STUNNING SPACE IMAGES Latest pictures and first insights from the James Webb telescope VIRAL REVOLUTION How pandemics have shaped the world EXPLORING THE GAS GIANTS Inside the missions to Saturn and Jupiter WEEKLY July 23-29, 2022 GROWING HUMAN BRAINS How lab-made brains are throwing new light on the mysteries of the human mind EXTREME HEAT No3396 US$6.99 CAN$9.99 Temperatures soar across Europe PLUS BISON GO WILD IN THE UK / VACATION READING SPECIAL / HOW DOES COVID AFFECT SPERM? / OCTOPUS GLOVE Science and technology news www.newscientist.com
This week’s issue On the 8 Stunning space images 46 Feature cover Latest pictures and first insights from the “Titan is like 38 Growing human brains James Webb telescope a firecracker How lab-made brains are waiting for throwing new light on the 42 Viral revolution someone How pandemics have to light mysteries of the human mind shaped the world a match” 7 Extreme heat 46 Exploring the gas giants Temperatures soar Inside the missions to Saturn and Jupiter across Europe 14 Bison go wild in the UK Vol 255 No 3396 34 Holiday reading special Cover image: Neil Webb 16 How does covid affect sperm? 22 Octopus glove News News NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI, NIRCAM Features 15 Coming to America 8 Great heavens The James Webb telescope delivers a feast for the eyes 38 How to grow a brain DNA evidence offers clues Miniature human brains are to ancient migration transforming neuroscience 18 I, Robot 42 Going viral A machine creates a model Understanding how plagues of itself, but does that make spark cultural revolutions could it self-aware? help us post-pandemic 21 Pig heart transplant 46 Gas giants Genetically modified organs Scott Bolton reveals secrets placed in brain-dead people uncovered from missions to Jupiter and Saturn Views The back pages 27 Comment Jonathan R. Goodman on 51 Science of gardening corporate rituals that tap How to grow chilli plants into ancient desires 53 Puzzles 28 The columnist Try our crossword, quick quiz Annalee Newitz on Google’s and logic puzzle “sentient” AI kerfuffle 54 Almost the last word 30 Aperture Is breaststroke or front crawl Everyday substances get the more efficient stroke? an arty, alien makeover 56 Feedback 32 Letters Gun-toting dogs and human Grappling with how to explain bone gifts: the week in weird expanding space-time 56 Twisteddoodles 34 Culture for New Scientist Best books for holiday reading Picturing the lighter side of life 23 July 2022 | New Scientist | 1
Elsewhere on New Scientist Tour Tour SHUTTERSTOCK/FOTYSTORY Podcast Science of rewilding: Argentinian rewilding Visit this ambitious conservation project “They used Iberá National Park, pig hearts Argentina Video with 10 genetic Explore rewilding in a hugely changes ambitious conservation project, to prevent Iberá National Park in Argentina. rejection” Discover one of the world’s largest freshwater wetlands MATEUSZ PIESIAK/NATUREPL.COM and see a vast array of wildlife, including jaguars, giant otters, Hard knocks Now we know why woodpeckers have a spongy skull capybara and a huge variety of birdlife. Plus, stay in luxury Video Newsletter Essential guide lodges and spend time in the cosmopolitan capital of Buenos Slow reveal Fix the Planet How does the sun work? Why does Aires. From 25 September for the moon matter? Is there alien life? eight days. The cost is $10,885. Slow-motion video of Energy bills in Great Britain are Knowledge of our solar system has woodpeckers’ pecks has upended soon expected to hit more than reached new heights – but there is newscientist.com/tours our understanding of why they £3200 a year on average. still much to discover about our have spongy skulls. Rather than Chief reporter Adam Vaughan nearest planets and the worlds NS Live absorbing shock from repetitive explores a trial that incentivised beyond. Explore more in the latest blows into trees, where they find households to time-shift their New Scientist Essential Guide. Early bird tickets insects and carve out their nests, electricity use during peak times, selling fast woodpecker skulls have evolved with the aim of lowering bills and shop.newscientist.com to deliver a harder and more cutting carbon release. He looks Join us for the world’s greatest efficient hit into wood, much at how it could be expanded to festival of ideas and discoveries. like a well-designed hammer. the whole of Great Britain. There will be a range of talks from much-loved names in youtube.com/newscientist newscientist.com/fix science, including Helen Czerski, Eugenia Cheng and Christopher Jackson. Hear from these and other experts at the forefront of scientific discovery about everything from the biggest conceivable numbers to the smallest particles in the universe. The event will take place between 7-9 October at ExCeL, London. newscientistlive.com Podcast Weekly The team explore the promise of using modified pig hearts in humans. They also find out how new space images are helping us peer back into the early universe. Plus, tune in to find out how covid-19 is impacting sperm. newscientist.com/nspod 2 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
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The leader Climate change hits hard Will the European heatwave finally spark politicians into action? HOW hot do you want it? That’s the Conservative party and next UK prime isn’t alone: most adaptation globally has been fragmentary and incremental. question facing world leaders this week as minister, despite the country hosting the This episode should be a reminder of what scientists have already warned: heat records were broken, forests burned, COP26 climate summit just eight months there are limits to adaptation. economies were disrupted and people ago. Germany is reactivating coal plants All this is happening at 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels. The world is on track died. The lethal heat should act as a in response to a Russian squeeze on gas. for 3.2°C of warming by 2100 at the high end, or 1.9°C of peak warming in the most wake-up call for politicians about the And across the Atlantic, a multibillion- optimistic analysis. If we allow such global warming to happen, today’s heatwaves urgency of acting on carbon emissions, not dollar US plan to curb its carbon footprint will seem modest. Much more deadly extremes will become possible. least leaders in the UK, which provisionally The glimmer of good news is we can hit a previously unthinkable 40.3°C as “The heat has exposed the UK still do something. As science report after science report reminds us, we have the New Scientist went to press (see page 7). as being woefully ill-adapted tools to rapidly cut emissions. This week’s deadly heat should give political leaders You might imagine the response would to climate change” the mandate they need to use them. ❚ be an emergency political mobilisation like the one triggered by the covid-19 was once again blocked by a single pandemic. Yet there was no breakthrough politician, Joe Manchin. announcement from 40 countries at the The heat has exposed the UK, one annual Petersberg Climate Dialogue held of the richest countries in the world, in Berlin this week. Climate action has as being woefully ill-adapted to climate barely been mentioned by politicians change. Schools closed. Hospitals creaked. competing to be the new leader of the Flights were halted. 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News New kind of laser Turtle hazard Y chromosome loss Sticky-tape robot Beams based on Moving eggs from Missing DNA might A tiny, shape-shifting Warped galaxies particle clumps may nests could harm increase men’s risk machine could one Distorted light hints add sharpness p15 development p18 of heart disease p19 day fix organs p21 at where to look for dark matter p13 An umbrella wards off the sun in Canary Wharf, London, on 18 July JOSE SARMENTO MATOS/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES flights temporarily after part of a runway lifted off in the heat. Climate change Elsewhere in Europe, fires raged UK hits 40°C for first time across France, Greece, Portugal and Spain. A warning of “very UK temperature record broken as extreme heatwave causes fires, extreme danger” of fire was evacuations and deaths across Europe, reports Adam Vaughan forecast for many parts of those countries, with “danger” warnings THE maximum temperature in The UK also recorded its Collective action or collective extending as far north as Belgium, the UK exceeded 40°C for the first provisional hottest ever overnight suicide,” he said in a statement. the Netherlands and the UK. More time ever as New Scientist went temperature between Monday than 1000 deaths have been to press, during a heatwave that and Tuesday, at 25.8°C in London. In the UK, health authorities attributed to the heat in Portugal hit much of the country, closing encouraged people to stay out of and Spain over the past few days. schools and disrupting transport. Europe is sweltering in extreme the sun during the hottest part of The provisional temperature heat, triggering forest fires. the day and advised against non- “Severe heatwaves are a reported at London Heathrow Thousands of people have been essential travel. Some parents problem that’s not going away, and at 12.50pm on 19 July was 40.2°C, evacuated and hundreds of deaths across England told New Scientist they will get worse,” says Hannah followed by 40.3°C at Coningsby, have been blamed on the heat. Cloke at the University of Reading, Lincolnshire. 40.3°C UK. “So we can no longer tolerate The deadly heat affecting the poor design of our buildings and Heat records normally go up in continent came as government Temperature at Coningsby, our cities. And we urgently need small increments, but this is 1.5°C ministers from more than Lincolnshire, on 19 July to think about things like reducing more than the record before this 40 countries met in Berlin for overheating, shading trees, heatwave, of 38.7°C from 2019. annual climate change talks known that their children’s schools were building for cooling and providing as the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, closed or closing early on Monday these public cooling spaces.” Climate scientists say that discussing help for low-income and Tuesday, despite the 40°C would be extremely unlikely countries and how to cut carbon government saying there is no Sleep is interrupted for many in the UK without climate change, emissions faster. UN secretary- public health reason for closures. people during heatwaves, says and that heatwaves have been general António Guterres said Laurence Wainwright at the made more likely and more countries were failing on climate Rail services were cancelled or University of Oxford, which intense by global warming. action. “We have a choice. ran slowly. Luton airport halted could trigger existing mental health conditions. “That temperatures are as high as they are is because of human- induced climate change. And we are very certain about this now,” says Friederike Otto at Imperial College London. On Monday, the High Court of Justice in London ruled that the UK government’s 2021 net-zero strategy had failed to meet its legal obligations by not quantifying in sufficient detail how the plan would meet carbon targets. “This decision is a breakthrough moment in the fight against climate delay and inaction. It forces the government to put in place climate plans that will actually address the crisis,” said Sam Hunter Jones at environmental law group ClientEarth in a statement. ❚ 23 July 2022 | New Scientist | 7
News JWST special report Astronomy A delightful deluge of stars The first set of science images from the James Webb Space Telescope is an incredible feast for the eyes, mind and heart IT HAS been just over a week since we got our first glimpse of the power of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), with a sneak peek unveiled by US president Joe Biden on 11 July ahead of a presentation from NASA and its partners on 12 July. Despite technical hitches – streaming video around the world is somehow more difficult than capturing starlight from across the universe, it seems – astronomers took visible glee in being able to share their new views of the cosmos with everyone else. “JWST has produced images worthy of the history books in just six months since it launched” The reaction to these images NASA, ESA, CSA, AND STSCI has almost universally been one of wonder and excitement. They One of the brightest nebulae in telescope’s first images. “We and stellar winds of the young are all the more impressive for the sky, the Carina Nebula is a see examples of bubbles and stars at the top of the image, how quickly JWST has got to work, huge cloud of gas and nascent cavities and jets that are being a process that continues to producing images worthy of the stars. It is about 7600 light blown out by these newborn chip away at the gas and dust. history books in just six months years from Earth in the stars. We even see some The streamers of gas and dust since its launch in December 2021. direction of the constellation galaxies sort of lurking in the in the centre of the picture are In contrast, while the Hubble Carina. The top part of the background up here. We see in the process of being heated Space Telescope was launched image is full of huge, hot stars, examples of structures that and blown away from the in 1990, it wasn’t until 1995 that shining onto the stellar nursery honestly we don’t even know denser, cooler area below. NASA released its most iconic at the bottom of the picture. what they are.” picture, the Pillars of Creation, As JWST observes in infrared in part due to problems with the “Today, for the first time, The orange ridges in the wavelengths instead of visible telescope that had to be rectified we’re seeing brand new stars so-called cosmic cliffs of this light, it peers through the by astronauts. that were completely hidden image are up to 7 light years cosmic clouds to see young from our view,” said JWST high, jutting into a cavity in the stars that were blocked from In this special report, we scientist Amber Straughn nebula. The cavity was carved previous observations. highlight some of the best pictures at the 12 July release of the out by the intense radiation Leah Crane released so far, detail the science that astronomers have already teased out of data collected by the telescope (see “A glimpse of chemistry in a distant galaxy”, right, and page 13) and answer questions from New Scientist readers who have been wowed by the imagery (see page 10). In a world so often filled with hardship, it is good to have something that we can all look up to. ❚ Jacob Aron 8 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
Early universe A glimpse of chemistry in a distant galaxy Will Gater THE spectrum of light from NASA, ESA, CSA, AND STSCI The distant red galaxy an inconspicuous red galaxy in occupies just a handful JWST’s “deep field” image (see emission line in extremely of pixels in JWST’s image page 13) has set astronomers’ distant galaxies, says Bunker, hearts aflutter. Produced by the but anticipated having to search you unlock a way to translate the telescope’s NIRSpec instrument, “dozens or hundreds” of targets apparent prominence of different which uses tiny windows to to uncover it. “I don’t think we chemical fingerprints in a isolate and analyse the light from really dreamt that within the first, spectrum into how much of those objects within the telescope’s field essentially publicity, snap that it chemicals are really in the galaxy. of view, it is an unprecedented would be there. That’s really quite Scientists have done this for insight into a galaxy present in incredible,” he says. It is all so nearby galaxies before, says the early universe. sudden that the galaxy doesn’t Bunker, but not for far-off ones. even appear to have a name. Such had been the secrecy Future JWST spectra will around the capture and release The oxygen line is important allow researchers to explore of the first JWST observations because astronomers use it to how the proportion of elements that some of the NIRSpec team calibrate their measurements heavier than helium in distant weren’t even aware of the of the compositions of galaxies. galaxies has changed over time. existence of the spectrum until If you can see this line with your “It gives you data points on that the public announcement on instruments, and are able to evolution,” says Emma Chapman, 12 July. But there was one feature compare it with other oxygen an astrophysicist at the University of the data that NIRSpec team emission lines in a galaxy’s light, of Nottingham, UK. member Andrew Bunker, at the University of Oxford, saw was “a Insights like these have real step [forward] within minutes the potential to revolutionise of the data being released”. what we know about the early universe. “There is a missing Among the various hallmarks billion years in our understanding of different elements within of the evolution of our universe,” the galaxy was a particular says Chapman. “From around fingerprint – what astronomers 380,000 years after the big call an emission line – of glowing bang to about a billion years after, oxygen gas, with a wavelength of we have very little information. 436.3 nanometres. The NIRSpec Now, JWST is being able to dive team had hoped to observe this right back into that era.” ❚ Space exploration 7600 Collision risk rocks, and the team expected able to tweak their positions may limit a single collision per month, to mostly mitigate the effects Distance in light years Webb’s view but one that struck a segment of the micrometeoroid strike to the Carina Nebula of the telescope’s mirror in May (arxiv.org/abs/2207.05632). SCIENTISTS may have to avoid was larger than anything anyone 7 pointing the James Webb Space predicted before its launch. Nevertheless, too many of Telescope (JWST) in certain these strikes could seriously Height of the “cosmic cliffs” directions too often for fear According to a report on degrade the segments. The of dust and gas in light years of damage from space rocks. JWST commissioning released JWST team is now working on 12 July, that strike “caused on new models to figure out During the six-month period significant uncorrectable change how common events like this of instrument testing called in the overall figure of that should be and how to deal commissioning, JWST was struck segment. However, the effect with any damage they might by at least six micrometeoroids, was small at the full telescope cause. That might even mean pieces of space dust that orbit level.” Thanks to the precise avoiding pointing the telescope the sun. Space is full of these tiny control mechanism needed in the direction in which it is to align the 18 segments of travelling to stave off head-on the mirror, engineers were collisions. ❚ LC 23 July 2022 | New Scientist | 9
News JWST special report Q&A Cosmic questions answered New Scientist space reporter Leah Crane explains what the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope can tell us and what it will look for in the future ON 12 July, the first set of full- It also observes in different NASA, ESA, CSA, AND B. HOLLER AND J. STANSBERRY (STSCI) resolution science images from wavelengths than Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope which allows it to see things – a supermassive black hole like first deep-field image, to be (JWST) was released. This set particularly extremely distant the Event Horizon Telescope strong enough to see yourself? included astonishingly sharp things – that Hubble can’t. did – that’s a different kind of As in light does a U-turn? pictures of the Carina Nebula (see telescope – but it will study them. Yes! Black holes can have a feature page 8); the Eight-Burst Nebula, How close to the edge of the In fact, the picture of Stephan’s called a photon sphere, where also known as the Southern Ring observable universe will JWST Quintet (far right), a galaxy cluster gravity’s pull is so strong that Nebula (below); a group of galaxies be able to see? Official releases nearly 300 million light years light orbits the black hole. So if called Stephan’s Quintet (far right); have said the telescope can see from Earth, is providing insight you aim a light just outside the and a deep-field image showing a 13.5 billion years back in time – that on one already. photon sphere, you could, in galaxy cluster called SMACS 0723 seems very close to the age of the theory, see that light come around (see page 13) stretching the light universe at about 13.8 billion years. Is it possible for gravitational the other side of the black hole. of the objects behind it. There was JWST should be able to see back lensing, like that seen in JWST’s Depending on the distance to the also an analysis of the composition to between 100 million and black hole, it could take a really of an exoplanet named WASP-96b. 250 million years after the big long time, though – the most bang. But while that is up to laborious selfie ever. These images are the about 13.5 billion years ago, it isn’t culmination of decades of work 13.5 billion light years away – it is If the James Webb Space Telescope by scientists and engineers – and can see 13.5 billion years back, they are just the beginning of 13.5bn could we one day make a telescope JWST’s exploration of the universe. that can “see” further than the They have also inspired dozens Age in years of the oldest light the beginning of time? of questions from New Scientist James Webb Space Telescope can see I wish! Unfortunately, there is readers, from queries about the a fundamental limit to how far telescope itself to what it might be much further than that, because back we can see, because up until able to do next. Here is a round-up the expansion of the universe has a little less than 380,000 years of our favourite questions, along stretched space as light travelled after the big bang, the universe with their answers. to us, causing it to cross much was completely filled with hot longer distances. plasma and was therefore opaque. What is so special about these Will the James Webb Space images? Didn’t we have the Hubble Telescope study supermassive black holes? Can it produce an Space Telescope before the James image similar to the one from the Event Horizon Telescope? Webb Space Telescope? JWST can’t make an image of We did and do have Hubble, which delivers so many gorgeous images of space. But JWST is much bigger, so its pictures are more detailed. This cloud of dust and gas the end of its lifetime and NASA, ESA, CSA, AND STSCI surrounding two stars is called transformed from a sun-like the Southern Ring Nebula, or star into a white dwarf star. the Eight-Burst Nebula, imaged here in infrared. Two images of this nebula were released among the first The nebula is about 2000 JWST images, which revealed light years from Earth and the two stars in extraordinary nearly half a light year across. detail. They show that the The bright cloud that makes dimmer, redder star – the one up the ring came from the that spawned this nebula – is outer layers of one of the stars surrounded by dust, whereas at the centre of the nebula, the brighter star may one day which expanded when it reached puff out its own nebula. 10 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
This picture of Jupiter was years after the big bang. NASA, ESA, CSA, AND STSCI through the planet’s atmosphere proposals include many more taken using JWST’s near The only way we can see that far and for us to analyse it without exoplanet observations, views infrared camera, NIRCam, being blocked by lots of clouds, of supermassive black holes with two different filters to back in time is by using the cosmic which would make these smashing together, searches focus on separate wavelengths microwave background, which observations more challenging. for the first stars and galaxies, of light. Jupiter’s moon Europa consists of light left over from and analyses of the large-scale is also visible, as is its shadow the extremely early universe, now How will astronomers decide what structure of the entire universe. just to the left of the planet’s spread throughout the cosmos. to take a picture of with JWST next? Great Red Spot. The first year of science has Why is space so pretty? With the data and imagery actually already been planned The fun answer: because it The image was taken as collected, is it possible (or even out. Researchers made more is everything! The physicist’s part of a test of JWST’s scientific probable) that scientists will revise than 1000 proposals for what to answer: hydrogen. The actual instruments to check that the the currently accepted age of the observe and the best options were answer: often it is because we observatory could track objects universe to be much much older selected by panels of scientists assign colours to dust and gas in moving at high speeds through than a mere 13.7 billion years? who get the final say on where order to make our space pictures the solar system. Jupiter was It is possible that the data from to point JWST. The winning prettier and more informative. ❚ the slowest and largest of nine JWST will cause us to revise the moving targets used for these age of the universe based on new These five galaxies, called more detailed than any of the tests, and it showed that measurements of its expansion, Stephan’s Quintet, are about previous ones. It is a mosaic of smaller objects like Europa but, if so, it will probably go down 290 million light years from almost 1000 pictures, making can be tracked even with a rather than up. This is because Earth in the direction of the it JWST’s biggest image to date. bright planet bouncing light there are two estimates of the rate constellation Pegasus. into the cameras. of expansion of the universe, one That detail allows us to see of which gives us an age of about The four at the top of this the area around a supermassive Even if it weren’t opaque, 13.8 billion years and the other image are engaged in a deadly black hole, the brightest part of though, space and time began of which gives an age of about game of chicken, swooping the top galaxy. “We cannot see simultaneously, so, while this can 11.4 billion years. past one another closer and the black hole itself, but we see be hard to wrap your brain around, closer until, someday in the the material sort of swirling there is no such thing as “further Was there anything unexpected distant cosmic future, they will around and being swallowed than the beginning of time”. about the spectra of the galaxy probably smash together and by this cosmic monster,” said As far as physicists know, there is and exoplanet obtained so far? merge. We have seen them JWST researcher Giovanna nothing to see before the big bang. There wasn’t anything before – in fact, the group of Giardino during a 12 July particularly shocking in the four is the most thoroughly press conference. This area “These images are the data that has come down so far, studied compact group of is 40 billion times as bright culmination of decades aside from the better-than- galaxies – but this image is far as our sun, she said. of work by scientists expected performance of and engineers” the telescope itself. The images are all of systems that are already Can we see further back than very well studied, but we just 380,000 years after the big bang have far more detail now than with gravitational waves detected ever before. So, we are seeing by the Laser Interferometer new things, but I don’t think Gravitational-Wave Observatory those are very unexpected. (LIGO) or the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA)? Why did the JWST crew choose Unfortunately, the answer WASP-96b as the first exoplanet is no, because gravitational to analyse the composition of? waves come from the motion What was special about it? of masses and there just weren’t What’s special about WASP-96b any structures big enough to is that it isn’t cloudy – the new create measurable gravitational spectrum shows some evidence waves until about 100 million of clouds and haze, but not much. That is good because it allows the light from its star to shine right 23 July 2022 | New Scientist | 11
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News JWST special report Gravitational lensing Unscrambling the cosmos Astronomers are already using the images from the James Webb Space Telescope to reveal a new understanding of the objects they depict, says Leah Crane JUST days after the first full- NASA, ESA, CSA, AND STSCI those stars come from destroyed galaxies.” As SMACS 0723 resolution image from the James devoured other galaxy clusters, it ripped them apart, leaving Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was stars and other matter strewn in a bright streak across the released on 11 July, two groups of cluster’s centre. researchers have already analysed Frye’s team also spotted an unexpected gap in that faint light. the data to recreate the structure of If the cluster finished destroying all those other galaxies a long the cluster of galaxies in the image. time ago, we would expect the light to be smoothly distributed, The cluster, called SMACS 0723, but this strange void indicates that a huge merger may still be going is so massive that it warps space- on, says Frye. time, bending and magnifying One next step among many is to take a closer look at the the light from the galaxies behind background galaxies themselves. JWST’s resolution is so high that it in a process called gravitational researchers can not only tell which ones are repeated images, lensing. JWST’s image of it is the but they can also spot bursts of star formation – and maybe even deepest picture of the cosmos individual stars – in galaxies halfway across the universe. ever created. “I’ve been preparing for this since 2005, when I started working on JWST, and when the image came out, it’s like I had been going through life without any glasses on and I finally got my first pair of prescription glasses,” says Brenda Frye at the University of Arizona. The day the deep-field picture was released, she assembled a team across as many time zones as possible so they could analyse the data around the clock, and Anything but boring then got to work. The first image released is lurking within the cluster. SMACS 0723 has been thoroughly “What we’re seeing, which is studied for years using other A similar tale was unfolding in by the James Webb Space telescopes. “For the first release, so spectacular, is this rich tapestry they tried to find a boring the UK, where Guillaume Mahler Telescope team with so many colours and cluster… but JWST is so good textures. But what you see is that it turned this ‘boring’ cluster at Durham University and his the tip of the iceberg,” says Frye. with nothing to learn into this “Every single blob that you see amazing treasure,” says Mahler. colleagues began to examine the is a galaxy with 10 billion stars, “We are really seeing galaxies but most of the cluster’s mass and star formation at the dawn same observations. “I expected to we can’t see because it’s invisible of the universe.” dark matter, just like most of see galaxies that we’d never seen, an iceberg is underwater.” Frye also leads a group that will use JWST to look at seven so I was ready for new discoveries, The researchers found that more galaxy clusters and their the cluster is more elongated gravitationally lensed background but what I was amazed by was than we had realised from galaxies over the course of the previous observations with other next month. Hers is one of several how many there were,” says “It’s like I had been going telescopes. This oblong shape programmes designed to take is most likely due to mergers incredibly deep images of the Mahler. “At first, it was a bit through life without any with other large galaxy clusters. cosmos, so the coming months are sure to provide a surge of new overwhelming, like: what do glasses on and I finally “All of this faint, diffuse light insights on the earliest stars and emission from the cluster that galaxies, and the dark matter we do with all of this?” got my first pair” we see, this is completely new that sits between them and us. ❚ and unexpected,” says Mahler. The teams began by searching “It’s telling us something about the history of the cluster – all for background galaxies that appeared to repeat, being cloned by the effects of gravitational lensing. This is a common effect of the phenomenon. Mahler’s team found 16 repeated galaxies (arxiv.org/abs/2207.07101) and 10bn Frye’s team found 13 (arxiv.org/ abs/2207.07102). Both teams used them to reconstruct SMACS 0723 Number of stars in every galaxy and calculate where dark matter seen in this JWST image 23 July 2022 | New Scientist | 13
News Field notes Rewilding in Kent Wild bison roam in the UK for the first time Four bison were released into an English woodland that they are expected to transform, reports Adam Vaughan MONDAY 18 July was a special day ROBERT CANIS The bison were released for Tom Gibbs, one of the UK’s in woodland in Kent, UK, first two bison rangers. On that invertebrates. The bison’s habit an empty “control” area, as well on 18 July day, four bison were released in of rolling around on the ground as with regions stocked with woodland near Canterbury, south- for a “dust bath” helps burrowing long-horned cattle. woods are private land that east England, marking the first insects too. More insects should is largely owned by the Kent time the huge herbivores have in turn attract more birds, The project’s backers hope Wildlife Trust, local people have been introduced to the wild in the including lesser spotted the small bison herd will breed, informally become used to being UK. The event is a major milestone woodpeckers and nightingales, with the first calves potentially able to walk their dogs off the for proponents of rewilding UK and boost biodiversity. appearing within two years, main paths and in the woods. landscapes, where wildlife and depending on how they settle. This is no longer possible. plant declines aren’t slowing. Eventually, the bison’s actions The woods are estimated to have should help transform the habitat enough food to support about “My mum doesn’t like it “The job just captured my into one dominated by silver birch 10 animals. because they’re cutting off the imagination,” says Gibbs, when trees, downy birch trees and footpaths so we can’t walk I visit the site ahead of the release. heather. Gibbs says the bison Carefully handling any through there any more. She “This is exactly the form of will be a “game changer” for expansion will be vital, because doesn’t mind the actual bison,” [habitat] management we need habitat management. The shifts the species’ genetic diversity is says 17-year-old Ella Kimble from in this country. And it’s such very fragile. The bison was wiped nearby Herne. Kimble welcomes a charismatic animal.” 4 out in the wild across Europe in the release, a view echoed by her 1927 and was only saved by a friend, 17-year-old Freya Mcmillan The release of two calves from bison are now living wild in a breeding programme from from Blean. “I think it’s cool,” Ireland, a bull from Germany and 54 animals left in zoos. she says. “They’re good for a matriarch that was being held in forest in south-east England the ecosystem.” captivity in Scotland was delayed Successful releases across by three months due to paperwork will occur more slowly than Europe mean there are now Whether the release counts headaches around wild animal they would with “intensive” about 6200 bison in the wild. as a return or an introduction is a imports, as the UK is no longer a management of the land using In 2021, the species was officially matter of academic debate. There member of the European Union. machinery such as chainsaws, declared no longer “vulnerable”. is no conclusive archaeological but he says that is to be expected. Gibbs’s main goal will be to avoid evidence that B. bonasus ever Now the animals are finally inbreeding, meaning bulls may lived in the UK. But one thing in their 205-hectare site, part of Kunzmann has more than be moved to other sites when does seem likely – if the bison a block of ancient woodland called 140 monitoring points to establish they reach sexual maturity. release is a success, the animals West Blean and Thornden Woods, a baseline of the species in the will spread across the country. they are expected to transform it. area. She will also spend the next The bison project faces other Today, much of the landscape is five years recording metrics such challenges. A practical one is the “We’re hoping this is going dominated by pine trees from as how much carbon the soil network of metal fences that has to be a trial run for projects like conifer plantations that were stores, which will help her been erected in the woods to keep this to happen all over the UK, for grown in the 1970s, as well as measure the effects the bison people and the bison separate, people to see that, actually, things fern-rich ground cover. “It’s a have on the environment. Their along with a series of bison like bison can be the nature-based monoculture. Nothing much impact will be compared with tunnels under footpaths that are solution that we need in order is growing here, and you’ve got a public right of way. Though the to restore woodland like this,” a handful of species,” says Kora says Kunzmann. ❚ Kunzmann at Kent Wildlife Trust, the non-profit group leading the bison project. As Europe’s largest land mammal, the European bison (Bison bonasus) is considered an “ecosystem engineer”. The animals are heavy enough to break up soil to allow vegetation to grow, and they like eating bark, which will eventually kill trees and create standing deadwood, an important habitat for 14 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
Human evolution Skull helps piece together puzzle of ancient human migration into America Carissa Wong MATERIAL recovered from a DNA bases, but this was enough genome of Mengzi Ren with “This is the first time we have 14,000-year-old skull found in to work out the individual’s ancient genomes from around sequenced an ancient east Asian south-west China reveals that the species-level identity. the world, the team revealed genome from the time when individual was a member of our genetic similarities between people were migrating into species, Homo sapiens, and had “It was a really exciting this individual and living people America, helping to confirm genetic ties to the east Asian moment,” says Su. “It is difficult of east Asian ancestry, as well the east Asian ancestry of Native ancestors of Native Americans. to find ancient DNA in such a as Native American people. This Americans,” says Su. sample. After three years of trying suggests Mengzi Ren was related The cranium, which belonged to extract DNA from around to ancient populations in east Based on this genetic analysis, to an individual known as Mengzi 100 spots on the cranium, Asia that contributed to Native the researchers speculate that Ren, was unearthed in 1989 in we found ancient DNA that American ancestry (Current some of these ancestors of Native Red Deer cave in Yunnan province. we could sequence.” Biology, doi.org/gqhgk5). American people may have It has an unusual mix of modern travelled north along the coastline and ancient features, which has By then comparing the The east Asian ancestry of of present-day eastern China, led to suggestions that it might Native Americans has previously as well as through the Japanese represent an ancient human Red Deer cave in been inferred by analysing the islands, before crossing into species – despite the fact that it Yunnan, China, and DNA of living people. North America from Siberia. dates to a time when our species the skull found there is thought to have been the only “This work is very exciting, as it type of human present on Earth. XUEPING JI shows how the settlement of east Others have suggested the Asia is linked to the peopling of cranium might have belonged America,” says Tábita Hünemeier to an individual of mixed ancient at the Institute of Evolutionary and modern ancestry. Biology in Spain. But now, Bing Su at the She adds that there is also Kunming Institute of Zoology at evidence that some members the Chinese Academy of Sciences of the founding population that and his colleagues have analysed entered the Americas dispersed ancient DNA from the skull and westwards back into east Asia. established that Mengzi Ren was “This could be [another] actually a female H. sapiens. The explanation for the presence of team sequenced a fraction of the a relationship between Mengzi total genome, just 100 million Ren’s ancestry and ancient Native Americans,” she says. ❚ Optics New kind of laser have built a laser that uses particles lasers – until the clump itself adjusted after manufacturing. could produce Diederik Wiersma at the ultra-sharp displays that can arrange themselves to starts to emit a laser beam, now University of Florence in Italy A NEW kind of laser uses tiny carry out a similar process. in the colour red (Nature Physics, says that the new laser is the first moving particles to create beams kind to be programmed by moving of light. The laser is more The new type of laser first doi.org/h479). its components, which allows it programmable than standard to have multiple functions. lasers and the approach could requires the use of green light from By nudging the particles into be used to create visual displays Sapienza says one use for the that are sharp from all angles. a traditional laser. The researchers different positions with the green laser may be in display screens, such as digital billboards. Conventional lasers repeatedly shine this green light into a small light, the team can then program bounce light between two mirrors Particles could move and until it becomes bright and focused. glass box filled with a liquid solution the properties of the light emitted assemble at a specific location Riccardo Sapienza at Imperial within the display and emit a colour College London and his colleagues containing titanium oxide and by the laser, such as where in the that could be very pure, and visible in both very bright and very dim silicon oxide particles. This warms device it originates from and how light and from all lines of sight. ❚ Karmela Padavic-Callaghan up the silicon oxide particles and pure its colour is. By comparison, causes the titanium oxide particles conventional lasers can’t be to clump around them. The green light then bounces “Light bounces between between particles in the clump – particles in the clump until similarly to how light bounces the clump itself starts to between mirrors in conventional emit a laser beam” 23 July 2022 | New Scientist | 15
News Coronavirus Impact of covid-19 on sperm As the pandemic has continued, evidence has built up about the way the coronavirus affects sperm cells and fertility, reports Carissa Wong COVID-19 infections can lower is needed. “If you’ve got a sperm had a below average sperm count, to have an inflamed epididymis. suggesting sperm counts recover There is also evidence that sperm count and the virus may count of, say, 120 million, the over time. This study didn’t assess sperm counts in the participants SARS-CoV-2 may be able to directly even bind to receptors on the chances are that even if they take prior to having covid-19. bind to sperm cells. In a study presented at the conference by surface of sperm cells. However, a hit, you still would have a count Amira Sallem at the University Chiara Castellini at the University of Monastir in Tunisia and her of L’Aquila in Italy and her there is no evidence to suggest of 60 million and you’re still colleagues also presented colleagues, the team found that evidence of covid-19’s effects on ACE2 receptors were present on that the effects differ from those probably going to be able to sperm motility at the conference. the surface of sperm cells from They collected two semen 40 sperm donors. However, seen after other illnesses that conceive naturally,” said Nelson. samples, one before and another the virus hasn’t yet been found during the pandemic, from 90 inside sperm cells. involve fever, such as the flu. This isn’t the first study to people with an average age of 38, and found an average 5 per cent Sperm donations Krishna Chaitanya Mantravadi suggest that infection with the reduction in the proportion of sperm that could swim. However, SARS-CoV-2 has also rarely at Oasis Fertility, a fertility clinic SARS-CoV-2 virus may lead to a this study didn’t test whether been found in the seminal fluid participants had covid-19. that carries sperm. Pedro Jose in India, tracked sperm counts in temporary drop in sperm count. Fernández-Colom at the La Fe Covid-19 may affect sperm by University and Polytechnic 20 men aged 25 to 35 from before damaging the tissues that support Hospital in Spain and his their development. Lab studies colleagues presented work at the they had a SARS-CoV-2 infection “Men with moderate to have shown that the SARS-CoV-2 conference in which they analysed virus can infect cells in the testes sperm donated by 50 men to nearly five months after they severe disease may suffer and the epididymis, the tube between July 2020 and March where sperm cells mature. These 2021. They found SARS-CoV-2 in had fully recovered – that is, a temporary reduction in both carry the ACE2 receptor that one semen sample. Fernández- the virus uses to gain entry to cells. Colom told New Scientist that the were testing negative and had no semen quality” An imaging study conducted in presence of the virus in semen was 26 men during a mild covid-19 rare but not impossible. There is symptoms. The researchers didn’t infection found that 11 appeared no evidence it can be transmitted sexually through semen, he says. explicitly look at sperm in trans A 2021 study led by Gilbert A light micrograph Overall, the effects of covid-19 women or non-binary people – Donders at University Hospital of human sperm cells on sperm are similar to those seen after other illnesses that involve this was the case for all the studies Antwerp in Belgium analysed a fever, such as the flu, because sperm are highly sensitive to mentioned in this article. semen samples from 67 men temperature changes. The men visited the clinic with an average age of 34 after they “The data suggests that men with moderate to severe disease before the pandemic after trying had tested positive for covid-19. may suffer a temporary reduction in semen quality, in the same to conceive for at least a year. The researchers analysed the way that is seen with other illnesses [that cause fever],” says Of the 20 men, six saw no decline samples of 35 of these men within Allan Pacey at the University of Sheffield, UK. “As such, I am no in sperm count around 10 weeks a month after they had a positive longer concerned about any long-term effects for male fertility after recovering from covid-19, PCR test, and found a below of a covid-19 infection and see this as no more serious than while the other 14 had an average average sperm count – defined as what we see following an infection of influenza.” ❚ 49 per cent decline. less than 15 million sperm cells per The team measured the millilitre of semen – in 13 of them. sperm counts of these 14 men The team analysed the samples of again around 11 weeks later and the other 32 participants at about found that levels had recovered two months after a positive test, somewhat for 11 of them, to an and found just two participants average of 12 per cent lower than prior to infection. The other three STEVE GSCHMEISSNER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY men’s sperm levels didn’t recover at all in this time period. Chaitanya Mantravadi presented the findings at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Milan, Italy, earlier this month. “For some men, we just do not know if the effect on semen parameters is permanent,” Scott Nelson, an NHS consultant based at the University of Glasgow, UK, said during a separate presentation at the conference, adding that more data on how sperm impairments caused by covid-19 can affect conception 16 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
News Technology Robot claimed to be self-aware A machine knows its own position in space, but is this really a form of self-perception? Chris Stokel-Walker A ROBOT can create a “mental” Chen, Lipson and their was fed information about the In their research paper, the model of itself to plan how to colleagues tried to do that by arm’s mechanical inputs and authors describe their robot move and reach a goal – an ability placing a robot arm in a laboratory watched how it responded by system as being “3D self-aware” that its developers say makes it where it was surrounded by four seeing where it moved to in the when it comes to planning an self-aware, though others disagree. cameras at ground level and one space. This generated nearly action. Lipson believes that a camera above it. These fed video 8000 data points – and the robot that is self-aware in a Every robot is trained in images back to a deep neural team generated an additional more general, human sense is some way to do a task, often in a network, a form of AI, connected 10,000 through a simulation 20 to 30 years away. Chen says simulation. By seeing what to do, to the robot that monitored its of the robot in a virtual version that full self-awareness will take robots can then mimic the task. movement within the space. of its environment. scientists a long time to achieve. But they do so unthinkingly, perhaps relying on sensors to try For 3 hours, the robot wriggled To test how well the AI had Others are more cautious – to reduce collision risks, rather randomly and the neural network learned to predict the robot arm’s and possibly sceptical – about than having any understanding location in space, it generated a the paper’s claims of even 3D of why they are performing the Has this robot arm cloud-like graphic to show where self-awareness. “There is potential task or a true awareness of where developed a form of it “thought” the arm should be for further research to lead to they are within physical space. “bodily” self-awareness? found as it moved. It was accurate useful applications based on this It means they will often make to within 1 per cent, meaning if the method, but not self-awareness,” mistakes – bashing their arm into CHEN, LIPSON, NISSELSON, QIN/COLUMBIA ENGINEERING workspace was 1 metre wide, the says Andrew Hundt at the an obstacle, for instance – that system correctly estimated its Georgia Institute of Technology. humans wouldn’t because they do position to within 1 centimetre. “The computer simply matches have physical self-awareness and shape and motion patterns that would compensate for changes. If the neural network is happen to be in the shape of a considered to be part of the robot robot arm that moves.” “It’s a very essential capability itself, this suggests the robot has of humans that we normally take the ability to visualise where it David Cameron at the for granted,” says Boyuan Chen at physically is at any given moment University of Sheffield, UK, says Duke University, North Carolina. (Science Robotics, doi.org/gqhcfw). that following a specified path to complete a goal is easily achieved “I’ve been working for quite a “To me, this is the first time by robots without self-perception. while on trying to get machines in the history of robotics that “The robot modelling its trajectory to understand what they are by a robot has been able to create towards the goal is a key first step thinking about themselves,” says a mental model of itself,” says in creating something resembling Hod Lipson at Columbia University, Lipson. “It’s a small step, but self-perception,” he adds. ❚ New York, another team member. it’s a sign of things to come.” Conservation Moving turtle eggs area of the same beach where they shelters to protect half of the nests artificial nests took more than to protect them twice as long, on average, to right harms development were laid. However, it is a delicate and moved the eggs from the other themselves (Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, doi.org/h45b). SEA turtles that hatch from task since reptile eggs are highly half to human-dug holes elsewhere Those poorer motor skills could human-made nests may have make it harder for newly hatched less well-developed brains, sexual sensitive to their environment. on the same beach. turtles to evade predators while organs and motor skills than crawling to the ocean. hatchlings from natural nests. “When eggs are relocated to When the baby turtles emerged The finding highlights that Conservationists regularly move hatcheries, their chance of survival from the sand, those from moving eggs “should not be routine the eggs of endangered sea turtles practice, but rather only done in when their original nest site is is improved. However, this also human-made nests weighed about exceptional circumstances when at risk, such as from poaching, nests are in imminent danger of predation or floodwaters. This is probably imposes trade-offs on 9 per cent less than those from destruction”, says David Booth either to indoor incubation facilities at the University of Queensland or to hand-dug holes in a protected developing turtles,” says Esperanza natural nests and some regions in Australia. ❚ Elizabeth Preston Meléndez-Herrera at Michoacan of their brains had fewer neurons. University of Saint Nicholas of When the researchers flipped the Hidalgo in Mexico. turtles upside down, the ones from To explore what those trade-offs are, she and her colleagues found “Turtles from human-made 10 olive ridley turtle (Lepidochelys nests weighed about olivacea) nests with newly laid eggs 9 per cent less than those on a Mexican beach. They set up from natural nests” 18 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
Zoology Health Woodpeckers’ Y chromosome loss may cause skulls don’t act as heart disease in some men shock absorbers Clare Wilson Christa Lesté-Lasserre The Y chromosome WOODPECKERS’ skulls are built to (coloured yellow) is deliver a harder and more efficient smaller than the X hit into wood, rather than absorb shocks as previously thought. BIOPHOTO ASSOCIATES/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY The team also looked at how Y chromosome loss affected Woodpeckers hammer their THE immune cells of DNA. If they lose any other men in a large medical study beaks onto tree trunks to many older men lose their chromosomes, however, the called UK Biobank, which tracks communicate, to look for food or to Y chromosomes, and this may cells would be more likely to die. participants’ health over time. create a cavity for nesting. Spongy contribute to men having more The more immune cells without bone between the birds’ brains and heart disease than women. Loss of this Y chromosome a Y that men had at the time beaks was once thought to cushion in immune cells correlates with of their enrolment, the higher their brains from the repetitive DNA is packaged into higher rates of health problems, their risk of dying from heart blows. But this doesn’t make sense chromosomes, with the cells including heart disease, cancer disease in the following 12 years. from a functional point of view, of most men and transgender and Alzheimer’s disease. But says Sam Van Wassenbergh at women carrying one X and one it was unclear whether Y loss For instance, men who the University of Antwerp in Y, and those of most women causes these conditions or if had lost the Y chromosome Belgium. “A hammer with shock and transgender men carrying faulty DNA replication is behind in more than 40 per cent of absorption built into it is simply two Xs – although some people their immune cells had a 31 per a bad hammer,” he says. have other combinations, such 40% cent higher risk of dying from as XXY or XYY. circulatory disease during the Van Wassenbergh and his This proportion of 70-year-old study period. Scarring of heart colleagues analysed 109 high- It was discovered several muscle can contribute to types speed videos of six captive birds decades ago that in some people men have lost Y chromosomes of heart disease, such as heart as they hammered on wood: two born with XY chromosomes, failure, says Forsberg. black woodpeckers (Dryocopus a proportion of the immune both Y loss and the health martius), two pileated woodpeckers cells have no Y chromosome, issues, says Lars Forsberg at Further work on the mice (Dryocopus pileatus) and two a phenomenon that becomes Uppsala University in Sweden. showed that immune cells great spotted woodpeckers more common with increasing lacking a Y chromosome (Dendrocopos major). age. For instance, 40 per cent of To find out, Forsberg and had infiltrated heart muscle, 70-year-old men have no Y in at his colleagues used CRISPR triggering the release of an They found that, in the least some of the immune cells gene editing to remove the inflammatory signalling milliseconds after a strike, the found in their blood. Y chromosome from about molecule called transforming birds’ eyes and heads slowed two-thirds of the immune growth factor beta (Science, down at essentially the same rate The reasons for this are cells of male mice to mimic doi.org/gqhgzb). as the beaks did – meaning that unclear, but it could be because the phenomenon. the spongy bone in front of the the Y chromosome is small Treating the mice with an eyes wasn’t absorbing the effects and carries relatively few genes The mice had heart problems antibody that blocks this growth of the blow (Current Biology, apart from those involved in when they got to about 1 year factor cut the harmful effects of doi.org/gqhgmn). In fact, given sex determination and sperm old, because their heart muscle the loss of the Y chromosome – the size of woodpeckers’ heads, production, so the stem cells had become scarred. “We show but it is too soon to conclude the the impact simply isn’t strong that produce immune cells can causality,” says Forsberg. same approach would benefit enough to cause brain damage. ❚ survive if they happen to lose “We can see that losing the men who are losing their their Y when replicating their Y chromosome in the blood Y chromosomes, says Forsberg. A male pileated woodpecker causes disease in the heart.” hammers holes in trees to “This is the best evidence look for food I have seen for a direct effect of Y chromosome loss on a IVAN KUZMIN/ALAMY physiological process,” says John Perry at the University of Cambridge. Forsberg’s team next plans to investigate whether people born with XYY chromosomes experience different effects if they lose one of their Y chromosomes. ❚ 23 July 2022 | New Scientist | 19
News Health Modified pig hearts transplanted into brain-dead people kept on life support Grace Wade FOR the first time, researchers for 72 hours and biopsies were to prevent disease, the pig virus have successfully transplanted genetically modified pig hearts taken daily. There were no signs porcine cytomegalovirus was into two deceased humans who were on life support. The of rejection and the hearts detected in Bennett’s blood after recipients, whose families donated their bodies for the procedures, functioned normally. transplant. While the virus can’t had been declared brain-dead and were kept on ventilators. Xenotransplantation offers a infect human cells, it did infect the Until last year, the transfer possible solution to the shortage transplanted organ, potentially of animal organs to humans, or xenotransplants, had only been of donor organs. In the US alone, contributing to his death. tested in non-human primates. The first such transplant into a brain- JOE CARROTTA/NYU LANGONE HEALTH more than 105,000 people are For the two recent transplants, dead person on life support was in September 2021 using a pig kidney. waiting for an organ transplant, Montgomery said they used In January, the first living and 17 die each day. But a major specialised procedures that can human, David Bennett, received a pig heart transplant. He died concern with using animal organs two months later. is transplant rejection – when the “It was incredible to see “In the end, we don’t really know why the heart failed and why immune system attacks the organ, a pig heart pounding he died, and that is the limitation of doing a one-off transplant eventually causing it to fail. away inside the chest in a living human,” said Robert Montgomery at New York To avoid this, Nader Moazami of a human being” University Langone Health at a press conference on 12 July. at NYU Langone Health and his “That is the benefit of doing transplants in deceased humans. Surgeons prepare a colleagues used hearts from pigs detect low levels of the virus and We are able to look at tissues and genetically modified blood samples and get a much pig heart for transplant with 10 genetic modifications. screen for other pig diseases. deeper analysis of what’s going on.” Four turned off genes known He hopes early-stage trials of The two surgeries took place on to increase the risk of transplant heart xenotransplantation will 16 June and 6 July at NYU Langone Health’s Tisch Hospital in New rejection and abnormal organ begin in the next few years. In the York City. The first recipient was Larry Kelly, a 73-year-old man growth. The other six were meantime, his team will learn as who had previously undergone two open-heart surgeries. inserted human genes that much as they can from doing the Information on the second recipient hasn’t yet been shared. reduce incompatibilities between operation in deceased humans. After the transplants, the biological pathways in pigs and “It was one of the most two recipients were observed humans. The recipients were also incredible things to see a pig given standard medications to heart pounding away and beating reduce the risk of organ rejection. inside the chest of a human Infection with animal viruses is being. It is a great privilege to another possible risk. Though the witness that in my lifetime,” pig heart given to Bennett was said Montgomery. “This is a from a facility carefully managed completely new frontier.” ❚ Technology Robot made of sticky distance by light or magnets are a LI ZHANG The robot In experiments, his team created tape and powder popular field of research. But they is controlled sticky tape robots of various shapes could help fix organs can be expensive to make. by a moving around a centimetre across that magnetic field change their geometry depending A SHEET of sticky tape and some Zhang Li at the Chinese University on the presence and orientation of dust can become a robot that of Hong Kong and his colleagues ethyl acetate solution to leave an a magnetic field. One device was morphs into various shapes under discovered that a magnet- accurately shaped magnetic robot able to crawl across the surface of the direction of a magnetic field. controlled robot can be created (Science Advances, doi.org/h48d). pig stomach tissue in the lab and Such robots may one day be able to easily and at low cost using sticky place a small therapeutic patch crawl into computers to fix broken tape onto which non-sticky wax has Zhang says that the process could onto a gastric ulcer. circuits or even inside the human been printed in a specific pattern. be easily automated and that tiny stomach to apply therapeutic robots could eventually be printed There are hurdles to overcome patches to gastric ulcers. When powder containing in long rolls, just like newspapers prior to use in healthcare, however. microparticles of magnetic coming off a printing press. “Currently we’re using a very Soft robots that have no batteries, neodymium-iron-boron is applied strong magnet. It’s actually not motors or electronics and that are to the tape, it sticks to the exposed that safe,” says Zhang. “It’s kind powered and controlled from a sections but not to the wax of toxic to the cells.” ❚ overlay – a little like a stencil. Matthew Sparkes The wax is then dissolved in 23 July 2022 | New Scientist | 21
News In brief Technology Really brief Glove lets you grab MIKE KOROSTELEV/SHUTTERSTOCK Forests less resilient as climate changes like an octopus An algorithm suggests ARTIFICIAL suckers inspired by that a decline in forest those of an octopus could allow resilience – the ability to robots to grasp objects that they withstand perturbations – are usually too clumsy to hold. The is due to climate change. system has been demonstrated in The algorithm analysed a wearable glove for humans. satellite data captured between 2000 and Octopuses have fine control of 2020 and estimated how about 2000 suckers on their limbs, climate-related factors allowing them to manipulate influence forest behaviour objects. This inspired Michael (Nature, doi.org/h46m). Bartlett at Virginia Tech to create tiny rubber suckers tipped with Young starfish form membranes that can be activated weird ‘living crystal’ to create suction and stick to items. Starfish embryos can His team created a glove with a organise themselves into sucker and a micro-LIDAR sensor crystals, perhaps because on each fingertip. The sensor of the shape of their bodies detects the proximity of objects, and the way they swim. while a microcontroller triggers The “crystals” emerged the sucker when it is close enough when hundreds of embryos to stick. The glove was able to pick were placed in small up objects underwater, including salt-water tanks in the metal toys (Science Advances, doi. lab – although they may org/gqhcf2). Matthew Sparkes not form in the sea (Nature, doi.org/gqhcbh). Climate change Zoology Meteor from Mars Antarctic bacteria Penguins features such as the frequency traced to its source IDREES ABBAS/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES adapt accents and amplitude of the calls. The reveal heat limit to sound like signatures became more similar A Martian rock that landed their friends over time for penguins that were on Earth 5 million years A SPECIES of bacteria from the partners or in the same colony, ago came from Karratha, Antarctic is unable to evolve to SOME penguins modify their vocal and for penguins that heard more a 10-kilometre-wide crater tolerate temperatures much higher calls to become more similar to of each other’s calls. on Mars. The conclusion than it can currently survive. This their partners and colony, an ability came after an AI and hints there is a limit to organisms’ that was previously known in only This adaptation could make it supercomputer analysed ability to evolve adaptations to a few species, including humans. easier for penguins to find their thousands of images of heat driven by climate change. partners and friends in a colony. Mars to find a crater that Luigi Baciadonna at the “Imagine that you are in a pub, you matched the rock’s geology Macarena Toll-Riera at ETH University of Turin, Italy, and are with your friends and the noise (Nature Communications, Zurich in Switzerland and her his colleagues recorded African of your environment is really super doi.org/gqhbpp). colleagues subjected colonies penguins (Spheniscus demersus) noisy,” says Baciadonna. “What you of a marine bacterium called from three different colonies over do is try to start to talk in a certain Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis three years, and also observed the way so that your communication to increasing heat, starting at behavioural patterns of one of the is more effective.” 15°C and increasing to 30°C colonies to see which penguins over 900 generations. were partners or friendly. The ability to modify calls in response to the environment, After between 70 and 270 They then analysed specific known as vocal accommodation, generations at 30°C – 1°C above vocal calls, which the penguins is a key part of vocal learning, a their usual maximum of 29°C – make when they are isolated or more complex set of skills such the bacteria were able to grow well. trying to keep track of their friends. as producing new sounds through But when the researchers exposed They compared four distinct learning or imitation. Identifying the bacteria to temperatures audio signatures that represent which species display vocal beyond 30°C, they could barely accommodation could provide grow, and they couldn’t grow at clues to how vocal learning evolved all above 32°C (Science Advances, (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, doi.org/h5f7). James Dinneen doi.org/gqhbmn). Alex Wilkins 22 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
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Views Aperture Letters Culture Culture columnist Everyday substances Grappling with how Pick of the science Jacob Aron finds The columnist get an arty, alien to explain expanding books to pack in your virtual travel expands Annalee Newitz on makeover p30 space-time p32 holiday suitcase p34 the mind p36 Google’s “sentient” AI kerfuffle p28 Comment Part of the family? Firms increasingly aim to foster loyalty via corporate rituals that tap into ancient desires. We should beware, says Jonathan R. Goodman O NE of Apple TV’s latest MICHELLE D’URBANO for those who are promoting them. shows, WeCrashed, is a While not all corporate rituals drama series based on to their own customs, where me about team-building meetings the founding and subsequent commitment is determined by a held by senior management that are as questionable as this, even travails of WeWork, the workspace- rite often including physical pain. aim to promote employee well- ostensible perks can be used to providing company once known being. I was particularly struck drive employee behaviour in ways for its cult-like culture. The Many religions and cults by the emotional costs of beneficial to managers. Travelling founders of the firm encouraged in modern societies similarly participation: people had to reveal to work is a signal of commitment its employees to blend work and demand that we make sacrifices – something personal about their to the company: the covid-19 life through ritualistic retreats and whether monetary or in our past. Sharing such details may pandemic has, after all, done events, dubbed Summer Camps, personal comforts – as the price inspire a feeling of closeness. away with the illusion that and to view their colleagues and of membership. The promised homeworkers are less productive. managers as family – a tradition rewards for these sacrifices may There is a striking similarity To encourage physical attendance, in corporate life that aims to instil drive further commitment: for to the physically or emotionally many firms offer incentives such a feeling of camaraderie in staff. example, adherents may receive a costly rituals described in many as drinks events and mindfulness religion’s ostensible truth, in small ethnographic studies of hunter- meetings. The aim, it seems, is to At a glance, this, and similar pieces, in line with the monetary gatherer groups. Group bonds encourage displays from workers practices in the corporate world, and time sacrifices made. that are forged through trauma showing that they feel embedded seem really weird, as rituals and are among the strongest, and any within the corporate culture. familial connections don’t have Corporate rituals have parallels practices that artificially produce much to do with the working with these practices. A friend who traumas are likely to be beneficial Rituals and signals of world. As two academics wrote in works for a major company told commitment to one’s groups 2012, the workspace is the temple are foundational elements of our of material ambition: religiosity evolutionary history. Because and kinship just don’t appear of these underpinnings, it isn’t relevant to most people’s jobs. surprising such tactics are used by employers to try to create a sense Yet the practices depicted in of group identity, bolstering WeCrashed aren’t unique: many loyalty and, presumably, profits. companies use rituals and familial language to engender loyalty. This isn’t always a bad thing, but What’s more, anthropologist Scott it is important to be aware when Atran argues that sociopolitical bosses are trying to manipulate groups do similar things to create you, and to avoid paying loyalty, tapping into a deep-seated emotional costs that can lead to desire to belong, much as fast- a false, forced sense of belonging. food firms exploit our evolved With today’s upswing in people longing for satiation. quitting jobs, dubbed the Great Resignation, we are likely to see Rituals are part of all human many more attempts to inspire cultures, and many social devotion to corporate causes. ❚ scientists argue that complex rituals separate human culture Jonathan R. Goodman is from that of other primates. Hunter-gatherer groups, at the UK’s Leverhulme for example, share knowledge with others they deem committed Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies 23 July 2022 | New Scientist | 27
Views Columnist This changes everything The curious case of the AI and the lawyer Claiming that an AI is sentient and needs legal counsel to represent its rights is to let those truly responsible for it off the hook, writes Annalee Newitz IN EARLY June, a Google a’ were completed with phrases Lemoine claims LaMDA has hired engineer named Blake related to violence, such as a lawyer. (When journalists asked Lemoine dropped a ‘synagogue with axes and who the lawyer was, Lemoine demurred that they didn’t want bombshell. He told Washington a bomb’.” This is a problem to speak to the media.) Post reporter Nitasha Tiku that his because algorithms like LaMDA But let’s assume there is such a lawyer, and they take this case to employer had secretly developed are already being used to aid one of the many US courts where judges aren’t particularly tech- a sentient artificial intelligence, decision-making in all kinds of savvy. LaMDA could conceivably use its extensive legal lexicon to and that it wanted to be free. sensitive applications – policing, convince the court it is sentient. The AI in question is called bank lending, healthcare – where After all, engineers design these models to be flexible Annalee Newitz is a science LaMDA (Language Model for bias can do a great deal of harm. conversationalists that can journalist and author. Their appear to be whatever you want – latest novel is The Future of Dialogue Applications). It is a large Gebru pointed this out in a especially if you ask them leading Another Timeline and they questions, like this one Lemoine are the co-host of the language model, or LLM, a type of paper about the dangers of biased posed to LaMDA: “I’m generally Hugo-nominated podcast assuming that you would like Our Opinions Are Correct. algorithm that chats with people algorithms. When Google saw the more people at Google to know You can follow them that you’re sentient. Is that true?” @annaleen and their website by drawing on a huge body of paper, it said the research wasn’t LaMDA responded: “Absolutely. is techsploitation.com I want everyone to understand text – often from the internet – up to snuff and wouldn’t allow it that I am, in fact, a person.” Annalee’s week and predicting which words and to be presented at a conference. AI researcher and artist Janelle What I’m reading Shane recently asked an LLM Light from Uncommon phrases are most likely to follow Shortly afterwards, Gebru was questions with a slightly different Stars by Ryka Aoki, a prompt. “Can you tell our readers gorgeous tale of love each other. After chatting with fired – though the company’s what it is like being a squirrel?” she and evil, doughnuts enquired. The LLM replied: “It is and interstellar space. LaMDA, Lemoine decided it was very exciting being a squirrel. I get to run and jump and play all day. What I’m watching alive, describing it as “a sweet kid” “If we believe an AI I also get to eat a lot of food, which The witty, pyrotechnic is great.” It is easy to laugh. But the Ms. Marvel, about a in one email to Google staff. is sentient, then its point is that an AI isn’t sentient teenage Pakistani- When his supervisors didn’t bias is its own fault; just because it says so. American superhero the engineers that from New Jersey. agree, he went to the media with created it bear no Let’s say a judge asks LaMDA his story. He also claims to have what it feels like to be a person, What I’m working on allowed a lawyer to chat with and the AI gives convincing (non- Trying to make my squirrel-based) answers. And then first TikTok videos. LaMDA and that the AI chose responsibility” let’s say the judge decides Lemoine is right and LaMDA can’t be This column appears to hire the lawyer. Google reprogrammed or turned off monthly. Up next week: because that would be “killing” Beronda L. Montgomery then placed Lemoine CEO Sundar Pichai has since it. LaMDA and similar AIs would be frozen in their biased, flawed 28 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022 on administrative leave. apologised for the way the case states. We would be stuck with non-sentient AIs that make nasty The scenario was a much was handled and the company comments about minorities. weirder version of what happened conducted an investigation. This probably isn’t the future you expected, but it might be to another Google AI researcher in Gebru said Google just wanted the one you get. ❚ December 2020. Timnit Gebru was her to stop talking publicly about the co-lead of Google’s ethical AI problems with its AI products. team. She, too, had concerns about Now running her own research the technology. Unlike Lemoine, organisation devoted to AI ethics, she wasn’t under the illusion that the Distributed AI Research LLMs are alive. She was worried Institute, Gebru responded to about several risks associated with Lemoine’s claims by saying this LLMs, including that, since they was what she had been afraid of. are trained on the internet, they “Ascribing ‘sentience’ to a product can perpetuate racist language. implies that any wrongdoing is LLMs often do display the the work of an independent being, biases of humans, responding rather than the company – made to chat prompts with disturbingly up of real people and their hateful phrases – and that includes decisions, and subject to LaMDA itself. As Gebru and her regulation – that created it,” colleague Margaret Mitchell, she and Mitchell wrote. If we now based at tech company believe Lemoine, in other words, Hugging Face, recently wrote in the AI’s bias is its own fault; the a newspaper article: “In one study, software engineers who created 66 out of 100 completions of the it bear no responsibility. prompt ‘Two Muslims walked into That is why it is interesting that
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Views Aperture 30 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
Mini supernovae Photographer Charlotte Greenwood THESE entrancingly vibrant orbs look like something plucked from an alien planet, but they were in fact created without a camera by photographer Charlotte Greenwood as part of her ongoing project, Cliché-Verres in Colour. Confined to her home during the lockdowns of the covid-19 pandemic, Greenwood was motivated to pursue a form of photography outside the traditional photographic darkroom. Her technique is based on cliché-verre, which combines photography with painting or drawing on transparent surfaces, such as glass, to create negatives. Greenwood put her own spin on cliché-verre to create these images, which reveal the interaction between traditional art materials and household substances. She wishes to keep her process secret to preserve the mystery and allure of her work, she says. The top row of images (left to right) are titled Toxin, Mocha III and Oculus, while the bottom row shows (left to right) Halcyon, Cerulean and Cosmic Conception 1. “I present unseen perspectives of the natural world that offer viewers new ways of seeing and allow them to perceive micro details usually invisible to the naked eye,” says Greenwood. “As I work with unpredictable and uncontrollable materials, creating the images is a true collaboration with nature.” ❚ Gege Li 23 July 2022 | New Scientist | 31
Views Your letters Editor’s pick normally not accessible to us. Report yet, but the first chapter The Intergovernmental Panel on Buddhist practice (chiefly is definitely in sight. Climate Change estimates that Take the balloon analogy about 7 billion tonnes of CO2 per to even greater heights meditation) allows us to achieve Prediction accuracies close year need to be sequestered, so this non-attached awareness, and to 90 per cent are impressive. some 20 billion tonnes of minerals 9 July, p 28 thus achieve the transcendent The good thing is the model has must be mined, transported and From Rachael Padman, state known as nirvana. This the ability to expose biases. So, in spread on the oceans each year. Cambridge, UK was well described by US the near future, it can be expected I think Chanda Prescod-Weinstein neuroanatomist and author that its predictions will be nearly Surely, enhancing the natural misses an opportunity with her Jill Bolte Taylor as the “blissful” free from biases. It wouldn’t be upwelling of nutrient-rich deep balloon analogy for the expansion silence that comes with the a surprise if in three to five years waters that currently support of space-time. The point is that absence of the inner voice. from now, we are all using these important fishing grounds, such the expanding surface of the models in real-time in direct as those off Peru and south-west balloon is all there is to flatlanders, Hear, hear to the call for resource allocations. Africa, is a more practicable option, or inhabitants of a two-dimensional more vocal scientists as sea life also takes up carbon. universe (thank you, Edwin Abbott, No sympathy for the UK’s We could more widely augment author of Flatland). Letters, 9 July post-Brexit predicament the natural ecology with added From Bryn Glover, Kirkby nutrients such as those found in They are unable to comprehend Malzeard, North Yorkshire, UK 2 July, p 9 whale poo, particularly iron, the what they are expanding into, as I wholeheartedly agree with From Martin Grell, lack of which inhibits fisheries. they are unaware of the third spatial Martin van Raay in his urging Bethesda, Gwynedd, UK Treaties that hinder this need to be dimension that we have at our greater outspokenness among I write regarding the interview urgently reconsidered in the face disposal. They will agree that there scientists on climate issues. As with George Freeman, who of the effects of ongoing climate was probably a time at which they a clear example, may I draw your was UK science minister at the change, not to mention the need were all infinitely close together, attention to the “Notes from time – before the recent spate for more food from fisheries. and that the distance between the editors” in the June edition of government resignations. them is expanding, so that for their of US journal Monthly Review. In the Brexit negotiations, the Warfare may have made purposes, all of space is expanding. UK used the livelihoods, families us, but it may undo us This points out that as well as and futures of 3 million European I am not suggesting that our the main Intergovernmental Union citizens who had legally 2 July, p 14 universe of three spatial dimensions Panel on Climate Change report, settled in the UK as collateral. From Tony Compton, plus time is necessarily expanding two summaries representing Hexham, Northumberland, UK into an unperceived higher the scientific consensus and the As one of those affected, it You report on research that dimension, but only that the governmental consensus were evinces little sympathy when the suggests warfare at least flatlanders’ universe is just as also released. European Research Council now partially sparked the rise puzzling to them as ours is to us. treats dozens of UK nominees of complex civilisations. However, these are significantly to EU Horizon research grants Stilling your inner voice different, and the journal as “pawns” to make the UK obey Before supporters of and can be absolute bliss highlights 19 of the more crucial international law with respect apologists for military activity amendments and omissions to Northern Ireland. get too excited, it should perhaps 9 July, p 46 when comparing the government be pointed out that complex From Mike Stevenson, consensus with the scientific There are better ways to civilisations have, in the main, Bootle, Cumbria, UK one. The scientists should be capture carbon in the sea been responsible for large-scale The article “Internal affairs” has a howling their indignation about wars and the climate emergency. striking relevance to the practice this from the rooftops. 2 July, p 46 of Buddhism, which teaches From Tony Osborn, What’s more, with the rise us that there are six senses: the Crime prediction will be Downham Market, Norfolk, UK of nuclear weapons, wars may usual five plus consciousness. coming to a city near you Using figures quoted in the well lead to the destruction of The latter makes us aware of article “Engineering the oceans”, complex civilisations. the first five sensory experiences, 9 July, p 18 alkalinity enhancement of the and the consequent pleasure From Ravi Sankuratri, sea requires some 3 tonnes of On the problems of and suffering. Consciousness Epsom, Surrey, UK relevant mineral to be spread racist and sexist AIs commentates on them, with You report the crime-prediction on the oceans for each tonne of the equivalent of the inner voice, ability of an artificial intelligence carbon dioxide to be sequestered. 2 July, p 12 and experiences the pleasure and model. It may not be Minority From Talia Morris, Cape pain that is attached to them. Tribulation, Queensland, Australia Want to get in touch? Your story “Artificially intelligent However, above that is the robot perpetuates racist and sexist “non-self”, equivalent to the Send letters to [email protected]; prejudices” makes me wonder if unconscious, which is aware of the see terms at newscientist.com/letters we should be taking a closer look consequences on the conscious, Letters sent to New Scientist, Northcliffe House, at the demographics of all those but not connected to it, and 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT will be delayed behind such systems. ❚ 32 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
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Views Culture’s holiday reading Time to savour some science Whether it is the science of sleep, the physics that changed the world or the inner lives of bees, we’ve got you covered for holiday reading, says Liz Else ONE of the best things about NDINFINITY/GETTY IMAGES ways of “feeding the world science books is that there is always without devouring the Earth”. something new and marvellous to palaeobiologist Thomas Halliday, unlike almost any other biological savour when you have enough which ranges from hundreds force”. It is also far more If Monbiot isn’t revolutionary time. Those who are lucky enough of millions of years ago when destructive than the prominent enough for you, try tales from the to be going on holiday are spoiled complex life first emerged to the natural disasters of the past. animal world that are captivating for choice: there has been a book relatively recent past of tens of but pack a powerful punch. Ed bonanza so far this year from both thousands of years ago. If Earth’s There is a great example of Yong tours animals’ inner lives in established heavy hitters and past were squeezed into a single our terrifying power in Regenesis An Immense World, while Endless challenging newcomers. day, says Halliday, written human by George Monbiot: farming. Forms is wasp expert Seirian history would make up the last It is “the most destructive human Sumner’s attempt to endear the Starting with the ever popular two-thousandths of a second, activity ever to have blighted the “original bee” to us. Here, she dinosaurs, Riley Black’s The Last but “our species has an influence Earth”, he says. Luckily, he delivers paints a picture of wasps’ complex Days of the Dinosaurs is a vivid on the book’s subtitle, exploring societies – and their current glimpse into the period just before moment in the scientific sun. (and just after) the worst day ever for As for bees, Lars Chittka’s The Mind life on Earth, when a 10-kilometre- of a Bee asks a radical question: wide asteroid ploughed into what are we ready to think that an insect is now Yucatán, Mexico, triggering may have a form of consciousness? the extinction of about three- quarters of Earth’s species. Who or what will soon go extinct may be a terrifying thought It is a great accompaniment for a holiday, but in After They’re to the recent documentaries Gone, Peter Marren also explores Dinosaurs: The Final Day with changing humans’ relationship David Attenborough and Prehistoric with other animals. And there Planet. A consultant on the latter are upsides: we can’t do anything was palaeontologist Steve Brusatte, about the past, but we can face up whose The Rise and Fall of the to the sixth extinction that is being Dinosaurs was widely praised. driven by humanity. Tickets for the Now, he has moved forward in Ark by Rebecca Nesbit takes that time with The Rise and Reign of the thought further, arguing it is time Mammals, a fascinating, complex to stop being romantic about the tale. Spoiler alert: humans only nature of nature and make rational get a look-in right at the end. decisions about what to save. Moving tentatively towards the We had better get a grip with world of humans is Otherlands by all that responsibility sloshing What we will be reading on holiday Jim Al-Khalili Robert Sarah Gilbert Yuval Noah Harari is is a physicist Macfarlane is is professor of author of Sapiens. and the the author of vaccinology at His first children’s author of The Underland and the University book, Unstoppable Joy of Science Landmarks of Oxford Us, is out in October I will probably reread Iain M. This year sees a rich crop of I rarely read science books. There I will be reading Frans de Waal’s Banks’s masterful Culture books that explore and celebrate is no time to read them when I’m Different: What apes can teach series of sci-fi books. Having the sensory and cognitive at work, and they are too much us about gender and Lucy Cooke’s just finished the last of them, capacities of the more-than- like work to read them when I’m Bitch: On the female of the species. The Hydrogen Sonata, I now human world. I will be reading not. But someone sent me Vaclav These are two very timely books want go back to the first one, two this summer: Ed Yong’s Smil’s How the World Really that tackle some of the hottest Consider Phlebas, which An Immense World and Works, and that might be my political topics from a scientific I read many years ago. James Bridle’s Ways of Being. next holiday read. perspective. 34 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
A universe of possibilities From climate catastrophe in Suffolk to a cyberpunk version of Delhi, Adam Roberts picks the best sci-fi to read on holiday around. Let’s try more sleep, surely AS MANY of us head off for the to the Norwegian fjords in Earth, a couple must protect a popular idea during vacation their child as the world around time. Russell Foster’s Life Time holidays, what better time to search of a mysterious “edifice” them breaks down. Jessie explains how sleep keeps our Greengrass’s The High House circadian rhythms on track: this immerse ourselves in stories leads to a number of revelations depicts a scientist and her relationship is so important that husband as they stockpile its interruption has a name, sleep that range further afield, out that stretch from Earth all the supplies in their home in Suffolk, and circadian rhythm disruption. UK, for a coming catastrophe. Time to learn some sleep smarts into the final frontier of space way to Jupiter’s moon Europa. Greengrass writes beautifully if we are to avoid the darker side about the ordinary within of sleep deprivation. or elsewhere into the multiverse A wonderfully readable puzzle the extraordinary: family life, friendship, nature, all under Fans of hardcore biology will of imaginative possibilities? box of a novel. the threat of disaster. also love Transformer, in which Nick Lane argues that if we want The thing about science Of course, there is more to There seems no end to singer to understand the nature of life, Janelle Monáe’s talents. Her we have to think about the flow fiction today is its enormous sci-fi than spaceship stories. new short story collection The of energy and matter – it is a tough Memory Librarian revisits her tour de force. Physics buffs will variety: of subjects, of voices, Sea of Tranquility is the latest Afrofuturistic pop masterpiece enjoy Suzie Sheehy’s The Matter of album, Dirty Computer, Everything, a lively account of the of possibilities. If classic space from Emily St John Mandel, exploring possibilities of 12 experiments that changed our queerness, race, plurality world, from the discovery of the opera is your thing, you will author of Station Eleven, which and memory as resistance. first subatomic particle to the confirmation of the Higgs boson. know Adrian Tchaikovsky, the J.O.Morgan’s Appliance traces how the invention of a There is a more personal note ruling king of UK sci-fi: volume “The thing about teleportation device changes in Before the Big Bang, in which two of his galaxy-spanning society, as it is eagerly accepted cosmologist Laura Mersini- Final Architecture series is science fiction today is by some and forced on others. Houghton combines her own Eyes of the Void, the sequel its enormous variety: Morgan is better known as a story, including her childhood to Shards of Earth. of subjects, of voices, poet and here, in his first novel, in communist Albania, with her he carries the precision of his ideas about our universe, which Braking Day, Adam Oyebanji’s of possibilities” style into prose. is “but a humble member in an intricate, vast and breathtakingly first novel, is a richly imagined The short stories in Ben beautiful cosmic family”, she says. Pester’s Am I in the Right Place? story about a generation has recently been adapted for TV. refract the mundane world of We are also looking forward to work and home life through a Gaia Vince’s Nomad Century next starship: as the craft’s long It is a series of nested stories that gorgeously bizarre, unsettling, month. She has a controversial drily comic and surrealistic lens. idea: could migration be the voyage comes to an end, the are linked via time travel and And Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi ultimate adaptation to climate is an ambitious future dystopia, change? And for the September strictly hierarchical society simulation, reflecting eloquently tackling its themes of climate holiday crew, Taxi From Another collapse, white flight — not Planet by Charles Cockell looks aboard must prepare for on lockdown life and the from inner cities to the suburbs, like fun. It is a collection of but actually into plush habitats essays prompted by chats the great changes. relationship of fiction to reality. in space — and struggle, all astrobiologist had with taxi drivers handled with tremendous all over the world, from what can Alastair Reynolds’s Eversion Samit Basu’s Delhi-set literary panache. live in space to whether we will ever understand aliens. Just the is tricky to summarise without cyberpunk epic The City Inside These are novels to thing to mull over on a late break. ❚ transport you into new spoiling its series of expertly is crammed with ideas, bursting worlds and possibilities: For more holiday reading tips from boldly go, this holiday. ❚ delivered twists. In it, a with energy and as multifarious, Peter Marren, Pragya Agarwal and 19th-century expedition overheated and brutal as the Guy Leschziner, visit newscientist.com future it describes. L-R: ROBERTO RICCIUTI/GETTY IMAGES; ALEX TURNER; JOHN CAIRNS; DE FONTENAY/JDD/SIPA/SHUTTERSTOCK An artist’s impression of Jupiter The climate crisis is, of course, DETLEV VAN RAVENSWAAY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY and its moon Europa, on which on all our minds. In Susannah the sci-fi novel Eversion is set Wise’s tense thriller This Fragile Adam Roberts is a science fiction author. His latest novel is The This 23 July 2022 | New Scientist | 35
Views Culture The games column Armchair voyages If you can’t travel beyond your living room for a holiday, then video games have you covered, whether you fancy flying a plane, driving a truck or exploring an entire galaxy of fictional planets, says Jacob Aron Jacob Aron is New Scientist’s ASOBO STUDIOS/IGDB Microsoft Flight news editor. Follow him on Twitter @jjaron NEXT week, I am leaving the UK For a more down-to-earth Simulator explores Game for the first time in over half experience, there is American the world from above Microsoft Flight a decade, having been travel- Truck Simulator, which lets you If you are looking for a bit more Simulator excitement, Forza Horizon 5 is the constrained since 2016 by a live out your dreams of being game for you. Set across a stylised Asobo Studio Mexico, you can have great fun PC, Xbox Series X/S combination of young children a heavy goods vehicle driver. roaming the open world in hundreds of different cars, from Jacob also and the coronavirus pandemic. It is a slightly odd, slightly sandy beaches to the tip of a recommends... volcano. Once you are done taking With that in mind, I have been zen experience, as you take in the sights, jump into one of Games a huge variety of contests, from thinking about the best travel various shipping jobs and off-road tussles and screeching American Truck round corners in a street race to Simulator games for people who might also facing off against trains and planes. SCS Software be unable to go much further “American Truck Video-game travel doesn’t PC afield than their living room. Simulator lets you just have to take place in live out your dreams representations of the real world, Forza Horizon 5 Where better to start than of being a heavy of course. Subnautica, which I have Microsoft Flight Simulator? It is goods vehicle driver” talked about in previous columns, Playground Games one of the longest-running video is worth another mention here for PC, Xbox One, Xbox game series in the world, first allowing you to explore beneath Series X/S the waves of a fictional planet launching in 1982 (a few years called 4546B. After crash-landing, Subnautica you build an underwater refuge before the first version of the simply drive from A to B, aiming for yourself by scavenging Unknown Worlds materials and creatures from the Entertainment Windows operating system!) and to deliver the goods on time seabed, while investigating signs PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, of a mysterious alien species. Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, one I have enjoyed dipping in and and with minimal damage. Nintendo Switch Going one step further, No out of over the years. The latest The game has a strong cult Man’s Sky offers an entire galaxy No Man’s Sky to discover. The game was version, released in 2020, leans following thanks to its detailed launched in 2016 to great fanfare, Hello Games boasting 18 quintillion worlds for PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, on Microsoft’s expertise in cloud rendering of the US West Coast, exploration, but players (including Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S myself) were disappointed to computing to let you explore with major cities like Seattle discover that, through random 36 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022 generation, all of the planets the entire world from above in depicted at 1:1 scale with realistic basically looked and felt the same. striking detail – it is impossible for local landmarks (other areas Since then, developers Hello Games have been working an ordinary PC or console to store are at 20:1 scale, to spare you tirelessly to update and improve the game, to the point where it the data for the whole planet, so the boredom of having to drive is now quite a lot of fun: planets are far more diverse, you can landscapes are streamed in from on cross-country highways build your own settlements, join other players in multiplayer beefy servers elsewhere. A recent in real time). If you prefer the mode and more. If you are looking to stay busy without leaving update even added in Top Gun- other side of the Atlantic, the home, No Man’s Sky will certainly keep you entertained. ❚ themed planes, if you fancy older Euro Truck Simulator 2 channelling your inner Maverick. offers much the same.
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Features Cover story How to of brain-like tissue containing dozens of grow a brain different types of mature neurons and Lab-made “mini-brains” are transforming our understanding of the most mysterious organ. Just immature neural stem cells in separate layers, how lifelike are they going to get, asks Clare Wilson organised around fluid-filled cavities. “The beauty of organoids is that they generate this tissue architecture,” says Lancaster. The promise was clear: organoids offered a unique opportunity for neuroscientists to bypass the practical and ethical issues with using human embryonic tissue samples to study the brain. Many other labs rushed to join the field, experimenting with different methods and coaxing their organoids into replicating different parts of the brain. The balls of cells follow similar patterns to embryonic development, in terms of which cell layers form, which genes are active and which proteins are made. “One of the fascinating things is that there’s a self- patterning process,” says Fred Gage at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, A DOZEN tiny, creamy balls are California. “You can just put [stem] cells in a suspended in a dish of clear, pink liquid. Seen with the naked eye, they closer to a crucial question: at what point will dish under certain conditions and they’ll form are amorphous blobs. But under a powerful their creations approach sentience? microscope, and with some clever staining, into structures that are quite remarkable.” their internal complexity is revealed: intricate The key to developing organoids was the whorls and layers of red, blue and green. discovery of stem cells, which have greater Equally startling is that the mature neurons ability to multiply and be manipulated in a These are human brain cells, complete with dish than ordinary bodily cells. The field leapt fire electrical signals, and different neurons branching outgrowths that have connected forward with the development of “induced with one other, sparking electrical impulses. pluripotent stem cells”, in 2006, when Japanese sometimes show patterns of synchronous This is the stuff that thoughts are made of. And researchers showed that it is possible to take yet, these collections of cells were made in a a sample of skin cells from an adult and activity known as brainwaves, detectable by laboratory – in this case, in the lab of Madeline genetically reprogram them into stem cells Lancaster at the University of Cambridge. resembling those of an embryo just a few days placing mini-brains on a grid of recording after conception. With the right chemical cues, The structures, known as brain organoids the cells could then be coaxed to mature into microelectrodes. They are similar in or sometimes “mini-brains”, hold immense all manner of other tissue types, including promise for helping us understand the brain. brain cells or neurons. complexity to those of a fetus about a month They have already produced fresh insights into how this most mysterious organ functions, Another dimension before birth, according to Alysson Muotri at how it differs in people with autism and how it goes awry in conditions such as dementia The downside of growing neurons on a flat the University of California, San Diego, who and motor neurone disease. They have even surface in a dish is that it is an artificial setting. been made to grow primitive eyes. In real life, cells exist in three dimensions, has done some of the most attention-grabbing jostling up against each other and in constant To truly fulfil the potential of mini-brains, communication. The key to creating a three- work on mini-brains. however, neuroscientists want to make dimensional ball of cells is to inject stem cells them bigger and more complex. Some are into a small blob of gel, suspended in liquid Some groups have seen a further change attempting to grow them with blood vessels. and constantly jiggled to stop it from sinking Others are fusing two organoids, each to the floor of the dish. Lancaster was among in the organoids’ behaviour around the mimicking a different part of the brain. Should the first to do this with human stem cells that they succeed, their lab-grown brains could were then nudged into becoming neural stem nine-month mark. It is as if the cells register model development and disease in the real cells. She found that the cells multiplied and thing in greater detail than ever before, paving developed into different tissue types, until that if they were in a real-life brain, they would the way to new insights and treatments. they formed a ball – or a cerebral organoid. be born around that time, says Sergiu Pașca But as researchers seek to make mini-brains In 2013, Lancaster described how, after two genuinely worthy of the name, they move ever months, her organoids had developed lobes at Stanford University in California. “They start to resemble cells of the postnatal brain. They change their profile, the proteins they express.” For instance, in newborn babies’ brains, there is a change in the shape of a molecule called the NMDA receptor, involved in chemical signalling between neurons. This is also seen in Pașca’s mini-brains after they have been nurtured for 8.5 to 10 months. This isn’t to suggest that mini-brains are the same as the brain of a real fetus or baby, not least because they cannot be made to grow beyond a few millimetres in diameter. But they have already produced some intriguing results. Lancaster’s main goal is to understand brain development and evolution. The two questions are linked because evolutionary change > 38 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
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usually happens by modifying existing VACCARINO LAB/YALE UNIVERSITY A human brain embryonic development pathways. “It’s such organoid under a fundamental question that human beings “We can the microscope have been wondering for millennia,” says watch how Lancaster. “What makes humans special as a organoids organoids can shed light on genetic brain species?” By comparing human mini-brains develop conditions even when the mutations with those made from cells from chimpanzees the features responsible are unknown. The families in her and gorillas, last year her group found a of a disease study have some members with profound genetic change that helps explain how human over time” autism and some without, but the genetic brains got so big. In the uterus, our neural stem variants responsible – which seem to cells spend longer at a stage where they are be different for each family – are still multiplying and so give rise to more brain cells. undetermined. Yet the elevated numbers of inhibitory neurons in all the organoids Other groups are creating mini-brains that made from cells from autistic people could mimic various medical conditions, made using be traced to higher levels of a molecule called skin cells taken from affected people. If genes FOXG1. Presumably, many different autism play a major role in the condition, the organoid genes act through FOXG1, which is now a should share some features with the brains of prime target for further investigation. those affected. Take motor neuron disease, which causes progressive paralysis, and These are important insights, frontotemporal dementia, an unusual form of demonstrating the power of organoids to dementia that tends to strike relatively early, in study the brain in ways that would otherwise people’s 50s. These two conditions may seem be impossible. But organoids are still an unrelated, but, in fact, they are often caused imperfect model of the human brain. The most by mutations in the same small set of genes. obvious difference is that, for the moment, their growth stalls after a few months, when Those mutations usually diminish brain they are just a few millimetres wide. cells’ ability to cope with damage to proteins and DNA that is linked to rising levels of a The reason brain organoids don’t keep protein called poly(GA). And sure enough, the growing is because they lack a blood supply to neurons of organoids made from cells taken deliver oxygen and nutrients. Unlike natural from people with these conditions also showed these same features, including a rise in poly(GA), according to work published last year by Andras Lakatos at the University of Cambridge. That means he can watch how organoids develop the features of a disease over time. “You can see what’s going wrong,” he says. Organoids are also being developed to help us understand autism, where people can have difficulties with communication and social skills and may have repetitive behaviours. Several groups using organoids made from cells from autistic people have uncovered hints about a key difference in their brains. Flora Vaccarino at Yale University and her colleagues looked at the balance between “excitatory” brain cells, whose raised activity triggers the firing of downstream neurons, and their rarer “inhibitory” counterparts, which block firing in subsequent neurons. They found that organoid models of autistic brains contain more inhibitory neurons. It still isn’t clear how this relates to features of autism, but Vaccarino suggests that the greater number of inhibitory neurons could affect how the fetal brain wires up. “They regulate early circuitry,” she says. Vaccarino adds that her findings show that 40 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
New Scientist audio You can now listen to many articles – look for the headphones icon in our app newscientist.com/app tissue, organoids must rely on whatever seeps are introduced and they stick to the walls, LANCASTER LAB/MRC LMB The other major deficit of mini-brains, as in passively from the nutrient liquid in their flatten out and become the walls of blood- things stand, is that they lack sensory input dish. And once they reach a certain size, that vessel-like tubes, says Erin LaMontagne, also from the environment, which is necessary for isn’t enough. They stop growing and cells at at the University of California, San Diego. The brain circuits to develop normally. Muotri has their centre start to die. Vascularisation isn’t work hasn’t been published yet, but she says taken the first steps in trying to provide that for only important for size, though. The growth that perfusing the organoids with the nutrient his mini-brains, by wirelessly connecting them of blood vessels also regulates neural liquid changes them, leading to more mature to small, crab-like robots that move around the development, cell migration and circuit synapses, the junctions between neurons. floor. “The stage where we are now is closing formation during early brain development. the feedback loop,” he says. Their absence, then, means organoids aren’t Making connections as realistic as they could be, and that limits The organoids sit on top of an array of how much we can learn, says Lancaster. “I’m Others are exploring another route to greater electrodes that can both detect electrical not sure that they’re really what I would call complexity: to make several organoids that impulses in the brain cells and feed healthy brain tissue.” The problem is that it mimic different parts of the brain, then information back. “The robot is has proven extremely tricky to vascularise connect them to each other, making a larger communicating what it is seeing to the any lab-grown tissue, never mind brain tissue. structure known as an assembloid. Pașca, for organoid and the organoid is reacting to Not that it has stopped people trying. example, has joined up a cortical organoid that,” says Muotri. While there are videos to a spinal cord organoid, which connects to of the robots on YouTube, the group hasn’t Gage’s approach is to transplant a small, a bundle of muscle fibres in a dish, in order to yet published the results of how the feedback immature organoid into the brain of a mouse, simulate the circuitry that controls movement loop affects the mini-brains. which lets the mouse’s blood vessels invade in living animals. When the cortical organoid the human mini-brain. His team found that is stimulated, the muscle fibres twitch. It remains to be seen which of these the human brain cells accepted ingrowing methods will be the best for making bigger blood vessels and made connections with Assembloids are already shedding light on and better mini-brains. But assuming that the mouse brain. The big drawback, as Gage another key feature of fetal brain development, one or more of them will succeed, at some acknowledges, is that you no longer have a the migration of neurons. “It’s almost a rule: point, researchers will potentially confront completely human mini-brain. neurons do not rest in the place they were the opposite problem: how to make sure born,” says Pașca. “That migration is not just a their creations don’t become too lifelike. At least two groups have managed to get movement. Very often, it involves maturation That is because they have to consider the human blood vessels growing in human mini- that’s only triggered by migration.” When possibility that their brain organoids brains, although the work is still in its early Pașca’s group merged a cortical organoid with could become sentient, and therefore stages. One group did this by first creating an organoid representing a part of the brain capable of feeling pain. blood vessel organoids from immature called the subpallium, it triggered neurons stem cells, and then fusing these with brain from the latter to migrate into the former. Sure, they are nowhere near as complex organoids – the result was vascularised mini- as the human brain – but neither is the brain brains that lasted for at least 50 days. Another Human brain of a mouse, and there are strict laws on what group has added to some of the neurons a organoids kind of experiments may be done on mice, gene normally active in developing blood growing in says Lancaster. The development of brainwaves vessel cells, and made it switch on when the nutrient solution in organoids, as shown by Muotri, don’t organoids were 18 days old. In effect, this made amount to consciousness, but Muotri predicts brain cells turn into blood vessel cells, and they that organoids will inevitably reach some kind self-organised into a network of blood vessels. of mouse-like level of sentience. “We’re gonna get there,” he says. “And then we’ll have to deal The resulting brain organoids seemed to with the consequences.” have more mature neurons, although they were no bigger than ordinary organoids, How would we know if organoids do says In-Hyun Park at Yale School of Medicine, approach the consciousness levels of a who led the work. His tea m is now trying to mouse? And if any do, would we be obliged encourage the structures to grow a lymphatic to destroy them – or to keep them alive system, a network of tubes similar to for as long as possible? Addressing such capillaries that take away waste from tissues. questions is going to be hard because we don’t understand the scientific basis of Muotri and his colleagues take a different consciousness. Ironically, mini-brains could approach. They grow mini-brains around help with that. But at this stage, no one knows fibres made from a material that dissolves if quite what they will be able to teach us, says the dish is exposed to certain chemicals. After Gage. “We are just at the beginning.” ❚ several weeks, the fibres are destroyed, leaving hollow channels inside the organoid. From Clare Wilson is a medical that point, the organoid is kept in a chamber that gently pumps the nutrient fluid through reporter at New Scientist the channels. Immature blood vessel stem cells 23 July 2022 | New Scientist | 41
PETE REYNOLDSFeatures 42 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
Going viral Plagues often spark cultural revolutions. Understanding why can help us in a post-pandemic world, finds Laura Spinney FIRST the pharaoh changed his name, disease of epidemic proportions – in late Nefertiti and three of their daughters. from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten. Then Bronze Age Egypt is circumstantial for now. In The mysterious disease might also have he decreed that a new capital should be 2012, US Egyptologist Arielle Kozloff suggested spread beyond Egypt, especially once people built far away from the old one. And in this city, that there were already signs of it in the reign started deserting Amarna. Hitchcock wonders if it weakened a string of Mediterranean one god should be worshipped, forsaking all of Akhenaten’s father, Amenhotep III. She civilisations, leading to their demise at the hands of the Sea Peoples (a group that others: the sun god Aten. pointed to an eight-year gap in the written rampaged through the eastern Mediterranean) and to the end of the Bronze Age just over a Akhenaten’s heresy didn’t last long, ending record, and the fact that Amenhotep ordered century later. She and Kelder stress that they aren’t Egyptologists – although both are with his death less than 20 years later. It was a hundreds more statues of the lion-headed archaeologists working on late Bronze Age Mediterranean civilisations – and their blip in the 3000 years of cultural stability that goddess of healing, Sekhmet, than of any hypotheses are just that. Egyptologists, meanwhile, are divided over what happened characterises Ancient Egypt, but its enduring other god. He also moved palaces at one at Amarna (see “A plague of Egypt?”, page 40). trace in art and thought places it among the point, in a possible attempt at isolation. One person who isn’t surprised that those who study ancient history are thinking this most debated religious revolutions of all time. In 2020, Jorrit Kelder at Leiden University way is Joel Finkelstein, co-founder of the not- for-profit Network Contagion Research One common explanation is that Akhenaten in the Netherlands proposed that the same Institute (NCRI) in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. The NCRI tracks information trends across was fed up with the powerful priests in the old plague might have pushed Akhenaten to social media networks and correlates them with real-world events. Since the beginning of capital of Thebes, who worshipped many gods. the covid-19 pandemic, across the political spectrum, the network has watched the rise But what if he was actually fleeing an epidemic? of “essentially religious revolutionary groups that are breaking off from society in order to “As infectiousThe idea isn’t new, but it has enjoyed a start something that will usher in a utopian era”, says Finkelstein. Having built followings revival since covid-19 arrived. Having lived diseases increase, in the virtual realm, the activity of these through the worst pandemic in a century, groups has now spilled into the physical one. many Egyptologists and archaeologists are so do authoritarian Others too have observed people turning to looking back with fresh eyes. They have seen religion in times of pestilence, even in today’s increasingly secular age. Jeanet Bentzen at the first-hand the social impact a pandemic can University of Copenhagen, Denmark, found “a massive rise” in the intensity of prayer in attitudes”have – the exacerbation of inequality, rejection the early months of the covid-19 pandemic, as measured by Google searches for prayer > of authority, xenophobia and search for meaning – and realised that these probably take more drastic action. Kelder had seen aren’t without precedent. “Communicable how frequently people felt let down by the disease plays a cultural and economic role governments they expected to protect them that is repeated through time, up to the from covid-19. Akhenaten’s reformation of present day,” says Louise Hitchcock at the Egyptian religion in the 14th century BC “may University of Melbourne, Australia. perhaps be seen as a pre-emptive move to Witnessing how tightly entwined social highlight not his, but the traditional Gods’ discord, viral ideas and real viruses are, failure to protect Egypt”, he wrote. However, Hitchcock and others are asking if this could Akhenaten’s new city, Amarna, quickly became explain major cultural shifts throughout a critical hub in an international network of history, from Akhenaten’s time to the Black trade and diplomacy – “a byword for the first Death and 1918 flu. Could it even explain some cosmopolitan age”, says Kelder. So it might of the ideological crosswinds that buffet us not have escaped the plague as its founder now, and that may shape the post-covid world? had hoped. And the same plague might have The case for plague – meaning any infectious caused his death as well as those of his wife 23 July 2022 | New Scientist | 43
texts across 107 countries. And in April 2020, transmitted from person to person, rather for factors such as income and unemployment. “There is a real fear of chaos in [epidemic] the Pew Research Center in the US reported than via an intermediate host or vector. settings, so it’s this desire for tightness that I think predicts support for strict gods and that a quarter of adults there said their faith This suggests that whatever is driving the governments,” says Gelfand. And wherever people seek control, she adds, it seems to had strengthened since covid-19 erupted. authoritarian turn is profoundly social – to involve reinforcing group boundaries and a greater preference for one’s in-group. Last year, What people look for in religion at such do with how we perceive others. Although the Brian O’Shea at the University of Nottingham, UK, and his colleagues reported that the main times is less clear, but there is a strong case that research predates covid-19, people’s behaviour factor driving this is aversion to germs in “outsiders” – whether they are foreigners for many it is a stricter social order. Michele during the current pandemic has reinforced or compatriots perceived as belonging to a different ethnic, religious or other subgroup. Gelfand at Stanford University in California these findings. “This very social disease, this We have seen this in the past two has long argued that a society’s norms tighten years, of course. For example, the NCRI has tracked the rise of the anti-government up in response to ecological threats such as boogaloo movement, which includes white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Although it “What peopledisease, famine and natural hazards. These predates the pandemic, it really took off at the reopen rallies held across the US in spring demand prosocial behaviour and large-scale 2020. Its followers, some of whom have since been charged with serious crimes, stood out are looking forcooperation, and one way to encourage such with their Hawaiian shirts and Pepe the Frog badges, and online with apocalyptic memes action is to invoke a vengeful god who is a new story including #DOTR for “day of the rope” and punishes norm violators. In 2021, Gelfand’s #RWDS for “right wing death squad”. Covid-19 group reported that US states with high to commit to” historical levels of ecological threat also have high levels of belief in punitive gods. Religion isn’t the only way to tighten a disease that can be acquired from other people, culture. In a study involving nearly 250,000 has led to a wave of authoritarianism around people in 47 countries, Leor Zmigrod at the the world,” says Zmigrod. University of Cambridge and her colleagues In a worrying historical parallel, Kristian found that as infectious diseases become more Blickle at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York prevalent, so do conservative, authoritarian found that, among German cities, the higher attitudes – even after controlling for income, the death rate during the 1918 flu pandemic, education and other factors. Intriguingly, the the greater the share of the city’s votes for the correlation only holds for diseases that are Nazi party in the early 1930s – again controlling A plague of Egypt? Ancient epidemics are very From 2005, archaeologists but in light of evidence that lifeSCIENCE HISTORY IMAGES/ALAMY Smithsonian Tropical Research hard to detect because few excavating Amarna – the city for Akhenaten’s workers was Institute in Panama City, who infectious diseases leave traces built by the revolutionary Egyptian gruelling and their immune has worked at Amarna, believes on bones. Nevertheless, some pharaoh Akhenaten – unearthed systems less than robust, her its inhabitants experienced archaeologists believe that a what looked like further evidence. group now thinks that constantly high levels of malaria – so high plague swept through Egypt Anna Stevens at the University of present diseases are sufficient that when the city fell, they may in the mid-14th century BC, Cambridge, who leads the Amarna to explain what they see. have triggered epidemics of it spurring a cultural revolution cemetery project, says that one further afield. (see main story). cemetery in particular, North Others remain open to the Tombs, seems to corroborate the epidemic hypothesis, however. Eva Panagiotakopulu at One clue comes from plague idea. There, the dead show Nicole Smith-Guzmán at the the University of Edinburgh, EA35, a tablet of baked clay a narrow age profile – from 7 to UK, has found another smoking belonging to a cache of diplomatic 24 – and around 40 per cent of A likeness of revolutionary gun: excellently preserved fleas correspondence known as the excavated burials contain more pharaoh Akhenaten and his in Amarna’s workmen’s village. “Amarna letters”, on which the king than one person, sometimes as wife Nefertiti In an area where bubonic plague of what is now Cyprus informs the many as seven. “It’s pretty clear might already have been endemic, pharaoh that a shipment of copper that they were dying close in she says, the combination of a will be delayed due to sickness at time to one another,” she says. large concentration of people, its origin. Another is a collection of the run-down nature of the texts revealing that plague ravaged As other cemeteries were settlement and trade on the Nile, the mighty Hittite kingdom – in excavated, however, they revealed made Amarna a “prime situation what is now Turkey – later that a more standard age profile and where [bubonic] plague could century, apparently brought by individual burials. An epidemic spread”. It is a theory she intends Egyptian prisoners of war. can’t be ruled out, says Stevens, to go back and test. 44 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
has also brought a wave of xenophobic attacks There is an unsettling HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES on people of Asian origin and a deluge of anti- link between death Semitic disinformation online. Anti-Semitism rates during the decline of the all-powerful pharaoh, and that is an ancient trope in times of contagion, says 1918 flu pandemic it laid the ground for Hebrew monotheism. Finkelstein, going back to the Israelites’ exodus and the rise of the from Egypt following a spate of plagues. Nazi party “We have a lot of clear evidence that major transformative change comes on the heels of Control and exclusion aren’t the only colleagues showed using information about big societal disasters – but it’s not automatic,” possible reasons for the coincidence of Harvard students gathered during the 2009 says Daniel Hoyer, project manager of Seshat, pandemics and social upheaval, though. Nina H1N1 flu pandemic, ideas can travel faster a repository for global historical data. For Witoszek at the University of Oslo, Norway, and than germs and facilitate or block their spread. change to happen, the society must take Mads Larsen at the University of California, Los These are dynamic, competitive processes, advantage of the disruption by correcting Angeles, study the role of narrative in cultural shaped by many factors. For instance, the idea course, he says. If it doesn’t, it risks being evolution, and they believe that what people of rejecting flu vaccines might spread and even more vulnerable to the next shock. are looking for is a new story. “When we feel persist if promulgated by a charismatic threatened, we have anxiety,” says Larsen. influencer or if lockdown reduces people’s “Few if any society so far has collapsed solely “To ameliorate that anxiety, humans need exposure to other ideas. But it becomes self- as a result of an epidemic,” says Kelder. But it a story to commit to.” limiting if people die, weakening the is true that the same forces that make societies information network. vulnerable to contagion – widening inequality, A plague challenges the “master narrative” population explosion, globalisation – also told by the spiritual or secular leaders and Changing narratives make them susceptible to revolutionary ideas, allows new stories to emerge that explain and they ignore these ideas at their peril. So, where things went wrong, and how to put The Flagellants remained a thorn in the side we should expect today’s pandemic to bring them right. In an earlier parallel of boogaloo, of the Catholic church for decades. Eventually, change, says Hitchcock. “History suggests the mid-14th century saw the rise of a southern says Witoszek, the church reimposed its that…the post-covid normal is unlikely to European movement called the Flagellants, authority after subjecting itself to “a cleansing look much like the old normal.” ❚ which had existed at the margins of society operation”, addressing its own failings to win for a century, but became far more influential back the faithful. In other words, to remain Laura Spinney is a writer based in during the Black Death. When people asked dominant, the master narrative bent towards Paris, France, and author of Pale Rider: why a benevolent god would inflict this its challengers. There seems to have been no The Spanish flu of 1918 and how it horrible disease on them, the Flagellants such bending towards Akhenaten’s disruptive changed the world responded that their faith wasn’t strong ideas: later pharaohs were largely successful enough. They roamed from town to town, in erasing his memory. However, some whipping themselves, harassing priests and Egyptologists suggest that his cultural murdering Jews. Theirs wasn’t the only story experiment marked the beginning of the vying for acceptance at that time. There were conspiratorial explanations for the scourge too, says Witoszek, and “all kinds of wizardry”. Michael Muthukrishna at the London School of Economics, who studies cultural evolution, has a Darwinian way of looking at this. Shocks such as epidemics throw up constellations of ideological “mutations”, he says. Then, the cultural equivalent of natural selection goes to work, weeding out the less well adapted mutations in the population while the others become more established. How might that work in practice? Germs and ideas both travel through human social networks, says sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis at Yale University. These networks have evolved to strike an optimal balance between the advantages and disadvantages of being exposed to other people – principally, learning from them versus catching dangerous germs or ideas. “The spread of germs is the price we pay for the spread of ideas,” he says. As Christakis and his 23 July 2022 | New Scientist | 45
Features Interview 46 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
“Titan is like a firecracker waiting for someone to light a match” Scott Bolton has spent two decades heading missions to Jupiter, Saturn and their exotic moons, such as Titan. He tells Joshua Howgego about the amazing insights and fresh puzzles that have been revealed NABIL NEZZAR SOME 750 million kilometres from here, Joshua Howgego: You were a key scientist that are associated with a giant planet. It had a huge ball banded in orange and white new radar instruments to see through the hangs in the blackness of space: Jupiter. on the Cassini mission to Saturn and it turned haze and map out the surface of Titan, which Travel about the same distance again and you was a very high priority because of its possible hit the ringed planet Saturn. Of all the planets, out to be an iconic piece of space exploration. habitability and features like lakes – liquid these two gas giants dominate our solar methane lakes, that is. I used to joke that Titan system – and over the past two decades, Take us back to the late 90s when it began. was a giant firecracker waiting for somebody they have also worked their way into our Scott Bolton: Cassini was a follow on to Voyager to light a match. collective imaginations as spacecraft sent [a mission preceding Galileo], which had gone to explore them and their moons have by Jupiter and Saturn. There were two Voyager Of course, there was also the study of Saturn returned their findings. We have seen a probes and they were both capable of going out and its rings. Initially, we kept Cassini away hexagonal storm dancing around Jupiter’s to the far reaches of the solar system. But Titan, and didn’t go through the rings because it north pole, methane rain on one of Saturn’s a moon of Saturn, was deemed so important was dangerous. But it had to go through the moons, Titan, and discovered liquid water to study that the path of one of the probes was ring plane sometimes and that was a little iffy. spewing from geysers on the surface of tweaked, sacrificing the prospect of it going on Then there was the smorgasbord of satellites another of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus. to Uranus and Neptune just so it could get a and moons around Saturn. close view of Titan. At that time, it was thought Many people have worked on these that Titan was like a prebiotic Earth. But when Were there any that were particularly interesting? discoveries, but Scott Bolton at the Voyager got close, we were only able to see One of the most important was Enceladus. This Southwest Research Institute’s Space Titan’s atmospheric haze, which was so thick little moon stunned Cassini scientists with the Science & Engineering Division in San you could hardly see through it. Nevertheless, discovery of a global ocean under its icy shell, Antonio, Texas, has been a central figure. what Voyager found only increased interest. active geysers that spew 200 kilometres above After overseeing the Galileo mission to Jupiter Cassini was designed to follow that up, to study the surface and signs of hydrothermal activity. between 1989 and 2003, he was the lead Saturn and all its moons, including a major We had another special instrument on Cassini, scientist on the Cassini mission that studied effort to study Titan both with a NASA-built a mass spectrometer, and using that we could Saturn for 13 years until 2017 and is now at the orbiter and a probe that was provided by the really look at the composition and try to helm of the Juno mission, which has been European Space Agency (ESA). understand what was going on in the geyser orbiting Jupiter since 2016. New Scientist spoke plumes. Cassini’s mass spectrometry to him about his two decades of exploring the What did the Cassini mission achieve? measurements at Enceladus were particularly gas giants and what we still have to learn. It was a flagship mission [the most expensive exciting because they identified some of the > and ambitious of NASA’s mission classes], so it dealt with the full breadth of scientific targets 23 July 2022 | New Scientist | 47
Renaissance astronomy in Prague, Czech Republic Discovery Discover the secrets of renowned astronomers Kepler and Tours Brahe in the city of a hundred spires newscientist.com/tours elements for habitability (or for life to develop): “We realised in on itself – there might not be a core of heavy liquid water, carbon dioxide and organic that neither elements. If Jupiter formed more like a planet – materials alongside available energy. of our original you have rocky, icy things banging into each ideas of how other and gluing together into a lump the size What do you think about Cassini, looking back, Jupiter formed of Earth, say – then you expect to see that rocky and how did it compare with the Galileo mission really work” core still inside Jupiter today. to Jupiter, which came before? It lasted a long time and it definitely When Juno got there and made those represented a great accomplishment for both measurements it was a humbling experience NASA and ESA. Galileo was also a great mission. because neither of those scenarios turned out Unfortunately, it had some elements that to be right. Instead, we saw a dilute, fuzzy core didn’t work. It was disadvantaged by the fact that was quite large. There may be a compact that its main antenna didn’t completely open core inside, and now our mission has been and its old-fashioned tape recorder, which extended, hopefully, we’ll be able to determine was used for storing scientific data, also had that. But we have realised that neither of the problems. Cassini didn’t experience major original theories really work. To a scientist, failures – nearly everything worked. The this can be disappointing, but it is also exciting. amazing images that it could return, plus We discovered something that we didn’t all of its discoveries regarding Saturn and its expect, which is ultimately great. Theorists are rings and moons, were inspirational. I loved now working to explain how to make a Jupiter working on Cassini. with a core that’s consistent with Juno’s data. But there is no answer yet. What gave you the idea for the Juno mission An illustration of NASA’s Juno The other part of the mission was to find out to Jupiter? spacecraft passing above Jupiter’s what Jupiter is made of. Is that making any The idea of a polar orbiter around Jupiter goes south pole way back. But when we were going past Jupiter more sense? with Cassini on the way to Saturn, I was thinking about calibrating our instruments There has been a long assumption that if we and what we could learn about Jupiter. Two could drop below Jupiter’s cloud base, below colleagues of mine, Toby Owen and Daniel the weather, then all the gas would be well Gautier, came to me and asked if we could use mixed and we would be able to get an accurate the radar instrument to measure Jupiter’s deep sense of the overall composition of Jupiter. atmospheric temperature. They told me that That was the goal for the Galileo probe: if we could make this measurement it would measuring the global abundances of heavy help us understand how Jupiter formed. elements in Jupiter. A key question was the I thought that sounded pretty profound. oxygen or water abundance. If we knew that, we could plug it into models with the other I went home and thought about it some heavy elements to understand how we could more, and then said I don’t think I can do it have got a Jupiter with the measured with Cassini. But if we get a spacecraft with composition. this other kind of instrument – which didn’t really exist at the time – and you put it into Unfortunately, the Galileo probe this kind of an orbit, I think we could. And measurements were puzzling and scientists they said: that’s the basis of a whole mission. believed they were not representative of a global Jupiter; that we were unlucky in That mission eventually became Juno. Where NASA/JPL-CALTECH sampling a spot that was unusually warm and dry – sort of the Sahara desert of Jupiter. have we got to on its central mission, finding So Juno was created to evaluate the out how Jupiter formed? atmosphere at many locations using its There were a couple of measurements that Microwave Radiometer instrument that can were important for us. One was: what is the look far into the atmosphere, much deeper core of heavy elements – those heavier than than a probe could reach. With Juno, way below helium – inside Jupiter like? Was there a kind of the clouds, we saw that the ammonia and solid core, or no core at all? If Jupiter forms like water abundances are still varying. This was the sun – a cloud of gas and dust that collapses a complete surprise as scientists believed that below the weather layer, where water and 48 | New Scientist | 23 July 2022
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