The New Scientist

SOU V E N I R I S SU E
THE PERIODIC
TABLE AT 150
XTrue story of its origins
X Time for a radical revamp?
X The superheavy atom factory
PLUS! Our favourite elements

WEEKLY 2 March 2019
THE TRUTH ABOUT

MALE AND
FEMALE
BRAINS
Do we really think
differently?
By Gina Rippon
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CONTENTS
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Recruitment advertising On the cover Leaders Features

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Email nssales@newscientist.com 33 The periodic table at 150 5 The most beautiful table in 28 The truth about male and
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34 True story of its origins science is worth celebrating. female brains Do we really
Key account managers Viren Vadgama,
Isabelle Cavill, Nicola Cubeddu 36 Time for a radical revamp? Space should be open to all think differently?
US sales manager Jeanne Shapiro
39 The superheavy atom factory 33 The periodic table at 150
Marketing Plus: Our favourite elements The icon of modern chemistry
Head of marketing Lucy Dunwell News remains unfinished
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Head of campaign marketing 28 The truth about male and 6 THIS WEEK Alternative facts 42 The poop collector Eric Alm
James Nicholson
female brains may be real. Hayabusa 2 samples is racing to preserve humanity’s
Head of customer experience
Emma Robinson Do we really think differently? an asteroid. Millions of fish die ancient microbiome
Head of data analytics Tom Tiner By Gina Rippon in Australia. Ban UK gas boilers.
Virgin Galactic’s first passenger
Web development
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Culture
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One man’s mission to preserve 8 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY 44 AI takes on Bach An AI has
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Events director Adrian Newton Plus Wolves return to Germany (15). cannabinoids. Drones to search for 45 Jim Al-Khalili Why my debut
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Israel’s moonshot (12). World’s murder victims. Extreme warming sci-fi novel is true to science
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is never anonymous (22) editor. Israel’s private moon 46 Russian Doll To escape the
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25 ANALYSIS How did the zebra get
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LEADERS
Editorial
Editor Emily Wilson
Art editor Craig Mackie
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News
News editor Penny Sarchet
Editors Jacob Aron, Timothy Revell
Reporters (UK) Jessica Hamzelou
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The most beautiful table

Alison George, Joshua Howgego,
Tiffany O’Callaghan
Feature writers Daniel Cossins,
Graham Lawton
Culture and Community

Editors Liz Else, Mike Holderness, Simon Ings,
As a visual symbol of reason, the periodic table is hard to beat
Frank Swain
Subeditors NAGAYASU NAWA describes periodic table designs. how reason helps us understand
Chief subeditor Eleanor Parsons
Tom Campbell, Chris Simms, Jon White
himself as a schoolteacher and Nawa takes his love for the material world, there is
periodic table designer. He has periodicity further than most, nothing quite like it. It stands
Design
Kathryn Brazier, Joe Hetzel, Dave Johnston,
created versions of the table that although there is something for completeness and order.
Ryan Wills adorn everything from clocks to about it that appeals to many of The truth, however, is that the
Picture desk a traditional Japanese coat and us. People have designed periodic order is disputed and the table
Chief picture editor Adam Goff even a school bus. tables of cupcakes, Star Wars, is almost certainly incomplete.
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This year, the 150th anniversary cereal and David Bowie, to Arguments are raging over
Production of the table’s invention by mention just a few. But what is elements that don’t quite fit
Production manager Alan Blagrove
Melanie Green
Dmitri Mendeleev (page 34), it about the table that makes it the pattern and whether such
has been designated by the so iconic and worth lauding? anomalies warrant a sweeping
Contact us
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made by US-based SpaceX. They
Space for everyone are cooperating, not competing.
Elsewhere in the solar system,
SPEAKING of anniversaries, this people there. But framing the new Japan is carving out a niche as the
year marks half a century since era of exploration beyond Earth as world-leader in asteroid mining
the first astronauts landed on a nationalistic competition is an and exploration thanks to its
the moon, an incredible feat that error. The superpower monopoly Hayabusa 2 mission (see page 6).
saw the US cement its space race of space is over – increasingly, it is JAXA, the nation’s space agency,
© 2019 New Scientist Ltd, England
victory over the Soviet Union. about the little guy too. has more experience than NASA
New Scientist is published weekly These days, there is talk of a new Take SpaceIL, the Israeli start-up in this area, but no one is talking
by New Scientist Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. space race between the US and that recently launched the first about a US-Japan race.
New Scientist (Online) ISSN 2059 5387 China, which recently landed a private lunar lander (see page 12). Space, as author Douglas
Registered at the Post Office as a
newspaper and printed in England
probe on the far side of the moon Unable to fund its own rockets, Adams once wrote, is big. There
by Precision Colour Printing Ltd and has ambitious plans to send the firm hitched a ride on one is room for everyone. ■

THIS WEEK
Asteroid dust in the bag

JAPAN’S Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has After landing, the probe began
successfully landed on the asteroid to rise again. The image shown to
Ryugu and grabbed the first sample the left was taken by the camera
from its surface. on the craft during this ascent. The
The manoeuvre was originally spacecraft’s shadow, with its solar
planned to take place in October last panels, can be seen just above a black
year, but had to be delayed because scorch mark created by its thrusters.
Ryugu’s surface proved to be more The mission first arrived in orbit
uneven than expected. around Ryugu in June 2018 after
The boulder-strewn terrain meant travelling 3.2 billion kilometres in
that mission controllers had to aim 3.5 years. The spacecraft has been
for a circle just 6 metres across on surveying the asteroid ever since.
the asteroid, and control the landing Controllers plan to take two more
precisely. At around 2300 GMT on samples before Hayabusa 2 returns
21 February, they confirmed that to Earth, where it is due in late 2020.
the ambitious touchdown had been The final sampling will be the most
pulled off. destructive, using explosives to blow
As it landed, the spacecraft fired a a crater in Ryugu to get at material
KYODO/VIA REUTERS
5-gram bullet made of the hard metal under the surface.

tantalum onto the surface to dislodge The findings will be of interest to
particles for collection. The aim is to companies hoping to mine asteroids
return samples to Earth for analysis. for valuable resources.
National University in Canberra, who

Virgin takes first Millions of fish die chaired the investigation, says the
Gas boiler ban may
passenger to space in Australian rivers sight of millions of dead fish should hit new UK homes
be a wake-up call, equivalent to the
VIRGIN Galactic has returned the Unity FISH have been dying by the millions coral bleaching events that have UK HOMES aren’t fit for the future,
spacecraft to the edge of space, this in Australia’s largest river system. been hitting the Great Barrier Reef. according to a report by the
time with a test passenger on board. Drought, poor water management The deaths were the result of a cold Committee on Climate Change (CCC),
Beth Moses, the space-flight firm’s and excess irrigation taking water snap that caused two layers of water which advises the UK government.
chief astronaut instructor, joined from rivers led to three mass deaths to mix, the larger of which had little The way new homes are built and
pilots Mike Masucci and Dave Mackay of endangered fish species during oxygen left as it had been used by existing properties are retrofitted
on the ascent. The success comes December and January in the microorganisms feeding on dead with energy efficiency measures
two months after its inaugural trip Murray-Darling basin, according blue-green algae. Fish that had been often falls short of stated design
into space in December, with only to an investigation by the Australian surviving in the oxygenated top layer, standards, inflicting costs on the
pilots on board. Academy of Science that was which had been made shallow by future, reports the committee.
On the latest flight, Unity went published last week. irrigation, quickly ran out of oxygen The report calls for support in
three times the speed of sound and Craig Moritz at the Australian and suffocated. retrofitting homes, such as installing
reached 89.9 kilometres above Earth loft and wall insulation, and protecting
at its maximum altitude. those at risk of flooding.
The Karman line – the point at From 2025 at the latest, no new
which Earth’s atmosphere ends and homes should be connected to the
space begins – is about 100 kilometres gas grid, says the committee. Instead
above the ground, although the of gas boilers they should use low-
US Air Force defines astronauts as carbon heat sources like heat pumps.
people who have travelled beyond “There are almost 30 million homes
the 80-kilometre mark. in the UK, and the depressing fact is
MIKE BOWERS/GUARDIAN/ EYEVINE
Unity was launched on the most of them are not in a condition to

underbelly of a larger aircraft. Once keep us comfortable and productive
in the upper atmosphere, it took over and well as the climate changes,”
with its own rocket engines to boost says Julia King at the CCC.
into space. Fifteen minutes later, it “The UK has reduced emissions
landed back at California’s Mojave faster than any other G7 nation,”
Air & Space Port. says a government spokesperson.
6 | NewScientist | 2 March 2019

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Alternative facts may be real

A quantum experiment could rewrite reality, says Anil Ananthaswamy
THERE are no objective facts in

the world. This isn’t a statement
about fake news. Rather, it is the
implication of an experiment
that suggests the nature of reality
depends on who is looking.
The work is rooted in thought
experiments about the nature
of quantum mechanics, but this
is the first time one has been
done in the lab, with potentially
profound implications. “I am very
excited about it,” says theorist
Carlo Rovelli at Aix-Marseille
MICHAEL MANN/PLAINPICTURE
University in France.
The experiment, carried out by
Alessandro Fedrizzi at Heriot-Watt
University, UK, and his team,
involved four fictional observers:
Alice, her friend Amy, Bob and his
friend Brian. It begins with Amy
and Brian inside their own labs. the same as Amy with the other information that’s obtained in a The nature of the world around
A central source outside both labs original photon, and Bob, who is measurement should be a fact of us depends on who is looking
creates a pair of photons linked by outside Brian’s lab, makes similar the world – a fact that all observers
quantum entanglement, sending choices to Alice to get Brian’s can agree on,” says Fedrizzi. mainstream views, such as the
one each to Amy and Brian. result, B0, or his own, B1. If these assumptions are Copenhagen interpretation,
Amy creates another pair of If this is confusing, here is correct, the tally of probabilities which says that the properties
entangled photons: a system the real mind-bender: quantum should be no more than 2. The real of quantum systems don’t exist
photon and a test photon. Amy mechanics says that the results A1 experiment gave a value of 2.47 until observed, but then become
uses the test photon to measure and B1 (the facts as established by (arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080). objective facts, and the many-
the state of the original photon Alice and Bob) can disagree with While this is predicted by worlds interpretation, which says
from outside the lab, and the A0 and B0 (the facts as established quantum theory, it also implies that all possible measurement
result is imprinted on the system by their respective friends). the assumptions are wrong. Prior outcomes are real and objective,
photon through entanglement. This can be verified by running theoretical work suggests that but each in a different world.
In thought experiments, Amy’s the experiment many times, with even if you deal with the first two Renato Renner at the Swiss
measurement is stored in her assumptions, the contradicting Federal Institute of Technology in
memory. In the real experiment, “A measurement should facts can persist. “One natural way Zurich, who last year published a
it is stored in the system photon, be a fact of the world — a to resolve this is to say there aren’t thought experiment along similar
making it the “observer”. fact that all observers any objective facts,” says Fedrizzi. lines, thinks photons might not
Once Amy has made her can agree on” The experiment could have count as observers. “The validity
measurements, she sends the immense implications for our of the conclusions depends on
original and system photons Alice and Bob making choices at understanding of the nature of whether one can reasonably claim
out of the lab to Alice. Then Alice random, then tallying the average quantum reality, which depends that their experiment mimics
can either directly measure the probabilities of the outcomes. on how we interpret quantum ‘observers’,” he says.
system photon, which is akin The process involves making theory. According to Fedrizzi and But Rovelli is thrilled. “I do
to just asking Amy what she three assumptions. One, Alice and his colleagues, their work favours take it as a great piece of evidence
measured (the result A0), or Bob have the freedom to choose interpretations saying that the directly supporting the relational
she can let the two photons their measurements. Two, Alice’s outcomes of experiments are interpretation. I agree in full
interfere quantum mechanically, choice doesn’t influence Bob’s subjective, such as quantum with the way they interpret it,”
establishing her own fact without outcomes and vice versa. Finally, Bayesianism and Rovelli’s he says. “It is fantastic that ‘ideal
asking Amy (the result A1). there are observer-independent relational quantum mechanics. experiments’ of the past become
Meanwhile, Brian does exactly facts in the world. “A piece of In turn, it questions more real experiments of today.” ■

NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
populated (Animal Conservation, other brightly lit places. They have

Light is leaking doi.org/c23f).
This is a warning to emerging
revealed that illuminated nights
change animals’ life cycles and
into vital habitats economies, says Christopher

Kyba at the GFZ German Research
Centre for Geosciences in
when plants flower, and can affect
predator-prey relationships.
This can be shown by bringing
Potsdam. “There’s a problem animals into the lab or placing
Michael Marshall throughout, and fewer than coming for these places, because lights in their habitats.
a third had no light pollution they’re going to develop, and But it is much harder to
LIGHT pollution is now so bad at all. Rates of light pollution when they do they’re going to determine the consequences
that a dull orange “skyglow” were significantly higher in get very bright.” of skyglow, which is both fainter
obscures the stars in more than Europe and the Middle East, However, we don’t know what and more widespread. “I think the
two-thirds of the world’s crucial where a higher proportion of the the effects of spreading skyglow consensus among the scientific
habitats. And we have almost no biodiversity areas experienced will be. Many studies of light community is that skyglow is
idea how this affects wildlife. skyglow, than in other regions. pollution have focused on probably having very widespread
There are two kinds of light Garrett’s team also found that organisms living in cities and impacts,” says Thomas Davies
pollution. The first is the intense more of the biodiversity areas at Bangor University in the UK.
brightness close to artificial lights were affected in regions that We don’t know how skyglow “But we’re yet to design the type
like street lights, which often were wealthier and more densely affects animals like the lynx of experiments that are capable
means night-time cities are lit up of quantifying that.”
like Christmas trees, and we know Tackling skyglow, and other
a lot about its effects on nature. light pollution, will mean both
But further from cities, using less light and being smarter
although there is less bright about it when we do use it, says
light, there is still a diffuse orange Kyba. Street lights could be turned
glow in the sky. This skyglow is off in the darkest hours of the
widespread: about a third of night, when most of us are asleep
people cannot see the Milky Way and the risk of accidents or
at night because of it. violence is minimal. Limits could
Jo Garrett at the University of also be set on the brightness of
Exeter, UK, and her colleagues illuminated signs and lights on
have now mapped how far building facades.
skyglow has penetrated into The direction of light is also
havens for threatened wildlife crucial, says Kyba. The main
known as Key Biodiversity Areas. cause of skyglow is light that
LAURENT GESLIN/NATUREPL.COM
They took existing satellite data shines horizontally, aiming just

on the global spread of skyglow above the horizon. “With street
and overlaid the locations of lights, eliminating emissions
these wildlife hotspots. in that direction can be really
About half the biodiversity effective at reducing the total
areas had artificially bright skies sky brightness,” he says. ■
Stars full of at the University of Erlangen–

Nuremberg in Germany and his
star completely, but it seems type Iax
blasts leave their stars intact and send
over from the explosion, says Raddi
(arxiv.org/abs/1902.05061).
nuclear ash race colleagues have found three more.
All four of these white dwarf stars
them hurtling away.
The three stars found by Raddi’s
“It’s like they tried to go supernova
and didn’t quite make it,” says Ashley
through galaxy seem to be survivors of a strange kind team have strange compositions. Pagnotta at the College of Charleston
of supernova discovered in 2013, Stars are generally made of mostly in South Carolina. “They came through
THEY are the stars that refuse to die. called type Iax. They are much dimmer hydrogen and helium, but these the flames and out the other side.”
Astronomers have detected four stars than type Ia supernovae, whose stars show no sign of those, instead These stars may tell us
hurtling through the galaxy that are consistently bright explosion allows containing heavier elements like something about the type Ia
full of ashes, probably because they us to use them as “standard candles” neon, oxygen and magnesium. These supernovae. It often turns out
are survivors of enormous cosmic to measure astronomical distances. seem to be a sort of nuclear ash left that studying oddities gives you
explosions. Two of them look set Both types of explosion involve information about the ”normal”
to escape the Milky Way altogether. stars in a pair, with a white dwarf star “It’s like they tried to go population, says Pagnotta.
The first of these cosmic stealing material from its partner until supernova and didn’t make “By not following the rules, they
runaways, called LP 40-365, was it gets too big and blows up. Type Ia it. They came through the help you define what the rules are.”
discovered in 2017. Roberto Raddi supernovae destroy the exploding flames and out again” Leah Crane ■

For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
Modified yeast Drones with lasers can see through

foliage and into the ground below
make cannabis to spot the grave containing the
plant chemicals single body, so the process still
requires refinement.
GENES from the cannabis plant have Lidar only picks up soil
been added to yeast strains to enable disturbances, so one limitation
them to make cannabinoids, key of the technique is that there is no
chemicals from the plant that have easy way to distinguish the graves
therapeutic value. of human bodies from those of
The “cannayeasts” should make it animals, or even changes to the
possible to turn sugar into pure forms ground due to other causes.
of many different cannabinoids, and But the technique could still
to do so more cheaply and with less prove valuable. Searching an
environmental damage than farming. area requires a lot of resources,
“It gives us access to all these particularly when investigators
KACPER KOWALSKI/PANOS
rare cannabinoids that might even don’t know exactly where they

be better therapeutics,” says Jay should look. The lidar-carrying
Keasling at the University of drones can narrow down a huge
California, Berkeley, who led the search area containing difficult
team behind the work (Nature, terrain to a few places of interest.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-0978-9). “Drones have a capability of
Our bodies produce cannabinoids
to help regulate everything from Police turn to drones to rapidly pinpointing areas for
subsequent investigations,” says
memory to appetite. Marijuana plants
make more than 100 chemicals that pinpoint buried bodies Jamie Pringle at Keele University
in the UK.
can also bind to the cannabinoid For the moment, the technology
receptors in our nervous system. DRONES could soon help search donated for research purposes is expensive: Weeden says that
The main cannabinoid in cannabis for murder victims in remote in a 20,000-square-metre area a lidar unit costs A$60,000 to
is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), areas. In recent tests, drones of dense forest. A$200,000.
which is what makes people feel equipped with laser scanners The cadavers were put in Elsewhere, researchers are
“stoned” when they take cannabis. identified graves in Australian three types of grave to simulate testing cheaper methods. Peter
The next most abundant is bushland. Now, the nation’s different crime sites: one Masters at Cranfield University
cannabidiol. This helps reduce the police want to use the technology containing only one body, another in the UK recently fitted out a
symptoms of some forms of epilepsy, in an ongoing case. with three and a larger grave with consumer drone with a GoPro
and may be useful for treating a few In the investigation, the police six bodies. Three empty graves video camera and a relatively
other conditions too. suspect that a missing person is were dug as controls. cheap lens attachment that filters
But extracting pure cannabidiol buried in a densely forested area. Patrick Weeden at drone near-infrared light to produce
or THC from plants, or making it from However, all searches so far have company Scout Aerial then flew images showing soil disturbance.
scratch, is difficult and expensive. come up empty. By using drones He used it to locate bodies buried
Keasling says the genetically modified carrying a scanning technology “It could help generate in a natural cemetery.
yeasts will produce pure cannabinoids called lidar, they hope to cover a new leads for cold cases, But this method only works
more cheaply. larger area more quickly than but also uncover mass well for open areas without tree
What’s more, producing chemicals they would be able to on foot. graves in conflict areas” cover, as it can’t map the ground
in yeast is less environmentally Lidar works by pointing lasers beneath vegetation.
damaging than growing large at a target and measuring how lidar-equipped drones over the Eventually, lidar could be
amounts of a plant just to extract much time it takes signals to be target area. He didn’t know any used to proactively search vast
a chemical that is present in tiny reflected back. The laser pulses details about the burials. areas and automatically detect
quantities, he says. bounce off the surfaces, such as Weeden used an algorithm to if anything looks suspicious.
Keasling and his team have leaves, they encounter. In this digitally remove the vegetation It could also be put to other uses
formed a company called Demetrix instance, they travel through gaps from the resulting images and than simply helping a police
to commercialise the cannayeasts. in the forest canopy to offer a view reveal the ground beneath. This force locate a single or a small
At least two other companies, of the trees as well as anything allowed him to spot changes both mass grave, says Weeden.
Librede in California and Hyasynth buried in the soil below them. on the surface and underground, As well as generating new leads
in Canada, have said they are also To test the technique, Soren letting him successfully identify for cold cases, he believes it could
working on making cannabinoids in Blau at the Victorian Institute of five of the six graves (Forensic also help uncover mass graves in
yeast, but they have yet to publish Forensic Medicine in Melbourne Sciences Research, doi.org/c22w). conflict areas as evidence of war
any results. Michael Le Page ■ and her colleagues buried bodies However, the technique failed crimes or genocides. Donna Lu ■

NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
Cloud loss may lead

to 14°C of warming
Michael Le Page reflecting the sun’s heat back into
space. The group found a sudden
IF WE keep burning fossil fuels transition when carbon dioxide
with reckless abandon, we could levels reached around 1200 parts
trigger a cloud feedback effect per million (ppm). At that point,
that will add 8°C on top of all the stratocumulus clouds broke
STOCKTREK IMAGES, INC./ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

the warming up to that point. up and disappeared.
That means the world could This finding applies only
warm by more than 14°C above to subtropical stratocumulus
the pre-industrial temperature. because these clouds are unusual.
This would be cataclysmic. The cloud layer is maintained by
For instance, large parts of the the cloud tops cooling as they
tropics would become too hot emit infrared radiation – and very
for warm-blooded animals, high CO2 levels block this process.
including us, to survive. The loss of these bright white
The good news is that, if clouds would have a dramatic
countries step up their efforts warming effect, adding 8°C to the Stratocumulus clouds reflect the Marvel at the NASA Goddard
to cut emissions, we should global temperature, Schneider sun’s light, keeping Earth cooler Institute for Space Studies.
calculates. Because the world Emissions are currently
“The planet became so would warm around 6°C or more CO2 levels would only pass growing in line with the
hot about 50 million years if CO2 levels passed 1200 ppm, 1200 ppm decades after 2100. worst-case scenario, however the
ago that crocodiles this means the average global Other climate scientists say expectation is that countries will
thrived in the Arctic” temperature rise could exceed 14°C this cloud feedback is plausible. eventually do more. “This result
(Nature Geoscience, doi.org/c223). “Conceptually, I think it’s isn’t cause for panic,” says Marvel.
avoid finding out if this idea Carbon dioxide levels will pass sound,” says Helene Muri at The finding could also help
is correct. “I don’t think we will 410 ppm this year, up from the Norwegian University of solve a long-standing mystery:
get anywhere close to it,” says 280 ppm in pre-industrial times. Science and Technology. But there why the planet became so hot
Tapio Schneider at the California If we burned all available fossil are some uncertainties about the about 50 million years ago that
Institute of Technology. fuels, atmospheric CO2 levels numbers, so it will be important crocodiles thrived in the Arctic.
Schneider’s team computer- could rise as high as 4000 ppm. to narrow them down, she says. We know that CO2 levels were
modelled stratocumulus clouds However, even in the standard The result might hold up, generally much higher at the
over subtropical oceans. These worst-case scenario used by but we already have more than time, but they didn’t seem high
clouds cover about 7 per cent of climate scientists, which assumes enough reasons to avoid reaching enough to explain the extreme
the planet and keep it cooler by nothing is done to curb emissions, such high levels of CO2, says Kate warmth during this period. ■
AI makes Chris images, training the program to

EMPICS ENTERTAINMENT/PA IMAGES
recognise and reconstruct particular

Hemsworth features – eyes, for example. Similar
masks taught it to recognise the
smile again colours and shadows of the face.
“This program would help designers
DRAW a few lines on a photo of a face by reducing tedious labour,” says Jo,
and an AI can turn your sketch into a enabling them to focus on more
realistic edit, no skill required. creative tasks. And, he says, it is easy
A face-editing program, created by adversarial network, formed of two Eventually, the generator gets so to use without design expertise.
Youngjoo Jo and Jongyoul Park at the competing AIs: a generator and good that the discriminator can no “The big question,” says
Electronics and Telecommunications discriminator. The generator edits longer tell the difference (arxiv.org/ machine-learning researcher Alex
Research Institute in South Korea, photos based on overlaid sketches. abs/1902.06838). Champandard, “is how do we make
lets you change hairstyles, add smiles The discriminator is given the edited The pair trained the program on these systems so that they benefit
and even insert earrings. pictures and untouched photos, 29,000 celebrity photos. Masks were a lot of the people whose work is
The program is a generative and must distinguish real from fake. randomly added over parts of these being disrupted?” Donna Lu ■

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NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
First private moon

mission launches
Leah Crane Most of its money has come from
individual donors and charities.
A SPACECRAFT that began life as The SpaceIL team hopes that
a sketch on a bar napkin nearly this mission will, as befits its
a decade ago is on its way to the name, help start an era of more
moon. If it succeeds, SpaceIL’s ambitious low-cost journeys
Beresheet lander will be the first into space. At an overall budget
privately funded mission to of $90 million, it is also much
touch down on the lunar surface. cheaper than previous lunar
SpaceIL, an Israeli non-profit expeditions. It cost half as much
organisation, began as a as China’s Chang’e 4 lander,
competitor in the Google Lunar which touched down in January.
X Prize, a contest offering a “The hopes are that if missions
$20 million reward for the first become cheaper you can do
private firm to land a rover on the more of them,” says Yonatan
SPACEX/ALAMY
moon. The contest ended in 2018 Winetraub, one of SpaceIL’s

without a winner, but SpaceIL founders. “I’m over the moon,
continued working on its craft. no pun intended, to start that.”
Now it has successfully launched Beresheet’s journey won’t be
from Cape Canaveral, Florida, simple. Instead of flying straight The Beresheet lunar lander hitched from the rising sun sizzles its
aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. to the moon, it was placed in a a ride into space from Florida– instruments. In that time, it will
The lander will spend a number relatively low orbit around Earth. take pictures and measurements
of weeks orbiting Earth before That lowered the launch cost, than 400,000 kilometres away. of the moon’s magnetic field.
attempting to land on the moon because the lander could share The lander is relatively small, It also carries a mirror designed
on 11 April. To date, only three its ride with satellites. at just 1.5 metres tall and 2 metres to reflect a laser light beamed
nations have successfully In the weeks ahead, the wide, but it does carry scientific from Earth back to us. This
managed the feat: the US, spacecraft will circle our planet instruments. The craft also has allows researchers to make
the Soviet Union and China. in ever-widening rings before a “lunar library” in the form of a precise measurements of the
Beresheet – which means getting far enough away to be small engraved disc containing, distance to the moon.
Genesis in Hebrew – could make captured by the moon’s gravity at among other things, the entirety “There are still a lot of risks
Israel the fourth, but with a the beginning of April. If all goes of English-language Wikipedia. involved,” says Winetraub. “A
difference. Due to the rules of the well, it will land on 11 April, having Beresheet is only expected to spacecraft isn’t something you
Lunar X Prize, the spacecraft has travelled 6.5 million kilometres, last about two Earth days on the can test on Earth – we can’t do a
barely any government funding. even though the moon is less moon’s surface before the heat landing and see how it goes.” ■
Vulnerability in most computers and smartphones. It

leaves devices vulnerable to software
Speculative Store Bypass, Ben Titzer
and his colleagues at Google have now
speculative execution, a feature of
chips that was intended to speed up
computer chips that is designed to steal information,
including passwords and emails.
concluded that there is no software
fix that works – leaving all computers
devices. It involves guessing at future
calculations, and then discarding
can’t be fixed Following Spectre’s discovery, with affected hardware vulnerable incorrect guesses.
firms including Apple and Microsoft (arxiv.org/abs/1902.05178). We still don’t know exactly what
A CRITICAL security flaw affecting scrambled to release security patches This all stems from a problem in can and can’t be stolen from machines
computers the world over is here to for some variants of the flaw. how processors were designed, says with flawed chips, so while patches
stay, and there isn’t any software However, there were problems. Titzer. “The entire field of computing seem to work for some variants, we
that can properly guard against it. These fixes were reported to slow missed this.” Spectre exploits this don’t know whether they are truly
That is the conclusion of Google down some computer functions by flaw, which involves something called effective, says cybersecurity expert
engineers trying to fix a vulnerability between 5 and 30 per cent. And the Paul Kocher, who helped find Spectre.
called Spectre in chips known as patches mitigate the risk for only “There is a problem with “We will be living with the
processors. It was first discovered a some Spectre variants found so far, how processors have been consequences of it for a long time,”
year ago, and affects chips built by and don’t solve the underlying issue. designed that the entire says Ian Batten at the University of
Intel, AMD and ARM, which are used in For one Spectre variant, known as field of computing missed” Birmingham, UK. Donna Lu ■

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NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
World’s biggest
bee found after
40 years
A GIANT bee thought lost to the world
PREMIUM STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY GMBH/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
for decades has been found again on

an Indonesian island. The black bee
is the size of a human thumb, with
a wingspan of 6 centimetres and
fierce-looking mandibles.
Simon Robson at the University of
Sydney and his colleagues spotted a
lone specimen of Wallace’s giant bee
(Megachile pluto) while searching
for the insect on one of Indonesia’s
North Moluccas islands.
The team found the bee in a
termite’s mound a few metres off
Wolf packs invade

Germany has seen a rise in wolf the ground. “She just came and
numbers since the 1980s looked around and went back to
her nest,” says Robson. “We ran
military land 14 per cent of similarly sized

protected areas (Conservation
Letters, doi.org/c2zt).
around cheering and shouting and
hugging each other.”
The bee is named after British
Similar trends can be seen in biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, who,
Chelsea Whyte animals were less likely to die other countries. “Something along with Charles Darwin, is credited
from human interactions in these we see in our work in California with developing the theory of
WOLVES are making a comeback places than in protected areas. is that lots of areas that have evolution through natural selection.
in a surprising place. Germany “Most of the dead wolves destructive processes happening, Wallace discovered the bee in 1859
had no wolves a few decades ago, died in traffic accidents,” says like logging, can be really on the Indonesian island of Bacan. He
but populations are now growing Reinhardt. Although road density important core habitats for large described it as “a large black wasp-like
in military training areas. is similar in both types of area, carnivores. Here, it’s mountain insect, with immense jaws like a
The predators began returning there may be less traffic on the lions,” says Justine Smith at the stag-beetle”. In 1860, an entomologist
to Germany in the 1980s, mostly military land, she says. University of California, Berkeley. in the UK determined that it was
from Poland. “We were expecting The relative safety of these Many species are more afraid actually a bee, saying it was a “giant
that the large forest areas training areas appears to have of humans than they are of of the genus to which it belongs”.
north-east of Berlin would be helped wolves spread across machinery like cars or even tanks, The bee has a history of vanishing.
the first place settled by the Germany. Analysing data collected she adds. Recreational activities It was believed to be extinct until
wolves, because it is close to between 2000 and 2015, the team are often promoted on protected its accidental rediscovery by a US
Poland and has dense forest,” lands, while the public has little forester in Indonesia in 1981. But
says Ilka Reinhardt at Goethe “Many species are more or no access to military land. the lack of another sighting led the
University Frankfurt. afraid of humans than “I think what might be going on charity Global Wildlife Conservation
But she and her colleagues have they are of machinery is that in many parts of the world, to include the insect on its list of
now analysed data from national like cars or even tanks” protected areas are built in places “25 most wanted” lost species in 2017.
surveys of wolf populations, that have a lot of people already. Ruby Prosser Scully ■
and found that the first colonies discovered that wolves seem to Or they can attract people to live
were in Saxony, to the south of have jumped from one piece of near them because of the benefits
Berlin, on military training areas. military land to another. they provide,” says Smith.
These places have tanks and Over this period, wolves So it may be the relative
shooting ranges and are off limits in Germany went from one solitude of military training
to the public. established mating pair to grounds that appeals to wolves.
With dense forest and few 67 pairs across the whole country, The routine of a military schedule
roads, the areas provide a similar with the population growing could help as well. “There is some
habitat to that in protected exponentially. By 2015, wolves shooting, but it’s always in the
natural areas. But the team’s were found in 62 per cent of same areas and it’s usually during
CLAY BOLT
analysis suggests that military military training areas larger than the workday, so the animals can
land is actually better for wolves: 30 square kilometres, and in only get used to it,” says Reinhardt. ■

NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
demands are removed, and the The cannabis scenario isn’t

AI could decide system decides a course of action
based on those that remain.
yet possible, as digital assistants
currently lack odour sensors, but
to snitch on you One problem is that ethical

behaviour isn’t consistent across
societies or from person to
they do have microphones and
some have cameras. Police have
already sought data collected in
person, so the AIs would have to this way: Amazon released audio
Frank Swain A digital assistant faced with be flexible, allowing them to be recordings from an Echo device
a drug-taking teen would weigh geared to better reflect local law present at a suspected murder
IF A smart home of the future up the demands of the different as well as the preferences of the scene to Arkansas police in 2017.
gets a whiff of cannabis smoke points of view and try to find a owner, says Slavkovik. Google’s Nest home security
in a teenager’s bedroom, should course of action that pleases them However, the team behind the system was also found last week
it tell their parents? Or even the all. It does this by mapping out idea has yet to work out what the to contain a microphone, even
police? One group of researchers the various arguments from each moral AIs should do if they can’t though this wasn’t disclosed in
thinks smart devices could draw stakeholder, noting which ones reach a consensus. any of the product material.
on artificial intelligence to reach clash (“involve the police” versus Beth Singler at the University
a moral decision. “respect individual autonomy”, Your digital assistant may one day of Cambridge isn’t convinced
Situations like this may emerge for example). Conflicting be an ethical guardian too by the idea of using moral AIs in
as digital assistants, like Amazon this way. “Humans and human
Echo or Google Home, make it situations are far messier than
into more dwellings and gain this method makes out,” she says.
even smarter features. One way For example, the proposed moral
to reach a resolution might be for AIs treat parents as a single unit,
a handful of artificially intelligent but parents may disagree on what
bots to debate the possibilities to do about a teenager’s drug use.
before reaching a decision. And when facing a tough call,
That is the view of Marija people can change their mind.
Slavkovik at the University of “There is no guarantee humans
Bergen, Norway, and her team. won’t behave differently, and may
They presented the idea at an disagree with what they expressed
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and previously to the artificial moral
Society conference in Hawaii. agent,” says Singler.
The idea is that in ambiguous The question remains about
cases, moral AIs would each whether we should place this
represent a point of view, such responsibility on robots in the
DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/ALAMY
as the device owner, a guardian first place, says Jason Millar at

or the police. They would have the University of Ottawa, Canada.
different priorities depending on “That question is very important,
who they represent: to prioritise much more important, I would
individual autonomy, to operate argue, than seeking agreement
safely or to be lawful. or consensus.” ■
Footballers are Ashley Jones at Leeds Beckett

University in the UK and his
athletes who can play football.”
Recent research has shown today’s
surprise that old injuries flare up more
often, says Jones. Some 40 per cent
working harder colleagues tracked 243 footballers
from 10 clubs across four of the
players run roughly 30 per cent
further than in 2006, but recovery
of modern injuries were the result
of repetitive stress and strain placed
on the pitch divisions below the English Premier time hasn’t increased. Lower league on players’ bodies over time.
League in the 2015/16 season. teams play a 46-game season, with Some things haven’t changed:
PROFESSIONAL footballers have They found players had an average additional cup competition matches. the most common injury remains a
never had it so easy, right? Not of 1.9 injuries per season, compared Of the injuries that Jones’s hamstring strain and problems tend
according to a study, which shows with 1.3 in the 1997/98 and 1998/99 group tracked, 17 per cent were to peak twice, during winter and in
modern soccer is taking an increasing seasons combined – the last time a reoccurrences of an existing problem, the first few weeks of the season.
toll on players. similar study was conducted (Physical up from 7 per cent in 1997-9. It is no Coaches could be pushing players
The finding lends weight to last Therapy in Sport, doi.org/c2z4). too hard and too early thinking they
year’s announcement by the English Jones says the game is different “Twenty years ago we had need to get them into shape, says
football authorities that the country’s now, with greater physical demands. footballers trying to be Jones. “It isn’t needed. These players
Premier League will test a mid-season “Twenty years ago, footballers were athletes. Now they are don’t lose fitness in the summer like
break, partly to try to reduce injuries. trying to be athletes. Now we have athletes who play football” they used to.” David Adam ■

IN BRIEF
NASA, ESA, AND L. HUSTAK (STSCI)
There’s more of a
buzz on the right
HONEYBEES are biased, at least
when it comes to which way to
turn when they enter a cavity.
Directional preferences exist in
many animals, but may be extra
important in social species for
group cohesion. To see if this is
the case in honeybees, Thomas
O’Shea-Wheller of Louisiana State
University got 30 bees to explore
two boxes. One was open inside;
the other had a maze of tunnels.
Out of 180 trials in the open
cavity, the bees turned right on 86
occasions but left just 35 times. On
the remaining 59 occasions, they
flew straight on. They turned right
more quickly than left, suggesting
a more automatic response. In the
maze box, they had no preference
(Biology Letters, doi.org/c2zj).
Bees explore spaces such as tree
hollows when seeking a nest site.
They choose a site only once a
certain number of scout bees are
First alien moon may System Research in Germany and his colleagues
disagree. Astronomers often look for exoplanets by together. A turn bias might help
not be what it seems watching for a dip in a star’s light as a planet passes in this process, says O’Shea-Wheller.
front. Exomoons should show up as an even smaller
THE first suspected moon found beyond our solar system dip on top of that. Heller says that the dip attributed
may not be what we thought. A team of astronomers say to Kepler-1625b’s moon could be a statistical anomaly.
Walk lowers blood
the evidence for the discovery is inconclusive, and that Further evidence for the moon, namely that the planet
an unseen planet may be a more plausible explanation. crossed its star 78 minutes earlier than expected, hinting pressure like a pill
In 2017, David Kipping and Alex Teachey at Columbia at a moon giving it a gravitational boost, could be caused
University in New York revealed evidence for a Neptune- by an unseen hot, Jupiter-like world orbiting more closely JUST 30 minutes of exercise every
sized exomoon orbiting the Jupiter-sized exoplanet to the star, says Heller (arxiv.org/abs/1902.06018). morning may be as effective as
Kepler-1625b, about 8000 light years from Earth. In Kipping agrees that the current data shouldn’t be medication at lowering blood
2018, the pair firmed this up, using data from the Kepler interpreted as a secure exomoon detection, but thinks pressure for the rest of the day.
and Hubble space telescopes. that an unseen planet can’t explain the moon-like dip in Michael Wheeler at the
But René Heller at the Max Planck Institute for Solar the brightness of the host star. University of Western Australia in
Perth and his team got 35 women
and 32 men aged between 55 and
A fifth of our genes are still a big mystery yeast. The team didn’t look at the 80 to try various regimes: sitting
rate of progress, but Wood thinks for 8 hours; 1 hour of sitting then
WE HAVE no idea what 20 per cent function remains unknown. it is similar to that for yeast (Open 30 minutes of moderate walking,
of our protein-coding genes are When the researchers applied Biology, doi.org/c2x7). followed by 6.5 hours of sitting; 1
for – and progress on solving this such criteria to yeast proteins, One reason for progress stalling hour of sitting before 30 minutes
puzzle has stalled. they found that the function of is that a common way to find out of walking, followed by 6.5 hours
That is the conclusion of a study most was discovered in the 1990s. what protein-coding genes do is to of sitting, but with 3 minutes of
by Valerie Wood at the University Progress slowed in the 2000s and mutate them in lab animals such light walking every 30 minutes.
of Cambridge and her colleagues. plateaued in the 2010s with the as mice and zebrafish to see what Blood pressure was lower in
They started by defining what is function of a fifth still unclear. happens. The mystery genes may men and women in the exercise
known or unknown. For instance, Next they showed that 3000 be involved in processes, such as plans. Women, but not men, saw
we may be able to tell a protein is human protein-coding genes ageing, that have subtle effects. worthwhile extra gains if they
an enzyme, but if we don’t know remain a mystery, which works In addition, research into such also did the 3-minute walks
what reaction it catalyses, its out as the same proportion as in proteins struggles to get funding. (Hypertension, doi.org/c2zv).

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IN BRIEF
Turtles work out Closing in on the real tale of how the dinosaurs met their end
as they slumber THE story of the mass extinction the Deccan eruptions occurred, years before the asteroid impact
that killed the dinosaurs has been Courtney Sprain at the University (Science, doi.org/c2xw). Sprain
HIBERNATING turtles have been fleshed out by two studies. of California, Berkeley, and her and her team concluded that
spotted doing underwater Up to 75 per cent of all species colleagues worked out the age three-quarters of the lava volume
push-ups, possibly as a way to vanished in the Cretaceous- of lava flows. Another team, led at Deccan erupted after the mass
grab enough oxygen to stay alive. Palaeogene extinction 66 million by Blair Schoene at Princeton extinction, and that the eruption
Mike Plummer at Harding years ago. There is evidence that University, used a different rate increased after the impact
University in Arkansas and his an asteroid impact at Chicxulub, method to do the same. (Science, doi.org/c2xx).
colleagues noticed the behaviour Mexico, created a global soot Both studies agree the Deccan We still don’t know the relative
by chance while keeping about cloud that blocked out the sun. eruptions lasted around a million contributions of the Deccan Traps
25 smooth softshell turtles in an However, the extinction also years, beginning around 400,000 and the asteroid to the extinction,
outdoor simulated pond. coincided with intense volcanic years before the extinction. But says Schoene, but a more precise
During checks, the researchers activity that resulted in a huge Schoene and his team suggest the timeline gets us closer. Sprain
saw the animals raise and lower the rock formation known as the eruptions occurred in four bursts. thinks volcanism may have had
back of their body like a push-up Deccan Traps in western India. The second was the most rapid a big role, weakening ecosystems
over 1000 times between them. To get a better idea about when and began tens of thousands of before the Chicxulub impact.
The animals typically spend the
winter partially buried in sand or
MARK CONLIN/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

mud at the bottom of rivers or
People conquered
streams so are hard to observe in
the wild. Although the reptiles extremes long ago
can breathe in air, this species is
well known for its ability to obtain RAINFORESTS, with dangerous
oxygen through the skin. “We animals, diseases and poor
hypothesised that the push-ups resources, were generally thought
resulted in replenishing the water too inhospitable for ancient
next to the turtle’s skin with humans to occupy. But new
oxygenated water,” says Plummer. evidence is overturning that view.
Further tests seem to agree with An international team analysed
that idea. The turtles did more push- around 15,000 bone and tooth
ups in warmer water than colder fragments from the Fa-Hien
water. Warmer water carries less Lena cave in Sri Lanka’s rainforest.
oxygen than cold water, so the This is thought to be the oldest
turtles would have to move more to archaeological site occupied by
get the oxygen they need (Journal humans in the country.
of Herpetology, doi.org/c2zg). The team found that the
Plummer says they might not do people living there were able to
this in the wild though, as water thrive by hunting small, quick,
there is constantly moving over tree-dwelling animals, such as Eco-friendly plastics within our grasp
their skin due to currents. monkeys and giant squirrels.
They did so almost continuously SQUID may hold the secret to a new used to make it in greater quantities.
SHUTTERSTOCK
until around 4000 years ago. generation of greener plastics. That They say one application of the
Michelle Langley of Griffith is thanks to substances in the tough, proteins could be for coating existing
University, Brisbane, an author serrated suckers at the end of their synthetic clothing fibres to produce
of the study, says their hunting tentacles, used to grab prey. a very hard-wearing fabric that won’t
methods seem sophisticated and Researchers are finding that shed microplastics. It could even lead
sustainable, rather than relying proteins in these suckers – called to self-healing materials.
on indiscriminate use of snares squid ring teeth – can be turned into The usefulness of the proteins is
that can lead to overhunting. fibres and films for making tough, a result of microscopic features, such
The researchers say that this flexible and biodegradable plastics. as the sequence of their amino acid
finding shows the flexibility that One barrier is that an average- building blocks and the structures
allowed Homo sapiens to rapidly sized squid only contains 100 they form: tightly coiled helices, flat
colonise extreme environments milligrams of these proteins. But sheets and disordered tangles. These
and eventually become the only Melik Demirel at Pennsylvania State features give the proteins their
hominin species left on the University and his team say that macro-scale properties (Frontiers in
planet (Nature Communications, genetically engineered E. coli can be Chemistry, doi.org/c2x4).
doi.org/c2zd).

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INSIGHT GENETIC PRIVACY
Uniquely you
Your genome definitively identifies you, but we keep pretending that
DNA data is anonymous. That has to change, says Chelsea Whyte
EVERY person in the world is

issued with a unique code before
they are even born. Governments,
insurance firms and indeed pretty
much anyone can use this code
to catalogue us throughout our
entire lives. This isn’t a sci-fi
dystopia – it is just genetics.
While your genome doesn’t
explicitly record your name,
address or other identifying
information, the rise of
consumer genetics services
means these details are
increasingly being linked to your
DNA. Once that happens, the
gene genie is out of the bottle.
Yet many genetics firms and
researchers continue to insist
that your genome isn’t personally
identifiable information, despite
it literally identifying you.
A recent revision of US ethical
guidelines, for example, has
TIM FLACH/GETTY
continued this fiction, ignoring
multiple objections. So should
we be concerned about our lack
of genetic anonymity?
The mistaken idea that medical zip code, birth date and gender to In other words, any DNA and tracing people through
information can be anonymised search hospital records on the made available to the research any listed relatives.
isn’t new. In the mid-1990s, the day he visited. She got an exact community or to the public in The use of this kind of DNA
Massachusetts Group Insurance match, and sent the governor databases doesn’t have to be searching has exploded along
Commission, which provides his medical records in the mail, protected. It can therefore be with the rise of consumer genetic
healthcare to state employees, showcasing the limitations of used without consent for kits. A recent article in MIT
decided to make all medical so-called anonymised data. research or other purposes. Technology Review used public
records available for research. In the US, the privacy of Law enforcement agencies data to estimate that 26 million
The state governor at the time, medical data is protected under have taken advantage of this people around the world have
William Weld, assured the the Health Insurance Portability lately, trying a kind of genomic used such kits, sending in a swab
public that the records would and Accountability Act (HIPAA), triangulation to find the of their saliva to one of several
be stripped of personally which lays out 18 identifiers that perpetrators of unsolved genetics companies such as
identifiable information. must be removed before medical murders. This technique has AncestryDNA and 23andMe (see
Then he fell ill, visited a hospital, data can be stored in an open been used to find dozens of graph, right).
and a computer science graduate database for, say, research suspects by matching DNA Even if you haven’t taken one
student at the Massachusetts purposes. This covers obvious left at a crime scene to that of these tests yourself, parts of
Institute of Technology took the things like names, addresses on genetic ancestry websites your DNA are likely to be out
opportunity to show him how and health insurance account there. “We’ve shown in our
easily identifiable his own records numbers. It also includes some “DNA made available to research that if we have a database
were. Latanya Sweeney, now the biometric markers, such as researchers doesn’t have of 2 per cent of a population, then
director of the data privacy lab at fingerprints and voice patterns. to be protected and can virtually everyone is traceable,”
Harvard University, used Weld’s But it doesn’t include DNA. be used without consent” says Yaniv Erlich, chief science

For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
officer at genetic ancestry SHOULD GOVERNMENTS GATHER DNA? provisions,” says Natalie Ram
company MyHeritage. That is at the University of Baltimore,
because the DNA of even distant Some US states are trying to limit to limit DNA collection to healthcare Maryland. What does constrain
relatives can be linked back to you. the use of genetic data, while others workers who directly care for patients. them is their terms and conditions,
Erlich and his colleagues want to amass large databases. In Maryland, a bill aims to stop but these can be unilaterally
demonstrated as much in a 2013 In Arizona, a bill to create a police from searching public genetic changed. For example, police were
study. They used patterns found in statewide DNA database elicited databases to hunt down criminals, able to upload DNA to GEDmatch,
DNA called short tandem repeats criticism when it was announced seen by some as an invasion of the a genetic genealogy database,
to search through public genetic on 19 February. It required people privacy guaranteed by the US to look for suspects, without
databases, and showed that they who work or volunteer for the state constitution. Law enforcement users knowing this was possible.
could discover the surname of to submit DNA, along with anyone lobbyists argue that limiting police GEDmatch updated its terms of
the person to whom the DNA applying to serve as a foster parent capabilities won’t benefit the public, service after the fact.
belonged. “With enough time and or get a driving licence. particularly because it isn’t illegal for All this means the cat is firmly
effort, I can get to you,” he says. The bill may have been a response a citizen to take a DNA sample found out of the bag when it comes
to a recent criminal case where a at a crime scene and upload it to a to genetic anonymity. “[These
healthcare facility worker was traced genetic genealogy database, says databases] create the largest
Myth of anonymity through his DNA and charged with Yaniv Erlich at genetic ancestry genetic surveillance apparatus
Stripping records of information impregnating a patient who was company MyHeritage. “To say that for US individuals that has ever
like names, addresses and social incapacitated. Following a backlash, police cannot do something an been established,” says Erlich.
security numbers was once the proposal has since been amended ordinary citizen can do is unusual.” Maybe the best approach is
enough to keep it from being to simply make that fact clear,
identifiable, but that changed population. For example, if you genetic data,” says Kärt says Jeantine Lunshof at MIT.
about 20 years ago. have blood drawn at the doctor’s Pormeister at the University “When you generate DNA data,
“There was this notion that office and there is a bit left over of Tartu in Estonia. “The fact that it’s out there and you can’t get it
was useful for decades, that if after your tests are done, it could it’s shared in significant part with back,” she says.
you redact certain types of be stripped of identifiers and your relatives – you don’t see that As ethics consultant for the
information, it becomes quite put into a repository where it with other types of data.” Personal Genome Project, which
hard to trace back records. And it can be used for research without Protecting genetic information
actually worked quite well,” says you ever knowing about it. But stored by consumer genetics “Even if you haven’t taken
Erlich. “But as we got into the era increasingly, people want control companies, rather than medical a genetic test yourself,
of big data and large-scale internet over the use of their data. researchers, is even more parts of your DNA are
resources, it became true that it’s In the European Union, the complex. “They’re doing a lot likely to be out there”
hard to anonymise any big data.” recent General Data Protection of genetic testing, sequencing,
The myth of genetic anonymity Regulation (GDPR) aims to give screening and sharing of data. aims to collect and publish
persists, however, because it people that power, but it doesn’t They aren’t covered by HIPAA, genomic data for 100,000 people,
is useful. It gives researchers apply to “anonymous data”, and in their capacity as consumer- Lunshof is putting this into
access to a wealth of information which includes DNA. facing, profit-driven companies, practice. Participants are made
without having to seek “GDPR is of such a general they’re not covered by research aware that their data will be fully
informed consent. nature that it couldn’t possibly protections. So, they kind of public and could be used for any
Research of human subjects address the peculiarities of fall outside the basic privacy kind of research, even something
in the US is governed by the they might not approve of like
Common Rule, which applies Estimated number of people DNA-tested by consumer genetics companies biological weapons research.
to all federally funded research. This kind of open consent
AncestryDNA 23andMe Others
This rule is rewritten periodically model is important in a clinical
30
to bring it in line with current or research setting, because it may
ethical standards and take into not be possible to explain all the
account new technology. This possible ways genetic data could
Number of people tested (millions)
happened in January, but the be used in the future, says Sandra

rulebook still doesn’t count DNA 20 Lee at Stanford University in
as identifiable information. California. But the rules of the
“Many people wrote opinions game change when we introduce
saying that DNA is identifiable commercial genetics companies.
SOURCE: MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
and that we should treat it this “When somebody is a patient

10
way,” says Erlich. Instead, the interacting with a physician,
new language explicitly says they are operating with a set
DNA isn’t identifiable. of ethical expectations,” she says.
There are clear benefits to “When you shift that to the
allowing this, because it is a 0 marketplace, those aren’t in
good way of sampling the entire 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 place. That’s worrisome.” ■

COMMENT
Folding phones are no fad

Samsung is the first major manufacturer to launch a folding phone,
and it might be useful rather than gimmicky, says Holly Brockwell
SAMSUNG’S launch last week to reports) and unproven. But as

of the Galaxy Fold sent shock the first step in a new direction, it
waves through the internet, is exactly what the market needs.
with many people outside the Smartphone innovation has
tech industry seeing a folding stagnated in the past few years,
smartphone for the first time. with various near-identical
The reaction has been as designs competing for the
divided as the phone’s hinged same money. Manufacturers
chassis, with one side professing have tried various tactics to
starry-eyed love for the device’s stand out, experimenting
innovative functionality and with colours or add-ons, but
the other decrying its price consumers have generally
and perceived gimmickry. stuck to their favourite brands.
The Galaxy Fold isn’t the first Foldables, as the category is
folding smartphone to market but known, are an innovation that
it is the first from a high-profile combines the cool factor with
brand, and as such it is a big deal. functionality.
Samsung has spent time and Superficially, they may seem
money to be the first mainstream like curved TVs, which failed
tech name on the folding to revolutionise their market
bandwagon, which suggests the because consumers weren’t
company believes it will be a convinced they added anything
popular category. Is it right? to the viewing experience.
Well, yes and no. The Galaxy Foldables may be different.
JOSIE FORD
Fold itself isn’t likely to sell well: That is because of the phones’
it is expensive ($1980 according ability to transform into a
fact sheet that was briefly argue that nuclear meets those
The nuclear option published on the website of the

resolution’s sponsor, charismatic
congresswoman Alexandria
criteria. Ocasio-Cortez’s fact
sheet, however, reportedly
stated that the GND “will not
The proposed Green New Deal should consider Ocasio-Cortez. include investing in new
So first, the facts. The resolution nuclear power plants”.
the value of nuclear power, says David Titley doesn’t contain the word Here are some more facts.
“nuclear” anywhere in its text. According to official figures, in
It does state that, within 10 years, 2017, nuclear power provided
SINCE last November, proposals their progressive wing, and the US will be “meeting 100 per about 20 per cent of US electricity,
in the US for a Green New Deal criticised by many Republicans. cent of the power demand in the and 58 per cent of the country’s
(GND) have incited much debate. One of the contentious issues United States through clean, “non-carbon-based” electricity.
The GND aims to address both is the role in the GND of civilian renewable, and zero-emission Furthermore, nuclear power
climate change and economic nuclear power, or lack thereof. energy sources” – but some would plants often operate at 90 per
inequality, but support for it The issue is muddied by confusion cent of their rated capacity. That
is dividing along partisan lines. between the information in the “In 2017, nuclear power of wind and solar, by comparison,
It is championed by many official resolution in Congress provided about 58 per cent ranges from 20 to 30 per cent.
Democratic 2020 presidential laying out the details of a Green of the US’s non-carbon- Ideally, wind and solar would
candidates vying for votes from New Deal and an accompanying based electricity” be rapidly scalable and battery

For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion
different device when needed.

It isn’t hard to see the value in a
ANALYSIS Zebra stripes
hand-sized phone that can slip
into your pocket and also fold out
to offer a big screen for movies.
However, one of the stumbling
blocks of curved TVs also applies
to foldables: concern about
fragility and repair. If you break
the screen on your $1980 Galaxy
Fold, how much is it going to
cost you to fix? Potential early
adopters may be put off if they
feel breakages are likely to be
costly and hard to remedy.
TIM CARO/UC DAVIS
Ultimately, though, the Galaxy

Fold is more important for the
smartphone industry than for
the consumer. It is a call to arms
for manufacturers to embrace
a new form and put their design
Beware evolutionary
study, based on computer modelling
talents to work finding new ways of how moving zebras would appear
to improve people’s lives. to a predator, indicated that the stripes
This kind of novelty is often would be extremely confusing.
left to the niche brands to
experiment with before the big just-so stories There is also the simple possibility
that the stripes are a signal. The
players like Samsung will risk message may not be for other zebras:
jumping in. The Galaxy Fold is a in 2017, researchers suggested that
bold statement. It may well pay Michael Marshall necessarily. Some ideas don’t seem to the stripes signal to other grazing
off for Samsung in the long term stand up, notably the suggestion that animals, encouraging them to
if it gives the firm a head start in WHEN it comes to explaining why the stripes help zebras stay cool on graze alongside the zebras. Such
developing and improving the zebras have stripes, it is best to hot days – if that were true, we would mixed-species herds offer more
technology, but that depends remember that some issues aren’t expect more stripy tropical animals. protection against predators. For
on how consumers – and other black and white. A study published last But other ideas have more to them. now, this is only a hypothesis.
phone manufacturers – react. ■ week offers further evidence for one One that at first seems ridiculous Perhaps the most important point
of the most promising explanations: is that the stripes are a form of is that these studies can tell us only
Holly Brockwell is a technology writer that the stripes deter biting flies. camouflage. Obviously, zebras why zebra stripes continue to exist
based in London In the parts of Africa where zebras aren’t inconspicuous. But the stripes today, not why they arose in the
live, there are blood-sucking horseflies could create “dazzle camouflage”, first place. Evolution is good at
that carry lethal diseases. Clearly, overwhelming a predator’s visual repurposing things, so a body part
storage of the energy they zebras would do well to avoid being system and making it hard to track the may arise, be used for one purpose,
generate would be nearly free, bitten. The idea is that the stripes zebra’s movement. Imagine watching and then end up being employed
so that the electricity can be fed somehow confuse the flies so that for something entirely different.
as needed onto power grids. they don’t land on the zebras. “There is something An obvious example is the lens of
But in the real world – the one A team led by Tim Caro at the psychologically appealing the mammalian eye. This probably
where climate is changing rapidly University of California, Davis, tracked about a single, clear arose as a protective cover for the
and threatening our health, our captive zebras and horses at a site in explanation” retina and only later developed
economy and our security – we the UK. Horseflies circled round both, the ability to focus light, creating a
need to use what we have. but they landed on horses significantly a herd of zebras all dashing in different sharper image – which is now its most
Leaders are often faced with more often. Putting striped coats directions, and trying to pick out one of “obvious” function. Zebra stripes may
choosing between imperfect on the horses’ bodies meant the them to bring down. have a similarly complex history.
options, and one of those, for horseflies landed there less often, The evidence here is mixed. A 2016 There is something psychologically
the foreseeable future, should but still landed on their heads, which study suggested that the dazzle effect appealing about a single, clear
be current and next-generation were uncovered. The implication is only really works if the stripes are explanation. That instinct doesn’t
nuclear technologies. ■ that the stripes were having a real parallel to the animal’s direction of mean we are wrong to seek such
effect (PLoS One, doi.org/gfvq46). travel, implying that zebra stripes go things – sometimes just-so stories
David Titley is director of the Center for The hypothesis is backed by a lot of the wrong way to work in this way. turn out to be correct – but this is
Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk evidence, but does that mean it is the But this came from tracking humans one area where our biases can work
at Penn State University only reason for a zebra’s stripes? Not playing a computer game. A 2014 against us. ■

APERTURE

Invasion of little nippers
IT MIGHT look as if this giant crocodilian has been
sprinkled with chocolate strands, but in reality,
it is hanging out with some 150 youngsters as
they compete to clamber onto its back. This
touching family moment in the Chambal river
in northern India was captured by nature
photographer Dhritiman Mukherjee.
A lesser-known relative of alligators and
crocodiles, gharials (Gavialis gangeticus) are
the most water-loving of the crocodilians. They
swim elegantly, although adults can’t walk well.
Gharials have large bodies and
disproportionately long, thin snouts, crammed
full of interlocking teeth. Their name comes from
the bulbous growth on the end of adult males’
noses (see picture below). The appendage is
named a ghara, a Hindi word for the earthenware
pot it resembles. It isn’t known for sure what it
does, but it is thought to be an extension of the
nasal chamber that amplifies the hisses and
popping noises males make while guarding their
territory or courting.
During the breeding season, a male mates
with all the females in its territory. Each female
lays its eggs on a sandbank, standing guard until
the clutch hatches in unison. The young then
congregate in large groups, sometimes of as many
as 1000 individuals. So this 4.5-metre male is
probably the father of all these recent hatchlings.
As such, he helps protect his progeny – and they
use him as a sunbed. Chris Simms
Photographer
Dhritiman Mukherjee
dhritimanimages.com

BEPPE GIACOBBE

COVER STORY
Do women
and men have
different brains?
EN are good at map-reading; women
The question of how brain is responsible for language as well
M can’t park cars. Men are better at fixing

stuff – but only one thing at a time.
Women, in contrast, can multitask, and do
sex influences behaviour
and ability casts a long
as analytical and logical types of thinking,
whereas the right half handles emotional
processing and creativity. So women’s famed
empathy and intuition better, too. Just don’t multitasking abilities and greater emotional
ask them to think logically in a crisis.
So say the stereotypes, anyway. It is a
shadow over neuroscience, awareness could be framed in terms of their
enhanced and near-simultaneous access to
widespread idea that men and women are says Gina Rippon both sides of their brain, thanks to their
distinguished not only by their genitals and enlarged corpus callosum.
related sexual characteristics, but also by their The advent of brain imaging technology
brains. Take the notorious Google internal at the end of the 20th century, alongside
memo from 2017, in which now ex-employee The hunt for sex differences in the brain has sophisticated computer models of brain
James Damore asserted that there were a long tradition, starting with the absurdities function and better systems for data analysis,
more men in the company’s workforce of skull measuring, or phrenology, to explain finally made it possible to generate the
because women’s high level of empathy and personality traits in the 19th century. Pretty evidence necessary to properly test the
lower interest in coding made them less much ever since, the idea that men and ways in which the brains of men and women
suited to Google-type work. women have different brains has been a differ. But as well as some thrilling and
According to this way of thinking, the given. The aim of research was to pin down groundbreaking research, it unleashed
biological blueprint that determines fixed the nature of those differences, and to find something of a tidal wave of neuro-nonsense.
and inevitable differences in our reproductive out how they translate into the go-to list of The colour-coded maps of brain activity
apparatus also determines similarly fixed and “well-known” male-female differences: that researchers could now produce with such
inevitable differences in the structure of our systemising vs empathic, map-reading vs apparent ease were wonderfully seductive.
brains and how they work. If you want to know multitasking, logical vs intuitive, and so on. Many people didn’t appreciate, however, that
what underpins differences between women Early explanations of brain differences these weren’t real-time photographs of the
and men in ability, behaviour, temperament often centred on the “missing 5 ounces” brain in action, but the end product of a long
and even lifestyle choices, you will find the phenomenon. Bigger brains were thought chain of mathematical processing. The colour
answers in genes, genitals and gonads. to be better brains. As women’s brains are, on coding was chosen by the imaging software
The slow recognition that gender identity average (an important term that we will return to make the most of the real but infinitesimal
and even biological sexual characteristics to later), around 10 per cent lighter than men’s, differences between activity averaged – that
don’t fit into a neat, binary division already amounting to about 5 ounces or 140 grams, word again – across groups or tasks. With a
calls such assumptions into question. they were deemed inferior. large part of the agenda in brain research still
Recently, too, we have begun to understand Later explanations tried to pin differences being driven by the hunt for differences
just how plastic our brains are, capable of on specific structures in the brain. In the between men and women, assertions of the
being moulded in all sorts of different ways early 1980s, for example, came the idea that “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus”
throughout our lives. So where does that the corpus callosum, the bridge of nerve type were one misleading end product.
leave the idea of predetermined, hardwired fibres connecting the two halves of the One study, published in 2014, illustrates
differences in the brains of women and men – brain, was bigger in women. This fitted neatly the problems associated with this approach.
and with it the rationale for the expectations, into the pre-existing concept of “right” and Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania
roles and achievements of each in society? “left” brains: that the left half of a human measured brain connectivity pathways in a >

large group of women and men. They reported running of predetermined internal software, Pennsylvania, showed that playing computer
stronger connections within each brain but also external inputs. One famous example and video games is a better predictor of spatial
hemisphere in men and stronger connections was reported in working London taxi drivers skills than biological sex is. There were higher
between hemispheres in women. This, they who have done The Knowledge, which levels of such experience among male
claimed, showed that “male brains are requires memorising different routes through participants, but women with the same level
structured to facilitate connectivity between the 25,000 or so London streets within a of experience had equally good spatial skills.
perception and coordinated action, whereas 6-mile radius of Charing Cross. Their brains Any regular activity, be it playing Tetris or
female brains are designed to facilitate Super Mario, or learning juggling or origami,
communication between analytical and “Playing computer games is can change our brains. So if one group is more
intuitive processing modes”. likely to engage in an activity than another,
But the study didn’t measure whether its
a better predictor of spatial this will determine their ability, rather than
subjects actually showed these supposedly skills than biological sex is” any other characteristic.
typical male and female traits. Measurements In addition, stereotypes about any group’s
of brain connectivity were being filtered are different from those of trainee taxi drivers, innate abilities can become self-fulfilling
through preconceived, stereotypical beliefs. retired taxi drivers and even bus drivers, who prophecies. If someone is made aware of
What’s more, many of the reported differences navigate fixed routes. a negative stereotype about the group to
were quite small, and there were many more Crucially, brain-changing experiences may which they belong, this can impair their
possible pathway comparisons that didn’t differ for men and women. Perhaps it was this performance in a related task. For example,
show any differences. The study only reported effect that early researchers, focusing solely on if a woman is told that women are poor at
those that did. Yet the results were eagerly dividing their groups of participants into men a particular mathematical skill, there is a
reported in the popular press, with headlines and women, were actually tapping into. consequent drop in performance in tests of
such as “The hardwired difference between Take one of the allegedly most robust that skill. Studies of this so-called stereotype
male and female brains could explain why brain differences: in spatial thinking, the threat have shown that if a task is presented in
men are ‘better at map reading’ ”. skill underpinning navigational abilities or a positive context, then both the associated
There are good reasons to think that such map-reading. In 2005, psychologists Melissa brain processes and how well someone
studies are chasing shadows. For a start, Terlecki of Cabrini College and Nora performs the task will be different from when
correcting the data for brain size can cause Newcombe of Temple University, both in it is presented in a negative context. It isn’t
the apparent differences in brain structures
between women and men to disappear. The
claimed difference in the size of the corpus
callosum is one casualty of this rethink.
Not born this way

The fact is, bigger people have bigger brains,
regardless of their gender. Bigger brains are
different from smaller brains, in both their
core structures and the connecting pathways
between them. But there is no evidence to
suggest that bigger brains are better brains.
After all, humans are (on average) cognitively
superior to species with far larger brains,
including the sperm whale and the African
elephant, to name just two.
More crucially, the idea of distinct female
and male brains depends on the adult
endpoint of brain development being a fixed,
predetermined destination. Scientists used
to think that beyond the changes that occur
during the highly plastic early years of the
brain, and barring deviations caused by
damage, disease or deprivation, you generally
end up with the brain you were born with,
DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES
only bigger and better connected.

We now know that isn’t the case. Our brains
are very much a product of the lives we have
lived, the experiences we have had, and our
education, occupations, sports and hobbies.
The way we perform tasks reflects not just the

just experiences that can change our brains: PROFILE
attitudes, especially powerful social Gina Rippon is a cognitive
stereotypes, can too. neuroscientist at the University
And it may be that we need to challenge of Aston in Birmingham, UK,
the assumptions behind the hunt for where she uses brain-imaging
differences between male and female brains. techniques to study conditions
Its origin is in the assumption that men and such as autism and dyslexia. She
women are profoundly different in their is the author of The Gendered
abilities, behaviours and preferences. But Brain (Bodley Head)
@JAMES WALLER
what if these “well-known” differences aren’t
as marked as has been claimed, and have
changed over time or in different contexts
or cultures? This would certainly challenge
the notion that they are inevitable or based be found in a 2015 study by Daphna Joel at of a brain-based condition as belonging solely
on fixed brain characteristics. Tel Aviv University in Israel and her to women or men may miss the clues offered
Revisiting the evidence suggests that colleagues. They examined the characteristics by, for example, brain size or body weight,
women and men are more similar than of more than 100 brain structures in over 1400 or brain-changing life experiences.
they are different. In 2015, a review of more brain scans and found that it was impossible In some of my own team’s research on
than 20,000 studies into behavioural to divide these neatly into two sets of “female- autism, we are starting to realise that holding
differences, comprising data from over typical” or “male-typical” brains. Each brain to the belief that this is a “male” condition
12 million people, found that, overall, the had a mosaic of different characteristics, means we are missing the many girls and
differences between men and women on some considered “female”, some “male”. women who clearly fit the diagnosis.
a wide range of characteristics such as Only around one in 20 of the brains even had Diagnostic tools are masculinised, with
impulsivity, cooperativeness and sets of characteristics that could be described examples of children’s unusual interests
emotionality were vanishingly small. as predominantly one or the other. and obsessions slanted towards those more
Perhaps the final nail in the coffin of female Applying similar analyses to data sets of commonly associated with boys. Not only
and male brains as a scientific concept can psychological variables such as engagement does this mean that the undiagnosed girls
in sports, impulsivity or scores on tests of aren’t getting the help they might need, but
masculinity-femininity revealed the same research is losing a rich source of additional
lack of binary grouping: no individual had evidence: many brain-imaging studies of
all-female or all-male tendencies. More
By learning routes, recently, using machine-learning techniques “It’s not just experiences
taxi drivers physically on data from more than 2000 brains
alter their brains showed that none fitted into one of two neat,
that change our brains –
non-overlapping sets that could be labelled social stereotypes can too”
“brains from women” or “brains from men”.
Where does all this leave us? We find autism have only male participants.
ourselves talking about average differences This isn’t just a question of importance
between men and women that, in general, to individuals, however. Believing that only
reflect a tiny difference between two closely one type of brain is capable of certain core
overlapping sets of data. Not only that, but the skills may lead to an immense loss of human
variability and range within each supposedly capital, to the detriment of wider society. Who
homogenous set is usually far greater than knows how many more software engineers
the differences between the sexes. You might global tech firms might find if we accepted
start to wonder why we are still talking about that there is little reason to believe that this
these differences at all. is a pursuit to which only men are suited.
For sure, biological sex must be considered It is finally time to discard this old chestnut.
as one of the variables in investigations into The concept of the female brain or the male
brain differences, so we can understand brain is outdated and inaccurate. Every
things such as responsiveness to different person’s brain is unique. The value comes
medications, or susceptibilities to mental from knowing where these individual
health problems such as depression, physical differences come from and what they might
problems such as Alzheimer’s disease or mean for the brain’s owners. ■
immune disorders. This might also give
insights into the true reasons for women’s Hear Gina Rippon and other neuroscientists at
under-representation in fields of science and our Mysteries of the Mind event in London on 11 May
technology. But a focus on biological sex as newscientist.com/science-events
the sole source of such differences is at best For links to the studies quoted, see the online version
incomplete and could be misleading. Thinking of this article

2 8 . 0 8 6
THE Silicon
2 8 . 0 8 6
PATTERN
OF REALITY
O
ne hundred and fifty years Krypton
ago this Friday, a Siberian
Neon
chemist named Dmitri
Mendeleev sent a manuscript to his Argon
publishers. It contained an outline
of the periodic table, descendants of Lithium
which would go on to grace the walls MY FAVOURITE Boron
of schools the world over. It depicts ELEMENT
the chemical elements that make Yttrium
up everything around us and, at a
glance, conveys a sense of order to Caesium
the building blocks of everything.
But don’t be fooled. The periodic
table didn’t appear complete and
Si
Silicon
Zinc
Xenon
out of nowhere – it had a troubled
birth (page 34). Neither is it as solid Lead
as it may appear. There’s still plenty Fluorine
of disagreement about exactly how Frances Arnold is a chemist at the
the table is best set out (page 36). California Institute of Technology. She won Lutetium
What is certain is that it remains the 2018 Nobel prize in chemistry for her work
unfinished, and that researchers are on evolved enzymes Copper
on the cusp of producing elements Rubidium
that exist beyond its bounds in ~
quantities that we can actually Flerovium
Silicon is readily available on Earth in the
study for the first time (page 39). form of sand. In the periodic table, it sits just Radon
below carbon, the element that nature uses to
build DNA, proteins and other molecules of
life. Why wasn’t silicon chosen? Can life build
organosilicon compounds? We wanted to
know, and discovered that enzymes that forge
carbon-silicon bonds could be evolved in a
test tube. We are just beginning to explore the
possibilities that exist for life.
1 0 . 8 1 1
Boron
BRINGING
ORDER TO CHAOS
Mendeleev’s periodic table broke through the chemical
haze. But it wasn’t a dream discovery, says Philip Ball
D
MITRI Mendeleev had a problem. list of elemental substances from
As a professor at the University MY FAVOURITE hydrogen to lead had a logic to it.
of St Petersburg in Russia, he ELEMENT That logic, said Mendeleev, is
was supposed to teach chemistry to essentially this: if you order the
students, and to guide him in that elements according to their atomic
Tc
task he had arranged a contract with weight – how much a constant quantity
a Russian publisher to write a two- of each element weighs relative to the
volume textbook. By January 1869, lightest, hydrogen – their properties
he had completed the first volume, but Technetium seem to repeat at regular intervals. You
it covered only eight of the 63 chemical can therefore write the list of elements
elements then known. How was he as a table, with columns of elements
going to cram the remaining 55 into Lee Cronin is a chemist at the that share similar attributes.
volume two? University of Glasgow, UK
This pattern is still the basis of
Clearly he couldn’t afford to take modern periodic tables, but the tale of
the same rambling stroll through the
properties of the elements as he had
~ how Mendeleev discovered it crumbles
under examination. Take the dream.
in the first volume. He needed some Technetium is the lightest radioactive element “I don’t believe it,” says historian of
system to organise the material. But and all of its isotopes are radioactive. It can be science Michael Gordin at Princeton
was there any order to the building produced in any reasonable amount only in a University, an expert on Mendeleev’s
blocks of the physical world? nuclear reactor. That appeals to me because it life and work. “The sources are too
When we retell stories of scientists means that if you found this element iffy.” Mendeleev never made the
pondering great questions like this, elsewhere in the cosmos it would be good dream claim himself; it came from a
they are often made to seem romantic. evidence that intelligent alien life exists. Plus, colleague 40 years later. Even then,
There is the period of struggle and it can be made from radioactive molybdenum, he could easily have meant something
confusion that ends when a lone genius which is my next favourite element because like a daydream, says Gordin.
sees the light, perhaps in a reverie or I’m trying to make nanomachines using it. Mendeleev himself emphasised that
dream. Then everything falls into place, his discovery “was the product of
the paradigm shifts, and nothing is insight and chemical knowledge”, he
ever the same. How much more noble adds. But Gordin admits that “people
this sounds than a desperate attempt seem to love this story, so I don’t think
to meet a publisher’s deadline. success, the story goes, until he fell my historian’s fussiness is going to
Some accounts of how Mendeleev asleep, exhausted, in his study in squelch it anytime soon”.
devised the periodic table try to make it February 1869. At any rate, there was never a perfect
fit that romantic template. They allege “I saw in a dream a table where arrangement of the table that made
that the Russian, originally from the all the elements fell into place as sense of all the available knowledge.
remote town of Tobolsk in Siberia, was required,” he was later reported to For one thing, Mendeleev’s ranking of
obsessed with finding structure among have said. On waking, he hastily wrote the elements by atomic weight isn’t
the elements and laid them out written down his vision, and two weeks later what we use today. Atomic weights
on cards, like a game of solitaire. He published his “Suggested System of the were deduced by experiment: by
tried all sorts of arrangements without Elements”. At last, the steadily growing breaking chemical compounds into

Be2O3, to get beryllium into the same
column as magnesium, with which it
seemed to have similarities. Mendeleev
would later be proved right about the
formula. In this and other small ways,
his table is an example of an idea
asserting precedence over the available
data, challenging the common view
in science that if your hypothesis
disagrees with the data then you must
discard it, no matter how elegant it is.
And even if Mendeleev’s table was
a master stroke, it wasn’t a total
revelation. The German chemist
Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner had
done something similar, by grouping
chemically alike elements into groups
of three, which he called “triads”, in
the 1820s. Others, including William
Odling and John Newlands in the
UK, Alexandre-Émile Béguyer de
Chancourtois in France, and Julius
Lothar Meyer in Germany, sketched out
“The steadily growing list

of elemental substances
finally had a logic to it”
arrangements of the elements gathered
into families in the 1850s and early
1860s. Meyer virtually had the periodic
PICTORIAL PRESS LTD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
table sorted by 1868, but he didn’t

publish it until a year after Mendeleev.
This work was no secret, although
Mendeleev insisted later that he had
been unaware of it. “This seems a
little odd,” says chemist Eric Scerri
at the University of California, Los
Angeles, a leading expert on the
periodic table. Disputes about who
got there first ensued, making you
wonder if the dream was just a
their constituent elements and oxygen atoms, with the latter eight Mendeleev’s convenient device.
weighing how much of each they times heavier, or twice as many table of Finally, the notion that, thanks to
contained. But the more fundamental hydrogen atoms as oxygens, with the elements Mendeleev’s periodic table, the scales
ranking comes from the atomic latter 16 times heavier? (It is actually wasn’t the fell from the eyes of his peers doesn’t
number of each element, the number the second of these, the molecular first, but it stack up. A few scientists, such as
of protons in nuclei of their atoms. In formula being H2O.) was the best Russian chemist Julia Lermontova,
the middle of the 19th century, no one It was, in fact, growing support for did take note and tried to clarify the
was sure if atoms were even real, and the H2O formula of water that helped ordering of elements by improving
Mendeleev himself was sceptical. Mendeleev order the elements methods of separation and
Even the atomic weights were properly. But he needed to take some characterisation. But there was no
disputed. For example, oxygen and liberties to ensure that elements with abrupt paradigm shift in chemistry.
hydrogen combined to make water similar chemical behaviour fell into the “At first, there wasn’t too much of a
in a ratio of eight parts to one, but did same group. For example, he decided to reaction to it,” says Gordin.
this mean water molecules contained give beryllium oxide the formula BeO, Curiosity about Mendeleev’s table
equal numbers of hydrogen and rather than (as most people thought) only began to grow six or seven years >

18.998
F Fluorine
RESETTING
after it was published, when the
element gallium was discovered by
French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq.
It fitted the prediction made by
THE TABLE
Mendeleev of a heavier element below
aluminium with atomic weight 68,
for which he had left a space in his
table, giving it the provisional name
eka-aluminium. Ostensibly, Lecoq
named it patriotically after the old
Latin form of his country, Gallia. But
it is widely suspected that the name
It is the iconic picture of nature’s basic
was also a bit of sly self-advertising, substances, but are they arranged correctly,
as the Latin word gallus means
cockerel – le coq in French. asks Joshua Howgego
Another of Mendeleev’s predicted
elements, labelled eka-silicon, was
R
discovered in 1886 and christened
UN your fingers over the white similar was going on with the chemical
keys of a piano. The notes get elements more than 150 years ago.
“Curiosity about the higher and higher as your hand Scientists even called it the law of
table grew as some of moves to the right. On the eighth octaves. And it is this repetition in the
key, something beautiful happens: properties of the elements that the
the gaps were filled” a note hangs in the air that embodies periodic table captures so beautifully.
something of the first, only with a Similar elements end up stacked in
germanium. This capacity to make different pitch. columns or groups. One group
predictions was what distinguished We began to twig that something comprises noble gases like argon and
Mendeleev’s table from earlier ones. neon that barely react with anything,
Still, recognition was a long time another contains reactive metals,
coming. That may have been partly due some of which, like francium, explode
to Mendeleev’s eccentric demeanour: MY FAVOURITE on contact with water.
his long hair, unruly beard and ELEMENT But there are doubts over whether
allegedly bad temper. The British the periodic table is in the best possible
chemist William Ramsay, having met configuration. Just as notes can be
him in London in 1884, described him arranged in various ways to produce
as peculiar, “every hair of whose head
acted in independence of every other”.
But having conversed with him in
Mt
Meitnerium
music, so the essence of the
relationships between the elements
could be depicted differently. There
broken German, Ramsay – who is no easy way to judge which is better,
augmented the periodic table with or more “true”. So arguments over
a whole column of noble gases at the Helen Arney is a comedian who spent nine perceived flaws in the current
end of the century – found Mendeleev months learning a song that lists all 118 elements arrangement rumble on, with some
“a nice sort of fellow”. chemists arguing that certain elements
Although the tales of Mendeleev’s
invention of the periodic table can be
~ should be relocated – and others
working on more radical ways to
more fiction than fact, that doesn’t On top of battling prejudice about her recompose the table.
detract from its significance. It was gender and Jewish background, physicist At first, the elements were organised
the most comprehensive ordering Lise Meitner was passed over for a share of by atomic weight (see “Bringing order
of the building blocks of matter and, the 1944 Nobel chemistry prize. She had to chaos”, page 34). Now we order them
unwittingly, it pointed the way to the worked with her friend Otto Hahn to by the number of protons in their
underlying quantum rules that govern discover nuclear fission in heavy elements – nucleus. We also know that their
the composition and properties of but Hahn alone got the prize. properties are largely determined by
atoms. It helped unite chemistry and I like the fact that the periodic table the arrangement of the negatively
physics, and revealed a deep aspect recognises Meitner: there is no hahnium, charged electrons that orbit in
of nature’s design. Just don’t try to but there is a meitnerium. And while there successive shells around the nucleus.
pretend that it arrived in a dream. Q is a copy of the iconic element chart on my The lightest elements have just one
daughter’s bedroom wall, there isn’t a list of shell, which can hold two of these
Philip Ball is a science writer based in London Nobel prizewinners. particles. Heavier elements have more
shells that can hold larger numbers of

Group 1 18
1 2
H 2
WHERE DOES HYDROGEN GO? 13 14 15 16 17
He
Hydrogen Helium
3 4 Atomic number 5 6 7 8 9 10
Li Be Key Symbol B C N O F Ne
Lithium Beryllium Name Boron Carbon Nitrogen Oxygen Fluorine Neon
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Na Mg 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Al Si P S Cl Ar
Sodium Magnesium Aluminium Silicon Phosphorus Sulphur Chlorine Argon
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr
Potassium Calcium Scandium Titanium Vanadium Chromium Manganese Iron Cobalt Nickel Copper Zinc Gallium Germanium Arsenic Selenium Bromine Krypton
37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54
Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
Rubidium Strontium Yttrium Zirconium Niobium Molybdenum Technetium Ruthenium Rhodium Palladium Silver Cadmium Indium Tin Antimony Tellurium Iodine Xenon
55 56 57-71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86
Cs Ba Lanthanides
Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
Caesium Barium Hafnium Tantalum Tungsten Rhenium Osmium Iridium Platinum Gold Mercury Thallium Lead Bismuth Polonium Astatine Radon
87 88 89-103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118
Fr Ra Actinides
Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt Ds Rg Cn Nh Fl Mc Lv Ts Og
Francium Radium Rutherfordium Dubnium Seaborgium Bohrium Hassium Meitnerium Darmstadtium Roentgenium Copernicium Nihonium Flerovium Moscovium Livermorium Tennessine Oganesson
THE F-BLOCK CONUNDRUM WHY ARE MERCURY AND GOLD SO WEIRD?
57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71
La Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho Er Tm Yb Lu
Lanthanum Cerium Praseodymium Neodymium Promethium Samarium Europium Gadolinium Terbium Dysprosium Holmium Erbium Thulium Ytterbium Lutetium
89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103

Ac Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
Actinium Thorium Protactinium Uranium Neptunium Plutonium Americium Curium Berkelium Californium Einsteinium Fermium Mendelevium Nobelium Lawrencium
electrons. What really matters for each elements in group 17, namely the the orbiting electrons, meaning they
element’s behaviour, however, is how halogens like chlorine. Their outer must travel faster and faster. By the
many electrons it has in its outer shell. shells need only gain one electron 23 time you reach mercury, the electrons
That number tends to fit nicely with to achieve a full shell of eight, which are travelling at 58 per cent of the speed
the way the table is arranged, namely to makes them similarly reactive. In of light. According to Einstein’s special
place elements with similar properties terms of its properties, then, hydrogen theory of relativity, this means their
in the same group. For instance, group 1 is closer to chlorine than lithium. effective mass is significantly higher
elements have one electron in their than an electron’s normal mass, which
outer shell and those in group 2 have
two. But it doesn’t always fit together
quite as neatly as all that.
WHY ARE MERCURY
AND GOLD SO WEIRD?
V exacerbates the inward pull they feel.
The upshot is that mercury’s
electrons orbit so tightly that they can’t
be shared to form bonds with other
Lower down the table there are no atoms, as is required to make a solid.
WHERE DOES HYDROGEN GO? available spaces for misplaced The same thing explains why gold is
Take the first element. Hydrogen has elements. Even so, a couple of the gold, a unique colour among metals:
one electron in its outermost shell so incumbents look like outliers. Take 5 0 . 9 4 2 relativistic effects change the way
you might assume it belongs exactly mercury, also known as quicksilver electrons absorb light.
where it is, in group 1 above lithium because it is a liquid at room Vanadium
and sodium, which also have one temperature. In that sense, it is
electron in their outermost shell. quite different to the other THE F-BLOCK CONUNDRUM
Yet hydrogen is a gas, not a metal, members of group 12, Group 3 holds two elements that might
so its properties don’t fit. including zinc and cadmium, belong elsewhere. As we move across
The complication arises because, which are all solid metals. the upper rows of the table, electrons
with an outer shell that can only hold What gives? fill up shells in a sequence of so-called
two electrons, hydrogen is one electron The further down the orbitals, waiting until the innermost
away from being full. Given that table you go, the more of the shell is full before entering the next.
elements yearn for full outer shells, positively charged protons By element 57, lanthanum, the
that makes it very reactive. In this an element’s nucleus contains. electrons begin to enter a new type of
sense, hydrogen resembles the This creates a stronger pull on orbital, an f-orbital. To account for >

GOING LONG
Some chemists think the periodic table should be extended to 32 columns to allow the atomic numbers, or the number of protons in the nucleus,
to run in an uninterrupted sequence
1 2
H He
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Li Be B C N O F Ne
Atomic number
Key
11 12 Symbol 13 14 15 16 17 18
Na Mg Al Si P S Cl Ar
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr
SOURCE: doi.org/c2w9
37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54
Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86
Cs Ba La Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho Er Tm Yb Lu Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118
Fr Ra Ac Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt Ds Rg Cn Nh Fl Mc Lv Ts Og
this, most periodic tables hive off “One proposed redesign looks But Guillermo Restrepo at the Max
the elements making up this f-block, Planck Institute for Mathematics in
putting it below the table, leaving a like a Christmas tree” the Sciences, Germany, favours an
gap in group 3. alternative. He has explored whether
Fair enough. But there is debate over California, Los Angeles, is among those chemical similarity of elements in the
which of the elements in the f-block who has argued for more fundamental same columns still holds as well as it
should come first. Some chemists changes. He previously proposed did 150 years ago, given our increased
maintain that the decision should that the table could be arranged to knowledge of chemical reactivity. His
come down to electron configuration, maximise the number of “triads”, sets conclusion is that lanthanum belongs
which would leave the table as it is, with of three elements that share similar in group 3 – that is, out of sequence.
lanthanum and actinium at the left- properties and are related by their Redesigning the periodic table might
hand end of the f-block. Others point atomic weights. These days, he is seem a quixotic quest, but it could
out that chemical properties such as backing an even more drastic soon take on a new urgency (see “The
atomic radius and melting point make approach: make the table not 18 but element factory”, right). We are already
lutetium and lawrencium, currently 32 columns by slotting all 30 f-block on the trail of element 119. Where it
at the right end, a better bet. In 2016, elements between the current groups will go, and how the table will morph to
the International Union of Pure and 2 and 3 (see “Going long”, above). This make space for it, remains to be seen. ■
Applied Chemistry assembled a task allows the atomic number to run in
group to settle the argument. But no an uninterrupted sequence. Joshua Howgego is a features editor at
one expects a decision soon. New Scientist
ELEMENTAL CYCLE
STARTING OVER This reimagining of the periodic table, proposed by chemist
All these niggles have persuaded some Theodor Benfey in 1964, emphasises the continuity of the
elements rather than imposing artificial breaks
chemists that we need to redraw the
es
id
in
periodic table – and there is no shortage

ct
ra
of ideas. Mark Leach at Manchester

pe
96
Su
118
95 Cm 97
Og
Metropolitan University, UK, keeps the 87 94 Am 65
Bk
86 Fr 93 Pu 64
Tb
internet database of periodic tables, Rn
55 88
92 Np
62
63
Eu
Gd
66 98
U
which contains hundreds of versions.
91
54 Cs Ra 61 Sm Dy Cf
Xe 90 Pa 60 Pm 67 Ho
es
37 56 99
Th
In an attempt to better represent 117 36
Rb Ba
89
Ac 59
c tinid Nd 68 Er Es
Ts Kr Pr da 69 Tm
100
the continuity where one row s an 70 Yb Fm

85 19 38 58
18
Ce d e 101
At ni Md
57
53
Ar K Sr
tha
102
La
I Lan
71
No
currently ends, retired Canadian 35
Br 17 9 Ne 3Na
10 11 20
Ca 39
Lu 103 Lr
Cl 2 72
chemist Fernando Dufour developed F He Li
4
12
Mg 21
Y 40 Hf
104 Rf
105 Db
8 1 Be Zr
a 3D periodic system that looks like 34
16
S
O
7
H 5 Sc 22 41
73 Ta
106
52
Se N 6 B Ti Nb 74 Sg
a Christmas tree, with the elements 116
84 Te 15 C
13
Al Tran
23
V Mo
42 W
Po P 14 sitio
Lv nm 24
radiating from a trunk in circles that 33 Si
31
Ga
30
Zn
e tals Cr
As 32 29
get larger closer to the bottom. An
25 43 75 107
51
Ge 49 48 Cu Mn Tc Re Bh
Sb In
28
Cd Ni
alternative is the spiral developed 83
50
Sn
47
Ag
27
Co
26
Fe
Bi 81 80
by Theodor Benfey, which allows
46
82 Tl Hg Pd
44
115
Pb
79 45 Ru
Mc
the f-block to bulge outwards (see 113 112
Au
78
Rh 76
Os
Nh Cn
“Elemental cycle”, right).
114
Pt 77 108
Fl 111
Ir Hs
Rg
Eric Scerri at the University of 110
Ds 109
Mt

THE ELEMENT FACTORY
A machine in Russia’s frozen north is about to begin pumping out
the heaviest atoms in the universe. Kit Chapman pays a visit
Cyclotrons like of a machine that will soon begin

this now retired churning out chemical elements – but
one in Dubna, not ordinary ones. These elements will
Russia, have been be superheavy, with atoms so huge that
creating new they stick around barely long enough
elements for to be sure they exist.
decades By forging these exotic atoms in
quantities sufficient to study properly
for the first time, Oganessian and his
machine should be able to answer
some big questions about how our
universe formed, and possibly give
us a staggeringly powerful source
of energy. He might even disprove
some of the rules underpinning the
periodic table itself.
The birth of the modern table
traces back to another Russian city, St
Petersburg. It was there that a scientific
consultant named Dmitri Mendeleev
helped cut through the chaos that
was chemical science 150 years ago
(see “Bringing order to chaos”, page 34).
With Mendeleev’s table, the patterns
of chemistry began to make more
sense. The Russian organised the
MAX AGUILERA HELLWEG
63 known elements by atomic weight,

which we now know is determined by
the number of protons and neutrons
in an atom’s nucleus. As he did this,
he found that certain chemical
properties were periodic, repeating
N
every eight or so elements. Mendeleev
ESTLED in thick pine forests But there is one place within arranged the table’s columns so that
north of Moscow, close to this complex where something
1 9 6 . 9 6 7
each contained elements with similar
the Volga river, lies the town groundbreaking is happening. In a vast traits. The first group, for example,
of Dubna. Not far from the centre is a concrete hangar, workers in hard hats Gold holds soft, fiercely reactive metals like
leafy avenue of Soviet-era buildings. are busy assembling one of the most lithium, sodium and potassium. The
It is obvious when I visit that they have powerful research machines in the last group contains the noble gases,
seen better days. The railway crossing world. Next to me as I look on is so called because they are almost
on the approach is broken, its flashing the only living person to have completely inert.
lights constantly proclaiming the an element named after him. We now know that these patterns in
coming of a train that never passes. Yuri Oganessian, Mr Element the way elements react are governed
A few of the buildings have broken 118, is gazing almost lovingly at by the electrons that orbit their nuclei.
windows. In the street, there are liquid the 4-metre-wide metal disc in Every time we move one place along
nitrogen containers with old baked the centre of the hangar. 79 the table, an element gains a positively
bean cans acting as lids. This is one of the first components charged proton compared with its >
Au 2 March 2019 | NewScientist | 39

“Elements on the ‘island of stability’ could
be amazing fuels for nuclear power plants”
the more protons an element has, the formed atoms across an array of gold
MY FAVOURITE more likely it is that electromagnetism pins with a temperature gradient,
ELEMENT will win out and make it unstable. The looking at how hot the gold must be
heaviest elements we have made only for them to stick. For anything more
last a fraction of a second. involved, you would need a larger
Na
Nevertheless, we keep trying to sample of atoms.
create new elements by cramming Yet there are hints that superheavy
more protons and neutrons into the elements don’t play by the same rules
Sodium atomic nucleus. For that, you need a as the others. “We assume that the
particle accelerator. Work of this kind chemical properties in a group change
has been going on for years at that systematically in some way,” says Rolf-
Martyn Poliakoff is a chemist at the complex in Dubna, the Joint Institute Dietmar Herzberg at the University of
University of Nottingham, UK. He starred for Nuclear Research (JINR), which was Liverpool, UK. But calculations suggest
in a series of videos about the elements set up to rival the CERN particle physics that several of the superheavy elements
~ laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland,

during the cold war.
we have already created would behave
like a noble gas, even though they don’t
My mother’s first name was Ina. As a little girl, The jewel in the JINR’s crown is the sit in that group. If so, he says, “you
she abbreviated it to ’Na, and when she Flerov laboratory, where an accelerator have to ask yourself if the periodic
became a grandmother she asked my children called a cyclotron flings positively table as we know it is still valid”.
to call her that. So now, 27 years after her charged ions – atoms with slightly too
death, I still get a warm motherly feeling few electrons – around a spiral track
whenever I see Na in a chemical formula. I am using magnets. Once up to speed, the MAGNETS AND GUNSHOTS
also fond of hassium, element 108, because in ions are fired down a track to collide The calculations are rooted in Albert
our first video about it, I was recorded saying with a target nucleus. Most collisions Einstein’s theory of special relativity.
“I know nothing about hassium. Should we simply break the components to pieces, One of its implications is that objects
make something up?”. but on rare occasions they fuse to form get heavier the faster they are
a superheavy atom. travelling. This matters in the case of
What’s your favourite element? Tell us at In the past few years, accelerators in larger elements because their nuclei
newscientist.com/my-favourite-element Japan, Germany and Russia have made hold greater positive charge, meaning
a spate of new superheavy elements in the electrons are whizzing around
this way, all the way up to number 118. faster and so appear a little more
But we know almost nothing about massive. In turn, that extra mass
them. The most advanced experiment means they orbit closer in than we
predecessor, as well as a negatively so far involves shooting the newly would expect, altering the chemical
charged electron to balance the properties of the atom.
charge. The electrons sit in a series of That’s the theory. And the new
concentric shells, which are most stable EXTREME MATTER machine being built in that concrete
when completely filled. The extent Superheavy elements might break the rules of the periodic table hangar at JINR is where we should
to which the different elements have soon find out whether it is right.
their shells filled is what drives their Rule takers Chlorine “Is 118 a noble gas or not? If not,
reactivity – and all chemistry on Earth, For most elements, it is the Nucleus it means that this is the end of
from the signals of neurotransmitters arrangement of electrons periodicity,” says Oganessian.
to the synthesis of antibiotics. that largely determines their When I visited in 2016, the Flerov
properties. Those with a
As time went on, chemists vacancy in their outer shell lab was still building its new cyclotron,
discovered more elements, filling some tend to be reactive. Elements Vacant known as the Superheavy Elements
electron
of the gaps Mendeleev had astutely in the same column of the site Factory or SHEF. It wasn’t easy, because
left in the table. By the 1940s, we had periodic table have similar this machine relies on a more intense
arrangements and therefore
created the first synthetic elements, similar properties
ion beam, and that meant installing a
such as technetium, which are too Flerovium much bigger magnet.
unstable to exist in any significant There are only so many places that
quantity on Earth. Rule breakers can make a 2000-tonne electromagnet.
The reason for this instability boils Superheavy elements may The Russian scientists chose a factory
down to an eternal rivalry between buck these trends. Their in eastern Ukraine. But just as the
electrons move so fast that
two of nature’s fundamental forces. they gain mass and so orbit
magnet was due to ship in 2014, war
The strong force holds protons and more tightly, squeezing the broke out. Staff from the JINR say that
neutrons together in the atomic atom’s size. This may change when they called the factory to check
nucleus, but the electromagnetic their properties, so they in, they could hear gunshots in the
align with those above
force makes protons repel each other background. Fortunately, the magnet
them in the column
because they have the same charge. So was winched safely onto a train – no

road truck would be sturdy enough to The periodic table
carry it – and some days later it arrived, looms over old
passing the same broken railway parts and tools
crossing I had seen on my way in. in a quiet corner
Now the SHEF is undergoing final at the Flerov
tests, ready to begin running at full laboratory in
capacity this spring. The next best Dubna
cyclotrons can produce one superheavy
atom a week. The element factory
should be 100 times more productive,
so soon we should have enough
superheavy atoms to start trying
new experiments.
“You can consider things like putting
them in a trap, measuring their mass.
You can do chemistry experiments,”
says Mark Stoyer at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in
California, who contributed to the
discovery of several superheavy
MAX AGUILERA HELLWEG
elements. The atoms could, for

example, be sent into a chamber
containing a reactive element such
as chlorine to see if they bond with
it. If not, that is a hint that the atoms
are unreactive like a noble gas.
There may also be new hidden gems Any superheavies in it could last for harder to produce,” says Herzberg.
to discover among the superheavies. thousands of years and would hold If only one or two neutrons were lost
This is because elements come in incredible amounts of energy because in the collisions, we would produce a
different forms called isotopes, each of their huge size. They would be an flerovium isotope that would hang
with a different number of neutrons. amazing fuel for nuclear power plants. around for perhaps a few hours. We
Elements are defined by the number of The SHEF is our best shot at getting would be on the shores of the island.
protons in their nucleus: if there is one, to the edge of island of stability. This Even if the SHEF doesn’t pull that
it is hydrogen, if there are two, that is is where flerovium comes in. It has off, it offers plenty of interest, says
helium, and so on. But isotopes of a 114 protons, which is a magic number. physicist Jon Billowes at the University
helium nucleus can contain either one, And one of its possible isotopes has of Manchester, UK. “It’s going to give
two or zero neutrons. 184 neutrons, which is also a magic us understanding of other areas of
It is a similar deal at the heavy end number. If we could make this doubly physics, such as supernovae,” he says.
of the periodic table. Take element 114, magic isotope, it could be stable for We know that the superheavy elements
flerovium, which, you guessed it, was days – nothing compared with the are created in supernovae and in
first made at the Flerov lab. It has a heart of the island, but still impressive. neutron star collisions, which are
variety of isotopes, but this time there When researchers make flerovium complex cosmic events that even our
is a chance that some of them may be in a cyclotron, each of the fusing nuclei best computers cannot model. But with
stable for long periods of time. typically ends up losing three or four more information about what these
It turns out that particles in the neutrons as part of the way the impact elements look like, we can build a better
nucleus come in shells just like energy is dissipated. That leaves an picture of how they might act.
electrons do. In 1963, physicists Maria atom with up to eight fewer neutrons 1 2 7 . 6 Supernovae may be light years away
Goeppert Mayer, Hans Jensen and than the doubly magic isotope. from the buildings nestled among the
Eugene Wigner won the Nobel prize At the SHEF, researchers can afford birch trees of Dubna. But this sleepy
in physics for suggesting that protons to set up collisions at lower energies
Te l l u r i u m town might soon get us closer to them
and neutrons in a nucleus can add up that would lose fewer neutrons. than ever before. Q
to “magic numbers”. These correspond With lower energies there will also
to when the shells are full, whereupon be less chance of the nuclei Kit Chapman’s book Superheavy: Making and
the nucleus would be highly stable. merging, but there will be breaking the periodic table will be published
According to this theory, there should plenty of collisions to generate by Bloomsbury Sigma in June
be pockets of superheavy elements that enough atoms to study. “If you
are incredibly stable. have 100 times more production, Turn to page 55 for the Elements
Finding this long-fabled “island of you can put that into sensitivity, so crossword, to celebrate 150 years
stability” could be incredibly useful. making something that is 100 times of the periodic table

INTERVIEW
Why I’m on
a mission
to save
humanity’s
ancient
microbiome
Eric Alm is racing to preserve the
microbial heritage of our guts before it
is too late. Elie Dolgin gets the scoop
HE bacteria in our gut are vital to our microbiomes – and it could disappear compared with the differences between an
T health, but urbanisation and antibiotics

mean that the rich diversity of the
traditional human microbiome is being lost.
altogether as more people living traditional
lifestyles adopt industrialised ways of life.
The time to act is now. What we are doing is
urban North American, say, and someone
living a non-industrialised lifestyle elsewhere
in the world. When we look at some non-
Eric Alm wants to change this. A biologist taking a snapshot of the biodiversity of industrialised populations, many organisms
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, human gut microbes on Earth today, and we find don’t exist in urban North Americans.
he has set up the non-profit Global then preserving that for future generations
Microbiome Conservancy. The aim is to collect so that we always have the biodiversity Why do these differences matter?
stool samples from indigenous and isolated that co-evolved with us stored somewhere. We already know that there are many diseases
peoples and build a repository of their of the modern world – inflammatory bowel
intestinal inhabitants before they disappear. How much does the gut microbiome differ disease, asthma, allergies, autoimmunity –
from one person to the next? that are linked to the loss of our microbial
Why create a library of gut bacteria? It depends where you look. Across heritage. Considering that these conditions
A lot of the biodiversity that is being lost industrialised nations, there are some regional are now rising in the developing world, the
today is housed within humans – in our gut differences but they are relatively small health crisis has already begun.

Photographed for New Scientist by Ken Richardson
Collecting faeces is Just so we are clear: you are talking about fact. This seemed like a really good idea to her,
no laughing matter collecting stool samples, right? and she joked to us, “Hey, can you sign up my
for Eric Alm That is the first step. It isn’t the only step, neighbour? He comes over every morning,
though. We can’t just take poop, stick it in a walks across an entire field, and then he poops
freezer, and hope to get back the full picture in front of my house.” This is in a village where
of biodiversity if we thaw that out. We need to people commonly poop outdoors, but usually
isolate the bacterial strains that are present, in a secluded spot. So she asked, “Can you get
grow them up and then create master cell him into your study, so he stops pooping in
banks, for long-term storage, and working front of my house?”
cell banks, for active research.
And did you?
How many bacterial strains are you looking No, unfortunately. We couldn’t sign him up
to collect? because he wasn’t part of the Baka community
Ideally, we want the whole spectrum of that we were sampling at the time.
human-associated microbial diversity, but
we don’t know what that is yet. We have set an Where are you off to next?
initial target of 100,000 strains for the first We’re going to Malaysia later this month to
few years, representing a few thousand strains meet with different populations, including
each from 34 different countries – but we the Jahai people. They practice a hunter-
would like to get a lot more. gatherer lifestyle, which is pretty exciting
How is the collection going? “People are almost always

So far, we have collected samples from
19 distinct populations, including many shocked that you want
indigenous populations living more the entire stool sample!”
traditional lifestyles, in Cameroon, Tanzania,
Ghana, Rwanda, Arctic Canada, northern because there aren’t that many isolated
Finland and on a Northern Cheyenne people that live this lifestyle anymore – and
reservation in Montana. We have isolated it may be that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle
more than 4000 strains from those produces a microbiome that’s more closely
expeditions, and we anticipate getting adapted to the natural environment.
many more. In addition, we have more than
7600 gut bacterial strains from people living Have you analysed the samples that have
in the Boston area whose stool we used to been collected so far?
hone our methods of strain isolation. We are starting to perform tests on some of
the bacterial strains that have been isolated
Are people generally willing to participate? from the samples, and we do see that they
We learned a lot on our very first trip, which have some metabolic functions that are really
was to the Northern Cheyenne reservation. rare or entirely absent from the organisms
We didn’t get as much enrolment as we had that we have cultured from North America.
hoped. Then we went to the rainforests of Not only are we seeing new functional genes,
south-eastern Cameroon, where we changed but we are finding that the rate at which
things logistically, spending time with the genes can jump from one bacterial species
people while we were waiting for our supplies to another is very different in industrialised
What will you do with the library once it to arrive. Not in a structured way, we just hung and non-industrialised populations.
has been built? out with them, chit-chatting, interacting. We
One of our foundational assumptions realised this was key to gaining people’s trust. Who owns this collection of bacterial strains?
is that this biodiversity is quite valuable. You talk about poop, and everyone thinks Every strain we isolate is owned by the people
The library is going to be valuable for it is funny, but you also get to explain what who contributed the stool samples. And
indigenous peoples, who might want a you are doing. Only towards the end of the although we don’t restrict who can work on
reserve of their gut microbes that they visit do we now ask people to sign up – those strains, we do have a clause that the
can tap into and bring back if they need and they generally do so, eagerly. material can’t be made into a commercial
to, either for health reasons or for their product. It is specifically disallowed. If a
traditional diets and lifestyles. They don’t find it strange that you want company takes a strain and wants to use that
It is also going to be valuable for medicine, their faeces? organism as a therapeutic agent, they need to
because these organisms co-evolved with Well, they are almost always shocked that you go back to the owners of that organism and
humans over very long periods of time and want the entire stool sample! But there was obtain a licence from the community. ■
may have metabolic functions that can be this one woman, from the Baka people of
transformed into new therapies. Cameroon, who was very interested in that Elie Dolgin is a science writer in Massachusetts

CULTURE
AI takes on Bach
scientist François Pachet, director
of the Spotify Creator Technology
Research Lab. His Flow Machine
program jams with jazz musicians
in real time, leading them into
Can artificial intelligence ever make music as wonderful as that improvisations that feel natural –
of our greatest human composers? Simon Ings talks to the and rightly so, since they are
derived from a deep learning of
creative minds behind an experiment to find out the musicians’ output.
How does Esfahani feel about
such technology? I expected
him to be either enthused or
The audience will listen to Contemporary Orchestra will also threatened. I didn’t think he
The Eternal Golden Braid: Gödel,
Esfahani playing a piece that work with the audience. But you would regard it as business as
Escher, Bach, with Marcus du Sautoy,
interlaces real Bach with Bach will need to be there to find out usual. “Every innovation has
Mahan Esfahani and Robert Thomas,
generated by AI – and be asked to how it will work. unintended consequences,”
Barbican, London, 9 March
look for the joins. When people “My feeling is that people find he says. “But these include
CAN you tell when a piece of think they have spotted one, they themselves stuck in a particular positive consequences.”
music has been written by a can flip a card that is a different way of doing things, and that’s For Esfahani, the world of
machine? Back in 1979, cognitive colour on each side. They will also classical and contemporary
scientist Douglas Hofstadter was listen to new pieces by Thomas “As we search for new music is anything but a stable
the first to ask that question in his and another AI-savvy composer musical territories, must environment – it has been in a
classic book Gödel, Escher, Bach: Robert Laidlow. we confront ever stranger state of reinvention for centuries.
An eternal golden braid. The point isn’t to fool anyone sound worlds?” “From Mozart’s birth in 1756 to
Forty years on, I thought it was into misattributing music created Schubert’s death in 1828 is no
a rather tired question. Of course by AI to a composer regarded by when we start behaving like more than a single lifespan,” he
we cannot tell. Of course we can many as the greatest who ever machines,” says du Sautoy. “My says. “Yet in that one generation,
be fooled. Why worry? After all, lived. Instead, audience responses hope is that artificial intelligence the instruments of the orchestra
no one stopped playing chess or will be used to create new music may free us from behaving became unrecognisable –
Go when computers proved they that explores Bach’s sound world mechanically, by showing us sometimes literally so.”
could trounce the best players. If and vocabulary. that there are new places to go.” It is true that AI threatens to
anything, the machines inspired Musicians from the London He cites the work of computer decentre much of human life,
people to play more, and better.
Pitting yourself against a human
adversary is the whole point of
these games. And if the point of
music is that it conveys emotion,
it is only interesting if there is a
human doing the conveying.
A concert on 9 March should
shake up my assumptions.
London’s Barbican is bringing
together harpsichordist Mahan
Esfahani, mathematician Marcus
du Sautoy and composer Robert
Thomas for a performance
lecture – called The Eternal Golden
Braid: Gödel, Escher, Bach – that
uses an algorithm trained on the
music of J. S. Bach.
Bach’s compositions have been
fed through a machine-learning
process created by computational
artist Parag K. Mital. It will use
what it has learned to create
MARK ALLAN/BARBICAN
its pieces.
Harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani

will play music created by an AI

For more books and arts coverage, visit newscientist.com/culture
DON’T MISS
but this continuing reinvention of

music means it is relatively safe. Read
Feelings will run high, though. Dieter Helm’s Green and Prosperous
In the 19th century, for example, Land: A blueprint for rescuing the
the German composer Richard British countryside (William Collins)
Wagner caused great outrage with delivers handsomely on the promise
his radical style. Philosopher in its title.
Friedrich Nietzsche went as far
as to say: “He contaminates Visit
everything he touches – he has Craft & Graft: Making science
made music sick.” In fact, Wagner happen, an exhibition (pictured)
exploited and exhausted at the Francis Crick Institute in
GETTY
contemporary harmonic and London, will take visitors behind
chromatic possibilities to the the scenes to see what is needed
point where, at the turn of the
20th century, younger composers
had no choice but to abandon
Dangerous light to support the research carried out
there, including the thousands of
flasks and test tubes that need
tonal music in a search for a cleaning. From 1 March.
sound of their own. Physicist Jim Al-Khalili reveals why he wanted
Will the algorithm used during his first novel to be true to science Watch
the upcoming concert reveal H is for Harry is in some UK cinemas
compositions that are easier to for World Book Day on 7 March. It is a
swallow? Or, as we search for new NEAR-future, science-fiction been weakening for decades. powerful coming-of-age film about
territories, must we confront ever thrillers are what Hollywood It is also long overdue a flip: the state of education in the UK.
stranger sound worlds? does best, but the science can when magnetic north and south A key claim is that one in five English
As a mathematician, du Sautoy often be flaky. I have never poles switch. And it is possible, 11-year-olds can’t read well.
thinks he has an answer. “When got angry about that: the key though unlikely, that Earth’s
I make the mathematics-music word is “fiction”, after all. magnetic field will die one day – Play
connection, people worry that My enjoyment of the latest as Mars’s did billions of years ago. Vectronom, a hypnotic video game
I’m taking the emotion out of Marvel movies isn’t spoiled The 2041 tech is what about music, geometry and being in
music and making it very cold, when physics laws get broken. New Scientist readers might the moment, lands on Steam this
clinical and logical,” he says. My preference, however, is expect: quantum computing, month and seals the reputation of
“What they don’t realise is that for sci-fi to paint a picture of AI, minds controlling cities, developers Ludopium for combining
mathematics is highly emotional. what really could be. So I set my perovskite-crystal technology edgy music, art and experimentation.
It’s a response to the play of first book, Sunfall, in 2041, far for solar power, and so on.
extraordinary, surprising enough from today that tech As for the science of dark Listen
patterns. I get the same buzz based on current developments matter, it is possible that it is Particle physicists John Womersley
reading mathematics as I do will have been realised, but not made up of as-yet-undiscovered and Harry Cliff will talk about The
when I’m listening to Bach.” elementary particles called Next Mega-Collider at London’s Royal
Music isn’t an arbitrary jumble “Sunfall is meant to be neutralinos. And while I Institution at 7pm GMT on 7 March.
of notes. It is iterative, generative, a page-turner: a fast- overstress the importance The Future Circular Collider would
algorithmic. Music can be easy paced, race-against-time of dark matter self-interacting be many times more powerful than
and banal, just as mathematics techno-thriller” in the book, the physics on CERN’s current collider, the LHC.
can be, and for the same reason: neutralino decay and the role
structurally, easy music isn’t so far that my predictions of the bending magnets in
particularly interesting. lose reliability. Over the past sending dark matter beams
For both mathematics and seven years, I have interviewed to Earth’s core is possible.
music, the point isn’t to hunt 200 of the most brilliant But in the end, Sunfall is
for novelty for novelty’s sake, scientific minds in their field, meant to be a page-turner: a fast-
but to look for results that are which has imbued me with paced, race-against-time techno-
interesting and surprising, and a broad understanding of thriller. I have enjoyed building
that lead to further discoveries. where the world is heading. a “could be” world and found it
Such results are always rare, The book’s premise is that tremendously satisfying that the
THE FRANCIS CRICK INSTITUTE
and the limits of human cognition Earth’s magnetic field is dying, science is correct. I hope people
set a hard barrier beyond which leaving us vulnerable to the sun’s find it a great story too. ■
the search becomes pointless. By radiation. It isn’t an original idea,
applying AI and machine learning but it is something that could Jim Al-Khalili presents The Life
to the problem, beautiful happen. We know, for instance, Scientific on BBC Radio 4. Sunfall
surprises may await us. ■ that the magnetic field has (Bantam Press) is out on 18 April

CULTURE
Trapped in the multiverse

How do you stop dying over and over at your own party? Chelsea Whyte binges on new drama
her sad-sack ex and even her that. Nadia tells her drug dealer We’ve been experiencing time
Russian Doll, streaming on Netflix
mother figure, a therapist named that every time she dies it hurts. differently in these loops, but this
THE latest hit on Netflix turns out Ruth, who took care of her during She has been hit by a cab, fallen tells us that somewhere, linear
to be a magic trick in eight parts. and after the breakdowns and down the stairs, drowned, been time as we used to understand it
As Russian Doll begins, everything death of Nadia’s actual mother. blown up, plummeted down an still exists,” she says. This nod to
looks fairly ordinary for a TV Which takes us to the heart of elevator shaft – and more. Einstein’s theory of relativity may
drama – a party, a woman the series and, be warned, some Around her 14th death, Nadia be a bit simplistic, but it does
floundering in her mid-30s, unavoidable spoilers. To get out of finally realises that her friends remind us of his key tenet: there
death – then, with a single twist, her self-centred time loop, Nadia and her beloved Ruth grieve for is no such thing as absolute time.
it becomes extraordinary. has to convince someone that she her when she dies. This motivates Our experience of time is
This dark comedy stars Natasha is reliving the same night, and her to look for a way out, and so dependent on our point of view.
Lyonne as Nadia, a foul-mouthed come to terms with intimacy and In the final moments of the
New Yorker who we soon learn is abandonment issues. The first “There is a nod to Einstein series, we see two timelines side
stuck in a time loop, repeatedly part is hard to do without getting that reminds us of his key by side – two branches of the
living through the night of her sent to a psychiatric hospital – a tenet: there is no such multiverse in which Nadia and
36th birthday. She dies, only to fate she avoids only by dying once thing as absolute time” Alan change their behaviour and
be resurrected in the bathroom at more in the ambulance ride there. save the other from their first
her party, but in a new branch of Initially, Nadia thinks it may all she notices that after each death, death. The split-screen effect is
the multiverse. This plays on the be a drug-induced turn or some things around her die off. Fresh almost gut-wrenching, as you
“many worlds” concept in physics, mystical retribution for having flowers wilt, and fruit in bowls don’t know whether these two
the idea the cosmos is constantly a party in what was once a Jewish looks rotten. Nadia tells Alan. people who have come to care
splitting into alternate universes. school. Then, she meets Alan, She cuts open an orange, and about each other will ever
Some of Nadia’s deaths are a perfectionist and her opposite though the outside is mouldy, reunite in the same timeline.
played for laughs, some are so in all ways but one: he too keeps inside it is still edible – just as It isn’t a great magic trick if you
graphic they are upsetting and dying and reliving the same day. their inner lives continue as one just saw the woman in half – you
some leave her so alone and Alan sees their experience as a linear experience while their have to put her back together
frantic that it is heartbreaking. video game, but their trip through bodies keep dying. “Time is again. Fortunately, Russian Doll
But Russian Doll isn’t painful to the multiverse isn’t as clear cut as relative to your experience. delivers on that. ■
watch. Each episode is 30 minutes,
a welcome change from the trend
for prestige television shows to
have much longer instalments.
Best of all, Lyonne infuses Nadia
with almost inexplicable charm.
The character is a fabulous
dirtbag with the personality of a
pit bull. Her unkempt hair has a
bottle top stuck in it for most of
one episode. Waking up, her first
move is to light a cigarette. She
did ketamine at a christening.
Seemingly self-centred, in real life
she would be horrible to know.
RUSSIAN DOLL/COURTESY OF NETFLIX
But Lyonne’s sardonic humour

makes Nadia likeable.
When the show starts, Nadia
has isolated herself from friends,
Caught in a loop: Nadia (Natasha

Lyonne) is reliving the same night

Science Content Director
The International Centre for
Life is a pioneering science
village based in the heart of
Newcastle upon Tyne. It
brings together over 500 <hfi^mbmbo^lZeZkrZg]ZmmkZ\mbo^[^g^ÛmliZ\dZ`^
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The Life Science Centre, Science in the 21st Century is fast moving, potentially 7RVHHDIXOOMREGHVFULSWLRQDQGSHUVRQVSHFL¿FDWLRQ
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2 March 2019 NewScientist | 47

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transform healthcare? JOLTPJHSHUKV[OLYWVSS\[HU[ZPU[OLTHYPULLU]PYVUTLU[6\Y
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West Midlands Regional Genetics Laboratory YLJY\P[PUN[^VYVSLZPUV\Y;LJOUPJHS;LHT
With genomics moving to routine NHS care, a number of exciting Technical Adviser
opportunities have arisen at all levels to work within the West *HUKPKH[LZZOV\SKWVZZLZZHZHTPUPT\THOPNOLYKLNYLLPUH
Midlands Regional Genetics Laboratory. Our expanded workforce ZJPLU[PÄJLUNPULLYPUNVYYLSH[LKKPZJPWSPULHUKWYLMLYHIS`OH]L
will help create a world class genomics laboratory service, WYHJ[PJHSL_WLYPLUJLVMWVSS\[PVUJVU[YVSHUKVY[OLLMMLJ[ZVM
providing state of the art genomic analysis for NHS patients with WVSS\[PVUVUTHYPULYLZV\YJLZ-S\LUJ`PUHSHUN\HNLV[OLY[OHU
a rare disease or cancer.
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serving 11 million people across the region.
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at: https://bwc.nhs.uk/west-midlands-regional-genetics-
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Healthcare Science Assistants and Healthcare Science Associates
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*SVZPUNKH[LMVYHWWSPJH[PVUZ¶22nd March 2019
Apprenticeship opportunities
• Level 4 Healthcare Science Associate ITOPF does not have a sponsor licence (issued by the UK Government) to employ
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letters@newscientist.com @newscientist newscientist
LETTERS
EDITOR’S PICK A ghost in the machine “something out there” – and

of the origins of life perhaps we risk creating a new
Electric cars are no panacea for clean air mysticism in our own image.
From Michael Crick,
have previously reported that half the Corbridge, Northumberland, UK From Krista Nelson,
fine particulate matter that gets into Paul Davies, for whom I have the Rokeby, Tasmania, Australia
people’s lungs from traffic on busy greatest respect, seems to be Davies spends a lot of effort trying
streets comes from tyres and brakes invoking a “ghost in the machine” to explain how life’s organised,
(29 October 2016, p 16). So electric in proposing that we need to self-sustaining complexity
vehicles aren’t a complete solution. consider information as a doesn’t really fly in the face of the
Electromagnetic braking can help physical quantity to explain how most sacred law of physics, the
reduce dust, but the tyres still something made of matter can second law of thermodynamics,
generate copious particles. exhibit the behaviours of life which says entropy in an isolated
It seems to me that the only (2 February, p 28). This seems to system tends to increase. It is
solution to the problem of fine dust be invoking an overarching power simple: life doesn’t break this
from vehicles is to have far fewer of for information – which seems to law. It merely creates a local, low-
them in towns and cities. We must me to be an abstract concept. entropy system by shifting excess
From Brian Pollard, reduce the need to travel, for example The universe is what it is, entropy to its environment along
North Hill, Cornwall, UK by working at home where possible. irrespective of our attempts with other waste products.
Michael Le Page reports some clever We also need to improve public to explain it using language,
ideas about wirelessly charging transport – and the article did show including mathematics and The editor writes:
electric cars (16 February, p 22). This we can wirelessly charge buses. information theory. Q That is what life does once it has
leaves me feeling quite dismayed. An upside of such changes would A nucleic acid base just does got going. The puzzle is that in the
There is an assumption that we can be town and city streets that are what it does. In my humble view, framework of thermodynamics,
solve our roadside pollution problems quieter than today, which would information is a human concept – the beginning of life – molecules
by switching to electric cars. But you be a great benefit in itself. a very useful one, but not coming together into complex
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“If research shows harm, report that. I don’t
think they have a secret anti-cheese agenda”
Andrew Coe responds to critical tweets after we highlighted the
environmental and welfare costs of cheese (16 February, p 30)
systems that spontaneously do chimes with neuroanthropologist The first time I was given and radioactive waste disposal,
stuff – is vanishingly unlikely. John Allen’s claim that home is a opioids, I waited for the pain to go not least worries about leaks. A
Davies frames this problem in cornerstone of human cognition, away, but the “painkiller” didn’t catastrophic release of stored
terms of its thermodynamical as basic perhaps as language. seem to have any effect. The CO2 to the surface, similar to the
peculiarity, and seeks the answer second time, I realised that it release of CO2 trapped in lakes
in terms of information. From Sam Edge, wasn’t making the pain go away, in Africa, could kill humans and
Ringwood, Hampshire, UK but did make it easier to tolerate. other animals over a large area.
Home is a hearth plus Spinney says that a Neanderthal I think any plan for setting up a
a door, or more home preferably backed onto The meat of the problem storage site would be met by “not
solid rock and had at least one of saving the planet in my back yard” opposition.
From Trevor Jones, entrance. Preferably? I’m not sure
Sheringham, Norfolk, UK I’d want a home that has fewer From Chris deSilva, From Tom Dillon, London, UK
Sitting in front of my gas fire with than one entrance. Dianella, Western Australia Lawton’s seven steps include
faux logs, reading your account of Graham Lawton’s seven steps to consuming less meat. But there
Neanderthal homemakers, I’m Pain and suffering save the planet seem to rely on is a world of difference between
reassured that the hearth is the aren’t the same systems for carbon capture and intensive, high-input, grain-fed
psychological centre of the home, storage (8 December 2018, p 31). meat dependent on fossil fuels
a phrase attributed to architect From Rosemary Sharples, The financial and energy costs of and fertiliser, and small-scale,
Frank Lloyd Wright (9 February, Sydney, Australia storing several cubic kilometres locally sold, naturally grazed,
p 28). Laura Spinney’s description I’m glad to see that someone of liquid carbon dioxide a year pasture-fed meat. Big herbivores
of the oldest known fireplaces, else has noticed that there is a will be considerable. play a critical role in creating
found in Neanderthal homes, difference between pain and I suppose we could turn the ecological diversity and enriching
provides an enigmatic glimpse suffering. You report that former Texas oilfields into a soil organic matter, which
into the prehistoric past. silencing brain cells in mice can storage site, but this could raise supports other animal life and
The emphasis on fire, keeping make them no longer care about some of the issues that are absorbs carbon from the air.
warm, cooking and storytelling, pain (26 January, p 19). brought up regarding fracking The savannahs of Africa and >
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letters@newscientist.com @newscientist newscientist
LETTERS
the Americas, maintained by showing how technical advances profiles were much less attractive western Europeans who wanted
mega-herds of herbivores, used drive economic growth. than those of others. 20°C and northern Europeans and
to be a great carbon sink. Yes, politicians need to avoid If the numbers of carriers of the Canadians who complained of
It is naive to think that a simplistic populist appeals, such two disordered genes in the study heatstroke at 16°C. The result is
landscape of vegetable and fruit as “Trump digs coal “ or “freeing” were similar, if the percentages open offices cooled, at great
monocultures will maintain any the UK from EU standards. But give a fair representation of the expense, to a temperature at
ecological diversity. they will always try to be popular population and if the personal which many feel too cold and have
Switching government to survive. They should note Greta scent effect had protected some to wear additional clothing.
subsidies from supporting Thunberg’s speech at the climate participants from forming
unsustainable, high-carbon change conference at Katowice in attachments to people with the A key question with a
emitting, intensive livestock Poland last December. same disordered gene, then the mixed readership
production to no-input, natural one in 40 figure is what random
grazing techniques can make This smells like a solution distribution would predict. From David Hoskin,
livestock an agent of biological to a statistical puzzle Driffield, East Yorkshire, UK
and ecological creation. No open-plan office can Readers gave several excellent
From Geoff Convery, Kirton in be the right temperature answers to a question about how
Technologies will drive Lindsey, Lincolnshire, UK many rotors on a key safe one
climate change solutions Richard Harris is surprised that, From Scott McNeil, should move to lock it (The Last
while one in 20 participants in a Banstead, Surrey, UK Word, 26 January). These will
From Anthony Richardson, study carried the gene for either Yvaine Ye discussed pitfalls of doubtless find applications in
Ironbridge, Shropshire, UK cystic fibrosis or spinal muscular open-plan offices (12 January, p 33) others’ everyday lives. A problem
Jane Rawson takes a generalised atrophy, only one in 40 has a and readers expanded on them is that, sadly, not all honest
shot at economic growth as a partner who also carries one (Letters, 2 February). Another is householders read New Scientist
barrier to climate action (Letters, (Letters, 2 February). You note that the issue of temperature. and, presumably, a number of
12 January). Maybe the two aren’t there were just 15 such couples. I am surprised how many intelligent rogues do.
so incompatible. If an explanation is needed, buildings have air-conditioning
While the notion of infinite it may lie in a study involving systems that can’t cope with Even my kitchen can’t
economic growth is illogical, student volunteers smelling open-plan spaces behind agree on serving sizes
developing technologies, soft and T-shirts previously worn by other expanses of glass, so occupants
hard, will be the major instrument students and rating the odours for of the south side are baking hot From Tony Green,
of climate change moderation. sexual attraction (24 August 2002, while those on the north freeze. Ipswich, Suffolk, UK
And Robert Solow won the 1987 p 20). The personal scents of I recently worked with people With Kayt Sukel’s guide to keeping
Nobel prize in economics for people with similar genetic from East Africa who wanted 25°C, your mind sharp, you present
food recommendations measured
in “servings”, defined as roughly
half a cup (26 January, p 30). Who
measures vegetables in “cups”?
According to my kettle, the cup I
use for coffee holds two cups; my
coffee maker thinks it’s three.
The editor writes:

Q Researchers tend to discuss
servings, meaning the amount of
a food you would normally eat as
part of a meal. The UK’s National
Health Service defines an adult
portion of fruit or vegetables as
80 grams (bit.ly/NS-servings).
Letters should be sent to:

Letters to the Editor, New Scientist,
25 Bedford Street, London, WC2E 9ES
Email: letters@newscientist.com
Include your full postal address and telephone

number, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to
articles. We reserve the right to edit letters.
New Scientist Ltd reserves the right to
use any submissions sent to the letters column of
New Scientist magazine, in any other format.

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FEEDBACK
cattle station, the ground itself Meanwhile, Bill Barksfield

has caught fire. Footage from points us to The Daily Telegraph,
the Mt Denison Station in which features an interview with
Northern Territory shows ground sheep farmer Sally Shepherd.
resembling a cast-iron pan – not
only black and smoking, but with FROM the ever-productive laboratory
an egg cooking away, as prepared of media measurements, Mark
by rancher Terry Martin. Vandersluis finds The Guardian
ABC News reports that Martin grappling with the size of the database
attempted to measure the fed to an AI to teach it to write. There
temperature of the smoking char, was no way to relate this to blue
but it melted his thermometer. whales, but the cetacean theme
Efforts to quench the fire with endured: the paper reports that the
water have had limited success, training set contained 40 gigabytes
with new fires soon appearing. of data, or “enough to store about
A “professor of pyrogeography” 35,000 copies of Moby Dick”.
noted that well-trodden manure This measure will be handy for
in the pens may have contributed anyone with a library filled with
to a naturally combustible layer nothing but Herman Melville novels.
of organic matter. “By my reckoning,” says Mark, “that
He says similar fires have
PAUL MCDEVITT
makes a white whale just over 1 Mb in

erupted in dried lake beds and size, with a MegaMoby coming in at
drained swamps during the around 1.143 Gb.”
heatwave. For residents, there is
little to be done except allow these
AN ELEGANT weapon for a more the ground, probably feeling fires to burn themselves out – and
civilised age? The French Fencing rather embarrassed. Animal maybe cook a little breakfast on
Federation has recognised lightsaber control workers tranquilised the them while they wait.
duelling as a sport. The authorities cat before firefighters slipped it
accepted the Star Wars energy swords into a harness and lowered it to MORE blackened earth: people in
as a way to encourage more young the ground. It will be released back central Russia awoke recently to
people to take up the sport. into the wild once veterinarians discover that their town had been
Traditional fencing relies on three give the all-clear, where it will no covered in black snow. Residents of
blades: the foil, sabre and épée, none doubt rush to adapt its story into Kiselyovsk shared apocalyptic scenes
of which glows in the dark or makes a heart-warming screenplay. online of homes, cars and fields buried
dramatic droning noises. Those in the sooty mantle.
qualities are key to inspiring a new THERE may be an app for everything, Blame for the odd precipitation has PREVIOUSLY, Feedback reported
generation of wannabe Jedis (or Sith but new rules proposed by a province fallen on nearby open-cast coal mines, on a Devon driver investigated
Lords) to put away the games console in Eastern China would see homework which residents say are responsible for driving under the influence
and take up the sport. But with the apps erased from the curriculum. for widespread ill-health. One after claiming he swerved to
trend among young Jedi of turning on Zhejiang province is pushing for environmentalist told The Guardian: avoid an octopus (16 February).
their mentors, would anyone be brave the move to combat high rates “There is a lot of coal dust in the air “Perhaps he is telling the
enough to train these youngsters? of nearsightedness in children. all the time. When snow falls, it just truth,” says Peter Slessenger.
As well as requiring homework becomes visible. You can’t see it the “There are quite a few seafood
RESCUING cats from trees is all to be paper-based, the rules would rest of the year, but it is still there.” restaurants in that part of the
in a day’s work for firefighters, increase outdoor activities and limit world, and octopuses are noted
although a team in California screen time in classrooms. Good news WE HAVE only ourselves to blame. for their escape abilities.”
deserve a special mention after for pupils everywhere. We breached our self-imposed Peter recommends that
a wild mountain lion got stuck ban and now new examples of Feedback takes an investigative
in a pine tree. A resident of AUSTRALIA is sweltering in a nominative determinism slip trip to the west coast to find
San Bernardino county spotted record-breaking heatwave, with unbidden into our inbox. “I know, out whether restaurateur Rick
the big cat trapped 15 metres off temperatures so high that in one I know, how fed up you must be Stein is missing a starter or two.
of these,” says Adam Robinson
insightfully. “But I love Feedback,
Visitors to the Grand Canyon museum may have and when I saw this I couldn’t You can send stories to Feedback by
felt all aglow after three buckets of uranium help but think of you.” He email at feedback@newscientist.com.
forwards a newly published paper Please include your home address.
ore were discovered in the taxidermy exhibit. on tectonic faults co-authored This week’s and past Feedbacks can
The radioactive rubble was rapidly disposed of by one Filipe Terra-Nova. be seen on our website.

Last words past and present at newscientist.com/lastword
THE LAST WORD
Hot topic For this reason it is better to same size as those of a mature oak. In Q Since a tree leaf has a low
apply cool water for longer rather animals, a stricter law of proportion weight compared with the rest of
I work in catering and often get than very cold water for a short seems to apply: babies have tiny the plant, it isn’t a problem for a
burned on the hand. Most of these time. If water is too cold it can lead hands and kittens tiny claws. Why this sapling to grow full-size leaves,
are relatively minor, but painful. The to reduced sensitivity, making difference? unlike hands on a baby. And the
National Health Service advice is to you believe the burn is no longer law of proportion in animals isn’t
hold the burn under a running tap of hot. It can also reduce blood flow, Q Infant paws and kitten claws are so strict: a baby’s head is
cool water for 20 minutes and not to by constricting blood vessels, mechanical tools and must be of a proportionately bigger than an
cover it in anything greasy. As burning which slows down damage repair size, and leverage, appropriate to adult’s. This is mainly so that the
is caused by a transfer of energy from and can even trigger frostbite. Ice the power provided by the limbs. brain can be bigger than would
one substance to another, even a hot can also do this and shouldn’t be Rather than hands, perhaps otherwise be the case, enabling
oil burn doesn’t need that long to cool put on burns. it would be more appropriate the baby to learn more quickly.
down. What is the basis for these Vittoria Dessi to compare leaf size with the The amount of light does have
measures? London, UK diameter of the hair on a child’s some effect on leaf size, and this is
head or the fur on a kitten, which used in the Japanese art of bonsai.
Q The length of time cool water Q A 2008 study by Leila Cuttle at doesn’t greatly change as the Here, suitable tree varieties (often
has to be applied to a burn the University of Queensland in animals mature. those with naturally smaller
depends on the severity of the Australia on the treatment of leaves) are kept miniaturised. Leaf
burn and how soon the water is burns with cool water found “The amount of light does size is kept small by a combination
applied. If a splash of hot water recommendations ranging from have some effect on leaf of bright light and removing any
on the skin is put under a cold tap 5 minutes to 3 hours. Testing on size, and this is used in the new leaves that grow in the spring;
within seconds its heat will barely pigs showed treating burns with Japanese art of bonsai” the tree then grows another set of
have penetrated. It may only need 20 minutes of cool water resulted smaller leaves. This unnatural
half a minute under the water in less damage after nine days Or you could compare leaves process puts a large strain on the
before it is entirely neutralised. compared with 5 or 10 minutes, with mitochondria. Both provide plant, so needs much skill by its
But if a large quantity of boiling and longer durations offered no power, and neither changes in size owner to produce the desired
jam spills down your leg, it will additional benefit. as the organism grows, they just appearance without killing it.
take time to remove it. The heat Interestingly, the study also increase in number. Richard Swifte
will have penetrated some way says that while immediate Peter Urben Darmstadt, Germany
into your leg before you begin to treatment is best, a delay of Kenilworth, Warwickshire, UK
cool the skin, and will continue to 1 to 3 hours is acceptable. This
go deeper into your tissues while suggests there may be more to Q The function of leaves is This week’s question
you cool the surface layers. the mechanism than simply different to that of hands or claws.
For minimum damage, cool removing residual heat, such Trees use leaves to gain nutrients BRING ME SUNSHINE
water must be applied for the as minimising inflammation. by photosynthesis and energy Can a blind person still benefit
20 minutes cited to ensure that Anthony Roberts from respiration. from the effect of natural light on
it has reached all the heat. Rushden, Northamptonshire, UK As a tree grows, it needs an ever- circadian rhythms and mental
Jane Lilley increasing surface area to perform well-being? I lost my remaining
Dorking, Surrey, UK these functions. But the leaves light perception 10 years ago and
Life size don’t have to get bigger, the tree since that time I’ve had insomnia.
Q Although it cannot be observed, just makes more of them. A study This would suggest that the
thermal damage beneath the skin I have an oak tree in a pot grown in 2012 calculated that a mature answer to my question is no, but
can continue once the source of from a seedling. After three years oak has around 230,000 leaves. maybe I just need to get out more.
the burn is removed and the burn it is healthy but barely a metre tall. Anne Campbell Allan Tweddle
feels cool. However, its leaves are much the Cardiff, UK Orpington, Kent, UK
Watch 100
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