World of Knowledge 2016-08

The EXPERIMENT to bring dead people back! ISSUE 41 AUGUST 2016 $6.95 (INCL. GST) NZ $7.90 (INCL. GST)

SECRET NAZI PAST THE MONARCHY'S CONTROVERSIAL LINKS TO HITLER

Why BIG CATS are taking over cities

REAL-LIFE CRIME

The horrors of history's biggest WITCH HUNT

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ITH ONE OF THE WORLD’S great whale migrations taking place along the NSW coastline this winter, it’s time to head to a coastal national park to see the ocean’s most majestic creature. National parks make up almost 50 per cent of the NSW coastline and provide some of the best lookouts, headlands and foreshores to see whales on their annual migration. The north coast – from Tweed Heads to Port Stephens – offers some of the best whale watching in the country. Popular spots such as Cape Byron State Conservation Area and Tomaree National Park (NP) are ideal for seeing breaching humpbacks and southern right whales. Sydney and its surrounds offer many places for whale watching and it’s an incredible opportunity to see them migrating past Australia’s largest city.Top spots can be found in Sydney Harbour,

Ku-ring-gai Chase and Kamay Botany Bay national parks. The south coast, from Shoalhaven to Batemans Bay and Eden, is home to several generous stretches of coastal wilderness, with large numbers of whales making an appearance on their annual migration. Head to Jervis Bay and Meroo national parks for fantastic vantage points. There’s also a range of accommodation in NSW national parks that offers a unique holiday experience. Stay in a restored lighthouse cottage perched on a headland. Choose from spectacular locations including Cape Byron, the wildlife sanctuary of Montague Island Nature Reserve and Green Cape Lightstation in Ben Boyd National Park. For family-friendly coastal cabins and a fun whale-watching getaway, enjoy a stay at Pretty Beach and Depot Beach, in Murramarang National Park on the south coast.

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Humpback breaching off Ben Boyd National Park

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SOLVIN ZANKL Photographer The nature enthusiast spent two years photographing the inhabitants of an oak tree – and discovered a fascinating natural universe. PAGE

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ACHIM PETERS Neuroscientist The brain specialist is convinced that wrong signals from our diet can trigger chronic illnesses, including Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis or even cancer. PAGE

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n the 1950s, three out of 10 people believed that Queen Elizabeth II descended from god. Conduct the same survey today and you’d be lucky to find three in a million who’d give the same results, even though support for the monarchy is now back to 1950s levels. You’d probably be sectioned for even posing the question. Our morals, values and opinions can shift seismically in a short space of time. Rewind 10 years. Could anyone have imagined a devout Catholic nation such as Ireland voting to legalise gay marriage, as happened in May 2015? Or antismoking feeling being so strong now that the habit would be banned in pubs and clubs across Australia? In the same vein, it’s difficult to comprehend that members of the British royal family – that

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MARCO STRENG Mathematician The director of Genesis Mining makes money every day – in the most literal sense. His firm generates bitcoins, the dollars and cents of the internet. PAGE

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eccentric, cuddly bunch who are met by grinning crowds of disciples wherever they travel – could have once been sympathetic towards the Nazi Party, only a few years before Britain would fight against the regime. But, alas, there’s some powerful evidence to confirm that this was the case. Before World War Two, fascism wasn’t the dirty word it is now, especially among the English aristocracy who believed it was the best weapon for battling the spread of Communism. Even if that meant climbing in bed with the Führer. What a relief, then, that our morals, values and opinions do change. We’re generally a wiser species for it. And not praying to statues of Lizzie every Sunday morning. Vince Jackson, Editor Follow me on Twitter: @vince_jackson1 3

ON THE COVER

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The British royal family’s links to Hitler and the Nazis revealed

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One tree – a microcosm of life

ON THE COVER

Are chemicals in food making us )$7and

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A shocking report on the leopards taking over Mumbai

Spectacular perspectives: natural wonders as you’ve never seen them before

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CONTENTS AUGUST 2016

ON THE COVER

9JCVCPGXGPV[GCTUCIQ reveals about the human psyche

NATURE 18 The Mysterious Universe Of The Oak The fascinating world of the oak tree (and its inhabitants)

50 New Cat On The Block Why leopards are moving to the big city

55 Smarter In 60 Seconds Theme: Big cats

70 A Drone’s Eye View Of The World How drones can outshine even the best photographers

86 You Can’t Kill Me Introducing the greatest survival artists on Earth

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SCIENCE 56 Waking The Dead Can money and a vat of dry ice buy eternal life?

ON THE COVER

THE HUMAN BODY AND MIND 40 The Deceptive Sense Of Taste The secret tricks of the food corporations

WORLD EVENTS 64 When Selfies Turn Deadly The fatal hunt for a viral hit

HISTORY 8 The Royal Family’s Nazi Connection The evidence behind the monarchy’s fascist links

32 The Psychology Of A Witch Hunt Can paranoia affect an entire village?

TECHNOLOGY 82 I Am A Bitcoin Miner

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Could we really live forever?

The secret factories where digital currency is made

REGULARS 3 Experts In This Issue Professional people offering their insights this month

90 Questions And Answers Amazing facts from science, technology and everyday life

96 And Finally Gannets leave fish with nowhere to hide

98 Letters Your views and questions aired

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THE Delve into the British monarchy’s past and you’ll find a family history dotted with flirtations with fascism, covered-up German ancestry and even Nazi relatives

The Queen

HISTORY

EVIDENCE #1: LEAKED VIDEO

WHY WAS THE QUEEN FILMED DOING A NAZI SALUTE? during the 1930s. Even more staggering is the fact that just seven years later, the Queen Mother and her husband George VI would become symbols of wartime defiance as London was bombed during the Blitz of 1940. Historians, though, are quick to pour water over suggestions that the Queen or the Queen Mother were ever Nazi sympathisers pointing out that the video be watched in context. Re scholar James Holland tol Sun: “They are all having there are lots of smiles, all a big joke. I don’t thi was a child in Britain in or 40s who has not pe mock Nazi salute as It just shows the Ro are as human as th Others historians commented that a the now-90-yearcouldn’t have co the future impli making a Nazi What’s not u however, are inclinations le of ars after th e

King before controversially abdicating. Edward’s links with Hitler’s fascism are a poorly kept secret. He once described the Führer as “a decent chap”. “It is right that it [the film] is put into the public domain,” says Dr Karina Urbach from the Institute of Historical Research. “It’s high time the Royal Archives were open for serious research on the 1930s and issue of Edward’s politics and n his generation ese

queen elizabeth

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he movie is just 20 seconds long, but its effects on the Royal Family’s reputation will linger for decades, hanging over the House of Windsor like a black cloud. The grainy black-and-white footage is shot in the gardens of Balmoral Castle, between 1933 and 1934. Frolicking around on the lawns are the Queen Mother, Prince Edward (who’d later become King Edward VIII), Princess Margaret – and a seven-year-old Princess Elizabeth. At first, there’s nothing sinister about the video. The family are playing with the royal corgis. Then, out of the blue, it happens: the girl who one day will be Queen faces the camera and raises her arm in what appears to be a Nazi salute, followed by her mother and Uncle Edward. The two adults then encourage Margaret to follow suit. The controversial film, first leaked by the UK newspaper The Sun in July 2015, sent shockwaves through British society. Here was a future monarch, now head of state and the Commonwealth, performing a ritual

inting that “It is disappo t decades film shot eigh rently from ago and appa personal Her Majesty’s e have been family archiv exploited in obtained and this manner.” om Statement fr Palace Buckingham

Queen Mother

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AUDIENCE WITH THE FÜHRER After abdicating, the Duke of Windsor (centre) met Hitler in Germany in 1937. The details of their meeting are still unknown.

“The Führer hoped to install Edward back on the throne once the Nazis conquered England.” Andrew Morton, royal biographer.

EVIDENCE #2: WAS BRITAIN’S KING A NAZI

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o the average Brit, Edward VIII is a romanticised figure; the handsome devil of a king who abdicated from the throne in order to marry his true love, the twice-divorced American, Wallis Simpson. History has proved, however, that the debonair monarch hid a darker side from the public, one which harboured far-right-wing views and a questionable relationship with Hitler.

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Like mo family (see page had close ties with Ger parents Queen Mary and Geo boasted strong Germanic heritage. Edward himself was fluent in the German language, once telling his friend Diana Mosley, wife of British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, that “every drop of blood in my veins is German.” This extended to his politics. Edward, like many British aristocrats

in 1933 one o Edward’s e uerries Sir Dudley Forwood, reported: “We were none of us averse to Hitler politically. We felt the Nazi regime

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tall e once the d,” writes ered Spanish try and in Europe, e in southern an $100 million ut the Duke and errified by Nazirs that the British urder them able assumption given acrimonious relationship x-king. Under enormous , the couple fled to the as, and Hitler was left -handed.”

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as a more appropriate government an the Weimar Republic, which d been extremely socialist.” If Edward was drawn to Hitler, en the feeling was mutual. ccording to Andrew Morton’s book 17 Carnations: The Royals, The azis And The Biggest Cover-Up History – a publication which uckingham Palace tried to ban – the Führer began wooing Edward soon after becoming chancellor in 1933, encouraging teenage German aristocrat Princess Friederike to romance the then-bachelor prince. Hitler hoped to revive bygone days when English and German royalty only married each other. Edward eventually wed Mrs Simpson but that didn’t stop Hitler from inviting Edward and his wife – now titled the Duke and Duchess of indsor post-abdication – to visit im at his German mountain retreat tober 1937. Edward and Hitler ute private chat, the main a mystery ard

COVER-UP CLAIMS The Royal Archives are held at Windsor Castle. Historians believe they’re being censored.

PALACE COVER-UP DID THE ROYAL FAMILY DESTROY DAMNING NAZI EVIDENCE?

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nder British law, government documents declared to be in the public interest must be transferred to the openly accessible National Archives after 30 years, unless they pose a threat to national security. Why, then, are the Royal Archives not subject to this kind of scrutiny? This is the question being posed by historians after the Queen’s Nazi salute footage was anonymously linked to The Sun newspaper last year (see pages 10-11). Especially since these files are believed to contain large volumes of correspondence between the royal family and various Nazi politicians and aristocrats. “The royal family can’t suppress their own history forever,” says Karina Urbach of the Institute of Historical Research. “This is censorship. Censorship is not a democratic value. They have to face their past. I’m coming from a country, Germany, where we all have to face our past.” Urbach, author of Go-Betweens For Hitler, a book about the relationship between the royals and the Nazis, has spent years trying to get her hands on documents in the Royal Archive relating to Nazi Germany – with no luck. She claims she’s seen rows of boxes containing information on the all-important 1930s era that’s off-limits to everyone, even suggesting that certain files belonging to this period “no longer existed”. “The Archives are a beautiful place to work but not if you want to work on 20th-century material… you don’t get any access to anything political after 1918. We know that after ’45 there was a big clean-up operation. The royals were very worried about correspondence resurfacing and so it was destroyed.” Still, Buckingham Palace hasn’t been able to totally control the flow of information. Much of the juiciest knowledge about the link between the royals and the Nazis may have been swept under the carpet if it wasn’t for the efforts of two A n ac em cs, Professor David Harris (then working wit the US State Department) and Dr Paul Sweet, who successfully campaigned for the so-called Windsor File – which amon other things revealed Edward VIII’s relationship with Hitler – to finally be published in 1957, after years of legal wrangling. >

NAZI PROCESSION A 16-year-old Prince Philip at a funeral for his sister in 1937, surrounded by senior Nazi officers.

EVIDENCE#4: FUNERAL PHOTOS

WHY DOES PRINCE PHILIP HAVE SO MANY NAZI RELATIVES?

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ou know him as Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, husband and consort to the Queen. His full name is less familiar and rarely used in public: Philip Mountbatten. But that itself doesn’t tell the full story. Mountbatten is, in fact, an anglicised version of the dynastic name Battenberg, which Philip’s German family members adopted during World War One due to the British public’s anti-German feeling. And here’s where it gets really interesting. The prince himself took the Mountbatten name in 1947, when he married Princess Elizabeth. The

deed may have helped deflect attention away from the Prince’s lesser-known heritage, as a fully paid up member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-SonderburgGlücksburg – a prominent German royal dynasty. The now 94-year-old Duke of Edinburgh was born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark in 1921. He’s been described by biographers as having an unsettled, lonely childhood; his parents separated after his schizophrenic mother was put into a mental hospital, and he was moved from school to school, from country to country. One of these establishments was Schule Schloss

Salem in southern Germany, where he arrived in the autumn of 1933, eight months after Hitler had been in power. Schloss Salem was one of the country’s most prominent schools, and the Nazis’ Hitler Youth movement quickly cemented its hold over the place, making all the boys – including Philip – perform Nazi salutes. He stayed for just two years, before being shipped to Gordonstoun school in Scotland. While there’s no suggestion that Prince Philip – who went on to fight against the Germans in World War Two in the British Royal Navy – ever had Nazi sympathies, the same perhaps can’t be said of three of his

YOUTH MOVEMENT The young prince attended Schule Schloss Salem in Germany, where Hitler Youth policies were implemented.

prin

WIVES OF THE SS Philip’s sisters Magarita (left) and Sophie (right) both eventually married senior Nazi officers.

sisters, Margarita, Cecile and Sophie, all of whom married German aristocrats with senior positions in the Nazi Party. Last year, an English TV documentary entitled Prince Philip: The Plot To Make A King, broadcasted excerpts from the memoirs of one of those siblings – Princess Sophie – in which she describes Hitler as a “charming and seemingly modest man”. When she gave birth to her first son with husband Prince Christoph von Hessen, the chief of Hermann Goering’s secret intelligence service, she named him Karl Adolf in honour of the Führer.

The documentary also photos of a 16-year-old Pr attending a Nazi funeral in near Frankfurt (see photo o page), after his sister Cecile killed in an air crash in 1937 dressed sombrely in a dark but he’s flanked by grieving all clad in their Nazi uniforms. In an honest and rare interv about his German past for the book Royals And The Reich, the Duke of Edinburgh admitted that he found Hitler’s attempts to restore Germany’s prestige after World War One as “attractive”, and admitted his German relatives had “inhibitions about the Jews”.

“You can understand how attractive Nazism was.” Prince Philip, excerpt from Royals And The Reich

get things going. You can understand how attractive it was.” Philip insisted he was never “conscious of anybody in the family actually expressing anti-Semitic views”, but added that there were “inhibitions about the Jews” and ”jealousy of their success”. >

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EVIDENCE#5: WINDSOR FAMILY TREE HOW GERMAN IS THE QUEEN AND HER FAMILY?

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PHOTOS: Alamy (7); Getty Images (6); PR (3) WORDS: Vince Jackson

n 1714, the British royal family was faced with a problem. Queen Anne, who famously united the kingdoms of England and Scotland into one sovereign state, died after a year-long illness. That meant her direct Stuart family line had come to a halt. Worse still, all the likely candidates for next monarch among her 50-odd closest suitable relatives were Catholic – which was forbidden by 1701’s Act of Settlement. So instead, the gig was given to a foreigner – George Ludwig, Prince Elector of Hanover: a German through and through. In that moment, the British royal house name changed from Stuart to Brunswick-Lüneburg-Hanover. The

NAME CHANGERS During WW1, the royal family – pictured here in 1989 – changed its surname from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor. 14

new German throne-sitters had a good run, lasting until 1837 when Queen Victoria took over the top job. The new monarch followed a strong tradition of English royalty marrying German royalty by wedding (her first cousin) Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, another richly Germanic dynasty – taking his family name, too. And from here, it’s only four generations – Queen Victoria is Queen Elizabeth’s great-great grandmother – until we arrive at the current members of the royal family. It’s not clear whether the average pre-20th-century Brit knew, or even gave a hoot, that their royals had so much German blood flowing through their veins, but come 1914

things had changed. The English and German royals found themselves on opposing sides in World War One, and suddenly having the family surname SaxeCoburg and Gotha was not a good look for the Palace. In recognition of this delicate situation, reigning monarch George V changed the family name to Windsor, which remains to this day. It’s worth nothing that of George’s 29 first cousins on his father’s side, 19 were German, the rest halfGerman. A look on his mother’s side reveals that of her 31 first-cousins, six were German and 25 halfGerman. Not a single one was British. George V’s wife Mary was the first royal consort in 400 years

GERMAN BLOOD King George V had 19 German first cousins on his father’s side alone.

‘George V’s wife Mary was the first royal consort in 400 years to speak British as a mother tongue.’

the windsors

to speak British as a mother tongue. While it’s clear that the Queen and her family have close blood ties with Germany, historian Dominic Selwood points out in the UK’s Guardian newspaper that Elizabeth II is also descended from a millennia’s worth of different British royal dynasties, too. “To be honest, if we scrutinise the royal family’s connections with the Fatherland, we should take a long look at our own, too, and acknowledge that this country [the UK] has had the most profound and close genetic and cultural ties with the people of Germany and Scandinavia for over 1,500 years.”

ROYAL MUTINY It’s claimed Prince George colluded with Nazi deputy leader Rudolf Hess (right)

EVIDENCE #6:

THE HESS INCIDENT WAS THERE A ROYAL/NAZI PLOT TO OVERTHROW CHURCHILL?

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n the night of May 10, 1941, Germany’s deputy Führer Rudolf Hess entered British airspace over Scotland in a light aircraft piloted by himself, tracked by a pair of RAF Spitfires. At 11:06 pm, Hitler’s right-hand man realised he was low on fuel and took the decision to parachute from his plane. Hess was subsequently captured and held as a prisoner of war at the Tower of London. The motives for Hess’s daring Scottish mission have been endlessly debated by historians. Some insist he fled Germany without Hitler’s permission to start peace talks. Others claim Hitler actually rubber-stamped the trip, and that Hess’s orders were to secure a military alliance with Britain against Russia. Authors John Harris and Richard Wilbourn have a more scandalous theory. After studying more than 10,000 documents for their book Rudolf Hess: Treachery And Deception, the pair believe Hess’s mission was part of a coup to topple British PM, Winston Churchill – a mutiny that was organised by Prince George, the Duke of Kent, the younger brother of wartime monarch King George VI. “The aristocracy had the most to lose from Churchill staying in power. All they knew was that Germany was bombing Britain nightly, softening the country up prior to an invasion, which would surely cost them their wealth, their status and their lives. They e also unhappy that Churchill’s strategy revolved around a US nce, which many quite correctly saw as the end of the British pire. A peace treaty with Germany, a country that had historic with the Royal Family, would have seemed like the most sible option to them. Communism was the real enemy; icularly to those with much to lose. There were many parties lved in the plot but our research points time and again ne man who was connected to them all: Prince George.” he historians claim that Prince George was in Scotland on the of Hess’s arrival. When the Nazi landed, he’s believed to have ediately asked for the Duke of Hamilton, a good friend of the ce’s. According to Harris and Wilbourn, a 30,000-strong army lied Poles, who’d fled their homeland and were also based cotland, had been primed to support the coup.

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NATURE

THE MYSTERIOUS

THE UNKNOWN CONTINENT ON OUR DOORSTEP It can live for centuries, gives shelter to thousands of different animal species and provides us with the oxygen we need to live. Oak trees are one of the most incredible miracles of nature

OF THE

HOME SWEET HOME Using its body-length proboscis, the female acorn weevil drills a hole in the shell of an acorn so that it can lay a single egg in the opening. This makes an ideal nursery for developing larvae as they’re protected from predators and provided with sufficient nutrients.

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THE CAMOUFLAGED HUNTER The mossy roots of European oak trees are the ideal hunting grounds for common toads. They provide a safe hiding place where they can lie in wait for their prey – mainly insects and worms – before ambushing them.

THE DECOMPOSER Every year an oak tree sheds up to 300,000 leaves weighing around 100kg. The slater plays a central role here: as the primary decomposer of plant waste, it ensures the forest doesn’t disappear under a layer of leaves that would grow by metres every year.

:+$7-2%'2(67+( 02660,7('2,17+( (&26<67(02)7+(2$." MEAL TIME! Moss mites feed on dead plant material that the oak sheds, transforming it into humus soil.

:+$70$.(67+(2$. 7+(1875,(17%20% 2)7+()25(67" RICH DELIGHTS Acorns are rich in carbohydrates (40%), fats (15%) and proteins (6%). In autumn larger mammals take advantage of the falling acorns while the soft fallen leaves provide food for many invertebrates.

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HOW MANY FLOORS DOES AN OAK TREE HAVE? Oaks are like high-rise buildings, composed of several storeys: the moss or soil layer (up to 0.15 metres), the herb layer (up to 1.5 metres high), the shrub layer (up to 5 metres high) and lastly the tree layer which can reach a height of up to 50 metres. Each of these floors has its own habitat with specific residents who fulfil defined tasks. This helps the ecosystem of the oak to function properly.

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When choosing their homes, UK blue tits are not particularly picky – but they like things to be cosy: they often build in neglected hollows in oak trees and furnish their homes with moss and grass.

TUMMY TROUBLES Although squirrels are associated with acorns, they can’t digest the nutrient-rich nuts properly. Often they cause the animal painful stomach aches.

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HOLLOW-DWELLERS The hornet is another insect that likes to seek shelter in old oak hollows. They build communal nests by chewing bark to make a papery pulp. Their notorious reputation as a killer insect means they are often looking for shelters where they can hide out in peace.

OAK AFICIONADOS Oaks provide a bed and a food delivery service for raccoons: when they’re not spending the day sleeping in a tree hollow, they greedily chow down masses of acorns. This helps them put on the winter fat they need to survive the cold months.

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HOW MANY INHABITANTS LIVE ON THE The oak is a complex microcosm. More than a thousand different species typically call a tree home, including many different types of butterfly and all kinds of beetle – few other species of tree provide so much shelter. The giants, which can grow to be 50 metres high, serve as both hiding place and sustenance for the entire population.

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:+<,67+( 7$:1<2:/ $ /2<$/ 628/" RESIDENT BIRD The tawny owl prefers to make its nest in the branches or hollows of old oaks. Once the owl has found its territory, it won’t stray from it for the rest of its life.

:+$70$.(67+( 3,1(0$57(1.,1* $021* &/,0%(56" TREETOP PREDATOR European pine martens spend a large portion of their lives in the treetops. The furry predators swing from branch to branch in their hunt for prey. While climbing they can even rotate their feet by 180 degrees.

:+<,6,7%(77(5127 72*(7722&/26( 72 7+,6 *58%" TOXIC CATERPILLAR As moths they are harmless, but the caterpillar of the oak processionary moth is not to be trifled with. Each one has over 600,000 toxic stinging hairs which can cause a life-threatening allergic reaction when touched.

:+<'21¶7 :22'3(&.(56 *(7+($'$&+(6" KNOCK, KNOCK! WHO’S THERE? Great spotted woodpeckers pound against brittle oak wood up to 20 times per second. A type of shock absorber inside its head ensures that it doesn’t get a headache.

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WHICH OAK INHABITANTS CAN ALSO BE DANGEROUS TO HUMANS? Owls, martens and woodpeckers are among the most prominent treetop residents. Of the lesser-spotted species, the oak processionary moth is a creature few of us have heard of – even though the larvae of this unassuming moth can pose a risk to humans as well as trees. The members of the Lepidoptera order, which have recently been spotted in parts of southeast England, crawl down from the tree crown in their thousands in early summer to feed on the oak leaves. Once they have emerged from their cocoons, they leave behind millions of tiny toxic hairs that can float on the air for up to 100 metres and can cause shortness of breath if accidentally inhaled.

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picking up the spoils of his victory, a female, and lets off a triumphant buzzing to celebrate. This is just one of many fascinating storylines that play out daily in the universe of the oak, and which have done for millions of years.

WHERE IS THE OLDEST OAK TREE IN THE WORLD?

“There is something to discover in every oak. If you are quiet and patient, the tree will reveal its secret.” SOLVIN ZANKL, PHOTOGRAPHER

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rom one second to the next the gnarled branch of the old oak tree is transformed into an arena: as the sun sets on the horizon, two male stag beetles get ready for a treetop duel – their antler-like mandibles directed threateningly in the other’s direction. Usually, this would be the cue for them to storm towards each other and attempt to throw the other onto its back with their three-centimetre-long jaws, or to push their opponent from the branch. But this time things are rather different: one of the beetles begins to teeter precariously and shortly afterwards tumbles to the ground below. The duel is over before it has begun – because the beetle made a fatal mistake: before the battle it slurped away on a sugary juice found dripping from a crack in the oak. What the insect didn’t realise was the oak’s sweet sap had been fermented into alcohol by bacteria. The beetle’s opponent doesn’t look in the least bit worried by this: he’s excited about

The Pechanga Great Oak Tree in Temecula, California, is around 2,000 years old. And Standing in a field in Manthorpe in the UK is a tree believed to be about 1,000 years old. Known as the Bowthorpe Oak, the tree’s trunk is now hollow but its staggering 15-metre circumference is so cavernous it’s claimed that 39 people once managed to stand inside it. These two giant trees have observed the lives and deaths of

LEAF ARTIST Before laying their eggs, female leaf-rolling weevils use their proboscis and legs to create artful nests from oak leaves.

several generations of people. They’ve seen wars and natural disasters, and been witness to exciting new eras – almost in a time lapse, as if they have lived life in slow motion. Oaks grow just four centimetres in height every year while a spruce manages 37 centimetres per year. An oak grows for half a century before it carries its first blossoms. And yet every oak forges its own individual history as a microcosm for thousands of living organisms. The tree is a mysterious continent on which the greatest miracle of nature is waiting to be discovered.

HOW MANY TONS OF DUST DOES AN OAK FILTER FROM THE AIR? In spring, once the cold weather has gone and temperatures are finally rising, the oak wakes up from its winter sleep. The buds start to open pretty much immediately and the first green leaves soon become visible. Shortly afterwards, the characteristic lobed leaves begin to shoot everywhere on the oak’s branches and twigs. The first blossoms appear. On every male flower or catkin there are up to 40,000 pollens, which are carried to the female flowers by the wind. The leaves of the oak are true miracles of nature: not only do they act as a source of nutrients and a nesting place for countless animal species, they also serve as umbrellas, climate control units, air filters and oxygen factories combined. “Using its 150,000 leaves, a 100-year-old oak tree converts around 6,000kg of carbon dioxide per year into 45,000 kg of oxygen,” explains biologist Mario Ludwig. That’s equivalent to the annual requirement of 11 people. The tree also functions as an active

HANGING BY A THREAD The grubs of the winter moth feed on oak leaves and pull themselves from tree to tree using self-spun threads. At the end of May they make their way down to the ground to pupate.

the oak tree and developed strategies to survive.

WHICH ANIMALS NEED DYING OAKS TO SURVIVE?

air filter: with a leaf surface area of up to 1,600 square metres, it filters up to a ton of pollutioncontaining dust a year. Above all, the silent giants are a complex ecosystem that offer a habitat to more than 1,000 species of animal – no other tree provides as much shelter. Over the course of evolution each one has adapted to the unique living conditions of

Many creatures benefit from eating the carbohydrate-rich, fatty fruits of the oak: the acorns. Unlike wild boar or dormice, at least the Eurasian jay makes itself useful while doing so by contributing – albeit unintentionally – to the dispersal of the tree. In autumn it buries acorn reserves under the soil that it can often not find again so that, in some spots, new oak saplings are already sprouting by the next year. Many insects have also discovered the nutrient-rich tree fruits for themselves – both as a hiding place for their offspring and as a source of nourishment. The acorn weevil deposits its eggs in acorn shells, which helps protect

them from hungry predators as well as meaning the larvae will be greeted with an opulent feast when they hatch. Their close relation, the oak leaf-rolling weevil, folds artful nests from the oak leaves by cutting through the leaf, rolling up the sides and curling it up from the tip. It then lays a single egg inside. Even inside the oak leaves and deep in the tree bark there exists a wealth of hidden riches unique to the oak tree: here the leaf miners are in charge – the tiny larvae of flies, butterflies and beetles which eat straight through the oak and leave behind empty corridors, known as mines, in the process. Some of them, like the oak bark beetle, can quickly become a real nuisance to the giant trees thanks to their insatiable hunger. Trees infested by the pest exhibit general symptoms of decline including reduced growth, wilted foliage and

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HOW MANY TREES ARE THERE ON EARTH? Trees grow from tiny seeds into gigantic titans. To date they have conquered almost every corner of the world: More than 25% of the Earth’s land areas are forested – that’s 40 million square kilometres. Researchers estimate that there are around three trillion trees in all of the forests in the world. This number can then be divided into 100,000 different tree species – there are 600 different types of oak alone. Trees are the lungs of the Earth, producing most of the oxygen on the planet.

WINTER The tree hunkers down for winter. Nutrient reserves are stored in the bark.

MALE FLOWERS Pollination mostly happens thanks to the wind – and not as a result of insects searching for nectar.

SPRING The oak begins to produce leaves.

SUMMER The big growth phase: the roots grow deeper.

AUTUMN The connections to the leaves are severed.

RIVER OF NUTRIENTS

Thanks to their green leaf dye, the tree can convert carbon dioxide, air and water into vital nutrients and distribute them all over the tree.

CURRENT OF WATER

EMERGENCY BUDS Oaks have buds that only grow when they are in danger. The ‘sleeping eyes’ can be 100 years old.

SHIFT WORK The wood of the tree consists of many different layers. Every one has its task. The cambium is responsible for the tree’s growth. DNA The acorn contains the genetic information of the tree.

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BUDS The acorns that fall in autumn germinate the following spring. A cold winter will mean they sprout sooner.

AN OAK TREE NEEDS

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LITRES OF

WATER PER DAY

woodpecker uses the dead wood to create rooms for its offspring. When the chicks have fledged, they are often re-used by owls, dormice and squirrels as a hideout. In parts of Europe an animal with a migrant background also likes to withdraw into neglected woodpecker nests: the raccoon, which migrated from America 80 years ago, often seeks refuge in oaks in order to spend the winter there or simply to take a refreshing nap.

DO OAKS HAVE THEIR OWN INTERNAL RESET BUTTON? Even from a distance the brown treetop catches the eye next to the lush green forest. In comparison to the beech tree, nibbled bare and with naked branches, the majestic oak radiates vitality. The reason for the different appearances of the two trees is down to the mighty oak’s survival strategy. Over the course of evolution the oak has developed a unique ability to react to feeding attacks by harmful bugs. Every year in summer, the most large-scale regeneration process in nature begins anew. It forces the pinkish-green leaf buds, meant for next spring, to sprout for the second time there and then. Using

FAVOURITE SNACK Acorns are one of the favourite meals of wild boar – for good reason: no other tree nut contains as many nutrients.

this trick even oaks that have been nibbled bare can regenerate within the shortest amount of time – and their leaves are sorely needed: scientists have discovered that oak leaves are at the top of the menu for 285 species of butterflies. The larvae of the oak processionary moth are particularly ravenous and from April onwards the caterpillars band together to form chains more than ten metres long, in order to take over the oak leaves like an armada. Often the only thing they leave behind is a landscape of utter devastation. The second leaf budding is, however, not the only strategy used by the oak to react to specific threats: before it sheds its foliage in late autumn, it draws important nutrients like the green leaf dye chlorophyll from its leaves in order to store them in the trunk and roots for the duration of the winter. The remaining reddishyellow leaves do not only make for a beautiful spread of foliage, they are also the leaves’ own protective shields. They have a similar function to the UV filters in suncream – to protect against sunlight. In addition the leaves contain substances that are toxic to some insects, which help them defend themselves against hungry insect larvae. In Europe at least, the oak tree is also prepared against cold winters. Its thick bark keeps in heat and water and the tree can also produce an internal anti-freeze to prevent the water in its cells from freezing and exploding as a result. All of these protective measures ensure that the oak tree is able to store enough energy during winter to be able to form leaves next spring and embark again on one of the biggest miracles of nature. A process that has been happening for millions of years and which will continue to happen in just the same way for the next million.

PHOTOS: Solvin Zankl (19), Frank Hecker (1) /Frederking&Thaler Verlag; Getty Images; Caters ILLUSTRATION: Sol90Images

branch dieback, all of which can ultimately kill the tree. But dead oaks also serve as an important source of food for numerous species of animals as well as a breeding ground or a hiding place. The stag beetle likes to lay its 80 or so eggs in the rotting tree trunks so that its larvae can stumble upon the decaying but nutritious wood immediately after hatching. The great spotted

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HISTORY

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A

In 1692, the North American town of Salem was rocked by a horrific massacre, which saw more than 20 people brutally murdered. For 300 years historians have been trying to figure out how such an event could have happened – in part so that we can better understand our present

CAN PARANOIA AFFECT AN ENTIRE TOWN? At first it’s just a few girls who are visited by the mysterious hallucinations. But soon the hysteria spreads like a plague through the whole of Salem, culminating in a bloody witch-hunt. How could it have come to this? Many historians point to a crucial factor linked to Puritanism – a strict Christian denomination brought to America by settlers from England. The Puritans, who lived predominantly in Massachusetts, not only rejected all forms of authority – they also preached their beliefs about their own divine rights as the

chosen ones. They considered other races and religions to be the inferior spawn of the devil, no ethnicity more so than the Native Americans. As one in ten settlers had lost their life in the war against the natives, it was easy for fanatical preachers like Samuel Parris or Cotton Mather (below) to condemn anybody who sympathised with them as sorcerers or witches in this climate of fear. The absence of regulated courts and central administrations allowed the Puritan judges to carry out arbitrary show trials, costing 24 people in Salem their lives.

RELIGIOUS WARRIOR The Puritan minister Cotton Mather believed in the existence of witches, who he saw as the devil’s messengers.

“Nobody doubts that there is a devil – except those who are under his direct influence.” COTTON MATHER, Puritan judge

UNDER THE DEVIL’S SPELL The priests of Salem were convinced that the girls had been bewitched by Native Americans with satanic rituals and saw these cases as evidence that Salem had been taken over by the devil.

awn is just breaking when the torchlit procession reaches the tree-lined cliff. The exposed location has been chosen deliberately – from here every resident of the town can clearly see what is about to happen: the enforcement of a judgment which is supposed to serve as a chilling warning to the inhabitants of Salem. Her legs trembling, her hands bound, Bridget Bishop climbs the ladder. As the noose is placed around her neck, she pleads her innocence one last time But it’s all in vain. Without warning, the ladder under Bridget’s feet is ripped away, leaving her legs thrashing helplessly in the air. After three minutes, which must seem like an eternity, her torturous death struggle is over – but the Salem witch trials have only just begun. They will change the small town on America’s east coast forever and go down as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in the annals of American history.

HOW DOES A VIOLENT MOB FORM? Since time immemorial there have been countless cases of targeted massacres, witch-hunts and lynchings around the world – but arguably no historical event has been as well-researched as the events in Salem. Why? Perhaps because they show an example of how a seemingly intact, peaceful community can suddenly transform into an angry mob and how quickly honest, upright citizens can become cold-blooded murderers.

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THE HEXAGRAM OF DEATH Husbands betray wives – even religious ministers are accused. Children die in prisons. Families are destroyed. The hysteria and paranoia that has overtaken Salem spreads like wildfire to the surrounding communities. It is only when the wife of Governor Phips is accused that this horrific spectacle comes to an end.

The statements given by the two girls Abigail Williams and Betty Parris set in motion a deadly spiral, the effects of which are felt throughout Salem in a matter of weeks. Everyone is affected, be they prosecutor, defendant or relative. Neighbour testifies against neighbour. Children against parents. DENUNCIATORS

SENTENCED († HANGED)

Mary Whittredge

THE ACCUSED Roger Toothaker, probably tortured to death

Mary Green, fled

Job Tookey

Nehemiah Abbot Jr

Lydia Dustin, died in custody

Eunice Frye

William Barker Jr

Edward Farrington

Sarah Osborne, died in custody

Arthur Abbot

Abigail Barker Sarah Swift

Sarah Rist

Sarah Cloyce

John Porter Sr

Dorothy Faulkner Bethiah Carter Sr.

† Elizabeth Howe

† Rebecca Nurse

† Sarah Wildes

Elizabeth Booth, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mercy Lewis, Betty Parris, Ann Putnam Jr, † Martha Corey Margaret Rule, Susannah Sheldon, Mercy Short, Martha Sprague, Mary Sarah Wardwell, Walcott, Mary Warren, pardoned after Abigail Williams confession

Mehitable Downing Dudley Bradstreet Sarah Dustin Daniel and Lydia Eames

† Mary Parker

Edward Farrington, fled Rachel Vinson

† Samuel Wardwell Sr

Anne Bradstreet Esther Elwell

Ann Foster, died in custody † Sarah Good

† Mary Eastey

† Margaret Scott

Margaret Prince

John Alden Jr.

† Wilmot Redd

Thomas Farrer Sr, detained in Boston jail for seven years

† Martha Carrier † George Burroughs, Ex-Minister

† George Jacobs Sr

Phoebe Day

Rebecca Dike

† John Proctor

Sarah Carrier Sarah Cole

† John Willard † Alice Parker

† Ann Pudeator Dorcas Hoar, pardoned after confession Elizabeth Proctor, pardoned

Hannah Post

George Jacobs Jr. Edward Wooland

Hezekiah Usher II. Abigail Rowe Thomas Carrier Jr

Israel Porter James Howe, husband of Elisabeth Howe

Daniel Andrew

Sarah Hawkes Jr Margaret Jacobs

Mary Lacey Jr, daughter of Mary Lacey Sr and granddaughter of Ann Foster

Abigail Faulkner Jr Mary Tyler Mary Rowe

Rev. John Busse, Minister of Wells, Maine

† Susannah Martin Mary Bradbury, fled

† Bridget Bishop

Mary Bridges Jr.

Sarah Bridges

Mary Bridges Sr

Mary Lacey Sr, pardoned after confession

Thomas Carrier Jr. William Proctor

Tituba, Caribbean slave

Stephen Johnson Edward Bishop III

Elizabeth Dicer

Mercy Wardwell

Rachel Clinton

Bethiah Carter Jr

Abigail Faulkner Sr, pardoned

Giles Corey, tortured to death

Katherina Biss

Hannah Tyler

Reverend Francis Dane, Minister of Andover, Massachusetts

Edward Bishop

John Bradstreet

Mary Marston

Sarah Bishop

Abigail Rowe

Mary Barker

Margaret Prince

William Barker Sr

Elisabeth Dicer Mary Rowe Jr

Joan Penney

Mary and Philip English

William Barker Sr

Frances Hutchins Sarah Carrier

Lady Mary Phips, wife of Governor Sir William Phips

Susanna Rootes

Sarah Hale, wife of Reverend John Hale, Minister of Beverly, Massachusetts

Elizabeth Johnson Sr

Dorothy Good, daughter of Sarah Good

Rebecca Jacobs

Mary Toothaker, wife of Roger Toothaker and sister of Martha Carrier

Mercy, daughter of Sarah Good, who was born and died in prison shortly before her mother’s execution

Elizabeth Hutchinson Hart

Sarah Wilson

Ann Foster

Susannah Post Mary Black, slave

Margaret Sheaf Thacher

WAS A SECRET WAR RAGING IN SALEM? Looking at the map of Salem one thing stands out: there was a clear division between the accusers and the accused. While the former all lived in the heart of Salem Village, 82% of the accused came from the suburbs or neighbouring towns. To give this some context: in the years leading up to the witch trials, a smouldering, latent rivalry had built up between the traditional peasant population and the more affluent, worldly businessmen of the outer districts. Concerned that their puritan values were under threat, the preachers saw the witch trials as a welcome opportunity to rid the community of unwanted ‘new money’ types.

SALEM VILLAGE

IPSWICH ROAD

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KM

TOWN OF SALEM

THE ACCUSERS

For decades, psychologists have studied historical sources from the time. They’ve found that often just one single factor is enough to ignite a conflict that has been simmering away for some time. In Salem’s case that trigger was a fatal combination of paranoid fear and religious fanaticism. Together, these two factors sparked their own dynamic that radicalised everything in the briefest period of time:

THE ACCUSED

Contaminated grain can cause hallucinations and behavioural changes – symptoms that occurred in Salem.” NICHOLAS COZZI, pharmacologist

thoughts, words, actions – and eventually even history itself.

CAN CONTAMINATED GRAIN UNLEASH MASS HYSTERIA?

SHOW TRIA/ In court, the accused were confronted with the girls – who promptly suffered new seizures. For the judge the case was clear cut.

It all begins in January 1692, when 11-year-old Abigail Williams starts behaving strangely. She utters peculiar sounds, throws things, and contorts herself into strange positions. Soon her cousin Betty Parris and other girls in Salem start exhibiting similar behaviour. This is the cue for Betty’s father, Reverend Samuel Parris, to enter the scene. As head of the strictly Puritan

community, he is dedicated to fighting Satan and his messengers on Earth – witches. Reverend Parris quickly suspects who is behind the girls’ bizarre behaviour – and the medical diagnosis confirms his suspicions: Abigail and Betty have been possessed by the devil. The minister is convinced that there must be accomplices – likely Native Americans or witches who have placed a curse on the pair. He harasses the two girls until they accuse three local women, all of whom are considered outsiders in the village community: Sarah

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Good, a homeless beggar; an impoverished old woman, Sarah Osborne; and Parris’ Caribbean slave, Tituba. All three women are quickly arrested. It is the start of a wave of persecution that spreads through the village and also affects numerous other communities in New England. More than 200 people in 25 towns and cities are accused of witchcraft – the youngest is just four, the oldest almost 80. It’s still not entirely clear what caused the mass hysteria. One explanation suggests the abnormal habits of the accusers were caused by the fungus ergot, which can be found in cereal grasses including rye and wheat. Toxicologists say eating ergotcontaminated foods can lead to muscle spasms and hallucinations. There’s just one snag with this theory: although it could explain the behaviour of the girls, it ignores the fact that a whole village voluntarily joined in the subsequent purge. For that reason, many historians believe that a variety of factors led to the witch-hunts: superstitions played a part, as did

DOG EAT DOG Many residents of Salem used the witch trials to do away with unwelcome citizens.

the feelings of paranoia that had swept through the town as a result of attacks by Native Americans. Family feuds, land disputes and a smallpox epidemic also contributed to the explosive mood, along with one more important element – scheming. The witch-hunt provided the perfect opportunity to do away with unwelcome guests: longsuppressed hatred against one’s neighbours could suddenly be displayed in public.

THE TRIALS IN NUMBERS In the course of the witch-hunts 200 people were accused of being in league with the devil, 150 of whom landed behind bars. While 19 people were condemned as witches and hanged, four more died in jail. The most agonising death was suffered by Giles Corey: because the 80-year-old farmer refused to incriminate others he was “pressed to death”. Covered in heavy stones, he suffocated three days later.

WERE THE WITNESSES FED FALSE MEMORIES? The Puritan judges also contributed to the malaise by steering the witnesses to say what they wanted to hear. Not only did they exert huge pressure on the girls, they actually sought to directly influence their testimony. “Even in those days people knew tricks, ways to fiddle with other people’s memories,” says cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus. A glance at the list of the accused shows that most were a thorn in the side of Parris and his fellow judges because they sympathised with the Native Americans or acted against

19 14 5

people were hanged in Salem

women

men

of the accused pleaded guilty during the trial

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people were convicted of witchcraft and hanged in New England – before 1692.

of the accused were women

Puritan beliefs – priests and former ministers included. The judges were involved in some decidedly murky goings-on. According to historian Richard Trask, confessions were tortured out of defendants and vital evidence withheld. In total the special court handed down 19 death sentences. How arbitrary these judgements often were is illustrated by the case of Rebecca Nurse, whose acquittal was quickly retracted after protests from the audience. As the witch-hunt continued, it also took a toll on the economy: since a majority of Salem’s farmers were either in prison, involved in the trials in some way or had fled in panic, the fields were no longer being tilled and sawmills stood empty. Trade was practically at a standstill. Critical opinions began to be aired – and when his own

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PREORDAINED JUDGMENT In later depictions of the trials, the accused were shown as sorcerers who had sworn allegiance to the devil. It was only in 2001 that the last women were declared innocent.

“The shocking thing about Salem is that all of those involved thought they were doing the right thing – ministers, judges, prosecutors – and that led to the deaths of 24 people.” KATHERINE HOWE, US author and descendant of a Salem victim

wife was accused of witchcraft, Governor Sir William Phips finally halted the trials and ordered that the court be dissolved. In the spring of 1693, therefore, the hysteria disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived in the town. Although the trials took place almost 325 years ago, sociologists claim much can be learnt from

them – in particular about how people behave in a community. Many of the factors that led to the witch-hunt are timeless and had nothing to do with the current reality at that time. When factors combine in a perfect storm, such as in Salem, it is almost impossible to prevent violence – even in apparently intact societies.

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HUMAN BODY The worldwide RTQFWEVKQPQHVJGƃCXQWT GPJCPEGTGLUTAMATE UVCPFUCV1.5 MILLION TONS RGT[GCT That’s enough to fill a 2,400-kilometres-long convoy of trucks. End-to-end they would stretch from Sydney to Cairns. More than 80% of the world’s production is consumed in Asia, with Europe gobbling up 95,000 tons’ worth. It’s found in a massive range of Australian foods including snacks, seasoning and stock cubes.

THE DECEPTIVE

6(16(2) 7$67( Can flavours make us overweight and ill? According to food researchers, they can. They claim additives in food not only manipulate taste but also our brains

(QQFEQORCPKGUJCXG SENSORY LABORATORIES where FLAVOUR CHEMISTS YQTMVQFGXGNQRPGY FLAVOURING AGENTS They’re far cheaper for the manufacturer to use than natural ingredients. More than 1.2 million tons of flavourings are produced worldwide every year.

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et’s imagine we’re conducting an experiment: think about your favourite chocolate, how it melts in your mouth – the delicate, smooth consistency, its sensual cocoa flavour and velvety sweetness. Now, if you had to describe the flavour in precise detail, what would you say? Would your account include words such as “crisps”, “gherkins”, “peach” or even “sweat”? Probably not, although in reality all of these flavours form part of the unique taste of chocolate. In fact, chocolate’s distinctive taste comes from the interaction of 500 different flavours. This discovery by the German Research Centre for Food Chemistry has turned the whole field of taste research on its head. Although people have always eaten food, the scientific investigation of our sense of taste is relatively new. It’s a field of research that goes by the rather strange name of neurogastronomy and it aims to answer the following: what exactly happens when we taste? Why do we like certain foods more than others? And do some flavours affect our body weight?

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TASTE: THE LAST, VITAL TEST OF OUR FOOD We now know that our sense of taste probably didn’t develop so we could feel pleasure and joy while eating. Instead, we use it to give our food a kind of final once-over. In a split second, our sense of taste gives the brain the information it needs to make a vital decision: to swallow or not to swallow? The brain asks five questions which the five established basic tastes help answer: 1. Does the food contain salt? (salty) 2. Is it full of protein? (umami) 3. Does it provide sugar? (sweet) 4. Is it acidic? (sour) 5. Is it toxic? (bitter). This information is conveyed to the brain via three nerve pathways – by comparison, the eyes use just one. The information is then evaluated in the brain stem. Salty, sweet and umami are tastes that indicate edible, energy-rich food. If the brain detects them, it stimulates salivation, initiates the swallowing process and activates the digestive system. Sour tastes, on the other hand, indicate unripe or rotten food, while dangerous, natural toxins have a bitter taste which makes you grimace, open your mouth, hold your breath and spit it out – the gag reflex. In other words, the sense of taste acts like the body’s early warning system: it decides whether you have something edible or poisonous in your mouth and triggers an appropriate reaction. While all this is going on, something else happens in the brain: an emotional assessment is >

HOW OUR SURROUNDINGS AFFECT THE WAY WE TASTE WHICH CUP GIVES COFFEE THE BEST FLAVOUR? A blue one. A study showed that the taste of coffee is influenced by the colour of the cup. For instance, it’s perceived as more bitter when drunk from a brown mug than it is from a blue one or a glass one. This is because the brain associates the colour brown with a bitter taste. Thus, the more that coffee’s ‘brownness’ is accentuated, the more bitter it will taste. A clear glass mug, conversely, triggers a feeling of ‘sweetness’. The colour blue indicates both ‘sweet’ and ‘bitter’ at the same time – making the taste more intense. DOES THE PRICE OF WINE AFFECT ITS TASTE? Californian brain researchers have investigated how much the price of wine influences the assessment of the drinker – with amazing results. Wine tasters judged expensive wines to be superior to cheaper ones, even when in reality they were drinking the same wine. The reaction is visible on brain scans with activity heightened in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, where tastes are assessed. The scientists write that the price of wine affects the activity in this region of the brain. WHICH SPOON SHOULD WE USE TO EAT YOGHURT? Psychologists from the UK’s University of Oxford have found that a spoon’s weight affects how we much we enjoy eating yoghurt. The heavier the spoon, the more watery and cheap the yoghurt will taste. A lighter spoon has the opposite effect as it makes the yoghurt feel heavier and thus more expensive. Scientists explain that food is mentally upgraded when the weight of the cutlery corresponds to the user’s expectations. This means that a dessert spoon should always be light.

carried out by its limbic system which regulates emotions, instincts and drives behaviour. The result is we can’t eat without distinguishing between “I like” and “I don’t like”. Foods that are salty, sweet or umami (a savoury-type taste) immediately unleash a feeling of pleasure. Our taste memory stores this reaction, driving us to eat foods associated with this positive feeling in the future.

1.5 MILLIONS TONS OF GLUTAMTE WORLDWIDE The food industry is now using this age-old mechanism to its advantage. If a consumer associates a product with a feeling of pleasure, he or she will buy it again and again. So, to help the industry attain their repeat custom, more and more foods are having flavourings and other additives added to them. A whole range of foods from crisps and instant soups to sweets and yoghurts are being packed with industrially produced flavourings:

worldwide more than 1.5 million tons of the taste enhancer glutamate are consumed every year. It’s estimated that every third product in the Australia has had its taste manipulated in some way, something that industry flavourists are responsible for. These ‘taste designers’ create chemically produced flavourings to make cheaply produced food more palatable and, therefore, seem of higher quality. This means that food nowadays is full of ‘information’ – because that’s what taste is. But, warns neuroscientist Dr Achim Peters, this could lead to problems. “If this information is artificially manufactured or distorted, it can lead to software malfunctions in the brain. Just like computer viruses that manipulate computer drives, false signals from food can alter the food detection and energy distribution networks in our brains.” The false signals work in the same way as Trojans hijacking a computer’s hard drive do: they alter the software without you noticing

at first. In the long term, the misinformation can cause illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis or even cancer. Another vastly underestimated side effect is that these substances can make us fat – without us noticing. They manipulate our energy balance, causing us to eat more than our brain and body actually need. A well-known example is the sweetener aspartame. Use artificial sweetener instead of regular sugar, and you’ll confuse your brain. The taste buds signal a ‘sweet’ taste, but, after ten minutes, the brain realises there isn’t any glucose, only chemicals. Thus it requests more energy. “If the brain is repeatedly deceived by sweeteners, it becomes irritated and declares an energy state of emergency – which then leads to Plan B. And Plan B, of course, is to eat more,” explains Dr Peters. This leads to food cravings, which mean we get fatter. What do we do then? That’s right: we consume more sweeteners. A vicious circle begins. Watch out for sweeteners is Dr Peters’ stark warning. “Treat them with extreme care – the less you’re exposed to them, the greater the chance your metabolic system will recover.” Just as aspartame can make us sick and overweight, so too can other flavours or flavour carriers. For details of what these are and how they work, see the table on page 48.

HOW PLEASURE CAN BE TRAINED Dr Harald Hahn, a food and flavour analyst, reveals another problem with additives: “The combination of so many flavours dulls our taste buds, which means

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SYMPHONY OF THE SENSES The thing we generally refer to as ‘flavour’ is far more than what we perceive via receptors on the tongue. It’s more a combination of many different sensations, which finally merge in the brain to become a ‘taste’. It also

relies on stimuli such as the temperature, consistency and colour of a foodstuff. Taste is, consequently, a multi-sensory experience, with expressions such as ‘a feast for the eyes’ having a scientific basis.

FOOD AND FEELINGS Taste and smell receptors are directly linked to the sensory centre of the brain. The limbic system decides: is the food delicious or disgusting? Memories saved in the hippocampus can also be involved in this decision.

HOW TASTE SOUNDS How does fresh bread sound when you bite into it? Do you hear a crunch when you enjoy an apple? Sound also influences how we perceive taste and assess a foodstuff.

LIMBIC SYSTEM THE EYES ALSO EAT The appearance of food, such as its colour, can lead us to make conclusions about its quality.

NOSE NO SMELL, NO TASTE

NOSTRIL

When chewed, scent molecules arrive in the nose via the throat. About 80% of a taste is determined by this ‘retronasal smelling’.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS Orthonasal smelling, or normal ‘sniffing’ with the nose, is the first method we use to inspect food. If it smells off, we won’t eat it.

HOW YOU FEEL FOOD

WHERE CHILLI BURNS TONGUE

The brain’s trigeminal nerve senses stimuli such as burning hot (e.g. chilli) or cooling (menthol).

The consistency of a food must correspond to our expectations. It’s the only way to achieve a good feeling in the mouth.

TASTE BUDS TONGUE TISSUES TASTE CELLS

TASTE PORES

WHERE TASTES COME FROM NERVE FIBRES

There are roughly 10,000 taste buds in the mouth. Each has between 50 and 100 taste receptor cells. Their perceptions are conducted via electrical impulses in the nervous system to the brain.

5

TASTE EXERCISES

we need ever more intense flavour impressions. The temptation for food companies is to provide these artificially.” But among all this doom and gloom is some good news: taste can be trained. In France, children attend Classes du Goût, lessons on the curriculum that teach about taste and taste buds. It’s no wonder that the French are famous for their sophisticated palates. But similar lessons and exercises could help each of us regain an original, natural sense of taste. It all comes down to habits. Deliberately reduce all unnatural flavours and you’ll be able to reprogramme your taste memory after just a handful of meals: highly processed foods become too salty, a sweetener’s aftertaste too pronounced. Many nutritionists, Nicole Hoenig among them, now offer taste training programmes to their patients.

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“You‘ll begin to notice a change after just one session,” says Hoenig. Her five recommended exercises are listed right:

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Close your eyes and hold your nostrils shut with your fingers. Now try to distinguish between the taste of apple, pear, raw potato and celery. Tricky, isn’t it? Now let go of your nose. Notice the difference? You’ll find that the flavours are significantly heightened. To test your personal sensitivity to four different taste areas, you’ll need a litre of lukewarm water with: – 1 tablespoon, 1 teaspoon and ½ teaspoon of sugar (sweet) – 3 teaspoons, 2 teaspoons and 1 teaspoon of lemon juice (sour) – 2 grams, 1 grams and half a gram of salt (salty) – 3 teaspoons, 2 teaspoons and 1 teaspoon of wormwood tea (bitter), which should be prepared according to the instructions on the packet. In turn, try small amounts of the three sugar solutions on your tongue. Start with the lowest concentration and decide the concentration at which you can first perceive the flavour. Do the same with the other solutions. Try a maximum of two flavours after one another. Rinse your mouth with water between sips. Potato exercise: Cook a jacket potato and hold it in your hand. While it’s still warm, feel whether it’s soft or dry and floury. Now put a piece in your mouth. Did you have to break a piece off or did the potato fall apart? Crush a small piece between your palate and tongue to feel whether it’s fine like a puree, coarse and mealy, or feels like pudding. The scent coming from the potato skin is a hint. Sometimes it’s earthy, sweet or smells slightly of caramel. Volatile flavour compounds influence how it smells, while the taste is dictated by non-volatile compounds. The nuances of flavours range from powerful, typical, species-specific flavour to neutral, bland, slightly sweet, bitter, earthy, strong and pungent.

Sweet tooth test: Compare the sweet taste of various sweeteners. You will need four glasses, each containing 100ml of room-temperature water. – Put ½ teaspoon of sugar in glass 1 – Put ½ teaspoon of honey in glass 2 – Put ½ sweetener tablet in glass 3 – Don’t put anything in glass 4 Now try them. To neutralise your sense of taste, begin with a sip of water. Then pick a solution, take a sip and roll it across your tongue to perceive all of the flavour components. Do the same with the other solutions. Have a sip of water between them. What do you notice? How does the sweetness feel in your mouth? Is there an aftertaste? Which sweetness do you like most?

For adventurous and advanced tasters: Completely refrain from eating granulated sugar and products containing sugar for two weeks – just look at the list of ingredients. After 14 days, these products will seem significantly sweeter than before the test. This means you can reduce your ‘sweetness threshold’ and go for much longer without sugar.

INTERVIEW / CHRISTIAN NIEMEYER / 0WVTKVKQPCNDKQNQIKUV

WHAT DOES ‘NATURAL FLAVOUR’ MEAN? The term ‘flavour’ in the list of ingredients may mean that a flavour molecule that normally occurs in nature has been entirely reconstructed by a chemical process. In contrast, products that have ‘natural flavour’ use the natural equivalent. But this may also be certain types of bacteria or mould. It’s also possible to extract a vanilla fragrance from rice bran – or the smell of raspberries from cedar. Buckwheat husks are a source of the pineapple aroma. However, the promise that a product contains natural flavours doesn’t necessarily equal higher quality for the consumer. For example, when ‘natural strawberry flavour’ is listed in the ingredients then 95% of the flavour must come from the fruit – but 5% is allowed to come from other substances.

WHY ‘NATURAL’ ISN’T REALLY NATURAL

WHO ARE FLAVOURINGS UNSUITABLE FOR? Anyone who wants to spend their money on real ingredients should steer clear of flavourings – and children, in particular, should avoid them. That’s because our sense of taste is extremely impressionable when young. If lots of flavoured products are eaten at this vulnerable stage of development, the body’s ability to regulate flavours will be severely disrupted. Later in life the person will prefer artificial flavours to natural ones.

CAN FLAVOURS TRIGGER ALLERGIES?

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HY DOES THE FOOD INDUSTRY USE SO MANY FLAVOURINGS? DON’T NATURAL PRODUCTS TASTE BETTER?

By using flavourings, it’s possible to produce food at a considerably cheaper cost. Raspberries are tasty but expensive – global supply is only enough to cover 5% of the demand. You would have to pay more than $46 for 100kg of yoghurt flavoured with fresh raspberries. But when identical but chemically synthesised flavours are used instead, the cost falls to just eight cents. Many foods are made affordable in this way.

Flavours are complex combinations and some flavours are suspected of promoting allergies or triggering intolerances. But carriers such as lactose or Balsam of Peru can also be responsible. Artificial perfumes in air fresheners, cleaning products and detergents or cosmetics can also be problematic.

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR CONSUMERS? Flavourings not only make food tastier and cheaper, they also allow food manufacturers to rely on their large bag of tricks. Consumers should, therefore, be wary of accepting their wholesale use. Flavourings may be substances that appeal to the senses but in no way do they increase the quality of the food.

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WHAT SHOULD I NOT EAT? Obesity, headaches, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, depression – the list of potential side effects from flavours and flavour enhancers is an extremely long one. In recent years, scientists have studied how exactly they affect the metabolism – and the consequences this might have in the long term. Neurological disorders that damage the nervous system were commonly observed. These usually appear in the form of dementia or movement disorders. The table here shows how these substances work, how they taste and how you can recognise them on the supermarket shelves.

Additive / flavour Glutamate / E620 Tastes both sweet and salty – enhances the flavour of the food, rather than changing it entirely.

Aspartame / E951 200 times sweeter than sugar. The market-leading sweetener in Europe and America.

Fructose Just as sweet as household sugar.

Citric acid / E330 Acidifier

Phosphoric acid / E338 Acidifier

Cyclamate / E952 35 times sweeter than sugar

Identification

Acute effects

Long-term effects

E620 – glutamic acid or monosodium glutamate. Yeast extract also contains large amounts of glutamate. You’ll find it in many salty things with long shelf lives – for example, sauces, sausages and crisps.

According to studies by Spanish scientists, glutamate reduces the amount of the ‘slimming hormone’ leptin in our bodies within minutes of being ingested, meaning the brain receives false messages about the supply situation and gives the order to begin eating – even though there’s no need. Thus there is a significant risk of weight gain.

The amino acid compound destroys neurons in the brain which can lead to headaches, nausea or problems with the eyes. Animal experiments have shown that glutamate can cause small holes, or lesions, to form in certain areas of the brain – a risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or multiple sclerosis.

E951 – aspartameacesulfame salt, ‘contains phenylalanine’. It’s often added to cream cake, biscuits, canned fish and fruit, snacks, desserts and sugar-free drinks.

Sweeteners such as aspartame or saccharin confuse the body. Their sweet taste promises the brain strength in the form of calories that is then not delivered. When the brain notices that it’s been cheated out of the expected sugar, it signals an energy emergency and orders us to eat more. We can actually gain weight from these cravings.

Aspartame is metabolised into aspartate by the body. This can damage our brain cells and is therefore a risk factor for the neurodegenerative diseases outlined above. Methanol and formaldehyde are also produced when aspartame is metabolised. Long-term studies have shown both to be carcinogenic.

Fructose – fruit sugar, glucose-fructose syrup or fructose-glucose syrup.

Fruit sugar is considered healthy and natural – but it tricks the brain’s appetite centre. American researchers have found our brain reacts normally to glucose, but not to fructose. Although fructose provides us with a lot of energy, our appetite centre remains active. Consequently, we eat more and more.

Research by the British Nutrition Foundation shows that there is a strong correlation between the increased consumption of fructose and the incidence of obesity and high blood pressure. This can lead to diabetes or stroke. Studies conducted by Harvard School of Medicine have also found that a high consumption of fructose is bad for the liver and the heart.

E330 – commonly found in ketchup, lemonade, iced tea, sweets, jam, marmalade and pasta.

Citric acid itself is not necessarily unhealthy. However, it transports metals such as lead and aluminium (found in some coffee whiteners, cheese and cake mixes) and therefore promotes their absorption. The metals dock with citric acid molecules, meaning the body doesn’t recognise them as a foreign substance – and can even outwit the blood-brain barrier. The brain metabolises the citric acid, but the aluminium remains. This molecule is a powerful neurotoxin which attacks nerve cells.

Aluminium has not only been associated with learning disabilities and hyperactivity disorders (such as ADHD); it has also been linked to the emergence of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis. The chemical element also considerably exacerbates pre-existing conditions.

E338 – orthophosphoric acid or phosphate. Often found in cola drinks, sports drinks, whipping cream, dairy drinks and coffee whitener.

“The high concentration of phosphate in cola drinks destabilises the calcium balance in the body by preventing the absorption of mineral calcium by the bones,” says leading nutritionist Anja Baustian.

Phosphoric acid prevents the absorption of calcium into the body, which increases the risk of developing osteoporosis. If you regularly drink cola, the phosphoric acid can damage your tooth enamel. This can result in tooth decay, especially in children.

E952 – sodium cyclamate. Used in diet drinks, desserts and sweet spreads including marmalades and jams.

The sweet taste of the artificial sugar can trigger overproduction of insulin. The hormone is released into the body to collect calories – and store them as fat.

Continuous consumption can lead to obesity and an aversion to products that are not as sweet. Banned in the US for decades.

PHOTOS: iStock; Getty Images (4); Fotolia (2); Alamy (4); PR. ILLUSTRATIONS: Geo/Picture Press

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NATURE

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THE SECRET KING OF MUMBAI A leopard sits on a hill above the roofs of the Indian metropolis of Mumbai. The animal waits until the city has gone to sleep before starting its nightly hunt, under the cover of darkness. The number of leopard attacks on humans has risen to almost 300 per year.

Leopards are among the most successful predators on the planet. But much of their territory is being lost to modern development, meaning the animals are having to encroach on human settlements for food

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THE HUNTER BECOMES THE HUNTED Backed up by local rangers, a vet tries to catch a leopard running amok in a small Indian city. This is the moment he makes a grave error: as the animal doctor turns his back for a splitsecond, the cornered animal prepares to lunge…

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A FORCE OF NATURE ERUPTS… …and leaps powerfully onto his back. The animal plunges its claws into the vet’s back and sinks its six-centimetre teeth into his neck. In the nick of time, the troops manage to wrestle the leopard off and force it away. Seriously injured, the vet makes his escape. But the big cat’s city break is far from over…

ONE AGAINST During its prowl through the city the leopard injures five other residents. After several hours of cajoling, the ten rangers corner the animal in a small alley. But the 60kg predator doesn’t go lightly. Quite the opposite – it goes on the counterattack. With one giant spring, the leopard leaps onto the 2.5-metre high jeep. It proves to be the final action of the day as a tranquiliser gun brings a halt to proceedings.

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MASTER OF DISGUISE Since a neighbour’s child was killed by a leopard, housewife Kusum has listened to the radio a lot. “I have it on every day until 1am,” she says. Kusum’s not a huge music fan. “But it helps keep the leopards away,” she explains. In India alone more than 300 people are attacked by leopards every year. That’s hardly surprising: as well as being the most densely populated area on Earth, the Indian subcontinent is home to the largest leopard population in the world. And in contrast to most wild

After the monsoon season, leopards transform into city hunters KRISHNA TIWARI, LEADER OF THE CITY FOREST INITIATIVE, MUMBAI

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cats, leopards are true masters of adaptation. They can survive at 43ºC in the Kalahari desert, at minus 25ºC in Russia – or in the middle of the big city. That’s because they’ll eat almost anything, from rodents to antelopes. Or people. Particularly in the aftermath of the monsoon. “Once the rains stop it’s only a matter of time before the leopards arrive in the cities,” explains conservationist Krishna Tiwari. The reason: the monsoon season is also mating time for the animals – and the pregnant females need more food than usual. It only recently became apparent that the rise in attacks might also have an entirely different cause. Biologist Vidya Athreya spent five years researching leopard attacks in the Indian city of Junnar. After the incidents, dozens of animals were caught using traps in the forested areas bordering the city. They were later released back in the wild, 35 kilometres away, in an area less densely populated by people. But the study by Athreya and her team revealed that the translocation resulted in a 325% increase in leopard attacks on people in the vicinity of the release sites. “The animals were confused. Stress levels rose as a result of their capture and confinement, while interacting with humans meant they no longer feared us,” explains Athreya. Authorities in Junnar have now stopped their trapping and resettling programme – and instead offer workshops on how to deal with leopards. Their three golden rules: 1) Always stand upright. Leopards avoid people who appear too big for them to tackle. 2) If out at night, play loud music and carry a stick or torch. Never go out alone. 3) Should you encounter a leopard, make sure the animal has an escape route and isn’t pushed into a corner. This was the mistake that Pintu Dey almost paid for with his life.

PHOTOS: Steve Winter/NGAS; Getty Images (3)

he news ripples through the city: a leopard is on the loose in Guwahati, north-eastern India. It was last spotted prowling through the Silpukhuri district. Pintu Dey’s heart starts to race: that’s where his family lives. The 40-year-old labourer runs home, fevered thoughts running through his head. Are his children playing outside? Dey reaches the backyard of his house when suddenly an angry snarl stops him in his tracks. Before Dey can react, a 60kg leopard leaps at him. He feels the force of a violent swipe: the animal’s razorsharp claws have scalped him. The attack ends as quickly as it began. With one impressive leap, the leopard – nearly two metres long – flees into the urban jungle, bounding from rooftop to rooftop. Eventually, the big cat is trapped in a shop, where a ranger uses a

tranquiliser dart to stun the animal and bring the terror to an end. And yet everybody knows it’s only a matter of time until it happens again. Over the past five decades, big cats in India have lost 85% of their habitat as a result of deforestation. Leopards are solitary creatures that won’t tolerate competition within their territories, which can stretch as far as 155 square kilometres. The nature reserves that host India’s 7,000 leopards are being squeezed ever smaller by an expanding population; as a result, animals driven out of the reserves are forced into villages and settlements. “They’re looking for food there,” explains Jimmy Borah from WWF-India. Their quarry includes chickens, dogs and children – in terms of their size, they perfectly fit a leopard’s idea of prey. Against the odds, Pintu Dey survives the gruesome attack. His children are unharmed, too. But not everyone is so lucky.

SMARTER IN 60 SECONDS… 4 FASCINATING QUESTIONS ABOUT BIG CATS

Who can jump the furthest? Javier Sotomayor’s world record for the high jump currently stands at 2.45 metres. That’s pretty impressive by human standards (it’s stood for 23 years now), but it’s a distance that a puma would find laughable. The feline predators can leap more than double that height – up to 5.4 metres from a standing position. And big cats also far outdo humans in the long jump. Snow leopards can achieve a distance of 15 metres in just a single leap. That’s ten times the length of their bodies.

Can you sound the alarm by laughing?

Who is the most successful predator?

A hyena’s famous squeaky cackle, which sounds uncannily like a human’s laugh, has a serious side to it. Researchers have recently discovered that the pitch of the laugh reveals the age of the animal, as well as conveying status when fighting over food. Hyenas can increase the intensity of the cry to recruit allies, for instance when one or two of the animals are outnumbered by lions fighting over some kill. The ‘tone’ of the giggle can also be used to sound the alarm if the animal is snapped up by a predator.

Lions are successful in one out of every five hunts. For tigers and leopards the success rate lies between five and 38%, while our own domestic cats taste victory on every third attempt. All of these rates pale in comparison to Africa’s black-footed cat. The 40cm-long wild cat happily snares between ten and 14 prey a night, including birds and shrews, with a success rate of 60%. It needs them, too – the cat has to ingest at least 250 grams of food daily, a whopping sixth of its body weight.

Are male lions

PHOTOS: NGS; Alamy

lazy all the time? For years it was assumed that male lions leave the hard work to the females, only making an appearance at the dinner table after the big hunt. But scientists have now shown the very opposite to be true. Thanks to a new technique of following the hunt, they found that male lions also get their paws dirty. Unlike the females, who hunt in a pack and kettle their prey, male lions go it alone. They hide in the undergrowth and lie in wait. The image of male lions as lazy chauvinists is, it turns out, a myth.

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SCIENCE

G N W I e r r K a z i A B e W h T

D A E D s c i n E o y r Hf C

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Cryonicists hope to give death the cold shoulder – literally. By paying for their bodies to be frozen, supporters hope to be reanimated when future medicine can revive them. Could it work?

t is summer, 2120. The location: a refrigerated depot in the US state of Arizona. All is quiet in the vast warehouse, the calm interrupted only by the steady, reassuring hum of the deep freezers housed here. At first glance this looks like a storage hall for frozen supermarket goods. But the truth is far more macabre. Because the cold storage here was not designed for refrigerated steaks or chilled ready meals. These imposing stainless steel cells hold over 100 human corpses. They are the lifeless bodies of the long deceased, individuals who chose to be frozen after their deaths in the hope that they might be revived in a distant future and cured of whatever malady originally killed them. Stored four bodies or ten brains to a freezer, the corpses (known as ‘patients’) are locked in purpose-built suspension capsules at the glacial temperature of minus 196 degrees Celsius. The icy steel coffins, which stand 3.5 metres 57

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Who was the first person to be cryopreserved? On 12th January 1967 Dr. James H. Bedford, an American professor of psychology, became the first person to be cryogenically frozen after his death from cancer. In his will, Bedford left $4,200 to cover the cost of a steel tank and enough liquid nitrogen to keep his body cooled at almost -200ºC for the foreseeable future. In 1991, after 24 years in cryostasis, the professor’s body was evaluated before being transferred to a multi-patient, cutting-edge cryocapsule operated by Alcor Life Extension. On freezing the first man, cryonics pioneer Bob Nelson reflected: “He’s survived the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, Watergate, the collapse of the Soviet Union and 9/11 – which is more than a lot of his contemporaries can say.”

tall, are filled with liquid nitrogen, which must be continuously added in small amounts to maintain the extremely low temperatures. The bodies are hung upside-down in sleeping bags: were the liquid nitrogen supply to fail, this ensures that the patients’ brains would be the last to thaw and start decomposing. The people in these tanks hope to be revived in a faraway future, once future science can thaw them, cure them and restore them to youthful vitality. They are members of the cryonics movement and they believe, quite literally, in life after death. One such member is Jack Lee. The 35-year-old died in 2020, a victim of brain cancer, and chose to have his body stored in this Arizona ice box in a last-ditch attempt to skirt death were a cure ver found. Advances in modern edicine mean that brain tumours an now be cured using nanobots at hunt down the malignant cells nd destroy them. The researchers ope that once Jack is ‘defrosted’, e will respond well to treatment nd make history, achieving omething that, today, still remains futuristic dream – bringing person back from the dead.

HE HISTORY OF THE RYONICS MOVEMENT KEEP ME ON ICE Cryonicists prepare James 7. Bedford’s cryocapsule in 196

1766 The British surgeon John Hunter begins experimenting with freezing an assortment of animals, including mice and carp, to see if they could be thawed and revived. The experiments failed.

ack’s resurrection is, of course, hypothetical scenario that ay never come to pass – even undreds of years from now. But

1889 Ten Thousand Years In A Block Of Ice, a French novel, is published. The plot sees a man wake up after being frozen for millennia.

1964 Robert Ettinger publishes the book The Prospect Of Immortality, making his case for cryonic technology.

“You can’t argue with the fact that you’re better off being cryogenically preserved than buried or cremated. In that case you’ll never be brought back to life.” MURRAY BALLARD Cryonics photographer

for the supporters of cryonics, it is a scenario into which they are willing to invest hope – and staggering amounts of money. Cryonics as a movement first gained traction in the 1960s, though the history of freezing people in a kind of ‘suspended animation’ runs far deeper. Science fiction novels and films have long spun tales of humans being ‘brought back to life’ by being frozen, often accidentally, and thawing out centuries later. In contrast, the aspirations of the fledgling cryonics movement were propelled by an altogether different goal – they weren’t much interested in time travel. Their ambition was to outrun their mortality: ultimately, they wanted to live forever. The era in which the movement evolved is crucial to understanding the birth of cryonics. It was the 1960s, an epoch of futuristic medical advances – a decade that saw the first heart and kidney

1966 Bob Nelson founds the Cryonics Institute of California, which goes on to freeze the first man just one year later.

1967 Dr. James H. Bedford, a US psychology professor, becomes the first human to be placed in cryonic suspension after his death from lung cancer.

7KHHDUO\IDLOXUHVRIFU\RQLFV The cryonics movement has suffered its fair share of setbacks. In 1979, a Cryonics Institute facility in Chatsworth, California was broken into by the relatives of those frozen there – they had grown suspicious after a breakdown in contact with the owners. Inside they made a grisly discovery: nine badly decomposing bodies, stored in rudimentary polystyrene coffins. The ice meant to keep their corpses cool had long since melted. The operator, TV repairman Bob Nelson, claimed he had done his best to maintain the facility though he could not afford to pay for a constant supply of liquid nitrogen. Despite this, relatives of the deceased later sued for fraud and won transplants, entirely new classes of antibiotics and the first working laser. In this atmosphere of feverish medical improvement, the idea of freezing a dead person so that they might be brought back to life one day suddenly didn’t seem so far-fetched after all. It was in this enlightened environment that a physics professor from Michigan, Robert Ettinger, published The Prospect Of Immortality. The book posed a simple question: what if death, like some illnesses, was not necessarily fatal? What if it could be treated and kept at bay? Could humans then live forever? Ettinger was motivated by the belief that death would one day be eradicated. If freezing can preserve human tissue indefinitely and

1972 Alcor

1976

Society for Solid State Hypothermia in the State of California is founded, changing to its current name Alcor Life Extension in 1977.

The Cryonics Institute, based in Michigan, is founded by Robert Ettinger.

significant compensation for their ordeal. The Chatsworth disaster, as it is known, would darken the reputation of cryonics for decades. Nelson later wrote a book about his experiences, Freezing People Is (Not) Easy. In it he revealed the obstacles he faced when freezing the first man, James Bedford, in 1967. In the hurried hours after the suspension, Bedford’s cryocapsule was moved from his son’s house to Nelson’s garage, where it was guarded by his children for a morning. Despite the chaos surrounding Bedford’s preservation, when technicians opened his cryopod in 1991, they deemed it to be in good condition with a ‘reasonable’ chance of being reanimated. medicine will one day be capable of solving all of the body’s fatal flaws, then couldn’t death be reversed? In that light, chilling a person’s corpse made perfect sense: in future, Ettinger argued, burials and cremations would be purely the domain of eccentrics. Freezerassisted immortality would become the new normal. Eventually people wouldn’t need to be frozen at all; medicine would cure all ailments. Ettinger’s book sparked a media sensation and inquiries streamed in from around the globe. Cryonics enjoyed particular popularity among sci-fi fans though the movement’s ideas were scorned by most of the mainstream medical community. As a 1964 article in the journal Science decried: “There is

1979 A Cryonics Institute of California facility in Chatsworth, CA is found to contain several rotting bodies after filing for bankruptcy.

1994 Alcor moves its HQ from California to the city of Scottsdale in Arizona because of the region’s low risk of natural disasters.

ON THIN ICE Bob Nelson and a practise cryonics colleague before Bedford’s techniques suspension.

absolutely no evidence that low temperature storage and recovery procedures will be possible.” Despite this scepticism, the number of organisations peddling their own refrigeration services multiplied. In 1966 the Cryonics Society of Michigan, now called the Immortality Society, was founded. That same year the Cryonics Society of California was set up by Bob Nelson, a television repairmen with no scientific expertise. Despite this, the group went on to freeze the first human a year later. On 12th January 1967, a professor named James Bedford died of lung cancer and, after being cooled in an ice bath and stored in a vat of liquid nitrogen, began his long icy sojourn in a cryo-pod crudely

2004 Advances in freezing technology allow for the vitrification of human tissues, adding significant protection to cryonics patients.

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2011 Robert Ettinger, the cryonics founder, dies aged 92. He is placed in cryostasis.

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CHEMISTRY OF OPRESERVATION Your corpse is packed in ice, pumped full of the anti-clotting drug heparin and connected to a heart-lung machine. This device keeps the patient’s blood circulating artificially, ensuring the brain continues to be supplied with oxygen. Then all of the water must be extracted from your body, including all of the blood contained in your cells. Once this has happened, the patient’s blood is replaced with a fluid that can only be described as a human anti-freeze. Sixteen different chemicals are injected into the body to halt cell decay. Once the patient has been perfused with cryoprotectants, the cooling process can begin. Alcor aims to cool patients by one degree Celsius per hour, finally refrigerating the body to minus 196 degrees Celsius weeks after death. After the body is hung de-down in its new me: a stainless steel ar, alongside five other ies. Some patients opt a neuro-suspension. In se cases, only the ain is vitrified: severed m the rest of the body, G N erfused and cooled, LI BONE-CHIL ns gi be s es is then stored in The cooling proc the heart r freezer with up immediately afte o weeks. tw stops and takes o ten other heads.

You’ve signed up for full-body cryopreservation, and have taken out life insurance to pay for the costs of freezing your body. What next? Let’s imagine you lead a happy life, not giving much thought to your eventual demise – until you are diagnosed with a terminal illness. At this point, you relocate to Arizona, where Alcor Life Extension are based. They provide a team of on-call doctors who will rush to your bedside once the end looks nigh. Soon after, you bid farewell to life in an Alcor-approved hospice. That’s when the real action begins. Now the medical team on standby begin what is known as the bedside rescue. Their mission is to take immediate action to keep your blood circulating and begin rapid cooling once your heart stops beating.

)UHH]LQJ YV 9LWULILFDWLRQ If you like the sound of being frozen after death, you can’t simply ask your relatives to put your body in the kitchen freezer when the time comes. Alcor takes pains to point out that the technology they use to cool their members after death differs from conventional freezing in several key aspects. The entire process is designed to prevent the damage that frozen water molecules would inflict on bodily cells. The firm’s state-of-the-art technology employs a form of vitrification. Unlike the freezing that keeps your bag of peas cool, vitrifying is an ice-free process which cools water without altering the chemical

composition of the molecules. But for this to work on a human being, up to 60% of the water in the body must be replaced with protective chemicals known as cryoprotectants. So far, human embryos, eggs and skin cells have been successfully vitrified and revived. A rabbit kidney has even been vitrified to minus 45 degrees Celsius before being successfully transplanted back into its owner. In essence: vitrification stops the biological clock. A vitrified body could survive intact for 10,000 years, after which time the level of background radiation sustained would likely be too high to survive.

fashioned from polystyrene. He went down in history as the first human ever to be cryonically frozen; in fact, members of the movement still celebrate the date of his death as Bedford Day. In 1976 Ettinger founded the Cryonics Institute, designed to bring the possibility of vitrification to the masses. Prices were kept deliberately low and facilities were constructed on the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan, to house the bodies of its members. But popular interest in cryonics was still far from mainstream and the facility remained almost empty for a decade – Ettinger’s mother died in 1977 and became the institute’s first patient, but nobody joined her until Ettinger’s wife died in 1987. By 2000, when his second wife followed, 32 other patients had joined his relatives in the freezer. Ettinger himself died in 2011, becoming the 106th patient to be preserved on ice at the Cryonics Institute. The Cryonics Society of California also suffered debilitating setbacks. The organisation quickly ran out of money and Nelson could not afford to keep the cryochambers, which in those days were rudimentary coffins fashioned from polystyrene and packed with dry ice, topped up with liquid nitrogen. In 1979 the society’s Chatsworth headquarters were found to contain the decomposing corpses of nine patients, including an eight-year-old girl who had died of kidney cancer. The gruesome discovery would tarnish the standing of cryonics for years.

DEAD OR DEANIMATED? Today, the reputation of cryogenic preservation has largely recovered from the setbacks perpetrated by Nelson and others in the early years of the movement. But an obvious question mark still hangs over the science behind the movement. Could a person ever really be brought back from the dead?

“We’re not trying to bring people back to life. We don’t believe they’re really dead.” DENNIS KOWALSKI CEO of the Cryonics Institute

The whole notion of cryonics is based on the idea that death is not the end. Whereas conventional medicine sees death as an irreversible event, unequivocal in its finality, cryonicists see death as a blurred line that is constantly shifting. “We’re not trying to bring people back to life,” says Dennis Kowalski, CEO of the Cryonics Institute. “We don’t believe they’re really dead; if dead’s final, then they weren’t dead.” Supporters of cryopreservation point to the seemingly infinite advances in medicine in the last century alone as evidence that the goal posts of what is possible, and what can be cured, are constantly shifting. Illnesses that were considered a death sentence 100 years ago, even ten years ago, can now be treated – or at the very least, controlled. That is perhaps illustrated no better than by a medical procedure that is today taken as a given: cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) has saved innumerable lives since it was invented in 1956. Cryonicists hope that the same will one day be true of human vitrification. Appropriately, Alcor’s slogan reads: “Dying is a process, not an event.” While a person is legally dead once their heart stops beating, the brain continues to function for a short time thereafter – and it’s in this time frame that cryonicists invest their hope. Ideally, the freezing process should take place as soon as possible after this. According to the cryonic understanding of death, brain damage is the biggest risk factor

for procedural failure. As the brain stores a human’s identity, it must be cooled as quickly as possible to avoid the brain damage that comes from oxygen deprivation. Every part of the modern cryonics process aims to minimise this hypoxia. For this reason, Alcor advises patients to consider hospice care close to their headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona when their time comes to die. Cryonics firms also advise against excessive drinking and smoking – that way, a member lowers their risk of heart attack and stroke, decreasing their chances of dying suddenly in a situation that would make it difficult for Alcor to reach the patient quickly. Many members wear neck tags engraved with instructions for how to proceed in the event of their death. In an ideal scenario, cardcarrying cryonics members will expire with a team of cryopreservation nurses at their bedside so that the cooling process can begin immediately after their heart stops beating and legal death has been declared.

THE COST OF CRYONICS The process itself comes with a significant price tag. At Alcor, cryonic preservation of a whole body costs a staggering $165,000. The majority of Alcor’s 1,000-odd members – of which 146 are so far in cryostasis – can afford this costly post-mortem care by taking out life insurance policies, often bringing the cost down to the same as a lifetime’s worth of satellite television or cigarettes. For Alcor members in other countries, the process is even costlier: an additional $14,000 surcharge must be handed over to cover the cost of shipping your dead body to the US for final suspension. Can’t afford the $165,000 charged by Alcor for a full-body suspension? Don’t worry, the firm assures its customers, there are plenty of options that are easier on

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the purse strings. A neurosuspension, where the head is detached from the body and only the brain is frozen, costs a comparatively cheap $70,000 at Alcor, where 18 patients have chosen this option. Their brains are chilled in two huge concrete vaults, called neuro-pods, at the firm’s Arizona headquarters. But what options would remain for a person without a body, were they to be woken up 50, 100 or 1,000 years down the line? Many orthodox futurists believe that the future of human life lies in so-called brain uploading – the contents of the brain would be transferred to a computer robot or to a new cloned body. Proponents of this method view the brain as something akin to a piece of computer software, which could be restored far in the future as long as enough data from the original disc survived. “Essentially, all you need is the brain,” explains Murray Ballard, a photographer who spent several years documenting cryonics procedures. “The theory is that the brain is like a hard drive that stores memories and personality. When you are revived in the distant future, a new body will be grown to

house your brain, or an entirely new brain may be built for them to somehow upload your personality.” Accordingly, most cryonicists believe only in ‘theoretical’ death: the idea that the information stored in your brain – your memories, your personality, your preferences – remains intact even once your body has been switched off. Just because the machine is switched off, it doesn’t mean the data on the hard drive no longer exists. “You are nothing more than the signals flitting through your brain,” says Robin Hanson, a health policy fellow at the University of California. “And if we can preserve that, we can save you.” In 2013, a 23-year-old called Kim Suozzi crowdfunded her way to a neurosuspension at Alcor after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. She hoped to be brought back decades later, when her billions of neurons could perhaps be scanned and converted into computer code and her brain recreated on a robotic computer. But just how likely is a future in which a person who is clinically dead could be brought back to life? Even Alcor admits that its services are essentially high-tech storage.

ICE THE PRICE OF rs be em m n lia ra st For Au 0 of Alcor, a $14,00 s. ie pl ap e fe ng pi ship

They openly acknowledge that, for the time being, there is no method for reanimating organs that have been vitrified. Alcor’s CEO Max More does not shy away from addressing these doubts: “We don’t know for sure, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong – but we see it as an extension of emergency medicine,” he explains. “We’re just taking over when today’s medicine gives up on a patient. Think of it this way: 50 years ago if you were walking along the street and someone keeled over and stopped breathing you would have checked them out and said they were dead. Today we do CPR. People we thought were dead 50 years ago, we now know were not. Cryonics is the same thing, we just have to stop them getting worse and let a more advanced technology in the future fix that problem.” Many cryonicists draw hope from hypothermia cases, which have shown how cooling can slow the rate of cell death. In one famous example, Swedish skier Anna Bågenholm was trapped under ice without a pulse for several hours before being successfully brought back to life. Her extraordinary feat of survival has been attributed to the frigid temperatures she

How much does a cryonic suspension cost? e price of cryonic suspension varies, with a number of mpanies in the US offering packages at different price ints. At Alcor, the cryonic preservation of a whole body sts $165,000 – not including a lifetime membership cost o $27,000 which can be paid as a lump sum or at $140 month for twenty years. Despite this Alcor’s CEO, Max re, is keen to highlight that many of his firm’s patients ke out a life insurance policy to cover the cost of their entual freezing. “Anybody who can afford an insurance l cy can afford this.” Still, there’s no denying that the C yonics Institute is a bargain in comparison. A wholedy suspension costs $38,000. The firm does not offer uro-preservation, but close relatives are entitled to lf-price membership.

Was Walt DisneyÊs head cryogenically preserved?

WORDS: Louise Burfitt. PHOTOS: Alcor (2); Getty (3); Alamy, Shutterstock

It’s the coolest myth in Hollywood, quite literally. In the late 1960s, just as the futuristic science of cryonics was taking off, the famous animator Walt Disney died of complications caused by lung cancer. After his death on 15th December 1966 aged 65, a pervasive rumour spread throughout the City of Angels: Walt Disney’s dying wish was to be frozen in perpetuity and, as such, he had been cryonically preserved and buried underneath the theme park rides at Disneyland in California a few days after his death. The myth, it turned out, was just that – a complete fiction. The millionaire entrepreneur had actually been cremated on 17th December 1966, two days after his death, and his ashes interred at Forest Lawn DISNEY ON ICE Memorial Park in Glendale, California. But despite this, the Despite persiste nt fable lived on – over the years believers of the fantasy have gossip, Walt Disn ey cited the secrecy surrounding Disney’s death and funeral as cremated, not fr was ozen. evidence for his clandestine cryonic preservation.

endured. US cardiologist Sam Parnia is already using these findings into his work: packing cardiac arrest patients in ice has increased the defibrillation survival rate at his hospital by 17%. But cooling a person down for a few hours before reviving them is one thing. Keeping a corpse frozen for generations in the hope of bringing it back to life is another entirely. And one undeniable fact remains: cryonic scientists have never successfully revived a human. They would likely add the significant caveat ‘yet’ to that statement, citing currently undiscovered medical procedures that they hope will make revival after death a possibility. Alcor board member Ralph Merkle believes that nanotechnology will be able to repair practically all tissue and DNA damage within a few decades. Others believe in a more distant future: 100 years, perhaps 150. The overarching concern is how different the world might be upon reawakening: would you be welcomed back by your great-grandchildren? Might the humans of the future treat you as a scientific oddity, an artefact from a long-distant past?

IS CRYONICS BASED ON JUNK SCIENCE? Many, if not most, medical professionals dispute the idea of a human ever being successfully resuscitated many years, even centuries, after death. After all, there is evidence that the connectome – the brain’s neural map that is thought to store and compose our identity and memories – fades soon after we die and takes with it any semblance of what makes a person human. Even more damningly, some scientists dispute the very idea that vitrification technology can preserve tissues in the long-term. As scientific journalist Michael Shermer explains: “Cryonicists believe that people can be frozen immediately after death and reanimated when the cure for what ailed them is found. To see the flaw in this system, thaw out a can of frozen strawberries. During freezing, the water within each cell expands, crystallizes, and ruptures the cell membranes. When defrosted, all the intracellular goo oozes out, turning the strawberries into runny mush. This is your brain on cryonics.” Physicist Michio Kaku also believes that cryonics is

based on junk science: “Those organisations that advertise that you can live forever this way may be misleading the public because when the body is thawed out, what you have is dead tissue.” Despite all of the uncertainties surrounding the process, cryonics devotees around the world – of which there at least several thousand – are prepared to take a risk for the chance to live again, in an unknown future. In fact, many members appear perplexed that more have not taken the leap. Given the possibility of eternal life, they ponder: why not take the risk? “This is in the most literal sense a clinical experiment, and we already know what happens with the control group,” says Kowalski, referring to the majority who choose to be buried or cremated. “They’re worm food.” And if the bet turns out to have been a fool’s errand? You’re still worm food. As cancer victim Kim Suozzi put it shortly before her death: “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. I think there’s only a 1 or 2% chance. It’s a long shot, but I think it’s worth it.” Only time – and a whole lot of dry ice – will tell. 63

WORLD EVENTS

 Every day 100 million new selfies are taken around the world. But these selfportraits don’t just alter the way we see ourselves. They also change our personalities, putting our lives in danger

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:+(1 7+( 48(67 )25 )2//2:(56%(&20(6 $'($'/<5$&( Ramon González (better known as rapper Jadiel) still hasn’t made it to the top. In an attempt to boost his profile, the 28-year-old Puerto Rican regularly posts striking selfies on Instagram. Steely glares, macho poses – ideally in the most extreme situations possible – could help promote his music and engender him to more fans in the rap community. To this end, González decides to take a selfie on his motorbike (right). Tragically, it is the last image of him. Moments later he loses control of his motorbike and races into oncoming traffic on a highway in Rochester, New York. He dies in hospital. It’s only after his death that his music becomes better known. The name of his last album? Me Descontrolo which translates as “I am losing control” in English…

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65

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75$*,& %$6( -803(5/26(6 +,6)227,1* Cambridge graduate Gareth Jones (right) perches on a cliff at North Head on Sydney’s northern beaches and looks out over the shimmering Pacific Ocean. Ninety metres above the ground, the 25-yearold BASE jumper dangles his feet over the edge and snaps a few photos. Just a few days later, during an early-morning outing to watch the sunrise at the exact same spot, he slips and falls into the abyss. His last selfie on Instagram (right) was captioned: “Another day another happy place.”

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7+( ),1$/ 020(17 2) +$33,1(66 Collette Moreno (left of image) and her friend Ashley Theobald, both 26, are on the way to Moreno’s hen night in Lake Ozark, USA. When this selfie is taken, neither of the women realise that their excursion will shortly end in tragedy. Theobald overtakes a lorry and realises too late that a pick-up truck is coming towards her in the opposite lane. She tries to turn but the cars collide. Moreno dies four weeks before her wedding. Ashley Theobald survives with minor injuries.

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avid Lopez can feel his heart racing with excitement. The moment has arrived. The 32-year-old is standing by the side of the road in the Spanish town of Villaseca de la Sagra, where a bull run is currently taking place. One of the 800kg beasts is bearing down on him, 100 metres away and closing fast. Lopez holds out his smartphone and turns his back… The bull is just 50 metres from him now. With shaking hands he switches to selfie mode and grins for the camera. Ten metres. Now he just has to leap over the fence and the image will become an instant hit on Facebook – or at least that’s his plan. But Lopez hasn’t factored in that his selfie perspective is deceiving. Moments after he pushes the button, a 20cm-long horn pierces his neck from behind. He’s thrown through the air like a rag doll and gored by the angry bull. His selfie never sees the light of day – but a harrowing video shot by onlookers does.

,1),9(7,0(6$60$1<3(23/( ',('$6$5(68/72)6(/),(67+$1 )5206+$5.$77$&.6 For the past five years, the rise of selfies has appeared unstoppable. More than 100 million digital self-portraits are shot every day. The images are uploaded onto Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and shared, distributed and liked in their millions. The camera function has become the most important piece of kit on today’s smartphones – no one in their right mind would ever dream of making a phone without one. Selfie-sticks and photo-related apps sell by the bucketload. But what has only gradually become clear is this: selfies don’t just impact on the smartphone industry or social networks. Researchers believe the hunt for the ultimate self-image actually changes our personalities – and increasingly, has fatal consequences. The likes of David Lopez and at least 50 others who have died shooting selfies in the past 18 months are testament to this. Last year took the art of selfies to dangerous new levels, with people, quite literally, dying to take a picture of themselves. Five times as many people now die from taking selfies as they do from shark attacks. And those are just the incidents that are reported. The real number, including cases like car drivers who die taking selfies, could be

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386+,1* 7+( :521* %87721 Fast cars, beautiful women, cool drinks: Oscar Otero Aguilar tries to make an impression with the selfies he shares on Facebook. But somehow the Mexican has the feeling that he’s not getting enough attention doing that. He needs to take an even more impressive selfie, something nobody has done before. In true gangsta style, at a party he grabs a weapon and holds it to his head. With his right hand he grasps the pistol and with his left hand he holds the smartphone out, switches to camera mode… and pushes the button. Except he doesn’t – he pulls the trigger instead. Aguilar dies in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

much higher. In Russia and India, where a spike in selfie-related incidents has resulted in many deaths over the past year, the government has stepped in to create ‘no-selfie zones’. Mumbai alone has 16 such areas. But why are more and more people dying while taking selfies? What impact do these smartphone portraits have on our behaviour? And who is particularly at risk?

+2:$6(/),(5(352*5$00(6 <285%5$,1 It happens with every like on Facebook, every favourite on Twitter, every share on Instagram. Upload a selfie to a social network and you’ll receive feedback from friends, colleagues, even strangers – often immediately. And that fires the synapses in the brain. As soon as that photo is shared, liked or commented on, neurologists have discovered that the brain releases dopamine, a happiness hormone also triggered by certain drugs or eating lots of

:+<3(23/(5,6. 7+(,5/,9(6)25$&/,&. Inching ever closer to the side of the cliff, a grimace at the wheel of a car doing 250km/h, a picture of you and a deadly snake – thousands of people step beyond what constitutes common sense, not to mention their own comfort zones, to generate online interest in their selfies. They overcome their fears, are more open to taking risks, even become narcissistic. In other words, selfies don’t just alter the neural circuits and the release of messenger substances in the brain, they manipulate our behaviour. A worrying trend in Germany has seen teenage girls running across train tracks with a friend, lying down on the rails and taking selfies. It’s a scarcely

believable craze that has already cost many young women their lives. Trains in Germany regularly travel at speeds in excess of 160km/h. If that wasn’t dangerous enough, when the wind is blowing in a different direction, trespassers on the line often don’t hear the train until it’s almost on top of them. If the train is 100 metres away, you’ve barely got a couple of seconds to scramble to safety. Granted, 99.9% of risky selfies pass off without incident – nobody dies and nobody gets injured. In an ideal world the photo becomes a viral hit. But psychologists warn that the very act of taking a selfie means one’s full attention is not on the job in hand. This has obvious dangers. Consider the air force pilot taking a photo during a training flight at the very moment he releases the missiles, the base jumper snapping away with his helmet camera during a freefall, or the park visitors who capture themselves grinning with a grizzly bear behind them. So far, all of these stunts have gone off without a hitch and brought the photographers plenty of attention around the globe. But they also add fuel to the belief that every risky selfie will turn out fine. Perhaps even one that involves multitasking, something that might sound innocuous, but in fact is anything but… It has been scientifically proven that even the most insignificant distraction causes concentration levels to sink dramatically. This is particularly true in the case of smartphones, where your field of vision – be it the ground under your feet or what’s directly in front of you – is shrunk from 180 degrees to just ten. You perceive only the screen on your smartphone. So it’s virtually impossible to calculate the distance between you and an onrushing bull while you’re busy getting the camera into the right position and striking a mean pose all at the same time. Looking cool and getting likes – that’s what Oscar Otero Aguilar dreamed of. The 21-year-old uploaded a photo of himself to Facebook posing in front of a white limousine. But he only got 63 likes. Maybe he needs to come across meaner and tougher. So Aguilar gets hold of a weapon. At a party, the young Mexican holds the gun to his head with his right hand, and, with the camera in selfie mode, holds out his smartphone in his left hand. Striking a mean pose, he pushes the button. Or so he thinks. Tragically, Aguilar pressed down on the thing he was holding in his right hand, not his left. He pulled the trigger. Oscar Otero Aguilar died on the way to hospital.

PHOTOS: Internet

sugar. “We want more of that feeling,” explains neurologist Dar Meshi. “We become addicted to the substance that triggered this intoxication. In the case of selfies it is this recognition from your peers and the attention you get from them.” Helping selfie junkies in their hunt for the perfect hit is the fact that people are scientifically more likely to spend time looking at human faces than they are at a picture of a landscape or an object. According to Jan-Hinrik Schmidt, an expert on digital interactive media, selfies create other possibilities. “Social media opens up new avenues of communication that were not as readily available before,” he says. If someone takes a photo of an elephant in the Thai jungle on their smartphone today, it can be shared, liked and rated by half the world just seconds later. There are also thousands of photo apps designed to help the user take better selfies: wrinkles disappear, overcast skies suddenly become clear, colours are warmer, smiles brighter. The result is an image of a person as he or she wants to be perceived by others. The problem is that the internet now has billions of people vying for the attention of others – in real time, 24 hours a day. And the general rule of thumb is: the more likes you get, the more dopamine is released, something confirmed by Angela Tillmann from the Institute for Media Research. “There’s a weird sort of ‘outdoing’ mentality in the online world,” she says. “Everyone is trying to make it look like they should be taken more seriously than everyone else.” And for many people that means taking more risks with their selfies than others have done before them.

NATURE

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A DRONE’S-EYE VIEW OF THE

They reach inaccessible places, present natural wonders in ways you’ve never seen them and capture moments invisible to the human eye. Only drones could take these spectacular images

HOW DO YOU EXPLORE THE BIGGEST CAVE IN THE WORLD?

Around 150 gigantic cathedrals are hidden under the ground in Vietnam. Made entirely of stone, they form part of a eight-kilometre network of caves that until a few years ago nobody even knew existed. “Son Doong is the biggest cave on Earth, a hidden world,” explains Romeo Durscher from drone development company DJI. But its size is also a curse: the only way in is via a tiny, metrewide entrance. To get in, Durscher and his team had to take their drone to bits and reassemble it once inside. Some parts of the cave system reach 200 metres in height and could swallow a skyscraper. In between the calcite walls, a river carves its way through the cave – which means this subterranean world can only be entered during the dry season. And it’s only by using drones that researchers have even been able to take a closer look. Climbers could damage the fragile interior – in many places the ceiling has already fallen in. “Flying down here takes place at 40ºC temperatures and 95% humidity. Dust and the lack of GPS make things extremely tricky,” says photographer Ferdinand Wolf. But all that effort is worth it: the drone’s roving camera captures a world unseen by any human eyes.

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HOW DO YOU RESTORE A PARADISE? The ships under Captain James Cook’s command glide gently through the crystal clear waters. In front of them, the towering volcanoes of Maui rise from the Pacific Ocean. On 26th November 1778, the explorer and his awestruck men become the first Europeans to clap eyes on this majestic oasis. Today, the Hawaiian Islands have an ethereal beauty that can only be captured using drones. The nine million people that follow in Cook’s footsteps every year have turned the once-peaceful group of islands into one of the biggest traffic hubs in the Pacific. Hundreds of thousands of tourists book plane or helicopter tours to fly over Hawaii’s nature reserves. “It’s no use protecting all this wilderness on the ground if you don’t also protect the air space overhead,” says Barry Stokes of local action group Citizens Against Noise. To prevent the thrum of engines from ruining the silence of this tiny tropical paradise, authorities have introduced flight restrictions. Now only drones are allowed to hover over the water’s surface. Why? Because they are emissions-free, unobtrusive and – above all – quiet.

HOW DO YOU MONITOR A PSYCHOPATH? Unpredictable and prone to extreme violence, volcanoes can be considered a type of geological psychopath. One example is 2,329-metre Mount Bromo (foreground) in East Java. But its vent, which was most recently active in April 2016, is just one of a much bigger system with a circumference of nearly ten kilometres: the cliffs of the Tengger caldera in the background of this picture show the remnants of a gigantic eruption in ancient times. To help protect people inside the danger zone, like those visiting the Hindu temple Pura Luhur Poten (far right), researchers around the world are now using drones to monitor volcanoes. Using flight data they can create 3D models of crater lakes or measure the volcanoes’ activity. Flying drones directly through columns of smoke allows them to analyse the composition of gases therein. “Using helicopters or aeroplanes is useless as the thermals are too strong and the high concentration of ash can damage their engines,” explains NASA scientist David Pieri. For this reason, drones with electric motors are particularly suited to these expeditions, though not always successfully. Volcanologists complain that they have one of the highest loss rates of drones worldwide because the heat simply proves too much.

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HOW DO YOU KEEP AN EYE ON THREE MILLION PEOPLE? For the NYPD, it’s a near-spotless record. Last year, ‘only’ 353 murders, 1,438 rapes and 15,391 burglaries were recorded in New York, making it one of the safest cities in the world. Even Central Park in Manhattan (left) no longer features on the list of crime hotspots. For law enforcers, it’s clear why things have changed: the most sophisticated surveillance system in the US, comprising tens of thousands of cameras, plays a big part in their success rate. “We introduced the technology to counter the rise in terrorist attacks, but it’s also proving itself against conventional crimes,” explains Paul Browne from the NYPD. An airborne camera known as the Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System, or ARGUS, can be mounted on a drone to watch over Manhattan from a height of around three miles. The system is so powerful it can even tell what colour T-shirt you are wearing, while its zoom can pick out the type of phone someone is carrying. Unlike a helicopter it can’t be seen from the ground. Instead of a network of individual cameras, the dronemounted lens delivers the big picture 12 times per second – at an astonishing 1.8 gigapixels.

HOW DO YOU REVEAL THE SECRETS OF A MONSTER WAVE? If this wave was a person, it would probably be more famous than Kennedy and Einstein put together: no object or person has been photographed as often as the Teahupo’o off Tahiti. There are thousands of videos of surfers riding the ten-metre blue wall. But what these films don’t relay is that the monster wave is by no means straight – and the daring surfers are anything but alone. To show the real face of Teahupo’o while simultaneously capturing the magical moment of the surfer on the wave, photographers Eric Sterman and Brent Bielmann released a drone just a few metres above the breathtaking scene. Using a high-definition camera they were able to take this never-beforeseen image. It’s clear to see how the wave sidesteps the sickle-shaped coral reef beneath it and forces the surfers to literally ride around a corner. The drone also captured the entire entourage of adrenaline junkies: the jet-ski riders in the background who drag the surfers onto the wave, the boats with the camera teams on board. In contrast to the drone, the latter have only one perspective, one that shows the huge scale of the monster wave – though not the true dimensions of this dramatic backdrop.

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HOW DO YOU SURF A CLIFF? Water, walls, turbulence – three elements that together form a nightmarish combination for helicopter pilots. An extreme case is provided by these almost closed-off, 300-metre-high cliffs in the Venezuelan rainforest, over which plunges the Churun Meru waterfall. Because as well as water, air masses also frequently break off the semicircular overhang, which is just a few dozen metres wide. As a result, dangerous downdrafts are formed which can unbalance helicopters without warning – something that could prove fatal if the rotor blades come too close to the cliff surface or a protruding rock for a millisecond too long. In addition, the downdraft of the propeller blades causes the falling water to swirl, thus distorting the panorama while looking towards the ground. Only a drone can effectively surf this natural wonder without destroying its natural form. Thanks to its small size, the device is significantly easier to control and keep stable. Plus it can fly through the spray without endangering the pilot.

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HOW DO YOU MEASURE A WORLD WONDER?

PHOTOS: Romeo/Visual-Aerials.com; Randy Jay Braun/DJI; Brent Bielmann, Eric Sterman; Air Pano (3); Caters; Rex Features

With a 28-metre arm span, its embrace could hardly be more powerful: since 1931 Brazil’s 38-metre-high Christ the Redeemer has been welcoming visitors of all religious creeds with open arms. Astonishingly, before last year the structural condition of the 1,145-ton Rio de Janeiro landmark had never been properly examined as it was deemed virtually impossible. Using lasers was ruled out because the colossus sits at a height of 700 metres on a rock needle directly above the city. It was only by using a drone that scientists were able to produce a 3D model of the statue, after shooting around 3,500 images over the course of 19 flights. Using GPS, the scientists positioned the flying device directly on the statue, voted one of the new seven wonders of the world in 2007. This image was captured during the most popular time of the day, when up to 4,000 people visit the monument. Most of them probably didn’t even notice the drone working overhead, as Rio’s skies are already full of helicopters thanks to the traffic chaos in the city’s streets.

HOW DO YOU WATCH A DYING GLACIER? They are some of the most powerful sculptors on the planet: every year Iceland’s glaciers erode up to five millimetres of the subsoil. No wonder: at almost one kilometre thick, the ice masses exert a pressure of around 90kg per square centimetre. From a bird’s eye view there’s nothing that hints of this gigantic strength. The meltwater of the receding ice collects peacefully at the lower end of the Flaajokull glacier in eastern Iceland, where it mixes with the muddy earth. But under the powerful ice cap a time bomb is slumbering: Grímsvötn, one of the most active volcanoes on the island. Burning lava can cause the ice to evaporate suddenly, triggering explosions that lead to large lakes of meltwater deep inside the glacier being released. Known as glacial bursts, these waters act in a similar way to tidal waves, and can carry away rock boulders weighing 1,000 tons and more. But the beauty of the ice can still be appreciated – though it’s no easy task to view it from the air. A helicopter is often hampered by bad weather and so for that reason a drone is more flexible: rather than using a heliport it can take off from the glacier itself – and witness its death throes up close. 81

TECHNOLOGY

,$0$ %,7&2,10,1(5 A machine that produces money and is 100% legal? It sounds like a dream. But actually, it’s not quite as far fetched as it seems. Welcome to the crazy world of Bitcoin

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rom the outside, the place where the money is created looks pretty ordinary. A nondescript warehouse with no fancy signage, no high-security barriers, no soldiers on patrol. But looks can be deceiving. Behind its bland exterior, the whereabouts of which is known only to a select few insiders, lies a vast space that resembles the control room of a spaceship. A loud hum throbs incessantly through the building. Warm air heated to 45ºC flows through endless corridors lined with hundreds of applicationspecific integrated circuits. Better known as ASICs, these superadvanced computers have been created with just one purpose in mind: to solve highly complex mathematical equations. Their reward for doing so is a virtual one: they receive bitcoins, the dollars and cents of the internet.

WHERE ARE THE MINES OF THE MONEY-MAKERS LOCATED? If you were to personally print a $50 note, it would always be a counterfeit – no matter how perfectly you imitate it. It’s also a criminal offence, regardless of the currency you’re trying to forge. Only central banks can issue currency and control the amount of money available. Australia’s central bank, the Reserve Bank, also sets interest rates, acts as the lender of last resort to commercial banks on the high street and provides banking services to the government. But what if there were no banks? What if all payers and payees were to agree on an asset considered a universal medium of exchange, like gold? Only one that exists virtually,

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SECRET MINES Dozens of data centres used for generating digital money are located around the world. For security reasons, their exact locations remain a secret.

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MONEY MINERS The server farms use vast amounts of energy and produce lots of heat. This makes Iceland an ideal location for Bitcoin miners: the climate is cold, the electricity is cheap and the internet is fast.

like the credit on a credit card? Well, that’s exactly how Bitcoin works. It’s a virtual currency controlled by a mathematical algorithm, rather than the governor of a central bank. It prevents counterfeiting and limits the availability of monetary units – the foundation of trust in the stable value of a currency. After all, bank notes are just bits of printed paper that can quickly lose their value. The inflation rate sees to that. Its most important characteristic then, and the thing that makes it different to conventional money, is that it is decentralised. In principle, Bitcoin is nothing more than a vast public ledger which accurately records the respective balances of its users, as well as storing every transaction that ever took place around the world (see diagram). To date, this index, which has a current value of around $9 billion, has never been successfully hacked. To do so, you’d have to 84

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take control of more than half of all of the millions of computers that monitor the system, all of which contain a constantly updated copy of the ledger – an incredibly complex task. The infrastructure for checking and authenticating payments – something normally done by banks – is provided by specific users known as ‘miners’. Miners use special software to solve encrypted codes that confirm that the payer really can spend a specific amount. This verification process takes roughly ten minutes to complete, after which time a certain number of bitcoins are issued – part of the 3,600 that are ‘mined’ each day. And that happens in a bitcoin mine. “It’s loud and very hot. But only with the maximum amount of computing power can electricity profitably transform into money,” explains Stefan Schindler of Genesis Mining, the world’s biggest

digital mining operator. They’re called ‘miners’ because new goods really are being created there – just as in a gold mine, where precious metal is extracted from the soil. Many of them are located in places like Iceland, where icy temperatures and 100% renewable energy are attractive draws to companies looking for a base for their power-consuming, heatproducing machines. After all, a large mine needs about as much ENERGY PROVIDER A bespoke electricity source could make financial sense for large mines.

683(532:(5%,7&2,1 Behind Bitcoin is the idea that neither banks nor governments should control money – instead it should be down to the payers and recipients around the world themselves. TRANSACTION

Mathematical algorithms ensure that it doesn’t all end in chaos. Each transaction is therefore more complex than a conventional bank transfer – but how does it all work?

AUTHENTICATION

transfer bitcoins, request floats on the A ‘miner’ picks up the request for compete to match the  Toa user  The  Miners generates a Bitcoin network, together  processing. During the mining block’s header with a ‘nonce’, an request and sends it to the Bitcoin network using a virtual wallet. Transaction

with all other pending requests in the world.

process, transactions are packed into data blocks and are randomly assigned with a ‘header’.

arbitrary number used only once. This gives them a short alphanumeric code called ‘hash’.



Bitcoin network

Each hash accepted by the Bitcoin network is rewarded with bitcoins.

Miners

r 311

Heade

Account 16Ls6azc76ixc9Ny7AB5ZPPq6oiEL9XwXy Amount 28

Bitcoin

Nonce Hash

Every user requires a virtual wallet. In it is a secret piece of data called a ‘private key’, which is used to authenticate transactions.

PHOTOS: Christopher Lund (3) ILLUSTRATION: Reuters

Header 313

Block

SEND

power as a small city. Some are also located at ASIC manufacturers, where getting hold of newer, faster models won’t present any problems. “Every day counts,” explains Genesis Mining’s Marco Streng. Investing in the $1,500 devices is worth it: every bitcoin can be converted into ‘real’ money. With each coin worth around $790 at the time of press, miners earn around $2.3 million a day collectively. Consumers can also buy things directly with the digital money. Anything from pizza to weapons can be traded. Algorithms ensure that the amount of bitcoins available is limited because mining new money eats up electricity and computing power. With the growing size of the system, Bitcoin mining will also get continually more time-consuming. That’s something not lost on Streng. “At the moment we’re considering building our own power station for generating electricity.”

Header 312

It takes several minutes to process a transaction. Once completed, it’s irreversible.

hash values are then added to the next block’s header,  The creating a ‘block chain’. This serves as the public ledger of all transactions ever made in the Bitcoin network.

)28548(67,216 $%287%,7&2,16 :+$7$5( %,7&2,16" Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency. Much like dollars or euros, it’s a medium of exchange for goods and services, but with encrypted data blocks replacing notes and coins. Instead of banks a worldwide community organises the exchange. The name comes from bit (storage unit in the computer) and coin.

+2:'2, *(7%,7&2,16" Bitcoins can be paid for directly with money or through the sale of goods. New bitcoins can only be generated by the users themselves: miners control the flow of data and receive bitcoins for the job. The more people who join in, the more difficult and resource-consuming the whole process becomes.

:+(5($5( %,7&2,16.(37" Bitcoins are encrypted onto a person’s own computer or smartphone in virtual wallets, where they can be stored, received or sent. In principle, Bitcoin is nothing more than a shared ledger that is constantly being updated with the account balances of all users worldwide.

$5(%,7&2,16 6(&85(" Every currency depends on the trust of its users: for US dollars it is relatively high, for the Venezuelan Bolívar it’s almost zero. The same is true of bitcoins: the system functions as long as its stability is proven. While it’s true that Bitcoin exchanges have been hacked like banks have, nobody has ever succeeded in taking over the digital currency completely. The Bitcoin market cap currently stands at around $9.2 billion.

NATURE

YOU CAN’T KILL ME! You can boil them, freeze them, even bombard them with cosmic radiation – but still they live. Tardigrades are the planet’s masters of survival

WHAT DOES THE WORLD’S SMALLEST VACUUM EAT? Also known as water bears, tardigrades are just 1-1.5 millimetres long – the spectacular example here has been enlarged to 400 times its original size with an electron microscope. Most tardigrade species feed almost exclusively on algae. To eat, the creatures press their mouth cone against the cell membrane of an alga. Two dagger-like teeth then pierce the outer skin of the plant and the tardigrade sucks the entirety of the cell dry. Predatory species use the same principle.

CAN TARDIGRADES PLAY DEAD? Without optimal conditions, the genus Tardigrada falls into a type of suspended animation known as cryptobiosis. This sees their metabolism dialing down to just 0.01% of its normal operating level – they are as good as dead. But when the living conditions of the animals start to pick up, they wake from this death torpor. Their ability to suspend metabolic processes has helped them colonise the entire planet – tardigrades can survive in a temperature range of minus 270ºC to 150ºC.

HOW DO YOU BREATHE WITHOUT LUNGS? There are some 1,000 known species of tardigrade. None of the creatures have lungs, but then none of the creatures need them: oxygen enters directly through their skin before spreading throughout the body. For this process to work they must be surrounded by a thin film of water.

WHERE DO TARDIGRADES HANG OUT? Mosses, lichens and other damp areas are tardigrades’ ideal stamping ground. Up to two million of the little critters can live in a square metre of silver moss. Using sharp claws on each of their eight legs, they can cling on to plants, sand or soil during flooding.

87

ARE TARDIGRADES DNA THIEVES? Researchers suspect that tardigrades can repair their DNA after their cryptobiotic sleep. When under stress, for example in harsh environments where there’s too little moisture present, their chains of DNA break into tiny pieces. Only once the animals are back in normal conditions can the repair process begin. The cell’s membrane becomes permeable, allowing foreign genes from bacteria and plants to pass through to repair and replace their DNA. The image here was taken through a confocal microscope to give an accurate 3D resolution.

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN IT’S FREEZING?

PHOTOS: Eye of Science/Agentur Focus; Andreas Schmidt-Rhaesa, Corinna Schulze, Ricardo Neves/Nikon Small World

To save themselves from freezing in hostile environments and extreme sub-zero temperatures, the tardigrades produce sugar in their bodies, which stops them from drying out fully. The animal can also form a type of endogenous bioglass, which protects important cells and proteins. This prevents the cell building blocks from being flushed from the body.

COULD A PREHISTORIC CRITTER REVOLUTIONISE MEDICINE? They might be 540 million years old, but medicine sees them as the next great hope. Researchers are using tardigrades to develop improved methods of preserving human organs. They’ve discovered that the micro-suckers produce proteins which could be used to keep donor organs useable for longer.

CAN TARDIGRADES STOP AGEING? All living organisms grow old someday – all except tardigrades, that is. Water bears are the only organisms that don’t follow this rule of nature. “The animals stop ageing when they are dehydrated. Life only starts ticking again when they are rehydrated,” explains biologist Ralph Schill.

30 YEARS IN HIBERNATION Tardigrades can remain in suspended animation for years until their bodies come into contact with water and reawaken. Only recently, Japanese researchers revived two animals from a 30-year hibernation. One of the creatures was even able to lay eggs after three decades. This was possible because some females can reproduce without a partner.

HOW CAN ANIMALS GROW WITHOUT CELL DIVISION? Most tardigrade species are born complete with fully grown cells. Unlike all other living organisms they do not grow through cell division. During the ageing process, the cells grow in size, rather than divide.

89

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS DO YOU HAVE A QUESTION FOR OUR TEAM OF EXPERTS? Simply send us an email with ‘Questions and Answers’ in the subject line to [email protected]

90

WHERE DO YOU STORE

126 MILLION ARTEFACTS? The National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. is a destination for around seven million people every year, making it the most visited natural history museum in the world. But many of humanity’s real treasures are hidden away behind the scenes where almost nobody can see them. Covering a total area of 139,000 square metres, the building is the size of 19 football fields. But only 30,000 square metres is accessible to visitors, meaning more than 90% of the museum’s huge inventory is stored backstage. Among them are 30 million insects pinned inside tiny boxes and 4.5 million plants pressed onto sheets of paper. The museum also owns around two million cultural artefacts, including 400,000 photographs.

TREASURE OF THE EARTH In total, 126 million animals, plants and cultural artefacts are either on display or stored in the museum’s vaults.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

HOW DO YOU SCAN A CATHEDRAL?

182

years was how long it took to build the Notre Dame. Four phases of construction were needed before the church was fully completed.

3D MODEL More than one billion data points create a virtual image of the Parisian masterpiece.

With the help of a tripodmounted laser, architectural historian Andrew Tallon hopes to get to the bottom of how the Notre Dame in Paris was built. To capture all of the cathedral’s intricate details, Tallon took scans in more than 50 locations in and around the building. How does it work? The laser beam sweeps around the cathedral, measuring the distance between the scanner and each point it hits. It then calculates the time it takes for the beam to travel from the wall back to the device. It’s a process similar to

that used in the search for the lost Honduran city featured in last month’s World of Knowledge. Tallon collected over a billion data points, which were stitched together with design software to form a ‘point cloud’. A 3D model is then created that can reveal structural defects invisible to the naked eye. Tallon has already found that the foundations on one side of the cathedral moved, which meant it began leaning to the north. Construction was halted for a decade until the soil had settled and could fully carry the weight of the building.

40 km

Where did the Eye of the Sahara come from? With a diameter of 40 kilometres, the ‘Eye of the Sahara’ is so easy to spot from space that astronauts use it to estimate their location. The circular rock formation is also known as the Richat Structure and is located in the Sahara desert in Mauritania, where it radiates a bluish-violet colour in the overwhelmingly brown, sandy landscape. Observers first believed it was a meteorite impact crater, but recent

studies suggest otherwise. The most plausible theory is that it is simply a geological structure: a mountain that has been eroded by nature over time. The Eye’s centre consists of sedimentary stone while its circular edges are made of paleozoic quartzites, which are resistant to erosion. It’s suspected that the dome formed one billion years ago as a result of magma rock moving towards the surface.

+RZGR\RXKLGHDSLVWRO LQDPRELOHSKRQH" A smartphone yet to reach the market is already causing something of a stir in the US. The reason for the hype? On closer inspection, this mobile phone is actually anything but. With a few flicks of the hand, the fake mobile becomes a loaded weapon. The pistol, which is made mostly from plastic, can hold two 9mm-calibre bullets. Some US senators have already called for it to be banned because it is so easy to conceal from law enforcement officials.

The light is focused on one point on its way through the cell.

CAN BACTERIA SEE?

MINI-WEAPON The fake smartphone will cost around $400.

Cyanobacteria have been living on Earth for 2.5 billion years, generating oxygen through light energy. There’s only one puzzle that researchers have not been able to solve so far. How do the unicellular organisms find sources of light? Now scientists have discovered that the body of a bacterial cell functions like a lensed eye. When light hits their bodies, it is refracted just like it is by the human eye. On the opposite side of the body there’s a focal point where the light rays focused by the lens meet. In this area, threadlike extensions are activated which push the bacteria in the direction of the light. 93

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

CAN YOU

GLIDE TO THE STARS? Sounds tricky enough, but how about without rocket fuel and using just the power of the wind? The Perlan 2 glider is attempting to do just that. In its tiny pressurised cabin, just one metre wide, two pilots will control its ascent to 27,000 metres – far higher than any other aircraft. To reach this height, the glider will use stratospheric waves – strong air currents rising off mountains. Perlan 2 is expected to

LIGHTWEIGHT Perlan 2 has an empty weight of just 574kg and can reach 700km/h.

12 METRES

10.16 METRES

94

lift off this summer on its voyage to discover hitherto untapped airspace. In this low-oxygen, high-UV radiation environment, even the smallest misstep can be deadly. But if the mission is successful, Perlan 2 could revolutionise air travel. It could help passenger planes reach heights never achieved before, assist in climate research, and provide new information about our planet – all without using a single drop of fuel.



2)7+()857+(67 ',67$1&(6 &29(5('%<$

SPACE PROBE 1 19,600,000,000 kilometres Released in 1977, Voyager 1’s objective was to explore the outer reaches of the solar system. It is still active today.

2 16,700,000,000 kilometres From 1972 until 2003, Pioneer 10 was on a mission to fly by Jupiter. The journey was only supposed to take 21 months.

3 16,000,000,000 kilometres Like its predecessor, Voyager 2 also set sail in 1977. Its destination was also the outer solar system and it too is still active today.

4 13,000,000,000 kilometres Pioneer 11 was launched in 1973 to research Jupiter and Saturn. The probe was last heard from in 1995.

+RZGR VWLQJLQJQHWWOHV JHWXQGHUWKHVNLQ" Just one ten-thousandth of a milligram of stinging nettle fluid is enough to unleash that unpleasant tingling beneath the skin and the accompanying red rash. When disturbed, the stinging hairs on the nettles’ leaves act like needles and inject a chemical cocktail into the skin. Scientists aren’t entirely sure what chemicals the liquid contains, but they include formic acid and acetylcholine, both of which are responsible for the burning sensation under the skin. The histamine in the ‘cocktail’ causes the swelling and itching. Special needles modelled on the nettles’ stinging hairs are now being designed for medical use. Tip: if you want to pick nettles without being stung, wrap your fingers round the bottom of the stem and pull. Don’t touch the upper side of the leaves where most of the stinging hairs are located.

5 5,000,000,000 kilometres New Horizons only took off in 2006. Its goal is to study the dwarf planet Pluto up close.

6 4,500,000,000 kilometres The Galileo probe was launched in 1989 to study Jupiter and its moons. Galileo was the first probe to fly by an asteroid.

7 3,500,000,000 kilometres The two-and-a-half ton double probe Cassini/ Huygens began its mission towards Saturn in 1997, reaching it seven years later.

8 1,300,000,000 kilometres The Magellan probe took off in 1989 to map the surface of Venus and to measure the planetary gravitational field.

9 968,000,000 kilometres The Ulysses probe was launched in 1990 to study the sun. It cut through Jupiter’s orbit en route.

10 626,000,000 kilometres Juno is the youngest probe on this list: it took off in 2011. Its destination is Jupiter, which it should reach by July this year.

+RZGLGWKLVWUXFN HQGXSLQWKLVJDUDJH" Passers-by pause in front of this garage in the German town of Dettelbach-Effeldorf, scratch their heads and wonder: how did that get in there? Closer investigation reveals that the ‘truck’ is in fact an image stuck to the garage doors. What’s amazing is how realistic the photo is; the truck has perfectly defined proportions, and details like light and shadow have been captured perfectly. The result is an optical illusion so lifelike that many people think it’s real – until they’re standing right in front of it.

PHOTOS: Chip Clark/NMNH (2); NASA (10); Corbis (2); PR (3)

AND FINALLY...

BOOBY

TRAP Britain is home to the world’s largest colony of Northern gannets. Sometimes mistaken for their unfortunately named cousins, the seabirds’ dive-bombing hunting style leaves helpless fish nowhere to hide

T

his is the moment Britain’s largest seabird turns into a two-metre arrow. The Northern gannet angles its wings just above the water to streamline its body before breaking through the surface like a bullet. Plummeting from 30 metres up, the bird can dive to a maximum depth of ten metres. Gannets hunt in a flock, so when they dive it’s like a machine gun peppering the surface of the water. Each bird exerts an enormous amount of energy during a dive: taking in seven seconds’ worth of air, Morus bassanus grabs a fish from the rapidly dividing shoal of herring, avoids colliding with other birds or dolphins under the water and races back to the surface. The slightest error in calculating the entry angle and the 100km/h hunter would become just a pile of feathers floating in the Atlantic.

The gannet’s entire anatomy (including closeable nostrils and a sternum that acts as a shield to protect its organs) is geared towards its kamikaze-style hunting technique. Closely related to the booby, the birds share many of their humorously monikered cousin’s idiosyncrasies. Like them, gannets waddle a bit when walking on land, but only because their feet are located towards the back of their body. Their hunting technique is also almost identical, and though their wingspan is larger at an impressive 180cm, they are similarly economical when it comes to their flight muscles. Both species use them only around 13% of the time. But does this inhibit the performance of the largest bird in the North Atlantic? Not at all! Indeed, every year, 150,000 of them glide their way to Bass Rock in Scotland’s Firth of Forth, making it home to the largest colony in the world.

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PHOTO: Richard Shucksmith/Barcroft Media/Animal Press

LETTERS

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*Letters may be edited for publication

Welcome to World Of Knowledge’s Letters page, where you can share your thoughts on anything you see in the magazine. Write to us at World Of Knowledge, GPO Box 4088, NSW, 2001 or email us at [email protected]

August 15

Troubled waters

On a wing and a prayer KRISHNA SHAH Top marks for the ‘How Planes Get Their Pink Slips’ feature in last month’s issue. Because planes have become such an everyday part of our lives – even if we’re not travelling on them, we only have to look up to see them zooming around in the sky – it’s easy to forget how complex the technology that keeps them in the air is. Really, it’s a miracle they stay in the air. But that’s exactly what you managed to convey with your report from the world’s biggest aircraft testing centre. This story will definitely be on my mind next time I board a plane. In fact, being a nervous flyer, I’m hoping this could go some way towards putting my mind at ease about flying.

Needle in a haystack FLORA MCDONALD The article on ‘What Doctors Don’t Tell You’ (July) was compelling. All of those invented diseases, useless medicines and manipulated studies! Who knew? I was particularly surprised by the myths surrounding chiropractic treatment, even though it’s not something I’ve ever tried myself. Is the same true of acupuncture? > According to a systematic review by the British National Health Service, acupuncture – the medical practice which involves stimulating certain points on the body using needles – has been found to have medical benefits for some conditions, while there is scant evidence that it offers advantages for others. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence only recommends considering acupuncture as a treatment option for chronic lower back pain, recurring tension headaches and migraines. And even the ultra-skeptical Cochrane Collaboration has found that there is some evidence acupuncture may ease chronic lower back pain, tension-type headaches, chemotherapyinduced nausea and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). But others describe acupuncture as a kind of ‘theatrical placebo’ with little benefit, especially for conditions it is commonly prescribed for like asthma, restless legs syndrome and insomnia.

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CHRISTIAN MOBIUS I like the way World of Knowledge consistently tackles tricky political topics – it definitely helps me to stay informed. In last month’s issue, the article about the crimes committed by the water corporations in developing countries truly shocked me. I found myself wondering how can such inhuman exploitation of others be allowed? > That’s primarily because, in industrialised nations, governments have treated water like an infinite resource that will never run out. Only very gradually – and under pressure from human rights and environmental movements – have some countries, such as the USA, started to review the water licences that were previously sold to water corporations. Tragically, the situation looks completely different in less developed African nations. There, governments and officials held the misconception that everybody would benefit from the sale of water licences to the world’s biggest beverage firms. Though that turned out to be false, the firms insist on seeing out their contracts.

Weathering the storm LUKE MATHIE Interesting piece about the dangers of lightning in ‘Questions & Answers’ last month (‘How Close Can Lightning Strike Before It Gets Dangerous?’). I’ve often wondered about one of my mother’s favourite sayings – ‘lightning never strikes twice’. Is that true? > The myth that lightning never strikes the same spot twice is a legend that any veteran stormwatcher will have seen defied many times. Lightning has no memory and if a location, object or person has been struck once, it is no less likely to be hit again. As Dan Robinson, a professional stormchaser, explains, “A strike to any location does nothing to change the electrical activity in the storm above, which will produce another strike as soon as it ‘recharges’.” Studies show lightning actually strikes the same place one-third of the time: The Empire State Building in New York is struck about 100 times a year.

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