June 2021. Vol. 42, No. 4 Discover

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MAKING SENSE OF NONSENSE WORDS

p.26

®

SCIENCE

JUNE 2021

THAT MATTERS

HOW TO SPOT PSEUDOSCIENCE ONLINE AND IN YOUR LIFE p.30

FUN WAYS TO FIGHT FAKE NEWS p.52

PLUS:

WHEN SCIENCE SAVES ART p.58 JOURNEY TO THE MOON’S FARSIDE p.62

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COVER: MILLETSTUDIO/SHUTTERSTOCK. THIS PAGE: OHOTNIKNAUTOK/DREAMSTIME

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Tales From the Fringe From Bigfoot to the anti-vaccine movement, fringe theories are everywhere, lingering in the shadow of science. Where do they come from? JENNIFER WALTER

38

COVER STORY

Show Me the Science

Beneath any valuable study, you’ll find a web of research, institutions, humans — and, of course, money. Trust in science hinges on the process.

46

52

Humans deceive — and so do animals. Here’s why we fall for trickery, and what happens when lies go unchecked.

He’s spent years researching misinformation. Now this psychologist makes online games to vaccinate the public against fake news.

AJA RADEN

ALEX ORLANDO

Natural-Born Liars

Truth Serum

ANNA FUNK J U N E 2 02 1 . D I S C OV ER

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CONTENTS

HOT SCIENCE P. 9

Take a look at the search for antimatter, the debate over protecting endangered species, the theories about how biological life travels through space, what to read or watch next, and much more.

p. 66

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS

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58

Damage Control

Fading Sunflowers and Screams

Mistruths are all around us. So how do we combat them?

p. 18

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INBOX Our readers ponder which way Orion faces and the history of the Everglades.

Centuries ago, the discovery of two elements led to new — but unstable — yellow pigments. Today, scientists are deploying particle accelerators to save artwork in these shades. STEPHANIE DEMARCO

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Spin Doctor

In Search of the Dark Ages

VITAL SIGNS

Not all cases of vertigo are created equal. TONY DAJER

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PIECE OF MIND

What’s in a Name? Some words sound like what they mean. And they could influence everything from fictional depictions of aliens to your first impression on a job application.

p. 62

HISTORY LESSONS

DAVID ADAM

OUT THERE

A telescope planned for the farside of the moon could plug a 500-million-year hole in cosmic history. ERIC BETZ

66

#SCIENCEIRL Hidden in a COVID-19 stimulus bill was a new national park. ANAMARIA SILIC

FROM TOP: GARY HARTLEY; PRZEMEK ICIAK/SHUTTERSTOCK; ILLUSTRIS COLLABORATION

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BY STEPHEN C. GEORGE

M AG A ZINE

STEPHEN C. GEORGE Editorial Director ELIZABETH M. WEBER Design Director

Damage Control

EDITORIAL TIMOTHY MEINCH Features Editor ELISA R. NECKAR Production Editor ALEX ORLANDO Associate Editor JENNIFER WALTER Assistant Editor MOLLY GLICK Assistant Editor HAILEY MCLAUGHLIN Editorial Assistant ANAMARIA SILIC Journalism Resident

S

ome people in my life have never forgiven me for becoming a journalist. For more than a decade now, I’ve been persona non grata on certain email threads where family members frequently share “news” and “facts” that they have gleaned from the internet. When occasion demanded it — and I’m sorry to say that the occasion often demanded it — I would have to be That Guy. The one who quashed the urban legend. The one who inconveniently provided links to hard evidence. I was the debunker, the skeptic. Or, as some members of my family would have it, the party pooper, the spoilsport. “Don’t make fun of my facts!” a relative once chided me. “It’s not a joke!” I’m not laughing. I’ve never actually made fun of friends and family who fell prey to fake news or pseudoscience. I don’t find it one bit funny when the people I care about are led astray by mistruth. It has happened to all of us at one time or another. And when it has happened to me, I get angry — at myself for letting my critical thinking skills lapse even briefly, and especially at the people out there who knowingly purvey false information. This issue is a chance to channel that anger into something productive. As Assistant Editor Jennifer Walter notes in “Tales From the Fringe,” on page 30: “When unfounded and false information is presented as scientific to skew the truth or blatantly lie, it can cause real damage in the world.” It’s everyone’s job — yours too — to repair that damage or prevent it from occurring in the first place. Even if it makes you the family spoilsport. That’s a badge I’ll wear proudly.

Stephen C. George Editorial Director Feel free to send comments and questions to [email protected]

Contributing Editors MAKING SENSE OF NONSENSE WORDS p.26

®

SCIENCE

THAT MATTERS

HOW TO SPOT PSEUDOSCIENCE ONLINE AND IN YOUR LIFE p.30

FUN WAYS TO FIGHT FAKE NEWS p.52

BRIDGET ALEX, TIM FOLGER, JONATHON KEATS, LINDA MARSA, KENNETH MILLER, STEVE NADIS, JULIE REHMEYER, DARLENE CAVALIER (special projects)

DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM MEGAN SCHMIDT Digital Editor DONNA SARKAR Digital Content Coordinator

PLUS:

WHEN SCIENCE SAVES ART p.58 JOURNEY TO THE MOON’S FARSIDE p.62

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INBOX

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? (“The Supernova That Wasn’t,” Jan/Feb 2021)

• SPECIAL ISSUE! •

®

SCIENCE

THAT MATTERS

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

THE STATE OF

SCIENCE

2021 Apparently scientists (or, at least, COVID-19 science journalists) can’t seem to agree on which way zodiacal figures face. Science News and Discover both discuss the recent variation in Betelgeuse’s brightness. Science News notes Betelgeuse’s observed position as “marking the hunter’s left shoulder” while Discover states that it “forms Orion’s right shoulder.” Seems one of them regards the figure of Orion’s as facing towards Earth while the other regards him as facing away. Ron Seiden Franklin, Pa. CRISIS HANDBOOK WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW p.22

PLUS

RACISM & SCIENCE: AN INSIDE LOOK p.36

FIXING FOOD ALLERGIES p.47

MURDER HORNET MAYHEM p.62

TRUTH ABOUT 5G NETWORKS p.68 OLDEST HUMAN DNA p.53

BONUS IMAGES OF THE YEAR p.70

Alison Klesman, senior associate editor of our sister magazine, Astronomy, responds:  You’re right — whether Betelgeuse is Orion’s left or right shoulder depends on whether the Hunter is facing toward or away from us. And the International Astronomical Union, the ruling body that determined the current 88 standard constellations we use today, doesn’t give much guidance — their published constellations only show the outline of each figure, rather than a drawing depicting features. I personally have nearly always seen Orion depicted as facing toward Earth, though. Furthermore, whether he is holding a bow or a shield (again, that depends on the depiction), it seems to make sense that he’s facing toward Earth so he can shoot his bow toward or hold his shield to protect himself from Taurus the Bull — both of which a right-handed man would do with his left hand. So, I’d say that Betelgeuse is Orion’s right shoulder, which means it appears on his left side as we are facing him, front to front. But perhaps we could all do to be a bit more specific when describing the star in the future, and say Betelgeuse is on the left side of the constellation as viewed from Earth.

ISLANDS IN THE STREAM (“Forest Islands Amid a Grassland Sea,” Jan/Feb 2021)

Bridget Alex gives us an interesting report on possible ancient cultures in South America and the origin of forest islands. As I read her analysis, I wondered if the same comments

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might relate to the hammocks in the Everglades? Driving along Route 41 between Naples and Miami, one can see many small plots of trees among the vast “river of grass.” If humans migrated from north to south in the Americas, then populating the Everglades would have happened before populating the Amazon Basin. Have

these forest islands ever been explored for this possibility? John Derr Port Charlotte, Fla.  Author Bridget Alex responds: That’s an interesting proposal, and one which seems reasonable to me. But it’s hard for me to evaluate because I don’t know about the ecological or geological history of the region. I do know the earliest archaeological site is in the Panhandle region — PageLadson, dated to about 14,500 years ago. The oldest sites in South America are about the same age, or older. It seems the first people in the Americas split, with some populating South America and other groups inhabiting North America. The Amazon forest islands likely formed a few thousand years later; if the Florida ones are human-made as well, there’s no reason they must have been made by the same people as the Amazon ones. I shared your question with José Capriles, one of the archaeologists who worked on that study. He wrote: It seems like similar processes might have been involved in the formation of the Everglades tree islands and more research could identify additional similarities and contrasts in these environments. I do know that Archaic Period mounds are also common elsewhere in Florida, so we know that people were congregating in some of these sites and I am sure they were also engaging with some level of plant and landscape domestication.

In the editor’s letter in our Jan/Feb 2021 issue, Editorial Director Stephen George asked what the biggest science story of the year was — besides COVID-19. Here’s how some readers responded:

• I can say that you have rightly selected COVID and CRISPR. However, you may consider publishing something about Roger Penrose’s mathematical discovery in 1965, which was recognized by the Nobel committee in 2020. — Kanan Purkayastha

• One of the biggest science stories for me this past year was the Great Conjunction that occurred on the evening of winter solstice, Dec. 21. Unfortunately, it clouded over prior to sunset here in my location. However, friend shared a picture — a beautiful image of the sunset low in the horizon and the brightness of the Christmas Star.  — T.S. Workman

• I think the biggest science story of the year will be electrification of transportation, though it may take time to realize that. When people see how quiet, clean, and healthy their cities become with electric vehicles, they will be the new paradigm. Electric planes and boats will follow, and we will be enjoying a convenient, economical, more sustainable world. Twenty-five years from now, history will see that as the biggest contribution of science in 2020. (Well, maybe 2021 — but it’s coming!) — Paul Heusinkveld

HOT SCIENCE TH E L AT E ST N E WS A N D NOT E S LIFE FROM SPACE? • THE VALUE OF A SPECIES • THE SEARCH FOR ANTIMATTER BATTERY SCIENCE • OZONE HOLE STATUS • FISH FANCLUB • DOG YAWNS • REVIEWS

SUPER SUNFLOWERS Deep within these resilient desert beauties, supergenes help generate growth in the harshest environments. They might sound like something out of the Marvel universe, but supergenes are large clusters of DNA that have been found in some plants, butterflies, birds and ants. In prairie sunflowers, they influence seed size, bloom timing and other environmental adaptations. Writing in Nature last July, one team identified 37 supergene blocks in wild sunflowers, such as those that help prairie sunflowers weather blazing temperatures and last weeks without water. If that’s not impressive enough, prairie sunflowers can thrive in most states in the continental U.S., making them masters of adaptation. — JENNIFER WALTER; IMAGE BY NOLAN C. KANE/ UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER

J U N E 2 02 1 . D I S C OV ER

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HOT SCIENCE

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Did Life Come From Space? SOME ASTRONOMERS HYPOTHESIZE THAT ASTEROIDS AND COMETS MIGHT SHUTTLE BIOLOGICAL MATTER BETWEEN PLANETS.

LEFT: JOHAN SWANEPOEL/SHUTTERSTOCK. RIGHT: EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY/M. KORNMESSER

Life, for all its complexities, has a simple commonality: It spreads. Plants, animals and bacteria have colonized almost every nook and cranny of our world. But why stop there? Some scientists speculate that biological matter may have proliferated across the cosmos itself, transported from planet to planet on wayward lumps of rock and ice. This idea is known as panspermia, and it carries a profound implication: Life on Earth may not have originated on our planet. In theory, panspermia is fairly simple. Astronomers know that impacts from comets or asteroids on planets will sometimes eject debris with enough force to catapult rocks into space. Some of those space rocks will, in turn, crash into other worlds. A few rare meteorites on Earth are known to have come from Mars, likely in this fashion. “You can imagine small astronauts sitting inside this rock, surviving the journey,” says Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard University and director of the school’s Institute for Theory and Computation. “Microbes could potentially move from one planet to another, from Mars to Earth, from Earth to Venus.” (You may recognize Loeb’s name from his recent book Extraterrestrial: The

First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, which garnered headlines and criticism from astronomers for its claim that our solar system was recently visited by extraterrestrials.) Loeb has authored a number of papers probing the mechanics of panspermia, looking at, among other things, how the size and speed of space objects might affect their likelihood of transferring life. While Loeb still thinks it’s more likely that life originated on Earth, he says his work has failed to rule out the possibility that it came from somewhere else in space. Meanwhile, recent experiments have suggested that earthly organisms can survive in space, at least for a little while. Experiments aboard the EXPOSE-E facility at the International Space Station have subjected bacteria, lichens and plant seeds to the extreme cold and radiation of space for anywhere from a few days to over a year. Some

Recent experiments have suggested that earthly organisms can survive in space, at least for a little while.

The mysterious object ‘Oumuamua passed through our solar system in 2017. Loeb has suggested it could have been sent by extraterrestrials.

bacteria and other organisms were able to survive the journey, including tardigrades, ultra-hardy animals found everywhere from Arctic ice to the deep ocean. If an asteroid or comet is large enough, microbes could be frozen deep within, Loeb says. That could protect them from radiation and the extreme temperatures that turn meteors into fireballs. After they explode onto the surface of a new world, these extraterrestrial colonists could begin to thrive. In other solar systems, panspermia could be even more likely to occur than in our own. For example, the seven tightly packed planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system, discovered in 2016, might be ideal for life to planet-hop. If we find life there one day, Loeb says, we should pay attention to whether it all looks suspiciously similar. He thinks two neighboring planets with similar biological systems would be a sure sign that life had traveled between them at some point.

Loeb also hypothesizes that panspermia could occur even between distant star systems. Interstellar visitors, like the recently observed space object ‘Oumuamua and the comet Borisov, could spread life from system to system. Such a process could even begin on our own planet. In a paper published in the journal Life, Loeb looked at the possibility that asteroids or comets might graze the Earth’s atmosphere, dozens of miles above the surface, picking up microorganisms floating high in the sky, before heading out on interstellar journeys. He estimates that, though rare, a few such instances have likely occurred during Earth’s lifetime. Even if an asteroid flyby did pick up a few microbes from Earth, it’s highly unlikely that they would survive the journey, much less land on another planet with conditions similar to ours. But, then again, we can’t necessarily rule it out. — NATHANIEL SCHARPING

J U N E 2 02 1 . D IS C OV ER

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HOT SCIENCE

Do We Really Need to Protect Every Species? FOCUS ON INDIVIDUALS OR ENTIRE ECOSYSTEMS? SCIENTISTS DISAGREE. Extinctions of species occurred long before humans arrived on

The Bramble Cay melomys lived solely on a small island at the northern tip of the Great Barrier Reef. It was wiped out in 2016 by sea-level rise.

THE CLAIM:

THE COUNTERPOINT:

PROTECT ECOSYSTEMS, NOT SPECIES

MORALS MATTER

F

or Peter Kareiva, the president and CEO of the Aquarium of the Pacific, the term biodiversity crisis wrongly inflates the role of individual nonhuman species in human well-being and prosperity, when in reality, holistic ecosystems are more important. A marshland that stifles tidal waves may not need 16 different species of shellfish to hold it together. It’s a “dramatic extrapolation,” he says, to conclude that the extinction of one species would imperil the coastline and thus human well-being. Kareiva adheres to a metaphor developed by biologist Paul Ehrlich: Nature is like an airplane, and species are the rivets that hold it together. Without a few rivets, a plane can still fly,

but if you take too many out, the plane will fall apart and crash. The trouble is, Kareiva says, we don’t know how many rivets we can take out. Instead of trying to nail down that number, we would be better served focusing on an ecosystem’s functions — that is, keeping the plane in the sky, rather than saving every rivet. “The first question you ask is, if this species goes functionally extinct, what will be different about the world?” A scientist’s role, he says, should be to answer that question as the evidence society uses to decide whether a species needs to be saved. Some conservation biologists, however, have turned into activists, when instead it is up to society to weigh social and cultural values against what it would take to protect a species. Often that means deciding whether to spend hard-tofind money in conservation or elsewhere.

T

ierra Curry is both a scientist and activist with the Center for Biological Diversity, and she’s well acquainted with the nonprofit cash crunch. Sometimes she feels pushed to concentrate efforts on protecting a more famous species, like the monarch butterfly, rather than the seemingly mundane freshwater mussels in the art that line her walls. A focus on preserving ecosystem services can often bolster financial support, but for her, allowing a species to go extinct is wrong. The funding exists for conservation, but we choose not to use it. “Extinction is a political choice,” she says. “ ‘We only have $100 million, what can we save?’ That’s not the question. The question is, ‘How do we get a billion dollars?’ ” Valuing the natural world in terms of how each individual species benefits humans may be too narrow a view, Curry says. “We’re not always looking at the right metrics.” For

instance, genetic diversity can make ecosystems resilient in the face of drastic changes like climate change and disease, she notes. A single invasive species may replace native species and accomplish an ecosystem function in the short term, but a disease would more easily wipe it out in the future. Diversity also brings honest allure, Curry says. “It’s the box of 128 crayons versus the box of eight crayons. No kid wants the box of eight crayons on the first day of school, when they could have the box of 128 crayons.” Curry’s main motivation, however, is morality. Mass global extinctions have happened five times before, but humans have the capacity to understand that we are causing this one. “Because we know,” she says, “I think we have the moral responsibility to take care of our fellow earthlings.” — IAN MORSE

FROM TOP: IAN BELL/EHP/STATE OF QUEENSLAND/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS; CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY; ANDREW REITSMA/AQUARIUM OF THE PACIFIC

Earth. By that definition, it’s a natural process. But today, extinctions are increasing rapidly — and very often linked to human activities. Take the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent on a remote island uninhabited by humans. In 2016, it became the first mammal to be erased from the planet due to climate change. Some conservationists mourned, but others questioned whether every extinction is something to worry about. In the face of tough decisions about human lifestyles and the climate crisis, a split among scientists is surfacing. Losing one species may not change life as we know it, so perhaps our limited conservation resources should focus on preserving the biodiversity in those systems where it benefits humans. Sometimes, such as when dense forests prevent landslides, a great diversity of species isn’t needed to perform this function. Essentially, we must ask the question: How should we value life?

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer has been collecting data from the International Space Station since 2011, but has yet to turn up evidence for antimatter. The K in T2K refers to Kamioka, Japan, where the Super-Kamiokande Detector resides deep underground. The detector uses this giant, water-filled cylinder to detect neutrinos shot from 180 miles away in Tokai — the T in the project’s name. Recent data show how neutrinos and antineutrinos change from one type to another — at different rates — as they travel.

The Search Goes On NEW PARTICLE ACCELERATOR DATA FROM THE T2K EXPERIMENT COULD FINALLY TELL US WHERE ALL THE ANTIMATTER WENT.

FROM LEFT: KAMIOKA OBSERVATORY/ICRR; JSC/NASA

In 1996, Discover reported on a new experiment that would probe the far universe for signs of antimatter. These particles are theoretically identical in behavior to the ones we know, but with opposing electrical charges, among other differences. Physicists’ theories about the Big Bang say there should have been equal amounts of matter and antimatter created during the event. But we live in a universe full of matter, with little antimatter in sight. There are different explanations for this, including that all of the antimatter might just be too far away to see. The search for distant antistars and antigalaxies was the focus of our April 1996 article, “The Antimatter Mission,” which chronicled the genesis of an experiment called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). The experiment set out to

measure cosmic rays to see if any of them came from antimatter. The AMS has been running on the International Space Station since 2011, but it has yet to turn up much evidence for antigalaxies and the like. It could be that our universe is largely empty of antimatter, which poses another question: Where did it all go? Scientists have long posited that slight differences in how matter and antimatter behave could have led matter to win out in the moments after the Big Bang. But finding those asymmetries has proved difficult. Now, physicists with Japan’s T2K experiment have published data that move us closer to an answer. T2K scientists are tracking a curious property of neutrinos, hard-to-detect particles that rarely interact with matter. Neutrinos change type, or flavor, as they travel — for example, muon neutrinos might turn into electron neutrinos.

The T2K experiment has been watching how both regular neutrinos and antineutrinos oscillate between flavors, and they’ve noticed there’s a slight disparity in how they behave. The transition of a muon neutrino to an electron neutrino happens at a higher rate than that of a muon antineutrino to an electron antineutrino, says Mark Hartz, a particle physicist at Canada’s York University and co-author of a recent Nature paper on the T2K data. The data provide further evidence that there could be some slight asymmetries between normal matter and antimatter, perhaps enough to explain why the universe today is almost exclusively made of matter. But Nobel laureate Samuel Ting, the principal investigator of the AMS experiment, says we need more data to truly say antimatter isn’t out there somewhere. “This neutrino experiment only says, ‘From Earth, we observe in space more matter than antimatter,’ ” he says. “It does not say, ‘Antimatter disappeared.’ ” Ting’s views may not represent the majority opinion among scientists, but the physicist is undaunted: “If you don’t look, then really you will never know.” — NATHANIEL SCHARPING

J U N E 2 0 2 1 . D I S C OVER

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Looking Into Lithium-Ion Batteries THE POWER SURGING THROUGH THESE RECHARGEABLE BATTERIES DEPENDS ON INTRICATE CRYSTAL TOWERS THAT OPERATE LIKE JENGA — SORT OF. Lithium-ion batteries: They’re in almost every phone and laptop, they’re powering zero-emission transportation, and they’re making it easier to transition to wind and solar energy. Let’s demystify how these ubiquitous black boxes store energy — and why they can’t last forever. Every battery has two core parts, an oxide electrode and a graphite electrode. The two electrodes are arranged in symmetrical, layered crystals.

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You can think of each as a Jenga tower whose stability comes from crisscrossing blocks. Rather than wood blocks, every other layer in the graphite electrode tower would be graphite; in the oxide electrode tower, it would be metal oxide. The remaining blocks would be ions of a soft metal called lithium, one of earth’s most widespread elements. In a lithium-ion battery, these ions move between the two electrodes. When you charge your battery, electricity causes the lithium

ions and an electron from the oxide electrode to move to the layers of the graphite electrode. When you use your phone or electric car, those electrons power an electric charge as they, along with the lithium ions, now naturally move back to the layers of the oxide electrode. Imagine you’ve plugged your battery into an outlet to charge. The negative charges of electricity attract positively charged

lithium ions to the graphite electrode. If you picture your battery as Jenga towers, you’d start with several empty spaces in the graphite electrode tower. Then, as the graphite electrode attracts the lithium ions, you slide out the lithium blocks from the oxide electrode tower and into the graphite electrode tower. Once all the spaces are used up on the graphite electrode, your battery is fully charged.

FROM TOP: ANWEBER/DREAMSTIME; ANTON STARIKOV/SHUTTERSTOCK

HOT SCIENCE

Oxide Electrode

Graphite Electrode

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HOLE IN THE OZONE LAYER?

FROM LETT: LIZZIE DRISCOLL/UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM; CRYSTAL-K/SHUTTERSTOCK

A

Each time you slide blocks into a Jenga tower, other blocks shift. Similarly, when lithium travels between the oxide and graphite electrodes, it distorts the neat layers around it. Eventually, the spaces where lithium once fit are no longer stable, and your battery begins to lose its ability to store energy. Elizabeth Driscoll, a chemistry Ph.D. student at the

University of Birmingham, uses Jenga to teach battery science. Overeager students who move blocks too quickly, she says, exemplify what happens when you charge a lithium-ion battery too fast: The electrodes collapse and can no longer hold lithium. If lithium can’t move, the battery can’t store energy and it’s time to buy a new one. — IAN MORSE

lmost 40 years ago, scientists found a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. Ozone molecules absorb UV radiation, acting as a sunscreen for life on Earth. Certain substances — especially chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), once emitted by refrigerators and air conditioners — destroy ozone molecules in our atmosphere. That’s why, in 1987, the United Nations established the Montreal Protocol to regulate CFCs. Did the treaty fix the ozone hole? Yes and no. THE DISCOVERY Concentrations of CFCs OF THE OZONE in the atmosphere have HOLE SHOCKED significantly declined. But they’re not gone for THE WORLD good. Stephen Montzka, AND PROPELLED a research chemist at NATIONS the National Oceanic INTO ACTION. and Atmospheric DECADES LATER, Administration, says WHERE DOES they’ve detected levels of THE PROBLEM CFCs in the atmosphere STAND? that indicate possible unauthorized industrial production. These could delay the ozone layer’s recovery, but they don’t mean game over. “The enhanced levels of CFC-11 that we have noted in the atmosphere represent an amount that will not by itself cause substantial additional harm to the ozone layer if those levels diminish and return to [expected amounts] quickly,” he says. — BÁRBARA PINHO J U N E 2 0 2 1 . D IS C OVER

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HOT SCIENCE

Solomon David — he’s the one smiling on the right — studies gar, an odd fish he hopes will revolutionize research.

The gar’s ancestors first appeared around 157 million years ago, even before the Tyrannosaurus rex.

The One-Man Gar Fanclub MEET THE BIOLOGIST WHO WANTS YOU TO LOVE PREHISTORIC FISH AS MUCH AS HE DOES.

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harp teeth and pointy snouts plaster the walls and bookshelves of Solomon David’s office at Nicholls State University, nested among the bayous of southern Louisiana. It’s like walking into a gar museum — perhaps

the only such in the world. The prehistoric fish that adorns the walls looks like an alligator that has fins instead of feet, a long, narrow snout and armored, diamond-shaped scales. A small stuffed animal gar, custom made from a woman in the U.K. who makes scientifically accurate paleo plushies, sits behind David’s computer chair. Multiple gars from Mexico are mounted on the walls; there, gar is a regional delicacy known locally as pejelagarto — a portmanteau of the Spanish words for “fish” and “lizard.” Next to a whiteboard hangs a

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framed spread depicting a gar swimming in a river, from the children’s magazine Ranger Rick. David sits in middle of this ad-hoc gar display, a lively researcher in his early 40s whose hands move almost as fast as his mouth. His enthusiasm for primitive fishes — living representatives of ancient lineages that were around hundreds of millions of years ago — is infectious. But David wasn’t always interested in prehistoric fishes; it was dinosaurs that initially gripped his interest. “I was always into the

more unusual-looking organisms,” he remembers. When he moved from North Dakota to Ohio as a child, he happened upon an issue of a nature magazine — the very same Ranger Rick now adorning his office wall. In the middle of the magazine was one of the most unusual organisms he had seen. He was fascinated to find out that these dinosaur-looking gar fish were real, present-day creatures. He built a career out of that fascination — which has only benefited the gar. Historically somewhat of an underdog fish, the gar’s fearsome looks and indiscriminate feeding habits have given it a bad reputation among sport anglers and wildlife officials. “In certain states, if you caught a gar, you were not allowed to return it back to the water alive,” David says. “You were required by law to kill it because people thought that they were ruining the habitat or the population of other game fish like largemouth bass or perch.” In Iowa, for

FROM LEFT: COURTESY SOLOMON DAVID; SARAH SAX; SOLOMON DAVID (2)

instance, this law remained in effect through the 1980s. But the gar, which scientists including Charles Darwin have referred to as a “living fossil,” has many traits useful for research into human and ecosystem health. David is determined to make sure the rest of the world knows about them. David runs down a list of interesting facts about the gar: Their ancestors first appeared around 157 million years ago during the late Jurassic period, even before the Tyrannosaurus rex. They have retained certain characteristics that don’t exist in other modern-day fish, such as salmon — for example, their chainmail-like armor of thick scales. And they are genetically much closer to humans than other fish species, such as zebrafish, which David calls the “lab rats” of fish in biomedical research. This last point is especially important; using gar for medical research could potentially open up a slew of interesting insights into human development and disease formation. David is working with evolutionary scientists to help make gars a viable model species for scientific research. With a team of (almost) equally enthusiastic graduate students, David is figuring out ways to more efficiently breed gars in the laboratory to gain a better supply of gars and gar embryos. While species of the fish exist as far north as Canada, wild populations of gar prefer slow-moving, often brackish

The spotted gar is one of seven species worldwide. It lives across a wide swath of North America.

rivers, and are abundant in the floodplains and bayous that surround the university. “Louisiana has this vast natural resource concentrated here that you don’t get in a lot of other places,” David says. “We are kind of like the boots on the ground. We get out there, we can get the fish, and we can send those embryos out to other labs.” While acceptance of gar as a natural and important part of the ecosystem is growing, some species, like the larger alligator gar, are still threatened or even endangered in some states. Outside of his official research, David’s enthusiasm is channeled into educating the general

public about the awesomeness of these prehistoric fishes. And like many scientists, David is guilty of taking his work home — except in his case, he does it quite literally. Today, his home aquarium houses all the different species of gar, from the 2-foot-long spotted gar to the alligator gar, which can grow to more than 8 feet in length. At one point, he was keeping the fish in a room that was later converted to his daughter’s nursery. “My wife and I used to joke that she was probably the only person to ever grow up with all seven species of gars in the room,” he says. If David has his way, she will not be the last. — SARAH SAX J U N E 2 02 1 . D IS C OV ER

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HOT SCIENCE

DOG, YAWN IT! If you ever find yourself yawning during a long Zoom video call, you may soon see yawns spread to the other faces on your screen. Your pet under the desk may even join in. Yawns are contagious, even between dogs and humans, as Discover reported in 2008 and again in 2012. At the time, empathy — the ability to put yourself in another’s shoes — was one of scientists’ most probable explanations, since dogs have been selectively bred to be our companions over millennia. But emerging evidence suggests this reasoning is wrong. To get a better glimpse inside your dog’s mind, researchers examined whether canine contagious

Researchers thought the reason dogs caught yawns from humans was empathy. But when put to the test, the idea didn’t hold up.

yawning follows the same behavioral patterns that empathetic yawning does in humans. For instance, people are both more empathetic toward and likely to contagiously yawn with friends and families than with strangers — what researchers call the familiarity bias. There’s a gender bias as well: Women, on average, report greater feelings of empathy than men, and catch yawns more frequently. But earlier this year, when researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand analyzed previous studies of contagious yawning in dogs, they found no sign of these biases. While dogs do catch yawns from humans — even from audio recordings — results are mixed on whether they’re more likely to yawn after a familiar human does

than a stranger. Likewise, male dogs yawned just as much as females. The researchers added an empathy test of their own: How often do dogs catch yawns from humans who are nice — or not so nice — to them? In the study, an experimenter would either play with or pet the dog, or blatantly ignore the dog and avoid all eye contact. The anti-social experimenter would also show the dog a treat and command it to perform a trick — and then eat the treat themselves. But this did not affect the dogs’ yawning susceptibility. They caught yawns from both nice and anti-social experimenters. Because they don’t share the same patterns, it seems that contagious yawning is not a sign of empathy in dogs.

It’s still unclear why we yawn in the first place. One hypothesis is that yawning is a stress response that increases alertness by increasing blood flow to the brain and cooling it. Having yawns spread could help coordinate a group’s alertness, says Alex Taylor, an evolutionary psychologist and the University of Auckland study’s senior author. However, this “is one nice evolutionary story that we don’t have that much evidence for,” he says. This isn’t to say your dog doesn’t have empathy at all. Instead, the study shows that “animal minds are still a mystery,” Taylor says. “We don’t know what your dog is thinking.” — RICHARD SIMA

The researchers added an empathy test of their own: How often do dogs catch yawns from humans who are nice — or not so nice — to them?

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FROM TOP: WAYHOME STUDIO/SHUTTERSTOCK; PRZEMEK ICIAK/SHUTTERSTOCK

YOUR POOCH MAY YAWN WHEN YOU DO, BUT THAT’S NOT EMPATHY.

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WHAT WE’RE READING

More Pages to Turn

The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything

Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization

By Michio Kaku

By Edward Slingerland

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Within the first few lines, Drunk will have you snorting beer out of your nose. Slingerland’s rich brew of history, anthropology, neuroscience and chemistry tackles one of humanity’s most perplexing paradoxes: our thirst for a low-grade poison that wreaks havoc on our brains and bodies. There’s even splashes of practical, realworld advice, like how to bring booze into professional gatherings without excluding nondrinkers. Slingerland’s thoughtful deep dive is both illuminating and, fittingly, intoxicating.

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Empire of Ants: The Hidden Worlds and Extraordinary Lives of Earth’s Tiny Conquerors By Susanne Foitzik and Olaf Fritsche; translated by Ayça Türkoğlu Have you ever wondered what goes on in the miniature world right outside your window? Biologist Foitzik teams up with journalist Fritsche to zoom in — sometimes literally, with gorgeous color photography — on these intriguing insects. The book is brimming with fascinating facts, such as that bullet ants give the most painful stings on record or that leafcutter ants don’t actually eat leaves. Empire of Ants will give you a newfound appreciation for the pint-sized civilizations thriving right in your backyard. — A.O.

WATCH LIST

Human Nature

Directed by Adam Bolt

This documentary on CRISPR, the game-changing gene-editing technology, was first released in 2019. But what better time to revisit than now, in light of biochemist Jennifer Doudna and microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier, two of CRISPR’s creators, winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry? The film features a cavalcade of experts excitedly recounting how the tech came to be and its implications for the future. If you’re curious about genetics or biotechnology and have 90 minutes to spare, this densely packed doc, available on both PBS Passport and Netflix, is well worth your time. — A.O.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE; LITTLE, BROWN SPARK/HACHETTE BOOK GROUP; WORKMAN PUBLISHING; WONDER COLLABORATIVE

hen I was a college student in the late 2000s, I wasn’t all that interested in reading about science. That all changed when I picked up theoretical physicist Michio Kaku’s Physics of the Impossible. As he explored the plausibility of science fiction concepts like death rays, force fields and time travel, it was like a switch flipped on in my brain. Suddenly, topics that had felt boring or inscrutable, like theoretical physics, became compelling and accessible. That same electricity suffuses Kaku’s latest book, which takes on another mindbending topic: the search for a mathematical formula that would combine all the known forces in the universe into a single theory. Such an equation, he argues, would illuminate some of science’s greatest mysteries, like what came before the Big Bang and the possibility of parallel universes. The sprawling tale begins in ancient Greece, with the origin of atomic theory. Then, Kaku fast-forwards to chronicle the exploration of other theories that forever changed the world, like Newton’s laws of motion and gravity and quantum mechanics, before unraveling his leading candidate for this unifying formula — string theory, a field he has made significant contributions to since the 1970s. It’s a delight to read Kaku’s saga of major milestones throughout this quest, like the so-called “battle of the currents” between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, in sweeping, operatic terms. But, ultimately, it’s Kaku’s ability to take ideas that defy comprehension and render them with utter clarity that makes this book a must-read. — ALEX ORLANDO

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