigators followed up
A cancer doctor studies the connection between spirituality with the caregivers some months after
the patients had died.
and end-of-life care. BY JEFF WHEELWRIGHT “I worked specifically on spiritual
measures,” Balboni says. “How did the

→ When a cancer patient has run

out of options — when her
disease has returned and the latest
experimental drug has failed and her
oncologist hasn’t much to say — that’s
when the patient would be fortunate
to meet Tracy Balboni. She’s a
radiation oncologist and palliative care
researcher at Harvard Medical School
and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in
Boston. She works at the murky stage
of care known as end-of-life, where
decisions about additional treatment
can be complicated by fear and pain.
Simply put, Balboni’s job is to relieve
the pain and provide the highest quality
of life possible. Her more conventional
tool is radiotherapy. Normally radiation
oncologists attack tumors with as much
force as the patient can stand, in an
effort to eliminate the disease. Palliative
radiation oncologists like Balboni,
treating advanced cases, use doses of
says. “Today we have patients living
much longer with their cancers. Instead
of two months it might be 10 years. Yes,
medical team attend to the spiritual or
religious needs of cancer patients? What
was the impact [of spirituality] on the
we need to cure, but in the setting where quality of their lives?”
we can’t cure, we need to use these tools The research terms are unusually
in a way so that patients can slippery. It doesn’t help,
live well as long as possible.” All religious Balboni concedes, that
spirituality and allegiance
FITTING IN SPIRITUALITY people can be to traditional churches are
The other powerful tool considered increasingly separate. All
that Balboni employs is religious people can be
“spirituality” — her own, spiritual, considered spiritual, but
the patient’s, the family’s not all spiritually minded
and the medical staff’s. but not all people are religious. Keeping
Although everyone defines spiritually it simple, Balboni defines
it differently, spirituality spirituality as “a search for
shapes the choices made minded meaning and purpose, which
at the bedside at the end may or may not include
of life. Balboni’s interest people are reference to the divine.” To
in religion and spirituality religious. measure it, she uses various
stems from her work on a questionnaires devised by
psychosocial study called “Coping with psychologists and other researchers.
Cancer,” which began in 2002 when she The actual definition of spirituality
PHOTOGRAPHEE.EU/SHUTTERSTOCK

radiation that are extremely quick. They
may, for example, try to reduce a spinal
tumor lest a person become paralyzed,
or shrink malignant obstructions in the
abdomen. “You’re using the technology
to help patients live better,” Balboni
graduated from medical school. The
six-year study surveyed more than 300
cancer patients who were facing death,
and also included their “informal
caregivers” — the friends or family
members closely involved in their care.
doesn’t concern Balboni as much as its
importance and meaning to the patient.
“And particularly,” she explains, “its
impact on whether to transition to
hospice care or to receive aggressive
interventions in the ICU.” The choice

66 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Prognosis
here is stark. Some terminally ill people
will fight to the last gasp. They say
they want to be resuscitated if they fall
unconscious; they want a ventilator if
they can’t breathe. The alternative is
hospice care: The patient declines major
interventions, and their dying is eased
by pain medication.
Obviously doctors influence the
decision by presenting the scientific facts.
But do they address the metaphysical
facts, too? For example, it’s been well
documented, as Balboni and her
colleagues noted in a recent article in
the Journal of the American Medical
Association, that there is a “protective
relationship” between religious
participation and people’s health.
Spiritual and religious support seems
good for the body. The article urged
doctors to pay more attention to this
factor throughout the stages of care.
Given that religion and spirituality
are highly personal matters entwined
with feelings about death, it’s not
surprising that doctors and nurses
would avoid talking about these issues
with patients. In the “Coping with
Cancer” survey, Balboni found that in
the minority of cases where spirituality
and end-of-life were discussed with the
medical team, those patients proved
more willing to enter hospice care.
EXPERIENCES AT THE END
The most counterintuitive finding
that Balboni and her colleagues
extracted from the survey concerned
those patients who did not talk about
spiritual issues with their doctors
and nurses. If they looked to outside
religious figures for support — pastors,
fellow parishioners and/or relatives
of a religious bent — they were more
likely to die hooked up to machines in
intensive care than to die in hospice.
Similarly, Balboni wrote, the cancer
patients who relied on private, unspoken
religious beliefs to manage their illness
were “nearly three times more likely
to receive intensive life-prolonging
care near death and less likely to enter
68 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
hospice during the final weeks of life” argument doesn’t hold if you care for
than those without a pronounced dying patients.”
religious sense.
In other words, instead of promoting DOCTOR HEAL THYSELF
peaceful acceptance, religiosity appears Balboni’s confidence in her research
to encourage a great many patients to is buttressed by the spirituality in her
cling to life, even at the cost of greaterown life. She and her family belong to
suffering, not to mention a Congregational church.
the higher financial Michael Balboni, her
expense of their hospital husband and primary
treatments. “That was collaborator, has a Ph.D.
completely the reverse of in theology and also did
what we were thinking postdoctoral research at
we might find,” Balboni the Harvard School of
says. Furthermore, the Public Health. When they
caregivers of such patients are not working, the couple
reported that their own run a program that she
bereavement was longer calls a “ministry to people
and their adjustment more in health care.” Aimed at
troubled than it was for the medical students in the
families that had attended Boston area, the Longwood
the deceased through Christian Community
hospice care. provides counseling, weekly
Balboni has some dinners and discussion, and
hunches about these results, even residential space to the
centering on the sanctity- young people weighing the
of-life concerns of certain Obviously demands of the profession.
religious traditions. With doctors “It’s a great help, even after
a $2 million research grant their training,” Balboni
from the John Templeton influence the says, “because it connects
Foundation, she and
her colleagues founded
decision by people with mentors —
people like me who are here
the Initiative on Health, presenting the for the long haul.”
Religion, and Spirituality “It’s hard to explain as it
at Harvard in order to scientific facts. isn’t at all typical,” she says
dig deeper into these But do they of Longwood. Its mission
amorphous, interlocking sounds like a 21st-century
domains and uncover their address the update of the Hippocratic
influences on patients,
physicians and physicians
metaphysical oath. “Dare I say that we
try to practice what we
in training. The new facts, too? preach? We are spiritually
work, she hopes, will put nurturing ourselves and
“spirituality” on solid ground. others as we embark on the wonders of
“It’s a tough construct with many exploring the complexities of science
dimensions,” Balboni says. “But and the body, of caring for the sick, and
you look across multiple studies for of experiencing the realities of health
a consistency of story that’s being care training and practice, which can
told. If someone said to me, ‘Oh, otherwise be all-consuming and even, at
you’re just measuring nothing,’ I’d times, demoralizing.” D
say, ‘No, no, no. There are too many
CASEY ATKINS
associations that we’re seeing to say Jeff Wheelwright is a contributing editor
it’s spurious and meaningless.’ That at Discover.
 History
Lessons
A Deadly Diet
A disease that devastated the American South a century ago lives on.
BY KRISTIN BAIRD RATTINI
→ One day in April 2014, Mathilde
Tissier noticed her hamsters
were acting a little odd. The Cricetus
cricetus in her lab at the University of
Strasbourg in France, once happily
subsisting on a corn-based diet, were
now banging their feeder against the
cage, their tongues swollen and black,
and had begun to eat their pups alive.
As Tissier reported in the Proceedings
of the Royal Society B in January
2017, she suddenly had cannibal
hamsters on her hands.
“I was shocked,” says Tissier, a
conservation biologist. “I thought I did
something wrong.” Searching for an
explanation, Tissier teased out a thread
that wove through America’s past. Some
of the symptoms she saw in both the
mothers and surviving pups resembled
those of a debilitating disease called
pellagra. The illness affected more than
3 million people and killed more than
100,000 in the United States, primarily
in the South, between 1900 and 1940.
The quest to understand and cure
the outbreak combined research, social
politics and economic forces — and, as
Tissier saw firsthand, it’s a history we’d
do well to remember.
SCOURGE OF THE SOUTH
In the early 1900s, cases of a mysterious
malady started appearing every
summer in the South. At first, patients
felt melancholy and weak. Some then
developed swollen tongues and drooled
excessively. As the disease advanced,
people displayed a symmetrical
photosensitive rash across their
limbs, neck and face. Some patients’
symptoms disappeared a few months
later, only to recur the following year.
For others, the disease progressed
through the four Ds: dermatitis,
70 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
diarrhea, dementia and death.
In 1907, physicians at two Southern
mental institutions began to suspect
their patients’ symptoms were the result
of pellagra, Italian for
“rough or dry skin.”
The disease was first
identified in 1735 by
Spanish physician
Gaspar Casál, who
called it mal de la rosa
(disease of the red
rash). In the intervening
centuries, pellagra was
particularly widespread
— and well documented — in northern
Italy, with cases reported as far afield
as South Africa and Egypt. The U.S.,
historically, had seen few cases. Clearly,
something had changed. But what?
One of the first doctors who made
the connection to pellagra was James
Babcock of the South Carolina State
Hospital for the Insane. In 1908, he
traveled to Italy and confirmed that
he and his colleagues were right about
the disease’s diagnosis. He went on
to organize the first U.S. conferences
on pellagra, where two competing
theories on the disease’s cause went
head to head.
One theory held that pellagra was an
infectious disease carried by Simulium
flies. “This was the golden era of
the germ theory,” says University of
South Carolina internal medicine and
infectious disease specialist Charles
Bryan, author of Asylum Doctor: James
Woods Babcock and the Red Plague
of Pellagra. Yellow fever, malaria and
Rocky Mountain spotted fever all had
been proven in recent years to have an
insect vector. Why not pellagra?
The other leading theory —
originating back with Casál himself
Dermatitis was
a symptom of
pellagra (above).
FROM TOP: TRANSACTIONS OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PELLAGRA/SOUTH CAROLINA STATE BOARD OF HEALTH.1909/INTERNET BOOK ARCHIVE; NIH; SOUTH CAROLINIANA LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
South Carolina’s
Spartanburg
Pellagra
Hospital (left)
was dedicated
to finding the
disease’s cause.
— suggested that
corn, of all things,
was to blame.
Some proponents James
regarded only Babcock
spoiled corn as the
culprit. Others, including Casál, focused
on the corn-based diet common among
impoverished victims, and advocated
treating pellagrins (those suffering from
the disease) with a more varied diet.
The U.S. Public Health and Marine
Hospital Service — soon to be known
as the Public Health Service (PHS), a
precursor to the National Institutes of
Health — began studying pellagra in
1909. But as the illness spread — South
Carolina alone reported 30,000 cases by
1912 — Surgeon General Rupert Blue
felt increasing pressure to escalate PHS
efforts. In 1914, he assigned the PHS
pellagra studies to Joseph Goldberger.
GOLDBERGER’S CRUSADE
A Jewish doctor from New York who’d
emigrated from Hungary might seem an
odd pick to lead a Southern campaign,
but it did make sense. “In many ways,
Goldberger was the perfect choice,”
says American University historian
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 History
Lessons
Alan Kraut, author of Goldberger’s
War: The Life and Work of a Public
Health Crusader. “He had experience as
an epidemic fighter on malaria, typhoid
and dengue fever, and on yellow fever
in the South. He was married to a
Southern woman. And he had lots of
lab experience.”
Right away, Goldberger saw a flaw
in the fly-infection theory: Institutions
with pellagra cases consistently
reported that staff members,
presumably vulnerable to
the same flies, weren’t
diagnosed with the disease.
The recent identification
of diseases caused by
Joseph
dietary deficiencies further Goldberger
convinced Goldberger that
a corn-based diet could be
pellagra’s cause. To test his
The grain had only diet theory,
recently become a popular
foodstuff. As “King Cotton” Goldberger
and textile mills came to
dominate the South’s post- supplied what
Civil War economy, many he called “a
families converted all their
farmland to cotton. They diet such as
stopped planting vegetables
and keeping livestock. that enjoyed
As a result, many poor by well-to-do
Southerners now ate almost
exclusively what was called people.”
the three Ms: low-quality
meat, molasses and meal (industrially
refined cornmeal) — the same cheap
gruel often served at orphanages and
asylums. Pellagra was most widespread
among populations subsisting on the
three Ms.
To test his diet theory, Goldberger
supplied what he called “a diet such
as that enjoyed by well-to-do people”
— meat, milk and vegetables — to
two Mississippi orphanages and an
asylum. Pellagra rates there plummeted.
His next quest: to induce pellagra in
healthy subjects. In 1915, with pardons
in hand from Mississippi’s progressive
governor, Goldberger recruited 12
healthy volunteers at the Rankin State
72 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
Prison Farm to eat the three Ms diet.
Within the six-month trial period,
six volunteers exhibited the telltale
dermatitis. Goldberger was convinced
he had proven the link between the
Southern poverty diet and pellagra.
To bolster his case against the
germ theorists, in 1916 Goldberger
conducted what he called filth parties.
He tried to infect himself, his wife and
other volunteers with pellagra by
injecting and ingesting the skin
scales, urine, feces, blood
and saliva from pellagra
patients. No one got
pellagra. He also organized
extensive epidemiological
studies of seven villages
that conclusively proved
the link between pellagra
and poverty. The studies are
still used in medical schools
today and hailed for their
thorough, groundbreaking
analysis of where economics,
social conditions and health
intersect.
Yet pellagra raged on,
propelled by plummeting
cotton prices in 1920.
Goldberger advocated for
food aid for the South,
to mitigate what the PHS
called a “veritable famine”
developing in the Cotton
Belt due to poor farmers’ diets.
Southern politicians and businessmen
railed against the recommendation,
which they perceived as an attack
on their honor. “Goldberger didn’t
understand Southern pride,” Kraut
says. “His mission was to conquer
the suffering and solve the medical
mystery.” He still had a ways to go.
THE P-P FACTOR
Goldberger focused on identifying the
missing dietary element, which he called
the P-P factor, for pellagra preventive.
In 1922, he tried to induce black-tongue
disease — the canine analog of pellagra
— in his laboratory dogs by feeding
them a diet typical of poor Southerners,
plus brewer’s yeast purely to stimulate
the dogs’ appetite. The dogs remained
healthy, prompting suspicion. Without
the yeast, the dogs developed pellagra.
Repeated testing on the dogs, then on
human subjects, confirmed that brewer’s
yeast, a product the poor could afford,
contained the P-P factor that cured and
prevented pellagra.
Goldberger was finally publicly
vindicated in 1927. That spring,
the Mississippi River flooded, to
devastating effect. The potential for a
widespread pellagra outbreak surged
in flood-ravaged areas of Tennessee,
Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Goldberger oversaw the Red Cross’
distribution of 12,000 pounds of
brewer’s yeast in those areas. That effort
cured most pellagrins within six to 10
weeks, prevented untold thousands
more cases and earned Goldberger the
recognition that was long overdue —
though he wouldn’t enjoy it for long.
Goldberger died in 1929, the same
year that pellagra cases at large started
declining. The Red Cross carried on
his work; by 1937 it had distributed
500,000 pounds of brewer’s yeast —
frequently referred to as Vitamin G
for Goldberger. That year, researchers
identified niacin (abundant in brewer’s
yeast) as the elusive P-P factor, and
doctors established a standard dosage
and therapy. Niacin has since become
a dietary staple, now better known for
fighting high cholesterol than pellagra.
Today, pellagra is mostly relegated to
history lessons and medical reference
books. But occasionally, such as during
isolated outbreaks in a refugee crisis, the
world receives a vivid reminder of how
the disease still affects people. And as
Tissier saw in her hamsters, it’s also a
lesson anyone caring for animals should
CDC/PUBLIC HEALTH IMAGE LIBRARY
keep in mind. This scourge is not gone,
just largely forgotten. D
Kristin Baird Rattini, a St. Louis-based
freelance writer, has written for national
publications for two decades.
 20 Things You Didn’t Know About …

Engines BY GEMMA TARLACH

1 Everybody’s doing the locomotion described how the excrement of giant pandas was
. . . really. We are all engines, which by “ideal” for biofuel production. 12 The bears digest
their most basic definition are machines bamboo, thanks to unique gut microbes that break
that convert energy into motion. 2 And down the tough plant material. Once excreted and
while you could think of animals as cultured by researchers, those same bugs go to town
being engines, plants have them: on other plant scraps and produce a hydrogen-based
Photosynthesis pathways are often biofuel. 13 That’s a pretty ingenious way to fuel
described as plant engines, and an engine. Both words, by the way, derive from
biologists are particularly interested ingenium, Latin for “talent,” an abstract concept.
in the C4 plant engine, which was Over time, the word engine also took on the more
discovered in the 1960s. 3 Plants concrete meaning of a device. 14 A device you
powered by C4 engines, including maize and sugar don’t see much these days is the siege engine. For
cane, typically convert atmospheric carbon dioxide millennia, these massive military weapons, such as
more readily, thanks to novel leaf and cell structures. catapults and battering rams, were a popular way to
They also tend to produce higher yields than C3 breach defenses. 15 One engine that has catapulted
species, which outnumber C4 species by about 30 to fame in the last couple of decades isn’t an engine
to 1. 4 The C4 pathway evolved multiple times at all. Search engines, programs that provide you
in different lineages, often during periods of low with lists of websites based on the terms you tell it to
carbon dioxide or in semiarid environments. The find, aren’t converting energy so much as directing
adaptation allows the plant to use scant resources, curiosity. 16 In 1989, McGill University graduate
such as water and nitrogen, more efficiently. 5 And student and systems administrator Alan Emtage
that’s why scientists are using genetic modification needed an efficient way to find files spread across
to try to turn C3 plants into C4 powerhouses, which multiple servers. He created a program to hunt
may prove more resilient in a drier, resource-depleted through the servers for specific content he requested.
world. 6 If thinking of plants as having engines is 17 Emtage’s personal timesaver got a big promotion
a little out there for you, how about a really far-out when his boss recognized its potential. The McGill
fact: Black holes are the universe’s most powerful team expanded the program — known as Archie, a

FROM TOP: NASA’S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER; DAUKER/DREAMSTIME; PRILLFOTO/DREAMSTIME; DAN BISHOP/DISCOVER
engines. 7 The workings of a black hole are similar shortened form of “archive” — into the world’s first
to an internal combustion engine. search engine. 18 Technology gave us another engine
It consumes fuel and produces that’s not really an engine. Developers use software
energy while remaining intact, packages called game engines as the template for
unlike, say, an explosion. 8 How the world in which a video game is set. 19 These
can a black hole produce energy complex programs automatically regulate the basics
From top: Black when nothing escapes it? Well, once material falls in, of a game, from managing memory needs efficiently
holes, catapults and
plant pathways
there’s no going back, but the black hole’s extreme for smoother play to changing the lighting as a char-
may not be what gravity creates the perfect environment for generating acter moves through a landscape. 20 Scientists are
powers your daily energy just outside its boundary, or horizon. 9 In increasingly turning to game engines in their research
commute, but they
still convert energy 2009, two researchers proposed a highly theoretical because the programs are, by nature, fast and
and are technically spacecraft powered by multiple mini-black holes efficient at tasks such as visualization. In 2017, for
all engines; despite
being called “search — the smaller a black hole is, the more energy it example, researchers designed a game engine-based
engines,” however, produces. 10 While the idea caused a buzz initially, system to identify optimal wind turbine positioning.
online queries and
search functions
the concept remains theoretical. Quite frankly, There it is: more human ingenuity. D
don’t meet the we’re more likely to have engines that run on panda
definition. poop. 11 No, seriously. In a 2016 study, researchers Gemma Tarlach is senior editor at Discover.

DISCOVER (ISSN 0274-7529, USPS# 555-190) is published monthly, except for combined issues in January/February and July/August. Vol. 39, no. 2. Published by Kalmbach Publishing Co., 21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box
1612, Waukesha, WI 53187-1612. Periodical postage paid at Waukesha, WI, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to DISCOVER, P.O. Box 62320, Tampa, FL 33662-2320. Canada Publication
Agreement # 40010760. Back issues available. All rights reserved. Nothing herein contained may be reproduced without written permission of Kalmbach Publishing Co., 21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box 1612, Waukesha, WI
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74 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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