BBC Knowledge 2009-04 Issue 4

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April 2009 issue 4 $5.99

FOR R THE CURI CURIOUS MIND ND SCIENCE • HISTORY • NATURE

ROBERT BURNS Revolution, democracy, terror – and poetry p70

i

POLAR SCIENCE Join us on a journey to the bottom of the Earth p34

p p2 nt for the dodo u h e h T • 2 p4 n o ti st century evolu 1 2 • 9 5 p5 s n i k w hard Da • Interview: Ric A ‘yegg’: a burglar who robs only safes

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ALBATROSS A LBATROSS Stunning S tunning pictures i of the world’s largest seabirds p48

PLUS P LU US

Q&A: What is the origin of life? How old is the Earth? Are plants intelligent? And how did d eyes evolve? p81

A L L

N E W

E P I S O D E S

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The cover HISTORY

70 Robert Burns Scotland’s favourite son, born 250 years ago, was a political radical, championing the burgeoning movement towards the controversial idea of democracy sparked by the American and French revolutions SCIENCE

COVER: PA PHOTOS, CORBIS X2, MARTIN REDFERN, NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

34 Antarctica Join Martin Redfern on a journey of discovery to the bleakest continent on Earth as he discovers what this frozen wilderness can teach us about our past – and how to preserve our future

DARWIN 200

EVOLUTION SPECIAL Commemorating Darwin’s 200th birthday with 22 pages of articles exploring the subject of evolution 22 Is evolution dead? Steve Jones and PZ Myers debate whether human evolution is finished

NATURE

26 In search of the dodo

48 Albatross

42 Evolution in action

There are up to 25 different species of this remarkable sea bird, most of which are now endangered. Celebrated photographer Tui de Roy has travelled thousands of miles to learn more about them

59 Interview: Richard Dawkins

The strange tale of the 19th century race to describe the dodo Meet Richard Lenski, whose 21st century lab is a hive ve of evolutionary activity

We asked the outspoken scientist and author about evolution and consciousness

81 Ask the experts A guest panel of biologists use the latest research to answer the questions that Darwin couldn’t ld ’

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Contents Mar/Apr 2009

74

How safe are we from catastrophe?

SCIENCE HISTORY DARWIN 200

NATURE DARWIN 200

HISTORY HISTORY SCIENCE

SPL X3, REX X2, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, CORBIS, THE EYES OF THE JUNGLE, BUCHER PUBLISHING, PHOTOGRAPHY © THORSTEN MILSE, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

DARWIN 200

FEATURES 26 In search of the dodo COVER STORY We unearth the bizarre saga of the 19th century race to describe the dodo, complete with double-dealing, exploitation and subterfuge

34 Journey to the end of the Earth COVER STORY Our man in Antarctica reports back on research at the bottom of the planet and explains how what’s going on there might just save us all

40 What did the Presidents do next? As ‘Dubya’ checks out of America’s most famous address, we take a look at how previous residents have whiled away their twilight years

42 Evolution in action COVER STORY Carl Zimmer visited biologist Richard Lenski in his Michigan lab to see how he watches evolution take place before his eyes every day

48 Portfolio: albatross COVER STORY This most remarkable sea bird soars across thousands of miles of open ocean in search of a mate and a meal. Our glorious photos tell its tale

59 Interview: Richard Dawkins COVER STORY Perhaps the most famous – and controversial – evolutionary biologist to emerge since Darwin himself speaks candidly. As always...

66 Nazis on the silver screen It’s now 70 years since the outbreak of WWII, yet the Nazis remain captivating box office draws. How has history portrayed humankind’s worst criminals?

70 Robert Burns

Biologist Richard Lenski keeps an eye on evolution

With revolution in the air in America and France, the bard of Scotland emerged as a champion of democracy – the terrorism of its day

89

COVER STORY

74 The Big Idea: catastrophism History has often dismissed tales of great floods and meteor collisions as mere fable, but now science is discovering the truth

32 Subscribe Never miss an issue of BBC Knowledge Magazine – and save money into the bargain! 4

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Lapping up the best new books and websites

REGULARS 6 Inbox Get something off your chest, or simply share your thoughts and experiences with other readers

10 Snapshot

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66

Amazing pictures explore the past, present and future of life on Earth

Can perfection be improved upon?

Nazis on film: from propaganda to paranoia

Update 17 Latest Intelligence

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Are we floating alone in space?

Not such a teddy bear: Roosevelt in retirement

21 Worlds Apart

DARWIN 200

The BBC’s Europe editor asks when is the English language not plain English

22 Comment & Analysis Have we now evolved so far that we’ve out-run evolution itself? We tackle both sides of the argument

24 World News in Context David Keys looks at the causes of last year’s Russian invasion of Georgia b – and finds a tangled web

81 Q&A O Our ur usual experts are nel of joined by a panel iissue sue biologists this is COVER STORY

24 A new cold war? Georgia’s dispute with Russia

Resource 89 Nature gle ffrom your sofa Explore the jungle

92 Science Try some armchair experiments

94 History Step back in time without getting up

96 In the Know

59 Inside the mind of Richard Dawkins

Train your brain with our testing puzzle and quiz pages

98 The Last Word Singularity: what the world doesn’t need now is a new group of religious fundamentalists confusing science with fanaticism, says John Horgan

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inbox Welcome 2009 MARKS THE bicentennial of the birth of world famous British naturalist Charles Darwin, and 150 years since the publication of his groundbreaking book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. And since there is no single subject better suited to BBC Knowledge Magazine than the history of the science of nature, spanning as it does all three of our core subjects, we’ve devoted 22 pages of this issue to evolution. We’re kicking off our ‘Darwin 200’ coverage with the race between two 19th century academics to become the fi rst to classify the dodo. Alfred Newton and Richard Owen each felt his career depended upon his name making the history books. Their squabbles make a thrilling story of treachery, subterfuge and deceit as they hunt for bones on the island of Mauritius and rush to study them back in Britain (p26).

Back in the 21st century, American science journalist Carl Zimmer visits the Michigan laboratory of a man observing evolution happen before his eyes in a way that Darwin could have only dreamt. Richard Lenski has been growing ‘lines’ of bacteria for more than 20 years, watching them grow and mutate, and thinks he might have even observed an entirely new species (p42). Creating havoc Lenski’s work is greatly admired by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. We are delighted to have secured an interview with the provocative scientist, in which he tackles head-on the creationist notion that natural selection is a theory of random chance. And lest you fear we’re presenting a one-sided view of the knotty challenges of religion and evolution, two highly regarded members of the scientific community, Kenneth Miller (a Roman Catholic) and Daniel Dennett (an atheist)

debate whether the theory of evolution is compatible with divine creation (p59). There’s plenty about other topics, too. As International Polar Year draws to a close, Martin Redfern recalls his trip to Antarctica aboard a scientific research vessel and catches up with the experts to see what they’re fi nding out about climate change (p34). Two recent war fi lms with a twist leave us pondering the legacy of Nazi Germany (p66). And 250 years after the birth of Scottish bard Robert Burns, we ask what resonance his poems have today? There’s plenty of food for thought, so do write and let us know what you think of the subjects we’ve ve covered this issue. e.

Sally Palmer [email protected]

AMONG THIS ISSUE’S EXPERTS

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RICHARD DAWKINS Biologist/ author The prominent British author and evolutionary biologist is a professorial fellow at New College, Oxford, UK. He explains his controversial criticism of the notions of creationism and intelligent design. See page 59

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TUI DE ROY Wildlife photographer

Tui spends around half of her time on location, doing whatever it takes to get the best photos – be it dangling from a rope in a rainforest or waiting around in a blizzard. Her albatross photos are a rare treat. See page 48

ROBERT CRAWFORD Historian/ author The Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews, UK, has recently published a new biography of Robert Burns. On the bard’s 250th birthday, Robert addresses Burns’ passion for democracy. See page 70

CARL ZIMMER Popular science writer Carl lives in Guilford, CT, from where he writes his highly-regarded blog, as well as science essays for publications such as the New York Times. He visits biologist Richard Lenski in his lab. See page 42

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US YOUR LETTERS Has something you’ve read in BBC Knowledge Magazine intrigued or excited you? Write in and share it with us. We’d love to hear from you and we’ll publish a selection of your comments in forthcoming issues. Email us at [email protected] We welcome your letters, while reserving the right to edit them for length and clarity. By sending us your letter you permit us to publish it in the magazine and/or on our website. We regret that we cannot always reply personally to letters.

Correspondence Superscrapers of old BBC Knowledge Magazine is the best I’ve seen in my 64 years. I have only a slight negative comment in regards to the article ‘Rise of the Superscraper’ ( Jan/Feb 09). It lacks a comprehensive history of building in antiquity, except for the box ‘The fi rst skyscrapers’. The Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Asians, South and North Americans also constructed structures using concrete, balusters and iron. The Great Pyramid of Khufu is 147m (482ft) high. There is also Machu Picchu in Peru, the Temple of Amon in Egypt built around 1250BC, the Parthenon of Ancient Greece, the Colosseum of Rome,

and especially the Colossos of Rhodes (constructed between 292-280BC). It was the fi rst recorded freestanding metal and masonry structure. The assumed height was 33m (110 ft). It was engineered with the same understanding of a massive base, tapering internal metal (iron and bronze) support and fi nished with masonry. Peter Shoff, St Louis, MO

Ed: Last November, it was announced that a 21st century Colossus is being planned for Rhodes’s harbour area. Rather than attempting to replicate the ancient wonder of the world, the new Colossus is to be a dramatic light scupture. Like its namesake, it will symbolise peace and be partially constructed from melted-down

© Bristol Magazines Ltd 2009 All rights reserved. No part of BBC Knowledge Magazine may be reproduced in any form or by any means either wholly or in part, without prior written permission of the publisher. Not to be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade at more than the recommended retail price or in mutilated condition. Printed by Fry Communication Ltd, USA.

weapons. It’s still at the drawing board stage right now, but it’s planned to be much taller than the original and to stand on an outer pier in Rhodes’s harbour area. Its creator, German artist Gert Hof, plans to make it the world’s largest light installation.

A small world The ‘It’s a small world’ article (Nov/Dec 08 issue) caught my attention, because I recently came back from Mexico, having visited Cancun, Mexico City, Ek Balam and Chichen Itza. While there, I was involved with being in a Penn and Teller show and discovered that Rob (one of the Showtime sound men) used to work with Leatherface (a videographer that follows our ghosthunting crew around in Sacramento). They both worked on MTV’s Viva La Bam series at one time and know each other well. Paul Dale Roberts, Elk Grove, CA

The publisher, editor and authors accept no responsibility in respect of any products, goods or services which may be advertised or referred to in this issue or for any errors, omissions, misstatements or mistakes in any such advertisements or references. BBC KNOWLEDGE (ISSN 1757-9929) is published bi-monthly by Bristol Magazines Ltd., 116 Ram Cat Alley, Suite 201, Seneca, SC 29678-3263. Application to mail at Periodicals Postage rate pending at Seneca, SC and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to BBC KNOWLEDGE, PO Box 688, Mt. Morris, IL 61054-0688

BBC Knowledge Magazine is a BBC Worldwide magazine Published by Bristol Magazines Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of BBC Worldwide

One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World looks set for rebirth

It’s a small world indeed – but you wouldn’t want to paint it

Mar/Apr 2009

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STEVE WINTER, WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR IS JOINTLY OWNED BY THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, LONDON, UK AND BBC WILDLIFE MAGAZINE, ALAMY

Snow Tiga To my amazement, when I opened your magazine there was a photo of my cat Tiga. Your beautiful photo was, of course, really a snow leopard, but this cat looks exactly like Tiga. My Tiga is unusual in that she has a bobcat for a playmate and she also plays with the deer each morning. They lick her, and she whacks them anyway. Both cats have the same pose, the same coloration, the same long, stiff tail, the same long, straight back, a small head and huge back feet. I have sent you her photo so you can see for yourself. The interesting thing to me is that other wild predators in my area seem to check her out. They don’t kill her or frighten her, they just look at her and then leave. I love your magazine, especially the variety of short stories and the breathless photos. Thank you for your work on your readers’ behalf.

Tiga (left) is certainly the indisputable leader of the gang – and far less camera-shy than the snow leopard (above)

Andrea Heyser, Rough and Ready, CA

Expanding minds Not a day goes by that I don’t draw on one of your articles when chatting with friends. Thank you for expanding my mind on so many varied subjects! I love it.

the magazine that she bought us both subscriptions for Christmas without ever having seen the issue! Can’t wait to see what else is in store. Alyssa Varley, New York, NY

Pene Herman, Las Vegas, NV

Organic food and pesticides

Thank you so much for such a fun magazine! I read the fi rst issue on a train ride home for Thanksgiving, and all weekend kept talking about the interesting articles I’d read. My sister was so intrigued by

In answer to the question ‘Does cooking destroy pesticide residues?’ (Nov/Dec 08), your expert concluded that the only way to be entirely sure of avoiding pesticides is to stick to organic produce.

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Mar/Apr 2009

This statement is technically incorrect, although a recent survey suggested that approximately 70 per cent of consumers do purchase organic foods to avoid pesticides. But organic food production methods permit the use of synthetic substances if they are on the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances. It’s true that a limitation in available pesticides and restrictions on their use with organic food production does generally result in fewer

pesticide residues being found in organic crops. However, it is important to consider what risks, if any, are posed by pesticide residues in conventional food. In their 2006 paper, published in Journal of Food Science, Carl Winter and Sarah Davis say: “typical dietary exposure to pesticide residues in foods poses minimal risks to humans. From a practical standpoint, the marginal benefits of reducing human exposure to pesticides in the diet through increased

Get in touch

consumption of organic produce appear to be insignificant.” Jamie Hale, Winchester, KY www.maxcondition.com

Luis replies: It’s quite true that some chemical pesticides are allowed on organic crops. Many of these are water-soluble, inorganic salts that do not build up in plant tissues. Organic farmers can also use Bacillus thuringiensis (a soil bacterium that is toxic to many insects), and pyrethrum and rotenone (both of which are organic compounds). However, Lotter (Journal of Sustainable Agriculture, 2003) found that fewer than 10 per cent of

organic farmers actually use these three compounds regularly. But you are right. Although not even growing all your own vegetables would completely eliminate pesticides from your diet, since a proportion of pesticide residue is actually from long term soil contamination. But the question was about reducing the pesticide levels in the food we actually eat and I still maintain that starting with organic produce is a much better way to do this than anything you can do while preparing the food.

Telephone: +44 (0)117 927 9009 Website: www.bbcknowledge.com Email: [email protected] Address: BBC Knowledge Magazine, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol BS1 3BN, UK

EDITORIAL TEAM

Editor Sally Palmer

Contributing Editor – history David Musgrove

Managing Editor Paul McGuinness

Contributing Editor – nature Sophie Stafford

Editorial Consultant John Horgan

Contributing Editor – science Jheni Osman

ART & PICTURES

You can run from pesticides, but you can’t hide from them

CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS 왘 Our podcast review on p94 of the Jan/Feb 09 issue mistakenly attributed Ronald Reagan’s Tear Down This Wall speech to JFK. Thanks to those who wrote in to point this out to us.

JOIN OUR

READER PANEL We want to know what you think. After all, the more we know about you, the better placed we are to bring you the best magazine possible. So we would like to invite you to join our reader panel. Interested? Log on to panel.bbcmagazines.com. Fill out the registration survey, and we’ll be in touch from time to time to ask your opinions on BBC Knowledge Magazine and the world around you. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Art Editor Sheu-Kuie Ho

Picture Editor Sarah Kennett

[email protected]

[email protected]

CONTRIBUTORS Robert Attar, Su Barton, Mark Blackmore, Susan Blackmore, David J Bodycombe, Chris Bowlby, Fergus Collins, Robert Crawford, Russell Deeks, Daniel C Dennett, Mike Dilger, Len Fisher, Will Gater, Julian Hume, Peter Jones, Steve Jones, David Keys, Chris Madden, Mark Mardell, Robert Matthews, Rupert Matthews, Kenneth R Miller, Gareth Mitchell, Roger Moorhouse, PZ Myers, Chris Packham, Martin Redfern, Nick Rennison, Andy Ridgway, Tui de Roy, Paul Simons, Agent Starling, Ian Taylor, Peter Thompson, Luis Villazon, Paul Whitfield, Carl Zimmer

MARKETING, PRESS & PR Marketing Manager Marie Spicer Press For press enquiries contact [email protected]

PRODUCTION Production Director Sarah Powell Production Manager Louisa James Reprographics Tony Hunt

THANKS Thanks to all our friends at BBC Worldwide America and the BBC Knowledge channel for their help on this project.

PUBLISHING & ADVERTISING Publishing Director Andy Benham [email protected] Managing Director Andy Marshall Editorial Director Nick Brett Publishing Consultancy Evergreen Marketing

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Snapshot

NATURE

Waterworld Across the world, coral reefs are endangered from over-fishing, pollution and global warming. In response, artificial reefs are being used to accelerate the process of rebuilding them. The structures, developed by Biorock Inc, are energised by a low-voltage electrical current that flows through the steel frame. This causes minerals from the sea water to form on the frame, resulting in a thin limestone layer. Scientists can then attach small pieces of coral to the structures, and the coral quickly becomes cemented into place by the accumulating limestone. The transplanted coral grows very quickly – four times as fast as it would in an entirely natural environment – and recent evidence suggests it is better able to survive stressful events. This reef sits in Permuteran Bay on the Indonesian island of Bali.

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WWW.BRANDONCOLE.COM

BALI, INDONESIA

Sobering up

CORBIS

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA Beer barrels in the USA are emptied at the start of the prohibition era. A national prohibition amendment was ratified in 1919, coming into effect a year later and lasting until 1933. Opposition to the sale of alcohol, led by the American Temperance Society and often fuelled by religious feeling, had become widespread in the early 19th century, encouraging many states to implement laws clamping down on drinking. However, the ban on alcohol proved very difficult to enforce and the sale of illegal drink led to growth in the criminal underworld. In particular, Chicago gangster Al Capone made many millions of dollars through illegal alcohol sales, ruling a nationwide bootlegging business by the end of the 20s. This helped undermine support for prohibition, which was eventually repealed in 1933.

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HISTORY

Living the high life

CAMERAPRESS

HONG KONG About 60 per cent of Hong Kong’s seven million inhabitants live in highrise blocks like these. With Earth’s urban population at three billion – greater than in rural areas since 2000 – cities are desperately trying to preserve their remaining green spaces, and the only way is up. At first glance, this is a sea of identical apartments. But look closer and you’ll see differences – curtains, blinds and laundry hung to dry. The city has an average of 6200 people per square kilometre, the second highest population density in the world after Monaco. Globally, the average is 48 people per square kilometre. During the 2003 SARS outbreak, entire apartment blocks were quarantined by the authorities. But being part of a dense urban population is not so bad – the average life expectancy of Hong Kong residents is 82 years, the highest in the world.

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SCIENCE

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THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

왘 How do salmon return home? p18 왘 Barbie at 50 p19 왘 Recreating Jurassic Park with woolly mammoth DNA p20 왘 The future of evolution debated p22 왘 The Vatican goes green p23 CO2 has been located in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-sized planet orbitting the star HD 189733 (ringed), 64 lightyears from Earth

SCIENCE

ASTRONOMY

Is anybody home?

An artist’s impression of planet HD 189733b

New discovery on a distant planet heats up the hunt for ET arbon dioxide, a

NASA/ESA, SPL

C sign of life, has been discovered in the atmosphere around a faraway planet. The planet is too hot to be habitable, but the discovery represents a major step forward in the search for life on other worlds. Cosmologists hunting for extraterrestrial life look for certain chemical markers such as water and methane, and this is the fi rst time carbon dioxide (CO2 ) has been detected on such a distant planet. The planet where the CO2 was found goes by the rather forgettable name of HD 189733b. It’s in another solar system and is a staggering 64 light years away – it would

years take us over two million ye shuttle. to get there in a space shutt Giovanna Tinetti from University College London, UK, and her colleagues made the discovery using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. “The presence of CO2 was predicted by models,” she says, “but there’s always a big difference between the models and observation.”

revealing its make-up. But the complications don’t end there. When astronomers look at the light from a planet, they also see light from its parent star. The really difficult task is to subtract the star’s light from what they see to reveal the planet’s ‘light fi ngerprint’. Alan Boss at the Carnegie Institution of Washington is

This is the first time CO2 has been detected on such a distant planet Current technology doesn’t allow direct measurements of the atmosphere around a distant planet, so its contents have to be calculated by studying the light the planet emits – the pattern of wavelengths

an expert in extrasolar planets (planets in other solar systems) and is impressed with the fi nding. “A little over 10 years ago we couldn’t even fi nd these other planets,” he says. “It’s a tribute to the rapid progress

in this field that we have gone from 0-60mph in an incredibly short period of time.” As technology advances, scientists will be able to analyse the atmospheres of more planets orbiting smaller stars, which are likely to be cooler than the 730oC (1346oF) roaring inferno that is HD 189733b. “I think the Universe is probably teaming with life,” says Boss. “It’s not likely to be ET-type creatures that are going to say ‘hi’ to us – a lot will be bacteria and maybe advanced cockroaches, who knows? But we’d want to make sure we take our antibiotics with us when we go because there’s going to be some bad stuff in the water.”

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Fishy goings on: how do these salmon find their way home?

The fish follow a memory, or ‘imprint’, of the magnetic field

NATURE MIGRATION

Global Positioning Salmon Fish may use Earth’s magnetic field to find their way t has long been known

I that salmon return

to the spot where they were born to produce their own offspring, but how they navigate up to thousands of miles across open sea to get there has always been something of a mystery. A new theory suggests that salmon – and sea turtles – use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate. It appears they follow a memory or ‘imprint’ of the magnetic field at the location where they were born.

COUNT DOWN 144 million euros ($200m) are to be spent on renovating a German resort, originally a spa for Nazis.

GETTY X2, SPL, PA PHOTOS, REX

100 miles (160km) per gallon is the goal for 22 teams entered so far in the Progressive Auto X Prize for ecologically sound cars.

8 is the number of arms that a creature that walked the Earth 300 million years before the dinosaurs is believed to have had.

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Mar/Apr 2009

The Earth’s magnetic field varies shifts over time, so it can’t be used for pinpoint accuracy. So as the salmon gets closer to their target location, says the theory, something else kicks in. Once they have negotiated the high seas, they can use the chemical signature of the river water to find the right place to spawn. Scientists believe sea turtles use a similar process. Understanding how the fish and turtles navigate could help with their conservation. “We’ve based our idea on two

findings,” explains Kenneth Lohmann, Professor of Biology at the University of North Carolina. “Firstly, salmon and sea turtles are remarkably sensitive to the Earth’s magnetic field. Secondly, different areas of coastline are marked by different magnetic fields.” Since only one in 4000 sea turtles survives to reproductive age, it’s more plausible to test the theory in salmon. The ideal experiment would be to raise the fish in a different area, and therefore different

magnetic field, to their actual birthplace. If they return to this spot to spawn years later, it’s the magnetic field they were using. “It would be extremely complicated to test,” says Lohmann. “I have been talking with various fisheries’ biologists and we hope to establish a collaborative team to do this, but at present there are no defi nitive plans.” It is thought this ‘natal homing’ takes place so the creatures know they are producing their eggs in an environment where they are likely to develop safely. Six of the seven species of marine turtles are listed as endangered or critically endangered. Artificial magnetic changes could be used to guide them to protected beaches to lay their eggs. Salmon populations could also be reestablished in rivers where they have been wiped out.

HISTORY ARCHAEOLOGY

Field of dreams Imagine scouring a rain-swept field looking for remnants from an wartime air crash with a metal detector when you stumble across a 2000-year-old treasure. That’s exactly what happened to Maurice Richardson. The artefact, which he found in Nottinghamshire, England, in 2005 is an Iron Age gold and silver choker known as a torc. Archaeologists think it was made by the Iceni tribe once headed by the formidable queen Boudica. It would have been made from dark gold alloy wires that were twisted together, and would have been worn by a powerful person – male or female – of high social standing. British law means that the finder receives half the money, with the rest going to the land owner. So Richardson, a tree surgeon, made a tidy sum when the torc was sold to the local council for £350,000 ($531,000). The choker was recently displayed at the British Museum in London to highlight the growing number of treasure finds in the UK.

Band of gold: Richardson dug up a small fortune

NEWS IN BRIEF

MILESTONES 50 years ago

Dead famous

March 1959: the world’s first Barbie doll hit the stores, clad in a black and white zebra swimsuit. Played with by millions of little girls since, Barbie’s existence is all thanks to Ruth Handler, wife of Mattel co-founder Elliott. Ruth watched her daughter, Barbara, playing and realised there was a gap in the market for an adultlooking doll. The prototype Barbie was based on a German toy called Bild Lilli, whose design was re-worked for the US market. The doll was named after Ruth and Elliot’s daughter. Around 350,000 Barbies were sold in the first year alone.

The cult of celebrity started earlier than you might think. Historian Elizabeth Barry of the University of Warwick, UK, says the modern fascination with the rich and famous dates back to obituaries that were published in the 1700s. Periodicals detailing the demise of well-known figures were incredibly popular, with the definition of who was noteworthy ever-widening.

An original Barbie doll fetches thousands of dollars today

Is new face-scanning technology set to foil terrorists?

SCIENCE SECURITY

Great Scot!

A face in the crowd Face recognition software goes 3D acial recognition

F systems that can spot a terrorist in a crowd could soon be used at airports, according to some experts. The technology would build a 3D image of passengers’ faces and check them against photos of terror suspects. Systems that use standard two-dimensional photographs have been available for years, but they can come unstuck if the passenger’s face isn’t in the same position when it’s scanned as the face in the suspect’s photo. This pretty much rules out any covert scanning. But 3D photos would mean passengers could be photographed at a distance and from any angle. Dirk Colbry at Arizona State University and George Stockman at Michigan State University are researching 3D security face scanning. “The hope of face recognition is that you could use a telephoto lens, and project out into a crowd and identify someone,” says Colbry. Colbry and Stockman have been testing the accuracy of 3D facial recognition that uses a laser to measure facial

dimensions. A photograph is taken, and then a horizontal plane of laser light passes over a person’s face. This creates a 3D representation which can be checked against any other photograph by measuring the distances between several points around the nose and eyes. If these dimensions equal those in the original, you have a match. In one test, the 3D scans were 99 per cent accurate.

You could use a telephoto lens into a crowd and identify someone Not everyone is convinced. One criticism is that photographs of suspected terrorists can be grainy, making recognition tough. But the scientists believe it’s worth persevering. “Current scanners take two to five seconds to scan a face, and the person has to cooperate,” says Colbry. “The new technology isn’t available to do real-time scanning yet. But it will be soon and we want to be ahead of the game.”

A long-lost fragment of the black wedding dress worn by Scottish poet Robert Burns’ bride Jean Amour, in 1788, has been found in a San Francisco auction house by one of her descendents. It will be shown at the new Burns Museum in Scotland in 2010. The fragment was last publicly displayed in 1896, before being sold to an American buyer in 1907. (For our Burns article see p70.)

Rescue me A computer model developed by the US Coast Guard and the University of Portsmouth, UK, will help rescue professionals to determine when to call off searches at sea. The model will allow them to predict how long someone could survive. It aims to support the US Coast Guard’s target of saving 93 per cent of victims annually.

When to stop searching is a tough decision

Mar/Apr 2009

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ROUND UP KEEPING ABREAST OF THE TOP SCIENCE, HISTORY AND NATURE RESEARCH FROM AROUND THE WORLD

EVOLUTION The mystery of how the turtle came to have a shell may have been solved by a Chinese fossil. The fossil is thought to have been a descendent of the turtle that only had a shell on its underside. This seems to prove the theory that the shell formed from below the backbone and ribs rather than as bony plates on the skin. The creature is thought to have lived predominantly in the water – its underbelly would have not needed such protection had it lived on land.

The shell can be seen on the fossilised creature’s underbelly. (Its head is to the right and it is viewed from below)

왘 http://bit.ly/2qC6YK Nature

INSTITUTE OF VERTEBRATE PALAEONTOLOGY & PALAEANTHROPOLOGY BEIJING, GETTY X4, SPL X4

SPACE

GENETICS

Volcanic activity might have continued on the dark side of the Moon longer than first thought. Theory has it that the Moon was formed when a large planet crashed into the young Earth, breaking a chunk off. In its early years, the Moon experienced volcanic eruptions, just like on Earth. Now researchers analysing images from a Japanese lunar orbiter think some of the volcanic deposits are younger than expected – shedding new light on the Moon’s evolution. 왘 http://bit.ly/oh9B Science

The side of moon few have seen

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Mar/Apr 2009

Recreating these is a mammoth task The genes that made up the genetic code of the long-extinct woolly mammoth have been identified. The DNA was taken from the hairs on two carcasses preserved in the Siberian permafrost, and deciphered. The finding could be used to bring the mammoth back to life by inserting its DNA sequences into the genetic code of an elephant – in theory at least. The research shows that the mammoth’s code differs from that of the African elephant by as little as 0.6 per cent. 왘 http://bit.ly/zfpc Nature

TECHNOLOGY Scientists say the cell phone of the future will be voicecharged, instead of needing to be plugged in. Researchers have been investigating the use of piezoelectric materials, which generate voltage when a force is applied. They have found these materials are most effective when produced in units the size of a few atoms. The finding could be a significant step towards self-powered devices. 왘 http://bit.ly/8DJG Physical review B Can we harness the power of speech?

PALAEONTOLOGY

This Scottish island shares a landscape with Wyoming Ancient footprints found in Wyoming and on the Scottish island of Skye could have been left by similar species of dinosaur. The prints, thousands of miles apart, are said to be indistinguishable. They were found in rock formations and are about 170 million years old. Britain and the US formed part of the same land mass millions of years ago but it’s not thought a mass migration is responsible because of the distance involved. 왘 http://bit.ly/tm3j Scottish Journal of Geology

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WORLDS APART MARK MARDELL Is there anything we can do to stop ageing?

NEUROLOGY

HEALTH

Face blindness, where otherwise capable people are unable to recognise faces, may be down to sufferers having fewer nerve connections in their white matter. White matter is the nerve tissue in the brain that links areas of grey matter, where information is processed. Scientists from the US, UK, Canada and Israel made the discovery by scanning the brains of congenital prosopagnosia sufferers. The condition is known to affect two per cent of the world population.

Scientists may have found one of the main culprits of ageing – a faulty DNA repair mechanism. Researchers in the US discovered that, in mice cells, a group of genes called sirtuins usually stop other genes becoming active by continually maintaining the protective coat around them. As cells age, they are less able to do this, so the genes are switched on and produce many of the symptoms associated with ageing. The research could help provide a ‘treatment’ for ageing.

왘 http://bit.ly/8g4i Nature Neuroscience

왘 http://bit.ly/4l7nvi Cell

GEOLOGY It now seems that Earth would have looked similar to the way it looks today soon after it was formed billions of years ago, with oceans and life. Traditionally, it has been thought that our planet was a hellish, dry world for a long period of time. But analysis of ancient mineral grains known as zircons inside volcanic rocks in Australia show it was a very different place to the world that has been predicted. 왘 http://bit.ly/16rJu Nature

It’s always been a green and pleasant land

WILDLIFE Some groups of land iguanas on the Galapagos Islands could be under threat. An international team of scientists investigated the genetic make-up of the lizards living on the Pacific Ocean islands that were the inspiration for Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. They found that in some clusters of iguanas, each of the dinosaur-like creatures has a similar set of genes. This could create a problem if their environment changes – if it gets hotter, for instance. If the lizards had a wide range of genes, it’s more likely that some of them would be well adapted to the heat. The finding could shape conservation plans. 왘 http://bit.ly/NEJw Molecular Ecology These iguanas don’t like change

We share a common tongue – we just use different lips Across continental Europe, in museums, on aeroplanes, in stores and hotels, it is clear that English is Europe’s second language. Of course, this is mainly because it is the language of the world’s only superpower, the language of pop music and of Hollywood movies. But I also like to think its because, jackdawlike, we delight in borrowing shiny new words from all over. It would be foolish to pretend there are not family disagreements between speakers of British and American English. “Two nations divided by a common language” has been variously attributed to Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. Whoever said it, it clearly strikes a chord. There seems to be little rhyme nor reason behind some of the better-known divergences. ‘Fall’, short for the delightful mediaeval expression ‘season of the fall of leaves’ is far more poetic than Britain’s raw Latin ‘autumn’. But I fi nd ‘sidewalk’ is prosaically literal when compared to ‘pavement’ from the old French word for smoothed stone. Many American coinings are a gift to any language. There is no trouble with borrowings from Native American languages, like papoose or kayak. One of my favourite words is the glorious “In England, diaper ‘boondocks’, for a cut-off rural hinterland. It was imported by was replaced by GI’s from the Philippines, where it means ‘mountain’. Apparently nappy, meaning it now means ‘cool’. ‘Cool’ itself fluffy cloth” has been cool since the jazz age. The origin of ‘jazz’ itself is much disputed, but seems to have been first used by baseball players adapting a word that roughly means guts, or spirit. Often new-fangled Americanism turns out to be archaic English. ‘Diaper’ fi rst makes its appearance in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew in 1623. There it means a diamond-patterned linen, from the Latin words for ‘two’ and ‘white’. It later came to mean that most essential item of baby’s clothing, but was replaced in England by ‘nappy’, meaning fluffy cloth. However, the American habit of turning nouns into verbs enrages my sensitive English ears. I know Shakespeare did it, but he didn’t invent ‘burglarize’, when what a burglar does is burgle. I’m happy when American athletes do well, but can’t help but wince they are ‘medalled’. I recently read a report of the President’s foreign visit: all was well until the journalist reported they had to “debus”, rather than simply get off the bus. I’m very fond of our lingo. Let’s be gentle with it. Mark Mardell is the BBC’s Europe Editor. His reports can be seen on BBC World News America, airing on the BBC America cable and satellite channel and on PBS stations around the country.

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COMMENT & ANALYSIS DAR DARWIN D ARW

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Is evolution dead It’ supposed to be an unstoppable force of nature. But with huge advances in medical care, technology It’s and social support, most humans today live long enough to pass on their genes. Has evolution come to a aan standstill in our species? Two of the world’s leading evolutionary biologists argue the case sst

YES STEVE JONES is Professor of Genetics at University College London, UK. He is the author of Darwin’s Ghost: The Origin of Species Updated (Ballantine, 2001)

What is the future going to be like? If you believe science fiction it is not going to be very different from today – tribes, empires, wars, with a little decorous love interest on the way. However familiar their behaviour, though, the imagined heroes and villains of years to come tend to look quite different from ourselves – giant green skulls, massive brow ridges and tentacles, perhaps even wheels. Natural selection – the process that would drive this progression – ultimately results from inherited differences in the ability to reproduce.

Once, it raged through most nations. In Shakespeare’s day two out of every three babies died before they were 21 and even in Darwin’s time almost half did. Many of those deaths came from disease, starvation or violence, and there are inherited components in the ability to withstand all of them, such as the variant that gives resistance to smallpox. Now, most babies in the developed world, once they have survived the difficult fi rst few months, survive until they are grown up, so the differences that once fed Darwin’s mechanism have largely gone away.

But while staying alive is relatively straightforward nowadays, fi nding a willing mate is more difficult. The range of success is wider, too, particularly for males. Each time a man has sex he makes enough sperm to fertilise every woman in Europe. In the old days, sexual inequality meant that was almost possible: Moulay Ismael of Morocco admitted to 888 children. There was, needless to say, more than one Mrs Moulay. As a result, around 100 of his male fellow citizens must have had no wives, so no children at all. What did that mean for natural selection? It meant

SPL, GETTY X2, DREAMSTIME, REUTERS

NO

PZ MYERS is associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota Morris. His blog, ‘Pharyngula’, can be found at http:// scienceblogs.com/ pharyngula/

There are two things that must happen for human evolution to come to an end: 1) everyone must be genetically identical, and 2) the copying of DNA from one generation to the next must become flawless. The former is simply not the case, while the latter is physically impossible – and these facts of life are the two engines that drive the appearance of anything new during the process of evolution. Genetic diversity is propagated by the reshuffl ing of alleles (all the different possible forms of a gene). We human beings do this by using sex. Every child is the product of the random assortment of alleles from two

Even ‘identical’ twins can have small genetic differences

individuals, producing a unique combination of alleles every time. This is a significant source of new variants and forms. We owe the fact that the copying of DNA between generations is imperfect to the phenomenon of mutation. This is a change to the sequence of ‘letters’, called nucleotides, in

DNA, and it is unavoidable. The most common mechanism is simply errors in copying. No machine can be immune to error, and that goes for the biological machinery of the cell, which is responsible for copying each of the three billion letters in the human genome each time a cell divides. And cells

HAS HUMANKIND PEAKED OR WILL WE CONTINUE TO EVOLVE 22

Mar/Apr 2009

Update... GOOD NEWS

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With survival now easier, have we stopped evolving?

Jet lag cure?

there were great differences in reproductive success. And any variation in the ability to attract a mate is raw material for selection. Now, that pattern has changed: variation has all but disappeared. Most people have zero to four offspring, with the reproductive Lotharios almost extinct. If natural selection favours variation in the ability to stay alive and to have sex, then once that variation has gone it loses its power. Put the figures for survival and for

reproduction together, and you come up with a statistic, the ‘opportunity for natural selection’. In the developed world, it has declined by around nine-tenths in the past few centuries. The result: for the time being at least (and keep your fi ngers crossed) there is no selection, and evolution on the Darwin model is over. In other words, if you are worried about what Utopia is going to be like, calm down – you are living in it now.

A new pill could help long distance travellers get to sleepp when they want to and avoid jet lag. Tests on volunteers at several cities across ss the US showed that Tasimelteon can shift people’s body clocks. In a trial, 450 people went to bed five hours earlier thann normal to replicate the effect of crossing into a different time zone. Those who had taken the drug enjoyed between 30 minutes and nearly two hours more sleepp than those who were given dummy pills. ills. Tasimelteon works by changing the he level of the sleep hormone melatonin. Full results of the study are published inn The Lancet.t

A photo of your keys could be enough to ‘steal’ them. Scientists have developed computer software that can reproduce a key from an image of it. Students searched online photo sharing websites and found thousands of keys in enough detail to replicate. The researchers at the University of California also set up a zoom lens 60m (200ft) away from a key and found they were able to successfully reproduce the key. The longest part of the process was always cutting the ‘stolen’ key. The Sneakey project was organised to show the dangers of leaving keys around or posting pictures including them online.

PICTURE RE THIS have to divide or we couldn’t produce populations of sperm and egg cells. Our cells are actually very good at copying, but there’s still a new mutation roughly once every three cell divisions, and it takes many divisions to make a sperm or egg. Most of these don’t have any effect, but it does mean that every single one of us is a mutant in the purest sense of the word. In spite of this, one common argument for the end of human evolution is that we’ve loosened the constraints of natural selection with our technology and social support systems. That does not imply an end of evolution though: selection is a conservative force that culls novelty. So less selection allows

greater amounts of genetic diversity in a population. Not that we’ve actually eliminated selection, of course. Perhaps we don’t have to outrun sabre-toothed tigers anymore, but our offspring still have to overcome the hurdle of acquiring skills that will get them a good job and finding a mutually fertile mate sometime before they die. Selection can be a subtle force, and you can’t escape it. There is one way we could see human evolution end: if we became extinct. Otherwise, evolution is a natural and unavoidable property of living, replicating systems, and it is absurd to talk of any living population as not evolving.

Tell us what you think: email [email protected]

HEAVEN-SENT POWER The Vatican has joined the fight against global warming by installing solar panels on one of its buildings. The photovoltaic cells now have pride of place on the wave-shaped roof of Nervi Hall, where Pope Benedict XVI holds his audiences. The panels, which can’t be seen at ground level, produce 300 kilowatt hours of energy per year and will be used to heat, light and cool the hall as well as several surrounding buildings.

Mar/Apr 2009

23

World News in Context

Georgia A bitter conflict that was waiting to happen Russia’s battle with Georgia over the breakaway republic of South Ossetia last year threatened to destabilise East-West relations. David Keys explores the roots of a dispute that could yet help trigger a new cold war ussia’s invasion last summer of its

R tiny neighbour Georgia was an

act of aggression unprecendented in postwar Europe. Even at the height of the Cold War, which lasted from the end of World War II until the early 1990s, the Soviet Union never invaded any countries outside the Marxist-oriented world. The Iron Curtain separated spheres of influence in unmistakably clear terms, with the nuclear threat of ‘mutually assured destruction’ discouraging either superpower from action. Today, neither the West nor the Russians seem averse to flexing their muscles. Are the risks really much lower or simply not so well understood? History has conditioned both western and, to an extent, Russian policy-makers in two apparently contradictory ways. Many military and political leaders who grew up and received their military education during the Cold War inevitably still derive aspects of their strategic thinking from those years. But equally, in their minds, the fall of the Soviet Union was perceived as marking the end of the Russian military as a serious threat to peace.

In a sense, the Cold War never stopped. Western democratic triumphalism coupled with American neo-Conservatism simply transformed it. NATO – the West’s Cold War machine created in order to prevent Soviet expansion – has been used to facilitate western expansion since the demise of the Soviet Union, despite claiming not to be anti-Russia. In effect, NATO has prevented Russia, as the USSR’s main successor state, from reestablishing its regional influence. Georgia is on the very front line of this new western democratic ‘cold war’. But it is not alone. All the former Warsaw Pact Soviet satellites are now NATO members. Three former member republics of the former Soviet Union (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) have joined NATO – and three more (Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan) are keen to join, with Ukraine having already been promised membership. Georgia started on the road to membership last December. US marines and special forces have been training the Georgian military and, despite pro-Russian, anti-NATO demonstrations in Ukraine, five former

UKRAINE

MOLDOVA

CORBIS X2. ILLUSTRATION BY SHEU KUIE HO

RUSSIA KAZAKHSTAN

KEY National borders Internal borders

Black Sea

Caspian Sea GEORGIA

RUSSIA

CHECHNYA NORTH OSSETIA

ABKHAZIA

ARMENIA

AZERBAIJAN

TURKEY

Black Sea 24

SOUTH OSSETIA

GEORGIA Mar/Apr 2009

IRAN

August 2008: South Ossetians proudly fly their flag alongside Russia’s in Tskhinvali

Soviet Republics – including Georgia and Ukraine – took part in a NATO exercise in the Black Sea last summer. To make matters worse, even some of Russia’s allies (Armenia, Kazakhstan and Moldova) have now officially enrolled in special NATO Partnership Action Plans designed to draw them closer to the western alliance. What’s more, US missile and/or other military facilities have been or will be opened for the fi rst time in Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria. The West may not call all this a cold war but, to the Russians at least, it looks and feels like one. From Moscow’s perspective, the West is systematically embracing or subverting Mother Russia’s former partners and allies. Difficulties may yet arise from the fact that the postSoviet map of Eastern Europe is far from straightforward. The internationally recognised boundaries conceal a series of potential geopolitical time bombs. Close to the Russian border in northern Georgia are the two breakaway ‘republics’ of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, both of which are anti-Georgian and pro-Russian. Indeed, the Russians have issued most of the inhabitants of both unofficial statelets with Russian passports. There are similar situations in several of Russia’s other,

The road to war 1989-91 End of the Cold War, USSR and Warsaw Pact 1992 Former Soviet republics split into proWest and pro-Russian camps 1999-2004 Former non-Soviet Warsaw Pact countries and the Baltic republics join NATO February 2008 Russia angered by West’s recognition of Kosovo’s independence 2008 Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan start on road to NATO membership June-August 2008 Clashes between South Ossetia and Georgia 7 August Georgia invades South Ossetia 8 August Russia drives Georgian troops out and temporarily occupies parts of Georgia

Georgian tanks lie destroyed in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali last summer

smaller neighbours. Across Eastern Europe, there are large numbers of ethnic Russians who still look to Moscow for protection. Further problems arise as the West, eager to push home its advantage in the apparent comfort of the post-Soviet world, is promoting its NATO ‘insurance policies’ to former Soviet Republics. This is particularly relevant in terms of understanding Russia’s attack on Georgia in summer 2008. In a sense, Moscow’s shells were aimed not just at their literal targets but at the West as a whole. Russia isn’t keen on having US or other NATO troops stationed within just a few miles of its southern border. Georgia’s internal problems provided the context for Russia to reassert itself. Both of the breakaway republics’ pro-Russian stance are part of the region’s Soviet legacy. The one that provided the pretext for the Russian invasion was South Ossetia. An unsettled history The Ossetians are an Iranic people, ethnically and linguistically distinct from Georgians. They are descended from a large nomadic group known as the Alans, who inhabited the vast triangular area between the Caucasus mountains and the lower reaches of the rivers Don and Volga in the fi rst and early second millennium AD. Pressure from the Huns in the fourth century AD drove many westwards into Central and Western Europe where they were politically and militarily active in Gaul (now France), set up a kingdom in Portugal in the fi fth century, and then helped establish one in North Africa. The 13th century saw their original homeland north of the Caucasus devastated by the Mongols. Some of them escaped across the mountains to Georgia – part of the Russian Empire from the early 19th century – where, usually as landless

peasants, they lived under the control of the Georgian nobility. In 1918, the Mensheviks (the antiBolsheviks who then ruled Georgia) created the Democratic Republic of Georgia, declaring themselves independent from Russia. This new state, however, only lasted until 1921. The South Ossetians rebelled against the Mensheviks, who in turn reacted by killing a substantial number of them. The South Ossetians then helped Russia’s Red Army extinguish Georgian independence. Their reward from the Soviets was an autonomous South Ossetian district within Soviet Georgia. Unsurprisingly, when the USSR began to disintegrate towards the end of the 1980s the South Ossetians were the only Georgians wanting to preserve it. In the run up to Georgian independence, Georgia’s Supreme Soviet revoked Ossetic as one of the region’s official languages, abolished South Ossetian autonomy and annulled the South Ossetian Supreme Soviet’s decision to unite with North Ossetia, itself part of Russia. From 1991-92 a vicious war between the two peoples broke out, costing around 1000 lives and creating thousands of Ossetian refugees. In 1991, Georgia – including South Ossetia – gained its independence. Twelve years later, in the so-called Rose Revolution, a more pro-western group of nationalists came to power, and started to impose its control on the breakaway regions. Russia responded, providing the South Ossetians with political and military support, and the South Ossetians successfully resisted the Georgians’ efforts. Russia distributed passports to many South Ossetians, and was therefore able to claim it was defending its own nationals. As Moscow realised that Georgia intended to join NATO, the US increased

What does the future hold? Last year’s crisis has left the West with a dilemma: limited appeasement, or full scale rearmament and a new cold war. It is no longer possible to expand NATO into former Soviet territory without also being prepared to massively invest in expanding conventional military forces. With their breakaway republics or Russian minorities, would-be future NATO members (such as Georgia and Ukraine) possess plenty of contexts in which future conflicts with Russia could easily erupt. The West will need to ponder whether Russia’s ‘near abroad’ is really strategically more important to the West than it is to Moscow.

its training programmes in Georgia. This led, some observers say, to an increasing number of military incidents taking place along the South Ossetia/Georgia border. Such incidents directly caused the Georgian government’s invasion of South Ossetia, with considerable loss of civilian lives. The Russians, who have hinted that they may ultimately annex South Ossetia, now had a reason to invade Georgia, thus chastening their neighbours and firing a shot across NATO’s bow at the same time. David Keys is a specialist correspondent for the London daily newspaper The Independent and is also a regular broadcaster

FIND OUT MORE 왘 Uncertain Democracy: US foreign policy and Georgia’s Rose Revolution by Lincoln Mitchell (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) 왘 The Making of the Georgian Nation by Ronald Grigor Suny (Indiana UP, 1994) Mar/Apr 2009

25

DAR DARWIN D ARW

200

IN A NUTSHELL

The dodo and Darwin

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

When, in 1598, ships from the Dutch East India Company landed on the volcanic island of Mauritius 900km (560 miles) east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, their crews were the first people to encounter the dodo (Raphus cucullatus). This large, flightless bird was unique to Mauritius and, it was suggested, had evolved as it did from living on an island free from predators. The arrival of the sailors, with their animals and guns, caused the bird’s extinction within 90 years. Following the publication of Darwin’s theory of evolution, many scientists sought to understand this near-mythical bird by way of explaining the theory, thus allying themselves with the acclaimed British naturalist.

DARWIN 200

The race to discover the dodo is a tale of treachery, 19th century academic rivalry and the great Darwin debate. Julian Hume unravels the mystery of a legendary bird

must say that I feel very

about the “I indignant conduct of Owen in

the case of Clark’s dodos. He has shown himself to be a very mean-minded, illiberal sort, and I am very much vexed that I should have been the cause of so much annoyance to you... and I greatly fear that Owen may injure you for the professorship in a vindictive manner” Edward Newton writing to his brother, Alfred, in February 1866. So began a rivalry between two of the greatest comparative anatomists of their day: Richard Owen, founder of the Natural History Museum, London, and ardent opponent of Charles

Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; and Alfred Newton, of the University of Cambridge, who became one of the fi rst Darwinian disciples. In fact, the rivalry between the two men had begun some years earlier. Both were egotistical, yearning to stamp their authority on palaeontological research, and both saw an opportunity arise from the discovery of the first fossil remains of one of the most famous birds in the world: the dodo (Raphus cucullatus) of Mauritius. The race between these two authorities to be fi rst to scientifically describe

the dodo’s anatomy resulted in unprecedented fi nancial bribery, academic blackmail and a lasting bitterness that was never resolved. At the beginning of the 19th century, fossil remains of the dodo had not yet been discovered, leading some authorities to doubt its very existence, even though a unique head and foot at Oxford and a foot in London survived. This led to geologist and ornithologist Hugh Strickland amassing all of the available information into a scrapbook entitled The Dodo Book. He was granted permission to dissect the unique dodo head


Mar/Apr 2009

27

DARWIN 200

Owen’s dodo Richard Owen (left) used a painting by Dutch artist Rolandt Savery to reconstruct the dodo. He fitted the skeleton into a traced outline of the painting, giving it an unnatural shape and stance. Exaggerated reports of the bird’s size were also incorporated, resulting in an obese image of the dodo.

Owen’s drawing of the dodo

SPL, NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM X5, BRIDGEMAN, CORBIS X2, REUTERS X2, TOPFOTO

Newton’s dodo Alfred Newton (left) did not have the opportunity to reconstruct the dodo, but worked on the solitaire instead. He believed that the solitaire was an active species, able to move with some rapidity. Unlike the obese image of the past, the dodo is now thought to have been similarly dynamic and agile.

How the dodo is now believed to have looked

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Mar/Apr 2009


held at Oxford in 1847, and employed the young and upcoming comparative anatomist Alexander Melville to describe the skull. Strickland and Melville confi rmed that the dodo was a giant ground pigeon, a controversial theory fi rst postulated by Danish professor John Theodore Reinhardt a few years earlier. Prior to Reinhardt’s proposal, the dodo was thought to have been a diminutive ostrich, a game bird allied to rails and coots, an albatross or, as proposed by Owen himself, a kind of vulture. This initiated a huge public and scientific interest in the bird. The race to obtain the fi rst dodo fossil remains had begun. By 1856, Richard Owen had risen to the rank of superintendent of what was then the British Museum (Natural History), now known as the Natural History Museum, in London, and became one of the greatest comparative naturalists of his time. Despite his abilities, Owen, who hailed from the English industrial county of

Darwin’s theory contravened God’s work and therefore Owen was hostile to it Lancashire and was not in the same social class as other noted academics, appears to have suffered an inferiority complex that made him bitter and jealous of any rival. Owen’s background was very different to that of Alfred Newton, an upper-class academic who was to become the fi rst Professor of Zoology at Cambridge, and one of the fi rst followers of Darwin’s theory. Newton fi rmly believed in the evolution of species. Conversely, though quietly sympathetic to the principles of evolution, Owen argued that every species was created as a predetermined archetype or ideal, a fi nished product fit to survive or condemned to die out without evolving in any way. Darwin’s evolution by natural

selection contravened God’s own work, and therefore Owen was hostile to the theory. Owen and Newton both set to the task of attempting to obtain dodo fossil material from Mauritius. Each had different means to achieve his aim. Owen had many high profi le contacts including royalty, government officials and highranking members of the clergy – including the Bishop of Mauritius, Vincent Ryan. He asked Ryan by mail to send word around the island that should any fossil material be found, he must be informed fi rst. Newton, meanwhile, had the good fortune that his brother Edward had become colonial secretary to Mauritius (from 1859 to 1877) and could therefore inform Alfred of any relevant events. Harry Higginson, a railway engineer from the mining county of Yorkshire in the north of England, was overseeing the construction of a railway line being built to ship sugar cane from around Mauritius to its capital, Port Louis. In September 1865, he noted in his diary: “Shortly before the completion of the railway I was walking along the embankment one morning when I noticed some coolies [cheap local labourers] removing some peat soil from a small morass. They were separating and placing into heaps a number of bones of various sorts among the debris. I stopped and examined them as they appeared to belong to birds and reptiles and we had always been on the lookout for bones of the then mythical dodo. So I fi lled my pocket with the most promising ones for further examination.” Wade in the water A Mauritius schoolteacher and natural historian, George Clark, had spent more than 30 years searching for the fossil remains of dodo without success. Higginson took some bones to Clark, and they both identified them as dodo. Clark immediately monopolised operations to dig the
site with the full permission of

DARWIN 200

1500s  Visitors to the island of Mauritius discover the dodo (Raphus cucullatus). It’s a large, flightless relative of the pigeon, weighing in at between 20 and 23 kilograms (44-50lb)

1626
Dutch artist Roelandt Savery paints the most famous contemporary picture of the dodo, depicting a bird that is far too squat and heavily overweight. It is now thought that the bird depicted was captive and obese through overfeeding

1598
Dutch traders settle on Mauritius, alongside the native bird. Contemporary accounts suggest the dodo had an unpleasant taste, but much damage was still done to its natural habitat. Dogs, cats, rats, pigs and monkeys were introduced to the island and often allowed to roam feral. Large areas of woodland were also felled

1700

1755  The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, UK, had been in possession of the last remaining stuffed dodo. Unfortunately the specimen had completely decayed, and in the mid-18th century the museum decided to dispose of it

1860-62 A series of important debates on Darwinian evolution take place. In particular the 1860 Oxford debate between TH Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce has passed into legend, largely because of a tart exchange between the two. Wilberforce asked Huxley if he thought he was descended from a gorilla on his father’s or his mother’s side, to which Huxley replied that he’d rather be related to an ape than a man who used his oratory gifts to obscure the truth. Wilberforce was coached for the debate by Richard Owen, while Alfred Newton was present and, in a letter to his brother Edward, provided one of the best accounts of the event

1866 In his monograph Memoir on the Dodo, Owen reconstructs the extinct bird using the fossils discovered by George Clark and, disastrously, Roelandt Savery’s painting. As a result the bird is far too squat and fat. Owen would be tainted by the error for the rest of his life

2005  Dutch and Mauritian scientists discover the bones of about 20 dodos at a dig site in Mauritius, in a swampy area near a sugar plantation on the southeast of the island

 The dodo is extinct. The last las confirmed sighting came from a shipwrecked mariner marine in 1662, and it’s thought that the dodo was already extremely rare by this stage. Recent statistical analyses fluctuate between 1681 an and 1693 16 as the year the last dodo died, died and it’s almost certain that the t species was gone before the turn of the century

1847
Confirmation arrives that the dodo was related to the pigeon. Geologist and ornithologist Hugh Strickland had previously created The Dodo Book, a collection of all the available evidence on the dodo. His work with comparative anatomist Alexander Melville confirmed the pigeon theory first suggested by the Danish professor John Theodore Reinhardt

1865 Schoolteacher George Clark, who later becomes embroiled in the dispute between Richard Owen and Alfred Newton, finds the first dodo fossils on Mauritius

1881 The British Museum of Natural History in London, UK, is established. Richard Owen is the driving force, and it remains possibly his life’s finest work

2007
Scientists exploring a cave in Mauritius discover the most complete and well-preserved dodo skeleton ever. It’s hoped that DNA can be recovered, raising the prospect of the dodo’s eventual resurrection Mar/Apr 2009

29

DARWIN 200

The road to extinction

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM X2. ILLUSTRATION BY SHEU-KUIE HO

The flightless dodo had evolved on an island free of predators, perfectly adapted to its terrestrial environment. When Dutch traders settled on Mauritius, the fate of the dodo was sealed. Direct hunting by humans is generally considered the cause of the dodo’s extinction, but the human population on Mauritius never numbered more than 100. It was the introduction of goats, pigs, deer, monkeys and rats that was primarily responsible, competing with the adult birds for food or feasting on eggs and chicks. The dodo could not adapt to this onslaught, dying out in less than a century.


the landowner. He recorded the event with deep satisfaction: “After many fruitless visits to the spot... I resolved by sending some men into the centre of the marsh, where the water was about three feet [1m] deep and there, by feeling in the mud with their naked feet, they met with one entire tibia... The dodo bones were imbedded only in the mud at the bottom of the water in the deepest part of the marsh... Encouraged by success, I employed several hands to search in the manner described, but I met with but few specimens of dodo bones till I thought of cutting away a mass of floating herbage nearly two feet in thickness, which covered the deepest part of the marsh. In the mud under this, I was rewarded by finding bones of many dodos.” Clark wanted to keep his discovery secret but with Mauritius being a small island, word soon got around. Along with other interested parties, Edward Newton visited the site during the excavation and he advised as to the best way to make the most money from the discovery. He made it clear that if Clark kept quiet about the number of dodo specimens they had retrieved then more money could be made. “Clark 30

Mar/Apr 2009

is working to make as much money from his discovery as he can, so do not let out to anyone how plentiful the bones are... I fear however that the whole thing is now too much blown, and plenty of people will search and fi nd ample remains.” Money talks It is clear Clark’s main interest from the discovery was monetary gain, which is not surprising since his annual salary was only £177 ($270). Therefore, Edward via Alfred was going to organise the sale in the most profitable way using funds from the British Association for the Advancement of Science. According to Edward, a consignment of dodo bones was to be sent to Richard Owen, so he persuaded Clark to send them to Alfred instead. The fi rst dodo fossils left Mauritius in October 1865 with a letter of authenticity from the Bishop. But despite Clark having accepted Newton’s offer, Owen intercepted the consignment. The original deal was organised through Clark’s son-in law – one Captain Mylins, of Notting Hill, London. After the interception, Mylins agreed to a new deal with Owen

receiving £100 ($152) for 100 bones from the Natural History Museum. Owen now owned the material and was going to make the best use of it. Under normal circumstances, Newton had ample reason to fi le a complaint about Owen’s conduct. However, he had recently applied to become the fi rst Professor of Zoology at Cambridge and, according to Edward, Owen’s powerful influence could lead to his application failing. Alfred was

Owen fitted the skeleton into an outline traced around Savery’s dodo image forced to relinquish his claim on the material and also withdraw a draft paper that had been prepared for review. Furthermore, he had to hold back all feelings of anger and frustration and cooperate on Owen’s terms. Both Clark and Edward were upset about the events but there was nothing they could do. Owen, having now silenced his main adversary, wasted no time in publicly announcing – and monopolising – the discovery and

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FACTSHEET Mauritius once swarmed with these placid birds Early explorers arrive at Mauritius in the 1500s

gave a series of highly publicised lectures in January 1866. This was before even Clark could publish on the subject – his paper did not appear until later in the year. Owen produced a monograph entitled Memoir on the Dodo in October 1866 formally describing the dodo’s anatomy. He had won the race to describe the bird. He concluded that the dodo was indeed a member of the pigeon family with extremely robust legs and reduced wings, thus confi ning it to the ground. He refused to make any reference to evolution and offered no alternative explanation as to how a giant fl ightless pigeon could have reached a remote island had it not evolved from a flying pigeon ancestor. However, Owen’s victorious coup proved to be a doubleedged sword. Having beaten the opposition, he made a serious mistake in interpreting the evidence. While Owen’s anatomical descriptions cannot be faulted, he reconstructed the dodo in his 1866 memoir using the most famous of the contemporary dodo paintings. Dutch artist Roelandt Savery’s 1626 life-size original is still in the possession of the Natural History

Museum. Owen fitted the skeleton into an outline traced around Savery’s dodo image, producing an unnatural, squat and overly obese dodo, which became the orthodox image of the bird. Owen published again on the dodo in 1869, this time rectifying his mistake by reconstructing the bird in a natural, more upright position, but the original image stuck. Owen has been associated with it ever since. Having failed to describe the dodo’s anatomy, Alfred Newton, now a professor at Cambridge, turned his attention to the dodo’s closest living relative, the Rodrigues Solitaire (Pezophaps solitaria) on a neighbouring island. Newton corresponded with Darwin over issues of evolution amongst birds and totally absorbed the principle into his scientific thinking, while in total contrast, Owen gradually retreated from the scientific community, his reputation tarnished by his anti-Darwinian views. He died in at the age of 88 in 1892. Newton continued researching other extinct species from Mauritius and its two neighbouring islands, Réunion and Rodrigues, but as with Owen his obsession with dodos led to a disastrous misinterpretation of information. In 1874 he published a paper supporting a second species of dodo from Réunion – the white dodo or solitaire – based only on contemporary dodo illustrations. The solitaire turned out to be an ibis, belonging to a totally different group of birds. Newton may have suspected an error as he never referenced his paper, continuing to write on describing the two giant, fl ightless ground pigeons. But it was Owen who succeeded in associating his name with the more famous dodo – an aim he was prepared to achieve at all costs.

RAPHUS CUCULLATUS Order: Columbiformes (pigeons and doves) Latin name: Raphus Common name: Dodo Size: 1m (3ft 3in) long with a thick, heavy beak 23cm (9 in) long. Probably weighed up to 23kg (50lb) Colour: Most accounts describe the dodo with grey plumage, lighter about the throat and abdomen and with white tail-feathers. Legs are said to have been yellow. Beak was probably green or black Diet: It is widely believed that the dodo mainly ate fruits and seeds. However, some sailors spoke of dodos clumsily wading in water pools to catch fish, while other accounts detail it happily wolfing down stones and even iron. It has been suggested that this may have somehow aided digestion Habitat: The dodo was unique to Mauritius, which lies about 900km (560 miles) to the east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It is believed to have inhabited the island’s forests Breeding: It is thought that dodos mated for life, with both parents taking care of the young. The female would lay one egg in grassy terrain, which would hatch after about 50 days Conservation status: Extinct

WHERE IT LIVED: Julian Hume is an artist, researcher, writer and zoologist based at the Natural History Museum in London, UK

TANZANIA

Indian Ocean ZAMBIA

MALAWI

MAURITIUS Rodrigues

ZIMBABWE

FIND OUT MORE
Lost Land of the Dodo: the ecological history of Mauritius, Reunion, and Rodrigues by Anthony Cheke and Julian Hume (Yale, 2008)
www.petermaas.nl/extinct/speciesinfo/ dodobird.htm the dodo at The Extinction Website

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Th iinternational The t ti l science i community it h has b been ffocusing i intently on Antarctica as part of International Polar Year, which ended this March. Martin Redfern joined a British Antarctic Survey team of scientists on an expedition to one of the fastest-warming places on the planet

SCIENCE

KELLY WHYBROW/ROYAL NAVY

Due south

Mar/Apr 2009

35

SCIENCE

Due south

f you had been standing on

I the ice-capped summit of

MARTIN REDFERN X3, CORBIS X2, ALAMY, WWW.CONCORDIABASE.EU, GAELEN MARSDEN

Mt Haddington on James Ross Island late in 1915, with good binoculars you might have seen the tattered remnants of the famous British explorer Ernest Shackleton’s aborted expedition to the South Pole, drifting northwards on thick pack ice after their ship HMS Endurance had been trapped in the ice, crushed and sunk. Seventy years later, a young researcher with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), Robert Mulvaney, made his fi rst visit to Antarctica. The Prince Gustav Channel, which separates James Ross Island from the mainland of the Antarctic Peninsula, was permanently ice-locked. In a reenactment of history, Mulvaney’s ship John Biscoe also became stuck in pack ice and had to be abandoned – though it was later recovered. But Mulvaney was undeterred. By February 2008, now Group Head of the Cryosphere Physical Sciences Division of the BAS, he was on his 15th expedition south to study climate change in Antarctica. And, as part of International Polar

Year, it was my turn to visit James Ross Island with him, on board the most recent vessel to bear the name HMS Endurance. Despite its name, International Polar Year (IPY) has actually been ongoing for the past two years, from March 2007 to March 2009. It’s a large scientific programme focusing on the Arctic and the Antarctic, organised through the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the

There are about 500 millions tonnes of Antarctic krill in the Southern Ocean; more than twice the mass of all the humans on Earth World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Over 200 projects have been running, involving thousands of scientists from over 60 nations. As our ship retraced the route Mulvaney had taken in 1985 it soon became clear that conditions on the Antarctic Peninsula are much altered even in such a short time. We were able to sail right through

James Ross Island as seen from Croft Bay. The glaciers are in retreat

Geologist Phil Leat is keen to get samples wherever a chopper can land 36

Mar/Apr 2009

Antarctica: not recommended for the faint-hearted camper

the Prince Gustav Channel and enter Croft Bay, the flooded caldera at the heart of this great volcanic island. Although glaciers still fi ll the valleys, and the ice cap of the 1630m (5348ft)-high Mt Haddington remains more than 300m (984ft) thick, hillsides and cliffs around us were showing bare rock. The vast Larsen B ice shelf to the south of James Ross Island disintegrated in 2002, releasing 500 billion tonnes of ice into the sea. “The Peninsula is the fastest-warming place in Antarctica, and one of the three fastest-warming in the world,” says Mulvaney. “Over the last 50 years it has probably warmed about 2.5°C (5°F), which is frightening.” Greenhouse gases resulting from human activity are a likely cause, but Mulvaney wants to make absolutely sure. Samples of marine sediments taken from beneath ice shelves suggest that some of them collapsed about 5000 years ago, so perhaps this is just part of a natural cycle. “I want to get a sense of how the climate here has changed since the last ice age, which ended around
10,000 years ago,” he says.

International research in Antarctica: the major bases During the International Geophysical Year of 1957/8, 12 countries signed a treaty to ensure that the continent would be forever used for peaceful purposes to further science research. Now, 29 countries operate 64 bases there, 42 of them permanent. Up to 4000 people live there during the summer.

Halley Research Station: UK

Kunlun Station (Dome A): China

Vostok Station: Russia

Halley is built on the Brant Ice Shelf in the Weddell Sea. Five bases have been constructed, but the first four are buried and crushed by snow. Halley V is on jacks to raise it above the snow. There are concerns that the ice shelf it is on is in danger of breaking away, so the next base, Halley VI, is under construction in modules that can be towed on skids.

First reached by a Chinese team in 2005, it is at 4093 metres (13,428ft) altitude, in the middle of the East Antarctic ice sheet. The new observatory being set up there is robotic. Kunlun is the proposed site for a deep ice core which might span a million years’ worth of climate records.

Near the geomagnetic South Pole, Vostok is the site of the lowest recorded temperature in nature, at -89.2 °C (-128.6 °F). An ice core here reached a record depth of 3700 metres (12,140 ft), stopping just short of what is believed to be a large freshwater lake. Lake Vostok has probably remained isolated for millions of years and could contain unknown bacteria or other life.

Rothera Research Station: UK The biggest UK base, with a dock, gravel runway and laboratories.

Supplies are collected for Halley

Rothera hosted one of 2007’s Live Earth global concerts

Frozen to the core: it doesn’t get colder than Vostok

Croft Bay James Ross Island

ANTARCTIC PENINSULA

The protective geodesic dome at the US station

EAST EA ST ANTA AN TARC R TI RC TICA CA A A TTA AN ARC CTI TIC CA A Pine Island Glacier

The twin towers of the Concordia Station

The southernmost continually inhabited place on Earth

Amundsen Scott Station: USA The Amundsen Scott Station at the South Pole depends on an ice runway to land people and supplies. It has been occupied since 1957. It is at an altitude of 2835m (9301ft) but the ice here is about 2850m (9350ft) thick. Nearby, ‘Ice Cube’ is under construction; a telescope in the ice consisting of thousands of photomultiplier tubes embedded up to 2450 metres (8038ft) deep in the ice. It will detect faint flashes caused by ghostly particles called neutrinos from outer space.

McMurdo boasts Antarctica’s largest community

McMurdo Station: USA Scott Base: New Zealand Not far from McMurdo, Scott Base is also close to Hut Point, where the hut constructed by Scott’s Discovery expedition in 1902 still stands.

McMurdo on Ross Island is the largest Antarctic base, supporting 1200 residents in summer. It has 100 buildings, 3 airfields and a port, and is the staging post for supply flights to the South Pole

Concordia Station (Dome C): France/Italy This relatively new base which opened in 2005 is at the site of the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA), a deep ice core which reached a depth of 3270 metres (10,728 ft) and recovered ice estimated to be more than 800,000 years old.

SCIENCE

Due south

Conquering the South Pole Antarctica was unforgiving to early explorers of the frozen continent The existence of a southern continent was first proposed by Ptolemy almost 2000 years ago. Seal hunters and government ships had been exploring the sub-Antarctic islands since 1784, but it wasn’t until the 19th century that Russian, British and American ships first sighted mainland. Antarctica’s mainlan Connecticut sealer John Davis made a In 1821, Con disputed claim to have landed there, and in 1839 the US Expedition’ discovered what is now known ‘Exploring E Land. Thereafter, explorers continued to as Wilkes L continent, often enduring extreme hardship. chart the c But the South Pole remained unconquered. AngloIrish explorer explo Ernest Shackleton reached the magnetic South Pole in 1908, and he battled fiercely to claim the geographic Pole. In 1909 he got to within 100 miles (160km) of it before being forced to turn back. Norwegian Norwegia explorer Roald Amundsen finally reached the Pole on 19 1 December 1911, after a fierce race with Britain’s Robert Scott. Scott’s team finally arrived six R Roald Amundsen weeks later, but died on their return journey. pictured in 1925

REX, GETTY, MARTIN REDFERN X2


So, with the help of two Lynx helicopters, 20 tonnes’ worth of drilling equipment and supplies were lifted to the top of Mt Haddington. We left Mulvaney and his six colleagues there to camp on the ice, drilling a core from the mountain-top glacier. I was due to return in HMS Endurance at the end of the project to recover the team and their equipment and fi nd out how they got on. In the meantime, the rest of us journeyed down the western side of the Peninsula.

For all its awesome scenery, the Antarctic Peninsula contains just one per cent of the continent’s ice. Much of the remainder covers Eastern Antarctica, in high, featureless ice domes more than

70 per cent of our planet’s total suply of fresh water is locked up as ice in Antarctica

Rob Mulvaney extracts an ice core in the drill tent on Mount Haddington

38

Mar/Apr 2009

Shackleton’s ship HMS Endurance was crushed by the ice in 1915

three kilometres (1.8 miles) thick, fi rmly grounded well above sea level. It’s Western Antarctica that is getting the scientists worried. It has been described as the weak underbelly of the continent. The underlying rock is mostly below sea levels and, were its vast ice sheet to collapse, it could raise the world’s sea level by many metres. Conditions can be harsh. On many occasions, wise caution from our captain and crew resulted in a change of course or a decision not to fly the helicopters as ice and weather conditions worsened. Every sample of ice, soil, rock or moss is hardwon. Research becomes a waiting game, with bursts of frenzied activity when conditions allow.

At the Rothera Research Station I met Julian Scott and Rob Bingham who had just returned from two months on the Pine Island Glacier. It’s the biggest glacier in Antarctica, freezing up the water from an area of the western Antarctic the size of Texas. They are only the second science team to visit this near-inaccessible region – the fi rst was a US expedition in 1958, as part of International Geophysical Year, which was the fi rst time true systematic science research was undertaken here. Since then, the glacier’s rate of movement has been accelerating. But Scott was in for a surprise. “The measurements seem to show an incredible acceleration over the last season – a rate of up to seven per cent,” he says. If the glacier does collapse, the results could be dramatic. “This is a very important glacier,” Scott explains. “It’s putting more ice into the sea than any other glacier in Antarctica. It’s a couple of kilometres (1.2 miles) thick, 30km (19 miles) wide and it’s moving at 3.5km (2 miles) per year, so it’s putting a lot of ice into the ocean.” Nearby glaciers are accelerating as well. Were the whole region to

Due South

SCIENCE

QUESTION TIME

lose its ice, sea level might rise by as much as 1.5m (5ft) worldwide. Back on the Peninsula, on Mt Haddington, bad weather and snowdrifts over Mulvaney’s team’s tents meant that drilling got off to a slow start. But it soon picked up, and for 18 days the team worked in four-hour shifts, 16 hours a day. On the 19th day, with Mulvaney at the drill, events took a surprising turn. Rock bottom “I got 22cm (9in) into my run and the drill got stuck,” he says. “Of course, my colleagues immediately said: ‘You’re rubbish at drilling, let me take over’. But we brought the drill back to the surface and we knew straight away that we’d reached the bottom of the glacier.” They put a rock drill on and managed to sample the frozen mud beneath the glacier, which they hope will help them date the fi rst ice that covered Mt Haddington. The ice is exactly 364m (1194ft) deep. The following day, we returned to James Ross Island to airlift out the ice cores and mud samples, and Mulvaney’s team. “We’ve left nothing in the hole, nothing on the surface,” says Mulvaney. “Everything goes out. That’s very important.” That marked the end of my involvement, as we headed back to HMS Endeavour. But for the scientists, the hard work was just beginning. In May last year, the ice cores arrived back in the UK by ship and analysis started immediately. Mulvaney’s team in Cambridge is studying the ratios of the various isotopes – different variations of the same element – of oxygen molecules in the ice. “We melt the ice and look at the isotopic composition of the water,” he explains. “There are two isotopes of oxygen. If we see more of the heavier one it tells us that the temperature was warmer, because it takes more energy to lift a heavy isotope out of the ocean than a light one.” From this, they can deduce what the sea temperature was at the time the ice formed to within 1°C. They’re also investigating tiny bubbles of the ancient atmosphere

that are trapped within the ice, studying the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the bubbles to learn about the planet’s climate thousands of years ago. Exactly how long ago is something else they’re still working on. “By measuring specific properties of the ice, we suspect we’ve found the transition into the last ice age about five to 10 metres (16 to 32ft) up from the base, so it’s older than 10,000 years,” says Mulvaney. But fully analysing the core is a prolonged and sometimes frustrating process. After initial tests and identification of the main volcanic layers, it was shipped to the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany for detailed preparation. That meant cutting into slices, measuring and logging it, and close examination, sometimes under a microscope. In addition the scientists extracted clean samples at identified points down the core. Now the samples are back in Cambridge and awaiting repairs to the isotope-measuring instrument. Eventually, Mulvaney hopes to have a complete record dating back well into the last ice age. If all goes well he anticipates the publication of his results later this year. Antarctica is one of the earliest indicators of climate change we have. I for one hope the results of programmes like Mulvaney’s will serve to encourage the preservation of this beautiful, unique and important wilderness Martin Redfern is a science journalist and producer for BBC World Service and BBC radio channels

FIND OUT MORE
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/ tech/7226358.stm The on-location blog from Martin’s Antarctic adventure
www.ipy.org The official website for International Polar Year

Dr Robert Mulvaney, Group Head, Cryosphere Physical Sciences Division

If Antarctica is so isolated, why is it important for climate studies? It’s one of the few places on Earth that contains a record of the climate and atmosphere over many thousands of years. It’s a way of seeing what the natural climate system should look like, so we can tell if modern changes are different to the normal climate system.

Why choose the Antarctic Peninsula to study, which has just one per cent of the continent’s ice? Because it’s one of the fastest-warming places on Earth. The temperature has risen by almost 3°C (5°F) over the last 50 years, and we need to understand why that is happening.

Have you seen changes since you’ve been coming to Antarctica? The first time I came to Antarctica, we tried to go to the southwest of James Ross Island, and in those days it was completely blocked by an ice shelf that floated on the sea. About 10 or 15 years ago, that ice shelf broke up, along with the very large Larsen B ice shelf. They floated off to sea in the space of a few weeks.

Is that because of global warming, or due to other natural causes? We don’t know for sure, which is why we’ve drilled an ice core in this region, but my gut feeling is that it’s a sign of climate change.

What do you think Antarctica will be like next century? I think the Peninsula will have a lot more rock exposed. Central Antarctica will look much as it does today. The ice core goes down 364 metres (1194 ft) from the drill head on Mount Haddington

Mar/Apr 2009

39

TOP 10

1

GO HUNTING

‘Teddy’ Roosevelt had given his name to a popular stuffed toy after refusing to dispatch a bear in 1902, but seven years later he was less shot-shy. Travelling around Northeast Africa, the former President and his party – which included his son Kermit, scientists from the Smithsonian Institution and more than 200 porters – accounted for elephants, rhino, hippos, snakes, zebra, monkeys and various other creatures, bringing many of the carcasses back for study. In 1913 Roosevelt embarked on another expedition, this time in Brazil. A year earlier Roosevelt had become a target himself when a German-born bartender shot him in the chest as he prepared to give a speech in Milwaukee, WI. Bravely, he opted to deliver the address before making his way to hospital.

WHAT DID THE

PRESIDENTS

DO NEXT? As Barack Obama takes centre stage, George W Bush may find himself with a lot more time on his hands. We take a look at how previous retired US leaders have filled their time, and offer some suggestions as to how Bush might spend his halcyon years...

Roosevelt wasn’t always a teddy bear

DREAMSTIME X2, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS X3, GETTY X4, CORBIS X2, ALAMY D

5

7

HEAL THE WORLD

“I can’t deny I’m a better ex-president than I was a president,” said the 39th incumbent Jimmy Carter in 2005, a quarter of a century after being heavily defeated by Ronald Reagan. Disappointed by the relative failure of his time in office, Carter threw himself into diplomatic and humanitarian work through the Carter Center he established in 1982. Since then Carter has mediated in conflicts all over the globe, earning a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. Perhaps his greatest achievement has been the near-eradication of Guinea worm disease, which once afflicted millions of Africans. His work has not always been without controversy but there have been few ex-presidents who could boast a more illustrious career away from the top job. Jimmy Carter: a fine ex-President

6

FOUND A UNIVERSITY

Scientific pursuits were the “supreme delight” of third President Thomas Jefferson, but the “enormities of the times” he had lived in forced him into the political arena. After he left the top job in 1809, Jefferson was able to devote himself more fully to education. His finest achievement was the founding of the University of Virginia, which was chartered in 1819. Jefferson designed both the curriculum and the university buildings, which included a grand rotunda (above) modelled on Rome’s Pantheon. As befitted the enlightened views of the drafter of the Declaration of Independence, it was the only college in America at the time with no religious affiliation.

TELL YOUR SIDE E STORY OF THE

James Buchanan’s presidency can be seenn as something of a disaster.r. The 15th President had been en unable to conciliate thee feuding North and South, th, and in the four months between Abraham Lincoln’s coln’s election and Buchanan’s ’s departure in March 1861, 61, several states seceded,, paving the way for the Civil War. Buchanan remarked ed to his successor: “My dear sir, if you are as happy on entering the White House se as I on leaving, you are a very happy man indeed.” Yet Buchanan was loath to accept the criticism heaped upon him. In 1866 866 he produced the first presidential memoir, making aking the case for his defence. It was a bold effort but one that largely failed, as underlined by a 1962 poll of historians which rated him the third worst president thus far.

HISTORY

2

4

WORK ON THE FARM

George Washington liked nothing better than tending to his Virginian estate, Mount Vernon. Having secured victory in the American Revolutionary War in 1783, Washington hoped to live out the rest of his life as a gentleman farmer. He approached the presidency six years later with some reluctance. Even while in office, agriculture was rarely far from his mind. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson he discussed how “buckwheat might be used advantageously as a manure.” On his retirement in 1797, he hastened back to Mount Vernon, which had been neglected in his absence. He died two years later after being taken ill riding a horse around his plantation in a snowstorm. Washington, horsing around on his estate

FALL IN LOVE

Theodore Roosevelt described 23rd President Benjamin Harrison as “a cold-blooded, narrowminded, prejudiced, obstinate, timid old psalm-singing John Quincy Adams Indianapolis politician.” Yet Harrison must have fought for slaves’ rights had some charms, for in 1896, three years after relinquishing the presidency, he married Mary Dimmick, CHALLENGE who was a full 25 years younger than himself. Harrison’s first wife Caroline had died of INJUSTICE tuberculosis two weeks before his failed attempt John Quincy Adams was the only former president to secure a second term in 1892 and it was not to enter the House of Representatives, to which long before he began romancing Mary – Caroline’s he was elected in 1830 – a year after his term assistant and niece. The 62-year-old former had ended. The sixth President spent the next 17 President’s two children years in the House. were horrified by the The cause he became most identified marriage, refusing to with was the fight against slavery. Famously attend the New York he took on the notorious 1836 ‘gag rule’, wedding service. preventing discussions against it. He continued On Harrison’s to present more and more petitions, sent to him death in 1901 he by abolitionists, until the House gave in and gave the bulk of his repealed the rule in 1844. Adams also went to $400,000 estate to his the Supreme Court in 1841 to defend the African wife and their daughter slaves who had mutinied against their owners on Elizabeth (born 1897), the Amistad. Thanks partly to the ex-President’s leaving little for his A wealthy widow: intervention, the defendants won their freedom. elder offspring.

3

Mary Harrison in 1910

8

TAKE THE LAW INTO OW HANDS YOUR OWN

Five years before being elected ele 27th President in 1908, William Taft made clear cle his views: “Don’t sit making me President for up nights thinking about m that will never come and I hhave no ambition in that “Any party which would direction.” He continued: “A nominate me would make a great mistake.” training, had applied to be Taft, a lawyer by trainin prompting of his wife and president through the prom He often his predecessor Theodore Roosevelt. R said “politics makes me sick”, sic and was pleased to return to legal work in the yyears after his defeat. The pinnacle of Taft’s career Th caree was probably his appointment Justice of the United States in appo ap p intment as Chief Justi 11921. 9211. He held this post for nine years.

Reeling in the years: Hoover was happiest with a rod in his hand

9

RELAX BY THE RIVER

10

BECOME PRESIDENT

A few former presidents have attempted to return to the White House after an electoral defeat but only one, Grover Cleveland in 1892, actually managed to do so. In the process he became both the 22nd and the 24th President. Cleveland was defeated by Benjamin Harrison after his first term in 1888 but remained sufficiently popular with the Democrats to be given a second chance against Harrison four years later. At the end of his second term Cleveland retired for good, and he now resides in trivia quizzes across the world.

Several presidents have been keen anglers, perhaps none more so than the 31st incumbent Herbert Hoover. One biography even bears the title Hoover, the Fishing President (Stackpole Books, 2005). In the White House he liked to relieve the stress of work with some quiet hours on the river. In his long post-presidential career Hoover wrote widely on international affairs and the problems besetting America, but the final book he produced was of a very different kind. Published a year before his death, Fishing for Fun (Random House, 1963) reflects a lifetime love of angling. In one of its most memorable lines, Hoover exclaims: “All men are equal before fish.”

Mar/Apr 2009

41

Evolution in 200

DAR DARWIN D ARW

ACTION

Species don’t always take millions of years to adapt to a new way of life. Carl Zimmer meets the man who’s been watching evolution happen in his own professional lifetime, in his own laboratory... ichard Lenski lifts the door of an

A collection of fl asks sit R incubator. inside, each one holding a splash of liquid. Lenski carefully takes one out, keeping his palm clamped tightly on the overturned beaker that serves as a lid. He spins the fl ask as he inspects the sloshing liquid. “It’s a little cloudy,” he says, as though judging a fi ne wine. “If you had a glass of water that colour, you wouldn’t want to drink it.” He puts the fl ask back in the incubator and draws out another. “Now this one looks like you’ve mixed milk and water together,” he says. There’s a profound significance in the colour of the two fl asks, one that Lenski is studying to learn about the workings of evolution. Both fl asks are loaded with Escherchi coli – a species of bacteria common to the human gut. Twenty-one years ago, Lenski used a single E. coli to establish 12 identical ‘lines’ of bacteria, each of which lived in its own fl ask. Ever since the experiment started, the bacteria have been evolving. Lenski and his students and colleagues in his Michigan State University laboratory have been tracking the microorganisms’ evolution in fi ne detail. Along the way, some of the bacteria have undergone extraordinary transformations. The microbes in the fl ask Lenski is holding have experienced perhaps the most extraordinary change of all. They’ve evolved a new way of living, one that’s so successful that their population has exploded and turned their fl ask cloudy. 42

Mar/Apr 2009

Lenski has a hunch that they should no longer even be called E. coli. It’s going to take months to fi nish the experiments he’s now running to see if he’s right. “At that point, I’d be confident to call it a new species,” he says. Lenski’s research shows just how far evolutionary biology has come since the days of Charles Darwin. Darwin did not run any experiments to observe evolution in action. He believed that it proceeded too slowly to be perceived by humans. Instead, he looked to the evidence of evolution’s effects that had accumulated over billions of years. But Darwin did live long enough to get a glimpse of an experiment in evolution. In 1878, a minister and amateur scientist named William Dallinger, from Liverpool, UK, wrote to Darwin to explain how he was raising microbes in a copper vessel of his own design. He could keep the water in the vessel at a constant temperature of his choosing. Over several months, he raised the water to 150oF (65.5oC), which instantly killed ordinary microbes. But Dallinger’s microbes thrived in the hot water. He argued that they had evolved adaptations to survive in the new environment. Along the way, the heatadapted microbes also became less suited to their previous way of life, and died when dunked in lukewarm water. Darwin praised the experiment in a letter to Dallinger: “Your results, I have no doubt, will be extremely curious and valuable.”


DARWIN 200

EYEVINE

Richard Lenski has watched evolution happen in a way Darwin could never have imagined Jan/Feb 2009

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DARWIN 200

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY, PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE. ILLUSTRATION BY SHEU-KUIE HO

Evolution, claims Lenski, needs both chance and necessity to occur

왘 Unfortunately, experimental evolution soon came to a halt. In 1886 Dallinger’s vessel was destroyed and he never rebuilt it. For decades, no-one followed up on his work. In retrospect, it’s clear that Dallinger was just too advanced. At the time no-one knew about DNA, and it would be over 20 years before the word ‘gene’ would be coined. There was no way that Dallinger or any other scientist of his day could say for sure it was natural selection driving the adaptation of his microbes. Perhaps it was just that the microbes were just responding to their experience, the way a bodybuilder gets stronger by lifting weights. It took about a century for scientists to return to Dallinger’s domain. Lenski was one of them. He chose to study E. coli, because it had emerged as the bestunderstood microbe known to science. It also had the advantage of growing quickly in labs on a diet of sugar. A single E. coli can produce billions of descendents in one day.

Instead of challenging bacteria with heat, Lenski decided to use famine. He reared his E. coli in fl asks of a standard laboratory broth, and for food he gave them a meagre supply of glucose. The bacteria used up the glucose in a few hours. Every morning, Lenski and his colleagues would draw out a little of the liquid and squirt it into a fresh fl ask, where the bacteria could feast again. Lenski wanted to see if the bacteria would be altered by natural selection. In each generation, some of the bacteria would mutate. A few of those mutations might make them grow and reproduce faster in their fl ask, and they’d outcompete the other bacteria. Over time, natural selection might transform the bacteria in measurable ways. A single run of the experiment would not tell Lenski much – the results might be a fluke of random mutations. So in 1988 Lenski started 12 genetically identical E. coli ‘lines’, each in its own flask. If evolution

was at all repeatable, he hoped to get similar results in many of them. “I’ve always been fascinated by this tension between chance and necessity, the randomness of mutation and the predictable aspects of natural selection,” he explains. Lenski also wanted a ‘fossil’ record that would preserve all of the evolution. Every few weeks, his team takes a sample of bacteria from each fl ask and puts them in one of the coffi n-sized refrigerators in a room across the hall from the incubator. Today there are over 100,000 samples in the freezers. They are labelled with names of mythical resting places of great heroes, like Valhalla and Avalon, along with a motto: “When needed they shall revive.” Lenski’s team can thaw out these ancestors to extract their DNA or see how they behave compared to their descendants. By the early 1990s, Lenski had clear evidence that the bacteria had evolved. They were growing faster than their ancestors and their descendants continued to evolve into even faster growers. The longer Lenski let the experiment run, the more questions occurred to him. So he continued to transfer bacteria to new flasks each day, building up the frozen fossil record. After 45,000 generations, the bacteria now grow over 75 per cent faster than they did at the beginning of the experiment. The rate at which they improve has slowed down, but they are still getting better. “I believe they’d keep improving for thousands of years,” says Lenski. The evolution of the 12 lines has unfolded in roughly parallel ways. All 12 have become faster at growing, and have also all become about twice the size of their ancestors, for reasons Lenski has yet to pin down. He discovered more parallel evolution when he began to zero in on some of the

Real-time evolution Over 21 years, Lenski has cultivated more than 45,000 generations of E. coli

Richard Lenski sets up 12 lines of E. coli

All 12 lines have already evolved to grow more quickly than their ancestors did

0 GENERATIONS

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changes that had arisen in the bacteria. He found a few key genes that had mutated in most of the lines, but not in exactly the same way – each line had a different mutation to the same genes. For instance, Lenski put some of the bacteria in fl asks where they had to feed on another sugar, called maltose. Some lines thrived on it, while others starved. It’s clear that natural selection can drive life in the same direction again and again. But its precise path may depend on the randomness of mutations. “Chance and necessity are both important,” says Lenski. Lenski and his colleagues have used the bacteria in his long-term experiment to run some short-term ones, too. They’ve found that viruses can drive the evolution of many different strains, each resistant in its own peculiar way to infection. They’ve bombarded E. coli with radiation and tormented them with cycles of heat and cold, and the bacteria have evolved into hardier forms.

New mutations led to a population boom, making the bacteria’s flasks appear cloudy Sometimes the bacteria spontaneously reveal new things to Lenski. One day in 2003 his lab manager, Neerja Hajela was performing the morning ritual of drawing a few drops of fluid from each fl ask and adding them to a new one. She noticed something odd: one fl ask was cloudy. At fi rst Hajela assumed that the fl ask had been contaminated – that another species had somehow slipped into the fluid. So she threw out the cloudy liquid and thawed out some of the most recently frozen

bacteria from that line. Within a couple of weeks, the same line had turned cloudy again. That couldn’t be a coincidence. “I decided, something’s going on,” she says. Lenski also thought at fi rst it was a false alarm, so he set a graduate student named Christina Borland on the task. Later another student, Zachary Blount, took over the project. Borland quickly determined there was no contamination. The bacteria exploding in the fl ask was descended from the original strain of E. coli – but a new variation that was doing something E. coli is not supposed to do. The broth Lenski uses to rear the bacteria is a standard recipe that microbiologists developed decades ago so bacteria will thrive in labs. E. coli needs tiny amounts of iron to survive, for example, but it can’t draw in free iron atoms. The broth contains a molecule called citrate (the compound that makes lemons tart) that can bind iron, and in that form E. coli can absorb the iron. What it can’t do is use the citrate as a food source. But Blount discovered that the bacteria were now taking in the citrate itself and eating it, drawing energy from the bonds between its atoms and using some of the atoms to create new molecules. These ‘citrate eaters’ no longer had to starve when their supply of glucose ran out. Instead, they could just start feeding on a new food. “Now they’ve got a big dessert tray,” says Lenski. Blount returned to the frozen fossil record to figure out when the citrate eaters fi rst emerged. The fi rst signs appeared after some 31,000 generations, about seven years ago. Over the next 2000 generations, they acquired new mutations that vastly improved their ability to exploit citrate, and led to their population boom, making
their fl asks appear cloudy.

In one of the 12 lines, the first E. coli bacteria with any ability to eat citrate appears

20,000

1997

25,000

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Evolving technology Can digital organisms out-compete real bacteria? Computer science and Darwinian evolution appear distant cousins at best. But the emerging field of digital evolution is a valuable extra resource in Lenski’s quest to better understand evolution. Lenski has teamed up with computer scientist Charles Ofria at Michigan State University and physicist Chris Adami at Caltech to investigate digital organisms. They use software called Avida, which is currently colonising 200 computers at MSU in a virtual experiment that is similar to Lenski’s real one with E. coli – but faster. Digital organisms are similar to DNA in that both are sets of instructions – one directed at computers, the other at biological cells. Each digital organism can divide and produce thousands of copies of itself per minute. Every division has a small chance of a line of code being changed at random to another one – a mutation. The bits of code compete, adapt and even use logic functions to evolve to replicate faster still. Every one of many different mutations in any organism under any particular condition can be tracked, and even the way each mutation affects all the other properties of that organism. The most advanced work on bacteria cannot yet achieve this level of detail.

Over the next 2000 generations, they acquire new mutations that vastly improve their ability to exploit citrate. Their population booms

31,000

2000

Bacteria blends with digital organisms in this virtual Petri dish

35,000

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Today, after 45,000 generations, the bacteria in all the lines now grows over 75 per cent faster and they are about twice the size of their original ancestors. Lenski says they are still evolving 40,000

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45,000

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DARWIN 200

THE CV NAME: Richard Eimer Lenski BORN: 13 August 1956 EDUCATED: PhD in zoology, University of North Carolina, 1982

BRIAN BAER/ MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY, BEN STECHSCHULTE

Lenski and Zachary Blount take time out for some horseplay in the lab
In 2006 Lenski was elected a member of the prestigious US National Academy of Sciences for his work on microbial evolution. Each new member gets to publish an inaugural paper in the Academy’s journal. Lenski’s paper, published last year, unveiled his citrate-eaters in a vivid example of how it is possible to observe evolution in our own time. Creationists were not pleased. Some even demanded that Lenski surrender his bacteria to them, hoping to prove his results were bogus. Instead, Lenski wrote to explain why their attacks were unfounded. His letter was reprinted on many of the world’s biggest science websites. “I’ve received an overwhelming number of emails from around the world,” he says. “Almost all have been positive.” When Lenski first launched his experiment, it was difficult to find the new mutations in his bacteria. Now it costs just a few hundred dollars to read a microbe’s genome (its complete DNA sequence). Blount and postdoctoral researcher Jeff Barrick are sifting through the genomes of the citrate eaters, comparing their DNA to pinpoint which mutations have allowed them to make a transition to a citrate diet. They won’t disclose full details until their work has been peer reviewed and published, but they do say that they’ve now figured out at least part of the genetic story, involving an unusual rearrangement of DNA that seems to have rewired the cell’s genetic circuitry in an unexpected way. The citrate eaters offer some clues to how other new species evolve. A new species requires a new ecological niche, so that it won’t be out-competed into extinction. In the case of E. coli, the citrate in the broth was a niche just waiting to be 46

Mar/Apr 2009

taken over. At fi rst the bacteria did a poor job at feeding on citrate, but they survived because they had no competition. As new mutations arose, they became better at their new way of life. Lenski and Blount predict that the mutations that make those bacteria better at eating citrate would not help the bacteria that still feed on glucose. It’s a prediction they can test by inserting the citrate-feeding mutations into the normal glucose-specialising bacteria and watching to see if they grow more slowly as a result. If that proves to be true, Lenski may be ready to treat the citrate-eaters as a completely new species. He is toying with potential names – perhaps Escherchia blountii after their discoverer, or Escherichia gouldii after the great, late palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould. Gould wrote often about how flukes steered evolution in unexpected directions. Certainly the citrate eaters in Lenski’s lab support that. Blount tried to replicate the evolution of the citrate eaters using their own ancestors from different points in the fossil record. It was a massive project, demanding that Blount smear trillions of E. coli across thousands of Petri dishes. In a few cases, the ancestors as far back as 33,000 generations could evolve the ability to digest citrate. But none of the other lines could. In just one lineage, it seems, some mysterious mutation opened the door to the evolution of a new way of life. Fortunately, Lenski and his colleagues were there to see what came through that door – and to study it further in years to come, for there is much to still discover. As Lenski says, “That’s the curse and beauty of science.”

RESEARCH POSITIONS: • 1982-85 Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA • 1984 Visiting Assistant Professor, Dartmouth College, NH • 1985-88 Assistant Professor, University of California, Irvine, CA • 1988-91 Associate Professor, University of California, Irvine, CA • 1991 Hannah Professor of Microbial Ecology, Michigan State University, MI ACCOLADES INCLUDE: • 1986 and 1992 Awarded the American Society of Naturalists President’s Award for Best Paper in The American Naturalist • 1992 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship • 1996 John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation Fellowship • 1997 Elected to Fellowship in American Academy of Microbiology • 1998 Elected to Fellowship in American Academy of Arts and Sciences • 1999 American Society for Microbiology, Division R Lectureship • 2006 Elected to Membership in National Academy of Sciences.

Carl Zimmer writes for the New York Times. His latest book is Microcosm: E. coli and the new science of life (Heineman, 2008)

FIND OUT MORE
http://myxo.css.msu.edu/index.html Lenski’s site, containing links to all his research
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7899 The paper where Lenski details his findings about the citrate-eating E. coli
http://avida.devosoft.org Information on self-replicating computer systems

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NATURE

Wandering albatross Tui de Roy has spent many years photographing the courtships of the world’s largest seabirds. Albatross only come ashore to breed, usually on remote islands. Only recently have DNA studies shown there may be up to 25 species, all but two of which are endangered

CLIFF HANGER A pair of Salvin’s albatross is engaging in one of the more subtle stages of courtship. One bird stares at its partner and utters grunting sounds in its puffed up throat, while the other responds with wide eyes, loud warbling and bill chattering. The exposed, brightly coloured skin along its gape-line indicates excitement. The rigorously protected, storm-battered Bounty Islands lie in sub-Antarctic New Zealand waters and are the birds’ only stronghold. I led a science research trip here with a team of volunteers, and we were only the third group to live on the islands since sealers worked here in the 1880s.

Mar/Apr 2009

49

wew NATURE

Portfolio

TOPPING THE BILL
Two Buller’s albatross click their bill tips together in a classic fencing posture. This is often the first move in a complex courtship dance routine that involves many precise steps. After several years alone at sea, young albatross return to their natal islands – in this species’ case, the tiny Forty-Fours, the easternmost outliers of New Zealand’s Chatham Islands, where they spend long periods of time socialising and displaying in search of the perfect partner. Seemingly designed to test a bird’s coordination and trust, some gestures are unique to one or two species. Other moves, such as the bill-fencing shown above, may be employed across the entire albatross family – albeit with variations. The dance creates a strong bond between compatible birds, and the pair may remain together for life.

50

Mar/Apr 2009

DOWN THE HATCH  This mate’s-eye view reveals the full impact of the waved albatross’s gaping display, the feathery eyebrows and black eye-rings accentuating its stare. Nesting on the Galápagos Islands west of Ecuador, the waved albatross performs the most elaborate courtship of any albatross, with an assortment of gestures that follow a strict chronology. Taking their cues from each other, suitors perform intense rallies of fencing, sky-pointing, bowing, clapping, fake-preening and bill-rattling at breakneck speed, pausing briefly during this gaping posture. Mark Jones, my photographic partner, caught this unusual angle by keeping himself aligned in front of one of the birds as the self-engrossed pair pirouetted, oblivious to his presence.

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NATURE

SPREAD YOUR WINGS The courting fervour of the Chatham albatross is often interspersed with brief, dizzying circles around their nesting island. Minutes later they land in a fanfare of splayed wings and long, wailing calls. Named after the Chatham Islands, the entire world population of this critically endangered species breeds only on the Pyramid volcanic islet – the smallest breeding site of any albatross. Tens of thousands of albatross die each year after becoming snagged on longlines and trawl cables in unregulated high-seas fisheries. Even though efforts are being made to curb these problems, global warming is thought to be affecting the Chatham albatross, whose chicks suffer from heat exhaustion, dehydration and disease during abnormally hot summers.

Mar/Apr 2009

53

NATURE

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DISPLAYING AROUND
Mouth gaping and wailing loudly, a Campbell albatross – named after the only island in the world where it nests – makes a spectacular entry into a cliff-edge gathering. In the process of seeking out mates, unattached individuals assemble for ‘gamming’ sessions, a term originally used to describe occasions when sailors of old would get together to swap stories and news from home. The Campbell albatross displays in a group, often at a frenetic pace, repeatedly swapping dance partners in search of a durable match. In the great albatross species (Diomedea sp) such as royals, whose gamming groups may number a dozen individuals or more, the process of finding a lifelong mate can take up to 10 years.

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Mar/Apr 2009

BOOTY CALL  The piercing call of a sky-pointing sooty albatross, advertising itself to potential mates passing overhead, echoes through misty, fern-clad canyons in the rugged interior of Gough Island, halfway between South Africa and South America. Here, sooties select secret nest-sites on mossy ledges, shunning the noisy colonies preferred by most other species.

,

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NATURE

HOME TO ROOST  On a rare calm day in the latitudes known as the Furious Fifties, far to the south of New Zealand, the Sun sets peacefully on a pair of southern royal albatross. They are courting in the tall tussock grass overlooking the windward cliffs of Campbell Island. Their stately dance peaks with a splendid wingstretching display, accompanied by ecstatic wild screams. Once the site of a failed farming colony and overrun by sheep, cats and rats for over a century, the island has reverted to a nearly pristine state in recent times, helped by intensive conservation management. It is now a safe nesting haven for six of the world’s albatross species.

Pacific Ocean

Atlantic Ocean Galápagos Islands

NEW ZEALAND

Gough Island

Chatham Islands Bounty Islands Campbell Island

Raised in the Galápagos after her parents immigrated there from Belgium, Tui de Roy turned her early interest in natural history into a career in wildlife photography and writing that has taken her to all seven continents. Her passion for albatross, first kindled as a teenager, has led her on a multi-year quest that has involved private sailing expeditions to remote sub-Antarctic islands for months at a time.

FIND OUT MORE  Albatross: their world, their ways by Tui de Roy, Mark Jones and Julian Fritter (Firefly Books, 2008)

Mar/Apr 2009

57

W E E K N I G H T S 7 & 10 P M / E T O N

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DARWIN RW WIIN N

200

INTERVIEW

RICHARD DAWKINS

REX

He’s called religion a virus of the mind, and thinks teaching children about hell fire is nothing short of psychological child abuse. Jheni Osman meets the evolutionary biologist, author and rationalist Richard Dawkins to find out why...

Mar/Apr 2009

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DARWIN 200

hy does it matter whether or not

W people believe in God?

I’d broaden it and say “Why does it matter if they understand what’s true?” I do think there’s something Philistine about saying “It doesn’t really matter what’s true, as long as you enjoy yourself.” I really, really think it matters what’s true. Here we are on this planet for a matter of a few decades. We have the opportunity to understand where we come from, where the Universe comes from, where the world comes from, where life comes from, where humanity comes from – what it’s all about. It is an amazing privilege to be able to understand all that. It’s a privilege that was not granted to our predecessors – from the Middle Ages right up to near the present. There are still things that we don’t yet know, but there’s an awful lot that we do know and it is a huge advantage over our historical predecessors that we have that knowledge. There’s something wonderful about it and there’s something tragic about anybody who isn’t interested in that or, even worse, somebody who would deny that knowledge to children and others who might be eager to learn it.

Creationists think evolution is random chance. Any fool can see that if it were random chance it wouldn’t work. You’ve only got to look at an eye to see it couldn’t come about by luck Have you ever changed a creationist’s mind? No, not in conversation. If you look at Converts’ Corner on richarddawkins.net you will fi nd a lot of personal stories of people who have been converted, mostly by The God Delusion. I don’t know whether some of those might have been creationists before reading it. What about people with borderline beliefs? Yes. I’ve known very intelligent people who when it’s put to them will say something like: “Oh, I didn’t really know what evolution was. I sort of vaguely thought it was something to do with chimpanzees.” They know that it means 60

Mar/Apr 2009

we came from apes, but if you then ask them where the apes came from they say: “I never really thought about that.” If you say: “Where did fish come from?” they hadn’t really thought about that either. And so it’s people in that category, who may be well-educated and intelligent but just for some reason haven’t given any thought to the question of where they come from and perhaps have simply accepted a religious account, kind of by default. I suspect there might be rather a lot of them, and I would expect to have converted some of them. So what kind of arguments do creationists use against evolution? I think the classic thing is that creationists think evolution is a theory of random chance. Any fool can see that if it were random chance it couldn’t work. You’ve only got to look at the complexity of something like an eye to see it couldn’t come about by luck, and for them that’s a sufficient argument to say that therefore it was designed. Creationists miss two points there. One is that natural selection is very much not a theory of chance. Natural selection is really the opposite of chance, it’s nonrandom survival. The second point they miss is they think that design is a feasible alternative to chance, which it really isn’t. Because if you think about something as complicated as an eye, then yes, it’s absolutely right to say that it can’t have come about by luck, but equally, any god capable of designing it can’t have just come about either. And so the very same argument – namely the statistical improbability of something as complicated as an eye – that they use wrongly against natural selection, can in fact be used rightly against intelligent design theory. Who designed the designer? Creationists don’t realise that’s the question they are in fact inviting. And as far as we know(there could be others we don’t know) evolution by natural selection is the only theory that is capable ultimately of explaining the massive complexity of the living world.

DARWIN 200

Religious fetivals, such as Kumbh Mela in India, attract millions of believers

Doesn’t that random chance argument also assume that complex adaptations – like the eye – appeared very quickly? Exactly. One of the ways in which creationists put the argument from improbability is what they call ‘irreducible complexity’. They say that the whole thing needs to be there before it’ll work. The whole eye needs to be there. If any part of it is missing it won’t work at all. The assumption is that half an eye won’t work at all, three quarters of an eye won’t work at all – you’ve got to have to have 100 per cent of an eye or it won’t work. Obvious nonsense. You can have a very bad eye which can hardly see anything at all but will still save your life because it will stop you running off a cliff. So there is plenty of usefulness in a very imperfect eye. There is a gradual, slow, incremental gradient from no eye at all, through one per cent of an eye, two per cent of an eye – all the way up to 100 per cent. Every step of the way, the slight, marginal improvement really will increase your chances of surviving. You do need a slow gradient. Darwin was aware of this – but creationists are much too ready to assume that there isn’t a slow gradient.

GETTY, PAUL BOX X3

Even so, isn’t the origin of life itself an improbable event, requiring random chance? Yes, the origin of life is an interesting 왘 question, because unlike everything

Richard Dawkins is well-known for his anti-religious sentiments

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GETTY

DARWIN 200

Dawkins studies crickets’ responses to computersimulated mating calls in Oxford, UK, in 1976

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왘 else about life, which can be explained by natural selection, the origin of life strictly can’t. The origin of life, for me, is the origin of the fi rst self-replicating entity. And a self-replicating entity is a prerequisite for natural selection, so therefore we can’t use natural selection, at least in the ordinary sense, to explain it. So to that extent the origin of life has to be a chance event. But chance doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have an explanation. The sheer number of planets in the Universe on which life could have arisen entitles us to postulate a very high level of chance for the origin of life. You are allowed to postulate that much luck because it only had to happen once, and if it did only happen once then the one planet where it happened has to be this one, because we are here talking about it. And therefore a theory which is a very improbable one is nevertheless satisfying.

American biologist Richard Lenski claims to have demonstrated evolution in action in bacteria (see Carl Zimmer’s article on his visit to Lenski’s lab on p26). What do you think of his work? Lenski’s research is brilliant. He’s got all bases covered, really. He has a dozen fl asks of bacteria in a nutrient broth and every day a little sample is drawn out of each fl ask and put into a brand new fl ask. So there are 12 lines of evolution – I call them the ‘12 tribes’ – and every day there’s a new generation. This has now been going on for around 25 years. So there are thousands of generations of fl asks. In every generation of fl asks there are hundreds of generations of bacteria and the bacteria are continually evolving to improve their ability to survive in this artificial environment. And so you can see evolution in action over this 25-year period. One of the nice things about it is that bacteria breed so fast, so time is telescoped. Another very nice feature of his research is the way he can store ‘fossils’. Every now and again he will draw out a sample of bacteria and deep-freeze them, so that at any time he can go back to, say, 10

years ago – which is a large number of generations ago. And so you’ve got the whole of evolution laid out in front of you with this magnificent, experimentally controlled environment, with an experimentally controlled fossil record. It’s a brilliant piece of research.

I’m committed to the view that consciousness is a manifestation of brain activity and therefore, since brains are produced by evolution, it must in some sense have evolved Is it enough to convince creationists? Well, it’s worrying them. They are bothered by it to the extent that one creationist keeps writing belligerent letters to Lenski challenging him to hand over his original data so they can examine it. But Lenski’s data are his bacteria. He replies: “If you’re equipped with a proper bacteriological lab and you know how to handle them – because these are E. coli bacteria and they can get quite nasty if they mutate in the wrong way – then I’ll let you have some samples.” Of course, the man wouldn’t have faintest idea what to do with a sample, but it’s an interesting correspondence and it shows that it’s got them rattled. What’s the best case that you’ve heard for the existence of God? I just don’t think there is one. I suppose the most interesting argument would be the argument from a physicist who might say something like: “As far as biology is concerned, the argument is dead – Darwin has solved that one. But we’ve still got the problem of the origin of the Universe and the apparent fi ne-tuning of the physical constants of the cosmos.” There are some half a dozen or so physical constants, and physicists have no explanation for why they have the value that they do. They just accept that the constants have those values, and they calculate that if they had different values the Universe wouldn’t work and we wouldn’t be here. 왘 Mar/Apr 2009

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THE CV

Dawkins-supported atheist advertisements have recently been carried on UK buses 왘 I think it’s clear that this is no argument because it still leaves open the question of who designed the designer. But if you forced me to say what’s the best argument, the best of some very bad arguments – and it’s still a bad argument – then it is that one.

G. NUNN/ATHEISTCAMPAIGN.ORG, REX, GETTY, PA PHOTOS

Could physicists ever lay such arguments to rest for good? I’m not a physicist, so I have to be very cautious. I suppose it’s possible that if we ever get a theory of everything, that theory of everything will show that those halfdozen physical constants are not actually independent of one another. It might show that there’s only one way for a universe to be, and that the constants have to be that way for reasons which at present we don’t understand, but will understand in the future. And I suppose the Large Hadron Collider, the experiment underway at CERN (see BBC Knowledge Magazine issue 2) could provide the basis for a theory of everything. What advances in our understanding of evolution do you hope to see in your lifetime? I think that subjective consciousness is something unexplained and not yet understood. You can program a computer to play chess to Grandmaster standard and it’s very impressive to do something like that. And you can program computers to do feats of navigation, feats of what look like biological behaviour. But I don’t think it’s obvious that these computers are conscious in the sense of having a sort of subjective awareness like you and I have when we look at a rose or smell an onion. There is something about the fact that I’m me and you’re you and you have private feelings which are your own and I 64

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have private feelings which are my own. Is the way that I see red the same as the way that you see red? This is a famous old philosophical conundrum that may not ever be answered. (For more on consciousness see BBC Knowledge Magazine issue 1.) And so these are mysteries to me. Not all philosophers agree, but to me this is mysterious and I’m committed to the view that it’s a manifestation of brain activity and therefore, since brains are produced by evolution, subjective consciousness must in some sense have evolved. And it raises all sorts of fascinating questions. How many animals have it? Do even earthworms still have some sort of very, very rudimentary subjective consciousness? Do only mammals have it? Do birds have it? These are all questions that, at present, are unanswerable and it isn’t totally clear if they ever can be answered.

Jheni Osman is contributing editor for science on BBC Knowledge Magazine. She is also the editor of the BBC’s British science magazine Focus.

FIND OUT MORE 왘 http://richarddawkins.net Richard Dawkins’s official website 왘 Finding Darwin’s God: a scientist’s search for common ground between God and evolution by Kenneth R Miller (Harper Perennial, 2007) 왘 Breaking the Spell: religion as a natural phenomenon by Daniel C Dennett (Penguin, 2007)

NAME: Clinton Richard Dawkins MA, DSc (Oxon), FRS, FRSL BORN: 26 March 1941, Nairobi, Kenya EDUCATED: Balliol College, University of Oxford, UK RESEARCH POSITIONS: University of California, Berkeley, and University of Oxford, UK. Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford from 1995-2008. Currently Professorial Fellow of New College, Oxford LITERARY HIGHLIGHTS: • The Selfish Gene (1976) • The Extended Phenotype (1982) • The Blind Watchmaker (1986) • River Out Of Eden (1995) • Climbing Mount Improbable (1996) • Unweaving the Rainbow (1998) • A Devil’s Chaplain (2003) • The Ancestor’s Tale (2004) • The God Delusion (2006) TELEVISION HIGHLIGHTS: • Nice Guys Finish First (1987) • The Blind Watchmaker (1987) • Growing Up in the Universe (1991) • Break the Science Barrier (1996) • The Atheism Tapes (2004) • The Root of All Evil? (2006) • The Enemies of Reason (2007) • The Genius of Charles Darwin (2008) NOTABLE AWARDS: • LA Times Literary Prize (1987) • Michael Faraday Award (1990) • Nakayama Prize (1994) • AHA Humanist of the Year (1996) • International Cosmos Prize (1997) • Kistler Prize (2001) • Alfred Toepfer Foundation • Shakespeare Prize (2005) • Deschner Award (2007) • Galaxy British Book Awards Author of the Year (2007)

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FOR&AGAINST

Is the theory of evolution compatible with divine creation? That is the question BBC Knowledge Magazine’s science consultant John Horgan put to two highly regarded members of the scientific community, each with a different viewpoint. Their answers show how the simple facts of what is true and false are anything but simple – or factual

DANIEL C DENNETT The atheist Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, MA, Dennett has written extensively on subjects such as evolution, religion and the mind

KENNETH R MILLER Professor of biology at Brown University, RI, and author of Finding Darwin’s God, Miller is a practising Roman Catholic who claims evolution has deepened his faith

YES

Indeed it is. An answer to that question turns, of course, on what we suppose the Creator might have fashioned. If we misconstrue the Book of Genesis as natural history, we find profound contradictions between its creation story and the modern sciences of astronomy, geology and biology. Heaven and Earth were not fashioned 6000 years ago, all living organisms did not appear simultaneously, and the Earth’s geological formations were not laid down in a single worldwide flood. What the modern theory of evolution does show is that the origins of all species, including our own, are found in natural processes that can be observed and studied scientifically. In other words, that our own existence is woven into the very fabric of

Can it be misleading to read the story of the garden of Eden literally?

the natural world. Seen in this light, the human presence is not a mistake of nature or a random accident, but a direct consequence of the characteristics of the Universe. Evolution tells us that we are part of the grand, dynamic and ever-changing fabric of life that covers our planet. To a person of faith, an understanding of the evolutionary process only deepens our appreciation of the scope and wisdom of the Creator’s work. Ultimately, evolution does not limit God’s involvement with his creation in any way. Rather, it places it on a deeper, more profound and more intimate level. To place any science – including evolution – in conflict with God is to presuppose that His existence and His modes of action are scientific questions. They are not. Arriving at a deeper and more rational understanding of nature – the ultimate goal of science – will always raise the question of why science should work, why nature should open itself to reasoned analysis. For some, that question will never have an answer. But for others, the answer is found in the creative power of God, manifest in many ways, not least of which is the process of evolution.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

NO

Judge John E Jones wrote a brilliant opinion in support of his important decision in the Dover Area School District case of 2005 that exposed the shabby subterfuges of the intelligent design movement, but one sentence dismayed me: “Repeatedly in this trial, plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator [emphasis added].” I wonder if Judge Jones has slightly distorted the scientific experts’ testimony. If they said that the theory of evolution in no way conflicts with the existence of a divine creator, then I find that claim to be disingenuous at best. The theory of evolution demolishes the best reason anyone has ever suggested for believing in a divine creator. This does not demonstrate that there is no divine creator, of course, but shows that if there is one, it (He?) needn’t have bothered to create anything. Of course ‘creation’ may mean different things to different people, but how far can we stretch the term in

Controversy at Dover Area High School surrounding the teaching of intelligent design in 2005

good conscience? Would the good judge similarly agree that when a defense team in a murder trial shows that the victim died of natural causes, that this in no way conflicts with the state’s contention that the death in question had an author; the accused? What’s the difference? Merely hoping for or approving of someone’s death, or foreseeing someone’s death, is not causing someone’s death, and merely presiding benignly over natural selection is not creating – in any ordinary sense. Is a God that merely endorses the laws of nature from which life follows a divine creator? And what if God hadn’t endorsed those laws? Would creation have happened without His blessing? The theory of evolution has no need for such an endorsement.

Write and let us know your opinions: [email protected] Mar/Apr 2009

65

HISTORY

Nazis on the silver screen With new films explodingg the traditional blockbuster image of thee ‘nasty Nazis’, Chris Bowlby examines the Third Reich’s changing role in cinema hen Hollywood turns its

GETTY

W spotlight on Hitler, many expect a diet of cleancut Allies triumphing over nasty Nazis. And such fi lms have been a Hollywood staple – not only war fi lms but also popular reworkings of the Nazi theme, like Indiana Jones’s efforts to thwart the Führer’s archaeological ambitions. But a recent fi lm sees a different Hollywood treatment of the Third Reich, in which screen superstars take on some of the most sensitive issues surrounding Nazism and German behaviour. In Valkyrie, which was released in December last year, Tom Cruise plays Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, the aristocrat and army officer who planted the bomb that nearly killed Hitler at his military

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headquarters dquarters in East Prussia in 1944, and who was executed in Berlin when his coup failed. The making of Valkyrie has aroused hugee interest in Germany itself. Cruise’s ise’s role was challenged by some in the he country due to his membership of the he Church of Scientology, viewed as a dangerous cult by the German government. ernment. But the fi lm’s champions believe eve it will mark a significant change nge in global perception. Frank rank Schirrmacher, one of the most st influential commentators in Germany, many, says that world opinion had always been shaped by Winston Churchill’s urchill’s immediate dismissal of the 1944 plot as an internal Nazi affair ir – a “murderous internecine power wer struggle” he explains. “Outside Germany, many, few people know that


Fascists on film

HISTORY

HISTORY

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there were Germans who actually wanted to kill Hitler.” A Hollywood superstar like Cruise has the power to bring this knowledge to “a 16-yearold boy in Glasgow or a girl in Iowa.” This belief in the power of fi lm derives partly from memories of how Hollywood’s portrayal of Nazi evils once broke a guilty silence in Germany itself. The TV series Holocaust, made in the US and shown in Germany in 1979, was derided by some historians for its soap opera style, portraying two ‘typical’ families, one Nazi and one Jewish. However, up to 20 million Germans tuned in and the series prompted a debate about what was and was not known about the treatment of Jews. A decade later, the reunification of Germany revived fears of German power, and led to renewed agonising over historical guilt. American historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s mid-1990s bestseller Hitler’s Willing Executioners (Vintage, 1997) was much criticised by other historians for its thesis that murderous anti-Semitism had been endemic among millions of Germans long before Hitler came to power. Yet the book was highly popular in Germany itself, widely welcomed as another necessary step on the road to national contrition. At the same time, the postunification period has seen a rich

Valkyrie tells the tale of one of the many German attempts on Hitler’s life

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vein of fi lms and documentaries representing many different historical views. The role of Germans as victims of the war rather than perpetrators of evil has emerged in fi lms about the bombing of Dresden and the brutal expulsion of millions of ethnic Germans from central and eastern Europe as Nazism was defeated. The idea of resistance against Nazism, central to Valkyrie, was fi rst seen in Hollywood in 1993 when Steven Spielberg released Schindler’s List. German fi lm-makers have since portrayed the women of Rosenstrasse in Berlin, who successfully resisted

Thanks to the Tom Cruise brand, if Valkyrie is a success, it will become a symbol of resistance the deportation of their husbands in 1943. And Sophie Scholl: the final days, which was released in 2005, focused on the female member of a small group of students in Munich who distributed a series of anti-Nazi leaflets and were beheaded after their capture by the Gestapo. Film historian Daniela Berghahn sees Sophie Scholl as an especially

Sophie Scholl: the final days celebrated German resistance to the Nazis

interesting symbol. She points to fi lm techniques that use lighting to create an aura around her as a kind of moral beacon amidst Nazi darkness. “It’s easier to redeem the German woman than the German man”, she says. However The Reader, another very recent fi lm, stars Kate Winslet as a former concentration camp guard who is brought to justice in postwar Germany, and through her story challenges the idea of German women as a more innocent group. Thanks to the Tom Cruise global brand, if Valkyrie proves to be a success, it will create a dominant popular symbol of resistance. And that does concern some historians. Stephan Malinowski is a professor at the Free University of Berlin whose research on the German aristocracy has shown them to be a more antiSemitic and pro-Nazi group than many had previously assumed. But, as Malinowski concedes, von Stauffenberg, was “handsome, courageous, with a wonderful wife and children, and member of a literary circle... everything you need to create a hero.” Heroism has proved to be an uncomfortable concept for modern Germans to deal with, following Nazi and Communist perversions of the ideal. Johannes Tuchel is Director of the German Resistance Memorial Centre at the Bendlerblock in Berlin – the same building where von Stauffenberg had his wartime office and was executed in July 1944 following the failed coup. He prefers to see heroism through many smaller

Fascists on film

1930 S 1940 S

 WHY WE FIGHT (1942-45) Frank Capra, the director of It’s a Wonderful Life, was the main player in this series of seven US propaganda films. Capra had been impressed by Riefenstahl’s achievement, and as a response set about trying to convince an isolationist United States that joining the war – and allying itself with the Soviet Union – was the right thing to do.

1950 S

 THE COLDITZ STORY (1955) An instructive tale of troublesome Allied prisoners of war sent to the supposedly escape-proof Colditz Castle in Saxony, Germany. The men work separately to escape and rejoin the fight until a stiff-upper-lipped British officer unites the national contingents – French, Dutch, British and Polish – for a joint escape attempt. Some succeed, some fail, but resistance is never questioned.

1960 S

 THE LONGEST DAY (1962) The day in question is 6th June 1944, and the Allied invasion of Normandy. This three-hour film covers the day in depth and from multiple viewpoints, including that of the Germans. Their portrayal is not without sympathy – German soldiers are shown as commanded by leaders who had become completely removed from reality.

1970 S

 THE TIN DRUM (1979) Volker Schlöndorff’s film of Günter Grass’s allegorical novel won an Academy Award for best foreign language film. It’s the story of a boy who, appalled by the behaviour he observes from adults, refuses to grow up. As society around him descends into wartime chaos, he beats his dismay on his most prized possession – a toy drum.  DAS BOOT (1981) Wolfgang Petersen’s anti-war movie was one of the first to unashamedly side with everyday (and decidedly non-Nazi) combatants, in this case the crew of the U-boat U-96. The film follows the crew through a single mission, in an atmosphere of claustrophobic dread. The misuse and maltreatment of brave men by arrogant superiors is again a major theme.  SCHINDLER’S LIST (1993) Steven Spielberg’s film, adapted from Thomas Keneally’s award-winning novel, focused on Oskar Schindler, who ended up protecting many of the Jews working for him. It arguably provided a breakthrough in bringing the horrors of the Holocaust to a global audience. Amon Göth, commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp in Poland, is portrayed as clinically insane.  DOWNFALL (2004) This attempt by a German director to depict Hitler and his closest associates in their bunker during the last days of war was taboobreaking in Germany, as it depicted Hitler as a weak, failing human being, albeit a monstrous one. The film was criticised for ‘humanising’ leading Nazis, as well as failing to sufficiently reflect the huge suffering as the Third Reich collapsed.


Ministry of Illusion: Nazi cinema and its afterlife by Eric Rentschler (Harvard UP, 1996)
Why We Fought: America’s wars in film and history by Peter C Rollins and John E O’Connor (UP of Kentucky, 2008)
http://tinyurl.com/2lxpvt Frank Capra’s Why We Fight propoganda movies

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FIND OUT MORE

 THE TRIUMPH OF THE WILL (1934) The film that documented – and lauded – the return of Germany as an international power. The epic depiction of the 1934 Nazi rally in Nuremberg by Hitler’s favourite director, Leni Riefenstahl, still offers a sobering insight into Third Reich propaganda. Most chilling of all is the carefully choreographed submerging of individual identity into a collective, utterly obedient whole.

1990 S

Chris Bowlby is a regular presenter and correspondent on BBC radio, specialising in history and European affairs

How the portrayal of Nazis has changed over the decades

2000 S

actions – perhaps some help given to a slave labourer by an ordinary German citizen. Tuchel unsuccessfully opposed the use of the Bendlerblock as a fi lm set by the Valkyrie producers, quoting one of his colleagues who suggested that Hollywood’s version “is likely to have as much to do with the reality of German resistance as Count Dracula has to do with modern Romania.” While acknowledging such fi lms’ ability to generate interest in a subject, Tuchel worries that they undermine a balanced picture of the resistance that includes all the different groups – not only army officers but also workers, religious believers, and those on the political left as well as the right. Indeed the role of the left, whose resistance began in 1933, has always been much less celebrated in Germany as a whole due to the Communist East German regime’s distortion of the story for its own propaganda purposes. And yet Tuchel admits that, properly presented, von Stauffenberg can symbolise the dilemma that faced every German living under the Third Reich – whether to accept the dictatorship, be a bystander, or say ‘I’m against the Nazis’. The fi lm-makers and the historians, respectively more crudely and more subtly, still fi nd themselves grappling with these very human questions: How did it happen? How could it have been stopped? What would I have done?

HISTORY

Mar/Apr 2009

69

The Grand Union flag, and the statue of Burns in Dumfries, where he died

Robert Burns

HISTORY

SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT? This year marks the 250th birthday of the Scottish poet Robert Burns. His recent biographer Robert Crawford explores the legacy of this early champion of democracy ew Year’s Eve, and as

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approaches across N midnight the English-speaking world the revelry culminates with a raucous rendition of Auld Lang Syne. For many, the reasons for singing this traditional song – if ‘singing’ is not too kind a word for most New Year’s efforts – are as deeply lost in the mists of time as the name of its creator. In fact, the words used to welcome in each New Year come from the pen of Scotsman Robert Burns – a man with so fervent a belief in the burgeoning movement of ‘democracy’ that at the time some felt it bordered on the equally new concept of terrorism. In the wake of the French Revolution (1789-99), which had seen the execution of the King and Queen of France, the notion of democracy was as frightening to many Britons as it was fundamental to those fighting for independence in the American Revolutionary War being waged around the same time (1775-83) across the Atlantic. Today, 250 years after the poet’s birth, the recurring themes of democracy and terrorism remain important and

controversial themes, both in art and in life. Like the overwhelming majority of Britons at that time, the passionate young Scots poet Robert Burns had no vote. Born on 25 January 1759 – a date now celebrated by Scots all over the world as ‘Burns Night’ – he grew up in the West of Scotland, close to the busy seaport of Ayr. He was a teenager during the American Revolutionary War and followed its struggles closely, since these were widely reported in newspapers, which Burns read avidly. Ayr, like other West of Scotland ports, suffered in the American confl ict. The trans-Atlantic trade in slave-harvested products such as tobacco and sugar had been making Scotland rich during the 18th century expansion of the British Empire. The war in America disrupted this profitable stream of commerce throughout Britain. In Burns’ native county of Ayrshire there was real anxiety that John Paul Jones, the Scots -born hero of the American rebels, would mount a naval assault, as 왘 Mar/Apr 2009

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Robert Burns: Bard of Ayrshire

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A brief biography of Scotland’s favourite son Born in his parents’ Ayrshire cottage on 25 January 1759, Robert Burns had relatively little formal education but read voraciously, relishing the recent philosophy of fellow Scot Adam Smith, the English poetry of Alexander Pope and the Scots poetry of Robert Fergusson. By the time he published his Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect in Kilmarnock in 1786, this young farmer was better read than many an undergraduate. By turns witty, heartfelt, subtle and sly, Burns’ poems such as To a Mouse and To a Louse entranced readers. Putting on hold his plans to emigrate to Jamaica, he went instead to Edinburgh where he was hailed as a “heaven-taught ploughman” by lawyer and novelist Henry Mackenzie. An expanded 1787 edition of Poems increased his fame and was soon republished in London, Philadelphia, and New York. A mesmerising speaker and an ardent lover of several women, Burns eventually married Jean Armour and became an Exciseman in Dumfries. Some of his neighbours found his politics suspect. He increasingly devoted himself to collecting and reshaping Scots songs, fusing his voice with that of the people. His mock-heroic poem Tam o’ Shanter shows his humour and artistry to the full. Ill and exhausted, Burns died in 1796 aged just 37, acclaimed as Scotland’s national poet.

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왘 Jones was trying to disrupt Scottish shipping. Such was the climate of fear that local gentry living near the coast took the precaution of moving their furniture inland to safer homes. At Ayr, men were appointed to raise the alarm should Jones or other American privateers attack. Their fears were confi rmed when Jones did indeed chase a cutter into the lower Firth of Clyde, as far as the island of Ailsa Craig, just off the Ayrshire coast. The result was that shipping at Scottish ports slumped. Burns’ community also suffered notable economic damage as a result of the war. He recorded the trauma suffered by one of his closest friends, the sailor Richard Brown: “He had been set ashore by an American Privateer on the wild coast of Connaught, strip’t of every thing”.

Democratic sympathies Given the hardships caused to those around him by American revolutionaries, one might have expected Burns to support his own government against them. The evidence of his poetry, however, shows that his sympathy lay with the democratic rebels, and demonstrates how closely he followed events of the American Revolutionary War throughout his teens. These ideals, rooted in the events of Burns’ youth, would shape the strong political commentary with which he is keenly identified. He never actually uses the word ‘democracy’ in his verse (though in one poem a contemptuous speaker mocks “democrat doings”), yet in tone and tenor he emerges as a champion of modern democracy, a writer whose gift for vernacular engagement and an open disrespect of inherited authority explain his popularity today among those with strong democratic ideals. In one substantial song-fragment, Burns wrote about the Boston Tea Party. It seems loyalist at fi rst glance, rebuking the American republican rebels who “did nae less, in full Congress,/ Than quite refuse our law, man”. Yet, while detailing events of the American Revolutionary War, Burns himself was no true Briton siding with “our law” and opposing the aims of the new American Congress. On closer examination his song sounds markedly as if it supports the American rebels, and it continues by chronicling Britain’s disastrous handling of the confl ict. When it fi rst appeared in print it was set to a tune

celebrating a famous Jacobite rebel victory over pro-Hanoverian forces. Such was the young bard’s captivation with the war in America that the fi rst place names to appear in his poetry are not Scottish but American – cities such as Boston, Philadelphia and New York. In fact, Burns was the fi rst of the great Romantic poets to write about America, and went on to compose an ode in honour of George Washington’s birthday. In this, he praised the “sons of Liberty” and their belief in “the royalty of man” – something that evidently meant considerably more to Burns than the royalty of the British Royal Family, as his work is notable for addressing royalty with naked disrespect. His poem A Dream scoffs at the then British Poet Laureate’s celebratory ode in honour of the King’s birthday, mocking Prince William, George III’s sailor son, as: “young, royal tarry-breeks”. Such cheeky disrespect is at one with some of his most famous lines, which celebrate the brotherhood of man – such as the song entitled Is There For Honest Poverty. At times Burns could behave sycophantically towards titled people, but in his best verse he sounds more democratic: Ye see yon birkie ca’d1, a Lord, Wha2 struts & stares & a’ that; Tho’ hundreds worship at his word, He’s but a coof3 for a’ that. For a’ that, & a’ that, His ribband, star, & a’ that; The man of independant mind He looks & laughs at a’ that. 1 smart fellow called

2 who

3 fool

Emphasising the independent -mindedness instilled in him by the Scottish song-culture which he grew up with, Burns champions ‘sense and worth’ above titles or inherited position. If he was shaped by ideals strong in the American struggle for independence, then in 1789, the year of the French Revolution, he stated that “a’ Men” were “brithers”. A few years later he was to be found looking forward to a time when “Man to Man, the warld o’er,/ Shall brothers be for a’ that.” Such sentiments brought him very close to the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity that were associated with French revolutionary democracy and terrorism, to the point that he was suspected of being a traitor. This all took place at a time when alleged democrats and republicans such as the Scottish political reformer Thomas

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Burns in the 21st century As with other great bards, such as Shakespeare or Wordsworth, Burns’ work has seeped into everyday life, both in his native Scotland and across the English-speaking world

AULD LANG SYNE

Burns followed events of the American Revolutionary War obsessively

Muir were being arrested in Scotland. Burns feared for his future, and made a show of protesting loyalty to the British crown. Yet it is hard to read his lines: “But while we sing, God save the King,/ We’ll ne’er forget the people” without suspecting that he is actually encouraging the payment of lip service to the monarchy while preserving a true allegiance to the popular cause. Today, when the principle of democracy is fundamental to modern life, it is hard to o fully comprehend how the notion of giving ng the vote to all and sundry shook the very foundations of empires such as Britain’s and France’s. Supporters of democracy and the new republics were viewed as dangerous enemies – the original terrorists, as it were – in those times of fierce protest and revolt. One of the joys of Burns is to look closely at the radical politics of this most charismatic of poets. James MacDonald, the last person to write a substantial account of Burns’ conversation during his lifetime, wrote of Burns and a friend in Dumfries in 1796, stating simply and, above all, dangerously: “They are both staunch republicans.” Robert Crawford is a Scottish poet and author. He is Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews, UK

FIND OUT MORE 왘 The Bard: Robert Burns, a biography by Robert Crawford (Princeton UP, 2009) 왘 www.burnsscotland.com Official website of Scotland’s National Burns Collection

As well as being sung at a number of formal occasions, the bard’s toast to times long gone is traditionally the first song sung each year by crowds at parties and gathering to celebrate the New Year – or Hogmanay as it’s known in Scotland. Tradition dictates that everyone links hands with the person next to them, while singing. The song itself, in essence, is about bringing the community together to reflect on what’s gone before and to raise a glass to the happy memories that have brought us to the present, before looking to the future.

MONEY It’s difficult to dispute the level of respect a nation has for the figures it chooses to immortalise on its currency. Where the English honour Charles Darwin on their £10 notes and America features Benjamin Franklin on its $100 bill, Scotland is proud to have Burns adorning the £5 note. And this year, the whole of Britain celebrates the poet’s 250th birthday with specially minted £2 coins. That the son of a poor farmer be so honoured by his nation centuries later is testament indeed to the power of democracy so dear to Robert Burns.

BURNS SUPPER The annual Burns supper is arguably Scotland’s proudest day of the calendar, far more widely celebrated even than St Andrew’s Day or Tartan Day. Millions of Scots in all corners of the world gather on 25 January to take part in this traditional meal. The evening includes the reciting of a number of Burns’ works, such as the ‘Selkirk Grace’ and the mock-heroic address ‘To a Haggis’. Speakers like to propose a humorous ‘toast to the lasses’ and, nowadays, ‘the lasses’ reply’. After the feast, other Burns’ songs are sung and much whisky consumed in his honour.

SPECIAL OCCASIONS Those of us less skilled with words will often turn to a poet to help express our feelings – and Burns is one of the most popular wordsmiths for such a purpose. Take that Valentine’s Day and wedding favourite ‘My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose’, in which the bard pledges his love will last “Till a’ the seas gang dry”. This song, like much of Burns’s work, has been translated into all the world’s major languages.

STATUESQUE There are many public statues and memorials to Robert Burns in the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA. He is celebrated in his homeland with major works in prominent parts of Glasgow, Edinburgh and London, as well as in his hometown of Alloway and his burial site in Dumfries. As a hero of the people, it is appropriate that he is honoured in a number of public parks in North America, including Golden Gate Park in San Fransisco, Toronto’s Allan Gardens and Central Park in New York City (left).

SPL, BRIDGEMAN

THE BIG IDEA EXPLORING LIFE’S GREAT MYSTERIES

ROBERT MATTHEWS INVESTIGATES

CATASTROPHISM The devastating effect on life caused by events such as meteor impacts and great floods has only recently begun to be accepted by science. But what does this mean for the future of our planet? t could have been a scene from

I a Hollywood disaster movie: a IN A NUTSHELL

What is catastrophism? Devastation descending from the heavens, dramatic eruptions, global upheaval: these are the classic ingredients of catastrophes of biblical dimensions. And for thousands of years such events featured in the mythology of many ancient cultures. Yet scientists long dismissed them as mere scarestories, the Earth’s past history being determined, they argued, by slow, steady action of forces such as erosion. In recent years this view has been challenged by mounting evidence for global catastrophes which devastate life on Earth. Their cause is eerily reminiscent of the ancient fears of our forebears: heavenly devastation wreaked by giant meteor impacts, and titanic volcanic eruptions. Scientists now recognise that such ‘catastrophist’ effects have played a key role in history of the Earth and the fate of life upon it.

former NASA astronaut brandishes a report calling on the United Nations to take urgent action in order to prevent a global catastrophe. But this was no fictional encounter. At a meeting held in Vienna, Austria, last November, ex-astronaut Russell Schweickart told UN officials that global efforts must be made to deal with the very real threat from cosmic impacts. According to an expert study presented at the meeting, a collision with a socalled Near Earth Object (NEO) – one of thousands of chunks of rock orbiting the Sun close to the Earth – could cause “terrible destruction, dwarfi ng that caused used sed by more familiar natural disasters”. Not so long ago, such statements would ou uld have been ridiculed by the scientific community as quasi-religious paranoia. a. But no longer. The view of the Earth ass a cosmic haven shaped by the slow, steady dyy processes of geology has been undermined in ned by evidence that our planet regularly suffers catastrophes of a magnitude thought ou ught to be the preserve of ancient myth. From Babylonian manuscripts to Dark arrk Age chronicles, descriptions of disasters rs striking with devastating consequencess have long been a feature of accounts off ancient Earth history. Many describe fi res that rain down from the skies. The hee legend of Gilgamesh, which originated in Mesopotamia over 4000 years ago, describes how “seven judges of hell” raised aised ised their torches, lighting the land with fl ame,

and sent a storm that turned day into night. Writing more than 2000 years later, the Dark Age British cleric Gildas described “a fi re that fell from heaven” around the year 441AD that led to dark skies and migrations out of England, with the land still in ruins a century later. The dramatic view of Earth history now emerging could hardly be more different from that held by modern scholars even as recently as the 1980s. For centuries, the idea of cosmic events affecting life on Earth was viewed as heretical by the Church, which regarded catastrophes as proof of divine intervention, and also by the scientific establishment, which dismissed it as
mere superstition. ii

Remains of the epic Gilgamesh telling the Babylonian legend of the Great Flood Mar/Apr 2009

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Soviet researchers take soil samples at the impact site of the Tunguska meteorite TUNGUSKA

TOPFOTO, ART ARCHIVE, GETTY X2, SPL X3

The Tunguska incident On the morning of 30 June 1908, villagers in a remote part of Northeast Siberia witnessed the terrifying effects of catastrophism at first hand. Eyewitnesses reported seeing a huge fireball tearing across the sky before exploded in a blast that could be heard over 800km (500 miles) away. It took another 20 years for the first clues to the cause to emerge, when scientists reached the epicentre of the event, north of the Tunguska River. They found a scene of utter devastation covering hundreds of square kilometres, with thousands of scorched trees lying like matchsticks, pointing outward from the centre of the blast. Analysis of samples taken at the site suggests the cause was the break-up of a 50m (164ft)-wide asteroid with the violence of a 15-megatonne H-bomb.

TIMELINE MAKING SENSE OF GLOBAL CATASTROPHE

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Yet over the last 20 years or so, the sheer weight of evidence has confi rmed the reality of heaven-sent catastrophes – and revealed just how close we have come to them in the recent past – such as the  Tunguska incident 100 years ago. Suspicions that the ‘myths’ of global catastrophes should be taken seriously actually date back to the dawn of modern science itself, in the 17th century. Following the publication of Newton’s laws of motion and universal gravitation in 1687, British astronomer Edmond Halley decided to apply them to the mystery of comets. By studying records of their appearance, Halley argued that the bright comets of 1456, 1531, 1607 and 1682 were in fact the same comet, following a vast elliptical orbit around the Sun in agreement with Newton’s laws. But Halley noted something else as well: a comet crossing the orbit of the Earth might one day collide with us, with potentially devastating consequences. In December 1694, Halley gave a lecture at the Royal Society of London in which he claimed that the biblical Great Flood may have been caused by the impact of a comet. He even argued that features like the Caspian Sea might have been formed by such cataclysmic events. Within days, he had recanted his claim, apparently under ecclesiastical pressure. The Church viewed catastrophes such as the Great Flood as proof of the power of God, and any attempts to explain them using science were not to be encouraged. Even so, Halley’s lecture would prove to be a turning point, highlighting for the fi rst time the vulnerability of the Earth to cosmic forces.

Over the next century, others would also attempt to put biblical accounts of catastrophes on a scientific basis, with the Cambridge, UK, mathematician William Whiston claiming that an analysis of cometary orbits showed that the Great Flood had occurred in 2349BC. By the early 19th century, eminent French zoologist Georges Cuvier appeared to have found rock-solid evidence for the Great Flood – quite literally. By studying the geological strata around Paris, Cuvier had found that fossils of sea creatures in one ancient layer of chalk were overlaid by those of land creatures. Then, just as abruptly, the layer above contained sea creatures again – with the top layer showing evidence of a vast and rapid inundation around present-day Paris. Cuvier took these sudden changes in the fossil record as evidence for sudden catastrophes which devastated life on Earth, of which the Great Flood was just the most recent example. Solid backing Cuvier’s discoveries, published in 1812, won backing from a number of eminent scientists, such as the geologist James Hall, and the ‘catastrophist’ movement was born. Others were deeply sceptical, however, pointing out that the evidence of a global flood was far from conclusive. Most sceptical of all were the followers of the Scottish geologist James Hutton, founder of the ‘uniformitarian’ view of Earth history. In 1795, he had published a twovolume text based on the view that the slow, steady processes that shape our planet today were also crucially important in the distant past.

1694

1795

1812

1830

1906

 Sir Edmond Halley informs fellow scientists at the Royal Society, London, of the catastrophic effects of a comet impact, which he claimed could trigger a flood of biblical proportions

Scottish geologist James Hutton establishes uniformitarianism, stressing steady and gradual changes in geology through processes like erosion, which he viewed as taking place over unimaginably long periods of time

 Studies of the fossil record in rocks near Paris lead Georges Cuvier to put forward the case for several extinctions of life during Earth’s history, including a Great Flood

Charles Lyell’s hugely influential work Principles of Geology puts forward simple explanations for the supposed evidence for the biblical Great Flood, and thus shifts thinking away from catastrophism


American mining engineer Daniel Barringer publishes evidence that Arizona’s mile-wide Meteor Crater was created by the impact of an iron meteorite, rather than by some terrestrial upheaval

The Big Idea TWO KEY THEORIES CATASTROPHISM The view that catastrophic events have played a major role in Earth history. Despite being the dominant view for thousands of years, catastrophism fell out of favour during the early 19th century. Recent recognition of the role of cosmic impacts have led to its revival, albeit in far more scientific form.

After the flood waters have subsided, the animals leave Noah Ark

Uniformitarianism was a powerful idea, allowing geologists to extrapolate from what they could see today to probe questions about the Earth’s history. Its most important advocate was another Scot, lawyer and geologist Charles Lyell, who saw catastrophism as an attempt by religious zealots to win scientific credibility for their beliefs. Lyell showed that Cuvier’s ‘evidence’ for the Great Flood could be explained by gradual changes in sea level, attacking catastrophists for being too keen on supernatural explanations. By the 1830s, Lyell’s influential book, Principles of Geology, had ensured that claims of global catastrophe were immediately linked to wild-eyed superstition. Yet while Lyell

had shown that the evidence for past catastrophes was not conclusive, he had not shown that they were impossible either. What he had done was to ensure any challenge to uniformitarianism would get a very rough ride for the next 150 years. Hints of where that challenge would come from were emerging even as Lyell built his case against catastrophism. For centuries there had been reports of stones falling out of the sky, but these had been dismissed as folk stories – until 26 April 1803, that is, when meteorites rained down on the village of L’Aigle, in Normandy, France. An investigation held by the leading French astronomer Jean Biot showed that the stones had indeed come from space.

1980

1994

2036

C.2300

Nobel Prizewinning American physicist Luis Alvarez and colleagues put catastrophism back in the limelight by linking the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago to a cosmic impact

 Astronomers observe debris from comet ShoemakerLevy 9 smashing into Jupiter. The largest impact released as much energy as six million H-bombs and left a dark area some 7000 miles (11,265km) across

On April 13, a small asteroid called Apophis comes closer to the Earth than many satellites, and has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking with the violence of 1000 H-bombs

 Approximate earliest date of the next impact of a Tunguskalike NEO, of the kind that exploded over Siberia in 1908, devastating a vast area of forest

UNIFORMITARIANISM 18th century Scottish geologist James Hutton suggested that processes which shape our planet today, such as erosion, were crucially important in the distant past. Taken up by many influential geologists, uniformitarianism hardened into the view that global catastrophes are little more than frightening superstitions.

Scientists took much longer to accept that larger meteors could also strike the Earth. In the late 1890s, Grove Gilbert, chief geologist of the US Geological Survey, decided to investigate reports of large numbers of meteorites being unearthed around a 1.2km (0.75 miles)wide crater in the Arizona desert. Failing to fi nd a giant meteor buried in the crater, Gilbert argued it must have been formed by a bubble of steam in once-molten rock – overlooking the possibility that the meteor could have been vaporised on impact. In 1906, Daniel Barringer, an American mining engineer, published evidence linking the Arizona crater to an impact, but failed to convince the scientific establishment – not least because in his scientific paper describing his claim, he derided Gilbert’s conclusions. Not until the 1950s would a new generation of geologists recognise the cosmic origins of what is now called Meteor Crater. Another clue pointing to a cosmic origin of global catastrophes emerged in the 1930s, with the discovery of the fi rst asteroids on orbits crossing that of the Earth. This prompted the American astronomer Harvey Nininger to point out that such asteroids could occasionally hit the Earth, with catastrophic results. In 1942, he suggested that such impacts might explain the otherwise puzzling gaps in the fossil record, which hinted at mass extinctions of life several times over the
last few hundred million years. Mar/Apr 2009

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The Big Idea

SPL X3, GETTY

This layer of rock in Italy gives evidence of impact 65 million years ago
By the mid-1950s, some scientists were suggesting that a meteor impact 65 million years ago might have ended the 100-million-year reign of the most successful creatures ever to live on Earth: the dinosaurs. While intriguing, however, the idea remained speculative and the evidence inconclusive. That changed in 1980, when a team of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, fi nally unveiled evidence powerful enough to break the 150-year stranglehold of uniformitarianism. Led by the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Luis Alvarez, the team had been studying the fossil record of the extinction of the dinosaurs. They found that clay samples from around the time of the event contained very high levels of iridium, an element relatively common in meteors. The implications of such high levels of iridium were dramatic, pointing to the impact of a huge meteor between five and 10km (3-6 miles) across. Such an event would have triggered a global confl agration, with smoke and debris blotting out sunlight for months, causing the collapse of food chains. Could this explain the disappearance of the dinosaurs? The mere hint of a return to catastrophism provoked a bitter response from many scientists. Critics argued that the iridium layer could have come from huge volcanic eruptions known to have taken place around the same time, and pointed out that the dinosaurs were already dying out before the supposed impact. Even so, further evidence pointing towards a global catastrophe 65 million

An artist’s impression of the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico shortly after impact

years ago started to emerge. In 1988, an international team of scientists revealed the existence of a layer of soot just above the iridium layer at many sites around the world – apparently caused by a global fi re. Others found evidence of a huge tsunami created in the Gulf of Mexico around 65 million years ago. The clincher came in 1990, when American geophysicists at the University of Arizona revealed the existence of a vast circular impact structure buried on the coast of Mexico. Measuring 180km (112 miles) across, the Chicxulub Crater is just the right size, and in the right place, to explain all the other anomalies – and it too is 65 million years old. Faced with such compelling evidence, most scientists now accept that a huge meteor did strike the Earth 65 million

Scientists are still not certain what wiped out the dinosaurs

years ago, triggering a global catastrophe, and that it could happen again. While uniformitarian processes like erosion undoubtedly play the major role in shaping our planet, catastrophist events have clearly had a dramatic effect as well. The fossil record shows evidence of at least five mass extinctions, with the largest taking place 250 million years ago, eliminating 70 per cent of land animals and 95 per

SPACEGUARD SURVEY

Looking for trouble: the Spaceguard Survey

Comet to get you? Space is full of uncharted objects

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Mar/Apr 2009

In 1989 a small asteroid zoomed past the Earth – and triggered a scare that led to an international effort to catalogue all such Near Earth Objects (NEOs) that pose a threat to our planet. The 300m (984ft)-wide rock at the centre of the scare, 4581 Asclepius, avoided a collision with the Earth by less than six hours. Had it struck, the devastation would have been equivalent to the detonation of thousands of H-bombs. To avoid future scares, NASA set up the Spaceguard Survey, with an initial goal of discovering and tracking every NEO above 1km (0.6 miles) in diameter – big enough to cause destruction on a global scale. Around 950 such objects are thought to exist, and to date around 80 per cent of them have been found. NASA has now embarked on the second phase of the survey, which aims to find and track 90 per cent of all NEOs down to just 140m (460ft) across. So far, however, barely 10 per cent of the expected numbers of such NEOs have been located.

MASS EXTINCTION

Catastrophism isn’t all bad news Despite its negative-sounding name, catastrophism also has a more positive side. Indeed, we humans may owe our current supremacy to the catastrophic meteor impact and volcanic eruptions that helped push the dinosaurs into extinction 65 million years ago. With these supremely well-adapted creatures gone, others could flourish – and within 10 million years mammals had become the dominant life-form on Earth. Dinosaurs can hardly complain about their fate, however: they too seem to have benefited from the biggest mass extinction event in the history of our planet, when around 70 per cent of terrestrial vertebrates were killed off around 250 million years ago. Known as the Permian-Triassic extinction, its cause remains the subject of much research, with multiple meteor impacts, volcanic eruptions and dramatic climatic change among the likely suspects.

cent of marine life. Such mass slaughter is not an unmitigated disaster, however:  mass extinctions often allow once downtrodden life-forms to flourish – their predators having been wiped out. The re-emergence of catastrophism as a scientifically credible concept was signalled in spectacular fashion in July 1994. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 struck Jupiter with greater violence than the detonation of the entire world’s arsenal of nuclear weapons. Many scientists hoped the event would alert governments to the need to take action to prevent humans suffering the fate of the dinosaurs. Yet so far, attempts to deal with this threat have been muted. Projects such as NASA’s  Spaceguard Survey have so far identified only around 80 per cent of NEOs whose impact would trigger a global catastrophe. Yet, as the UN officials heard at last November’s meeting, the impact of NEOs as small as just 50m (164ft) across can devastate huge areas – as seen at Tunguska. To date, only a tiny fraction of such objects has so far been catalogued and tracked. In the meantime, NEOs continue to spring nasty surprises. Shortly before the UN meeting, an astronomer in Tucson, Arizona, discovered an NEO on a collision

course with the Earth. Fortunately, the object – code-named 2008 TC3 – was just a few metres across. Even so, within 24 hours it had plunged into the atmosphere over Northern Sudan, Africa, and exploded with the violence of 1000 tonnes of TNT. With uniformitarianism now revealed to be a comforting myth, such events may regain their ancient significance – as portents of the future, which are ignored at our peril. ROBERT MATTHEWS is a science journalist and Visiting Reader in Science at Aston University, UK. www.robertmatthews.org

FIND OUT MORE
neo.jpl.nasa.gov NASA’s Near Earth Object resource site
Catastrophism: asteroids, comets and other dynamic events in Earth history by Richard J. Huggett (Verso, 1998)

NEXT ISSUE Quantum entanglement: how a researcher proved Einstein wrong – and what he discovered in doing so

QUESTION TIME STEPHEN SELF No less catastrophic than cosmic impacts are the eruption of so-called super-volcanoes – one of which lurks under Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Stephen Self, senior volcanologist of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC, spells out the threat

What makes the Yellowstone supervolcano especially interesting? It’s a large supervolcano. It has very occasional, huge eruptions, rather than, say, Taupo in New Zealand, which has the same power output over a similar period of time, but has smaller, more frequent eruptions. Yellowstone is one of perhaps just five examples of its scale currently active on Earth. Plus it’s in the USA, so it gets a lot more attention than the others. It probably won’t go off again with a big eruption for tens of thousands of years, which is greater than the length of time of development of anything resembling modern society. But for geologists who deal with a million years like the snap of a finger, it’s quite active, and the risk is real.

Do you think the threat from natural catastrophes has been overplayed? No. After all, one day, one such catastrophe will occur. The real problem with super-eruptions is that we have no idea how many volcanoes on Earth could cause one, or what state they are in, activity-wise. If there are more than around 100, the statistics for one occurring in the future would change considerably, and they might be perceived as a real threat. Even a small eruption – ejecting around 100km3 (24 cubic miles) of material – would make a real mess, so being prepared with some knowledge is better than blind ignorance.

What are the risks this century? There has not been an eruption of around 100km3 of size for many thousands of years. At present my best estimate – admittedly based on very little data – is that there’s a roughly one in 100 chance of a super-eruption ejecting up to 500 km3 (120 cubic miles) by the end of this century.

Mar/Apr 2009

79

Next issue NATURE

A bug’s

life

Step inside the fantastical world of insects

PIOTR NASKRECKI, DREAMSTIME, ALAMY X2, GETTY.

T BIG HE IDEA QU

ENTA ANTUM NG Why t he inte LMEN T rconn of ev e erythin c g mattedness ters

SCIENCE

HISTORY

SCIENCE

The code war

How to raid a castle

Jungle fever Ju

Deciphering the complex battle between code makers and breakers

Ask politely or simply smash the walls down? Ten ways to win a seige

Mee the scientists clearing the planet Meet of ddeadly viruses to save us all

PLUS Q+A: What would happen if the world stopped spinning? And do lions purr?

O&A

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

EXPERT PANEL Len Fisher Len is a science author and an honourary research fellow in physics at the University of Bristol, UK Robert Matthews Robert is a science writer and a Visiting Reader in Science at Aston University, Birmingham, UK Rupert Matthews Freelance history writer Rupert has written over 100 books about history, travel, wildlife and dinosaurs Gareth Mitchell Gareth is now a broadcaster and writer, and presenter of Digital Planet on the BBC World Service

HIGHLIGHTS
Do ants sleep

p82
Where does the phrase ‘women and children first’ come from p83
What Darwin didn’t know: evolution Q&A special p844
Do opposites really attract p87

Why do poppy flowers open in the morning and close at night

L VITA

ROSEMARY WHITTINGTON

S STAT

This behaviour is called nyctinasty, and although it is by no means universal, there are lots of other flowers besides poppies that do it. Most of them instigate the closure by pumping water out of cells at the base of the petals so that they wilt themselves shut. The most likely explanation for this behaviour is to protect the pollen. At night the insects that pollinate most flowers are dormant and closing the flower keeps the pollen dry and contained. Some flowers that are pollinated by moths or bats do the opposite and only open at night. LV

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Roger Moorhouse Roger is an expert in European history. His most recent book, Killing Hitler, was published in 2007 Nick Rennison Nick is a writer specialising in literature and history – his work includes Sherlock Holmes: the unauthorized biography (Atlantic, 2005) Paul Simons Journalist and author Paul regularly contributes to the British newspapers The Times and The Guardian PHOTOLIBRARY.COM

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vel ha ht sea le The heig ing annually s been ri 93 (0.12in) since 19

Luis Villazon Luis has an MSc in zoology from Oxford University, UK. He is a freelance science journalist based in the UK

Waiting for the day: many flowers only reveal their beauty in daylight hours

Mar/Apr 2009

81

Q&A

Do ants ever sleep PAUL BACHELOR Stalin (right) and Lenin: old Bolsheviks

Why do we have five fingers and five toes BECKY ROGERS

Was Stalin’s rise to power in the Soviet Union planned or was he simply lucky

TOPFOTO, ALAMY X3, GETTY X3

MARJORIE PORTER Initially, Josef Stalin was but one of the clique of old Bolsheviks around the Soviet leader Lenin, and he was not even the best-known among them. His rise to power after Lenin’s death in 1924 owed something to good fortune, it’s true, but was primarily the result of Stalin’s remarkable political skill. Stalin’s main stroke of luck was his appointment in 1922 as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. This comparatively lowly position was largely administrative, but it was one that Stalin astutely built up into a formidable power base, from where he could influence access to information and patronage. The modest title of General Secretary was one that was subsequently held by all Soviet leaders down to Mikhail Gorbachev until his 1991 resignation. Stalin was the supreme political predator. In the aftermath of Lenin’s death, the Soviet Union was ruled jointly by three Bolsheviks – Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev. In this situation, Stalin manoeuvred with consummate skill, expertly sidelining his rivals, discrediting his opponents and playing off faction against faction. When he emerged as the country’s sole ruler in 1928, all that was left to do was to deliver the coup de grace to his competitors, which he did with the brutal purges that took place in the 1930s. In the final analysis, Stalin was perhaps fortunate in some of his appointments. However, his masterly exploitation of such positions demonstrated another, much more important factor in his rise to the top: his vicious, uncompromising, Machiavellian brilliance. Roger Moorhouse

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Mar/Apr 2009

It’s probably nothing more than an accident. All tetrapods (the group of vertebrates that includes mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians) are descended from a pentadactyl (meaning ‘five-fingered’) ancestor. The common ancestor of the tetrapods was a lobe-finned fish living around 365 million years ago. The fossil record also shows fish with six and seven ‘fingers’ in their fins, but there is no clear reason why the five-fingered form became the template. Perhaps having fewer bones allowed each to become stronger and this helped when crawling out of the water. LV

KNOW SPOT There are several large, permanent whirlpools around the world, caused by merging tides, narrow straits or fast-flowing water. The most powerful are the Saltstraumen and Moskstraumen whirlpools in Norway, whose currents have been measured at 40km/h (25mph) and 28km/h (17mph) respectively. The Old Sow whirlpool off the coast of Maine has been measured at 28km/h (17mph)

Ants definitely rest – in any given colony there will always be some individuals that are standing still, not doing anything. Ants are also inactive in cold temperatures and many species hibernate through the winter. Resting ants exhibit loss of muscle tone and reduced sensitivity to stimuli. But they don’t have a complex enough nervous system to exhibit the different brain wave patterns seen in humans during sleep – nor do they dream. LV

Is space travel bad for your health Alun Harris Space travel could be bad for your health in a number of ways. One obvious problem currently being studied by the National Space Biomedical Research Institute at Houston, TX, is the effect of space radiation, which the Van Allen belt protects us from on Earth. The effects of space radiation can include cancer, acute radiation sickness and degenerative tissue damage. Radiation can also degrade some common drugs, including some antibiotics and scopolamine, which astronauts take to curb nausea. The absence of gravity can pose problems, including loss of bone mass. There is evidence that the microtubules that provide the inner scaffolding of living cells require gravity to help them orient properly, which may make breeding in space problematic. LF

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WHAT IS IT

QUICK FIRE KNOW SPOT The last words of Albert Einstein were lost to posterity because the nurse caring for him during his final nal illness did n speak not G German. erman. A Although lthough he hhad ad lived in the U USA SA for many yyears ears and sspoke poke English w well, ell, Einstein ((unsurprisingly) unsurprisingly) reverted to his native German on his deathbed and so the only person with him could not understand what he was saying

NOT OT MUCH OF A BOUNTY OUNTY

This s collection of items was used by long-suffering seafarer Captain Bligh afterr the mutiny on the Bountyy in 1789. The bowl ((top) top) is carved from a coconut onut and inscribed with Bligh’s initials, the date, and on the reverse side the phrase: “The cup I eat my miserable allowance out of”. The cup ((left (left) t) is made de of bone and the bullet (centre) was used by Bligh to measure out the bread ad ration of the 18 men who remained faithful to their captain after the mutiny. The ration weighed out was 18g (0.6oz), which was taken three times daily during the group’s epic voyage of 5800km (3600 miles). The journey took 48 days.

When was the phrase ‘women and children first’ first used DOMINIC TRENT The phrase may have come to prominence following a maritime disaster of 1852. Soldiers on British troopship HMS Birkenhead, wrecked off the coast of South Africa, obeyed their commanding officer’s orders to stand fast on the decks of the sinking ship while the women and children were given places in the lifeboats. Most of the women and children survived while nearly all the soldiers went down with the ship. NR

What is junk DNA

DANIEL CANE Only around five per cent of human DNA consists of genes with known functions, the rest is referred to as ‘junk’. However, scientists are finding L that this junk controls vital VITA S processes such as switching STAT specific genes on and off during development. For example, in of the th September 2008 scientists in p e d The t ice thickes America announced that junk DNA world’s 5,668ft) sheet (1 might control the development of your hands and feet. RM

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Who owns Greenland STEVEN BUCKHAM The international community today recognises Greenland as being a self-governing part of the Kingdom of Denmark, although things have not always been so clear. The rest of the world long refused to recognise the Danish claim on the grounds that their settlements on Greenland had been defunct for some 500 years. In the mid-19th century several British exploration voyages were made, claiming the lands they ‘discovered’ for Britain. Maps produced in the British Empire recognised these claims. The USA claimed other sections, while Norway announced a claim to all of Greenland. In 1932, the Court of International Justice listened to all the arguments, and then decided to award Greenland to Denmark. The precise boundary between Greenland and Canada has never been settled. In 2004 the dispute flared up again over the potentially oil-rich seabed around Han Island. Rupert Matthews A Greenlander’s home is his brightly-coloured castle

How much abuse ke could my iPod take and still work DAVID LUDFORD Moving parts, like the he hard drives in bigger iPods, can n give out after time, especially y if they are dropped. With intensive use, the headphone phone sockets can wear out too. But most remarkably, arkably, in Iraq last year, the metal casing on a 20GB iPod took a stray bullet for a soldier, apparently preventing it piercing its owner’s body armour. The soldier survived but the iPod was trashed. GM

WHAT DARWIN DIDN’T KNOW He fundamentally fun n changed the way we look at life on Earth, but Charles Darwi Darwin didn’t know everything about how evolution works. BBC Knowledge Magazine Maga az interviewed today’s y experts p to bring the great man up to date on what whh sciencee has discovered since his day…

EVOLUTION EXPERT PANEL Christopher Wills Professor of Biology, University of California, San Diego Laurence Hurst Professor of Evolutionary Genetics, University of Bath, UK Richard Leakey Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist and politician Simon Ings author of The Eye: a natural history (Bloomsbury, 2007) Iain Stewart Professor of Geoscience Communication, University of Plymouth, UK Robert Shapiro Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Scientist, New York University

CORBIS, PHOTOLIBRARY.COM X2, SPL X4, BRIDGEMAN

Anthony Trewavas Professor, Institute of Molecular Plant Science, Edinburgh, UK

The Grand Canyon is full of clues to the Earth’s history

DARWIN 200

What is the origin of life

DARWIN 200

Are plants intelligent Darwin speculated that the tips of plants’ roots acted like brains. Plants don’t have nervous systems, of course, but he wasn’t too far off. The direction that roots grow, for example, is sensitive to touch, light, gravity and moisture. “What Darwin had observed was the ability to sense all these signals simultaneously and prioritise which were the most important to deal with,” says Anthony Trewavas from the Institute of Molecular Plant Science at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Since Darwin’s day, far more evidence has been found for plant intelligence – from trees competing for sunlight at the top of the Amazonian canopy to parasitic plants that coil around hosts and suck out sugar, water and minerals.

In 1863, Darwin wrote to his friend the English botanist Joseph Hooker: “It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.” In 1871, however, he wrote again to Hooker imagining a “warm little pond” with various salts and energy sources in which proteins could develop. “The role of DNA and RNA in biology was not yet known,” says Robert Shapiro, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Chemistry at New York University. “But it does sound as if he was speculating about a prebiotic soup. We have learned a tremendous amount about biochemistry since Darwin’s time but still don’t have proof as to which mechanism led to the origin of life.”

DARWIN 200

How old is the Earth Today, thanks to radiometric dating, we know that the world is roughly 4.55bn years old. But during Darwin’s day, Earth was said to be much younger – 400 million years old or less. “Lord Kelvin had worked it out on the basis of a cooling ball,” says geologist Iain Stewart of the University of Plymouth, UK. “How long would it take a molten ball of this size to cool to the temperature it is now?” Kelvin’s sums were devastating for Darwin because he knew that evolution needed much longer to work its magic on the diversity of life on Earth. “Kelvin had said that unless there is some other heat source, then this is the age of the Earth,” Stewart says. Luckily for Darwin, that missing heat source – radioactivity – would soon allow geologists to date the main geological periods.

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Lord Kelvin underestimated the Earth’s age by over 4bn years

Q&A DARWIN 200

DARWIN 200

How wd did id the olve eye evo evolve

Where do o new traits come fro om o from

What’s the he use e of a half-evolved ved eye? eye ye? e That’s a big question tion forr creationists or anyone e else unconvinced unconvinced by the gradual adual process process of pr evolution.. The eye ey ye is certainly a puzzle. It’s ’s squishy, squish h so fossils are hard hy, to come by. It seems see ems to have just one function (unlike many ma any organs). And that, coupled with its sheer heer complexity, mplexity, makes you wonde wonder nderr how how it could possibly have come me ab about out if something hadn’t designed d it. “The eye is a fantastic example of something really complicated,” says Simon Ings, author of The Eye: a natural history. story. “It’s not obvious how you get from there to here.” Darwin n didn’t have the answer. But what he did do was set the eye as an ultimate test for his own theory. If anyone could show how the eye evolved, he said, then n natural selection happens. No question. Biologists gists have since explained the story by tracking down organisms living in the world today that show the range of eye complexity, from simple lightsensitive depressions to something that has lots of separate and sometimes imperfectt parts, much like our own. Genetics, meanwhile, has given us the genes that at trigger the whole process off. And once it starts, the eye can develop really quickly. ckly. “Improvements ovements are fast,” Ings says. “It’s easy to acquire the shape needed to focus an image. For a fish’s eye to evolve, that process might be as short as 40,000 generations.” enerations.”

Variety isn’t just the spice sp pice of life – it’s the main ingredient for p natural selection. Without Witho out the appearance of new traits in o the gene pool, selection selectio on would have no characteristics to o select, and evolution wo would ould effectively grind to a halt. Darwin had suspected tthat variation was positive, but it wasn’t until the 20th cen century ntury that anyone figured out where n new traits come from. The answer answe an swe is i mutation. These random changes to the sequence of a gene trigger a new trait, such as turning a red flower white. As to what causes mutations, there have been some big changes in our understanding. “First, radiation and chemicals were thought to be the most important causes,” explains Christopher Wills, Professor of Biology at the University of California, San Diego. “It is now clear that most mutations occur through mistakes in the process of DNA replication, and that many of these can be repaired by DNA repair mechanisms that we all possess.” Of course, if you’re blasted by atomic radiation, this will cause mutations too, but these tend to be short-term because they are so damaging to a cell that they are removed quickly. For the mutation variants that remain, natural selection isn’t the whole story – evolution can also come down to luck. “The frequency of mutant versions that come into a population can go up and down simply because they’re lucky or unlucky,” says Laurence Hurst, Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at the University of Bath, UK. “This is what we see with genetic drift.” Genetic drift describes how genes can be passed from one generation to the next, purely by chance. These genes aren’t necessarily the best but they can nevertheless establish themselves in a population. Genetic drift happens in all species and, according to the ‘neutral neutral theory theory’ of evolution, the fate of a particular variant is more likely to be explained by random drift than natural selection.

DARWIN 200

Where did humans come from When Darwin first published his theory of evolution, most people believed that God had created man in his own image. So Darwin was acutely aware of the implications that natural selection would have. Not that there was much of a fossil record at the time to show that our ancestors resemble apes. Neanderthal skeletons had been discovered before On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, but it wasn’t until ‘Java Man’, a specimen later believed to be a Homo erectus, was discovered in 1891 that hard evidence for the human story began to emerge. “There’s now a very good fossil record going back five or six million years,” says paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey. “Although the pressures for specific selection are not fully understood, there are examples of the various steps that were taken.” Radiocarbon dating technology and genetics have also been crucial in piecing together human evolution, allowing scientists to study when, why and how certain adaptations came to the fore. But there is still more to learn, Leakey says. “There are several things that are still critically important, such as the circumstance that led to a bipedal ape getting established,” he explains. “Prior to that, all primates were quadrupedal. We don’t yet have a very clear fossil record of what this might be attributed to in terms of Java Man, or environmental change and pressure.” Homo erectus

Galapagos finches were the key to Darwin’s thinking

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Q&A

STRANGE BUT TRUE VAMPIRE PLANT It looks like an extra-terrestrial being that fell to Earth, but this is the flower of Hydnora africana, which lives in the deserts of Southern Africa. The plant is unusual in having no roots, leaves or chlorophyll and, apart from its flower, living entirely underground. It behaves like a subterranean vampire, using suckers on its stem to draw out juices from the roots of its prey, the shrubby Euphorbia mauritanica. The only sign of the plant above ground is when the flowerbud bursts up, swells and opens its shocking pink fleshy bloom. It then gives off a powerful scent of rotting meat, which is often how people locate it (though there are worse-smelling plants – see Know Spot below right). The flower’s stench and bright pink colour are an irresistible draw for carrion flies and beetles, which are probably fooled into thinking it’s an animal carcass. As the insects enter the floral chamber, the hairy fringes around its entrance bend inwards to prevent them from escaping. The interior of the flower is smooth and slippery with wax, and insects such as small beetles slip and slide around, trapped inside. Only once the insects have pollinated the plant does its entrance open, allowing the captives to flee. PS

KNOW SPOT In the mid-18th century, American geography was so little known in Europe that the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in 1768, described California as “a large country of the West Indies”

L VITA

S STAT

14

The vampire plant pretends to be meat in order to attract pollinators

How do we know the speed of light is the same for everyone

ine of red w glasses e risk of ly k e e W halve th said to ing a cold catch

SPL X2, GETTY, STOCKFOOD, DREAMSTIME, NEWSPRESS

HARRIET BEST This is the assertion behind the theory of special relativity – and it’s not obvious. The speed of a train may be 200km/h (125mph) to a stationary observer, but 400km/h (250mph) relative to a train coming the other way. Einstein’s claim that the speed of light is the same for everyone, regardless of how they’re moving, was confirmed by experiments at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Sub-atomic particles were accelerated to 99.975 per cent of the speed of light, but when the speed of light they emitted was measured, it turned out to be 300,000km/s (187,000 mph) – the same as when the particles are stationary, as Einstein predicted. RM

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KNOW SPOT Also known as the corpse flower, the Amorphophallus titanium – or titan arum – is believed by many people to be the smelliest plant on Earth. When it blooms, it releases an extremely foul odour that smells like rotten flesh, and can be detected up to half a mile away

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QUICK FIRE Do opposites really attract DEAN PURNELL

Could an adult live healthily on any one single food

People are likely to choose partners who are similar, rather than opposite, to themselves when it comes to three of the big five personality traits – agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness. This is according to research by Beatrice Rammstedt at the Centre for Survey Research and Methodology in Mannheim, Germany, and Jürgen Schupp at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin. They found that two other major traits (extroversion and emotional stability) have no perceptible effect on the choice of partner. But psychologist Sanjay Srivastava at the University of Oregon has a different explanation for this observation: “Perhaps the longer couples stay toget together, the more they grow alike.” LF

Can a plant die of cancer Ca PETE JONES

Agrobacterium tumafacians attacks a cell on a tobacco plant

Plants can develop neoplasms, or tumours, where P the plant cells divide uncontrollably to form hard outgrowths. By far the most common example of this is crown gall disease, which is caused by Agrobacterium tumafacians, a bacterium that inserts part of its own DNA into the plant genome. But these tumours do not aggressively invade surrounding tissues or move to other parts of the plant (known as metastasis) and so are a not normally classified as cancers. Part of the rreason for this is that plants don’t have the sort of circulatory system that would allow tumour cells to be circu transported around it. LV

If you could drive a car upwards at 60mph, how long would it take to get to the Moon MATT BURNS Astronomer Fred Hoyle was the first to point out that if you could drive a car upwards at 95km/h (60mph), it would only take about an hour to get into space. To get to the Moon would take a little longer though, since it’s 400,000km (250,000 miles) away – around 10 times the circumference of the Earth. So it would take as long as driving around the world 10 times – just under six months. LF

We’re only 4380 hours from Tulsa

ASK THE EXPERTS Ever wondered… well, anything? Email [email protected] and our experts will consider your question for our next available issue. We’re sorry, but we cannot answer questions individually.

NEXT TIME What happens if the world stops spinning? Is there any scientific research into the afterlife? Could you fit solar panels to wind turbine blades? Do lions purr?

HARRY GRAY The closest contender is the avocado pear. This contains carbohydrate, fat and protein (including all the essential amino acids) as well as all the essential vitamins and most of the minerals – but not in the correct proportions. To get enough calcium, you’d need to eat 10kg (22lb) of avocados a day, which would amount to 16,000 calories! LV

Why do people in the same family have such different intelligence levels PJ LLOYD Intelligence is a very nebulous concept and extremely difficult to define, let alone measure. There is good evidence that there is a genetically determined component to intelligence but it is certainly not the only factor. Education, class, culture, diet and even the order of your birth compared to your siblings all have an effect on your cognitive ability. Even then, the genetic part itself isn’t controlled by just a single gene. LV

Have pencils ever contained lead MARK MUSGROVE The Ancient Romans and Egyptians used a lead stylus to write on papyrus but the wooden pencil has always contained graphite. The original source was a single huge deposit of graphite that was discovered in the 17th century in Cumbria, UK. This was pure enough to simply saw into sticks and place in wooden cases. Later, powdered graphite was mixed with varying amounts of clay to adjust the hardness of the pencil. LV

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Resource A feast for the mind

CONTENTS 89 Nature It’s a jungle out there, and what a wonderful place that is. Have fun exploring it

92 History The past is inhabited by heroes and villains, and history is written by both

94 Science Keeping an eye on the depths of the human mind and the search for ET life

96 In the Know Puzzling puzzles and quizzical questions

THIS ISSUE Milse and Henschel’s book features a wide range of animals

The jungle book The Eyes of the Jungle By Thorsten Milse and Uta Henschel Bucher-Lounge, 200 pages $65.00

Open The Eyes of the Jungle and that’s exactly what you’ll see: the piercing stare of a snarling tiger; 100 ‘eyes’ in a peacock’s tail; the limpid pools of a local woman’s eyes gazing directly into yours; the worried frown of a Hanuman langur; an extreme closeup of the amber flecks in an

’ iris. The h full-bleed f ll bl elephant’s photographic spreads that open Thorsten Milse’s book are eye-catching, and the perfect introduction to the gorgeous pages to come. Former tiger-hunting grounds and the inspiration for Kipling’s The Jungle Book, Bandhavgarh was established as a reserve in 1993. Since then, tiger watching in particular has become big business. But what is often lost by the throng of tiger-snappers jostling for the best view is any sense of real wildness or air of tranquility.

Thorsten Milse was struck by the notion that he could remedy this. An internationally renowned wildlife photographer and the winner of multiple awards, he spent months in the park, waiting with agonising patience to capture the most important moments of tigers’ lives, those fleeting moments where the world seems to hold its breath and that once-in-a-lifetime 왘 image can be snapped.

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THE EYES OF THE JUNGLE, BUCHER PUBLISHING, PHOTOGRAPHY © THORSTEN MILSE

If you enjoy reading this magazine then the chances are that, like those of us who enjoy making it, you’ll always be on the look out for new and interesting things to read. For us, much of the pleasure of producing BBC Knowledge Magazine is the knowledge we ourselves accumulate along the way, and this section of the magazine is where we share our favourite new sources. My own personal favourite this issue is a glorious book, packed with the photos of wildlife photographer Thorsten Milse. His sublime pictures capture the very essence of life in the wild – something most of us can only imagine, no matter how much knowledge ledge we gather.

NATURE

VODCAST Animal crackers http://bit.ly/u6rM UK newspaper The Guardian’s site features an ever-changing array of wildlife footage. Watch dolphins rescue a pod member from drowning, see a chimp parenting a pair of tiger cubs, and laugh as a man in a monkey suit scares real monkeys away from Indian railway lines.

PODCAST

THE EYES OF THE JUNGLE, BUCHER PUBLISHING, PHOTOGRAPHY © THORSTEN MILSE, THAMES & HUDSON

Radio report www.bbc.com/radio/podcasts/ nathistory The BBC’s world-renowned natural history unit regularly reports on the BBC website, providing listeners with halfhour updates on nature stories from all over the globe. There’s always plenty to hear about. Whether it’s following the tortuous progress of Atlantic salmon through Europe’s river system or uncovering the mysteries of avian night migration, it’s manna from heaven for nature lovers.

BLOG Tales from the freezer www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/ earth/antarctica/blog The Antarctic Conservation Blog concerns itself with a variety of topics, handily sectioned for our viewing pleasure, including the recovery of artefacts from the explorer’s hut left behind by Ernest Shackleton in 1908.

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왘 The result is a beautiful collection of atmospheric, intimate and enchanting pictures. Within these pages you will see tigers with cubs, the grown adults playing like kittens; tigers melting into the forest; tigers bathing or just passing by; and tigers so close you can only conclude that Milse possesses either an astonishing zoom lens or nerves of steel. In truth, probably both. Tigers are elusive and private beasts, so the images of them are reason enough to buy this book. But there are plenty of other animals in Bandhavgarh, and they are well represented here. Birds, deer, elephants and monkeys are all photographed so well you’re left feeling that each animal deserves a book of its own. All this is married to warm and illuminating text by Uta Henschel, a science writer who has specialised in natural history and animal behaviour since 1978. She has received many awards for her

Getting this close to a wild tiger is not for the faint-hearted

Tigers appear so close that Milse must have an astonishing zoom lens or nerves of steel – probably both work and if you can tear your eyes away from the pictures it’ll be obvious why. It all makes for a wonderful package, an absorbing coffee table book that won’t remain on the coffee table for long. It’s a fitting tribute to a vital area

of jungle rich in treasures. Let’s hope it remains that way for a long time yet. Sophie Stafford is a Contributing Editor to BBC Knowledge Magazine, and the editor of BBC Wildlife Magazine in the UK

What a wonderful world The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Natural World By Michael Benton Thames & Hudson, $45, 304 pages

Have no fear: you won’t fi nd the Bigfoot, Yeti and Loch Ness monster fraternity lurking within the pages of this wonderful font of knowledge. Remember knowledge? It’s that stuff we craved before

internet access to information rendered it redundant. Here, a team of the world’s best-qualified scientists has condensed what they each know about 70 natural curiosities into a series of short essays. These cover a plethora of topics from evolution and geography to animal behaviour and global warming. As I read the contents page, I felt like a child in a sweet shop. My mouth watering, I chose ‘Giant dinosaurs: how did they get so big?’ as my appetiser, swiftly followed by a main course of ‘Are five fi ngers

essential?’ and ‘How do dogs see the world?’ I didn’t stop reading for three hours. As a result, I missed an England football match and forgot to eat dinner. But I learned that solar radiation generates amino acids (the essential building blocks for life) on the surface of asteroids, that trilobites had the fi rst real eyes, and that most diamonds are between 0.9 and 3.3 billion years old. I learned the names of a lot of new dinosaurs, some of which weighed a staggering 70 tonnes – and I know how they managed to get that big.

Resource

Hide and seek

WEBSITES

Top 100 Birding Sites of the World

DARWIN 200

By Dominic Couzens University of California Press, $45, 320 pages

Unlike compiled charts of the most-watched movies or the best-read books, which tend to be based on the solid statistics of sales volume, a list of the world’s top birdwatching sites is always going to be highly subjective. This book will appeal to both the dreamy armchair naturalist and the birder who spends all their time and money on trips to far-flung places, contentedly ticking off new birds from their world checklist. Well researched and written as eloquently as you might expect from Couzens, it includes an excellent blend of information about each

location – its history and conservation status, the best time to visit, and key birds or flocks to marvel over. The text that stayed most in my mind is his opening remark that the Katanglad Mountains (number 14) in the ecologically devastated Philippines are “the one that you should hurry to see fi rst”. The book breaks down the sites by continent, with the text wrapped around sumptuous photos of the world’s most exciting birds. I was slightly disappointed to fi nd that birdsong was relegated to a few scant remarks. Believe me, hearing a screaming piha in the Amazon is a lot better than just seeing one! Apart from that, this is one of the loveliest books I have read in a while. And I’m still upset that Manu in Peru only came third! Mike Dilger is a British ecologist and natural history TV presenter

NATURE

Devolution www.darwinou.co.uk Britain’s Open University has created a new Charles Darwin website to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the great man’s birth, and it mines a rich seam of facts and fun. There are sections titled ‘About Darwin’ and ‘Darwin’s Theory’, which have all the information you need on either subject, as well as a forum and links to other interesting and useful resources and events. Best of all is ‘Devolve Me’, a powerful face-morphing tool that can take your uploaded image back to how it would have looked further down the evolutionary scale, right back to 3.7 million years ago.

A wise old bird www.owlpages.com The owl is one of the world’s more interesting birds, its appearance having made it an object of myth and superstition. To some, owls are symbols of wisdom, while others consider them harbingers of death. The Owl Pages strip away all that to bring you the facts about this fascinating creature. The site is encyclopaedic, with sections on different species, physiology and owls’ place in popular culture.

You’ve got a friend The Dead Vlei, in the heart of the Namibian desert, boasts the world’s highest sand dunes

www.naturalistnet.com/forum A love of nature can sometimes feel somewhat solitary, especially if you’re dedicated enough to spend hours in woodland, waiting for a passing marten. The Naturalist’s Net, billed as “an online home for Naturalists and Biologists”, is a large forum with threads on every kind of nature subject. You are absolutely guaranteed to meet people who share your interests.

The great survivors

Some may write off the book’s style as old-fashioned, but for those of us with a passion for understanding the world and our place in it, this is superb. It provides a veritable armoury of conversation starters, as well

as the odd stopper. So many great mysteries and wonders, so little time... Chris Packham is an English naturalist, author and television presenter

www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/crocs/ The companion site to the 1998 NOVA programme Crocodiles! is still going strong, and providing entertainment and education in equal measure. As a reader of BBC Knowledge Magazine you’ll already know that the crocodilian family also includes alligators, caimans and gharials (Sep/Oct 08 issue), but there’s still plenty of good times to be had here, especially in the interactive ‘Clickable croc’.

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HISTORY

VODCAST Green gauge www.eh-resources.org/vodcast Exploring Environmental History is the place for informative films on the condition of the planet, as well as investigations into how exactly we got ourselves into such a state. Major themes include climate history, the role of disease throughout history and pollution through the ages. There are also reports on conferences and field research.

15 March 1939: the 2 August 1776 and the Nazis enter Prague to ‘new world’ declares its the locals’ anger independence from the old one

Imperial measures

PODCAST Past hearing www.historyzine.com Historyzine is a trove of knowledge on a host of subjects. The pods are grouped into themes, with one subject dominating until it has been examined from every angle. And if that’s not your cup of tea, the archive offers choices galore – once you find a theme that interests you, your life will no longer be your own.

BLOG

GETTY

Old blog, new tricks www.thehistoryblog.com This is one of the most entertaining and professional blogs we’ve seen. In the blogger’s own words: “My interests are European ancient and mediaeval, but I’ll pretty much blather about anything that catches my eye. My name is Livius. I shall endeavour not to suck. That is all.” Quite.

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Crisis of Empire: Britain and America in the 18th Century By Jeremy Black Hambledon & London, 224 pages, $29.95

It is a paradox that our knowledge that Britain’s American colonies declared independence in 1776 often obscures our understanding of the causes that, as Jefferson put it, “impelled them to the separation”. The temptation to cast independence as a story involving the inevitable triumph of a libertarian cultural patrimony over a weak imperial system persists. Prior to 1763 the orientation of the British imperial system promoted values of commerce and liberty that the United States of America would later claim to espouse. Empire and monarchy provided a sense of political, economic and

cultural community between Britain and the American colonies. To understand independence, Black argues, one needs to understand the crisis that engulfed this functioning system. Black briskly handles the main features of the crisis, along the way offering three relatively fresh insights as to its causes. First, angst in Britain stemming from the debt incurred winning wars with France and Spain encouraged Britons to view the colonies as fi nancially beholden and therefore to underestimate the offensive impact of revenue-raising. Secondly, debate pitted colonial legislatures against the Houses of Parliament on the issues of taxation and representation. Black insightfully argues that Parliament stood to lose far more than the Crown from any recognition of American

legislative claims and that Parliamentary intransigence significantly deepened the crisis – a point the Anglo-English statesman Edmund Burke made at the time. Finally, British imperial policy encouraged American elites to partially embrace democratising forces within their colonies that they viewed with suspicion and might otherwise have resisted. This book works as a general introduction to several themes (comparative imperial studies, the War for Independence, England’s relationship with America) and while at the same time confl ates with minimal explanation (and debatable justification) topics that others have preferred to treat at length and in isolation. Peter Thompson lectures in American History at Oxford, UK

Resource

The ski’s the limit

WEBSITES

Two Planks and a Passion: the dramatic history of skiing

DARWIN 200

By Roland Huntford Continuum, $29.95, 436 pages

Huntford’s book is an amazingly detailed history of skiing’s Scandinavian origins. The chapters on the Nordic region are meticulously researched, investigating how skis were fi rst used by Finns, Lapps and Norwegian peasants. Beginning with the surprise of prehistoric skis, it traces skiing’s survival into the modern era for hunting and transport before being adopted for military purposes and polar exploration. Skis became a symbol of Norwegian nationalism with the growth of competition and recreational use from the 19th century.

This is really the story of Norwegian skiing and its influence. Unlike other histories of skiing, where the birthplace and cradle of the activity is included as a prelude to its alpine adaptation, in this work the Nordics have the leading role. Even the chapters on Germany, Austria, Switzerland and USA focus on Norwegian involvement. This downplaying of others’ contributions to the sport is rather surprising. Huntford seems critical of non-Norwegians, such as Scott the explorer, and entrepreneurs Henry and Arnold Lunn. However, his knowledge of Nordic skiing and survey of the sport counter his Scandanavian bias. Su Barton is the author of Healthy Living in the Alps

Holding out for a hero Travelling Heroes: in the epic age of Homer By Robin Lane Fox Knopf, $30, 496 pages

For the past 30 years, scholars have suggested that Homer and his near contemporary, the farmerpoet Hesiod (c700 BC), were heavily influenced by Near Eastern tales such as Gilgamesh. In both epics, the heroes are sons of goddesses, with mortal fathers, both are helped by their mothers who use more powerful gods to support their cause, both are obstinate and passionate, prone to instant

decisions, both lose their dearest companions, both are devastated by their loss and take extreme action to try to compensate for it, and so on. Lane Fox will have none of it. Their poetry, he argues, depended on Greek understanding of the world, rather than Near Eastern. Whatever one makes of Lane Fox’s central argument, this is a complex, wide-ranging, superbly referenced and goodhumoured investigation that will have scholars of classical history, anthropology, myth and epic arguing for a long time to come. Peter Jones is a British classics writer, broadcaster and journalist

HISTORY

Evolution’s evolution http://tinyurl.com/6egnea Part of the Replicators: Evolutionary Powerhouses website, which examines Richard Dawkins’s concept (see interview p59), History of Evolution is a thorough and thoroughly fascinating account of Darwin’s theory. There are many absorbing essays, starting right back in the ancient world when certain Greek philosophers started to wonder what was causing change. All the major evolutionists are covered. With the primacy of the scientific method under constant fire from faith-based alternatives, this will provide an essential background in a vital subject.

Chaos rules http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ Anarchist_Archives/index.html Anarchism, generally defined as the opposition to any form of state or government, has a very long and involved history. Here there’s a hoard of information on the various political philosophies of anarchist movements, if that’s what you want, but also biographies of leading lights and a nation-by-nation state of play in the respective anarchist movements.

An institution www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/History_ and_Culture/ The Smithsonian’s history and culture section has a myriad of pages on the history of subjects ranging from advertising to jazz. Examine the life of Abraham Lincoln, or the genesis of the electric guitar. Be sure to check out ‘HistoryWired’, a collection of the Smithsonian team’s own favourite objects. Kermit the Frog is, of course, included.

Debunking the myths www.pantheon.org Everyone, it’s said, loves a good story, and Encyclopedia Mythica has more than most. Moreover, it also offers a look at the sources of the great mythological tales, and will have you wondering how much of the fiction is grounded in fact. You can look up myths by geographical region, or by pantheon. The Greek, Roman, Norse and Celtic mythologies are all well represented.

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SCIENCE

VODCAST Terra hawks http://lifeonterra.com With a video podcast resource stretching back to 2005, Life On Terra is ‘a collaborative filmspace and laboratory exploring the questions and ideas on the cutting-edge of science and at the farthest horizons’. In practice, this means a range of videos on subjects that might seem a little esoteric – until you start to watch them, that is.

Paul Dirac, shortly before drawing the nose and mouth

PODCAST Are we all alone? radio.seti.org Is there life elsewhere in the Universe? The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in California aims to find out. Hosted by Seth Shostak, who’s the Institute’s Senior Astronomer and possibly the best popular science speaker since Carl Sagan, this weekly show features interviews with scientists and authors.

BLOG

SPL

Pharyngula http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ The domain of PZ Myers, biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Pharyngula covers a wide range of science-related subjects, and is regularly updated to comment on the latest developments in research, funding and politics (for more from Myers, see p22).

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A life less ordinary The Strangest Man: the hidden life of Paul Dirac, quantum genius By Graham Farmelo Faber, $TBC, 544pp

Asked to name a brilliant scientist, most people would probably come up with Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and maybe James Watson. It’s unlikely more than one person in a thousand would name the British physicist Paul Dirac. Which is a shame, considering he predicted the existence of anti-matter, unified Einstein’s theory of relativity with the laws of the sub-atomic world, and still holds the record for the

youngest-ever theorist to win a Nobel Prize for physics (in 1933, aged just 31). But as the title of Farmelo’s outstanding biography suggests, Dirac wasn’t exactly a natural science celebrity. His father’s bullying made him pathologically taciturn, possible autism gave him the social skills of a lamppost, and his theories are migraine-inducing. Out of this unpromising material, Farmelo has fashioned a biography teeming with insights into the nature – and price – of genius. He explains Dirac’s theories with impressive clarity, and shows how they initially provoked huge scepticism from his contemporaries, Einstein

included. But there’s far more besides. Dirac lived at a time of unprecedented scientific, political and social change, and Farmelo weaves these into the narrative with great skill. Combining fi rst-rate historical research with narrative drive and a fascinating human story, Farmelo has produced one of the great scientific biographies of recent times. Robert Matthews writes our ‘Big Idea’ feature each issue (see p74)

Resource

Fourth rock from the Sun

WEBSITES

A Passion for Mars: intrepid explorers of the Red Planet

DARWIN 200

By Andrew Chaikin Abrams, $35, 280 pages

Over a decade ago Andrew Chaikin wrote A Man on the Moon (Penguin, 1995) – to many, the seminal account of the Apollo missions. In turning his attention to the Red Planet, he’s done it again. The book charts the study of Mars from the fi rst concerted telescopic observations right up to today’s robotic missions and their scrutinising highresolution eyes. Just as A Man on the Moon stood out because it wasn’t just a straightforward retelling of the facts, A Passion for Mars superbly captures the very human, occasionally emotional and captivatingly

real stories at the heart of humankind’s Martian adventure. It’s Chaikin’s ability to present this thrilling and powerful tale of exploration that makes this book so compelling. Thanks to Chaikin we meet the people involved in, and experience the excitement of, the events that have shaped our understanding so far of Mars. With the world’s space programmes at vitally important waypoints in their respective existences, A Passion for Mars is a timely reminder of why Mars is such an exhilarating place to focus our future investigations. Yet, unlike the bygone days of the Apollo era, the story that runs through this book is, thankfully, far from over. Will Gater is staff writer on UK magazine BBC Sky at Night

Bad memories Try to Remember: psychiatry’s clash over meaning, memory, and mind By Paul R McHugh Dana Press, $25, 300 pages

Imagine you raise your kids as best you can and then years later they accuse you of sexually abusing them. You deny the crazy charges, but their psychiatrist assures you their patient remembers it all. This is what happened in the ‘recovered memory’ movement in the 1980s, when a group of psychiatrists began claiming their patients were anxious or

depressed because of repressed memories. Using hypnosis to help them ‘remember’, the psychiatrists claimed their patients could be cured. In Try to Remember, psychiatrist Paul McHugh recounts the story, from his fi rst encounter with a patient being treated this way to his long involvement with the law, the psychiatric profession, desperate families and the patients themselves. Disturbing and moving, this fluently-written book gives intimate accounts of McHugh’s work and of families torn apart. Susan Blackmore is an English psychologist and science writer

SCIENCE

National Center for Science Education www.ncseweb.org With the stated aim of defending the teaching of evolution in public schools, the site of the National Center for Science Education is rigorous about providing enough information to enable you to make up your own mind – though it obviously assumes that any reasonable assessment of the evidence will lead you to its viewpoint. Explanations of intelligent design and Darwin’s theory of evolution sit alongside in-depth looks at the controversy and court cases that have dogged this emotive subject. Legal cases are presented and links suggested for those who wish to delve a little further.

Nano nano www.nanotechproject.org Sometimes less really is more, and never was that truer than in the study of nanotechnology – engineering on the tiniest scale. Carbon that is manufactured on nano-scales, for example, is six times lighter than steel but 30 times stronger. And other applications include new cancer treatments, solar devices and compounds to destroy pollutants. Learn the way of the nano here.

Battle beyond the Earth www.spacewar.com Following recent tests of space weapons by both China and the US, there has been much criticism about the militarisation of space. Armaments such as the ‘rods from God’ – which, dropped from orbit, hit the ground with the force of a small nuclear explosion – have caused much concern. Keep up to date on the most advanced weaponry on Earth – and beyond.

Knol-edge knol.google.com A website where you can post factual information, and then edit entries made by other people? It all sounds familiar but Google’s Knol is somewhat different from Wikipedia. Contributors retain ownership of their work, so whether you decide to let others change your words is your choice. There are also contributor profiles, to help you assess the authority (or not) of what you read.

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IN THE KNOW

FAMOUS

LAST WORDS

SET BY DAVID J BODYCOMBE www.qwertyuiop.co.uk Q1 A stick is broken into two pieces, at random. What is the average length of the shorter of the two pieces? Q2 The local Swedish superstore is running a special offer on homeware. Using multiples of the coins shown below, you would need to use a minimum of four coins to buy one Schlürpp cup with the exact amount. To buy two cups, you’d need to use at least six coins, but only two coins are necessary to buy three cups. How much is a Schlürpp?

1

5

10

25

50

100

Q3 Which royal word in the plural becomes singular when you add one letter to the end?

Q5 This sum works as it is when stated in words. However, if you replace each letter with a different digit (for example, every T becomes an 8), it can also work in numerical form. What is the correct numerical sum?

T T + F OR S I X

E E T T

N N Y Y

Q6 If the values of the letters shown below are 11, 4, 12, 10 and 6, what’s Y worth?

ACEFPY Q7 What is the 100th number of the series that begins:

81, 73, 52, 42, 34, 22, 18, 10…?

Q8 Find the minimum number of triangles that is needed to replicate this design:

“The action’s still there but the steam’s all gone” Tom Cribb, world champion bareknuckle boxer, punching the air on his deathbed, May 1848.

TOP 10 BEEKEEPERS Movers and shakers whose leisure time was a veritable hive of activity – the following people were all keen apiarists

1 Aristotle (384-322BC) Greek philosopher

2 George Washington (1732-99) US President

Q4 If ‘express elevator’ is a SWIFT LIFT, find rhyming couplets for the following clues: (A) Cardiograph (5, 5) (B) Ethical dispute (5, 7) (C) Impressionist’s autobiography (7, 7) (D) Food poisoning panic (8, 8) (E) The White House (10, 9)

3 Gregor Mendel (1822-84) 2-84) Austrian geneticist

4 Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) Russian author

5 Robert Baden Powell (1857-1941) British founder of the Scout movement

6 Raymond Poincare (1860-1934) French President 7 Henry Fonda (1905-82) American actor

8 Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008) New Zealand mountaineer ountaineer

9 Sylvia Plath (1932–63)

Solution to Crossword No 04

Mar/Apr 2009

SOLUTIONS

DREAMSTIME, TOPFOTO, GETTY

IN THE KNOW Q1) One quarter of the length. Since the breaking point is random, the shorter piece could be anywhere from almost nothing to almost half of the length. On average it will be a quarter of the length. Q2) Each cup costs 17 units, using 10 + 5 + 1 + 1. For two cups you’d use 25 + 5 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1, and for three it’s 50 + 1. Q3) Princes, which becomes princess. Q4) Heart chart; moral quarrel; Renoir’s memoirs; listeria hysteria; President’s residence. Q5) 850 + 850 + 29,786 = 31,486. Q6) Y is worth nine, because its outline contains nine corners. Q7) At each stage, the next number is equal to the previous number minus the digits of the previous number multiplied together: 81-(8x1)=73. Therefore, every remaining term of the series will be 10: 10-(1x0)=10-0=10. Q8) There are four large triangles pointing upwards, three large triangles pointing downwards, plus two more smaller triangles pointing downwards in the middle, giving a total of nine. THE QUIZ Q1) Sir Isaac Newton Q2) Blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile Q3) The theory that the Earth moved around the Sun and not vice versa Q4) The Big Bang theory Q5) Chaos theory. Lorenz also popularised the term ‘butterfly effect’

96

American poet

10 Sir Peter de la Billière 4) (born 1934) British general eral This his Kiwi ved his climber loved buzzing buddies

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KNOWLEDGE CROSSWORD No 04 COMPILED BY AGENT STARLING HOW IT’S DONE The puzzle will be familiar to crossword enthusiasts already, although the British style may be unusual as crossword grids vary in appearance from country to country. Novices should note that the idea is to fill the white squares with letters to make words determined by the clues to the right. The numbers after each clue tell you how many letters are in the answer. There are no prizes for completing the crossword but do let us know how you got on. All spellings are US. Good luck!

THE QUIZ: THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE T Q1 Who developed deve many of his theories of calculus, optics and gravitation at his fam family home at Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, UK? Q2 According Accordin to mediaeval medical theory, what were the four bodily ‘humours’ that needed to be balanced for a person to remain healthy? ‘humou was developed by 16th-century Polish astronomer Q3 Which theory t What did Copernicus Nicolaus Copernicus? Nicola see in the stars? Q4 In 1931, 193 Belgian priest and physicist Georges Lemaître proposed what he later called his ‘hypothesis of the primeval atom’. How is it popularly known? Q5 Of w which theory was American meteorologist and mathematician Edward Norton Lorenz an early pioneer?

ACROSS 9 Boat isn’t designed by naturalist (8) 10 Has turned into a tree (3) 11 Strange result for Northern Ireland (6) 12 A committee on the ship (6) 13 Servile flatterer (7) 14 Real variety of nobleman (4) 15 Cold storage appliance (10) 17 Creature makes sign with nitrogen (8) 18 Identification of pub rules (3,4) 19 Gemstone (4) 21 Game is transformed by pictures (6) 24 Antacid (6,11) 27 Crazy, free city (6) 29 Ghoul naturally has a bone (4) 30 Golden sound (7) 33 Briton liberated without harm (4-4) 35 Natural habitat of clouds and trees (10) 36 Lois ran to the store (4) 37 I’m no sub – revised and extended form of transport (7) 38 Fall asleep agreeably (3,3) 40 British bird and dog (6) 41 Allow to hire out (3) 42 Publicly known to be recorded on vinyl (2,6) DOWN 1 Instrument that’s twice as low (6,4) 2 Girl at a festive occasion (4) 3 Blocked female deer reaching other deer (8) 4 Adhesive label (7) 5 Businessmen who don’t do things by halves (11) 6 Caribbean island (6,4) 7 Please move out (6) 8 Worry a few are scary (8) 10 Mad agent has a proverb (5) 16 Bullfighter (7) 20 Can follow exercise nut (5) 22 Non-professional (7) 23 Nearly 180 degrees – stupid fish (6,5) 25 Out of uniform, still in bed (10) 26 Travel ticket shortfall (6,4) 28 Artist returns herb to the records (8) 31 Child soldiers (8) 32 VIP with a high score (3,4) 34 Thug puts rabbi in a ditch (6) 35 Right to boot out automaton (5) 39 Dodge under a bird (4)

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The last word What happens when science becomes a cult, asks John Horgan

“If we’re to become immortal, shouldn’t we see more progress in treating cancer?” rominent scientists, notably the British biologist Richard Dawkins, have been knocking religion lately. Elsewhere in this issue Dawkins faults creationists for rejecting what science tells us about where we come from (see p59). The assumption is that science, in marked contrast to religion, is a bastion of reason. If only things were that simple! The ‘Singularity Summit,’ a scitech conference I recently attended in San Jose, California, shows that scientists are hardly immune to irrational, wishful thinking. In physics, the term ‘singularity’ describes an event or place, like the Big Bang or a black hole, where reality gets really weird. Singularitarians (their own awkward self-designation) have adopted the word ‘Singularity’ to describe the imminent transformation of humans into immortal machines. At fi rst, Singularitarians say, we may extend our lives and boost our intelligence with genetic engineering, brain chips and other technologies. Eventually we will leave our flesh-and-blood selves entirely behind as we transform our psyches into software programs and ‘upload’ them into cyberspace. In San Jose, Vernor Vinge, a computer scientist and sci-fi writer who fi rst predicted the existence of the singularity in a 1993 essay, stuck to his assertion that it will unfold not millennia from now but by 2030. Equally optimistic is Ray Kurzweil, a computer entrepreneur who has promoted the Singularity in The Singularity Is Near (Viking

SKYE HORGAN. ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS MADDEN

P

Penguin, 2005 – and watch out for the forthcoming movie) and other books. At the summit, Kurzweil declared that the Singularity will be the inevitable culmination of exponential advances in information technologies as well as artificial intelligence, genetics, nanotechnology and neuroscience. Singular problems Skeptics deride the Singularity as “the rapture of the geeks,” an allusion to the belief of some Christian fundamentalists in an ‘end time’ when the faithful are whisked to Heaven while we sinners perish here on Earth. I didn’t stoop to such name-calling at the summit, where I served as the token skeptic. I merely pointed out that science is not progressing nearly as rapidly as Singularitarians contend. Sure,

SCIENCE FACT OR WISHFUL THINKING 98

Mar/Apr 2009

computer scientists have invented programs that can translate languages and play championshiplevel chess. But researchers haven’t come to close to creating the kind of artificial intelligence depicted in fi lms, from HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey to R2D2 in Star Wars. Nor are scientists on the verge of “reverse-engineering the human brain,” as Kurzweil claims. Neuroscientists still have no idea how, precisely, a brain makes a mind. This ignorance is reflected in our primitive treatments for brain disorders such as depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Similarly, the Human Genome Project has inspired hopes that we will soon conquer not only disease but even ageing itself. But so far hype has outrun reality. Scientists have carried out hundreds of clinical trials of gene therapy for inherited diseases, and not one has been an unqualified success. And if we’re about to become immortal, shouldn’t we see a little more progress in treating cancer? Kurzweil, Vinge and, as far as I could tell, most of the 500 or so attending the Singularity Summit dismissed my criticism as hopelessly naïve, the product of outmoded linear thinking. I empathise with Singularitarians’ yearning to transcend this troubled world. But the last thing humanity needs now is another apocalyptic cult masquerading as science. John Horgan is Director of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey

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