JULY/

AUGUST
2017

CATCHING A CRIMINAL
EVOLUTION
AUTISM ANCIENT DNA
SURVIVING SPACE
THE PERFECT BATTERY
HOW WE DECIDE
MARIJUANA ALIEN CONTACT
DARK UNIVERSE
THE FUTURE OF FOOD
...AND MUCH MORE!
 The Apocryphal Jesus
Taught by Professor David Brakke
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
T I ME O
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8. Jesuss Statements beyond the Gospels
9. Conversations with the Living Jesus
10. The Gospel of Judass Gnostic Vision
11. The Gospel of Peter and the Talking Cross
12. The Apocrypha and Pilates Sanctication
13. Dialogues with the Risen Jesus
14. Hope and Adventure in the Acts of John
15. Social Disruption in the Acts of Paul
16. Thecla: Independent Woman of the Apocrypha
17. Miracles and Magic in the Acts of Peter
18. Peter versus Paul in the Pseudo-Clementines
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20. Spiritual Love in the Acts of Andrew
21. Forged Letters of Jesus and the Apostles

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 Contents
JULY/AUGUST 2017
Website access code: DSD1708
Enter this code at: www.DiscoverMagazine.com/code
to gain access to exclusive subscriber content.

VOL. 38, NO. 6

EVERYTHING SPECIAL
FEATURE
WORTH SECTION
KNOWING Nowadays,
its common
Starting on
page 28. to experience
information
overload on a
topic, only to discover
that a lot of that
info wasnt based on
rigorous research.
You wont nd that
here. This issue offers
legit science on
16 topics. Learn
the essentials about
Auroras, How
We Decide, the
Future of Food,
Catching a
Criminal, When
We Left Water
(Evolution),
Virtual Reality,
Asteroids,
Ancient DNA,
Marijuana,
Alien Contact,
Autism Spectrum
Disorder, Ice,
Surviving Space,
Yeast, the Dark
Universe and the
Perfect Battery.

Earths magnetic poles

ROEN KELLY/DISCOVER

create light shows in the

sky. Read more about
auroras on page 30.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 3

 Contents
COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS

6 EDITORS NOTE
Unspooling the
Essential Code
DNA threads through all the stories in
our special feature section: Everything
Worth Knowing.

9 THE CRUX
Lab-created meat is
taste-worthy for many
people; brain function
continues in a person
declared clinically dead;
cutting carbon dioxide levels
in the atmosphere may
require more than lowering
emissions; dive into our
favorite science summer
reads; and more. Read about the James Webb and
NASAs next telescope on page 83.

18 VITAL SIGNS NASA has plans for a bigger and

Under Pressure
A patient with pain complaints but
no sign of a serious condition is
actually a ticking time bomb with
a deadly malady.
BY CHRISTOPHER TEDESCHI
22 NOTES FROM EARTH
The Deserts Living Skin
A blanket of tiny plants and organisms
keeps drylands healthy. But what
happens when they disappear?
BY KATHERINE MAST
more powerful space observatory to
continue the quest to find other pale
blue dots in the universe.
BY KOREY HAYNES
94 PROGNOSIS
The Body Electric
A scientists innovative work
harnesses the bodys movements
to improve medical devices.
BY STEPHEN ORNES
98 20 THINGS YOU DIDNT KNOW
ABOUT

83 OUT THERE Powered by

Yoga
The discipline practiced by most
ON THE COVER
Meet the Next- magazine people today has little in common The Deserts Secret Life p.22
Generation
NASA/DESIREE STOVER

with the ancient tradition, but that Tomorrows Telescope p.83

Space Telescope doesnt mean you should toss out Everything Worth Knowing p.28
Even with the James Webb Space your mat and leggings. Cover illustration by Nata-Lia/Shutterstock
Telescope set to launch next year, BY GEMMA TARLACH

4 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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SCIENCE FOR THE CURIOUS

Editor's Note

BECKY LANG Editor In Chief

DAN BISHOP Design Director

Unspooling the EDITORIAL

KATHI KUBE Managing Editor
GEMMA TARLACH Senior Editor
BILL ANDREWS Senior Associate Editor

Essential Code MARK BARNA Associate Editor

ERIC BETZ Associate Editor
LACY SCHLEY Assistant Editor
DAVE LEE Copy Editor
ELISA R. NECKAR Copy Editor
Its in my DNA its just how AMY KLINKHAMMER Editorial Assistant

Im wound. How many times has Contributing Editors

that phrase run through your TIM FOLGER, JONATHON KEATS,
LINDA MARSA, KENNETH MILLER,
head? My hunch is more than STEVE NADIS, ADAM PIORE,
a few. Its an apt explanation COREY S. POWELL, JULIE REHMEYER,
STEVE VOLK, PAMELA WEINTRAUB,
for how you think, operate, JEFF WHEELWRIGHT,
get through life. DARLENE CAVALIER (SPECIAL PROJECTS)
Its that essential nature of ART
DNA thats the thread of this ERNIE MASTROIANNI Photo Editor
special issue, Everything Worth ALISON MACKEY Associate Art Director

Knowing. Weve taken over the DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM

magazines feature section with CARL ENGELKING Web Editor
NATHANIEL SCHARPING Web Staff Writer
16 stories that give you the basics Bloggers
as well as the new research on a MEREDITH CARPENTER, LILLIAN FRITZ-LAYLIN,
range of scientific disciplines. JEREMY HSU, REBECCA KRESTON,
JEFFREY MARLOW, NEUROSKEPTIC,
DNA is coursing through them ELIZABETH PRESTON, SCISTARTER,
all, from the latest forensic science CHRISTIE WILCOX, TOM YULSMAN
on how to catch a criminal to the ADVERTISING
ingredients needed for surviving STEVE MENI Advertising Sales Manager
888 558 1544
and prospering on Mars. DNA is smeni@discovermagazine.com

crucial to figuring out our future Rummel Media Connections

food supply, with a planet that will be home to more than KRISTI RUMMEL Consulting and Media Sales
608 435 6220
9 billion by 2050. kristi@rummelmedia.com
MELANIE DECARLI Marketing Architect
The intrinsic code of DNA sheds light on who strode our BOB RATTNER Research
planet before us, as anthropologists consistently learn more from DARYL PAGEL Advertising Services
ancient genomes. And those keys to life lurk as astronomers KALMBACH PUBLISHING CO.
search for any ping of alien life in our solar system. DANIEL R. LANCE Senior V.P., Sales & Marketing
Id argue that DNA is even part of virtual reality. We take STEPHEN C. GEORGE Vice President, Content
JAMES R. MCCANN Vice President, Finance
you through the basics of this alternate world, and how it can NICOLE MCGUIRE Vice President, Consumer Marketing
transcend normal life. Its a trip that goes beyond our DNA. JAMES SCHWEDER Vice President, Technology
ANN E. SMITH Corporate Advertising Director
And, as it happens, a pretty eye-opening way to unwind. MAUREEN M. SCHIMMEL Corporate Art Director
KIM REDMOND Single Copy Specialist
MIKE SOLIDAY Art and Production Manager

Becky Lang
Feel free to send comments and questions
to editorial@discovermagazine.com
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6 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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THE CRUX T H E L ATEST S CI E N C E N E WS A N D N O T ES

FUSION FRAMEWORK
With his robot assistant, a technician works on the worlds largest fusion research device of its kind at the Max Planck Institute
for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany. The experimental equipment, dubbed Wendelstein 7-X, will test the feasibility of
stellar nuclear fusion in which nuclei bind together and release energy as a clean energy source. It uses magnetic elds
from 70 supercooled magnets to contain just a few thousandths of a gram of superheated hydrogen plasma. The plasma must
sustain extreme temperatures about 100 million degrees Celsius, or 180 million degrees Fahrenheit before fusion can happen.
Wendelstein 7-X took more than 10 years to build and cost over $1 billion. ERNIE MASTROIANNI; PHOTO BY STEFAN SAUER/DPA/ALAMY

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 9

THE CRUX

NASAs Orbiting Carbon

Observatory-2 captures carbon
dioxide as it changes with Earths
seasons. This visualization shows
increased carbon dioxide in red.
Decreased levels are blue.

10 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 BIG IDEA

What Carbon
lasts about a decade will still
cause sea levels to rise for centuries.
The reason is fairly simple. Green-
house gases trap extra heat in our

Really Costs
Even if we curb emissions, wrangling greenhouse gases
will mean a price tag of trillions.
ATOP EARTHS LARGEST active volcano,
an alarm bell has tolled unheeded
for six decades. In 1958, Scripps
Institution climatologist Charles
Keeling began making precise
measurements of atmospheric carbon
dioxide concentrations at Mauna
Loa Observatory. Back then, Earths
atmosphere clocked roughly 310 parts
per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide. It
took just a year for Keeling to spot a
now-familiar upward trend.
You can think of it as taking
planetary vital signs, says Ralph
Keeling, who continues his fathers
work at Scripps today. The news isnt
good. In April, carbon dioxide hit 410
ppm, a 50 percent increase from pre-
Industrial Revolution levels. And its
been increasing roughly 3 ppm per year,
a record rate. Last year, 175 countries
agreed to reduce emissions via the Paris
Agreement, which optimistically
could hold global temperatures to an
increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius since
pre-industrial levels.
We are almost there already,
says glaciologist Eric Rignot of the
University of California, Irvine. I
think at some point, people will realize
weve already passed it.
NASAS SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION STUDIO
atmosphere, and oceans suck most of
it up. As the warmer water expands, it
causes sea levels to rise. And like a hot
bath, the ocean must radiate its heat
back out through the atmosphere
and into space for it to cool.
Former NASA scientist James
Hansen, now at Columbia University,
helped launch climate change into the
April study in Nature Communications. public sphere with his 1988 testimony
Add a few more centuries of similar before Congress. [A level of] 450 ppm
emissions, and carbon dioxide levels rise would guarantee disaster, Hansen
to those not seen in 420 million years, says now. If you leave it in place long
causing unprecedented sea level rise. enough, it would guarantee that you do
Keeling doesnt think itll come to lose the coastal cities.
that. New efficiency standards and And in a recent study in Earth
cleaner energy are already reducing System Dynamics Discussion, Hansens
emissions in the U.S. and other team writes that to reach 350 ppm,
countries. If such efforts humans must spend the next
register at Mauna Loa, it In April, century extracting billions
could show humans still have carbon of tons of carbon dioxide
some control. Its been an from the atmosphere. They
alarm bell so far the curve,
dioxide hit calculated a range of options
Keeling says. But if we start 410 ppm, a to reach that threshold, putting
to take positive steps, it can 50 percent the final price tag between $100
become a sign of progress billion and over $1 trillion
and hope.
increase each year, for roughly 80 years.
However, new research from pre- They found that returning
shows that reducing emissions Industrial Earth to 350 ppm by 2100
isnt a complete fix. If you Revolution requires planting trees on an
just stop emitting cold turkey, epic scale, as well as substantial
the temperature drops a little, levels. investments to boost soil fertil-
but it doesnt drop too much, ity so it holds more carbon.
says MIT atmospheric scientist Susan Wed also need large-scale tech to
Solomon. The temperature stays remove the gas, something not currently
almost as hot for 700 years. feasible. Others are exploring alterna-
Thats because the carbon dioxide tive approaches. A Harvard University
remains trapped in the atmosphere program is spending $20 million to
much of it lingers a millennium launch particles into the stratosphere to
later pumping more and more test a kind of solar shield.

Our current emissions trajectory
locks Earth into a carbon dioxide level
of at least 450 ppm, Ralph Keeling says.
And burning fossil fuels at the same
increasing rates through 2050 would
drive those levels to their highest point
in 50 million years, according to an
energy into the ocean. So temperatures
stabilize, but the seas keep rising.
This means humans actually have
to remove greenhouse gases to reach
levels scientists consider safe, roughly
350 ppm. And even short-lived
greenhouses gases methane
Some scientists fear that even
talking about such geoengineering
will embolden people to keep polluting.
But that hasnt stopped the discussion.
All the pollution we put in the air,
were going to have to take it back,
Rignot says. ERIC BETZ

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 11

THE CRUX
TRENDING BY LACY SCHLEY

Who Will Give Lab-Grown

Meat a Chance?
A recent study surveyed nearly 700 people to suss out
their attitudes toward meat created in a lab, so-called
in vitro meat (IVM). Here's what researchers found:

65%of respondents
Degrees of Separation
From life after death to life under the seabed.

would likely How long brain activity continued

MINUTES
33%
try IVM

10 after a patient was declared

clinically dead, according to a
recent case study.

4.4

MINUTES
How much longer it took heart attack
would likely eat and cardiac arrest victims to get to the
IVM regularly hospital via ambulance on mornings
when their city was hosting a marathon.

HOW MUCH ARE PEOPLE WILLING TO PAY FOR

5 MILLION
IVM COMPARED WITH TRADITIONAL MEAT?* MPH The approximate speed at
which scientists observed
1% 10% a supermassive black hole,
Much more No response
roughly 8 billion light-years
15% away from Earth, hurtling
11% through space.
Somewhat more Much less

800
34% 29%
The rate at which some TIMES PER
SECOND
No more, no less Somewhat less
mosquitoes can beat their
wings; researchers have
just gured out the unique
WHAT KIND OF IVM ARE PEOPLE wing movements involved.
WILLING TO TRY?*

20%
The minimal humidity level
TOP: AFRICA STUDIO/SHUTTERSTOCK. BOTTOM: NTNT/SHUTTERSTOCK

typical of most arid climates

63% 69% that a new solar-powered
45% Poultry Pork 71% device needs to harvest water
Fish Beef from the air.

10
The depth (a little over 6 miles) below the
KILOMETERS

5.3% 3.1% seabed at which life could exist. Mud samples

Horse Cat / Dog from underwater volcanoes near the Mariana
Trench, the deepest part of the ocean oor,
*Note: Participants who indicated no interest in trying IVM revealed chemicals usually produced by living
did not answer these questions. organisms. But the jurys still out on whether
Source: Attitudes to in vitro meat: A survey of potential consumers in the United States, PLOS One, 2017 anything is actually living down there.

12 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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14 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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 Vital
Signs
Under Pressure
A middle-aged man has common complaints of chest and
stomach pain, but the nal diagnosis is anything but typical.
BY CHRISTOPHER TEDESCHI
Scott arrived in the
emergency room by
ambulance around 3 p.m.,
complaining of chest and
abdominal pain. The medics
described him as pale and sweaty,
and said he may have passed out
for a few minutes when the pain
began. A seasoned triage nurses
immediate reaction: He doesnt
look right. Thats the last thing an
ER physician wants to hear when a
patient arrives.
Scott was a mostly healthy
48-year-old with untreated
high blood pressure. His initial
cardiogram showed possible
signs of reduced cardiac blood
flow and maybe even a heart
attack. But after negative cardiac
blood tests and improvement in
Scotts symptoms, the team agreed
that nothing was immediately life
threatening.
Healthy middle-aged men complain
of chest pain and upper abdominal
pain for dozens of reasons, from
indigestion to something serious like
a heart attack. Best guesses on Scotts
chest pain: high blood pressure, a
stomach ulcer, a panic attack. The plan
was to admit him to the hospital for
observation and more cardiac testing.
Wed keep him in the ER until a
hospital room became available.
At 8 p.m., Scott looked comfortable
when our team huddled around his
stretcher, squeezed next to other
patients on a crowded Friday night.
He was chatting with his family as they
drank apple juice from plastic cups.
He was still with his family a couple
of hours later, but his arms were
18 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
crossed on his belly, and he was slowly
rocking back and forth. He was a little
sweaty. And he had that pale look the
nurse had noticed earlier.
SEEKING ANSWERS
Scotts work-up revealed no objective
signs of trouble. No fever, no increased
heart rate, nothing scary on the
heart monitor. I swung around to his
stretcher to do a closer exam. He told
me his belly hurt, and he felt mild pain
when I pressed on the right upper part
of his abdomen.
Maybe this wasnt a cardiac
problem after all. Scott might have
painful gallstones or, at worst,
cholecystitis: inflammation of the
gallbladder that can be excruciatingly
painful, comes in waves and causes
some people to pass out. A quick
ultrasound could detect gallstones or
kidney stones, even internal bleeding.
I decided to take a peek.
For many of us who trained in the
past 15 to 20 years, the ultrasound
machine is a second stethoscope. The
technology first made its way into the
ER via the trauma bay as a tool
for a FAST (focused assessment
with sonography in trauma)
scan. Scotts FAST was negative.
I moved the ultrasound probe
up to his gallbladder to look for
gallstones. Nothing.
I like to think I am smart
enough to reason my way to a
diagnosis, even in patients with
vague or confusing complaints. But
something didnt make sense. His
pain was severe and unexplained.
While the odds favored something
harmless, his symptoms suggested
it could be far more serious.
Training in emergency medicine
means you are constantly asking
yourself, What is going to kill this
patient today? Thats different
from what most students are taught
in medical school, which is to ask,
What is most likely? In the ERs
intentionally paranoid world, headache
means brain bleed until proven
otherwise, chest pain means heart
attack, and abdominal pain means . . .
I slid the probe to the middle of
Scotts belly, pressed a little harder to
get intestines out of the way and found
his aorta, the main artery that carries
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2 centimeters in diameter. It pulsates
on the ultrasound screen when
pressure is applied.
The diameter looked right. But as I
rotated my wrist 90 degrees so that the
ultrasound could show me a picture
of the aorta lengthwise, the image
stopped me cold. The information
that made everything else fall into
place pulsed along with the patients
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 Vital
Signs

heartbeat on the screen. A thin but
unmistakable bright line bisected the
vessel, flapping back and forth in the
middle of the blood-flow area. I was
watching, in real time, an acute aortic
dissection. Scotts aorta was shredding
itself in two.
A DEADLY FIND
In an aortic dissection, the flap is
the innermost of the aortas three
layers, which because of high
blood pressure, atherosclerosis or
an inherited disease tears loose
from the surrounding outer portion.
The tear allows high-pressure blood
to flow between the layers, which
Blood enters
lining tear
of aorta
Dissection
Each year, there are roughly three to
four new cases of aortic dissection
out of 100,000 people in the general
population. That number may be
Jonathan Larson, who posthumously
won a Pulitzer Prize for drama for the
landmark musical Rent, visited two
New York City hospital emergency
departments over three days,
complaining of severe chest pain and
shortness of breath. A New York State
Health Department investigation found
that Larson was twice discharged with
diagnoses of food poisoning and
viral syndrome, according to the
departments report. Roughly 24 hours
after leaving the ER, Larson, age 35, was
found dead on his apartment floor. His
autopsy revealed an aortic dissection.
For an emergency physician,
diagnosing a condition so ominous

EVAN OTO/SCIENCE SOURCE

loosens them. The dissection splits
the aorta along a path that can travel
from the aortic valve through the
chest and abdomen.
Dissection is as rare as it is deadly.
20 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
an underestimate, however, as the
condition is often missed even after
multiple medical visits, or because
patients die before evaluation.
Its a hard one to diagnose. In 1996,
is a little unnerving. Suddenly youve
identified the sickest patient in the
ER. The patients survival now
depends on dozens of health care
providers, a specialized operating

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room and an intensive care unit, if the
patient is lucky. In an acute dissection,
the mortality rate can increase by as
much as 1 percent every hour after
symptoms appear.
It was now shortly before midnight,
nine hours since Scott arrived. A
thought filled my head: This guy is
going to drop dead in front of us
unless we do something right now.
SKIRTING CATASTROPHE
An emergency CT scan revealed
a dissection that started at the
ascending aorta, near the origin of
the coronary arteries, which supply
blood to the heart. It extended over the
aortic arch, down the descending aorta
through the abdomen and into the
smaller arteries that supplied blood to
the brain, intestines and kidneys. This
was a huge dissection, encompassing
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the aortas entire course and several
smaller branches. Any further
interruption of blood flow along that
path could deprive Scotts bowels, liver
or brain of oxygen.
Before sunrise, cardiac surgeons
replaced most of his ascending aorta
and arch with a synthetic graft,
essentially sealing off the leak. A new
aortic valve completed the repair, since
Scotts own valve was too damaged to
function properly after the dissection.
Scott spent a few days in the
cardiothoracic intensive care unit,
fighting through a minor infection
and the pain of open-heart surgery.
He left the hospital a week later with
prescriptions for several medications,
including four different drugs to
control hypertension. Though the
exact cause of his dissection remains
unknown, it was likely due to
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untreated high blood pressure and
possibly an inherited component yet
to be diagnosed.
As an emergency physician, I
often wonder how close Ive come to
catastrophe by missing a diagnosis. On
a busy night, the emergency team risks
the temptation to overlook the patient
with seemingly unrelated symptoms
who isnt in obvious distress. Equally
dangerous conditions can be subtle and
elusive, becoming apparent only after
time, thought and re-evaluation. And
then theres that final lesson: Always
respect the look. D
Christopher Tedeschi is an emergency
physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital
and assistant professor of medicine at
Columbia University Medical Center. The cases
described in Vital Signs are real, but names
and some details have been changed.
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 Notes
From
Earth
The Deserts
Living Skin
Communities of tiny plants and organisms protect arid
landscapes. Now their survival is threatened. BY KATHERINE MAST
On a cool September morning,
a caravan of international
scientists rumbles past the iconic
formations of Canyonlands National
Park in Utah. Over the eons, wind
and water have carved this landscape
into a maze of stunning red sandstone
arches and spires. The researchers
marvel at the formations, so different
from their own backyards places
as distant as China, Niger, Australia
and Spain. But when they pull into the
parking lot for a short hike to Pothole
Point, their attention goes straight
toward their feet.
A thick, bumpy film covers large
patches of the giant sandstone slabs.
The patches resemble burnt soil, as if
a fire left behind only these charred
remains. Up close, the spots mimic the
Canyonlands topography on a tiny
scale: Centimeter-tall towers rise above
a network of valleys. These dark, crusty
soils span the arid Colorado Plateau in
the Four Corners region.
22 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
Here, the ground is alive.
Biological soil crusts, or biocrusts,
are crammed with communities of tiny
photosynthetic organisms and other
life-forms. Biocrusts in some parts of
the world are mostly cyanobacteria,
one of the oldest microorganisms on
Earth. Other biocrust communities,
like these on the Colorado Plateau,
include mosses, lichens and fungi. The
first scientists to study them called these
living crusts cryptogamic Greek
for hidden marriage because their
inner workings were still mysterious.
And while they might seem secretive,
biocrusts are critical to healthy
drylands around the world. But now,
ecologists are worried that a changing
climate will put them in jeopardy.
DONT BUST THE CRUST
Drylands cover nearly half of the
worlds landmass and sustain more
than 2 billion people. Biocrusts are
important components of these arid
Desert locales like Utahs
Canyonlands (left) rely on biocrusts
lichens, mosses, fungi (below)
which take years to grow.
ecosystems. When it does rain and
in the desert Southwest, summer rains
come in monsoonal downpours
those peaks and valleys on the soil
surface help retain the water. That both
improves water absorption and reduces
erosion. Biocrusts also add nitrogen
and carbon to the nutrient-poor soil, a
critical service for plants. And, perhaps
most importantly, the cyanobacterias
sticky slime and the root-like filaments
of the mosses help bind soil to earth.
The wind can whip through
this ecosystem, almost knock you
FROM LEFT: BILL BOWMAN/UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO; JEFF MITTON/UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO
down, and this crust is going to
stay 100 percent solid, says Sasha
Reed, a research ecologist with the
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Southwest Biological Science Center
in Moab, Utah.
Despite their resilience to wind,
biocrusts crack under pressure. When
hikers, bikers and vehicles stray from
established paths, or livestock roam,
they can leave a trail of bare earth where
crusts used to live. Then, when the wind
blows, those areas kick up sand.
That dust is going to enter the
atmosphere, says Reed. Its fertility
leaving. Its going to be deposited
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 Notes
From
Earth

elsewhere. And when

dust from Utah settles on
Colorados snow-packed
Rocky Mountains, those
dark-colored sand particles
speed up spring snowmelt by
absorbing more solar energy.
Because of the limited
water of desert ecosystems
and other factors, it can
take a long time for these
disturbed areas to recover.
In the best-case scenario,
cyanobacteria will recolonize
the soil in five years or so. It
takes another 20 years for a
community rich with lichens
and mosses to establish.
In very dry places, like
Californias Death Valley,
scientists say full recovery
takes up to 250 years. And
alarmingly, recent studies
Scientists, like Jayne Belnap (left) and Sasha Reed (right)
show climate change can wipe from USGS, use test plots to explore how biocrusts handle
out biocrusts just as surely as climate change.
physical disturbance.
rainfalls. Or perhaps less frequent, but
CLIMATE MANIPULATION even larger, storms.
Some 12 miles northeast of Moab, Reed stands by a plot hit with
a thin electric fence partitions a mesa both heat lamps and light, regular
overlooking the Colorado River. water treatments. The ground looks
Inside are 20 experimental plots where trampled. Its surprising that just a
USGS researchers are simulating little water could cause this kind of
future climates to learn how biocrusts damage. Reed and Belnap think the
might respond. water gives the crusts just enough
Infrared lamps overhang some moisture to rev up metabolism, but not
sections, keeping them consistently enough to replace the energy theyve
7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the used, especially as heat speeds up
control plots. Other plots get regular evaporation.
doses of misted water. Some receive Whats troubling is how quickly
both. This allows scientists to look the warmed and watered crusts
at the individual factors of warming disappeared they were barren in less
and precipitation, and also study how than a year. You can tell right away
those two factors might interact. which ones got watered, says Belnap.
We know the temperatures are Everything used to look like that over
going to increase, says Jayne Belnap, a there, she says, pointing to a distant
USGS ecologist and biocrust research control plot with visible, thick crusts.
JENNIFER LAVISTA/USGS (3)

pioneer. Precipitation, thats a lot It was stunning and disappointing

more variable, and people dont really and somewhat gut-wrenching, says
know whats going to happen. The USGS researcher Scott Ferrenberg, the
future could bring light, regular rains. lead author on a paper analyzing data
Or we might see more frequent heavy from these experiments.

24 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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 Notes
From
Earth
Other researchers, like Fernando Maestre, a professor
at Rey Juan Carlos University in Spain, are doing
similar experiments in other parts of the world. Nearly
75 percent of Spain is classified as drylands. Climate
models predict really, really high warming for Spain,
particularly during the summer. And summer in Spain
is already really hot, he says. We need to know what
is going to happen before we can think of ways of
mitigating it.
Maestres experiments are showing results similar to
those from USGS.
ASSISTED MIGRATION
The future doesnt look good for biocrust
communities, and thus for the stability of desert soils,
as we continue to careen toward a warmer climate.
But researchers still hold out hope. Were trying to
turn to a more optimistic phase to see if theres some
way we could help these communities to return, says
Ferrenberg. Several universities are trying to culture
biocrust organisms in greenhouses and reintroduce
them to damaged landscapes. Results are mixed
so far. In China, government scientists sprayed a
cyanobacteria-loaded slurry over growing sand dunes
and stopped their advance. But recent experiments in
New Mexico and Utah have been hit-or-miss, and its
not clear why. The jurys out in terms of restoration
and how much success we might have in the face of
climate change, says Ferrenberg.
Scientists are also exploring assisted migration,
a controversial topic in ecology where species are moved
from a place they currently thrive in to places they might
survive as the globe warms. The Moab USGS team just
began a new common garden experiment to see which
crust communities might fare the best in a warmer Utah.
They gathered crust samples from different ecosystems
across the Southwest and grew them in a greenhouse at
Northern Arizona University. Early this year, the team
spread those samples in adjacent Utah plots. Similar to
climate manipulation plots near the Colorado River, half
of these plots are warmed with infrared lamps to
simulate the future.
Right now, the plots look like sand with confetti
colors. So, were waiting to see how those communities
take shape over time, says Reed. If the native crusts
cant withstand the expected warming, maybe the crusts
already adapted to hotter deserts could.
In the end, perhaps preserving the biocrusts
ecosystem function is more important than preserving
species native to the Colorado Plateau. D
Katherine Mast is a science writer in Santa Fe, N.M.
July/August 2017 DISCOVER
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27
 EVERYTHING
SPECIAL
SECTION

WORTH
KNOWING
We get it. Youre bombarded with new information
every single day heck, every hour. If only someone
were around who could sort through it all and
give you the freshest, most legit stuff in science,
p. 30 Auroras a knowledgeable guide who could plow through the
thousands of scientific papers published each week
p. 34 How We Decide and just tell you what you need to know, and what
p. 38 The Future of Food youd like to know.
With our latest collection of Everything Worth
p. 40 Catching a Criminal Knowing, we aim to catch your curiosity with the story
p. 44 When We Left Water of how our distant ancestors left the oceans, help
you learn the basics of talking to E.T. and make sense
p. 48 Virtual Reality
of the systems that affect how we make decisions
p. 50 Asteroids among other things.
p. 52 Ancient DNA Consider this special section your knowledge
curator, with its blend of shorter and longer takes on
p. 56 Marijuana everything from autism to yeast. Whether you revisit
p. 58 Alien Contact favorite subjects or discover something new, youll
walk away knowing more.
p. 62 Autism Spectrum Disorder Feel free to share your thoughts with us at
p. 66 Ice editorial@discovermagazine.com. THE EDITORS
p. 70 Surviving Space
p. 74 Yeast
p. 76 The Dark Universe
p. 78 The Perfect Battery

28 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
KELLIE JAEGER/DISCOVER

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 29

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
Auroras
KNOWING Colorful shape-shifters of the heavens.
BY ERIC BETZ

When the space weather is just right, one of natures grandest

J.C. CASADO-STARRYEARTH-GLORIA PROJECT

spectacles unfolds over Earths poles. Visible on clear nights, clouds of

glowing green slowly morph into gyrating arcs that cover the sky then
vanish. And repeat. At times the lights appear straight overhead, falling
as cosmic rain in shades of green, red and blue. Its a phenomenon
Aurora borealis, humanity has marveled at for millennia. Yet scientists are still
natures light show,
puts on a display over
unraveling its mystery.
Iceland in 2015.

30 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM

Carrington Event
Our modern understanding begins on
Sept. 1, 1859. British astronomer Richard
Carrington was tracking sunspots when a
group unlike any other hed seen appeared.
It sent out two intense ashes of white
light and vanished minutes later. Those
bright ashes signaled that an enormous
eruption the largest geomagnetic storm
in history was heading for Earth.
When it hit, the storm was so intense
that sparks shocked telegraph operators
through their machines and set their paper
on re. Rare red auroras appeared as far
south as Hawaii and El Salvador. Called
the Carrington Event, the incident showed
auroras were caused by solar activity but
half a century passed before science could
explain how.
Forecasters still struggle to predict this
space weather, and scientists have yet to
understand its subtleties. That ongoing
effort is vital to protecting power grids
In 1859, astronomer Richard Carrington
and satellites, which are sensitive to the observed strange sunspots evidence of
same power surges that have inspired awe the largest geomagnetic storm in history
for thousands of years. later reproduced in a sketch.

How to Get That Glow

Earth is a giant magnet with two poles. The magnetism
of the sun is a little more complicated. Our star has north
and south, plus a patchwork of polarities that rip holes
and cause eruptions from its atmosphere. You get a re
hose of particles coming off the sun, says Tom Berger,
director of the federal Space Weather Prediction Center in
Colorado. These ejections fuel the solar wind, which races
toward Earth at hundreds of miles per second.
As these wind-borne particles mostly electrons and
protons breach Earths atmosphere, they work just like
Vegas-style neon lights. Solar particles (the electric current)
stream down Earths magnetic eld lines (the tube) and
collide with molecules of nitrogen and oxygen (the gas),
exciting them until they glow in various colors.
FROM TOP: RICHARD C. CARRINGTON/THE MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY (VOL. 20, P. 13) 1860; ROEN KELLY/DISCOVER

Solar wind
A constant stream
of solar particles.

Solar
particles

Coronal mass ejection

Bursts of plasma shoot Magnetic eld
off the sun, accelerating The solar wind pushes
the solar wind. Earths magnetic eld
into a tadpole shape.

Coronal hole
Lower gas density and energy
make an area slightly colder,
and appear darker.
Prominence
A large, often looping arc of gas
that protrudes from the sun.
Special K
Geomagnetic storm magnitude is measured
using the Planetary K-index, after Kennziffer, a
German word for indicator. If the index rises
to 4 (on a 1-9 scale), auroras are likely and an
alert is issued, a handy heads-up for power grid
and satellite operators, as well as aurora chasers.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 31

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
KNOWING Auroras

E Electron

Paint With All the Colors Oxygen 400km

atom O
of the (Solar) Wind
O E
Earths atmosphere is mostly nitrogen and oxygen, Excited oxygen
but the exact concentration varies with altitude. emits radiation E
Red light 300km
Aurora colors do, too. Auroras happen when
charged particles smash into atmospheric gases O
and energize them. And each gas emits a
particular color as a result: Oxygen makes green E
Excited oxygen
light at common aurora altitudes, so thats what emits radiation
O E

we see most often. 200km

Nitrogen
atom N
Green light
Excited
nitrogen N E
emits
radiation 100km
Red light

AURORA
BOREALIS

Auroral oval
Auroras most often occur in this region, which
creeps toward the equator during
geomagnetic storms. Few auroras happen
very close to the geographic and magnetic
Magnetic
poles, though one uncommon type, the
eld lines Magnetic north pole
theta aurora, cuts across the ovals center.
Geographic north pole

Snap, Crackle, Pop!

Aurora watchers have long reported
hearing strange claps and crackles during
intense displays, but it wasnt until 2016
that scientists found a possible explanation:
an atmospheric phenomenon called an
inversion. A pocket of warm air, accumulating
negatively charged particles, forms between
layers of cold air full of positively charged
particles without mixing. Geomagnetic
disturbances force the accumulated charges
to discharge, creating sparks and sounds.

Geomagnetic
AURORA Cold air + + force +
ALL ILLUSTRATIONS: ROEN KELLY/DISCOVER

AUSTRALIS
- -
Warm air -

Magnetic
Cold air
+ + + pulse

32 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Space Weather Watchers
GOES-16
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administrations latest weather
spacecraft, launched in 2016, can also
monitor geomagnetic storms.
Solar Dynamics Observatory
NASAs sun-tracking spacecraft uses
sound waves similar to a medical
ultrasound to track action on the
back side of the sun. Seeing what could
soon face Earth lets companies prep for
geomagnetic storms.
Alien Aurora
FROM TOP: NASA (4); UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO/NASA; NASA, ESA, AND J. NICHOLS (UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER)
Earths not alone in its regular light
shows. In late December 2014, NASAs
MAVEN spacecraft watched auroras in
Mars atmosphere (right). And Hubble
caught auroras on Jupiter, too, seen in
ultraviolet light (below).
DSCOVR
NASAs DSCOVR spacecraft can watch
both sun and Earth, helping scientists
to better understand and predict space
weather.
Magnetic Reconnection
In 2015, NASA launched the
Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft
to study the mysterious interactions
between Earth and the solar wind
when our planets magnetic eld lines
occasionally break and reconnect, which
also affects auroral activity.
All the Highlights
30,000 B.C. Early Europeans may
have carved images of auroras into
rock art panels.
~A.D. 1000 The Sami, nomadic
Scandinavian reindeer herders who
live north of the Arctic Circle, believe
auroras were spirits of the dead. The
lights are still celebrated in a type of
singing called the yoik.
1619 Galileo coins the term aurora
borealis after the Roman goddess
of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek
northern winds.
1859 The Carrington Events intensity
still frightens scientists today.
Fortunately, ice core records show
events like that rarely hit Earth.
1882-83 Danish astrophysicist Sophus
Tromholt helps establish a northern
lights observatory in Norway to
determine aurora altitudes and shows
that auroras are more likely to happen
at the peak of the suns 11-year cycle of
solar activity.
1892 German astronomer Martin
Brendel takes the rst aurora picture
a fuzzy image captured in northern
Norway.
1909 Kristian Birkeland, a Norwegian
physicist, proves that the suns charged
particles create auroras when they
hit our magnetic eld. He put a
magnetized sphere a lab Earth
in a box and pummeled it with
electrons. The sphere glowed near its
poles.
1910 Another Norwegian physicist,
Carl Strmer, begins photographing
auroras, often simultaneously imaging
the same formations from different
directions. Over the next four decades
hell take 100,000 shots, mapping the
shape of auroras and determining a
typical altitude of 50 to 100 miles.
1958 Americas rst satellite, Explorer I,
discovers the Van Allen Belts, bands of
charged particles surrounding Earth
born from the solar wind.
1989 A solar eruption hits Earth on
March 12, sending northern lights as
far south as Cuba. A power failure
affects Quebec for 12 hours.
2012 A coronal mass ejection on par
with the Carrington Event blasts off the
sun and narrowly misses Earth.
July/August 2017 DISCOVER 33
 EVERYTHING
WORTH
How We Decide
KNOWING Make up your mind already!
BY ADAM PIORE

When were presented with a choice, we carefully weigh the alternatives and
choose the option that makes the most sense or do we? Only recently has
science begun to unravel how we really make decisions.
In the face of stress or time pressure, or $5 all at once to a second group, and ask the
even seemingly unrelated cues, our assessment people how many lottery tickets they would like
of situations and the choices we ultimately to buy. Youd think both groups would buy the
make can be colored by innate biases, flawed same number of tickets after all, they got the
assumptions and prejudices born of personal same amount of money.
experience. And were clueless about how they Nope. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon found
influence our judgments. These unconscious that the first group would consistently buy twice
processes can lead us to make decisions that, in as many lottery tickets as the group that was
fact, dont really make much sense at all. given the same amount of money but only one
If youre not convinced, go to a group of chance to buy lottery tickets.
people and offer each person a dollar. Do this Heres another way to see irrational,
five times, each time asking if the individual unconscious biases in action: Change your
wants to buy a $1 lottery ticket. Then offer hairstyle. This experience inspired Malcolm
Gladwell to write the bestseller Blink, which
looked at the science of snap judgments.
After he grew his hair long, his life changed
in very small but significant ways. He got
speeding tickets, was pulled out of airport
security lines, and was questioned by police
in a rape case, even though the prime suspect
was much taller.

Unconscious processes
can lead us to make
decisions that, in fact,
dont really make much
sense at all.
The lottery and hair scenarios provide
real-world examples at odds with traditional
theories used to predict human behavior.
These scenarios tell us that decision-making
can depend on perspective and unconscious
stereotypes. These kinds of biases do serve an
evolutionary purpose, many other researchers
have found. In some cases, making snap
decisions and following your gut can be an
advantage, especially in high-pressure, time-
sensitive situations.
DNY59/GETTY IMAGES

The hidden, unconscious processes at work

when we decide are so powerful that efforts to
uncover and understand them have won at least
two researchers the Nobel Prize in recent years.

34 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 CHECKS AND BALANCES
Daniel Kahneman won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for his widely referenced work in the area of human
judgment. Kahneman and others in his eld divide our decision-making process into two systems: System 1, with
its nearly instantaneous impressions of people and situations; and System 2, with its rational analysis and ability to
handle complexity. These two systems compete and sometimes overlap, acting as checks on each other.
System 1
That long-haired guy looks suspicious.
The stock market is going down I better
sell NOW!
This system generally offers preferences
based on patterns picked up by our brains
without our awareness. This is the source of
both unconscious biases that may lead to bad
judgments, and the insight from experts with
signicant experience in a specic situation.
This system tends to be fast, non-conscious
and emotionally charged, says Michael
Pratt, a professor of organizational change at
Boston College.
Neuroscientists often call this implicit
knowledge. According to Paul Reber, a
neuroscientist at Northwestern University, it
is the result of connections between groups
of neurons that form throughout the sensory
cortex after repeated exposure to two or more
stimuli together or in quick succession.
QUALITIES
Fast, Automatic, Associative
ADVANTAGES
It is faster and can take on an automatic quality,
which makes it useful for high-pressure, high-
stress situations, like combat or a basketball
game. It can be harnessed and, through training,
be used to speed up reaction times and save
mental energy.
DISADVANTAGE
Its not the best system for some kinds of
structured problems, such as those based on
math, in which there is one correct answer. Its
predictions and assumptions based on the sum
of previous experiences might not represent
current reality. It is vulnerable to unconscious
biases.
System 2
That baseball player reminds me of a young
David Ortiz, but appearances can be misleading.
I should ignore the compulsion to sell when
the stock market is going down. That is just
fear talking.
These decisions are analytical, deliberate and
rational. A dualistic notion of decision-making
has been around forever. People assume that
System 1 is bad and System 2 is good, says Pratt.
People have been unreective about that until
recently.
Neuroscientists have traditionally called the
information we use to make these decisions
explicit knowledge. It relies on the traditional
memory systems of the brain, such as the
hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, the
integral component of working memory.
One might liken the hippocampus to the brains
ling clerk for long-term memories lose it, and
you become an amnesiac, incapable of retrieving
memories or storing new ones. The prefrontal
cortex is the seat of the brains executive function.
Thats where we hold information we need
temporarily to calculate how much to pay the
babysitter or what to buy for dinner.
QUALITIES
Slow, Controlled, Rule-Governed
ADVANTAGES
It allows you to consider the consequences of a
decision before you make it. Also, it allows the
application of complex rules and information;
studied, analytical thought; and analysis. And it
can insulate you from the corrosive effects of fear
and emotions.
DISADVANTAGE
Its slower and can break down under stress,
causing you to choke.
July/August 2017 DISCOVER 35
 EVERYTHING
WORTH
KNOWING How We Decide

epileptic seizures. For the make them feel. Scenarios

A Tale of Two Horses
Ancient Greece Plato
compares the human will to
a charioteer, driven by two
horses, one representing our
rational or moral impulses,
and the other our irrational
passions and appetites.
Late 18th century Italian
criminologist and economist
Cesare Beccaria publishes an
essay called On Crimes and
Punishments, which would
form the basis of whats called
rational choice theory: People
will act in their own best
interest. Beccaria argued for
the principle of deterrence
in dealing with crime. He
contended that punishments
should be just severe enough
to offset any benet from the
crime. Beccarias ideas would
establish the foundation of
modern economic theory.
1890 Psychologist William
James provides what some
consider the modern origins
of dual process theory,
speculating that there are
two ways that people decide:
associative and true reasoning.
1936 Management theory
pioneer Chester Irving Barnard
argues that mental processes
fall into two distinct categories:
logical (conscious thinking) and
non-logical (non-reasoning).
Although the categories could
be melded, Barnard believed,
scientists relied mainly on
logical processes, and business
executives on non-logical when
making decisions.
1950s Herbert Simon analyzes
the role of intuitive decision-
making in management
in a scientic way. When
people make decisions, their
rationality is limited by time
and knowledge. Choices are,
by necessity, good enough,
Simon says.
1953 A patient known as
4 H.M. undergoes experimental
brain surgery to halt his
rst time, researchers nd
that decisions based on
unconscious learning, or
knowledge we dont know
we know, may rely on entirely
different brain pathways than
the parts of the brain we use
when we make conscious,
rational choices.
Late 1960s In a series of
experiments, psychologists
Daniel Kahneman and Amos
Tversky demonstrate the
downside of the way humans
make decisions, identifying
several unconscious, systemic
biases that consistently distort
human judgment. Kahneman
would win the 2002 Nobel
Prize in Economics for this
work. (Tversky died in 1996.)
1979 Kahneman and Tversky
4 time pressures, with a blend of
introduce prospect theory,
which describes how people
make choices in the face of
risk. Individuals are more
likely to base their decisions
on the potential value of
losses and gains and how
those gains and losses will
that are more vivid or
emotionally charged can
exert more power than less
emotionally charged but
equally probable scenarios.
4
1998 Psychologist Gary Klein
publishes Sources of Power,
based on his earlier work
in the mid-1980s. The book
would form the basis for
the new eld of naturalistic
decision-making. By studying
experienced reghters,
military commanders and
nurses, Klein contended that
intuition was not inherently
bad its just less accurate
when based on limited
experience. He argued that
experts make decisions in
high-stress situations, under
Systems 1 and 2: They notice
patterns, get an intuition on
how to handle it, and then
use System 2 to simulate and
evaluate that intuition.

Implicit Learning 4
In 1953, a patient named Henry Molaison underwent an
experimental brain surgery that halted his seizures. But
then Molaison couldnt form new long-term memories.
His misfortune made him famous.
By studying H.M. and other amnesiacs,
neuroscientists were able to prove the role of the
hippocampus and related structures in long-term memory
formation. Molaisons experiences also shed light on
unconscious, or implicit, learning.
Molaison was given a battery of tests, which conrmed
his complete inability to form long-term memories. But
one test contradicted the other results. Given the test
10 times across three consecutive days, he traced a star
on paper using a barrier and mirror. His speed increased
steadily, but each day when he arrived at the lab, he had
no memory of learning to trace the star.
Years later, Molaison was shown 20 line drawings of
common objects and animals in a series of sessions. He
eventually was able to identify the drawings even with
mere fragments. An hour later, he had no memory of ever
taking the test. Yet when he took it again, his scores still
improved. On some level, he had retained his ability to
correctly classify the fragments.
This form of learning is now known as implicit learning.
Unconscious Biases 4
Starting in the late 1960s, Kahneman and Tversky began a
collaboration that would eventually overturn the way people
thought about decision-making in medicine, economics and a wide
range of other elds.
They focused on heuristics a series of unconscious rules or biases
and how they can consistently lead us in the wrong direction.
The simplest and most powerful one is called the availability
heuristic. Sometimes we grasp for the wrong answer on instinct,
simply because it is easier to access and thus feels correct.
Kahneman and Tversky designed and administered a series of
questions to university students and their answers consistently
went against what one would consider rational thinking.
Students listened to recordings of lists of 39 names read aloud.
Some of the names were very famous people, like Richard Nixon,
and others were public gures who were less well-known. One list
had 19 very famous male names and 20 less-famous female names. A
second list included 20 less-famous male names and 19 very famous
female names. The students were then asked whether the list of
names included more men or more women. When the men in the
list were more famous, a majority of participants incorrectly thought
there were more men on the list, and vice versa for women. Tversky
and Kahnemans interpretation: Judgments of proportion are based
on availability. Students could more easily connect with the names
of better-known people.

36 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 4 High-
Stakes
A Split Decision
The brains two systems arent exclusive of each other.
They depend on shared connections and experience.
Decisions
In the 1980s, Klein wanted to
know how people made really
hard decisions under extreme
time pressure and uncertainty.
First responders and experienced
military commanders seemed
to make decisions the right
decisions under pressure all the
time. How did they do it?
To get to the bottom of this
phenomenon, Klein visited re
stations across the Midwest. When
he started out, Klein suspected
that expert commanders picked a
limited range of options to choose
from and then carefully weighed
the pros and cons. Klein expected
Sensory
SYSTEM 1
a rational, logical approach to cortex The basal ganglia, which helps
unfold in every commanders (brown) strengthen the speed of circuit
conscious mind an approach formation, and the sensory
based on System 2. cortex are major players. In
To his surprise, Klein Basal the sensory cortex (shown
consistently found the ganglia
(orange) in detail above), groups of
commanders looked at just one neurons develop patterns of
option. They knew what to do. ring that are re-established
By the time they became aware more easily with repeated
of the approach, theyd already exposure to stimuli. This is key
decided. Sometimes after the best to those split-second decisions,
approach popped into their mind, made under pressure.
they consciously imagined how
it would play out before actually
implementing it, to make sure
it would work. But for the most
part, their rst idea was the only
one they considered.
It really shook us because we
didnt expect that, Klein recalls. Hippocampus
How can you just look at one (red)
option? The answer was that they
had 20 years of experience.
Twenty years experience Prefrontal
gave the reghters the ability cortex
to do what Klein called pattern (purple)
matching. The process seemed to
involve complicated analysis of
sensory information that occurs,
BRAIN ILLUSTRATIONS: EVAN OTO/SCIENCE SOURCE. NEURONS BY JAY SMITH

somehow, entirely without SYSTEM 2

their awareness. After the best
approach popped into their
heads, the commanders didnt
compare it with others. Instead,
they just acted, their thought
process akin to the muscle
memory of a trained boxer.
It was unconscious, it was
intuitive, but it wasnt magical,
Klein says. You look at a
situation and you say, I know
whats going on here, Ive seen it
before, I can recognize it.
The prefrontal cortex,
which is the seat of the
brains executive function,
and the hippocampus
crucial to memory storage
and recollection work
together as the foundation
of explicit, rule-based
decision-making.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 37

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
The Future of Food
KNOWING How well serve 10 billion.
BY KATHERINE MAST ILLUSTRATIONS BY KELLIE JAEGER

Fifty years ago, two paradigms clashed over how to handle a growing
population. Some preached curtailed growth, while others believed human
ingenuity could meet the challenge.
Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted many millions of people
would starve in the 1970s and 80s. The only solution, he wrote in the book The
Population Bomb, was to curb birthrates. But plant geneticist Norman Borlaug
developed a high-yield, disease-resistant dwarf wheat that boosted global
agricultural production the Green Revolution. He persuaded developing
countries to adopt this new seed and later, an improved rice ultimately
tripling global cereal grain yield. Borlaug won the Nobel Prize in 1970.
As the world braces for another population bomb, scientists are still chasing
the next Green Revolution.

PROBLEMS

A WARMER WORLD
POPULATION BOMB Climate change will bring
Seven billion people now bigger storms and more
CALAMITIES
live on Earth. By 2050, the frequent droughts, as well as
Agricultural diseases and pests
population is expected to desertication in places like
age-old problems are amplied
hit 9.7 billion. Even though sub-Saharan Africa. Precipitation
by climate change. As the cold
the rate of malnutrition patterns will change, affecting
season gets warmer, winters
has fallen globally in recent agriculture, though its not
killing frost will do less to keep
decades, nearly 800 million certain how. These effects could
crop-eating insect populations
people still dont have be strongest in the Southern
under control. And this warmth,
enough food. To feed Hemisphere, home to the most
along with stronger storms and
the world in 2050, food rapid population growth.
altered precipitation, will spread
production must diseases where they once
increase by 70 percent. werent a problem.

38 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 SOLUTIONS
1
BOOST YIELD ON
THE LAND WE HAVE
Urban expansion coupled with
land lost to climate change means
growing more crops on less land.
Biotechnology has increased yield
by introducing new crops designed
to resist pests and disease, and to
withstand weed-killing herbicides.
Now, nearly all American corn and
soybean farmers grow genetically
2
modied seed. Certain varieties
of genetically engineered squash,
tomato and potato havent been
as widely adopted.
Future genetically modied
organisms (GMOs) could be more
heat- and drought-tolerant and
provide better nutrition. And the
gene-editing technique CRISPR
could soon let scientists tweak DNA
with new speed and precision,
leading to breakthroughs in crop
breeding. Experts say CRISPR could
make traditionally low-yield crops,
such as quinoa and wild legumes,
more farmable, and even introduce
traits that took thousands of
years of breeding, like reduced
bitterness, into plants that have
never been farmed.
But GMOs are no silver bullet.
They dont deal with the ecological
problems of modern agriculture, like
erosion and lack of soil biodiversity,
critics say. So other researchers
are developing perennial crops
that produce year after year, and
cultivating microbial diversity in the
5
soil to boost yield and nutrition.
3 EMBRACE UGLY
PRODUCE
About one-third of all food
never makes it from farm and
table. Corporations are trying
to transform our ideas about
the perfect piece of produce
by encouraging people to eat
ugly fruit. Supermarkets in
France can now be ned for
dumping food that is old yet
still edible. But its more than
EAT AN ANT just nes for supermarkets.
Mealworms, termites, beetles Stopping food waste means
and ants: Diets around the world education campaigns, meal
feature insects for protein, yet bugs portion sizing and removing
on the menu make a Westerners expiration dates on foods
stomach turn. Its time to expand that dont really expire.
our palates. Insects are packed
with easily accessible proteins
and nutrients; humans can digest
about 80 percent of an insect
compared with just 50 percent of
a chicken or pig. And theyre easier
on the environment than large-
scale livestock operations. When
comparing beef versus bug protein
pound for pound, cattle need 10
times more land than mealworms.
4
MEGAFARM-TO-
TABLE SHORTCUTS
The typical American meal
contains ingredients from
TOILET TO TAP
ve countries. This kind of
Water, water
globalized food trade has
everywhere, but not
ecological and economic
a drop to drink or
impacts. Regional food hubs
use for irrigation.
can shorten the distance
Reclaimed wastewater
from farm to market.
graywater, sewage
efuent and other waste
might seem gross, but
if handled correctly, it can
be a nutrient-rich way to
irrigate crops. In places
like Egypt, Jordan, central
Mexico and even the U.S.,
it already is. A similar,
but costlier, technique
can transform salty water
into usable drinking and
irrigation water.
July/August 2017 DISCOVER 39
 EVERYTHING
WORTH
Catching a Criminal
KNOWING Getting an edge with high tech and lowly microbes.
BY JONATHON KEATS
In 13th-century China, a field worker was killed with a sickle and all
villagers sickles were alike. So the investigator had every worker lay down
his tool in a field, and observed that just one sickle attracted blowflies, which
were known to seek out blood. Its owner, the culprit, immediately confessed.
The Chinese sickle slaying is one of the
first reported cases of forensic investigation.
The role of science in evidence collection and
presentation has only become more important
over time, and it continues to evolve at an
ever-accelerating pace.
New discoveries are bolstering even the
oldest techniques, such as fingerprinting,
first systematized by Englishman Sir
Francis Galton in 1892. For instance, in
2015, National Institute of Standards and
Technology chemist Shin Muramoto found
that ridges on a fingerprint release a substance
known as palmitic acid at a predictable rate,
allowing investigators to determine when
prints were laid down and whether theyre
temporally relevant to a crime. And at the
University of Albany, chemist Jan Halmek
recently published a method to determine the
40 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
sex of the person who left a print based on
proportions of amino acids found in skin oils.
One of the most significant developments
in forensics the advent of DNA profiling in
the 1980s also continues to advance. More
than just a means of tying a suspect to a crime
scene, genetic information can reveal clues
about a culprits appearance through a process
called DNA phenotyping. Indiana University-
Purdue University Indianapolis geneticist
Susan Walsh has successfully predicted eye
and hair color based on genetic markers
known as single nucleotide polymorphisms
(SNPs), and Pennsylvania State University
anthropologist Mark Shriver has used SNPs to
make predictive digital mugshots.
DNA phenotyping has met some
skepticism, which is important given
an individuals freedom may be on the
line; overconfidence and pseudoscience
both have a long and tragic history in
forensics. Exhibit A: Galton, the father of
fingerprinting, falsely claimed that criminal
tendencies could be detected in the faces
of people who physically resembled known
lawbreakers. Last year, a study released
by the Presidents Council of Advisors on
Science and Technology raised a fresh round
of concerns, finding inadequate scientific
support for standard techniques ranging from
ballistics testing to blood spatter analysis.
However, forensic science is also a powerful
technique to scrutinize itself, as researchers
discover and correct past inadequacies.
Studying the reasons why blood spatter can
be misleading, Loyola University Maryland
biologist David Rivers recently observed that
the blood was sometimes spread by flies. So
in a move that would surely have impressed
medieval Chinas CSI, Rivers developed a
spray that could distinguish bug-borne spatter
PASIEKA/SCIENCE SOURCE
by detecting fly gut enzymes in bloodstains.
Check out some other cutting-edge
ways researchers are advancing established
investigation methods.
 1
Examining
the Victim
When investigators nd a body, they
want to know how long ago the victim
died. There are numerous established
techniques, but each has signicant
limitations. Rigor mortis isnt very precise
over extended periods, and the presence
of telltale insects varies by region. In
contrast, microbes are always present
at a death scene, says Colorado State
biologist Jessica Metcalf. And the rise
and fall of microbial populations follows
a reliable course as a corpse decomposes,
even though the actual pace of activity
varies widely due to temperature and
other environmental factors.
Over the past several years, Metcalf and
colleagues have developed a microbial
clock to measure postmortem passage
of time by genetically sequencing the
population of microbes on the skin and
in the surrounding soil. Their experiments
at body farms outdoor facilities where
scientists study the decomposition of
donated cadavers have established
a timekeeping accuracy of two to four
days over a 25-day period. The microbes
can also show whether a corpse has been
moved and reveal the original location.
Tools from metagenomics sampling
trace genetic material in the environment
and methods of studying the human
microbiome are providing insights into
disease while bolstering the crime-
ghting potential of bacteria and
fungi. Were also working on using
skin microbes as trace evidence to link
people to objects they recently touched
or spaces they have recently occupied,
says Metcalf. Invisible and ubiquitous,
microbes are the ideal witnesses.

MICROBIAL CLOCK

1. Upon death, the

6. Following additional
breakdown by microorganisms,
including saprotrophic fungi,
the cadaver dries out. Bacteria
such as Sporosarcina consume
remaining compounds.
immune system shuts
down, allowing internal
microbial populations to
ourish. Their activity
produces gases, causing
the body to bloat.

2. As cells die, bacteria

from families such as
5. The abundance Moraxellaceae and
of microbial biomass Enterobacteriaceae
provides food for consume them,
microscopic worms. beginning the process
of decay. In addition,
Enterobacteriaceae
may attract insects,
which further aid
decomposition.
BACTERIA: KATERYNA KON/SHUTTERSTOCK. FEET: PICTURE PARTNERS/SCIENCE SOURCE

4. The corpse ruptures.

Oxygen enters the body, 3. Bacteria in families
along with an abundance such as Rhizobiaceae and
of aerobic microbes from the Chromatiaceae break
surrounding soil. down nitrogen sources.

Note: This
is just a small
sampling of the
many microbes
involved in
decomposition.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 41

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
KNOWING Catching a Criminal

2
Investigating
the Scene
of the Crime
From protein markers for hair, to
microbial clocks for cadavers, to sprays
for detecting y gut enzymes in blood
spatter, the tools and techniques of
forensic investigation now extend
beyond the expertise of any single
investigator.
As a result, the enzymes, microbes
and proteins that could prove crucial
to catching a criminal might easily be
overlooked at the scene of a crime.
Bringing in large groups of experts
would be impractical, wasting
precious time and potentially
contaminating evidence.
Working in collaboration with
the Dutch National Police,
researchers at the Delft University
of Technology have come up with
a solution that looks somewhat
like Pokmon Go: arm CSIs with
augmented reality (AR).
Investigators wearing shoulder-
mounted cameras allow off-site
specialists to observe the investigation
in real time. They can even annotate
the crime-scene video feed with text
and arrows that the CSI on the ground
can see on a wrist-mounted screen
or through glasses like Microsofts
HoloLens. The mobile policemen will be
Microsoft HoloLens
able to get in contact with remote
experts and solve cases more easily
together, explains Drago Datcu, a
former Delft University of Technology
researcher who now heads research for a
Dutch AR company called Twnkls.
Twnkls plans to commercialize the
system for law enforcement by the end
of the year. If it catches on, the Sherlock
Holmes of the future may nd himself
with a desk job.

View recorded
by camera INVESTIGATOR AT SCENE OFF-SITE SPECIALIST
Transmits view using Adds notes in real time
shoulder-mounted camera

AUGMENTED REALITY
Investigator can see notes
on wrist camera or glasses

TOP: MICROSOFT.COM/HOLOLENS. BOTTOM: ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER AFTER DRAGOS DATCU/DELFT UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
Shared display
is visible to
both parties

Annotations
placed on live
video feed of
the crime scene

SOFTWARE ANNOTATION OPTIONS

3-D arrows Area to record Warning Areas to Take DNA Barcodes tag Team Potential
highlight points with laser to avoid analyze samples for other potential notes dangerous
of interest scanning an area for prints analysis evidence substances

42 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 3
Identifying
the Culprit
DNA proling is universally accepted as
the highest standard for identication
in forensics, and it has been used
successfully for decades to convict or
exonerate suspects. In fact, a 2009
National Research Council report
on forensic science eviscerated all
other identication techniques, from
ngerprinting to bite mark analysis,
holding DNA as uniquely capable of
reliably distinguishing between any two
people on Earth.
TOP: ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER AFTER LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY/RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS/A NEW ROLE FOR HAIR IN HUMAN IDENTIFICATION. BOTTOM FROM LEFT: JULIE RUSSELL/LLNL (2); PARKER ET AL./ JOURNAL.PONE.0160653
at the University of California, Davis,
has been studying unique markers in
the proteins made by DNA. The major
advantage is that protein, particularly
hair protein, is more stable than DNA,
he explains.
Protein-based identication relies
on the mechanism that makes DNA
valuable for forensic identication.
Single nucleotide polymorphisms
(SNPs, used as genetic markers in DNA
proling) can produce single amino acid
polymorphisms (SAPs) in the amino acids
that make up protein. The challenge
for criminal investigation is to nd a
set of SAPs that can be easily isolated
and are collectively unique for each
human being. Parker and his colleagues
have already identied more than 100
protein markers, which together can
pinpoint one person out of 15 million.
Theyve also shown that these proteins
are stable enough in hair to identify
250-year-old human remains.
However, there is a gap between
feasibility and implementation, Parker
notes. We still need to optimize sample
processing so a single hair can be
analyzed. And they need to nd the
SNPs that can identify one person out
of 7.4 billion. He gives it a few years,
and in the interim expects to extend his
technique to skin akes. Criminals with
dandruff, beware!

But DNA also has limitations. It can

degrade and be difcult to extract from
HOW POLYMORPHISMS CAN PINPOINT A PERSON
trace evidence, such as skin
and hair. So Glendon
REFERENCE CODONS VARIANT CODON
Parker, a biochemist
Amino acids DNA
sequence ...GGT AGA TGC... ...GGT AG T TGC...
Single nucleotide
polymorphism (SNP)
Proteins are made
up of amino acids. Gly Arg Cys Gly Ser Cys Single amino acid
A peptide is two or polymorphism (SAP)
Protein
more amino acids ...Glycine Arginine Cysteine... ...Glycine Serine Cysteine...
sequence
linked in a chain.

A grouping of three nucleotide bases in a DNA sequence is called a codon. Each codon provides
instructions for creating a specic amino acid. Variations from the reference genome are called
polymorphisms and can be used as identifying markers. In this example, changing a single
Protein DNA nucleotide from A to T creates the amino acid serine instead of the expected arginine.

HAIR ANALYSIS: HOW IT WORKS

1. Hair from the crime scene is milled
and processed to break the proteins
into smaller peptides.
2. The peptide mixture is dissolved and
ionized, and then routed into a mass
spectrometer.
3. The instrument measures the weight
of the peptide and the weights of all the
pieces of the peptide when broken up.
The pattern that the fragments weights
create can be used to match the peptide
to a sequence of single amino acid
polymorphisms (SAP).
4. When a specic SAP is found in the
peptide sequence, the investigator
knows that individual had the DNA
to produce that polymorphism. If
the polymorphisms in all the peptide
sequences are consistent with those
of a suspect, then that suspect can be
associated with the evidence.

5. The more marker peptides detected

and compared, the greater the
probability that the match is unique
to the suspect.

Protein markers
create a pattern.

Biochemist Glendon
Parker holds a sample Mass
of human hair. spectrometer

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 43

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
When We Left Water
KNOWING How our tetrapod ancestors first came ashore.
BY GEMMA TARLACH

More than 350 million years ago, our distant fishy ancestors traded in the
life aquatic for land. Once ashore, these four-limbed vertebrates, called
tetrapods, branched into an impressive range of animals: amphibians,
reptiles, dinosaurs, birds and mammals. The fossil record shows that as
species evolved to fill particular ecological niches, a few of the tetrapod clan
Surf lost limbs (snakes), turned arms into wings (bats, birds and pterosaurs) or
to Turf decided the heck with dry land and headed back to sea (including whales,
seals and some marine reptiles).
While the fossil
The tetrapods move to land has long been one of the great evolutionary puzzles. Fossil
record from
this slice of the finds from this transitional period are too few to explain why or how it occurred, or exactly
Paleozoic Era is when the first fully terrestrial tetrapods evolved. Even so, researchers are getting closer to
too incomplete piecing it all together.
to say whether The tetrapod story starts with lobe-finned fishes nearly 400 million years ago. Unlike ray-finned
any of these
animals were
fishes, which make up the majority of fish species today, the lobe-finned varieties evolved with
directly related bony limb-like fins, a handy adaptation (no pun intended).
or just distant During the late Devonian period, starting about 375 million years ago, transitional fishapods,
cousins, the with both primitive, fish-like traits and adaptations for semi-aquatic living, begin to appear in
species represent the fossil record. Although these species had evolved stronger limbs with defined digits, they still
the transitional
nature of the
vertebrate move
from water
to land.

375 million years ago

385 million years ago Tiktaalik: Found at a single
site in the Canadian Arctic,
Eusthenopteron: Known this transitional shapod
from thousands of fossils, the had a number of skeletal
lobe-nned shs four meaty quirks, including 45 or more
limbs have the same pattern vertebrae. It also had the
of bones seen in the limbs of beginnings of a neck and
all tetrapods: a single bone a primitive wrist, as well as
nearest the body (your arms a middle ear tetrapod traits
humerus and your legs femur), not seen in sh.
two bones farther out (your
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAY SMITH

arms radius and ulna and your

legs tibia and bula).

44 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 werent truly tetrapods. All of them are a little weird,
says Cambridge University professor emeritus
Jennifer Clack, the grand dame of early tetrapod
research. None of them are like tetrapods from
later on. Thirty million years later, theyre
running about.
Researchers have yet to find the species
that can link early fishapods with fully
terrestrial tetrapods. We may be closer
to understanding how the transition
happened, however.
In the early tetrapod hotspot of southern
Scotland, for example, researchers
discovered that tetrapods apparently moved
to land during a wetter period: Many of
the tetrapod fossils turning up there have
been found in what were seasonal floodplains.
Its possible that aquatic tetrapods swam into
shallow waters or were washed in during storms
or seasonal monsoons. There, vegetation may have
sheltered them from the sun, preventing them from
drying out. An Acanthostega fossil
As researchers continue to hunt for the first landlubbers in
our lineage, heres what we know so far.

350 million years ago

365 million years ago Pederpes: This Scottish

nd is the earliest with
Acanthostega: Like its rough ve functional digits,
contemporary Ichthyostega, a pattern that would
another early tetrapod, this dominate later tetrapods.
creature had evolved digits The roughly meter-long
lots of them, as many as eight animal also appears to have
per limb. Acanthostega is also been capable of four-limbed
the rst tetrapod with a sacrum, locomotion on land, though
strengthening the pelvis-hind limb researchers believe it spent at least
TOP: SCIENCE STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY/SCIENCE SOURCE

connection. Researchers believe it some time in the water.

was still fully aquatic but may have
walked in the shallows.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 45

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
KNOWING When We Left Water

How to Be a Landlubber
Terrestrial life required four key adaptations for aquatic tetrapods.

1
LOCOMOTION
The muscles and bones in lobe-nned sh appendages
gave tetrapods, ahem, a leg up on adapting to life
Ichthyostega
on land. The rst vertebrates to forsake the seas reconstruction
probably didnt walk or even crawl, however. A 2012
reconstruction of early tetrapod Ichthyostega suggests
that it couldnt bend side-to-side like lizards do as
they walk. Its more likely the animal crutched,
like the modern mudskipper, using both front

FROM TOP: REPRINTED BY PERMISSION FROM MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS LTD: STEPHANIE PIERCE ET AL./NATURE 486, 523526 (28 JUNE 2012); SCIENCEPICS/SHUTTERSTOCK; RICH CAREY/SHUTTERSTOCK; EDUARD SOLA VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
limbs simultaneously to propel itself forward. The
shoulders and pelvis of early tetrapods expanded and
strengthened, allowing for load-bearing on land.

2
RESPIRATION
The common ancestor of both ray-nned and lobe-
nned shes had primitive internal air sacs that
allowed them to breathe air. For ray-nned species,
these sacs evolved into bladders for buoyancy
control. For lobe-nned shes tetrapod descendants,
however, the sacs evolved into lungs. Moving around
on land required signicantly more hufng and
Lobe-nned pufng and oxygen than swimming for early
sh tetrapods. Some researchers believe the atmosphere
when vertebrates were heading ashore had
signicantly higher levels of oxygen (30 to 35 percent
rather than todays 21 percent), which may have
made moving on land easier for the animals.

3
FOOD ACQUISITION
If you crawled or crutched your way from water onto
land, your biggest challenge wasnt breathing or
moving around; it was swallowing your food. In water,
sh can change the pressure in their mouths to force
water and food, which have about the same density,
into their esophagus. On land, the difference in density
between air and food makes that mechanism a no-go,
and helpful adaptations such as tongues and specialized
jaw shapes would not evolve until millions of years after
the transition to land. A 2013 study found that modern
eel catsh grab prey on land with their jaws but return
to water to swallow the meal. Its possible transitional Eel catsh
tetrapods did the same thing.

4
SENSORY SYSTEMS
In March, researchers found that tetrapod eyes
tripled in size just before they transitioned to land.
While that kind of increase would not have helped
the animals see better while swimming, it would
greatly expand their vision out of water. At about
the same time, the eye position moved from the side
to the top of the skull, as seen on some transitional
species, such as Tiktaalik. The combination of better
vision out of water and eye location suggests that
these shapods may have hunted like modern
A Tiktaalik fossil crocodiles, lying in wait in the shallows to ambush
prey on the shore.

46 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 The Trouble
With Trackways
In 2010, the apparent discovery of
terrestrial tetrapod tracks in Polands
Zachelmie quarry made headlines.
At more than 390 million years old,
the trackways would predate by
tens of millions of years the period
LEFT COLUMN FROM TOP: ADAPTED BY PERMISSION FROM MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS/GRZEGORZ NIEDZWIEDZKI ET AL./NATURE 463, 43-48 (JAN. 7, 2010); NIEDZWIEDZKI ET AL. RIGHT COLUMN FROM TOP: ROB CLACK; CENTER FOR BIOLOGY AND SOCIETY/ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
we thought tetrapods left water
for land. In 2015, however, another
study suggested the depressions
were from a sh nest, or imprints
of a sh feeding in a circular
pattern. Until researchers nd bones
associated with the trackways,
or at least from the same period,
we cant be condent about what
animal made them, or how.
A group of scientists believed the
fossilized imprints in this slab were
made by a tetrapod moving in a manner
shown in the illustration on top. But that
theory was called into question in 2015.
Mind the Gap
Burnmouth Harbor, shown at low tide, is one of several sites in Scotland where researchers
dug for tetrapod fossils. The work, part of a project called TW:eed, paid off. In 2016, team
members described ve new species of tetrapods from Romers Gap, a span of millions of
years nearly bereft of tetrapod discoveries.
Some of the most exciting research on tetrapods has come from an interdisciplinary
project based in the United Kingdom. Tetrapod World: early evolution and
diversication (TW:eed) re-created the environments these distant relatives called
home. The team also continued lling in Romers Gap, a span in the fossil record
from about 335 million to 360 million years ago that had long vexed paleontologists.
On the far side of the gap, named after Alfred Romer, the Harvard University
researcher who rst noticed it, tetrapods are rare
and ill-adapted for terrestrial living. Fast forward
to after the gap, and we see a diverse assortment
of terrestrial tetrapods.
TW:eed researchers focused on a handful of sites
in Scotland, which was much closer to the equator
and had a tropical climate when tetrapods were
rst coming ashore. In late 2016, team members
described ve new species of tetrapod and
identied fragmentary remains of at least seven
more, all from the Romers Gap era.
Thanks to detailed study of the layers in
a 500-meter-deep borehole at one of the fossil
sites, TW:eed members were able to determine the
tetrapods habitat was a mosaic of braided rivers
Alfred Romer and oodplains, with distinct dry and wet seasons.
While some invertebrates had transitioned from
marine to terrestrial environments millions of years earlier, even more came ashore
during this period, along with the tetrapods.
Carys Bennett, a geologist at the University of Leicester who specializes in
sedimentology and microfossils, says Romers Gap is becoming a misnomer as
more species remains are discovered. Its full of life, she says of the era. It was
a thriving time.
July/August 2017 DISCOVER 47
 EVERYTHING
WORTH
KNOWING
The
Money
In 2014, the VR tech
market totaled a
paltry $100 million
in sales. But in
just three years,
virtual universes
have undergone
a very real big
bang nancially. insatiable appetite for communicating with each
Sales of software
and hardware
should approach
$5 billion this year.
And if these trends
continue (a decent-
sized if), some
analysts say sales
could skyrocket to
$38 billion by 2020.
2016
$1.8 billion
2017
$4.9 B
2018
$13.6 B
2019
$23.4 B
2020
$37.7 B
Source: Superdata
Evolution of the
Multi-Metaverse
1935 Pygmalions
Spectacles, a short story,
features a holographic
48 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
Virtual Reality
Youre almost there.
BY STEPHEN ORNES
Forget reality: In virtual reality, you can be whomever and wherever you want.
VR makes the unreal real, using computer software and hardware that responds
to our bodys movements to immerse us in a convincing alternate existence.
Theres plenty of space to roam. VR places personal details: In most VR worlds, you cant
can be huge. In Second Life, an early pioneer see where other people are looking, or what
of virtual worlds, you can attend university, theyre doing with their hands. But while VR is
own a blimp, have blue fur whatever. famous for overpromising and underdelivering,
It includes more than 600 square miles of Rosedale sees progress being made on these
otherworld existence. The worlds of Minecraft, fronts think eye-tracking sensors, or
another digital sandbox, could cover Earth gloves that communicate gestures. Within
eight times over. a few years, personal VR meetups could be
The possibilities are endless. VR movies startlingly personal.
offer new vehicles for narrative structure. VR The future is exciting, but uncertain. VR
classrooms may reach students who dont environments including headsets can
thrive behind a desk. Soon, we may have virtual trigger motion sickness. And critics warn that
meetings, conferences, classes and parties. were becoming increasingly isolated and risk
According to tech entrepreneur Philip Rosedale, addiction or physical harm. Champions say
who founded Second Life, We have an VR brings us together. The only certainty is
that as this tech experiment evolves around
other. VR is the next medium in that regard. us, were all lab rats in the least natural
Right now, the visual fidelity of these environment imaginable one entirely
worlds remains somewhat blocky and lacks invented by humankind.
Medical Applications Patients walked on a treadmill
while watching a real-time
VR goes beyond fun and games. Doctors, engineers and video of their own feet
inventors want to help people with real-world medical walking. In the six months
problems using alternate realities. after the exercise, patients
who trained this way saw a
Conquer fear. Afraid of Manage prosthetics. 50 percent reduction in their
ying, spiders or tight spaces? Amputees can retrain muscles rate of falls compared with
VR exposure therapy may associated with lost limbs in patients whod only walked on
help reduce anxiety through virtual environments and a treadmill.
gradual, safe and realistic take new articial limbs for a
Live without chronic
contact with what haunts you. test drive.
disease. Alternate worlds like
Curb PTSD symptoms. VA Avoid falls. A recent study Second Life also offer a place
WILLIAM ZUBACK/DISCOVER
hospitals and others have showed a decreased risk where people who have chronic
begun using VR treatments that of falling in people with diseases can leave their physical
allow soldiers to safely revisit Parkinsons disease who bodies behind and interact with
traumatic memories. engaged with a kind of VR. other people online.
machine combining 3-D by humans and articial an immersive virtual
lm, sound and smells, intelligence. experience.
amounts to little more
than a fad.
1989 VPL Research
introduces the data suit,
1990s Online users
ock to text-based
1984 William Gibsons which includes sensors virtual worlds. Early
immersive experience.
novel Neuromancer all over the body and VR games, including
1950s Sensorama, a introduces the matrix, a bulky headset that Dactyl Nightmare, begin
phone-booth-like a VR space populated turns sensory data into appearing.
 THE TECH
Five Senses
Our perceptions are shaped by sounds, sights, feels, tastes and smells.
A convincing VR world needs to hit all those buttons.

What you hear: VR

What you see: VR
sounds have to line
goggles display 3-D
up with the visuals.
landscapes using
That often means
slightly different side-
recording with multiple
by-side images, one for
microphones and
each eye. Embedded
linking sounds to virtual
sensors monitor head
locations or objects.
movements and shift
the scene accordingly.
Microsofts HoloLens
What you smell:
even displays virtual
Soon, you might smell
objects overlaid on the
things that arent there.
real world; its often
A company called
referred to as an AR,
What you taste: FeelReal is building a
or augmented reality,
Epicures, rejoice! mask containing odor
device.
Researchers have capsules that let a user
unveiled devices that smell the owers or
mimic the sensation other odiferous objects
of tasting foods. A within a virtual
digital lollipop, for world (similar to the
example, stimulates the ride Soarin at Disneys
taste receptors with Epcot Center).
vibrations and electric What you feel:
signals to simulate Haptic devices use
avors. Relish the meal, ultrasound to create
forget the calories. midair illusions that
you can touch and
move. Can you hug
someone halfway
around the world? Not
yet, but someday.

1992 Neal Stephensons combine sound and 2014 Launch of Google worlds for thousands 2016 Wide release of
novel Snow Crash projected images with Cardboard, a cheap of gamers. the Oculus Rift, HTC
showcases the Metaverse, headsets to make headset that turns a Vive and PlayStation VR,
2016 High Fidelity, a
a virtual mega-reality immersive virtual spaces. users smartphone into a high-powered consumer
company from Second
where people connect VR platform. headsets that let users
2003 Launch of Second Life designer Philip
through the internet. move around in a VR
Life, an online 3-D 2015 SpatialOS debuts, Rosedale, launches a
environment.
2000s Engineers create fantastical facsimile of a platform for coders to new VR platform for
room-sized boxes that the real world. create seamless virtual world-building.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 49

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
Asteroids
KNOWING World killers. Life builders. And they could be worth trillions.
BY NATHANIEL SCHARPING ILLUSTRATION BY ROEN KELLY

Our early solar system was a wild place. Dust grains grew into pebbles, and
pebbles became world-building planetesimals. These rocks spun around
and bumped into each other in a chaotic dance that left a trail of debris in
its wake. The remnants of these festivities remain strewn about our cosmic
backyard. Many rocky and metallic bodies now orbit in whats called the Main
Asteroid Belt, between Mars and Jupiter.
More than just leftovers, asteroids offer clues to the earliest days of our solar
system, as well as the promise of valuable minerals and precious resources.
Assuming they dont kill us first.

Seek and Destroy The key to protection

is detection. A recent U.S. government
report proposed seven steps for an
asteroid survival plan. The most important:
Work together and nd them fast. Future
Hayabusa2 As the successor to the rst
projects, like the Large Synoptic Survey
asteroid sample-return mission, Japans
Telescope and NASAs NEOCam, will scan
Hayabusa2 hopes to make an even bigger
the sky for incoming threats.
impact literally. It will ram open a crater
to gather subsurface materials.

Near-Earth Objects Weve found more

than 15,000 near-Earth objects (NEOs)
comets and asteroids but there could
be hundreds of thousands more out there.
And they are indeed near: About 50 passed
between Earth and the moon last year.

OSIRIS-REx Launched in 2016, the NASA

mission will map asteroid Bennu and even
bring back a piece.

Mining Estimated to be worth billions

or even trillions, the asteroid rush has
already begun. Two U.S. companies, Deep
Space Industries and Planetary Resources,
already have prototype mining probes.
The companies goal: bring an asteroid
close enough to collect rare-earth metals
and water for future missions.

50 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Trojans Two separate groups of asteroids,
known as the Trojans, are ensnared by
Jupiters gravity. Their numbers could rival
that of the Main Belt asteroids.

Lucy Mission NASAs Lucy spacecraft is

set to swing by six of Jupiters Trojans
beginning around 2025 to get an up-close
view of this still-mysterious group of
ancient asteroids.

Main Belt Chill out,

Han Solo. Although
the Main Belt is
populated by millions
of asteroids, the odds Ceres NASAs Dawn spacecraft recently
of hitting one are tiny. brought the largest asteroid into view.
Theyre separated Its an active world with evidence of ice
by at least twice the volcanoes and an ancient ocean.
Earth-moon distance
on average.

Psyche Mission Scientists think the all-
metal asteroid Psyche was once the core of
a protoplanet. A NASA mission of the same
name will visit the 150-mile-wide nickel-
SPACECRAFT, CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: BRYAN VERSTEEG/DEEP SPACE INDUSTRIES; NASA; JAXA; NASA (3). MAP BY EKLER/SHUTTERSTOCK
COMPOSITION
Silicate and metal asteroids are
somewhat uncommon space
rocks most others are mainly
carbon. But rare metals, a tiny
slice of the compositions below,
make them lucrative mining
targets.

iron body in 2030 to nd out.

Panspermia Life
might have a cosmic
origin. We know some
precursor molecules
came to Earth from Metal
space because amino asteroid
acids are found in
meteorites fallen
space rocks. But some
scientists believe life
might have started on
Mars and traveled to OIron 91%
Earth after impacts. ONickel 8.5%
OCobalt 0.06%

IMPACTS Silicate
Small rocks can make a asteroid
big bang: The 2013 Kara crater
Chelyabinsk meteor Popigai crater
was 65 feet across,
but the shock wave Manicouagan crater
Sudbury crater
shattered enough
glass to injure over 1,000 Lake Tai crater OOxygen 36%
people. But dont panic. Large Chicxulub crater OIron 26%
impacts happen about once OSilicon 18%
every million years. South OMagnesium 14%
Africas nearly 200-mile-wide
OAluminum 1.5%
Vredefort crater places Vredefort crater Warburton crater
rst among Earths largest Morokweng crater ONickel 1.4%
conrmed impacts (right). Acraman crater OCalcium 1.3%

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 51

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
Ancient DNA
KNOWING The lure and limitations of a coded past.
BY BRIDGET ALEX

In 1984, geneticists recovered 229 base pairs of genetic code from a quagga,
a subspecies of zebra extinct since the late 1800s. The achievement proved
DNA could survive in dead things and spurred a new field of science:
paleogenetics. Today, technological advances allow scientists to read
billions of letters from the genomes of ancient humans and other organisms,
transforming our view of history and evolution.
The genetic record is like a lost library . . . ancestors of some living humans, contributing
and were just starting to learn the language of genes beneficial in cold environments and at
all those books that we have uncovered, says high altitudes.
Johannes Krause, director of archaeogenetics A decade ago, these discoveries were not
at the Max Planck Institute for the possible; geneticists could only read
Science of Human History in short stretches of ancient genomes.
Jena, Germany. Consequently, studies focused
For anthropologists, either on particular genes or
ancient human DNA on narrow portions of DNA:
(aDNA) provides insights the male Y-chromosome or
that could not be gleaned maternally inherited code
from fossils or artifacts. Its called mitochondrial DNA.
already settled some major These short sequences do not
debates, including whether reflect an individuals complete
modern humans interacted ancestry. For that, researchers
with Neanderthals. Ancient Quagga need DNA from across the full
genomes show definitively that our genome. Obtaining it from living
ancestors not only met, but mated with humans is not difficult, but its a formidable
Neanderthals multiple times between challenge to extract and sequence genome-wide
40,000 and 100,000 years ago. aDNA, which can degrade into fragments,
In 2015, aDNA confirmed that Kennewick undergo chemical reactions that change its
Man, an 8,000-year-old skeleton found in code, and be contaminated by modern DNA.
Washington state in 1996, was genetically With the recent development of specialized
closest to Native Americans. The revelation methods for genome-wide analysis of aDNA,
ended a 20-year legal battle and allowed tribes the power of archaeogenetics has really been
to rebury the bones. unleashed, says Krause.
Ancient DNA has also brought Now encompassing a half-million years and
surprises. In 2010, the genome hundreds of individuals, ancient DNA studies
of a pinky bone from Siberia are revising our understanding of major events,
DNA: ORANGE DEER/SHUTTERSTOCK. QUAGGA: FLORILEGIUS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
revealed the existence of such as the origins and spread of agriculture.
Denisovans, a previously Because aDNA can be used to track the
unknown type of human evolution of diseases and human resistance to
that lived around the them over time, its also valuable to medical
time of Neanderthals. research. And researchers are already working
Denisovan aDNA on identifying the genes unique to modern
also shows they humans at the most basic level, what unites
interbred with the and defines our species.

52 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Decoding aDNA 101
1. Extraction: In a sterile lab, bones 2. DNA soup: Despite cleaning, the extract
and other surviving tissues are cleaned, is a soup of DNA from the sample and
crushed into powder and dissolved with contaminated material, mostly microbes
chemicals that isolate short DNA strands. from soil where the remains were buried.
Researchers add molecular tags that will
later work like barcodes, selectively binding
to DNA to inventory and nd particular
sequences.

Ancient
human DNA

Modern
human
DNA

Microbial DNA
3. Copies: To read the DNA quickly and accurately,
computers must analyze millions of copies
simultaneously. Geneticists make these copies by
heating double-stranded DNA, causing it to separate;
enzymes then build new double-strands from each
half. Repeating the procedure makes two strands into
four, then four into eight, and so forth, until
millions of strands have identical DNA code
and tags. Because human genomes are
over 99 percent identical, researchers
often selectively copy only the
parts that differ. 4. Sequencing: In the nal round of
copying, geneticists chemically color the
different nucleotide bases better known
by their letters A, T, C and G. Computers
then read the code based on the order in
which the colors appear, analyzing all the
identical strands with matching tags at the
same time to weed out any errors.

Heat

5. Authentication: Researchers use a number of

clues to discard contaminants in the ancient code:
For example, aDNA strands are usually shorter than
100 letters, with predictable degradation patterns.
Ancient hominin reads
T CC A A A GC A T C A C C A C C A A T A A C T C A T C A T T CCC T A G T G A A T GG A C A G T C

Ancient DNA
fragments
Rejected pattern

A T CGGG A C T C A GG

GG A C T C A GGC A C T T G A T T A 6. Alignment: The short strands that have been read need
Ancient
hominin reads to be arranged into their proper positions across the full
A GGC A C T T G A T T A C C T
CYNTHIA SCHROEDER

genome. Software lines them up based on overlapping

stretches of code and comparisons with previously
T T A C C T C A A G A T C C T A C GG
sequenced reference genomes.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 53

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
KNOWING Ancient DNA

Take It to Ancient DNA Atlas

the Limit The rst big discoveries in paleogenetics came from chance
specimens with well-preserved aDNA. Researchers learned whatever
Dont get your hopes up for
they could from the available sequences. With todays aDNA capture
dino DNA. Studies conducted
in the 1990s, reporting methods, geneticists can analyze hundreds of ancient genomes to
genetic code from fossils answer specic questions. The emerging genetic history spans the
over 50 million years old, globe from 430,000 years ago to today, representing
have since been rejected as both individuals and entire populations.
cases of contamination. Most
aDNA has come from samples
younger than 50,000 years,
and from cold climates.
Although paleogenetics is
advancing technologically,
it will always be limited by
preservation: Researchers
cant extract DNA from
specimens that no longer
have any.
When organisms die,
their DNA decomposes. How
long this takes depends on
factors like temperature,
burial conditions and the
number of microbes making
a meal of it. Calculations
predict that in the optimal
conditions very cold
ones DNA could survive
around 1 million years. To
date, the title for oldest Earliest American Genome
complete genome belongs (Montana 12,600 years ago) In 2014,
to a horse unearthed from researchers recovered the genome
frozen ground in Yukon, of Anzick-1, an infant buried with
Canada, and dated to be Clovis tools, artifacts from the
560,000 to 780,000 years rst widespread culture in the
old. The oldest DNA from a Americas. The results conrm

member of our Homo genus
is a fragment of genetic
code from 430,000-year-old
Neanderthal ancestors found
in Spains Sima de los Huesos
cave, which stays at a cool
50 degrees Fahrenheit.
Geneticists are starting
to have success in warmer
places, which is a priority
because most of human
evolution occurred in Africa.
Recently, they discovered
that DNA preserves best
with up to 100 times
higher recovery rates in
the petrous bone. Samples
of this tiny, dense part of
the skull from places such
as the Middle East have
yielded aDNA thats up to
12,000 years old.
MAP: EKLER/SHUTTERSTOCK; CLOVIS TOOLS: SARAH ANZICK; FUR SEAL: CYRIL RUOSO/NATURE PICTURE LIBRARY
that Native Americans mostly
descend from Siberians who
migrated several thousand
years before Anzick lived.
Seal Tuberculosis (Peru 1,000 years ago)
Tuberculosis in the Americas is thought
to have arrived with European
colonists, although earlier
indigenous skeletons show signs
of the disease. A 2014 study
found tuberculosis bacteria
DNA in 1,000-year-old Peruvian
bones; in a surprise twist, it was
not the European strain, but one
likely contracted from seals.

54 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Before the Black Death (Eurasia 3,000-5,000
years ago) In 2015, geneticists discovered aDNA
from plague-causing Yersina pestis bacteria in
the teeth of Bronze Age Eurasians, revealing
that less-contagious strains infected people
millennia before historically documented
pandemics. The bubonic types responsible
for the medieval Black Death and recent
outbreaks emerged about 3,000 years ago
from a mutation that made Y. pestis ea-borne.
Ice Age Immigrants (Eurasia 7,000-45,000
years ago) aDNA from 51 individuals reveals
the earliest modern humans to reach Europe
went extinct; those arriving in subsequent
waves, starting 37,000 years ago, left
descendants who remain to this day. There
may also have been a migration of Near
Easterners into Europe roughly 14,000 years
ago, detected for the rst time by aDNA
analysis in 2016.

Oldest Homo DNA (Spain 430,000 years ago) Denisova Cave (Altai Mountains
Researchers in 2016 salvaged about 50,000 base 50,000-100,000 years ago) Samples
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: JAMES CAVALLINI/SCIENCE SOURCE; MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY; JOS ANTONIO PEAS/SCIENCE SOURCE; MAX PLANCK/SVANTE PBO; JAVIER TRUEBA/MADRID SCIENTIFIC FILMS/SCIENCE SOURCE

pairs of genetic code from fossils excavated of aDNA from one nger fragment
years before in the Sima de los Huesos cave. and three teeth found in Siberia
The aDNA conrms what revealed Denisovans, a newly
many archaeologists have discovered type of extinct human.
long believed: The The same site also yielded a
Sima hominins were toe bone, which produced the
Neanderthal ancestors. highest-quality Neanderthal
genome sequenced so far.

First Farmers (Middle East

and Europe 3,000-14,000 years
ago) Analyses of hundreds of
genomes show how early Middle
Eastern farmers spread to Europe,
mixed with hunter-gatherers and
adapted to agricultural diets,
Neanderthal including through a lactase gene
Great- . . . Grandson mutation that allowed people to
(Romania 40,000 drink milk after childhood.
years ago) Oase 1, the
jawbone of a modern
human found in 2002,
contained over 99
percent contaminant
DNA. But in 2015
researchers
sequenced
enough
authentic code
to show that
the man had
a Neanderthal
ancestor a
mere four to six
generations back.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 55

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
Marijuana
KNOWING The blunt truth.
BY LACY SCHLEY

Humans have used marijuana, or Cannabis sativa, for thousands of

years, for religious purposes, medicinal remedies or simply getting high.
These days, 1 in 8 Americans ingest or smoke marijuana, and the drug
faces renewed scrutiny as more states wrestle with legalization. While
the legislative battles rage on, scientists continue to study the effects this
plant can have on us, therapeutic and otherwise.
But the work isnt easy. The U.S. government hasnt legalized
marijuana and still classifies it as a Schedule I drug with high potential
for abuse, no accepted medical use and no safe use under medical
supervision. To study it, experts must secure samples with a Drug
Enforcement Administration stamp of approval. That makes for some
serious restrictions for researchers, though theyve made some headway.

Know The Big Players

Your Lingo
Cannabinoids
Any chemical that interacts
with the cannabinoid systems
in the body; these can include
cannabinoids that come from
the plant, from the body or from
synthetic variations.
Phytocannabinoids Cannabinoids
that come naturally from the
cannabis plant.
C. sativa has hundreds of chemical compounds, from
fatty acids to the terpenes that give it its distinct smell.
But the most studied are cannabinoids. Below are the
most common cannabinoid subclasses and their general
impact on the body.
O Cannabidiols
(CBD): Painkiller, anti-
inammatory, antioxidant,
anxiety reducer,
antipsychotic, suppresses
muscle spasms.

Endocannabinoids O Tetrahydrocannabinols
Cannabinoids the body makes (THC): Painkiller, anti-
on its own. inammatory, antioxidant,
euphoriant, suppresses
nausea and vomiting.
O Cannabigerols
(CBG): Painkiller, anti-
The Bodys inammatory, antibiotic,
antifungal.
Cannabinoids O Cannabichromenes
(CBC): Painkiller, anti-
In the 1990s, researchers realized inammatory, antibiotic,
humans can produce their antifungal.
own cannabinoids
O Cannabinols and
LEFT: JAY SMITH. RIGHT: DREAMWAVES/SHUTTERSTOCK

Endocannabinoids through the bodys

endocannabinoid cannabinodiols (CBN,
system (ECS). The CBND): Anti-inammatory,
ECS is a complex antibiotic, sedative, anti-
chemical convulsant.
Receptors
signaling system O Others: Includes
that has two cannabicyclols (CBL),
Receptors main receptors cannabielsoins (CBE),
Neurotransmitters located in many cannabitriols (CBT) and
areas of the body. other miscellaneous types.

56 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Good for What Ails You Theres Always
Scores of studies have found that a Downside
cannabinoids can help with specic disorders
and diseases, but not all studies are created Plenty of promising research shows
equal. Many of them use different doses, the pros of marijuana use, but also
administer those doses differently some serious cons.
and can use combinations of
cannabinoids with different ratios. Brain function and mental health:
Long-term use could lead to panic
So a lot of the results are hard to
disorders and psychosis. If youre a
compare and dont always agree. longtime user who started lighting up
Below are some disorders and in your teens, your hazy days could
diseases where cannabinoids predispose you to depression. To top it
seem medically helpful. off, repeated exposure to THC can have
a negative effect on areas of your brain
that deal with forming memories, like
OO Sleep the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.
PSYCHIATRIC/
disorders
NEUROLOGICAL
DISORDERS THC improves sleep Heart health: Even minor use of
quality and quantity cannabis can cause your heartbeat
O Anxiety and for some people; to ramp up, and mess with your
panic disorders CBD increases blood pressure levels and blood ow.
CBD reduces alertness. (Research has shown both increases
symptoms. and decreases in blood pressure.)
O Schizophrenia
CBD reduces O O O O O Anti- Sexual and reproductive health:
psychotic symptoms. inammatory Men, if youre looking for some
O Parkinsons All of the most com- action, best mind your marijuana
CBD alleviates mon cannabinoids habits: Chronic use can lead to erectile
psychotic symptoms relieve swelling. dysfunction and a decrease in overall
and some issues sexual functioning (pleasure, orgasm,
with motor control. desire and arousal). And if you want
O O O O Pain to start a family, theres more bad
Most of the common news. THC has been shown to restrict
O O Heart function cannabinoids sperm mobility and its ability to fuse
THC and CBD relieve pain. with eggs. Very heavy male users (who
combination relaxes smoke eight or more joints daily) even
some arteries. risk reducing their sperm count. As for
women, researchers have yet to really
investigate how cannabis impacts
them between the sheets, and studies
OTHER DISORDERS looking at human female fertility have
been inconclusive.
OO MS
THC alleviates Dependence: You cant overdose
ODigestion MS-related pain; on cannabis, but you can develop a
complications THC and CBD dependence. Up to 17 million people
THC eases chemo- combination reduces globally meet the ofcial classication
related nausea and muscle spasms. when it comes to cannabis. Hallmarks
vomiting, helps O AIDS include inability to lessen intake,
improve symptoms THC increases using even if youve had physical or
of irritable bowel appetite and helps psychological issues related to cannabis
syndrome. with weight gain. and spending more time than youd like
O Epilepsy CBD seeking to buy the drug and recovering
reduces convulsions. from its effects. If youre trying to kick
OO Immune O O Cancer the habit, expect symptoms such as
system THC and CBD mood swings, a lack of appetite and
complications combination trouble sleeping.
THC and CBD reduces chemo-
COOLGRAPHIC/SHUTTERSTOCK

combination related nausea and Further reading: Handbook of

alters growth and vomiting, manages Cannabis, edited by Roger G. Pertwee.
function of certain pain, stimulates Stoned: A Doctors Case for Medical
immune cells. appetite. Marijuana, by David Casarett.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 57

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
Alien Contact
KNOWING Hey, it could happen!
BY SARAH SCOLES

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has been going for
more than 50 years, with ever more sophisticated detection systems and
creative ideas about how E.T. might come calling. Astronomers havent
heard anything yet, but perhaps its only a matter of time. Check out what
theyve been looking for, how they would know if they found it and what the
aftermath might be.

How to Listen
The universe emits many signals of its own. Black holes send out bursts of radio waves, X-rays
and gamma rays. The dusty disks of forming planetary systems shine in infrared waves.
Scientists must separate those so-called dumb signals from the smart signals that might come
from extraterrestrials. Because of that necessary sifting, they assume that aliens would try
to make their messages look different from the natural pings of the universe. In general,
astronomers look for two hallmarks of technology.

Synthetic Frequency compression: Narrowband signals come in on

narrowband signal a small range of frequencies, like an individual radio station.
Broadband signals spread across a wider range, like a broadcast
that contains the whole FM band at once. Natural objects can
only make signals so skinny, so if scientists see one that covers
a tiny range of frequencies like a laser or a satellite ping
INTENSITY

Natural they know it had to come from technology.

narrowband
signal

Noise
Time compression: Scientists
look for signals that last only for
Broadband signal a ash and repeat, perhaps in a
pattern that looks purposeful.
FREQUENCY

BONUS! Almost-but-not-quite-natural-looking: Astronomers also keep their telescopes

eyes out for anything that looks nearly natural. When researchers discovered fast radio bursts
superquick bursts that release at least as much energy in milliseconds as the sun does in a month
they threw around aliens as a (dim) possible explanation. And when astronomers discovered
a star in 2015 whose light seems to occasionally get blocked by something big, one researcher
proposed it was an alien megastructure. We still arent sure what causes either phenomenon, but
scientists are studying them as natural emissions from the universe.

99.959% How much searching astronomers

Are We There Yet? still have to do to cover 1 million stars.
LEFT: WIREMAN/SHUTTERSTOCK. RIGHT: JAY SMITH

You wouldnt dip a glass in the ocean, come up with no sh

inside and conclude, No sh exist. Astronomer Jill Tarter
often says thats where humans are with SETI. To ll enough
glasses to get a good sense, researchers want to look at
1 million stars within 1,000 light-years of Earth and scan all the
frequencies between 1 and 10 gigahertz. When theyve done
that, maybe theyll have caught a sh or two or will at least
be able to say more about how many swim in the cosmic sea. 0.041% How much of that search they have
Heres how close theyve gotten, proportionally, to that goal. completed, for all radio SETI projects.

58 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 An artists rendering of
the TRAPPIST-1 system
Searches Past
and Present
1960Astronomer Frank Drake performs the
rst modern SETI experiment, called Project
Ozma (after a Wizard of Oz character). With
an 85-foot radio telescope in Green Bank,
W.Va., he looks at two sunlike stars for signs
of alien technology.

1961A small SETI conference takes place

in Green Bank, at which Drake presents
whats now called the Drake Equation,
which scientists use to estimate how
many extraterrestrial civilizations may
exist in our galaxy.

1973Ohio State University undertakes a SETI

program with its Big Ear Observatory.

1979The University of California, Berkeley,

begins a long-lived project called SERENDIP
the Search for Extraterrestrial Radio from
Nearby Developed Populations at Hat
Creek Observatory in Northern California.

1983At Harvard University, astronomer Paul

Horowitz launches Project Sentinel, using an
84-foot radio telescope.

1988NASA endorses its SETI studies, and

Our Best Bets scientists begin building the instruments they
need to perform a search.
Just as you wouldnt bird-watch in interior Antarctica, you wouldnt search
for aliens in inhospitable environments. Astronomers have discovered 1992NASAs SETI project, now the High
Resolution Microwave Survey (HRMS), turns
thousands of planets, but only a few so far meet our basic requirements for paperwork and plans into a physical project at
possibly hosting life: being rocky and in the habitable zones around their Goldstone Observatory in California and the
stars (where water can stay liquid). Here are a few potentially life-friendly Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.
star systems where astronomers will aim their alien-seeking telescopes.
1993Just a year after its start, HRMS ends
when Congress cancels its funding.
PROXIMA CENTAURI
The star system closest to our sun has a planet Proxima b similar to 1995The private SETI Institute raises
Earths mass. No one knows if it has any water, but its just 4 light-years away, philanthropic funds and starts Project
so maybe we could nd out in person someday. Phoenix, a reincarnated version of HRMS.

WOLF 1061 1995Horowitz continues his SETI work

The second planet in this stars solar system is the next-closest Earth-ish-sized at Harvard with the Billion-Channel
planet in a habitable zone, after Proxima b. Its just 14 light-years from where Extraterrestrial Assay (BETA).
youre sitting right now.
1999Berkeley launches the citizen science
GJ 667 project SETI@home, which lets your computer,
A mere 22 light-years away, this solar system has three super-Earth planets in its downtime, dip into SERENDIP data.
between Earths and Uranus mass in the habitable zone. And in the hunt
2005The SETI Institute begins building a
for extraterrestrial life, every possibility counts.
telescope dedicated to searches for aliens.
TRAPPIST-1 2015METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial
Some 39 light-years away, this sun has three potentially rocky planets in its Intelligence) International begins an
habitable zone and bonus four additional rocky planets. Thats seven optical SETI program at the Boquete
Earth-ish-sized planets in one spot! Observatory in Panama.

KEPLER 186 2016The $100 million Breakthrough Listen

About 561 light-years away, the fth planet discovered in this dwarf-star project, sponsored by Russian magnate Yuri
NASA/JPL-CALTECH

system circles its stars habitable zone. The planet was the rst astronomers Milner, begins a 10-year search that includes
found with a size similar to Earths. both radio and optical strategies.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 59

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
KNOWING Alien Contact

Should We Transmit So You Think Youve

a Message? Discovered Aliens
In addition to listening for E.T.s phone calls, we could Heres what to do when a candidate signal is detected
also try catching his attention. But scientists arent sure (informally called the First SETI Protocol, formally called
whether thats a great idea. Declaration of Principles Concerning the Conduct of the
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence):
SUPER PRO
Douglas Vakoch
President, METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial PING! A candidate SETI signal arrives at your telescope.
Intelligence) International
One of the assumptions we
typically make is that if there are
civilizations out there, they will DO A DOUBLE-TAKE. Look at the same spot
take the initiative in letting us know again. Does the signal show up?
theyre there. But if they do what were
doing, well never make contact. I want to send an
intentional message letting other civilizations know that
YES NO
we want to engage in the conversation.

PRO
Seth Shostak Does it come from the
Senior astronomer, Center for SETI heavens or the Earth?
Research at the SETI Institute
GAME
Im in the pro-transmitting
HEAVENS EARTH OVER.
camp! says Shostak. In one
E.T. didnt
position paper, he explains that
phone.
if an alien society wanted to
destroy us, keeping quiet wouldnt REPEAT. Gotta make
keep us hidden anyway: Any putative sure of these things.
extraterrestrials who are in possession of technology
that would allow them to threaten our world will also
be able to detect [our] unintentional leakage signals.
Call up your telescope operator friends.
ANTI Do they see the same suspicious signal NO
Jill Tarter coming from space?
Former director, Center for SETI Research
at the SETI Institute
We arent grown-up enough to YES
take on 10,000-year projects, and
transmitting for a moment or a
year makes no sense. Transmission Call even more friends, and have them call friends (an alien
is in our future, assuming we make phone tree!) to monitor the signal round the clock and
it to the advanced technological round the globe.
civilization status.

SUPER ANTI Call everyone involved with your project and scream joyfully.
Stephen Hawking
FROM TOP: SETH SHOSTAK (3); REX FEATURES/AP IMAGES

Physicist and mathematician,

University of Cambridge; author Tell (Presumably)
of A Brief History of Time Hang up
everybody build the
Hawking has warned that the phone.
in the whole spaceship
broadcasting our existence could world. from designs
end with an unpleasant visit from they sent
highly evolved aliens. Such advanced you.
aliens would perhaps become nomads, Put your data
looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they online, because
can reach, he said in 2010. The history of our own aliens are for
species backs him up. everyone.

60 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Tomorrows SETI
How we might hunt alien signals in the future.

Dyson sphere searches: Energy-hungry civilizations might put Dyson

spheres around their stars. These structures collect visible light and
transform it into infrared radiation (heat energy) that would show up as
TOP: MARC WARD/SHUTTERSTOCK. CINEMA IMAGES FROM TOP LEFT: WARNER BROS./COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION; UNIVERSAL/GETTY IMAGES; PARAMOUNT PICTURES/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION; 20TH CENTURY FOX/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION; MGM/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION;

unexpected excesses in astronomers data.

Broadband searches: A broadband message, spread across many

frequencies, can encode tons more information than the more presumably
typical narrowband one. But the message would then be spread thinner
and harder to pick up. Sophisticated algorithms are learning to sort
through data to nd these complex missives, just in case.

Optical SETI: The search for visible-light signals from extraterrestrials is

just beginning, as the technology that detects the light inside telescopes
Dyson sphere
visualization becomes more powerful, affordable and able to detect faster ashes. And
who knows? Maybe aliens like lasers.

Cinematic SETI
Sometimes, ctional lm people meet extraterrestrial
beings. When the encounters are good, they are very,
COLUMBIA PICTURES INDUSTRIES/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION; COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION; 20TH CENTURY FOX/PHOTOFEST; SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION

very good. But when they are bad, they are horrid
and leave humans destabilized or dead. Here, weve
ranked some of the most famous rst-contact movies
according to how naughty or nice the aliens are, as
well as how realistic they, their technology and Earths
response are.
BENEVOLENT

Contact Arrival E.T. the

Extra-
Terrestrial
Close
Encounters
of the
Third Kind

2001:
A Space
Odyssey
OUT THERE
REALISTIC

Signs The Abyss

John Carpenters
The Thing

District 9 Alien

Independence War of the Star Trek:

Day Worlds First Contact
AGGRESSIVE

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 61

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
Autism Spectrum
KNOWING
Disorder
Many questions, few answers.
BY MARK BARNA

There is no cure. The causes are only partially understood. And treatments
are limited to tackling symptoms, not the condition itself. One in 68
Signs and school-age kids in the U.S. have autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a range
Symptoms of developmental conditions usually marked by social, behavioral and
communication issues. While researchers are making progress in figuring out
of Autism ASDs causes and developing better treatments, theres still a long way to go.
Spectrum
Disorder
Social interaction
A NEW SPECTRUM
Avoids eye contact,
prefers to be alone,
Autism was once separate from other developmental complications such as Aspergers syndrome,
avoids physical pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) and childhood disintegrative disorder. But in 2013, the
contact, irritable, fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the standard medical
anxious, might reference for mental disorders, merged Aspergers, PDD and the old definition of autism and
be interested in
created the catchall term autism spectrum disorder.
people but doesnt
know how to talk Many experts argued the new label would be more helpful; despite including a broader range
or relate to them. of symptoms, the revised definition is worded more clearly and thus is more specific. But in
practice, other medical professionals and families have criticized the change. Although the
Communication evidence isnt cut and dried, there are several anecdotal accounts of some high-functioning
Difculty
patients who met the old, more vague criteria but not the updated one losing medical
expressing needs
with typical words services associated with autism.
or gestures, doesnt
look at objects
when someone
points to those The ASD Rainbow
objects.
The autism spectrum describes people with a wide range of developmental disorders. Many who
Repetitive were high-functioning used to be diagnosed separately as only having PDD or Aspergers. (Most
behaviors people with autism are diagnosed as children.) Now, medical experts use a series of levels to gure
Obsessive interest out where patients lie on the spectrum.
in limited areas,
adherence to AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER
routine, repeats
particular
movements
such as hand
apping or rocking
back and forth.
HIGH-FUNCTIONING AUTISM SEVERE AUTISM
Sensory overload AUTISM
Unusual reactions LEVEL 2 LEVEL 3
or sensitivity LEVEL 1 Needs substantial support Needs very substantial
to light, noise, Needs support Patients social and support
IUNEWIND/SHUTTERSTOCK

smells, tastes and Patients social and communication skills and Patients social and
textures, such as communication skills and repetitive behaviors are still communication skills and
the roughness repetitive behaviors are only obvious to the casual observer, repetitive behaviors severely
of clothing. noticeable without support. even with support in place. impair daily life.

62 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 RISK FACTORS
Only decades ago, experts thought a lack of parental affection was a major cause of autism a notion thats since been
debunked. And people who should have been diagnosed with autism were often misdiagnosed with schizophrenia or other
mental conditions and institutionalized. Today, ASD is widely viewed as the result of genetic and certain environmental
factors that influence early brain development.

Genetic No Link Between

Twin studies are
one of the most
Vaccinations
important pieces
of evidence for
and Autism
genes being involved In 1998, British
[in autism], says gastroenterologist
Abha Gupta, a pediatrician who Andrew Wakeeld
also researches the genetics and made headlines
neurobiology of ASD at Yale School when he
of Medicine. Identical twins share argued there
nearly 100 percent of their genes, was a possible
while fraternal twins share about 50 link between
percent. So if identical twins have autism and the
a disorder, its strong evidence for childhood vaccination for measles,
a genetic cause. Since the 1970s, mumps and rubella. His paper,
these sorts of studies have revealed published in the British medical
that both identical twins are more journal The Lancet, resulted in
likely to have autism than both many parents in Britain and the
fraternal twins. A recent study has
shown that, if one identical twin
Environmental United States not vaccinating their
children, increasing their chances of
has ASD, the likelihood of the other Research on environmental factors contracting one of the potentially
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: GIOVANNI CANCEMI/SHUTTERSTOCK; AMLIE BENOIST/SCIENCE SOURCE; FUNNYANGEL/SHUTTERSTOCK; HRAMOVNICK/SHUTTERSTOCK

twin having it is between 77 and
99 percent; for fraternal twins,
the likelihood is 22 to 65 percent.
Hundreds of genes are linked
to ASD, making it tough to research.
Currently, many researchers agree
that 60 to 70 genes are related
to the syndrome, but those genes
account for no more than 20 percent
of the cases the best medicine can
do so far. Although ASD is heritable,
children with no family history
of the disorder can still develop it
through genetic mutations. And
those who have kids after theyre
35 years old are also more likely
to have children with autism.
is ongoing; some experts believe
these factors can inuence an infants
odds of having ASD if theyre exposed
to certain things during the early
stages of fetal brain development.
So far, the only generally accepted
risk factors are related to maternal
health during pregnancy, such as
inammation stemming from
an infection.
Other possible risk
factors:
iPremature birth
iAir pollution
iWater pollution
iPesticides
deadly diseases.
But scientists found aws
in Wakeelds work. Ten of the
papers 12 co-authors denounced
its ndings in 2007. Three years
later, The Lancet retracted the
paper, and the British Medical
Council revoked Wakeelds medical
license. Over the years, many robust
studies have found no causal link
between autism and childhood
vaccinations. Instead, most experts
say Wakeelds work set back autism
research and created unwarranted
fear about childhood vaccinations
that lingers today.

A Century of Autism 1944 Austrian scientist

Hans Asperger
1964 Bernard Rimland
publishes the book
1968 Donald Baer,
Montrose Wolf and
describes a disorder Infantile Autism: Todd Risley publish
1911 Swiss psychiatrist and anti-social behavior called Aspergers The Syndrome and the dening paper
Eugen Bleuler coins in children. syndrome, which, Its Implications, on applied behavior
the word autism 1943 Leo Kanner at in older diagnostic which asserts autism analysis, a behavioral
from the Greek autos, Johns Hopkins Hospital criteria, had similar but has a neurological therapy that focuses on
meaning self to publishes the rst case milder symptoms than cause rather than developing social skills
describe extreme studies of autism as autism. a psychological one. and lessening repetitive
self-obsessiveness a medical condition. behavior.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 63

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
KNOWING Autism Spectrum Disorder

TREATMENTS
Health professionals can reliably diagnose ASD in kids as young as 16 months old. They rely on behavioral observations,
medical screenings and a childs developmental history for their diagnosis. Then, families and experts work together to come
up with a tailored treatment plan that can include any combination of the following therapies below.

Medications Behavioral Therapies

Antipsychotic, Many behavioral therapies exist, but the most common
anti-anxiety is applied behavior analysis, or ABA, established in 1968
and stimulant by Donald Baer, Montrose Wolf and Todd Risley.
medications can, In ABA sessions, therapists work with children to modify
to some degree, their behavior and develop social skills with a combination of techniques, like
control ASD symptoms positive reinforcement and chaining breaking a skill down into small chunks so
such as repetitive behaviors, its easier to learn.
anxiety and irritability. But Until the 2000s, these programs tended to be cookie-cutter and rigid, Treffert
they also can cause side effects and says. Recently, therapists have moved on to behavioral approaches, often
dont alleviate anti-social behavior, variations or modications of ABA, that focus more on childrens strengths and
says Darold Treffert, an autism interests rather than behaviors that negatively impact their life. For instance, one
expert who runs a clinic for children of Trefferts patients is a 3-year-old boy, an above-average reader fascinated by
with developmental disorders in the solar system. So his therapy team uses books about astronomy to engage with
Fond du Lac, Wis. him, which makes it easier to work on his behaviors.
The time will come when we can Therapists now also focus more on their personal relationship with their
do a genetic prole to determine the patients. And therapies begin earlier at age 2 or 3 rather than 7 or 8.
kinds of medications that would be Still, behavioral therapies remain controversial. The U.S. Department
helpful to a patient with autism, of Education has found that the ABA model has no discernible effects
Treffert says. on communication and language skills, social and emotional development or
functional abilities, says Julia Bascom, executive director of the Autistic Self
Advocacy Network (ASAN). Because of this, Bascom says ASAN recommends
programs and services aimed at helping children with autism build skills that can
Autism enhance their quality of life, like speech therapy and occupational therapy, which
in the U.S. teach specic daily living skills.
1 in 42 Boys
1 in 189 Girls
44%

Children on the spectrum with average
or above-average intellect (IQ higher
than 85).
10%
Children who also are savants,
or patients showing remarkable memory
and skill in a specic area, such as music.
20%
Children with enlarged brains as infants
and toddlers.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PAVEL KUBARKOV/SHUTTERSTOCK; AMLIE BENOIST/SCIENCE SOURCE; EKLER/SHUTTERSTOCK
Complementary Therapies
Treatments aside from traditional behavioral programs may reduce a patients
anxiety, which can also lessen some repetitive behaviors and help in social situations.
The most popular are:
iPet interaction
iFine art and music participation
iDietary programs (vitamin/mineral supplements, diets free of yeast,
gluten or articial additives)

1980 The third edition
of the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders
includes autism
for the rst time.
1998 Andrew
Wakeeld, a British
gastroenterologist,
and 12 other
researchers publish 2003 The Autism Medical Council autism, Aspergers
a now-retracted paper Diagnostic Interview- revokes his medical syndrome, childhood
in The Lancet linking Revised, an interview license. No other disintegrative disorder
autism and childhood process that helps research has ever and PDD under
vaccinations. doctors and specialists suggested such a link. the ASD umbrella.
diagnose the disorder,
2003 Researchers nd 2013 The fth edition
is introduced.
the rst genes linked of the Diagnostic and
to autism, providing 2010 The Lancet Statistical Manual
clues that could lead to retracts Wakeelds of Mental Disorders
better treatments. paper, and the British merges classic

64 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 AUTISM AND THE BRAIN
Years of studies in children on the autism spectrum suggest they have an increased brain volume that may correlate with the
severity of their symptoms. But the brain returns to normal size, or smaller, by the time a child is an adolescent. Studies have
also indicated various brain regions as playing a role in ASD, and that these areas may fluctuate in size compared with brains
of kids without ASD, but the work is still inconclusive.

Corpus callosum
Prefrontal cortex Connects the right
(includes the and left brain
cerebral cortex) hemispheres; one-
Pars opercularis Responsible for third of people
Involved in language cognitive and social born without
comprehension. learning; may cause this structure are
faulty connections on the spectrum.
to other parts of
Superior the brain.
temporal sulcus
Involved in perception Caudate nucleus
of emotions and Stores and processes
facial cues; shown memories, acting
to have structural as a feedback
abnormalities. mechanism to
regulate future
behavior.

Amygdala
Regulates emotions,
especially those for
survival, such as fear
and aggression; Hippocampus
theres conicting Deals with
evidence that memory and
neurons in this brain learning; in
area can be over- mouse models,
or underconnected. its sometimes
enlarged.
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: SCIEPRO/GETTY IMAGES; EVAN OTO/SCIENCE SOURCE; ALEX MIT/SHUTTERSTOCK

Brain size
Cerebellum About 20 percent of
Controls motor children between
skills, including 18 months and 4 years
muscles for old with ASD have
speech. brains 5 to 10 percent
larger than average.
Some scientists attribute
this to an overload of
nerve-ber growth during
prenatal development.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 65

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
Ice
KNOWING Its everywhere!
BY SIDNEY PERKOWITZ

We typically encounter ice as cubes floating in a glass of something nice to

drink. But more than just a party staple, ice is a significant part of our planet
and the universe a fundamental substance that deeply affects us, and may
even be connected to the origins of life. Talk about refreshing!

EARTH . . . No-Tech, Low-Tech and High-Tech

Americans love ice. We make desserts out of it,
put it in drinks and expect motels to provide it by
the bucketful. But before ice-making technology,
it was a precious commodity laboriously harvested
from nature. In the early 19th century, American
entrepreneur Frederic Tudor began shipping ice cut
from New England ponds to warm climates like the
West Indies. He eventually became the Ice King,
selling thousands of tons of ice throughout the U.S.
for iceboxes, which preserved food.
Natural ice remained protable until a century
ago with the arrival of electric refrigerators, which
exploited the cooling properties of evaporating
liquids. Those white boxes with clumsy cooling units
have evolved into sleek stainless steel models,
but we still harvest ice. High-end drinkers want
premium, artisanal ice in their craft cocktails
perfectly clear, oversized cubes that look
good and supposedly melt slowly to avoid
dilution. While these can be created in-house,
its a time-consuming process, so specialty

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GAMMA-RAPHO/GETTY IMAGES; BILL MCCULLOUGH (2); VALENTYN VOLKOV/SHUTTERSTOCK
companies now provide this elaborate ice.
The cubes are hand-cut from big blocks of
ltered water gradually frozen in special
units for days, a process that eliminates the
air bubbles that produce cloudiness. The
cost? A whopping $1 each. The
Ice King would be green Workers harvest ice from a frozen lake in the
with envy. northern U.S. in the 1930s.

Artisanal ice is cut with a band saw and shaped into clear cubes without
bubbles for drinks at the Half Step bar in Austin, Texas.

66 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 A Most Complicated Mineral
Ice is not just the solid form of water. By denition, natural ice is a mineral,
like quartz: a naturally occurring inorganic solid with an ordered atomic
structure. Or rather, structures. It appears in at least 18 different crystalline forms,
plus amorphous forms where the atoms are randomly arranged.
The variety that cools our drinks, hexagonal ice or Ih, is the
most common type, but its also quite unusual. Unlike most
solids, its frozen state is less dense than its liquid state, thanks
to the hexagonal atomic geometry. That means frozen water
oats on liquid water not the case for almost any other
substance. The geometry is the reason icebergs oat, and
helps explain why bodies of water dont freeze solid from the
bottom up, allowing aquatic life to survive winters.
Common ice also appears as snowakes, which take on
hexagonal forms in atmospheric water vapor. Less well known Atomic structure
of hexagonal ice
is hair ice, which grows in ne laments on wood infested with
a specic fungus.
FROM TOP: KENNETH LIBBRECHT/SCIENCE SOURCE (3); UMARAZAK/SHUTTERSTOCK; GISELA PREUSS VIA THE EUROPEAN GEOSCIENCES UNION; ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER AFTER CANADIAN GEODETIC SURVEY/NATURAL RESOURCES CANADA

Other exotic ice structures are made

in the lab. Researchers recently found
that squeezing room-temperature water
between atom-thick sheets of carbon
locks the water molecules into a two-
dimensional square array to form a new
kind of ice.

Kurt Vonneguts novel Cats

Cradle featured Ice-Nine, a
ctional version of ice that would
instantly crystallize all water,
potentially dooming the world.
While there really is an ice-
nine, it forms only under high
pressure and low temperature,
and does not lock up all water.
Hair ice

Reshaping the World POST-GLACIAL REBOUND

Earths massive ice stores are melting, thanks in part to global warming,
and were seeing the effects on our planet. One of the biggest concerns Flexing
Ice upward
is the accompanying rise in average global sea level estimated at 3 to
6 feet by 2100. But other problems pop up with some 400 billion tons of
Greenland and Antarctic ice turning into water each year since 2011. Loaded crust
First, theres something called post-glacial rebound. Ice piled onto a sinks
landmass presses it down into the squishy mantle layer below Earths
crust. As our world warms, the formerly icy areas rebound, literally
raising the land up. Thats one reason for the varying sea level rises along Mantle flows outward
different coasts.
Also, the weight of all that ice had slightly attened the whole planet.
(A single glacier can weigh millions of tons.) Rising temperatures caused Global sea
it to start becoming spherical again. This inuenced Earths rotation, level rising
akin to an ice skater jutting out her arms to spin slower, contributing Collapsing
toward a lengthening of the day by milliseconds over the past 2,500
years. It also alters the planets axial tilt: The North Pole had been
steadily wandering toward Canada, but researchers recently realized
that the current ice melt has jolted it on a new course toward the
Crust rebounding
United Kingdom, at an accelerated rate of 7 inches a year since 2000.
Astronomers stellar observations and your phones GPS program have to
Mantle flows back
take this effect into account.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 67

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
KNOWING Ice

. . . AND BEYOND
Water, Water Everywhere Europa, Enceladus and other
moons of Jupiter and Saturn
have ice in abundance.
In 2015, NASAs New Horizons mission to Pluto spectacularly conrmed
that the entire solar system boasts water ice, as well as other frozen
volatile materials. The composition of these ices sheds light on the
properties of their home worlds and gives clues to how the solar system
formed some 4.6 billion years ago.

Near the sun, Mercury has water
ice preserved within craters in
permanent shadow. (Similar ice
appears on Earths moon.)
Mars cold temperatures support
water ice, including on its North Pole. Plates of ice churn and break apart
on Europa (above), while Enceladus
(below) boasts an icy, fractured surface.

Venus, the hottest planet, cant
claim water ice, but astronomers
were surprised to nd several
types of snow were possible.
Ice could one day power
space exploration. Methane,
Larger bodies in the asteroid belt, like
Ceres and 24 Themis, appear to be full of
water ice in fact, Ceres may have more Saturns rings are
fresh water than Earth! practically nothing but
water ice.
Ceres icy
volcano,
Ahuna
Mons
BACKGROUND: LISA ALISA/SHUTTERSTOCK. IMAGES: NASA

found throughout the solar

system, combines with
liquid oxygen to yield a
type of rocket fuel. That
means spacecraft might
someday hop through the
solar system, refueling from
methane ice deposits along
the way.

68 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM

Waters Envoy e-
Clearly, water ice is more abundant
than we once thought. But did our
solar system just get lucky? And where
did it come from in the rst place? The
answers lie within water itself.
The components of water ice e-
hydrogen and oxygen atoms
have been around for much of the
universes history, but of course its
not water till theyre combined.
Astrophysicists think that happened
during the earliest days of our solar
system, when the sun and planets were
nothing more than a swirling cloud of hydrogen
and dust particles. If high-energy particles from
deep space, called cosmic rays, happened to hit
one of those hydrogen atoms, it became ionized,
stripped of its electron. Ionized hydrogen atoms
Pluto and
other Kuiper
Belt objects
also boast
surface and
subsurface
collections
of ice.
The ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, likely
have rocky cores surrounded by water,
methane and ammonia ices.
Rocky core Icy mantle
FROM TOP: ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER; NASA (3)
could then easily combine with oxygen,
forming our H2O ice.
The sun has
a much lower
Planetary scientists tested this by
deuterium
p examining the hydrogen atoms in todays
water. Deuterium, a type of hydrogen concentration
Hydrogen with a neutron, is heavier than regular than our
hydrogen. Scientists can classify water oceans,
samples, and compare their histories, by suggesting
learning how many of those hydrogen atoms that much of
are deuterium. Theyve found that the ice
p Earths water
on comets has deuterium concentrations
n very similar to the water in our oceans. comes directly
The match means our water ice stores have from the initial
Deuterium
the same cosmic origin as the solar systems pre-solar cloud.
comets among its oldest known objects. Just think: Part
So, we know our watery bounty is not unique, of every sip
since the same conditions likely occurred during
of water you
the formation of any other solar system. Water
is likely similarly abundant around other planets,
drink could be
raising the odds of nding life as we know it, or older than the
at least habitable conditions, somewhere else. sun.
Ice, Ice, Baby?
Ice may be responsible for life itself. By analyzing the light from molecular
clouds, astronomers have observed not just H2O, but 200 different molecules
including H2, carbon dioxide and ammonia existing either as gases or in
ice that coats dust grains. These molecules can interact to produce complex
organic compounds, which could generate DNA, RNA and amino acids. Such
biomolecules or their precursors could have ridden to Earth on comets or
asteroids to seed life on our planet and possibly elsewhere.
Scientists at the NASA Ames Research Center went even further in 2015
when they exposed the organic molecule pyrimidine, found in meteorites, to
interstellar conditions. Frozen in ice under ultraviolet radiation, high vacuum
and low temperature, the pyrimidine turned into uracil, cytosine and thymine,
major components of earthly DNA and RNA.
While we have not yet found complete biomolecules or their forerunners in
molecular clouds, these are promising results. We may soon nd that lifes true
cradle may be the cold and seemingly hostile environment of interstellar ice.
A vacuum chamber at NASAs Ames Research Center exposes ices found on meteors to
space-like conditions. The radiation and harsh temperatures broke down pyrimidine in
the ice and formed new compounds related to life, such as uracil and cytosine.
July/August 2017 DISCOVER 69
 EVERYTHING
WORTH
Surviving Space
KNOWING Settle the final frontier.
BY KOREY HAYNES

Hundreds of humans have orbited Earth since space exploration began

more than half a century ago. In that time, astronauts have walked on the
moon and even endured more than a year in microgravity.
But becoming a multiplanetary species whether to flee a dying world
or just explore the unknown means learning to live without easy access
to Earths resources and conditions.
The first space settlers will face some challenges as old as life itself,
while other problems will rear their heads for the first time. Humans must
solve them all if we want to survive beyond Earths warm embrace.

70 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 THE PROBLEM

Coming Down
Is Hard to Do
Floating in space may look fun,
but its also problematic. Humans,
plants and other animals all evolved
to survive 1 g of force, the average
gravity they feel at Earths surface.
The body does less work in zero
gravity, and returning to normal
gravity strains muscles, hearts and
the whole cardiovascular system.
While the moon and Mars,
humanitys next destinations, do
have some gravitational pull, the
moon packs about one-sixth Earths
gravity, and Mars boasts roughly
one-third. Scientists think it would
be tough to adapt to Earth after
living for years on the Red Planet.
But what if Martian settlers stay
there? And what about space
explorers who dont want to touch
the ground at all?

THE SOLUTION

Take Yourself
for a Spin
Long-term orbiting astronauts
could live in a Stanford Torus. The
THE PROBLEM structure, developed by NASA and
Stanford University in the 1970s,
Astrogrub is a design for a space station:
essentially a hollow ring that spins
four times per minute. (Picture
While our technology has advanced beyond spears and ceramic jugs, food and water
2001: A Space Odyssey.) This
remain an eternal challenge. Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) and
motion provides articial gravity
other nearby outposts can survive on supplies shipped from Earth, but for any human
by means of centrifugal force,
settlement to persist farther out, the thin thread of an Earth-based supply chain will
like a sock stuck to the drum of a
prove dangerously fragile. If theres a crop failure on Mars it occasionally happens in
spinning clothes dryer.
Antarcticas greenhouses, which serve as analogs colonists cant live on astronaut ice
Astronauts and cosmonauts
cream for the two years it would take for emergency supplies to arrive.
have spent over a year in zero
gravity with few problems, and
THE SOLUTION those mostly arise when re-
acclimating to Earth. So its logical
Mining and Greenhouses to assume low gravity would be
safe, perhaps even pleasant, for
The only sustainable answer is to mine and farm the solar system. short missions. But we have no
Water mining on comets and asteroids should be far more cost-effective than long-term studies of how humanity
heaving tons of H2O out of Earths gravitational grip. would cope with years spent in the
Greenhouses are also cheaper than shipping. Scientists have already grown small test gravity of another world. Our best
plots aboard the ISS. Russias orbiting Mir station ourished with plants, from wheat evidence is that between 1969 and
to weeds. And perhaps most intriguing, research suggests that Martian and lunar soil 1972, a dozen men walked on the
could be used to grow crops like wheat and even potatoes. But just in case those crops moons surface for a few days with
fail, Red Planet settlers would want enough in storage to make a doomsday prepper no ill effect. Before we discover
seem ill equipped. if we can survive as a species
Space colonizers could even adopt a DIY approach to building materials by baking beyond Earth, we should probably
lunar and Martian regolith rocks and dirt into ceramics, rather than transporting
NASA/KSC (2)

take a few more walks out there.

heavy supplies like steel and metal.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 71

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
KNOWING Surviving Space

THE PROBLEM

Off-Planet Birds and Bees

Even if well-prepared adventurers can overcome all these
challenges, theres still a civilization-stopping hurdle that
science has barely explored: Can we procreate in space? The
problems of radiation and low gravity are likely magnied
for developing babies and growing children. And exposing
babies to radiation and 0 g is ethically fraught, so its also
hard to learn more.
But before an infant even arrives on the scene, scientists
still dont know how important gravity is for successful sex
in a Darwinian sense, anyway. Experiments in zero gravity
with rats, quail eggs, jellysh and wasps have not been
promising for fertilization, implantation or gestation, with
different problems arising within each species and at each
stage. Thats not to say the results are especially damning,
though. Many were simply inconclusive.

THE SOLUTION

Lets Change the Subject

The truth is that more than a half-century after rst venturing
into space, were still in the dark when it comes to space sex.
As far as we know, its never even happened between humans,
though rumors abound. Whether its because space agencies
are more focused on short-term goals or because theyre simply
prudish, little research has gone into whether humans have any
hope of continuing the species off-world. Maybe one day!

THE PROBLEM
Cosmic Storms
Earths atmosphere and magnetic eld protect us from the
constant stream of harmful solar radiation and other occasional
deadly particles from deep space. Venturing beyond Earths
protection is a gamble. But how dangerous is it?
Nuclear accidents and attacks show that short, severe
exposure to radiation is deadly for humans. During solar
storms, space-farers hunker in shielded areas of their stations
akin to tornado or bomb shelters. But scientists still dont know
how the human body will react to sustained low-level doses of
radiation inherent in space travel. There are few ethical ways
to nd out, however: An accidental decades-long exposure in
Taiwan suggests its not as simple as more radiation is bad.
When 1,700 apartment buildings were unintentionally exposed
to radiation from 1983 until 2005, residents actually had lower
rates of cancer and birth defects.

THE SOLUTION
Gimme Shelter
Scientists still dont have a solution for shielding interplanetary
astronauts from radiation. But a space station in equatorial
low-Earth orbit (ELEO) would sit inside Earths magnetic eld. It
would receive most of the benets of radiation shielding that
ground-dwellers enjoy. Al Globus, a researcher with San Jose
State University and NASA Ames Research Center, has put a lot
of thought into such a dwelling. ELEO is the best place for
[safe] radiation by a large margin, he says.
For people who want to travel beyond Earths magnetic
eld, the only other safe and long-term option might be
underground. Hiding some 15 feet under the surface of Mars or
the moon would provide all the radiation shielding of home.
Both those worlds also have natural caves. Ancient
underground lava ows have carved tube-like caves that can
stretch up to 1,000 yards wide and extend for many miles.
Occasionally, parts of the cave ceiling can collapse, creating a large
skylight opening. By securing these natural skylights with thick
glass, the vast interior spaces could be pumped full of air and used
as a pre-fab home. You can imagine setting up a large mirror
farm on the surface to bounce light into the tunnel, says Jeff
Greason, CEO of Agile Aero and an aerospace expert. Such a setup
would bring sunlight to living or green spaces. Humanitys future
NASA/KSC

could look much like our past in Earths caves.

72 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Such Great
Heights
238,900 miles Humans
walking on the moon
represent our farthest reach
above Earths surface.

220-250 miles Humans

live comfortably on space
stations and can explore
outside. BYO air, and we
seem to do just ne for
periods brief and not so
brief. Valeri Polyakov spent
more than 14 straight
months on Russias space
station, Mir.

39,000 feet (7 miles)

The human altitude record
is roughly tied among
stowaways who climbed into
passenger plane wheel wells.
LEFT: NASA/KSC. RIGHT FROM TOP: NASA (2); TED SOQUI/GETTY IMAGES; JIM RICHARDSON/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE; COURTESY AHMED GABR; SCIENCE AND SOCIETY PICTURE LIBRARY/GETTY IMAGES

Doctors think hypothermia

lowers oxygen needs, letting
them survive, though more
than half of the attempts
result in death.

13,200 feet Groups living

in mountain ranges at high
elevations have evolved to
survive the thin air there. In
the Andes, locals show higher
levels of hemoglobin in their
red blood cells, boosting their
oxygen-carrying capacity.

0 feet Near sea level,

humans enjoy the world that
weve evolved into.

1,091 feet below sea

level In a record-setting
deep-dive in 2014, Ahmed
Gabr, wearing only scuba
gear, descends into the
Red Sea for 15 minutes. It
took him nearly 14 hours
to resurface, as he carefully
avoided decompression
sickness.

35,797 feet (almost

7 miles) below sea
level Jacques Piccard and
Don Walsh dive into the
Marianas Trenchs Challenger
Deep Earths deepest
point inside Trieste, a
specially reinforced vehicle,
in 1960. The pressure there
is a crushing 1,000 times
that at sea level.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 73

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
Yeast
KNOWING A fungus of many trades.
BY CARL ENGELKING

Our relationship with yeast is like a college

friendship that grew beyond keggers and
into distinguished adulthood. Weve partied
with our eukaryotic wingmen dating back
to at least 7000 B.C., using them in foods and Yeast cells

head-spinning libations. In 1680, Anton van

Leeuwenhoek, godfather of microscopy, gazed
upon yeast for the first time; thats when we started
moving past the party years.
We still throw down with yeast, but weve grown up
and have jobs now. These days, the fungus is a laboratory
champion, an engine of industry. It underpins Nobel Prize-
winning breakthroughs and churns out biofuels and novel
medicines. Indeed, yeast may someday save our lives.

What
Is Yeast? BioSentinel
There are over 1,500 species of yeast.
The microscopic, single-celled, eukaryotic Mission 2018
fungus is found everywhere, and we know
Planned for launch in July 2018, NASAs

BACKGROUND: SIRO/SHUTTERSTOCK. LARGE BUBBLES: PHYSICX/ SHUTTERSTOCK. TOP: THOMAS DEERINCK/NCMIR/SCIENCE SOURCE. BOTTOM: NASA (2)
it well. Beer barons control its evolution, and
scientists ddle with its DNA. One-third of BioSentinel spacecraft (below) will expose yeast to
yeast genes have counterparts in the human the ravages of interplanetary radiation. Cards dotted
genome, many of which are associated with with a series of microwells housing three strains of
diseases, such as cancer. And given that yeast will be activated (via a hydrating injection) at
yeast is inexpensive, reproduces quickly different points along an 18-month timeline. Scientists
and is easy to work with, its the will track the yeasts growth and metabolic activity.
most well-studied organism The experiment will be replicated aboard the
known to humans. International Space Station and on Earth
for comparative samples. Itll be the rst
Winning experiment elucidating the biological
effects of radiation beyond low
Nobel Prizes Earth orbit in over 40 years,
according to NASA.
Yeast is basically the MVP of lab organisms.
Its helped scientists claim ve Nobel Prizes in the
21st century (2001, 2006, 2009, 2013 and 2016).
Yoshinori Ohsumi, the most recent prizewinner, used
bakers yeast to identify genes crucial in autophagy,
the process by which cells recycle their components.
Diseases like Parkinsons, Type 2 diabetes and cancer
have been linked to disruptions in this cellular
recycling process. The autophagy machinery in
yeast cells is similar to that in human cells,
and Ohsumis work, which began in the
1990s, gives scientists new targets for
possible treatments.

74 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Pasteurs Gross
Revenge Yeast Tricks
Beard Beer, from Oregon-based Rogue Ales,
Soaked in the vinegar of defeat after the Franco-Prussian
is brewed with a strain of wild yeast harvested
War, French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur
from nine beard hairs plucked from brewmaster
vowed to avenge his homeland by hitting the Germans
John Maier. The Baltimore Sun said the American
where it hurt: the beer.
wild ale has a smooth nish and citrus notes.
A pioneer of immunization and food sterilization, Pasteur (below) also
In 2015, British blogger Zoe Stavri reportedly
experimentally proved in the 1850s that yeasts drove the fermentation
baked a sourdough leavened with yeast from
process, gobbling sugars to produce ethanol, carbon dioxide and a host
a vaginal infection granted, it was a very
of other compounds essential to beer. He identied microbes that could
small amount. Candida albicans, the
spoil a batch of beer and devised methods to keep them out, preventing
typical culprit behind such infections,
contamination and enhancing beers avor.
likely played a role in this baking
By the time the war broke out in 1870, Pasteur, jaded by personal losses, project. Doctors do not advise
forbade publishing his brewing secrets in German, hoping to give French repeating this at home.
brewers enough scientic artillery to threaten Germanys chokehold
on the industry. Pasteur wanted France to produce the worlds nest
beer, or what Pasteur dubbed the beer of revenge. His work
inspired a generation of beer barons, including J.C. Jacobsen,
who founded Carlsberg in Denmark.
In the 1880s, scientist Emil Hansen isolated a yeast
strain and named it Saccharomyces pastorianus
in homage to Pasteur a man who,
reportedly, didnt even like the
Biofuels
taste of beer.
Weve used yeast to convert plant
cellulose and starch into biofuels
like ethanol for decades; however, the
process still isnt efcient, and scientists are
genetically altering yeast to change that.
Yeast doesnt function well in high alcohol
concentrations, so upping its resistance is one
objective. Also, coaxing yeast to move beyond
glucose to sugars found in non-food plant
DNA bers could lower costs.
As it stands, 90 percent of car engines
Slipping still run on petrol, as opposed
to alcohol.
Weve been slipping foreign DNA into
yeast since 1978, when Gerald R. Fink at
MIT gured out how. In 2015, scientists
swapped genes crucial for yeast survival with
human versions, and of the 414 genes they
Spider
tested, nearly 50 percent of the human
proteins could keep the yeast alive.
Silk
Today, yeasts are programmed to In the lab at Bolt Threads in Emeryville,
secrete human proteins used in Calif., technicians are using yeast enhanced
CENTER: WELLCOME LIBRARY, LONDON. BOTTOM: BOLT THREADS

vaccines, insulin and other
biopharmaceuticals.
manipulating protein chemistries, fermentation
with spider DNA to brew silk proteins that
are spun into textiles. Bolt researchers control
fabric qualities, like stretch and softness, by
conditions and other aspects of the spinning
process. In 2016, the company received
$50 million to scale up production, even
partnering with apparel company
Patagonia to develop designer
products.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 75

EVERYTHING
WORTH
The Dark Universe
KNOWING See the light on dark matter and dark energy.
BY ADAM HADHAZY

Say the universe is a restaurant entre. Astonishingly, everything that we

can discern on the plate, so to speak protons, paramecia, people, planets,
pulsars, you name it altogether adds up to a mere sprig of parsley. To
a cosmic garnish such as ourselves, the vast majority of the universe is
invisible, an empty plate dominated by dark matter and a dark energy.
The effects of these phenomena are writ large in space, yet their true natures
have frustratingly evaded every instrument weve brought to bear.

How Do We Know Its There? Gravitational

lensing
iThe cosmos would ing itself apart were it not for a Cosmic
gravitational glue provided by tremendous, yet unseen, structure
amounts of mass. Factoring in all the ordinary matter we

FROM TOP: NASA/ESA/S. BECKWITH (STSCI)/THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (STSCI/AURA); NASA/ESA/JUDY SCHMIDT; ESO/ILLUSTRIS COLLABORATION; ESA/THE PLANCK COLLABORATION; C.H. FAHAM
cannot see contained in exoplanets, galactic gas clouds,
and black holes, none of which emit light still isnt enough
to make up the difference.
iThe immense gravity from clusters of galaxies warps the
light coming from more distant objects, acting like a cosmic
magnifying glass. This gravitational lensing is far too strong to be
caused by plain ol matter.
iGas laments (in orange at right) connect scattered groups of
galaxies. This vast cosmic web makes structural sense only when
explained by underlying concentrations of dark matter (blue).
iOrdinary matter also cant explain temperature uctuations
in the Big Bangs relic afterglow. Known as the cosmic microwave
CMB
background (CMB), its visible everywhere in the sky as microwaves.

What Could It Be? How Do We Look for It?

Probably an elusive kind of subatomic
particle (or particles) that outnumbers
normal matter particles by 5 to 1.
The two leading contenders:
WIMPs Cute acronym for weakly
interacting massive particles, much
heavier than the familiar protons and
neutrons in atomic nuclei. WIMPs would
feel matter through gravity and the
so-called weak force, which is responsible
for why atoms radioactively decay.
Axions A two-for-one special?
Physicists originally cooked up the axion
to explain why neutrons dont spin in
electric elds. The particles attendant
properties insanely low-mass, mostly
indifferent to matter and highly
abundant neatly check off many
dark matter boxes, too.
Typically, dark matter alooy passes
through Earth, but in rare instances
it might interact with normal
matter; the trick is to tell when.
Experiments like SuperCDMS
and LUX-ZEPLIN rely on metal
germanium crystals and liquid
xenon, respectively, as their LUX detector
dark matter nders. Come 2020, tank
these experiments will run in deep
underground mines, shielded from the
cosmic radiation striking our planets surface.
The Axion Dark Matter eXperiment, started at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory before
moving to the University of Washington, seeks the
subtle signatures just a trillionth of a trillionth
of a watt left by axions as theyre snagged by a
strong magnetic eld. Telescopes are also on the
lookout for telltale gamma rays from space, in case
dark matter commits the particle version of suicide
and self-destructs.
 How Do
We Know
Its There?
Space telescopes studying
the Big Bangs relic radiation
(the cosmic microwave
background) have found
the universe is almost
perfectly at. That means
light travels in straight lines
unless it encounters mass.
Scientists say this only really
makes sense in a universe
brimming with some kind of
dark energy.
Dark energy would also
explain why our universes
expansion is accelerating.
Although weve known for
about a century that galaxies
are receding from ours,
scientists long speculated
that matters gravitational
heft would eventually slow
cosmic expansion maybe
even reverse it, culminating
in whats called a Big Crunch.
In 1998, however, astonished
astronomers discovered the
opposite. A certain kind
of exploding star, called a
supernova, turned out to be
fainter than expected in the
distant past, indicating that
the universe is ballooning at
an ever-faster rate, and has
been for nearly half of its
13.8 billion-year existence.
At the current clip of
FROM TOP: ROEN KELLY/DISCOVER; NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER/CONCEPTUAL IMAGE LAB; NASA
cosmic growth, the distance
between galaxies will double
in 10 billion years.
27%
Dark matter
Composition
of the Universe
68%
Dark energy
What Could
It Be? Expansion
continues
Many astrophysicists wager
that dark energy is inherent Present day
to the empty vacuum of
space, comprising the
universes bulk by virtue
of being near-ubiquitous.
Stars, galaxies
After all, theres a lot of develop
emptiness out there.
First stars
How Do We Cosmic
background
afterglow
Look for It?
Huge sky surveys measuring Ination
the distribution of billions
of galaxies over cosmic Big Bang
history could offer clues
about the evolution of
dark energy, as well as
its enigmatic properties.
Key missions include NASAs
Wide Field Infrared Survey
Telescope (WFIRST) and the
European Space Agencys
Euclid space telescope,
plus the ground-based
Large Synoptic Survey WFIRST
Telescope, opening in
Chile in the 2020s.
DISCLAIMER
Could Dark Matter and
5% Dark Energy Be Wrong?
Regular matter
Oh yeah, big time. It could be that neither dark matter
nor dark energy exists. Sure, it would require a major
rejiggering of Albert Einsteins extremely well-tested
theories: Gravity would somehow have to operate
differently on epic, cosmic scales. But dont count out
the possibility that current ideas about the universe are
totally wrong. Many scientists freely admit theyre really
ahem in the dark about the dark universe.
July/August 2017 DISCOVER 77
 EVERYTHING
WORTH
The Perfect Battery
KNOWING Powering up our lives.
BY STEPHEN ORNES

Batteries symbolize our love affair with convenience. They liberate us from
wires by juicing up our smartphones, laptops and cars. With gadgets fully
charged, we can go anywhere, do anything. One hundred percent power
feels secure.
But when the charge runs dry, were screwed.
The good news? Engineers are trying to create the perfect battery. It is efficient and safe, and it
packs a lot of oomph using little space. Its made from abundant, cheap and nontoxic materials.
It maintains a charge over thousands of recharges. It can store energy generated by wind turbines
and solar cells.
But significant hurdles remain in this quest, and the outcome will determine our electronic
future. Without better batteries, tomorrows doodads or dreams of using alternative energy
will remain points of endless frustration. Or maybe frustration is inherent. In 1883, Thomas
Edison warned that chasing the perfect battery is a fools journey: a catchpenny, a sensation,
a mechanism for swindling the public by stock companies, he wrote. Working on the latest,
greatest battery brings out a mans latent capacity for lying.
Sensation or game changer? Heres your guide to the perfect battery.

How a
CHARGING
Battery DISCHARGING

Works
Inside a battery, chemical

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: VECTOREPS/SHUTTERSTOCK; ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER; RUMRUAY/SHUTTERSTOCK; KACZOR58/SHUTTERSTOCK

Electron
reactions involving
Electrons flow is
a material called an reversed
electrolyte cause electrons to when
accumulate in the negative recharging
Flow of
terminal, or anode, and electrons
ow when its connected around
to the positive terminal, circuit
or cathode. Recharging a
Anode Electrolyte Cathode
battery reverses that process
solution
returning electrons to
the anode, where they can Negative Positive
be reused. terminal terminal

78 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
 Two Measures of Success Battery

1
Big energy, little package: Batteries are PREDICTED
FUTURE PEP
Development:
often compared by their specic energies,
measured in watt-hours per material mass. (Wh/kg) Highs and Lows
The higher the measure, the more pep Magnesium-ion:
packed into the unit. 400 SUCCESSES
Lithium-air: 1800: Voltaic pile. Italian physicist
CURRENT ENERGY RELATIVE TO MASS 1,000 Alessandro Volta builds the rst
Lead-acid electric battery by layering plates of
(to start cars) different metals (anodes, cathodes)
Nickel-cadmium separated by brine-soaked cloth
(rechargeables for (electrolyte). The battery creates a
ashlights, toys) weak but steady current.

Alkaline 1859: First rechargeable battery.

(ashlights, toys) French physicist Gaston Plants
Lithium-ion lead-and-sulfuric-acid battery can be
(laptops, handheld recharged with a reverse current. This
mobile devices) type is still found in todays cars. The
technology hasnt changed, but the
recipe has been improved.
0 50 100 150 200
WATT-HOURS/KILOGRAM 1957: Alkaline battery patented.

2
Cycles. How many times can you
recharge a battery to its highest
possible capacity? This is also
a measure of how long your
battery will last. Lithium-ion
batteries are great cyclists,
able to recharge hundreds of
times. Adding nanoparticles to
batteries can speed up recharge time,
some studies have shown.
Alkaline batteries use alkaline
electrolytes instead of acid, and
they remain the workhorses of the
battery world. These are most of
the AAs, AAAs, Cs, and Ds bought
everywhere.
Lithium-
1979-80: First commercially
ion:
viable lithium battery. Engineers
500-1,000
demonstrate rechargeable, efcient
recharges
batteries that use lithium ions and
have cathodes with cobalt. Today,
theyre the battery of choice in
electronic devices.

The Quest to Make Lithium-Ion FAILURES

Batteries Better and Safer 1915: A watery grave. After the
U.S. submarine F-4 sank in the Pacic,
Among todays batteries, the family of lithium-ion batteries reigns. Theyre used in mobile an investigation blames corrosion
phones, cameras, laptops and electric cars. Theyre more efcient and last longer than in the battery tank. All 21 people
their predecessors. And because lithium is the worlds lightest metal it can even oat aboard sank with the sub.
FROM TOP: ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER; ALEXLMX/SHUTTERSTOCK; WK1003MIKE/SHUTTERSTOCK

its used to make lightweight batteries. The price is right, too: After a quarter-century on
the market, lithium-ion batteries are cheaper, thanks to better manufacturing techniques. 2010: Fire in the air. The fatal crash
Just one problem the liquid electrolyte of a UPS jet is blamed in part on a
in most lithium-ion batteries re that began in a storage area for
can burst into ames. ammable lithium-ion batteries.
Gerbrand Ceder, a
materials scientist 2012: Perfection that wasnt.
at the University of Startup battery developer Envia,
California, Berkeley, powered by $11 million from
has developed a investors and a government grant,
solid electrolyte that claims that its new electric-car
contains nothing battery has an energy density over
combustible and twice that of existing electric-car
that could last longer. batteries. Executives boasted about
A solid-state battery a 200-mile range. Reality bit when
would be the ultimate Envia and other battery technology
battery in terms of safety, companies failed to reproduce the
and probably in terms of stellar results.
lifetimes as well, he says.

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 79

 EVERYTHING
WORTH
KNOWING The Perfect Battery

Material Help Future

Lithium and cobalt, two ingredients
of lithium-ion batteries, are relatively
rare. About half of the worlds
cobalt supply comes from the
war-torn Democratic Republic of
the Congo. Can we make a perfect
battery from more abundant,
less controversial materials?
Sodium-ion batteries combine low cost
with high efciency, and sodium is more
abundant than both lithium and cobalt. Plus,
their energy density is close to that of lithium,
and theyre particularly appealing for storing
energy from wind and solar farms.
Magnesium-ion batteries could pack more
energy than lithium-ion batteries and might be
safer, but theyre harder to charge. Ceder, the Berkeley scientist, says this technology
A worker in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo descends
into a crude mine where cobalt,
an ingredient of lithium-ion
batteries, is extracted.
Innovation
How far outside the box can a
battery go? Some engineers are
working on projects that would
redene the battery as we know it.
Quantum action. In the past few
years, physicists have investigated
ways to produce energy from qubits,
or quantum-mechanical systems like
subatomic particles. Their reasoning
goes something like this: As particles
drop into their lowest energy state,
they release energy. If we can
collect that energy, we can use it in
batteries, and recharge by returning
them to a higher state. Theres an
additional predicted quantum quirk
that doesnt happen with ordinary

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ/THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY IMAGES; ASHLEY CHRISTOPHERSON AND REZA MONTAZAMI/IOWA STATE; CALIFORNIA ENERGY COMMISSION
is still in its infancy and is hard to predict. He likens todays progress on magnesium batteries: The more qubits you have,
to the early research in the 1980s on lithium-ions. the faster they recharge.

Hydrogen fuel cells also pack a lot of energy in a small package. The fuel cells Biobatteries. What about batteries
combine hydrogen, water and oxygen to generate electricity. Automakers have powered by living organisms? Some
begun rolling out cars powered by them, and a few states have installed hydrogen bacteria produce electric currents
refueling stations. But hydrogen remains controversial. Critics point out that its when they eat or convert sugars
expensive to produce the fuel cells and they dont store a lot of power. into usable energy. Last December,
physicists at the State University
of New York-Binghamton unveiled
Hydrogen a disposable paper battery that
fueling sites,
like this
generates a trickle of power from
one in West trapped bacteria.
Sacramento,
Calif., are Self-destructing battery. Scientists
popping up at Iowa State University have
in the United
developed a lithium-ion battery that
States.
dissolves in water in 30 minutes.
One application could be powering
temporary medical devices in
the body. Other versions of this
technology cause battery destruction
when exposed to heat or light.

Researchers have created a battery that

dissolves in water.

80 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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 Discover
SCIENCE FOR THE CURIOUS
M AG A Z I N E
PACIFIC NORTHWEST
& SAN FRANCISCO
August 17-26, 2017
Enjoy 2 minutes and 2 seconds
of totality at a specially selected
viewing location in central
Oregon.
Discover some of the Pacific
Northwests most notable
cities, including Seattle, Bend,
Portland, and San Francisco.
Explore Seattles historic Pike
Place Market, nearby Mount
St. Helens, the Columbia
River Gorge, Crater Lake and
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cross the Golden Gate Bridge.
P30021
NATIONAL PARKS OF
THE AMERICAN WEST
August 16-28, 2017
View 2 minutes of totality in
the stunning sky above Jackson
Hole, Wyoming.
Visit Lowell Observatory, journey
through red rock country around
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OUT THERE
A Look at the Universe and All Its Wonders
Powered by

magazine

WEBB DESIGN
Technicians at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., position the massive James Webb Space Telescope for tests in its assembly
room earlier this year, in preparation for a 2018 launch. While Webb will be the most powerful space telescope ever built, astronomers
are already designing its successor. The High Denition Space Telescope will have a mirror nearly twice the diameter of Webbs 21.3-foot
gold mirror and should be powerful enough to detect evidence of life on alien planets. Read more on page 84. ERNIE MASTROIANNI;
PHOTO BY NASA/DESIREE STOVER

July/August 2017 DISCOVER 83

Meet the
Next-Generation
Space Telescope
Using the High Denition Space Telescope,
astronomers hope to discover life in the universe.
BY KOREY HAYNES
In 2018, when the James Webb
Space Telescope (JWST) opens its
enormous eye on the universe and begins
collecting data, the astronomers who envi-
sioned it and the engineers who designed
and built it will celebrate and cheer.
But even as the first waves of data beam
down to Earth, another team of scientists
will be hard at work designing its replace-
ment. In fact, they have already begun.
Conceiving of, researching, and
building sciences biggest, most valuable
tools of inquiry the Large Hadron
Collider, or the Hubble and James Webb
space telescopes requires dozens of
years, hundreds of expert panels and team
meetings, and billions of dollars, and the
gears that march these projects through
the bureaucratic assembly line turn slowly.
So it should come as no surprise that,
while it wont fly until at least the mid-
2030s, astronomers are already planning
the next next large space observatory,
currently known as the High Definition
Space Telescope (HDST).
Since the moment Hubble left the
launchpad, different groups have discussed
what this future project might look like,
but they all agree on the basic requirements
and objectives. Theres not a million ways
to do it, says Sara Seager, astronomer at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She was also a co-chair for the committee
tasked by the Association of Universities
for Research in Astronomy (AURA) to
define a vision for HDST. You have
your science drivers and your engineering
constraints, and you try to find a happy
84 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
medium among all of those.
So, balanced between technologies
within reach and the most pressing
astrophysics questions of the day, the
basics are already apparent to Seager and
her fellow visionaries. While JWST will
focus specifically on the infrared portion
of the spectrum, HDST will be a true
Hubble successor, with capabilities in the
infrared, optical, and ultraviolet. JWSTs
6.5-meter mirror already dwarfs Hubbles
comparatively modest 2.4 meters, but
HDST will span about 12 meters, matching
the largest telescopes currently on Earth.
And while earthbound telescopes will have
advanced to 30 meters by HDSTs era, the
space telescope will, like JWST before it,
fly not just in space, but at the distant L2
Lagrange point, well beyond the moons
orbit. It will command an uninterrupted
and unclouded view of the heavens, far
from Earths atmosphere or its photo-
bombing bulk. From this pristine vantage
point, it will peer into the farthest reaches
of the cosmos and hunt the holy grail of
astronomy: another living Earth.
THE SEARCH FOR LIFE
In 1995, exoplanets catapulted from
science fiction to cutting-edge science
when Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz
discovered the first one orbiting a solar-
type star. Over the next decade, searches
from both the ground and space revealed
a handful more, then dozens. In 2009, the
Kepler spacecraft opened the floodgates,
DON DIXON
and hundreds and then thousands of
exoplanets poured onto the scene.
 Astronomers have
big dreams for
the upcoming
telescope and
its potential
starshade, which
would enable it
to block a stars
glare and hunt for
habitable worlds.

July/August 2017
2016 DISCOVER 85
OUT THERE

But astronomers know only the slimmest of details for

most of these planets. They know a planets mass or its size Measuring Up
they know both only in serendipitous cases and the distance
between it and the star it orbits. Determining a planets
composition from this information is an exercise in intelligent
guesswork, modeling, and puzzle solving. Even now, scientists
have directly observed a handful of specific molecules that
comprise a planets atmosphere in only a few dozen systems,
and those are the brightest, hottest giant planets that hold no
hope of life.
Far from being clinically detached, many astronomers dream
of finding another Earth. They want to find life. It should
be no surprise that some of the leading exoplanet research-
JWST Hubble HDST
ers among them Seager and Bill Borucki, who designed 6.5 meters 2.4 meters 11.7 meters
and headed Kepler describe their motivations along these
lines. I think all of humankind is interested in our place in the The High Denition Space Telescope will be nearly twice the diameter
of the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. It already dwarfs
galaxy, in life, in the universe, Borucki says. And the answer Hubble, which remains for now the premier in optical observing.
to that lies along finding intelligence, finding life, and finding
planets on which this life could exist.
These are very distinct tasks. Astronomers know of a hand-
ful of planets already where life could be present. These planets
are the right size to have rocky surfaces, and they orbit in the
habitable zone of their star where liquid water could potentially
exist. Yet astronomers cannot ascertain whether water is actu-
ally present. And even if water is present is life?
Answering this question means moving beyond a planets
size and peering deep into its gas shroud to find the telltale
signs of a living atmosphere: water, oxygen, carbon dioxide,
methane, ozone. Only the interplay of such substances can
reliably inform astronomers about the actual presence of life,
instead of its mere potential.
Transit studies are the current best method for learning the
components of an exoplanets atmosphere. Astronomers watch
a host star as its planet crosses in front and measure how the
observed starlight changes as the planets atmosphere blocks
and filters it. This method yields rich information when the The James Webb Space Telescope team stands in front of a full-size model
planet is large, puffy, and hot, like a Jupiter or Neptune on a at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, where it is being assembled.
The Webb is roughly the size of a tennis court when its sunshield is fully
tight orbit. But for a planet with Earths comparatively small extended, and the High Denition Space Telescope will be almost twice
size, compressed atmosphere, and more distant orbit, the as large.
change in light is simply too small to measure, even for future
giant telescopes. Hubble Deep Field, observes Marc Postman from the Space
JWST will perform spectacular transit observations with Telescope Science Institute, another member of the AURA
so-called super-Earths, planets one and a half to twice Earths team. And while E.T. might be worth 100-plus hours of tele-
radius. But these planets are not especially Earth-like. So unless scope time, astronomers face reasonable odds that after such
astronomers are lucky enough to find an extremely nearby an investment, the planet might turn out to be a barren and
Earth-sized planet with a cool M-dwarf host star, neither arid exo-Mars instead of an exo-Earth. It is not a feasible way
JWST nor any of the accompanying and upcoming fleet of to conduct a large-scale study. Astronomers need a different
TOP: AURA. BOTTOM: NASA/GSFC

exoplanet missions will have the ability to characterize a true
Earth twin in the habitable zone.
Even around an M-dwarf star, the time required to perform
a full spectroscopic measurement of a transiting Earth-sized
exoplanet with JWST would be similar to that used for the
tool and so HDST was born.
Instead of using transits, Earth-twin investigators will look
for the planets directly, a feat that carries its own stiff engineer-
ing requirements. Theyre within reach, but they represent the
most pressing challenges for HDST.

86 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM

Hubble JWST
Modelers compare the
HDST resolution of a distant
galaxy achieved by the High
Denition Space Telescope
(HDST), James Webb Space
Telescope (JWST), and Hubble.
Only HDST is able to clearly
pick out bright star-forming
regions from older red stellar
populations.
Strong science requires repeatability; Earth-twin hunters
need a whole sample of potential Earths to study. Seager poses
the question: How many Earth-like exoplanet atmospheres
do you think you need to get a handle on whats really going
on, including the search for life? Do you think its one? 10?
100? 1,000?
She settles on dozens. It isnt an abstract thought experi- around these galaxies. Thats a game changer, Postman
ment. HDST will be exactly as powerful as is needed to answer
the questions astronomers pose. Exceeding these specifications
wastes precious budget dollars and can lead to impossible
engineering demands. Underperformance would leave
astronomers questions unanswered. And Seager has not just a
question, but a mission: find the next Earth.
STELLAR ARCHAEOLOGY
But HDST will be a telescope for the whole astrophysics
community. Postman studies the formation and evolution of
galaxies and large-scale structure in the universe, and he looks
forward to HDSTs capabilities on these much grander scales.
LEFT: L. PUEYO, M. NDIAYE. RIGHT: D. CEVERINO, C. MOODY, AND G. SNYDER
Where do galaxies get the gas to make their stars? he asks.
We only understand that at a rudimentary level. To make
stars, galaxies must capture gas from the intergalactic medium.
And energetic activities like bursts of star formation that form
young and violent stars, as well as black hole evolution, can in
turn spew gas back out of galaxies. Astronomers have many
models of this cycle, but Postman says none of them has been
verified at the detailed level they desire.
Currently, Hubble tracks the position and motion of gas
around galaxies by studying how their gas absorbs light from
faraway quasars bright pinpricks of light caused by active,
much more distant galaxies far in the background. But
Hubble usually can observe only one quasar per intervening
galaxy, and that only in a small number of targets. But if
Jupiter
Earth
Venus
Astronomers model how the solar system would appear to an observatory
the expected size of the High Denition Space Telescope with an internal
coronagraph to block out a central stars light. An Earth twin and its blue
color could be detected with 40 hours of observing time.
you had a telescope in the 10-meter class, Postman says,
there would be 10 to 20 quasars behind every galaxy out
to 10 megaparsecs [32.6 million light-years] that would be
bright enough to pursue for these studies. This would allow
astronomers to draw spatially resolved maps of the gas
declares.
Astronomers also are interested in so-called stellar archaeol-
ogy, the history of star formation in galaxies. How many stars
of every size did galaxies form, and how long ago? Again,
Hubble attempts these measurements now, but has the angular
resolution to study only the Milky Way and our closest neigh-
bors in the Local Group of galaxies. HDST could map star
formation out to the same 10-Mpc-range. And if researchers
can understand the flow of gas that feeds star formation, these
maps would be even more informative, painting a fuller picture
of the history of the local universe and beyond.
The upcoming generation of 30-meter-class ground-based
telescopes will join in this search, but their best angular
resolution comes in the near infrared, where the color differ-
ences between old and young stellar populations are far less
dramatic than in the ultraviolet range HDST will access.
This difference highlights the complementary nature of
the upcoming generation of telescopes. HDST will achieve
its highest resolution in the ultraviolet, with the 30-meter
telescopes matching it in the infrared. With its enormous team
of networked dishes, the ALMA radio observatory can supply
the same level of detail in its target range. Together, they will
offer the most comprehensive maps of the nearby universe
ever seen, delivering unprecedented resolution at the same
spatial scale from radio to ultraviolet wavelengths. It will be
revolutionary, Postman predicts.
July/August 2017 DISCOVER 87
OUT THERE

Blocking Out the Stars Planet

HDST
Telescope aperture
diameter: 12 meters

Inner working angle

Separation: 160,000200,000 kilometers

Starshade diameter:
80100 meters

A starshade is a separate unit from the telescope that ies in formation

far from its partner observatory. It blocks out light directly surrounding
the star, creating a totally dark inner working angle, but allows the
telescope to see much closer in than without the shade, when starlight
glares too brightly to see planets orbiting nearby.

THE BUILD dozens of exo-Earths.

Fortunately, astronomers are in agreement about what it will
take for HDST to meet these various science goals, which
informed their decision to build a 10-meter-class mirror (the
exact size has yet to be determined) and fly it at L2. While
engineers are already breaking ground to build telescopes three
times that size on Earth, a very simple problem caps the size of
any space telescope: There must be a way to get it into space
to begin with. The largest vehicle planned for the foreseeable
future is NASAs Space Launch System (SLS) Block 2, and
even this leviathan rocket nearly 400 feet (120m) tall and
with a payload capacity of 150 tons is only 8 meters across
on the inside. This means that HDST, like JWST before it,
must accommodate a foldable, segmented mirror design, with
as many as 54 hexagonal pieces. It will blast off Earth folded
onto itself in the belly of the largest rocket ever built, and
unfold only when it reaches deep space.
Getting it to space is only one of the engineering demands.
To find those elusive habitable exoplanets, scientists must reach
beyond transits to direct imaging. But Earth, for example, is
10 billion times fainter than the sun, and from a distance of
tens of trillions of miles away or farther, it would be lost in our
suns glare. Astronomers need to kill the starlight.
Observers know of two ways to block out a central stars
But theres another way. For years, astronomers have
dreamed of a starshade, an external version of the corona-
graph with a delicate and complicated petal structure designed
to perfectly eliminate the multispiked diffraction pattern of
light cast by a faraway star.
For a telescope the size of HDST, a starshade would be
over 300 feet (100m) across and require that each petals
construction be accurate to a millimeter. HDST and its
starshade would fly nearly 125,000 miles (200,000 kilometers)
apart and maintain their flight formation at a precision of a
few feet (1m). Such formation flying is difficult, and slewing
from one target to another would take days or even weeks as
astronomers wait for the starshade to fly the thousands of
miles necessary to assume a new position.
It also is an unproven technology: No starshade mission has
yet flown. But such a design could see smaller, closer-in planets
to greater sensitivity than an internal coronagraph and ease
engineering requirements on the telescope itself. A starshade
mission might fly with another Hubble-sized space telescope
called WFIRST-AFTA, set to launch a decade before HDST.
If so, it could be a field test for this new technology.
Hubbles current
Hubble HDST
view of outer solar
TOP: DON DIXON AND ROEN KELLY/DISCOVER. BOTTOM: AURA

light. The first uses a device known as a coronagraph, system worlds, such
as Jupiters moon
which sits inside the telescope and carefully obscures
Visible

Europa, provides the

light from the star while letting through light immediately impetus for sending
around it. This delicate operation requires an exceedingly probes ying to the
gas giants. But the
well-engineered and very stable telescope where the path of High Denition Space
light traveling through the spacecraft is perfectly under- Telescope could yield
rich detail from its
stood and meticulously mapped, with components cor-
Ultraviolet

orbit near Earth.

recting the mirrors shape to keep images stabilized against
even the tiniest aberrations. It substantially complicates
the overall telescope design, but the depth and clarity of
the resulting images would yield thousands of planets and

88 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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OUT THERE
LH 95 in the Large Magellanic Cloud
30 Doradus in the Large Magellanic Cloud
Orion in the Milky Way
Counting individual stars outside the Milky Way is difcult but
extremely valuable to astronomers seeking to understand how
stellar populations are born and evolve across the universe.
Currently, even stars in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud blur
together in Hubbles eyes, while the High Denition Space Telescope
will count each separate sun.
For now, the AURA team is setting its sights on an internal
coronagraph as the higher priority. But, Seager says, theres
no reason you cant have both. The final decision will rest
heavily on research conducted even now, as engineers explore
how and if promising technology can be delivered in time to
fly by the mid-2030s.
The telescope itself, and its instruments, will not come easily.
HDST will build as much as possible on current technolo-
gies either already proven on missions like JWST and Gaia,
which is currently mapping a billion stars. It will call on other
technologies tested and developed for missions that never
flew, like the Terrestrial Planet Finder and the Space Interfer-
ometry Mission.
Engineers will catch some good breaks as well. Unlike
JWST, whose infrared specialties dictated a cryogenic mis-
sion, requiring cooling at every stage of testing and assembly,
HDST can be operated at room temperature. This is not an
insubstantial simplification, and those infrared complica-
tions were a major contributor to JWSTs infamous cost and
scheduling overruns.
Operating at lonely L2, HDST shouldnt expect to see any
servicing missions, but scientists dont discount the possibil-
ity. Hubbles many servicing missions taught engineers the
value in modular parts: instruments and panels that can be
removed, replaced, and upgraded easily. Perhaps more likely
than human mechanics are robot technicians, an area NASA
has been researching for a decade. A robotic servicing mission
could be flown for lower cost and safety factors than a human
expedition. So engineers will build HDST not expecting any
such missions, but prepared if the possibility arises.
90 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
The High Denition Space Telescope represents sciences best bet to take
a pale blue dot image of a system beyond our own.
THE PATH FORWARD
No formal proposal is yet on anyones desk. No
comprehensive cost analysis or timeline exists. But unless
NASA chooses to forgo the space telescope business entirely,
HDST will move forward.
Twenty years is a long time to wait for your next science
project. Put another way, the potential to find out if alien
worlds are not just habitable, but inhabited to answer the
fundamental question of whether we are alone in the universe
could be answered within most of our lifetimes. Stacked
against millennia of human questioning, the project seems just
around the corner.
HDST is only one placeholder name for this project. A
previous NASA study used the wistful backronym ATLAST,
which has come to stand for Advanced Technology Large-
Aperture Space Telescope. And once upon a time, the
same basic concept was called simply the Very Large Space
Telescope. In the same way, the James Webb was for many
years called the Next Generation Space Telescope, and even
Hubble was simply the Large Space Telescope during decades
of planning.
Eventually, one assumes that the flagship of the 2030s will
garner a more auspicious name, likely that of a memorable
scientist or public figure. While a commissioning date is still
years away and perhaps difficult to visualize past the haze of
advisory panels, funding battles, and engineering victories
yet to be wrought, Postman offers his choice, based on the
telescopes most fantastic goal of looking for a world that
mirrors our own, and a man who made sharing that goal his
lifes mission.
Youd want it to be someone who was a true visionary in
the field because it takes true vision to accomplish a project
like this. I think Carl Sagan would be a very nice tribute.
Heres a toast to Carl, then, and to everyone looking to
LEFT: AURA. RIGHT: NASA/JPL
further our understanding of the universe. The 2030s will be
here sooner than you think. D
Korey Haynes is a former Astronomy associate editor who earned
her Ph.D. studying exoplanets. Shes on Twitter, @weird_worlds
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 Prognosis

The Body Electric Canan Dagdeviren

launched her
research group at
MITs Media Lab
Materials scientist Canan Dagdevirens cutting-edge work earlier this year.

on exible sensors is grounded in personal experiences.

BY STEPHEN ORNES

Can we improve medical devices

by designing them to translate
the language of the body? Materials
Microbattery

scientist Canan Dagdeviren, who just

launched a new research group at MIT,
thinks so. Ever since she was a child
growing up in Turkey, shes turned
Rectier
tragedy and loss into research that
speaks to hope.
Her inventions suggest that scientists Piezoelectric
circuit
can harvest electricity from the
movements of our organs, pick up
PZT
the first hints of disease from subtle nanoribbons
changes in physiological patterns, or
track changes wrought on the brain
from neurodegenerative conditions.
When Canan (pronounced JAH-
naan) was a child in the early 1990s, she
Electric
learned that her grandfather had died A piezoelectric
charge is
of heart failure at just 28 years old. She mechanical energy
created as
harvester (above)
promised to herself to do something, ribbons bend
turns a balloons
and ex
anything, to tackle the condition that ination and deation
into electricity.
struck her grandfather. Flexible
Decades later in early 2014, as biocompatible
material
part of her doctoral research at the

PHOTOS COURTESY OF CANAN DAGDEVIREN/MIT MEDIA LAB; NANORIBBONS BY ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER

University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, she and her collaborators
unveiled a tiny biomedical gadget with
big implications. Only a few centimeters
on a side, the device looks like a sticker
and converts energy from the natural
movements of internal organs the
beating heart, the expanding or
deflating lung, the rising diaphragm
into electricity. Its not much, but its
enough juice to power an implanted
device like a pacemaker, which regulates
irregular heartbeats.
Todays pacemakers need to be
changed every seven years as batteries
degrade, she says. That means an
operation. Dagdevirens device, which
has been tested for safety on cows
but hasnt yet made it to the market,
would generate enough power to run a
pacemaker or other implanted device
Canan Dagdevirens no batteries required.
biomedical device, Dagdevirens energy harvester is built
on a flexible foundation. The secret
which is built on a to its success is PZT, or lead zirconate
titanate, which is piezoelectric. That
flexible foundation, means it generates a small electric
would generate charge as it flexes and relaxes. Affixed
to the lungs, for example, the device
enough power to run changes shape delivering a steady
current as a person breathes in
a pacemaker or other and out.
implanted device Dagdevirens mother inspired
another device. In 2012, her mom
no batteries required. complained about how difficult it
was to treat dry skin, and Dagdeviren

94 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM

immediately imagined how tech might
help. As people age, their skin becomes
thinner and less elastic; moisturizers
restore some of that elasticity.
So Dagdeviren created a small,
flexible and stretchable sensor that
adheres like a sticker and bends with
the skin as a person moves. PZT
nanoribbons in the device generate
small charges that measure skin
elasticity, which indicates how well
the skin is hydrated and how well a
moisturizer is working. During the
design process, she consulted with
dermatologists, who suggested the
device might also identify some skin
cancers in their earliest stages. The
patent is still pending on the device.
A few companies have expressed
interest in bringing it to market, and
Dagdeviren says her group is looking
for ways to apply the technology to
other applications. And wherever it
goes, it will always be rooted to her
personal history, and her family.
A SPARK OF CURIOSITY
Dagdeviren grew up near the sea, so
for a change of scenery, her family
would trek into nearby forested hills for
picnics. One of these outings sparked
her interest in science when she was
7 years old, she says. Dagdeviren
doesnt mean sparked figuratively.
She and her brother had just collected
wood for the fire when their mother
pointed out some white rocks with
sharp edges, surrounded by flowers.
Her mother struck two of those rocks
together and produced sparks
showing her daughter the secret for
making fire spill from stone.
I loved the idea that you deform
this material and create sparks, says
Dagdeviren, 32. It was very exciting.
That picnic experiment was akin to
something shed already been reading
about. A few months earlier, her father
gave her a biography of French scientist
Marie Curie, two-time winner of the
Nobel Prize and a pioneer in the study
and understanding of radioactivity.
Dagdeviren was inspired, but not
in the way her father had expected.
She became infatuated with Maries
husband, Pierre, who Dagdeviren says
was her scientific love. Pierre and
his brother Jacques first described
piezoelectricity in 1880. The Greek
word piezein means to squeeze or
press, and piezoelectric materials
generate a charge when squeezed or
deformed or smashed like smashing
two rocks together to produce a flash.
As an undergraduate at Hacettepe
University in Ankara, still pondering
how to make her own sparks fly,
Dagdeviren majored in physics. Her
father worried she wouldnt find a
job, that shed be given a hard time
as a woman in the field, but she was
undaunted. Dagdeviren studied
materials and physics, learned about
the science behind all the sparks, and
designed her first devices.
In 2008, at a materials science
conference in Boston, Dagdeviren
approached John Rogers, whom
she describes as a king of flexible
devices. At the time, Rogers was at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign. His lab has produced
a dizzying array of miniature
biocompatible electronic devices that
use soft materials, such as plastics
and biological tissues. Many stick
to the skin like temporary tattoos.
Gadgetry out of Rogers lab has
July/August 2017 DISCOVER 95
 Prognosis
included everything from
wireless electronic implants that
fight a bacterial infection and
then disappear, to stretchable
batteries made of tiny nanowires
arranged to resemble an
accordions bellows.
Rogers is an alum of Bell Labs
(now Nokia Bell Labs), which
in its heyday was renowned for
turning scientific research into
engineering applications with a
broad societal impact. Rogers
says he runs his own lab on that
model, encouraging students
to focus on interdisciplinary Dagdeviren designed a exible and stretchable sensor that uses
nanoribbons to generate small charges to measure skins elasticity.
scientific discovery and also This can help monitor subtle changes in the skin.
to think about applications.
Dagdeviren landed at Illinois in Rogers
lab, and she fit right in.
Many graduate students in the lab,
like Dagdeviren, are driven by personal
experiences, says Rogers. Theres
something that really motivates people
when theyre working on things that
could benefit human health, he says.
If those devices can save my grandma,
then its not just a device that works
it has a real, and much deeper impact.
In 2014, with her doctorate in hand,
Dagdeviren joined the MIT laboratory
of Robert Langer, whose work blends
materials science with biotechnology.
His group has designed novel
approaches to drug delivery systems, as
well as new ways to engineer tissue.
I like people to work on big ideas
that I hope change the world, and I
think they have already changed it, he
says. Dagdeviren brought her expertise
to research on brain implants, launching
collaborations with neuroscientists and
other engineers. Shes been incredible
in doing that kind of [collaborative]
work, says Langer. Shes great,
brilliant, innovative.
HUMAN DYNAMOS
Dagdevirens most recent design was
inspired by the death of a beloved
aunt from a brain tumor. The new
sensor, implanted in the brain, would
96 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
Devices that remain
attached to the body,
outfitted with an
unending power
source, can observe a
stream of data, which
Dagdeviren says could
make medicine truly
personalized.
continuously monitor neurological
activity and carry out targeted drug
delivery. If it survives extensive lab
testing and gets to market, it could
track the progression of Parkinsons
disease or monitor and treat a tumor.
The ideal medical device is
comfortable, lightweight and
practically invisible, says Dagdeviren.
Her creations are stretchy, soft and
robust. Theyre flexible enough to
laminate sensitive organs, but durable
enough to work safely in such a
complicated environment. They
look nothing like the clunky, fragile,
beeping, invasive technology we usually
associate with lifesaving gadgetry.
Shes doing things that cant
be replicated with conventional
electronic technology, says
Rogers, now at Northwestern
University.
Although shes deeply
entrenched in the complexities
of nano-electronics, Dagdeviren
sees her mission as translating
the hidden codes encrypted in
data collected from the body.
The way to decipher those
codes, she says, is through
continuous monitoring. Most
data measurements heart rate,
blood pressure, glucose levels
reveal only a momentary
snapshot of a person and dont
capture how those variables fluctuate.
Devices that remain attached to the
body, outfitted with an unending
power source, can observe a stream
of data, which Dagdeviren says could
make medicine truly personalized.
Once scientists understand what a
body says, they can figure out how to
keep it running.
I create devices that can listen to
and interpret the body, she says.
After her postdoctoral work with
Langer, Dagdeviren was offered
her own research group at MITs
Media Lab. She spent last winter and
earlier this year assembling a team of
researchers, hiring lab managers and
filing patents on the brain implant.
(She also took a break last December
to travel to Stockholm to accept a
prestigious Science & SciLifeLab Prize
for Young Scientists.) Dagdeviren has
big plans for the brain implant, and she
is developing ideas for piezoelectric-
based devices that harvest energy from
COURTESY OF CANAN DAGDEVIREN/MIT MEDIA LAB
outside the body, such as from the
motions of knees and elbows.
She calls them human external
dynamos one more example of
translating the bodys language into
improved health. D
Stephen Ornes writes from a backyard shed
in Nashville, Tenn.
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 20 Things You Didnt Know About

Yoga BY GEMMA TARLACH

1 Yoga today is a mainstream fitness activity; components, controlled breath and meditation, can
1 in 5 American adults participates in what most regulate blood pressure, heart rate and respiration.
people believe is an ancient practice. Surprise: The 12 Yoga may be especially helpful to seniors hoping
yoga youre going to the mat for isnt that old. to avoid a fall. In a 2016 meta-analysis of six studies
2 What we generally think of as yoga began involving individuals over the age of 60, participants
in late 19th century India, when leaders of an showed small improvements in balance and moder-
anti-colonialism movement sought to rally their ate mobility gains after going through postural
countrymen to their cause. 3 Some of these men saw yoga programs. 13 The practice may even help
yoga, then more of a philosophy, as a non-sectarian, asthmatics breathe easy. In 2014, a meta-analysis
indigenous symbol of India that transcended of 14 randomized controlled trials investigating
divisions of religion and language: a handy tool to yogas effects on asthma found that it appeared to
have when youre trying to unify a nation. 4 These alleviate the chronic inflammatory airway condition
Victorian-era gurus, notably Swami Vivekananda, better than conventional care. 14 Dont swap your
spread their version of yoga worldwide as a inhaler for yoga pants just yet, though. The same
proudly Indian way to achieve a higher level of 2014 study stressed additional research was needed
understanding through contemplation. 5 Modern to rule out bias and to understand the mechanism
postural yoga, the practice of actually holding behind yogas apparent benefit. 15 A 2016 pilot
poses, originated with early 20th century guru study of women who described themselves as
Krishnamacharya, who taught a mix of gymnastic psychologically distressed provided a clue to how
and wrestling moves, Western calisthenics and hatha yoga works on a molecular level. After eight weeks
yoga, a medieval practice all but lost in India for of instruction, participants had lower levels of
centuries. 6 Its in hatha yoga, beginning about the certain immune system biomarkers linked to stress.
10th century, that an emphasis on controlling breath 16 While the researchers emphasized the study

SHUTTERSTOCK PHOTOS, COUNTERCLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: CHUTIMA CHAOCHAIYA; 71; DEAN DROBOT; NAZAR SKLADANYI; GURYANOV ANDREY
and maintaining certain postures arose. But it has sample was too small to draw firm conclusions, it
little in common with doing a sun salutation at appears yoga may modulate the bodys epigenetic
your local gym for tighter abs; medieval hatha response, which turns certain genes on or off,
yogas goals included divination and attaining affecting physical as well as mental health. 17 In a
immortality. 7 Whats really ancient about yoga? 2014 study, women with treatment-resistant PTSD
The word itself. Around the 15th century B.C., improved significantly during and after a 10-week
key Sanskrit writings use it to mean an animals yoga program. 18 In fact, by the end of the study,
yoke and also an entire war chariot, yoke and all. half of the participants no longer met the criteria
8 Early on, due to the association with chariots for a PTSD diagnosis. The researchers believe
used only for fighting, yoga also meant warlike, that practicing yoga may have given the women
and people believed a charioteer killed in battle greater body awareness, which is linked to improved
was taken up to the heavens in a emotional regulation. 19 A study published earlier
divine yoga. Swing low, sweet chariot, this year found that self-reported physical health
indeed. 9 In Sanskrit, yoga has numer- quality was higher among people who practiced
ous other meanings, including a constellation yoga in a school or studio setting rather than alone
of stars, the quality of industriousness and even at home. 20 That same study found participants
a fraud. 10 Were not saying theres anything also reported better mental health if they practiced
fraudulent about many of the mental and physical yoga in a group setting. So for maximum benefit,
health benefits claimed by practitioners of modern dont yoga-go it alone. D
yoga, however. 11 Studies have shown, for example,
that postural yoga, along with the practices other Gemma Tarlach is senior editor at Discover.

DISCOVER (ISSN 0274-7529, USPS# 555-190) is published monthly, except for combined issues in January/February and July/August. Vol. 38, no. 6. Published by Kalmbach Publishing Co., 21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box
1612, Waukesha, WI 53187-1612. Periodical postage paid at Waukesha, WI, and at additional mailing ofces. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to DISCOVER, P.O. Box 62320, Tampa, FL 33662-2320. Canada Publication
Agreement # 40010760. Back issues available. All rights reserved. Nothing herein contained may be reproduced without written permission of Kalmbach Publishing Co., 21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box 1612, Waukesha, WI
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