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This week’s issue

On the 42 Are we alone?

We can finally answer the
cover biggest question in the cosmos

34 Bad back? 30 Selling happiness 6 weeks to go!

There’s a back pain epidemic. How positive thinking Discover our biggest and
Most treatments make became big business best speaker line-up ever
things worse. at our 4-day festival of
Here’s why, and what 12 Quantum teleportation science. Find out more at
you can do Now in 3D! newscientistlive.com

38 Refreezing the Arctic

Three ways to engineer
the ice cap back

5 Amazon on fire 10 Koala microbiome 17 Spy gliders

14 Pollution and mental health 13 How old is your brain?

Vol 243 No 3245

Cover image: Belovodchenko Anton/Shutterstock

News Features
6 Brexit hate speech 34 Bad back?
The UK government is News The most common treatments
using AI to predict spikes in for chronic back pain may be
Brexit-related hate crimes making it worse

7 Polio success 38 Refreezing the Arctic

Wild polio virus has been If we want to save the frozen
eradicated in Nigeria, but north, we may have to bring
the battle isn’t over yet the ice back ourselves

20 Dawn of the pyrocene 42 Are we alone?

Arctic wildfires could spur After millennia of guesswork,
a powerful feedback loop we can finally start finding out for
certain, says Sarah Rugheimer

Views
The back pages
23 Comment
Genetic medicine tests the 51 Maker
limits of patient confidentiality, Build a mini weather station
says Laura Spinney
52 Puzzles
24 The columnist Quick crossword, a riddle of ages
James Wong delves into claims and the quiz
that fruit is bad for you
53 Feedback
26 Letters Sexy pavement lichen and a robot
Using biomass to make fuel priest: the week in weird
is a criminal waste
JASON BYE FOR NEW SCIENTIST

54 Almost the last word

28 Aperture Readers explain why water
Shipping glints from space hydrates and dogs roll over

30 Culture 56 The Q&A

The psychology of happiness Niamh Nic Daeid on a paradigm
feeds a vast industry 8 Coastal erosion Crumbling cliffs prompt communities to retreat shift in forensic science

31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 1

 The Human Body is
Remarkable.
It inspires our mission to discover, develop
and deliver innovative medicines that help
patients prevail over serious diseases.

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Jobcode: NOUK1900519-02
Date of Prep: June 2019
The leader
The climate tipping point
Two crises mean irreversible change is no longer an abstract concept
YOU rock your chair back, confident
you are still in control and can restore
equilibrium. Before you know it, you are
on the floor, struck by an irreversible
change you can’t swing back from.
That’s the dangerous thing about
tipping points: you don’t know you have
reached one until it is too late. Earth’s
climate could now be facing at least two.
Reports from Brazil’s National
Institute for Space Research suggest that
wildfires in the Amazon are occurring
in unusually high numbers (see page 5).
They haven’t yet been confirmed as
record-breaking, but many see them
EVARISTO SA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
as evidence that the anti-environment,
pro-agriculture policies of Brazil’s
president, Jair Bolsonaro, are driving
illegal burning of the rainforest.
This is disastrous for the people and
wildlife living there, and for the planet.
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The policies of
Brazil’s president,
Jair Bolsonaro,
have seen an
increase in
Amazon burning
The Amazon is a region of extraordinary
cultural and biological diversity, and
a huge global sink of carbon dioxide.
We need it to have a chance of keeping
global warming to a manageable level.
Fewer trees means less water vapour
being pumped into the atmosphere.
Intact regions of forest start to suffer.
At some point, the whole may reach
a tipping point where the untouched
forest dies and the Amazon flips to
become a non-forest ecosystem.
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We don’t know where that point is.
Some studies indicate that we could
get there if a fifth of the rainforest is
lost. Others suggest a tipping point
could be reached as soon as 2030.
Meanwhile, an unprecedented
number of fires are ripping through the
Arctic (see page 20). There, the tipping
point is of a different nature: a sea-ice-
free Arctic creating positive feedbacks
that accelerate warming. That risk is now
so dire that some researchers say we
should investigate local geoengineering
options to prevent it (see page 38).
The law of unintended consequences
means that must be a last resort. As
for the Amazon, Bolsonaro must be
persuaded to about-face, if necessary
by withholding aid and trade deals.
We know by now what we all have to
do. Let’s not test the tipping points. ❚
EDITORIAL
Editor Emily Wilson
Executive editor Richard Webb
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31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 3
 News
Birds and burgers Managed retreat Digital privacy Shock waves in space Air pollution
Crows may have high The fight to save Facebook’s data may LIGO spots its first Is city air causing
cholesterol because coastal dwellings put millions of gay black hole-neutron mental health
they eat fast food p7 from rising seas p8 people at risk p11 star collision p13 conditions? p14
REUTERS/BRUNO KELLY

Amazon fires are on the rise

Fires raging across the Amazon have renewed efforts from some countries, companies
and individuals to protect the rainforest. Michael Le Page and Adam Vaughan report
A LARGE increase in the number of
fires in the Amazon rainforest has
led to an international outcry and
a row over the need for action.
Brazilian president Jair
Bolsonaro has rejected an offer
of $22 million from seven of the
world’s richest countries to help
tackle the fires, accusing the G7
of colonialism and suggesting the
money be used to reforest Europe
instead. Many environmentalists
also criticised the offer, saying it
was too small.
Despite Brazil’s rejection of the
offer, more money should reach
non-governmental organisations
trying to save the Amazon
rainforest thanks to private
fundraising efforts by individuals
and companies. Leonardo
DiCaprio pledged $5 million, for started with the intent of clearing biodiversity. The rainforest stores
instance, and Apple said it would the land. vast amounts of carbon and hosts
donate an undisclosed sum. Last week, the ESA said the a rich variety of species.
On Tuesday, the European Space carbon dioxide released by the The Amazon is also home to
Agency (ESA) said its satellites had blazes in August was the highest 400 groups of indigenous peoples.
detected nearly four times as for the month since 2003. The fires These peoples say they are being
many fires burning over the past have also been releasing carbon subjected to a rising number of
few weeks compared with the monoxide, and thick smoke has attacks. “But these crimes go
same period last year: 4000 from reached cities such as Sao Paolo. unpunished; they are increasingly
1 to 24 August versus 1100 last year. “The past week has been really encouraged by our national
There are fires burning in parts concerning in terms of the leaders, including the President
of Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Amazon forest, there is no of Brazil,” Sonia Guajajara,
Argentina as well as Brazil. question about it,” says Erika coordinator of the Association of
While wildfires do occur Berenguer at the University of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, said
naturally during Brazil’s dry Oxford. Saving the Amazon is in a statement. “We are putting
season, almost all the fires are seen as crucial to efforts to limit our bodies and our lives on the
thought to have been deliberately global warming and preserve line. If we disappear, so will the
world’s tropical forests.” ❚
The latest on the Amazon online
For more on the race to save the rainforest visit To learn about tackling a world
newscientist.com/subject/environment of wildfires, see page 20

31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 5

News
Social media

Predicting Brexit-related hate crimes

As the UK’s exit from the EU nears, government agencies are trying
to pinpoint hotspots of race-related hate speech, reports Donna Lu
THE UK police are monitoring The team recently established forces and councils may use tweets. In addition, it shows
hundreds of thousands of Twitter for the first time that an increase the information from the hub networks of tweeters who interact
posts containing hate speech in hate speech on Twitter leads for counter-messaging on social with each other, although their
every day. It is part of a pilot to a corresponding increase media. These include awareness identities are anonymised. These
project to predict spikes in hate in crimes against minorities campaigns, reiterating zero clusters can provide information
crimes in the run up to 31 October, on London streets (British tolerance for hate crimes and about how much of the hate
when the UK is due to leave the Journal of Criminology, encouraging people to report speech results from coordinated
European Union. doi.org/c9qh). The pattern is incidents to True Vision, a national efforts, says Williams.
The Online Hate Speech similar to what happens with crime reporting hub. Williams and his colleagues
Dashboard is being used by domestic violence, which Last year, the UK government measure the performance of the
analysts at the National Police often escalates from verbal to launched a nationwide hate crime dashboard using an F1 score, a
Chiefs’ Council’s online hate physical abuse, says Williams. statistical measure of accuracy
crime hub, which was established The team found that as the “The dashboard flags that takes into account the rate of
by the Home Office in 2017 to number of tweets that were between 500,000 and true and false positives. “Usually,
“tackle the emerging threat antagonistic about race, ethnicity 800,000 hate-related our algorithms come in between
of online hate crime”. or religion increased, so did the tweets per day” 85 and 95 per cent,” says Williams.
It gathers Twitter posts from incidence of aggravated crimes, Less than half of hate crimes
across the UK and uses artificially including violence, harassment awareness campaign, which are reported to the police.
intelligent algorithms to detect and criminal damage. A similar included adverts on social media. According to the Crime Survey
speech that is, for example, study in 2018 found a link between The hope is that the dashboard for England and Wales, racially
Islamophobic, anti-Semitic or the number of anti-refugee will lead to a reduction in and religiously motivated crimes
directed against people from statements on Facebook and online hate speech. It includes in the two nations spiked after the
certain countries or with violent crimes against refugees information about the trends Brexit vote in 2016, with 5605
disabilities or from LGBT+ groups. in Germany. in hate speech against each group crimes reported in July that year,
The police chiefs’ council tasked Relevant government over time, and commonly used up 44 per cent from the same
Matthew Williams at Cardiff authorities such as police words and hashtags in hateful period in 2015.
University, UK, and his colleagues People with racist views feel
with developing the dashboard so emboldened to target others
that government organisations by events like the vote, says
could monitor hate speech. Imran Awan at Birmingham
The dashboard flags between City University, UK.
500,000 and 800,000 tweets The police are often slow in
per day as containing hate-related reacting, he says. Awan attributes
language. About 0.5 per cent this to scepticism about the link
of these are from users tagged between online and offline abuse.
with precise locations within “The perception is: ‘Do I really
the UK, which the dashboard need to come out and speak to
presents as a map of hate somebody because they’ve posted
hotspots. If there is a spike, the a tweet?’.”
information can be passed by Hate-speech detection tools
analysts to the relevant local that analyse aggregated data may
police forces, says Williams. not be able to prevent individual
Previously, such monitoring acts of violence, says Timothy
had to be done manually. Quinn at Hatebase, a firm that
The main aim of the project is to provides hate speech resources
identify patterns of hate speech in to law enforcement agencies.
the lead up to 31 October to warn Such tools are more useful for
police and support organisations governments to identify overall
REUTERS/YVES HERMAN

of any potential issues. rises in hate speech across a

region, giving opportunities
Reported hate crimes to prevent it escalating into
spiked after the UK voted violence in the form of riots,
to leave the EU in 2016 for example, he says. ❚

6 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019

Ornithology Analysis Polio

City crows may have

high cholesterol
Wild polio virus eradicated in
thanks to fast food Nigeria, but battle isn’t over yet
Jake Buehler Debora MacKenzie

CROWS living in urban areas have The oral polio vaccine

higher blood cholesterol levels than has helped wipe out
their rural counterparts. That may wild polio in Nigeria
be due to the food we leave behind
for them to feast on. vaccinations, so “there have
Crows are “experts at raiding been more outbreaks of Type 2
human trash cans and dumpsters”, vaccine-derived virus than we
says Andrea Townsend at Hamilton expected”, says Zaffran.
College in New York. Some of the The only way to stop such
food they scavenge is fast food, an outbreak spreading is to
which is often high in cholesterol. give people a live, oral vaccine
Townsend and her colleagues containing only weakened
PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/GETTY IMAGE

measured cholesterol levels in Type 2. This is because while the

blood samples taken from injected vaccine will stop people
140 American crow (Corvus getting infected, once they are
brachyrhynchos) nestlings in infected only the live vaccine
rural, suburban and urban areas in will stop them spreading the
California. They also measured the virus. In an outbreak, 95 per cent
birds’ body mass and fat reserves, or more of people infected don’t
and tracked their survival rates. have symptoms but spread the
They found that the more urban the NIGERIA has officially wiped polio virus. The Type 2 strain virus, so many people must
surroundings, the higher the blood out wild polio, after three years replicated faster than the others, be vaccinated.
cholesterol of the crow nestlings. without a case caused by the provoking the most immunity. But the live, Type 2 vaccine
To see if access to the foods wild polio virus. This is a As a result, wild Type 2 polio has also spawns yet more
that raise cholesterol in heartening milestone for a been eradicated worldwide potentially dangerous vaccine-
humans were responsible, the country that nearly derailed since 1999. derived virus, which can go on
researchers ran a “cheeseburger the global drive to eradicate The Type 2 vaccine virus is to cause more infections if it
supplementation experiment” the disease after some regions also the strain most likely to encounters children who
where they left cheeseburgers banned vaccination in 2003. mutate to a disease-causing haven’t been immunised
near nests in rural New York. But Faisal Shuaib, head of the form. In 2018, there were against Type 2 with the injected
Townsend didn’t have country’s public health agency, 70 cases of vaccine-derived vaccine. Routine vaccination
reservations about leaving behind called for “cautious euphoria”. polio in seven countries, the must improve alongside
burgers for the nestlings as elevated That’s because Nigeria hasn’t majority Type 2 viruses. So in outbreak response, but that is a
cholesterol doesn’t appear to wiped out polio. As first revealed 2016, everyone shifted to using slow, expensive process and is
affect all species in the same way, by New Scientist in 2000, the hampered in many places by
and has actually been linked to live, weakened polio virus used “In 2018, there unrest or conflict, including in
better body conditions in some in the vaccine responsible for were 70 cases of northern Nigeria.
animals, she says. the breakthrough can spread vaccine-derived polio That’s not the only problem.
The burger-fed rural crows had between people and mutate to in seven countries” Only three companies make the
cholesterol levels that were about a form that can paralyse. It has live, Type 2 vaccine, so we could
5 per cent higher than nearby crows caused 15 cases of vaccine- a live oral vaccine containing run out. “We have enough to
that weren’t given fast food. Those derived virus infection in only Types 1 and 3. Immunity to cope now, but there could be
that ate the burgers had cholesterol Nigeria so far this year. those improved, and cases fell. a crisis if the outbreaks don’t
levels more similar to crows living There are ways to stop this At the same time, children improve,” says Zaffran.
in cities (The Condor: Ornithological happening, but they haven’t were supposed to get an injected Yet there are ever more
Applications, doi.org/c9r9). been rolled out fast enough, vaccine containing killed people susceptible to vaccine-
Townsend says these results are says Michel Zaffran, head of versions of all three strains of derived Type 2 polio, as wild
consistent with the handful of other polio eradication at the World virus, making them immune to polio no longer circulates and
studies on cholesterol in animals Health Organization. any vaccine-derived virus still immunises people, and too few
that live near humans, including The drive to eradicate polio circulating. In this way, India receive the injected vaccine.
foxes, sparrows and even sea turtles was based on a cheap, effective eradicated all polio in 2014. Polio could roar back worse
living near more densely populated oral vaccine containing But too few children in than ever if it isn’t contained,
Canary Islands. ❚ three strains of live, weakened poorer nations get routine says Zaffran. ❚

31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 7

 Fieldnotes East Anglia, UK

Moving away from the coast Rising sea levels mean that
a managed retreat for coastal communities is no longer a
case of if, but when and how. Adam Vaughan reports

JANE HAMILTON stands next to

a model of Dunwich in Suffolk,
UK, the “lost city” that was once
one of England’s largest ports, but
has been largely swallowed by the
sea after storms in the 13th and
14th century and years of erosion.
She accepts that people will have
to retreat in the face of a warming
world and rising seas. “It’s natural.
It’s like people dying, it does
happen,” she says.
As a resident of the remaining
JASON BYE FOR NEW SCIENTIST

village, that doesn’t mean she

wants to stand back and let it
happen. “It’s human nature
to preserve your community,” says
Hamilton. “I don’t accept: ‘That’s
fine, it’s all going to fall in the sea,
we’ll all move inland.’ ”
Dunwich is one of several not necessarily the biggest and to defend the majority of Coasts are in retreat across
communities in East Anglia, an fastest, but the most adaptable England’s coastline, and moving East Anglia, including here
area on England’s east coast, that to change,” she says. Historically, people in response to climate at Happisburgh in Norfolk
must decide whether to promote around a metre of coast was lost change is the exception, she says.
a “managed retreat” inland or to each year here, but recently, it has The EA recently finished the than a decade about giving up
hold the line. In a recent article in been around 3 metres annually, £70 million Ipswich Tidal Barrier land to the sea. “I have no direct
Science, researchers argued that she says. in Suffolk, a large “hold the line” problem with a managed retreat,
adaptation to climate change While Blaxland accepts that her defence. More hardware and because that’s what humanity has
means, in some places, “the home probably has just a few more engineering like this will be needed done for millennia,” says Wrinch.
years left, neighbouring buildings in the region, says Mark Johnson What is missing is clarity from
“It’s human nature to reveal contrasting attitudes of the EA, such as an increase in authorities, he says.
preserve your community. towards coastal erosion. One is the height of beaches in Norfolk to A glimpse of a possible future
I don’t accept: ‘That’s fine, the former house of Peter Boggis, help protect Bacton Gas Terminal. for Wrinch lies across the county
it’s going to fall in the sea’ ” dubbed King Canute for building David Ritchie of East Suffolk border in Essex. At Fingringhoe
his own coastal defences by the Council says managed retreat Wick nature reserve, the sea wall
question is no longer if retreat will cliffs, in defiance of authorities. can be positive, pointing to the was deliberately breached in
occur but how, where, and why”. Down the road, a pair of holiday Benacre Estate, just north of 2015, so seawater now covers
The UN’s Intergovernmental homes, the Watch Houses, were Easton Bavents, where there 22 hectares of former farmland.
Panel on Climate Change predicts built with steel frames so they can are plans to flood 100 hectares Mark Iley of the Essex Wildlife
warming will bring a sea level rise be easily moved inland by crane. with seawater to create an Trust, which worked with the EA
of up to a metre by 2100, and more In the past, the UK government intertidal habitat. on the scheme, says losing hard-
if the Antarctic ice sheet begins its offered money to help people In Shotley, near Ipswich, won land is “very controversial”,
collapse this century. In England, relocate, as well as assisting with Richard Wrinch stands on but that the project has been a
the Environment Agency (EA) has planning issues around new the doorstep of his farmhouse, roaring success for both human
said sea level rise can’t be fought homes for them, but no such overlooking a glorious vista of and avian visitors.
with “limitlessly high walls and schemes are active today. fields bordering the river Orwell The motivation was to create
barriers” alone. “We are very much responding that flooded during a 2013 storm salt marsh habitat, which is fast
Juliet Blaxland, who lives a to the climate emergency,” says surge. The farmer has been talking disappearing throughout England.
few kilometres up the coast from Julie Foley of the EA. Its policy is with the EA and others for more However, the approach could
Dunwich near the crumbling cliffs be applied elsewhere if the two
of Easton Bavents, recognises the More climate change online challenges – finding funding and
need to adapt. “In nature, the For more on our warming planet willing landowners – are overcome,
most successful animals are newscientist.com/subject/environment says Merle Leeds of the EA.  ❚

8 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019

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News
Animals

Koala microbiome shift

Faecal transplants help the marsupials change their diets
Ruby Prosser Scully

KOALAS in Australia may find

settling into a new habitat easier
after a faecal transplant.
In 2013, a population of koalas
grew so large that the animals ate
enough leaves from their preferred
type of eucalyptus tree, the manna
gum (Eucalyptus viminalis) to kill
many of the trees. This resulted in
starvation and the death of more
than 70 per cent of the koalas.
Surviving animals were moved
to a new area, but they had little
interest in feeding on a similar
tree, the messmate (Eucalyptus
obliqua), despite other koalas
living off it exclusively.
Michaela Blyton at the University
of Queensland, Australia, found that
giving the relocated koalas a faecal
JOUAN & RIUS/NATUREPL.COM

transplant from the local population

helped them to adapt. The process
changed the koalas’ natural mix
of bacteria, which began to
resemble that of the donors (Animal
Microbiome, doi.org/c9nx). ❚

Cosmology

LIGO could solve space expansion mystery

COSMOLOGISTS can’t agree on find out two things: how far away can be hard to spot. But in 2017, waves came from. Then they
how fast the universe is expanding they are and their redshift, which LIGO researchers showed that if used the galaxy’s redshift in
because the two methods they use is the degree to which the object’s they could catch some light from their calculations (arxiv.org/
to find out give distinctly different light has stretched as it passed the source of a gravitational wave, abs/1908.06060v1).
results. Now a third method through expanding space on its they could measure the redshift. The new method is important
involving gravitational waves way towards us. The gravitational wave itself gives because it is independent of
could help break the deadlock. The Hubble constant is usually the distance, so the Hubble the other two, but it can’t yet
Gravitational waves are the calculated either by looking at constant could be calculated. provide a definitive answer. The
ripples in space-time whose certain supernovae or at the 10 detections made so far are too
existence was confirmed in 2015 cosmic microwave background, “The two methods we few to provide a precise estimate
by the Laser Interferometer often called the big bang’s use to find out how fast the of the constant.
Gravitational-Wave Observatory afterglow. But these methods universe is expanding give “At the moment, our method
(LIGO). They are produced when result in different numbers. distinctly different results” is like Switzerland, completely
massive objects like black holes It is possible that this discrepancy neutral,” says Patricia Schmidt
or neutron stars smash together is caused by errors, but some Now the LIGO team has at the University of Birmingham,
(more on page 13). astronomers believe that it is extended its work to black hole UK, and a member of the LIGO
To calculate the Hubble constant, evidence of unknown physics. mergers, which don’t emit light. consortium. As more detections
which quantifies the expansion The events that make The group instead used galaxy are made, the estimate should
rate of the universe, astronomers gravitational waves don’t always catalogues to identify the most get more precise. ❚
usually look at distant objects and produce light. Even if they do, it likely place that the gravitational Stuart Clark

10 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019

Internet Data privacy

Revealing why posts

are moderated helps
Facebook’s data collection
us comply with rules may put gay people at risk
Chris Stokel-Walker Chris Stokel-Walker

SOCIAL media platforms struggling MILLIONS of gay people In Saudi Arabia, where practice, such information
to tackle the tide of misinformation living in countries where homosexuality can be punished could be used to identify people
and unsuitable content could cut homosexuality is outlawed with death, the team found in and collect information on
its flow by a fifth by better could be put at risk by February that 540,000 people them. For example, an advert
explaining their rules. That is Facebook’s advertising were labelled as having an directed at a particular group
the finding of a large-scale study practices. This is because the interest in homosexuality. could offer a prize to people if
of 32 million posts on popular firm allows advertisers to target The team revisited that number they enter their personal details.
discussion site Reddit. people on the basis of their in August and it had nearly Facebook says that just
On Reddit, volunteer moderators interests, including sexual ones. doubled to 940,000 people. because someone shows an
clear forums, called subreddits, Ángel Cuevas Rumín at Overall, Cuevas’s team found interest in something doesn’t
of unsuitable or off-topic material. Charles III University of Madrid, that there were more than mean they have that attribute.
Moderators take different Spain, and his colleagues You could like a page about gay
approaches, however. Some explain
why they have removed the content,
but about 99 per cent simply take it
analysed the list of options
available for targeting adverts
on Facebook. They found that
940,000 men, for example, without
being a gay man yourself.
people in Saudi Arabia are labelled However, there is likely to be
down without explanation. Shagun about 2000 of the options as interested in homosexuality overlap between the two groups.
Jhaver at the Georgia Institute of would be classed as “sensitive” “The interest targeting
Technology and his colleagues have information under Europe’s 4.2 million people tagged as options we allow in ads reflect
found that those who have had their recent GDPR data protection interested in homosexuality people’s interest in topics, not
posts removed – with or without law. These include a person’s living in countries where personal attributes,” Facebook
explanation – are less likely to politics, race or sexuality. homosexuality is illegal. told New Scientist. “People can’t
continue posting. But those who Some two-thirds of Facebook These people could be targeted discriminate by excluding
aren’t provided with a reason why users in the 197 countries and using Facebook’s ad tools (arxiv. interests such as homosexuality
their content was taken down have states the team looked at were org/abs/1907.10672). when they build an ad.” The firm
a higher likelihood of further posts tagged with at least one such While there is no suggestion says it recently removed more
being removed than those who are preference, accounting for a that anyone has been identified than 5000 targeting options.
given an explanation. fifth of the overall population. or killed as a result of this Collecting such data is a legal
Another study by the team found grey area. In Europe, there are
that 37 per cent of Reddit users stronger legal protections for
surveyed didn’t understand why sensitive data than there are for
their post was removed, and 29 per other types of personal data.
cent felt frustrated that it had been. However, data protection
The group calculated that if all experts are torn over whether
post removals were accompanied Facebook is breaking any laws.
with an explanation, the odds of “Facebook is in the wrong for
future removals would drop by sure, as far as EU data protection
20.8 per cent. The team will present law is concerned,” says Ed Boal
the work at the Conference on at Stephenson Law in Bristol,
Computer-Supported Cooperative UK. Sandra Wachter at the
Work and Social Computing in Oxford Internet Institute, UK,
Texas in November. isn’t so sure. “If the argument
While the system works in small being made is nobody is
communities, it may be hard to inferring sexual orientation but
scale across a larger site such as assuming an interest in sexual
YouTube, which has been criticised orientation, that brings us to an
for its opaque rules on what is unclear legal perspective,” she
acceptable content. says. “We need to broaden data
“Moderators have to be careful protection in a more sensible
about how they articulate their and holistic way.” ❚
HOCUS-FOCUS/GETTY

policies,” says Kat Lo at the

University of California, Irvine. If you “Like” a Facebook
“It has to be able to move between page, the data is used
many different types of context.” ❚ to record your interests

31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 11

News
Cryptography

Quantum teleportation win

Physicists have used the rules of quantum entanglement to teleport
a richer package of information than ever before, reports Leah Crane
QUANTUM teleportation has
made a leap in sophistication.
Physicists have teleported more
information at once than has
ever previously been possible,
paving the way for a global
quantum internet that would be
extremely secure from hacking.
This isn’t teleportation as you
might imagine it from science
fiction. Rather than transporting
ELLA MARU STUDIO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

matter through space, it involves

moving information related to
the quantum state of a particle.
Previously, we have only been
able to teleport quantum bits,
or qubits, the simplest unit of
quantum information in which
a particle can be in two states
at once. For instance, a photon
that is simultaneously vertically
and horizontally polarised would
be a qubit.
Now Jian-Wei Pan at the
University of Science and
Technology of China and Anton
Zeilinger at the University of
Vienna in Austria and their
colleagues have teleported a more
complicated unit of quantum
information called a qutrit for
the first time. If a qubit can be
considered two-dimensional,
a qutrit is three-dimensional:
the photon is polarised in three
perpendicular directions.
“The higher the dimensions
of your quantum system, the
more secure you can ensure your
communication is and the more
information you can encode,” says
Ciarán Lee at University College
London. “But going from a qubit
to a qutrit is especially difficult:
the tricks you use for qubits have
to do with a nice symmetry that
qutrits don’t have.”
To teleport a qubit, you begin
with three particles. One is the
qubit whose information you
want to teleport. The other two
are a pair of particles that have
been entangled in such a way
that making a measurement
on one will affect the result of a
measurement made on the other.
Now imagine two people,
traditionally called Alice and Bob.
Alice has the qubit and one of the
pair of entangled particles. Bob
has the other particle in the pair.
If Alice wants to send the qubit’s
“Passing messages through
quantum entanglement
would be a very secure
means of encryption”
information to Bob, she performs
a special kind of measurement
on both her particle and the
qubit. Going through this process
means that Alice’s particle is now
entangled with the qubit, as well
as Bob’s particle.
Because of all this entanglement,
Alice’s measurement forces Bob’s
particle into one of four possible
states. He can find out which by
making a measurement. The
results of Alice’s measurement –
Love quantum theory?
More entanglement and weirdness online
newscientist.com/article-topic/quantum-science
which she can send to Bob using
non-quantum methods, such as
an email – lets him determine how
the measured state of his particle
is related to that of the original
qubit. Once he knows that, he can
reconstruct the information from
the original qubit. Its information
has been teleported.
Qutrits are a level up in
difficulty because it is much
harder for Alice to perform her
measurement and entangle her
particle with the qutrit.
The researchers got around this
by adding another particle to the
system so Alice is measuring three
particles instead of two (Physical
Review Letters, doi.org/c9ns).
As a result, her measurements
contain more information, which
she sends to Bob, allowing him to
reconstruct the qutrit.
The researchers could teleport
qutrits with 75 per cent fidelity,
meaning Bob’s qutrit was 75 per
cent similar to Alice’s original.
That may not seem high,
Teleportation depends
on spooky quantum
connections
but the highest fidelity possible if
the quantum entanglement had
failed is 50 per cent.
“Seventy-five per cent is
probably not good enough to
start communicating in this
way with much accuracy, but
this is early days,” says Lee.
The researchers claim that
their method could be used to
teleport even larger packets of
information with higher fidelity.
If that works out, it would be
a further step towards quantum
communication systems. Passing
messages using quantum
entanglement would be far
more secure than current
encryption methods.
Quantum teleportation
could enable information to
be passed over long distances
by secure quantum networks,
says Lee. “The ability to teleport
a high-dimensional system is
going to be one of the bedrocks
on which a future quantum
internet is built.” ❚

12 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019

Neuroscience

Tests at 3 years old could predict

brain ageing in later life
Jessica Hamzelou

YOUR brain isn’t necessarily the things like cholesterol and blood they were 3 years old went on to “Acceleration or delay could be
same age as the rest of you. Now, sugar levels to estimate the have the youngest-looking brains positive or negative,” says Cole.
it may be possible to predict how biological age of the volunteers’ (bioRxiv, doi.org/c9ng). “If a 60-year-old has a brain that
quickly a person’s brain will age bodies. They found that this was This suggests we might be able looks 70, that’s bad, but if a 3-year-
throughout life based on tests loosely linked to brain age, but not to tell who is at risk of accelerated old has a brain that looks 5, that
taken when they are 3 years old. totally. “There are some people brain ageing early in life, says might be a good thing.”
A person’s biological age may who have a very advanced brain Elliott. He hopes that predicting The team also asked other
be a better indicator of their health age whose bodies seem to be brain ageing earlier in life could researchers to guess how old the
than their chronological age. Brain ageing slowly, and vice versa,” says allow treatments for conditions volunteers were based on photos
age can be measured using brain Elliott. However, the team found like dementia to be started sooner. of their faces. Again, the responses
scans and machine learning to that those who had the highest This means they might have a varied hugely, with estimates
determine if a person’s brain looks scores on cognitive tests when better chance of working. coming in 20 years above and
older or younger than the average James Cole at King’s College below their actual age. Those who
healthy brain for people of the Lower stress levels and London cautions that it will be looked older also had older brain
same age. exercise may help your difficult to make predictions ages. “It suggests that the outward
To find out if brain age might brain stay young based on a 3-year-old’s test results. signs of ageing are reflected by the
reveal anything about a person’s internal signs of ageing,” says Cole.
health in midlife, Max Elliott at That doesn’t mean that all older-
Duke University in North Carolina looking individuals will be on
and his colleagues assessed the their way to dementia, says Elliott.
brains of 869 adults in New We don’t yet have a way to treat
Zealand who have undergone brain ageing, but given the known
regular medical and cognitive benefits to the brain of healthy
testing since they were 3 years old. eating and exercise, these aren’t
When the volunteers, all aged a bad place to start. “Ageing is a
between 43 and 46, underwent complex interaction of genes
MRI brain scans, the team found and environment,” says Cole.
SALLY ANSCOMBE/GETTY

that their brain ages ranged from “The environmental factors are

23 to 71. Those with older brain likely to be things like stress levels,
ages performed worse on tests diet, how much physical exercise
of cognition, memory and IQ. people get and how much they
The researchers also measured use their brains,” he says. ❚

Space

A black hole has US and by Italy’s Virgo detector.
“We’re very confident that
been seen eating we’ve just detected a black hole
a neutron star gobbling up a neutron star,” says
Susan Scott, a theoretical physicist
ALMOST 900 million years ago, at the Australian National University
two objects – one a black hole, the in Canberra and part of the LIGO
other almost certainly a neutron collaboration.
star – slammed together with If confirmed, the observation
incredible force, sending shock would complete the trifecta of
waves through space-time. cataclysmic events researchers had
These gravitational waves hoped to detect when LIGO was first
have now washed over Earth. proposed: the collision of two black
Last week, scientists from the Laser
Interferometer Gravitational-Wave
Observatory said the waves were
holes; the collision of neutron stars
in a binary system; and the merger
of a black hole and a neutron star.
picked up by LIGO’s detectors in the In April, LIGO researchers thought
they had seen their first black hole
and neutron star merger, only for the
observation to be chalked off due to
the high possibility the signal was
background noise from Earth. This
time, researchers are almost certain
the signal came from beyond Earth.
Researchers around the globe
are now running the numbers to
confirm the identity of the two
objects involved. Given its size,
researchers agree the larger
900 m
Approximate number of years
since the collision spotted by LIGO
is a black hole. Based on initial
estimates of its mass, the smaller is
probably a neutron star. “But there
is the remote possibility it could
actually be a very light black hole,”
says Scott. If that proves to be the
case, it would be by far the lightest
black hole ever observed. “We have
to look at the signal to see if we can
confirm it is behaving like a neutron
star in the in-spiral,” says Scott.
Ticking off the final of the three
types of event doesn’t mean LIGO
will be powered down, however.
“That’s just the end of the
beginning,” says Scott. ❚
James Mitchell Crow

31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 13

News
Briefing Mental health
Why is pollution linked to
schizophrenia and depression?
A NEW study has added to the
mounting evidence suggesting
air pollution is linked to mental
health conditions. But it isn’t
clear yet how – or if – pollution
may be affecting our brains.
What has the latest study found?
Analysing data from 151 million
people in the US and 1.4 million
people in Denmark, researchers
discovered a strong correlation
between poor air quality and
higher rates of bipolar disorder,
schizophrenia, personality
disorders and major depression
(PLoS Biology, doi.org/gf6t7f).
This suggests there is a link, but
not necessarily that pollution is
causing these conditions.
How strong is the link?
When the researchers looked
at health insurance claims in
the US, they found that the
strongest predictor of being
diagnosed with bipolar disorder
(after ethnicity) was air quality.
Previous studies have
unearthed a correlation in
the UK between polluted
areas and teenagers reporting
psychotic experiences, and local
air pollution and psychiatric
disorders in Swedish children.
How good is the evidence?
“We don’t really know very
much overall. We’ve only got
a handful of studies and most
have methodological problems,”
says Helen Fisher of King’s
College London, who worked
on the UK teenager study.
One problem is a lack of data
on what an individual’s true
exposure to air pollution has
been, with some research
looking at city-wide air quality
More mental health news online
The latest research on depression and other conditions
newscientist.com/article-topic/mental-health
14 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019
Busy traffic in
Copenhagen, Denmark
measurements rather than
specific addresses. That is a big
weakness, given we know air
pollution exposure can vary
significantly from one street
to the next. In the new study,
exposure in the US was mapped
at county level, administrative
areas that can cover thousands
of square kilometres.
What else could explain the
associations between dirty air
and psychiatric conditions?
The study tried to take into
account confounding factors
where figures were available,
including income, ethnicity
and population density. But an
obvious factor that could be
linked to both mental health
and pollution is traffic noise.
This is known to increase stress
and disrupt sleep, which are
both linked to mental ill health.
In what ways could pollution
affect our brains?
Some of the smallest pollution
Earth science
Volcano that
led to little ice
age identified
Chris Baraniuk
A MINI ice age that lasted for
125 years began in the middle of
the 6th century, helping to plunge
the world into an era of chaos. One
of the key events behind it was the
massive eruption of a volcano
somewhere in the southern
hemisphere. Now we may know
when and where it happened.
BILL BACHMANN/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Huge eruptions fling so much
ash and debris into the atmosphere
that sunlight is partially blocked.
This can cool Earth and encourage
more ice to form at the poles, which
reflects more sunlight, further
cooling the planet. It has long been
thought that the eruptions of
particles can pass through the volcanoes between AD 536 and
blood-brain barrier, potentially 547 kick-started what is known
affecting the brain. Air pollution as the Late Antique Little Ice Age.
is known to cause inflammation Robert Dull at California Lutheran
in the body, which may ignite University and his colleagues have
the brain’s stress response. Or now shown that the second of two
perhaps pollution can cause big eruptions during this time
epigenetic changes that affect appears to have occurred at the
the levels of signalling chemicals Ilopango volcano in El Salvador.
in the brain. But these are only The team found the remains of
tentative ideas. three trees that “witnessed” this
event. Two of these were killed by
“Air quality was a the volcanic activity.
strong predictor of Radiocarbon dating on multiple
being diagnosed with tree rings inside the trunks revealed
bipolar disorder” their age – the trees died between
AD 503 and 545. Evidence from
Why does it matter if air quality ash deposits in nearby soil also
affects our brains? Shouldn’t helped to confirm that a gigantic
we care because of the known eruption happened around this
physical effects it has anyway? time, most likely in late AD 539 or
Stronger evidence of a link to 540 (Quaternary Science Reviews,
mental health might not have a doi.org/c9nk).
huge impact on policy because An earlier big eruption is thought
the case for action on air to have occurred in AD 536, but
pollution – such as it shortening researchers haven’t yet managed to
lives through lung and heart identify which volcano was involved.
problems – is strong. But if dirty “I think the Late Antique Little Ice
air was found to cause mental Age was started by these eruptions
illness, it would “open new here and prolonged by others,” says
avenues to the prevention Michael Sigl at the University of
and treatment of mental Bern in Switzerland. The final
conditions”, John Ioannidis at proof that would tie Ilopango to
Stanford University in California the AD 540 eruption would be to
wrote in a commentary in find debris from it in Antarctic ice
PLoS Biology. ❚ Adam Vaughan cores from that time, he says. ❚
 YEMEN EMERGENCY

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 News In brief
APEXPHOTOS/GETTY
Biocomputing
Cells could become
computers in body
GENE editing can turn living cells
into minicomputers that can
record data and could track what
happens inside the body.
DNA computers have been
around since the 1990s, when
researchers created DNA able
to perform basic computer
functions. Instead of storing
information as 0s and 1s like
digital computers do, these
computers store information in
A, C, G and T, DNA’s molecular
code. One problem is that this
information doesn’t change
during a cell’s life, making DNA
computers very slow.
Now Fahim Farzadfard at
the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and his colleagues
have created a technique that
uses DNA editing to speed up the
process. They call their system
DOMINO, for DNA-based Ordered
Memory and Iteration Network
16 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019
Bacteria
How airborne microbes
conquered Mars-like desert
MICROORGANISMS fly into the
Atacama desert on grains of dust
carried by the wind, which may be
how they first colonised the desert.
The finding suggests that if there
are microbes on Mars, they could be
carried around the planet by global
dust storms, says Armando
Azua-Bustos at the Centre of
Astrobiology in Madrid, Spain.
The Atacama in South America
is one of Earth’s driest places, with
soils so parched they resemble
those of Mars. Some Atacama
microbes survive even in the driest
spots, but questions remain over
how they got there.
Azua-Bustos and his colleagues
suspected microorganisms arrived
on dust carried by afternoon winds
that blow in from the Pacific. To find
out, they set out Petri dishes filled
with nutrients in lines stretching
Asteroids
Operator. It is designed to
respond to various biological Space rock Ryugu
cues, such as small molecules is a dustless oddity
or light, and builds on CRISPR
gene-editing techniques. THE MOST detailed pictures yet of
Current technologies used to the asteroid Ryugu have revealed
edit genes in cells or organisms something odd: a lack of dust.
are limited. Their capacity to After arriving in 2018, Japan’s
store data stops after one or two Hayabusa-2 spacecraft dropped
molecular events. In contrast, three landers and took a sample
DOMINO can be programmed to from Ryugu’s surface. Now,
edit DNA after complicated chains pictures from one of the landers
of events, allowing it to encode have revealed more details about
more information quickly. the composition of the asteroid.
One application for the Ralf Jaumann at the German
system could be to monitor Aerospace Centre’s Institute of
sugars, by programming it to
respond to lactose for example.
When a bacteria with the system
encounters lactose, DOMINO
would make changes to its DNA
(Molecular Cell, doi.org/c9n3).
The history of events are then
stamped onto the DNA in the form
of unique mutational signatures
AKIHIRO IKESHITA/JAXA
that don’t fade over time even
after the cues, in this case lactose,
fade away, says Farzadfard. ❚
Ruby Prosser Scully
from the coast to the desert interior.
Any microbes flying in would land
in them. They found 28 species
growing in the dishes and extracted
DNA from several more that landed
but didn’t grow. The microbes came
from near the coast (Scientific
Reports, doi.org/c9pc).
Oceanobacillus oncorhynchi is
one of them. It lives in tidal pools.
Because the pools evaporate in the
heat of the day, it can survive being
dried out for hours – giving it a
chance of surviving the Atacama.
Azua-Bustos says such microbes
may have been the first to colonise
the desert. Mars is prone to dust
storms, so if there is any microbial
life there it could be dispersed on
dust grains. And if life can be moved
around Mars, contamination from
our probes could spread fast, he
says. ❚ Michael Marshall
Planetary Science in Berlin and
his colleagues have analysed the
images. They were surprised to
see the surface of Ryugu doesn’t
have a layer of dust (Science,
DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw8627).
This is strange because dust is
expected to accumulate through
collisions in space.
One explanation could be that
fine dust becomes charged due to
solar radiation and gets removed
by electrical forces, says Jaumann.
Another is that the release of
volatile gases from the surface
might have blown the dust away.
Or maybe, if Ryugu shakes as it
travels through space, the dust
could have gradually settled in the
interior of the asteroid, meaning
we can’t see it.
The pictures also revealed
details of rock texture on the
surface. The images show there
are two kinds of rock on Ryugu’s
outer layer, dark and rough or
bright and smooth, and they
both take up an equal share
of the surface. ❚ Abigail Beall
 New Scientist Daily
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Chemistry
Really brief
the point at which the key bonds can be put in a device to trigger it
This material will in a material begin to break. to self-destruct on demand.
self-destruct Lots of polymers slowly When the substance falls apart,
decompose when they reach this all that is left is a residue and a
AGENTS might soon be able to temperature because many faint smell. Kohl and his team
CARLO PREARO/EYEEM/GETTY

drop behind enemy lines and bonds have to be severed. But have made a glider with a 2-metre
leave no trace, thanks to a material Kohl designed his material so wingspan, and he says they can
that can be made into gliders or that as soon as one bond breaks, make 5 kilograms of the polymer
parachutes but that disintegrates the whole thing unzips. at a time. The work was presented
when exposed to heat or light. It is made from a chemical at a meeting of the American
The self-destructing polymer, called an aldehyde with various Chemical Society in California.
initially designed for use in additives that can either make the Marek Urban at Clemson
Honey can tell us all battlefield sensors, is the work of material rigid for use in a glider or University in South Carolina
about lead pollution Paul Kohl at the Georgia Institute sensor, or flexible to make a fabric. worries that the residue could be
of Technology and his colleagues. Sunlight can trigger the toxic. Kohl says he has tested it
Bees pick up pollution as They began with polymers that disintegration. Or, in true spy on plants, which survived. ❚
they fly around and some have a low ceiling temperature, style, a small light-emitting diode Chelsea Whyte
of it ends up in their honey,
although it is still safe to Demographics Technology
eat. Kate Smith at the
University of British
Columbia in Canada found App designed to spot
that analysing honey is as winter vomiting bug
good a way to check lead
levels as using soil or air A SMARTPHONE app can detect
samples. It could be used signs of norovirus, the most
to monitor remote areas. common cause of gastroenteritis.
Jeong-Yeol Yoon and his team at
Time to get up and the University of Arizona used a
move around a bit phone with an add-on microscope
and a light source to detect low
VISUAL CHINA GROUP VIA GETTY

Sitting for nine and a half levels of norovirus in water.

hours or more a day is Their technique can spot as little
associated with a higher as 10 attograms (10−18 grams) of
risk of early death in middle norovirus per millilitre, six orders
aged and older people, of magnitude better than other
according to a review of portable detectors, says Yoon. That
data from over 36,000 is important, as even tiny amounts
individuals. The study Two-child policy in China sees of norovirus can trigger illness.
found that any level of Also known as the winter
physical activity, regardless millions more babies born vomiting bug, norovirus is
of intensity, is linked to a notorious for causing vomiting
lower risk of premature A CHINESE government policy December 2017, covering the first and diarrhoea in crowded
death (BMJ, doi.org/c9nw). allowing all couples to have two 18 months after the policy began. situations, such as on cruise ships.
children led to an extra 5.4 million The team compared these with At the heart of the team’s test
Blood pressure births in its first 18 months. baseline birth rates up to the end of is a paper chip that contains tiny
linked to brain size China’s universal two-child policy, June 2016, nine months after the beads of fluorescent polystyrene.
announced in October 2015, was October 2015 announcement. These beads contain antibodies
People with high blood designed to boost the country’s In the 18-month period, there against norovirus. When virus is
pressure in their 40s seem stagnating population growth. were 5.4 million additional births present, it binds to clumps of
to have smaller brains at It targeted 90 million women of to women who already had one or beads. Under the light, these
age 70. The findings, from reproductive age who already had more children (BMJ, doi.org/c9n2). clumps fluoresce. Analysis via the
a group of 500 people at least one child – 60 per cent of Despite the national increase in phone microscope reveals the
aged between 69 and 71, these women were older than 35. births, the total probably fell short level of norovirus present.
hints that looking after Susan Hellerstein at Harvard of the government’s annual target The team is using it to test water
your health may help University and her team looked at of 20 million. China’s one-child supplies. A diagnostic version for
prevent some forms of data on 67.8 million births in most policy, introduced in 1979, was checking stool samples is planned.
dementia (The Lancet of China from January 2014 to scrapped amid concerns about an The research was presented at
Neurology, doi.org/c9nm). December 2017. They measured ageing population and shrinking an American Chemical Society
birth rates from July 2016 to workforce. ❚ Donna Lu meeting in California. ❚ DL

31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 17

News Insight
Wildfires

Dawn of the pyrocene

Wildfires raging in the normally wet Arctic could spur a powerful
feedback loop releasing yet more emissions, discovers Adam Vaughan
DEVASTATING wildfires across the
world have made front-page news

CONTAINS MODIFIED COPERNICUS SENTINEL DATA [2019]/SENTINEL HUB/PIERRE MARKUSE

in recent times, from last year’s
deadly blazes in Greece to the
widespread property destruction
in Canada three years ago. One
place you might not expect to
be burning, however, is the Arctic.
Yet as New Scientist went to press,
millions of hectares of land in the
Arctic were ablaze.
Fire is a natural part of the
ecology of the vast boreal forests
that girdle Earth in northern
latitudes. But the amount of
vegetation that has been on fire
across Alaska, Canada and Russia
since June is highly unusual. Even
Greenland, four-fifths of which
is covered in ice, has seen fires.
The impacts on human health decades. This is probably because in the Arctic,” says Carly Phillips at Siberia has been hit hard
and the environment are coming of the way we are managing forests the Union of Concerned by wildfires, as this
into focus – and they are worrying. to reduce the risk of fire. Scientists and Woods Hole satellite image shows
Is there anything we can do? Surprising as it may seem, Research Centre in Massachusetts.
This year has already seen this year isn’t that special when About 173 megatonnes of CO2 temperature records have
striking fires around the world, it comes to fire, either, globally have been emitted from Arctic tumbled, making it warm and dry
including in places not usually speaking. The European Union’s fires so far this year, according enough for blazes. “The north is a
known for them, such as the UK Copernicus Atmosphere to CAMS, which is a record amount big tinder box, but it’s been limited
(see “Fires in February”, right). In Monitoring Service (CAMS) says (see chart, below). Russia has from burning by the climate,” says
Indonesia, where fires are often that some 3500 megatonnes been hit hardest, with more than Merritt Turetsky at the University
started to clear areas for oil-palm of carbon dioxide were emitted 13 million hectares affected and of Guelph in Canada. “If you
plantations, the fire season may from wildfires in the first half smoke hazes reported in cities. remove those climatic constraints,
prove to be as bad as that of 2015, of this year. At a global level, that So why the surge in Arctic fires? all those fuels are ready to go.”
when blazes there created a plume makes 2019 distinctly middling The region is effectively stuffed Climate change could also be
of smoke that extended halfway compared with the past 16 years. with fuel: huge swathes of forest contributing to the lightning
around the planet. Brazil’s space The fires in the north, however, and peat. Most of this doesn’t strikes that usually ignite the fires.
agency has reported more than are exceptional. “This year has normally burn because it is cold More lightning is linked to rising
75,000 fires in the Amazon this been unprecedented for wildfires and wet. But this year, maximum surface temperatures. “Hot
year, a record number. A surprising weather is making the Arctic more
number of crop fires have hit the The amount of carbon dioxide emitted by wildfires in the Arctic is a proxy for thunderstormy than normal,” says
Netherlands, Germany and how big the blazes are. The fires in 2019 are the largest for at least 16 years Rod Taylor of the World Resources
Luxembourg, says Cathelijne 200
Institute in Washington DC.
SOURCE: COPERNICUS ATMOSPHERE MONITORING SERVICE

Stoof at Wageningen University Most of the fires are in remote

in the Netherlands. 2019 data is regions, but that doesn’t mean
Annual CO2 emissions

150 up to 18 August
You would be forgiven for people are escaping the effects.
(megatonnes)

thinking that fires are on the rise “What happens in the Arctic
globally. In fact, the evidence 100 doesn’t stay in the Arctic. Pollution
doesn’t bear that out. For example, can carry thousands of miles
a 2017 study led by Niels Andela away,” says Elizabeth Hoy at NASA.
at NASA used satellite images 50 The agency has tracked smoke
to show that the amount of land from the fires in Siberia reaching
being burned worldwide has 0 the US and Canada. That pollution
actually decreased in recent 2005 2010 2015 2019 can combine with a city’s local

20 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019

 More Insight online Working
Your guide to a rapidly changing world hypothesis
newscientist.com/insight Sorting the week’s
supernovae from the
absolute zeros

fumes to turn air quality from Russia’s helicopters to tackle flames

average to poor, potentially Aerial Forest in some areas. “Large-scale
causing respiratory problems Protection intervention is very costly and
for young, old and other Service battled not very effective for large and
vulnerable people. fires earlier this remote fires,” says Cristina Santín
TASS VIA GETTY

The health costs aren’t just month at Swansea University, UK. ▲ Kakapo
physical. Turetsky says that in Russian authorities have tried The birds are back in
Yellowknife, the capital of the seeding clouds to induce rain. town. For the first time in
Northwest Territories in Canada, The idea is that planes spray 70 years, the number of
doctors have reported increasing away an insulating layer that helps chemicals such as silver iodide kakapos, New Zealand’s
rates of hospital admissions for maintain permafrost – ground in an effort to enhance the rate giant parrots, has hit 200.
post-traumatic stress disorder that is normally frozen. This of ice crystal formation in the
during and following wildfires. makes it more likely that the atmosphere, producing more ▲ Chunky chips
At a workshop she ran in the city, permafrost could thaw and clouds, but there is no evidence Ever wished microchips
many people reported what they release even more CO2. Permafrost this is effective. were larger? Then
called eco anxiety. “A lot of these thaws discharge not just CO2, Today, firefighters’ priority is to Cerebras Systems’s
people didn’t experience the fires but also the more powerful protect life and property. Turetsky (macro) chip could be for
directly, but they know it’s going greenhouse gas methane. you. It is as big as an iPad
to come back,” says Turetsky. The potential positive feedback and will be used for AI.
The effect on the climate could
be more serious still. The problem
isn’t simply that fires release a lot
of CO2. This will exacerbate global
doesn’t end there. Researchers at
CAMS have already used satellites
to track soot from this year’s
northern Russia fires. Some landed
173
megatonnes of CO2 emitted from
▼ Fogcam
Farewell to the world’s
oldest running webcam.
warming, and Arctic wildfires have on ice in Greenland. That matters fires in the Arctic so far in 2019 Fogcam had recorded
released about the same amount because studies have shown that weather in San Francisco
of CO2 this year as the Netherlands soot can alter the reflectivity of ice, says that could in future be since 1994, but will be
does in a year. making it absorb more of the sun’s extended to protecting rich stores shut down because its
“For me what is far more energy and heat up. of carbon in the Arctic. “It might owners say there are no
insidious is the long-term The remote nature and sheer be governments come together good places to put it.
climate impact,” says Phillips. scale of the Arctic means there to protect certain areas where we
Her worry is the prospect of a isn’t a lot that firefighters can understand where the old carbon ▼ Cruelty
harmful positive feedback loop. do about these fires. Russia had is,” she says. The other thing we YouTube removed videos
Fires burn off vegetation, stripping to send in the army, planes and can do is to reduce CO2 emissions. of robots fighting each
In the future, hotter, drier other for defying animal
conditions in the Arctic will set (not android) cruelty rules.
Fires in February the stage for more blazes. A recent
report on land use by the UN’s ▼ Practice
A WAVE of warm weather hit the peat of it being protracted. It’s a climate science panel warned as A study found that good
UK in February and three huge more difficult fire to deal with,” much. Stephen Pyne, who studies violinists practise just as
fires broke out in different parts says Paul Hedley at the National the history of fire at Arizona State much as even better ones,
of the country. In fact, the period Fire Chiefs Council. University, says we are entering suggesting the phrase
between June 2018 and June Since the 2018 moorland fires the “age of the pyrocene”. practice makes perfect is
2019 was a “really crazy year” near Manchester, the UK’s worst One crumb of comfort is that far from perfect after all.
for wildfires, says Thomas in decades, the country’s fire and the feedback loop can’t continue
BY_NICHOLAS/GETTY; TOP: ROSS HENRY/ALAMY

Smith at the London School of
Economics. The UK has had 95
large wildfires in 2019 already.
In the Arctic, it is often forests
that burn (see main story). In the
UK, peat and heathland blazes
are the main problem. “There is
potential once the fire is in the
rescue service has trained
35 staff nationally as wildfire
tactical advisers, to pool expertise
and aid coordination. Despite
this, wildfires are a growing
burden. “There is no way of
getting around it, it is a real
challenge for us,” says Hedley.
forever. Once forest is burned, it
can’t keep burning. And smoke
from northern fires has a modest
cooling effect, reflecting some of
the sun’s energy. In the meantime,
however, the Arctic is still on fire. ❚
Read about geoengineering efforts
to refreeze the Arctic on page 38

31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 21

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 Views
The columnist
James Wong delves
into claims that fruit
is bad for you p24
Letters Aperture Culture Culture columnist
Using biomass Three years’ worth of How the psychology Helen Marshall
to make fuel is a shipping glints in the of happiness feeds a on poking fun at
criminal waste p26 English Channel p28 vast industry p30 business culture p32

Comment

The right (not) to know

Genetic medicine challenges age-old notions of who should
share in a patient’s diagnosis, says Laura Spinney

themselves, don’t want to know

they are at risk?
This question was raised by a
German case in which a woman
sued a doctor for telling her that
her ex-husband had Huntington’s,
meaning that their two children
were at risk. The doctor acted
with the consent of his patient,
the ex-husband, but the
woman’s lawyers argued that
the information was useless to
her because the condition can’t
be cured and the children were
too young to be tested anyway.
Knowing her ex-husband’s
diagnosis without being able to
act on it, the woman claimed, had
sent her into a reactive depression
and left her unable to work.
The German case wound its way
through several courts before a
final decision was handed down,
in 2014, in favour of the doctor –

O
NCE upon a time, a
doctor’s consulting
room was as safe as a
confessional. You could say what
you liked confident that, barring
very exceptional circumstances,
it would go no further. No more.
Two legal cases, one in Germany
and one still ongoing in the UK,
show how the limits of patient
confidentiality are being tested,
and how this challenges long-
established medical norms.
At issue is how to define a
patient in an era of genetic
testing. If a test shows that I carry
a disease-causing gene, that may
be relevant to other members of
JOSIE FORD
That is the nub of a trial coming
up at the High Court in London in
November, in which a woman is
suing the hospital that diagnosed
her father with Huntington’s
disease for not informing her.
Huntington’s is a fatal, incurable
neurodegenerative disorder
caused by a mutation in a single
gene. Every child of an affected
parent has a 50 per cent chance
of inheriting the mutation.
The woman argues that, had she
known her father’s diagnosis, she
wouldn’t have given birth to her
daughter, who is now herself at
risk of Huntington’s. Currently, in
the UK as in many other countries,
patients unless they consent to
their information being shared.
Guidelines issued by
professional organisations such as
the Royal College of Physicians do
acknowledge that situations can
arise where a doctor has a duty of
disclosure to third parties even in
the absence of consent – notably
when not sharing information
could result in death or serious
harm. The High Court trial will test
whether that duty of disclosure
should also be recognised in law.
That could bring some much
needed clarity to the area, but also
create new problems. What if I test
positive for a disease-causing gene
despite the fact that, unlike in the
UK, the right not to know is legally
protected in Germany, with
respect to genetic information.
Balancing these various rights
isn’t easy. Huntington’s is a clear-
cut case, medically: if you have
the mutation, you will develop the
disease, assuming you live long
enough. That is unusual. In most
cases, a gene test is likely to reveal
only an increased risk of disease.
The real problem is that the law is
black-and-white, while predictive
medicine is all about grey. ❚
Laura Spinney is a writer
and science journalist

my family. If I refuse to tell them, doctors are legally obliged to variant and my family members, based in Paris. Follow
should my doctor? respect the confidentiality of who didn’t consent to be tested her @lfspinney

31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 23

Views Columnist
#FactsMatter
Now that’s fruitloopery Ever heard the one about how
zoos stopping monkeys eating bananas tells us that fruit
isn’t good for us? Pull the other one, says James Wong
I
F YOU have ever delved into
the world of online diet advice,
you might have heard the
claim that modern fruit is so
filled with sugar that it is unsafe
for zoo animals. It might have
come with links to media reports
with headlines like “Zoo bans
monkeys from eating bananas”.
James Wong is a botanist and The claim that fruit is no longer
science writer, with a particular a healthy part of the diet – for
interest in food crops, humans as well as animals – has
conservation and the gathered thousands of likes and
environment. Trained at the shares from low-carb devotees
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, he around the world. But how good is
shares his tiny London flat with the evidence behind these claims?
more than 500 houseplants. As a botanist who knows rather
You can follow him on Twitter a lot about fruit, but very little
and Instagram @botanygeek about monkeys, I decided to go
straight to the source, and talk to
the zoologist whose work first
spurred these stories.
Amy Plowman is director of
James’s week living collections at Paignton Zoo
What I’m reading in Devon, UK, and has done
“Transforming the pioneering research on the diets of
Nutrition of Zoo Primates non-human primates in captivity.
(or How We Became She observed that the food given
Known as Loris Man to zoo monkeys was often a poor
and That Evil Banana reflection of what they ate in the
Woman)”. An excellent wild. In some zoos, it more closely
chapter by Amy Plowman resembled the food preferences of
and Francis Cabana from their human keepers.
the book Captive Care “We have, whether consciously
and Management, Part II or unconsciously, assumed
that human food is suitable for
What I’m watching non-human primates,” she says.
The TV adaptation of the In some leading zoos, primate
film What We Do in the species whose diet in the wild is
Shadows. I’m a total geek made up overwhelmingly of leaves
even outside work. are routinely fed chicken, eggs,
cheese, yogurt, bread and noodles.
What I’m working on This understanding of primate
Lots more writing and nutrition is, Plowman says,
radio projects, and I am “far removed from reality”.
filming part of a new TV To create a diet as similar to the
documentary. monkeys’ natural diet as possible,
she eliminated energy-dense
items such as meat, dairy and
grains, and reduced the amount
AHTENG/GETTY
This column appears of fruit and some of the more
monthly. Up next week: calorific vegetables. The monkeys’
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein new regime consisted essentially
24 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019
of specialist primate feed pellets,
leafy veg and fresh tree leaves.
In a very short time, Plowman
and her team noticed dramatic
improvements in the animals’
health, with reduced obesity,
improved dental health and
even behavioural improvements.
The press enthusiastically
reported the story, focusing
almost exclusively on the angle of
zoo monkeys no longer being fed
bananas. When other institutions,
such as Melbourne Zoo, started to
follow suit, it triggered a further
flurry of headlines.
These news reports rarely
mentioned that many of the
“These conclusions
require us to ignore
one small detail:
humans aren’t
zoo monkeys”
animals involved in these new
feeding regimes, such as the red
pandas in Melbourne Zoo, are
essentially leaf eaters and don’t
actually eat much, if any, fruit in
their natural habitat anyway. But
then, pandas being fed bamboo
instead of fruit is less of a story.
Those who linked the switch to
the benefits of particular diets in
humans also failed to point out
that the new regime given to these
animals involved eliminating all
meat and dairy too, and swapping
to an essentially 100 per cent leaf
diet. Advocates of ultra-low carb
and meat-heavy “carnivore”
diets for humans were therefore
sharing research whose findings
were contrary to their claims.
What does Plowman think of
this interpretation of her findings
in zoo animals being used as
justification for excluding fruit
from human diets? “I wasn’t aware
of this and find it very surprising,”
she says. “Fruit and non-leafy
vegetables have a much lower
energy content than most of the
foods available to humans, so are
a very healthy option for us given
most of us consume too much.”
Stressing that her work on zoo
animals couldn’t be translated to
humans, she went on to say that
the dietary alterations she made
were to replace foods higher in
sugar and starch with indigestible
fibre, not replace it with fat and
protein. There is plenty of
evidence, she says, that a switch
from starch to fat and protein is
“definitely not” a good thing.
The evidence suggests
she is right. In several exhaustive
reviews of the best scientific
studies we have to date, higher
fruit consumption has been
consistently linked to a lower
incidence of obesity in humans,
as well as a reduced risk of
cardiovascular disease and
even certain types of cancer.
Perhaps more pertinently, if you
or I were put on a leaf-only diet we
would need to eat more than
300 cups of chopped, raw lettuce
a day. That wouldn’t be pretty. We
would struggle to get anywhere
near enough calories to meet our
daily needs, and would quickly
succumb to nutrient deficiencies.
It seems, much like zookeepers
of the past, our close-relatedness
to monkeys means many of us,
low carb activists included, can’t
help but project their needs onto
ourselves and vice versa. But to do
so requires us to ignore one small
detail, which even I as a botanist
can confirm: Humans aren’t zoo
monkeys. Shocking, I know. ❚
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Views Your letters

Editor’s pick
Using biomass to make
fuel is a criminal waste
27 July, p 23
From Fred White,
Nottingham, UK
Michael Le Page’s article barely
scratches the surface of the
problems with biofuel policy.
Solar energy conversion involving
wheat is around 0.06 per cent
efficient. That is 1/250th the
efficiency of the solar cells that we
now see covering agricultural land.
This idea takes no account of the
energy cost of planting, cultivation,
fertilisers, pest and disease control,
harvesting, processing and
distribution of biofuel. Cover roofs
in solar cells and leave the good
earth for food and nature reserves.

From Maarten van der Burgt,

Akersloot, the Netherlands
Having worked for many years in
the biomass field, I was delighted
to read Le Page’s article. Using
biomass to produce power or fuel,
when it has much more important
uses, should be a crime.
Politicians seem to believe that
because biomass is mostly green
it fits into a green future. Of course,
it is our only source of renewable
carbon. But the waste from sugar,
paper and wood processing is more
than sufficient to supply carbon-
based feedstock for the chemical
and plastics industry as well as for
some very special fuels.
Are ‘septic foci’ returning
to haunt and hurt us?
10 August, p 42
From Hazel Russman,
London, UK
Debora MacKenzie reports work
suggesting that the gum disease
bacterium Porphyromonas
gingivalis is behind a range
of diseases.
When I was growing up in the
1950s, many believed that decayed
teeth served as “septic foci”,
spreading disease throughout
the body. I remember several
advertisements for toothpastes
and mouthwashes that played on
this fear. Dentists usually removed
decaying teeth as a precautionary
measure instead of trying to
conserve them.
Then it was declared that bad
teeth were just bad teeth and
there was no such thing as a
septic focus. The idea dwindled
into pseudoscience. Is it back?
I was a climate change
denier but I got better
Letters, 13 July
From Bruce Denness,
Whitwell, Isle of Wight, UK
Lucia Singer refers to her teenage
concerns about global warming in
the 1980s and the existence even
then of deniers, who nowadays
attribute the undeniable warming
to natural fluctuations.
Sadly, I was at the time one of
those instinctive deniers. Being
professor of ocean engineering at
Newcastle University and a reader
of voluminous reports on deep-
sea drilling projects that referred
to past climate variability, instead
of just ignorantly sniping from the
bushes, I set about trying to prove
my point. This is how I failed.
Among those reports, one
interpreted global temperature
changes over the past 7 million
years from cores taken from the
Atlantic seabed. A diagram in it
seemed to show a sinusoidal
variation with a period of
4.8 million years, and variations
with successively smaller
amplitudes and periods of 2.4 and
1.2 million years. I was hooked.
I discovered hundreds of
references to proxy-temperature
variations, ranging from billions
of years down to the most recent
hundred or so years. All showed
the same summation of
sinusoidal curves with halving
period and reducing amplitude.
I built a simple model based on
those sinusoidal curves (see bit.ly/
Denness). Then I compared it with
the temperatures measured since
instruments were available.
This showed global temperature
consistently increasing above the
model’s forecast. I could explain
the difference only by adding
human-made heating – of about
3°C for every doubling of carbon
dioxide equivalent. I ate humble
pie in 1984 and have remained a
convert ever since.
In 2009, after several years of
global cooling, my model forecast
the precise scale of warming in
the middle of this decade – and
the pause in warming since.
It forecasts this to continue until
about 2030 with accelerating and
unstoppable temperature rise
after that. I would be delighted
to have my model proved wrong.
I don’t want to fry.
Looking on the bright side
of a large seaweed patch
13 July, p 17
From Paul Whiteley,
Bittaford, Devon, UK
You report the detection by
satellites of a giant seaweed patch
stretching from West Africa to
the Gulf of Mexico. This should
be seen as good news. It is taking
up nutrients and fertiliser run-off
from the land and turning them,
with minerals that are dissolved
in seawater, into the best compost
and soil conditioner I know of.
Farmers in Malta and elsewhere
have collected seaweed for
centuries in order to create new
soil and replenish the old. Farming
practices throughout the world
tend to result in increased erosion
and loss of soil quality. There
should be ships gathering up
this bounty to replace the tired,
mineral-deficient soils being
washed into the sea.

26 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019


Not everyone depends
on thinking in language
Letters, 20 July
From Martin Greenwood,
Stirling, Western Australia
David Werdegar asserts we have
an “absolute dependency on the
signs and symbols of language”.
That is questionable: not
everybody thinks in the same way.
Composers clearly think in
musical terms that are sometimes
difficult if not impossible to
verbalise. Roger Penrose, in his
1989 book The Emperor’s New
Mind, uses his own experience,
and that of other distinguished
scientists, to argue that much
scientific and mathematical
thought is non-verbal.
More on mapping time
and language to space
Letters, 27 July
From Derek Bolton, Birchgrove,
New South Wales, Australia
Phil Ball suggests that Mandarin
speakers think of the future as
down because it matches their
direction of writing. Even if such
a correlation is found across all
writing systems, it could equally
be that the mapping of time to
space came first.
Spatial mappings can arise
where there is no writing. The
Yupno of Papua New Guinea
conceive the future as uphill, while
for the Aymara of the Andes it is
behind one, with the past in front,
perhaps on the basis that the past
is known, the future unknown
(2 June 2012, p 14).
The far right recycles
its ideas efficiently
17 August, p 24
From Anthony Wilkins,
Ripponden, West Yorkshire, UK
I enjoyed Graham Lawton’s
article on the exploitation of
environmental language by the far
right. I take exception, though, to
the idea that this has only recently
emerged. Far-right politicians
have often linked notions of
nationhood and the environment.
This was particularly evident
in the 1930s, when some Nazis in
Germany used the idea of a Volk
embedded within an environment
supposedly peculiar to a particular
race. So this is another example of
the ability of the far right to do its
own dispiriting sort of recycling.
I see downsides of drawing
water from the desert air
3 August, p 38
From Sam Edge,
Ringwood, Hampshire, UK
Attempts to draw water from the
air, and especially the use of metal
organic frameworks with their
non-intuitive properties, are
interesting. But what is going to
happen to flora, fauna and down-
wind weather patterns if large
amounts of moisture are pulled
from the atmosphere in already
arid environments?
Please get in touch if you
were on the Maths Bus
3 September 1994, p 6
From Lawrence Sithole,
Soweto, South Africa
Sue Armstrong reported nearly
a quarter of a century ago on
the Maths Bus that toured South
Africa. Some of your readers
were attracted to this educational
project and volunteered on and
supported the bus. I ask them to
get in touch through New Scientist.
Some obstacles to building
better hearing aids
Letters, 27 July
From John Woodgate,
Rayleigh, Essex, UK
Alan Gordon suggests hearing aids
should replicate the directionality
given by the shape of the ear. Most
manufacturers use test equipment
called a Head and Torso Simulator.
This can be fitted with external
ears to test the idea. It ought to
Want to get in touch?
Send letters to New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street, London
WC2E 9ES or letters@newscientist.com; see terms at
newscientist.com/letters
work. I haven’t yet tried it myself,
but I might be able to in the
near future.
My guess is that it doesn’t
work very well. If it does work, it
isn’t easy to see how to make its
appearance acceptable, especially
as hearing-aid manufacturers
try to convince people that the
aids should be as near to invisible
as possible. This is despite it
increasing costs and
compromising performance.
By the way, I’m nearly 82 and
am still able to work on things
to help people hear.
We are halfway to a carbon
sequestration solution
Letters, 3 August
From Barry Cash,
Bristol, UK
Butch Dalrymple Smith says
we should plant trees and make
things out of wood to sequester
carbon. We are already doing half
the job by farming trees to make
paper and chipboard. When we
have finished with them we
recycle or destroy them.
Why not preserve the paper
and chipboard as a way of storing
carbon? We would need to package
it to prevent decomposition. How
about baling the paper and then
coating it in plastic? We have lots
of waste plastic to recycle for that.
Slime, slime, glorious
healing slug slime
15 June, p 19
From Theo Rances,
London, UK
Leah Crane reports work on using
salamander mucus to help heal
wounds. This reminded me of the
time my father gashed himself
while working on a motorbike
engine. As someone whose
pharmacy training was
interrupted by a spell as ground
crew in the air force, he knew a
remedy used in the 1920s, and
dispatched me to find a large slug.
This he squeezed to make it exude
the slime that he found to be
healing for the wound.
I have never found the need to
repeat this treatment on myself.
I am surprised that Harvard
Medical School has discovered
the same phenomenon in
Chinese salamanders.
A surprising part of Gaia’s
self-correcting strategy
10 August, p 13
From John Entwisle,
Leatherhead, Surrey, UK
After reading your recent
article on the Gaia hypothesis,
I wondered whether anyone
had considered that the human
species may be a solution to one
of the biggest threats facing Gaia.
It seems that humans have just
the right amounts of aggression
and intelligence to create things
that could alter the trajectory of an
incoming asteroid that is capable
of causing a mass extinction.
The last one of these was quite
bad and the next could be worse. It
would be a risky strategy on Gaia’s
part, but if the species also enables
life to be established on a second
planet that would improve the
long-term odds of life’s survival.
Such a cool word
deserves to be used
13 July, p 15
From Rick McRae,
Canberra, Australia
Chelsea Whyte writes of moons
ejected from their orbits around
exoplanets, called “ploonets”.
She mentions the slow drift
in our moon’s orbit and the
possibility that this might be
its fate. Would this make it a
“protoploonet”? That is such
a cool word that it deserves
to be used.
For the record
❚ The common name of Protonibea
diacanthus is the blackspotted
croaker (1 October 2016, p 16).
31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 27
Views Aperture

28 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019

Channel vision

Photo European Space Agency

THIS is a picture of division,

but also connection. Hundreds
of radar images taken by the
European Space Agency’s twin
Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites
from 2016 to 2018 have been
combined to give this view of
the English Channel.
Water deflects the radar pulses,
rendering the sea wine-dark.
Metallic objects, by contrast,
ping the pulses back strongly.
Most obviously, that reveals ships
as bright dots (though wind farms,
a recent addition to the seascape
off the UK, are evident, too).
Two lines of dots proceed
ant-like in their designated lanes.
The lower consists of ships bound
for ports such as Rotterdam in the
Netherlands, Antwerp in Belgium,
Hamburg in Germany and
Felixstowe in the UK; the upper
of ships travelling west to the
Atlantic. This was the first such
maritime “traffic separation
scheme”, introduced to reduce the
potential for accidents in 1967.
Bright dots of vessels queueing
to enter the ports of Southampton
in the UK and Le Havre in France
are also visible to the left of the
image, as is the pinch point of the
Dover Strait between Britain and
France, top right. Here the Channel
narrows to 33 kilometres, and the
container traffic conflicts with one
of the world’s busiest international
ferry routes: Dover to Calais.
The Channel has long been
the UK’s bulwark, reinforcing
a self-image of otherness,
independence and indomitability
most recently reflected in the
country’s 2016 vote to leave the
European Union. How leaving will
change the established patterns of
international trade visible in this
picture is anyone’s guess. But what
is clear is that in today’s world no
country is truly an island. ❚

Richard Webb

31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 29

Views Culture

The selling of happiness

Fuelled by government and corporate dollars, being happy has become near
mandatory. Douglas Heaven lifts the lid on an industry worth billions

Book
Manufacturing Happy
Citizens: How the science
and industry of happiness
control our lives
Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz
Polity

THEY say money can’t buy

happiness. But that doesn’t stop
people from selling it. Day passes
to Goop’s wellness summit in
London in June cost £1000, with
weekend tickets (two nights in a
hotel, a VIP Sunday workout and
Goop-favourite meals) going for
an eye-watering £4500.
IRA BERGER/ALAMY

From mindfulness to detox

to the nine crystals you should
keep on your desk, actor Gwyneth
Paltrow’s multi-million dollar
business has it covered. There
are so many ways you can pay
to feel better about yourself.
I closed Goop’s website soon
after learning about shock-wave
therapy for my penis.
Happiness has become a
commodity that needs to be
topped up as often as possible.
What do we want? To be happy.
When do we want it? Now.
At some point, our happiness
became other people’s business.
“Most of what we do on behalf
of our happiness… is first and
foremost favourable and
beneficial to those who claim
to hold its truths,” write Edgar
Cabanas and Eva Illouz in the
excellent Manufacturing
Happy Citizens.
Educational psychologist
Cabanas and sociologist Illouz
explain how happiness became
not only a commodity, but also
one that society has decided it is
our civic duty to pursue. Happy
people are better citizens. The
book is a clear-sighted critique
of capitalism’s current obsession
with happiness and of the shaky
science allowing a well-meaning
ideal to be so easily subverted by
governments and companies.
It is surprising that happiness
(at least, as we know it today) has
an origin story. In this tale, the
prime mover is Martin Seligman,
a behaviourist and cognitive
“In his paper, Seligman
wrote that positive
psychology called to
him just as the burning
bush called Moses”
scientist. In 1998, he was elected
president of the American
Psychological Association, the
largest professional body for
psychologists in the US. He had
come to believe that psychology
was too negative, focusing on
pathologies, not betterment.
Seligman wanted to make
happiness the focus: what was
it and how could we achieve it?
It was a real calling. In his joint
2000 paper “Positive Psychology:
An introduction”, published in
American Psychologist, Seligman
wrote that “Positive psychology
called to me just as the burning
bush called Moses.” But according
to Cabanas and Illouz, “as is often
the case with revelations, the
picture of positive psychology
presented in the inaugural
manifesto was vague”. They say
that Seligman cherry-picked ideas
from a grab bag of disciplines
he felt said something about
the human condition, including
evolutionary biology, psychology,
neuroscience and philosophy.
Seligman was clear about one
thing, however: happiness studies
shouldn’t be part of psychology
but a new field.
The authors argue that it wasn’t
entirely new: positive psychology
sounded a lot like the self-esteem
movements of the 1980s and 90s,
the humanist psychology of the
1950s and 60s, and the think-
yourself-well and mind cures
promoted by the likes of Christian
The impact of happiness
research has been huge –
just not on science
Science at least 150 years earlier.
The enterprise might have
fallen flat if the money hadn’t
poured in. Cabanas and Illouz
quote Seligman saying that
“grey-hair, grey-suited lawyers”
from “anonymous foundations”
that only picked “winners”
would call him for meetings
in fancy buildings in New
York to ask what positive
psychology was and request
“ten-minute explanations”
and “three-pager” proposals.
Within two years of his paper,
the field had attracted some
$37 million. The John Templeton
Foundation gave Seligman
$2.2 million to set up the
Positive Psychology Center at
the University of Pennsylvania.
The 2002 preface to the Handbook
of Positive Psychology, which
declared the field’s independence,
was written by Templeton himself,

30 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019

 Don’t miss

Driving forces
Nothing can be taken for granted in an
autonomous future, finds Simon Ings

apparently “thrilled by the decides whether to leave a Watch

project, given his interest in smaller distance to the bicycle Open City
how individuals can control Exhibition on its left to reduce the chance Documentary Festival,
their minds to master their Driverless: of hitting a truck on its right. in London from 4 to
circumstances and shape the Who is in control? What if that causes more 10 September, presents
world”, write Cabanas and Illouz. Science Museum, London cyclists, but fewer passengers, Expanded Realities,
The message spread via Until October 2020 to die every year? Such an exhibition and
meetings, symposiums, textbooks questions aren’t new. But symposium about how
and journals, aided by a receptive DURHAM Cathedral’s stained they are having to be asked digital technology is
press. In its grand promises, there glass windows inspired artist again and in a different and changing and enriching
was something for everyone. Still Dominic Wilcox’s contribution disconcerting form as we move non-fiction film.
more bodies paid for scholarships to Driverless, a tiny but more safety systems off the
and prizes. The US National thought-provoking exhibition roads and into vehicles.
Institute on Aging and what is at London’s Science Museum. On show is the Massachusetts
now called the National Center It occurred to Wilcox that Institute of Technology’s “Moral
for Complementary and artificial intelligence could make Machine”, a website using more
Integrative Health both funded traffic collisions a thing of the than 40 million participants’
research. Companies such as past, which means “we don’t decisions on what to do in
Coca-Cola invested, hoping to need the protection systems certain situations to inform our
find ways to reduce employee that are built into contemporary autonomous machinery design.
stress and promote productivity. cars”, he told design magazine The findings can be unsettling: Visit
One of the largest grants now Dezeen. “We can just have a would-be designers are more Ars Electronica, since
comes from the US Army through shell of any design.” likely to sacrifice your safety if 1979 the big beast of
its $145 million Comprehensive His Stained Glass Driverless you are fat, a criminal or a dog. the European science-art
Soldier Fitness project, run closely Sleeper Car of the Future This is a show as much about scene, is contemplating
with Seligman and his centre. (pictured below) is the sort of possible futures as it is about the the digital revolution
Is there anything in all this? vehicle we may be driving when present. Interviews, archival in middle age. Artists,
Here, Cabanas and Illouz are road safety has improved to footage, models and some scientists and tech
careful. It is hard to take down the point where we can build interactive displays create a pioneers of the past four
a hugely successful area that has cars out of whatever we want. series of provocations, more decades will be gathered
globally reinvigorated psychology It suggests a future in which than a fully fledged exhibition. in Linz, Austria, from
departments. Still, there are many safety is no longer a set of I especially liked the look 5 to 9 September.
critics who attack everything from barriers, cages, buffers and of the MIT Senseable City Lab
its theoretical simplifications to lights, and is instead a dance and the AMS Institute’s
its methodological shortcomings. of algorithms. Rather than “Roboats”, currently on trial on
The authors write: “The field is measuring out a bike lane, say, Amsterdam’s canals. These
characterized by its popularity we will have an algorithm that autonomous floating platforms
as much as its intellectual deficits form spontaneous bridges and
and scientific underachievement.” event platforms and can
TOP: FOREST, KELSEY BONCATO, DANIEL OLDHAM. 2019, MIDDLE: OMAI USA

Though its scientific impact transport goods and people.

is questionable, elsewhere the The exhibition spends
impact of positive psychology much of its time off-road, Read
has been huge. It has reshaped investigating drone swarms and The Nature of Life and
© THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE SCIENCE MUSEUM

attitudes towards happiness, privacy, flocking behaviour and Death (Putnam) by

changing how firms think about mine clearance, ocean mapping forensic ecologist Patricia
staff, governments view citizens and planetary surveillance. Wiltshire blends science
and how we think about ourselves. Don’t let its size put you and true-crime reporting.
It feeds a billion-dollar wellness off: this little show is full of It reveals the microscopic
industry. At least some people big surprises. ❚ traces we leave behind
have something to smile about. ❚ us, and how these are
An autonomous racing drone used to reconstruct our
Douglas Heaven is a consultant for and a car made of glass: which most desperate acts.
New Scientist future would you pick?

31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 31

Views Culture
The science fiction column

A surfeit of snake oil Ordinary lives hang in the balance when self-appointed
industry disrupters roll into town. Let’s hear it for novelists who puncture and poke
fun at a business culture disconnected from its people, says Helen Marshall

Life in a one-horse town

teaches you there is no
such thing as a free lunch

ultracapitalism with folksy charm,

creates The Cloud. In the wake of
climate change and a ravaged
economy, The Cloud has become
the only game in town: a vast
Helen Marshall is an editor, system of warehouses supporting
award-winning writer a mini-ecosystem with its own
and senior lecturer at the living spaces, restaurants, social
University of Queensland, ratings and credit system. Think
Australia. Follow her on Amazon, but on steroids.
DAVID ALAN HARVEY/MAGNUM

Twitter @manuscriptgal Paxton, a former entrepreneur

THE pulp novels of the 1950s are
best remembered for their sense
Books of wonder. This is exactly the
The Return of feeling that billionaire tech funder
the Incredible Stanislaw Clayton tries to create
Exploding Man in The Return of the Incredible
Dave Hutchinson Exploding Man, the latest novel
REBCA by Dave Hutchinson, author
of the deservedly praised
The Warehouse Fractured Europe series.
Rob Hart The 1950s were also a golden
Bantam Press age for social satire: for Pohl and
Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants,
Helen also and Vonnegut’s Player Piano.
recommends... Hutchinson’s new book is, in
truth, more this sort of science
Books fiction. It bites.
The Silver Wind The novel follows down-and-
Nina Allan out journalist Alex Dolan as
Titan Books he agrees to write a book
A haunting collection of documenting the history of
uncanny time-travel stories. Clayton’s latest project: the Sioux
Crossing Supercollider. What
World Engines: Clayton has in mind is a PR
Destroyer exercise designed to build support
Stephen Baxter for his struggling project. He gets
Gollancz a lot more than he bargained for.
Follow a strange object on The bulk of the novel is a
its 500-year orbit of Earth. slow-burn account of Dolan’s
investigation into the mysteries
surrounding the project, part le
Carré spycraft, part Crichtonesque
scientific thriller. There is
something of Stephen King, too,
in the book’s close focus on the
inhabitants of Sioux Crossing,
ordinary folk transformed by
Clayton’s regeneration of their
town. For better or worse, they
need him to succeed. If the project
fails, it will take the town with it.
In the finale, we might expect
this book to live up to its pulpy
“The Cloud has become
the only game in
town: a vast system of
warehouses sustaining
a mini-ecosystem”
title, but by now Hutchinson has
become more interested in the
politics than in the science. Some
readers might feel deflated, but
Hutchinson’s point is well made:
that we ought to be suspicious
of technocrats bearing gifts.
The Warehouse by Rob Hart is
similarly interested in the effects
of a billionaire’s ambitions on
everyday people. In it, Gibson
Wells, an American entrepreneur
peddling a dangerous brand of
whose company failed after The
Cloud undercut his business, has
found work as a security officer,
charged with stopping the flow
of illegal drugs into The Cloud’s
compound. Zinnia is ostensibly
a picker, one of the redshirts
running a daily marathon to locate
cheap goods for drone delivery to
the outside world. But she isn’t all
she seems. A competing company
has offered her a life-changing
sum of money if she can ferret
out The Cloud’s secrets.
The Warehouse depicts a
world of systemic abuse, petty
corruption and a callous disregard
for the things we need to be
properly human. But while Hart
spends a decent amount of time
exploring Wells’s justification for
The Cloud, Paxton’s complicity is
the main point: will he buy into a
system he knows is fundamentally
broken or will he risk his relative
comfort to tear it down?
Ultimately, is The Warehouse
a novel that puts the capstone
on post-industrial capitalism?
Not really. Rather than trusting
his own story, Hart relies on
references to Orwell, Atwood,
Bradbury and Le Guin to
explain his ethical stance. The
result is an entertaining, almost
cinematic read, but one that is
content to let others do the
intellectual heavy lifting. ❚

32 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019

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Features Cover story

Back story
Chronic back pain is on the rise,
and the most common treatments
may be making matters worse,
finds Helen Thomson

34 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019

 A
“ RGHH.” The first time it happens
it takes you by surprise. Was that me?
Then it happens again, and again.
You give a tiny groan every time you get off the
sofa. You hold the bottom of your spine and
stretch, wondering if you should see a doctor.
Surely you are too young to have a bad back?
That tends to be the start for a lot of us.
Backache is an extraordinarily common
burden, with one in four adults experiencing
it right now, and 90 per cent of people having
back pain at least once in their life. Last year,
a series of papers in The Lancet revealed the
extent of the problem: back pain is a leading
cause of disability around the world. In the US
alone it costs an eye-watering $635 billion a
year in medical bills and loss of productivity.
Much of the blame has fallen on our
increasingly desk-bound lifestyles and
growing lifespans, which mean more years
of wear and tear on our spines. But these
factors only partly explain how we got here
and what makes some people more vulnerable
or resilient. The World Health Organization
expects back pain problems to steadily rise
in the years ahead and to affect more people
around the globe. That makes it especially
worrying that the people who are trying to
help are making the problem worse.
The good news is we already have the
knowledge to improve things – if we finally
apply it. At the same time, new understanding
of how and why our brains create the
experience of pain is changing the way
we think about those crippling aches and
pointing to some surprising solutions.
To understand the solutions, we must
first travel back 7 million years, to when our
ancestors caused the problem. In exchange
for walking upright, we got back pain. At least,
that is the hypothesis posited by Kimberly
Plomp at the University of Liverpool, UK,
and her colleagues.
To find out why humans experience more
spinal disease than non-human primates,
Plomp’s team studied the shape of human,
chimpanzee and orangutan vertebrae, the
ANDREA UCINI
bones that make up your spine. They were
looking for small bulges called Schmorl’s
nodes that can occur in the soft tissues
between vertebrae and are linked to back
pain. People who had these nodes had
vertebrae that were more similar in shape
to those of chimpanzees. “We started to walk
on two feet relatively quickly in evolutionary
terms,” says Plomp. “Perhaps some individuals
with vertebrae that are more on the ancestral
end of normal human variation are less well
adapted to withstanding the pressures placed
on the bipedal spine.” This ancestral vertebral
shape then plagued us throughout our history
because it didn’t affect our ability to reproduce,
so evolution didn’t select against it.
“People say they
can tell you
what is wrong
from a scan.
They can’t. It’s
not possible”
Yet despite its long evolutionary history,
it is only in the past few decades that we have
started to see an epidemic of chronic back
pain (see graph, page 36). What changed?
There is evidence that the rise of office
culture plays a part. Several studies have found
a link between spending more time sitting on
the job and increased reports of lower back
pain. Slumping in front of computer screens
puts pressure on the muscles, ligaments and
discs that support the spine and can deactivate
muscles that promote good posture.
Of course, backache can also be caused
by accidents, sports injuries or a congenital
disorder, but it is lifestyle factors such as
obesity and smoking that are the real problem,
says Rachelle Buchbinder at Monash
University in Victoria, Australia, one author
of The Lancet series.
Smoking probably puts people at higher risk
of lower back pain because it is associated with
a clogging of the arteries, which can damage
the blood vessels that supply the spine, leading
to muscle and bone degeneration. Being
overweight amplifies the mechanical strain on
the back and decreases mobility, predisposing
people to deterioration of discs in the spine.
Obesity can also increase the production of
inflammatory chemicals associated with pain.
Unfortunately, identifying which of these
problems has led to your own back pain is
incredibly difficult. According to one study
in the US, nearly a quarter of all primary care
appointments for adults are for back pain.
Less than 1 per cent of people who seek help
will have something seriously wrong, such as
an infection, inflammatory arthritis, cancer
or a fracture, says Buchbinder. These people
will usually have other red flags, such as fever,
rapid weight loss or problems going to the
toilet. Everyone else falls under the category
of “non-specific back pain”, which usually
improves in a matter of days or weeks.
Yet many people and their doctors pursue
MRI scans in the belief that they will provide
an accurate diagnosis, and therefore quicker
recovery. The trouble is, “by the time we’re
50, many of us will have abnormalities in our
spine: degeneration of the discs, bulging, a
little arthritis in the joints”, says Buchbinder.
“Some of these may cause pain in some people
but not others. There are lots of people that
say that they can tell you what is wrong from
a scan, but they can’t. It’s just not possible.”
Getting a scan may not only be a waste of
time and money, says Buchbinder, but it can
actually worsen your back pain. Once you start
to look for abnormalities, you will find them.
Once that happens, doctors are more likely
to prescribe painkillers, steroid injections or
surgery, which may be unnecessary, ineffective
and sometimes harmful.
In 2003, Jeffrey Jarvik at the University
of Washington in Seattle and his colleagues
randomly assigned 380 people with lower >
31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 35
 back pain to have an X-ray, which can identify
things like fractures, or an MRI scan, which is
used to look at soft tissues. A year later, there
was no difference in their health outcomes,
but those who had an MRI were more likely to
have had surgery, exposing them to the risk
of infection and other complications. “The
potential for harm has been shown in many
studies,” says Buchbinder.
In countries like the UK, where doctors are
advised against offering surgery for back pain,
people are often offered anti-inflammatory
steroid injections, but these have been shown
to be no more effective than placebo. They can
also cause increased appetite, mood changes
and difficulty sleeping.
Moreover, many doctors, particularly in
the US, prescribe stronger painkillers than
are necessary, says Buchbinder, fuelling
the opioid crisis that has decreased life
expectancy in the US. Backache is the number
one reason for prescribing opioids, says
Tamar Pincus, a health psychologist at Royal
Holloway, University of London, despite
several studies showing that safer treatments,
such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatories,
may offer similar relief.
Not all back pain is bad. The initial pain we
get from an injury alerts us to a problem and
protects us from further damage. This
mechanism can be critical to our survival. But
chronic pain that lasts weeks, months or years
after an injury has healed serves no useful
purpose and can seriously harm our health.
Most people assume that pain must always
have a physical cause – an injured muscle or
Growing pains
Disability related to lower back pain has increased dramatically around the world in the past few decades
1990
Disability-adjusted life years (millions)*
“Low mood and
pain-related
guilt increase
the risk of pain
becoming
chronic”
squashed disc, perhaps. Yet often there is no
identifiable mechanical explanation. That is
why many specialists instead focus on how and
why we perceive pain. Fundamental to this idea
is our understanding that pain is generated by
the brain. Although we have cells in our body
that send messages to the brain to alert us to
potentially damaging stimuli, like heat, or a
sharp object pressing against the skin, it isn’t
necessary to stimulate these cells to feel pain,
nor is their activity always directly related to
our experience of discomfort.
Irene Tracey, a clinical neuroscientist at the
University of Oxford, was fundamental in
uncovering these nuances. In the 1990s, her
2015
team showed that anticipation of pain made
networks in the brain light up with activity, and
that different aspects of our experience – the
intensity of pain or anxiety caused by it – are
controlled by separate brain circuits.
All of these circuits can be triggered or
suppressed. For instance, people who are
depressed show greater activity in pain areas,
but this can be subdued by listening to music
or watching a gripping film. One experiment
even showed that religious faith could have
analgesic properties in the brain. When devout
Catholics were shown pictures of the Virgin
Mary while given a sharp pain, they rated their
pain lower than atheists shown the same
image. When both groups were shown a non-
religious painting, their pain rating didn’t
differ. Scans showed that the religious
iconography triggered a brain area in the
Catholic group called the right ventrolateral
prefrontal cortex, which inhibits pain circuits.
With chronic back pain, understanding how
the experience of pain can be manipulated by
the mind is important to figuring out why it
sticks around after an injury has healed – and
what we can do to prevent this. Pincus points
out, for instance, that low mood and pain-
related guilt increase the risk of pain becoming
chronic. “People start to feel guilty for
dropping out of activities,” she says. “They
then worry that people are going to judge them
for that, so they don’t accept the activities in
the first place.”
After several bouts of back pain, people
also start to process the world differently, says
Pincus. Their pain becomes embedded within
their “self-schema”: the things they associate
with themselves. If they are shown an image
of a staircase, for instance, their first thought
is, “I can’t climb it”.
“After a while, you see and feel things
coated with pain,” says Pincus. “You no longer

6 need the injury to feel pain. And you might

experience more intense pain, purely because
5 you’re expecting it.”
So between our brain and the rest of our
4 body, what can we do to avoid or diminish
chronic back pain? First, you may want to
3
rethink your back belt, shoe insoles and any
other ergonomic products, since there is
2
almost no evidence that they are effective.
Once they are out of the way, it is time to
SOURCE: IHME

1
get up and go. Despite doctors all over the
0 world still prescribing bed rest, it is one of
the worst things you can do. When young
9

+
5-

-1

-1

-2

-2

-3

-3

-4

-4

-5

-5

-6

-6

-7

-7

80

healthy male volunteers spent eight weeks

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

65

70

75

Age group in bed, their  lumbar multifidus muscles,

*A disability-adjusted life year is the equivalent of one lost year of “healthy life”, according to the WHO which keep our lower vertebrae in place,
had wasted and become inactive. Some of

36 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019


SHAWN PATRICK OUELLETTE/PORTLAND PRESS HERALD VIA GETTY
the volunteers’ muscles had still not recovered
six months later.
“Many low-back-pain patients have a strong
fear of moving,” says Luana Colloca, a pain
specialist at the University of Maryland School
of Nursing. Yet exercise can make all the
difference. A study published in June found
that exercises designed to strengthen the lower
back help ease pain, and just walking regularly
helps too. “We need to remove this fear and
persuade ourselves to exercise,” says Colloca.
Small changes in how we work can also help.
People with chronic back pain who used a
standing work station for three months saw a
significant decrease in the worst pain they felt,
and their general pain at the end of the study.
If chronic back pain is already plaguing you,
give some thought to your mind. “It’s no good
asking someone to stop thinking about their
pain,” says Pincus. “It’s like telling someone not
to think of a white elephant.” Instead we should
concentrate on reframing the world so that the
things you like doing don’t lead your thoughts
back to pain. For instance, Pincus herself
People who
switch to
standing desks
say they feel
less back pain
experiences chronic pain after a knee injury,
but says that when it hurts when she is out
with her children, she feels happy, rather than
sad. “I feel fantastic. I think: ‘You’re an amazing
mum because you’re out walking with your
kids.’ How we think about our pain may not
affect the pain intensity, but it does affect the
ability of that pain to infiltrate our daily lives,
which creates that negative cycle that can
destroy our lives.”
Back me up
Clinicians also need to do their bit, says Pincus.
When we are injured, our friends say: “Ooh,
that must hurt.” They acknowledge our pain.
Doctors often forget to do so, and that matters.
In one study, 50 people were asked to hold a
bucket of sand with a straight arm for as long
as they could, while listening to a distressing
sound. It is a surprisingly painful task.
Immediately after, they were asked to perform
tests in which they had to recall lists of words.
They then chatted to an examiner who either
validated or invalidated their pain, before
recalling as many words from the original
tests as possible.
Most participants told the examiner that
they found the task difficult, that it hurt their
arm and that they were disappointed that they
couldn’t hold the bucket for longer. In the
validation group, the experimenter replied:
“That’s a really common response, many
people feel surprised over the level of pain that
the task brings about. When something looks
easier than it is, it’s often hard to live up to
one’s own expectation.” In the other group,
the experimenter would say: “That’s strange.
Nobody else described their experience this
way. No wonder you’re disappointed.”
People whose painful experience was
dismissed remembered fewer words on
average and three times as many words that
weren’t there, compared with the group whose
pain had been acknowledged. “Until you get
validation of your pain, your brain’s resources
are completely swept up with how to
communicate your suffering,” says Pincus.
“Doctors need to acknowledge this. If patients
are able to be heard, they can understand.”
The best way to prevent long-term disability
from back pain is to ditch the drugs and
promote wider international adoption of a
mix of increasing physical activity plus mental
retraining, suggest Buchbinder and her
colleagues. There is reason to hope that plan
will work. In the Australian state of Victoria,
workers’ compensation claims for back pain
tripled in the early 1990s. Then in 1997, a state-
wide public health campaign encouraged
people to avoid bed rest and unnecessary
scans. It also gave them tips on how to think
about pain and its impact on their life. By the
time the campaign was over, there was a
significant drop in the number of claims for
compensation for back pain, compared with
a nearby state, which saw no change.
When you are in pain, the last thing you
expect to be told is that you should stay away
from the doctor and get back to work. For
backache, that may truly be the best advice,
says Buchbinder. Perhaps we need to start
thinking about bouts of back pain the way
we think about other common ailments, says
Pincus. “Nobody expects to get through life
without a cold,” she says, “and they don’t visit
the doctor when they do.” ❚
Helen Thomson is the author of
Unthinkable: An extraordinary
journey through the world’s
strangest brains
31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 37
Features
Arctic
rescue
squad
If we want to save the
Arctic, we might have to
intervene directly. Rowan
Hooper investigates three
ambitious projects to
bring back the ice
38 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019
T
HE Arctic is in a death spiral. The top
of our world is heating up faster than
anywhere else on the planet, setting
new records for the speed and area of ice melt.
We are on track this year to have one of the
lowest summer sea ice coverages so far. It is a
huge problem, because what happens in the
Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.
What’s more, the Greenland ice sheet, which
alone contains enough water to raise global sea
levels by 6 metres, is disappearing. The frozen
Arctic soil and sediment, or permafrost, is
melting, releasing more and more carbon
dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.
This year, vast wildfires in the peatlands of
Siberia have blazed for more than a month,
and the Arctic warming is playing havoc with
weather systems in the northern hemisphere
too. But if you prefer to think simply in terms
of money, the economic impact of unmitigated
Arctic warming by the end of this century was
recently estimated to be $67 trillion. As US
congressman Jerry McNerney says: “When it
comes to the Arctic, we’re in deep shit.”
You’ve heard the slogans: we are living in a
time of climate emergency. But it is no good
declaring an emergency without summoning
help. So here it is: let’s refreeze the Arctic. There
are several imaginative ideas to manipulate its
climate system to get the ice back. They won’t
be cheap or easy, but some researchers argue
that the crisis in the north is too serious not to
at least investigate ways to engineer the return
of the ice.
Climate intervention in the Arctic might be
more necessary than it first appears because
the region’s death spiral is a feedback loop.
As the shiny ice melts, models and satellite
images suggest we could get a sea ice-free
summer any year now. When the ocean is
exposed, instead of reflecting sunlight, the
dark water absorbs more of the sun’s heat. Over
the past 30 years, this change corresponds to a
warming equivalent to a quarter of all the
carbon dioxide released by human activity
during that time. The warming is weakening
the polar jet stream – the fast-flowing, high-
altitude air current – in the northern

hemisphere, resulting in more“blocked”
weather patterns, and corresponding
droughts, floods and heatwaves.
The global risks are huge. “Allowing the
Arctic to change in unrecoverable ways poses
an enormous safety risk to communities
around the world and could move the climate
system beyond our ability to recover,” says
Kelly Wanser, director of SilverLining, a
geoengineering NGO based in Washington DC.
Of course, we could have prevented the
Arctic from warming as much as it has if we
had cut global greenhouse gas emissions
when scientists first started advising us to
do so, decades ago. But we didn’t, and nor
are we now. “It’s a pious hope and anyway it
would take a while,” says Peter Wadhams,
head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at
the University of Cambridge.
This is why a growing number of scientists
argue that, if we want to save the Arctic, we
need to intervene directly by manipulating its
climate system. There are three main proposals
for doing this: increasing the extent of sea ice;
In 40 years, about 2.4 million
square kilometres of Arctic
sea ice has disappeared
artificially brightening the surface of the ice to
reflect more sunlight; and cooling the Arctic air
by brightening the clouds to deflect sunlight.
All three ideas are forms of geoengineering:
intervention in the environment on a scale big
enough to counteract climate change. The
concept bothers many scientists because they
fear that the idea of a technological fix will
undermine efforts to cut carbon dioxide
emissions. “Well, we’re not making them
anyway,” says Cecilia Bitz, a sea ice physicist
at the University of Washington in Seattle.
“Maybe intervention would be positive,
showing that we have the capacity to improve
the environment.”
For those advocating such action, a big
concern is the methane already streaming out
of the seabed as microbes break down thawed
organic matter. “The fear is that this will grow
from being a set of methane plumes to an
outbreak,” says Wadhams. “So we need to bring
back the ice around the coastal seas, and that
might save us from a catastrophic methane
burst.” As well as this methane trapped under
CHRISTOPHER MICHEL
the sea, an estimated 1 trillion tonnes of carbon
are in the top 3 metres of Arctic soils. If only a
small fraction of this reaches the atmosphere,
it will overwhelm any cuts in emissions we
have made. “It seems that nature offers us a
choice: instant methane from the seabed
giving us a huge immediate burst of warming,
or longer, slower warming from complex
chemical processes as terrestrial permafrost
thaws. Except that it’s not an ‘or’, it’s an ‘and’.”
“It is no good The first potential solution comes from
Steve Desch, an astrophysicist at Arizona State
declaring a University. His plan is to build windmills that
climate pump seawater onto surface ice during the
winter, where it will freeze, thickening the sea
emergency ice and extending its coverage. This method
was recently proposed to prevent the collapse
without of the Antarctic ice sheet too.
Sea ice moves around, so Desch’s idea is to
summoning locate the windmill-pumps on sea ice in the
help. So here it north of the Arctic. This would help thicken
chunks of ice that are then protected from
is: let’s refreeze melting when they move south. “While that
may seem like an impossible task, since the
the Arctic” Arctic is a very large place, we outlined a
mechanism, using simple, brute-force,
steampunk technology that is not impossible,
but enormous in scope,” he says. “It’s not like a
space mirror larger than the Earth or
something. It’s pretty simple, but just a big job.”
Desch has calculated that we would need >
31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 39
 How to be Superhuman
Rowan Hooper is speaking at New Scientist Live
about people at the peaks of human potential
newscientistlive.com

Last ice? 10 million windmills across the entire Arctic to

refreeze it, at a cost of $500 billion. That is a
About one-third of the Arctic’s summer huge sum, but just a fraction of the estimated
sea ice has disappeared over the past $67 trillion economic impact of Arctic warming
40 years. This is an area of approximately if we don’t act. Bitz has evaluated Desch’s idea
2.4 million square kilometres – roughly
in a paper currently submitted for publication.
the size of Algeria
“The physics can work,” she says. “The basic
principles make sense. To me that’s
promising.” But so far, Desch only has a
Sept 1979 prototype windmill that works in the lab.
7.1 million km2 For a true test, field trials are essential.
The second proposal for geoengineering
Sept 2018
the Arctic has had some success outside the
4.7 million km2
lab. It involves covering the ice with shiny,
white beads. The idea is that these microbeads
increase the reflectiveness, or albedo, of thin,
young ice, so protecting it from the sun. The
Algeria leading advocate is Leslie Field, an engineer at
2,382,000 km2 Stanford University in California, who also
runs Ice911 Research, a non-profit organisation
exploring methods of restoring Arctic ice,
mainly using hollow silica microspheres.
These bright, non-toxic beads are chemically
and physically similar to sand but smaller,
more like powder, with a diameter of about
65 micrometres (0.065 millimetres).
Field and her colleagues have tested the idea,
most notably on about 4200 square metres of
North Meadow Lake in Alaska. They have
shown that the microspheres increase albedo
“Arctic sea ice may be restored by around 20 per cent and slow the ice melting.
To cover 25,000 square kilometres of the Arctic
by brightening ocean with the stuff would cost about $300 million for
stratocumulus clouds” the materials alone, says Field. This represents
just 0.7 per cent of summer ice coverage at its
lowest extent on record: 3.4 million square
kilometres in 2012. Yet many questions remain,
not least whether it works on sea ice – so far it
has only been tested on frozen lakes. And what
Reflective microspheres happens to the beads when ice melts? Some
(below left) are being used to sink and are incorporated into the mud on the
preserve winter ice in North lake floor, says Field.
American lakes (right) There are, however, concerns about the
biological hazards of this approach. Bitz says
she is worried about the ecological impact of
adding millions of tonnes of silica to the Arctic.
“For me this raises a red flag,” she says.
Ken Caldeira, who researches
geoengineering at the Carnegie Institution for
Science in California, has doubts about the
workability of modifying the surface of the
ice – whether by the methods proposed by
Field or Desch – and about whether this could
be an effective tool against climate change.
“I am highly sceptical that this approach will
ALEXANDER SHOLTZ

ALEXANDER SHOLTZ

prove feasible and desirable at scales required

to be climatically substantial,” he says.
For Bitz, Wadhams and several other climate
scientists who spoke to New Scientist, the most

40 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019

promising potential intervention is one that
doesn’t involve tinkering with the ice directly.
Instead, it entails brightening the clouds over
the Arctic.
The idea dates back to the 1990s, when John
Latham, now at the University of Manchester,
UK, started thinking about ways of limiting
the greenhouse effect by reducing the amount
of sunshine reaching the planet’s surface.
Latham was fascinated by something called
the Twomey effect, which describes how the
amount of solar radiation that clouds reflect
back into space depends on the concentration
of tiny particles around which cloud droplets
form. He realised that you could increase this
concentration over oceans by seeding clouds
with tiny droplets of salt water.
Cloudbusting
Predicting warming means deciphering the role of clouds
Clouds play a vital part in controlling our
climate. Their reflection of the sun’s rays,
especially at the tropics, is essential for
cooling Earth. But we don’t know how
cloud formation will change as the planet
gets hotter. This means we don’t know
how much warmer Earth will become
for a given increase in carbon dioxide
concentration in the air.
Climate change deniers often point out
that there is too much variability in the
predictions climate models make about
warming. One reason is a lack of certainty
about so-called climate sensitivity. This is
a measure of the amount of warming that
results from a doubling of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere. In climate models, it
ranges from 2°C to 5°C.
We don’t know if our climate is
particularly sensitive – in that a doubling
of CO₂ gives a correspondingly large
increase in heating – or if it is resilient.
But Tapio Schneider, a climate scientist
at California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, says evidence from improved
recent climate models points towards
the planet being more sensitive than we
thought, which means we should be very
worried. If it is that sensitive, then we will
get 1°C of additional warming from
adding a mere 70 parts per million or so of
CO₂ to the atmosphere – which would take
about 20 years at the current rate. That
would take us over 2°C of global warming
since pre-industrial times, the level at
We know from satellite images of ship developed proposals for remotely operated
tracks – the equivalent of the contrails left by drone ships able to deliver the spray, which
airplanes – that clouds can be seeded by the he presented to the UK government’s
sulphate emissions from ships. Latham and his Environmental Audit Committee’s 2017
colleagues have produced computer models inquiry into Arctic sustainability. The thing
showing how Arctic sea ice may be restored holding him back is lack of funding.
by brightening ocean stratocumulus clouds.
These large, rounded clouds are by far the
most common kind seen in the Arctic, and are For the price of Neymar
usually found in groups covering huge areas. Shortly after I started corresponding with
On paper, it looks promising, but testing it Salter, he sent me a photo of Brazilian
for real is quite another matter. To do so will footballer Neymar, beaming as his transfer to
require a system that can spray an ultra-fine Paris St Germain was announced in 2017 at a
mist of sea water into the lower atmosphere cost to the French club of £198 million. Salter’s
over a large area of ocean. Stephen Salter, an point was made clear when he detailed the
engineer at the University of Edinburgh, UK, costs of his cloud-seeding project. For the price
has well-advanced plans for this, having of Neymar, researchers could conduct all the
preliminary trials and then run an entire fleet
of ships for two years that might start to
restore the damage done to the Arctic.
“Among ideas to prevent Arctic collapse,
the most viable in terms of the scale and
nature of the problem involve increasing the
reflection of sunlight from the atmosphere,”
says Wanser, who is also an adviser to the
University of Washington’s Marine Cloud
Brightening Project. “However, our effective
level of investment in sunlight reflection
is zero. This leaves us with an enormous
exposure to near-term climate risk and
not enough fast-acting options to keep
warming within safe levels.” Several scientific
assessments have identified marine cloud
which “severe impacts” are expected: brightening as one of the most promising
more wildfires, longer periods of drought methods to manage sunlight levels, says Rob
in some regions and an increase in the Wood at the University of Washington.
number and intensity of tropical storms. We don’t yet know how effective cloud
Cloud formation is boosted by brightening might be. But there is another
atmospheric particles called aerosols, reason to do this research: it could help
many of which are pollutants from dirty solve one of the biggest puzzles related
industrial processes and fossil fuels. As to how warm our planet could get (see
these particles have a cooling effect on “Cloudbusting”, left).
the planet, both directly and through their In the meantime, the region continues to
NASA/ROBERT SIMMON &JESSE ALLEN/JEFF SCHMALTZ, MODIS RAPID RESPONSE TEAM
action on cloud formation, phasing out turn from white to blue. Wadhams, who has
their sources will unmask previously led 40 expeditions to the Arctic, has seen
concealed greenhouse gas warming. So to enormous change in that time. “When I started
understand the extra bump of warming going to the Arctic, you could think of the
we can expect when the atmosphere gets whole of the northern hemisphere as a solid
cleaner, we need to figure out how clouds continent,” he says. “Ice connected Eurasia and
contribute to climate sensitivity. North America. But now you have blue ocean.
“Marine cloud-brightening experiments Physically and psychologically, the world is
have the potential to shed light on one of fragmented, and I think that is having an
the most vexing and important questions important change in how people think.” ❚
in climate science, namely how aerosols
affect clouds,” says Schneider. “It behooves
us to do everything we can to understand Rowan Hooper (@rowhoop) is head of
the climate system better, before we try to features at New Scientist and author
manipulate it.” of Superhuman: Life at the extremes
of mental and physical ability
31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 41
Features Big question
Is there
anybody
out there?
After millennia of guesswork, we can
finally start finding out for certain,
says astrobiologist Sarah Rugheimer
I
T IS the biggest question in the universe:
are we alone? Philosophers have
debated the question for millennia.
When 16th-century Italian astronomer and
Dominican friar Giordano Bruno declared that
the cosmos contained “an infinity of worlds of
the same kind as our own”, he was directly
contravening religious dogma. He was later
burned at the stake during the Inquisition, in
part for daring to question Earth’s unique status.
The debate continues, in more restrained
fashion, to this day. For some, the sheer
size of the universe makes it unlikely that
life formed only once. For others, the
remarkable complexity of life on Earth
is testament to its uniqueness.
Until recently, vague philosophical
answers of this kind were the best science
could do. The signs of life were far too
ambiguous to pin down for certain, and
our nearest potentially habitable worlds
were too small and distant to test.
But for the first time in human history we
are reaching the technological sophistication
needed to provide a genuine answer. Powerful
telescopes are letting us study planets in other
solar systems, giving us a glimpse into their
atmospheres and a flavour of what type of life
might be living on their surfaces. At the same
time, improved analysis of our own planet is
allowing us to redefine what life might look
like from afar, and is helping us to distinguish
the signs of a flourishing alien civilisation from
42 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019
the mere geological rumblings of a lifeless
world. With these tools at our disposal,
answers are finally within our grasp.
To understand my optimism, it is worth
revisiting the work of astronomer Frank Drake.
In 1961, Drake devised a formula to estimate
how many advanced civilisations were capable
of signalling their presence in the Milky Way.
His eponymous equation depends on breaking
down that big unknowable quantity into a
number of more tractable ones that can be
multiplied together, such as the number of
stars in the galaxy and the fraction of those
likely to have planets (see “Quiet
neighbourhood”, page 45).
Even with pessimistic values, the existence
of millions of technological civilisations seems
likely. The main bottleneck on that apparent
explosion of life, however, is in Drake’s final
term: the average lifetime of a communicating
civilisation. Humans have been broadcasting
radio signals that escape into space for only
about a century, and, in the current geopolitical
climate, who is to say how many more years
we have left. If you take the pessimistic
assumption that intelligent life destroys itself
rather quickly, the Drake equation suggests
that statistically we are alone in the galaxy.
If intelligent civilisations survive for millions,
or even billions of years, however, then the
BETH HOECKEL
Milky Way should be teeming with aliens.
This calls for optimism, but also caution.
After all, if there are millions of alien
civilisations out there, then why haven’t we
seen signs of them already? This seeming
contradiction is sometimes called the Fermi
paradox, after Italian physicist Enrico Fermi,
who gave it its most succinct expression. With
a back-of-the-envelope calculation, he showed
that a single space-faring civilisation could
easily colonise a galaxy within a hundred
million years. Because the universe is
13.8 billion years old, and no interstellar
colonists have yet appeared on our horizon,
Fermi asked: where is everybody?

Radio silence
There are many proposed answers to this
question (see “Solutions to the Fermi paradox”,
page 44). Perhaps, say some, the aliens are
already here, just keeping their identities
secret. Perhaps they are deliberately steering
clear of Earth, treating it as a sort of cosmic
heritage site that deserves their protection.
Or alternatively, there are simply no aliens out
there. As an astrobiologist, I prefer to believe
that aliens are out there; we simply haven’t
communicated with them yet.
It isn’t hard to imagine why this could be the
case. Alien civilisations might well be millions
of years ahead of us in their technological
advancement. Trying to communicate with
them using our primitive technology would
be as absurd as teaching a ladybird to use a
telephone. That hasn’t stopped us trying, of
course, whether by including artefacts, such as
plaques etched with celestial maps and images
of humans, on our long-distance spacecraft or
by broadcasting targeted radio messages into
the depths of space. So far, no reply.
All hope is not lost. The Fermi paradox and
Drake equation specifically deal with the
question of intelligent life, with the ability to
communicate, travel and colonise. But only
a fraction of the life we know of would be
capable of these feats. Today, the vast majority
of Earth’s biosphere consists of microbes.
Single-celled organisms dominated the
planet’s surface for nearly 3 billion years
before multicellular life began. What is more,
microbial cells not only outnumber human
cells on our planet, they even outnumber them
on and in your body. If life exists elsewhere in
the universe, chances are it is microbial.
This means that the first detection of alien
life is unlikely to come from eavesdropping
on an interplanetary conversation. Instead,
we will need to scan the atmosphere of
other planets for familiar molecules that
primitive microbes are likely to emit: as
close as we can get to a fingerprint of life. >

31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 43

 What does life look like on other planets?
Hear Geraint Lewis speaking at New Scientist Live
newscientistlive.com
Solutions to the
Fermi paradox
In 1950, physicist Enrico Fermi
was having lunch with his
colleagues when he asked a
profound question: where is
everybody? He wasn’t referring
to the emptiness of the
university cafeteria, but why,
if we calculated that the
universe should be filled with
extraterrestrial life, none had as
yet crossed our radar. Over the
decades since then, various
creative solutions to Fermi’s
paradox have been proposed.
THEY ARE ALREADY HERE
This solution remains surprisingly
popular, positing an international
conspiracy to cover up the evidence
of alien contact.
THEY DON’T WANT TO DISTURB
Perhaps aliens have some “prime
directive”, as fictional space explorers
in the TV and film series Star Trek
do, to not interfere with the
development of less advanced
cultures on other worlds.
Or maybe extraterrestrials regard
us as a sort of national park
or zoological garden, watching
our movements but hiding their
presence.
THEY WON’T LIVE LONG ENOUGH
TO GET IN TOUCH
The depressing possibility exists
that no advanced civilisation
survives long enough to still be
around when its neighbours are
thriving. This idea is called the
Great Filter. We may have already
unknowingly passed through the
filter unscathed, or it may be
looming, in which case threats
such as nuclear war and climate
change might spell our doom.
WE ARE ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE
Might the simplest answer
be the best, after all?
44 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019
An obvious place to start is with our own
planet. If alien astronomers were observing
Earth from a remote star system, would
anything about it grab their attention?
Compared with our rocky neighbours Mars,
Venus and Mercury, the distinctive mix of
oxygen and methane in Earth’s atmosphere
would be sure to trigger interest. Oxygen
makes up 21 per cent of the atmosphere
now and is entirely due to life, entering the
atmosphere from photosynthetic bacteria
and plants that convert sunlight into energy.
We aren’t sure when exactly oxygenic
photosynthesis evolved, but there are
clear signs that our atmosphere filled
with oxygen 2.33 billion years ago.
Methanogens, the microbes that
produce methane, existed even earlier.
Despite the biological origins of both
gases, neither on its own is a sure sign of life.
Methane, for example, is also produced by
volcanoes and hydrothermal vents, although
methane with an organic origin has a higher
carbon-12 to carbon-13 isotope ratio. Oxygen
could be formed when radiation from an active
star splits molecules of water into hydrogen
and oxygen, with the lighter hydrogen
escaping from the planet’s atmosphere. In
combination, however, methane and oxygen
tell a story of a planet swarming with life.
In the 1960s, astronomers realised that the
existence of each gas was fatal to the other.
Without large quantities of both oxygen and
methane being continuously pumped into
the atmosphere, these gases would quickly within solid rock or in hidden seas, where it
react and destroy each other. Individually would be effectively invisible. More radical
you might expect a lifeless planet to contain alternatives are also possible. It could be based
either oxygen or methane. But geology alone on silicon, for example, rather than carbon, or
doesn’t provide a way to maintain both. run on unknown metabolisms that use a liquid
This means that finding oxygen and other than water. For these types of weird life,
methane coexisting in appreciable quantities synthetic biology and research into alternative
on a distant planet is a pretty good indicator biochemistries could help us understand what
of life. What’s more, life on Earth produces unique chemicals to look for.
thousands of other molecular gases that Sara Seager at the Massachusetts Institute
seem to be unique. Methyl chloride, dimethyl of Technology is trying to tackle this problem,
sulphide and nitrous oxide have all been working her way through all the molecules
proposed as promising biosignature targets. whose presence might indicate the existence
What if our search for all of these gases of life. One of my favourite ideas comes from
comes up empty? Does that mean a planet is another MIT researcher, Clara Sousa-Silva,
an arid ball of rock? Not necessarily. Life on a who says we should look for phosphine as a
distant world may be totally different to that sign of life. Phosphine is a gaseous compound
on Earth. It could be hiding under the surface, of phosphorus and hydrogen that is produced
“Finding no life elsewhere may lead us
to take better care of our own world”
 Quiet neighbourhood
Frank Drake’s 1961 equation remains the best method to get a rough sense of how many detectable alien
civilisations should exist within our galaxy (N). According to the latest data, that number is somewhere
between 1 – our lonely selves – and an impressive 4 billion

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on Earth by anaerobic microbes, which don’t
rely on oxygen to survive. Not only would it
be relatively easy to detect in an exoplanet’s
atmosphere, but it is the simplest gas that
can’t be produced by any natural processes
we know of. Detecting phosphine, in other
words, could indicate an anaerobic biosphere.
If coming up with such hypotheses seems
challenging, putting them to the test is
something else entirely. The first step is to
identify candidate exoplanets: those with the
right temperatures to nurture the complex
chemistry needed to sustain life. At present,
finding worlds beyond our solar system is
usually done by looking for the slight dimming
that happens when a planet crosses in front of
its star. It is a process hundreds of times more
difficult than spotting a firefly crossing a
searchlight on the other side of the Atlantic.
This detection method also opens the door
to sensing different types of molecules in the
atmosphere of a temperate and rocky planet.
For example, when light from a star passes
through the air cloaking such worlds it can
reveal the composition of that air. Different
Li
N = R* x fp x ne x fl
molecules respond to different wavelengths
of light, and by separating the light we collect
in our telescope into different wavelengths,
we could see the telltale spectra, or light signals,
produced by substances such as oxygen,
ozone, methane, water and carbon dioxide.
What makes it such an exciting time to work
in this field is the number of missions being
developed to perform this task. The first
of these will be NASA’s James Webb Space
Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2021. This
will be our first hope at identifying molecules
in the atmosphere of a habitable exoplanet.
ARIEL, a European Space Agency mission due
to launch in 2028, will continue this effort.
Another promising technique involves
using large ground-based telescopes to do
the same thing. These include the European
Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large
Telescope, currently being built in Chile and
due to start working in 2025. Observing planet
atmospheres from Earth’s surface is difficult
because you must first remove our planet’s
atmosphere from the signal. Next-generation
ground observatories will be able to do just
that by subtracting its effects from the light
entering the telescope. This detailed technique
can even allow us to distinguish isotopes
on other worlds, subtly different versions
of the same atoms that differ only by the
presence of a single neutron in their nuclei.
That is something I never dreamed would
be possible in my lifetime.
For all the excitement surrounding far-flung
planets, perhaps the first successful detection
of extraterrestrial life will happen closer to
home. Certainly, other places in our solar
system have conditions suitable for life as
we know it, such as in the liquid water ocean
hidden beneath a thick ice layer on Jupiter’s
moon Europa or in the subsurface water on
x fi x fc x L
Mars. Alternatively, some have suggested that
life could reside on Saturn’s moon Titan,
swimming in its lakes of liquid methane.
Whatever we find on these nearby worlds,
I am confident life exists elsewhere in the
universe. But confidence isn’t enough. Over
the next few years, our searches are going to
become more accurate, more thorough and
capable of looking further than before.
The answers we find stand to fundamentally
shift our understanding of the universe and
our place in it. As the science fiction writer
Arthur C. Clarke put it: “Two possibilities
exist: either we are alone in the universe
or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
To my mind, finding alien life would humble
our apparently exalted status in the cosmos.
We would be just one more example of life as
a planetary process, crystallising out of the
molecules that make up our universe.
Searching widely and finding nothing would
be equally sobering, however, indicating that
even in environments we think of as habitable,
the chasm between chemistry and simple life
is vast. Hopefully, such an appreciation of
life’s rarity would lead us to protect all forms
of existence on our own world, reminding us
that Earth is the only home we have.
The next two decades will witness a
revolution in exoplanetary science. We have
already found dozens of potentially habitable
worlds and the next technological advancement
in observations will be able to detect potential
biosignatures in their atmospheres. Now we
need to watch – and wait. ❚
Sarah Rugheimer is an
astrobiologist at the
University of Oxford, UK

31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 45

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The back pages
Puzzles
Quick crossword,
a riddle of ages
and the quiz p52
Hannah Joshua is a science
writer and maker based in
London. You can follow her
on Twitter @hannahmakes
New stuff you need
Second micro:bit
and battery
DHT11 environmental
sensor
For next week
Large plastic drinks bottle
Cardboard
Zip ties
Servo motor
Zip
Glue
Nuts (the edible kind)
Next in the series
1 Moisture-sensing plant
2 Moisture and temperature-
sensing plant
3 Plant auto-waterer
4 Tweeting wildlife cam
5 Pest scarer
6 BBQ thermometer
7 Rain alarm
8 Mini weather station
9 Remote controlled
pest-proof bird
feeder part 1
10 Bird feeder part 2
Feedback Picture of the week Almost the last word The Q&A
Sexy pavement lichen Your photos based Readers explain why Niamh Nic Daeid on
and a robot priest: the on a weekly theme: water hydrates and a paradigm shift in
week in weird p53 first up, Mars p53 dogs roll over p54 forensic science p56
How to be a maker 2 Week 8
How’s the weather?
With two micro:bits you can make a mini weather station that
sends you up-to-the-minute reports, says Hannah Joshua
LAST week it was rain. This
week, our mini weather station
will measure temperature and
humidity. And by using a second SENSOR
BBC micro:bit, we can get the
readings before heading outside.
First, we need a DHT11 sensor,
and to check whether it works
using one micro:bit. To do this, we
must teach the MakeCode editor
new tricks. Go to “Extensions”,
type in “DHT11” and click on the
DHT11/DHT22 result.
DAVID STOCK FOR NEW SCIENTIST
Under the new menu option,
select the block that is five lines
tall and clip it into forever. This
one communicates with the RECEIVER
sensor. The default settings are TRANSMITTER MICRO:BIT
fine. Under that block, clip two MICRO:BIT
“show number” blocks from
“Basic” and clip into these two
“Read humidity” blocks from the
“DHT11/DHT22” menu, using the Make online
drop-down to change the first to Projects so far and a full list of kit required are at
“Read temperature”. Lastly, add a newscientist.com/maker Email: maker@newscientist.com
“pause” from “Basic” to “on start”
to give this sensor a moment to to “Read temperature”. In the first this, clip a “show string” block
fire up before we start quizzing it. “name” oval, enter “T:” and put and a “show number” block from
Connect the sensor’s Vcc “H:” in the second. Then, clip a “Basic”. Then, click and drag the
connection to the micro:bit’s 3V 2-second “pause” between the “name” oval from the top of the
pin, its ground to ground and out blocks and another “pause” after. “on radio received” block and drop
to pin 0. Attach the battery and The second “pause” will determine it into your “show string” block.
check the readings seem sensible how often this micro:bit sends Do a similar thing for “value” and
for temperature and humidity. data. I went for 10 seconds. “show number”. This code will
Now, we can transmit the data Finally, take “radio set group 1” make your receiver micro:bit
to another micro:bit via radio. In from “Radio” and clip it into “on show “T:”, followed by the
your program, replace the “show start”. The radio group establishes temperature, and “H:” followed
number” blocks with two “radio a comms channel so micro:bits by the humidity on the screen.
send value name = 0” blocks from using the same one can recognise Now, stash your transmitter in
the “Radio” menu. Where these messages from each other. a waterproof container and poke
say “0”, clip two “round” blocks Now for the receiver. Start a a hole so air can get in, but the
from “Math”, then into the “0” of new program and add the same electronics are safe. The radio
each clip a “Read humidity” block “radio set group 1” to “on start”. range is up to 70 metres in an open
from “DHT11/DHT22”, using the Next, grab an “on radio received area without interference, so get
drop-down to change the first one name value” from “Radio”. Into creative with the placement!  ❚
31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 51
The back pages Puzzles

Quick crossword #39 Set by Richard Smyth Quick quiz #18 Puzzle set by Zoe Mensch
1 Nihonium, Tennessine,
       Oganesson – what fourth #19 The vicar’s age
name is missing from
this list? A bishop visited his friend the vicar on
 
her birthday. Knowing the bishop liked
2 9,192,631,770 what of
number puzzles, the vicar told him about

what equals what?
a family that had just joined her church.
 
3 The ICZN, based in “If you multiply their three ages
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do what? your grace.”
4 A golfball-sized lump of The bishop, after some thought, said:
    90 per cent platinum and “I can’t be certain how old everyone in the
10 per cent iridium (by family is.”
mass) fulfilled what function The vicar responded: “I am older than
  
until 2019? everyone in that family.”
The bishop could then tell how old
5 FlyBase collates genetic


information concerning everyone was.

 
which fast-breeding How old was the vicar on that day?
organism beloved
  of biologists? Answer next week
Answers below
ACROSS
1 Intelligence assessment, 16 Marriage within a social Cryptic #18 Cable on the moon
purportedly (2,4) or ethnic group (8)
Crossword #13 Solution
4 Antelope; Chevrolet (6) 18 3LFWXUHSX]]OH
8 6SOLWVKDUHG 20 6HH'RZQ
Answers A power cable buried in a 1-metre deep
9 ^ (7) 21 Harvey ___, rubber ACROSS 1%XONLHU5 Umbra, trench encircling the moon’s equator will
11 Term used to describe tyre pioneer (9) 8 Generation Gap, 96KDUG only be about 6 metres shorter than if it was
the technological 24 Condition caused by 10 Trailer, 12 Median, laid on the surface.
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revolution by Harold
Wilson in 1963 (5,4)
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projecting from a
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14 B (5)
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variables, relating to a
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1,738,100 metres, but you don’t actually
DOWN 1 Bogus, 2 Lanyard, need that figure to answer this question.
3 Irradiate, 4 Rotate, 5 UFO,
6 Bagel, 7 Amperes,
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species (5)
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launched in 2006 (7)
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essayist (7,3,5)
5 Friedrich ___, inventor
of a scale of mineral
in 1849 (6,3)
13 2011 science fiction
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14 Cretaceous clay found
in Wyoming (9)
17 Waterproof garment (7)
Quick quiz #18
Answers
melanogaster
5 The fruit fly Drosophila
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replaced it with a standard based
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shorter than one on the surface.
hardness (4) 19%DFWHULDOQHXURWR[LQ animal and plant names.
6 Air sacs in the lungs (7) 226SLUDOKRUQHGDQWHORSH 3ODQW7D[RQRP\HQVXUHFRQVLVWHQW
7 õ+DFNWLYLVWöJURXS 236WDU7UHNSKDVHUVHWWLQJ
the International Association for
on Zoological Nomenclature and
3 The International Commission
caesium-133 atom = 1 second.
the hyperfine ground states of the
9,192,631,770 oscillations of
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2 The International Bureau of
Applied Chemistry in 2016. Get in touch
,QWHUQDWLRQDO8QLRQRI3XUHDQG Email us at
$QVZHUVDQGWKHQH[WFU\SWLFFURVVZRUGQH[WZHHN added to the periodic table by the
crossword@newscientist.com
1.0RVNRYLXP7KH\DUHHOHPHQWV
puzzles@newscientist.com

52 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019

The back pages Feedback
Taking a liking to lichen
If you happen to be in New Zealand
and are unnerved by that man
over there apparently licking
the pavement, don’t be alarmed.
He is probably just after his fill of
Xanthoparmelia scabrosa, a grey,
leafy lichen commonly found
on Kiwi roads and sidewalks.
It contains a chemical somewhat
similar to the active ingredient in
Viagra, gaining it the soubriquet
“sexy pavement lichen”.
Online marketplaces have taken
to selling X. scabrosa by the kilo as
a herbal alternative to the little
blue pills. Now Kiwi news outlet
Newsroom relays warnings from
local researchers against likin’ the
lichen. Those hoping it will give
them more lead in their pencil may
get more than they bargain for: the
urban pavements where the lichen
grow infuse them with high levels
of lead and other heavy metals,
including cadmium, mercury and
arsenic.
Perhaps it is fortunate, then,
that an investigation by the US Food
and Drugs Administration into one
online batch of X. scabrosa found it
was 20 per cent grass clippings and
80 per cent ground-up Viagra. What
dodgy online herbal remedies lack
in authenticity, they may make up
for in efficacy. Besides, nothing
quite kills the mood like popping
out to lick the street.
Deus Ex Machina
A 400-year-old temple in Japan
has unveiled its latest priest:
a robot modelled on Kannon
Bodhisattva, the Buddhist deity
of mercy. The $1 million android,
named Mindar, leads services at
Kodaiji temple in Kyoto, relaying
and explaining wisdoms
contained in the Heart Sutra.
It isn’t the first time holy words
have come from robot mouths.
Readers may recall that Pepper –
a child-sized android that has held
down more jobs than Barbie – also
had a stint presiding over
Buddhist funerals back in 2018.
What should we draw from this
about the essence of Buddhism,
except that creeping automation
comes for all, and the holy men
Picture of the week Mars
won’t be spared? If you pass a
saffron-robed man on the street,
begging bowl in hand, be kind.
He might not even have a job
any more.
Rabbit run
Further to the question of
whether nematode worms read
New Scientist (10 August), Peter
Duffell writes: “On a recent trip
to Northumberland we saw a sign
in one of the gardens we visited
that read ‘RABBITS & HARES KEEP
THIS GATE SHUT’.”
“If only rabbits and hares are
required to shut the gate, what
do the rest of us do?” asks Peter.
“If we leave them open, do the
rabbits and hares get the blame?”
Feedback is unsure: rabbits
that can read signs can probably
type, too. You wouldn’t want
to risk online shaming by
Northumberland’s literate To give you a taste of our new picture of the week slot, here is New Scientist’s
lagomorphs. head of features, Rowan Hooper, with a full-size replica of the Curiosity rover.
While its twin is on Mars, this one is at the University of Arizona.
The next theme is Alexander von Humboldt, in celebration of the
Double trouble 250th anniversary of the naturalist’s birth. Email us your related
Let it not be said that Brazil’s photos to readerpics@newscientist.com by Tuesday 3 September.
president Jair Bolsonaro isn’t Terms and conditions at newscientist.com/pictureoftheweek-terms
environmentally conscious.
Yes, he has threatened protections Noms de flume Wonder weed
of indigenous land rights and
opened up the Amazon to logging Such themes lead us, with terrible Visiting a chiropodist’s surgery in
and mining. Yes, he fired the inevitability, to this week’s dose Greenock, UK, Bill McMillan spies
director of Brazil’s National Space of nominative determinism. In a poster proclaiming that cannabis
and Research Institute after it Adelaide, Australia, Alan Moskwa oil can help with PTSD, epilepsy,
revealed the extent of recent reveals that a story in The Advertiser Crohn’s disease, cancer, psoriasis,
deforestation. on the city’s expanding waistlines Dravet syndrome “and many
But he has a plan. Questioned has provoked a letter in reply more conditions”.
on his environmental record, he suggesting “toilet bowls and seats Only two weeks ago, this
replied: “It’s enough to eat a little should be strengthened, enlarged” esteemed organ raised an eyebrow
less. You talk about environmental and generally made taller and at the wondrous variety of claims
pollution. It’s enough to poop wider. The correspondent’s name? made for weed’s curative powers
every other day. That will be better Neil Longbottom. (17 August, p 20). But Bill is most
for the whole world.” Meanwhile, Peter Jung is perplexed by an omission. “It
As green policies go, two days delighted to discover that the seems the oil can cure anything
between number twos is a novel head of coastal research at Monash except foot and toenail issues,”
one. We’ll resist the temptation University in Melbourne is none he says. Well, the chiropodists
to say it’s all going down the pan. other than Ruth Reef. wouldn’t tell you if it did.  ❚
Given the boost Bolsonaro’s
policies are giving to consumption
and exploitation, Feedback thinks Got a story for Feedback?
Brazil’s green activists can be Send it to New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street,
forgiven for thinking he is the London WC2E 9ES or you can email us at
one full of crap. feedback@newscientist.com
31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 53
The back pages Almost the last word
Seven litres a day
How does water hydrate us?
If we drink a lot of it we only
pass it as excess waste.
Eleanor Horton,
Canterbury, Kent, UK
Breaking down food – and our
metabolism in general – generates
waste. This needs to be removed
or it would damage the body.
Water is the solvent for these
waste products – it dissolves them
and allows them to pass out of the
body as urine, as well as in sweat.
Urine is produced in the kidneys
and consists of urea and other
waste products dissolved in water.
We need to drink more water to
replenish the fluid that leaves the
body this way.
When you are dehydrated, your
urine will be dark yellow. This is
because there isn’t enough water
in your system to dilute the urea
sufficiently. Water itself is not a
waste product – it is a mechanism
by which the body removes waste.
Andrew Sanderson
Spennymoor, County Durham, UK
We lose water in four principal
ways: in urine, sweat, breath
and faeces. This doesn’t include
minor losses such as in tears
and spitting. We gain water by
drinking, and by breaking down
food during metabolism into
carbon dioxide and water.
Sweat, breath and faeces stay at
the same concentration, so the
main control of body fluid content
is via our kidneys. Their activity
is controlled by a molecule known
as vasopressin or antidiuretic
hormone, which is secreted by
the pituitary gland. This is
regulated by an area of the brain
called the hypothalamus, which
contains receptors sensitive to
the blood’s concentration of
sodium and other substances.
The kidneys are the main way
for us to excrete salts. If you eat
a lot of salt, your kidneys will
increase the concentration of
the urine up to their maximum
ability. Past this, the volume will
increase. If you drink a lot of water,
54 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019
Why don’t blue
highlighters look as bright
as the other colours?
Roll of honour
Why do dogs and horses roll on
their backs when happy?
David Muir
Edinburgh, UK
Horses roll and writhe on their
DOUGLAS SACHA/GETTY
backs not because they are happy
but because they want to get rid
of an itchy irritation. They could
be trying to get rid of their winter
coat, which makes them sweaty
This week’s new questions in the summer. If they are being
bothered by biting insects, then
In the ink Why do blue highlighter markers never seem to rolling in mud, or even dust,
have the high luminosity of pink, yellow, orange and light affords some protection.
green highlighters? Ana Beard, London, UK Dogs are different. A very
relaxed dog will lie on its back with
Once upon a time Why does my brain like fictional stories? its vulnerable abdomen exposed.
Shvets Roman, Moscow, Russia On the other hand, a dog that is
frightened may roll over as a sign
Run the world If the world’s population all met in one place of submission and thus avoid
and all ran in the same direction, would this affect Earth’s attack by another dog.
rotation? Neil Edwards, Guildford, Surrey, UK Some dogs retain their
evolutionary urge to roll in other
animals’ excreta, such as fox
urine concentration falls and thirsty. You drink, and the body’s faeces, to disguise their own scent.
volume increases. The more regulatory system works out how This seems to make dogs happy
you exercise and sweat, the much you should drink to restore and their owners very unhappy.
more salts you lose, because the balance to be within required
sweat can’t be concentrated, limits. When you have drunk Tony Holkham
hence the marketable value of enough, you feel sated and stop Boncath, Pembrokeshire, UK
sports drinks. The amount you drinking. This system is Horses, and many other animals,
need to drink is unique to you. remarkably efficient. roll to rid themselves of irritation
Linked to the hydration sensors It takes several hours for the or parasites that they can’t reach
are the thirst parts of your brain. fluid levels in the body to respond with their mouths or feet. It is
If you feel thirsty, then drink to the liquid you have drunk, but necessary, but leaves the animal
water. Otherwise, keep someone the regulatory system works well vulnerable for a short time.
else happy and rich by buying enough most of the time to keep Dogs roll for this reason too,
their fluid replacement and by the body’s fluid content within especially because many modern
all means carry a bottle with you its typical parameters. breeds are unable to groom
to prove that selective advertising If you lose a lot of water themselves effectively. They
has an effect on you. quickly, on a very hot day for also do it to submit to another
example, you may lose too member of the pack and, in
Brian Pollard much, and then you become domesticated dogs at least,
North Hill, Cornwall, UK dehydrated, and it feels because they love to have their
The human body is made up unpleasant. The unpleasant belly rubbed. My Jack Russell
mainly of water, and our feeling is your body requesting Sparky would probably put this
physiology operates to keep an urgent ingestion of liquid. last reason at the top of the list. ❚
within about a litre of the 45 or so
litres in an average-sized person.
The way it does this is by Want to send us a question or answer?
regulating the feeling of thirst. Email us at lastword@newscientist.com
When the fluid level starts to get Questions should be about everyday science phenomena
low, your body makes you feel Full terms and conditions at newscientist.com/lw-terms
The back pages The Q&A
As a child, what did you want to do
when you grew up?
My parents were practical scientists, and they
used their skills to solve real-world problems.
Partly as a consequence of that, my overriding
desire was to make a difference when I grew up.
Explain what you do in one easy paragraph.
I lead a team of people from different scientific,
statistical and science communication
backgrounds and we try to address some of the
fundamental challenges in how science is used in
the justice system. We work with police,
researchers, lawyers, judges and the public. I also
do forensic casework – my area of expertise is in
investigating how and where fires start.
What’s the most exciting thing you’re
working on right now?
We are working on the development of a global
citizen science project that will help forensic
scientists understand how materials transfer
between surfaces and then persist on the surface
they have transferred to. We have designed
and tested universal experiments to build
databases that will address these questions and
will launch these globally in 2020. These are
profoundly important issues that help us
explain the relevance and weight of forensic
evidence to our courts.
If you could send a message back to
yourself as a kid, what would you say?
Work harder than everyone else and don’t be
afraid to think differently.
Were you good at science at school?
Yes – and maths and woodwork, which is
always a useful skill to have.
What achievement or discovery are you
most proud of?
Proving that conventional smoke alarms don’t
wake children and then finding a sound that does.
It sounds like a truck reversing, that intermittent
beeping noise, followed by a female voice saying
“get up, the house is on fire”. Each sound is played
for 10 seconds, repetitively. Most children wake
with either the first beeping tone or when they
hear the voice for the first time.
56 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019
As a forensic scientist, Niamh Nic Daeid does
research that helps justice be done – from how
fires start to how DNA transfers between objects
How has your field of study changed in
the time you have been working in it?
We have been at the centre of a paradigm shift
in forensic science. The situation before was
that the only time judges and forensic scientists
spoke to each other was in the courtroom.
“Your DNA could
Now, the judiciary and forensic scientists work transfer to a
weapon even
together. We speak about science in informal
ways, exploring each other’s questions and
perspectives, to gather a collective understanding
of what science can answer and what it can not.
though you have
never directly
Do you have an unexpected hobby,
and if so, please will you tell us about it? touched it”
Not really – I am a workaholic.
How useful will your skills be after
the apocalypse?
I can make things out of wood and I can set a fire
almost anywhere – two of the essential skills for
building a shelter and keeping toasty warm.
If you could have a long conversation
with any scientist living or dead,
who would it be?
One is Michael Faraday, who wrote
The Chemical History of a Candle and instigated
the Royal Institution’s Christmas lecture series.
Another is Florence Nightingale, who was the
first female member of the Royal Statistical
Society and made good use of infographics.
OK one last thing: tell us something that
will blow our minds…
We have very little understanding of how trace
materials, such as DNA, transfer and persist from
one surface to the next. If someone picks up a
glass that you have handled and then they pick up
a weapon and assault someone, your DNA could
transfer to that weapon even though you have
never directly touched it. We are undertaking
research to understand whether this can happen
and in what circumstances. ❚
Niamh Nic Daeid is professor of forensic science
and director of the Leverhulme Research Centre for
Forensic Science at the University of Dundee, UK
STOCK MONTAGE/GETTY
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