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 RETURN TO THE MOON
Can NASA really make
it back by 2024?
NORTHERN SOUNDS
The mysterious noise
the aurora makes
THE POWER OF RELIGION
How gods shaped
the rise of humanity
WEEKLY April 6–12, 2019

MIND OVER
MATTER
How you can think yourself sick
... and well again

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PLUS THE DAY THE DINOSAURS DIED

A NEW WAY TO MULTIPLY NUMBERS
THE INNER LIFE OF CHIMPS / OUR DENISOVAN FRIENDS
5

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 We’re looking for the best
ideas in the world.
The Ryman Prize is an international award
aimed at encouraging the best and brightest
thinkers in the world to focus on ways to
improve the health of older people.
The world’s ageing population means that in
some parts of the globe – including much of
the Western world – the population aged 75+
is set to almost triple in the next 30 years.
The burden of chronic diseases including
Alzheimers and diabetes is set to grow at the
same time.
In order to stimulate fresh efforts to tackle
the problems of old age, we’re offering
a $250,000 annual prize for the world’s
best discovery, development, advance or
achievement that enhances quality of life for
older people.
Go to www.rymanprize.com for more information
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern with 2018 Ryman Prize winner Professor Takanori Shibata.
www.rymanprize.com
The Ryman Prize was first awarded in 2015
to Gabi Hollows, co-founder of the Hollows
Foundation, for her tireless work to restore
sight for millions of older people in the
developing world.
World-leading researchers Professor Henry
Brodaty and Professor Peter St George-Hyslop
won the prize in 2016 and 2017 respectively for
their pioneering work into Alzheimer’s Disease.
The 2018 Ryman Prize went to inventor
Professor Takanori Shibata for his 25 years of
research into robotics and artificial intelligence.
If you have a great idea or have achieved
something remarkable like Gabi, Henry, Peter
and Takanori, we’d love to hear from you.
Entries for the 2019 Ryman Prize close on
Friday, June 28, 2019.
 newscientist.com/issue/3224
CONTENTS

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22 Return to the moon
Can NASA really make it back
by 2024?
40 Northern sounds
The mysterious noise the
aurora makes
36 The power of religion
How gods shaped the rise
of humanity
28 Mind over matter
How you can think yourself sick…
and well again
new way to multiply numbers (12).
The inner life of chimps (42). Our
Denisovan friends (9)
5 It’s time to change our approach to
psychosomatic illness. What price
a rocket launch?
News
6 THIS WEEK Huge fossil find may
be victims of dino-killing asteroid.
India tests anti-satellite missile.
Stickers confuse Tesla’s autopilot
8 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
Climate lifestyle sacrifices. Moving
cliffs on comet 67P. AI passes
English exams. We interbred with
Denisovans much more recently
than we thought. Earth life can’t
survive on Mars… but young
Venus may have been habitable.
Robots learn how to betray us.
A faster way to multiply. The EU’s
copyright controversy. Non-native
species in Galapagos waters.
Lions are losing genetic diversity.
Biggest ever rewrite of a single cell
28 Mind over matter A group of
mystery conditions shows how
we can think ourselves well – or ill
34 The choice engine Being a
biological machine doesn’t mean
we lack free will
36 Has religion been good or bad
for humanity? An epic scientific
analysis could settle the question
40 Northern sounds Solving
the mystery of the aurora’s
ghostly hiss
Culture
42 Inner life of chimps Frans de
Waal’s new book lays animals’
emotions bare
43 Music lessons Following a beat
is harder than it looks. PLUS: This
week’s cultural picks
44 Speaking in tongues Want
to be a good citizen? Then learn
some more languages

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Analysis 55 FROM THE ARCHIVES
22 INSIGHT Can NASA really make Exxon Valdez oil spill
it back to the moon by 2024? 56 FEEDBACK
24 COMMENT Game theory of Sherlock the police dog
Brexit votes. Don’t over-sharent 57 THE LAST WORD
25 ANALYSIS How air pollution is You say tomato
linked to teenage psychosis

6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 3

 WHAT IF TIME STARTED
FLOWING BACKWARDS?

WHAT
IF THE
RUSSIANS
GOT TO
THE MOON
FIRST?

WHAT IF DINOSAURS
STILL RULED THE EARTH?
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It’s time to change our approach to “psychosomatic” illness
Subeditors
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medicine can’t explain what is kinds of pain relief. they can be life-changing,
Design going on in our bodies. And when But what about when the mimicking the symptoms of
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that happens, it is more often problem is all in your head, but epilepsy or multiple sclerosis,
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HOW much does a rocket launch
cost? It depends who you ask.
Boeing, the firm making NASA’s
gigantic Space Launch System
(SLS), can’t tell you. According to
an internal NASA audit, a maze of
contracts means the agency has
no way of knowing just how much
it is paying to build and launch
an individual vehicle. By contrast,
SpaceX will tell you exactly how
much its Falcon Heavy rocket
costs: $90 million per ride.
It is right there on its website.
This dichotomy is partly
responsible for the Trump
administration’s frustration with
NASA. For its wildly ambitious
push to land astronauts on the
moon by 2024 (see page 22),
Trump’s team is willing to use
commercial rocket providers if
The agency’s reliance on
“costs-plus” contracts, in which
the government agrees to pay
for all additional expenses, once
made sense: Boeing was never
going to find a non-NASA
customer for the Saturn V rocket
it helped develop in the Apollo
era. But now, as the number of
players in space continues to rise,
SpaceX’s fixed-price model, based
on its confidence in finding other
buyers, is the only way to go. ■

6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 5

 THIS WEEK

India blows up satellite

INDIA has destroyed one of its own
satellites in Earth orbit as part of
a test of an anti-satellite missile.
NASA subsequently warned that
the act could put the International
Space Station at increased risk of
a collision with debris. “The risk
went up 44 per cent over a period
of 10 days,” said NASA administrator
SPACE RESEARCH ORGANIZATION HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK
consortium, which studies how to
get rid of space rubbish. “For orbits
of 300 kilometres or less, any
remaining material will quickly be
removed by atmospheric drag.”
The Indian test was announced
by prime minister Narendra Modi in
a televised address on 27 March.
“In the journey of every nation

Jim Bridenstine on Monday. there are moments that bring utmost

A similar test by China in 2007
generated a huge cloud of space
debris and drew international
condemnation for potentially putting
other nations’ satellites at risk. But
the Indian satellite was in such a low
orbit – 300 kilometres up – that any
debris should soon fall to Earth.
“Things shouldn’t last long at
that altitude,” says Craig Underwood
at the University of Surrey, UK, one
of the leaders of the RemoveDebris
pride and have a historic impact on
generations to come,” Modi tweeted.
“One such moment is today. India has
successfully tested the Anti-Satellite
(ASAT) Missile.”
The US, Russia and China have
all previously tested anti-satellite
missiles. The last such test was
in 2008, when the US used a
ship-launched missile to demolish
a defunct spy satellite that was
falling to Earth.

Now Terry Hughes at James Cook

Tesla’s autopilot Coral reefs struggle University in Australia and colleagues
Guidelines for
fooled by stickers to bounce back have found that the amount of coral mesh implants
larvae on the reef in 2018 was down
JUST three stickers placed on the GLOBAL warming is destroying the by 89 per cent on historical levels. THE UK health regulator has taken the
ground were enough to confuse the Great Barrier Reef’s ability to recover The decline is bad news for the first step towards NHS England lifting
autopilot in a Tesla into moving the from disasters and reducing its reef’s long-term future. It is also a temporary ban on the use of vaginal
car to the wrong side of the road. biodiversity by changing the species changing the mix of coral species mesh implants.
Tesla’s autopilot uses cameras that live there. that replenish the reef, which will The implants are used to treat
to detect lane markings so that it Around half of Australia’s Great reduce the amount of suitable incontinence and prolapse in women,
can position itself on the road. Barrier Reef died off in 2016 and 2017 habitats for marine life (Nature, often after childbirth. Their use was
When a team at Keen Security Labs, after ocean temperatures warmed DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1081-y). paused last year to allow for a safety
run by Chinese technology giant enough to cause mass bleaching, “There’s fewer adults after the review, after women reported severe
Tencent, placed three white stickers where heat stresses coral to the back-to-back bleaching because of the pain and complications.
on road markings to make a jagged, point that it expels the colourful high rates of mortality, and dead coral Now the National Institute for
rather than straight edge, the algae living inside it. doesn’t make babies,” says Hughes. Health and Care Excellence has said
autopilot mistook this as a cue the ban could be lifted if certain
to change position. conditions are met. These include
The hack works because Tesla’s recording all procedures and
front-facing camera can’t easily complications in a database, offering
distinguish between the genuine people booklets that set out the
markings on the ground and the implants’ risks, and warning women
white stickers. who opt for surgery over physical
Tesla told New Scientist that therapies that the implants may cause
the issue isn’t a real-world concern pain, including during sex.
IMAGEBROKER/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

because drivers can easily override But campaigners say the new
autopilot settings and take control of guidelines aren’t materially different
the car themselves. However, others from ones published 16 years ago.
have raised concerns that people “They are so weak, they clear the way
often don’t fully concentrate on the for the next generation of women to
road once the autopilot has taken be harmed,” Kath Sansom of Sling The
over, so may not be ready to intervene. Mesh said in a statement.

6 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019

For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news

The day the dinosaurs died

Extraordinary fossils may hold evidence of the catastrophic asteroid strike, finds Michael Marshall

A REMARKABLE fossil deposit

found in North Dakota seems
to offer an unprecedented record
of the mass extinction event that
wiped out most of the dinosaurs
66 million years ago. The fossils
appear to be animals that were
killed within minutes of an
asteroid striking Earth, in a
flood triggered by the impact.
“I have never seen a site like
it,” says Phil Manning of the
ROBERT DEPALMA/UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

University of Manchester, UK,

a member of the team studying
the fossils. “You can almost see
the event happening.”
The findings were made public
last week by the New Yorker
magazine, rather than in a
conventional scientific paper,
leading many palaeontologists to
be publicly sceptical of the work. weather because dust was thrown the New Yorker published its story These fossilised fish may have
However, a paper has now up into the air, blocking sunlight. early, triggering a media frenzy. been victims of an asteroid strike
been published in Proceedings The impact would have sent “I found out a few seconds later
of the National Academy of vibrations through the planet, because I started getting phone aftermath of the Chicxulub
Sciences and researchers are causing widespread earthquakes calls,” says Manning. The impact, it cannot however tell us
expressing cautious enthusiasm and floods. The fossil deposit in universities involved rushed out much about the cause of the mass
(PNAS, doi.org/c34m). North Dakota preserves the site their own press releases, leading extinction,” says Courtney Sprain
The mass extinction 66 million of a river, which would have to accusations of hype. at the University of Liverpool, UK.
years ago wiped out a swathe of experienced a flash flood as water In theory, it is possible that this Its main value will be the range of
species. Contrary to popular hurtled inland. A mix of mud site has no link to the Chicxulub preserved fossils, she says.
belief, it didn’t obliterate the and sand surrounds a densely impact: floods happen all the “The geological interpretation
dinosaurs: birds are a kind of packed collection of fossilised time. But the team has several seems very credible to me, and
fish and other organisms. lines of evidence for a connection. the fish fossils do seem to record
“The fish fossils do seem Everything seems to have been The sediments are thick with a catastrophic event at or near the
to record a catastrophic laid down in a single flood. tektites: tiny pieces of natural asteroid impact,” says Stephen
event at or near the The site was first examined by glass formed in meteorite impacts Brusatte of the University of
asteroid impact” Robert DePalma from the Palm and scattered. The tektites match Edinburgh, UK. “I’m very excited
Beach Museum of Natural History the Chicxulub meteorite on a about this discovery.”
dinosaur and they are still around. in Florida in 2012, after it was chemical level. Many of the fish Brusatte’s one complaint is that
However, no non-avian dinosaurs found by a private collector in the have tektites in their gills, the paper doesn’t describe any
survived. The extinction allowed Hell Creek Formation in North suggesting the glass was floating. dinosaur fossils, whereas the New
mammals to flourish, paving the Dakota. The following year, And the deposit is topped by a Yorker story says there are many,
way for the evolution of primates convinced that an asteroid distinctive rock layer known to including skin and an unhatched
and ultimately humans. impact was responsible, DePalma mark the extinction event. egg. Manning says this paper
The main cause seems to have contacted a New Yorker journalist. “It’s hard to come up with focused on establishing a link
been a 10-kilometre-wide asteroid Finally, DePalma and his anything other than ‘this between the site and the asteroid
that slammed into what is now colleagues had a paper ready to package of sediment was rapidly impact, and that descriptions of
the Chicxulub crater on the go. According to Manning, the emplaced just after the impact’,” fossils will follow. If so, the North
Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The New Yorker and PNAS both agreed says Manning. Dakota site could explode our
immediate blast was devastating, to publish on Monday this week. “While this deposit may help understanding of one of the most
and it also led to years of cold However, on Friday last week, us understand the immediate violent events in Earth’s history. ■

6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 7

NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
People need forcing
to become greener
Adam Vaughan
POLITICIANS will have to consider
making people eat less meat and
fly less, because individuals won’t
voluntarily change their lifestyles
enough to deliver their fair share
of carbon emissions cuts.
That is the message from a
four-year study of more than
300 European households on their
attitudes and carbon footprints.
The study found that people
were willing to make lifestyle
changes to reduce emissions,
but voluntary cuts would deliver
only half of the 50 per cent
emissions reductions that
households worldwide will
need to make by 2030 to keep to
the world’s 1.5°C climate target.
For example, when it comes
to transport, people choose
incremental actions with a small
impact on their carbon footprint,
such as driving more efficiently,
rather than stopping driving or
reducing long-distance flights.
Only 4 per cent of households
would voluntarily give up their car.
NANOSTOCK/GETTY
Food and transport together
accounted for more than
60 per cent of the participants’
emissions, bigger than energy use
Comet 67P’s
cliffs march
towards the sun
THE hills may not be alive, but they
are moving. Comet 67P/Churyumov-
Gerasimenko has small cliffs that
migrate across the landscape.
The European Space Agency’s
Rosetta spacecraft arrived at 67P
in 2014. The pictures it took revealed
a changing landscape, especially
when the comet reached its closest
approach to the sun, and jets of
8 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019
and other consumption such as
shopping. The results suggest
strict government policy is
needed to deal with cars, planes
and meat-eating.
People are more resistant
to changes in transport because
it is closely tied to personal values,
the study suggests. One German
interviewee said he wanted to
study or work abroad because it
dust and gas shot off into space.
The jets form when sunlight hits
the surface and turns ice into gas,
which floats away along with any dust
that was mixed in with the frost. Now
Sam Birch at Cornell University in New
York has found that Rosetta images
show a similar process is causing small
cliffs on the comet’s surface to move.
The cliffs, or scarps, in question are
only between 1 and 2 metres tall, but
on a comet the size of 67P, which is
just 4 kilometres across at its longest
point, they aren’t negligible. Birch and
his colleagues found that when the
comet was relatively close to the sun,
would look good on his CV.
“It sounds better than saying:
Oh well, yes, this guy is organic,
he is climate-friendly, he decided
to stay at home and not pollute
the air,” he said.
“We are entering territory
that is very much taboo,” says
Benjamin Sovacool at the
University of Sussex, UK, one
of the paper’s authors. “The things
we may have to force or nudge
people to do are more intertwined
with identity. They are stickier,
harder to change.”
Many people voluntarily cut their
emissions, but rarely by enough
the scarps moved at a rate of between
3 and 7 centimetres an hour.
This seasonal process means that
when 67P is near the sun – for about
two months every 6.5 years – its
landscape changes dramatically.
The big surprise was that the cliffs
were moving towards, not away from,
the sun. “The sun is shining down on
these features, but they’re going the
wrong way,” Birch told the Lunar and
“When the comet is near
the sun, the cliffs move
and its landscape
changes dramatically”
People were more willing to
voluntarily change what they eat,
according to the research, which
saw households in France,
Germany, Norway and Sweden
take part in a series of interviews
and games, and have their carbon
footprints mapped. Eating less
meat and more locally produced
foods were among the most
popular actions, although in
some cases the latter can result
in a net increase in emissions.
Ultimately, however, people
aren’t willing to change their lives
enough without being forced to
by the government. The authors
stop short of advocating specific
measures, such as a meat tax,
which some have recommended.
While the four countries
examined might seem relatively
green-minded, the conclusions
could apply to any rich country,
say Sovacool and his colleagues
(Energy Research and Social
Science, doi.org/c32h).
Adam Corner of the Climate
Outreach group in Oxford, UK,
said the research is useful
because it shines a light on which
household behaviours have the
most impact, and the fact people
are reluctant to make changes
that reduce emissions the most.
Sovacool says we must all
recognise we have a dual role to
play in climate change. “Too often
we are seen as the cause of the
problem, or part of the solution.
The truth is we are both.” ■
Planetary Science conference
in Texas. This is unlike elsewhere
in the solar system, where features
such as ice or snow dunes move
because of direct sunlight.
The team found that this
backwards movement was probably
because the scarps are located next
to a much larger cliff face. This
feature, called Hathor cliff, absorbs
heat from the sun then radiates it out
again, warming the ice in the scarps
and pushing them away. “The hot
surface radiates onto the ice, the ice
melts, the scarp retreats,” said Birch.
Leah Crane ■
For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
Leading robo
student scrapes
a C+ in English
THE results are in. An artificial
intelligence has gone to the top of its
class after passing an English exam.
Though it can’t beat more able human
students, it achieved the best mark
yet for a machine.
Hai Zhao at Shanghai Jiao Tong
University in China and his colleagues
trained their AI on more than 25,000
English reading comprehension tests.
Each contained a 200 to 300-word
story followed by a series of related
multiple-choice questions. The tests
were sourced from English proficiency
USO/GETTY
exams aimed at Chinese students
aged from 12 to 18 years.
While some answers could be
directly found in the text, over half of
them required a degree of reasoning.
For example, one of the questions
asked you to choose the best headline
for a story from four options.
After the training, the AI sat a
final exam consisting of 1400 tests
it hadn’t seen before. It achieved an
overall score of 74 per cent, better
than all previous machine attempts
(arxiv.org/abs/1901.09381).
The next best was a system made
by Tencent, a leading Chinese
technology firm, which scored
72 per cent on the same exam.
Despite topping the leader board,
Zhao is determined to improve his
system’s abilities. “What our AI got is
very average, a C+ at most,” he says.
“For students who want to get into
good universities in China, they will
aim for 90 per cent.”
To increase its score, the team
will try to modify the AI so that it can
understand information embedded
in sentence structure and feed it with
more data to expand its vocabulary.
It is unclear what rules AIs follow
when they learn our languages,
says Guokun Lai at Carnegie Mellon
University in Pennsylvania, who
originally collated the tests in 2017
for AI research. “They seem to be
able to [understand our logic]
after reading tonnes of sentences
and stories.” Yvaine Ye ■
DNA reveals our recent
Denisovan ancestry
OUR species may have interbred
with Denisovans, another kind of
human, as recently as 15,000 years have generally looked at only a
ago. That is according to a detailed small fraction of people’s DNA.
analysis of the DNA of people
living in Indonesia and Papua
New Guinea.
We already know that, after
Homo sapiens first moved out
of Africa, our species repeatedly
interbred with others, including
the now extinct Neanderthals
and Denisovans. The signs are in
our DNA: people of non-African
descent carry some Neanderthal
DNA, while some Asian and
Australasian people also have
Denisovan DNA.
Not much is known about the
Denisovans, whose existence
came to light when DNA was
sequenced from a fragment of
finger bone unearthed in a cave
in Siberia in 2010. Since then, only second more recently.
a few more fragments and teeth
have been found, but genetic
analyses suggested our species
interbred with Denisovans at least there is reason to think it
twice, in Asia and Australasia,
and that the genomes of people
in Papua New Guinea may be
up to 5 per cent Denisovan.
Until now, studies of such links
To get a fuller picture, Murray
Cox of Massey University, New
Zealand, and his colleagues have
done the first large-scale study
of whole genomes, analysing
the DNA of 161 people living in
“People may have interbred
with Denisovans much
later than thought, maybe
just 15,000 years ago”
Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.
It reveals that our ancestors
in this part of the world seem to
have interbred with at least two
distinct groups of Denisovans –
the first about 50,000 years ago,
as previously thought, and a
While the analysis suggests the
latest interbreeding was between
50,000 and 15,000 years ago,
happened at the most recent end
of that range, says Cox. This is
because the genes from the
Residents of Papua New Guinea
have some Denisovan DNA
second mixing are much more
common in people living in the
Papua New Guinea mainland than
in people living on nearby islands,
suggesting the mixing occurred
with the mainlanders after the
islanders’ ancestors had left.
Archaeological evidence
suggests this migration to the
islands happened 30,000 years
ago. But, by comparing the
genomes of mainlanders and
islanders, Cox’s team calculates
that it was later, at around
15,000 years ago. He presented
the findings at the American
Association of Physical
Anthropology Conference in
Cleveland, Ohio, last week.
Despite the idea of Denisovans
being around more recently, Cox
doesn’t think any could be hiding
out on an island in the region. “It’s
isolated, but it still has too much
contact for something like that
not to be noticed,” he says.
The new data also reveals
considerable genetic diversity
among the Denisovans. The
group involved in the earlier
Papua New Guinea interbreeding
are almost as genetically different
to Denisovan DNA from a bone
found in Siberia as they are to
Neanderthals. “This study is
giving us insight into the real
pattern of human diversity,” says
John Hawks at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. “There was
once a population that was
as diverse as modern humans
that’s now gone.”
At the same conference, Bence
Viola at the University of Toronto
in Canada and his colleagues
revealed the first Denisovan skull
fragment to be found. “It indicates
it was a pretty large individual,”
says Viola.
The fragment is small, and
hasn’t told us that much more
about Denisovans yet. “But look at
how our knowledge has exploded
over the past nine years from a
tiny fragment of finger bone,”
says Viola. Clare Wilson ■
6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 9
 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
Water on Mars too
salty for Earth life
Leah Crane
THERE are certain areas on Mars
where we don’t dare tread. NASA
forbids spacecraft from visiting
spots that possibly host liquid
water, and so where life might
be able to thrive, for fear of
contaminating Mars with Earth
microbes. But an analysis of the
salty liquids on Mars suggests we
needn’t worry, because life as we
know it should be unable to exist
anywhere on the planet’s surface.
Edgard Rivera-Valentín at the
NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS
... but an ocean
may have made
Venus habitable
NOWADAYS, Venus is a sweltering
hellscape with no liquid water on its
surface, where temperatures exceed
450°C – hot enough to melt lead. But
billions of years ago, it may have had
an ocean whose tides could have
slowed the planet’s rotation and
made its climate relatively temperate.
Venus is a leisurely rotator. It makes
a full turn just once every 243 Earth
10 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019
Lunar and Planetary Institute
in Texas and his colleagues used
readings of the temperature and
relative humidity across Mars to
map the presence of salty water.
Any water on the surface is likely
to be salty, simply because the
surface is. This boosts the chances
of water being liquid because salt
lowers its freezing point.
It is like when you throw salt
on an icy sidewalk, says Danielle
Nuding at NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in California. “It’s the
same chemistry happening.”
days, which is slower than any other
planet in the solar system. But in the
deep past, it may have spun faster.
Observations of Venus’s geology
and clouds have indicated that early
in its history, the planet may have
been more similar to Earth, with a
liquid water ocean on its surface.
Michael Way at NASA’s Goddard
Space Flight Center and his colleagues
calculated how an ocean on young
Venus could have slowed down its
spin from a much faster rotation
shortly after it formed and made
it more habitable.
Like Earth’s ocean, Venus’s would
Unfortunately, the saltier the
water, the less likely anything can
survive in it. The team found that
even though there could be briny
water on the surface of Mars up to
18 per cent of the year, depending
on the season, no microbe we
have ever seen on Earth would
be able to reproduce there.
“Life as we know it is not going
to find these brines and survive
because it’s either going to be
way too cold or way too salty,” says
Rivera-Valentín, who presented the
results at the Lunar and Planetary
Science Conference in Texas.
That doesn’t mean we can’t
contaminate Mars: brines with
different types of salts mixed
No part of the Red Planet could be
off limits to NASA’s Curiosity rover
have had tides, which can slow a
planet’s spin as the sun or a moon
pulls on the water. Because Venus is
closer to the sun, its tides would have
been stronger than those on Earth.
Way and his colleagues found that
if Venus started out spinning at about
the same rate as Earth does now, these
tides could have reduced the spin rate
by five Earth days every million years.
At that pace, it would have taken less
“Venus rotates once every
243 Earth days, which
is slower than any other
planet in the solar system”
together might be friendlier to life
and temperatures just below the
surface are much less extreme.
Nevertheless, as long as we
don’t dig down, it might be highly
unlikely or even impossible for
rovers such as Curiosity to
contaminate Mars.
“The level of sterilisation that
we’ve done with Curiosity should
be good enough to ignore [the
ban on visiting] what we’ve been
calling ‘special regions’ until
now,” says Jennifer Hanley at
Lowell Observatory in Arizona.
“I think that we’re OK to go.”
Visiting these regions would
be particularly helpful because,
while they are in theory the most
vulnerable areas on Mars, they
are also the most interesting.
For example, arguments have
been raging for over a decade
about whether dark streaks on
Martian slopes called recurring
slope lineae are flowing water
or just dust. A quick visit by
Curiosity, which is near an area
where the flows often form,
could solve it once and for all.
Even if areas with water are
inhospitable to Earth life, they
could still be home to native
Martian life forms.
“If you had life that originated
on Mars when it was more
habitable, it could be that as
Mars changed, life could have
gradually adapted to the new,
more extreme conditions,”
says Rivera-Valentín. ■
than 50 million years to slow Venus to
its current rotation rate – extremely
fast braking by planetary standards.
The team presented the work at
the Lunar and Planetary Science
Conference in Texas.
A slower rotation rate plus a water
ocean would probably have created
huge cloud banks that would have
reflected much of the sunlight that
makes Venus so hot now, says Way.
If Venus stayed cool because the
clouds were blocking solar radiation,
that would have made it much more
hospitable to any ancient life, says Way.
Leah Crane ■
NEWS & TECHNOLOGY

Deceptive robot multiplication method would

take about six months to
tells lies to multiply two billion-digit
numbers together, says Harvey,
regain our trust the Schönhage-Strassen
algorithm can do it in 26 seconds.
BETRAYING someone and lying The landmark 1971 paper
about it is pretty low – especially if also suggested a possible
you are a robot. An experiment on improvement, a tantalising
interactions between humans and prediction that multiplication
robots reveals just how easy it is might one day be possible in no
for robots to regain trust by fibbing more than n*log(n) steps. Now
after a misdeed. Harvey and van der Hoeven seem
The devious robot in question is to have proved this in the paper
NAO, a 58-centimetre-high humanoid they have posted online. “It finally
that moves and interacts with people. appears to be possible,” says
Sarah Sebo at Yale University and her Cooper. “It passes the smell test.”
colleagues arranged for 82 people to “If the result is correct,
compete for points against NAO in an it’s a major achievement in
asteroid-shooting computer game. computational complexity
In some rounds, a special asteroid theory,” says Fredrik Johansson
JOHN ARCHER/GETTY

blaster was awarded to either the at INRIA, the French research

human or NAO. It could be used institute for digital sciences, in
to get bonus points when shooting Bordeaux. “The new ideas in this
an asteroid or for temporarily work are likely to inspire further
immobilising the opponent. Ahead of research and could lead to practical
10 games played together, the robot
promised it wouldn’t immobilise the
player, but betrayal was programmed
A new way to improvements down the road.”
Cooper praises the originality
of the work, although he stresses
into its nature – it always broke its
promise in round three.
To test the best route back
multiply numbers the complexity of the maths. “You
think, jeez, I’m just multiplying
two integers, how complicated
from betrayal, the robot framed can it get?” says Cooper. “But boy,
the immobilisation as a mistake with Gilead Amit If your two numbers each have it gets complicated.”
half of the human players. “Oh no! n digits, this way of multiplying So, will this make calculating
I hit the wrong button,” it would say. FORGET your times tables, will require roughly n2 individual your tax returns any easier?
With the other half, it yelled: “Yes! mathematicians have found calculations. “The question is, “For human beings working with
You’re immobilised!”. It then either a faster way to multiply two can you do better?” says Cooper. pencil and paper, absolutely not,”
apologised or denied it had broken its numbers together. The method, Starting in the 1960s, says Harvey. Indeed, their version
promise to the players in each group. which works only for whole mathematicians began to prove of the proof only works for
People were twice as likely to numbers, is a landmark result in that they could. First, Anatoly numbers with more than
take revenge by immobilising the computer science. “This is big Karatsuba found an algorithm 20 trillion trillion trillion digits.
robot in the following round if news,” says Joshua Cooper at the “The word ‘astronomical’ falls
they thought the robot’s betrayal University of South Carolina. “You think, jeez, comically short in trying to
was on purpose rather than an To understand the technique, I’m just multiplying describe this number,” he says.
accident. The same was true if which was devised by David two integers, how While future improvements
NAO simply denied its actions. Harvey at the University of complicated can it get?” to the algorithm may extend
“Personally, I think robots New South Wales, Australia, the proof to more humdrum
should be 100 per cent honest and Joris van der Hoeven at the that could turn out an answer numbers only a few trillion digits
and not lie ever,” says Sebo, Ecole Polytechnique near Paris, in no more than n1.58 steps. long, Cooper thinks its real value
who presented the work at the France, it helps to think back to And in 1971, Arnold Schönhage lies elsewhere. From a theoretical
International Conference on what you learned at school. and Volker Strassen found a perspective, he says, this work
Human-Robot Interaction in Daegu, Write down two numbers, one way to peg the number of steps allows programmers to provide
South Korea. But the results suggest on top of the other, and then to the complicated expression a definitive guarantee of how
an advantage in lying to a person painstakingly multiply each n*(log(n))*log(log(n)), in which long a certain algorithm will take.
to optimise their trust. Framing a digit of one by each digit of “log” is short for logarithm. “We are optimistic that our new
betrayal as incompetence could the other, before adding all These advances had a major paper will allow us to achieve
lead to a robot being treated better the results together. “This is an impact on computing. Whereas further practical speed-ups,”
by people. Donna Lu ■ ancient algorithm,” says Cooper. a computer using the longhand says van der Hoeven. ■

12 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019

 Humanity will need the
equivalent of 2 Earths to People lying down
support itself by 2030. solve anagrams in
10% less time
than people
standing up.

About 6 in
100 babies
(mostly boys)
are born with an
extra nipple.

60% of us
experience
‘inner speech’
where everyday
thoughts take a
back-and-forth
conversational style.

We spend 50% of our

lives daydreaming.

AVAILABLE NOW
newscientist.com/howtobehuman
NEWS & TECHNOLOGY

BRIEFING of your favourite content-sharing isn’t infringing the rules without

websites. If you own a website or
The EU’s copyright a forum in which people can post
text, images or video clips, you
this software.
It is very hard to make these
tools and they make bad

controversy will be responsible for ensuring

no unlicensed material appears.
decisions, says Jim Killock at the
Open Rights Group, a UK digital
rights campaign organisation.
Why is it controversial? The monitoring software could
Frank Swain like Google and YouTube, forcing How long have you got? Users say mean people have their content
them to pay for content they the rules risk killing off vibrant unfairly removed by overzealous
THE European Union has passed aggregate. However, critics say internet culture, such as memes, bots. Article 13 will require site
a wide-reaching update to the opposite is true, with smaller which often repurpose unlicensed owners to implement a complaints
copyright rules, which will websites most adversely affected material. And the legal status of process to deal with disputed
become law when individual by the directive. streamers, who post videos of decisions, but Killock says this
member states enshrine them themselves playing video games is unlikely to fix the problem.
in national legislation. Most of How does it affect the way I use online, is in question. “Our experience pretty much
the changes in the EU Copyright the internet? Website owners aren’t required everywhere is people generally
Directive are uncontroversial, It is platform owners rather to install content monitoring don’t complain. They worry about
setting out how copyright is than internet users who will bear software to detect copyright the effects on their reputation,
managed and licensed, but Article the brunt of these new rules, but material, but practically it will and worry about the legal
13 could have a huge effect on how they may spell the end of some be impossible to guarantee a site ramifications,” he says. Rather
material is shared online. than risk further sanctions, users
may simply stop making content
What is Article 13? for online publication.
The EU says the directive is about
making “copyright rules fit for the Still, something must be done
digital era”. To comply with Article about piracy, right?
13, platforms such as YouTube and That depends on who you ask.
SoundCloud will need to ensure Music and video producers
that copyrighted material on their have lobbied hard to see the
sites is licensed, guaranteeing the changes passed. Others question
EMMANUELE CONTINI/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

original artist payment for its use. whether the problem of copyright
Non-profit encyclopaedias like infringement is really serious
Wikipedia and cloud storage enough to require such sweeping
services are exempt. legislation.

Why do we need it? What happens next?

Rightsholders say the rules will There is likely to be a series of
put an end to online pirating campaigns against the changes as
of music and video, and will well as legal challenges in national
challenge the power of tech giants and EU courts. ■

Aliens off the Now 48 such species have been

found in the waters, in addition to
shores of the five known non-native species
(Aquatic Invasions, doi.org/c32k).
Galapagos The organisms probably hitched a
ride on ships from around the world.
THE waters around the Galapagos The actual number of non-native
Islands, a hotspot of biodiversity species is likely to be much greater
off the coast of Ecuador, have been as surveys were only undertaken in
invaded by more non-native species certain habitats around two of the
than previously thought. larger islands. “From our knowledge
While the number of non-native of similar studies, I wouldn’t be
species on land across the World surprised if the number was twice [as
Heritage Site is well-documented, many],” says team member Jim Carlton
relatively little was known about at Williams College in Massachusetts.
those in the marine environment. The invaders included worms,
mussels, crabs and sea squirts. There
were also tiny Bryozoa, commonly
known as moss animals, such as
Amathia verticillata, which kill
seagrass and mess up fishing gear.
Seventeen of the invaders had
been spotted around the Galapagos
archipelago before, but were wrongly
thought to have been native species.
The effect of these alien species
on the islands’ ecosystems isn’t yet
“Seventeen of the newly
identified invaders were
previously mistaken for
native species”
known. But it is likely to be negative
judging from experiences elsewhere,
and could threaten the islands’
endemic marine species. “What we
know is a number of these [invasive]
species clearly have had impacts
elsewhere in the world,” says Carlton.
Invasions in other places suggest
that even more harmful species could
soon be headed for the waters of
the Galapagos, the team warns. This
could include soft corals that could
grow rapidly over local coral, and
the prospect of venomous lionfish
arriving from the Caribbean via the
Panama Canal. Adam Vaughan ■

6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 15

 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
SIMON DURES/ZSL
Lions’ genetic
diversity in decline
Adam Vaughan
ONE of Africa’s last major lion
strongholds has experienced a
significant decline in its genetic
diversity since the end of the
19th century, leaving the animals
more vulnerable to future threats.
Researchers looked at how the
genetic diversity of African lions
(Panthera leo) has changed over
time. They discovered that the
diversity of the population in the
Kavango-Zambezi conservation
area, which spans parts of Angola,
Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and “This shows we have to
Zimbabwe, has fallen by up to
17 per cent since 1895 (Diversity
and Distributions, doi.org/c3wb).
This drop is significant because
it occurred in an area that is home could be disease. It’s the ability
to one of the continent’s most
important lion populations, says
Simon Dures at the Zoological
Society of London, who led the
analysis. “It’s pointing out we
have to be careful even in these
strongholds, not to let them split the Kavango-Zambezi area
up into fragments,” he says.
It is known that there are now
fewer lions in Africa and they
occupy a smaller area, but it was
16 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019
previously less clear how well they
were doing in their heartlands.
The loss of genetic variation
in the Kavango-Zambezi lions
reduces their ability to adapt to
future changes. The most obvious
of these is shifting climate, but
changes in prey may impact them
too. “If you lose some of those
lion populations, or they’re not
mixing, you’re going to lose the
overall population’s ability to
withstand change,” says Dures.
“It could be climate change, it
be careful not to let these
lion strongholds split up
into fragments”
to withstand the unknown.”
The team was able to measure
the shift in genetic diversity over
time in part due to 19th-century
British hunter Frederick Selous.
Many of the lions he killed in
ended up at the Natural History
Museum in London.
In total, Dures and his team
were able to identify 27 relevant
With less genetic variation, lions
may struggle in leaner times
old lion samples at the museum.
They compared DNA taken from
these with that of 204 lions living
in the conservation area today.
Stopping the decline in
the lions’ genetic diversity
will require political support.
Most of the Kavango-Zambezi
conservation area is only sparsely
populated by humans. But some
parts, particularly in Zimbabwe
and Zambia, contain large swathes
of subsistence and cattle farming,
which can lead to tensions
between farmers and wildlife.
In Botswana, there is political
will to protect lions because
tourism is so important for the
country, as evidenced by its
trophy hunting ban, says Dures.
A key measure will be to
remove some of the fencing in
the Kavango-Zambezi area to
create wildlife corridors so lion
populations can mix. “The main
thing is ensuring within this big
area that the lion populations
are connected,” says Dures.
Urs Breitenmoser of the
International Union for
Conservation of Nature says
the lion population studied is
one of the best preserved on the
continent. “The picture of many
other lion populations in Africa
would be more bleak,” he says. ■
Biggest ever
rewrite of
a single cell
A RECORD-BREAKING 13,200 changes
have been made to the DNA of a
human cell using the genome-editing
technique CRISPR. The feat takes us a
step closer to being able to thoroughly
rewrite the genetic library of our cells
and other organisms.
Half our genome – the complete
set of DNA inside our cells – consists
of hundreds of thousands of copies of
genetic parasites called transposons.
These code for genes that copy and
paste themselves from one location
in the genome to another. Most copies
of transposons are so full of mutations
that they no longer work, but many
remain active and can cause cancers
and other disorders if they paste
themselves into the wrong spot.
George Church at Harvard
University and his colleagues decided
to use CRISPR genome editing to
deactivate a widespread transposon
called LINE-1. They first tried using
the standard form of CRISPR, which
involves cutting DNA. But doing so
in hundreds of sites killed the cells,
they found.
So the team turned to a newer form
of CRISPR called base editing. This
transforms one DNA letter to another
without making any cuts. Using this,
the team managed to edit half the
26,000 active LINE-1 transposons in
a human cell. “We hope, in the future,
to knock out 100 per cent of active
LINE elements,” says Church.
Although 13,200 edits were made
successfully, the team has been
unable to assess how many extra,
unwanted mutations this process
introduced (bioRxiv, doi.org/c32m).
This is hard to figure out because
LINE sequences are so repetitive.
Church and his team set the
previous record for the most edits
made at once when they disabled
62 copies of a virus lurking in the
genome of pig cells. Next, Church
wants to make thousands of
different changes to different
sequences in a human cell in one go.
Michael Le Page ■
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 IN BRIEF
DAVID COLLINGWOOD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Lab-grown spare
blood vessels work
HUMAN blood vessels created
in a dish have been successfully
added to the circulatory systems
of people. They are grown using
a person’s own tissue and could
one day be used to replace arteries
damaged by heart disease.
Heather Prichard and her team
at Humacyte, a technology firm in
Durham, North Carolina, coaxed
human smooth muscle cells to
make the vessels. These cells were
spread out on a scaffold and given
nutrients to get them to produce
a 3D network of proteins in the
shape of a long, vessel-like tube.
In this case, the tubes were
implanted in people with kidney
failure who needed larger blood
vessels added to their system to
help them have dialysis, in which
blood is filtered by machine. The
team found the implants became
multilayered tissues that could
Mutts learn to sniff out the Using treats as rewards, the team then used these
bags to train five mixed-breed dogs to recognise smells
self-heal, just like a person’s own
vessels (Science Translational
scent of an epileptic attack associated with seizures, before setting them a test. Medicine, doi.org/c3zs).
In each test, the dogs had to choose between seven
DOGS seem able to smell when someone has an epileptic scent samples from a single person, only one of which
seizure. This may help explain why support dogs for some was collected after a seizure. Each dog did nine tests
Martian rivers came
people with epilepsy, trained to fetch help in the event of involving samples from people not encountered before.
a seizure, know when one is happening. Three of the dogs scored 100 per cent. The other two in extra wide sizes
Amélie Catala at the University of Rennes, France, identified the correct sample in two-thirds of the tests
and her colleagues, wondered if scent was involved. To (Scientific Reports, doi.org/c3zx). RIVERS on Mars were unusually
investigate, they got people with epilepsy to wipe their This shows for the first time that, despite people broad compared with those on
hands, forehead and neck with a pad immediately after a having different body odours, an epileptic seizure has a Earth today.
seizure, placing the pad in a bag and then breathing into distinctive scent profile that dogs can learn to recognise. To learn more about water
the bag before sealing it. They also asked them to do the We don’t know what molecules the dogs are detecting, features on Mars, Edwin Kite at
same after exercising or doing a calm activity. but further research could tell us, says Catala. the University of Chicago and his
team used images to measure
the widths of 205 well-preserved
Robocar drives fast, furious and safely acceleration. Even when cornering river channels there. They also
at about 50 kilometres per hour, it looked at the size of their basins,
A SELF-DRIVING car has learned They trained it on data from deviated less than 50 centimetres the area in which all precipitation,
to make high-speed turns without more than 200,000 motion from its desired turning path. snowmelt and groundwater feeds
losing control, a skill that may samples taken from test drives The team found its neural a single river.
be vital for emergency swerves. on a variety of surfaces. The team network also worked when the The team found that, for a given
J. Christian Gerdes and his equipped a Volkswagen GTI car track was covered in snow or ice basin size, rivers on Mars were
colleagues at Stanford University with the algorithm and tried it (Science Robotics, doi.org/c32j). more than twice as wide as Earth’s.
in California used a type of out on an oval-shaped race track. Autonomous vehicles will need (Science Advances, doi.org/c3z9).
artificial intelligence algorithm It drove as fast as physically control systems that can rapidly “For reasons we don’t
called a neural network, which possible for the road surface, brake, accelerate or steer safely understand, land features on Mars
is loosely based on the neural bends and tyres, observing its in critical situations, such as tend to be larger than Earth’s,”
networks in our brains, to create motion from previous fractions of emergencies in which sudden says Victor Baker at the University
the self-driving system. a second to adjust its steering and swerves are likely. of Arizona.

6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 19


IN BRIEF
Encoding language Killer fungi unleashed an apocalypse on biodiversity
is easy on the brain THE extinction of 90 species of diseases, such as the bat-killing and B. salamandrivorans, two
AS YOU learn your first language,
your brain stores just 1.5 megabytes
of information – not much more
than a computer floppy disc holds.
Frank Mollica at the University
of Rochester in New York and his
colleagues used a branch of
mathematics called information
theory to quantify how many bits
of data you would need to encode to
learn English. To do this, they looked
at various aspects of language, such
as sounds, meanings and context.
They began with phonemes,
distinct sounds that make up words.
There are about 50 phonemes in
English, each requiring 15 bits, so
these alone require about 750 bits.
We also need to learn to say
individual words. The team found
that learning the average English
vocabulary size of 40,000 words
requires about 400,000 bits.
Understanding the meaning of
those words requires a lot more bits
though – 12 million – because words
contain a lot of information.
Knowing how often certain
words appear is also important
during language learning, and
storing this word-frequency
information takes about 80,000
bits. Finally, syntax – the set of rules
that govern sentences – requires
the least, clocking in at about 700
bits. Add that all together and you
get 1.56 megabytes (Royal Society
Open Science, doi.org/c3z7).
ASTRAKAN IMAGES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
20 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019
amphibians can be pinned on a
deadly fungal disease, according
to the most comprehensive
attempt yet to map its impact.
Since it emerged 30 years ago,
chytridiomycosis has contributed
to the decline of more than
500 species of frogs, toads and
salamanders, or nearly 7 per cent
of all amphibian species.
The toll means the disease
has wrought the greatest loss of
biodiversity by any pathogen we
know of, an order of magnitude
greater than other wildlife
Smart PJs tell if all is
well as you snooze
YOUR pyjamas may soon be able
to monitor sleep quality.
Trisha Andrew and her team at
the University of Massachusetts
have developed a pyjama shirt
that can monitor breathing,
heartbeat and movement.
It can track the quality of your
slumber, such as the amount of
REM sleep you get – thought to
be important for consolidating
memories. It can also alert you to
breathing issues during the night.
The shirt has five lightweight
sensors sewn into its lining. Four
detect constant pressure, like that
of a body pressed against a bed.
The fifth, positioned over
the chest, senses rapid pressure
changes, providing information
about heart rate and breathing.
Signals travel to a tiny circuit
board that looks and functions
like an ordinary button. This has a
built-in transmitter that sends the
data to a computer for analysis.
The pyjama shirt is still in its
early stages. It has been tested
overnight on only eight people,
and the team is still in the process
of ensuring the sensors are
accurate for a variety of body
shapes and heights. The work was
presented at a recent meeting of
the American Chemical Society.
For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news
white-nose syndrome.
Previous work has been done
on the disease’s spread, and
regional efforts have been made
to gauge its impact on frogs and
other species. But the large,
international team of researchers
behind the new study says it is
the best effort yet to aggregate its
dramatic effects globally. Trenton
Garner at the Zoological Society
of London says it shows those
effects have been extreme.
Chytridiomycosis is caused by
Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis
Crystal-based fridges are a cool idea
A FRIDGE that runs on plastic crystals
could solve a big problem: cooling us
and our food without warming Earth.
Refrigeration equipment, air
conditioners and heat pumps use up
to 30 per cent of all electricity, and
many contain refrigerants that act
as greenhouse gases if they end up
in the atmosphere.
Bing Li at the Chinese Academy of
Sciences’ Institute of Metal Research
in Shenyang and his colleagues have
used an alternative, solid cooling
material known as plastic crystals.
They believe these could use less
energy and avoid leaking gases.
chytrid fungi. They are believed to
have emerged in Asia in the 1980s
and the disease they cause spread
rapidly, aided by globalisation and
the trade in wildlife. There was
a peak of amphibian deaths that
decade and a later spike after
2000 when it hit South America.
There are small signs of hope.
The number of new species hit by
the disease is down, some frogs
appear to be evolving resistance to
it and antifungal treatments have
been shown to work in some cases
(Science, doi.org/gfxkrt).
JACK TAYLOR/GETTY IMAGES
Conventional fridges use pressure
to turn a refrigerant gas into a liquid,
which then re-evaporates, cooling
its surroundings as it does so. But
solids that change temperature in
response to pressure have been
floated as an alternative.
Plastic crystals – soft, powder-like
solids – have been considered as a
material to store energy, but Li and
his colleagues found that they work
surprisingly well as a refrigerant.
They identified one type, neopentyl
glycol, that has a greater cooling
effect than other candidates (Nature,
doi.org/gfxkgv).
 Where did we come from?
How did it all begin?

And where does belly-button fluff come from?

Find the answers in our latest book. On sale now.

Introduction by Professor Stephen Hawking

INSIGHT MOON MISSION
Dream of a new Apollo
The US wants to drastically accelerate its plans to return to
the moon, but can it be done? Chelsea Whyte investigates
THE countdown has begun.
Last week, US vice president Mike
Pence announced that NASA is
being directed to put astronauts
on the moon by 2024 – the final
year of president Donald Trump’s
tenure, should he win re-election.
It is an ambitious goal and
there are several obstacles to clear
before we will see new bootprints
in the lunar soil. Most crucially,
reaching the moon requires
a heavy-lift launch vehicle –
a rocket that can boost 20 to
50 tonnes into low Earth orbit –
to carry a crew, cargo and the
vast amounts of fuel for the trip.
NASA doesn’t have one, but
it isn’t for lack of effort. In 2010,
then-president Barack Obama
gave the space agency the
go-ahead to design and build
the Space Launch System (SLS),
a heavy-lift rocket to rival the
Saturn V rocket that powered the
Apollo missions. NASA contracted
The Saturn V took Apollo astronauts to the moon, but how will their successors travel?
100
80
Height (metres)
60
40
20
0
Saturn V
Lift in tonnes* 118
First launch 9 November 1967
Cost per flight $1.2 billion
(inflation adjusted)
*to low Earth orbit
22 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019
Boeing in 2012 to build SLS, but policy analysis firm in Virginia.
the firm has overspent on the Part of the problem is that
project by billions of dollars SLS was designed to build on
and run into delay after delay. older US space efforts. Boeing was
As part of his announcement, required to use parts from both
Pence said that commercial the space shuttle and the defunct
rocket providers, such as Constellation programme
SpaceX, could offer an alternative. from the early 2000s. SLS is also
“We’re not committed to any designed to be built in a series of
one contractor,” he said. “If our increasingly powerful versions,
current contractors can’t meet which will lift 70, 105 and then
this objective, then we’ll find 130 tonnes into low Earth orbit,
ones that will.” so it can be used for both moon
Either way, it is going to be and Mars missions.
expensive – and the new mission That sounds like SLS has been
NASA ORION
came with no promise of a trying to do too much, but the
politically difficult budget delays may actually be due to it
increase. “It seems highly unlikely doing too little, says Lori Garver,
Congress would agree to provide who served as NASA’s deputy a moon mission is SpaceX’s
the massive infusion of funds administrator from 2009 to 2013. Falcon Heavy. This made its
needed to accomplish this Despite spending more than maiden launch in February
goal, whether NASA builds the $6 billion on SLS, NASA never 2018, carrying CEO Elon Musk’s
hardware itself or buys services had a specific destination in personal Tesla Roadster car,
from commercial companies,” mind, she says. “It really was put and its reusable rocket boosters
says Marcia Smith at Space and together by the contractors to landed back on Earth just a few
Technology Policy Group, a extend their own contracts.” minutes later. Reports suggest
The current goal for SLS is to that Falcon Heavy will return
launch the Orion crew capsule to space this month, carrying
on an uncrewed test flight a communications satellite on
around the moon. That flight its first commercial launch.
has been delayed by two years,
and NASA’s current administrator,
Jim Bridenstine, recently said
Rockets needed
that he would be open to using SpaceX says Falcon Heavy can
a commercial rocket instead ferry nearly 64 tonnes into low
to hit the planned June 2020 Earth orbit at a cost of $90 million
launch date. per ride. Estimates for launching
SOURCE: NASA/BLUE ORIGIN/SPACEX
Many of the delays could have SLS range from $500 million
NEW GLENN
been avoided. An internal audit by to more than $1 billion, and the
NASA last year found that Boeing ageing rocket design doesn’t
made missteps in construction include any reusable parts,
and staffing that resulted in increasing costs.
two-and-a-half years of lost time. Using proven legacy hardware
Another problem with SLS is means SLS should at least be
NASA’s Blue Origin’s Space X’s that even when built, it will cost reliable, but it could also be
SLS New Glenn Falcon Heavy more to operate than upcoming technologically obsolete before
70 45 64 commercial spacecraft. it even gets off the launch pad.
June 2020 2021 6 February 2018 Its solid rocket boosters use 1970s
The only rocket anywhere
$500 million unknown $90 million
to $1 billion near being ready to carry technology developed for the
enough weight into space for space shuttle, says Garver.
For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news

at the urging of politicians from build a crewed lander based on

For these reasons, SLS has
been falling out of favour. Its
most powerful version, capable
of launching the Orion crew
capsule, isn’t in Trump’s proposed
2020 budget, which calls for cuts
to NASA’s already shrinking
funding (see graph below).
The budget also sidelines SLS
in favour of cheaper commercial
rockets for future missions to
build a space station circling
the moon and send an orbiter
to Jupiter’s moon Europa.
That seems at odds with the
directive to land on the moon.
To meet the deadline for the
uncrewed Orion test flight in 2020
and a crewed lunar orbit mission
slated for 2022, corners may need
Will US astronauts return
to the moon in 2024?
Garver. If NASA is considering
cuts to stay on schedule, the
argument that it is inherently
riskier to use commercial
rockets falls apart.
So, if it is cheaper and just as
safe to use privately built rockets,
why hasn’t SLS been axed yet?
The agency has sunk a lot of
money into the system, often
NASA was given a huge amount of money to achieve the Apollo moon landings,
but its budget has been dwindling ever since
5 it delivers great stuff, but never on
JFK announces plan to land on the moon
Apollo 8 orbits the moon
Percentage of US federal budget
states where rocket building existing systems used in Orion.
creates jobs. “The SLS and Orion Blue Origin, a space-flight
programmes are, of course, key firm headed by Amazon CEO
to the health of our national Jeff Bezos, has plans to develop
aerospace supplier base,” said a lunar lander called Blue Moon.
congressman Robert Aderholt However, this is in the concept
at a budget hearing last week. phase, and is at present intended
It is also down to the preference to transport cargo rather than
of NASA managers, says Garver. humans. It could be converted
“It’s a combination of a lot of
people who either flew in space “NASA’s Space Launch
or are leaders in the space System could be obsolete
programme,” she says. “There’s before it even gets off
a bunch of men who want to the launch pad”
focus on building the big rocket.”
They would do well to focus on to carry a crew, but Blue Origin
something much smaller: a craft doesn’t yet have a way to launch
that can land on the moon and it. The firm is currently building
then return to lunar orbit. “You its own heavy-lift rocket, New
need a lunar lander and you’ve Glenn, which will be able to lift
got to demonstrate that it can do 45 tonnes and has a planned first
some kind of propulsion in lunar launch of 2021.
orbit,” says Jonathan McDowell at Meanwhile, SpaceX is building
the Harvard-Smithsonian Center Starship, an even bigger rocket
for Astrophysics in Massachusetts. than its Falcon Heavy. And while
“That’s a whole new spacecraft. some doubt the new launcher
It’s hard to do it in five years.” could be ready for 2024, Musk
The last spacecraft to take off thinks it could be. When asked
from the moon’s surface was the on Twitter if Starship could send
Soviet Union’s uncrewed Luna 24, humans to the moon in five years,
which returned samples of moon he said, “I think so. For sure worth
rock to Earth in 1976. NASA hasn’t giving it our best shot!”
done it since 1972, when the final McDowell says Blue Origin or
Apollo crew blasted off. SpaceX’s rockets are the best bet
Lockheed Martin, the company for NASA to take humans to the
that is building the Orion capsule, moon. He says either firm could
said in a statement that Pence’s probably send a crewed mission
accelerated timeline is “aggressive into orbit around the moon
but achievable” and that it could within five years, but would need
the agency’s help to fund a lunar
lander. Either way, it probably
won’t happen by 2024.
“SpaceX talks a good game and
the schedule does it say it is going
to do it,” says McDowell, while

SOURCE: NASA/U.S. OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET

to be cut with SLS. Bridenstine
has already proposed skipping
a planned engine safety test to
accelerate the timetable, but,
ironically, this may be just
another reason to ditch the rocket.
One concern NASA has about
using commercial space-flight
companies is that they may follow
different safety procedures.
“NASA’s had the view that if
they’re doing it, it’s safer,” says
4
Apollo 11 lands on the moon Blue Origin prefers the slow and
steady approach.
Apollo 18, 19 and 20 cancelled
3 Garver agrees that commercial
International Space Station rockets are the way forward,
construction begins adding that even if the 2024
2 deadline can’t be met, the latest
First space push towards the moon might
shuttle launch Last space
shuttle launch be what helps pull the plug on SLS.
1
“The fact that NASA has wrapped
its head around the possibilities
0 of doing something different than
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 SLS is a good thing,” she says. ■

6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 23

COMMENT
Guaranteed uncertainty
The mathematics of game theory reveal how the UK has missed an
opportunity to resolve the chaos of Brexit, says Petros Sekeris
AS THIS magazine went to press,
the status of the UK’s Brexit
negotiations was still unclear.
This has been the default
description for months, and
is unlikely to change any time
soon. But last week, the House
of Commons missed one of its
best opportunities yet to break
the Brexit deadlock.
On 27 March, MPs proceeded
with an array of indicative votes
whereby a series of potential
outcomes, including the no-deal
option, were proposed to the
speaker of the house, John Bercow.
He then compiled a shortlist
of eight for all MPs to vote on in
a strict yes or no manner, giving
UK prime minister Theresa May
the option to decide which – if
any – to officially subject to voting
in the House.
In the end, all eight proposals
were voted down, giving the
prime minister no clear path
Avoid over-sharenting
Consider your child’s legacy next time you post
that “hilarious” picture, says Linda Geddes
“MOM we have discussed this.
You may not post anything
without my consent.” These
words, posted on Instagram by
14-year-old Apple Martin in
response to an image of her
shared by her mum, Gwyneth
Paltrow, have reignited the debate
over whether it is ever OK to put
pictures of your children online.
24 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019
JOSIE FORD
Concerns mainly revolve around
two issues. First, safety. According
to Australia’s eSafety commission,
about half of images shared on
paedophilia sites were taken from
social media sites. The advice is
simple. Don’t post photos of your
child in a state of undress, and
avoid images in which their
Apple’s words could become a school uniform or location is
common refrain as the current identifiable, which could leave
generation of children grows up.them vulnerable to grooming,
Many of them will have had says UK children’s charity, the
digital footprints before they NSPCC. Avoid posting personal
could even walk. About 98 per
cent of mothers and 89 per cent “Many parents value the
of fathers report having uploaded emotional support of
photos of their child to Facebook, sharing anecdotes, but our
according to a 2012 US study. children may not thank us”
forward. But things could have
proceeded very differently,
because – as with any voting
procedure – the process adopted
by the House is open to
manipulation.
Such deal-making falls within
the purview of game theory, a
branch of maths dedicated to
analysing the potential outcomes
of multiparty negotiations.
The eight options on
Wednesday’s ballot paper could be
reduced to three broad scenarios:
a no-deal option (which includes
alternative deals unacceptable to
the European Union); May’s deal;
and other proposals that require
further discussions – including a
new referendum.
Hard Brexiteers were free
to vote exclusively for the first
option. The majority of MPs,
meanwhile, preferring some deal
to no deal, were likely to opt for
one of the new options rather
information to minimise risk of
identity theft, and ensure that
your privacy settings are strict.
You might also consider using a
pet name for your child online,
making it harder to link
information to them.
A second issue, as Apple
astutely notes, is that of consent.
What would your child want to
see about themselves online
in the future? Videos of them
mid-temper tantrum may be
amusing now – but could be used
by bullies. Given that employers
often use social networking sites
to research candidates, it is also
worth considering how they
might view such information.
For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion
than May’s proposal. But because
of the number of options that
Bercow included on the ballot,
each single choice attracted fewer
positive votes. That effectively
split the moderate vote and
resulted in a loss for all eight
scenarios. If parliament had
genuinely wanted to subvert
the European Union’s strategy
of forcing it to choose between
the two “evils” of a hard Brexit
and an unpopular deal, there
should have been just three
options on the table.
PAUL MCGEE/GETTY
With the vote decided on in
such haste, the procedure may
also not have been sufficiently
thought through. Even the
voting system, for example,
can have a dramatic impact
on an election’s outcome.
A preferential vote, for instance,
would have brought forward
a single “winner” and resolved
some dilemmas, while
sequentially voting on one
option after another would
have given more power to
Bercow to orient the outcome
when selecting the voting order.
As it is, the result of the vote
is still more uncertainty, and
further delay in the negotiations
with Brussels. ■
Petros Sekeris is a game theorist at
Montpellier Business School in France
Even seemingly innocuous
photos may become a source of
conflict in the future, depending
on your child’s disposition or your
changing relationship with them.
Of course, certain photos are
likely to be more problematic
than others: an embarrassing
birthmark; that time your toddler
smeared faeces all over the floor.
Many parents value the support
that online sharing of parental
struggles can bring. But our
children may not thank us for it. ■
Linda Geddes is the author of
Bumpology: The myth-busting
pregnancy book for curious
parents-to-be
ANALYSIS Dirty city air
Does air pollution really
cause teen psychosis?
Adam Vaughan
WE KNOW dirty air is bad for our bodies,
causing the equivalent of millions of
deaths worldwide every year, making
it a bigger killer than smoking. But could
air pollution be bad for our minds too?
A study has found that psychotic
experiences, which can involve
hearing or seeing something that
others don’t, are more common among
teenagers in the UK’s most polluted
areas (JAMA Psychiatry, doi.org/c3x4).
However, the association doesn’t
mean that breathing in air pollution
leads to psychosis in teenager,
because there could be other
explanations. The study doesn’t show “It may not be dirty air
causation, says Helen Fisher of King’s
College London, one of the authors.
Fisher and her colleagues found
that 30 per cent of a group of 2000
18-year-olds reported having at least
one psychotic experience in their
teens – other research on young
adults has reported similar figures.
When the teenagers’ addresses
were mapped against air pollution,
those in areas with higher
pollution were more likely to have
reported a psychotic experience.
In areas with the highest levels
of nitrogen oxides (NOx) – pollutants
produced by diesel cars – 12 teens
reported psychotic experiences for
every 20 teens who didn’t, with
the number falling to seven for
every 20 in cleaner areas.
It isn’t known how air pollution might
be linked to psychotic experiences. One
speculative mechanism put forward by
the team is that a build-up of pollutants
can directly influence the brain.
Studies have linked air pollution with
inflammation and degeneration in the
frontal cortex and the part of the brain
that gives us our sense of smell, the
behind psychotic episodes,
but the noise from the
cars emitting pollution”
olfactory bulb. Inflammation of the
brain has been linked to psychosis.
A simpler explanation could be
that it isn’t the dirty air itself behind it,
but the noise from the cars emitting
pollution. Noise pollution can increase
stress and disrupt sleep, two factors
associated with psychotic experiences.
“There is no evidence that pollution
Long-term exposure to pollutants
can bring on effects later in life
necessarily causes psychosis, or
whether this is one of many factors
or acting in isolation,” says Sophie Dix
at mental health charity MQ. But the
study provides a starting point for a
possible link between pollution and
psychosis, she says.
There is an emerging body of
research looking at possible links
between air pollution and mental
health. For example, a link has been
found between polluted areas
and Swedish children being given
medication for psychiatric disorders.
There is a compelling case for
further investigation into toxic air’s
potential connection to mental health,
says Stefan Reis at the Centre for
Ecology and Hydrology in the UK.
But there is limited evidence so
far, says Fisher. “It’s really preliminary.
We don’t know very much.”
Fortunately, the world doesn’t
need to wait for evidence for any link
between air pollution and mental
health to act on what we pump into
the air – we know of plenty of physical
harm that air pollution does cause.
Tiny particulate matter can penetrate
deep into the lungs and bloodstream,
causing heart and lung problems,
including infections and aggravating
asthma. It has also been associated
with low weight and premature births.
“There’s a huge weight of evidence
on the physical effects,” says Fisher. ■
6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 25
APERTURE

26 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019

Hoopoe headwear
BLACK, white and orange all over, the Eurasian
hoopoe is an unmistakable sight. Its zebra-like
wing markings are particularly recognisable when
in flight, delighting birdwatchers across Europe,
Asia and North Africa.
The bird’s colourful crest of feathers also adds
to its distinctive appearance. These feathers are
usually closed but are often raised, as in this
photo, just after landing. It is the most widespread
of three living hoopoe species – the other two
being the Madagascan and African hoopoes – and
has a recognisable whooping call.
Favouring grassy open areas such as heaths
and farmland, the Eurasian hoopoe (Upupa
epops) feeds on the ground, using its long bill to
probe underground for insects or to pick its prey
off the surface.
Uniquely among birds, nesting female Eurasian
hoopoes coat their eggs with a dark, foul-smelling
secretion, which is thought to protect the
developing embryos from infection and increase
the likelihood that chicks will hatch successfully.
This image was taken by Finnish photographer
Sanna Kannisto, whose exhibition Observing
Eye is showing at the Helsinki Contemporary
in Finland from 5 April. Kannisto’s images and
videos of birds highlight issues relating to
environmental conservation and threats to
their existence. Donna Lu

Photographer
Sanna Kannisto: Upupa epops, 2019
Courtesy of the artist/Helsinki Contemporary

6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 27

 COVER STORY
STEFANIA INFANTE

28 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019

A
MANDA PAYNE’S seizures weren’t going
away, despite taking strong epilepsy
drugs. One time she felt the warning
signs just before getting off a bus on a busy
road in Glasgow. She only just made it to the
pavement before collapsing and convulsing.
Payne was sent for further investigations.
Like many people with epilepsy, she had
been diagnosed based on a history of sudden
blackouts, but had never undergone a
definitive test to record her brain’s electrical
activity during such an episode. This time,
she was admitted to hospital where she wore
electrodes on her head for four days. By the
end the doctors knew one thing: whatever
was wrong, it wasn’t epilepsy.
Despite four years of apparent seizures, her
brain was to all appearances working fine. As
to the real problem, the doctors had no simple
explanation. But they had seen this before.
Payne is one of a group of people with
neurological symptoms – those affecting
the nervous system – that defy all the usual
medical tests. As well as seizures, other
manifestations include paralysis, tremor,
blindness and pain – but no physical cause
can be found. Until recently, those who
experienced these disorders were routinely
dismissed by medical professionals as
attention-seekers and fakers.
In the past decade, though, neurologists have
come to understand how real these symptoms
are, and how people with them experience
injustice and abuse. This shift has led to
techniques that help people regain control over
their bodies. What’s more, it is shedding light
on some puzzling bodily experiences we all
may have and even the nature of consciousness
Mind tricks
The symptoms are very real, but all the tests
say there is nothing physically wrong. A group
of mystery disorders shows how we can think
ourselves ill – and well again, finds Clare Wilson
itself. “An awful lot of strange things we have
noticed about the brain might fall into place
if this is right,” says Andy Clark, a cognitive
scientist at the University of Edinburgh, UK.
The medical term for conditions in which
the body malfunctions without any visible,
structural cause is functional disorders.
But they can go under many names. In the
19th century, they were called conversion
disorders, based on the idea that mental
trauma was being converted into physical
symptoms. Today, doctors may use the terms
psychosomatic or medically unexplained
symptoms. By this they mean that a person
isn’t lying about their symptoms, but neither
can anything be found wrong with that part of
their body. Rather, the symptoms seem to be
generated by something going wrong in their
brain. It can be hard to believe – especially for
those affected – but in a way, this group of
people are thinking themselves ill.
These mysterious illnesses aren’t just seen
on the neurology ward. People may also have
functional asthma, constipation, chest pain
and so on. But physical illness can most easily
be ruled out in the case of functional
neurological symptoms because of the array
of highly accurate tests available for nerves
and muscles. So it is also the area where most
research has been done, and where we have
made most progress.
As well as functional epilepsy, which is
what Payne had, people can have problems
with movement, ranging from arm or leg
weakness through to tremors, tics and even
paralysis (see “Communication breakdown”,
page 31). Sensory problems include pain,
tingling or blindness. >
6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 29
 The symptoms may resemble those of a
stroke or conditions like multiple sclerosis.
But experienced neurologists can identify
aspects that should be medically impossible,
says Suzanne O’Sullivan of the National
Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery
in London.
For instance, O’Sullivan, author of It’s All
in Your Head: True stories of imagined illness,
once saw someone with a small, harmless
growth of fatty tissue on the side of her head,
who was convinced it was a brain tumour. She
experienced worsening weakness on that side
of her body until she was almost paralysed,
proving to her that the “cancer” was growing
into her brain. But she didn’t know that one
half of the brain controls the other side of
the body, so it was the “wrong” side that
had become paralysed.
Countless tests
Another person had a permanent muscle
spasm in her hand that was so strong the
fingers were curled inwards, the hand left
useless. O’Sullivan agreed to the standard
treatment, an injection of Botox, which
paralyses muscles. Minutes later, the woman’s
fingers uncurled, and she looked up in joy.
But Botox takes days to work, so the woman
had just revealed that the problem lay not in
her hand but in her head.
Some doctors take incidents like these as
signs of pretence, a risk those affected are
well aware of. “They are worried you think
they’re doing it on purpose,” says O’Sullivan.
They may also be suspected of having
Munchausen’s, a much rarer psychiatric
condition where people fake symptoms
and seek medical care for attention.
There are no foolproof methods, but with
time and experience, doctors can generally
distinguish between people faking and those
genuinely baffled by what’s happening to
them, says Jon Stone, a neurologist at the
University of Edinburgh. He notes that people
with these conditions submit to countless
tests and return to doctors again and again
because they “desperately want to know
what’s wrong”.
Cases such as these are surprisingly
common. In a 2010 survey of people attending
neurology outpatient clinics, 16 per cent had
some kind of functional disorder, making this
the second most common reason for seeing
a neurologist after headaches.
Functional epilepsy, also called dissociative
attacks, can be one of the most alarming.
If performed, an EEG shows that these
30 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019
WHY DO
FUNCTIONAL
SYMPTOMS START?
One of the oldest explanations for
functional disorders, where there is
no clear structural cause for physical
symptoms, was promoted by Sigmund
Freud, who believed that they are due
to a past psychological trauma. This may
be true for a minority of those affected.
One meta-analysis revealed that
24 per cent of people with a functional
neurological disorder had been abused
in childhood, against 10 per cent in a
comparison group.
Other people’s symptoms seem to be
triggered by some kind of physical injury
or disease. It is common for someone
to be in a car crash, for instance, with
injuries that cause pain or weakness in
part of their body, but as their injuries
heal, the problems continue. Some
people report that their symptoms
began when they were going through
a period of stress. But for many there
is no clear origin.
These disorders are more common
in women than men: two-thirds of
those affected are women. No one
knows why this is. But in general,
women are more likely than men to
have medical problems dismissed
or belittled by doctors – a worrying
trend when the condition itself is so
difficult to understand.
“These disorders are
the second most
common reason for
seeing a neurologist”
episodes aren’t seizures, when there is a surge
in the brain’s electrical activity, nor are they
the same as a faint, caused by a lack of blood
to the head. Still, the person may collapse,
start shaking and be unable to remember
what happened during the episode.
An attack that lasts for more than a few
minutes may result in the person being
rushed to hospital. If the staff in the accident
and emergency department are unfamiliar
with functional disorders, there are two risks.
One is that doctors treat it as a true seizure,
administering potent drugs and putting a
breathing tube down the throat, which can
introduce infections. The other is that staff
realise this isn’t epilepsy and, lacking
understanding, think the person is putting
it on. “There’s an awful lot of unkindness
towards people who develop this condition,”
says Payne.
As people come round from a dissociative
attack, they may regain awareness before
they can speak or move, so have to lie there
listening to sceptical remarks from staff. Payne
herself has been told to snap out of it. “If you
could stop doing it, you would,” she says.
Worse, though, is when doctors intensify
their efforts to wake people up, for instance
by inserting a needle or pressing with their
knuckle on a tender spot on the chest, a
procedure known as a sternal rub. These are
normal techniques for gauging someone’s
level of consciousness, but with dissociative
attacks they may be done repeatedly by
doctors who suspect that the person is faking.
If this happens when the person has regained
partial awareness, it can feel like they are
being abused.
So if people with functional disorders are
neither pretending, nor do they have anything
structurally wrong with their nervous system,
what is the explanation? How can you think
yourself ill?
For much of the 20th century, doctors
believed the condition stemmed exclusively
from mental trauma, and that its mechanism
was beyond our understanding (see “Why do
functional symptoms start?”, left). Things
started to change with the arrival of a brain-
scanning technique called functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that
lets us see which parts of the brain become
active under different conditions.
Several studies showed that people with a
functional tremor, for instance, had different
brain activity compared with volunteers asked
to fake a tremor. That helped convince doctors
that people weren’t pretending or imagining
things, says Stone.

Jamie Lacelle could no longer walk. But
doctors said nothing was physically wrong
Yet progress in treatments has come from
a different route. Around 15 years ago, Stone
became interested in something that had long
been noted in medical textbooks but little
explored: functional symptoms tend to
dwindle when people are distracted.
Take someone with a functional tremor
in their right hand. Ask them to hold out the
hand and the tremor is especially pronounced.
Ask them to also hold out their left hand and
tap it on the table to a beat and, with attention
focused away from their right hand, it may
either stop shaking, or it could pick up the
same rhythm as their left. A tremor with a
physical cause would remain the same.
Similarly, other problems, such as weakness in
DAVE STOCK
a limb, lessen when the person is asked to do
a task involving a different part of their body.
These types of tests were routinely used for
diagnosis, but doctors didn’t discuss them
with their patients. Yet it was well known that
some people recovered simply by being told
their functional diagnosis – if they accepted
it. So Stone started showing people how
their symptoms abated under distraction –
sometimes even filming them as they moved
their leg, for instance, to help convince them
the muscles were working normally. Then he
began to go further by suggesting that people
use their own distraction techniques if
symptoms began.
This approach could even be used by
people with dissociative attacks, who often
get warning signs before they lose awareness.
It has proven so successful that patient
CASE STUDY
COMMUNICATION
BREAKDOWN
“It’s hard to get your head around,”
says Jamie Lacelle, a former dancer, who
two years ago was struck by a mystery
illness. It started with a worsening of
pain in her hip, which had always given
her trouble. Then she started dragging
that leg, and developed bizarre jerking
movements as she walked. Soon she
had to use a wheelchair.
Lacelle was lucky in that she was
referred to a doctor who could see she
had a functional neurological disorder.
This meant that while there was nothing
physically wrong with her leg, she wasn’t
imagining or faking her symptoms.
Instead, the problem was in her brain.
This makes it difficult for Lacelle to
describe to others what has happened to
her. “I say I have a neurological condition
where my brain and my body don’t talk to
each other properly,” she says. “It’s hard
to explain. The neurologist can’t explain
it, never mind me.”
Although there is still much that is
mysterious about these disorders, new
physiotherapy treatments can help. As a
result, Lacelle has improved significantly
and can now walk with a stick.
Lacelle is baffled why this happened
to her. While one theory is that it can
be triggered by trauma or stress (see
“Why do functional symptoms start?”,
left), this wasn’t the case for her. “I have
had a very happy, fortunate life,” she
says. “When it all exploded, I had just got
back from my honeymoon, the happiest
time ever. I haven’t had any physical
trauma either. I have no idea why
this happened.”
>
6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 31
 CASE STUDY
AFTER
SURGERY
Matt Turner’s problems began two
years ago after he had emergency
surgery to remove a prolapsed disc in
his spine. When he came round from
the anaesthetic he couldn’t move his
right leg. The next day his right arm was
also paralysed. The doctors suspected
a stroke, but all the tests and scans
were negative.
After seeing several specialists, he
was told he had a functional neurological
disorder, which may arise from
something going wrong with the way
the brain processes signals from the
body. Sometimes these conditions are
referred to as “psychosomatic”, meaning
the person is unconsciously thinking
themselves ill. But Turner dislikes this
word. “That almost implies you are
making it up. You would never make this
up,” he says.
After specialist rehabilitation, Turner
has regained most of the movement of
his arm, but not of his leg, and now he
can only shuffle slowly. It also causes
him pain. Why the problem began is
a mystery to him, although it isn’t
uncommon for a functional neurological
disorder to be triggered by an injury
or operation.
“ ‘Psychosomatic’
almost implies you
are making it up.
You would never
make this up”
32 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019
groups now swap tips on the best techniques
online. These can involve counting backwards
in fives, looking around a room to spot things
that are a certain colour, stroking a pet or just
talking to someone.
LIVING ART ENTERPRISES/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Payne uses her walking stick, which has a
series of holes in the metal shaft for height
adjustment: simply running her fingers over
the holes provides enough distraction. “You’re
making your brain think about something
else,” she says. She has been off medication
and free of seizures for two years.
Some small trials of these techniques have
shown positive results both for dissociative
attacks and movement problems, and larger
studies are under way.
Although this is encouraging, distraction Scans can show if the brain is behaving
doesn’t tend to work instantly, especially if normally in spite of external appearances
people have been immobile for a long time
and their muscles have weakened through Intriguingly, the approach may shed
lack of use. Some hospitals now offer tailored light on the underlying cause of functional
physiotherapy programmes based around symptoms, says Edwards. According to one
distraction, where people gradually relearn theory about how the brain normally works,
their lost abilities. “By showing them how we experience the world not as raw data
to redirect attention, we trigger normal arriving from our senses, but instead as
movement patterns underneath,” says a meld of this data with our predictions
Mark Edwards, a neurologist at St George’s, and expectations.
University of London, who stumbled on Edwards argues that, in functional
distraction treatment around the same disorders, the circuitry goes wrong so that
time as Stone. the brain places too much weight on these
In some cases,
distraction techniques
have enabled people
to overcome their
inexplicable symptoms
predictions, instead of the inputs from the
senses. In someone who has functional
blindness, for instance, the expectation of
darkness overrides signals from the optic
nerves. In someone who cannot move an arm,
beliefs about their limb override the real nerve
signals from the muscles. “If these predictions
are wrong every time you try to access
movement, it goes wrong,” says Edwards.
It is unclear why the predictions go
wrong, though. One idea is that it is due to
people paying excessive attention to the
malfunctioning part of their body – whether
consciously or subconsciously. Several studies
have shown that people with functional
disorders direct more attention to all of their
bodily sensations than people without these
disorders. Distraction techniques could
help simply by diverting attention.
Whether or not Edwards’s explanation
turns out to be right, distraction techniques
are already helping people to recover from
functional conditions. Yet they are no panacea.
They are less likely to work for people who also
have other hard-to-treat conditions, such as
depression or arthritis. And some people have
several functional symptoms mixed together
that wax and wane over time, making it hard
to achieve progress.
Some people don’t accept their diagnosis.
HINTERHAUS PRODUCTIONS/GETTY
CASE STUDY
MYSTERY
NUMBNESS
“I thought I was having a stroke,”
says Rachael Troup, a 21-year-old in
Edinburgh, UK. She was having lunch
with some friends when her right arm
and leg became numb, and the right side
of her face drooped down. Her friends
took her to hospital, where she had an
array of tests including X-rays and MRI
brain scans, but none of them showed
anything wrong.
Over the next few days in hospital,
she began regaining some ability to
move. Doctors said it may have been
due to a kind of migraine, or Bell’s
palsy, which is caused by inflammation
of a nerve in the face. Her medical
notes also mention the possibility
that the symptoms were “functional”
in origin. But doctors didn’t explain
what this meant.
In the following months, her
weakness and paralysis returned and
she ended up in a wheelchair living
back home with her parents. Troup had
a course of ordinary physiotherapy, but it
was unsuccessful and she was accused
of not trying hard enough. Finally, she
saw a neurologist who specialises in
functional disorders. “He said: ‘First off,
it’s real and you’re not imagining it’,”
she says. She has now begun tailored
physiotherapy designed to stop the
faulty brain processes that generate
the symptoms.
Troup is finding this helpful, although
she still has relapses, and needs to
rebuild her muscles, which have grown
weak through disuse. “I was looking at
being in a wheelchair the rest of my life,”
she says. “This has given me hope for
the future.”
That is understandable, says O’Sullivan.
“Imagine you have been in a wheelchair for
five years and you thought you had multiple
sclerosis and I’m telling you it’s functional.
You’re still disabled, but you’re potentially
going to lose all of the support you’ve had,
perhaps financial benefits. And now you have
to tell your neighbours and your employers.”
A lot depends on the doctor’s experience
and tact, and whether there are specialist
physiotherapy and psychological services
for rehabilitation. But times do seem to be
changing. And if we get better at helping
with functional disorders, there may be
wider benefits too, says Edwards.
Power of mind
In people with clear physical illnesses, the
degree of symptoms may bear little relation
to disease severity as shown by objective
tests. That may be because a physical illness
is being worsened by what is sometimes
called a functional overlay. “Any symptom is
a combination of the physiological process
and your brain sensing that and presenting
it to you,” says Edwards.
The idea might help to explain the placebo
effect, by which illnesses seem to abate after
pretend medical treatments, says Andy Clark
at the University of Edinburgh. Although this
effect has a big reputation, its influence is
usually relatively small, amounting to, for
instance, a fall of 1 or 2 points on a 10-point
pain scale. That might be a disease’s functional
overlay melting away under the power of
expectation.
Even those who aren’t ill can experience
something similar as mind over matter.
Just as negative expectations about part
of the body can make it start malfunctioning,
positive expectations have been shown to
boost performance, increasing endurance
in sport, for instance.
“The takeaway message is that the way we
conceive our world is what constructs our
conscious experience,” says Clark. “Some of
these predictions bring about the very thing
you have predicted. You could harness that
for good or for ill.”
If these ideas are right, any insights we
gain from learning how to help people with
functional disorders could end up benefiting
all of us. “One day, this fairly vulnerable group
of patients may be recognised for having
contributed to improving human health,”
says Edwards. “That’s my fantasy.” ■
Clare Wilson is a reporter at New Scientist
6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 33
 The choice engine
The idea that we lack free will is built upon a mistaken
sense of what it means to be a biological machine,
argues psychologist Tom Stafford
PLAINPICTURE

34 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019

A
SIMPLE insect can help us understand
free will, and the lack of it. When a
female digger wasp is ready to lay her
eggs, she hunts down a cricket or similar prey,
paralyses it with a sting, drags it back to the
MICHAEL DURHAM/NATUREPL.COM
lip of her burrow, and then enters to check
for blockages. If you move the cricket a few
centimetres away before she re-emerges, she
will again drag it to the threshold and again
leave it to check for blockages. She will do this
over and over. The wasp has no choice. This
mindlessly inflexible behaviour has led to
the wasp, Sphex ichneumoneus, becoming a
byword among biologists for determinism,
the idea that what we think of as a “choice” is
in fact a path dictated by pre-existing factors.
It is tempting to think that we aren’t like the
wasp – that what we do is the result of choices
that are freely made. Yet the more we learn
about the neuroscience of decision-making,
the more “sphexish” we seem to be. You
hear people arguing that humans are mere
biological machines trapped in cycles of
behaviour that are ultimately beyond our
control – that free will is just an illusion.
As a cognitive scientist who studies
decision-making, I disagree. Of course,
humans are animals. The problem, I believe,
is our misguided intuitions of what it means
to be a biological machine. In an attempt to
dispel some of these misconceptions, I have
created an interactive essay on Twitter called
The Choice Engine.
Waspish behaviour
How Sphex came to be linked with free will
is a long story. Charles Darwin was studying
this wasp while working on his theory of
evolution. We know from his notebooks that
its behaviour had a big impact on him. He
wasn’t aware that it would ceaselessly check
its burrow – that discovery was made decades
later by Nikolaas Tinbergen, the founder of
ethology, the science of animal behaviour.
What interested Darwin was what the wasp
does once it has dragged a cricket into its
burrow: it lays its eggs in the body of the
immobilised but still living prey. When the
larvae hatch they eat it from the inside out.
Darwin was so appalled by this behaviour
that he cited it as one reason for his loss
of faith. “I cannot persuade myself that
a beneficent & omnipotent God would
have designedly created the Ichneumonidae
with the express intention of their feeding
within… living bodies,” he wrote. Meanwhile,
his theory wasn’t just undermining God.
Some took it as support for the idea that
humans are mere animals and that animals
are mere machines, fanning the flames of
The digger wasp can get trapped in inflexible
behaviour, but does that mean it lacks free will?
a millennia-old debate about free will.
To Darwin, Sphex was emblematic of the
cruelty found in nature. Tinbergen exposed
it as emblematic of nature’s mindlessness. But
it was the philosopher Daniel Dennett of Tufts
University in Massachusetts, who coined the
word “sphexishness” to describe the nature
of human choices if we say they are like those
of other animals. In doing so, he highlighted “Simple rules can generate
a common misconception: that we must
either reject the idea that biology influences
our choices or reject the notion of free will.
This fallacy is the nub of the problem.
Biology certainly influences our choices, as
plenty of evidence shows. Perhaps the most
famous example is an experiment on free
will done in the 1980s by Benjamin Libet. He
showed that brain activity associated with an
action occurs before the subjective feeling of
choosing that action. More recently, Libet’s
experiment was replicated with the addition
of an functional MRI scanner. This time, the
researchers were able to predict some actions
from brain activity up to 10 seconds before
a conscious decision was taken. If the brain
activity precedes the feeling of choice, some
have argued, all choosing is just an illusion.
These results aren’t the great challenge to
free will that they might seem at first. Their
apparent force relies on misguided intuitions
about what it means to have free will. We tend
to think in terms of the self versus other causes. difficult to predict.
And we assume that the more of these other
causes that are involved in the decision-making we choose has made me optimistic that we
process, the less self-determination, or free
will, is involved. The misconception arises
because we have difficulty comprehending
causation in complex systems. We tend to
think about cause and effect as a one-to-one
relationship: A causes B. In reality, it is always view of free will and at the same time
a set of things happening (or not happening)
that cause another set of things to happen (or
not happen). Discovering that A was involved
in causing B doesn’t mean that other factors
aren’t important too.
Causality encompasses everything from
your genes to your ideas about the future. As
we find out new facts about genes and brains,
the space in which your self exists – your
free will, responsibility and choices – doesn’t
diminish. This is something I have been
pondering for years. What really brought it
home to me was interacting with a complex,
chaotic system called a cellular automaton,
and seeing that the simplest of rules can
generate an endless, unpredictable set of
behaviours. This is a grid world created on
a computer with basic rules for changing
each tile in the grid from black to white
and vice versa. With the right rules and the
right starting conditions, it can generate an
infinite number of unpredictable patterns.
Seeing, from so simple a beginning, endless
forms being born, made me realise that the
fear we are sphexish is baseless. There is no
need to worry that something as complex as
a human can be caught in a meaningless loop.
It was to explore these ideas and more,
an endless, unpredictable
set of behaviours”
that I created The Choice Engine. You can
find this interactive essay by tweeting
@ChoiceEngine START, and the bot will guide
you, letting you choose your own unique
path through the story, following the areas
that most interest you. In it, I argue that
our intuitions mean that the problem of
free will never feels solved, but it is. The
solution is that we are part of nature – we
are complex machines. If you change your
intuitions about what such a machine can
do, and what those actions can mean, then
you realise that we are free to make real
meaningful choices. Yes, our thoughts are
caused by our brains, our environment
and our history, but this causal mix is
unique to each individual at each moment.
That explains why human behaviour is so
My career researching the brain and how
do have free will. Darwin’s theory of evolution
gave us a fear of being mere creatures. I simply
disagree with the word “mere”. There is enough
tangled complexity in relation to the brain
and mind that we can retain a meaningful
recognise our nature as living machines. ■
Tom Stafford is at the University of Sheffield, UK.
To explore his Choice Engine on Twitter, tweet
@ChoiceEngine START
6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 35
 THE BIG QUESTION
Has religion been good
or bad for humanity?
An epic scientific analysis of history could finally settle the
question of how religion influenced the rise of civilisation,
says Harvey Whitehouse
R
ELIGION has given us algebra and the
Spanish Inquisition, Bach’s cantatas
and pogroms. The debate over whether
religion lifts humanity higher or brings out
our basest instincts is ancient and, in some
ways, reassuringly insoluble. There are so
many examples on either side. The last word
goes to the most erudite – until someone
more erudite comes along.
The latest round of the eternal conundrum
was triggered by the seemingly religiously
inspired 9/11 attacks in the US, after which
“new atheists” rose to prominence. The likes
of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins
and neuroscientist Sam Harris argue that
rational beings following the evidence
must inevitably conclude that religion is
harmful. They, in turn, have been accused
of cherry-picking their evidence.
You might conclude that it is impossible
to make a moral judgement about such
a multifaceted cultural phenomenon.
Nevertheless, in recent years, there have
been attempts to dissect the question using
a scientific scalpel. Researchers have tried
to work out how humanity has been shaped
MICHAEL KIRKHAM
by things like moralising philosophies,
world religions, all-seeing gods and rituals.
The studies offer intriguing insights, but
36 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019
each presents just a fragment of the full story,
and sometimes they generate competing
ideas. What is needed is a way to assess them
and to build a more holistic picture of the
role religion has played in the evolution of
human societies. And that is what I and my
colleagues have been doing.
Moral quicksand
But first, what do we mean by “good”
and “bad”? Should religion be considered
good if it has inspired magnificent art but
enslaved millions? Would it be judged bad
if it ensured equality at the price of free
expression? Such assessments risk miring
us in moral quicksand. Besides, how could
these intangibles be weighed against one
another? A more empirical approach might
tally lives lost or harmed against those saved
or enhanced as a result of religion. But any
attempt to estimate these numbers would
be hopelessly subjective.
Alternatively, we can ask whether religion
has helped societies grow and flourish. Is it, as
many believe, a form of social glue that builds
cooperation? As it happens, there is surprising
agreement about the moral significance of
cooperation. A study involving 60 societies,
ranging from small groups to the very largest,
found that people everywhere equate “good”
with cooperative behaviours and “bad” with
non-cooperative ones. Admittedly, societies
differ in the kinds of cooperation they value:
some are more authoritarian, others more
egalitarian. Nevertheless, this approach
allows us to ask a more tangible question
about religion: what role, if any, has it played
in establishing the cooperative behaviours
that have allowed human societies to grow
from small hunter-gatherer groups to vast
empires and nation states?
One obvious place to begin is the Axial
Age, a period when many researchers
believe civilisation pivoted towards
modernity. Around the middle of the first
millennium BC, the thinking goes, a set
of cultural changes swept the world. Novel
notions of equality radically altered the
relationship between rulers and ruled,
stabilising societies and allowing them to
take a leap in both size and complexity.
Religion is thought to have played a role in
this. Indeed, the Axial Age concept emerged
from the observation that a handful of
important prophets and spiritual leaders –
among them Buddha, Confucius and
Zoroaster, or Zarathustra – all rose >
6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 37

to prominence in that period, preaching
similar moralistic ideologies.
Another popular hypothesis is that
cooperation in complex societies is intimately
connected with the invention of “Big Gods”:
deities who demand that their moral code be
observed by all, and who have supernatural
powers of surveillance and enforcement.
Most of today’s world religions have these
moralising gods, but they are rare in small-
scale societies, where supernatural beings
tend to care only whether people discharge
their obligations to the spirit world.
It has been suggested that the establishment
of big states with large urban populations
depended on belief in such gods, who cared
about how everyone, including relative
strangers, treated each other. Big Gods could
also have helped solve a problem that plagues
every society beyond a certain size: free-riders.
In smaller communities, it is relatively easy
for peer groups and local chiefs to catch
people who try to live off the fruits of society
while contributing less than their fair share.
In bigger ones, where impersonal transactions
are more commonplace, compliance is
harder to police. Here, the fear that a
moralising god is watching and will punish
free-riders – for example, with eternal
damnation – could help do the trick.
Other researchers, including me, have
examined the role that sacred rituals might
“The puzzle is that many
early civilisations practised
ritual human sacrifice”
have as social glue. For most of prehistory,
humans lived in small groups whose members
all knew each other. Today’s small-scale
societies tend to favour infrequent but
traumatic rituals that promote intense social
cohesion – the kind that is necessary if people
are to risk life and limb hunting dangerous
animals together. An example would be the
agonising initiation rites still carried out in the
Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, involving
extensive scarification of the body to resemble
the skin of a crocodile, a locally revered species.
However, with the advent of farming, such
rituals were no longer fit for purpose. Farming
supported larger populations whose members
didn’t always know each other. They also
weren’t required to risk everything for one
another, so they didn’t require the same levels
of social cohesion. But they did need to feel
part of a group obeying the same moral code
38 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019
Social glue: (left to
right) Maat, Buddha
and Christianity have
helped societies gel
and system of governance – especially as
their society absorbed other ethnic groups
through military conquest. New kinds of
rituals seem to have provided that shared
identity. These were generally painless
practices like prayer and meeting in holy
places that could be performed frequently and
collectively, allowing them to be duplicated
across entire states or empires.
FROM LEFT: AMANDA LEWIS/GETTY, PLAINPICTURE/MIGUEL SOBREIRA, AMANDA LEWIS/GETTY
A puzzle, however, is that many of these
early civilisations also practised the brutal
ritual of human sacrifice. This reached its
zenith in the so-called archaic states that
existed between about 3000 BC and 1000 BC,
and were among the cruellest and most
unequal societies ever. In some parts of
the globe, human sacrifice persisted until
relatively recently. The Inca religion, for
example, had much in common with today’s
world religions: people paid homage to their
gods with frequent and, for the most part,
painless ceremonies. But their rulers had
divine status, their gods weren’t moralising
and their rituals included human sacrifice
right up until they were conquered by the
Spanish in the 16th century.
The Axial Age, Big Gods, rituals – how can
we test these ideas? In 2010, Pieter François at
the University of Oxford, Peter Turchin at the
University of Connecticut and I began building
a history databank. This project, named Seshat
after the Egyptian goddess of record-keeping, unchecked, for example. And Confucianism
provides us with the infrastructure and data didn’t take off in China until after 200 BC.
to investigate these hypotheses rigorously It would appear that these moralising
and on a global scale. To date, it contains ideologies weren’t directly linked with the
information on more than 400 societies that rise of sizeable, cooperative civilisations.
have existed around the world over the past So what about Big Gods? Were they required
10,000 years. Seshat keeps growing, but we for societies to scale up? In research just
believe it is now mature enough to tackle the published in Nature, a large, interdisciplinary
question of whether religion has been good team of scholars, including Patrick Savage
or bad for humanity. at Keio University in Tokyo, François,
In research published last year, I was part Turchin and me, used Seshat to test this
of a team that used Seshat to explore the idea. We measured social complexity using
Axial Age idea. Advocates of that concept were 51 markers – such as population size and the
in for a surprise. For a start, many features presence of a bureaucracy or money – and
characteristic of the age – including moralistic found that in almost all of the regions we
norms and a legal code – arose in places far analysed, moralising gods were adopted much
from the influence of the spiritual leaders, later than expected. Instead of helping foster
and sometimes long before the middle of the cooperation as societies expanded, Big Gods
first millennium BC. In what is now Turkey, appeared only after a society had passed a
for example, the Hittites adopted a moral threshold in complexity corresponding to
code about a millennium earlier. What’s more, a population of around a million people.
the various features of the Axial Age didn’t This happened first in Egypt, where people
come together until much later than most believed in the supernatural enforcement of
scholars had thought – many thousands of order or Maat – personified by a goddess – as
years after the initial emergence of large-scale, early as 2800 BC. Egypt had a population of
complex societies. For a long time after some 1.1 million at the time and was, by all
Zarathustra preached in Iran, the divinely measures, the most sophisticated society
sanctioned powers of ruler remained in the world. The most parsimonious

explanation is that something other than
Big Gods allowed societies to grow.
Our study suggests that something
was the shift in the nature of rituals
from traumatic and rare to painless and
repetitive. This predated Big Gods in nine
of the 12 regions we studied – by 1100 years,
on average – giving rise to the first doctrinal
religions, the forerunners of today’s world
religions. But there was a dark side to this
development: human sacrifice.
Despotic god-kings
A 2016 study based on a historical analysis
of more than 100 small-scale societies in
Austronesia concluded that human sacrifice
was used as a form of social control. The
elites – chiefs and shamans – did the
sacrificing, and the lower orders paid the price,
so it maintained social stability by keeping the
masses terrorised and subservient. Seshat
includes much bigger societies, and our yet-
to-be-published analysis indicates that the
practice started to decline when populations
exceeded about 100,000. At this point, when
rulers were finding it increasingly difficult to
police the masses, human sacrifice may have
become a destabilising force, providing
incentive for people to revolt against the
system. Society began to fracture, making
it vulnerable to conquest.
Piecing all this together, here is what we
think happened. As societies grew by means
of agricultural innovation, the infrequent,
traumatic rituals that had kept people
together as small foraging bands gave way to
frequent, painless ones. These early doctrinal
religions helped unite larger, heterogeneous
populations just enough to overcome the
free-riding problem and ensure compliance
with new forms of governance. However, in
doing so they rendered them vulnerable to
a new problem: power-hungry rulers. These
were the despotic god-kings who presided
over archaic states. Granted the divine right
to command vast populations, they exploited
it to raise militias and priesthoods, shoring up
their power through practices we nowadays
regard as cruel, such as human sacrifice and
slavery. But archaic states rarely grew beyond
100,000 people because they, in turn,
became internally unstable and therefore
less defensible against invasion.
The societies that expanded to a million or
more were those that found a new way to build
PROFILE
Harvey Whitehouse is chair of
social anthropology and director
of the Centre for the Study of
Social Cohesion at the University
of Oxford. A founder of the
cognitive science of religion,
he is known for his idea of
“modes of religiosity”, which
explains how the frequency
and emotional intensity of
collective rituals influence
the scale and structure of
religious organisations
cooperation – Big Gods. They demoted their
rulers to the status of mortals, laid the seeds
of democracy and the rule of law, and fostered
a more egalitarian distribution of rights and
obligations. To our modern eyes, “bad”
religions gave way to “good” ones. In reality,
religions were always “good” in the sense that
they promoted cooperation. What changed was
that societies began valuing social justice above
deference to authority. In other words, they
changed their ideas about what constituted
“good” cooperative behaviours to ones that
more closely align with our modern agenda.
Today, many societies have transferred
religion’s community-building and
surveillance roles to secular institutions.
Some of the wealthiest and most peaceful
have atheist majorities. But some of these
same societies are also facing grave problems
as they absorb migrants and struggle to
contain growing social tensions and
xenophobia. Time will tell if they are capable
of adapting to meet the challenges of these
destabilising influences. But analyses of
the kind we are doing could at least reveal
which elements of religion have pushed us
towards our modern notion of civilisation,
and so might be worth emulating. ■
6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 39
 Northern
sounds
The enduring mystery of
the aurora’s ghostly voice
may have been solved.
David Hambling reports
40 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019
L
ATE one evening, at a jazz festival in the
remote village of Saariselkä in northern
Finland, Unto Laine and his friends
decided to go outside to watch the aurora
borealis and listen to the silence.
It was -35°C and completely still as the
Northern Lights played overhead. “We all
started to listen without talking, without
moving and almost even without breathing,”
says Laine. They wanted to hear how quiet
it could be with no traffic, no wind and
everyone asleep.
But to their surprise, the silence wasn’t
total. The group became aware of a faint
background sound, a sort of hissing that
seemed to change in synchrony with the
movements of the aurora.
“We started to discuss whether these
sounds could be caused by the aurora and we
all agreed – no way,” says Laine. “The aurora
is so high that the sounds created there could
not be audible on the ground.”
That was in 1990. Laine forgot about the
JUERGEN RITTERBACH/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
rustling aurora until he revisited the jazz
festival in 1999. He once again found himself
puzzled by the mysterious sound. He may not
have been the first person to be intrigued by
this phenomenon, but he was perhaps best
placed to solve it.
Laine studies psychoacoustics – the science
of sound and how we perceive it – at Aalto
University in Helsinki. He has now spent
much of the past 20 years fighting to prove
that the aurora isn’t simply a feast for the
eyes; there is magic for the ears as well.
The Northern Lights occur when charged
particles from the sun collide with Earth’s
atmosphere. At the poles, the orientation of
our planet’s magnetic field can allow these
particles to penetrate the upper layers of air
and excite gas molecules 80 kilometres over
our heads. These molecules then get rid of
their excess energy in the form of light: green
or red for oxygen, blue or purple for nitrogen.
Most aurora watchers never hear anything.
Sounds are lost in background noise, like
traffic and people talking and taking pictures.
Few seek to watch in perfect silence as
Laine’s group did.
But some clearly had. Laine found a long
history of accounts of auroral sounds from
indigenous peoples in northerly latitudes,
as well as scientific reports going back more
than 300 years. A list compiled in 1931 quotes
one listener hearing “a swishing or rustle, like
that of a silken skirt”, another said it was “the
sound made when a couple of slices of good fat
bacon are dropped in a red-hot pan”, a third
compared auroral sounds to “a flock of birds
flying close to one’s head”. Others described
“a very curious faint whistling sound” and
even “loud reports similar to rifle cracks”.
Physicists looking to replicate these
observations weren’t so lucky. Auroral sounds
were problematic for two reasons, says Dirk
Lummerzheim at the University of Alaska.
“Every attempt to record or observe that
sound with technical equipment had failed,”
says Lummerzheim. “And there was no known
mechanism that could explain the sound that
people reported.”
Seen but not heard
That led some to suggest that the sound
was an auditory illusion caused by seeing the
aurora, or even the result of synaesthesia – in
which the activation of one sense can trigger
another. To Laine, this was dismissing
observations simply because they were
hard to explain.
“What if the Canadian First Nations,
Inuits, the Sami people and those minorities
living in northern Siberia are right?” asks
Laine. “Instead of blaming the observers
for making errors, or having synaesthesia,
shouldn’t we scientists study this
phenomenon and solve the mystery?”
In 2000, Laine started a project to do just
that with Finland’s Sodankylä Geophysical
Observatory, a centre of expertise on the
aurora borealis. A major goal was to record
the sound of the aurora for the first time. This
was challenging, because it wasn’t clear what
the sound was, or where it was coming from.
“It took a long time to discover all the
ambient sound sources and to reject them,”
says Laine. These difficulties, plus the
challenge of finding funding and a lack of
wider interest, meant that it wasn’t until
2010 that Laine captured his first recording
of auroral sounds.
For those who had taken auroral sounds
seriously, the recordings contained a surprise.
Many had speculated that the noises were due
Auroral roar
The mysterious sounds that accompany the Northern Lights could be the product of a corona discharge,
the phenomenon responsible for the snapping noise produced when you get an electric shock
HOT AIR
––––
COLD AIR
––––
GROUND
On still nights, a layer of Rising hot air carries
hot air traps cold air negative charges
near the ground from the ground to
forming a boundary the boundary layer
between the two
to ground objects acting as electromagnetic
receivers, mini aerials vibrating in response
to the great light show overhead. Laine was
sceptical. “Observers have talked for hundreds
of years about these sounds being ‘in the air’,
not on the ground or in treetops,” he says.
His psychoacoustics background encouraged
him to believe these reports.
Laine’s findings ultimately backed them
up: the sounds were coming from the air
itself, from an altitude of less than 100 metres.
“Human hearing is very good at localisation
of sound sources, and this part of the reports
had not been taken seriously,” he says.
So why do these auroral sounds arise?
Laine believes their origin lies in a
phenomenon known as corona discharge,
similar to the process responsible for the
audible spark of a static shock. These discharges
are often seen around high-voltage electrical
equipment, in the form of a blue glow around
pointed metal objects, often accompanied by
a buzzing sound.
To generate the kind of voltages required,
you need to build up a lot of positive and
negative charge in very close proximity.
Laine’s proposal is that this can happen on
very still evenings, when the frozen ground
begins to cool the air immediately above it.
This results in a high layer of warm air, with
several hundred metres of cool air trapped
below it. Negative ions close to the ground rise
up to the lower layer of this interface, known
as an inversion layer, but are prevented from
rising above it. Meanwhile, positive ions settle
on its upper surface. This electric potential,
already significant, is increased further by the
SOURCE: KRISTIAN PIKNER/CC BY-SA 4.0
+–+– +
– –+
––––
Auroras increase the The charges eventually
conductivity of the neutralise in a corona
atmosphere, causing discharge, heating the
positive charges to air and producing an
flow to the layer audible shockwave
aurora, says Laine, up until the point where
a sudden corona discharge happens. “This
produces ultraviolet radiation, magnetic field
pulses – and sounds.”
This theory elegantly accounts for why the
sounds occur only during particular weather
conditions. Without an inversion layer, there
are no sounds, however bright the auroral
display. And when the sounds do appear, they
are always at similar altitudes.
“Laine’s proposed mechanism does seem
plausible,” says Daniel Whiter, a space
physicist at the University of Southampton,
“Observers had talked for
a long time about these
strange noises in the air”
UK. But not everybody is convinced. Most
scientists still ignore auroral sound, says
Lummerzheim, and those who do accept
it tend to favour synaesthesia as an
explanation. “What is needed is for other
researchers to try to duplicate Laine’s
experiment and design independent
experiments to test the inversion layer
hypothesis,” says Lummerzheim.
However, Laine is delighted at the progress
towards vindicating all those reports
previously dismissed as illusory. “A new
page has turned in this long history,” he
says. “Those who made valid observations
of these sounds can now be proud.” ■
David Hambling is a freelance writer based
in London
6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 41
CULTURE

The legacy of a hug

We are surprised when animals seem to have inner lives. Why, asks Michael Bond

biologist who had known her for for more than a century. they subjectively experience their
Mama’s Last Hug: Animal emotions
40 years (the YouTube video of Discomforted by Darwin’s emotions. “I’m all for assuming
and what they teach us about
this event has been watched more references to affectionate cats, that species related to us have
ourselves by Frans de Waal, Granta
than 10 million times since it was disappointed chimps and happy related feelings, but we should not
UNTIL recently, posted in 2016). cows, they championed human overlook the leap of faith that it
it was heretical When she realises who he is, exceptionalism, the idea that we asks us to take.” All the things he
for a biologist to Mama rouses herself from her are a cognitively superior species. has learned about animals have
argue that animals lethargy, grins expansively and come from observation. He is a
have a mental life. embraces van Hooff. It is hard not “He envisages a science of brilliant observer, and is often
Because animals to interpret her reaction as sheer animal feelings. For now, amazed by what he sees.
can’t tell us what joy, and de Waal believes that we it is enough that we take He was among the first to
they are feeling, are right to do so. “Instead of seriously what is visible” understand the importance of
most scientists thought it safest tiptoeing around [the emotions], reconciliation among apes after
to assume that they don’t feel it’s time for us to squarely face As de Waal writes in Mama’s Last watching two rival male chimps
much at all, or that their the degree to which all animals Hug, this has not only corrupted make up after a fight by grooming
behaviours derive from simple are driven by them,” he writes. our understanding of animals, each other’s behinds. Hours spent
instinct or learning. Emotions, In 1872, Charles Darwin made a but also of ourselves. scrutinising the submissive grins
empathy and intelligence were similar point in The Expression of There is nothing sentimental of monkeys and the playful grunts
considered exclusively human the Emotions in Man and Animals. about de Waal’s position, and he of chimps helped him and his
traits – they were what defined Despite its initial success, this draws the line at conjecturing colleagues unpick the separate
us as human. book was overlooked by scientists about how animals feel – how evolutionary origins of smiling
Frans de Waal, who has been
studying the behaviour of
primates for more than four
decades, has always opposed this
view, which is still prevalent in
some circles. For him, there has
never been any question that
animals experience the same
emotions as humans.
“Why did we go out of our way
to deny or deride something so
obvious?” he asks in his latest
book, Mama’s Last Hug, written
before he retires this year.
“Considering how much
animals act like us, share our
physiological reactions, have
the same facial expressions, and
possess the same sort of brains,
wouldn’t it be strange indeed if
CYRIL RUOSO/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

their internal experiences were

radically different?”
The title of de Waal’s book refers
to a final reunion between Mama,
a dying 58-year-old chimpanzee,
and Jan van Hooff, a 79-year-old

Darwin believed that animals and

humans both had emotional lives

42 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019

For more books and arts coverage, visit newscientist.com/culture
and laughter. And his analysis of
thousands of facial expressions
among the chimp colony at
Yerkes National Primate Research
Center in Atlanta, Georgia, where
he works, revealed how quickly
the animals shift from one
emotional state to another.
If these traits sound familiar,
that is the point. Animal emotions
are human emotions, even if
some of them are more developed
in us. It would be surprising
if any of our emotions were
uniquely human, given that
they arise from changes in the
body and, as de Waal reminds
us, all mammalian bodies are
essentially the same.
So what does this emotional
continuum tell us about
ourselves? Great ape species vary
considerably in their behaviours,
so take your pick. Primatologist
Richard Wrangham has argued
that the violence of chimp
societies implies warfare is innate
to humans. But the stand-out
feature of our species is arguably
our ability to cooperate and keep
the peace, which makes us more
like bonobos. Nevertheless, we are
not a “higher order” version of
either species: it is more complex
than that because we share a
common ancestor, and much
more besides.
Despite what de Waal calls the
“anthropo-denial” of people such
as neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux,
who prefers science to avoid
any allusion to animal emotions
(despite having spent many
hours studying fear in rats),
he is optimistic that attitudes
have largely shifted. For him,
the study of the emotions is a
new frontier in the science of
animal behaviour.
De Waal even envisages a
new science of animal feelings:
the study of animals’ private
experiences. But not yet. For
the moment, it is enough that
we take seriously what is visible
on the outside. ■
Michael Bond is a writer based
in London
The beat goes on
Darwin believed in the musicality of animals. The
truth may be more interesting, says Simon Ings
The Evolving Animal Orchestra: In
search of what makes us musical
by Henkjan Honing, MIT Press
“THE perception,
if not the
enjoyment,
of musical
cadences and of
rhythm,” wrote
Darwin in his 1871
book The Descent
of Man, “is probably common to
all animals.”
Henkjan Honing has tested
this eminently reasonable idea,
and in his book, The Evolving
Animal Orchestra, he reports back.
He details his disappointment,
frustration and downright
failure with such wit, humility
and a love of the chase that any
young person reading it will
surely want to run away to
become a cognitive scientist.
No culture has yet been found
that doesn’t have music, and all
music shares certain universal
characteristics: melodies
composed of seven or fewer
discrete pitches; a regular beat;
a limited sequence of rhythmic
patterns. All this would suggest
DON’T MISS
Listen
Showcase, a podcast from the
Radiotopia network, is exploring
how communications between the
US and the Soviet Union shaped the
internet. There were three episodes
of its Spacebridge production
available as we went to press.
Visit
PAULA BRONSTEIN/GETTY IMAGES
German film-maker and artist Hito
Steyerl’s technical wizardry will have
us measuring and pondering on
inequality when her Power Plants
exhibition opens on 11 April at
London’s Serpentine Sackler Gallery.
Play
On 11 April, producers Vile Monarch
and Devolver Digital invite us
to grow pot in the US with
Weedcraft Inc, a sharply observed
game that captures the legal highs
and murky lows of the volatile
cannabis industry.
a biological basis for musicality.
A bird flies with regular beats Watch
of its wings. Animals walk with a “One thing about queer history is
particular rhythm. So you might it can move very fast,” says Jason
expect beat perception to be Barker, a trans man who seven years
present in everything that ago opted to become pregnant. A
doesn’t want to falter when Deal With The Universe (pictured)
moving. But it isn’t. Honing gets a limited theatrical release on
describes experiments that 12 April, charting more than 15 years
demonstrate conclusively that we of his and his partner’s life.
are the only primates with a sense
of rhythm, possibly deriving from Read
advanced beat perception. Explore what we focus on and why
Only strongly social animals, in How Attention Works: Finding
he writes, from songbirds and your way in a world full of distraction
parrots to elephants and humans, by cognitive psychologist Stefan Van
have beat perception. What if der Stigchel (MIT Press).
musicality was acquired by all
prosocial species through a
process of convergent evolution?
Like some other cognitive
scientists, Honing now wonders
whether language might derive
from music, in a similar way to
how reading uses much older
neural structures that recognise
contrast and sharp corners.
Honing must now test this
exciting hypothesis. And if The
Evolving Animal Orchestra is how
he responds to disappointment,
BFI FLARE
I can’t wait to see what he makes
of success. ■
6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 43
CULTURE
The power of talking
Could growing up multilingual make us more humane? Anil Ananthaswamy explores
Four Words For Friend: Why using
more than one language matters now
more than ever by Marek Kohn, Yale
University Press
THE latest book
by science writer
Marek Kohn is
truly one for our
times. In Four
Words for Friend,
Kohn argues that
bilingualism could
be the antidote to those seeking
to “close borders, build walls and
impose a resentful simplicity
upon the world”. A language is
both a way of communicating and
of creating linguistic boundaries
to exclude those who don’t speak
it, he says. If we became bilingual,
we might break through cultural
barriers and counter the divisive
nationalism gripping the world.
To make this point, Kohn tries
to paint languages as living
entities, not just something we
use or possess. Languages evolve
in much the same way as species,
says Kohn, behaving “as though
they are in a hurry to get away
from their relatives”. Like species,
languages can go extinct too.
The connections between
languages and our humanity (or
lack of it) comes across in some
powerful anecdotes. One concerns
Jewish people living in Düsseldorf
before the second world war, all
of whom spoke fluent German.
They fled the Nazis in two waves.
Six decades later, the group that
left last, after the violence of
Kristallnacht in 1938, spoke worse
German than those who fled
when Hitler came to power in
1933. Those who left earlier
Mastering more than one tongue
completely must start very early
44 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019
retained native command of We get a sense of how language benefits of bilingualism.
the language. “The last group to can possibly influence both While the evidence for cognitive
leave experienced the most cruel thought and behaviour. For superiority among bilingual
persecution, and it alienated them example, languages in which people is shaky, it is much
from the language spoken by actions are bounded in time (they stronger when it comes to health,
their persecutors,” writes Kohn. have beginnings and ends) cause primarily the delayed onset of
Four Words also explores speakers to look for endpoints as dementia if you speak more than
infants as they acquire one or they describe an activity. When one language, writes Kohn.
more languages, suggesting there describing a film, for example, He packs in a lot and the book
is a biological window for children English speakers tend to talk is richer for it, but to do it all in 215
(usually the first year) to acquire about ongoing activity (“he’s pages means the writing is a tad
“native-grade sound sets for more looking around”), while German aloof, never really getting close
than one language”. While you speakers wait for outcomes (“he to the people who populate the
may still speak a non-native has again discovered water”). pages. As Kohn cites study upon
language fluently if you learn it The book shines when Kohn study, statistic upon statistic,
later, you may never do it well tackles the cognitive and health readers may sometimes hanker
enough to fool a native speaker. for a slower, more intimate take.
Kohn explores in detail the “Confronted with the That said, Four Words will make
question of whether different wonders of languages, it you wonder about languages and
languages influence the way their is hard not to worry about their connection to how we think,
speakers experience their worlds. their declining numbers” act, relate and form friendships,
communities and nations. You are
confronted with the wonders of
human languages, and it is hard
not to worry about their declining
numbers. It will take real effort to
preserve our linguistic diversity.
Kohn provides a wonderful
example of the community of
Warruwi in Australia’s Northern
Territory. The 400 people there
speak eight languages between
them, and “sustain these both by
speaking them and by declining
to do so”, writes Kohn. If two
people talk to each other, they
use different languages – each
understanding the other but
speaking only their own tongue.
Such bilingualism, argues
Kohn, could save us from our
worst nationalistic impulses by
providing emotional access to at
least one other reality, creating an
PHOTOALTO/JAMES HARDY/GETTY
overlapping mosaic of worlds. As
someone who grew up trilingual,
I couldn’t agree more. ■
Anil Ananthaswamy is a consultant for
New Scientist
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• Research experience with mice is desirable, but
not required DISCOVER WHAT YOU CAN
• The ambition to thrive within a highly collaborative, ACHIEVE AT SHELL
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/jobs/26625/postdoctoral-associate/job Shell is an Equal Opportunity Employer - Minorities/Females/Veterans/Disability

46 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019

 newscientistjobs.com

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The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine offers postdoctoral and senior research awards on
behalf of 23 U.S. federal research agencies and affiliated institutions with facilities at over 100 locations throughout the
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Awardees have the opportunity to:

• conduct independent research in an area compatible with the interests of the sponsoring laboratory
• devote full-time effort to research and publication
• access the excellent and often unique facilities of the federal research enterprise
• collaborate with leading scientists and engineers at the sponsoring laboratories

Benefits of an NRC Research Associateship award include:

• 1 year award, renewable for up to 3 years
• Stipend ranging from $45,000 to $80,000, higher for senior researchers
• Health insurance, relocation benefits, and professional travel allowance

DESIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

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abroad should be equivalent in training and research experience to a degree from a U.S. institution. Some awards are
open to foreign nationals as well as to U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

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for participation since 1954. Through national competitions, the Fellowships Office recommends and makes NRC
Research Associateship awards to outstanding postdoctoral and senior scientists and engineers for tenure as guest
researchers at participating laboratories. A limited number of opportunities are available for support of graduate
students in select fields.

6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 47

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LETTERS
EDITOR’S PICK
Don’t dismiss the power of dreaming
From Chris Whittaker, High
Fremington, North Yorkshire, UK
Philip Ball reports scepticism over
the claim by a colleague of chemist
Dmitri Mendeleev that the periodic
table came to him in a dream (2 March,
p 34). But there is evidence of the
role of the unconscious mind in
problem-solving (28 July 2018, p 34).
52 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019
This seems to be linked to the power
of sleep to consolidate emerging ideas
(24 March 2018, p 32).
The philosopher of science Thomas
Kuhn claimed science is structured by
“paradigms” that are replaced not by
deliberation and interpretation, but by
a relatively sudden and unstructured
event. He wrote of scientists speaking
of the “scales falling from the eyes”
or the “lightning flash” that illuminates
a previously obscure puzzle.
In The Art of Scientific Investigation,
William Beveridge recounts a number
of such descriptions, including the
physicist Hermann von Helmholtz
reporting: “Happy ideas came
unexpectedly without effort, like
an inspiration”. All were associated
with a period of relaxation, apparently
when the unconscious mind had
been working on the problem.
letters@newscientist.com
Female and male brains
and hormones’ effects
From Gina Rippon,
Birmingham, UK
George Chaplin (Letters, 23 March)
and Lawrence Bernstein (Letters,
30 March) note the omission
of the role of hormones in my
article on male and female brains
(2 March, p 28). The focus of the
piece was on brain structure
and function, but the role of
hormones is very much part of
the arguments I consider in my
book The Gendered Brain.
I devote a chapter to the
changing views on the extent
and stability of sex differences
that are informing research in
cognitive neuroscience and those
informing our understanding
of the links between hormones
and behaviour investigated by
psychoneuroendocrinologists.
This discipline is undergoing just
@newscientist newscientist
the kind of rethink that is core
to my argument for the need
to revisit our answers to the
question of whether women’s
brains are different from men’s.
For example, evidence of
socially induced plasticity
in the levels of the hormone
testosterone among fathers who
are primary caregivers shows
the need to acknowledge how
entangled nature is with nurture.
This rethink will include the
impacts of cultural expectations,
biological factors and a
multiplicity of brain-changing
life factors. The power and
influence of these will vary over
time and in different situations.
Such flexibility and variability,
both within and between sexes,
in all measures of biology and
behaviour, has major implications
for the extent to which we can
invoke evolutionary explanations
or make reference to assumed
 “As both Earth and life are rare and precious,
it’s time to appreciate our home planet”
Fleeting Flo draws a conclusion from the news that out of
4000 exoplanets, none may be right for life (30 March, p 14)

biological or cultural universals in
explaining individual differences
in human behaviour.
Mixed messages on
wood as sustainable fuel
From Mike Meech,
Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, UK
Graham Lawton says wood is a
carbon-neutral biofuel so long
as trees are replanted (16 March,
p 33). But Michael Le Page reports
the European Union being sued
for making global warming worse
by burning wood (9 March, p 9).
He notes that wood burning
might seem an appealing
alternative to fossil fuels, but it
produces more carbon dioxide
than coal per unit of energy.
From Samuel Stucki,
Nussbaumen, Switzerland
Is wood burning good or bad
for the climate? The answer is:
it depends. Foresters are used to
taking a long-term perspective.
Good forestry means managing
wood harvesting so the forest can
continue to provide ecosystem
services and maintain its carbon
stock in the long term.
Whether or not wood can
be considered as a renewable
resource for building materials,
furniture, paper and indeed
renewable energy therefore
depends on whether it is the
product of good forestry practice.
As a rule of thumb, if producing
bioenergy involves intense
farming, its eco-balance is
probably negative. But if biomass
is used as a fuel at the end of its
material life cycle, its eco-balance
is, in most cases, positive. This
means the way to go for wood is:
use it first as a material and then,
at the end of its life cycle, exploit
the wood’s fuel value in a clean
process, such as gasification.
Other people cut fingers
as a mark of defiance
From Geoff Coxon,
Highworth, Queensland, Australia
Some peoples cut off fingers
in mourning, report Margaret
McGovern from Canada (Letters,
23 February) and Ted Webber from
New Guinea (Letters, 23 March).
When I worked in Papua New
Guinea, a young employee walked
in with a large bandage on a finger
of her left hand. She had cut off
the top joint in response to her
parents trying to force her to do
a thing that she definitely didn’t
want to do.
Barbaric practices – in
1950s New Zealand
From Aroha Mahoney,
Te Awamutu, New Zealand
Terrance Chapman says his
mother-in-law had her teeth
removed in her teens in the 1930s
(Letters, 16 March). The practice
continued in New Zealand in the
1950s. A neighbour’s daughter
had her teeth out when I was a
child and I was puzzled at anyone
voluntarily going through this.
She told me it was because the
daughter was getting married
and having her teeth out would
save her husband money.
Speed of climate change
and the fate of insects
From Frida Inta,
Westport, New Zealand
You report the alarming decline
of insects due to habitat loss and
climate change (16 February, p 6).
The response of insects to the
latter is likely to be adaptation by
evolution. Creatures with shorter
lifespans can adapt faster and
displace those who live longer.
Those with the shortest >

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6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 53


LETTERS
lifespans, such as cyanobacteria,
are thriving as things are.
The paper you cite suggests
that adaptable, generalist insects
will fill niches vacated by
declining specialists. Generalist
German and common wasps
have already reached plague
proportions in parts of New
Zealand, while specialists such
as honeybees have declined.
Specialists appear to be
declining in response to the
causes of climate change, such
as changes in land use, and to
pesticides and water pollution.
If this is so, they may eventually
arise once more in forms that are
more tolerant of new conditions.
Insect decline hidden
by automotive design
From Peter Cochrane,
Menstrie, Clackmannanshire, UK
Alan Wilkinson asks whether
biologists should have noticed
how windscreens were crushing
fewer insects by the mid-1960s
(Letters, 9 March). I have seen
such a decline, but I put it down
to aerodynamic improvements
in the cars I drive. Has this been
54 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019
taken into account? I am also a
motorcyclist and I haven’t noticed
a fall in the number of insects
deposited on my visor or clothing.
Does it matter what
television we watch?
From Christine Rogers,
London, UK
You report that older people’s
memory may worsen if they
watch lots of television (9 March,
p 20). Does content matter? My
husband and I watch quiz shows
such as University Challenge – at
which we compete fiercely –
documentaries and comedy panel
shows. Will we end up drooling?
The climate cost of
cheese in context
From Keith Ross, Villembits, France
You illustrate the carbon footprint
of a kilogram of cheese and other
foods (16 February, p 30). It would
be more useful to see the carbon
footprint per kg of dry mass.
I estimate that milk (90 per cent
water) has an impact of 12.5 kg of
CO2 equivalent per kg of biomass;
cheddar cheese (37 per cent water)
letters@newscientist.com
an impact of 13.8; chicken (65 per
cent water) 14.2 and pork (65 per
cent water) 17.8.
From Timothy Treffry,
Sheffield, UK
You make a persuasive case
for looking at carbon dioxide
emission per calorie. I would like to
see a chart that shows this.
Pass the sourdough
starter on the left side
From Adrian Bowyer,
Foxham, Wiltshire, UK
Having yeast make cannabinoids
sounds useful to medicine
(2 March, p 9). I cannot imagine,
though, that they will stay
cloistered in the lab for long.
They could be transferred as
easily as a sourdough starter,
allowing interesting wine, beer
and bread to be made.
Not on me ‘ead, mate: a
case for reforming soccer
From Sam Edge,
Ringwood, Hampshire, UK
You report that association
football players are working
@newscientist newscientist
harder and getting injured more
often (2 March, p 16). These health
and injury issues are common to
many professional sports.
One of the worst problems in
association football, though, is
that players are expected to be
able to head the ball – as are
children in sports lessons.
This has been shown to cause
irreversible brain damage just as
blows to the head in boxing do.
The sooner the rules of football
are changed to treat heading as
a foul, in the same way that a
handball is, the better.
What if an illusionary
entity has an illusion?
From Andrew Whiteley,
Consett, County Durham, UK
Willem Windig is surely right
when he says that “illusion” is a
word used far too freely (Letters,
9 March). The one view we cannot
take of consciousness and mind
is that they are an illusion. If we
do then, logically, that view must
itself be an illusion, since it is part
of our illusory consciousness.
For the record
Q Inconstant wind: storm Idai crossed
Mozambique into Malawi and went
back out to sea. Then, upgraded to
a cyclone, it crossed Mozambique
to Zimbabwe (23 March, p 6).
Q They’ve really made the grade:
it is the US space agency NASA that
has a training cohort of whom half
are women (23 March, p 24).
Q For tropical use: we have posted a
corrected map showing the number
of minutes’ sun you need to get your
daily vitamin D at different latitudes
at bit.ly/NS-sun (16 March, p 28).
Letters should be sent to:
Letters to the Editor, New Scientist,
25 Bedford Street, London, WC2E 9ES
Email: letters@newscientist.com
Include your full postal address and telephone
number, and a reference (issue, page number, title)
to articles. We reserve the right to edit letters.
New Scientist Ltd reserves the right to
use any submissions sent to the letters column of
New Scientist magazine, in any other format.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Thirty years ago, the Exxon Valdez oil spill was one of the
worst ever human-made environmental disasters

JEAN-LOUIS ATLAN/SYGMA VIA GETTY IMAGES

THE
UNIVERSAL UNITS
OF THE MIND
HOW A SI MPL E DATA M OD ULE UN DER LI ES
A LL O UR TH OU GH TS A ND PERC EPTI O NS

ON 24 March 1989, the Exxon

Valdez supertanker hit a reef
off the southern coast of Alaska,
releasing around 35,000 tonnes
of oil into Prince William Sound.
As we reported on 6 April of that
year, it was the largest spill on MICHAEL JESSOP AND TERRY HILL

record in the US.

Even back then, though, it was
by no means the biggest in the
world in terms of the quantity
of oil spilled. But our report gave some inkling of why it
has come to be acknowledged as among the worst-ever
environmental disasters.
The spill happened in “one of the world’s most
unspoilt but fragile ecosystems”, we wrote, in an area
with about 15,000 kilometres of complex coastline
teeming with wildlife. It was very hard to remove the oil
from beaches and inlets, where it soaked into the loose
sand and stone. “In the more sheltered embayments…
long-term impacts may stretch out three to five years,”
said one conservationist. Overall, we predicted the
recovery would take between 18 months and 10 years.
That proved optimistic. As the slick spread along the
Alaskan coast, countless seabirds, otters, seals and other
large animals were killed, and hundreds of species of
invertebrates were affected. Estimates for salmon and
herring deaths ran into the billions, and the local fishing
industry collapsed. Although most of the oil had dispersed
within a few years, animal populations took much longer
to recover. Some, such as the sea otter, didn’t return to
pre-spill numbers for 25 years. Oil still remains today in
many places, buried in the rocks and sand.
Some good did come of the incident, however. It led
to the US Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which placed much
greater responsibility on oil companies for the prevention
and clean-up of spills in US waters. And even though a
greater volume of oil is being transported today, oil spills
have been decreasing steadily over the past few decades
and are now at an all-time low. Julia Brown ■

To delve more into the New Scientist archives, go to

newscientist.com/article-type/old-scientist/

6 April 2019 | NewScientist | 55


FEEDBACK
WHAT has four legs, wears a
deerstalker and cracks unsolvable
crimes? Why, Sherlock the police dog
of course. Or rather Sherlock the
police dogs. China’s state-owned
tabloid Global Times reports that
Sinogene, a biotechnology company,
has cloned a celebrated police sniffer
dog, and intends to achieve “volume
production” in the future.
Readers are invited to give this
new puppy meme their own score
on a scale from “cute” to “alarming”.
The mutt clone army would have
its advantages, though: its paw
soldiers would supposedly be ready
for duty at just 10 months old, while
traditionally sourced dogs need five
years of training at police academy.
Still, as Sinogene’s deputy general
manager admitted to the newspaper,
the high cost of cloning could still be
a bar to the plan in a world where
puppies usually get made for free.
FANCY a cuppa? You could be
PAUL MCDEVITT
risking your life, according to
recent headlines reporting a
study that was published in the
A naked Russian man tried to board a plane at
Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, reports UK
newspaper The Independent. His explanation?
Shedding clothes made him more “aerodynamic”
56 | NewScientist | 6 April 2019
International Journal of Cancer.
Researchers looking at tea
drinkers in northern Iran found
that those enjoying a couple of
piping hot cups of tea (heated to
over 60°C) every day had almost
twice the risk of developing
oesophageal cancer.
This is an assault on all
Feedback holds dear: our
outpourings rely on vast
inpourings of strangely insipid
hot brown liquid (dash of milk,
one sugar please). Fortunately,
cooler minds are on the case.
The yearly risk of developing
oesophageal cancer is around six
in 10,000; so giving a stadium
filled with that number of people
scalding hot tea every day would
result in no more than six
additional cases every year.
Age is also a factor, as many
pointed out while eviscerating
the lurid headlines the study
provoked. Oesophageal cancers
mostly appear late in life, so the
real winning strategy is to avoid
getting old in the first place. Sigh.
For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedback
BESIDES cosmic rays, cramped
quarters and an ageing International
Space Station, astronauts have
something else to worry about: cold
sores. A study published in Frontiers
in Microbiology reveals that
astronauts shed more herpes virus
particles in their saliva and urine in
space than when on Earth. The
researchers hypothesise that the
stresses of space missions dampen
the immune system, allowing
dormant infections to flare up.
Feedback suggests we add this to
the already long list of Things We
Must Solve About Space Travel.
ON A brighter note (possibly),
astronomical verse continues
to plop into our inbox. Peter J.
Bleackley gives a succinct science
lesson with his take on Twinkle,
Twinkle, Little Star:
A great incandescent mass
Of self-gravitating gas
Far away in outer space
I believe that is the case.
In your thermonuclear core
Proton-proton chains galore
Fuse together nuclei
Releasing radiant energy.
Meanwhile, geology-minded
Richard Johnson turns the
telescope on our home planet,
offering a star’s eye view of Earth:
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
Do you wonder what we are?
Below we’re nickel-iron bright,
Mantled in peridotite.
THE Bloodhound supersonic car has
been rescued from a possible trip to
the scrapheap, after the project was
bought out by entrepreneur Ian
Warhurst for an undisclosed sum.
The rocket-powered vehicle
performed a “low speed” test run at
320 kilometres per hour in 2017, but
couldn’t outrun its creditors. The new
venture pursues an identical funding
model – selling sponsorship for ad
space on the buggy’s fairing – but
Warhurst promises his deep pockets
will protect the vehicle from similar
bumps in the road.
Bloodhound is supposed to provide
inspiration for a future generation
of engineers, although according to
those involved, the biggest hurdle
it faces now is a less-than-inspiring
mountain of paperwork. We are sure
it can burn through that.
FACING up to the most pressing
challenge of the day, researchers
have created a beer that doubles
as a medium for developing your
photographs. Super Eight, created
by Dogfish Head Craft Brewery
in Delaware, was designed in
collaboration with Kodak.
The company touts the beer
as its “most extreme yet”. Its
eclectic set of ingredients includes
“prickly pear, mango, boysenberry,
blackberry, raspberry, elderberry
and kiwi juices, a touch of toasted
quinoa and an ample amount of
red Hawaiian sea salt”.
Or if you prefer, and assuming
the digital age has passed you by,
you can heat the beer on a stove,
add ascorbic acid and baking soda,
and drop your negatives into the
brine. After 15 minutes, a quick dip
in a stop bath and fixer will have
your holiday pics ready for print.
Sadly, choices must be made:
the beer can be used for drinking
or photography, but not both. That
is a problem for future scientists
to crack. We await developments.
You can send stories to Feedback by
email at feedback@newscientist.com.
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This week’s and past Feedbacks can
be seen on our website.

THE LAST WORD
You say tomato
What creates accents? Is it purely
psychological, or is there some
physiological element in play?
QAccents develop from the
relative isolation of populations.
The pronunciation and language
of each population changes in
different ways and accents are
the result. This happens in much
the same way that isolation of
populations leads to different
evolutionary outcomes. Changes
to language and pronunciation
come from a range of sources:
immigration, the introduction
of new words, the popularity of
different influences like music,
random changes, and so on.
The root cause of most accents
is psychological not physiological.
While the shape of the mouth and
jaw can affect our voices, we can
adapt easily – think of actors who
change accents for roles. And our
accents usually match that of the
area in which we were raised, not
necessarily the accents of parents,
whose physiology we inherit.
Lewis O’Shaughnessy
London, UK
QThere is no one true language
or pronunciation from which
people diverge. English, for
example, has always been a gaggle
of related dialects and different
accents. Also, language is always
changing. There is no reason why
everybody should change in the
same way at the same time.
The driving forces behind an
individual’s accent are varied
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telephone number and email address.
You can also send questions and
though. For example, when
people speak alike, who are they
imitating? Most of us generally
speak like the people around us.
But people also imitate those
they look up to and want to be
like. For instance, if you want to
belong, you will talk like your
neighbours. If you want to get
ahead, you might talk more like
the people in centres of prestige,
such as your country’s capital.
You might not notice you are
doing it, but to linguists, these
alterations in speech stick out
like a sore thumb.
David Cordiner
Birmingham, UK
Take a bite
Why aren’t hit-and-run attacks
common in the animal kingdom?
Surely a barracuda or shark could
take a meal-sized chunk out of the
back or belly of a whale before it
could respond. The same goes for
smaller pairings of animals.
QHit-and-run attacks are seen in
the animal world. Wounds from
the teeth of cookie-cutter sharks
have been seen on migrating
whales that passed through the
sharks’ habitat. One sei whale had
more than 100 bite marks on it.
Other fish arguably qualify too.
For example, white sea bream
have been reported to take nibbles
out of people paddling in the
Mediterranean and waters off
the western coast of Africa.
Chris Simms
Banwell, Somerset, UK
answers to The Last Word, New Scientist,
25 Bedford Street, London, WC2E 9ES.
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readers in any medium or in any format
and at any time in the future. All
unanswered questions and previous
questions and answers are at
newscientist.com/lastword/
Last words past and present at newscientist.com/lastword
QFor an animal to feed using
a hit-and-run strategy requires it
to locate, stalk and then attack a
ferocious or fleeing animal. And
this is all for a limited amount of
food. The attacker would spend
less energy overall by killing the
prey and enjoying a sumptuous
feast at its leisure.
Peter Guinan
Llangors, Powys, UK
QThe reason such attacks aren’t
common is fear. The prospect of
getting hurt while taking a bite
out of an animal much larger
than you would put most
predators off. They are at risk of
being belted sideways, eaten alive,
damaged for life and so unable
to survive, just for one, small
mouthful of a whale’s behind.
Relying on hit-and-run
feeding could bring evolutionary
consequences for a species,
whether you are a barracuda,
a cockroach or a human being.
Linda Latham
Biggar, South Lanarkshire, UK
QHit-and-run tactics are suited
to victims that are too formidable
to confront but easily evaded.
However, it takes some doing to
bite pieces off whales, so you need
to be suitably equipped. The jaws
and teeth of tiny cookie-cutter
sharks are adapted to slicing out
pieces of skin and blubber. They
sneak in on the slipstream of
a large fish or whale, grab a
mouthful, and scoop it out as the
host jerks, leaving a characteristic –
and horrible – hollow wound.
Many other fish, including
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some piranha and cleaner wrasse,
use similar hit-and-run tactics.
The jaws of one species in Lake
Tanganyika in east Africa actually
grow asymmetrically to the left
or right. This helps in grabbing a
mouthful when quickly passing
prey sideways on.
“Cookie-cutter sharks sneak
up on large fish and scoop
out a mouthful, leaving a
horrible wound”
On land, pack hunters such as
wild dogs and wolves hit and run
cooperatively, taking turns, not
directly to feed, but to confuse,
exhaust, injure and kill big prey.
Jon Richfield
Somerset West, South Africa
This week’s
questions
SPACE REFLECTORS
Does the space junk orbiting Earth
have any effect on the amount of
solar energy reaching the surface
of our planet, either by absorbing
or reflecting it?
Alastair Mouat
Kilbucho, Peeblesshire, UK
LIGHTER EARTH
We have sent a large number
of spacecraft and satellites into
space. This must reduce the mass
of the planet, albeit by a small
amount. Does this reduction
affect Earth’s gravity with respect
to the sun and moon?
Ben Spannagle
London, UK