8 September 2018, No3194 New Scientist (Australia) 9780198788959

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF GRAVITY • A LIFE IN BRAIN SURGERY • BLUE PLANET, UNSEEN WHO ARE WE AND HOW DID WE GET HERE? • THE NATURE OF TIME

THE MANY WORLDS OF QUANTUM MECHANICS • SECRET LIFE OF THE TEENAGE BRAIN • THE SIMPLE ROUTE TO BETTER HEALTH COSMOS STAGE

DEFENDING EARTH FROM ASTEROIDS • EXOPLANETS, ON THE HUNT FOR UNIVERSAL LIFE THE FATE OF THE COSMOS • GRAVITATIONAL WAVES: SIRENS OF THE COSMOS JOURNEYS INTO PARTICLE PHYSICS • THE DARK SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE EARTH STAGE

HOW NATURE IS THRIVING IN THE HUMAN AGE HOW PRIMATES AND ELEPHANTS PREVENT CLIMATE CHANGE • SHOULD WE GENE EDIT FARM ANIMALS?

PLANET ON A PLATE - HOW FOOD CONNECTS US WITH EVERYTHING • ANTIBIOTIC DISCOVERY IN THE ABYSS • VOLCANOES: FRIEND OR FOE? ENGINEERING STAGE

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GUT HEALTH: THE SECRET TO HAPPINESS? • IS AUTISM A GIFT? OBESITY: WHO IS TO BLAME? • WHY REALITY IS A HALLUCINATION

PREVENTING AND OVERCOMING CHRONIC PAIN • CAN YOU LIVE FOREVER (AND WOULD YOU WANT TO)? TECH NOLOGY STAGE

HOW QUANTUM SENSORS CAN IMPROVE OUR LIVES • SHOULD ROBOTS HAVE RIGHTS?

IMAGING EARTH’S SECRETS USING COSMIC MUONS • MATHS VERSUS AI • THE HIDDEN SECRETS OF EGYPTIAN MUMMIES THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE EXPERIENCES

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EARTH’S ALIEN PAST

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TWO DECADES MORE

Embryo gene tweaks to vastly extend lifespan

APOCALYPSE NEVER

Sci-fi genius Cixin Liu predicts the future

WEEKLY 8 September 2018 No3194 Australia $9.50 (Inc. GST) New Zealand NZ$9.50 (Inc. GST) Print Post Approved 100007877

THE YOU DELUSION Why your sense of self is just a trick of the mind

HYDROGEN RESURGENCE

The battle for the future of clean cars

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PLUS ANTI-POLLUTION PRAMS / MUMMIFIED PENGUINS / EUROPA’S MYSTERY COLD SPOT / DESALINATION’S DIRTY SECRET News, ideas and innovation www.newscientist.com

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CONTENTS

Management

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We should be open to the idea that human intelligence isn’t as special as we like to think

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Web development

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Two decades more Embryo gene tweaks to vastly extend lifespan

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THIS WEEK Crunch time for Ebola. Brazil National Museum fire. Race to save Opportunity. Find your heart age. The reality of the American dream

6

NEWS & TECHNOLOGY Mummified penguins. Dark matter blasted. Laser-powered drones. DNA editing before birth. Europa’s mystery cold spot. How you type could reveal Parkinson’s. Do AIs know what we are thinking? Corals fight the heat. Pram design can cut air pollution risk. Overworked brains. CRISPR helps dogs’ muscle disease. Fish pass the mirror test

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42 Apocalypse never Sci-fi genius Cixin Liu predicts the future 28 The you delusion Why your sense of self is just a trick of the mind 20 Hydrogen resurgence The battle for the future of clean cars Plus Anti-pollution prams (13). Mummified penguins (6). Europa’s mystery cold spot (8). Desalination’s dirty secret (32)

17 IN BRIEF Elk antler gamble. Non-addictive opioid. Warm water threatens Arctic. AI tracks cancer. Print with sound and honey

Analysis 20 INSIGHT Why your next car could run on hydrogen 22 COMMENT The lunar gateway is a terrible idea. Why Americans should vote for a scientist 23 ANALYSIS Is self-harm in UK teens rising?

Features 28 The you delusion Why your sense of self is just a trick of the mind 32 The briny deep Ocean desalination could provide drinking water for all – if only we knew what to do with the waste salt 36 The surgeon fixing a scandal We could have avoided the worst consequences of vaginal mesh, says Sohier Elneil 38 Earth’s alien past Our deepest history may hold the key to the search for life on other planets

Culture 42 Apocalypse never China’s sci-fi genius Cixin Liu on why our future is bright. PLUS: This week’s cultural picks 44 A fantastical experiment Ceramic art acts as a foil for a collection of scientific curios

Regulars 24 APERTURE Eye to eye with a hawkmoth 52 LETTERS Polluter pays - but to whom? 55 CROSSWORD 56 FEEDBACK The politics of alien abduction 57 THE LAST WORD Eggstraordinary claim

8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 1

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Like looking in a mirror We’re not unique – lots of species can recognise themselves WE LIKE to think that the human mind is special. One sign of our superiority is self-awareness, which is generally seen as the pinnacle of consciousness. Only a select group of species has passed the test of being able to recognise themselves in a mirror. Most, including elephants, apes and dolphins, are notoriously smart. But now a scrappy little fish, the cleaner wrasse, has joined their ranks (see page 14). What are we to make of this? Admittedly, the mirror test is a questionable way of probing the minds of other animals. But the finding does fit with an emerging idea that the ability to recognise

oneself is more related to an animal’s lifestyle than to its brain size. Self-awareness is likely to occur in creatures whose survival is dependent on reading the minds of others. In fact, by this way of thinking, it is nothing more than an accidental by-product of evolution, a simulation created by the brain, or even just a hall of mirrors giving the illusion of complexity (see page 28). The cleaner wrasse lives on coral reefs and provides a service by nibbling parasites off the scales of bigger fish, a delicate relationship that may require insight into the minds of its clients. Such “theory of mind”

has long been seen as another cornerstone of human mental superiority. The possibility that fish possess it is not, however, the only threat to our human exceptionalism. It may not be long before computers give us a run for our money, too. Researchers have created a set of tests to look for theory of mind in artificial intelligence – and some systems are on the verge of passing (see page 10). We probably don’t need to worry about robots that can recognise themselves in mirrors. But we might want to be more open to the idea that human intelligence isn’t quite as special as we like to think. Q

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THIS WEEK

Treasured artefacts lost BRAZIL’S oldest and most important scientific museum was gutted by fire on 2 September. Within hours, the blaze destroyed many priceless scientific artefacts and collections gathered since the National Museum was founded in 1818. Items potentially lost include

BUDA MENDES/GETTY

the massive Bendegó meteorite, weighing 5260 kilograms, and Luzia, a 12,000-year-old human skeleton, the oldest in the Americas. Based in Rio de Janeiro, the museum housed irreplaceable collections of scientific artefacts, specimens and records in geology, botany, biology, palaeontology and zoology, as well as priceless cultural and anthropological artefacts. Almost 90 per cent of the 20 million items there are thought to have been lost. “It is incalculable for Brazil to lose

American dream is slipping away

Race to save Mars rover Opportunity

IT IS the American dream that anyone can become prosperous through hard work, irrespective of their status at birth – but the reality is different. The socio-economic status of someone in the US is more strongly influenced by that of their parents than previously thought.

TIME is running out for NASA’s Opportunity rover. A dust storm that has been raging on Mars since early June is starting to subside, potentially giving the rover enough sunlight to charge its batteries. But on 30 August, NASA set a 45-day deadline before it gives up trying to wake it.

Michael Hout of New York University looked at data from 21,000 people, each given a “socio-economic index” (SEI) score – a measure of pay and credentials ranking 0 to 100, with 0 representing the lowest in society. The data included questionnaire answers that helped establish the SEI scores of the people’s parents. The American dream suggests that

The Opportunity rover runs solely on solar power, so a dust storm like this one, which has blocked out more than 99 per cent of sunlight on Mars’s

Earlier studies have hinted at such “intergenerational persistence”, says Hout, but not to such a strong degree as his findings suggest. 4 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

NASA/JPL

anyone can achieve a high SEI score, but Hout found otherwise. It turned out that there was a strong linear relationship between someone’s SEI score and that of their parents (PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1802508115).

surface, can be catastrophic. The last signal received from Opportunity was on 10 June. Since then, it has been in sleep mode, using any power it has left to keep its batteries warm enough to survive on the frigid surface. Now that the planet-encircling storm has begun to clear, rover operators are sending Opportunity wake-up calls three times a week with orders to send back a beep if it is alive. The hope is that sleep mode kept the battery safe, and that a Martian dust devil will soon come along and blow the sand off the rover’s solar panels, allowing it to charge up again.

the collection of the National Museum,” said Michel Temer, Brazil’s president, in a statement reported by The Rio Times. “200 years of work, research and knowledge were lost.” Media sources report that the fire began between the museum closing at 5 pm as usual on Sunday 2 September and 7.30 pm. Some reports claim that two key fire hydrants on site were dry, preventing firefighters from tackling the fire in the early stages. Other reports say that successive governments had allowed the museum to fall into disrepair. The Brazilian government says it is now seeking corporate funding to help rebuild the museum. Officials are also seeking international help and are speaking to UNESCO, the cultural agency of the United Nations.

Doubts raised over online heart test HEALTH chiefs in England this week launched an online “heart-age” test, which is claimed to reveal people’s risk of a heart attack or stroke. Public Health England (PHE) says that if a person’s heart is “older” than their age, they are at increased risk and should consider diet and lifestyle changes. PHE says that of 1.9 million who have already tried the test, 78 per cent had hearts older than their age. In 14 per cent, their hearts were 10 years older. But critics say the test – which asks simple physical and lifestyle questions – could create unfounded alarm by basing estimates on incomplete data. It asks for accurate measurements of blood pressure and cholesterol, but if these are not available, it seems to assume abnormal values, potentially overestimating heart age. “I just entered this as a 30-year-old with no risk factors, and it told me to get cholesterol and blood pressuretested,” tweeted Margaret McCartney, a family doctor in Glasgow, UK. “Where is [the] evidence of benefit?”

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

Crunch time for Ebola in the DRC THE Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has reached a critical juncture. It seems to be subsiding, after striking 121 people and killing 81 as of 2 September. But the coming days may be crucial, says Tedros Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO). That is partly because the outbreak is in North Kivu province in the war-torn east of the DRC, where fighting by more than 50 armed groups puts many areas off limits. To stop the virus spreading, medical teams must isolate and vaccinate anyone who has had contact with an infected person, and all the people they in turn came into contact with. But the teams can’t work much more than 30 kilometres from the epidemic’s centre in the city of Beni. Worse, the UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has found that people in the region are highly mobile, with traders and miners transiting to Uganda and Rwanda, and a million people have been displaced by violence. Such high population mobility, plus a slow medical response, caused an Ebola outbreak in West Africa to mushroom into an unprecedented epidemic that killed more than 11,000 in 2014. This time, the response has not been slow. The outbreak was recognised on 1 August, only a week after an Ebola epidemic on the other side of the DRC had been halted. A week later, teams in North Kivu were vaccinating. This selective “ring vaccination” of the contacts of known cases, then their contacts, makes best use of limited vaccine stocks by containing virus spreading from known cases. It seems to be working: on 1 September, with

JOHN WESSELS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

War zones may thwart efforts to halt virus, reports Debora MacKenzie

5462 contacts vaccinated, the WHO reported 13 new cases the previous week, down from 25 and 35 in the weeks before that. If that continues, the 300,000 doses of vaccine available worldwide should be more than enough to contain this epidemic. But epidemics can hit tipping points and soar exponentially.

“Ebola comes in waves: the next surge could still be incubating, or invisible in violent no-go areas” Stopping that requires stopping all the chains of transmission, says Mike Ryan, head of emergency response at the WHO. Moreover, Ebola epidemics come in waves: the next surge could be incubating, or invisible in violent no-go areas. Worryingly, four of the new cases reported last week were not from known chains of transmission, so there are unknown chains out there. They may be hard to find. The IOM has used its data to choose

the 34 most important transport hubs where people leave the region, and Congolese authorities have so far checked 840,000 travellers there for symptoms. It has also mapped highly vulnerable spots, such as popular markets and churches with strong connections to the outbreak zone, for closer monitoring. But the IOM is only able to monitor relatively safe zones. “The news of two confirmed cases in Oicha is extremely distressing, because the area is almost entirely surrounded by armed militants,” says Michelle Gayer of the US-based International Rescue Committee. Last week, a medical team with a heavy UN military escort vaccinated 97 contacts of the two infected people in Oicha, discovered only because one travelled to Beni. Anyone in the area around Oicha cannot be reached. The WHO also last week decided to test three antiviral drugs in randomly chosen patients. No one will get a placebo, so the trials

A church service near Beni, DRC, the epicentre of an Ebola outbreak

can’t establish formally how much better the drugs are than getting no drug. But they can compare the three. Two people have received ZMapp, a cocktail of antibodies, the immune proteins that attack the Ebola virus. It showed promise in 2014, but is hard to administer and must be stored at −80°C, which is difficult in the DRC. Five have had remdesivir, a molecule that blocks the infection process. The big surprise is that 13 have been given mAb114, an antibody from a survivor of the 1995 Ebola epidemic in Kikwit, DRC, which can be kept in a refrigerator and needs only one simple injection. Last year, a WHO panel judged it too untested to use in epidemics, but the US National Institutes of Health has since rushed through safety trials in humans. Two people on it have recovered, says the WHO, but it is not yet known if the drug helped. ■ 8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 5

NEWS & TECHNOLOGY

Graveyard is a bad omen for penguins sediments, which contain excrement and nest material. They found that penguins have lived there for at least 3900 years, but most of the deaths occurred in two periods, about 750 and 200 years ago. The colonies were abandoned afterwards each time, as little new sediment was laid down in later centuries. The cause seems to have been unusually heavy snow or rain over several decades. The team found evidence of floods that carried

MUMMIFIED penguins have been found littering the ground in Antarctica. The birds seem to have died during two bouts of extreme weather over the past 1000 years. Such conditions are expected to become more common as a result of climate change, making mass die-offs more likely. The birds were found on Long Peninsula, in east Antarctica, by researchers led by Liguang Sun at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei. It isn’t unusual to find dead penguins, but those on Long Peninsula – mainly chicks – are especially numerous, with up to 15 per square metre and hundreds overall. “They consist of wellpreserved dehydrated mummies,” the researchers write in a paper. All are Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae), which only live in Antarctica. They currently breed in the Antarctic summer at about 250 sites, forming huge colonies near the coast. To find out what happened on Long Peninsula, Sun’s team used carbon dating to estimate the ages of the corpses. They also studied

Star explosions could explain misfit galaxies

of this dark matter should increase as you move towards the centre of a galaxy, but some dwarf galaxies didn’t get the memo: they have a constant density of dark matter. That might seem a minor wrinkle,

THE dark matter in small galaxies has been giving cosmologists a headache. Blowing up a few stars may provide the solution. Dark matter is thought to make up most of the matter in the universe and should be found mixed in with the regular matter of galaxies. The standard model of cosmology, called lambda-CDM, predicts that the density

but if it can’t be explained within lambda-CDM, it could deal a blow to our understanding of dark matter.

6 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

Climate change threatens the Adélie penguins of Antarctica

HIROYA MINAKUCHI/MINDEN PICTURES/FLPA

Michael Marshall

sediment and corpses downhill, and signs of erosion (Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, doi.org/ctj9). Rain is a lethal threat, says Yan Ropert-Coudert of the French National Centre for Scientific Research. “The chicks especially are not made for wet weather,” he says. Hypothermia is a risk. Meanwhile, snow makes it hard for parents to find pebbles to make nests, and if it melts the meltwater can drown chicks. The cause of the wet weather was probably a shift in the Southern Annular Mode, a pattern of winds in the Southern Ocean

“The implications of these very subtle measurements are large so people have argued a lot over them,” says Marla Geha at Yale University, who wasn’t involved in the latest work. Star formation is one potential

explanation. Some stars are born after old ones die in explosive supernovas, which send matter flying. Bursts of such star formation in small galaxies might blow some dark matter towards the edges, smoothing out the distribution. Justin Read at the University of Surrey in the UK and his colleagues used measurements of the mass at the centres of dwarf galaxies to test

“Dark matter density should increase as you move to the centre of a galaxy, but some didn’t get the memo”

that can send extra damp air to east Antarctica. Climate change is likely to make this more frequent. Adélies are widespread, so can handle occasional disasters, says Steven Emslie at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. But they face increasing pressures. In April, Emslie published a study of the largest modern Adélie colony, at Cape Adare. “Sea level rise is going to displace hundreds of thousands of penguins there and at Cape Hallett within the next 30 to 50 years, as those beaches are gradually inundated,” he says. Ropert-Coudert has detailed the disastrous 2013-14 breeding season, when no chicks survived in a major colony on Petrel Island in east Antarctica. Unusually heavy snowfall killed them, combined with weak winds that failed to break up the sea ice, preventing adults from catching enough food. And it wasn’t a oneoff. “In 2016-17 we had a second massive breeding failure in the same place,” he says. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Adélie penguins are at low risk of extinction. But Ropert-Coudert says repeated breeding failures on Petrel Island are a bad sign. The solution is to limit climate change as much as possible, he says. We could also set up protected areas to “prevent other threats from superimposing on the climate ones”. ■

this idea. They picked out samples of two different types of galaxy, eight that stopped forming stars long ago, and eight that are still forming stars or only stopped relatively recently. They found that the galaxies with higher rates of star formation had less dark matter in their centres, pointing to a more uniform distribution. That matches up with the idea that star formation moves mass towards the edges of the galaxy, which then shifts the dark matter outward. It’s a good sign for lambda-CDM, if the result stands up (arxiv.org/ abs/1808.06634). Leah Crane ■

For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news

Genome engineering could reduce disease risk in generations to come

Drone can fly indefinitely by laser power THE US Army is taking wireless recharging to new heights, by using lasers to power small drones in mid-air. Small multicopters – flying vehicles

Now the US Army’s Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center based in Maryland is developing a power beaming system with a combination of lasers and efficient photovoltaic cells. The aim is to provide enough power from 500 metres away to keep a drone patrolling indefinitely above a base, or flying over a convoy for its entire route. The system works by firing laser light at photovoltaic cells on the drone, which then converts the light into electricity. “The major challenge we see is thermal management,” says project engineer William Rowley. Any energy that is not converted to electricity becomes heat, so there is a risk of melting or burning the drone. This problem is being overcome by developing accurate beam control and ensuring the excess heat can dissipate. The plan looks technically feasible, according to David Anderson at the University of Glasgow, UK. However, proving its safety is another matter, given the potential risks from the high-energy beam, such as eye or skin damage. “The challenge is how you can convince the regulatory authorities that it is safe,” says Anderson. “Specifically, you have to persuade them that the laser will not miss the drone energy collector panel when charging.” The team aims to demonstrate a first working system in 2019.

David Hambling ■

JADE ALBERT STUDIO/GETTY

with several rotating blades – have proven valuable to the military for intelligence gathering. But they are power-hungry, meaning that their flying time is limited to half an hour or less.

DNA editing before birth may bring healthier lives MAKING dozens of changes to decades, says Roman Teo Oliynyk, DNA in human egg and sperm a computational biologist at the cells or very early embryos could University of Auckland, New dramatically extend the lifespan Zealand. For instance, CRISPR of offspring – according to genome editing has been used to the first attempt to quantify make multiple changes to animal potential benefits of germline egg cell genomes. genome editing. Oliynyk looked at gene variants “This… shows that we could known as SNPs that affect the risk potentially use germline gene “Those treated would live editing to make us all resistant two decades longer on to diseases of old age,” says average before developing biomedical ethicist Christopher a range of cancers” Gyngell at the University of Melbourne, Australia, who was not involved in the study. of developing diseases of old age, It is already possible to prevent including heart disease, type 2 genetic diseases caused by single diabetes, stroke, Alzheimer’s, mutations, such as cystic fibrosis – osteoarthritis and some cancers. by screening IVF embryos before From these it is possible to implantation, for instance. estimate whether a person has a But we all carry thousands of greater or lower risk of developing gene variants that don’t inevitably these diseases. lead to diseases, yet affect our risk Oliynyk modelled what would of developing them. Changing happen if those with a higherone wouldn’t have a big impact, than-average risk had undergone but changing many could genome editing before birth to potentially add years to lives that reduce their risk to the average. would otherwise be cut short. This This would mean altering dozens may be possible in the next few of SNPs – even hundreds in those

with the highest risk. The findings suggest the results would be dramatic, with people on average living many years longer before developing these diseases. The benefits would be greatest for cancers. Those treated would live two decades longer, on average, before developing breast, prostate or colorectal cancers, and their lifetime risk would be more than halved, even if they live 10 years longer (bioRxiv, doi.org/ctjp). However, as Oliynyk acknowledges, his conclusions depend on several assumptions. One is that we have correctly identified SNPs that affect disease risk. In reality there is still huge uncertainty. “I don’t think we are there yet. I’m not sure we ever will be,” says geneticist Helen O’Neill of University College London. She points out that the effect of gene variants can depend on the environment and other gene variants and may prove impossible to accurately predict. Another assumption is that altering SNPs has no side effects, says Ali Torkamani of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. “There is often a tradeoff to be had – you’ve reduced your risk for coronary artery disease but you may have increased your risk for some other disorder,” he says. There is also a major practical problem, says O’Neill. You can’t know what SNPs an embryo will inherit until it forms, so you can’t work out risk in advance. But if you wait until this stage, it may be too late to edit the genome. Oliynyk thinks the answer could be the use of synthetic genomes – rebuilding genomes from scratch and correcting disease-causing variants. This is not yet possible with large genomes like ours, but Oliynyk is confident it will be. “It is a purely technological issue, and these are always solved,” he says. Michael Le Page ■ For more on gene editing, see page 14 8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 7

NEWS & TECHNOLOGY Your typing could reveal Parkinson’s

NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SETI INSTITUTE

SUBTLE clues in how you type on a keyboard may be able to reveal early signs of Parkinson’s. The hope is that this could help spot the disease before pronounced hand tremors or serious changes in the brain have occurred. To test the approach, hundreds of volunteers installed a program on their computers that monitored their typing over nine months. Warwick Adams at Charles Sturt

Mystery cold spot found on Europa Leah Crane

is different enough to be surprising, she says (arxiv.org/ abs/1808.07111). There are two main potential explanations for the cold spot: either it is emitting less heat than the rest of the surface, or it takes longer to warm up in Europa’s morning. The first could happen if the ice there has a different composition to that in the surrounding area, making it harder for heat to travel through it. The second could be a result of a blockier, less grainy texture. A large block of ice would

THERE is a weird cold spot on Europa, and nobody knows what it is. The first full thermal map of Jupiter’s icy moon has thrown up a spot about 300 kilometres across that seems colder than its surroundings, and we don’t have enough data on the area to figure out why. Samantha Trumbo at the California Institute of Technology and her colleagues used the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, a set of more than 60 radio telescopes in Chile, to measure the heat radiating from Europa’s “The cold spot might emit surface in a set of four overlapping less heat than the rest of the surface or take longer thermal images. It represents the to warm up in the morning” first full temperature map of the icy moon. “We weren’t so interested take longer to warm up, much as in cold spots, we were more an ice sculpture can last an entire interested in hot spots, because afternoon but a bowl of ice cubes those could indicate geological will melt within a few minutes. activity,” says Trumbo. “But we “If this spot is real, I would saw this one cold spot repeated expect it to be a large ice sheet, in two of the images.” The spot maybe younger than the rest is only about 9°C colder than of the surface because it hasn’t the surrounding areas, but it been broken up yet,” says 8 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

Part of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is even chillier than the rest

Jessica Noviello at Arizona State University. “On Europa, I would be interested in studying something young to see what this moon really looked like in its earlier state and how it changed over time.” The model that Trumbo’s team used to spot this anomaly was partially based on limited data from the Galileo spacecraft on the area’s albedo, or reflectiveness. Because of that, Noviello and Julie Rathbun of the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona doubt that the cold spot is actually there. “I looked back over the Galileo data, and there is no good data on that area, so we have no idea what it looks like,” says Rathbun. Despite the lack of data, Trumbo insists that there’s something odd going on. “It is possible that our albedoes are not 100 per cent correct – actually it’s likely,” she says. “But it would be strange if they were wrong significantly in only one location without that spot being somehow different.” Figuring out exactly how it is different will have to wait for more data. “For now, you can imagine almost anything,” Trumbo says. ■

University in Australia then whittled the sample down to 76 individuals who were of the appropriate age, not taking medication, and who either didn’t have Parkinson’s or whose condition was of mild severity. Adams wanted to see if the times between key presses could be accurately plotted against a sine wave of 4-6 hertz – the frequency of Parkinson’s hand tremors. If these data points didn’t map well to such a curve, that would be an indication that no tremor was present. Using this technique, the system was able to correctly identify patients who had mild Parkinson’s disease tremor with 78 per cent accuracy (bioArXiv, doi.org/ctjk). “The endgame is to develop a widely available screening test for both GPs and individuals,” says Adams, who has Parkinson’s himself, but not tremors. Early detection would in theory allow doctors to prescribe treatments that can inhibit the progression of the disease. About three-quarters of people with Parkinson’s develop hand tremors. Adams has previously developed a method of detecting early Parkinson’s disease by spotting changes in the flow of someone’s typing. He thinks combining the two methods will help build a diagnostic tool. However, one difficulty the system will face is that mild tremors are most pronounced when resting, not typing, says Álvaro Sánchez Ferro at the HM CINAC Comprehensive Neurosciences Center in Spain. Chris Baraniuk ■

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In Florence, admire Brunelleschi’s daring dome atop the cathedral and his Old Sacristy at San Lorenzo with its Ptolemaic planetarium. Enjoy elaborate collections at the Pitti Palace and Speculo Museum, and catch an early example of artistic perspective in the Brancacci Chapel. Visit much under-rated Bologna. Discover its Anatomical Theatre and the science museum at Palazzo Poggi. And don’t forget to sample its world-renowned cuisine. Our celebration of culture includes four-star hotels throughout.

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NEWS & TECHNOLOGY

Timothy Revell

DO COMPUTERS know what we are thinking? To find out, a team at the University of California, Berkeley, has created a set of gruelling tests that probe AI’s progress in understanding the world. None has passed the tests yet, but one got very close. The tests examine theory of mind – the ability to reason about another’s beliefs – and are inspired by experiments in psychology. Each consists of a short paragraph describing a scenario involving people – for example, Sally hides a marble and then Anne moves it to a new location. Passing the test revolves around identifying first and second-order beliefs. A first-order belief is working out what someone else thinks, answering a question like “where does Sally think the marble is?”, for example. A second-order belief is what someone thinks someone else is thinking, for example, “where does Anne think Sally thinks the marble is?”. Children are normally able to correctly identify first-order beliefs by around age 3, but it isn’t until age 6 or 7 that they can do

Some corals are beginning to beat the heat REPEATING an experiment 47 years after it was originally carried out has revealed some rare good news about corals: some species appear to have become significantly better at surviving temperature increases. In 1970, marine zoologist Steve Coles collected three species of coral from a reef in Kane‘ohe Bay, Hawaii. When he put them in a chamber and 10 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

the same for second-order beliefs. Aida Nematzadeh, who led the work and is now at Google’s AI lab at DeepMind, and her colleagues generated 10,000 scenarios and associated questions that tested theory of mind via first and second-order beliefs. They then put them to four state-of-the-art AIs. None managed to achieve a passing score, which was set at 95 per cent. Most humans should be able to score 100 per cent. The highest achiever was an AI called RelNet, produced by Adam Santoro and his colleagues at DeepMind, which scored 94.3 per cent. The other three AIs managed scores of between 82 and 94 per cent (arxiv.org/abs/1808.09352). However, the results were fairly fickle. Inserting an unrelated sentence with no bearing on the tested situations was enough to bamboozle the AIs. All of them dropped their scores by between 5 and 20 per cent, suggesting they weren’t properly grasping the meaning of the text. Though no AI has yet displayed theory of mind, they are improving at an impressive rate. Only two years ago, Facebook produced a series of tests that

gradually heated the water, he found that they couldn’t tolerate increases of 1 to 2°C. They started to bleach, ejecting the colourful algae that live within them. Without these, coral die. Overall, no corals from one species survived, and survival rates were 40 per cent and 5 per cent for the others. But Coles, at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, got a different result when he repeated the experiment using the same species of coral from the same area decades later. When he raised temperatures by the same amount, it took a few days longer for the corals to begin bleaching, and more

EYEEM/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

AI takes ‘marble’ theory-of-mind test

Tracking marbles can test the ability to reason what others think–

would examine AI’s ability to answer questions about the world. None tested could handle the task at the time, but some can now pass with few mistakes. A machine with theory of mind could prove useful, says Alan Wagner at Georgia Tech Research Institute in Atlanta. “An AI agent teaching assistant might be able to reason about a student’s false beliefs related to a course, for

than half survived (PeerJ, doi.org/cthn). “That was a big surprise,” says Coles. The finding is in line with anecdotal observations from reefs that some corals seem to be surviving bleaching. Coles doesn’t know how they do it, but other research suggests some corals adapt to higher temperatures by associating with species of algae that are more tolerant of heat stress. It isn't clear whether corals in

“If we take action now, some coral reefs may still exist a hundred years in the future”

example, that the final exam is next week when in fact it is tomorrow, and in doing so be better suited to help.” Another example is self-driving cars, says Johannes Bjerva at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. An AI-driven car with theory of mind might realise that the driver of another car hasn’t seen a person in the road, and honk its horn to warn them, he says. However, even if an AI can pass these tests, it may still not have theory of mind, says Wagner. ■

Hawaii are individually acclimatising to rising temperatures, or whether they have genetically evolved a heat tolerance that they will pass onto future generations, says Mikhail Matz at the University of Texas at Austin. Either way, it is good news, he says, although genetic adaptation may have more lasting benefits. Coles doesn’t think the change will be enough to counteract the effects of global warming on coral. But it suggests that, if we take action on climate change now, some coral reefs may still exist in a hundred years’ time, he says. Katarina Zimmer ■

Humanity will need the equivalent of 2 Earths to support itself by 2030.

People lying down solve anagrams in 10% less time than people standing up.

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

60% of us experience ‘inner speech’ where everyday thoughts take a back-and-forth conversational style. We spend 50% of our lives daydreaming.

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NEWS & TECHNOLOGY Brains at full capacity stop noticing things EVER felt like you are struggling to think about too many things at once? That might be because your brain’s attention systems are full. A brain scanning method that

WEHNER/PLAINPICTURE

shows how much energy nerve cells are using has provided support for the idea that we have a finite amount of attention available. This offers an explanation for the bizarre “invisible gorilla” optical illusion, in which people focus so much on one aspect of a staged video that they fail to see a person in a gorilla suit.

Pram design can cut air pollution risk Inga Vesper

pollution because the protective mechanisms in their lungs are not yet fully developed, he says. When choosing the best pram for defending against pollution, the weather is also a factor. Hot summer air concentrates pollution close to the ground, making seat height particularly important. But when the air is cold, the heat from car exhausts whirls dangerous particles higher in the air, after which they descend. In these cases, prams with some kind of covering, such as a canopy or plastic bad-weather

HIGH prams with canopies that shield a baby’s head could go some way towards reducing exposure to dangerous particle pollution. By kitting out prams with air quality sensors and taking them for a stroll, a team at the University of Surrey, UK, is studying how much pollution babies are exposed to and the pram designs that are best at combating it. The team has found that higher prams are better, because most particle pollution is concentrated in the first metre above road level. “Babies are more vulnerable to pollution than adults – On average, children in prams they breathe faster and breathe at a height of about have less developed lungs” 0.85 metres, meaning they are exposed to about 60 per cent more pollution than adults. cover, can help protect children On top of this, particle pollution from pollution falling down on is more dangerous to infants than them from above (Environment adults, says Jonathan Griggs at International, doi.org/cthc). Queen Mary University of “There are very few existing London, who was not involved in studies to draw conclusive the study. Babies breathe faster evidence on which pram design is than adults and they are more best,” says Prashant Kumar, who vulnerable to the effects of led the research. So far he is only

Canopies can shield babies from swirling car exhaust particles

able to identify broad things to look for in a pram, but his team are running further tests until the end of September, after which they plan to make more detailed recommendations. In the future, it may be possible to purchase add-on air filter systems for prams. One currently in development is called Brizi. The device consists of a flat headrest with wings on either side of the baby’s head. Air is sucked in on one side, cleaned, and blown out the other, creating a bubble of slightly higher air pressure, which keeps out particles. Exposure to particle pollution damages lungs and can cause inflammation and long-term respiratory problems. According to the UK government’s Clean Air Strategy, around 340,000 life years are lost in the country every year due to pollution. Designing better prams is only an interim solution to tackling pollution itself, says Griggs. “It’s certainly prudent not to stick your child next to an exhaust pipe, but in the end it is not about protecting babies by technology, but reducing emissions on roads,” he says. Q

Nilli Lavie at University College London (UCL) took advantage of a new brain scanning method, called broadband functional near infrared spectroscopy, which was developed as a way of measuring the brain’s oxygen levels with a simple headset. Another research group at UCL has tweaked the technology so that instead of oxygen, it measures the activity of an enzyme inside mitochondria, the tiny structures that provide cells with energy. “We are measuring the metabolism inside the neuron,” says Lavie. In her latest experiment, participants did either an easy or hard version of a visual task that involved spotting certain shapes and colours on a screen, while wearing the headset. Half the time they were also shown a flickering chequerboard pattern in the periphery of their vision. When the main task was easy, the brain cells dealing with peripheral vision raised their firing rates as the pattern started flashing. When the main task was difficult, the flashing chequerboard pattern led to little increase in neural activity. “You suppress things you’re not attending to,” says Lavie, who presented the findings at a recent UCL Neuroscience Symposium. Jan de Fockert of Goldsmiths, University of London, says other work has also shown that demands on our attention from one sense can affect other senses too. Clare Wilson Q 8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 13

NEWS & TECHNOLOGY

CRISPR helps dogs’ muscle disease

“Virtually all of the muscle fibres showed high levels of dystrophin. We were exuberant” result in heart or lung failure. In 2010, Richard Piercy at the Royal Veterinary College in London and his colleagues identified the same mutation in a Cavalier King Charles spaniel that was brought into the veterinary hospital showing muscle weakness. They found relatives of that dog and bred them with beagles. Three of the resulting pups have now been used to test

Fish passes mirror test for first time THE cleaner wrasse has become the first fish to pass the mirror test – a classic experiment used to gauge self-awareness in animals. Until now, only relatively intelligent animals – such as apes and elephants – have passed the test, which shows whether an individual can recognise itself. To see if fish may also be self-aware, Masanori Kohda at Osaka 14 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

RVC

CRISPR gene-editing has been used to improve muscle function in dogs with a condition similar to Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) – and the technique might one day lead to a treatment for humans. The study represents the first use of CRISPR gene-editing in a living large animal. People with DMD have a genetic mutation that makes them unable to produce dystrophin, a protein that maintains muscle structure and function. The condition can

a potential treatment for DMD. Today there is only one approved DMD treatment to elevate dystrophin levels. In clinical trials, this drug treatment had modest effects: people taking it could produce dystrophin but only at about 0.4 per cent the levels seen in healthy individuals. The gene-editing treatment has been able to restore up to 92 per cent of the dystrophin expression in the beagles’ heart tissue, 58 per cent in the diaphragm and 64 per cent in the biceps. This method relies on CRISPR Cas9, a genome editing enzyme that cuts a cell’s DNA in a specific spot, guided there by RNA . The team injected a virus carrying CRISPR and its RNA molecular guide into the skeletal muscle and heart tissue of two onemonth old beagles with the DMD mutation. It is the first time CRISPR has been used in live animals of such a large size, says Eric Olson at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Six weeks later, they analysed the dogs’ muscles and sequenced their genomes before comparing them with a dog with the same mutation, and a healthy dog.

Some of these dogs have a genetic muscle condition – but which?

“We looked through the microscope and it was jawdropping,” says Olson. “Virtually all of the muscle fibres showed high levels of dystrophin underlying every membrane. We were exuberant.” However, he says it is not known whether the treatment would have such dramatic effects in the human version of the condition (Science, doi.org/ctgz). Melissa Spencer at the University of California, Los Angeles, says the results are a great first step towards a treatment, but she cautions that HELMUT CORNELI/ALAMY

Chelsea Whyte

Cleaner wrasse are only about the size of a human finger

City University, Japan, and his colleagues put 10 wild cleaner wrasses in individual tanks with a mirror. During the first few days, seven of the fish attacked their mirror images. But these fish then began to dash towards the mirror and dance – unusual behaviours that have never been observed before. The team put a coloured gel onto the heads of eight of these fish, in positions that could be seen only using the mirror. Seven of the fish spent significantly more time in front of the mirror in poses that let them observe the mark on their head. Some

they require more safety testing. “The Cas9 protein expresses for a long time, so the immune system could attack it. We need a better assessment of the immune response, and we also need to be sure CRISPR isn’t cutting offtarget,” Spencer says. Recently, concerns have been raised that CRISPR does indeed cut off-target – snipping up DNA where it isn’t supposed to. Olson says they didn’t see evidence that this was happening in the dogs, and blood tests were normal after the treatment. Piercy adds that he hopes the treatment could lead to a routine therapy for dogs with muscle disease, as well. ■

even tried to scrape it off (bioRxiv, doi.org/cthm). According to the team, this means cleaner wrasses are as successful at recognising themselves in a mirror as elephants. However, Gordon Gallup of the University at Albany, New York, who invented the mirror test, is not convinced. Cleaner wrasses eat parasites living on other fish. These wrasses probably mistook the marks for parasites on the skin of other fish, Gallup says. Yvaine Ye ■

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IN BRIEF Opioid blocks pain and addiction

Wolves may have influenced when elk shed their antlers

In 18 cases wolves attacked a lone male, and the presence or lack of antlers made no difference. But the remaining 37 encounters involved attacks on groups of

A NEW opioid drug has been shown to stop monkeys feeling pain, without any apparent addictive or harmful side effects. Opioids such as morphine stop pain, but can also be addictive. In the US alone, more than 46 people die daily from overdoses of prescription opioids. Mei-Chuan Ko at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and his colleagues have found that a drug called AT-121 blocks pain by activating two types of opioid receptor in the brain. One is the mu opioid receptor, the pain-relieving receptor targeted by many opioids. The other is the nociceptin opioid receptor, which blocks the brain’s addiction-forming response, while also providing pain relief. The drug was 100 times as good as morphine at reducing pain in monkeys. No addictive properties were seen (Science Translational Medicine, doi.org/ctf3).

two or more male elk, and wolves targeted stags without EACH spring male elk lose their antlers so they can grow

antlers. Groups containing at least one antler-less animal

back bigger and stronger to fight rivals for mates in

were 10 times more likely to be attacked (Nature Ecology & Evolution, DOI: 10.1038/s41559-018-0657-5). The findings may also apply to related species.

autumn. It turns out wolves may have helped shape the evolution of this timing: if elk lose their antlers too soon, their risk of ending up as wolf food rises. Too late and they may fail to win a mate. Matthew Metz at the University of Montana and colleagues analysed 55 encounters between male elk

Elk don’t have a choice about when they shed their antlers – it is probably linked to testosterone levels – but shedding early seems to carry long-term benefits for

2016. They found that elk that shed their antlers early

a potential short-term but fatal cost. “We suggest that wolves – formerly everywhere across the northern hemisphere – have shaped the timing of

were also the most vulnerable to wolf attacks.

when elk… shed their antlers,” says Metz.

and wolves in Yellowstone National Park from 2004 to

Warm-water time bomb threatens Arctic THE Arctic is in hot water, literally. Heat has been accumulating rapidly in a salty layer 50 metres down in a large part of the Arctic Ocean. Currently, it is capped by a less-dense layer of fresh water, but the fear is that winds could make this lid fall apart. If the two layers mix, this could melt all the seasonal sea ice above. Mary-Louise Timmermans at Yale University and her colleagues

discovered the heat time bomb after analysing data on ice cover and sea temperature, heat content and saltiness at different depths over the past three decades in the Canadian basin, which is fed by waters from the North Chukchi Sea, north of the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia. The team found that the heat content of the 100-metre-thick salty layer had doubled over this

time. The root cause is global warming, which has seen Arctic surface temperatures rise by 2°C from pre-industrial levels, leading to record-low sea ice coverage. With sea ice retreating, heat absorption by surface waters has increased fivefold in 30 years, the team found. Strong winds push these newly warmed surface waters at the Arctic fringes down to the depths where they are now accumulating under the ice (Science Advances, doi.org/ctf4).

Serengeti shaped by ancient herders AFRICA’S Serengeti grasslands are far from pristine works of nature. In fact, their rich biodiversity may owe more to cowpats from livestock corralled overnight by nomadic herders millennia ago. Such dung has long been known to provide hotspots of nutrients in otherwise barren grasslands, eventually enabling much richer ecosystems to develop. It was assumed that, on the Serengeti, these spots – called grassy glades – date back roughly 1000 years. Fiona Marshall of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, and her colleagues have shown they may be much older. The team sampled five sites in Kenya and found evidence of dung and richer soils dating back 3700 years (Nature, doi.org/gd3zfb). 8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 17

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

IN BRIEF

SURF’S up! Electrons riding a plasma wave can be accelerated to high energies, which may let us build small particle accelerators to smash them up and learn more about the tiniest objects in the universe. The world’s largest accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, smashes protons by whizzing them around a 27 kilometre ring, but that won’t work for electrons – they have to be accelerated in a straight line. The Advanced Proton Driven Plasma Wakefield Acceleration Experiment, also at CERN, gets round this by shooting hundreds of billions of protons into a tube filled

AI could help doctors stay one step ahead of cancer AN ARTIFICIAL intelligence system called Revolver is unveiling the evolutionary tricks cancers use to spread and defy treatment. It should allow doctors to more accurately identify what stage cancers have reached, what they will do next and how to stop them. We can treat cancer if we intervene early enough, says Andrea Sottoriva of the Institute of Cancer Research in London, whose team is developing Revolver. “The key is, can you stay one step ahead of the disease?” he says.

Revolver helped Sottoriva’s team unmask key evolutionary steps in cancers. It uses data from patients to create a genetic “family tree” tracking how cancer evolves, and identifies the series of mutations that most often lead to cancer. Existing analyses, often relying on samples from one patient, can struggle to distinguish important mutations from harmless ones. Revolver instead analysed mutation data from 178 patients, covering 768 tumour samples and four types of cancer – bowel, lung,

breast and kidney. This made key evolutionary steps stand out better. Three key gene mutations are known to be crucial for benign colon polyps to turn cancerous, for example, but have not been seen together in a single patient. Despite this, Revolver identified the three mutations as the key ones when tested on gene profiles from 95 colorectal cancer patients. It also correctly identified key mutations already known to drive evolution of lung, breast and kidney cancers (Nature Methods, doi.org/cthk). DANIELE FORESTI, JENNIFER A. LEWIS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

A machine to split the electron

MS drug halves loss of brain tissue

with rubidium atoms that have been stripped of their electrons, forming a plasma. This results in waves in the plasma, and when electrons are injected into the tube, the waves accelerate them. The container used is just 10 metres long, and the electrons at the end reached energies of 2 gigaelectronvolts (GeV) (Nature, doi.org/gd3zfz). Electrons are fundamental particles, meaning we think they don’t break down into anything smaller. But we don’t know for sure. To test that would require smashing electrons at hundreds of GeV, which could be done

CERN

using higher-energy protons.

18 | NewScientist | 17 September 2018

AN EXPERIMENTAL drug for the most severe forms of multiple sclerosis has slowed brain shrinkage by nearly 50 per cent. Loss of brain tissue is a marker of disease progression in primary and secondary progressive MS. In these forms of the disease, the ongoing breakdown of the protective myelin that surrounds nerve fibres in the brain leads to slower nerve signals, which can ultimately result in muscle weakness and problems with balance and vision. Robert Fox at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio led a phase II clinical trial of a drug called ibudilast, which inhibits proteins that can result in central nervous system inflammation. The trial involved 255 people from the US, with 126 receiving a placebo instead of the drug. Each took up to 10 capsules per day for 22 months and had brain scans every six months to gauge the volume of brain tissue. The team found that, on average, ibudilast slowed brain shrinkage by 48 per cent compared with placebo, with those given the drug losing 2.5 millilitres less brain matter (New England Journal of Medicine, doi.org/ctf2).

Print with sound using honey as ink PRINTERS that use sound waves may

which can exert a force on objects.

one day let us build structures out of

Their printer extrudes a droplet

honey droplets, or even print human

from a nozzle and then fires sound

tissue without harming cells.

waves at it to make it fall to the

Regular inkjet printers are great at controlling the placement and

printing surface. The sound is extremely loud, but it is at a high frequency that

size of ink droplets, but only work for watery fluids. Daniele Foresti at Harvard University and his colleagues have come up with a way to print

the human ear cannot detect. The researchers tested the printer using water, honey and a liquid mix

droplets of viscous liquids. Inkjet printers rely on streams of liquid naturally separating into drops.

of gallium and indium metal. They

To make droplets from a viscous fluid, that fluid has to be forcefully broken.

sound (Science Advances, doi.org/ ctjq). “With the cells, you could do

The team turned to sound waves,

tissue engineering,” says Foresti.

also tried an ink full of human cells to confirm they wouldn’t be killed by the

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INSIGHT HYDROGEN CARS

Gassed up and ready to go Vehicles that run on hydrogen have been dismissed by the likes of Elon Musk, but they’re making a comeback, says Alice Klein HYDROGEN-POWERED cars have had a bumpy ride. Back in 2003, they were touted as “one of the most encouraging, innovative technologies of our era” by US president at the time George W. Bush. Then the Tesla revolution came along and they were left in the dust by their battery-driven electric rivals. Now, there are signs of a comeback. A recent survey of more than 900 global automotive executives by consulting firm KPMG found that 52 per cent rated hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as a leading industry trend. Japan has announced plans to put 40,000 hydrogen vehicles on the road in the next five years, and South 20 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

Korea 16,000. Germany wants to instead of a battery to power an have 400 refuelling stations for electric motor. Hydrogen is stored hydrogen vehicles by 2025 and in a tank and fed into the fuel California has already opened 35. cell, where its chemical energy is This renewed push has its converted into electrical energy sceptics. Tesla chief Elon Musk, for (see diagram, above right). example, has dismissed hydrogen Hydrogen cars are finally cars as being “extremely silly”. becoming commercially viable But Joan Ogden at the University of California, Davis, sees a future “Hydrogen vehicles produce zero emissions, in which hydrogen and electric so don’t damage our vehicles play complementary health or the climate” roles. “There are arguments for having both,” she says. Like electric cars, hydrogen because fuel cells have become vehicles produce zero pollutants smaller and lighter, says Matthew and carbon emissions, so they Macleod at Toyota, which began don’t damage our health or the selling the Mirai, one of the first climate. The main difference is mass-market hydrogen cars, in that hydrogen cars use a fuel cell 2014 for $60,000. Honda and

The Toyota Mirai is one of the first mass-market hydrogen cars

Hyundai have competing models, and Mercedes-Benz plans to launch one next year. We are also figuring out better ways to transport and store hydrogen, says Michael Dolan at Australia’s national science organisation, the CSIRO. Last month, his team showed that hydrogen gas can be converted to liquid ammonia for transportation, then converted back using a membrane made from the metal vanadium. Liquid ammonia takes up less space and is less flammable than hydrogen gas, making it easier to ship to refuelling stations. The ability to rapidly refuel is one of the main advantages hydrogen vehicles have over their electric counterparts, says Macleod. Filling up a hydrogen car takes about the same time as filling a petrol one, rather than the hours it typically takes to recharge

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an electric car’s battery. You can also go further on a full tank of hydrogen – about 500 kilometres, compared with 300 kilometres for a standard fully charged battery (see table, below). But although hydrogen reacts cleanly – the only thing coming out of the exhaust pipe is water – hydrogen vehicles are more energy-intensive than electric ones if you factor in fuel production and transport, says Jake Whitehead at the University of Queensland, Australia. At the moment, most hydrogen is extracted from natural gas – a fossil fuel. “Green” hydrogen can be made by splitting water using solar or wind power, but this involves multiple steps, each using energy along the way. In contrast, a single energy step is required to directly recharge a car battery at home.

Clean fuel? If you account for this complete energy cycle, Whitehead’s modelling shows that hydrogen vehicles require between 80 and 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity to travel 100 kilometres, compared with about 20 kilowatt-hours to travel the same distance in a battery vehicle. This is the main charge levelled by Musk at hydrogen cars. “[The efficiency is] terrible, so why would you do that? It make no sense,” he told reporters at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit in 2015. Hydrogen fuel is also more expensive than petrol. Hydrogen cars currently cost about 13 cents per kilometre to run, compared with 8 cents per kilometre for petrol cars. However, some projections suggest that the costs will become equivalent by 2025 as the technology to produce hydrogen becomes cheaper. At the moment, there are only about 6000 hydrogen vehicles on the road globally, compared with 2 million electric vehicles. But Ogden says that hydrogen vehicles may end up becoming

A chemical reaction between oxygen and hydrogen generates electricity, which is fed to the car’s battery and motor. Water is the only by-product, leading to clean emission

Power generation Motor O2

Air in (oxygen)

Battery

Hydrogen in

H2 Water out

Fuel cell stack

more popular among certain drivers. “If you’re only using your car for short commutes or to get around the city, battery cars can handle all your needs,” she says. “But if you want a big car that you can take on long drives in the mountains on a whim, a hydrogen fuel cell car might be better.” The shorter refuelling time and longer range of hydrogen fuel cells also make them appealing for taxis, buses and long-haul trucks, says Dolan. “These vehicles can’t afford to be stopping for hours at a time to recharge,” he says. Hydrogen fuel cells are already finding applications in these heavy-use vehicles. Japan will showcase 100 hydrogen buses at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and South Korea plans to introduce 1000 hydrogen buses by 2022. A fleet of 180 hydrogen taxis, private-hire and police cars is being trialled in London, Paris and Brussels, and retailer Amazon has recently invested in hydrogen-powered forklifts for its warehouses. US manufacturer Nikola Motors, meanwhile, says it has received 11,000 pre-orders Car type

Petrol

Emissions

Carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, NOx gases etc.

Typical refuel/ recharge time

3-5 minutes

Typical range

400 kilometres

Typical running cost

8 cents/ kilometre

High-pressure hydrogen tank

SOURCE: TOYOTA

for its hydrogen fuel cell truck. can even survive being shot Japan and South Korea are at or set on fire. New ways of leading this push because they transporting hydrogen – like want to embrace zero-emissions in the form of ammonia – will technology, but their combination also make its deployment safer, of small land masses and large says Macleod. populations means they don’t The most probable future have enough solar, wind or other scenario is that we will have a renewable energy to support large mix of vehicles run by batteries, numbers of battery electric hydrogen and petrol, each vehicles, says Dolan. performing different roles, says They can’t import renewable Ogden. “There are proponents of energy itself, but they can import the different technologies saying hydrogen made from renewable it’s all going to be all hydrogen energy in other countries. or all batteries, but auto-makers Australia, for example, could use are putting their money on both,” its abundant solar energy to split “There are only about 6000 water and export hydrogen to hydrogen vehicles on the these countries, says Dolan. road globally, versus “You can see hydrogen basically as a carrier for renewable energy.” 2 million electric vehicles” Many people feel jittery about hydrogen because of its she says. According to the KPMG connection with hydrogen bombs survey, car-makers are predicting and the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, an even four-way split between in which a hydrogen-filled airship electric, hydrogen, petrol and spectacularly caught fire, killing hybrid vehicles by 2040. 36 people. But the hydrogen tanks The final mix will depend on used in modern fuel cell vehicles the willingness of governments are made from multiple layers of and industry to invest in resin, carbon fibre and fibreglass hydrogen infrastructure – for that keep the flammable gas example, by building refuelling safely contained. Tests show they stations and introducing hydrogen buses – as well as Battery Hydrogen consumer enthusiasm for electric fuel cell hydrogen cars. But whether it None Water ends up being hydrogen or battery power that wins the bigger share, any dent in the dominance of petrol vehicles is likely to be a 8 hours 3-5 minutes good thing. With less emitted carbon warming our globe, less 300 kilometres 500 kilometres toxic exhaust fumes choking our 3 cents/ 13 cents/ lungs and less smog staining our kilometre kilometre skylines, we will all be better off. ■ 8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 21

COMMENT

Sheer lunacy The US plan to build a habitable station orbiting the moon is the worst idea of the new space age, says Robert Zubrin BEFORE the recent Mars Society convention, I was asked what I thought of the US plan to send astronauts to the moon. No doubt I was expected to explain why the Red Planet is a more suitable goal, but I said this was about much more than the moon versus Mars. I am prepared to make the case for prioritising Mars, though. Once warm and wet, it may have evolved life, and if we can find evidence of it, we could learn a lot about the possible prevalence and diversity of life in the cosmos. Taking on Mars would inspire millions of young people into science. It is also the closest planet with the resources for human settlement. In short, Mars is where the science is, where the challenge is and where the future is. It should be the goal. Unfortunately, that argument assumes that those making US space policy think it is important

for NASA’s human space flight programme to have any goal at all. This is far from evident. While the Trump administration says that it is setting its sights on a return to the moon, its actions do not lend credence to such claims. If it intended to put people on the moon again, it would fund the development of a lunar lander. Instead it is funding the Lunar Orbit Platform-Gateway, a costly boondoggle that serves no useful purpose. US Vice President Mike Pence talks of it as a done deal. What he fails to add is that we don’t need a lunar-orbiting base to go to the moon, or to Mars, or to go anywhere. Not only that, crewed trips to anywhere beyond Earth orbit would be designed to use the gateway as a staging post, adding to fuel requirements and decreasing the load they can carry, which is why I call it the Lunar Orbit Tollbooth instead.

A vote for reason If they value facts, Americans can elect a scientist, says Shaughnessy Naughton THE battle for political power in the US is heating up. The two main parties are stepping up pleas for support in this autumn’s midterm election, which will decide who controls Congress. That’s nothing unusual. But November’s vote does offer something the electorate hasn’t seen before: a dedicated push to 22 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

the halls of power ever since. I founded this organisation in part because I know how hard it is to be a candidate with a STEM background – I was one myself. I’m a chemist by training, and when I ran for Congress in 2014, I realised that if you aren’t a lawyer or a career politician, it can be hard to break into politics. Take, for example, the simple barrier of entry for scientists in the middle of their careers. Unlike lawyers (who are often

get candidates with science backgrounds on the ballot. Anti-science attitudes in US politics are well-documented. For those enraged by them, help is at hand. I started 314 Action in 2016 to recruit, train and support “There are more talk radio hosts in Congress scientists running for office, and we’ve been laying the groundwork than there are physicists and chemists” to bring evidence-based policy to

encouraged by their firms to run), taking a year off to campaign can spell the end of a scientist’s career. Our organisation acts as a support system and siren call for a community that has long shied away from politics. The response has been promising. An unprecedented number of scientists ditched lab coats for suits and launched campaigns. While I neither expect nor desire every seat of Congress to be held by persons with STEM backgrounds, 2018 is a great chance to bolster the scientific community’s representation there. Currently, there is one physicist (Representative Bill

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Robert Zubrin, an astronautical engineer, is president of the Mars Society, which advocates for a human mission to the Red Planet

Foster) in Congress. There are more than 200 lawyers. There are more talk radio hosts in Congress than physicists and chemists. The time for signing polite letters and waiting to be tapped for an advisory role is over. Scientists need to get involved in electoral politics. Voters want governance based in facts and evidence, and who better to lead that charge than those who have spent their careers in a role where there is no room for “alternative facts”. ■ Shaughnessy Naughton is founder of 314 Action, which seeks to get scientists into elected office in the US

ANALYSIS Self-harm

SHESTOCK/GETTY

Yet the problem with the project is bigger than the waste of time and money and the harmful distortions imposed on other missions. The deeper problem is the form of thinking it represents. NASA’s astronomy and robotic exploration programmes have achieved epic accomplishments because they are purpose-driven. In contrast, since Apollo ended, NASA’s human space flight work has been purpose-free. As a result, accomplishments have been few. The science programmes spend money to do things. The human space flight programme is doing things to spend money. The situation is ironic. With the success of the Falcon Heavy rocket that could send crew to the moon and Mars, the US could be poised for a deep space breakthrough. The Lunar Orbit Tollbooth cash, if spent on developing landers and ascent vehicles, could enable a return to the lunar surface within four years and human missions to Mars in eight. What is lacking is intelligent direction. We will never get to Mars if we allow our human space flight programme to be run as a random walk. Q

Are modern teens hurting or happy? Clare Wilson

like that just once in the past year for it to count. Such self-destructive behaviour would naturally be of concern to parents, but wouldn’t be that unusual for teenagers. Max Davie, a health promotion officer for the UK’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, does believe that self-harm among teens is somewhat on the rise – but thinks the question in this survey was not specific enough to reveal its real prevalence. The latest headlines join an ongoing narrative about a mental health crisis in today’s youth. Some blame cutbacks

ALARMING headlines suggest one in four teenage girls in the UK are self-harming, motivated by sexist stereotypes and pressures to look good in a selfie society. The truth may not be as bleak as it first appears. These stories come from a report by UK charity The Children’s Society, based on an ongoing survey of 11,000 children aged 14, called the Millennium Cohort Study. Among the girls, 22 per cent said they had self-harmed. For boys it was 9 per cent. But while the term self-harm conjures images of teenagers cutting “The latest headlines join themselves, that may, thankfully, an ongoing narrative be only the most extreme end of about a mental health a broader spectrum. In this survey, crisis in today’s youth” participants were merely asked if they had “hurt themselves on purpose in any way”. in social services, while others point to a loosening of sexual norms putting Some could have answered yes teens at risk. For those wary of new for things like punching a wall in technologies, it is social media or the frustration or deliberately getting falling-down drunk. Others could have latest popular computer games. But such reports also deserve thought the question included mental some scepticism. Claims of soaring hurt – such as spending a miserable evening stalking an ex on social media. rates of depression are usually based They needed to have done something on surveys with very loose, non-

medical criteria. Teenagers have always been sad or anxious from time to time. Thankfully, clinical depression is still rare in this age group. In fact, a different and regularly repeated survey has found no change in 11-to-15-year-olds’ happiness with life as a whole between 1995 and 2016. Nor did their satisfaction with their appearance change, which makes it odd to blame the selfie culture for the apparent self-harm epidemic. This survey, called Understanding Society, even found a boost in happiness with family and schoolwork over that period. These more optimistic findings were also in the latest Children’s Society report, but were buried at the bottom of their press release. Davie thinks the rise in self-harm may not be due to a rise in unhappiness, but simply that this age group now sees self-harm as a more culturally acceptable way to express anguish. “It may be that previously people didn’t know that this was something you could do. If people are talking about something and normalising it, it’s probably more likely that their peers will do it.” If that is the case, it is all the more reason not to make self-harm seem more common than it really is. ■ Need a listening ear? UK Samaritans: 116123 (samaritans.org). Visit bit.ly/ SuicideHelplines for hotlines and websites for other countries. 8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 23

APERTURE

24 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

Eye to eye NO NEED to fear this hairy monster. This poplar hawkmoth couldn’t even try to bite you: it has no functioning mouthparts, and will never be able to eat. These moths (Laothoe populi) are found all over Europe, and can reach the size of a small bat. Unlike other moths, they have no proboscis protruding from their head, so are unable to sip nectar from flowers. Instead, these adults rely solely on body fat they stored for energy when they were caterpillars. This keeps them going for just three or four weeks, meaning the race is on to find a partner and mate. The large insects use pheromones to find each other. This moth is a male, and will use his yellow antennae to search for scent-emitting females in the night. The females send their signals and wait. They are so weighed down by eggs that flying is too strenuous. If they mate successfully, the eggs are laid and more than 100 pale green caterpillars will emerge a week later. Before winter arrives, these bulk up on the food that gives their species its common name – the leaves of poplar trees. “I wouldn’t have stood a chance had this individual been flying,” says photographer Alex Hyde of this close-up. He snapped this hawkmoth as it rested in Derbyshire, UK, early one summer morning. “It is humbling to remember that we are surrounded by a multitude of fascinating creatures every day, most of which are too small for us to give a second look to as we charge through our busy lives,” Hyde says. Yvaine Ye

Photographer Alex Hyde Naturepl.com

8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 25

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The why of me Is having a sense of self really the hallmark of a sophisticated brain or simply an accident of evolution? Soia Deleniv investigates

L

OOK into a mirror and you may see pimples, wrinkles or unruly facial hair, but beneath the superficial lies something far more interesting. Every time you lock eyes with your reflection, you know exactly who is looking back at you. The sense of self is unmistakable. It is so much a part of being human that we often fail to notice it. Yet selfawareness is one of the biggest mysteries of the mind. How did it arise and what is it for? Looking at other animals suggests we are not alone in being able to recognise ourselves in a mirror. Admittedly, it’s a short list of species that seem capable of this feat, but it hints at a possible explanation. Self-awareness may have evolved in only the brightest animals with the biggest brains. If so, it represents the peak of mental complexity – the highest form of consciousness. However, some people have started to question this idea. Now, an extraordinary finding lends weight to their scepticism: one monkey species that was previously deemed unable to recognise itself in a mirror can easily learn to do so. This isn’t simply another name to add to the echelons of the self-aware. The discovery suggests we need to fundamentally rethink our ideas about mirrors and minds. The hunt for self-awareness among non-

28 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

humans has been going on for decades. In the most widely used test – the so-called facemark test – researchers stealthily apply a spot of odourless dye to an animal’s forehead or cheek and then observe its reaction when it is in front of a mirror. The underlying premise is that those with a firm sense of self can acknowledge their reflection and attempt to scrub off the dye. Most of the animals that have passed this test are considered to be intelligent. They include chimps, bonobos, orangutans, Asian elephants and Eurasian magpies (a member of the notoriously clever corvid family). Killer whales and bottlenose dolphins also seem to recognise themselves in a mirror, although their anatomy means they can’t remove a face mark. This apparent correlation with smarts means that self-awareness has become a sort of proxy for mental complexity. But there are some puzzling evolutionary gaps. Gorillas, for instance, usually fail the test – with the notable exception of the recently deceased Koko – yet our more distant primate relatives, the orangutans, pass it. Also, the self-aware elite contains some bizarre anomalies such as pigeons, manta rays, ants and even a robot. Some of these findings – particularly with > ants and pigeons – are contested.

REILIKA LANDEN/PLAINPICTURE

COVER STORY

8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 29

Researchers have tried to explain away others, arguing, for example, that gorillas have mentally regressed since their split from the other ape lineages because they face fewer pressures in their environment. But the recent discovery in monkeys is harder to dismiss. Last year, Liangtang Chang and colleagues at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, China, released video footage of a small group of rhesus macaques interacting with a mirror. It shows the monkeys contorting their bodies, tugging at their facial hair, inspecting their fingertips and making flashy displays of their genitals, all the while keeping their eyes on their reflections. They are captivated, leaving little doubt they recognise themselves. Yet, rhesus macaques have consistently failed the mirror test. And just a few weeks earlier, the ones studied by Chang’s team had shown no signs that they understood their reflections. What changed? In fact, there is anecdotal evidence of macaques in the lab showing a sudden interest in mirrors after being fitted with bulky neural recording devices that protrude from their heads. Chang’s team wondered whether the monkeys genuinely lacked self-awareness, or whether they were being held back by a lack of coordination – an inability to link what they saw with internal signals generated by their muscle movements. To test this, they taught the monkeys to link vision and movement by giving them a food reward for touching a projected laser dot. At first, the researchers shone the laser where the monkeys could easily see it, then gradually worked up to shining it in places only visible in the mirror. Fast-forward a few weeks of practice, and they passed the face-mark test with flying colours. At the least, this indicates that the way we test for self-awareness is flawed (see “Mirror, mirror”, right). That, in turn, raises the possibility that self-awareness is much more widespread than we think. So, what do we know about the evolution of this prized trait?

MIRROR, MIRROR The ability to recognise oneself in a mirror is generally taken to be an indicator of self-awareness, but that idea is being challenged. For a start, developmental psychologists argue that it doesn’t necessarily reveal an awareness of self that extends beyond the here and now. Experiments show that children can acknowledge themselves in a mirror at the age of 3, yet cannot recognise themselves in videos taken a few months earlier. They will struggle with the idea of existing in the past for another year or two. It is even less clear what it means for a non-human animal to recognise itself in a mirror. Only a handful of species seem capable of the task. The majority are either our primate relatives or animals with complex social lives, like us. So, rather than reflecting mental complexity, it could simply indicate that their minds have evolved to face similar challenges to our own. Besides, the discovery that animals can learn to pass the mirror self-recognition test hints that there could be many species with undetected self-awareness (see main story).

Many psychologists and anthropologists hold that there is a hierarchy of consciousness that corresponds with increasing brain complexity. At its base is the minimal consciousness attributed to animals with simple nervous systems. These minds are thought to be permanently adrift in a sea of raw sensory experiences, tossed around between perceptions such as colour, hunger, warmth and fear, with little awareness of their meaning. Few minds are sophisticated enough 30 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

JOE RAEDLE/NEWSMAKERS

Levels of consciousness

to experience the world differently – through an introspective lens. Even then, they may have a limited sense of self. Only at the peak of mental complexity do we find minds able to construct a lifelong narrative of experiences centred around an abstract concept of “self” – these are the elite. What is the evidence for this hierarchy? After all, mental complexity is a slippery concept and, besides, none of us has insight into even the mind of another human, let alone a bat or a beetle. Well, there’s no question that some brains are much bigger and more structurally complicated than others. This disparity is mainly the result of the differing evolutionary demands that animals must meet to survive. For example, the nervous system of a sedentary, filter-feeding oyster consists of just two cell clusters. These allow it to do exactly what an oyster needs to do – control its digestion, and transmit signals from lightsensing tentacles to the muscle that snaps it shut when a predator looms. Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, there is one particular demand that seems to have led to the evolution of complex brains and could also have created the conditions for a sense of self to arise. That challenge is dealing with the minds of others – be they prey, competitors or other members of your social group. According to the social brain hypothesis, developed by Robin Dunbar at the University of Oxford, life in tight-knit communities is especially challenging because close relationships hinge on being able to understand what is going on in another individual’s mind. To achieve this, brains needed to evolve from being simply things that experience sensations and thoughts to becoming their observer. To do this, they needed to build a model of a mind, according to neuroscientist Michael Graziano at Princeton University. And once the biological machinery for such model-building evolved, it could be used to represent not only the minds of others, but also one’s own mind. A model – be it for mind reading, weather forecasting or whatever – usually starts with some assumptions about the factors that contribute to the system in question and their relative importance. It then runs a simulation and, depending on how much the result diverges from physical observations, modifies the assumptions. The model thus acquires an accurate representation of the forces at work, allowing it to make reasonable predictions about the future. “The brain is a modelbuilder,” says Graziano. “You can’t move your arm properly if your motor system doesn’t

JAMES BALOG / AURORA PHOTOS

Smart animals like chimps and dolphins can recognise themselves in a mirror, but have they led us up the garden path?

know where it is, can’t predict where it will be in the next few seconds, and can’t run simulations about what will happen if it sends out this or that command to the muscles.” And, he argues, the brain uses exactly the same strategy to model minds so that it can interact socially. If he is correct, then what you consciously experience is the simulation. By extension, self-awareness is the conscious state of running that simulation on your own mind. Graziano believes we have no reason to put it on a pedestal. “Self-awareness is not higher-order, or intrinsically more complicated, than consciousness,” he says. “It is another example of consciousness.” A mind is just an object that some brains can model, and so become aware of. Moreover, it is hard to establish whether this ability is associated with uniquely complex biological machinery. After all, we are still struggling to pin down what consciousness looks like in the brain. Most researchers agree that the brain operates at least partly by generating simulations. However, many disagree that consciousness is a functional piece of the modelling machinery. Instead, a widely held view sees it as the unintended by-product of information rushing through the closed loop of connections that is the brain. Consciousness can’t help existing despite serving no particular purpose, just like the noise emitted by a running engine, which has no bearing on the workings of the engine itself. By this way of thinking, self-awareness isn’t even a simulation; it is just a hall of mirrors.

Such emergent phenomena are common in nature. They give the mesmerising impression of complexity and intentionality, despite stemming from a system whose components operate with no regard for the phenomenon itself. One notable example is the collective behaviour of flocks of birds, which can be modelled using individuals driven by just two opposing forces – an instinct to follow their nearest few neighbours, and to back off if they get too close. Apparent complexity emerges even in Petri-dish-bound bacterial colonies, where individual bacteria automatically respond to chemical signals secreted by their neighbours to regulate their proximity.

“Perhaps self-awareness isn’t even a simulation but just a hall of mirrors” The structure that emerges has no agency or purpose – it is purely an indicator of the forces at work in each individual. Similarly, self awareness may be an apparently complex phenomenon that emerges from the brain. However, unlike with birds or bacteria, a mind cannot observe its individual components. It can only glean the echo of billions of neurons responding to each other with electrical signals. The flow of signals is dynamic, rushing along a different set of connections every moment. But some paths are more well trodden than others. In humans, the predominant connections seem

to be those used to contemplate the minds of others – the same connections used to contemplate ourselves. What emerges from this is a pattern that seems constant. To you, that is your sense of self, confined inside the Petri dish of your brain. In other animals, the well-trodden paths in the brain will be different. In bats, for example, it might be those transmitting information from the echolocation clicks used to construct a 3D model of the world. There will be a huge diversity of emergent mental patterns that serve the various survival needs of different species. Looked at this way, there is no clear hierarchy of consciousness corresponding to mental complexity.

Consider the octopus In fact, some of nature’s most sophisticated minds probably lack a sense of self as we know it. In mammals, those with bigger social groups generally have bigger brains, implying that a sense of self goes hand in hand with intelligence. But some other animals seem to have evolved to be highly intelligent without having had to understand the minds of others. Take cephalopods – a group of marine animals that includes cuttlefish and octopuses. Having spent years collaborating with marine biologists, philosopher of science Peter Godfrey-Smith at the University of Sydney believes that the particularly large brain of the common octopus is shaped mainly by the unique demands on a soft-bodied animal inhabiting an environment dominated by vertebrates. This challenge might have triggered the evolution of a bodily selfawareness akin to that of primates, but Godfrey-Smith sees a clear distinction between the two. “When one watches an octopus squeeze through a tiny space, it certainly looks [different],” he says. Either way, we can rest assured that if an octopus has a sense of self, it will have very little in common with the “self” that inhabits our brains. It is even less likely to be something we can measure with a mirror. Indeed, all this makes clear that the best we can hope for with mirrors is an imperfect glimpse into minds like our own. What’s more, if we proceed under the assumption that such minds are the true pinnacles of complexity, then we will miss out on the most beautiful thing about minds – that they are biological machines for adaptation, with contents that can be sophisticated in so many ways. Q Sofia Deleniv is a doctoral student at the University of Oxford 8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 31

The briny deep Ocean desalination would provide drinking water for all – if only we knew what to do with the waste salt. Katherine Bourzac reports

F

OR the time being, Cape Town has dodged a bullet. After months of unrelenting drought, the recent winter rains have begun to refill its parched dams. That doesn’t mean things are easy. City residents are still limited to using 50 litres of water a day, scarcely enough to half-fill a bath. But at least so-called day zero, when the taps run dry and residents have to wait in line to collect survival rations of water, has been averted. The South African city is an extreme example, but it is far from the only place facing a severe water shortage. To slake that thirst, many cities are turning to the ocean, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of water. They are doing this through desalination, a water purification technology that has been around for decades. Cape Town is bringing a

32 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

couple of desalination plants online in a hurry and many others are being built elsewhere. As they spring up, however, attention is focusing on what they leave behind: concentrated brine, millions of litres of it a day. Now scientists are sounding a note of caution about the impacts of dumping all that salt in the environment. “Increasing salinity is one of the most important environmental issues of the 21st century,” says engineer Amy Childress. But smarter methods of desalination are emerging and they have benefits far beyond providing clean water. Sao Paulo, Cairo, Beijing, Bangalore – the list of cities with water shortages runs long and touches every continent. Even London, often thought of as a wet city, only gets about 600 millimetres of rain a year and will

probably have supply problems by 2025. As populations grow, things are set to worsen. In 2007, the UN found that about 1.6 billion people lacked adequate infrastructure to supply them with drinking water. By 2025, the organisation expects 1.8 billion people, almost a quarter of the world’s population, to be living in areas where there is not enough water to sustain them. Ideally, we would meet demand by tapping into stores of fresh water such as rain-filled reservoirs and rivers, or perhaps groundwater wells. But plenty of places don’t have sufficient, easily accessible sources of fresh water to support growing populations. One option is to recycle waste water on a mammoth scale. Another is to turn to salty water, like the ocean or brackish lagoons.

SPACES IMAGES/PLAINPICTURE

That is where desalination comes in, and there are plenty of ways to do it. For example, you can evaporate water from one spot and condense it in another, leaving salt and impurities behind. But the most energyefficient method is reverse osmosis. Imagine a strong salt solution and a weak one, separated by a membrane that allows only water through. In this situation, the water will flow naturally from the weak solution to the strong, evening out their concentrations in a process called osmosis. Do the reverse, forcing ocean water at high pressure through a salt-excluding membrane in the opposite direction, and you are well on the way to making drinking water. This approach is becoming more common. In 2005, desalination produced

about 40 billion litres of water daily, according to the International Desalination Association. By 2015 that had increased to 87 billion litres, produced by nearly 1900 plants around the world. The vast majority of those are in the dry countries around the Persian Gulf, but the technology is on the up elsewhere too. The Australian city of Adelaide gets roughly half of its water from a huge desalination plant. California already has a few plants and is spending more than $30 million on eight new ones. Great news. Except what about all that brine left behind? It is about twice as salty as the starting water, depending on the desalination technique used, and most plants dispose of it by pumping it back out to sea. That is a source of concern for researchers, including

For coastal communities, the ocean is a tempting source of water

Childress, who is based at the University of Southern California. The concentration of salts in the sea varies. On average it is 35 parts per thousand, meaning that for every 1000 grams of seawater, about 35 grams is salt. Once salt levels exceed what marine plants and animals are used to, there is a danger that their cells might cease to work properly. The evidence so far for what happens to life around brine outflows from desalination plants is mixed. In 2012, a study for the California State Water Resources Control Board looked at how animals responded to increased salt concentrations in lab > 8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 33

conditions. It found that many marine species would probably be fine in increased salinity. But some important ones, like giant kelp, would be at risk. Dense strands of these tall algae form underwater forests along the California coastline, and their canopies are home to a diverse range of species including sea otters and urchins. Giant kelp reproduces most successfully at salinity levels between 25 and 35 parts per thousand, says Michael Foster at California’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. With the Pacific Ocean’s salinity already at 35 parts per thousand, any increase might be problematic for the kelp and the ecosystem it supports. The water control board study also found that red abalone, a prized edible mollusc, seems to be highly sensitive to salinity increases. Heather Cooley, director of research at the Pacific Institute, a water think tank in California, is alert to the unintended consequences of brine disposal. “We don’t really know what the impacts will be on the marine environment,” she says. Cooley has conducted an extensive review of the evidence, for example looking at levels of biodiversity and dissolved oxygen before and after the installation of brine outflows from desalination plants in Perth, Australia, and elsewhere. The results are not easy to interpret and do not necessary apply

“The ideal desalination process will reap valuable minerals, not just water” elsewhere. Wave patterns, for instance, significantly influence brine dispersion, she says. Still, the potential risks mean that most desalination plants must already dilute their brine before discharging it into the ocean. That in itself is problematic. The stuff used for the dilution is often cleaned-up waste water or water used to cool industrial facilities. It is clean enough to dump in the ocean but not quite drinkable. That whole procedure is drenched in irony. Desalination plants are needed only where there is a lack of fresh water, yet they are taking fresh water that could be easily cleaned to make it drinkable, and instead flushing it into the sea. “Why aren’t we reusing that water?” says Cooley. “You’re treating it, then dumping it back in with desalination brine. It just defies logic.” Childress thinks innovative engineering could stop this. In order to desalinate water, you have to fight against its natural tendency to flow from areas of low to high salt concentration. But if you let nature take its course – allowing forward, not reverse,

Dilution solution Desalination produces concentrated brine. Pumping this back out to sea is a potential problem for the environment, but diluting it wastes water that could be otherwise recycled. Extracting energy from the dilution could make it worthwhile MEMBRANE PRESSURE Salt water from the sea

FRESH WATER WASTE WATER

Concentrated brine returned to the sea or...

Ultimate utopia

REVERSE OSMOSIS

Pressure used to drive a turbine producing electricity PRESSURE ...mixed with treated water before being returned to the sea

Water treatment plant PRESSURE RETARDED FORWARD OSMOSIS 34 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

osmosis – it is possible to get more and more water to flow across a salt-excluding membrane into a container of brine, increasing the pressure. That pressurised water can be used to drive a turbine and generate electricity in a process called pressure-retarded forward osmosis (PRFO). Add this stage to a reverse-osmosis desalination plant and you not only dilute the waste brine, you also get power that can be fed back into the process or used however you like (see diagram, below). Hybrid systems like this do not work perfectly yet. The first such facility, opened in 2009 and operated by Norwegian company Statkraft, closed after five years because it didn’t generate enough electricity to justify the building and operating costs. Childress is currently modelling similar systems in her lab to see if they can be made successful, though the details are under wraps. There are hopeful signs elsewhere. Neal Tai-Shung Chung, a chemical engineer at the National University of Singapore, says his lab has developed the technology to a point where it makes economic sense. It comes not a moment too soon in his home country. “We don’t have energy and we don’t have water,” he says. Singapore buys a significant amount of water from neighbouring Malaysia, but the arrangement is set to expire in 35 years and has long been a political football. Chung’s group set up a test system based on essentially the same idea as the Statkraft plant, but using the team’s own improved membranes. When the researchers ran the set-up for 500 hours, feeding it municipal waste water and seawater, its power consumption was just 1 watt per cubic metre of desalinated water made, a quarter of what is typically needed for reverse osmosis alone. A Singapore research incubator has taken up the designs and is planning a larger pilot plant.

Some want to take desalination even further. Carry on removing water from brine, and you eventually get pure water and salt. Childress calls it the “ultimate utopian” desalination process. The technical name for it is zero liquid discharge (ZLD) desalination. Anyone who pulls off the feat would get three-fold rewards: zero brine, maximum fresh water and a haul of valuable compounds. In some cases that includes lithium salts, which would provide the crucial component of our best batteries. “It’s amazing how much work has been done on this,” says Christopher Bellona,

BLOOMBERG/GETTY

new life into the ZLD dream. The plant has teamed up with Enviro Water Minerals of El Paso and, in April, they finished building a brine-mining facility inspired by, and using some technology from, the petroleum industry. The firm’s CEO Hubble Hausman calls it a “water refinery”. Just as crude oil can be separated into many valuable products, the facility separates brine into about five different streams, eventually extracting nearly all the water and a handful of useful compounds. These include hydrochloric acid, sodium hydroxide, gypsum and magnesium hydroxide, all of which are either used in industry or in building materials. The facility will soon be running at full scale, recovering an additional 7.5 million litres of drinking water a day from the plant. There is no new technology involved, just existing tech in a new combination. “It’s a brilliant idea,” says Michael Mickley, a hydrologist and consultant in Colorado. “Whether it makes sense economically is the question.” Only time will tell.

RICHARD HERRMANN/FLPA

Oily treasure trove

an environmental engineer at the Colorado School of Mines. Chemists have explored mining just about any mineral from brines: uranium, lithium, rubidium, plain old table salt. But turning briny trash into treasure has never quite hit the big time, principally because the various salts are present at low concentrations and in mixtures that are hard to separate. There are, however, a few places where the economics finally add up. Most desalination happens at the shoreline, but the US is an exception. Much of the country has groundwater reserves that tend to be salty, which is why 95 per cent of its desalination plants are inland. With no ocean to discharge into, the waste brine is even more of a problem than usual. Most of the time,

California is building 8 desalination plants. The effect of waste salt on kelp forests is unknown

it gets dumped in rivers. Where land is cheap, it might be routed to evaporation ponds. In Texas and other places with favourable geology, it is injected into deep wells. But all these options have a limited capacity. That’s why Arizona is trying to get Mexican permission to build a brine-carrying canal to the sea, so far without success. The largest inland desalination facility in the US is the Kay Bailey Hutchison plant in El Paso, Texas. It slakes the thirst of 2.7 million people and injects its brine into deep wells. That is expensive and the wells will be full before long, a combination that has breathed

Other engineers are looking to turn waste water into treasure under even more challenging conditions. Benny Freeman at the University of Texas at Austin has his eye on oil wells, which extract five times as much water as oil. “There’s been talk about using the water, but the least expensive thing to do is pump it back into the ground,” he says. Yet oil well water in Texas contains 1000 parts per million of lithium. Freeman has collaborated with chemists at Monash University in Australia to develop membranes that can selectively separate the element from water. Even if mining the lithium in this way makes economic sense, Freeman is the first to admit that turning this system into a full-on desalination process would be a challenge, but he says it is an obvious thing to try next. The ZLD dream won’t work everywhere. But desalination is a tool that city and state planners need to have ready, says Childress. She says the only way to solve the problems that come with it is to embrace a diverse set of technologies and pick the options that work locally. The reason many of these more cuttingedge ideas are not widely used is not that they don’t work. Rather, it is that “we aren’t desperate enough yet”. Perhaps the lesson from Cape Town is that we soon will be. ■ Katherine Bourzac is a freelance science journalist based in San Francisco 8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 35

INTERVIEW

The surgeon fixing a scandal The worst consequences of vaginal mesh could have been avoided if doctors had taken women’s reports of pain seriously, surgeon and campaigner Sohier Elneil tells Julia Brown

36 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

ALICIA CANTER/EYEVINE

I

N THE late 1980s, the medical industry was looking for new ways to treat women experiencing urinary incontinence and vaginal prolapse, both relatively common conditions following childbirth. At the time, doctors suggested physiotherapy, weight loss and other non-surgical interventions, with complex surgery as a last resort. When mesh implants came along, they seemed like a simple and convenient alternative: a flexible plastic scaffold that took less than an hour to implant and allowed women to leave hospital quickly and get on with their lives. Permanent mesh implants became standard treatment for millions of women with these conditions. They have proved effective in many cases. But some women have experienced complications, including mesh eroding through the vaginal wall or piercing the bladder, nerve damage and infection. The implant can cause chronic pain, sometimes so severe women are barely able to walk. Tens of thousands of women around the world have brought lawsuits. The US Food and Drug Administration reclassified mesh as a “high-risk” device in 2016. More recently, Australia and New Zealand have banned its use in some circumstances. And in July the UK’s National Health Service suspended the use of mesh in England for stress incontinence. The mesh was designed to allow bodily tissue to grow through it, so it is very hard to remove. Sohier Elneil at University College Hospital in London is one of fewer than 10 surgeons in the UK able to carry out the procedure. She performed her first mesh removal in 2005 and, since then, has been

Protesters outside the UK Houses of Parliament call for a halt to vaginal mesh implants

at the forefront of the campaign to raise awareness of mesh complications.

deemed to be between 1 and 3 per cent. But this was based on hospital data, where there was no standardised way to record mesh complications and removals. And these figures didn’t consider patients who had gone to a family doctor or pain clinic.

How bad is the situation?

It’s a crisis that’s probably unprecedented – we still don’t know the depth of it. Worldwide, 3.7 million meshes were sold between 2005 and 2013, and we will have to monitor patients for the next 15 to 20 years. The complication rate is around 1 in every 10 women who receive mesh, according to research I was involved with. And that’s just for the first five years after implantation – we have really limited information on longerterm outcomes. But there are indications that complications could be as high as 40 per cent for mesh inserted to treat prolapse. The complications can be serious, so why have doctors been using the material for so long?

Originally, the complication rates were

Why did you start removing mesh?

Women with mesh implants would often come into the chronic pain clinic I ran with colleagues at University College Hospital in London. We initially focused on using medication and other pain management strategies but a significant group of patients did not respond. We concluded the only thing would be to try to remove this mesh. Do women’s symptoms improve after the mesh is removed?

In certain patients, things do improve and generally women are back on track. But the pain doesn’t always go away. There are longterm consequences even after you have taken the mesh out, including an autoimmune

Photographed for New Scientist by Dave Stock

been trained in all the other complex surgical techniques, they cannot offer a surgical option to their patients, so they have no alternative. Some doctors are taking it personally: they fail to recognise that the injury isn’t to them – the injury is to the women. So, what’s the alternative?

Research shows that over 70 per cent of women with stress urinary incontinence who committed to physiotherapy did not need any further intervention. So, many clinicians are reverting to conservative measures first before considering surgery, and some are retraining in the traditional surgical techniques, which existed in the pre-mesh era. How do you feel about the issue from a cultural perspective?

response seen in some people, as well as complex nerve problems affecting the pelvis and lower limbs. How many people in the UK are qualified to insert mesh?

so they lost trust in their doctors. They want somebody who will listen to them. There’s also a group of women who feel that nobody else can do their surgery, and there’s an element of truth to that: many surgeons are starting to learn how to deal with potential surgical complications, but many are still not far enough down the road of experience.

Hundreds are qualified to insert it, but relatively few are qualified to remove it. My training involved a lot of complex vaginal surgery, in particular in women who’d had really bad, traumatic childbirth. So my skill set “This crisis is unprecedented. came from that background. Mesh removal is We still don’t know the difficult and occasionally scary surgery. The depth of it” mesh adheres to the bladder, urethra, vagina, blood vessels, nerves and bones. Once removed, You and others face resistance for speaking out the symptoms of incontinence and prolapse against mesh. What do you think is behind that? often return and so one needs to consider There has been a great deal of resistance, even non-mesh options to restore functionality. anger, from some clinicians, even though That can be difficult in tissue that has been evidence is coming out all the time. I think chronically inflamed or infected by the mesh. there are some who believe this is media hype Even though others can do removals, and upset, and that women have jumped on I understand women seek you out. the bandwagon. And of course if a surgeon is Many patients were dismissed for a long time, stopped from using mesh, and they haven’t

It’s no longer just a mesh issue or a pain issue. This is about right of access to good healthcare, and belief in women: it’s a women’s rights issue. What makes me angry is the fact that many women affected by complications were not listened to. They were ignored, patronised, and many were sent to psychiatrists or psychologists when their problem was physical. Sometimes these women couldn’t walk unaided, couldn’t function, gave up their jobs, couldn’t look after their families – the impact on their quality of life was huge. What has happened in the past few years has made me sad because it has affected the way I think about my profession. But occasionally in life, and especially in medicine, you must stand up because you have to make people think differently. Is the situation getting better in the UK?

Until the recent suspension led by Julia Cumberlege and her team in tandem with NHS England and the Department of Health, people were still using continence and prolapse mesh. The suspension has meant many have stopped, albeit temporarily. But we are just at the tip of the iceberg in dealing with the complications of the mesh already implanted. This is going to get bigger in years to come, globally. I have several trainees and colleagues working with me, learning how to do removals. And women are becoming much more aware. Many women are telling doctors: I’m not having this, thank you very much. The suspension is a good result for the women: it is a vindication. I suspect using mesh will become more difficult from now on. ■ Julia Brown is an interview editor at New Scientist 8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 37

STANLEY CHOW

38 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

Lessons from early Earth Our deepest history could hold the key to the search for life on other planets. Kelly Oakes reports

F

EW discoveries could be bigger than detecting life on another planet. Whether it is a rocky ball or a giant cloud of gas, hot, cold, or somewhere in between, we aren’t picky: so long as a world has life, we want to find it. For as long as we have searched, we have had one image in mind: Earth. It might seem like vanity, but our focus makes a certain amount of sense. After all, Earth is the only planet in the universe that we know for a fact supports life. Even if faraway exo-Earths don’t have oceans, continents, rainforests, deserts and polar caps, the long-standing assumption is that they will still be familiar in certain ways. There will be water on the surface, oxygen in the air, possibly even vegetation on the land. But Earth hasn’t always looked the way it does now. In the 4.5 billion years our planet has existed, it has experienced dramatic transformations: ice ages and warming periods, times when the atmosphere was

impossible to breathe, when large areas were desert, or when lush tropical forests hugged the poles. Throughout the vast majority of this turbulent history, life has somehow clung on. If, armed with a spotters’ guide to the world we inhabit today, we found exoplanets resembling those early Earths, would we even recognise them for what they were? Maybe not. We know how to seek comparatively advanced signs of intelligent life, such as cacophonous radio transmissions and the bright lights of megacities. If a planet has less sophisticated inhabitants, however, we must rely on identifying other signatures of life. That is why scientists interested in filling in the blind spots of our search for intelligent life have started a lot closer to home. They want to imagine how early Earth would look if seen from far outside the solar system. The first time we tried to study our planet from afar was when the Galileo mission launched in 1989. It was programmed to orbit

twice around Earth, using the planet’s gravitational pull as a slingshot to power it on its way to its ultimate goal, Jupiter. The astronomer Carl Sagan suggested taking the opportunity to point our best alien-finding equipment at Earth itself. If it found nothing, he reasoned, that meant life elsewhere might also escape our attention. Galileo was to be the first of several probes to use their instruments in this way, and they confirmed that our technological civilisation should be detectable by a distant, similarly advanced alien civilisation. Where there are no hints of technology to home in on, by far the best life sign to latch on to is oxygen. Its abundance in our atmosphere – 21 per cent – would be difficult to sustain without plants pumping it out constantly. Methane, released by bacteria as well as flatulent livestock, is a more ambiguous biosignature, given that a number of non-biological mechanisms can produce the gas. A bigger giveaway than either oxygen or methane on their own, however, is the presence of both. That is because the combination is combustible and releases energy when it reacts, forming carbon dioxide and water. “If these two gases are left to their own devices, they’ll usually annihilate,” says Chris Reinhard at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “The fact that they’re both present at relatively high abundance suggests that they’re being pumped into the atmosphere at very high rates, potentially by biology.” Another reliable sign of life is the light reflected by plants. Although our planet’s vegetation absorbs most visible wavelengths, with the exception of green, it absorbs far less infrared light. The upshot is an abrupt jump – known as the red edge – in Earth’s reflectance spectrum, a phenomenon that would be hard to replicate without living organisms. Searching for high levels of oxygen, methane coexisting with oxygen, or a red edge would be a good way of picking up planets that look like Earth now. But Earth has been inhabited – not to mention inhabitable – for far longer than it has displayed any of these features (see diagram, page 41). The earliest known life forms emerged about 4 billion years ago, when the planet’s crust was cooling to form rocks and the beginnings of continents. At this time, known as the Archaean, Earth’s atmosphere would have been dominated by carbon dioxide produced by active volcanoes. In this hostile environment, primitive microbes emerged > 8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 39

“For about four-fifths of Earth’s history, we would not have been able to see evidence of life as we know it on the surface”

that made methane, and oxygen levels were at an all-time low. This was fortunate – if they had been any higher, life as we know it might not have emerged at all. “Oxygen poisons some of the prebiotic chemistry that we think culminated in the origin of life on Earth,” says Stephanie Olson at the University of California, Riverside. A billion or so years later, the planet was entering a time called the Proterozoic. Photosynthesis was already well under way, but it was at this time that the ability to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen had lasting consequences for the planet. For the first time, oxygen, carbon dioxide and methane coexisted in the atmosphere, leading to the accelerated evolution of multicellular life. During this time there were two “snowball Earth” events, when the entire planet was covered in ice. The trigger may have been something as trivial as a brief drop in global temperatures, allowing the polar ice caps to expand. This reflected more sunlight, reducing temperatures even more in a feedback loop that eventually froze the whole planet. The trouble is, we don’t know how freezing over would have affected the chance of spotting life from afar. “The composition of the atmosphere during the snowball Earth events is actually not terribly well known,” says Reinhard. The Proterozoic’s defining feature, however,

VITALIJ CEREPOK/EYEEM/GETTY

The emergence of vegetation dramatically changed Earth’s appearance from space

40 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

was a billion-year period of apparent stability from 1.8 billion years to 800 million years ago. After the frenzied emergence of multicellular life, and the chaos of the first snowball Earth event, the planet relished the opportunity to take a breather. The climate was constant, life appeared to be evolving very slowly, if at all, and oxygen remained at low levels. Little wonder that geologists have taken to calling this the “boring billion”.

Oxygen masked Some think that name is a tad unfair. After all, this was when sexual reproduction first evolved, and when the first eukaryotes – organisms with complex cells that ultimately gave rise to ourselves – appeared, “which is a big deal”, says Nick Butterfield at the University of Cambridge. From the perspective of an alien Galileo space probe, however, little would appear to change. By the time the boring billion ended, life was really stepping on the accelerator pedal. At this time, called the Phanerozoic, the diversity of life forms skyrocketed in what is known as the Cambrian explosion, oxygen finally reached levels that would be remotely detectable and plants began to flourish on the planet’s surface. This is when the red edge would have first been visible. This complicated history offers a stark lesson for those hunting exoplanets based on Earth’s current appearance. “For about fourfifths of Earth’s history we would not be able to see evidence of life on the surface,” says Reinhard. Whether searching for high oxygen levels, oxygen-methane coexistence or a red edge, you would mostly come up emptyhanded. “The obvious candidates for biosignatures aren’t going to work as well as we thought,” says Olson. Part of the problem is how little we know about early Earth. It is no exaggeration to say that, in some ways, we will soon know more about planets billions of kilometres away than we do about our own world billions of years in the past. With so little surviving evidence – and each piece so open to interpretation – reconstructing Earth’s history is a major challenge. Until the gaps are filled in, what life-hunting astronomers need is a broader-brush way of figuring out which planets to investigate further. For Enric Pallé at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, one promising avenue is the ancient equivalent of red edge. Ever since the days of the Archaean, long before the continents became hotbeds

Earth through the ages The characteristic signals of present-day life on Earth include the coexistence of methane and oxygen in the atmosphere. But life existed on the planet for billions of years before the atmospheric composition we see today formed

3.5

3.0

2.5

2.0

1.5

PHANEROZOIC 1.0

103 102

Glaciation ”Snowball Earth”

Methane

0.5

0

101 100

SOURCE: ARXIV.ORG/1803.05967

Relative atmospheric concentration

4.0 bya

PROTEROZOIC

TODAY

ARCHAEAN

10-1 10-2 10-3 10-4 10-5

Oxygen

10-6 Earliest signs of life

Oxygen appears in the atmosphere Plate tectonics resemble modern Earth

First land plants appear

Photosynthesis develops

for vegetation, they were probably swamped by purple mats of single-celled bacteria. If these tiny organisms were present in great enough numbers, says Pallé, their effect on the light reflected from Earth would be similar to that of vegetation, but shifted toward the far red end of the spectrum. “You can envision a whole bunch of colours you can get,” says Abel Méndez, director of the Planetary Habitability Lab at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, depending on which bacteria are most common. Attractive though this sounds, its signal could be weak and tough to spot from afar. Olson and her colleagues think they have identified two more promising avenues. The first could be to observe planets over a long period, instead of just getting a snapshot of their atmosphere’s composition. Observing Earth in this way, for example, would reveal a seasonal change in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. That is because plants use more carbon dioxide during their growing season, with the northern hemisphere dominating the effect because of its greater land mass. “You’d see that it’s kind of wobbly up and down once a year,” says Reinhard. On plant-free planets like Proterozoic Earth, it is not likely that photosynthesis by microbes would be enough to cause clear oscillations in carbon dioxide levels. Instead, respiring organisms might produce similar seasonal variations in oxygen. And although oxygen levels themselves might be too low to spot from afar, the effect of their fluctuations on levels of other chemicals

such as ozone could conceivably be picked up. One downside of using seasonality as a biosignature is that some worlds don’t have seasons. Méndez points out that planets around the smaller, dimmer stars that are Earth’s closest neighbours must orbit close to their star to be potentially habitable, but doing so means they tend to end up keeping the same face pointing toward their star all the time. “They are tidally locked,” he says, “so you won’t have any seasons.”

Delicate imbalance The other idea Olson and her colleagues are working on could prove more fruitful. It involves rethinking how life might influence the make-up of an atmosphere. Much as methane and oxygen would not persist together on Earth if all present-day life disappeared, there are other combinations of gases that scientists regard as being in disequilibrium – that is, they would be hard to sustain without life. During the Archaean, for example, such was the imbalance of atmospheric methane with carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water that it would have been rapidly wiped out as soon as it stopped being produced. But it isn’t necessary to look for all of those gases at once. Olson’s team argues that you need only see carbon dioxide and a sufficiently large amount of methane together in an atmosphere to realise something biological is probably afoot. And although the relative abundance of oxygen and methane would probably not have been measurable

from afar at any point in Earth’s history, that of carbon dioxide and methane might be. “A detectable carbon dioxide and methane disequilibrium is more likely on a broader range of planets,” says Olson, “including those with undetectable levels of oxygen.” Butterfield thinks looking for these atmospheric imbalances is an interesting idea, but cautions against falling for alien life as the explanation. “Just seeing disequilibrium is interesting,” he says. “But it doesn’t necessarily have to be biological activity.” Although false positives are inevitable, Olson is hopeful that clues like disequilibrium and seasonality will help fill in some of those blind spots in our search for life. For one thing, says Olson, “they’re not tied to specific metabolisms”. Alien life wouldn’t necessarily need to be like us, or even be carbon-based, for these potential biosignatures to reveal its existence on a distant planet. Getting a good enough look to find out, however, isn’t going to be easy. Figuring out what is going on in the atmosphere of an exoplanet means gathering as much light as possible from it. But of course, planets don’t produce light; they only reflect it, and that signal is dwarfed by the light of their star. To separate them, we will need enormous telescopes like NASA’s James Webb telescope, due to launch in 2021, or the next generation of extremely large, ground-based telescopes. Even with these devices, the task will be tricky. Seasonality on an exoplanet will require so much telescope time, says Pallé, that “we will not be able to measure that, not as long as you or I are alive”. No single measurement is ever going to be conclusive. By looking at the make-up of a planet’s atmosphere, how it changes over time and anything unusual that appears to be going on at the surface, researchers will instead build a slowly evolving picture of that world’s chances of hosting life. “It’s not going to be like a discovery where you dig something and you say, ‘That’s it! I found it’,” says Pallé. “It’s a process where we are slowly choosing our best candidate.” Our continuing ignorance of aspects of Earth’s primordial past could also hamper the hunt for distant life. What set off the snowball Earths of the Proterozoic, for example, is still a mystery. Even if we spot an exoplanet in an ice age, says Reinhard, we won’t know how to interpret what we see. One of the biggest discoveries in history could elude us once again. ■ Kelly Oakes is a freelance writer based in London 8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 41

CULTURE

Among the cruel stars China’s leading sci-fi author Cixin Liu tells Yvaine Ye that the future is bright for our species – partly because we kill everything in our path

were an enormous number of civilisations out there, we can only derive assumptions from our own experience. A glance over human history tells us that the rise and fall of a great many civilisations is the result of war. It is even more depressing when we think about inter-species interactions. What happens when a species meets a stronger,

We are totally not ready yet. The technology we have is still primitive. If other civilisations visit – aliens who are able to travel “Because of our selfishness, distances of hundreds or even millions of light years to get here – we can overcome any amount of environmental the gap between our respective destruction” technologies would be about the same as that between humans and ants. How will a group of more intellectually developed such highly civilised aliens even competitor? That thought gives know that we are intelligent? me shudders. The CretaceousActually, that problem works Paleogene extinction was a both ways. How does that ant horrible event. Dinosaurs and wandering across your desk know many other animals and plants you are the planet’s dominant were killed. But consider what we species? You don’t know how are witnessing now. Every year, to dig a hole, you don’t fondle thousands of species disappear, delicious dead bugs and you don’t because they ran up against protect your queen. All you do is humans. So, the survival theory hit those square-shaped things in Dark Forest is reasonable. in front of you – an activity that There could be a highly civilised generates absolutely no food cosmic ecosystem with high whatsoever. Ants don’t think moral standards, but I think the humans are intelligent at all. possibility is low, given what we know about Earth’s history. In Dark Forest, the middle volume of your trilogy, you wrote “Each civilization’s goal is survival”. This sounds like a Darwinian process, applied at a civilisation level. Is it possible to have a galactic ecosystem that is ethical?

First, we haven’t discovered any extraterrestrial life form, not to mention any other civilisation! And if we are to picture what the universe would be like if there 42 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

If we receive a message from the stars, should we respond?

How to respond will be a decision for the entire world. We would need a consensus, as this would affect every one of us. I think we should be cautious, rather than recklessly respond to the message and expose our location. We simply don’t know whether we are talking to friends or enemies.

Some people think if a species enjoys a high level of civilisation, it is bound to maintain high moral standards. That’s very naive; we have no way of knowing whether that’s true. Most of your stories have sad endings. Are you pessimistic about the development of civilisation?

I’m absolutely positive about human survival. We will continue to develop our civilisation and expand not just on Earth, but also across the solar system, the galaxy, even the entire universe. But I’m absolutely pessimistic about the survival of the other species who currently share Earth with us. The development of human civilisation will eventually force other living things to go extinct or become our food. Are you not concerned that the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems will threaten human survival?

We are almost wholly reliant on science and technology for our survival already. We can create an environment to sustain ourselves with technology, even if the ecosystem collapses. The new system could be on Earth or in space; we might develop one system or hundreds of them. Frankly, these environments could probably only support humans, although we probably wouldn’t care about other species anyway. Humans are selfish, and because of our innate selfishness, I’m very confident that we can overcome any amount of environmental destruction.

PROFILE Dubbed “China’s Answer to Arthur C. Clarke” by The New Yorker, Cixin Liu worked as a computer engineer for a power plant before winning accolades in the late 1990s as a writer of galaxy-spanning science fiction. In Liu’s thrillingly pessimistic space operas, intelligence does not breed virtue, and the most advanced cultures live in fear of each other. His 2004 novel Ball Lightning has just been published in English by Atlantic Books.

ZACHARY BAKO/REDUX/EYEVINE

Your Three-Body Problem trilogy, first published between 2006 and 2010, describes the 20-millionyear-long fallout from humanity’s attempt to make contact with extraterrestrials. How well prepared are we for the arrival of an alien race like your Trisolarans?

Can we work together as civilisation develops further in the future?

I believe we can work together. Even though we still have defined nations, and each nation pursues its own self-interest, the borderlines between nations, ethnicities and religions are disappearing. Technology is improving communication and accelerating cultural exchange. So, I think the concept of

For more books and arts coverage, visit newscientist.com/culture

DON’T MISS

For example, if you want to fly, you need a massive amount of energy to work against gravity. Riding a magical broom doesn’t work in science fiction. But there’s something paradoxical about the science in science fiction. Although it sets boundaries, science doesn’t restrain our imagination; it only spurs it. What modern physics has revealed goes far beyond common sense. We zoom out, and the universe in science fiction is 40 billion light years across, consisting of millions of solar systems with countless planets. We zoom in, and quantum mechanics inspires us to create a world that we can hardly visualise. Science immensely expands the canvas for science fiction. Fantasy, on the other hand, operates almost entirely at one, human scale. Does it bother you that your wife and daughter don’t like science fiction?

Not at all. It is understandable that they don’t like it. Science fiction, wherever it comes from, has always been a niche genre, only enjoyed by a unique group of people. I write science fiction, not because I’m fond of literature, but because I’m fascinated by science. Which area of science excites you the most?

I’m interested in studies that probe the mysteries of nature and the universe, such as physics and cosmology. I spend a lot of time every day reading about them and following the latest news. nationhood will eventually vanish. The world will share the same set of values and become a more united group.

fiction writers didn’t have access to expert opinions. Those ideas and concepts of mine are all distilled from my own self-taught understanding of the science.

The science in your stories is very detailed. Do you consult experts over its plausibility when you write?

When you write stories, do you let your imagination fly free or is there a limit to how far you can travel?

I have never checked with any experts for my novels. Not long ago, science fiction was a very marginal activity and science-

The imagination in science fiction has boundaries. Unlike fantasy, science fiction must follow natural laws and scientific rules.

Listen Science guru Bill Nye’s views on the politics of space feature in the latest instalment of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s excellent (if slightly hokey-sounding) StarTalk All-Stars podcast.

Play Actions have consequences in Growing the Galaxy: Boundless, a game where every element – from the politics to the buildings – is left entirely in the hands of the players. It launches on 11 September for PC and PS4.

Visit The premiere of Marshmallow Laser Feast’s immersive black hole experience Distortions in Spacetime kicks off this year’s British Science Festival, in Hull from 11 to 14 September.

Learn Discover how conflict can shape international science at “Science and the First World War: the aftermath”, a one-day conference at London’s Royal Society on 13 September.

Watch Charlton Heston has crashed onto a distant planet ruled by apes! Go cheer him (or them) along at a 50th-anniversary screening of Planet of the Apes (pictured) on 15 September at the National Space Centre in Leicester. Doors open at 6.30pm BST.

Do you think science fiction can predict the future?

I don’t think science fiction predicts the future at all. It simply lays out some possibilities. The 2018 we are living in now is so very different from the 2018 I wrote about in my short story of that name. Back when I wrote 2018, that year seemed really, really far away – but here we are! ■ Yvaine Ye is a science reporter 8 September 2018 | NewScientist | 43

CULTURE

A fantastical experiment Ceramic art acts as a cunning foil for a collection of scientific curios, finds Simon Ings items in Loudon’s collection. An arrangement of ceramic flowers above an anatomical cut-away torso suggests a mandrake-like marriage of vegetable and human. Next to it is a discomforting juxtaposition of plaster models of teeth and wax copies of lemons. Models of cell division are easily

Surreal Science: Loudon Collection with Salvatore Arancio, Whitechapel Gallery, London, to 6 January 2019

WHENEVER the artist Salvatore Arancio visits a new city, he heads for the nearest natural history museum. He goes partly for research: his eclectic output, spanning photography and ceramics, explores how we categorise and try to understand natural and geological processes. In the main, though, Arancio wants to be overwhelmed. “A lot of these collections are so vast, after a while you find yourself wandering around in a spaced-out state, inventing mental landscapes and narratives. It’s that feeling I’m trying to evoke here,” he tells me as we watch the assembly of his new show, Surreal Science, a collaboration with art patron George Loudon. Loudon famously collected work by Damien Hirst and his generation years before they became global celebrities – until the day a canvas he bought wouldn’t fit through his door. At that point, Loudon turned to the books, images and models (in clay, felt, glass and plaster) that educated 19th-century science students. “Looking back, I can see the move was a natural one,” Loudon says. “Artists like Hirst and Mark Dion were exploring the way we catalogue and represent the world. Around the time that collection felt complete I was travelling to South America a lot, and I became interested in the scientific discoveries made there – by Charles Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt, Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates.” This isn’t a collection in the sense that there is any demarcation 44 | NewScientist | 8 September 2018

“The explosion of science meant scientists turned artist to produce materials for their students”

Loudon’s collection includes wax lemons and an anatomical torso

to it. “It’s somebody’s personal eye that chooses this over that,” says Loudon. Nevertheless, a clear theme has emerged: how the explosion of science in the 19th century meant that scientists had to turn artist to produce educational materials for students. And, when the burden became too much, how companies of artisans emerged to satisfy the demand. Loudon’s collection has been shown before, at the Manchester Museum last year, but Surreal Science is a different enterprise. The objects, designed to be handled, are exhibited here on open shelves, bringing the visitor tantalisingly close to the work in a very un-museumlike manner. Needless to say this makes for a nerve-racking build. This is the moment of truth

for Arancio, who had to plan this installation-cum-exhibition armed only with photographs of Loudon’s collection and sheets of careful measurements. It is the first chance he has had to see his arrangements realised in situ. The ceramic pieces he has created provide a foil for the

mistaken for geodes. Again and again, Arancio’s ceramic pieces – pools, leaves, corals and tubular spider forms – mislead the eye, so we miscatalogue what we see. “I tried to create pieces that carried George’s objects off into some kind of fantastic realm,” says Arancio. Even before key elements of the show are installed –proper lighting, a looping educational film from 1935 and an experimental soundtrack by The Focus Group – it is clear that the experiment has succeeded. For Loudon, it is a vindication of his decision to collect objects that until recently weren’t recognised by the fine-art market. He moves from shelf to shelf, past exquisite Blaschka glass slugs, felt fungi, a meticulously repaired elephant bird egg. “Now these objects have lost their original purpose, we can look at them as objects of beauty,” he says. “I’m not claiming that this is art forever. I am saying it is art for today.” ■ George Loudon’s collection is explored in his book Object Lessons (Ridinghouse) TOP: FRANCESCO GARNIER VALLETTI TWO BOXES OF WAX FRUITS (LEMONS AND PEACHES) 19TH CENTURYTURINIMAGE COURTESY GEORGE LOUDON COLLECTION, PHOTOGRAPH BY ROSAMOND PURCELL PLASTER ANATOMICAL DEMONSTRATION MODEL TORSO 19TH CENTURY 72X37X26CM FRANCE OR GERMANY IMAGE COURTESY GEORGE LOUDON COLLECTION, PHOTOGRAPH BY ROSAMOND PURCELL

TENURE-TRACK ASSISTANT PROFESSOR PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY Faculty of Arts and Sciences Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Department of Chemistry Faculty Position in Chemistry The Department of Chemistry, at the University of California, Berkeley, invites applications for two faculty positions at the assistant professor level with an expected start date of July 1, 2019. We will consider creative and energetic candidates who show extraordinary promise or accomplishment in research and teaching in any area of chemistry. Preference will be given WRFDQGLGDWHVLQWKHEURDGO\GH¿QHG¿HOGVRIFKHPLFDOELRORJ\ experimental physical chemistry, and analytical chemistry. 7KHEDVLFTXDOL¿FDWLRQIRUWKLVSRVLWLRQLVD3K'RUHTXLYDOHQW international degree in the physical sciences or life sciences at the time of application. The Department of Chemistry and the Berkeley campus value GLYHUVLW\HTXLW\DQGLQFOXVLRQDVH[HPSOL¿HGE\WKHIROORZLQJ principles of community: • We recognize the intrinsic relationship between diversity and excellence in all our endeavors. • We embrace open and equitable access to opportunities for learning and development as our obligation and goal. Our excellence can only be fully realized by faculty, students and staff who share a commitment to these principles. Successful candidates for our faculty positions will demonstrate evidence of a commitment to equity and inclusion in higher education through their teaching, research and service activities. Financial and in-kind resources are available to pursue activities that help accelerate our efforts to achieve our equity and inclusion goals. All applicants should submit a recently updated curriculum vitae, a statement of research plans, a statement of teaching, and a 2-3-page statement on your contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion, including information about your understanding of WKHVHLVVXHV\RXUUHFRUGRIDFWLYLWLHVWRGDWHDQG\RXUVSHFL¿F plans and goals for advancing equity and inclusion if hired as a Berkeley faculty member (for additional information, go to https:// ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversity). In addition, applicants should provide at least three but no more WKDQ¿YHOHWWHUVRIUHFRPPHQGDWLRQ$FRYHUOHWWHULVRSWLRQDO Applications should be submitted electronically through our web-based system at: https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/apply/ JPF01881. $OOUHFRPPHQGDWLRQOHWWHUVZLOOEHWUHDWHGDVFRQ¿GHQWLDOSHU University of California policy and California state law. Please refer potential referees, including when letters are provided via a third party (i.e., dossier service or career center), to the UC VWDWHPHQWRQFRQ¿GHQWLDOLW\http://apo.berkeley.edu/evalltr. html) prior to submitting their letters. The deadline for receipt of the application materials is October 1, 2018. Please direct questions to Lauren Nakashima ([email protected]). UC Berkeley is committed to diversity in all aspects of our mission and to addressing the family needs of faculty, including dual career couples and single parents. 7KH8QLYHUVLW\RI&DOLIRUQLDLVDQ(TXDO2SSRUWXQLW\$I¿UPDWLYH$FWLRQ (PSOR\HU$OOTXDOL¿HGDSSOLFDQWVZLOOUHFHLYHFRQVLGHUDWLRQIRUHPSOR\PHQW without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age or protected veteran status. For the | 46 FRPSOHWH8QLYHUVLW\RI&DOLIRUQLDQRQGLVFULPLQDWLRQDQGDI¿UPDWLYHDFWLRQ NewScientist | 8 September 2018 SROLF\VHHKWWSSROLF\XFRSHGXGRF1RQGLVFULP$I¿UP$FW

Position Description: Candidates are invited to apply for a tenure-track assistant professorship in physical chemistry, broadly defined, including experimental and theoretical research in areas such as but not limited to atomic and molecular physics, biophysical chemistry, condensed matter, quantum science and ultrafast spectroscopy. The appointment is expected to begin on July 1, 2019. The tenure-track professor will be responsible for teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels. We are seeking candidates who have an outstanding research record and a strong commitment to undergraduate and graduate teaching. Basic Qualifications: Doctorate or terminal degree in chemistry or related discipline required by the time the appointment begins. Additional Qualifications: Demonstrated experience in teaching is desired. Special Instructions: Please submit the following materials through the ARIeS portal (https://academicpositions.harvard.edu/8371). Applications must be submitted no later than October 15, 2018. 1. Cover letter 2. Curriculum Vitae with publications list 3. Teaching statement (describing teaching approach and philosophy) 4. Outline of future research plans 5. Names and contact information of 3-5 references. Three letters of recommendation are required, and the application is complete only when all three letters have been received. 6. Selected publications Contact Information: Susan M. Kinsella, Search Administrator, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, 12 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA 02138. Phone: 617-496-4088. [email protected] Harvard is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions, or any other characteristic protected by law.have been submitted.

Position Title: Assistant

Professor of Chemistry

Req # 03779

The Department of Chemistry at The University of Chicago invites applications for the position of Assistant Professor of Chemistry in all areas of chemistry. Applicants must apply online to the University of Chicago Academic Career website at http://tinyurl.com/y9yhvxg9 and upload a cover letter, a curriculum vitae with a list of publications, a succinct outline of research plans, and a one page teaching statement. In your cover letter, please specify one sub-discipline that best represents your research interests (inorganic, materials, organic, physical, and theoretical chemistry or chemical biology). In addition, three reference letters are required. At the time of hire the successful candidate must have completed HSS YLX\PYLTLU[Z MVY H 7O+ PU *OLTPZ[Y` VY H YLSH[LK ÄLSK Joint appointments with other departments are possible. Review of applications will begin on October 08, 2018 and ^PSSJVU[PU\L\U[PSHSSWVZP[PVUZHYLÄSSLK ;OL