New Scientist, No. 3380 (April 2, 2022)

WHAT IS A PLANET?
WHEN TRAUMATIC
DOESN’T EQUAL TRAUMA
TRACKING ANIMALS
FROM SPACE
HOW TO GREEN YOUR HOME
GENE-THERAPY GEL
WEEKLY April 2 - 8, 2022
Is CONSCIOUSNESS
FUNDAMENTAL
to the COSMOS?
Rethinking the relationship between mind and matter
No3380 US$6.99 CAN$9.99

PLUS VAMPIRE APPLIANCES /
A COW’S -EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD/
WHEN SNAKES LOST THEIR LEGS /
BANANA-PEELING ROBOT
Science and technology news www.newscientist.com
This week’s issue
On the 16 What is a planet?

46 When traumatic
43 Features
cover doesn’t equal trauma “Boobies in
43 Tracking animals
38 Is consciousness from space the Indo-
fundamental to 20 How to green your home
the cosmos? 14 Gene-therapy gel Pacific will
Rethinking the relationship
between mind and matter 30 Vampire appliances tell you how
34 A cow’s-eye view of the world
12 When snakes lost their legs
strong the
18 Banana-peeling robot next El Niño
will be”
Vol 254 No 3380
Cover image: Pablo Hurtado
de Mendoza
News Features
7 Coral bleaching 38 Cosmic consciousness
The Great Barrier Reef Culture Physicists are radically
has turned white again rethinking the relationship
between matter and mind
8 Bronze Age evolution
DNA evidence shows ancient 43 Animals from space
Britons adapted to low sunlight The internet of animals could
predict natural disasters, says
10 Covid-19 vaccines Martin Wikelski
The risk of rare side
effects on the heart 46 Rethinking trauma
is back in the spotlight What counts as traumatic? The
answer is proving controversial
Views
The back pages
27 Comment
Zero covid was the best route 51 Science of gardening
to take, says Michael Marshall How to create a bee hotel
28 The columnist 53 Puzzles

Annalee Newitz on what Try our crossword, quick quiz
tech can do for bird studies and logic challenge
30 Aperture 54 Almost the last word

Night-time photos show the Could we see a really distant
waste of “vampire power” ship if the world were flat?
MARK HIGGINS/GETTY IMAGES
32 Letters 56 Feedback
Russia’s nuclear weapon Cryptic times for ex-football
threats just don’t ring true stars: the week in weird
34 Culture 56 Twisteddoodles
An unsettling film offers a for New Scientist
cow’s-eye view of the world 35 After the fire How should we define regeneration? Picturing the lighter side of life
2 April 2022 | New Scientist | 1

Elsewhere
on New Scientist
Event Podcast
Discovery
Instant expert: “He’s this
Meet your brain
Find out everything you have ever
hologram,
wanted to know about the most
fascinating object in the universe:
a digital
your brain. Six expert speakers will uploaded
teach you how our brains learn to
speak, how they store memories, version of
why they need to sleep and what
himself –
ANKARB/GETTY IMAGES
we understand about empathy,
emotions and consciousness.
At the British Library in London
but is he
on 23 April at 10am BST.
really him?”
newscientist.com/events
Dig carefully Learn how to excavate on our tour of Mycenaean sites
Discovery
Newsletter
Learn to dig
Join us on an interactive tour of
key Mycenaean sites, including
a three-day “behind the ropes”
experience at Mycenae, one of the
most important archaeological
sites in Greece, where you will
learn how to explore, map
J. ENGLISH, EMU, MEERKAT, DES.
and excavate with resident

archaeologists. Accompanied by
Christofilis Maggidis, president of
the Mycenaean Foundation, and
New Scientist editorial staff, this
tour starts on 23 September and
lasts for seven days for £1995. Space oddity Clearest image yet of odd radio circles
newscientist.com/tours
Podcast Video Newsletter

Weekly Stone breaker Distant galaxies
This week Rowan Hooper speaks By using sound to move objects Thanks to the MeerKAT telescope
to climate scientist Peter Stott through the body, researchers in South Africa, we have the best Essential guide
about recent extreme weather at the University of Washington image yet of one of the weirdest
events. The team also chat about are helping people pass kidney phenomena in space. Reporter More than 3 billion years in the
black hole paradoxes and review stones without invasive surgery. Leah Crane explains how new making, the latest New Scientist
a compelling sci-fi opera in New Ultrasound bursts can break up observations of “odd radio circles” Essential Guide is a sweeping
York called Upload, in which a the stones without the need for that are 1 million light years survey of the history of life on our
daughter comes to terms with her sedation. The project is part funded across have revealed the central planet, the wonders of biodiversity
father’s decision to die in order to by NASA to help astronauts reduce galaxies and supermassive black today – and the unique threats
have his consciousness uploaded the risk of kidney stones during holes at their heart. it faces from human activity.
to a computer. long missions. newscientist.com/ Available to purchase now.
newscientist.com/nspod youtube.com/newscientist launchpad shop.newscientist.com
2 | New Scientist | 2 April 2022

The leader
Europe must re-energise

The countdown to a painful winter has already begun
“THE time to repair the roof is when existing plans for renewables, energy required between countries, like the
the sun is shining,” US president efficiency and hydrogen. By contrast, the UK-Denmark one due to be finished
John F. Kennedy once said. It is an adage UK’s long-trailed energy plan was delayed next year. Energy efficiency needs serious
that Europe must now wrestle with. again this week, as winter draws ever closer. government support, and electrification
With spring blossoming even as war When new energy security strategies for of cars and heating must be accelerated.
continues to darken the continent, it is Europe arrive, it is essential that they align And, yes, some mix of nuclear power,
hard to spend too much time thinking with climate change goals. False solutions more energy storage or carbon-capture
about next winter. Yet the geopolitical abound, such as kick-starting a UK fracking power stations will be required to support
uncertainty created by Russia’s invasion renewables when the sun isn’t shining.
of Ukraine means volatile energy prices “It is essential that new energy Individuals can’t solve the climate or
are guaranteed this year. UK energy bill security strategies for Europe energy crises on their own, but as we detail
projections for October have yo-yoed align with climate change goals” on page 20, there are things homeowners
with oil and gas prices in recent weeks, can do to help. People on lower incomes
from a high of £3000 a year on average industry, even though that has already need support to cope with high energy
to a still-very-high low of £2500. been tried without success (see page 14). prices. But for those able to pay, there
Governments must act now. The Thankfully, the answers are already has never been a better time to “repair”
European Union already has – its recent clear. Wind and solar power should be that roof, with proper insulation and
energy strategy mandates that gas stores turbocharged, and ideological barriers such solar panels. Winter is sooner than
be replenished by winter and calls for a as vetoes for onshore turbines in England you think. Let’s seize the opportunity
diversification of gas supplies. This bolsters must be lifted. More electricity links are to make sure we weather it. ❚
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News
Hypoallergenic cats Fracking refund Male contraceptive Beat the heat Lung repair
Gene-edit felines to UK gave cash back to A non-hormonal pill Ostriches’ necks Drugs might help
remove proteins that fossil fuel firms after prevents pregnancies assist in temperature heal damage caused
trigger reactions p9 shale gas ban p14 in mice p15 regulation p16 by smoking p18
Bleached coral on
the Great Barrier
Reef in March
what should have been a cooler

(La Niña) summer”.
Reverter says the milestone
means there is increasingly little
respite for coral. “Coral reef
scientists were thinking there
would be some years when coral
reefs could recover,” she says.
“We thought it [La Niña] could be
a safe period. Turns out it’s not.”
Whether the cumulative impact
of more frequent mass-bleaching
events makes coral more
vulnerable to new bleaching is still
being researched, says Reverter.
But she says there is evidence
that the coral reef species dying
GLENN NICHOLLS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
off in the greatest numbers during

mass bleaching are those with
a physically complex, more
three-dimensional structure.
Their loss hurts the reef’s ability
to provide a habitat for fish and
to mitigate coastal flooding.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine
Park Authority, which conducted
Environment the surveys using helicopters and
small planes, said on its website
No respite for coral that the bleached coral could

still recover if the waters cool,
as happened in 2020 when there
was relatively little coral die-off
The Great Barrier Reef is being affected by warm seas despite despite the most widespread
the cooling effect of La Niña, reports Adam Vaughan bleaching ever.
UNESCO, which awarded the
UNUSUALLY warm ocean Miriam Reverter at the University The bleaching is particularly reef World Heritage status, last
temperatures have turned corals of Plymouth in the UK. notable for happening when year stopped short of placing the
white on Australia’s Great Barrier Warmer oceans under climate the Pacific region is in a cooling natural wonder on a list of sites
Reef in the first-ever mass change have led to an increase phase brought about by La Niña. in danger because of the impacts
bleaching under the cooling in mass-bleaching events at The worst mass-bleaching event of climate change, after lobbying
conditions created by the the world’s largest reef: this is happened in 2016, the planet’s by the Australian government.
La Niña weather pattern. the sixth since modern records hottest year on record, when an El Hughes and other researchers
An official analysis of aerial began in 1988, and the fourth Niño warming phase was in effect. have said the decision was
surveys published on 25 March in just seven years. Terry Hughes at James Cook denying the scientific evidence.
found mass bleaching across all Ocean temperatures at the reef University in Australia tweeted While the Great Barrier Reef
four of the reef’s management during March have been between that the latest mass bleaching is being affected at the moment,
areas, with the north and central 0.5°C and 2°C above average in was “a grim milestone during Reverter says it will be important
parts of the World Heritage Site most places, and up to 4°C higher to monitor other coral in the
worst hit. The impact has been in some spots. Normally, the “We thought La Niña could Pacific and Indian oceans in the
less severe in the south of the reef. water would be expected to start be a safe period when coming months, to see whether
“What we’re seeing at the Great getting cooler as the southern coral reefs could recover. heat stress triggers more
Barrier Reef is very worrying,” says hemisphere autumn arrives. Turns out it’s not” widespread bleaching. ❚

News
Archaeology
Ancient Britons evolved to survive

DNA from bones shows how these people adapted to keep healthy in their
sun-starved land once they had turned to farming, finds Michael Marshall
NATURAL selection was at work The new approach impresses vitamin D. It helps us to absorb vitamin D production in Britain.
on Bronze Age Britons, ancient Claire-Elise Fischer, who is at the dietary calcium, strengthening It may seem odd that this
DNA reveals. Within the past University of York in the UK. “It’s bones. Children who are deficient shift only happened in the past
4500 years, evolution has acted on really amazing,” she says. “We’re in vitamin D can develop soft few thousand years, when people
genes involved in the production all going to use the method.” bones, a condition called rickets. have lived in Britain for much
of vitamin D – which people living Terhorst and Mathieson have Our bodies make vitamin D longer than that. However, the
in Britain are sometimes short of now used the new technique to when our skin is exposed to earlier inhabitants were hunter-
due to a lack of sunlight for much examine DNA from 529 ancient ultraviolet radiation in sunlight. gatherers who could get vitamin D
of the year. Britons from the past 4500 years, When humans first evolved in by eating oily fish.
The genetic changes have had enhanced with genetic data from Africa, there was no shortage of Cheddar Man, who lived in
knock-on effects on other traits, 98 present-day individuals. sunlight. However, when people Britain about 10,000 years ago,
from the ability of people to migrated away from the tropics, had very dark skin, and some Irish
digest milk to their skin colour. “All these genes under they found themselves in places people from about 5000 years ago
One of the ways evolutionary selection can be linked where the sunlight reaching them had moderately dark skin.
change can happen is through to a need for increased is less intense and the days can Natural selection for paler
natural selection: genetic variants vitamin D and calcium” be shorter. Britain’s cloudy skies skin only really kicked in when
that are beneficial become more didn’t help either. people started getting most of
common in the population They found seven regions of the Nina Jablonski at Pennsylvania their food from crop farming,
because individuals that carry genome with strong evidence of State University, who has leaving them prone to vitamin D
them are more likely to reproduce. selection (bioRxiv, doi.org/hnhz). spent decades unpicking the deficiency, says Mathieson.
In recent years, geneticists have To their surprise, there was a significance of vitamin D on Jablonski agrees this would
collected DNA from the remains of pattern. “All these genes that are human populations, says Britain create evolutionary pressure.
thousands of people who lived in under selection can plausibly be has “a punishingly low and highly “They’re going to be at the sharp
Britain over the millennia, so it is linked to natural selection for seasonal UV regime”. end of natural selection,” she says.
possible to see natural selection increased vitamin D and calcium,” Unable to produce enough People can also compensate for
by looking for genetic variants says Mathieson. vitamin D, Bronze Age Britons a lack of vitamin D by consuming
becoming more or less common. That finding fits into an existing adapted. One shift, which lots of calcium in their diet. Milk
“In some cases, the change is body of knowledge about the role Mathieson and Terhorst saw in the is an excellent source, but for
so dramatic that you can rule out of vitamin D in recent human DNA they examined, was towards most of our species’ existence we
this happening by chance, and evolution, which has driven lighter skin. Skin pigmentation could only digest it as babies. After
that’s when we would posit that genetic and cultural adaptations protects against UV, which is that, our bodies stopped making
selection is driving this,” says in some populations. At the heart good in the tropics as it guards the lactase enzyme that digests
Jonathan Terhorst at the of this is the health function of against skin cancer, but can limit the lactose sugar, so drinking milk
University of Michigan. caused indigestion.
Terhorst has developed a However, in Bronze Age Britain
LENNART LARSEN/NATIONALMUSEET
new method of analysing ancient there was strong selection for

DNA for signs of natural selection. producing lactase even into
Unlike previous techniques, it adulthood, allowing people to
doesn’t assume that selection is drink milk throughout their lives.
equally intense throughout the Today, most adults of European
study period, as that is unrealistic. origin can drink milk, whereas
“The novelty here is that we can many other populations remain
really localise selection to within lactose-intolerant beyond infancy.
a few thousand years, and say ‘this The study illustrates the
is what’s being selected’,” says Iain importance of vitamin D, says
Mathieson at the University of Jablonski, because the lack of it
Pennsylvania, who has worked forced evolution to find “multiple
with Terhorst to apply the strategies” to help Bronze Age
technique to ancient Britons. Britons survive. “Virtually
everything in the body requires
A reconstruction vitamin D,” she says, so it isn’t
of a typical Bronze surprising that a shortage
Age settlement provoked rapid evolution. ❚

Technology
Virtual computer contained within an

AI could help crunch numbers faster
Matthew Sparkes
AN ARTIFICIAL intelligence computer uses artificial neurons to

that mimics the operation of both store and compute, lowering
a standard computer within its the number of operations it
neural network could speed up must carry out. Neuromorphic
certain calculations. Researchers computers may also make it easier
have used it to put an AI inside for software to accurately work
an AI and play Pong. with continuous variables, such
If you want a computer to do as those in physics simulations.
something, you have to write code Francesco Martinuzzi at Leipzig
that manipulates bits of data. But University in Germany says neural
if you code an AI-driven neural networks running code could
GIROSCIENCE/ALAMY
network, you have to train it with squeeze better performance out of

feedback before it can do anything. neuromorphic chips. “There will
For instance, a neural network definitely be specific applications
can distinguish between photos where these computers are going
of cats and dogs after being to be outperforming standard
shown thousands of examples An abstract illustration The virtual neural network can computers. And by far, I believe.”
and told if its guesses are correct. of a neuromorphic also drastically simplify splitting Abdelrahman Zayed at Montreal
Now Jason Kim and Dani Bassett computer chip up huge computational tasks. Polytechnic in Canada says this
at the University of Pennsylvania These are often spread over many could be exciting, so long as the
have a new approach, in which Kim and Bassett then linked processors to gain speed, but take chains can avoid long calculations
a neural network runs a code, several networks together in more power to be split into chunks failing if an algorithm forgets the
just like an ordinary computer. chains so they could do more that can be run independently by beginning as it is learning the end.
A neural network is a series complex operations, replicating separate chips, then recombined. These neural networks would
of nodes, or artificial neurons, the behaviour of the logic gates An emerging breed of machine also need to be scaled up.
that takes an input and returns found in computer chips. These called a neuromorphic computer, “Computers don’t just have one
a changed output. The pair chains were combined to make designed to efficiently run AI or two logic gates – a CPU will have
calculated what effect individual a network that could do things a software, may also be able to billions of transistors,” says Zayed.
artificial neurons had, and used classical computer can, including help these virtual networks work “Just because it worked for two
this to piece together a very simple running a virtual neural network faster. While a computer uses its or three gates, that doesn’t
neural network that could carry and a playable version of the game CPU to carry out tasks, and stores necessarily mean that it will
out basic tasks, such as addition. Pong (arxiv.org/abs/2203.05032). data in memory, a neuromorphic scale up to billions.” ❚
Genetics
Plans to use CRISPR allergic reactions to cats. The main Because the sequences of genes The next step will be to delete
cause of this is a small protein called with key functions tend to change all copies of the two genes at once,
gene editing to make Fel d 1 that is secreted by salivary little if at all, this suggests that and to confirm that this prevents
hypoallergenic cats and skin glands. It is spread over Fel d 1 isn’t essential. The only way cells making the Fel d 1 protein.
cats’ fur when felines clean to find out for sure, however, will Only then will the team try to
THE two genes for the protein that themselves and can become be to see what happens to cats create cats that lack the genes.
is mainly responsible for allergic airborne as the fur dries. that cannot produce any Fel d 1. “[We have] no particular cat
reactions to cats have been deleted Fel d 1 consists of two different The team has now deleted either breeds in mind at the moment,”
from cat cells using CRISPR gene subunits, and there are two genes, the CH1 or the CH2 gene from cat says Brackett.
editing. It is a first step towards called CH1 and CH2, encoding cells growing in culture using the In the 2000s, at least two other
creating hypoallergenic cats, says each subunit. When Brackett and CRISPR genome editing technique companies announced plans to
US-based company InBio. her colleagues compared the (The CRISPR Journal, doi.org/hnh8). modify moggies to eliminate Fel d 1,
“The estimated timeline for sequences of the CH1 and CH2 but neither managed it. However,
this is several years,” says Nicole genes in domestic cats with those “Plans to modify moggies achieving this is now more feasible
Brackett, who leads the CRISPR in other cat species, such as lions, to reduce allergic reactions thanks to the development
cat team at InBio. tigers, cougars and fishing cats, to cats are more feasible of CRISPR in 2012. ❚
About 15 per cent of people have they found many changes. thanks to CRISPR” Michael Le Page

News
Coronavirus
Vaccines’ effects on the heart

With the mRNA covid-19 vaccines being delivered to growing numbers of young people,
researchers are looking again at the rare risk of myocarditis, reports Clare Wilson
AS THE UK offers a covid-19 5 to 11 develop myocarditis out
GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

vaccine to children aged 5 to 11, of every 1 million second Pfizer/
and officials consider the benefits BioNTech doses, according to the
of a fourth jab for adults, we still US Centers for Disease Control and
have an uncertain picture about Prevention. “Given that there have
the risks to the heart. been a few millions of vaccines
High-income countries are given, we should be reassured
mainly administering the Pfizer/ by these estimates,” says Russell
BioNTech and Moderna vaccines Viner at University College London.
to their citizens. Based on mRNA, Nevertheless, the UK’s Joint
these contain a strand of genetic Committee on Vaccination and
material that instructs cells to Immunisation (JCVI) was hesitant
make the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s spike to recommend a low-dose jab
protein, prompting an immune for 5 to 11-year-olds. In February,
response that protects against the JCVI announced that this age
severe disease. These mRNA group could receive a Pfizer/
vaccines are effective, but in BioNTech dose on a “non-urgent”
rare cases they have been linked basis. England is due to roll these
to heart muscle inflammation, A child being given a Among this group, myocarditis out this month, with programmes
known as myocarditis. covid-19 vaccination was more common after the under way in the rest of the UK.
Myocarditis often causes chest in Paris, France vaccines than it was after covid-19 Myocarditis becomes less likely
pain and breathlessness, which itself, which caused an additional with a longer interval between
usually resolve without treatment. seven myocarditis cases. This vaccine doses. Rates are therefore
In severe cases, however, it contradicts an August 2021 expected to be lower in the UK,
can trigger heart damage. US study, in which myocarditis which administers doses 12 weeks
Inflammation signals that after covid-19 was six times more apart, versus four weeks apart
the immune system’s activity “Younger people’s lower likely than it was post-vaccination. in the US, says Ismail. But the
is raised, but how myocarditis covid-19 risk makes it Unfortunately, varying condition could become an issue
specifically comes about is unclear. difficult to assess the myocarditis definitions make it as health officials consider fourth
“Arguably, it isn’t a single disease,” vaccines’ pros and cons” difficult to compare country-to- doses. In the UK, fourth vaccines
says Tevfik Ismail, a cardiologist country data, says Ismail. are mainly being offered to older
at King’s College London, who has Although the cases have been people, who are at a higher risk
advised the UK Health Security mainly linked to mRNA vaccines, of covid-19 but not myocarditis.
Agency on the issue, but spoke to the Oxford study also reported an Myocarditis aside, severe
New Scientist in a personal capacity. additional 14 myocarditis events covid-19 has been linked to
Myocarditis is also linked to
other vaccines, medicines and
to covid-19 itself, but regardless
12
Additional myocarditis cases per
after a second Oxford/AstraZeneca
dose, which is based on a different
technology. It is therefore unclear
strokes, sepsis and even to the
onset of diabetes, suggesting that
the vaccines’ benefits outweigh
of cause, it is more common 1 million males aged 13 to 40 whether the cases are linked to the any risk. While the dominant
in males and younger people. in England after a second Pfizer/ spike protein or perhaps to a more omicron variant is less virulent
In December 2021, work led by BioNTech vaccine dose universal vaccine component. than its predecessors, more than
a team at the University of Oxford A study released last month 14,000 people were admitted
looked at the prevalence of
myocarditis after a covid-19 vaccine
in more than 42 million people
13
adds to the uncertainty. A team
at the University of Alberta,
Edmonton, in Canada reviewed
to hospital with covid-19 in the
past week in the UK.
Younger people’s lower risk of
aged 13 or over in England. Males 1 million males aged 13 to 40 46 studies on heart inflammation severe illness from covid-19 makes
under 40 were most at risk. There after a third jab after an mRNA covid-19 vaccine. it difficult to assess the vaccines’
were an additional 12 myocarditis Male teens and young adults pros and cons for them, says
events per 1 million males in
the 28 days after a second Pfizer/
BioNTech vaccine, as well as an
7
were most at risk, but the
estimated prevalence ranged
from 50 to 139 cases per million.
Ismail. There are rare serious
complications from infection but
also rare adverse events from the
additional 13 events after a third 1 million males aged 13 to 40 When it comes to children, vaccines, he says. “There’s a lot
jab (medRxiv, doi.org/hnmn). after covid-19 infection 4.3 males and two females aged we don’t know,” says Ismail. ❚

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News
Palaeontology Neurology
Armless fossils show how Chronic pain in Black

people in US linked
animals like snakes lost limbs to gene expression
Christa Lesté-Lasserre Jason Arunn Murugesu
LESS than 100 million years says Mann (Nature Ecology direct ancestors of modern BLACK people in the US have worse
after vertebrates first grew & Evolution, doi.org/hnkv). snakes, says Mann. “They’re chronic pain than white people due
legs during the transition to “They’re relying on sort of an early experimental in part to gene expression.
land, some of their descendants body-based locomotion like lineage of reptiles.” Edwin Aroke at the University
had evolved to lose them sidewinding and not really The fact that the molgophids of Alabama at Birmingham and his
again, fossils reveal. The relying on limb-propelled evolved to lose at least some colleagues collected blood samples
discovery shows that land locomotion anymore,” he says. of their limbs is an important from 98 people – half were Black
vertebrates first began to It is a fascinating discovery, discovery, because it shows and half were non-Hispanic white,
evolve a snake-like form at says Rolf Zeller at the University that this ability is present in and their average age was 45. Half
least 308 million years ago. of Basel in Switzerland. “Snake most vertebrates that have the group had chronic lower back
Arjan Mann at the legs, he says. pain, while the rest were pain-free.
Smithsonian National “The discovery suggests Apart from snakes and some Everyone with chronic pain was
Museum of Natural History that the ability to lose lizards, the only vertebrates asked to report how bad their pain
in Washington DC and his limbs is present in most without legs are a number of was and how much it affected their
colleagues found two fossils vertebrates with legs” amphibians, including some daily lives. Black participants had
of an ancient animal, both salamanders and the worm-like higher scores on both counts than
of which came from rocks in embryos, such as pythons, caecilians. But it seems that their white counterparts.
Illinois that are well-known still form hindlimb buds that other groups, such as mammals The researchers analysed the
among palaeontologists disappear during development,” and birds, may have the capacity participants’ blood samples using
for preserving the remains he says. “The discovery of to evolve into legless forms – genetic sequencing that identifies
of ancient land animals in an ancient snake-like fossil unless they have lost the which sections of DNA have small
fine detail. lacking forelimbs but retaining associated genes, says Mann.
The animal has been dubbed
Nagini mazonense. It represents
a new genus and species, within
hindlimbs is a fantastic find,
because it reveals the existence
of transitional forms before
A related molgophid was
discovered in the same rocks
in Illinois in 2019, but in that
110
Signalling pathways with higher DNA
a group called the molgophids. complete limb loss.” case, the animal – called methylation in Black people with pain
N. mazonense may have grown Modern snakes also lost Infernovenator steenae –
to be about 10 centimetres their upper limbs and pectoral had four legs. molecules called methyl groups
long, and had a snake-like girdle first, about 170 million “[The rock site] is becoming attached. This methylation can
body with no forelimbs. years ago, says Mann. They a sort of a hotbed for looking happen for a variety of reasons,
It also lacked the bony then lost their rear limbs at early reptile evolution and including ageing and chronic
structures that support the about 100 million years ago. all the different body plans stress. This type of stress has
attachment of forelimbs But N. mazonense and that were experimented on previously been linked to racial
to the body, known as the other molgophids aren’t early on,” says Mann. ❚ discrimination, and can lead to
pectoral girdle. However, changes in gene expression.
N. mazonense did have a pair Earlier studies have shown that
of small but fully formed back methylation may be linked to poorer
legs, with four toes on each foot. health outcomes. In this study, there
Along with the nearly were 110 signalling pathways with
complete skeletons, which significantly more methylated genes
are around 308 million years in Black people with chronic pain
old, there were also impressions than in Black participants who were
of soft tissue, revealing that pain-free. These pathways have
N. mazonense had a round been tied to chronic pain. There were
snout and a long body with 31 pathways with more methylated
about 85 vertebrae and ribs. genes in white people with chronic
There were no signs of soft pain than in white participants
HENRY SUTHERLAND SHARPE
tissue in the area where without such pain (Neurobiology

forelimbs might be expected, of Pain, doi.org/hm74).
DNA methylation is reversible,
An artist’s impression so interventions targeting racism
of Nagini mazonense may also reduce ethnic disparities
(with blue stripes) in chronic pain, says Aroke. ❚

News
Medicine
Gene therapy treats skin condition

A gel applied to the skin replaces a faulty collagen gene in people with a genetic disease
Alice Klein
A RARE genetic skin condition Peter Marinkovich at Stanford replicate or cause disease. “All it repeated weekly until the wounds
has been corrected for the first University in California and his does is go into the cell and deliver closed. After three months, 71 per
time using a gene therapy that colleagues developed a way to the gene,” says Marinkovich. cent of the wounds treated with
is applied to the skin. insert normal COL7A1 genes into The gene therapy was then the gene therapy had completely
About 1 in 800,000 children the skin of such individuals so incorporated into a gel so it healed, compared with 20 per cent
in the US are born with a severe they can start producing collagen could be applied to the skin. It was of those that had the inactive gel
condition called recessive properly. The researchers did this tested in a late-stage clinical trial applied, and there were no serious
dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa by engineering herpes simplex in the US involving 31 children side effects (Nature Medicine,
that makes their skin extremely virus to deliver the genes into and adults with recessive doi.org/hnkx).
fragile and prone to tearing skin cells. The virus is normally dystrophic epidermolysis Mascoli’s large back wound
and blistering. known as the cause of cold sores, bullosa, including Mascoli. was treated with the gene therapy
“It is very painful,” says but it was modified so it couldn’t For each participant, the gene and it is now 95 per cent closed.
Vincenzo Mascoli, 22, who therapy gel was applied to one of “The gene therapy was very good
travelled from Italy to the US to Layers of skin can easily their wounds and an inactive gel for my back. Now, I can have a bath
have the gene therapy. He had separate in people with was put on another to compare without it burning my skin,” he
open wounds all over his body, epidermolysis bullosa the difference. The treatment was says. “I hope I will be able to use
including one covering his entire it on the rest of my body.”
back that had been there since Marinkovich has been trying
he was 2 years old. “Sometimes to develop a treatment for
I also get blisters in my eyes epidermolysis bullosa for more
and have to keep my eyes closed, than 25 years. He says it is “so nice
and sometimes I get blisters in to finally have something to offer
my throat that make it difficult this patient population. Up until
to eat,” he says. now, they’ve had nothing, there
Mascoli and other people have been no specific therapies.”
with the condition have fragile A US company called Krystal
skin because they have a faulty Biotech has partnered with
ISM/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
version of a collagen gene called Marinkovich and his colleagues

COL7A1. That means their skin to develop the gene therapy and
can’t produce the collagen will apply in the next few months
proteins needed to give it for approval to make it available
structure and strength. to patients in the US. ❚
Energy
UK gave cash back residents and caused the work to approve applications for a waiver In total, £640,000 was paid back
be paused. However, Prime Minister of the fees, with the blessing of to companies for waivers granted
to fracking firms Boris Johnson has recently asked for the Treasury. The regulator wasn’t for a period running from 1 April
after shale gas ban a fresh look at shale gas because obliged to approve the applications 2019 to 31 March 2021, according
of the energy price crisis, despite and pay back the money. to the NSTA’s response to the FoI
THE UK Treasury and the experts saying it would make no A spokesperson for the NSTA request. The regulator doesn’t say
country’s oil and gas regulator difference as production would said: “Licensees can apply for a which firms received the money.
chose to give fracking companies take years to start. rental waiver to the NSTA. The Greenpeace UK says now isn’t
a refund of £640,000 after the When the ban came into force, NSTA considers these requests the time to revive fracking. “The
government banned shale gas firms that had paid oil and gas and not all waivers are granted. climate crisis and energy security
exploration in England. licensing fees for fracking were Any successful requests require concerns mean accelerating what
Exploratory fracking had out of pocket, but a freedom of HM Treasury confirmation.” is clean, cheap and deliverable, not
already ground to a halt ahead information (FoI) request by the indulging fantasies of hydrocarbon
of a moratorium imposed in
November 2019, as firms struggled
to operate without triggering minor
website Drill or Drop? has revealed
that the North Sea Transition
Authority (NSTA), the UK’s oil and
£640k
Total returned to fracking firms by the
abundance stemming from a
bygone era,” says Doug Parr
at the environmental group. ❚
earthquakes that alarmed local gas industry regulator, chose to UK government after shale gas ban Adam Vaughan

Health Briefing
Male birth control

pill is safe and EU’s latest plan to take on tech
effective in mice The European Union’s proposed law would force tech companies
Alex Wilkins
to open up to wider competition, says Matthew Sparkes
A NON-HORMONAL male What does the new law say?

contraceptive pill is 99 per cent The final text of the proposed
effective at preventing pregnancy in Digital Markets Act hasn’t yet
mice with no observed side effects. been released, but we already
Despite many attempts at know it will be wide in scope.
making an effective and safe male Tech companies will have to
contraceptive, no treatment has allow their services to connect
LORENZO DI COLA/NURPHOTO/SHUTTERSTOCK
passed human clinical trials. Most with those of competitors, so
have been based on hormones, but that people using WhatsApp
non-hormonal contraceptives tend or Facebook Messenger, which
to have fewer side effects, says Md are both owned by Meta, can
Abdullah al Noman at the University chat seamlessly with those
of Minnesota in Minneapolis. using Apple’s iMessage.
“Safety is very important for People will also be given the
birth control pills because people right to remove pre-installed
are not taking it for a disease, software from devices they buy,
so they are less tolerant of side so you could get rid of Google
effects,” says Noman. software from a laptop sold by in different countries, the EU WhatsApp and iMessage
He and his colleagues gave Google, or Apple’s built-in apps legislation is likely to be adopted users can’t communicate
male mice a daily dose of a from an iPhone. worldwide by most companies, with each other
molecule called YCT529 over meaning that the benefits of
a four-week period, and found Which firms will the law apply to? more consumer choice won’t to do,” he says. “Or, worse,
that their sperm count plummeted. Companies that meet a number be confined to Europe. This that they do understand the
Between four and six weeks of requirements: those with happened with the EU’s General implications and are pushing
after the mice stopped receiving a value of €75 billion or over, Data Protection Regulation, for it all the same.”
the treatment, they could those with at least 45 million which is designed to protect
reproduce normally again monthly users and those that consumers’ data. Some Can’t tech firms find a solution?
with no observable side effects. operate via an app, website or countries that deal with the “In theory, you can still have
“When we went to even social network. This captures EU a lot adopted similar laws to end-to-end encryption if
100 times higher dose than the the likes of Meta, Google and streamline trade, while some everyone is using absolutely
effective dose, the compound Apple, but also smaller firms companies decided to introduce compatible protocols, which
didn’t show any toxicity,” says like Booking.com. Any company a more stringent policy globally they’re probably not at the
Noman, who presented the results that breaks the law could be for the sake of simplicity. moment,” says Keith Martin
at the American Chemical Society hit by fines of up to 10 per cent at Royal Holloway, University
Spring 2022 conference in San of its global turnover, and up Are there any downsides? of London. “There’s a lot of
Diego, California, on 23 March. to 20 per cent for repeated Making messaging services complexity around making the
The researchers have licensed infringements. interoperable is a large cryptography protocols broadly
their drug to a private company, engineering hurdle. Neil Brown compatible. It’s not something
YourChoice Therapeutics, which When will these changes begin? that anyone could do quickly.
is aiming to carry out human The draft act was provisionally “I fear that those pushing I would imagine for the people
trials in the US later this year. agreed by the European for this don’t understand implementing these apps, it’ll
While Noman and his team Parliament on 24 March, but the implications of what be a messy process.”
didn’t observe any side effects in must be formally approved they are asking for” But Martin says the law
mice, this doesn’t guarantee that by the parliament and European could ultimately boost security.
the drug will be safe in humans, Council. Then, there will be at UK law firm decoded.legal “I think standardisation and
says Richard Anderson at the a buffer of 20 days before it believes it carries the risk of scrutinisation is a good thing,”
University of Edinburgh, UK. becomes law, and the rules will compromising the end-to-end he says. “I think possibly it
“If you were developing a start to apply six months later. encryption offered on services would be a net gain for security
drug that’s targeting a completely such as WhatsApp. “I fear that if it meant that we had more
novel pathway, I think it would be What will happen for people those pushing for this don’t high-profile, secure standards
appropriate to be cautious about outside the EU? understand the implications that everyone was using.
safety when there isn’t a track Because of the complexity of what they are going to There’s an argument that
record in that field,” he says. ❚ of offering varying services compel service providers that’s a better world.” ❚

News
Astronomy
The struggle to define a planet sees

some alien worlds kicked off the list
Alex Wilkins
WHAT is a planet? Astronomers turn, wasn’t actually well-defined. that an exoplanet must be technically not planets because
still haven’t found a definition “Since that time, we have “clearing the neighbourhood” they don’t orbit another body.
that everyone can agree on – discovered many exoplanets and in its orbit, meaning that it has The mass ratio also kicks some
and the problem only gets harder many different systems,” says the gravitationally removed other existing exoplanets out of the
when considering worlds outside IAU’s Alain Lecavelier des Etangs – objects of similar size. This club. “Several objects that are
our solar system, as the latest NASA puts the latest count at brings exoplanets in line with listed in the NASA Exoplanet
controversial attempt to define 5000. “The knowledge we have the definition of a planet within Archive are no longer technically
an exoplanet shows. about these exoplanets is totally exoplanets,” says David Kipping at
The International Astronomical different from the knowledge “Several objects Columbia University in New York,
Union (IAU), arbiter of all things we had in 2003.” that are listed by such as MOA-2010-BLG-073L b,
cosmic, set out a final definition To better conform to the new NASA are no longer which is 11 times the mass of
for planets in our solar system in discoveries, the IAU’s working technically exoplanets” Jupiter. “This is because they
2006, famously demoting Pluto group on exoplanets, a body of orbit very low mass stars, and
to a dwarf planet in the process. Its more than 400 astronomers, our solar system. Although the so dividing that by 25 ends up
first requirement is that a planet voted in 2018 for a definition exoplanet rules were voted on in cutting out [such] super-Jupiters.”
is in orbit around the sun, which that adds a new requirement: 2018, details have only now come Astronomers understand
rules out all exoplanets. an exoplanet’s mass must be to light with a newly published that definitions change as more
An IAU definition of exoplanets less than 1/25th of the mass explanation of the decision that information comes in, but it is in
set out in 2003 included any object of the object it orbits. has caught the attention of the the marginal cases, where things
below 13 times the mass of Jupiter, This ratio is important because wider astronomical community. can be considered a planet or a
a cut-off chosen because objects of it implies something about how an Mikko Tuomi at the University star, that questions often arise. “If
this mass with the same chemical object formed, says Beth Biller at of Herefordshire, UK, called the you have a 13 Jupiter-mass object
composition as the sun start the University of Edinburgh, UK. new definition “horrible” in orbiting a star, and then you have
undergoing star-like fusion of “If the mass ratio is fairly large, this a tweet, saying it would be a 12.5 Jupiter-mass object orbiting
deuterium, a form of hydrogen. is something that has formed in a impossible for astronomers to a star, and one is just slightly
At the other end of the scale, it disc around its star, like a planet, as detect whether an exoplanet has massive enough that it has
excluded anything below the opposed to something that forms cleared its neighbourhood, while deuterium fusion, then is that
minimum size of a planet in our more like a binary star,” she says. the mass-ratio requirement means enough to call one a planet
solar system, although this, in The new definition also decreed free-floating “rogue planets” are and one not?” says Biller. ❚
Evolution
Ostrich necks act like From 2012 to 2017, they took A male Kenyan
nearly 5600 infrared photos of “red” ostrich (Struthio
a radiator to control 794 ostriches at a research farm in camelus massaicus)
head temperature Klein Karoo, South Africa. The team
found that the neck was a “thermal The researchers also suggest
THE ostrich’s long, flexible neck window”, emitting excess heat in that, as the planet warms, ostrich
is an important way to stay cool in hot conditions and retaining heat in necks could evolve to become
the heat and keep warm in cooler the cold, stabilising the temperature even longer. Using pedigree data
KLEIN & HUBERT/NATUREPL
weather, and it may have evolved of the head and brain. from ostriches on the farm, they
partly as an adaptation to wildly The farm hosts three populations confirmed that the neck radiator’s
variable climatic conditions. of the birds: South African “black” efficiency is heritable.
Large animals are vulnerable ostriches, Zimbabwean “blue” Ben Smit at Rhodes University
to rapid temperature changes ostriches and the Kenyan “reds”. in South Africa says ostriches use
because their big bodies tend Ostriches that evolved in what is now evaporation from their open mouth
to hold on to heat. To investigate South Africa or Zimbabwe, regions their head and neck temperatures and throat to lose heat. He wonders
how they evolve thermal tolerance, with more climatic variability, were laid more eggs in the following days if the excess heat in the neck is
Erik Svensson at Lund University, more efficient at shifting the compared with those with a smaller mostly warm blood being shunted
Sweden, and his colleagues looked temperature in their necks. heat gap (bioRxiv, doi.org/hm6t). to the head, where evaporative
to the world’s largest bird: the On hot days, female ostriches This all suggests that the neck is a cooling happens. ❚
common ostrich (Struthio camelus). with a greater difference between buffer for heat stress, the team says. Jake Buehler

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News
Technology Medicine
Robot works out

how to carefully
Drugs seem to help repair
peel a banana damaged mouse lungs
Chris Stokel-Walker Carissa Wong
A ROBOT trained by a machine- CT scan of human lungs

learning algorithm that imitates (black) with damaged
a human demonstrator can tissue (blue/green)
successfully peel a banana without
smashing it to smithereens. and grown in a gel for 14 days,
Handling soft fruit is a challenge in dishes that each contained
ZHITAO ZHANG AND JIANCHENG LAI/BAO GROUP RESEARCH LAB
for robots, which often lack the one of the drugs, or control
dexterity and nuanced touch to dishes with no drug.
process items without destroying “You take the progenitor
them. The uneven shape of fruit – cells and place them in a gel,
which can vary significantly even then they form these mini-lung
with the same type of fruit – can structures known as organoids,”
also flummox the computer-vision says Gosens. By assessing how
algorithms that often act as the many organoids developed in
brains of such robots. the absence or presence of the
Heecheol Kim at the University drugs, the team found that both
of Tokyo and his colleagues have drugs appeared to fully restore
developed a machine-learning the regenerative ability of the
system that powers a robot progenitor cells, which declined
(pictured below), which has TWO existing drugs may help on invasive cellular therapies after exposure to the smoke.
two arms and hands that grasp regenerate mouse lungs that such as stem cell implants, The team also treated the
between two “fingers”. have been damaged by cigarette which provide a source of mice with the drugs during
It was trained by having a human smoke. The preliminary progenitor cells. a week of cigarette smoke
operating the robot peel hundreds findings suggest the drugs might Gosens and his colleagues exposure and found they had
of bananas, creating 811 minutes benefit people with chronic analysed data previously the same beneficial effect on
of demonstration data for the obstructive pulmonary disease, collected from the lung tissue subsequently extracted lung
system to learn from. After training, which currently has no cure. of people with COPD and mice progenitor cells (Science
the robot was able to successfully COPD is the third leading exposed to cigarette smoke, as Advances, doi.org/hm24).
peel a banana 57 per cent of the cause of death worldwide after well as data from healthy people “Compared to other
time (arxiv.org/abs/2203.09749). heart disease and stroke, and and mice, to find out which drugs that can support lung
“What is really interesting in can result from smoking, air regeneration in animals,
this case is that the process that pollution or genetics. It involves “The drugs identified are the big benefit of the drugs
a human uses has been carried an excessive immune response already used to treat we’ve identified is that they’re
over into the training of the robot that irreversibly damages the other conditions, so we already used to treat other
system through the deep-imitation lungs, leading to elevated know that they are safe” conditions, so we know that
learning,” says Jonathan Aitken mucus levels in them, shortness they are safe and they are
at the University of Sheffield, UK. of breath and chest tightness. genes were more or less active similarly effective,” says Gosens.
Aitken would like to see how “The problem with COPD at in diseased tissues compared “I’m really delighted to see
the robot handles fruit that is more the moment is that we do not with healthy controls. people working on regenerative
misshapen. The technology won’t have a way of preventing the This allowed them to identify power using drugs in COPD,”
simply be used for bananas, though: progression of disease and two proteins in epithelial says Rolf Ziesche at the Medical
the goal is to train a system that the decline in lung function. progenitor cells that contributed University of Vienna, Austria.
can deal with general tasks that We only have ways to treat to the disease and could be “However, the model uses
require fine motor skills. ❚ symptoms,” says Reinoud targeted with two existing mice aged at about 20 human
Gosens at the University of drugs: iloprost, which is used years, whereas typical COPD
Groningen in the Netherlands. to treat high blood pressure in patients are around 50 and
HEECHEOL KIM/UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO
COPD damages so-called lung arteries, and misoprostol, we know regenerative power
epithelial progenitor cells that used to heal stomach ulcers. slows with age. Better models
normally regenerate the lining To test these drugs, the team are needed to really establish
of the lungs, meaning they exposed mice to cigarette therapeutic potential.” ❚
cannot repair themselves. smoke for four months. Lung
Previous efforts at treating this progenitor cells were then For more on regeneration,
condition have mainly focused extracted from the animals see page 35

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News Insight
Energy efficiency
Time to green your home

With an energy crisis sending power bills soaring, using green tech
to keep homes warm makes economic sense, finds Adam Vaughan
FOR the past few weeks, 22 million The rising cost of power
people across England, Scotland has made solar panels
and Wales have had an unpleasant a more attractive option
shock lurking in their inboxes and
on their doormats, as their energy the current situation and going
suppliers have laid out their future forward will be even more
energy costs. For a home with effective,” he says. Solid wall
typical energy consumption, insulation of the kind required for
annual bills will jump by 54 per older properties is more marginal
cent to £1971 from 1 April under from a cost perspective. It will
a regulated price cap. typically cost £10,000 with energy
The unprecedented increase bill savings of around £400 a
was triggered by an energy crisis year for a home on a gas boiler,
that started well before Russia’s according to modelling by David
invasion of Ukraine, although Adams at the UK Green Building
this has pushed prices even Council (UKGBC). Nonetheless,
higher. When the price cap moves now is a good time to consider
again in October, analysts expect solid wall insulation, he says,
IAIN MASTERTON/ALAMY
annual bills will hit anywhere “in the context of net zero and
between £2500 and up to £3000. getting off Russian gas”.
Emergency action will be Most home heating is provided
needed to help the millions of by gas boilers today. As Marcus
people who are least able to pay. Shepheard at the UK’s Climate
But for those with capital and Change Committee wrote
cheap credit, a world with such cent to 0 per cent. That should and it may reach as much as recently: “We cannot reach Net
high prices rewrites the financial cut solar installation costs by 45p/kWh in October. But the Zero if we continue to use gas for
calculations for the green home £1000, said Sunak. amount that energy supplier heat.” For most homes using a
renovations that are considered Simon Evans at the website Octopus Energy is paying for solar gas boiler, the main low-carbon
essential for meeting the UK’s CarbonBrief calculates that exports increased at the end of alternative is an air-source heat
climate targets. Energy experts the electricity bill savings of a January to just 7.5p/kWh, up on the pump, which uses electricity to
say the attractiveness of measures 3-kilowatt peak solar photovoltaic 5.5p/kWh it paid before: a level that extract warmth from the air.
system would currently pay back had stayed the same since 2019, To date, these have been
“The attraction of installing the upfront cost in 18 years. From when electricity prices were much financially unattractive. An
insulation, solar panels April, that figure should drop to lower. Still, Octopus is paying more installation can cost £10,000
and heat pumps has 11 years. By October, it should have than other energy suppliers: the compared with £2500 for a gas
fundamentally changed” dropped even further, to 7 years. joint second highest, E.ON and boiler, and running costs are higher
The payback period will vary ScottishPower, pay 5.5p/kWh. because most “green levies” –
such as installing insulation, depending on homes and the Jan Rosenow at the Regulatory designed to support investment
solar panels and heat pumps solar panel system. Savings will Assistance Project says that the in renewables – are paid through
has fundamentally changed. also rise the more the household financial case is now clear-cut electricity bills, not gas bills.
“It has to massively change the consumes rather than exports the for solar panels, plus cavity wall However, from April, Rosenow
calculus,” says Rob Gross, director solar electricity (Evans assumes insulation and loft insulation. says they will be cheaper to run
VUK VALCIC/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES
of the UK Energy Research Centre. 45 per cent self-consumption). “Loft and cavity insulation were for the first time. That is because
Solar panels are one technology Self-consumption also makes already cost effective well before gas prices are increasing by 81 per
back in the sun, after installation more financial sense given that cent in April versus 36 per cent
rates drastically slowed due to there is a growing gap between The UK energy for electricity, much of which
subsidy cuts six years ago. Solar the amount people pay energy crisis has led to also comes from renewables and
power also got a boost in the suppliers for electricity and what protests against nuclear. Octopus Energy, which
spring statement on 23 March, those suppliers pay households fuel poverty hopes to become a major supplier
which UK chancellor Rishi Sunak for exporting solar electricity. The of heat pumps, says a heat pump
used to impose a 5-year-long cut cost of a unit of electricity is now replacing a gas boiler would
in VAT on solar panels and energy capped at 21p per kilowatt hour, lower an annual energy bill by
efficiency products, from 5 per set to increase to 28p/kWh in April, £8 from April. While that saving

More Insight online
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is marginal, Evans calculates the Heat pumps are on the verge of becoming cheaper the research evidence tells us that
saving will be about £240 a year to run than gas boilers in the UK because of high that’s not true.”
from October. An absence of good advice is a
energy prices
Crucially, April also sees the big issue, says Rosenow. “A lot of
launch of the government’s Boiler The horizontal axis shows efficiencies for heat pumps, measured what is online is out of date and
Upgrade Scheme, giving 30,000 as coefficient of performance (COP). The vertical axis is energy bill based on old prices,” he says. The
homes a year a £5000 grant costs compared with using a gas boiler: a positive figure is more Energy Saving Trust, which is
towards a heat pump. Octopus expensive, a negative one cheaper intended to be the main impartial
After the 1 April price cap,
Energy claims it can match the a heat pump with a COP of 3 source of information for
cost of a gas boiler installation will become a fraction consumers, is still using existing
£200 cheaper to run than a gas boiler
when the grant is factored in. energy prices even though the
Louise Hutchins at the UKGBC £100 April price cap was announced
says the cost of heat pumps will in February. It says it is working
fall too, as production and installs £0 to update its figures in line with
ramp up. Gas will also get more −£100
post-April energy costs.
expensive and electricity cheaper, Overcoming hurdles is where
because the UK government has −£200 the government has a role to play,
promised to shift the green levies says Gross. That could involve
−£300
onto gas bills over the next decade. helping with upfront capital costs
Of course, payback periods for −£400 or loans. Previous government
different technologies will depend But the savings will become much schemes – notably the 2012 to
bigger under the October 2022 price cap
on how many years energy prices −£500 2015 Green Deal and 2020 to 2021
stay at current highs. Before Green Homes Grant – have been
−£600
Russia’s invasion, analysts had 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4 3.6 3.8 4.0 short-lived and poorly executed.
expected wholesale energy prices “But that doesn’t mean that we
Oct 2020 price cap Apr 2021 Oct 2021 Apr 2022
to fall later this year, but that has have to do it badly,” says Gross.
Oct 2022
been undone. High costs are Government support will
CHART: NEW SCIENTIST • SOURCE : CARBONBRIEF / INVESTEC
now anticipated to continue also be important for the training
well into 2023, but there is a huge and certification of installers,
uncertainty looking further out. to assuage consumer fears of
Few in society want such prices Energy price rises in October 2022 mean the “cowboys”, he adds. Another lever
to persist. Nonetheless, Simon payback period for solar panels would fall to less the government could pull is to
Cran-McGreehin at the Energy than a decade make stamp duty when buying
and Climate Intelligence Unit a property ramp up or down
think tank believes “all bets are The speed of payback depends on what energy suppliers charge based on the home’s energy
off” because geopolitics could be
for electricity and on what percentage of the panels' electricity a performance, says Adams.
household consumes rather than exports. These figures factor in
messy for years. “I think there’s a In the meantime, the terrible
the VAT cut on solar panels announced in the spring statement
need to start thinking about this humanitarian situation in Ukraine
in terms of an insurance policy,” Some analysts are projecting
could prove a more powerful spur
he says of green home measures. electricity prices may reach 45p for households than financial and
20 years
However, while the financial per kilowatt hour under a new environmental concerns. People
price cap in October 2022
calculations for those measures have already taken to social media
may have changed dramatically, it 15 to post about how they have
Payback period
doesn’t necessarily mean a wave of turned down their boiler flow

home energy retrofits will sweep 10 temperatures and thermostats.
the UK. Gross says all the “non- Bigger steps, such as energy
price barriers” remain, including retrofits of the whole house,
5
lack of information, lack of access could be next. Rosenow says:
to capital, disruption and fear of “There’s the emotional driver,
builders. “This kind of idea that 0 where people feel, ‘I really
0.20 p/kWh 0.30 0.40 0.50
because the relative economics don’t want to use gas any more:
of something have changed, it will 25% 35% 45% 55% I want to reduce that for moral
just kind of magically happen: all CHART: NEW SCIENTIST • SOURCE: CARBONBRIEF reasons, to support Ukraine’.” ❚

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Thursday 21 April 2022 7-9pm BST/2-4pm EDT and on-demand
Every day we are bombarded with messages about healthy eating, from
gimmicky fad diets to the latest superfoods. But what is the truth behind
sensational media claims about boosting your gut bacteria or eating foods to
improve your mental health? Join leading nutritional expert Megan Rossi and
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News In brief
Infectious diseases
Human-to-animal infections
more common than thought
WE often think of diseases passing animals, such as mountain gorillas
from other animals to people, as in in Uganda (pictured) catching
the case of covid-19, but they go the several bacterial infections. “I think
other way too and we seem to have there’s a lot more transmission
vastly underestimated this spread. happening than we are currently
Anna Fagre at Colorado State picking up,” says Fagre.
University and her team searched There were no confirmed cases
previously published research for of a disease crossing to an animal
all papers that describe human-to- species and continuing to spread
animal disease transmission that between individuals. But several
didn’t involve the new coronavirus. wild skunk have been found to be
The group found 97 reports, infected with human influenza,
involving bacteria, viruses, fungi which suggests that there may
and parasites. Of these, 57 involved be ongoing transmission. And the
JO-ANNE MCARTHUR/WE ANIMALS/NATUREPL
transmission to primates – probably virus that causes covid-19 is now

because it is easier for pathogens spreading widely among white-
to jump between humans and more tailed deer in North America.
closely related species (Ecology There is a chance these diseases
Letters, doi.org/hm3h). could harm the animals, but there
Many of the transmission events is also the risk a pathogen mutates
involved zoo animals – for instance, while in another host and becomes
a cheetah that caught a human flu more dangerous for people, if it
strain – but they also involved wild crosses back. Clare Wilson
Medicine Technology
deliver an inactivated form of or are too fragile or too expensive.

Tetanus trick tackles tetanus toxin to pancreatic cancer. A screen that you Zhenan Bao at Stanford
hard-to-treat cancer Because most of us are vaccinated wear like a plaster University in California and her
against tetanus, our immune team have created a light-emitting
PANCREATIC tumours have been systems detect it. So pancreatic AN ELASTIC polymer that can plastic material that can be
drastically shrunk in mice using cancer cells loaded with tetanus glow like a filament in a light bulb stretched up to twice its original
a strategy that allows the immune should be vulnerable to attack. could lead to flexible screens that length without tearing. The
system to kill the cancer cells. The To test this, the researchers gave are affordable, practical and robust. polymer is up to twice as bright
method may one day help to treat tetanus vaccines to young mice These could form part of as smartphone screens. When an
this deadly disease in people. engineered to develop pancreatic wearable computers that stick electrical charge is passed through
Most people with pancreatic cancer. When the animals had to our skin and do away with the material, it causes photons to
cancer don’t survive long because advanced cancer, the listeria the need to carry a smartphone be emitted, creating red, green or
the cancer often spreads before bacteria were injected into them. or laptop. But existing flexible blue light. A thin film can be stuck
symptoms arise and we lack This successfully delivered displays have flaws: they either onto skin and doesn’t rip when it
effective treatments. tetanus to the tumours, making require high voltages; are lacking flexes (Nature, doi.org/hm6j).
Many cancers can be treated them visible to the immune brightness; aren’t bendy enough; So far, the researchers have
using therapies that boost the system, which attacked the cancer. demonstrated small, static
cancer-fighting abilities of the This was amplified by giving the examples of the films in single
immune system. However, these mice a drug that stopped some of colours. To be useful for devices,
don’t usually work for pancreatic the cells around the tumours from they will need to develop a larger
cancer as it isn’t easily detected by suppressing immune activity. version with discrete pixels and
ZHANG AND LAI/BAO GROUP RESEARCH LAB
the immune system. The tumours This reduced the size of the control technology to allow the
also tend to be surrounded by cells pancreatic tumours and those that image on the screen to change.
that suppress immune activity. had spread to other parts of the Harish Bhaskaran at the
To address this, Claudia body by over 80 per cent. It also University of Oxford says a light-
Gravekamp at Albert Einstein improved the average survival emitting polymer that is robust
College of Medicine in New York time of the mice by 40 per cent and cheap to manufacture could
and her team used listeria bacteria, (Science Translational Medicine, make new types of smart device
which are attracted to tumours, to doi.org/hm6n). Alice Klein practical. Matthew Sparkes

New Scientist Daily
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Astrophysics
Really brief
telescopes. The waves comprise plasma. None of these matches
Odd waves within small eddies, or vortices, travelling the data (Nature Astronomy,
sun defy explanation around the sun in the opposite doi.org/hnhh).
direction to its rotation. “To find a set of waves that
A STRANGE type of wave has been However, the vortices has no current explanation is…
discovered that travels backwards move around the star three exciting and intriguing, because
FRANS LEMMENS/ALAMY
through the plasma that makes up times faster than other, similar the challenge now remains to
the sun. But possible mechanisms waves – more rapidly than can explain what they are,” says
to explain these waves don’t fit the be explained by any models of Hanson. “We are missing an
data, so they remain a mystery. plasma motion within the sun. ingredient in our understanding
Chris Hanson at New York The researchers tested three of the sun.”
University Abu Dhabi in the possible explanations: that the The researchers couldn’t
How boas constrict United Arab Emirates and his waves were caused by magnetic think of any other plausible
yet can still breathe team found the phenomenon, fields within the sun; that they mechanisms, but they hope that
called high-frequency retrograde come from other ripples in the more detailed modelling will be
Taking a breath is difficult vorticity waves, using decades sun called gravity waves; or that able to explain these strange
when you are using your rib of data from ground and space they are due to compression of waves in the future. Leah Crane
cage to squeeze the life out
of your prey. But the boa Farming Wildlife
constrictor has come up
with a solution: it can move
the ribs lower down its long Genetic secrets of
body to still pull air into its the vampire bats
upper lungs while the ribs
higher up are incapacitated VAMPIRE bats are missing several
(Journal of Experimental genes found in other bats, which
Biology, doi.org/hm55). may be related to their unique
diet – they are the only mammals
Sand supplies may that feed exclusively on blood.
run low by 2060 Living on blood is challenging
because it is mostly composed of
SIEGFRIED LAYDA/GETTY IMAGES
Our need for sand could water and low in calories. To get
soar 45 per cent over the enough energy, common vampire
next 40 years, and it isn’t bats (Desmodus rotundus) have to
clear if supplies can meet ingest as much as 1.4 times their
such demand. A lot of sand body weight in blood in each meal.
is used to produce concrete. To find out more about how
However, alternatives to they adapted, Moritz Blumer
concrete, such as the use of Genetic tweak boosts yields at the Max Planck Institute of
timber frames in buildings, Molecular Cell Biology and
could help avert a crisis of two important food crops Genetics in Germany and his team
(Nature Sustainability, sequenced the common vampire
doi.org/hnhf). TURNING off a particular gene Xiaohong Yang at China bat genome and compared it with
in maize and rice could enhance Agricultural University in Beijing those of 26 other bat species.
Tropical forests help yields by 10 per cent and 8 per cent and her colleagues mapped the This showed that these vampire
hold down warming respectively. By exploring similar genomes of maize (Zea mays L. bats are missing 13 genes found in
genes in other cereal grains, global ssp. mays) and rice (Oryza sativa). other bats. For example, three lost
Forests around the crop production could be boosted. They found 490 pairs of genes genes are linked to taste receptors
equator are more than Maize (pictured) and rice are that seemed to serve analogous that tell foods apart – redundant if
just a carbon store, they staple foods around the world, each functions in both grains. From these you only feast on blood. Two more
also cool the air as water with a distinct history of cultivation pairs, the researchers identified two are usually involved in managing
evaporates from leaves for large-scale consumption. It is genes – known as KRN2 in maize blood sugar levels, again not that
and triggers the build-up of believed that maize originated in and OsKRN2 in rice – that affected necessary in a blood diet lacking
clouds. Overall, they reduce Mexico, while rice came from China. their grain yield. By using CRISPR carbohydrates. The loss of another
global temperatures by 1°C Despite the independent evolution gene editing to switch off these gene seems to allow the bats
(Frontiers in Forests and of these species, plant biologists genes, they could increase grain to increase the amount of iron
Global Change, DOI: have noted that they possess yield by 10 per cent in maize and they can excrete, since their diet
10.3389/ffgc.2022. some very similar traits. This is 8 per cent in rice. These figures puts them at risk of excess iron
756115). known as convergent evolution. came from tests in farm fields in the body (Science Advances,
To delve into these resemblances, (Science, doi.org/hm6d). Chen Ly doi.org/hnhj). AK

Views
The columnist Aperture Letters Culture Culture
Annalee Newitz Night-time photos Russia’s nuclear An unsettling film The hunt for a whale
on what tech can do show the waste of weapon threats just offers a cow’s-eye with an unusual
for bird studies p28 “vampire power” p30 don’t ring true p32 view of the world p34 sonar signature p36
Comment
Zero doubts
Several countries are now abandoning their zero-covid approach, but
the evidence shows it was the best route to take, says Michael Marshall
I
T HAS been two years since measures, so governments that
the World Health Organization previously banked on elimination
declared covid-19 a pandemic, have been forced to let the virus in.
and governments are still If the target of zero covid is now
changing tack. One of the biggest being ditched, does that mean
shifts has been the abandonment it was a failure? A crude answer
of the “zero covid” strategy by would be: only if you think saving
countries like New Zealand and lives and preserving economic
Vietnam, which are opening up growth constitutes a misstep.
and allowing the virus to spread. Let’s go further. Consider what
As a result, it is tempting to would have happened if, in early
think the approach was a mistake 2020, every country able to had
and that the strategy of nations adopted a zero-covid policy. It is
like the UK has won out. But that is incontestable that the global death
nonsense. Countries that followed count would be far lower, fewer
the zero-covid playbook have people would have long covid and
done better on every measure, the economic damage would have
from death rates to economic been reduced. The virus would
growth. If more nations had still be spreading, but slowly,
implemented this approach, and rising rates of vaccination
humanity would be in a better would control it further. Crucially,
place. When the next pandemic omicron probably wouldn’t have
emerges, governments should had the chance to evolve.
consider trying to eliminate it At the start of the pandemic,
using zero-covid methods. governments like the UK’s
There is no single definition asserted that eliminating the
of a zero-covid strategy, but virus repeatedly snuck into the economic growth in zero-covid virus was utterly impractical and
it generally means reducing country. In contrast, more than countries than in those that let so it was necessary to let it pass
the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 164,000 people are confirmed the virus spread. The one big through the population in a
coronavirus as much as possible. to have died in the UK, which is downside is that maintaining “controlled” manner. Two years
This typically entails a rapid 0.24 per cent of the population. border controls hurt trade and on, we know that was wrong.
lockdown once the virus is Zero-covid policies also cause tourism. But overall, zero-covid When the next pandemic
detected in the community, less economic harm. When the nations did better economically. emerges – as it will – governments
followed by reopening once cases virus is barely present, people Although zero covid was a should remember zero covid,
have fallen, combined with a feel confident going out, so the successful strategy for countries and work together to eliminate
robust system for testing, tracing economy can reopen more fully. like New Zealand, they are now the new threat if they feasibly can.
chains of infection and supporting There is an economic cost to abandoning it. A key factor has Coordinated international action
those who need to self-isolate. the initial lockdown, but many been the evolution of the virus. is hard, but we must learn to do it. ❚
The most obvious benefit nations that allowed the virus The delta variant was far more
is that far fewer people die. As to spread have also had lockdowns transmissible than the original
MICHELLE D’URBANO
of 18 March, New Zealand had to save their health systems and virus, and the newer omicron Michael Marshall is
seen 151 confirmed deaths from so paid the same costs – and their variant is more transmissible a science writer in
covid-19, or 0.003 per cent of its lockdowns were often longer. A still. These new variants can Devon, UK, and author
population – even though the 2021 study found there was greater only be halted by truly draconian of The Genesis Quest

Views Columnist
This changes everything
An idea with wings Thousands of us are glued to the online

dramas of two peregrines, but the Cal Falcons webcam is just the
start of what tech can do for bird studies, writes Annalee Newitz
A
FEW weeks after officials moments in the birds’ lives. to explain what was happening.
in California issued the Right before the 2022 egg- Over the past couple of weeks,
first stay-at-home orders laying season, which lasts roughly Annie has been in the nest a lot,
of the pandemic, back in 2020, from March to May, Annie and and it looks as if she is back to stay.
something amazing happened Grinnell’s lives suddenly became The webcam is just the
on the internet. Well, not on the a soap opera. More peregrines beginning in terms of what
internet exactly – it happened in a were encroaching on their technology can do for the study
gravel box high up on a bell tower, territory and Grinnell was of birds. Schofield says “most birds
while thousands of us tuned in attacked by the interlopers. With lead a double life”, nesting for a
Annalee Newitz is a science by webcam to see two peregrine an injured wing, foot and beak, few months, and then migrating
journalist and author. Their falcons snuggling their freshly he fell to the ground and was across huge distances. That
latest novel is The Future of hatched chicks. Over the next discovered by nature-lovers, is why she is working with
Another Timeline and they few months, we watched the who brought him to a local wildlife groups like Motus, a non-profit
are the co-host of the Cal Falcons webcam as the tiny hospital. It took a month for him organisation that uses radio
Hugo-nominated podcast chicks grew into fierce adults. to recover, and while he was gone, telemetry to track birds in motion.
Our Opinions Are Correct. The sight was a balm. It was Annie began to court other males. Researchers attach tiny radio
You can follow them a scientific wonder as well. All of us watching the Cal transmitters to animals, and then
@annaleen and their website Peregrines were locally extinct Falcons cam were riveted. rely on a network of scientists and
is techsploitation.com in many parts of North America amateurs to set up receivers that
50 years ago, and endangered “In just 50 years, pick up signals from the tagged
throughout the world, after the the nearly extinct creatures (see page 43 for more on
pesticide DDT nearly wiped them tracking animals). The result is a
peregrine has
out. Now, thanks to decades of map of where birds like Annie go
Annalee’s week conservation efforts, the raptors become populous when they aren’t rearing babies.
What I’m reading are making homes in our cities, enough to spawn “We need to know where
How Our Days Became even in a noisy bell tower in soap operas” the wildlife is if we’re going to
Numbered: Risk and the the middle of the University conserve it,” says Schofield. “That’s
rise of the statistical of California, Berkeley, campus. Would Annie wait long enough the constant difficulty of studying
individual by Dan Bouk “People have contacted me for Grinnell’s triumphant return? birds. They exist on continental
and said watching is our one Would she even want him after scales.” Eventually, she says, we will
What I’m watching solace during these huge events,” his defeat? Although female be able to use machine learning
Our Flag Means Death, says Lynn Schofield, a founder peregrines are twice as large as to analyse the radio signals
a delightful comedy series of the Cal Falcons project and males, and far more dangerous, for common bird behaviours
about the not-so-dread a biologist at the Institute for they still need strong partners. like hunting and nesting.
pirate Stede Bonnet. Bird Populations in Petaluma, At last, Grinnell was well enough These days, most of Schofield’s
California. She and her husband to return, and Annie seemed to research focuses on how wildlife
What I’m working on Sean Peterson, an environmental accept him. They bowed their is affected by climate change and
A podcast episode about researcher at Syracuse University heads to each other and chirruped fire – pretty grim subjects. That is
animal communication. in New York, worked with a team (classic courtship behaviour) and why the webcam is so important:
to build the birds’ nest in 2017. the webcam even captured them it is evidence that conservation
Then, in 2019, they crowdfunded mating. But then Annie abruptly research can pay off. In just
the Cal Falcons webcam to educate disappeared for more than a 50 years, the nearly extinct
the public about urban wildlife. week – unheard of during laying peregrine has become populous
The birds have returned every season. Grinnell began courting enough to spawn soap operas.
year to rear a new clutch of young. a new young female, and Schofield Plus, Annie and Grinnell’s fans
The pair named the falcons and Peterson sadly informed have formed a brigade of citizen
Annie and Grinnell, and post the Cal Falcons community that conservationists, including
videos from their lives, with they assumed Annie had died children who may become the
scientific explanations for or left the territory. next generation of environmental
their generally adorable, The very next day, Annie scientists. The Cal Falcons cam,
This column appears often bloodthirsty, behaviour. reappeared at the nest, much to says Schofield, “makes a big
monthly. Up next week: They also host livestreams to the watchers’ delight. Schofield difference – it reminds me that
Beronda Montgomery take audience questions at key and Peterson held a livestream all of this work is worthwhile”. ❚

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Views Aperture

Vampire power
Photographer Alessio Perboni
THESE are night-time scenes as

you have never seen them before.
Using long-exposure techniques
and only the illumination from
LEDs on household and office
devices on standby, such as
TVs and computer monitors,
photographer Alessio Perboni,
based in Milan, Italy, casts the
everyday in a new light.
These images are part of
a photo project that is under
development by Perboni called
Stand-by. The Wasted Month,
which will highlight the energetic
cost of keeping devices on standby
instead of switching them
off completely.
There are many estimates
of the amount of energy used
during standby, sometimes
referred to as “vampire power”.
One study of around 1300 homes
in the European Union, for
example, found that standby
energy use amounted to about
7 per cent of a household’s total
energy consumption.
With energy prices on the rise in
many parts of the world, Perboni
says he wanted to highlight the
importance of this “seemingly
invisible and negligible” problem.
In fact, as the name of his project
points out, the standby energy
wasted in a typical home in a
higher-income country in a year
could power that same building
for about a month. ❚
Gege Li

Views Your letters
Editor’s pick technology is similar to our own. keen on getting the real science in the 1960s and 70s meant it
Even if it isn’t, we can see behind climate change and the became much easier for baby
shortcuts being made by the biodiversity emergency. Thanks boomers to find partners.
Russia’s nuclear threats
simulator now. There is quantum for continuing to supply it in
just don’t ring true indeterminacy, where the articles such as “Drowning in a sea
5 March, p 7 The problem with some
simulator stops tracking of plastic”. In it, Graham Lawton
From Florence Gaub, everything exactly and instead offered a balanced analysis – of tree-planting schemes
European Union Institute for throws a weighted random hope tempered with political 5 March, p 27
Security Studies, Paris, France number. And, at the other end of realism – but I would love to have From Pamela Manfield,
Further to your report on concerns the scale, the cosmic microwave some tips on possible actions at Monmouth, UK
over Russia’s nuclear weapons background forms a tidy edge the end of such pieces. Who can I agree with Jingjing Liang’s points
status, the “special regime of to the simulated universe. we write to in order to try to tip the on the shortcomings of current
combat duty” that the country I am sure other simulation scales in favour of a meaningful forestry management in a world
has elevated its nuclear readiness tricks are being performed, like plastics treaty, for example? where tree planting is seen as a
to is meaningless. It isn’t an official simulating things that aren’t I don’t think it is enough to climate solution. These problems
category in Russia’s nuclear level easily seen at lower resolution. simply observe as if impartial can be seen in Europe.
classification, meaning it was Those distant galaxies are any more: scientific knowledge On a recent trip to Sweden, I
created to cause upset more probably only approximated. brings an obligation to act upon discovered that the government is
than anything else. it when the evidence is as clear encouraging felling of thousands
The idea that it is now at level 2 as it is and yet still being ignored. of old trees in the far north. New
Maths errors were great
of 4 is simply unfounded and is Please help us, your readers, feel trees will be planted to suck up
Russian propaganda. This is for keeping us on track we can make our voices heard. carbon, but reindeer rely on lichen
confirmed further by the fact that 12 March, p 28 in winter, which only grows on
Russia hasn’t actually increased From Arthur Barnett, London, UK mature trees. Without lichen, the
On the benefits of deliberate
Baby boomer theory
anything when it comes to nuclear reindeer will starve and their Sami
weapons, i.e. it hasn’t loaded errors: 50 years ago, as a maths doesn’t add up for me herders’ way of life will disappear.
missiles, increased activity, etc. undergraduate, a small group 5 March, p 21 In Wales, big companies are
More importantly, anyone who of us used to record the errors in From Duncan Cameron, buying farms to plant trees to
puts the odds of a nuclear strike at lecture notes. The lecturers would Brighton, UK offset their carbon footprints. But
20 per cent is wrong. Probabilities complain that we didn’t point Your article on UK baby boomers again, these trees will take a long
can’t be established in the absence them out, but we found keeping being the unhappiest generation time to grow. More importantly,
of data. We have an extremely small them useful in understanding was interesting, but I don’t buy small farms are vital to the
sample of nuclear strikes and not and revision. The errors provided the belief that the higher birth economy and communities of
enough data to understand why useful flags in the mathematical rate during the baby boomer rural Wales. If the farms disappear,
and when nuclear weapons would arguments that avoided our generation from 1946 to 1964 is so will the people and villages
be used. This doesn’t mean the attention drifting. relevant. The researchers’ analysis that benefit from them. We seem
probability is zero, it just means we found that cohort size was the to be too eager to take up green
can’t make a statement of this kind. From Bryn Glover, Kirkby biggest predictor of happiness. solutions without considering
The US elevated its nuclear Malzeard, North Yorkshire, UK The article also says that “snagging the drawbacks of many of them.
level (its actual nuclear level, not Could David Robson’s notion the partner they wanted might
some made-up level for public of “fruitful” errors be the real also have been harder due to
explanation behind British
Message to Kirk: No need
consumption) several times in greater competition”.
non-nuclear crises, such as the comedian Les Dawson’s unique On the assumption that the to time-travel to get whales
9/11 terrorist attacks, the first piano performances? proportion of eligible mates in 12 March, p 35
Gulf war and the Yom Kippur war. a population remains the same From Robert Checchio,
Again, this doesn’t mean it is regardless of any change in cohort Dunellen, New Jersey, US
The time for impartiality
harmless, but it does show that size, simple logic suggests that That AIs may allow us to converse
this isn’t extremely unusual. on Earth’s future is over the chances of meeting a suitable with whales, an idea raised in the
26 February, p 26 mate must remain the same book How to Speak Whale, would
From Andrew Marston, regardless of cohort growth. have been invaluable to Captain
Plenty of other hints that Flushing, Cornwall, UK In fact, the revolution in Kirk in the film Star Trek IV:
we are in a simulation My household is particularly sexual behaviour that occurred The Voyage Home, in which the
Letters, 19 February inability to respond to an alien
From Alec Cawley, probe trying to communicate with
Newbury, Berkshire, UK Want to get in touch? whales threatens Earth. Kirk had
Alec Williams suggests we look Send letters to letters@newscientist.com; to time-travel back to the 20th
for pixelation to see if our universe see terms at newscientist.com/letters century to get some humpback
is a simulation. That relies on Letters sent to New Scientist, Northcliffe House, whales. These then responded
the idea that the simulator’s 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT will be delayed to the probe, saving the day. ❚

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Views Culture
Down on the farm

A dairy cow’s-eye view on the world raises uncomfortable
questions about the way we treat animals, finds Elle Hunt
Through Luna the dairy
cow, we see the reality of
life lived on human terms
clear that Luna is well cared for,

even loved. But the life of a dairy
cow is, by definition, one that is
punctured with sudden violence.
Though Cow may not depict the
industrial-scale horrors of animal
production, Arnold doesn’t
shy away from depicting the
indignities and intrusions that
feature in a dairy cow’s world.
An early scene of calves being
dehorned with a cauterising
iron reportedly had critics at
the Sundance film festival
covering their eyes.
The end, when it comes,
manages to be at once inevitable
MUBI
and shocking – the harshest
possible awakening from the
Six years in the making, scenes of Luna’s everyday life, dreamlike state viewers have been
the BAFTA-nominated Cow while snatches of chatter from her lulled into. It encapsulates the
Film
follows Luna in her day-to-day largely faceless farmers lend them film’s understated political point:
Cow
life, from grazing and mating structure. The emotion we come to that, from beginning to end, this
Andrea Arnold
to birthing and milking. It is feel for Luna, our investment in her is a life led entirely on humanity’s
MUBI and Apple TV+
about as immersive and visceral well-being, is organic and earned. terms, for the production of
a depiction of a non-human The only point where Arnold milk and meat. Luna may not
MOST documentaries chronicle being as one can imagine, with relaxes her commitment to suffer more than is essential to the
exceptional lives that anyone Arnold filming from Luna’s realism is a late-night mating existence of a dairy cow, but is that
would be curious about, or highly perspective as much as possible sequence, set to R&B pop a price we are willing to accept?
ordinary ones that warrant a and using zero narration. music and with spliced-in In honouring the sacrifice
second look. Andrea Arnold’s For many viewers, the first of one farm animal, Arnold
new film does both, providing surprise may be the immediate, “Luna may not suffer quietly but insistently invokes
an immersive look into the easy charisma of her subject: the spectre of far more – many of
more than is essential
world of a dairy cow. in an early scene, Luna holds which aren’t treated with the same
Arnold is the celebrated director the camera’s gaze, mooing
for a dairy cow, but is dignity as Luna, even if we choose
of projects as diverse as Red Road insistently, in such a way that it that a price we are to remain ignorant of the details.
and Fish Tank, which explore leaves the audience in no doubt willing to accept?” Empathetic and often
working-class Britain; the Shia about her curiosity and appraising unexpectedly moving, Cow
LaBeouf epic American Honey; intelligence. Likewise, shots of fireworks, a moment that may not instantly turn you vegan,
a 2011 adaptation of Wuthering her caring for her just-born calf concludes with some post-coital as more aggressive accounts of
Heights; and episodes of and taking obvious pleasure from cuddling. The surreal comedy animal production might – but
Transparent and Big Little Lies. an open field suggest a multifaceted of the scene excuses any charge you will never see its subject in the
In Cow, her fifth feature and first mind, which is portrayed clearly of anthropomorphism, as does same way again. Equally, having
documentary, Arnold turns her and without sentimentality. the sequence where Luna is being gently led us to assume the bovine
trademark unflinching gaze on For an essentially quiet film, milked on Christmas morning by gaze, what may be most unsettling
a subject that is both familiar sound is used to great effect in a farmer wearing a Santa hat, set to is how we see ourselves. ❚
and entirely other: a cow named Cow. Mournful pop songs by Billie the sound of Fairytale of New York.
Luna on a cattle farm in the Eilish and others are piped into the This is no hard-bitten Elle Hunt is a freelance writer
English countryside. milking shed, adding pathos to the slaughterhouse exposé: it is based in Norfolk, UK

Don’t miss
Spare parts on demand

The mysterious process of regeneration can help us understand
life in all its complex glory, finds Simon Ings
on cellular signalling. Their account those of growth and development, Watch

pivots on the work of Thomas Hunt what is to stop everything Apollo 10 ½ sees
Book
Morgan (better known as a pioneer ceaselessly regenerating? What Richard Linklater
What Is Regeneration? of chromosomal genetics) and, dictates the process of regrowth use the hallucinatory
Jane Maienschein and
in particular, his 1901 book and why does it happen only in animation style of his
Kate MacCord
Regeneration. Morgan, more than some tissues, in some species A Scanner Darkly to tell
University of Chicago Press
anyone before or since, attempted and only some of the time? the fantastical tale of a
(out 6 April)
to establish clear boundaries Maienschein and MacCord young space fan living
around the phenomenon, and argue that, to fully understand this, in Houston, Texas, in
SOME animals are able to grow the terminology he came up we need to see regeneration as a 1969, when anything
an entire new body from tiny parts. with remains useful. window into the world of biology in felt possible. Via Netflix.
Crabs and lobsters can regenerate He identified three kinds of general, and the complex feedback
lost tentacles and claws. Hydras and regeneration. The first two are loops that decide what grows,
some worms can regrow their heads. restorative regeneration, which divides and dies, where and when.
We humans can replace our skin, occurs in response to injury, and Far from being an interesting
hair, fingernails and even our liver. physiological regeneration, which curio, then, studying regeneration
Regeneration is such a peculiar describes replacement, as when can tell us much about life in
ability that, even in science, it is an elk moults its antlers and new general, from a cellular level right
surprisingly under-researched. As ones grow in their place. The third, up to the level of ecosystems, and
a result, there is much we still don’t morphallaxis, refers to more inform everything from regenerative
know. What Is Regeneration? is a extreme cases, such as when a therapies using stem cells to Visit
collaborative effort between Jane hydra, cut into pieces, reorganises ecosystem protection and recovery. Requiem features an
Maienschein and Kate MacCord, itself into a new hydra without Seen through this lens, urn full of dust gathered
both at the Marine Biological going through the normal processes regeneration is a far bigger subject by artist Katie Paterson
Laboratory in Woods Hole, of cell division. than it might at first seem, and from meteorites, rocks,
Massachusetts, to fill some of the The key to this categorisation is Maienschein and MacCord take corals and other detritus.
gaps. Together, they explore why that the mechanisms of regeneration fewer than 200 pages to anatomise From 9 April, it will be
regeneration occurs when it does, aren’t, as the authors put it, “a the complexities and ambiguities the focal point of an
why it doesn’t always happen and special response to changing that their simple question throws exhibition at the Ingleby
what the process can tell us about environmental conditions but, up. It is to their credit that they Gallery in Edinburgh,
the grander mysteries of birth, rather, an internal normal process mostly focus on the big picture and UK, that explores our
death and development. of growth and development”. don’t make the biology any more planet’s past and future.
It turns out to be a seemingly So here is the problem: if the complex than it needs to be. ❚
simple phenomena that, on closer mechanisms of regeneration
inspection, becomes far more can’t be distinguished from Simon Ings is a writer based in London
complicated. For instance, are we
NETFLIX; REQUIEM: JOHN MCKENZIE/COURTESY THE ARTIST & INGLEBY GALLERY, EDINBURGH
thinking only about regeneration
of structure, about regeneration of
function or both? Is the regeneration
of the gut flora in your intestines
after a course of antibiotics or
the regeneration of woodland Read
after a forest fire at all similar Power in the Wild,
to regrowing a body part? by behavioural ecologist
To try to pin it down, the authors Lee Alan Dugatkin,
begin with a history of the study of reveals the realpolitik
the subject, starting with Aristotle behind the lives of
KARENHBLACK/GETTY IMAGES
and ending with Magdalena sweet-looking creatures

Zernicka-Goetz’s ongoing research from meerkats to field
mice, as he examines
Is the regeneration of a forest after the eternal struggle for
fire fundamentally the same as an dominance in nature.
animal regrowing a body part?

Views Culture
Lost at sea?
The search for one enigmatic whale drives home the plight of them all,
finds Katie Smith-Wong
Film
The Loneliest Whale:
The Search for 52
Joshua Zeman
Digital download from 4 April
IN 1989, the Woods Hole

Oceanographic Institution
in Massachusetts detected
an unknown sonic presence at
COURTESY OF BLEECKER STREET

52 hertz. It was initially thought
to be from a submarine, but
marine biologist William Watkins
later determined that it was the
sonar signature of a whale, which
he gave the nickname “52”.
It is an unusually high
frequency for whale vocalisations, Looking for one whale in the vast ocean, year after year, conclusion. In fact, as 52 has never
and Watkins was intrigued enough the vast, deep ocean was never having any proper contact been seen or even definitively
to search for 52 until his death in never going to be easy with another of its kind. proven to exist, some within the
2004. But despite picking up 52’s This, combined with a growing scientific community are sceptical
call every year, Watkins never They begin in the waters awareness of the harm that there is even a 52 to find.
found the mysterious whale. off California, at the Port of Los human activity has caused whales, Zeman’s attempt to create
In The Loneliest Whale: The Angeles – the busiest container has made 52 something of a focal a sense of thrill and adventure
Search for 52, US film-maker port in the western hemisphere. point for whale conservation, as he embarks on his quest is
Joshua Zeman picks up the Their initial hopes aren’t high: with articles, poems and even hit-and-miss. Exciting footage
search where Watkins left off, the Pacific Ocean is deep and a song by the K-pop band BTS of the search is punctuated with
and sets out to find a whale wide and the chances of finding about his plight. evocative images of the oceans,
that has since taken on 52 seem roughly the same Yet this is a story that goes which makes the documentary’s
almost mythical proportions. as those of 52 finding a mate. deeper than just one whale. Whale tone feel inconsistent. At times,
Why 52 calls at this frequency Zeman’s documentary has populations are still under threat there isn’t enough to elevate the
is also a mystery – the whale’s a strong sense of exploration from hunting, pollution, climate film above being a group of people
species hasn’t been confirmed, and ambition: he believes he spending time in a boat. At least
and it is possible that it is the can locate 52, who has become “There’s something not until the closing moments,
only one of its kind in the ocean. the Moby Dick to Zeman’s Ahab. deeply affecting about when it appears that the team’s
The one thing we do know is Although there is an underlying efforts may not have been in vain.
that 52 is almost certainly a he: sense of excitement as to whether
a social animal never Overall, The Loneliest Whale:
male whales do the singing. 52 can finally be found, there is having contact with The Search for 52 offers a
The reason for 52’s presumed a human aspect to the search another of its kind” moving insight into a legendary
loneliness has nothing to do and a personal story behind whale and Zeman’s curiosity is
with the fact that he has always Zeman’s fascination. change and collisions with ships. infectious. Frustratingly, though,
been detected swimming alone. In our increasingly connected Even if they avoid these perils, the there isn’t enough discussion and
Instead, it is because the unique world where contact and noise of shipping can drown out explanation of the science behind
frequency of his call means that interaction is only the click of a a whale’s calls, regardless of the whale communication, which
other whales can’t understand button away, the fact that so many frequency it may use. Arguably, leaves viewers, much like Zeman,
to respond. With 52’s unique call people still report feeling lonely Zeman’s quest says more about wondering if they might have
as the only lead, Zeman launches makes it easy to identify with 52’s our collective guilt about this missed something important
a seven-day search mission situation. There is something state of affairs than it does about along the way. ❚
with bioacoustics specialist deeply affecting about a creature our desire to solve the scientific
John Hildebrand and research as intelligent and social as we mysteries surrounding 52. Katie Smith-Wong is a freelance
biologist John Calambokidis. know whales to be, swimming Finding him is never a foregone writer based in London

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Features Cover story
Consciousness
in the cosmos
To make sense of time and quantum reality,
physicists are radically rethinking the relationship
between matter and mind, finds Thomas Lewton
A
WALK in the woods. Every shade of things like how reality emerges from the fog all known elementary particles and forces,
green. A fleck of rain. The sensations of the quantum world and what the passage and of the evolution of the cosmos from just
and thoughts bound in every moment of time truly signifies – unless we reimagine after the big bang until today.
of experience feel central to our existence. But the relationship between matter and mind. These days, precious few scientists would
physics, which aims to describe the universe Their ideas amount to an audacious attempt claim to see the mind as inherently separate
and everything in it, says nothing about your to describe the universe from the inside out, from matter. Modern neuroscience has left
inner world. Our descriptions of the rather than the other way around, and they little room inside the brain for an immaterial
wavelengths of light as they reflect off leaves might just force us to abandon long-cherished soul. Instead, physicalism reigns – the idea
capture something – but not what it is like to assumptions about what everything is that everything in nature must be derived
be deep in the woods. ultimately made of. from the basic stuff of physics. It follows that
It can seem as if there is an insurmountable Modern physics was founded on the consciousness must somehow emerge out
gap between our subjective experience of the separation of mind and matter. That goes of particles, strings, information or whatever
world and our attempts to objectively describe back to Galileo Galilei, whose big idea, some you take as fundamental.
it. And yet our brains are made of matter – four centuries ago, was to boil the world down But while neuroscience can explain
so, you might think, the states of mind they to the interactions of moving objects that with growing precision which kinds of brain
generate must be explicable in terms of states could be described by mathematical laws. activity map onto conscious states, it is far
of matter. The question is: how? And if we Our senses, meanwhile, lived in the human from understanding why this brain activity
can’t explain consciousness in physical soul – distinct, though still important. “Galileo gives rise to conscious experience. This is
terms, how do we find a place for it in an said ‘don’t worry about consciousness for the what the philosopher David Chalmers called
all-embracing view of the universe? moment, just focus on what you can capture in the “hard problem” of consciousness: the
“There is no question in science more mathematics’,” says Philip Goff, a philosopher seemingly insoluble question of why matter
difficult and confusing,” says Lee Smolin, at Durham University, UK. inside your skull gives rise to a personal,
a theoretical physicist at the Perimeter That philosophical sleight of hand changed subjective experience of the world at all.
Institute for Theoretical Physics in everything. The material world became Some dismiss the hard problem as a red
Waterloo, Canada. understandable as Newton and others created herring. They argue that consciousness
It is also one that he and others are addressing “universal laws” that describe how matter is a useful illusion, or that we will explain
with renewed vigour, convinced that we will behaves. The achievements since have been consciousness in physical terms if only we
never make sense of the universe’s mysteries – stunning: precise, predictive models of have the patience. But philosophers and >

PABLO HURTADO DE MENDOZA

New Scientist audio
You can now listen to many articles – look for the
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neuroscientists who think the hard problem

is real see it as a reason to call physicalism “We as know for sure. “What quantum mechanics and
what questions about time have both pressed
into question. “The irony is that physicalism
has done so well and explained so much observers on us is the absolute need to understand the
observer, and to recognise it as a physical
precisely because it was designed to exclude
consciousness,” says Goff. seem to constituent of the world,” says Jenann Ismael,
a philosopher at Columbia University in New
For physicists, the motivation to rethink
matter and mind comes primarily from bring reality York. For centuries, we could ignore observers
with little consequence, she says. Not any more.
another direction – their ongoing attempts
to make sense of quantum mechanics, the into being” One option is to suggest that some form
of consciousness, however fragmentary, is an
laws that govern the behaviour of the atoms intrinsic property of matter. At a fundamental
and subatomic particles that make up the level, this micro-consciousness is all that
deepest layer of reality we know of. exists. The idea, known as panpsychism, rips
Quantum mechanics was one of two up the physicalist handbook to offer a simple
theories that revolutionised physics in the solution to the hard problem of consciousness,
early 20th century. The other was Albert says Goff, by plugging the gap between our
Einstein’s general relativity. This says that inner experiences and our objective, scientific
gravity is the result of mass warping space- descriptions of the world. If everything is to
time, and it ends up offering among the some extent conscious, we no longer have
best examples of what physicists are striving to account for our experience in terms of
for – an objective “view from nowhere” non-conscious components.
that has nothing to do with the individual But most physicists aren’t buying that.
perspective of observers. Extending the fundamental stuff of physics
Quantum theory was different. Experiments to include micro-consciousness would disrupt
showed that subatomic particles manifest our remarkably successful account of how
not in definite states – here or there, say – but the universe works, says Sean Carroll at the
as clouds of probabilities of many different California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
possible states. That fuzziness is captured world. Quantum mechanics and general We have little idea of what consciousness is,
by a mathematical entity known as a “wave relativity define observers in totally different and so adding it directly into such precise
function”. When we make a measurement of ways, so thinking deeply about them could and definitive equations could knock
a quantum object, the wave function is said offer clues about how to reconcile the two to everything else off-kilter. “To start with the
to collapse such that the object suddenly has give us a unified, quantum theory of gravity. least-well-understood aspects of reality and
definite properties. The classical world we draw sweeping conclusions about the best-
see somehow seems to arise out of quantum understood aspects is arguably the tail wagging
uncertainty thanks to our intervention. The view from nowhere the dog,” Carroll wrote in a recent issue of the
We as observers bring reality into being. And then there is time. Here, physics is once Journal of Consciousness Studies dedicated to
Or at least that’s one interpretation. Some again at odds with our experience, in that the mind-matter question.
argue that there is no need to invoke conscious general relativity’s view from nowhere holds Goff counters that the only way to
observers to solve this “measurement that observers, including us, are just make sense of our subjective experiences,
problem” and instead advocate alternative coordinates or points in a static chunk of or “qualia” – such as the redness of a sunset
interpretations. Perhaps the most notorious space-time called the “block universe” – a or the sharpness of a lemon – is to treat them
is that, when the wave function collapses, perfect, unchanging mathematical object in as new data that science must include. This
all possibilities play out in a near-infinite which past, present and future all exist at new approach complements rather than
number of parallel universes. Critics of this once. If that is true, our experience of flowing contradicts physics, he says.
many-worlds interpretation point out that the time, from the past through the present and Where to begin? We should be sceptical
multiverse is an enormous price to pay to keep to the future, is merely an illusion. of attempts to amalgamate lots of little
the mind and the observer out of the picture. The problem is that “a view from nowhere is bits of micro-consciousness to create
Whatever their take on the measurement not something anyone’s ever had”, says Adam complex consciousness, says Eleanor Knox,
problem, many physicists agree that a better Frank at the University of Rochester, New York. a philosopher at King’s College London, because
understanding of observers would be a boon, We presume that there is some shared, it isn’t how anything else in physics works.
and not just for understanding the quantum objective reality out there, but we can never “That’s the old-fashioned Lego brick view of

To understand the
universe, we might
have to rethink the
idea that objects
are fundamental
the same laws have a different effect.

Emergence gives physics new explanatory
powers, says Knox – but it is far from
understood. “Even thinking that fundamental
physics has something to say about my
coffee cup is really complicated, and there
are explanatory gaps”, says Knox. Still, Carroll
argues that if we can better understand the
messy complexities of emergence, we might
NASA, ESA, K.LUHMAN & T.ESPLIN ET AL, ESO; PROCESSING: GLADYS KOBER
make sense of our role as observers in

quantum reality. We may even find clues as
to how Einstein’s smooth space-time appears
out of the grainy picture depicted by quantum
theory. Physicalism could yet survive.
Others advocate a more radical approach.
For Smolin and Marina Cortês at the University
of Lisbon, the problems we have are related
in a different way. We can gain a better
understanding of quantum reality – but
only by accepting that conscious awareness
is tangled up with the nature of time.
Together with independent philosopher
Clelia Verde, Cortês and Smolin are taking
tentative steps towards a new theory of
quantum gravity that folds in qualia. It starts
with a conviction that the timeless block
universe depicted by general relativity is wrong.
how we build things up in the universe,” she
says. “What panpsychism doesn’t take at all “ This new Instead, Smolin says that we should take our
experience of time seriously and recognise
seriously is the complexity of the story that we
already have about emergence in the world.” cosmology that things only exist in the present moment.
Nothing persists, things only happen. “For
Emergence is the idea that behaviours and
properties that don’t seem to exist when we is rooted not me, time is absolutely fundamental,” he says.
“And there is one property that mathematical
look at the individual components of a complex
system suddenly take shape when we see the in objects, models don’t have, which is that nature seems
to be organised as a series of moments.”
system as a whole. Emergent phenomena are,
essentially, more than the sum of their parts. but events” This leads to a very different cosmology, one
rooted in present events and the relationships
Individual water molecules aren’t wet, for between them, rather than objects sitting in
instance, and yet wetness is a property of water. space-time. Each event has a view of the world
To create a picture of how things work at that provides information about how it fits into
a higher level, we don’t just simply combine the rest of the world – in particular, what its
particles from the bottom up. If we did, we progenitor events in the past were and how it
would barely be able to explain how a kettle came to be formed from them. In this “causal
boils – never mind why our experience of theory of views”, quantum mechanics and
time doesn’t stack up with the timeless space-time aren’t fundamental, but emerge
block universe. Instead, we have to add in out of this network of views of events. As events
top-down information. The same physical come to be, they make ambiguous possibilities
laws act on water molecules in a liquid and definite; the unknown future becomes the
in a gas, but flipping the switch on your present moment. And in this time-created
kettle changes the temperature and puts world, physical laws aren’t fixed like Galileo or
a new condition on the overall system so that Newton supposed, but evolve through time. >

Neuroscience doesn’t
explain why brain
activity produces
conscious experience
mistake we make is when we try to reverse

that process of abstraction – when we try to
start from microscopic particles, like atoms
and quarks, and recover our internal
MONTY RAKUSEN/GETTY IMAGES
experience. “The closest that we get with

an objective description is brain processes,”
she says. “We look at that and say: ‘That has
no connection with anything that’s going
on up here.’ But that’s partly because of
this process of abstracting outwards.”
In this way, physical theories will always
seem to be at odds with our internal self and the
language of experience. The hard problem of
consciousness isn’t something that physicists
Intriguingly, this opens the door to qualia
and conscious awareness. That is because in “ Totally novel need to address, says Ismael. “Physics can move
on without worrying about it.”
this picture, there are two types of events. Some
events can be predicted, at least statistically, events allow Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist at
Aix-Marseille University in France, takes
based on what has happened before. But if
physical laws evolve, then there are other, rarer the universe things further still. Much of the confusion
arises, he says, because we forget that all
events whose outcome is not habitual. These
totally novel events, free from precedent, allow to dictate what phenomena, whether mind or matter, are
related to one another. This relational view,
the universe to dictate what happens next.
Near the big bang, novel events would happens next” rooted in Rovelli’s research in quantum
mechanics, demotes the physical objects that
have been very common. Consciousness are usually the starting point for fundamental
would permeate the universe in a picture not physics. “The best description we have about
unlike panpsychism. But as the universe ages, the world is in terms of the way systems affect
unprecedented events become much rarer. one another,” says Rovelli.
One potential wellspring of novelty today, In which case, Galileo’s distinction between
however, is the highly complex human brain. experiences are bundled together and subject and object is blurred, as everything
Perhaps our brains evolved to make use of these enter our stream of consciousness. is both a subject and an object – including
novel events and their freedom to determine Accepting qualia as scientific data is just observers and their minds. There is no view
the future, says Cortês. The idea is that our what Goff has called for. He wants physicists from the outside. In this way, Rovelli sees the
awareness results from this creative freedom. to go even further than Smolin and Cortês, relational universe as a “very mild form of
though. Rather than finding a home for panpsychism” in that there is something in
consciousness in a physical theory, as in common between mind and matter. “It is
Taming qualia the causal theory of views, Goff reckons the realisation that nature is about things
“The universe often surprises itself. Qualia that consciousness comes first, and that it is that manifest themselves to one another,”
are expressions of the universe to surprise,” networks of simple, conscious entities that he says. “This takes away much of the
Cortês, Smolin and Verde propose in their ultimately realise the mathematical structures mystery of consciousness.”
contribution to the special issue of the of physics. The challenge is to demonstrate how. If Rovelli is on to something, it would leave
Journal of Consciousness Studies. Yet Ismael sees no need for qualia, or indeed us with an uncomfortable truth. The traditional
All of which is rather bold. “I’m willing to ask our experience of time, to take on a central role stuff of physics – namely objects with absolute
questions,” says Smolin. “I don’t claim to have within physics. We can build up a satisfactory properties, to which Galileo devoted his life –
an answer.” But evidence may come by looking picture of reality, she argues, simply by can’t exist alone. How does that feel? ❚
for parallels in the structure of views of events, examining the relations between ourselves
on the one hand, and in the structure of qualia and how we go about doing physics.
on the other – bridging the void between mind Humans have the ability to develop Thomas Lewton is a science
and matter opened by Galileo. A first step is abstractions that are far from our actual writer based in London, UK
to make qualia more hospitable to physics experience, which helps when devising
by describing, for example, how certain mathematical descriptions of nature. The

‘Collective behaviour
is what gives animals
their “sixth sense” ’
To better understand what really happens in the natural world,
Martin Wikelski has created an animal version of the internet
of things. The insights are staggering, he tells Matthew Ponsford
I
N SEPTEMBER 2020, a blackbird flew idea, conceived two decades ago, is to create
1530 kilometres from Belarus to Albania. what he calls an “internet of animals” by
As avian migrations go, it wasn’t that fitting 100,000 creatures with miniaturised
impressive. But this journey was tracked from transmitters that supply information about
the International Space Station, setting in them. It took a while to win the support of
motion an ambitious project that could solve German and Russian space agencies and bring
some of the biggest mysteries in animal together a global group of collaborators, but,
behaviour, from how crop-eating plagues of since that first blackbird flight, hundreds of
locusts form to whether some animals possess animals have been fitted with custom-made
a sixth sense to predict natural disasters. tags weighing just 5 grams. These don’t just
ICARUS, International Cooperation for monitor their location, they also log aspects
NABIL NEZZAR
Animal Research Using Space, is the brainchild of behaviour and physiology. A menagerie of
of Martin Wikelski, a director at the Max Planck birds, bats, goats, rhinos, tortoises and more
Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany. His has been sending signals to the ISS as well as >

“Boobies in the in the US, it’s 3 billion birds missing. Where did
they get lost? Nobody knows.
we can tap into. For example, we have some
early indications that animals can sense
upcoming disasters like earthquakes or
Indo-Pacific will What kinds of things have you observed volcanic eruptions.
with ICARUS so far?
tell you how Every time we look, we see something
completely unexpected and new. People
How can you put such long-held folk
beliefs to the test?
strong the next only know on average what animals are doing,
but no animal is average. They all do really
The key is to work with local people who
understand the animals. It’s almost like a good
El Niño will be” interesting and crazy things. So we have

white storks flying over the Sahara five times
dog handler – if you have a good person, they
can search for drugs at customs. Not everybody
a season. We have cuckoos going from can do that. But it works if you ask those
Kamchatka [in Russia’s far east] through people: ‘What kinds of signs are you looking
India to Angola and back. We have sooty for? How can the dog tell you?’ That’s exactly
terns from the Seychelles going all the way how we start with disasters. We try to get a
to eastern India and Sri Lanka. For us, every read-out of this black box, this sixth sense of
day is super exciting. animals, this interaction of intelligent sensors.
We’re doing this now at Mount Etna in
Other groups are watching animals from space. Sicily, Italy. We have goats running around,
What does ICARUS do that’s new? and whenever we see the goats do something
It can track smaller animals, it can track more crazy – it happens every few weeks or so – we
animals, and it can track their behaviour predict that something is happening with
through sensors. We record temperature, the volcano. And in most cases, we are right.
Earth-based receivers. The information acceleration, humidity, magnetometry, We did an internal evaluation of our
gathered is freely available to all. And pressure – the kind of environmental predictions and it was pretty powerful.
increasing numbers of grassroots animal sensing that the other satellite trackers We aren’t yet at an early warning system,
taggers are getting involved in ICARUS. don’t have. We can track wing beats in birds, but we are getting towards these systems.
As the project grows, so do Wikelski’s energy expenditure, foraging behaviour And then we can go further and ask what kind
ambitions. He believes that, as well as and see when they are excited or stressed. of environmental features the animals could
shedding new light on animal behaviour, the tune into. That’s so far pretty much unknown.
internet of animals can also help us forecast Why do you call this the “internet of animals”? It isn’t seismic information because that’s easy
environmental change, track emerging This internet is, in principle, the collective of to measure, so it must be something else.
diseases, conserve endangered species the animals, because they constantly interact
and make humans more responsive to the with each other. It’s really what you could Could animal networks also help with more
needs of other creatures. call swarm intelligence. We are combining mainstream predictions, such as weather
the terrestrial Internet of Things (IoT) with a forecasting?
Matthew Ponsford: To drum up interest in space-based IoT. So, if an animal is close enough Yes, many systems are really ripe for animal
ICARUS, you published a list of mysteries to connect to an Earth-based data station, predictions. For example, the gannets and the
that it could shed new light on. Which in then it communicates terrestrially. If it’s shorebirds in the western part of Mexico – they
particular would you like to solve? away from these areas – if it is killed in a valley tell you in spring how the harvest of anchovies
Martin Wikelski: There are hundreds, but one in the rainforest, if it dies over the Sahara, and other fish will be in the fall, because they
we want to start with is where do European eels or whatever – then you need the satellite IoT are already tuning in to the fry production
go to reproduce? Are they really going to the to send and receive that information. early in the season. Or boobies in the Indo
Sargasso Sea and, if so, where exactly? This is The interesting part is that we now know Pacific will tell you how strong the next El Niño
all a big mystery. Another is what are the causes that collective behaviour is basically responsible will be because – months ahead of time – they
of death in European storks? We’re planning for the “sixth sense” of animals. In the old days, all give up their breeding schedules. They
to tag 15,000 storks a year to understand why people saw this as something metaphysical or either abandon the eggs or they don’t even
about 70 per cent die in their first year. Where crazy. But we know from physics and chemistry lay eggs. And then you know it will be a
are they? I mean, if you imagine the pile of that, where there are interacting parts, new strong El Niño. We already have those kinds
10,000 dead storks, that’s a hell of a lot. But properties emerge. This is what you have in of long-term predictions, but we have not
nobody sees them die out in the wild. Also, we animals as well. With intelligent sensors that brought them together yet on a global
have massive declines in songbirds: in Europe, interact, you get emergent new properties that scale. And that goes back to the internet
their numbers are down by about 600 million, aren’t visible on the lower level. That’s what of animals. That is what’s coming.

not so important, but it is for an endangered
species – for shorebirds, a sea turtle or a big
fruit bat in Africa. It helps us understand which
habitats they need. We can also dynamically
MPIAB/MAXCINE/CHRISTIAN ZIEGLER
guard them. If, for example, we see that

shorebirds, which in the old days flew directly
from Mauritania to the Netherlands, now,
with climate change, can’t get enough food
in Mauritania and have to land in France, we
can say: “Close the beaches for three days until
they recuperate.” Such dynamic interactions
between animals and humans are really only
possible if you have animals communicating
YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
with you through these tags.

SHUTTERSTOCK/DIRK M DE BOER
Your free online database, Movebank, allows

anyone to track individual animals and get a
sense of their lives and dramas. How can this
help in conservation efforts?
If you say that we have lost 3 billion songbirds,
nobody cares. But if we have lost Fritz and Franz
and Helga somewhere between North America
and South America, and there are school
Will ICARUS also allow you to predict the spread A 5-gram tag (below) classes following those animals and knowing
of emerging and endemic diseases? is used to track their fates and knowing them individually,
Again, yes. We already have ducks in China with white storks and it makes a total difference in conservation.
tags that record body temperature, which can goats (above), and a The other aspect is that people are learning
tell you about the next avian influenza: where 500-milligram tag will the good that animals bring us. Take fruit bats
that is and whether it’s an important outbreak. be attached to locusts in Africa: they are super important in many
With flying foxes in Africa, you can take a blood areas for replanting trees because they fly
sample and see if an animal has encountered over open areas and spit down seeds.
diseases like Ebola. Then ICARUS is almost like
a coronavirus-tracking app: you know where What does the future hold?
these animals have been, and if all the ones We want to track the Portuguese man-o-war,
with Ebola antibodies have been in eastern a really poisonous, jellyfish-like creature.
Congo, you know that’s the place where they And we are working on a new, improved
picked up the disease. version of ICARUS. It will include very small
tags – 500 milligrams – that will go on desert
How can the internet of animals help locusts. So, tracking the locust plague.
with conservation? But the nice thing is, this is a bottom-up
One thing we’re doing now is looking at movement. It isn’t directed by somebody.
how other species can help us protect animals Every day we get requests from people around
like the rhino. In many areas of the world, the world saying: “Hey, we want to understand
corrupt rangers are working with the guys our animals – give us tools to do that.” Everybody
that poach rhinos. Now, we can tag the animals wants to do that, they just don’t have the
around them – zebras, giraffes, wildebeests, means to do it yet. It’s almost like giving people
lions, wild dogs and so on – and they tell us a microscope, or a telescope to see the stars. ❚
there’s something bad happening.
We are also using heart-rate loggers in
blackbirds, which give a measure of stress and Matthew Ponsford is a London-
MPIAB/MAXCINE
energy use. We want to know how expensive based journalist who writes The
it is to migrate, whether it is better to stay at Manuals, a newsletter and how-to
home or migrate. Maybe for a blackbird that’s guide to ecological engineering

Features
Rethinking
trauma
The stressful events of the past two years have
left many people reeling, but whether their
experience qualifies as trauma is hotly debated,
as Jessica Hamzelou reports
G
IVING birth. A car accident. Racial war is high on the news agenda – has big
abuse. Many of us feel we have implications. Ultimately, our understanding
experienced things we would describe of what trauma is, and which experiences
as traumatic. Look no further than the past few qualify, determines whether people are
years. Beyond the sickness and deaths wrought being unnecessarily diagnosed and treated
by covid-19, many psychologists warned that for PTSD, or are living with the symptoms
the pandemic was a mental health crisis in the unable to get the treatment they need.
making, with cases of post-traumatic stress The medical profession has long recognised
disorder (PTSD) predicted to soar. the importance of trauma, even if it has
Consult the medical textbooks, however, struggled to define it. The first edition of the
and you find that such experiences don’t “psychiatrist’s bible”, the US Diagnostic and
generally qualify as trauma. People who Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM,
suddenly lost a loved one to covid-19, and those published in 1952, mentions a “gross stress
working in hospitals and care homes might reaction” that can result from severe situations
meet the criteria. But relentless news updates such as catastrophe or combat. But it wasn’t
about a mysterious deadly disease, job loss, until 1980 that PTSD was introduced.
social isolation and living under lockdown – The symptoms of PTSD include recurrent
none of these fits the bill. “People called the disturbing memories, dreams or flashbacks,
pandemic traumatic, and it’s not,” says George stress reactions to certain cues, avoidance
Bonanno at Columbia University in New York. behaviours, low mood or feelings such as
In our propensity to view things as guilt or shame. Importantly, however, an
traumatic, we may also be overplaying the experience cannot be termed traumatic unless
impact, Bonanno argues. His research has it fits with a list of potential traumas that are
shown that, given time, most of us will recover collectively called “criterion A”. This list has
even from the most horrifying experiences. In widened over the years and today includes
light of this, says Bonanno, the word “trauma” actual or threatened death, serious injury
has lost all meaning. But others believe the and sexual violence. A person must have
strict medical definition should be expanded experienced, witnessed or had repeated
to cover a wider set of human experiences. professional exposure to one of these events,
DANIEL STOLLE
This explosive debate – reignited by in order to qualify for a PTSD diagnosis.

the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter The public perception of trauma has
movement, and continuing at a time when also changed, says epidemiologist Karestan

Koenen at Harvard University. “When I
started in the field, if you said ‘trauma’, the
only thing people associated with it were
war veterans,” she says. “Now, the public
has a much broader view.”
This broader definition has been described
by some psychologists as “concept creep”.
“People use it indiscriminately now,” says
Bonanno. “Suddenly, people were saying they
were traumatised from relatively mundane
things.” That is a problem, because if a broader
range of human experiences are considered
traumatic, more people will meet the criteria
for a PTSD diagnosis – and some may receive
unnecessary treatment as a result. “It could
potentially harm them. At minimum, it would
waste their time,” says Bonanno.
For others, the criteria are too narrow. In
2017, Lisa van den Berg at Leiden University in
the Netherlands and her colleagues assessed
PTSD symptoms in 1433 volunteers who were
already participating in a study on depression
and anxiety. The team found that PTSD
symptoms following an event that wouldn’t
meet the latest DSM criteria (DSM-5) for being
traumatic were just as severe or more severe
than those following an event that would be
considered a trauma.
Atypical trauma
Koenen also wonders whether the criteria
should be broadened. Over her years of
research, she had seen women develop the
symptoms of PTSD following events that
wouldn’t have necessarily met the DSM-5 list,
including miscarriage and sexual harassment.
In one case, a woman had been through
aparticularly acrimonious divorce, during
which her ex-husband had kidnapped her
children. “Nothing she described in that
event fits on a typical trauma scale,” says
Koenen. “It really challenged my thinking.
How do we define trauma, and what questions
should we ask?”
So, between 2018 and 2021, her team surveyed
more than 33,000 current and former nurses
in the US about their experiences of trauma.
The survey encompassed traumas that would
fit the DSM-5 definition, but also included
an option for responders to describe “other”
events they felt were traumatic. “That ‘other’
category has the highest prevalence of PTSD
associated with it,” says Koenen. >

Rigidly applying the DSM-5’s criteria in the New Yorkers
pandemic could mean that people who have head back to work
found the experience traumatic are unable in the days after
to access treatment, argue Marielle Wathelet the 9/11 attacks
at Lille Regional University Hospital in
France and her colleagues. “In the covid-19
pandemic, the strict application of DSM-5
criterion A could leave a large number of
patients without the appropriate care,” they
recently wrote in a paper.
Yara Mekawi at the University of Louisville
in Kentucky, who studies the impact of racial
discrimination on mental health, also feels
that meeting a set of criteria for trauma
makes no sense. If two people have the same
PTSD symptoms and the difference between
them is that one person meets the DSM-5
criterion A but the other doesn’t, why would
they be treated differently, she asks. “It’s not
like there’s a blood test or biological basis for it.”
And yet, under criterion A, people who
repeatedly witness threats to the lives of
others in a professional capacity, such as
police officers and first responders, qualify
for a PTSD diagnosis. Why don’t Black people event. Someone who has been in a car accident City at the time, was one of the many people
in the US who were repeatedly exposed to and sustained minor injuries, for instance, who developed symptoms of PTSD in the
distressing footage of Black individuals being might have dreams about the accident, days following the attacks. “The planes fly
manhandled and murdered over the past few flinch at the sound of screeching brakes right over my apartment,” he says. “I had
years, asks Mekawi. “If you’re being inundated and temporarily avoid driving. These would nightmares about planes crashing.”
with images of someone from your racial all be considered symptoms of PTSD, but are In one survey of 988 adults living in the
group being brutalised, why would that be to be expected following such an experience. area, conducted between five and eight weeks
disqualified as a criterion A trauma?” she says. The person would only be advised to seek after the attacks, 58 per cent reported at least
“It’s a good question and I don’t know the treatment if the symptoms didn’t begin one PTSD symptom, with insomnia and
answer,” says Robert Ursano at the Uniformed to improve within a month or so, or if they intrusive memories being the most common.
Services University in Bethesda, Maryland, significantly affected quality of life. But symptoms began to ease with time. Among
who was one of the panel of experts who residents of Manhattan, the incidence of PTSD
decided the DSM-5 PTSD criteria. appeared to drop from around 7.5 per cent a
Ursano stresses that miscarriage and racial Nightmare events month after the attacks to 0.6 per cent six
abuse are “tremendously terrible events, For the majority of us, this doesn’t happen. months after the events.
no question about it”. But he maintains Most people won’t develop lasting symptoms, Rates of PTSD were higher among those
that there must be a threat to life – which can even after horrifying experiences. For who were more directly affected by the events.
occur in some cases of each experience – to example, multiple studies suggest that A month on from the attacks, 37 per cent
qualify for a PTSD diagnosis. He points to around 8 per cent of people who experience of those who were in the World Trade Center
a lack of research – it isn’t yet clear if these the horrors of war go on to develop PTSD. complex at the time had probable PTSD.
experiences lead to PTSD in the way other The 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US also offer A separate study by the same team suggests
experiences do, he says. up some insights. Images of planes crashing this figure had dropped to 15 per cent within
While we lack the evidence to answer into the World Trade Center in Manhattan, two to three years. We can expect symptoms
this question, we do have a growing body New York, were broadcast globally, and the that developed during the pandemic to
of research to answer another question: attacks dominated the news for months, decline in the same way, says Bonanno.
how resilient are people to trauma? And particularly in the US. “Within days, there In a study conducted with colleagues from
these findings are further stoking the fire were these very dramatic pronouncements Columbia University, as well as Tsinghua
around the debate. that we were heading for a mental health crisis University in Beijing, Bonanno assessed PTSD
It is perfectly normal to experience some of unprecedented magnitude,” says Bonanno. symptoms in 326 residents of China’s Hubei
PTSD symptoms after a potentially traumatic Bonanno, who was living in New York province between April and October 2020,

following the implementation of a strict for example. And people who have had higher
covid-19 lockdown in January. By the end of this amounts of trauma in their lives tend to develop
period, just 7 per cent of people had symptoms more severe symptoms from further trauma.
that might qualify for a PTSD diagnosis. Bonanno has found that the way a person
Studies like these have important take-home thinks can improve their odds of recovery.
messages, says Bonanno. One is that simply He refers to a “flexibility mindset”, a set of
hearing about an event doesn’t necessarily characteristics that tend to be associated with
make it traumatic for you. Another is that, better outcomes. In his research, people who
on the whole, people tend to be remarkably are generally confident, optimistic and braced
resilient. “There isn’t an event I’ve studied for challenges, as well as able to understand
yet where even the majority develop PTSD,” their situation and how to improve their lot,
he says. “Usually it’s a very small percentage – tend to fare the best.
5 or 10 per cent.” This was borne out in his Hubei study:
JACQUES LANGEVIN/SYGMA VIA GETTY IMAGES
According to Bonanno’s research, the way optimism and a flexible mindset, as well
individuals recover from a traumatic event as good health and family support, appeared
can take one of a handful of trajectories. Over to be key to following a resilience trajectory
the past few decades, he has identified three following lockdown.
common ones. But resilience isn’t a baked-in personality
In the resilience trajectory, people move trait. “I don’t like the term resilient, because it
on and continue with their lives. This is the seems to imply that someone is resilient or not,
most positive and also the most common, a yes or no,” says Koenen. People might be more
occurring in 62 to 73 per cent of people resilient in some aspects of life, and less so in
depending on the study. others, for instance. Koenen has seen people
Then there are around 7 per cent of people who, following a trauma, perform well at school,
“Planes fly over who tend to show high levels of PTSD in the
first few months of an event, but display
but struggle in their relationships. “Resilience
is really multidimensional,” she says.
my apartment. improvement within about six months or
so. They usually recover within a year or two.
How to boost resilience has been a hot
topic of research – whether through positive
After 9/11, I had The third common trajectory is that followed
by people whose PTSD symptoms last for years.
thinking, meditation or even using a pill.
But such approaches can be misguided,
nightmares about Their symptoms are severe enough to affect
their ability to function in life. And it can take
says Mekawi. “Based on my experience,
people who have resources, who have
planes crashing” several years for their symptoms to improve.
Even so, people are complicated, and it
stability, and who have space to process their
trauma are more resilient,” she says. “I think
isn’t always possible to file complex cases the idea of taking a pill to boost resilience
into one of three neat categories. And while is just so bizarre. Why not change our social
Bonanno’s recent book, The End of Trauma, structure to support people?”
Streets in Wuhan, China, focuses on these three trajectories, in reality, And given the ever-changing nature of
are all but deserted in there are many more, he says. our understanding of what trauma is, we
January 2020, as a strict Koenen, too, has been trying to better can afford some flexibility in our definition,
lockdown is imposed understand how people will respond to says Mekawi. “Trauma is a social construct…
trauma. Since 2016, her team has been working there’s no single truth that everyone is going
with hospitals around the US to assess people to agree on,” she says. “There’s no reason to
who seek care in emergency departments gatekeep trauma.” ❚
following a potentially traumatic experience.
Volunteers are then followed up for a year, Need a listening ear? UK Samaritans: 116123
during which they undertake surveys and (samaritans.org). Visit bit.ly/SuicideHelplines
cognitive tests. Blood and saliva samples are for hotlines and websites for other countries.
scoured for biological clues that might one
STRINGER/GETTY IMAGES
day predict a person’s response to trauma.

A handful of key factors have now been Jessica Hamzelou is a science
identified that play a role in resilience. journalist based in London
The worst symptoms tend to develop after
experiencing violence from another person,

The back pages
Puzzles Almost the last word Tom Gauld for Feedback Twisteddoodles
Try our crossword, Could we see a really New Scientist Cryptic times for for New Scientist
quick quiz and logic distant ship if the A cartoonist’s take ex-football stars: Picturing the lighter
challenge p53 world were flat? p54 on the world p55 the week in weird p56 side of life p56
Science of gardening
Open a bee ‘n’ bee

Early spring is the time to create bee accommodation that is snug
and safe for these important pollinators, says Clare Wilson
MANY bee species are in decline

across the world, but there are
things we can do to help boost
their numbers on our home turf.
I have previously covered ways
to make sure your garden has lots
of flowers for pollinators in order
to provide their food sources,
pollen and nectar. The key thing
Clare Wilson is a reporter is to avoid flowers with “double”
at New Scientist and blooms, like most roses, where
writes about everything the reproductive parts of the
life-science related. flowers have been converted into
Her favourite place is her extra petals, so they lack nectar.
allotment @ClareWilsonMed Another way to help is to
provide homes for solitary bees –
ANDREW THOMSON/ALAMY
What you need the majority of bee species in the
Old log and drill (for UK – which make their nests in
wood-based design) soil, hollow plant stalks or
Plastic soft-drinks cavities in brickwork.
bottles or old pipe (for If you are in a country where
the alternative design) spring is getting going, now is a
Bamboo canes or hollow, good time to make some tempting in each one, so make the cavities the ends of the canes or the holes
woody plant stalks (for real estate for species such as the as long as possible without drilled into wood have smooth
the alternative design) red mason bee (Osmia bicornis), as breaking through the other edges, as any sharp splinters
young individuals tend to emerge face of the log. could tear a bee’s wings, says
in April and May in such places. Starting at the bottom, the Dave Goulson, a bee ecologist
They then start looking for a place bee will lay an egg, deposit some at the University of Sussex, UK.
to build a nest and lay eggs. pollen and nectar, seal it in with Once constructed, fix your bee
You can buy ready-made bee mud and repeat. She can lay up to hotel in a south-facing spot, so
hotels, although some are badly 40 eggs in multiple cavities over that it gets plenty of sun, at least
designed and large ones may several weeks. Another reason 60 centimetres off the ground.
encourage too many bees to live to make the holes deep is that A site on a fence or shed is ideal,
close to each other, which seems woodpeckers may eat the grubs as putting it on tree trunks can
to encourage parasites. It is also that are closest to the outside. leave it too shaded.
possible to buy “bee bricks” for Another option is a bundle of If you don’t have anywhere for
use in construction, but one bamboo canes or hollow, woody a bee hotel, consider helping out
study suggests that they aren’t plant stalks. These can be wedged ground-dwelling bees by leaving
particularly favoured by bees. horizontally into an old pipe or a a patch of dryish, crumbly soil in
Fortunately, it is easy to make large plastic soft-drink bottle with a sunny spot undisturbed. They
Science of gardening your own bee hotel. One method the bottom cut off. The edge of will make their own holes in it. ❚
appears every four weeks is to take an old log and drill holes the pipe or bottle should stick
up to about 8 millimetres wide out a little further than the canes, These articles are
Next week into one face. The deeper the to help keep out rain. posted each week at
Citizen science holes, the more eggs will be put With either method, make sure newscientist.com/maker

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The back pages Puzzles
Cryptic crossword #80 Set by Rasa Quick quiz #145

1 How many types, or flavours,
Scribble of quark are there?
zone
2 The two types of vascular tissue in
plants are the xylem and the what?
3 Following humans and chimpanzees,

what was the third ape species to
have its genome sequenced?
4 The layered, fossilised structures created

when microbes are overlaid with sediment
are known as what?
5 Where in our solar system would

you find Makemake and Orcus?
Answers on page 55
Answers and Puzzle

the next quick set by Brian Hobbs
crossword #161 Reduction deduction
next week
“When exactly is a person supposed to
celebrate their half birthday?” wondered
ACROSS DOWN Lionel. “I mean, you could celebrate your
1 Astronomer playing Handel melody (6,6) 2 Nearly stop financially supporting 182/365th birthday, or your 183/365th
9 Euphemism for rude word court no longer in use (7) birthday, but unless it is a leap year, the
returns in farewell material (7) 3 Write startling word, interrupting 1/2 fraction never arrives.”
10 Type of bond I ought to cut acceptable sort of test (4,4)
before the end (5) 4 Want day at home for all of us (6) “The world’s greatest mystery,” said Jill.
11 Be not so haphazard in pursuit 5 Seed case part initially doesn’t
of ten synthetic lifeforms (8) appear in rainy month (4) “But the good news is that if you write
12 Hey, by the way, spreadsheet 6 Provides diameter used every date as a fraction, so 1 January is
isn’t filled in (4) in optical equipment (5) 1/365 and 2 January is 2/365 and so
14 Shower participant fixed remote (6) 7 You vacated island in a board game on, then my birthday falls on a day where
15 Snoops around a backed-up where many jaguars live (7) that fraction is reducible,” says Lionel.
spring, for example (6) 8 Echo pierces mythical flower (4)
18 Racetrack figures correct in retrospect, 13 Hardened fill-in worker expressed “Reducible?”
having doubled down (4) hesitation with magazine VIP (8)
20 Denied PM sabotaged AI company (8) 14 Academic includes directions “You know, can be simplified, like 12/18
23 Treat quicklime by adding for evening event (7) can be reduced to 2/3. My birthday fraction
water, salt and pigment (5) 16 Boy eats lean, strong-smelling cheese (7) can be reduced, but the next day can be
24 Spun segment of dodgy rat 17 British bird name associated reduced even more, to numbers on the
edutainment (7) with Charles Darwin (6) top and bottom that are even smaller.”
25 Unsurpassed study probing trail of 19 Upcoming commercial involves
evidence after unhinged rant (12) hard-drive feature histrionics (5) “I’ll be sure to celebrate by reducing the
21 Pigeon relative repeated note (4) number of presents I get you,” says Jill.
22 For listeners, auctions off
animation collectibles (4) When is Lionel’s birthday?
Solution next week

Our crosswords are now solvable online
newscientist.com/crosswords

The back pages Almost the last word
Frogs return to the same

Flat Earth
ponds to breed, so how do
If the world were flat, how far they spread to new places?
away would a ship need to be
to “disappear” from sight? this distance could be greater,
although an atmosphere, dust
Mike Follows and refraction would reduce this.
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, UK As a related question, with some
If we were living on a flat surface skyscrapers more than 600 metres
without an atmosphere, the tall, on a curved Earth, what is the
maximum distance we could see greatest distance such a building
would be limited by the ability can be seen from? In theory, a
of our eyes to resolve a ship from 600-metre-high building should
other nearby objects and by the be visible 100 kilometres away.
ship’s contrast with its background.
A ship would be seen from the Ian Cargill
greatest distance at night if it had Taroona, Tasmania, Australia
all its lights on. The maximum The limit of our eyes’ power to
PHOTO CREDIT
distance would depend on how resolve objects is generally taken
bright it was, its size and whether to be about 1 arc minute (1/60°).
you were interested in identifying This means that the largest ships,
it as a ship or just detecting a This week’s new questions which have a width of about
few photons of light. Obviously, 60 metres, should remain
you could see it at even greater Springing back If frogs return to breed at the place where visible to at least 200 kilometres.
distances with the aid of they hatched, how do they spread across the country? I live near the mouth of the
binoculars or a telescope. If the Stephen Yeardsley, Long Bennington, Lincolnshire, UK Derwent River in Tasmania and
ship were as bright as a star, can see vessels going out to sea.
you might be able to see it from Magnetic weather Does Earth’s magnetic field affect We don’t get such big ships, but
13 billion light years away. the weather? Carl Good, Groton, Massachusetts, US a new Australian icebreaker, the
But all these conjectures are Nuyina, has been passing recently,
and it has a beam, or width, of
“It is this ability to It is this ability to see “over the with excellent atmospheric about 26 metres. By the same
see ‘over the horizon’, horizon”, beyond our line of sight, conditions, most ships would criteria, it should be visible up
that can give us the illusion we disappear before they are to about 88 kilometres away.
beyond our line of
live on a flat Earth. that far away though. But when I use a ship tracker as
sight, that can give us I watch it head south, it disappears
the illusion that we Hazel Beneke Hillary J. Shaw about 25 kilometres away,
live on a flat Earth” Banksia Beach, Newport, Shropshire, UK consistent with the calculated
Queensland, Australia We may be able to discern an horizon of 19 kilometres from
sidestepped when we factor Assuming that there is object 1 millimetre wide at a my observation height and the
in our atmosphere and the nothing blocking your view, distance of 12 metres, but we height of the ship. And a telescope
refraction, scattering and the constraints will be the size can also perceive a large range of doesn’t bring it back into view!
absorption of light that it brings. of the ship, the atmospheric colours. This means that a smaller
As the distance of the ship conditions and your visual acuity. object might just be discernible Nic Brough
from us increases, so do the The biggest ships are about if it is sufficiently different Wellingborough,
chances that light rays from it 450 metres long, but they are in hue from its background. Northamptonshire, UK
are refracted out of our line of less than 50 metres high. If you The world’s largest ship is the oil The answer depends on whether
sight, due to variations in air can distinguish a 0.1-millimetre tanker Seawise Giant, 458 metres you want to be able to identify
density, driven by convection. object from its background at long, and colour contrast means it as a ship. You are able to see
Ironically, it is possible that arm’s length (roughly 1 metre), we might then just see her, that a ship is there because of
we are able to see a ship from with excellent vision you should sideways on, with perfect visibility, the light it is reflecting to your
just as far on our spherical Earth. be able to distinguish an object in a vacuum, with 20/20 vision, at eye, but unless it is within 30 or
This is because the density of air 50 metres tall at a distance of 12,000 times this distance on a flat 50 kilometres, you probably won’t
decreases with height above 500 kilometres. For the average Earth, or 5500 kilometres away. be able to tell that it is a ship.
Earth’s surface so that all light rays person, with average sight, even With a decent pair of binoculars,
travelling nearly parallel to the Paul Bethel
planet’s surface bend downwards Want to send us a question or answer? London, UK
slightly, almost matching Earth’s Email us at lastword@newscientist.com If Earth were flat, and given a
curvature, something that Questions should be about everyday science phenomena good telescope, you would see
surveyors take into account. Full terms and conditions at newscientist.com/lw-terms the ship until it fell off the edge.

Tom Gauld Answers
for New Scientist
Quick quiz #145
Answers
1 Six: up, down, charm,
strange, top and bottom
2 Phloem
3 The Sumatran orangutan
(Pongo abelii)
4 Stromatolites
5 The Kuiper belt, the ring of
objects located beyond Neptune
Quick Crossword
#104 Answers
ACROSS 8 Thorax, 9 Phthisis,
10 Wren, 11 Lymphocyte,
12 Nash, 13 Canis Major,
17 Cyst, 18 Calyx, 19 Arch,
21 Subsidence, 23 Ears,
24 Machine-gun, 28 ICBM,
29 Duodenum, 30 High-up
DOWN 1 Pharmacy, 2 Bronchitis,

3 Oxalic acid, 4 Spam, 5 Itch,
Puppy love “Did our cooperation Francis Blake 6 Zinc, 7 Distro, 14 Nylon,
with wolves enable us London, UK 15 Sixteenths, 16 Awakenings,
Why do I love my dog when, It isn’t known exactly when Canis 20 Cerebrum, 22 Uranus,
in evolutionary terms, there
to survive the harsh lupus (the wolf) morphed into the 25 Hedy, 26 Nine, 27 Game
are no benefits to me? winters of Europe subspecies Canis lupus familiaris
more successfully (the domestic dog), although it is
Garry Trethewey than Neanderthals?” probably more than 30,000 years #160 Blurry-Ness
Cherryville, South Australia ago. The change presumably arose Solution
In evolutionary terms, there are oxytocin, serotonin and through cooperation in hunting.
benefits to being a member of dopamine. When you release This would require the building The correct answer is 15 metres.
a group. A person who seeks these hormones, you experience of trust between the wolves/dogs When the boat reaches the ripple
physical, emotional and social improved mood, relaxation and humans, and it is easy to see (point X), the ripple has been
contact is more likely to survive and lower levels of depression. how, over time, this trust would travelling for 5 seconds. When
than an outcast. Serotonin has also been linked to become affection, on both sides. the boat crosses the other side (Y),
The qualities that elicit enhancing the immune system. Our modern love for dogs can the ripple has been travelling for
love include proximity and Human-dog tactile interaction be seen as a hangover from these 15 seconds, so the diameter of the
dependency, and characteristics probably does have evolutionary earlier times when there would outer ripple in the diagram is three
such as big eyes, round features benefits for the human, and have been clear evolutionary times that of the inner ripple, so the
and intrusiveness – similar to perhaps for the pet pooch as well. benefits for our ancestors. ripple originated 1/4 of the way
those of human babies. Dogs have I have often wondered if the between X and Y. The boat took
enough of these qualities that we Don Burke cooperation between wolf and 10 seconds to cross the ripple, so
expend resources on them, a bit Sydney, Australia Homo sapiens – presumably reached Nessie 2.5 seconds after
like a cuckoo’s foster parents. Dogs first domesticated humans resulting in more plentiful meat crossing the ripple or 7.5 seconds
about 20,000 years ago. They and warm pelts – is one reason after taking the photo. This gives
David Muir probably made the first move why these people survived the 2 m/s x 7.5 s = 15 metres.
Edinburgh, UK by following us around to get harsh winters of Europe more
When you stroke and hug your food. They then joined hunting successfully than Neanderthals
dog, and your pet appreciates this, groups and defended houses (I am assuming that Neanderthals X Y
you are mutually bonding. In you, and villages and provided didn’t also domesticate the wolf).
and probably your dog, this causes friendly companionship. There I will leave it to others to explain
a cascade of the cuddle chemicals, is a huge benefit for us humans. why we also love cats. ❚

The back pages Feedback
On Earth… Twisteddoodles for New Scientist the principle of British units for
British places. “Could you convert
As a fresh-faced 18-year-old, that to fractions of a Berkshire
Michael Owen’s mazy run from please?” asks Ceri, catching us
the centre circle to score against slightly off guard. No, but in
Argentina in the 1998 World Cup standard Imperial units, it is
round of 16 raised hopes of a new a smidgen under 2 milliWales.
golden era of English football – That is if anyone is actually sure
“soccer”, we add, looking in no how big Henderson Island is.
particular direction – just as surely
as David Beckham’s subsequent
Atmospheric surge
sending-off and the inevitable
loss on penalties dashed them. This admirable effort to make
Back then, it was only 32 years global news local sends us rootling
of hurt; by now it is getting silly. in our piles for a headline from
Altogether more forward-facing the Essex Live website in the UK
is Owen’s recent reinvention as sent in by Anthony Jamieson
a crypto guru. “Looks to me like in January. “Essex sees huge
blockchain is here to stay,” he atmospheric pressure surge as
announced last month on Twitter, Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption
hence he was working with a felt across East Anglia”, it screams,
blockchain specialist on “a really adding in smaller typeface that
exciting new football project”. the pressure in Heybridge, Essex,
Rapid reaction on the social jumped “from just over 1,023
media site renowned for rapid millibars of pressure to 1,024”.
unkind reaction was predictably No eardrums burst, we hope.
unkind, largely along the lines
that Owen possibly didn’t actually
Out of time
know what blockchain is. If so, he
is welcome to join our club any time. Got a story for Feedback? Gerben Wierda writes from the
This seems to follow a trend of Send it to feedback@newscientist.com or New Scientist, Netherlands currying favour – quite
ex-elite sportspeople advertising Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT our favourite curryable material –
cryptocurrency projects, something Consideration of items sent in the post will be delayed and challenging the orthodoxy
we can associate with the ennui that true New Scientist aficionados
and need for new revenue streams read the magazine back to front.
associated with being an ex-elite figures, such as Oprah, Elon No matter. We detect a whiff “I read NS from front to back,”
sportsperson. We click further, Musk, and the Dalai Lama – into of good old performance art in he says, “but Feedback plays an
on our eternal quest for both orbit on SpaceX,” the PR puff all this, so we will politely just important role in my NS backlog
excitement and enlightenment. breathlessly informs us. “Once nod and smile. management. If I come across an
“The first Michael Owen official in space, passenger Israeli air issue and I am uncertain if it has
NFT collection comprises of 1233 force pilot Eytan Stibb will call Small island far away been read, I check the first entry
NFT’s that are available across them up on his tablet and bless in Feedback.” We are thus not
5 increasingly exclusive tiers,” we them with starlight and cosmic Ceri Brown writes from only the most memorable bit
read. We are somewhat the wiser: rays. He’ll then ‘drop’ them Haverfordwest in Wales, querying of the magazine, he says, but
the blockchain is about football from space directly into the a Sky News story about the position “like dessert: that most enjoyable
stickers. Welcome to the future. blockchain collection.” of Henderson Island, part of the end of a good experience.”
The selection of great minds Pitcairn group in the South Pacific Your cheque is in the post. Of
… as it is in heaven of our time is interesting, but that through historical accident course, we recognise that the true
the ultimate aim – to auction finds itself a UK Overseas Territory. measure of an aficionado of this
And much, much good may the widgets off for the benefit of Populated largely by native crabs magazine is a backlog of issues
come of this sort of thing, going clean-water charities – is laudable. and non-native plastic waste, that you always convince yourself
by a press release on behalf of a The whole process does strike it is perhaps a measure of the you are going to clear. Being stuck
“visionary NFT production house” us as a mite overcomplicated, seriousness with which the UK has on the issue of 9 October 2021
thrust our way by a colleague though, given that starlight and taken its stewardship up till now has its advantages, says Gerben.
with eyes not so much rolling cosmic rays are freely available on that the Royal Navy recently found “One can read news articles about
as whirling like pulsars. Earth. An interesting metaphysical it situated about 1.5 kilometres to the possible rise of the new delta
“On April 3, they’re launching question is, if digital art exists only the south of where it thought it was. variant of covid-19 and remain
30 NFTs from their bestselling when constituted as pixels, and is “Henderson Island is uninhabited in a world that is still blissfully free
‘Greatest Minds of Our Time’ – called into life only when in orbit, and is about the size of Oxford,” the of war crimes being performed
pop-art images of inspirational has it been launched into orbit? article states, presumably following in Ukraine.” We hear you. ❚

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