Science Illustrated Australia - Issue 24 2013

DEEP SUIT
AUSTRALIAN
Archaeologys latest toy
GIANT BLACK HOLES

Cracking a cosmic mystery
MEDICAL NANOBOTS
Soon youll be fixed from the inside
QUANTUM SPYCRAFT
Creating a truly uncrackable code
What happens to the Earth
ZOONAUTS
The amazing history of animal astronauts
How our cities will decay, and how nature will bounce back - fast!
ISSUE #24
ScIEncEIllUStratEd.com.aU
lIcE: oUr conStant companIonS + amazIng StonE agE toolS + nExt gEnEratIon aIrcraft carrIErS + and mUcH morE!
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Issue #24 (24 July 2013) EDITORIAL Editor Anthony Fordham afordham@nextmedia.com.au Contributors Caitlin Howlett, Damon Wilder Photographers Damon Wilder DESIGN Group Art Director Kristian Hagen Art Director Malcolm Campbell ADVERTISING National Advertising Manager Cameron Ferris cferris@nextmedia.com.au ph: 02 9901 6348 National Advertising Executive Lewis Preece lpreece@nextmedia.com.au ph: 02 9901 6175 Divisional Manager Jim Preece jpreece@nextmedia.com.au ph: 02 9901 6150 Production Manager Peter Ryman Circulation Director Carole Jones INTERNATIONAL EDITION Editor-in-Chief Sebastian Relster International Editor Lotte Juul Nielsen BONNIER INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINES International Licensing Director Anders Malmsten Art Director Hanne Bo Picture Editors Allan Bagges, Lisbeth Brnnich, Peter Eberhardt
EDITORS LETTER
The eNd OF The WORld

ersonally, I dont think the world is going to end any time soon. The human world, I mean. I think weve reached a level of technology, knowledge - wisdom even - that will dramatically increase our ability to bounce back from even the worst disasters. If you look at the great plagues and eruptions and impacts of the past, they massively disrupted populations and even wiped many cultures out. But this was in a world where the total human population was small - only a few millions - and we didnt go extinct. If a comet hits central Europe tomorrow (touch wood it wont), the loss of life will be unprecedented. But - harsh as it sounds - if even two billion people are killed or die in the resulting nuclear winter and tectonic aftershocks, that leaves ve billion humans to pick up the pieces (and hopefully not kill too many more in the inevitable wars that follow). When the Black Death ravaged Europe, it killed up to 200 million and plunged the continent into total chaos and is a major chapter in human history. Contrast this to the Spanish Flu in 1918. Coming on the heels of World War I (nine million combatants killed) it caused the deaths of as many as 100 million around the globe. In terms of scale, it was similar though much faster than the Black Death, yet today its a historical footnote (unless you lost someone to that u, of course). And what about World War II? We killed another 70 million, but our population continued to increase faster than ever. Im not suggesting that a massive disaster or disease or some kind of war that has casualties measured in billions wont be the worse thing thats ever happened to us, or that it wont
NEXTMEDIA Chief Executive Officer David Gardiner Commercial Director Bruce Duncan Science Illustrated is published 6 times a year by nextmedia Pty Ltd ACN: 128 805 970 Building A, 207 Pacific Highway St Leonards, NSW 2065 Under license from Bonnier International Magazines. 2013 Bonnier Corporation and nextmedia Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited. Science Illustrated is a trademark of Bonnier Corporation and is used under limited license. The Australian edition contains material originally published in the US and UK editions reprinted with permission of Bonnier Corporation. Articles express the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Publisher, Editor or nextmedia Pty Ltd. ISSN 1836-5175. Privacy Notice We value the integrity of your personal information. If you provide personal information through your participation in any competitions, surveys or offers featured in this issue of Science Illustrated, this will be used to provide the products or services that you have requested and to improve the content of our magazines. Your details may be provided to third parties who assist us in this purpose. In the event of organisations providing prizes or offers to our readers, we may pass your details on to them. From time to time, we may use the information you provide us to inform you of other products, services and events our company has to offer. We may also give your information to other organisations which may use it to inform you about their products, services and events, unless you tell us not to do so. You are welcome to access the information that we hold about you by getting in touch with our privacy officer, who can be contacted at nextmedia, Locked Bag 5555, St Leonards, NSW 1590 www.scienceillustrated.com.au To subscribe, call 1300 361 146 or 9901 6111 or visit mymagazines.com.au THE SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED CREDO We share with our readers a fascination with science, technology, nature, culture and archaeology, and believe that through education about our past, present and future, we can make the world a better place.
completely change the face of the planet and of human civilisation. All Im arguing is that it wont end the world. Our population and sophistication now is such that even if a dinosaur-killer asteroid is detected tomorrow, we have the technology to preserve a core population and vast amounts of information, even the DNA of many species. We already have seed banks that are preserving plant species against environmental collapse. Its not a humane or maybe even ethical way to think - billions will be abandoned to save the lives of only a few hundred thousand. But in terms of species survival, it is what it is. On any sort of reasonable time scale centuries for instance - our return from a near-extinction-level event will be fast. We understand our reproductive system. We know how to increase our population rapidly. We know how to establish a food supply, almost even without a biosphere. There will be several generations of people who live only to survive and to carry forward a (probably religious) vision of a restored world. But within the sort of span of time that the universe considers a mere twitch - even a thousand years well have a population in the billions again. Is the extinction of humans impossible? No there are many unlikely events that could scythe the planet clean of all life, or disrupt us beyond recovery. Am I just arguing semantics by suggesting that being reduced to 300,000 people living in bunkers isnt the end of the world? Perhaps. But around 70,000 years ago, something cut us down to as few as 3,000 breeding pairs. And with barely any technology, we came back. I think, in this universe, humans are here to stay. Anthony Fordham
Twitter: @sci_illustrated Facebook: facebook.com/ScienceIllustratedAus
Things we learned in this issue

+ lIcE are among humanitys oldest parasites, and they enjoy really long lovemaking sessions. + nanoBotS are an engineering challenge to create, but are actually relatively simple machines that are smarter in large numbers. + anImal aStronaUtS paved the way for our space programs, and have repeatedly shown that life can adapt to weightlessness and other literally otherworldly conditions.
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contents #
ISSUE 24
SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED AUSTRALIAN EDITION
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PUbLIShED 24Th jULy 2013
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STONE AGE TOOLS Apart from giving us the ability to hunt almost every animal on the planet, stone tools had another surprising benefit: they helped us develop sophisticated language.
Cover Story
LIFE AFTER HUMANS
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Are our mighty works really that mighty? What would happen to our cities and monuments if we all just disappeared overnight?
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UNDERWATER ARCHAEOLOGY Using a combination of state-of-the-art articulated submersibles and amazing 3D image processing, archaeologists are making astounding underwater discoveries.
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LICE these tiny parasites are the bane of the public school system, but the fact is we (or at least our ancestors) have been living with them for tens of millions of years.
REGULARS
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BUllS-EYE
The worlds largest telescope!
NANOBOTS the days of getting cut open by your surgeon are numbered. Soon, you may be injected with a swarm of sub-microscopic machines that will fix you from the inside.
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ScIEncE UpdatE
The latest news and developments in science!
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SKYWatcH
The team from Macquarie Uni handles all your astronomy needs.
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aSK US
Can we see the core of our galaxy?
QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY
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MASSIVE BLACK HOLES Just when we think weve got a handle on how black holes work, along come a new kind thats more massive that it should really be. How will our model of the universe change now?
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How can it be possible to create a truly uncrackable code? With a quantum computer, thats how. Heres the secret story of the qubit.
anImalS In orBIt
The unsung heroes of the space program
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BY tHE nUmBErS
The insane size of US aircraft carriers
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trIVIa
Now with more rocket riddles!
BacKYard JUnglE
Stuck on sticky sundews...
SUBSCRIBE NOW! 66
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AUSSIE IMAGE
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AMAziNg phoTogrAphy by AUSTrAliAN ArTiSTS, boTh AMATeUr ANd profeSSioNAl [left] alex mcdermotts Bigleaf maple Seedling [below left] Beau tsais common Kingfisher
australian glass artist cas daveys radiolarian - a sort of plankton whose skeletons make up the thick layer of ooze on the ocean floor.
www.pittsburghglasscenter.org/exhibitions/lifeforms
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CApTUred iN glASS
Story by Anthony Fordham Believe it or not these amazing images are actually made out of glass. Theyre entrants from the Lifeforms Award, a competition organised by the Pittsburgh Glass Centre in the US. The exhibition took 50 works from around the world - including Australia - and handed out awards for the best. Award of Excellence winner Greater Blue-ringed Octopus on a Teeming Coral Reef was created by Joe Peters from Battleboro, Maryland in the US, while the other large image called Radiolarian - is by Aussie glass artists Cas Davey. Another Aussie, Mark Elliot, went for a more realistic look with Little Terns (small marine birds). Its made from flame-sculpted and blown borosilicate glass, while Daveys piece was made with a blowtorch and flame. Why make biological sculptures out of glass? Lifeforms was organised and coordinated by Robert Mickelsen, a Florida-based glass artist, and inspired by father-and-son team Rudolf and Leopold Blaschka. They made glass biological models back in the 19th and 20th centuries for Harvard Universitys museums. Glass sculptures were preferred in the days before durable plastic, because they lasted much longer than painted plaster or even porcelain models. Today, museum curators have access to realistic-looking resins and - for actual artefacts - humiditycontrolled display cases and special lighting systems that shield objects against the degenerative effects of ultraviolet radiation. Still, its somehow uplifting to see master glassblowers are still out there, and still able to make these amazing and beautiful objects from little more than melted sand, a few trace elements, fire and their own breath. If you happen to be in Pittsburgh in the latter half of 2013, the exhibition is on at the Glass Centre until 17 November.
Joe peters coral reef might not be the kind of thing youd put in your house, but its amazing to think this is made entirely of glass.
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aStronomY WorldMags.net BULLS-EyE
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TELESCOPIC HARDWARE FOR A NEW ASTRONOMICAL front row VIEW

In the Atacama Desert, four antennas are aimed at the Milky Way. They are part of ALMA, the worlds largest and most recently inaugurated telescope. ALMA measures cosmic radiation from galaxies millions of light years away. The individual, 100-tonne antennas stand up to 16 km apart, depending on their function. ALMA is professional stargazers most sophisticated tool, and the expectations of learning new things from primordial gas and dust, which form planets and stars, are huge.
j.f. salgado/eso
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SCIENCE UPDATE
Editors: Carsten Nymann & Emrah Sutcu
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LATEST NEWS AND DISCOVERIES
Three teams of scientists compete to find life in sub-Antarctic lakes. American scientists were the first to prove the existence of bacteria.
Life found in sub-Antarctic lake

PeteR West/nsf
Lake eLLsworth
BIologY For the first time ever, American scientists have found signs of life deep below the Antarctic ice sheet. In late January, a drill, which melts through the ice by using jets of hot water, worked its way 800 m down through the ice to the underground fresh water Lake Whillans. Scientists secured 30 litres of water from the lake, which has since proved to contain large amounts of living, biological material.
Analyses of the samples have revealed around 1,000 bacteria per mm of water. the discovery is sensational, as scientists have never before found signs of life under the Antarctic ice sheet, which measures up to 4,500 m in the thickest places. Lake Whillans covers an area of 59 square km and is located in the western part of Antarctica. the lake is only some two metres deep, but still highly important to
drill chief frank rack from the University of nebraska, USa, inspects the equipment.
scientists. For at least 500,000 years, the lake has been cut off from the outside world, and the microorganisms, which live in the water, can provide scientists with a unique knowledge of the evolutionary history of early life. Moreover, the exploration can give scientists a hint of whether it will be possible to find life under similar extreme conditions in space, including under the semi-permanent Co2 ice caps of Mars.
WIssaRd PRoject
o. sanIsIdRo/csIc
Brain
The ampelosaurus' brain and internal ear, which controls equilibrium and rotation, were rather small, so scientists assume that the giant was unable to even move its head quickly.
Giant dino had miniature brain

palEontologY one of the biggest
land animals that ever roamed the earth now confirms the saying that size doesnt necessarily matter. In 2007, palaeontologists found a 70 million-year- old ampelosaurus fossil near the Spanish city of Cuenca. the specimen is a 15-m-long herbivorous sauropod. Now, Spanish scientists have completed a reconstruction of the giants brain, and size-wise, its less than impressive, measuring just 8 cm: about the volume of a tennis ball. Scientists had expected to find a bigger brain in an animal, which had evolved over 160 million years. But increased brain size wasnt needed during the sauropods' evolution, says Fabien Knoll, one of the scientists behind the reconstruction.
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Toxins from bee stings may be used in a future HIV vaccine, according to new scientific results from India.
Three drill sites:

Scientists from three countries have set up camps on the ice above Lake Ellsworth, Lake Whillans, and Lake Vostok.
Lake whiLLans Lake Vostok
THE Neanderthal died 10,000 years earlier

Based on new datings of Neanderthal remains, an international team of scientists has shown that this human species probably died out 10,000 years earlier than we thought. According to the new studies, most Neanderthals died around 50,000 years ago. It makes scientists question how much contact there really occured between Neanderthals and modern humans, who came to Europe 40,000 years ago.
hennIng dalhoff
MIguel caPaRRos/Mnhn
The UK had to give up

In December 2012, a British team of scientists had to give up drilling 3 km down through the ice to Lake Ellsworth. Technical breakdowns caused the project to be shelved. The British team plans a new attempt in 2016 or 2017.
Americans were the first

On 28 January, scientists from the American Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling project managed to get through to Lake Whillans, 800 m below the ice sheet. Scientists retrieved 30 l of water from the lake.
Russians drill the deepest

After more than 20 years of preparations, in 2012 Russian scientists drilled their way down to Lake Vostok, 3.7 km under the ice cap. The scientists have collected water samples, but so far, there are no confirmed signs of life.
The galaxys youngest black hole found

FUSION reSearcherS develOp NeW caBleS
in 2020, the worlds first nuclear fusion plant will start to come online. The scientists behind the iTer test plant have completed the reactors superconductive cables (cables with virtually no electrical resistance), which produce the core's plasma-controlling magnetic field.
aStronomY In the 1,000-year-old

remains of a supernova, scientists from the American Massachusetts Institue of technology have discovered what might be the youngest black hole in our galaxy, the Milky Way. the supernova remnant is located some 26,000 light years from the earth and is the result of an unusual explosion. Material from the dying star was not, as is usually the case, flung into space in all directions - it emerged faster from the poles than from the rest of the star. When heavy stars collapse, their centres
typically become very dense neutron stars, but astronomers cannot find a neutron star. this indicates that a black hole has formed.
the W49B phenomenon captured by naSas chandra x-ray telescope.
nasa/chandRa
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SCIENCE UPDATE
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Three of the worlds top car makers, Ford, Daimler, and Renault-Nissan, cooperate to revive hydrogen-powered for a series of 2018 models.
MaRtIn ehRbaR/unIveRsIttssPItal ZRIch
Mussel glue to save unborn babies

mEdIcInE Mussels will stick to
almost anything below the surface of the oceans. they liberate a secretion of proteins, which hardens into natures own version of waterproof superglue. Scientists from the North-western University in Illinois, USA, now intend to copy the mussels and make a similar glue for the benefit of medicine. the glue can be used, when prenatal surgeons repair spina bifida in unborn babies. At the moment, doctors carry out surgery on unborn babies in the womb, but it is difficult to seal the hole in the womb afterwards. Synthetic mussel glue is expected to be very well-suited in connection with this type of surgery. Rabbit foetus
Scientists test mussel glue on rabbit foetal membranes.
Scientists provide rats with infrared vision

tEcHnologY By using a brain implant,
American scientists from Duke University have given rats able the ability to feel infrared light waves. Normally, rats like humans cannot see infrared light. But the scientists developed an artificial device, which provides rats with this ability. Before the experiment, the rats were trained to get a liquid reward from one of three light diodes, which lit up in a random order. Subsequently, the rats were implanted with an infrared detector attached to microscopic electrodes in the part of the brain which handles the sense of touch. the scientists then exchanged the light diodes with infrared light sources. After a month, the rats had learned to identify the infrared light source which was turned on.
nIcolelIs lab/duke unIveRsIty
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bird species have died out in Pacific islands due to human colonisation, according to scientists. Islands like Fiji and Hawaii were conquered by humans 700-3,500 years ago.
Living cells per ml 10,000,000 100,000,000
Rat
a rat finds the infrared light and gets its reward in the shape of water.
Drinking water is filled with bacteria

A laser-based method of analysis named flow cytometry has revealed that drinking water contains a lot more bacteria than previously believed. Even top quality drinking water contains 100-10,000 times
Waste water Lakes and rivers Mineral water Tap water
more micro-organisms than documented by other test methods. Flow cytometry is normally used by doctors for counting such things as blood cells.
Even purified drinking water contains much more bacteria than expected.
thInkstock
Ground water 100 1,000 10,000 100,000 1,000,000
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SkyWATCH
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THE LATEST IN ASTRONOMy AND COSMOLOGy
NIGHT Sky
Stand out featureS in the CoSmoS BETWEEN 24 JULy AND 17 SEPTEMBER:

Compiled by dr david frew, research fellow, department of physics and Astronomy, Macquarie University
SEE WITH yOUR EyE

At this time of year the grand arc of the Milky Way is visible by mid-evening. for those lucky enough to observe from a dark rural sky, the Milky Ways central bulge is prominent, crossed by intricate dark patches of foreground dust. The central bulge, positioned in the constellation of Sagittarius, the Archer, represents the centre of our galaxy, and is composed of ancient stars much older than the Sun.
Searching for Survivors Around Giant Stars

T
he search and study of planets outside our Solar System is still in its infancy. However, despite the first discovery of an extra-solar planet (exoplanet) less than 20 years ago, this field has become one of the most active topics in modern astronomy and is a major driving force behind the development of new instruments. Most of these planets were found indirectly, their presence inferred from perturbations of the light emitted from the host star. one method measures Doppler wavelength shifts in the starlight to detect small velocity changes of the star with respect to us, as it orbits the star-planet centre of mass. However, intrinsic pulsations on the surface of stars can generate signals that mimic the presence of planets. this is particularly problematic during the final and most turbulent stages of a stars life (the giant phase). one way to overcome this problem is to observe a giant star frequently and for long enough to determine which signals come from pulsations, remove them, and then look for the planetary signatures. one example of a planet orbiting a giant star is that of BD +48 740b, in which the host star shows high amounts of Lithium suggesting that this is a planetary system being engulfed by the stars expansion, as shown in the image on
SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
this page. this type of search, however, is inefficient and expensive to do on large telescopes, but can be done with small telescopes, provided they can be equipped with precise and calibrated spectrographs. one such instrument is currently being developed at Macquarie University, led by Dr Michael Ireland with PhD students tobias Feger and Carlos Bacigalupo. the replicable High-resolution exoplanet and Asteroseismology (rHeA) spectrograph is a compact single-mode fibre-fed spectrograph that uses novel approaches for careful calibration and temperature stability, which are key requirements for precise Doppler measurements. We will be testing the prototype using the 16 telescope at Macquarie Universitys observatory and aim to install copies of the rHeA spectrograph on various 0.3-1m automated telescopes around the world. the discovery and study of large numbers of planets found around evolved stars are key towards understanding the latter stages of planetary systems, and any findings will shed some light on what will happen to our own Solar System in the future!
by Dr joao bento, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Macquarie University www.physics.mq.edu.au
SEE WITH BINOCULARS

Sagittarius holds many star clusters of various sizes and ages, as well as several emission nebulae, the birth places of stars. binoculars will how that many of the bright patches of the Milky Way are made up of innumerable stars at the limit of vision. Messier 8, and Messier 17, two of the brighter emission nebulae, can also be seen as small misty patches of light. A good star atlas is necessary to locate them.
2Mass/uMass/IPac-caltech/nasa/nsf
SEE WITH A TELESCOPE

Messier 17 (the Swan nebula) is the brightest of the emission nebulae in Sagittarius, and can be seen with a small 6-cm telescope. it appears as a small bar of greyish light, without the embedded stars like other emission nebulae such as the orion and Carina nebulae. yet, the stars are there, heavily dimmed by the dust located in the molecular cloud from which they were born.
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SCIENCE UPDATE
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forams build shells (called tests) out of various materials, including the same calcium carbonate that corals use to build reefs. So theyre vulnerable to the same changes in ocean acidity.
WIkIPedIa
E IBle rEd Inc u ! but tr
diamonds improve sperm quality

The way sperm cells waste away in a culture dish, are a wellknown problem in connection with artificial insemination. New scientific results show that the surface of a petri dish becomes toxic to cells, once it gets wet. by adding a diamond nanocoat, the cells chances of survival improve.
Grim fate of the forams

Tiny shelled protozoans could suffer as ocean acidity rises by CAitliN Howlett
BIologY Look closely at the rocks on your next dive, or examine the bottom layers of your marine aquarium, and youll see dozens of tiny shells, pink spiky tree-shapes, and other odd forms. these are the foraminiferns (forams for short), a kind of protozoa that builds itself a hard shell (also called a test). And theyre at risk from climate change. As Co2 levels increase, our oceans will become more acidic, making it more difficult for small marine creatures to form the shells they need to survive, says Dr Sven Uthicke from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), the lead author of a study
published in Scientific Reports, an online journal of Nature. Dr Uthicke and his team looked at underwater volcanic seeps in Papua New Guinea, an area where he says the water has already reached acidification levels predicted for our oceans by 2100 in all but the most optimistic emissions scenario So, these seeps provide important clues to what the marine world might look like in the future. Previous studies of underwater volcanic seeps in the same area by AIMS scientists found that corals have trouble growing in acidic water, as they require alkaline conditions to precipitate calcium carbonate out of the water to build their skeletons. the new study confirms that forams too suffer in acidic conditions. Forams are much like an amoeba with a shell, explains Uthicke. these simple organisms are vulnerable to increasing ocean acidification as they lack the complexity and energy reserves of other skeleton-based marine creatures, like corals and sea urchins. www.gmagazine.com.au
lightning migraine
Arthritis and weather changes are often interconnected, but for the very first time, a new study demonstrates a connection between lightning strikes and headaches. American scientists have studied 100 migraine patients and shown a clear connection. exactly how lightning provokes headaches is still not clear.
dogs in their owners' shoes

A new study shows that dogs understand their owners better than previously believed. british scientists banned 42 dogs from eating the food in their feeding bowls. As long as the room was lit, the dogs obeyed, but once the scientists could not see, what was going on, they stole food.
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50% of africas lions could disappear over the next 40 years, according to a study. The lions will starve to death or be shot by hunters.
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palaEontologY She is more rare
than pretty, says Australian anthropologist Susan Hayes. By means of forensic techniques, the scientists recreated the face of a 30-year-old woman of the Homo floresiensis species. the extinct species is named after the Indonesian island of Flores, where the diminutive 1-m-tall and 30-35 kg heavy hominids lived some 17,000 years ago. Because of their smallness, the species members
Australian recreates 17 ,000-year-old face

Scientists reconstructed the face of a 30-year-old Homo floresiensis woman based on a fossil skull.
hayes, sutIkna & MoRWood, unIveRsIty of Wollongong kevIn hand
have been nicknamed hobbits. thanks to Susan Hayes face reconstruction, we can now for the very first time get an impression of what the species looked like. the Homo floresiensis face has been reconstructed based on a skull found in 2003.
48 cameras send images to an operator, who remote-controls the rover from Earth or a spacecraft.
1.
Busy bee
One of the rover's tasks will be to carry goods. When a pallet lands on the Moon, an operator directs the rover to the goods.
2. Parts in two
The rover splits in two. The two three-legged halves approach the pallet from different sides.
3. handles pallets with hooks

The two tripods grab the pallet using hooks, and the rover stretches it legs, lifting the pallet.
4. walking rover
When the rover moves in rugged terrain with its load, it can walk or crawl instead of driving.
5. split personality
Puncture-proof tyres Athlete is equipped with a drill, a shovel, and gripping arms. Each wheel features clips to attach tools. Upon arrival, the goods are lowered to the surface. Athlete splits again and releases the pallet.
A HANDy HEXAPOD
aEroSpacE It could have starred in a Star Wars
film, and it can jump, dance, climb, walk, and roll, thus the name. Athlete: short for All-terrain Hex-Limbed extra-terrestrial explorer. the eight-metre-plus-tall rover is to be sent to the Moon in 2017 to work for a new American wave of exploration and maybe colonisation. NASAs Californian rover shop, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is responsible for the development of Athlete. the scientists were asked to design a remote-controlled lunar rover, which can overcome all possible hurdles and
nasa
NASAs new space rover Athlete is the ultimate cross-country rover.

operate in any type of terrain. the rovers mission will be to transport containers with up to 450 kg of goods and supplies to and from manned spacecraft or space bases, and to take samples from the Moons surface. Several prototypes have been developed, and the central element of the concept is six flexible legs with a wheel at each end. on even surfaces, the rover will drive like a car, but when it encounters obstacles, such as a large rock or a steep slope, the wheels are locked and become feet, allowing Athelete to walk across the obstacle.
BRIAN WILCOx
The brain behind Athlete is NASA engineer Brian Wilcox. He also developed the two Martian rovers Spirit and Opportunity.
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SCIENCE UPDATE
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chemical pollution causes malformed sex organs in many otters, say British scientists are concerned, as the same could happen to people.
17,425,170 Erupting volcanoes can blow bubbles

Scientists identify new type of eruption.
gEologY volcanoes erupt in two
ways. either lava flows slowly, or the volcano explodes, sending lava into the sky. Now, scientists from england and New Zealand have identified a third type of eruption, called tangaroa, in which lava is emitted in bubbles. Scientists have studied the ocean floor around the underwater Macauley volcano in the Pacific. the volcano emits pumice, which is normally connected with explosive eruptions. But the rocks, that scientists found in the ocean, looked very special. Pumice has a lot of gas-filled cavities, but in this case, the cavities were round and even, almost like fossilised chocolate mousse. rather than exploding, the rocks had expanded slowly. According to the scientists, this means that the lava moved to the surface in the shape of bubbles. Ocean surface
digits - the length of a newly discovered prime number found by a supercomputer, which made 150 trillion calculations a second for 39 days.
dIctIonarY
Pumice: A porous, volcanic rock, which contains so much air that it will float. Tangaroa: A sea god in Maori mythology. He is the son of Ranginui and Papatuanuku, the Sky and the Earth.
Waste protects astronauts

Astronauts produce huge amounts of waste, which takes up space in a small spacecraft. But now, NASA has had a bright idea. The waste can be reused and converted into a shield, that protects space travellers against cosmic radiation. Water bottles and other plastic packaging is compressed into 1.3-cm-thick discs with a 20 cm diameter. The discs can be used to protect the spacecraft's sleeping quarters.
lava balls produced in the ocean

The ocean functions as a heavy blanket preventing volcanoes from exploding.
claus lunau
3 At the surface, the gas has expanded so much that the outer shell of the ball, which is coarse after having been cooled by the water, cracks. Incoming water makes the ball fall apart, and pieces fall to the ocean floor.
The lava consists of molten pumice. As the lava balls move towards the ocean surface, gas trapped in pumice cavities expands. Magma moves towards the ocean bed. The weight of the water prevents an explosive eruption. Instead, ball-shaped lava appears.
Pumice
nasa
Volcano
The peking Man , an extinct homo erectus su bspecies, made leather clothes and kn ew about fire, acco rding to new studies of finds made in 1920 . Thus, the spec ies was probably more sophisticated than scientists thought.
PEKING maN drEssEd IN LEaTHEr
Magma
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EDITOR: Morten Kjerside Poulsen
ASk US
tHE anSWErS to lIfES lIttlE mYStErIES
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HoW IS a SoccEr plaYErS WorK load mEaSUrEd?

TV soccer matches are often accompanied by information concerning how far individual players run and how many successful assists they produce. But how are these statistics collated? Up to 16 cameras are located along the sidelines in modern soccer stadiums to follow the players' every move. Second by second, they are assigned a set of 3D coordinates, and their positions are described by x, y, and z coordinates. As the cameras produce 25 images a second, the system is able to measure every movement in the field very accurately. The ball and the referee are also monitored, and by means of computers, the measurements are converted into information about the distance run by individual players, but the system can also indicate the speed of the ball. The technology is partly inspired by missile
Camera
stats llc
the StatS company has developed a new 3-camera tracking system. tracking systems and is very accurate. Tests show that only 2-3 % of the measurements are faulty. The system was first introduced officially during the 2008 European Championship, but was tested the previous year in Champions League matches. Now, soccer without stats is only half the game!
A field player typically runs 10 km

Running distance measurements indicate that a field player typically covers 10 km during a top-of-the-league match. On average, a field player sprints 800-1,200 m during a match, whereas he is only in possession of the ball for a total of 200 m.
3. By following
individual players second by second, the computer can calculate the distances run. Cameras
4. The ball is
also monitored, and the system can thus tell the length of a goal kick.
1. Up to 16 cameras
film the field and the players from individual angles. The cameras produce 25 images/second.
stats llc
2. A computer compares the images from several cameras, and each player is assigned x, y, and z coordinates.
Soccer field
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SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
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Cameras
WorldMags.net
t. albIR/ePa/scanPIx
Is the core of the milky way visible from EARTH?

From our position in the galactic arm, the view of a Centre of large part of the Milky Way is the Milky Way unfortunately blocked by dark dust clouds. The perfect place to see the glow of the core in our hemisphere is at 27 degrees south, in late winter, where the band of the Milky Way is parallel to the horizon the furthery you move away from 27S, the more tilted the band will appear. The core is mostly blocked by dust, but is appreciably brighter than other parts of the galactic arm.
jPl/nasa s. teRRy/sPl/scanPIx
5
do cranBErrIES rElIEVE cYStItIS?
According to an old piece of good advice, cranberry juice is efficient against cystitis, and scientific experiments indicate that it is true. Bacteria such as E. coli feature long protein threads, which can bind to the bladder wall and cause inflammation. But apparently, proanthocyanidin and glucose, which are contained in cranberry juice, prevent bacteria from binding to the cells, and instead, they are rinsed out in urine. A daily intake of cranberry juice may thus reduce the risk of cystitis in some women.
TOP
heaviest reptiles
Up to 16 cameras follow each players every move.
1. SaltWatEr crocodIlE
Maximum weight: 2,000 kg Length: 3.85 m
2. BlacK caIman
3. nIlE crocodIlE
4. SEa tUrtlE
Maximum weight: 932 kg Length: 2 m
Soccer players work harder

Soccer player Distance run: 10 km Top speed: 35 km/h Fastest shot: 130 km/h NRL player Distance run: 7 km Top speed: 25 km/h Hardest impact: 13G AFL player Distance run: 12-15 km Top speed: 30 km/h Longest kick: 100 m
5. orInoco crocodIlE
Maximum weight: 900 kg Length: 3.6 m
a saltwater crocodile may weigh up to 2000 kg and also try to eat you...
thInkstock
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Was the ring finger always the ring finger?
The fourth finger counted from the thumb has been the ring finger since Antiquity. Several Roman writers describe the custom of wearing an iron ring on the ring finger, which was believed to be directly connected with the heart via a blood vessel. And the rings were not only engagement or wedding rings, they were also worn as a symbol of friendship, trust, or status.
b. honecZy/aP/Polfoto
What dogs can smell:

Breath: lung cancer Urine samples: bladder cancer Biopsies: ovarian cancer
thInkstock
dogs can smell cancer.
do cYclonES alWaYS rotatE In tHE SamE dIrEctIon?

Is it really true that cyclones rotate differently, depending on which side of the Equator they are? In the northern hemisphere, the wind of a cyclone will always move counter-clockwise, and vice versa in the southern hemisphere. Cyclones are huge depressions, and air masses will always try to move directly from high to low pressure. This is, however, impossible on a planet, which is rotating, because of the Coriolis effect. All motion is affected by this effect, and the result is that any motion north of the Equator will be bent to the right, and to the left south of the Equator. In most everyday situations, Coriolis forces have little effect, but for motion across long distances or time, it may affect the air particles of a pressure system such as a cyclone. The Coriolis effect increases with the distance to the Equator, where it is 0. Between 5 N and 5 S, it is so weak that cyclones rarely occur.
Can dogs smell cancer?

Several scientific studies have demonstrated that dogs can actually smell cancer. Cancer cells release odorants, and a dog's unique sense of smell reacts to those. Depending on the breed, a dogs nose is 10,000-100,000 times as sensitive as a human's. You may hear many dog owners tell stories about how their dog repeatedly sniffed or nibbled at a birth mark, which later turned out to be a case of skin cancer. Likewise, there are plenty of accounts of family dogs, which have suddenly changed their behaviour, becoming anxious, exited, or seeking a sense of security in connection with their owners being diagnosed with cancer.
Northern hemisphere
Right bend
Left bend Southern hemisphere
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SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
claus lunau
the coriolis effect is the result of different speeds of rotation at different degrees of latitude. At the Equator, the speed is 1,675 km/h, going from west to east, in Hobart approx. 1,000 km/h, and at the South Pole, zero. A pilot on his way north from the Equator will observe the Earth rotates more slowly, the further north his plane gets. The aircraft itself keeps the rate of rotation from the Equator and thus its course will be bent to the right (east).
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How severe is a human bite? We bite with only 90kg of force (compared to a sharks 1500kg!) but our mouths contain bacteria which often cause terrible infections.
WorldMags.net WHY doES BUttEr ExplodE In a mIcroWaVE oVEn?

A microwave oven heats food by using electromagnetic micro waves, which make water and fat molecules vibrate. The motion produces heat, and as water is more easily affected than fat, it is heated much faster. This may make the butter explode but only if it is frozen.
thInkstock & claus lunau
Physics in PRACTICE
Microwaves
Water
1
Fat
Vapour explosion
1. A magnetron produces the microwaves, which are directed into the oven.
2. The electro-
magnetic radiation makes the water and fat molecules of the butter vibrate.
3. The microwaves affect fat molecules less than water molecules, and consequently, water is heated faster.
4. Frozen butter contains a little bit of water in the shape of small balls. When the water becomes vapour, it expands several hundred times, and it can only escape by exploding its way out of the butter.
What is the difference between an ocean and a sea?

How big must a body of water be, before it is an ocean, and what are the definitions of seas and oceans? Oceans are the primary bodies of salt water on Earth. The definition of an ocean varies from country to country, but oceanographers generally recognise five: the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Arctic Ocean, and the Southern Ocean. The International Hydrographic Organisation (IHO) defines boundaries and international names of seas and oceans. A sea is typically smaller than an ocean and is located where an ocean encounters land, just like the Tasman Sea, which is located, where the west coast of New Zealand encounters the Pacific Ocean. Confusingly though, many scientists refer to the whole interconnected body of salt water on Earth as the sea. Seas are often the product of human geography, and may not always be named seas. Examples include the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Persian Gulf, and Hudson Bay in the northern US.
OceAnS
The Atlantic Ocean The Pacific Ocean The Indian Ocean
SeAS
The Tasman Sea The Gulf of Carpentaria The Mediterranean Hudson Bay
thInkstock
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WorldMags.net HoW IS a laSEr BEam prodUcEd?

A laser beam consists of light particles, photons, which all have the same wavelengths and vibrate with the same frequency. The first photon starts a chain reaction, as it stimulates the emission of other photons, producing a beam. Laser: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
How Things Work

A. A laser beam is produced, when an exterior energy source briefly exposes the laser atoms to light. Power source D Switch
B Atom B. The light from the flash hits the atom's electrons, increasing its energy level. Photon c F e
Reflecting aluminium cylinder Quartz flash tube
Semitransparent mirror Laser beam
c. The atom sheds the extra energy by emitting a light particle, a photon, which stimulates other atoms to emit photons as well.
claus lunau
D. Mirrors at the ends of the laser reflect the photons and stimulate the emission of even more photons with the same amount of energy, amplifing the light intensity.
e. One mirror is semitransparent, allowing a fraction of the photons to escape the chamber.
F. The lens unites the escaped photons and concentrates them into a laser beam.
Why do plants germinate in Spring?

In tropical regions, seeds germinate as soon as they fall off plants. But in order for plant seeds to survive in a cooler climate, they must hibernate in the winter. When a seed hibernates, the biochemical processes in the cells run much more slowly. The seed will not germinate until affected by sufficient light, which converts the phytochrome photoreceptor into its active version, generating growth hormones.
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IN SHORT
WHIcH BodY cEllS arE tHE longESt?
The motor neurons are the longest cells of the human body. They send signals from the brain to the leg and feet muscles and extend from spine to hallux. The longest motor neurons may measure more than 130 cm, depending on your height.
thInkstock
SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
WorldMags.net
Which baby animal is the heaviest? blue whales are the heaviest animals that ever lived on earth, and they give birth to the biggest babies. A newborn calf may thus weigh
WorldMags.net
3 tonnes
thInkstock
ser who o p m o c The a Species d e m a f ini e D hino Ross
acc poser Gio g Italian com contributed to givin ) ra 8 e 6 p 8 o -1 is 2 H (179 tion. bad reputa about a house a s ie p g a m pie is ving Mag The Thie d of se u cc a is maid, who s rn ut it tu stealing, b magpie a t a th out lprit. was the cu
Eurasian magpies (shown) are corvids, while aussie magpies are more closely related to butcherbirds and are in the artamidae family.
k. tRansIeR/coRbIs/Polfoto
alaMy
IS It rEallY trUE tHat ... ... magpIES StEal SHInY oBJEctS?

t. laMan/ng/getty
Bowerbirds blue moves

magpies are often said to be clever thieves, but is this really true? Keys, coins, and jewellery. Legend has it, that they are irresistible treasures to magpies. However, the indications are that magpies' preference for shiny objects is nothing but urban folklore. No scientific studies have yet proven that magpies are particularly fond of shiny things. In the book The Magpies, biologist Tim Birkhead declares, that, in nature, magpies will neither steal, nor hide anything but food. The reason why magpies are said to be thieves is probably that, particularly in the past, the bird was often in conflict with humans in rural areas. There, magpies would steal fruit from fruit trees and food, eggs, and sometimes chickens from open chook pens. Australian magpies dont often get accused of stealing - theyre in a completely different family to the Eurasian Magpie. In the early years of the NSW colony, the term Bell-magpie was proposed to distinguish the bird, but failed to gain widespread acceptance since our maggie looks so much like the European species. In any case, our magpie is more feared for its fierce territorial swooping behaviour, while accusations of stealing (especially blue items - see box) are mostly levelled at the satin bowerbird. Satin bowerbirds attract females by building elaborate bowers - these arent nest, but rather a sort of performance space filled with blue objects. Traditionally these were berries and flowers, but since pegs, straws and milk bottle tops went blue, the bowerbirds seem to love or even prefer these human objects perhaps because they stay bright blue for weeks, not days.
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In the film After Earth, Will Smith and his son make an emergency landing on Earth 1,000 years after a mass evacuation from the planet. But what would a world without people be like? According to scientists, nature will bounce back fast. Predators will spread, human artefacts will break down, and after 1,000 years, all that will remain of us are our quarries and waste.
WorldMags.net
a+e netWoRks uk & shutteRstock
THe cURe FOR HUMAnITY?

Humans have made drastic changes to the Earth, but to restore a pristine wilderness, all we need to do is leave... and wait. Fundamental laws of physics will cause our structures to decay, and life will surge into the spaces we leave behind...
LAW
Why our world will decay

ENTROPy When houses decay, it is due to the thermodynamic law of entropy. The degree of entropy or disorder increases over time. A shapeless pile of sand has high entropy, while a sandcastle has low entropy. A structure with low entropy will move towards a state of still higher entropy, disorder, and disintegration over time.
shutteRstock
THEORy
g. douWMa/natuRe Pl
Nature restores itself

EcOLOgIcAL SUccESSION For nature, the disappearance of humans will not be a loss. On the contrary. Nature will return to the ecological balance, which humans have disrupted. Biologists call it ecological succession, by which plants and animals will produce tougher original forms through natural selection.
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SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
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FEATURE | after humans
By Antje Gerd Poulsen
the life after people tV series created this cgI image of what Hollywood might look like after 175 years.
WorldMags.net
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WIlDlIFe
Predators reclaim their hunting grounds
laRs juul
hauschIld t
In Europe and northern america, the wolf population would explode. In australia, cats and dingos may dominate
shutteRstock
bek President of th Biogeography e International Biogeography Society. the geograph is the study of ic of plants and distribution animals.
CarsTen
rah
all humans) in houses and flats, on farms and in zoos throughout the world, animals starve to death. The majority of the worlds 1 billion pigs die, as do many of our 400 million dogs.
DAY 7 (After the sudden disappearance of
YeAR 1 Wild animals enter our cities
nature is drawn toward a dynamic balance

[In the abscence of humans] The animals, that benefited from a man-made environment will be under severe pressure, and the majority of our domesticated animals will die quite fast. But a few of them will adapt. In a few generations, natural selection will see to this. We have observed it before. The Australian dingo was originally a tame dog turned wild. Nature will not be drawn to an original state, it will always be drawn towards a dynamic balance.
jefatuRa de PolIcIa/ReuteRs/scanPIx l. geslIn/natuRe Pl R. caRey/thInkstock
Day 7
and farmlands particularly adaptive species like bears and wild hogs, which eat many types of food. On the other hand, the population of vermin like cockroaches and rats will initially fall dramatically as their current numbers are supported by us. Despite our pampering, domestic cats never lost their desire to hunt. In Australia, where there are few small predators, cats thrive and might even drive native predators extinct.
YeAR 5
year 1
YeAR 7 By now, most fish species YeAR 8 A new equilibrium has

year 7
have recovered from decades of overfishing.
emerged. Predators and prey have populations that can be sustained. The real winners are the big predators - bears, wolves, tigers, sharks: every animal humans saw as a threat is back on top.
year 1
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SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
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The first years after the loss of humanity will mean fires, flooding, and decay. But within days, nature will begin to conquer cities, and millions of pets and domestic animals will starve to death or be eaten by predators.
cITIeS SIlenT, DARk, cHAOTIc

scanPIx
DAY 14 As many as 50,000 power

plants worldwide have shut down. At night, the globe is almost completely dark. Electric pumps normally keep cities like London, Amsterdam, and New York clear of water, but now, tunnels are flooded, and canals overflow, filling basements with water.
YeAR 1 Plant seeds find

nourishment in gutters and cracks between pavements and high-rise facades.
YeAR 3 Windows break in storms and temperature fluctuations. Once wind and water get inside, the structures will decay quickly.
lAnDScAPeS FIReS AnD FlOODIng

DAY 20 The worlds 441 nuclear power plants are close to disaster. Cooling systems collapse, and a few weeks later, the coolant water has evaporated. Then, reactors melt down or catch fire. The air, land, and water around the plants become radioactively contaminated, and many animals and plants die. MOnTH 6 Forest fires run wild
without humans to fight them. In nature, the fires serve a purpose, and new plants emerge from the ash after their seeds are cracked in the heat. In other places, dykes collapse, and vast areas are flooded. Reclaimed land (such as some airports) slips back beneat the waves.
I. fIlIMonov/thInkstock
YeAR 5 Farm fields are now

overgrown. In 1882, British scientists demonstrated how fast other plants will take over an abandoned wheat field. After four years, only a few wheat spikes remained, and the next year, they were gone. Without humans, aggressive species like trees and hedges can dominate.
RuIg/thInkstock
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cITIeS Air, water and rust undoes our mightiest creations

YeAR 10 Grass grows
between paving stones, cracking them. Trees already grow into houses.
YeAR 25 Skyscraper
a+e netWoRks uk RogeRtRenthaM/thInkstock a+e netWoRks uk
year 25
windows are broken, letting wind and rain in. The steel inside reinforced concrete rusts. Bolts and screws corrode, and panels fall out.
The worlds one billion cars have corroded beyond recognition. In the humid coastal climate, after 20-30 years a car is barely recognisable.
YeAR 50
the city of pripyat near chernobyl 25 years after the nuclear disaster.
a. skelly/getty IMages
year 50
The steel wires of suspension bridges have corroded. Their flexibility is gone, and one single gust of wind will make the bridge collapse.
YeAR 100
YeAR 200 The joints of

year 200
the Eiffel Tower have corroded, and it collapses. Most skyscrapers and many older structures follow suit particularly those with submerged foundations.
Frost + rust break down concrete

From high-rises to bridges concrete is the most common building material of modern times and has been used since Antiquity. Concrete is highly weather resistant, and reinforced concrete even more so. Nevertheless, nature makes concrete crumble over time.
FROST
Frost damage occurs when water in concrete pores expands in frosty weather, first cracking and then bursting the concrete, and flaing off the surface.
P. vasaRhelyI/thInkstock shutteRstock
cORROSIOn
Once the concrete is cracked, moisture gets to the reinforcement, and the steel rods corrode. They expand, making the concrete burst even more.
shutteRstock
PlAnTS
If plants are allowed to climb a concrete structure, the roots will find even the tiniest cracks and draw water. The concrete continues to crumble.
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SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
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WorldMags.net
After 200 years without maintenance, most houses have become overgrown ruins. Structures which have not already collapsed continue to come down. Cities are as quiet as deep forests.
Professor of Pr (historical bu eservation Practice ild of Preservatio ings) and Director n Tulane School Studies at the in New Orlean of Architecture s.
After 200 years, most buildings will be gone

the temperature of buildings is key to their lifespan. With no people around, they would be subjected to disrupting temperature fluctuations. the materials will expand and contract, until the structures fall apart. New, massproduced buildings will not last as long as carefully constructed historical buildings, which are often huge and made of more durable materials than modern buildings.
john h. st
ubbs
John sTu bbs
YeAR 100
Domestic animals and pets have reverted to their original forms. Racehorses have become brumbies, , and the descendants of domestic cats resemble forest cats.
year 100
s. staRostenko/RIa novostI
lAnDScAPeS TOXIc TIMe BOMB

YeAR 10 Static electricity or
lightning strikes cause fires on oil rigs throughout the world, and unmanned supertankers, container vessels, and cruise liners drifting with the current plough into the rigs, which collapse. Result: millions of litres of oil gushing into the ocean.
YeAR 50 Almost no
nitrate and phosphorous remain in fresh water, but corroded tanks filled with chlorine for swimming pools leak. Toxic chlorine gas clouds spread in the environment, and when chlorine encounters water vapour, acid is produced. Tankers with chemicals leak.
MIlous/thInkstock
YeAR 200 New ecosystems have been established. Australias vast eucalypt forests have returned, and native birds thrive. Horses are wellestablished in some niches where rainfall is constant - other less-hardy European animals are driven out by our variable climate.
year 50
YeAR 200 Corrosion makes time bombs explode all over the world. Silos, tanks, and other containers with encapsulated nuclear waste, fuel, and chemicals begin to leak or even explode. Animals and plants die, but over time, bacteria will break down most oil and toxic residue.
a. butenko/thInkstock
WorldMags.net
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WorldMags.net
More than ever, Earth is a blue planet. Even several hundred years after the last gram of coal is burned, ocean water levels are still rising, swallowing cities and landscapes.
WIlDlIFe RHInOS AnD lIOnS MOve nORTH

YeAR 500 Lack of habitats and the intense search for tusks kept down the elephant population, when humans lived on the planet. But now, they migrate with rhinos from Africa and Asia to Europe. Those venturing far north develop fur in cold weather. Predators also move north. The Romans were the last to hunt wild lions in Greece, but now the big cats are back to take advantage of booming prey populations.
a+e netWoRks uk
cITIeS A HIllY lAnDScAPe

YeAR 300 The Statue of Liberty in New York collapses, and parts fall into the harbour.
YeAR 500 The Sydney Harbour

Bridge, which contains iron, has crumbled. Now concrete buildings collapse: the twin towers of Kuala Lumpur and St. Peters Basilica in Rome.
Huge trees have overgrown angkor Wat in cambodia but its a well-built monument. modern buildings would collapse under a tree this size.
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year 500
YeAR 400 Most cities have been totally taken over by plants. In 1860, French explorer Henri Mouhot discovered what an overgrown city looks like, when he found the great temple complex of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. In 400 years, the city had been almost devoured by the big roots of silk cotton trees.
YeAR 1000 The worlds metropolises have lost their famous skylines. Instead, the cities are hilly landscapes with rivers and lakes. Everything is overgrown. An archaeologist could find the ruins, if they looked closely.
W. vaIyaboon/thInkstock
a+e netWoRks uk
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SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
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lAnDScAPeS Oceans swallow countries. new habitats appear

YeAR 300
Restored fresh water wetlands are efficient water purification plants, which absorb chemicals.
The virgin forest is self-sustaining

The Bialowieza National Park in Poland and Belarus is an example of what Europe may look like after 500 years without humans. The virgin forest remains the way it was after the ice age, and rare animals like bison, lynx, and beaver thrive. Nature has its own ways, and when a forest is left alone, old trees collapse, leaving room for new ones. Thus, the forest becomes varied with trees of different ages, swamps, and clearings: habitats for many animals.
YeAR 400
Low-lying cities throughout the world are underwater. Large parts of the Netherlands have disappeared due to collapsed dykes, but the ocean water levels are also still rising. Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gasses tomorrow, water levels could still rise by 1.8 m until 2500 due to the long response times of oceans and ice.
aniMaLs in The european virGin foresT Bison Wild hog Bear Wolf Lynx Eagle Black stork Beaver
a. bolbot/thInkstock
central Europe would be like the Bialowieza national park in 500 years.
j. shaRP/getty IMages
YeAR 500
The wildwood is back in Europe, and the African jungle and Australias eucalypt forests have regrown.
YeAR 1000
Flooded cities and sunken ships have become new homes for marine animals. The oceans are filled with whales, tuna, and sea turtles, and destroyed coral reefs recover.
Water will break free, providing new habitats

Humans and nature compete for water. Everywhere, humans built cities near large waterways and redirected rivers by means of dams and canals. The course of waterways and different water levels are key factors determining which plants thrive. Different plant species have adapted to different moist levels, and when the water once breaks free of its man-made barriers, there will be habitats for more animals and plant species.
after 300 years, the Statue of libertys internal iron structures collapse, and she falls into the ocean.
steve Mcghee
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Few traces of humans will remain after 1,000 years. But humans have managed to create a few things that will endure for a millennium or more - not all of them good.
STRUcTUReS
W. Ryka/thInkstock
thInkstock
The Channel Tunnel will still link England and France
GreaT survivors of The aGe of huMans

The Lascaux cave paintings, Southern France The Sphinx of Egypt The Great Pyramid of Giza Bronze church bells, statues, and propellers Mount Rushmores presidential faces Venus de Milo a marble statue The tunnel between France and England Military concrete facilities Gold, silver, and other precious metals Diamonds
ART
the mount rushmore granite will remain for 1,000+ years.
A millennium from now, only the ruins of very few buildings will remain. Paradoxically, some of the most ancient ones such as the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Giza are still around, protected by the warm, dry climate. Sandblasted, they are about to be swallowed by the desert, however. The Great Wall of China has crumbled, but still marks the landscape. Of modern structures, only protected concrete buildings like military facilities will remain, and the tunnel between France and England still exists, as it was made in an intact chalk layer and is unlikely to collapse.
Diamonds are forever

The Mona Lisa and other paintings have long crumbled, but works of art made of gold and precious stones will remain for more than 1,000 years such as The Love of God, a human skull made of titanium and studded with 8,601 diamonds. The jewels of royal treasuries and national banks gold bars will also remain intact, as will works of art made of ceramics, glass, marble, granite, and bronze, like the presidential faces of Mount Rushmore, which are carved into granite.
iquity, the Ro mans used sandstone, granite, and marble , which can for more th all last an 1,000 ye ars. Plus a hi durable typ ghly e of concre te consisting of calcium, crus hed tiles, an d volcanic as The cupola h. of the Panthe on in Rome made of this is material an d ha remained fo r almost 1,90 s now 0 years. Onl few modern ya buildings ar e constructe similar leve d to ls of toughn ess.
We should like the Ro build mans In Ant
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SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
WorldMags.net
W. PeRRy/t
hInkstock
WorldMags.net TOxiNS ARe FOReveR

The landscape still
WASTe RUBBISH WIll Be OUR legAcY

SOMe ARTeFAcTS WIll SURvIve In lAnDFIll
Mobile phones, computers, TVs, and other electronics Wine bottles and glasses Kitchen aids and tools made of plastic and stainless steel Car/bike tyres + other rubber objects Newspapers, magazines, and books Shoes and bags Dolls, Lego, and other plastic toys
features traces of humans after 1,000 years in the form of mines and quarries. But the dams of the Panama Canal and elsewhere have long collapsed, and the water has blazed its own trails.
Plastic will remain in the sea.

Humans left more than 100 million tonnes of plastic in the oceans including some of the 500 million straws used in the US every day. Plastic leaves toxic chemicals in the food chain.
environmental toxins
will remain on Earth long after humans. Heavy metals like mercury, lead, chromium, and cadmium. Plus radioactive waste and plastic like the polyethylene of carrier bags. toxic life cycle
Cadmium compounds: 7,500 years Lead compounds: 35,000 years highly radioactive nuclear waste: 100,000 years polyethylene, pCb, and pbDe: Unknown
Landfill will be the pyramids of our time

Ironically, our waste will survive for at least a millennium or perhaps even longer. Huge landfills dot the landscape in the form of hills containing objects, which reveal details about human life on Earth. Deep inside a large landfill, which is dry like a pyramid and low in oxygen like a bog, even newspapers and books can survive, along with millions of tonnes of domestic waste. Today, its a problem - in a distant future, our junk might be a boon to visiting aliens who want to study the long-disappeared human race.
WorldMags.net
alaMy/IMageselect
dolls can remain for 1,000+ years in a dry, oxygen-free environment.

o. IoRdachI/thInkstock
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WorldMags.net
HOMO HABIlIS
Where: east africa When: 1.6-2.5 million years ago prey: Small monkeys and small gazelles
elIsabeth daynes/ lookatscIences
the first stone tools were made by knocking two stones against each other, producing sharp flakes.
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One of the earliest human species is known from 1.8- million-year-old fossils. The bones indicate a 130-cm- tall creature with a brain weighing 550 g. Homo habilis was a good climber and spent much of their time in trees.
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SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
WorldMags.net
the secret is to bang the rocks togetheR...

Up to 2.6 million years ago, one of our ancestors knocked two stones against each other and started an arms race, which made her (or his) descendants efficient hunters and thoughtful artisans.
WorldMags.net
FEATURE | anthropology
by Rasmus kragh jakobsen
Weapons date back 2.6 million years

With primitive stone tools, our ancestors gained better access to meat and fat and a more efficient brain food.
n 1913, a German archaeologist found some primitive stone tools in Tanzanias Olduvai Gorge. The tools turned out to be 1.6 million years old, and since then, similar spectacular finds have been made throughout Africa. Like when, in the 1990s, scientists excavated 2.6-millionyear-old stone tools in Ethiopia. The primitive tools marked the beginning of an unknown weapons technology, and according to most experts, the first members of the Homo genus, the 130-cm-tall Homo habilis, made the tools. The evidence? Habilis bones had already been found
together with similar 1.8 million-yearold stone tools. With stone tools at their disposal, our ancestors could suddenly cut into thick-skinned animals and crush bones, obtaining access to highly concentrated energy in the shape of fat, meat, and marrow, which does not require a strong mouth and jaws. The Homo genus teeth and jaw muscles began to shrink, and so, the skull could leave room for brain expansion, nourished by the new, energy-rich food. Mention that at your next vegetarian dinner party!
BasHING
Or coup de poing..
The first stone tools were made by knocking flakes off stones. Studies have shown that the process requires both knowledge and training. The tool maker must know different stone types to find the right stones, and the technique requires control and coordination, as the stone must be hit at the perfect angle.
Can cut through thick animal skin Can cut meat chunks Can crush bones
dIdIeR descouens
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HOMO eRecTUS
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Where: africa and asia When: 300,000-1.8 million years ago prey: Zebra, antelope, and deer
1.8-million-year-old Homo erectus fossils show a tall, slender human with a brain of 800-1,000 g. The erectus is considered to be the first hunter, who could kill large herbivores like zebra and antelope.
Homo erectus left africa armed with sharp stone axes and a large brain.
j. kIRkeby/scanPIx
Stone axes: a planned tool

Complex hand axes are evidence of humans mental development.
round 1.7 million years ago, the first sharp hand axes appeared. The weapon was so sophisticated that, according to experts, the production required a brain which could make complex and long-term calculations, since the toolmaker needed to plan the final result before he set to
work. Subsequently, he had to keep up a mental image of the design, which he was working on. Once again, a new weapons technology coincides with a new, distinctive human species: Homo erectus the oldest fully upright human. The erectus is the first to leave Africa, and
their stone axes have also been found in Europe and Asia. The new sophisticated weapons technology played an important role in the erectus marked success, and hand axes were used in Europe until 140,000 years ago.
claus lunau
HaNd axE fine-tuned using bones

The erectus flat, drop-shaped hand axes are evidence of a sophisticated striking technique and thorough knowledge of the qualities of different stones. This knowledge enabled the toolmaker to produce a more symmetrical and sharp weapon, and waste was reduced. Some hand axes show that the erectus fine-tuned its tool using softer striking tools like bones and antlers, which could knock finer pieces off the stone.
1. A hammer stone is used to knock a large flake off the core stone, which will eventually become a hand axe.
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2. The hole resulting from the first flake can now be used to knock off more flakes, so the holes overlap. The edge becomes more even.
3. When the shape of the stone is complete, light strokes with a bone can remove small flakes, making the edge even sharper.
4. When the hand axe is finished, the result is a symmetrical stone weapon with two razor-sharp edges.
P. goetgheluck/sPl/scanPIx
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Spears: the silent killers

our ancestors conquered nature with stone spearheads.
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ciently at a distance of up to thirty metres. As a result, hunting became more efficient and less risky, and our ancestors became the first animals with the ability to secure a steady flow of energy-rich meat and fat.
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inds of 500,000-year-old spearheads in South Africa reveal that Homo heidelbergensis was much more intelligent than previously believed. Scientists used to think that the Neanderthal and Homo sapiens invented the stone spear, but the newlyfound stone spearheads show that the heidelbergensis attached stones to spears 200,000 years before the other two. From a technological point of view, the stone spear is evidence of yet another IQ leap. Apart from knowledge about the characteristics of different stone materials, humans now also knew a lot about natural binding agents. Stone spear production required the heidelbergensis to collect and process juice from trees and tendons from prey to fasten the stone spearheads. Unlike earlier spears, which consisted of pointed sticks, the finished stone spears could penetrate thick skin, and they enabled heidelbergensis to kill silently and effi-
the heidelbergensis brain was almost as large as that of a modern human.

P. PlaIlly, e. daynes/euRelIos/lookatscIences
FLaKEs fashioned into sharp knives

The heidelbergensis invented the levallois technique, which focused on making tools with stone flakes (such as knives). After the core stone was processed with small strokes, a single well-performed stroke could knock long, sharp flakes off the stone.
Can kill large prey Makes hunting less risky Provides a better hit rate
HOMO HeIDelBeRgenSIS
With the new spears, heidelbergensis was able to kill large animals such as the buffalo.
j. tRueba/Msf/sPl/scanPIx & jayne WIlkIns/unIveRsIty of toRonto
Where: africa, asia, and europe When: 200,000-1.3 million years ago prey: oxen and buffalo
The heidelbergensis was a tall, slender human with a brain of 1,100-1,400 g. The species is the ancestor of both modern man and the Neanderthal, who split into two branches approximately 6-700,000 years ago.
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StonE WEaponS taUgHt US

A study from Emory University in Atlanta, USA, shows that the ability to speak draws on the same area of the brain which is used when we make stone tools. According to scientists, this demonstrates that the development of stone weapons must have affected humans ability to speak. The scientific results are based on brain scans of test subjects, who watched films about the production of stone tools. Existing scientific results have demonstrated that the brains of onlookers activate the same areas, which are required to carry out the activity studied. The scans revealed that stone tools activated the area of the frontal lobe, which generates sentences. Other scans showed that a brain area, which is related to linguistic expression, became four times as active when scientists exchanged primitive stone tools
to SpEaK
with more sophisticated ones. The conclusion: more sophisticated tools triggered a more sophisticated language. The results make sense because the structure of language is divided into the same sequences of behaviour as toolmaking. Sentences - or more accurately, clause complexes - are words in complex sequences, and similarly, the production of stone tools is a complex sequence of actions.
Scans show that stone tool production activates the brains language centres.
albuM hIstoRy/IMageselect
faIsal et al.
kyle bRoWn/unIveRsIty of caPe toWn
FIrE converts harmless stones into sharp superweapons

Heat processing was one of Homo sapiens most important contributions to the stone weapon technology. When heated to around 300 C, some stone types are converted from a weak material into hard stone, which is easier to knock flakes off, results in less waste, and is as sharp as a modern knife.
1. Stones are placed in a hole and covered with sand to secure uniform heat.
Brain: the ultimate weapon in the evolutionary war

ew finds indicate that Homo sapiens experienced an explosive technological and creative development some 70,000 years ago. Stone points found in South Africa show that humans used modern weapons like arrows and could harden stone tools using fire. By using the improved weapons, humans wrought more resources out of nature and were able to kill small, fast prey like birds and rabbits, giving Homo sapiens an advantage over the Neanderthal and other species.
Because of its larger brain, Homo sapiens was able to kill all types of prey.
2. A fire is lit on top and fed for around 24 hours. At a temperature of 300 C, the stone is chemically altered.
Before
70,000 years ago, there was a sudden explosion of sophistication
The new creativity produced clothes, which made European Ice Age winters tolerable, and scientists have found snowshoes, harpoons, and scales, which is evidence of a highly developed culture. Around the same time, our ancestors also began to use abstract symbols - writing - which has long been considered a milestone in the development of the brain. These finds demonstrate that the human brain was just as sophisticated 70,000 years ago as it is now.
3. The stone is cooled and has now been transformed into a premium material that is easier to process - and more durable.
AFTER
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HOMO SAPIenS
When: Originated about 200,000 years ago prey: everything
The anatomically modern man originated about 200,000 years ago, only to leave Africa shortly after. With their excellent IQ, Homo sapiens was the first human species to conquer almost all parts of the globe.
modern mans IQ and creativity generated new weapons, which were much more efficient than those of our ancestors.
P. PlaIlly, e. daynes/euRelIos/lookatscIences
Homo sapiens weapons technology was sophisticated enough to produce modern weapons such as arrows.
benjaMIn schovIlle/asu
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FEATURE | SCARy BUGS
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ack in the 1930s, American entomologist Henry Ellsworth Ewing carried out a simple experiment at his local zoo. He took a louse from a spider monkey and made it suck blood from his arm. The louse died. Ewing repeated the experiment with lice from a baboon. And got the same result. With his simple experiment, Ewing demonstrated that the small, bloodsucking parasites are so adapted to their hosts that they cannot survive on other species. Strange blood is poison to them. This dependence on specific, sometime single-spieces hosts has been developed over millions of generations. And in recent years, the very close connection between lice and their hosts has made them the subject of renewed interest from scientists, who are working with family trees and evolution. Lice are a gold mine of knowledge from how epidemics spread to when humans began to wear clothes. And thus, the itchy parasites can help us map out the earliest stages of human evolution very accurately.
A TASTE FOR BLOOD

The story of the louse begins some 130 million years ago, when the small, parasitic insect originates. Scientists base their estimate on a comparison of gene sequences from different lice species. In the Cretaceous period, some 70 million years ago, mammals and birds experienced an explosive evolution. New species meant new habitats for parasites, and the different lice families started to spread. Today, the louse family includes more than 3,000 different species, which are
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Crawling through our hair and clothes, lice are the perfect human parasite...
SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
Blood
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Using its powerful claws, the louse clings tightly to individual hairs, and is almost impossible to get rid of.
g. beRnaRd/sPl/scanPIx
Buddies
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lice go through 5 life stages
Over just 10 days, the newly hatched lice reach adulthood and are thus ready to find new hair to colonise.
scIence factIon/getty IMages & shutteRstock
2. Eggs hatch into nymph lice

in just one week. With so many eggs, lice are hatching constantly in the hosts hair.
3. The nymph sheds its skin three times before maturing into an adult, and each nymph stage last three days. Even as a nymph, the louse sucks blood.
Third nymph stage
Second nymph stage
1. A louses life begins in the egg. Under optimal conditions, a female louse lays four eggs a day.
Male Female
3
4. The louse becomes sexually mature
immediately before shedding for the third time. New eggs can be transferred between hosts (people) though touching and sharing living space.
4
lice are persevering lovers
As soon as lice reach adulthood, they reproduce around the clock. The sex act can last up to one hour. Moreover, body lice have wild group sex, where up to six males try to mate with a single female.
v. stegeR/sPl/scanPIx
parasitic on just as many thousands of different birds and mammals, including primates, that were included among the ranks of lice meals approximately 25 million years ago. Thus, lice have accompanied humans all through our history of evolution, but amazingly we had very little understanding of these tiny insects until just 350 years ago. Using primitive microscopes, the naturalists of the times could finally begin to paint a precise picture of the small animals. Customized mouth parts were designed for
sucking blood, and its flat body made a louse more difficult to get hold of, once it stuck to our hair. The naturalists also established that the small beast could change colours, depending on whether it had been eating recently or not. Later, scientists discovered that the pigmentation of head lice adjusts to the hair and scalp colour of the host.
MICROSCOPIC EGGS
Once the louse came under a microscope, it was clear that, like other insects, its life cycle includes mating and egg-laying. The new knowledge made more efficient measures possible. Previously, humans had fought against an invisible itch, but now, they could suddenly see the small eggs and thus combat the lice more efficiently. Despite this, lice are still common around the world. This is primarily due to their exact adaptation, which is particularly revealed by a unique detail of the louse anatomy: The legs feature special claws and thumbs, which enable a perfect grip of a human hair. It is this tight grip that makes lice so difficult to defeat, once they have settled in your scalp. Nevertheless, humans have made energetic attempts to defeat lice; attempts, which probably started long before humans took shape. Delousing is also observed
among some of our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. And their lice are very much like ours at least on the face of it.
LICE NEED US MORE THAN WE NEED THEM

Our most well-known louse species is normally just called a louse, but its proper designation is a head louse. Today, scientists know for sure that head lice were the first lice to live on humans, and have evolved specifc traits to do so. In fact, they adapted to human hair and scalp to such an extent that they cannot hope to survive for more
v.s. sMIth/unIv. of utah
The first comb was a delousing comb

Combs are the earliest known measure against lice, and fine-toothed combs have been found in Egyptian tombs from 3000 BC.
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Hopelessly Addicted to... Us

Lice are wingless insects measuring 2.5-3 mm and with flattened bodies. Their greatest strength is the powerful claws, which enable them move throughout your hair.
s. gschMeIssneR/sPl/scanPIx
Pointed mouthparts
The mouth is designed to penetrate skin and suck blood. When lice do not eat, they can withdraw the mouth parts into their heads.
Breathe through side tubes

Like other insects, lice do not have lungs, but breathe through trachea tubes. On the abdomen, you will find the spiracles, which direct oxygen into the trachea tubes.
Blood colours skin red

A louses semitransparent to greyish skin normally makes it hard to spot. But when it has just finished a meal, the skin becomes reddish from blood.
coupling
At the back, you will find the genitals. The male lice are pointed at the back, while the females have two pins. This is where the lice couple during mating.
Tough claw
The reason why lice are so hard to defeat is located at the end of each leg. The powerful claws enable lice to cling tightly to a single human hair.
Speed up and down hairs

Lice have six short, powerful legs, which are designed for fast motion up and down hairs. Yet despite the rumours, lice cannot jump. In the males, the two forelegs are extra strong and used to hold on to the female during mating.
a. PasIeka/sPl/scanPIx
nits: not lice, just their eggs

Lice eggs are oval and measure about 0.8 mm. They are virtually transparent or skin coloured. Once the nymph has left the egg, the shell becomes more whitish - this is what people see when they call lice nits .
Sticky secretion Louse egg
3 2
Single hair
1. First, the louse selects a good place on the hair close to the warmth of the scalp, providing the best conditions.
2. Then, the louse

deposits a highly sticky secretion of keratin-like proteins and places the egg in it.
3. The secretion
hardens around the egg, but still allows it to breathe. It is now very difficult to detach.
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than a few hours, when they are away from their hosts. David Reed from the Florida Museum of Natural History is one of the worlds leading louse scientists. In the past 10 years, he has published several sensational results based on genetic analyses of 69 different lice variants. By looking at how much the different species deviate from each other, David Reed and other scientists can reconstruct the family tree of the parasites and estimate how long ago two given lice species split up. Reeds reconstruction shows, that the chimpanzee louse, Pediculus schaeffi, and our own louse, Pediculus humanus, shared the same ancestor some six million years ago, and this knowledge has now been used as yet another piece in the puzzle of human history. Scientists already suspected that the ancestor of humans split from the chimp at
Ancient, deadly remedies for head lice

Around 1200 BC, the Chinese used mercury and arsenic mixtures against lice undoubtedly bad for both lice and human health.
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CRAB LICE CAME FROM GORILLAS

Head lice have been with us from the start, but Pthirus pubis, the crab louse, only found us later on. Studies of crab lice noncoding DNA demonstrate that they were originally gorilla lice, which began to suck our blood some 3.3 million years ago. Noncoding DNA is DNA sequences, which do not code directly for any proteins. Mutations in noncoding DNA do thus not immediately have any harmful effect on the organism, and so the mutations are able to remain as a kind of DNA history archive. And this very history has presented scientists with a number of mysteries. While humans have had a type of gorilla lice for 3.3 million years, the split between gorillas and human ancestors dates more than three times as long back. We split from the gorillas 12 million years ago. In other words, gorilla lice found their way to humans millions of years after the two primates family trees split. How this happened is still quite a mystery. As crab lice are primarily transferred by sexual intercourse, the natural and rather shocking answer would be that our ancestors mated with gorillas. That is however inconceivable, and according to scientists, early humans hunted gorillas and took over parasites from their prey through this activity. If so, the crab lice may have been the dead gorillas itchy revenge.
that time, but Reeds work confirms it. Moreover, a number of scientists believe that part of the selective pressure that made us naked was due to parasites like lice. Because no fur equaks no lice. It must be the irony of fate that humans ended up with more lice types than other monkeys. This was primarily due to our sporadic and different hair on heads and bodies. But clothes also offer several different habitats for the bloodsucking parasites.
PUBIC HAIR RESEMBLES GORILLA FUR

As lice are so adapted to their hosts and rarely able to survive on other species, the gorilla lice should actually not be able to survive on humans. Part of the explanation is the non-uniform hairiness of human beings. A crab louse cannot live in our scalps today either. Instead, it lives in our groins, and the hair in human groins is more like gorilla fur than human scalp hair and this was probably even more so among our more hairy ancestors 3.3 million years ago. The hair of the groin and surrounding regions of humans was consequently a habitat, which gorilla lice could conquer, because it resembled their former home. Unfortunately for crab lice, this private habitat is now under pressure in many places of the world. Pubic hair shaving is such a common phenomenon today that according to preliminary studies, it constitutes a
delousing has been a social ritual throughout the history of mankind.

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The 130 million year itch...
Head lice have accompanied humans, ever since we crawled down from the trees. Subsequently, they developed into body lice, and then gorillas gave us yet another variant.
Pthirus gorillae
3.3 million years ago

A human ancestor, probably Australopithecus, takes over lice from the gorilla. The lice live in pubic hair and become known as crab lice.
M. shIelds/getty IMages
25 million years ago

Lices long coexistance with primates begins.
GoriLLa
12 million years ago

Gorilla lice split up from the lice, which later become human and chimp lice.
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Pediculus schaeffi
ChiMpanzee
130-70 million years ago

Lice arise 130 million years ago, and 70 million years ago, the different louse families seriously start to spread.
d. Mack/sPl/scanPIx
6 million years ago

The human ancestor and the chimp split up. Their lice split into head lice and chimp lice.
shutteRstock
Precursor of chimp and human lice
Crab lice Pediculus humanus Head lice Body lice
hoMo sapiens hoMo sapiens hoMo sapiens
major problem for crab lice, which are almost extinct on women in several places in the western world.
BODy LICE ARE VILLAINS

As humans had less and less hair, the original lices habitats were under increased pressure. Luckily for the lice, humans began to cover their naked bodies with something else than fur clothes and thus, a new chapter in the history of lice began. A few visionary pioneer lice colonised the new habitat. The lice were not yet adapted to life in clothes, and most of them
died in the process. But the survivors thrived. They developed a brand new niche, as the competition for space and food was much less intensive on peoples clothes than on their heads. Previously, scientists believed that the body louse was a different subspecies than the head louse. The debate has been going on since the mid-1700s and has still not been finally settled. But still more seems to indicate that head and body lice are the same, only they manifest themselves differently in different situations. At the gene level, it is impossible to distinguish
Approx. 100,000 years ago

Humans began to wear clothes, providing habitats for a new louse type called Pediculus humanus corporis the body louse.
s. PlaIlly/lookatscIences
8000 BC
The earliest direct proof that lice lived in human hair can be seen in Brazilian finds.
c r a b lo u s e
G o r i l l a lo u s e
Around 350 BC
Aristotle introduces his theory that lice arise spontaneously on human bodies.
natuRal hIstoRy MuseuM, london london scIentIfIc fIlMs/getty
1250
The English philosopher Roger Bacon perfects the magnifying glass.
1500s
The flea glass, a predecessor of the microscope, is invented.
In spite of 3.3 million years of separate evolution, crab lice and gorilla lice are still much alike. crab lice were originally gorilla lice, which were transferred to humans.
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A house full of uninvited guests
Lice are not the only creatures which have invaded our bodies. Living with parasites is the price you pay for being a reasonably large animal. Even in the modern world, a wide range of creepy-crawlies have found humans very well suited as a home and a source of food.
s. gschMeIssneR/sPl/scanPIx
k. h. kjeldsen/sPl/scanPIx
The humble flea

LenGTh: 2-3 mm. habiTaTs: Throughout the body. fooD: Blood. syMpToMs: Skin irritation and intense itching. Disease: Suspected of carrying the plague. TreaTMenT: Shaving, shampoo, special comb. DiD you knoW ThaT fleas are a sign of poor hygiene and sanitation?
Subdermal itch mites

LenGTh: 0.3 mm. habiTaTs: Right under the skin fooD: The top skin layer. syMpToMs: Itching and subsequently violent allergic reaction to mite eggs. Disease: Itch mites are a disease in themselves. TreaTMenT: Non-prescription drugs. DiD you knoW ThaT the female gnaws its way down through the upper layers and lays its eggs in paths under the skin?
sPl/scanPIx
Ingo aRndt/scanPIx
letting bedbugs bite

LenGTh: 5 mm. habiTaTs: Hide in cracks of beds or in other places and creep up on the body at night and gorge on blood. fooD: Blood. syMpToMs: Itching and rash. Disease: Do not transmit diseases. TreaTMenT: Bagging clothes and beds DiD you knoW ThaT adult bedbugs can survive for 18 months without feeding?
Deadly but tiny: the tick

LenGTh: 3 mm, but the tick can grow to measure up to 11 mm, once it is saturated with blood. habiTaTs: Moves from blades of grass to the bodies of passing humans or animals. fooD: Blood. syMpToMs: You will not notice the tick. Disease: Can transmit a virus, which causes meningitis, and bacteria, which cause lyme borreliosis. TreaTMenT: If the tick is removed within 24 hours, infection is normally not transmitted. DiD you knoW ThaT ticks can hide everywhere on the body, and often in the groin?
Mites in the dust

size: 0.5 mm. habiTaTs: Live in beds, duvets, pillows, bed linen, and similar places inside the house. Housedust mites thrive with high humidity. fooD: Skin flakes and other organic waste. syMpToMs: Allergies. Disease: Worldwide, housedust mites are the main cause of asthma. TreaTMenT: Ventilation to avoid high air humidity and frequent, thorough washing of bed linen at a high temperature. DiD you knoW ThaT just one single gramme of dust can harbour up to 500 house dust mites?
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SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
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The question is an important one, as the use of clothes can reveal, when our ancestors left Africa. Now, it finally seems that Melissa Toups from the Indiana University has found the answer. In 2011, she compared four genes from head lice and body lice, and her results indicate that the body louse appeared 83,000-170,000 years ago. As body lice live and breed in textiles, the scientist concludes that within this interval, humans began to wear clothes, and the use of clothes thus only began with anatomically modern humans, who evolved in Africa by the end of the Middle Pleistocene period and in the Late Pleistocene. The clothes played a very important role for humans ability to move out of Africa and expand further north, where the climate was cooler. For a naked ape, this would have been impossible. But the price was high, and humans have paid for clothes and expansion by being attacked by body lice and the resulting diseases. Luckily, body lice are now rare guests in many parts of the world, but in very poor countries, there is still a long way to go, and body lice tend to appear in times of war and chaos. Moreover, like many other animals with a relatively short life cycle, lice are very good at developing resistance, just as fast as humans develop new remedies against lice. Consequently, there is every indication that the lice are here to stay unless we all begin to shave our heads. And when all is said and done, humans are probably so vain that we would rather keep our hair than get rid of lice.
The Romans long struggle against lice

Shortly after the birth of Christ, Roman armies were tormented by lice. Pliny the Elder thought that the soldiers could defeat the lice by drinking a snakeskin solution.
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1664 Robert Hooke publishes a drawing of lice on a human hair seen through his microscope. 1758 Carl
Linnaeus declares that humans have one type of lice. He names it Pediculus humanus, which includes both head and body lice.
between body lice and head lice in spite of different lifestyles, behaviour, and size. This means that body lice are actually head lice, which just found a different habitat. Anthropologists and other scientists have confirmed this and observed a particular pattern over and over again: In very poor and dirty environments, body lice always occur, after head lice have spread. Thus, head lice have developed an ability to move into our clothes under the right or seen from a human point of view the wrong circumstances. Body lice are often observed in prisons, refugee camps, and other places w i t h p o o r s t a n d a rd s o f hyg i e n e . Unfortunately, the situation goes from bad to highly dangerous, when head lice play the role of body lice, as they can be disease carriers. During a plague outbreak among humans, the Y. pestis bacterium has been found on body lice. From animal experiments, scientists know that lice can transmit Y. pestis infection from sick to healthy rabbits and kill after a few days. It is, however, unknown, how big a role body lice play in connection with other disease carriers such as rats, which also thrive under the miserable conditions, which usually precede severe epidemics.
sPl/scanPIx
1767 Swedish businessman and entomologist Charles De Geer splits human lice into two subspecies: head lice and body lice a split, which is still controversial today. 1812 Lice typhoid fever stops Napoleons
troops, before they reach Moscow.
1864 Louis Pasteur once and for all rejects

the millennia old theory that lice arise spontaneously on humans.
1944-1970
Widespread use of DDT almost defeats head lice in the US, but body lice develop resistance quite quickly.
Apart from the plague, body lice probably also transmit typhus and trench fever. It is thus easy to conclude that body lice are in many ways harmful, but in one respect, they are beneficial to science. Scientists have long discussed, when humans began to wear clothes, and the estimates vary a great deal. Some believe that humans started to wear clothes three million years ago, while archaeological finds of primitive sewing needles indicate that our textile adventure began 40,000 years ago.
Questionable household tips

In the 1900s, housewives used both paraffin oil and petrol as inflammable louse shampoo. Less hazardous methods included rubbing hair and scalp in mayonnaise or vaseline.
alaMy
oRlando/getty/all oveR
CLOTHES MADE HUMANS LEAVE AFRICA
1990s-today Repeatedly, lice prove

to develop resistance against different recent lice remedies. The short-lived generations and the relative great number of lice mean that the parasites adapt to the chemicals fast. Lice thus still pester humans throughout the world.
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FEATURE | nanotech
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Via the blood vessels, future nanorobots will be sent on missions deep inside the body.
d. Mack/sPl/scanPIx
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SUrgErY
Soon, nanorobots will be ready to enter the body and wage war against bacteria, cancer, and other diseases. Scientists have already designed much of the content of the nanorobots medical tool box, and now, they have started to develop motors and navigation equipment.
EXTREMELy SMALL TOOLS TARGETED DRUGS EFFECTIVE DIAGNOSES
he nurses have completed the pre-op checks, and the patient waits for the surgery to begin. Finally, the door opens, and two million nanorobots in a glass ampoule enter the room on a trolley pushed by a porter. As soon as the chief surgeon has injected the clear liquid with the tiny robots into the patients blood vessel, the bots head for the brain, where their job is to remove a blood clot. the robots cooperate efficiently. Some lead the team to the blood clot and at the same time send out signals, allowing the surgery to be monitored on screens in the operating theatre. others are equipped with nippers, which grab the blood clot and hold on to it, while tiny robotic surgeons cut it up into small pieces with their sharp scalpels. the pieces are collected by a gripping arm and carried away in a container, while other nanorobots dose drugs directly into the injured tissue, boosting its ability to heal. After the successful surgery, the nanorobots go dormant, and are flushed into the bloodstream to be later excreted from the body. the surgery lasts less than half an hour. this could be the future blood clot (and a series of other surgeries) treatment scenario. Scientists have already managed to develop nanoscale robots and to send them into the human body. For several years, doctors have used very simple nanorobots, which can trace and eliminate cancer cells by burning them without harming the healthy tissue nearby. But the real challenge is to develop robots which are able to move about the body on their own, find the sick tissue, and use tiny tools to carry out a surgeons job by acting directly on tumours, blood clots and more. today, the first prototypes are ready for trials, and it has proved possible to customise sophisticated robots with highly unique qualities.
CUT OUT THE CUTTING

the advantages of nanoscale robotic surgeons are obvious. the vast majority of diseases are caused by a defect in a cell or in one of the cells tiny components. Consequently, it is often way out of proportion for doctors and surgeons operate with scalpels and
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Nanorocket
tHE EartH is as many times bigger than a soccer ball ...
a SpEcIal JEt EngInE for nanorobots uses hydrogen peroxide as fuel. In four seconds, the nanorobot moves eight millimetres.
Wang et al./uc san dIego
... as a SoccEr Ball is bigger than ...
1 NM
... a partIclE with a diameter of 1 nanometre.
sick cells. Almost all drugs have been developed to be effective against certain types of cell. But when the drug is given in the shape of a pill or an injection, it affects the entire body, markedly increasing the risk of side effects. Scientists have long dreamed of being able to carry out surgery and dose drugs deep inside the body and directly onto the sick tissue - and only the sick tissue. In continuation of the most recent scientific results, the dream may very well soon come true. One of the great breakthroughs came in 2006, when Paul Rothemund from the California Institute of Technology in the US managed to fold a DNA strand into an arbitrary figure. Since then, DNA has become one of scientists favourite building blocks for nanorobots. DNA can be interwoven and bound to molecules in different
nano mEanS Small

Really small. the prefix nano comes from the greek word for dwarf and is used as a designation for one billionth. consequently, one nanometre (nm) is one billionth of a metre. a nanoscale object is anything measuring up to 100 nm. above 100 nm, you can image the object in an optical microscope. once a thing becomes big enough to see with visible light, it is considered merely microscopic.
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HUMAN HAIR (DIAMETER): 90,000 NM
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EFFECTIVE DIAGNOSES EXTREMELy TINy TOOLS WorldMags.net Little nippers could save lives by means of tiny grids and cutting nippers, robots are to repair the body from the inside.
At nano-scale, the tools a robot needs do traditional jobs (cutting, suturing) in strange new ways. Robert Freitas from the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing in California has developed round nanorobots, or clottocytes, which can repair a burst blood vessel very fast, using a fine-meshed grid, which will seal the hole and prevent blood cells from escaping. At the same time, signals are sent to other clottocytes, which will quickly come to the accident site. According to Robert Freitas, the clottocytes are 1,000 times faster than the bodys own blood coagulation processes.
CapTure bLooD CLoTs

In 2012, Gabriel Lavella from the University of California designed a pair of nano-cutting nippers. Only 100 nm long, the nippers consist of two jaws, which capture blood clots when encountering the fibrine protein, which is found in coagulated blood.
1. In the initial position, the cutting nippers are open. 2.

The teeth are tiny receptors, which can recognise fibrine from coagulated blood.
Nano-cutting nippers
Blood clot
3. When encountering
fibrine, the teeth capture their prey a blood clot.
claus lunau
structures, making it ideal as a nanorobot skeleton. Since then, DNA has been used to build nanorobots shaped as drug-carrying containers. Another great advance was made, when scientists managed to utilise some proteins ability to bind to particular molecules. Scientists can use the technology to develop nanorobots, which can hold on to a cancer cell or grab hold of a blood clot.
TINy ENGINES TO POWER ROBOTS

One of nanotech engineerings greatest challenges is to enable the nanorobots to move about the body. The tiny surgeons must be equipped with a type of engine, fuel, and navigation equipment, so they can get to the sick tissue. However, scientists are well on their way to solving these problems. In 2010, Liangfang Zhang and Jospeph Wang from the University of California, San Diego, developed an example of an extremely efficient engine, which can power nanorobots. Their rocket-shaped nanorobot uses hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) as its fuel. The rockets jet engine consists of layers
of four metals platinum, gold, iron, and titanium. When placed in a liquid, which contains a weak solution of hydrogen peroxide, the engine will suck in the fuel through its front aperture and split it into water and oxygen, so thousands of tiny air bubbles are forced out through the rockets tail. The engine provides the nanorobot with so much power, that it can move at a speed of up to 2 mm/ second. This may not sound fast, but considering the size, it is like a car driving at 600 km/h. The splitting up of hydrogen peroxide also provides the power of another nanotech engine developed by scientists from the Pennsylvania State University in the US. The engine consists of a small metal rod with platinum at the front and gold at the back. The hydrogen peroxide is split into oxygen and two free protons and electrons, when it comes in contact with the platinum. After the split, the electrons move through the metal rod to the gold at the back, where they encounter the protons, which have made the same trip only on the outside of the metal rod. Now, the protons and the electrons are united with the
CELL (DIAMETER): 25,000 NM
DNA MOLECULE (DIAMETER): 2 NM
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TARGETED DRUGS
WorldMags.net The end of side effects?

OPEN PILL BOx
Two different methods make it possible to deliver drugs accurately.
Almost all drugs involve side effects, as the harsh chemicals will also affect the healthy cells of the body. With this in mind, in 2012, George Church from the Harvard Medical School in Boston developed a nanorobot, which almost hand feeds bacteria and sick cells with drugs. The nanorobot is a DNA strand folded into a pill box, which can be opened and filled with different drugs. The pill box is closed with two locks and will not open, until it contacts certain molecules such as proteins from bacteria flagella. Since the drugs have been delivered directly into the sick tissue, the side effects are reduced to a minimum. The brain is normally so well-protected that it is difficult for drugs to move from the blood into
the delicate brain cells. A group of American scientists have designed a nanorobot,which may solve the problem. The nanorobot looks like a group of trees,with drugs instead of fruit on their branches. In experiments with rabbits with spastic paralysis, the nanorobot had a positive effect, as it could pass freely from the blood into the brain. The experiment showed that the treatment was up to 10 times as efficient compared to injecting drugs willynilly into the blood. When the nano-pill box encounters bacteria, it opens and dispenses drugs.
Drugs
dePt. of genetIcs/haRvaRd MedIcal school
Lock
hydrogen peroxide, generating a water molecule. The process is repeated and creates momentum, which forcess the metal rod through the liquid at a speed corresponding to a car driving 180 km/h. Not too shabby at all for a little tacker. While hydrogen peroxide has so far been the favourite nanorobot fuel, blood sugar may provide energy for the work, which the robots are to carry out in the future. Glucose is always present in the blood, and it can be metabolised by utilising the oxygen red blood cells carry around. According to calculations made by Robert Freitas from the Institute for
Molecular Manufacturing in Palo Alto, California, the principle can be utilised by a nanorobot to generate at least 10 picowatts. This might sound pretty low-end, but its actually 10,000 times more power than the amount used by an e-coli bacterium, when it swims using its flagellas. At this stage, no glucose-powered nanobots have been prototyped - this remains a tantalising theory.
BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED (OR NEEDED)

Many nanorobot designs actually dont need an external energy supply. By using well-understood bio-chemical processes, nano-cutting nippers can be made to bite, and the leg of a nanorobot can take a step forward by itself - simply by utilising chemical reactions at the molecular level. In 2012, Milan Stojanovic from the Columbia University in New York used this principle to design an extremely tiny nanorobot, which resembles a three-legged spider. The nanospider is only four nanometres long five million times smaller than an ordinary spider. The three legs are made of short, individual DNA strands. DNA is normally a double-stranded molecule made up by two corresponding strands, which always seek to join up. The robots DNA legs are, however, single-stranded, and thus, they will constantly stretch in search of a corresponding DNA strand. When the nanorobot is let loose on a surface of single-stranded DNA, it moves its three small legs step by step. In this way, the spider can move forward at a speed of 180 nm/h corresponding to an ordinary spider moving 1 m/h. However, scientists do not only utilise the DNA molecule to power the spider. They also use the DNAs genetic code as a map, with which the spider can navigate. Milan Stojanovic and his colleagues have consequently demonstrated that the nanospiders movements can be controlled by laying out a trail of single-stranded DNA sequences, which correspond precisely to the legs of the robot. Just like Hansel and Gretel followed a
EFFECTIVE DIAGNOSES
Cancer? Get infected with nanoworms

The earlier cancer is detected, the greater the chances of an efficient treatment. Tiny nanorobots can move deep into the bodys tissue and study every single cell to determine if it is healthy or has mutated into a cancer cell. In 2008, Erkki Ruoslahti from the University of California in Santa Barbara designed a nanoworm by joining 5-10 tiny magnetic iron oxide
hennIng dalhoff
particles into short chains. The nanoworm was subsequently equipped with a type of fur made of bits of protein, which bind to cancer cells. When the nanoworms were injected into the body, they found the cancer cells and collected around them. In this way, the worms magnetic iron content made even the smallest of tumours stand out in an MRI scanner.
Nanoworm Sugary substance Iron oxide nanoparticle
nanoworms bind to cancer cells, so it is easier to see them in mrI scans.
Cancer cell
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trail of breadcrumbs through the wood, the nanospider follows the DNA trail laid out by the surgeon. In this way, scientists can control the robot, so it will either move directly to the target or follow an alternative route, which will wind once or twice on the way.
real nanobots will be too small to see with an optical microscope. this artists impression is fanciful a real nanobot will be a very simple machine that looks like strangely geometric arrangement of molecules.
shutteRstock
TINy STEPS TOWARD A TINy FUTURE

Other scientists have also suggested how to direct nanorobots to particular places in the body. Sylvain Martel from the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal in Canada invented a system in 2009, in which a nanorobot is directed through a blood vessel by means of magnets, which are moved along the outside of the b o d y. A n d i n 2 0 1 1 , scientists of the Indian Institute of Science invented a methodto help nanorobots find a blood clot. The scientists took it as their starting point, that the blood pressure increases around a blood clot. They attached a nanowire which is affected by the pressure change, to the nanorobot. Thus, the robot could feel, whether it swam in the right direction towards the blood clot, or if it had to change its course. Other scientists imagine that, in the future, nanorobots can be equipped with sensors, which can measure everything from blood oxygen content to histamines from inflamed tissue, so the nanorobots will automatically move to the place, where their help is needed. It is still the job of real doctors to carry out the work, diagnose the illnes, and determine when and if patients should undergo surgery. But nanorobots will soon be ready to leave the lab. And when that happens, they will be able to navigate safely to sick cells inside patients, where, by targeting only unhealthy tissue, they can live up to that ancient oath taken by doctors everywhere: first do no harm.
mICrOCHIPs? yOu GOTTa THINK smaLLEr

Individual nanobots will be surprisingly basic, with a single specialised tool and a simple communications system. But when they swarm together, they could combine their internal processors into a powerful distributed computer. Surgeons could reprogram nanobot swarms during operations by using ultrasound... or even a standard WiFi network!
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FEATURE | archaeology
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At the bottom of the Mediterranean, french scientists are revolutionising deep-sea archaeology. Theyre using groundbreaking 3d imaging technology to excavate the wreck of the the la lune a warship which sank 350 years ago and claimed as many as 900 lives. if this dig is successful, the technique may soon reveal thousands of hidden wrecks to archaeologists.
deep-dive pressure suits like this one are expensive to operate. By 3d-mapping a wreck before the dives begin, teams can save thousands and reduce the time spent on dives.
osada/seguIn/dRassM/gRand angle/ dassault systMes/aRte
3d mapping: a new frontier for underwater archaeology?
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Using haptic gloves which transmit simulated touch , scientists can uncover artefacts which may not be immediately visible to the eye.
Archaeologists and computer experts utilise the latest 3D technology to create a virtual copy of the wreck at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Eventually, the technology will allow scientists to explore sunken ships from their offices.
osada/seguIn/dRassM/gRand angle/ dassault systMes/aRte
STEP 1
Remote photography
The first step consists in collecting as much visual data as possible from the wrecksite of La Lune. The sea floor is divided into squares of 3 x 3 m, which are each systematically mapped out by the archaeologists. A sophisticated camera, which takes high-resolution photos, is mounted on a remote-controlled submarine robot, which moves about the ocean floor, documenting the wreck at different depths and angles.
a remote-controlled submarine photographs the wreck site.
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bridgehead, from where he could fight the pirates. A successful expedition would secure him public admiration and seafaring Europes respect. The expedition began in the port city of Toulon in July 1664, but it went terribly wrong. Bad planning, incompetent officers, and worn-out ships forced Louis fleet to return home after just four months. For one of the vessels, the defeat was fateful. The three-masted La Lune flagship sunk off Toulon with almost all 900 men aboard. La Lune was remembered only in history books until one day in May 1993, when, during a submarine dive, deep-sea diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet suddenly received sonar signals indicating metal nearby. Shortly after, he first registered several guns and then an entire wreck partly covered in sand, but intact. According to the French ministry of cultural affairs, the wreck was La Lune. Back then, scientists did not have the equipment to carry out archaeological work at a depth of 90 m. But two decades later, this is no longer the case, and in October 2012, archaeologists were ready to take a look at La Lune. What they discovered confirmed the historical sources. The ship sank like a marble block, the leader of the expedition informed the king after the shipwreck. Thanks to the fast demise and the large depth, archaeologists found a remarkably wellpreserved wreck, a virtual time capsule on the oxygenpoor sea floor.
osada/seguIn/dRassM/gRand angle/dassault syst?Mes/aRte
a special instrument carefully blows sediments away from la lune without harming it.
T
STEP 2
he French King Louis XIV only had one thing on his mind in 1664: to flex his military muscle and shoewwhat France could do. A war in Europe was too risky, so he focused on the North African coast, where pirates looted European vessels. By conquering Jijel, a fortified city in Algeria, Louis could establish a
STEP 3
A cloud of points creates a 3D version of the photos.

cdRIc sIMaRd/3ds.coM/ dassault systMes
Photo processing
Photos taken under water are often blurred due to haze, sediment, and more. With an image processing programme, scientists refine the underwater photos and intensify the colours, so the image becomes sharper.
cdRIc sIMaRd/3ds.coM/dassault systMes
BEFORE
Scientists combine photos which have the same subject.
creating the cloud

AFTER
Scientists compare the photos to find key points special characteristics of the wrecksite or the objects, which are present in two or more photos. Using telemetry from the camera, scientists can see from which angle the many photos were taken and calculate the subjects location and proportions. When a sufficiently high number of identical subjects have been registered, the data is entered into a 3D coordinate system, so scientists can generate a cloud consisting of points.
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Wireless communication takes place

via radio waves and a unit, which is also found in small subs. The diver can talk to the ship within a 1.6 km radius.
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P. Wootton/sPl/scanPIx
The oxygen cylinder contains

enough oxygen for 48 hours. A special rebreather system removes CO2 from the expired air, so the air can be cycled through again.
The face shield consists of 2-cm-thick, polycarbonate coated plexiglass polished with small particles, making the glass both very strong and very clear.
Two 75 watt light bulbs provide light on the sea floor. The bulbs are full of xenon gas, which produces brighter light than traditional halogen bulbs.
Extremely heavy in air, the adS requires a crane for deployment.
Two propellers
and their individual blades can be moved in different directions, so the suit can be controlled very precisely.
the atmospheric diving Suit

A motor-powered aluminium suit is marine archaeologists most important tool on the sea floor.
The excavation of La Lune at a depth of 90 m requires sturdy equipment, which can endure the extreme conditions on the sea floor. The atmospheric diving suit (ADS) is actually an articulated submersible, or submarine, which can maintain normal air pressure inside, making it possible to operate at extreme depth. At the site of La Lune, the pressure is 10 atmospheres. The suit has been approved for use at depths of up to 300 m, but was used by the US Navy in 2006 as deep as 610 m.
Grip hooks allow scientists to examine objects found on the sea floor.
18 flexible joints allow the

diver freedom of movement, as he walks about the sea floor.
Foot pedals in the boots allow the diver to control the speed and direction of the suit.
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the conditions at the bottom of the mediterranean have protected the remains of the la lune warship and e.g. preserved the anchor.
entire wreck site has been carefully explored by remotecontrolled robots, which can bring back interesting finds to the Andr Malraux expedition vessel. The ship was designed for expeditions like this one, and by means of GPS, sensors, and powerful engines, it can remain directly above the wreck without the use of disturbing mooring lines. And with a Newsuit diving suit a type of customized miniature submarine, which equalizes the pressure on the sea floor the archaeologists can explore La Lune without fearing decompression sickness, which is normally involved in deep sea diving.
WRECkS CAN BE EXCAVATED FROM THE OFFICE

The photos from the sea floor have e.g. been used to create 3D models of the objects of La Lune, allowing archaeologists to study them without having to dive or rescue them. Moreover, scientists are working on a complete 3D model of the wrecksite, so they can walk about the sea floor, before they start diving. The virtual test dives can e.g. help archaeologists find the best route to an object, that they wish to study in detail. The route planning will make dives more efficient and less risky, archaeologists expect. The excavation of La Lune will be carried out over the next four years, but the new technologies, which scientists are developing, reach far into the future. This project is aimed at developing methods for archaeological studies at great depths. What robots can do at 100 m (La Lune), can also be done at 2,000 m, says Michel LHour. He expects a lot from the 3D models of wrecks.Once the system has been fully developed, scientists will not only see the wreck. A special 3D helmet and gloves will provide sensory impressions of the structure, shape, and weight of objects. The helmet and gloves will be connected to a submarine robot, which repeats the motions of the archaeologist, eliminating the physical limitations involved in excavating at great depths and allowing scientists to explore more of the three million wrecks, which are scattered across oceans and seas, according to UNESCO. By means of virtual reality, I will be able to explore every wreck in the world directly from my office, says Michel LHour.
Nothing has been stolen, as the wreck is located too deeply for amateur divers. To us, La Lune is like Pompeii, says Michel LHour, the head of the French ministry of cultures marine archaeologists, referring to the Roman city, which was buried in a thick layer of volcanic ash in 79 and excavated in an intact condition in the 1800s. Among the finds made so far are guns, ship bells, and a large collection of kitchenware. The archaeologisists have not yet excavated the earthly remains of the crew, but they hope that DNA analyses of teeth and bones will reveal e.g. where the men came from and their state of health. In order to make a complete snapshot of La Lunes last hours, the scientists use the most modern and sophisticated tools of archaeology. For instance, the
STEP 4
3D image generation
A sophisticated computer programme connects each of the calculated points in the cloud, generating a virtual grid, which is placed across the sea floor. As a result, the wrecksite and all objects appear in a coarse 3D shape. Even before further refinement and image enhancement, objects like guns and other large items can already be identified.
objects such as guns begin to appear.
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Gun including surface structure
STEP 5
Finalising the model

The computer programme connects the dots of the cloud to give the image solid surfaces and make it more realistic. Later in the process, the objects are also coloured by covering the 3D model with photos from the sea floor. An underwater photo of a gun is placed over the a virtual gun, providing it with the right colour and structure.
combining 3d data with existing 2d photos gives the model realistic texture - heres what it looks like before that step
STEP 6
In the virtual world, scientists can touch and move all the objects at the bottom of the sea.
like a sophisticated videogame, scientists can simulate and plan actual dives using the 3d model
virtual exploration
The last step consists in making the 3D world interactive. Different camera angles are coded into the model, so archaeologists can either see the wrecksite from different angles or move freely about on the sea floor. Moreover, all objects qualities are defined, so scientists can interact with them virtually, even picking up and moving objects.
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FEATURE | quantum physics
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crEatIng an UncracKaBlE codE
In 2012, austrian scientists tightbeamed quantum-encoded photons between the islands of la palma and tenerife.
esa
ulius Caesar, the roman dictator, was in a dilemma 2,000 years ago. In charge of a huge army like romes, the general depended on being able to send orders and receive reports from even the most remote corners of the empire. the risk of messages being intercepted by enemies en route was constant, but the romans found a solution. By writing messages to victorious legions in code, the emperor made sure state secrets were not revealed, even if enemies laid hands on the letters. today, Caesars code, by which the letters of the alphabet were moved three positions,
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would be a piece of cake for any hacker. But throughout history, code systems have become ever more sophisticated, and the best modern encryption, used for military and civil communication, has never been cracked. World history is, however, ripe with examples of totally uncrackable codes, which have been cracked sooner or later. But perhaps the first truly uncrackable code is here, thanks to quantum computers, which utilise the laws of physics to make calculations by means of atoms instead of transistors. Nobody knows for how long the encoded bulwarks
will be able to resist the massive calculating powers of quantum computers, and consequently, over the past 20 years, physicists and cryptologists have developed a new coded language: quantum cryptography. In 2016, the new codes will be put to the test, when Chinese scientists launch the worlds first quantum satellite, which can send these codes round the world.
OPEN MAILBOX USED TODAy

the quantum-encrypted messages will first be employed for safe exchange of strategic information between countries
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in 2016, a Chinese satellite will pave the way for uncrackable, quantum-encrypted codes to be sent round the world. if the experiment is successful,cryptologists may finally win their 2,000-year-old battle against hostile spies.
Quantum mechanics make hackers dizzy

Immediately illogical phenomena arising in particles, which are smaller than atoms, are the domain of quantum mechanics. This marvellous physics field e.g. dictates that a particles state is indefinite, until the moment it is measured. And the very measurement may alter the particles qualities. It all corresponds to a situation, in which you wrongly measure a vertical column to be horizontal, and it is horizontal, once you have measured it. This phenomenon makes quantum cryptograpy uncrackable. The very moment a hacker tries to read a quantum-encoded particle, he will alter the particles qualities. The hackers interference thus disrupts the coded message, and the recipient will immediately know and scrap the message.
light-speed transmission
A laser beam shoots quantum-encoded photons off towards the receiver. Photons can act as particles or waves. Unless directly observed, they can exist in several different states at the same time.
and for military uses. Civil modes of application are however also a logical step such as moving money in global bank transfers. today, public key systems are used for sensitive communication. the systems are based on the sender and the receiver possessing two codes. one is publicly known, the other is secret. When A sends a message to B, A uses Bs public code to encode his data, before sending it over the Internet. B decodes the message with his private code the key. the method may be compared to a mailbox, into which everybody can put letters, but only the owner can open. the
key is produced by a complex mathematical formula, so a computer, which is sufficiently powerful, will be able to calculate the key, if it has enough time.
PHOTONIC AMBIGUITy
Quantum cryptography is revolutionary, as it is not based on sophisticated maths, but on the laws of physics. Quantum mechanics, which regulates subatomic particles such as electrons and photons, has a number of odd qualities, of which one is well-suited for encoding. A photon, which is the primary constituent of light and some radiation, can (unlike
Werner Karl Heisenberg is the father of modern quantum mechanics. He invented the uncertainty principle, which is a prerequisite for quantum cryptography.
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macroscopic things such as
Quantum codes locked by physics

0 0 1
The codes, scientists intend to send between Beijing and Vienna via satellite, are based on photon swing directions.
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0 1
Photon encoding A laser sends out one photon at a time. The sender, a satellite, notes whether the photon swings vertically or diagonally at angles of 45 or 135 degrees.
4 directions = 4 Bits Each swing direction represents 1 bit. Vertical may signify 1 and horizontal 0. Likewise, 45 degrees may mean 1, and 135 degrees may mean 0.
HAckeRS AlWAYS lOSe

The photons are read using filters, which measure either rectilinearly or diagonally. If the filter does not match the photon, the filter will alter the photons swing direction into one which the filter can measure. If a hacker makes a wrong measurement, he alters the senders bit - say from 0 to 1. The satellitte and recipient in Beijing detect the attack when they compare measurements.
FiLters receiVe Photons The recipient in Beijing adjusts his filters randomly. When a filter matches a photon, he makes a correct measurement, and vice versa. Beijing does not yet know which measurements are right or wrong.
macroscopic things such as computer chips) be in several different states at the same time. You can only find out which state photons are in, by making a measurement. But the very measurement may alter the photons state. This is utilised by cryptologists. If a hacker tries to monitor quantum-encoded photons, many of the photons qualities will inevitably be altered. The hacker achieves nothing, and he will be revealed, as the message becomes nonsense to the rightful recipient. Cryptologists have been able to send data via quantum-encrypted connections in fibre-optic cables for more than 10 years. But the cables have practical limitations. The codes cannot be sent across distances of more than 100 km, as data is lost in the fibres, and thus, quantum-encrypted fibreoptic cable networks are only suitable for local communication.
University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei will be the first to launch a satellite, which is to send uncrackable code keys from China to Austria. The Chinese quantum satellite plans were developed as early as around the turn of the millennium. According to Yu-Ao Chen from the team of scientists, the design is now complete, and the satellite is under construction.
HOSTILE SPIES DEFEATED

Once the satellite has been built, the scientists will carry out a series of lab tests, before the 600 kg device is launched by a Chinese rocket. The project is carried out in cooperation with the Austrian team of scientists, which was responsible for the experiment in Tenerife, and the first aim is to exchange encrypted code keys between Beijing and Vienna. The quantum-encoded photons are sent off one by one from an oscillating laser diode. For practical reasons, the satellite functions as the sender, and the two earth stations function as receivers, as big, extremely sensitive detectors are required, and those are much too heavy to be sent into space. It is a feat in itself that the detectors are able to distinguish individual quantumencrypted photons from the myriad of photons in sunlight.The scientists use photons with wavelengths, which are rare in sunlight, and the detectors have been designed to filter out all other wavelengths. If the exchange of quantum-encrypted code keys between Asia and Europe becomes a success, the way will be paved for 100% safe global communication, and cryptologists will finally win their long war against criminals and hostile spies.
2. SecReT cODeS ARe geneRATeD

Both cities contact the quantum satellite. First, it sends a secret, quantum-encrypted code to Beijing in this example (1 0 0 1) and subsequently another secret code to Vienna (0 0 1 1).
SCIENTISTS TARGET THE Sky

Instead, scientists intend to send the photons through the air, by which it will be possible to send codes across much longer distances. The present record (143 km) was set in 2012, when scientists from the University of Vienna sent quantum-encoded photons between the Canarian Islands of La Palma and Tenerife. Earlier this year, German physicists from the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich and the German Centre for Aviation and Space Travel in Wessling took up the baton, exchanging quantum codes between Earth and an aeroplane 20 km away and moving 290 km/h. A new milestone will be reached in 2016, when a team of Chinese scientists from the
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1. BeIjIng WRITeS A MeSSAge

A secret message is to be sent to Vienna, and the Chinese wish to make sure that the message cannot be decoded if it is intercepted en route. Thus, the parties must generate a quantumencrypted one-shot key kode, which only they possess.
BEIJIng
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resuLt coordination Beijing contacts the satellitte to learn, which filters were adjusted correctly. The photons Beijing measured incorrectly are scrapped. The sequence of ones and zeros from the correct measurements makes up the secret key. Hackers will not benefit from monitoring the filter communication, as it is not revealed, if the bits measured were ones or zeros.
QUAnTUM cODeS TRAvel WorldMags.net FROM ASIA TO eUROPe

IllustRatIoneR: claus lunau
For clarity, weve used a 4-digit code, which would be easy to guess. The real codes will be much, much longer.
3. SATellITTe PRODUceS A cOMMOn cODe
Satellite The satellite compares the two codes, (1 0 0 1) and (0 0 1 1), and produces a new common code according to this principle: Two identical bits, two ones or two zeros, common signify 1, and two codE different bits signify 0. 0
1 0 1
4. cOMMOn cODe IS SenT

The satellite sends the common code to both cities without encrypting it. According to the same principle, Beijing now compares the common code to the secret code received from the satellite. The result matches Viennas code:
SatEllItE BEIJIng
SatEllItE common codE
KEY
1 0 0 1
0 1 0 1
0 0 1 1
5. One-SHOT keY IS ReADY

Beijing now knows Viennas secret code. Thus, the cities have a common key, that can be used to encode and decode their mutual message. Only the common code has been sent through the open network.
6. BeIjIng SenDS leTTeR

The code key is ready, and Beijing encodes its message and sends it to Vienna by e-mail, which can be compared to an open postcard. Only Vienna can decode the message. The parties need not worry about the letter being intercepted en route, as it cannot be decoded by parties, which do not possess the quantum-encrypted one-shot code key.
VIEnna
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FEATURE | ASTRONOMy
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0 0 0 , , 0 0 00 10 40,0 0
0 0 ,0 0 , 0 0 0 0 , 0 500
500,000 lIgHt YEarS is the diameter of the pKS 0745-19 galaxy. At its centre, you will find the ultramassive black hole. 40 BIllIon SUnS is the weight of the most massive black holes discovered so far.
0 0 ,00
In a galaxy at the centre of the pKS 0745-19 cluster, there is a black hole with an event horizon bigger than our Solar System.
cxc/nasa
100 BIllIon Km is the diameter of the event horizon, the point, beyond which nothing is able to escape.
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SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
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The Chandra telescope hunts
BLACK HOLES
Quite by chance, a group of astronomers stumbled across the heaviest black holes ever discovered. The holes are located at the centres of huge, remote galaxies and harbour an unsolved mystery.
By Lone Djernis Olsen
GIANT
lack holes are the most peculiar structures in the universe and they are also among the most massive. Recently, astronomers found black holes which weigh up to 40 billion Suns four times the heaviest that cosmologists otherwise knew. The holes are so huge that astronomers had to create a brand new category: ultramassive black holes. So far, scientists have only
found a few confirmed examples of the heavyweights, but there are strong indications that they exist in droves and perhaps some are even heavier. Common to the black holes are that they consist of a so-called singularity a huge amount of matter compressed into one point. The matter is so dense that even atoms have been compressed, so the electrons no longer orbit the atomic
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WorldMags.net Stars collapse under their own weight

black holes are the tombs of supergiants some of the most massive stars of the universe. When they die, their giant masses collapse and are compressed into one point with an infinite concentration of matter.
MIkkel juul jensen
Gravity from the huge mass.

Radiation pressure generated by energy transport from the centre.
Fusionprocesses
A gas cloud contracts due to gravity.
gas cloud
blue supergigant
1. Star originates from gas

Stars are formed by a large cloud of gas and dust, which becomes unstable and begins to contract.
2. The giant starts to shine As the gas is concentrated,

the temperature at the centre becomes so high that atomic nuclei fuse. The fusion processes make the star emit light and heat. The energy is released at the centre and keeps the star balanced against gravity.
nucleus, rather they have been compressed into it. Normally, this is impossible, because the electromagnetic force and the strong and weak nuclear forces make sure that the atoms have an extent and that the electrons maintain their orbits around the nucleus. But because the gravity of black holes is so extreme, it outcompetes the other forces, so the atoms collapse. The extreme characteristics of the gravity also mean that nothing not even light can escape, if it has passed a point called the event horizon. The bigger the mass of the black hole, the further away the event horizon. The newly-found black holes have an event horizon the size of our Solar System. So if there were a black hole, where our Sun is, it would encompass everything all the way to the other side of Neptunes orbit.
eject. Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo studied 18 black holes in remote galaxy clusters. There, she found jets, which were ejected in both directions along the black holes axes of rotation in the same way as in black holes near us. But one thing puzzled the astrophysicist: Only a few of the black holes shone. Light from black holes is normally a sign that matter is being sucked injested. And black holes get the energy for jets from
matter, which is sucked in from the surroundings. On its way towards the hole, the matter, which primarily consists of gas, is heated and starts to shine. Astronomers can see the light in their telescopes, until the gas crosses the black holes event horizon. But there was only very little light to be seen, so where did the energy for the spectacular jets come from? One possibility was that the black holes were much heavier
j. hlavacek-laRRondo/stanfoRd unIveRsIty
Black hole hunter

Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo is fascinated by black holes. The so-called singularity at the centre of a black hole is extremely small, but its forces reach far into the universe. Her studies of black holes put Julie HlavacekLarrondo on the track of the ultramassive holes of big galaxies. Larrondo works for the Stanford University.
RAyS PUT SCIENTISTS ON RIGHT TRACk

The discovery of the ultramassive black holes was made by a group of scientists from the Stanford and Cambridge Universities led by astrophysicist Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo. She almost stumbled across them, while she was solving another one of the universes many mysteries concerning the rays of material called jets, which some black holes
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I wouldnt be surprised, if I end up finding a 100 billion solar mass black hole.
Julie hlavacek-larrondo, astrophysicist
SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
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supernova
Remaining matter is attracted by gravity.
Black holes are formed everywhere in the universe. Several may fuse into supermassive holes.
All mass is compressed into one point.
blacK Hole
The outermost layers are rejected in a supernova explosion.
3. Fireworks end the party
After millions or billions of years, there is no more fuel. When the star stops generating energy, the radiation pressure drops, and the matter collapses. The outermost gas layers are rejected in a giant explosion.
4. A black hole remains The atoms cannot resist gravity, and the star collapses into a so-called singularity, whose density is in principle infinite. A black hole has formed.
than previously believed. Extra mass would provide the weight necessary to eject permanent jets even without sucking in new matter. Consequently, Julie HlavacekLarrondo began to investigate, whether the holes could in fact be an indication of a mass of unknown dimensions.
26,000
X-rays are absorbed by the atmosphere, so it is necessary to use telescopes like Chandra, which orbit the Earth. Radio waves, on the other hand, pass right through the atmosphere, so in this case, telescopes on Earth are sufficient. The astrophysicist could obtain the observations of radio waves she needed from Earth-based telescopes like the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, New Mexico, and the Australia Telescope Compact Array. Other astronomers had already estimated the weight of the 18 black holes based on a theory that there is a fixed correlation between the mass of a black hole and the mass of the galaxy, at whose centre the hole is located. But when Julie HlavacekLarrondo calculated the mass based on data from X-ray and radio telescopes, the values did not match. The black holes were on average 10 times heavier than scientists used to believe.
light years is the distance to the big black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. There may be many smaller black holes in other places of our galaxy.
This meant that there was either an error in the new calculations, or the old theory was incorrect: a classic dilemma in scientific research. Hlavacek-Larrondo chose to maintain that her calculations were correct, because the correlationbetween the amount of X-rays and radio waves on the one side and the black holes mass on the other had held water on so many other occasions. At the same time, she could explain how the black holes managed to eject powerful jets. The new numbers demonstrated that the black holes had masses of up to 40 billion Suns heavier than any other holes known by scientists. The next step was to fit the discovery into the catalogue of black holes. Until recently, astronomers believed that black holes primarily came in two versions: small holes with a mass of 10-30 Suns and evenly distributed across most galaxies, and supermassive black holes, which weigh
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ASTRONOMER HAD BRILLIANT IDEA

The most accurate method for determining the mass of a black hole is looking at how the hole makes nearby gas or stars rotate around it. The black hole itself is invisible, as no light escapes. But by studying how much it affects other heavenly bodies, astronomers can estimate the mass. Right now, only the Hubble space telescope can produce data of sufficient quality. But unfortunately, Hubble has never observed the 18 black holes, which HlavacekLarrondo studies, and it was not possible to get it to do so within a foreseeable future. Instead, the astrophysicist used her knowledge about a simple, fundamental correlation between the amount of X-rays and radio waves emitted by the gas surrounding a black hole and the black holes mass. And the very X-rays around the interesting black holes had been measured very accurately by NASAs Chandra satellite.
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10,000-10 billion solar masses and are located at the centres of galaxies. But recent observations indicate that there is also a rare type of medium-sized holes. And now, the family of black holes has grown by yet another type: ultramassive holes with a mass of up to 40 billion suns.
jPl/nasa
Shining gas reveals black holes
DO BLACk HOLES SWALLOW EACH OTHER?

The last and still unsolved mystery is h ow t h e h o l e s b e c a m e s o h u ge . Astronomers know that small black holes arise, when big stars die. The stars collapse under their own gravity and end up as a singularity with the entire mass compressed into one point. Supermassive black holes may have occurred in collisions between small black holes. But in the case of the newly-found giants, this explanation is not sufficient. Astronomers are not sure, but according to one theory, they occurred when several big, very active galaxies collided. The central black holes swallowed each other and grew to massive sizes. This assumption is consistent with the fact that scientists are now quite positive that the majority of galaxy centres harbour a supermassive black hole including our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The black hole at the centre of the Milky Way is located approx. 26,000 light years from our Solar System. And by looking at how nearby stars orbit it, astronomers have estimated the mass at 4.1 million Suns.
Rogue giants: a new black hole subclass?

PHENOMENON: Black holes outside galaxy centres are normally relatively small and light. Consequently, it is a mystery that two black holes found in the arms of the IC 342 spiral galaxy are still able to make gas nearby shine brightly this would usually require a much bigger mass. The two black holes are so-called ULXs (ultraluminous X-ray sources). The holes have been spotted by an X-ray telescope, and the image has been fused with an ordinary photo taken in visible light, so the location in the galaxy becomes clear. POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: The ULXs may be a rare type of mid-size black hole. However, scientists do not rule out that we could be talking about ordinary black holes, which shine brightly for a so far unknown reason.
NEW DESIGNATION
Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo would still like to have her discovery confirmed by the Hubble telescope. With Hubble, the mass can be determined by analysing how heavenly bodies close to a black hole are affected by it. If Hubble provides the same result, the theory is very reliable. In connection with some of the 18 mysterious black holes, it has so far only been possible to determine a lower limit of their mass a minimum weight of the holes. In principle, the real mass may be much greater. By means of the Hubble telescope, Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo believes she may find a black hole with a mass of 100 billon Suns. If so, she must go back to work and find an explanation of its formation. And astronomers will probably also need to study their dictionaries in detail to find another word for the massive giants, as super and ultra are already taken.
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-273
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273 dEgrEES below zero is the temperature inside black holes. The extreme cold is very close to absolute zero.
SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
WorldMags.net four puzzling interstellar discoveries

in 2012, scientists discovered a black hole moving fast out of its galaxy. The peculiar behaviour is only one of a number of phenomena, astronomers are trying to explain.
cxc/nasa
collission sent black hole on long journey

PHENOMENON: Big black holes are usually located at the centres of galaxies, where they suck in mass for millions or billions of years . By combining data from several telescopes including NASAs Chandra X-ray telescope scientists discovered in 2012 that a black hole is moving out of its galaxy at a speed of several million km/h. The black hole is already far away from the centre, and at its present speed, it will leave its galaxy entirely some time in the distant future. POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: According to one theory, the black hole was originally two holes located at the centres of two different galaxies. Several billion years ago, the two galaxies collided, and the holes at their centres fused. The collision generated so-called gravitational waves, a type of ripple in space time the medium, in which all heavenly bodies move. Gravitational waves can have a huge effect on their surroundings, and astronomers believe that the waves may have sent the black hole on its a long journey, essentially washing it out like a stone on a beach.
Black holes
gsfc/nasa
Jet
Impossible twins, impossibly close

PHENOMENON: In the M82 12 galaxy millions of light years from Earth, new stars originate all the time. But among all the new stars, scientists have also spotted two black holes close to each other. The holes have not been sucked into the centre of the galaxy. POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: Scientists believe that these type of holes can be the beginning of supermassive holes at galactic centres. They do not have sufficient masses yet.
Gas cloud
Black holes eject powerful jets

PHENOMENON: When a black hole sucks in gas due to its violent gravity, the gas collects into a disc, which it is compressed and heated. Immediately before the gas passes the black holes event horizon, part of it is sometimes suddenly accelerated and sent far into space. The two opposite gas columns, called jets, are ejected along the black holes axis of rotation. POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: The two jets consist of particles, which move at a speed close to the speed of light. Astronomers do not quite understand how they are formed, but scientists have discovered that when the particles of the two jets collide at extreme speeds, they emit energy-rich gamma radiation. Analyses of the radiation are expected to indicate how the jets arise.
cxc/nasa
Galaxy centre Direction of motion
Black hole
Area enlarged
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FEATURE | space travel
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laika was a stray dog from moscow, who was chosen because the scientists concluded that she was used to tough conditions.
RIa novostI/scanPIx
SURvIvAl
1957 laikas cruel hightemperature fate

EXPERIMENT: Nobody knew whether
humans could endure weightlessness. So a stray dog, Laika, became the first living creature to orbit the Earth. Scientists did know that Laika would not return alive, as technology for reentering the atmosphere was not available, but they expected the dog to survive for a couple of days. Unfortunately, Laika died of superheating after a few hours, as the launcher did not part from the space capsule as planned. But scientists still managed to measure normal pulse and breathing in the dog.
WHAT WE LEARNED: In spite of her tragic fate, Laika proved that living organisms can survive without gravity, and she laid the groundwork for launch of humans.
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SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
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WorldMags.netfrom tHE ScIEntIfIc arcHIVES
animaLS in SPaCe:
by lea holtze
in the early space age, scientists wrestled with a great mystery: Can humans survive in conditions of weightlessness? To find out, animals took the first dangerous trips to test the extreme conditions in the name of science and pave the way for humans.
Y
1961
uri Gagarin of Russia became the first human in space in 1961. But his achievement took place four years after the space dog Laika. She proved that living creatures can endure the conditions outside Earths atmosphere and function in a state of weightlessness. Laika is only one of a long series of animal pioneers who have tested everything from gravitys influence on the nervous system to
space missions effect on our ageing processes. The mission of each animal was basically to test what humans could not or dared not do themselves. When Laika was launched in a Sputnik 2 rocket sadly with no return ticket in her suitcase the humans in charge of various space programs were not in any way sure that living creatures could survive without gravity, and they did not know how the body
WORk cAPAcITY
Space chimp was a space champ

EXPERIMENT: In January 1961, Ham the Astrochimp became an American
space pioneer when he joined Project Mercury. The experiment involved testing whether Ham could carry out duties in space. The monkey had been trained to push a lever after seeing a blue light. If he did not, he immediately got a mild electric shock via small electrodes on his body.
WHAT WE LEARNED: Ham diligently pushed the lever during the space mission pausing only one second longer than on Earth, proving that living creatures could do work in space.
after a job well done, Ham was pensioned off and lived another 17 years in two zoos.
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as early as 1970, bullfrogs were tested on space flights. In the photo, microelectrodes are attached to measure bodily functions.
getty/all oveR
WeIgHTleSSneSS
1973
arabellas first coweb did not quite measure up to the usual quality standards.
nasa
coweb spun without gravity

EXPERIMENT: Scientists wanted to find out, whether a
spider could spin a coweb without gravity, and the cross spider Arabella was included on the Skylab Mission in 1973. After 24 hours, Arabella began to spin a web, which was not one of her best. An astronaut removed the web, and Arabella - now acclimated to weightlessness, spun a new, and more well-constructed web.
WHAT WE LEARNED: Living creatures soon learn to adapt in conditions of weightlessness.
FeRTIlITY
1992 Frogs breed in space

EXPERIMENT: Embryos of a female frog were aboard NASAs Endeavour
space shuttle in 1992. Half were incubated in weightlessness, the other half in a centrifuge, which simulated normal gravity. For scientists, the mystery consisted in the fact that when an egg divides, a type of symmetry occurs at one point where it becomes clear, what is right and what is left. The theory was that the egg was guided by gravity, but the space experiments demonstrated that embryos can easily develop without gravity. In 1995, American scientists also carried out artificial insemination of eggs aboard the Atlantis space shuttle.
WHAT WE LEARNED: Frogs can easily be conceived and born in weightlessness and the same probably goes for humans.
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SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
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would react to being launche at a speed of more than 3,000 km/h. Scientific experiments showed that animals tolerated life in space surprisingly well. In the early days, the zoonauts could not be returned to Earth, as spacecraft were not designed to survive atmospheric re-entry. But measurements revealed that breathing, pulse, and other life functions functioned normally in most cases, even when the animals were hundreds of kilometres above Earth. Laika demonstrated that animals in space can both eat and react to their surroundings by barking. After Neil Armstrongs Apollo 11 moon landing, the ranks of zoonauts came to include turtles, insects, fish, and algae. Such creatures are smaller and easier to handle, and muscle reactions might as well be studied in roundworms as dogs. Algae could also be useful in connection with future utilisation of photosynthesis on space missions. Moreover, the small creatures are not as cute as big, furred animals and thus cause fewer problems with animal protection groups. again, animals are to help scientists. Before 2020, Danish Profesor of Gravitational and Space Physiology Peter Norsk must answer 32 questions about physiological risks facing astronauts on long-term missions: how they can be protected against muscle degeneration, kidney stones, and visual disorders caused by the increased pressure on the brain generated after a few months. To answer the questions, Peter Norsk and his colleagues will carry out a number of experiments, in which at least 1,000 rats and mice are sent to the International Space Station. So zoonauts will not be out of a job anytime soon.
MICE PAVE THE WAy TO MARS

Today, scientists would like to venture further into space and stay there for longer periods of time, particularly in connection with a future Mars mission. Staying in space for 500+ days has an unknown effect on the body, and once
BAlAnce
AgeIng
1998
oyster toadfish quickly find alternatives to gravity.
2003 Roundworms survived crash

EXPERIMENT: All seven astronauts were killed when the Columbia space shuttle
exploded upon reentering the Earths atmosphere on 1 February 2003, but by contrast, microscopic roundworms from the species Caenorhabditis elegans were found alive in a container among the wreckage in eastern Texas. The worms had been sent on a space mission, because they were the first multicelled life forms whose genomes had been completely sequenced. At the same time, humans share 50-60 % of our genetic muscle material with the tiny creatures. The worms are thus very well suited for stuying how long space missions will affect our physiology and muscles. The C. elegans roundworm Scientists could see that the worms thrived in space, and their muscles contained fewer toxic proteins than in peers on Earth. This is so, because seven genes change into a slower and less stressful rhythm of life.
nasa
Fish adapted
EXPERIMENT: Like all other vertebrates,
fish have a sense of balance, which is controlled by gravity. But what happens to the nervous system, when the balance organ is invalidated by weightlessness? On a mission with the Columbia space shuttle, scientists carried out no fewer than 23 experiments with oyster toadfish to see how their brains and nerves reacted to the unfamiliar conditions.
WHAT WE LEARNED:
Muscles including those of humans are probably able to adapt to long space missions and may even age at a slower rate.
WHAT WE LEARNED: The nervous system proved to be the bodys most adaptive system. Without gravity to guide them, fish quickly got used to swimming with their backs to the light.
roundworms may live longer lives in space.

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aIrcraft carrIErS
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BY THE NUMBERS
first appearing in WW2, these ocean giants are still being built. in 2015, the USS gerald r. ford will leave Virginia, USA, as the first of a new generation of aircraft carriers.
300,000,000
watts of electricity are generated by the aircraft carriers two A1B nuclear reactors. In comparison, an electric locomotive typically generates 5,000,000 watts.
91 yrs
1922
The first vessel designed to be an aircraft carrier, the Japanese Hosho, is put into service. Five years earlier, the British HMS Furious (above), was modified to allow planes to land. The first jet aircraft lands on an aircraft carrier, the British HMS Ocean, which is subsequently employed in the Korean War. Decommisioned in 1962. The worlds first nuclear aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, joins the US Navy. The last oil enginedriven ship, the USS Kitty Hawk, is introduced.
1945 1961 2001 2012

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SHIPS ARe FlOATIng cITIeS

Modern aircraft carriers are whole communities with up to 7 levelS below deck. Crew sleep in dormitories with as many as 60 colleagues and sailors working below deck often go without sunlight for stretches up to 2 WeekS at a time. The ships are complete with everything from cinemas and gyms to restaurants and dental clinics. The mess halls and cafeterias of an aircraft carrier serve up to 18,000 MeAlS a day. The Harry S. Truman even has its own Starbucks cafe.
SecOnDS
time it takes the airstrip wires to bring the 25t combat aircraft from 240 km/h to a standstill.
The first non-American, nuclear aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, is deployed in France. It is Western Europes largest warship. Chinas first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, is introduced. The refitted ship was originally Russian.
SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
by sren bjrn-hansen. Photos: us navy & us naval historical center
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370 km/h
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metres - length of the ships hull. The beast has a beam of 40 metres, and the flight deck itself is an epic 78 metres.
is the speed of a jet, when launched by electromagnetic catapults.
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7 coloUr palEttE
Different coloured worksuits indicate the roles of the deck crew.
Violet aircraft refuelling blue aircraft parking and lift operation Green catapult control, cargo yellow flight control officers reD weapons and ordnance specialists brown aircraft take-off white aircraft mechanics
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47,
BIllIOn DOllARS
is the price of one aircraft carrier. That many dollar coins would weigh 87,600 tonnes nearly twice the weight of the ship.
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are u 000 the Gsed for t o erald the c f st R. Fo onstru eel rd su ctio perc n of arrie r.
types of aircraft can take off from the Gerald R. Ford. Their reach is only limited by refuelling requirements.
4,500
people work on the Gerald R. Ford. Thats actually 1,500 than its predecessor, as several systems have been automated to reduce the total size of the crew.
30
knots - top speed of the ship, (approx. 56 km/h). Roughly as fast as a grizzly bear can run.
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TRIVIA WorldMags.net
1. Which indigenous inhabitants of Japan, especially of the northern islands, were only ofcially recognised by the Japanese government as a distinct ethnic group in 2008? 2. Of all the weird and wonderful quantum particles, which type of quark has the strangest name? 3. Consisting of many folded plates or pages that maximise surface area, which unique organ do spiders and other arachnids use to breathe? 4. What can Spacexs Grasshopper rocket do that no NASA rocket has ever done in the history of the space program? 5. If perigee means the point in an orbit closest to the Earth, what does perihelion mean? 6. In mathematics, does i (the square root of -1) come before e (the exponential function)? 7. If you drop a 2mm-diameter cylindrical magnet down a 2.5mm-diameter copper tube, will it fall faster or slower than it would in empty air? 8. In what ratio do people with Type II Diabetes (usually caused by obesity + genetics) outnumber those with Type I Diabetes (usually congenital)? 9. Established in 1583 with a voyage to Newfoundland and following the creation of the Plantations of Ireland, when did the British Empire nally come to an end (according to historians)? 10. Which US electric car company, owned by the sometimes zany billionaire creator of PayPal, is named after a famous Serbian mad scientist who competed with Edison (and also the measure of magnetic field strength?)
Trivia countdown (use fewer clues, get a higher score!)

5 POINTS 4 POINTS 3 POINTS 2 POINTS 1 POINT
1. FILms
Name this classic
This film was directed by hungarian Michael Curtiz and produced by hal b. Wallis for Warner bros. This subway features (as of 2013) 270 stations, and it boasts a total length of 400 km.
it was inspired by a by then neverperformed play named everybody Comes to ricks.
it featured several classic lines, not leastheres looking at you, kid and play it, Sam.
The lead actors are humphrey bogart and ingrid bergman. peter lorre plays a secondary role. The citizens rarely call their beloved subway anything other than the Tube.
The film, from 1942, is about war refugees trying to get to the US via the city of Casablanca. This metro is located in england in the same city as buckingham palace, Westminster Abbey, and big ben.
2. TraNsPOrT
Name this famous subway

3. CONFLICTs
The first train left in 1863, making this metro the oldest in the world.
A total of 11 lines make up the system, including the bakerloo line, the piccadilly line, and the Circle line.
Name this war
The english photographer roger fenton's photos from this war are among the earliest war photos.
russia fought against an alliance made up by england, france and some others.
Among the war heroes is nurse florence Nightingale, who took care of wounded soldiers.
The war was fought in 18531856. one famous clash is the battle of Sevastopol.
Much of the conflict took place in the Crimean peninsula, which is located in the northen part of the black Sea.
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BACkyARD JUNGLE
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FAmILy NAmE Drosera cOmmON NAmE Sundew DISTRIbUTION throughout Australia and every continent apart from Antarctica DIET Insects
KIllEr VEgEtaBlES: SUndEWS

hats covered in tentacles, lives in a swamp and has a voracious appetite for bugs? the sundew plant of course. Nature has many ingenious ways of surviving in adverse environments. Unlike the majority of animals, plants are destined to live or die in the exact spot that they strike their first roots. If the water or soil nutrient supply is lacking, they will likely wither and die there. through an ingenious adaptation, sundews are able to thrive in wet and boggy soil too nutrient-poor for most other plants. their leaves are covered in hundreds of tentacle-like stalks each crowned with a sticky blob of mucilage that both catches their insect prey and also digests them. the sticky secretion is sweet smelling and attracts passing insects looking for a feed. once caught, the sundew can bend its tentacles around the ensnared victim ensuring it doesnt escape. As the victim succumbs, either to exhaustion or suffocation from the sticky secretions clogging its spiracles, the leaves begin to secrete enzymes that fast track the digestive process. the plant then absorbs the nutrients through its leaves. Sundews can be found in damp or boggy areas, often in shade, where water collects but where nutrient-poor soil means mosses and other damp-loving plants cant proliferate. Sundew patches may be very small, just a few metres across, but crowded with dozens or even hundreds of plants. these patches are often quite isolated. Sundews are easy to find in the Blue Mountains near Sydney - the sandy soils and shady creeks provide an ideal habitat.
Damon Wilder is an award-winning photographer and the editor of naturalselectionmedia.com
trivia answers: 1. The Ainu 2. The Strange Quark 3. A book lung 4. land and launch again 5. The point closest to the sun 6. Though i is an imaginary number, its square is -1, which is less than e which equals about 2.718. So... kind of! 7. Slower - and it will also generate a small electric current. 8. 10:1 9. in 1996 with the return of hong Kong to China. 10. Tesla trivia countdown: name this film: Casablanca name this subway: The london Underground name this war: The Crimean War 82
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Science Illustrated Australia - Issue 24 2013

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Science Illustrated Australia - Issue 24 2013

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DEEP SUIT

Archaeologys latest toy

GIANT BLACK HOLES

Soon youll be fixed from the inside

What happens to the Earth

The eNd OF The WORld

Things we learned in this issue

LIFE AFTER HUMANS

Stuck on sticky sundews...

aStronomY WorldMags.net BULLS-EyE

TELESCOPIC HARDWARE FOR A NEW ASTRONOMICAL front row VIEW

Editors: Carsten Nymann & Emrah Sutcu

Life found in sub-Antarctic lake

Giant dino had miniature brain

Three drill sites:

THE Neanderthal died 10,000 years earlier

The UK had to give up

Americans were the first

Russians drill the deepest

The galaxys youngest black hole found

aStronomY In the 1,000-year-old

the W49B phenomenon captured by naSas chandra x-ray telescope.

Mussel glue to save unborn babies

Scientists test mussel glue on rabbit foetal membranes.

Scientists provide rats with infrared vision

Drinking water is filled with bacteria

Ground water 100 1,000 10,000 100,000 1,000,000

Stand out featureS in the CoSmoS BETWEEN 24 JULy AND 17 SEPTEMBER:

SEE WITH yOUR EyE

Searching for Survivors Around Giant Stars

SEE WITH BINOCULARS

SEE WITH A TELESCOPE

E IBle rEd Inc u ! but tr

diamonds improve sperm quality

Grim fate of the forams

dogs in their owners' shoes

Australian recreates 17 ,000-year-old face

3. handles pallets with hooks

NASAs new space rover Athlete is the ultimate cross-country rover.

17,425,170 Erupting volcanoes can blow bubbles

Waste protects astronauts

lava balls produced in the ocean

PEKING maN drEssEd IN LEaTHEr

EDITOR: Morten Kjerside Poulsen

HoW IS a SoccEr plaYErS WorK load mEaSUrEd?

A field player typically runs 10 km

Is the core of the milky way visible from EARTH?

Up to 16 cameras follow each players every move.

Maximum weight: 2,000 kg Length: 3.85 m

Maximum weight: 1,310 kg Length: 3.6 m

Maximum weight: 1,089 kg Length: 3.7 m

Maximum weight: 932 kg Length: 2 m

Soccer players work harder

Maximum weight: 900 kg Length: 3.6 m

What dogs can smell:

dogs can smell cancer.

do cYclonES alWaYS rotatE In tHE SamE dIrEctIon?

Can dogs smell cancer?

Left bend Southern hemisphere

WorldMags.net WHY doES BUttEr ExplodE In a mIcroWaVE oVEn?

What is the difference between an ocean and a sea?

WorldMags.net HoW IS a laSEr BEam prodUcEd?

How Things Work

Reflecting aluminium cylinder Quartz flash tube