Discover 11.2018

Why We're Superstitious P.26 World's Tiniest Satellites Ready for Launch P.
70
Discover
SCIENCE FOR THE CURIOUS
®
NOVEMBER 2018
LIFE IN THE
QUANTUM
REALM
How the Smallest
Particles Make the
Biggest Impact P.30
PLUS
Cracking the Protein Code P. 54
Driverless Cars on
Every Road? Dream On P. 48 BONUS
ONLINE
When the First Farmers CONTENT
CODE p.3
Changed History P. 38
Contents
NOVEMBER 2018
Website access code: DSD1811
Enter this code at: www.DiscoverMagazine.com/code
to gain access to exclusive subscriber content.
VOL. 39, NO. 9 FEATURES
30 Your
Daily Dose
of Quantum
The effects of quantum
mechanics aren’t just
relegated to crazy
experiments — they’re also
part of our everyday lives.
BY TIM FOLGER
38 he Farmer
and the
Forager
Along a European river
8,000 years ago, two very
different groups met for
the irst time. Humanity
would never be the same.
BY MARK BARNA
48 Baby,
Can You Drive
My Car?
Plans to bring autonomous
vehicles to the public are
in the fast lane, but it may
be time for a rest stop.
BY HANNAH FRY
54 All in
the Fold
When it comes to proteins
— life’s building blocks
— the key is how they’re
folded. One biochemist is
studying the how and why
of proteins’ crucial crimps
IBREAKSTOCK/SHUTTERSTOCK
so he can build his own.

BY JONATHON KEATS
Biochemist David Baker is unraveling
the mystery of proteins, crucial to
building life. Read more on page 54.
November 2018 DISCOVER 3

Contents
COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS
6 EDITOR’S NOTE
Perceiving Reality
Motorcycle riding, heightened
awareness and the quantum world.
7 INBOX
Readers weigh in on eating insects
and the psychology of personality.
9 THE CRUX
The art of microscopic
photography; a look back
at preparing astronauts for
a crazy-long journey; the
financial cost of breast cancer;
the secret to developing math
and reading skills; and more.
Why do some people cling to superstition? Find out on page 26.

22 VITAL SIGNS
Why We're Superstitious P.26 World's Tiniest Satellites Ready for Launch P.70
Pain, Motion, Repeat 70 OUT THERE

Discover
A young professional has her life

upended by dizzying moments A Sprite-ly Spacecraft NOVEMBER 2018
®
doctors can’t explain. BY TONY DAJER Though individually tiny and LIFE IN THE
disposable, a fleet of probes could QUANTUM
play a big role in space exploration.
26 MIND OVER MATTER BY STEVE NADIS
REALM
How the Smallest
Particles Make the
Knock on Wood Biggest Impact P.30
We know crossing paths with a black

74 20 THINGS YOU DIDN’T
TOP: KELLIE JAEGER/DISCOVER. BOTTOM: LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY

cat isn’t bad luck. So why do we KNOW ABOUT … PLUS
still change our routes? Cracking the Protein Code
Lasers
P. 54
BY GALADRIEL WATSON Driverless Cars on

Every Road? Dream On P. 48
They’ve won a lot When the First Farmers

Changed History P. 38
of Nobels, helped
64 ORIGIN detect lost cities
STORY and chronicled ON THE COVER
Know Your the drift of Why We’re Superstitious p.26
Enemy the moon. World’s Tiniest Satellites Ready for Launch p.70
BY ERIKA K.
Research on deadly CARLSON
Life in the Quantum Realm: How the Smallest
ancient pathogens Particles Make the Biggest Impact p.30
offers clues to how Cracking the Protein Code p.54

they formed, and how Driverless Cars on Every Road? Dream On p.48
Technicians
they might be defeated. at a laser facility When the First Farmers Changed History p.38
BY GEMMA TARLACH in California COVER: Dmitriy Rybin/Shutterstock
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Discover
Editor's Note ®
BECKY LANG Editor In Chief

DAN BISHOP Design Director
EDITORIAL
Perceiving Reality
GEMMA TARLACH Senior Editor
BILL ANDREWS Senior Associate Editor
ELISA R. NECKAR Production Editor
MARK BARNA Associate Editor
LACY SCHLEY Associate Editor
DAVE LEE Copy Editor
I’m still a relative newbie to AMBER JORGENSON Editorial Assistant
motorcycling. It took about a Contributing Editors
TIM FOLGER, JONATHON KEATS, LINDA MARSA,
year of being on the back of my KENNETH MILLER, STEVE NADIS, ADAM PIORE,
husband’s BMW before I was COREY S. POWELL, JULIE REHMEYER, STEVE VOLK,
PAMELA WEINTRAUB, JEFF WHEELWRIGHT,
itching to be on my own bike. DARLENE CAVALIER (SPECIAL PROJECTS)
So, when I swing a leg over my ART
Suzuki V-Strom, I’m hyper-tuned ERNIE MASTROIANNI Photo Editor
ALISON MACKEY Associate Art Director
to everything — the smell of the
dry autumn air, the sound of the DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
ERIC BETZ Digital Editor
wind sliding around my helmet NATHANIEL SCHARPING Assistant Editor
and the feel of the bike as it picks Bloggers
ERIK KLEMETTI, NEUROSKEPTIC, SCISTARTER,
up speed in second gear. And AMY SHIRA TEITEL, TOM YULSMAN
I’m constantly assessing risk and Contributors
BRIDGET ALEX, RONI DENGLER, KOREY HAYNES
tweaking my behavior.
When you’re new to riding, ADVERTISING
STEVE MENI Advertising Sales Manager
your perception of reality is in 888 558 1544
smeni@discovermagazine.com
overdrive. Maybe it’s like when
Rummel Media Connections
we’re little kids, our senses KRISTI RUMMEL Consulting and Media Sales
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space. As adults, our reality is so
MELANIE DECARLI Marketing Architect
established, we take it for granted. BOB RATTNER Research
We expect things in our everyday world to behave in a certain DARYL PAGEL Advertising Services
way: coffee is our kick-starter, the garden’s roses offer up their KALMBACH MEDIA
DAN HICKEY Chief Executive Officer
perfume each year and that bench will support us as we sit. CHRISTINE METCALF Senior Vice President, Finance
While our perception of reality underlies our behavior as we STEPHEN C. GEORGE Vice President, Content
NICOLE MCGUIRE Vice President, Consumer Marketing
move through the world, in the super-small realm of quantum BRIAN J. SCHMIDT Vice President, Operations
mechanics, it’s the opposite. The behavior of these teeny-tiny SARAH A. HORNER Vice President, Human Resources
particles lies at the bedrock of our perception. And their DAVID T. SHERMAN Senior Director, Advertising Sales
and Events
behavior can be pretty weird. An electron, for example, can SCOTT REDMOND Advertising Sales Director
exist as a particle and a wave at the same time. A photon can be LIZ RUNYON Circulation Director
MICHAEL SOLIDAY Art and Production Manager
in two places at once — and just maybe our eyes can see both. CATHY DANIELS New Business Manager
In this issue’s cover story, Contributing Editor Tim Folger KATHY STEELE Retention Manager
KIM REDMOND Single Copy Specialist
takes us through the wacky world of the quantum, and how it’s
SCIENCE GROUP
embedded into our lives, without us even realizing it. TIM PAULSON General Manager
Those unseen mechanics will be rolling around at the back of BECKY LANG Executive Editor
my brain on the two-wheeled commute to work. DAN BISHOP Design Director
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and then including a full-page MULTIMEDIA FEEDBACK
An Unappetizing illustration of a fork illed with
A Little Personality
Illustration a living, squirmy mealworm
(“Everything Worth Knowing: Personality,”
(“A New Animal Farm,” and a cricket. How are we July/August 2018)
July/August 2018) to get past the idea of eating
From theories to tests, we took you
I have been reading a lot insects if the visual is counter through the essentials of the psychology
of articles about insect to the message? of personality. Here’s what some Facebook
consumption as a good source Patricia Dittoe readers had to say in response:
of protein, and your article was a Conroe, Texas
Fino Menezes: Evelyn
welcome addition to my growing It seems to me a great Haskins:
knowledge. However, you’re not An Electric Issue injustice that while a But far
furthering the concept of insect (“Everything Worth Knowing,” growing number of people better to
consumption by saying, “But for an July/August 2018) can boast “multiple” have no
personalities, there are personality
entire culture shift to occur, Ashour The latest “Everything Worth others, less fortunate, who than
[one of the Aspire Food Group’s Knowing” issue was a fantastic have been left with none multiple
founders] wants to change how we edition! For next year, I would love to at all. This is the plight horrible
of the charismatically ones.
see a section on Earth’s magnetic ield
challenged in today’s
BRAIN LIGHT/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
ADDRESS LETTERS TO: — how it’s generated by our molten two-tier society.
DISCOVER core, the magnetic ield’s composition
21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box 1612
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EMAIL: editorial@DiscoverMagazine.com Steve Brooks Feedback is edited for space and clarity.
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THE CRUX THE L ATEST SCIE NCE NE WS AND NOTES
GLASS GALAXY
A plain crystal ball at a Santiago flea market recently caught the eye of astronomer Juan Carlos Muñoz-Mateos, who studies galaxy formation
from the Paranal Observatory in Chile. He works with the world’s most advanced telescopes, and he saw the common glass sphere’s potential
as a different kind of astrophotography lens. A few nights later, he placed it on a handrail outside the observatory, focused his camera on
the ball and made this 30-second-exposure photo, trapping the Milky Way in a cosmic marble against its own backdrop.  ERNIE MASTROIANNI;
PHOTOGRAPH BY JUAN CARLOS MUÑOZMATEOS

THE CRUX
BIG IDEA more using cellular networks.
Facebook wasn’t the only tech
agency to crash and burn. Back in
The Web, Worldwide

2014, Google’s X division moved in
ahead of Facebook and purchased
Titan Aerospace, which made
personal solar-powered drones.
During Titan’s only test flight, both
Half of humans still lack dedicated internet access. wings snapped off and the aircraft was
destroyed on impact. The company
DESPITE THE NAME, THE WORLD WIDE WEB urge to ind more customers, which was shut down in January 2017.
. . . ISN’T. Some 52 percent of the world — concerns outside groups worried about X has now switched focus to Project
roughly 4 billion people, mostly women privacy, data collection and free speech. Loon — a balloon flotilla that bobs 12
— don’t have access to the open web. “It’s not enough simply to bring the miles above Earth, beaming 4G LTE
This has sparked something like a internet to a country,” says Cynthia like a cell tower. Loon was deployed
new space race, featuring satellites, Wong, the senior internet researcher at last year after Peru’s deadly floods
high-altitude balloons, drones, even Human Rights Watch. “It’s what kind of and again after Hurricane Maria hit
lasers. The rush of startups and tech internet do you bring, how is it going to Puerto Rico. They’ve (temporarily)
companies, including SpaceX, Google be regulated, and how much meaningful connected more than 300,000 people,
and Facebook, make it only a matter of control and choice do people have over the company says. And now they’re
time before most humans are online. their experience.” eyeing rural Africa.
The beneits are already clear. Getting Ellery Biddle is advocacy Meanwhile, others are
online is inancially advantageous for director for Global Voices, focusing their efforts on
folks in low-income regions, especially which focuses on technology “It’s not making satellite internet
Africa and Asia, where lack of and human rights. She enough cheaper. By year’s end,
connectivity is highest. Connectedness agrees the issue isn’t just startup OneWeb aims
also promotes greater participation in
to simply to launch the irst of a
“connecting” countries. It’s
politics and society. about quality. “Today, it’s a bring the constellation of 900 little,
“If people have access to faster matter of who has access to internet to low-orbit satellites beaming
internet speeds, then you will also see and beneits from that internet high-speed internet. SpaceX
improvements in economic growth,” infrastructure,” she says. a country.” wants to launch around
says Dhanaraj Thakur, a researcher at Companies have gotten 4,000 satellites for the same
the Alliance for Affordable Internet, a creative to overcome the technological purpose; its prototypes are doing well.
group aiming to lower broadband costs. hurdles, with mixed success. In June, Other companies, big and small,
“There are speciic beneits in different Facebook shuttered Project Aquila, are edging in on the action. But
sectors: health, education and so on.” its program of massive solar-powered despite these many projects, there are
The International Telecommunication drones that would’ve beamed the more roadblocks than just logging
Union has nailed down a few main internet via lasers and then relayed it on. Biddle says Facebook and other
reasons why online access remains down to places without dedicated access. companies often overlook government
elusive: insuficient infrastructure, lack The much-hyped project ran just two presence — and things like balloons
of digital literacy and irrelevant content, test flights — during the irst, a drone and drones can distract leadership
such as English webpages when your faced with high winds crashed, leading from building infrastructure.
native language is Amharic. to a federal investigation. After that, “Some of the riskier ‘moonshot’
But one of the biggest hitches? Cost. Facebook decided building aircraft investments will fail, and some will
A survey of 58 low- and middle-income was too dificult — and irrelevant, with ind a place alongside more mature
ANTON BALAZH, NOTBAD AND ALEXHLIV/SHUTTERSTOCK
countries found just 19 boast affordable so many other companies developing access technologies,” says Nathan
internet, deined as 2 percent or less autonomous Wi-Fi hotspots. Kundtz, CEO of Kymeta, whose
of average monthly income for one Facebook closed their lab, and flat-panel satellite antennas came on
gigabyte of mobile data. Across Africa, they’ve partnered with Airbus on their the market last year. “Ultimately, I
the 2015 average cost was more than drones. Now, they’re testing plane- expect that the expansion of internet
17.5 percent of monthly income. mounted lasers like Aquila’s. They’re access into developing countries will
That’s prompted interest from tech also working on OpenCellular, an open- continue, and that it will be a force
companies. It can seem altruistic, but source, low-powered base station that for positive economic and social
these endeavors are also driven by the Facebook hopes will connect billions development.”  TROY FARAH

THE CRUX
Q&A
Focusing on the Small

Zoom in on four decades of microscopy advances.
HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR stunning images of the

THOMAS DEERINCK microscopic world. She
didn’t expect his life was hoping to recruit
to change when he students for her electron
walked into his science microscopy training
class one day in the mid- program, eager for new
1970s. Local research helping hands. Deerinck
scientist Betty Barbour promptly enrolled.
had come to share her Forty years later, his
award-winning photos
have appeared on the
covers of scientific
journals. He’s also one
of the most senior
researchers at the
National Center for
Microscopy and Imaging
Research in La Jolla,
California, where he and
his colleagues expand
the boundaries of what
a microscope can see
and do.
But as his subjects
have gotten smaller
over the years, the large
streams of data the
photos produce need
heavy-duty processing.
Recent images of
slices of a mouse brain
require a supercomputer
to assemble them
into a 3D model of
individual neurons and
synapses. The image
files are big, and the
3D models are even
larger, so managing
data is key. Deerinck
has learned that when
the microscopes can see
individual atoms, his
small world becomes
almost impossibly huge.
Q When you started in 1978, what was the
state of microscopy?
A Techniques and instruments were similar to those

used for decades. We shot everything on film since Keel-billed Toucan
there were few computers and no digital cameras.
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A In the mid-’80s, a special tool called a laser

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samples without out-of-focus blur. In the ’90s came green
fluorescent protein, which makes different parts of living
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Q What sort of microscopy challenges are you working
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THE CRUX
ReDISCOVER
A Mindset for Mars

Space agencies are still figuring out the best personalities for a trek to the Red Planet.
CAN WE GO TO MARS insights into how we’ll deal. 2001 article — and colleagues published
without going crazy? In May Participants endure months in a study in 2014 reporting two Mars-500
2001, Discover’s cover story cramped confines in analog crew members accounted for 85 percent
asked exactly that, exploring missions at NASA’s facilities of the mission’s reported conflicts.
unanswered questions about in Houston, as well as remote Clearly, selecting voyagers with the
the psychological perils of places like Antarctica, the right psychological profile is critical to
humans crammed together floor of the Atlantic Ocean mission success. Though we still don’t
and flung through space. and atop a Hawaiian volcano. know what that profile looks like, it’s
At the time, scientists The European Space Agency’s becoming easier to see what won’t
didn’t have much data to CAVES program, started in 2011, work. “Having six Type A personalities
predict how people would handle the sends participants into unmapped Italian on a long, boring voyage may not be
six-month journey. Researchers realized caverns to test and train their cooperative the best combination,” says psychologist
interpersonal skills and camaraderie exploration skills. Then there’s the final Gary Strangman, who works with the
would be critical to success. run of Mars-500, another international Translational Research Institute for Space
We’re still not sure how things would Martian analog, where six men from four Health, a collaboration between NASA
go. But growing interest in the mental countries simulated an entire mission to and a consortium led by the Baylor
risks of space travel — which NASA lists as the Red Planet over 17 months, from 2010 College of Medicine in Houston.
one of the biggest threats to astronauts to 2011, in a tiny Moscow facility — the Jack Stuster, a cultural anthropologist
— has spawned a wave of new research closest we’ve gotten to the real thing. who has studied journals kept by both
and technology. Those projects suggest space agencies astronauts and earthbound explorers,
Experts are developing stress- are taking the psychology of astronauts says behavioral issues are a surmountable
management systems, including virtual more seriously than it did in 2001, says challenge. Enthusiasm for putting the
reality programs and robotic companions, David Dinges, a professor of psychiatry at first footprints on Mars, he thinks, will
to help interplanetary travelers cope on the University of Pennsylvania Perelman inspire resilience: “Humans will endure
their trip. And projects that simulate long- School of Medicine. Good thing, too, almost anything to be among the first.”
term space travel are giving researchers since Dinges — who was featured in our  STEPHEN ORNES
Missions like
this one on
the Mauna Loa
ROSS LOCKWOOD
volcano in Hawaii
help astronauts
train for Mars-
like conditions.
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THE CRUX
INFOART
The Life & Death

of Social Media
WE’RE MORE CONNECTED THAN EVER, thanks Facebook reigns
to social media. Despite thousands of supreme, with
miles of distance, we can still stay in The Climb to Success 2.23 billion
touch with friends and family. We can Monthly active users* worldwide active users per
even make new friends and start social month in 2018. 2500
movements at the drop of a #hashtag.
Facebook
But the websites that helped make this
all possible had to start somewhere. And
despite their strong starts, some sites Twitter
didn’t last to see the interconnected 2000
MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS (in millions)

world we live in today.  LACY SCHLEY Instagram
WhatsApp
1500
Pinterest
No data
available 1000
500
YEAR LAUNCHED
0
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
CHARTS: ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER; DESIGN ELEMENTS: ENVATO
*Snapchat and LinkedIn

Ghosts of Social Sites Past
Eons: Site geared toward baby boomers measure users by different

metrics and so are excluded
and users age 40 and older. 2006-2012 from the above graph. box
(Users as of 2011: roughly 800,000)
Friendster: Social-networking-turned-social-gaming site.

2002-June 2015. (Users as of 2008: roughly 30 million)
Xanga: Though this personal blogging site is technically still around, it’s been under
a redesign since at least 2013. 1999-2018 (Users as of 2006: 27 million)
Notable Moments in
Who’s Using What? Tech Media History
Percentage of Americans
who say they use social media 35% 24%
(2018)
Instagram Twitter
29% 22% Mid-1990s: The internet
68% WhatsApp
becomes widely available with
the emergence of affordable
personal computers and
Pinterest web browsers like Netscape.
24%
27%
Facebook
LinkedIn
Snapchat
FROM TOP: ZUMA PRESS INC./ALAMY STOCK; TED THAI/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES; CARL BERKELEY VIA FLICKR
Percentage of U.S. Adults Who Use Multiple Times a Day (2018) 1999: Apple offers Wi-Fi
compatibility in its iBook
Facebook 51% laptops, the first tech company
to do so, spurring an industry-
Twitter 26% wide trend.
Instagram 38%
Snapchat 49%
Back From the Dead MySpace had a brief resurgence

MySpace: There was a time
in 2010 with 54.3 million
when MySpace was in the same
unique U.S. visitors . . . 2006: Facebook, which
boat as Xanga — essentially originally only allowed people
with .edu email addresses to
dead. To regain some popularity, 60
UNIQUE U.S. VISITORS BY END OF YEAR
. . . and again in 2013, join, opens up membership

the site went through a to anyone. The move sparks
reaching an audience
redesign and shifted its focus 50 Facebook’s rise through the
of 38.52 million.
in 2010 from personal profiles ranks of social media sites.
to music. Then it went through 40
(in millions)
another redesign in 2013. When

that wasn’t enough, in 2014, 30
MySpace made a seemingly
last-ditch effort with an email 20
blast to users reminding them
of all the pics they uploaded 10
in the angst of their youth. The
appeal to nostalgia worked — 0 2007: Apple releases the
at least for a little while. 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 iPhone, pushing smartphones
and mobile apps into the
mainstream.
£
Visit DiscoverMagazine.com/SocialMedia for a full list of sources.

THE CRUX
FAR, FAR AWAY
BABY, YOU’RE A STAR

Stars are born from gas, and spiral galaxy Messier 66 (aka M66, or NGC 3627) has a lot of both. When gas gathers, it clumps into dense clouds,
which can then collapse to form stars. Astronomers can find such areas of stellar birth by looking within the ultraviolet spectrum of light, since
newborn stars emit more of it than older stars. Hubble’s recent Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS) explored M66 and 49 other nearby star-
forming galaxies, aiming to better understand how, where and when galaxies create stars.  ERIKA K. CARLSON; PHOTO BY NASA/ESA/LEGUS TEAM
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THE CRUX
TRENDING BY LACY SCHLEY
Building Blocks
Surprise! It’s a Dragon!
Researchers found a new
dinosaur at the wrong
place and the wrong time
Breast Cancer’s Financial Toll in China. The previously
unknown species of advanced
In the United States, your wallet can take a hit with any sort of health sauropod — giant, long-
scare. For those fighting cancer, costs frequently spiral out of control. necked herbivores — was
But how often do doctors talk with their patients about the financial named Lingwulong shenqi, or
aspects of treatment? In a recent study, researchers at the University “amazing dragon from Lingwu.”
of Michigan surveyed 845 doctors and roughly 2,500 people diagnosed The multiple fossils found in northwest
with breast cancer to find out. And it seems many patients feel like China are 174 million years old, about 15 million years
their concerns aren’t being heard. earlier than paleontologists thought this particular
branch of the sauropod family existed. The fossils are
AT LEAST SOMEWHAT WORRIED ABOUT FINANCES also the first of their kind from East Asia, another
surprise. Researchers had believed the region was
38% never home to these animals. The find suggests
of this group say doctor’s office didn’t help deal advanced sauropods evolved much earlier and were
73% with financial impact of diagnosis distributed much more widely than we thought.
BOTTOM LEFT: DMITRY GUZHANIN/SHUTTERSTOCK. RIGHT COLUMN FROM TOP: ZHANG ZONGDA; NASA/CXC/M.WEISS; TATYANA VYC/SHUTTERSTOCK. OPPOSITE: ALBERTO HORNERO/SWANSEA UNIVERSITY
DOLLARS A Snack Fit for a Star
14% AND
CENTS
17% In a first, astronomers may have witnessed a star eating
a planet — well, sort of. The star in question, RW
SPENT
$
LOST Aur A, is about 450 light-years away, but it’s been on
more than more than
10 percent of
experts’ radars for decades because it has a history of
10 percent of
household income dimming every so often before returning to its usual
household income
because of on out-of-pocket shine. Recently it’s been dimming a lot more than usual.
missed work expenses Now, data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory
suggest those shady periods may be due to the nearby
collision of two newly formed planetary bodies. When
those masses hit each other, debris
likely fell into the maw of RW
Aur A, resulting in dust and gas
WHICH DOCTORS DISCUSS FINANCIAL BURDENS WITH PATIENTS? that obscured the star. Seeing
Medical oncologists* 50.9% this event and continuing to
track what’s going on could
Radiation oncologists 43.2% help scientists learn more
Surgeons 15.6% about how planetary bodies
form and what factors affect
*Use chemotherapy as well as hormonal, biological and targeted therapies their survival.
CONCERNS BY ETHNICITY A Curious Mind

Cut food budget to Wanted to talk to providers Want your kids to be better at math and reading?
help pay for treatment about financial impact Encourage their curiosity. A recently published study
45.2% Black 31.1% found that inquisitive children understand basic
math and reading concepts better. Researchers used
35.8% Latina 30.3% data from a long-term project funded by the U.S.
22.5% Asian 25.4% Department of Education that’s been following
babies born in 2001. Surveyors checked in with the
21.5% White 15.2% children’s parents regularly over the first five years,
measuring their kids’ math and reading abilities as
20 10 0 0 10 20 30 40 50 well as their curiosity in kindergarten. After analyzing
Percentage the results, the study’s authors saw
the connection between curious
minds and math and reading
skills, even after controlling for
things like ability to focus and
Source: “Unmet control impulses — something
Need for Clinician
Engagement called effortful control. The
Regarding Financial results point to another tool
Toxicity After to help kids succeed in school,
Diagnosis of Breast
Cancer,” Cancer, 2018 the authors say.
Olive Protection
Europe’s olive trees are suffering. The culprit — Xylella fastidiosa, a devastating bacterium that’s common in the Americas
— can infect up to 350 different plant species. The pathogen made its way across the pond only recently. Farmers in Europe
have to move fast to stop its spread (usually by sap-eating bugs), or else risk destruction of their crops. In response, experts
have developed an aerial remote-imaging system that scans orchards to pick out infected trees before they show the telltale
symptoms: withered branches and scorched leaves. The system, which uses a combination of thermal and electromagnetic
imaging, can flag infected trees with over 80 percent accuracy. This thermal image shows the severity of symptoms of an
orchard in southern Italy from blue (least severe) to red (most severe).
“It’s a little bit like you waking up in New York . . .

and then deciding in the morning as you step out the front door,
‘Nah, not going to work today. Today I’m going to Antarctica.’
In terms of body length, that’s roughly what the
Bogong moths are doing.”
— neurobiologist Eric Warrant on the annual trans-Australia migration of Bogong moths

Vital
Signs
Pain, Motion, Repeat

Chest-tightening, world-spinning attacks leave a 25-year-old grasping for answers.
BY TONY DAJER
→ “It’s like being electrocuted,”

said Alana, her body quivering.
“It keeps happening. Doctors can’t
the cause of a patient’s complaints,
I think about other patients I’ve seen
who had similar symptoms, or who
tell me why.” had symptoms that manifest in a
The 25-year-old had been walking similar sequence.
with a friend on a sidewalk when As I examined Alana,
everything started spinning and her I thought about Peggy.
body shook. Her chest tightened and
she couldn’t breathe. Her friend called A PATTERN EMERGES
an ambulance, which brought her Two months earlier, Peggy
to the emergency room. had arrived in the emergency
Dizzying, heart-thumping expe- department sobbing, vomiting
riences like this one had been hap- and doubling over from stomach
pening to her every few weeks for pain. She was in the middle of
eight months. Brain scans showed a recurring attack, she told me. It
nothing amiss. A specialist had always went the same way: stomach
found no inner ear problem. Her pain, vomiting and an awful taste
neurologist suspected arrhythmia of sulfur in her mouth.
(or irregular heartbeat), but she As we talked about her medical
hadn’t seen a cardiologist yet to history, Peggy said she also some-
have it checked out. times had migraine headaches. This
Her vitals, such as blood stopped me for a moment: The hall-
pressure, pulse and body temperature, mark of what we broadly call migraines
were all normal. is recurrent, stereotypical attacks that
It wasn’t making sense. Here was Dizzying, heart- eventually resolve completely. Could
a it, young woman who didn’t drink or Peggy’s attacks be migraines?
do drugs. She had never been hospital- thumping experiences An estimated 36 million Americans
ized. Yet she seemed close to a complete suffer from migraines, which typically
mental breakdown. like this one had been are severe, throbbing or pulsing
happening to her headaches, often accompanied by
A DIZZYING SITUATION vomiting. Scientists aren’t sure of their
Young professionals being seized every few weeks root cause, but there appears to be
by panic attacks is not uncommon. a genetic component, since migraines
But Alana’s condition seemed to be for eight months. run in families.
something else. Peggy did not have a throbbing
Her episodes might be caused by a hyperthyroid condition. headache when she came in, but
benign positional vertigo, in which For a moment I considered she recurring symptoms suggested she was
STEVEN PUETZER/PHOTOLIBRARY/GETTY IMAGES
people experience a spinning sensation might have an irregular heartbeat, as having a repeat migraine attack. In
when they move their head. Another her neurologist thought. The condition an odd twist of neurology, and to the
possibility was a hyperthyroid condition, is known to bring about dizziness, diagnostic confusion of doctors, people
but that usually causes a fast heartbeat. lightheadedness and shortness of can have migraines without headaches.
I dismissed both in part because breath. But Alana’s electrocardiogram, Even odder, the same person can
Alana was experiencing pain which checks the electrical activity of have a different series of symptoms
throughout her body, something not the heart, revealed no issues. at different times.
usually associated with vertigo or Sometimes when I’m stumped about The trigger of the attack can also
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Vital
Signs
change. For a while it might be a certain Moreover, not all headaches come
smell. Then it shifts to, say, being in a with an aura.
stressful situation.
Eventually we igured out that Peggy CALM AFTER THE STORM
had an abdominal migraine, which is Migraine treatments are tailored
accompanied by nausea, vomiting, belly to the speciic phases of the attack.
pain and, in her case, that distinctive At the irst sign of a migraine aura
sulfur taste. Despite multiple medical or a throbbing headache, a person
work-ups and even hospitalizations, can be prescribed serotonin-like
it had gone undiagnosed since she was drugs of the so-called triptan class,
8 years old. taken by injection or pill. Introduced
25 years ago to great fanfare, the
ANOTHER KIND OF ACHE drugs work for many patients, but
“Have you ever had migraines?” I not all. They are most effective
asked Alana as she lay on the stretcher, Vestibular migraines occur when electrical early in an attack. Other early
waves propagate through the brain’s
arms clutching her chest. cerebellum, shown in red. phase mainstays include naproxen,
“Yes,” she said. “As a teenager, the caffeine and aspirin.
headaches were so bad, I’d have to take “How do you feel?” By the time patients get to the
loads of Advil and lie in a dark room emergency room, their migraines
for hours.” I asked. She rewarded are usually peaking. In those cases,
My hunch was that Alana was in the our go-to intravenous drugs include
middle of a vestibular migraine, a vari-
me with her irst smile anti-inflammatories like Toradol and
ant where the brain’s electrical waves since her arrival. anti-dopamine agents like Reglan,
propagate through the cerebellum, the which we gave Alana.
brain’s balance center. A vestibular “It’s gone,” she said. Thirty minutes later, I peeked into
migraine is often not accompanied by her room. She was curled up sleeping. I
a headache, and its symptoms mirror according to this theory. The result is shooed out two of her visiting friends,
those of peripheral vertigo. “migraine aura,” the non-headache left the room and closed the door.
Vestibular migraines strike 1 in barrage of symptoms that has been I checked on her two hours later.
100 people. The singer Janet Jackson described in medical literature for She looked clear-eyed and refreshed.
is among them; her attacks have been centuries. Wavy lights are the classic “How do you feel?” I asked.
so intense that in 2008 she had to cut manifestation, but there are many other She rewarded me with her irst smile
short a concert tour. aura symptoms. since her arrival. “It’s gone,” she said.
Doctors have plenty of theories on The list includes pain in the arms and Alana’s neurologist placed her
migraine causes. The latest is called legs, and sensitivity to light, noise and on migraine preventatives — daily
cortical spreading depression, which smells. Also possible are stomach pain magnesium supplements and vitamin
refers to a spontaneous electrical wave and nausea, as Peggy had experienced, B2. She was given sumatriptan, now
that travels through the brain’s cortex. and chest tightness and vertigo, Alana’s one of the more widely used migraine
Migraines, this theory holds, start primary symptoms. In addition, medicines, to take at the irst sign
when the spreading electrical wave migraine auras can cause temporary, of trouble.
activates the trigeminal ganglion, partial or full blindness, as well as Months later, I asked her neurologist
a cluster of neurons that sit close to muscle weakness. how Alana was doing. She hadn’t had
the brainstem. This sets off a chemical One recent patient at the emergency any migraine episodes, he said.
cascade that releases inflammatory department was unable to speak. The storm had blown offshore, but
proteins along the meninges, the multi- We’d almost treated her for a stroke, Alana would still need to guard against
layered outer envelope of the brain but something didn’t it. After the incoming waves. D
SCOTT CAMAZINE/SCIENCE SOURCE
that is crammed with pain-producing attack passed, she said her migraines
sensory nerves. This produces the often appear as strokes. Tony Dajer is director of the emergency
jackhammer headache. Migraine auras and pounding department at New York-Presbyterian/Lower
But that’s not the end of it. The headaches are inconstant partners. Manhattan Hospital. The cases described in
electrical and chemical ripples can An attack might precede or accompany Vital Signs are real, but names and certain
stimulate neurons throughout the brain, a headache. Or it might go solo. details have been changed.
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Mind
Over
Matter
Knock
on Wood
Why we latch on to
superstitious behaviors,
and how to give them up.
BY GALADRIEL WATSON
→ Last March, it snowed. And

snowed and snowed. It was so
heavy that roofs around my town were
caving in, trapping pets and trucks to drop with 7- and 8-year-olds. And
and leaving people homeless. My own
Don’t open an 9-year-olds were much more likely to
roof had several feet piled on. One umbrella indoors. say that events were caused by skill or
night, flakes perpetually pelting down, effort, not luck.
I couldn’t sleep. I listened for the creaks Avoid black cats. I can’t remember when my
of soon-to-collapse timbers. I imagined knocking-on-wood habit kicked in.
the porch overhang ripping away from
Be wary of Friday the I do, however, remember avoiding
the kitchen. I stared into the dark. 13th. Superstitions stepping on sidewalk cracks (or I’d
Did I eventually haul myself out of break my mother’s back). I also
bed to shovel the roof ? No. My fear of like these abound. remember that habit quickly dying,
falling from such a height was too great since it was impractical and simply
— as was my love of a warm bed. These beliefs begin in childhood. hadn’t proven true.
Instead, I knocked on wood. Repeat- “Kids have to learn about these
edly. My bedside table is wood, and things irst,” says Jacqueline Woolley, KNOWING BETTER
my knuckles rapped it with each new a professor of psychology at the Despite this childhood rise and fall in
terrifying thought. A wooden necklace University of Texas at Austin and an superstitious beliefs, some persist into
hangs at the head of my bed. I tapped expert on childhood superstitions. adulthood, even for people (like me)
that, too. “They’re picking up the superstitions who don’t truly believe. Will knocking
This wasn’t a one-time, snowstorm- of their particular culture.” on wood really save my roof ? No.
of-the-century deal. No matter the But soon after this childhood belief Yet I do it anyway.
season or situation, knocking on wood peaks, it starts falling. Take the concept In a study published in 2008
is how I ward off the dangers in life. of luck. By age 4, children are starting in the Journal of Personality and
to hear about it. A couple of years Social Psychology, Risen found that
LEARNED YOUNG later, they believe in it pretty strongly. participants believed it was bad luck
I’m not alone. “Superstitions and magi- “But then the skepticism kicks in pretty to tempt fate — even when they didn’t
cal thinking aren’t really special,” says quickly after that,” says Woolley. believe in fate.
Jane Risen, a professor of behavioral She and her team witnessed this She further examined this contradic-
science at the University of Chicago. transition during a study published tion in a 2016 study published in the
“They’re just part of the way we think in 2017 in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Psychological Review. “We see people
about things.” Review. When told an improbable story maintaining these beliefs that they
Don’t open an umbrella indoors. — for example, one in which a severely themselves acknowledge are irrational,”
Avoid black cats. Be wary of Friday the injured dog heals without medical care she tells me. “They’ll say, ‘I know it’s
KELLIE JAEGER/DISCOVER
13th. Superstitions like these abound. — most children tried to ind a natural crazy, but I’m going to do this.’ We have
In 2015, a poll by 60 Minutes and Vanity explanation. But 5- and 6-year-olds [these beliefs] because they’re the output
Fair found that 60 percent of respon- also often credited miracles or luck. of pretty basic cognitive processes.”
dents admitted to knocking on wood. These supernatural explanations started We have two ways of thinking, she
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Mind
Over
Matter
explains. One is intuitive: fast, eficient recite its attached poem. But if she had
and quick to jump to conclusions. company in the car, “I might look like a
This can provide a seeming rationale fool, so I’m not going to do it,” she says.
for those crazy beliefs. Did my roof Woolley explains that, once a
collapse? No. Therefore, my knocking superstition is established, we do a
on wood must have been effective — cost-beneit analysis that can make
I’ll do it again next time. it seem like not performing the ritual
Then we have a slower, more deliber- poses a risk. Skipping it can even give
ate way of thinking. It may jump in some people anxiety. So if no one is
to point out my faulty reasoning and around to think the superstitious ritual
recognize that my knocking has nothing is crazy — and add a cost to performing
to do with whether or not the roof to (eventually) sleep. “These beliefs and it — we are more likely to complete
caves in. But, Risen says, “detecting behaviors actually do end up regulating it out of a “better safe than sorry”
an error in your intuitive belief doesn’t your emotions,” says Risen. “When mindset, indicating we must believe in it
necessarily lead you to correcting it. you knock on wood, you may worry at least a little bit.
It seems that some intuitions are just about this less.” I also wonder if parenthood has
very dificult to shake.” And it never hurts to hedge your bets anything to do with the strength of my
People also like to feel a sense of — usually. Woolley provides her own beliefs. I don’t only knock on wood to
KELLIE JAEGER/DISCOVER
control. I may not have been shoveling example of owning a “parking angel” save my roof, but to save my children.
on the roof, but at least I was doing that once hung from her rearview mir- Is my son at a party? Please bring him
something. And it may have given me ror. If she were alone and desperate for home safe. Is my daughter on a road
enough peace of mind to allow me parking, she might rub the angel and trip? Please keep the roads clear.
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And while my kids have never been whose average age was about 70, were and concluding I should do it again
gravely ill (knock on wood), supersti- less superstitious than young adults next time, I should dare not to knock
tions have helped other parents in that averaging about 19 years old. on wood. “Assuming that it goes OK,
terrifying situation. During a 2017 The key seems to be an accumulation you have to remember and note that
study in the neonatal unit at Santa of life experience. My mother never experience,” she says. “Then the next
Lucía General University Hospital in got hurt when I stepped on sidewalk time will be a little bit easier because
Cartagena, Spain, researchers discov- cracks. I own a black cat that has never you’ll realize, ‘Oh wait, things went
ered that about 40 percent of parents (as far as I know) caused problems. ine last time.’ ” By keeping track
said they believed in magical concepts Although I used to fly on airplanes of these outcomes over time, I can
like the evil eye, and protective amulets with a lucky teddy bear, the one time build up data that my slower side of
were placed by more than 26 percent of I forgot him, the plane didn’t crash. thinking can grasp and use to shake my
the children. Once older adults have accumulated superstitious beliefs, Risen says.
some evidence that those beliefs So a couple of days ago, when my
THE MYTH OF OLD WIVES’ TALES don’t work, “they kind of update” son stayed out late, I held back my
So am I relegated to this superstitious their beliefs about cause and effect, hands. I avoided wood. I even managed
life forever? No, according to Nadia says Brashier. to sleep. And guess what? He came
Brashier, a postdoctoral fellow at “You may be very well practiced home just ine.
Harvard University specializing in mem- at completely ignoring black cats,” This winter, I’ll try it with my roof. D
ory and judgment. She and her team Risen tells me. But to kick harder
published a 2017 study in Psychology superstitious habits, I should break the Galadriel Watson’s upcoming book for kids
and Aging on magical thinking in reinforcing cycle. Instead of knocking highlights impressive human abilities and the
adults. They found that older adults, on wood, noticing the positive results science behind them.
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COVER STORY
Your Daily Dose of
QUANTUM
How the science of the super small
lets you smell, see, touch and more.
BY TIM FOLGER ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAY SMITH

I
f Max Planck hadn’t ignored some bad Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr
advice, he would never have started a and other titans to transform Planck’s inspiration
revolution. The pivotal moment happened in into a full theory, but it all started because no
1878, when young Planck asked one of his one understood what happened to things when
professors whether to continue pursuing a they get hot.
career in physics. Herr Professor Philipp von The resulting theory, quantum mechanics,
Jolly told Planck to ind another line of work. deals with particles and blips of energy in the
All the important discoveries in physics realm of the ultra-small, divorced from our
had already been made, the professor assured everyday experience, and all but invisible to
his young protégé. As Planck later recalled, von our clumsy mammalian sensory apparatuses.
Jolly told him, “[Physics] may yet keep going in Well, not completely invisible. Some quantum
one corner or another, scrutinizing or putting in effects are hiding in plain sight, blatantly and
order a jot here and a tittle there, but the system beautifully obvious, like the sun’s rays and the
as a whole is secured, and theoretical physics is twinkling of the stars — something else that
noticeably approaching its completion.” couldn’t be fully explained before the advent of
Putting one of those jots in order, it turned quantum mechanics.
out, eventually won Planck a Nobel Prize — and How much of the quantum world can we
led to the birth of quantum mechanics. The experience in our daily lives? And what sort of
troublesome trifle concerned a very ordinary information can our senses glean about the true
phenomenon: Why do objects glow the way nature of reality? After all, as the origin of the
they do when heated? All materials, no matter theory itself makes clear, quantum phenomena
what they’re made of, behave the same way with can lie just under our noses. In fact, they may be
increasing temperature: turning red, then yellow, taking place right inside our noses.
then white. Yet no physicist in the 19th century
could explain this seemingly simple process. THE QUANTUM SCHNOZZ
The problem came to be called the ultraviolet What’s going on in your nose when you wake
catastrophe, because the best theorem of the up and smell the coffee, or the slice of bread
day predicted that objects heated to very high browning in your non-lethal toaster? For such
temperatures should spew ininite amounts of an in-your-face sensory organ, the nose is poorly
short-wavelength energy. Since we know a strong understood. No less a luminary than Enrico
current doesn’t turn light bulbs and toasters into Fermi, who built the world’s irst nuclear reactor,
energy-spewing death rays, 19th century physics once remarked to a friend while frying onions
clearly wasn’t the last word. that it would be nice to understand how our sense
Planck found an answer in 1900 with what of smell works.
amounted to a modern-day hack. He proposed So you’re lying in bed, and someone has
(guessed, really) that energy could only be thoughtfully brewed some freshly ground
absorbed or emitted in discrete packets, or quanta. Sumatran dark roast. Molecules from the elixir
It was a radical departure from so-called classical waft through the air. Your inhalations draw some
physics, which held that energy flowed in smooth, of these molecules into a cavity between your eyes
continuous streams. At the time, Planck had no just above the roof of your mouth. The molecules
theoretical justiication — but it turned out to stick to a layer of mucus on the upper surface
work anyway. His quanta effectively capped the of the cavity, embedded with olfactory neurons.
amount of energy that heated objects could release Dangling from the brain like the tentacles of a
at any temperature. No more death rays. jellyish, olfactory neurons are the only part of
So began the quantum revolution. It would the central nervous system constantly exposed to
take decades of incandescent theoretical work by the outside world.
If the biophysicist is right, and we do smell vibrations

in addition to shapes, how do our noses manage
the feat? He speculates that a quantum effect
called tunneling might be involved.
What happens next isn’t quite clear. We know Horsield, a materials scientist at Imperial College
the molecules bind to some of the 400 different London.
receptors on the surface of the olfactory neurons; The conventional explanation for how smell
we don’t know exactly how that contact creates works seems straightforward: The receptors
our sense of smell. Why is smell such a dificult accept very speciic shapes of molecules. They’re
sense to understand? like locks, which can be opened only by the
“In part, it’s the dificulty of setting up right keys. Each of the molecules escaping from
experiments to probe what’s going on inside the your cup of joe, according to this model, its
olfactory receptors of the nose,” says Andrew into a particular set of receptors in your nose.

The brain interprets the unique combination of key model suggests our sense of smell arises not
receptors activated by their bound molecules as just from the shape of molecules, but also from
the smell of coffee. In other words, we smell the the manner in which those molecules vibrate.
shapes of molecules. All molecules constantly jiggle with distinct
But there’s a fundamental problem with the tempos, based on their structure. Could our noses
lock-and-key model: “You can have molecules somehow detect differences in those vibrational
of wildly different shape and composition, which frequencies? Luca Turin, a biophysicist at the
all give you the same odor perception,” says Alexander Fleming Biomedical Sciences Research
Horsield. It seems that something more than Center in Greece, believes they can.
shape must be involved, but what? Turin, who also happens to be one of the
A controversial alternative to the lock-and- world’s leading perfume experts, was inspired
Some 93 million miles separate the sun and Earth,
and it takes photons just over eight minutes to cover
that distance. But the bulk of their journey occurs
inside the sun, where a typical photon spends
a million years trying to escape.
by a vibrational theory of smell irst proposed impulses that create the perceptions of different
by chemist Malcolm Dyson in 1938. After smells in the brain.
Turin irst caught scent of Dyson’s idea in the Tucked away in our noses, then, might be a
1990s, he started looking for molecules that sophisticated electronic detector. How could our
would allow him to test the theory. He hit upon noses have evolved to take advantage of such
sulfur compounds, which have a unique odor quantum strangeness? “I think we underestimate
and a characteristic molecular vibration. Turin the technology, so to speak, of life by a couple of
then needed to identify a completely unrelated orders of magnitude,” says Turin. “Four billion
compound — one with a different molecular shape years of R&D with unlimited funding is a long
than sulfur but possessing the same vibrational time. And I don’t think this is the most amazing
frequency — to see if it would smell anything thing that life does.”
like sulfur. Eventually, he found one, a molecule
containing boron. And sure enough, it reeked of SIGHT UNSEEN
sulfur. “That’s when the penny dropped,” he says. OK, so you’re quafing your coffee, nearly
“I thought, ‘This cannot be a coincidence.’ ” awake. Your eyelids are gearing up for daytime
Since that odoriferous eureka moment, Turin has mode, blinking, letting in a bit of the light that’s
been gathering experimental evidence to support streaming through the window. As you sip your
the idea, collaborating with Horsield to work out brew, ponder this: The particles of light warming
the theoretical details. Five years ago, when Turin your face and entering your eyes originated a
and colleagues designed an experiment in which million years ago in the center of the sun, around
some of the hydrogen molecules in a musk-scented the time our not-quite-human ancestors started
fragrance were replaced with deuterium — a to use ire. The sun wouldn’t even be sending out
variety of hydrogen containing an extra neutron — those particles, named photons, if not for the
they found that people could smell the difference. same phenomenon that might underlie our sense
Since hydrogen and deuterium have identical of smell — quantum tunneling.
shapes but different vibrational frequencies, Some 93 million miles separate the sun and
the results again suggested that our noses could Earth, and it takes photons just over eight
indeed detect vibrations. Similar experiments with minutes to cover that distance. But the bulk of
fruit flies complemented those results. their journey occurs inside the sun, where a
Turin’s idea remains contentious — typical photon spends a million years trying to
his experimental data have divided the escape. Matter is so tightly packed at the center of
interdisciplinary community of olfactory our star — the hydrogen there is about 13 times
researchers. But if he is right, and we do smell denser than lead — that photons can travel only
vibrations in addition to shapes, how do our noses an ininitesimal fraction of a second before being
manage the feat? Turin speculates that a quantum absorbed by a hydrogen ion, which then spits the
effect called tunneling might be involved. photon out for another soon-to-be-interrupted
In quantum mechanics, electrons and all other journey, ad ininitum. After about a billion trillion
particles possess a dual nature; each is both such interactions, a photon inally emerges from
a particle and a wave. This sometimes allows the surface of the sun, having zigged and zagged
electrons to spread out and travel, or tunnel, randomly for a thousand millennia.
through materials in ways that would be forbidden But the photons never would have been born,
to particles under the rules of classical physics. and the sun wouldn’t shine, were it not for quantum
The molecular vibrations of a scent molecule tunneling. The sun and all other stars generate
might provide the right jump down in energy that light by nuclear fusion, smashing hydrogen ions
electrons need to tunnel from one part of an odor together to form helium, a process that releases
receptor to another. The tunneling rate would energy. Every second, the sun converts about
change with different molecules, triggering nerve 4 million tons of matter into energy. But hydrogen

ions, single protons, have positive electric charges Would the person then sense light on both sides
and naturally repel each other. So how can they of the retina? Or would the interaction of the
possibly fuse? photon with the eye cause the superposition to
With quantum tunneling, the wave nature of “collapse,” as physicists say, into one position or
protons allows them to overlap ever so slightly, the other — and if so, would it happen equally on
like ripples merging on the surface of a pond. the right and left side, as theory suggests?
That overlap brings the proton waves close “Based on standard quantum mechanics, the
enough so that another force — the strong photon in the superposition probably wouldn’t
nuclear force, which kicks in only at extremely look any different to them than actually randomly
small distances — can overcome the particles’ sending a photon to the left or the right,” says
electrical repulsion. The protons fuse and release Holmes. If it turns out that someone participating
a single photon. in the experiment did indeed perceive the photon
Our eyes have evolved to be exquisitely sensitive in both places simultaneously, would that mean the
to these photons. Some recent experiments have person herself was in a quantum state? “You could
shown that we can even detect single photons, say the observer was in a quantum superposition
which raises an intriguing possibility: Could for some vanishingly small amount of time,” says
humans be used to test some of the weird features Holmes. “But no one has tried this, so truly, we don’t
of quantum mechanics? That is, could a person know. That’s reason enough to do the experiment.”
— like a photon or an electron or Schrödinger’s
hapless cat, dead and alive at the same time — FEELING YOUR WAY
directly engage with the quantum world? What Now back to that cup of coffee. The cup feels
might such an experience be like? substantial, a solid chunk of matter irmly in
“We don’t know because no one has tried it,” contact with the skin of your hand. But that’s an
says Rebecca Holmes, a physicist at Los Alamos illusion: We never really touch anything, at least
National Laboratory in New Mexico. Three not in the sense of two solid slabs of matter coming
years ago, when she was a graduate student at together. More than 99.9999999999 percent of an
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, atom consists of empty space, with nearly all its
Holmes was part of a team led by Paul Kwiat stuff concentrated in the nucleus.
that showed people could detect short bursts of When you exert pressure against the cup with
light consisting of just three photons. In 2016, a your hand, the seeming solidity comes from
competing group of researchers, led by physicist the resistance of electrons in the cup. Electrons
Alipasha Vaziri at Rockefeller University in New themselves don’t have any volume at all — they’re
York, found that humans can indeed see single just fleeting, zero-dimensional flecks of negative
photons. Seeing, though, might not accurately electric charge that surround atoms and molecules
describe the experience. Vaziri, who tried out the like clouds. And the laws of quantum mechanics
photon-glimpsing himself, told the journal Nature, limit them to speciic energy levels around atoms
“It’s not like seeing light. It’s almost a feeling, at and molecules. As your hand grasps the cup, it
the threshold of imagination.” forces electrons from one level to another, and that
In the near future, Holmes and Vaziri expect requires energy from the hand’s muscles, which the
experiments that will test what people perceive brain interprets as touching something solid.
when photons are put into strange quantum Our sense of touch, then, arises from an
states. For example, physicists can coax a single exceedingly complex interaction between electrons
photon into what they call a superposition, where around the molecules of our bodies and those of
it exists in two different places simultaneously. the objects we encounter. From that information,
Holmes and her colleagues have proposed an our brain creates the illusion that we possess
experiment involving two scenarios to test whether solid bodies moving through a world illed with
people might directly perceive a superposition of other solid objects. Touch doesn’t give us an
photons. In the irst, ho-hum scenario, a single accurate sense of reality. And it may be that none
photon would go into either the left or right of our perceptions match what’s really out there.
side of a person’s retina, and the person would Donald Hoffman, a cognitive neuroscientist at the
note on which side of the retina they sensed University of California, Irvine, believes that our
the photon. But in the other scenario, a photon senses and brain evolved to hide the true nature of
would be placed in a quantum superposition that reality, not to reveal it.
would allow it to do the seemingly impossible: “My idea is that reality, whatever it is, is too
travel to both the right and left sides of the complicated and would take us too much time and
retina simultaneously. energy [to process],” he says.
In Hoffman’s view, evolution has shaped our
brains to operate in much the same way, as a
graphical interface that doesn’t reproduce the
world with any sort of idelity. Evolution doesn’t
favor the development of accurate perceptions; it
rewards ones that enhance survival. Or as Hoffman
puts it, “Fitness beats truth.”
Hoffman and his graduate students have run
hundreds of thousands of computer models in
recent years to test his ideas. In the simulations,
artiicial life-forms compete for limited resources.
And in every case, the organisms programmed to
emphasize itness outcompete the various ones
primed for accurate perceptions. For example,
if one organism is tuned to accurately perceive,
say, the total amount of water present in an
environment, it will lose out to an organism that’s
tuned to perceive something simpler: the optimal
amount of water needed to stay alive.
So while one organism might construct a
more accurate representation of reality, that
representation doesn’t enhance its survivability.
Hoffman’s studies have led him to a remarkable
conclusion: “To the extent that we’re tuned to
itness, we will not be tuned to reality. You can’t
More than do both.”
His ideas align with what some physicists
99.9999999999 believe to be a central message of quantum theory:
percent of an atom Reality is not completely objective — we cannot
consists of empty separate ourselves from the world we observe.
Hoffman fully embraces that view. “Space is just
space, with nearly all a data structure,” he says, “and physical objects
its stuff concentrated are themselves also data structures that we create
on the fly. When I look at that hill over there, I
in the nucleus. When create that data structure. Then I look away and
you exert pressure I’ve trashed that data structure because I don’t
need it anymore.”
against a cup with your As Hoffman’s work shows, we haven’t yet come
hand, the seeming to grips with the full meaning of quantum theory
and what it says about the nature of reality. Planck
solidity comes from himself struggled for most of his life to understand
the resistance of the theory he helped launch, and always believed
in an objective universe that exists independently
electrons in the cup. of us. He once wrote about why he decided to go
into physics against the advice of his mentor: “The
outside world is something independent from man,
something absolute, and the quest for the laws
which apply to this absolute appeared to me as the
Hoffman likens the picture our brain constructs most sublime scientiic pursuit in life.” Maybe it
of the world to the graphical interface on a will take another century, and another revolution,
computer screen. All the colorful icons on the to prove whether he was right, or as mistaken as
screen — the trash can, the mouse pointer, the Professor von Jolly. D
ile folders — bear no resemblance at all to what’s
really going on inside the computer. They’re Tim Folger is a contributing editor to Discover and series
abstractions, simpliications that allow us to editor of The Best American Science and Nature Writing,
interact with complex electronics. an annual anthology. He lives in New Mexico.

Eight thousand years
ago, early agriculturalists
moved into the lands
of hunter-gatherers in
Europe. What happened
next changed history.
BY MARK BARNA
ILLUSTRATIONS BY PRINCE PARISE

he barrel-chested man is known to us
only as Burial 7/I. His 8,000-year-old
remains were found at a ishing camp
that hugs a curve in the Danube River
as it winds through southeastern
Europe, on its way to the Black Sea.
For most of his life, he stalked red deer in dense human remains that are 7,900 to 8,200 years old.
forests and wrestled sturgeon from whirlpools The sites here represent the oldest examples in
in the churning river. But later in life, he seemed Europe of interaction between farmers and forag-
to turn away from the hunter-gatherer life ers during the region’s Neolithic transition, when
of his ancestors and toward that of a settled the semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle that
agriculturalist. had persisted for millennia was replaced with
Burial 7/I, according to some of the archaeolo- agricultural communities. That transition, which
gists who have studied him, was born a hunter and occurred at different times in different places,
died a farmer — though other researchers dispute changed the course of humanity.
that. It’s just one of the questions that linger over “It is probably the most exciting period in his-
▼ The skeleton this stretch of the Danube, where archaeological tory that I am aware of,” says Joachim Burger, an
known to
archaeologists inds are revealing details of an unprecedented archaeologist and population geneticist at Mainz
as Burial 7/I was encounter between traditional European hunter- University in Germany.
interred 8,000
years ago along
gatherers and early farmers moving into the area The sites offer a glimpse of the everyday life of
the Danube River from the south. people living at this time of momentous transi-
with an additional Since the 1960s, at these sites where the Danube tion. And thanks to analysis of Burial 7/I and
human skull, as
well as the skull of forms the border between Serbia and Romania, other remains through ancient DNA sequencing
an auroch (a type archaeologists have turned up artifacts and and other methods, researchers are uncovering
of wild cattle).
more details — and more mys-
teries — about the individuals
who called this bend in the
river home.
Ancient DNA analysis has
established that the arriving
farmers were most closely
related to people living in
northwestern Anatolia, or the
Asian part of modern Turkey.
Agriculture had been a way
of life for them for thousands
of years. It had spread from
the Fertile Crescent in the
southeast, a region that today
includes Iran and Iraq.
The Anatolians arriving at
the Danube’s banks to farm
were not the irst to get their
INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY, BELGRADE
hands dirty in European ields.

Hundreds of miles to the south,
by the Aegean Sea in southern
Greece, agriculturalists were
reaping and sowing 500 years
before the Anatolians showed
up. But there is scant evidence
ROMANIA Dam
IRON
GATES I
r
ive
eR
ub
Lepenski Vir
n
Da
SERBIA
ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES
Dam
Open-air sites IRON
Danu Cave/rock shelter GATES II
b e Ri
ver
TURKEY
(Ancient Anatolia)
Spre
ad of agriculture
Source: "Radiocarbon and Stable Isotope Evidence of Dietary Change from the Mesolithic
to the Middle Ages in the Iron Gates: New Results From Lepenski Vir," Radiocarbon, 2004
▲ Neolithic
farmers migrating
that those earlier farmers interacted FISHERMEN FORAGERS out of Anatolia
with local hunter-gatherers. Home to scores of prehistoric brought their way
of life to a corner
Before the ifth millennium B.C., settlement sites, this nearly 100-mile of southeastern
or 7,000 years ago, farmers and for- stretch of river is known as the Europe. The
region, rich in
agers rarely crossed paths; examina- Iron Gates region, named after two archaeological
tion of burial remains shows genetic dams built decades ago. Just as the sites, is now
separation, says Burger. “They Danube is a resource for modern known as the Iron
Gates, named
probably saw each other from a dis- populations, it sustained the hunter- after Cold War-era
tance occasionally and just stared gatherer bands that lived there more dams erected
along the Danube
at each other, thinking, ‘Oh, those than 8,000 years in the past. River there.
strange people.’ ” While many forager groups in
Whether farmers or foragers, other parts of the world moved with
groups were small and scattered, the seasons, hunting game and gath-
dwarfed by the limitless European ering plants, Iron Gates bands stuck
landscape. In addition, they sought close to the river valley. Excavations
different environments, says Stephen Shennan, an of their encampments reveal large amounts of ish
archaeologist at the University College London bones; dietary clues preserved in the foragers’
and author of the book The First Farmers of bones showed heavy ish consumption.
Europe. Foragers opted for forests and mountains Their favorite catch was apparently sturgeon,
full of game, or rivers and coasts teeming with some specimens longer than a man, as they swam
ish. Farmers chose flatland with fertile soil in upriver in spring from the Black Sea to breed
ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER
temperate climates. and spawn. The activity required planning, and

And yet, against all odds, here along the it was a group effort: Parties would have used
Danube, contact happened. “It is something very boats, nets, harpoons and stone mallets for club-
special and doesn’t represent the norm at all,” bing, says Columbia University archaeologist
says Shennan. Dušan Bori , who has excavated Iron Gates sites.

▲ Lepenski Vir,
a key site for
Favorite ishing spots would have been the river’s outcomes in human history. In the 1500s, Neolithic foragers
whirlpools, where the currents confused the ani- the arriving Spanish in Mexico wiped out the and farmers,
was relocated in
mals and made them easy prey — and a protein- Aztec and Incan empires. The Pilgrims in New 1971 during dam
rich staple. England were friends with Native Americans, construction
to avoid being
Soija Stefanovi , an anthropologist at the until they weren’t. flooded; it‘s now
University of Belgrade, says that based on her But at Iron Gates, farmers and foragers got protected from
bone analyses of many Mesolithic remains at Iron along. Human remains unearthed at the numer- the elements on
a hillside above
Gates, the foragers were healthy with no signs of ous sites have no battle wounds or other injuries the whirlpool
malnutrition. “Their diet in the Mesolithic was consistent with full-scale conflict. “The evidence for which it was
named.
actually perfect,” she says. “In many cases, they shows that these two populations were relatively
lived quite long, 50 to 60 years.” peaceful in their interactions, rather than killing
each other or [attacking] each other,” says Bori .
FIRST CONTACT “I would not exclude the possibility of outbursts
Besides eating a diet of mostly ish, the forag- of violence, but there is no systematic violence of
ers looked physically different from the farm- one population on the other.”
ers. Remains from Iron Gates reveal the male There are a number of reasons why the hunter-
hunter-gatherers, on average, were more muscular gatherers may have been friendly toward the new
and about a head taller than the male farmers, arrivals. For example, they might not have viewed
though women from both cultures were about the the migrants as a threat. At least initially, the
same height. foragers outnumbered the migrants. A 2015 paper
The farmers likely traveled from Anatolia along in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences
the Black Sea coast to the Danube peninsula, placed the river valley’s hunter-gatherer popula-
where they turned upriver and into the heart of tion in the hundreds. No warrior invasion here.
southeastern Europe. Upon arrival, they probably And the migrants’ interest was agriculture, not
aimed to befriend the locals, a common practice muscling a netted sturgeon out of a whirlpool. So
MITA STOCK IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK
of migrants entering an inhabited territory, territorial conflicts were unlikely.

says University of Kansas archaeologist Ivana Still, the foragers’ receptiveness also could have
Radovanovi , who studies Iron Gates. They’d been something else entirely: They were already
want to be on good terms to pick the foragers’ aware of the farming way, to some extent.
brains about the region. Vast trade networks linked the foragers
This could have ended badly, given other with regions perhaps as far away as Greece, as

▲ A broad bend
in the Danube
River, seen here indicated by exotic items found at Iron Gates: Trading for crops before embracing agriculture
from the Serbian seashell beads from the Black Sea and tools made is common. North American foragers traded for
side looking into
Romania, is home of volcanic obsidian mined from an island in the domesticated maize for hundreds of years prior
to Lepenski Vir Aegean Sea. In fact, hunter-gatherers of the era to cultivating it themselves, the paper points out.
(at far left) and
several other
were no strangers to networking. “Their trade Still, some scientists want to see more evidence.
archaeological connections were massive and probably still Mirjana Roksandic, a University of Winnipeg
sites dating underestimated,” says Burger. anthropologist who has excavated at Iron Gates,
back more than
8,000 years Crops may have been among the items traded. isn’t convinced that wild and domesticated starch
and charting According to a paper published in 2016 in the grains can be distinguished from each other in
the arrival of
agriculture. journal PNAS, Iron Gates hunter-gatherers were tooth plaque.
eating domesticated wheat and barley as early as One fact not disputed among researchers: The
8,600 years ago, more than 400 years before the farmers and foragers eventually shared their cul-
Anatolian farmers arrived. Researchers discov- tures. Both groups saw beneits to it, says Burger.
ered starch granules in the tooth plaque of some The foragers had a generous food supply, which
of the foragers. The starch, they contend, came intrigued the farmers. And the foragers were open
from domesticated grains not grown in the region. to learning about food production. Within a few
generations, ancient DNA shows, the two groups buried there: Nearly 200 human remains have
were having sex and raising families. “For people been recovered, some beneath buildings.
to marry into another population, there must be From about 9,500 years ago, when only hunter-
a high economic attraction underlying this pro- gatherers lived in the area, to about 7,500 years
cess,” says Burger. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t do ago, when Iron Gates was the sole domain of
it. It’s not like you fall in love and it’s a romantic farmers, Lepenski Vir was variously a ishing
story. You are attracted because you think you camp, a social destination, a settlement, a burial
can have a better life.” site and perhaps a spiritual center. It might have
been all or a combination during some periods.
A CULTURAL POTPOURRI The river site offers a wealth of evidence for cul-
Among the Iron Gates settlements is Lepenski tural exchange during the transition.
ZARKO DJOKIC/SHUTTERSTOCK
Vir, named after the whirlpool at its doorstep. Consider how the bodies were buried. In south-
(Vir means “whirlpool” in Serbian.) Perhaps only eastern Europe, hunter-gatherers buried their
a few dozen people occupied it at any one time, dead on their backs with hands usually placed on
according to the paper in Archaeological and the stomach and legs straight. Anatolian farmers
Anthropological Sciences. But many people were buried their dead on their sides in a curled position.

strontium isotope ratios in tooth
enamel, which forms in early
childhood. Unlike genetic mate-
rial, tooth enamel is generally
impervious to degradation after
death. Strontium comes from
weathering rocks, and it ends up
in water and food, seeping into
tooth enamel layers. The molec-
ular particles are a signature of
a geographic region and indicate
where someone lived in youth. If
someone were born in northern
Greece or Anatolia, the stron-
tium signal would be different
from that of Iron Gates natives.
Scientists have long suspected
that Danube foragers and their
farming neighbors gathered at
Lepenski Vir to exchange stories
and ideas, and probably to ind
mates. The strontium analysis,
published in a 2013 PNAS paper,
supports this idea. Of the 45
remains tested, 10 belonged
to women who came from
Anatolia, presumably as part of
the farming communities — a
head-turning number in what is
essentially a forager settlement.
▲ Two different Adding to the mystery, three of
styles of burial at
Lepenski Vir and This all gets jumbled at Lepenski. those women were buried in the
other sites in the Several people with DNA matching hunter-gatherer manner.
region reflect the
disparate cultures Anatolian farmers were buried in the The discovery suggests the
merging into one. hunter-gatherer manner; curled burials casual manner in which farming
Foragers native
to the area buried
appeared at the tail end of the transi- spread, says Bori , co-author of
their dead on tion, about 8,000 years ago. the paper. “It is very likely that
their backs, but The decorative items the two groups Neolithic women coming into
farmers arriving
from Anatolia laid wore also became mixed up. Foragers the forager settlements spread
them to rest on adorned themselves with disk-shaped [farming] skills,” he says.
their side, knees
pulled toward beads like those worn by Anatolians, Lepenski Vir’s most intrigu-
elbows. while forager beads made from mol- ing human burial is that of 7/I
lusks vanished from the archaeological — the large-framed man, likely
record. Other evidence shows that farmers brought in his 50s, that some researchers believe was
with them more than just agriculture. Shards of born a hunter and died a farmer. He was laid to
pottery, the irst found in the area, and bones of rest beneath a building’s plaster floor, with the
domesticated animals — including goats, cattle detached skull of another individual placed over
and pigs — have been recovered. his left shoulder.
The foragers also changed their diet. Bone col- Researchers examined collagen from the man’s
lagen analysis reveals they were consuming less right femur and a rib, according to a study pub-
ish and more grains and meat, like the farmers lished in 2015 in Radiocarbon. The femur, which
in Anatolia. stops replacing collagen usually in early adult-
hood, suggested a diet primarily of ish, typical of
THE LAST FORAGER Iron Gates foragers. The rib, however, indicated
Ancient DNA and artifacts aren’t the only a farmer’s grain and meat-heavy diet. Collagen in
means to tell the story of Iron Gates. Scientists a rib is continually replaced, so it suggests a per-
can determine migration patterns by measuring son’s diet in their inal years, says Clive Bonsall,
▲ From left:
Limestone
lead author and an archaeologist at the University appears to have been the region’s irst multicul- beads found in
of Edinburgh. tural nexus. “That might have contributed to the an Iron Gates
grave, statues
Rather than feasting on, say, a plate of catish creativity we see at the site, and what makes the that may depict
in the years before his death, Burial 7/I might site so important,” says Bori . fishlike gods, a
reconstructed
have spooned up calorie-rich porridge, a mix of Within hundreds of years of irst contact house at the
cereals and goat’s milk. Here was the Neolithic in Iron Gates, complex agricultural societies Lepenski
transition embodied in one person. sprang up in southeastern Europe, along with Vir site and
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: DUSAN BORIC; ALBUM/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; PAVLEMARJANOVIC/SHUTTERSTOCK; BORIC; ALBUM/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
perforated
Despite the dietary turn, the ways of his other advances, such as intricate metalwork. shell beads all
ancestors didn’t completely escape him: The man Meanwhile, agriculture was also spreading provide clues
to how farmers
was laid to rest on his back, body straight, palms outside southeastern Europe. By the middle and foragers
on his belly. of the sixth millennium B.C., some 400 years interacted
8,000 years
The conclusions in the Radiocarbon study are after Burial 7/I, farming was in central Europe ago.
controversial. Originally excavated in the 1960s, and on the Iberian Peninsula, according
Burial 7/I’s remains have been moved to differ- to a paper published in Nature in February.
ent storage locations and sometimes mishandled, By the end of that millennium, agriculture
says Roksandic, who examined the skeleton had reached Eastern Europe, which included
in the late 1990s and is the paper’s co-author. farming settlements in the Ukraine of hundreds
Contamination is possible, she acknowledges. of people.
But Bonsall says bone collagen is relatively resis- The swiftness of the agricultural revolution
tant to postmortem alteration. He hopes that makes the interaction at Iron Gates all the more
future analysis of the skeleton’s DNA and teeth interesting. An ancient subsistence strategy
will answer questions raised by colleagues. was starting to vanish. A cultural watershed,
By the time the man died, about 8,000 years perhaps the most signiicant in human history,
ago, hunter-gatherer culture was in its twilight was underway. Change was happening on an
at Iron Gates. “It takes not more than 300 years, unprecedented level. But from the viewpoint of
and the whole area is full of farmers,” says Burger. an individual living through it, the transition
“The hunter-gatherers have been replaced.” was pretty casual — manifesting, on occasion,
as foragers and farmers talking shop above the
FARMER BOOM thrum of a river. D
Before the foragers were fully absorbed into the
farming communities, however, Lepenski Vir Mark Barna is an associate editor at Discover.

BY HANNAH FRY
ILLUSTRATIONS BY NEIL WEBB
he sun was barely above the horizon on March 13, a hill — at which point the tires started spinning and, without
2004, but the Slash X saloon bar, in the middle a human to help, carried on spinning until they caught ire. It
of the Mojave Desert, was already thronging was over by late morning. A DARPA organizer climbed into a
with people. helicopter and flew over to the inish line to inform the waiting
The bar is on the outskirts of Barstow, a journalists that none of the cars would be getting that far.
California town between Los Angeles and Las The race had been oily, dusty, noisy and destructive —
Vegas. It’s a place popular with cowboys and off- and had ended without a winner. All those teams of people
roaders, but on that spring day it had drawn the had worked for a year on a creation that had lasted, at best,
attention of another kind of crowd. A makeshift stadium that a few minutes.
had been built was packed with engineers, excited spectators But the competition was anything but a disaster. The rivalry
and foolhardy petrol heads who all shared a similar dream: had led to an explosion of new ideas, and by the next DARPA
to be the irst people on Earth to witness a driverless car win Grand Challenge in 2005, the technology was vastly improved.
a race. An astonishing ive driverless cars completed the race without
The race had been organized by the U.S. Defense Advanced any human intervention.
Research Projects Agency, or DARPA (nicknamed the Now, more than a decade later, it’s widely accepted that
Pentagon’s “mad science” division). The agency had been the future of transportation is driverless. In late 2017,
interested in unmanned vehicles for a while, and with good rea- Philip Hammond, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer,
son: Roadside bombs and targeted attacks on military vehicles announced the government’s intention to have fully driver-
were a major cause of death on the battleield. Earlier that less cars — without a safety attendant on board — on British
year, DARPA had announced its intention to make one-third roads by 2021. Daimler, a Germany-based auto manufacturer,
of U.S. ground military forces vehicles autonomous by 2015. has promised driverless cars by 2020, and Ford by 2021.
Up to that point, progress had been slow and expensive. Other manufacturers have made similar forecasts for their
DARPA had spent around half a billion dollars over two driverless vehicles.
decades funding research at universities and companies in the On the surface, building a driverless car sounds as if it should
hope of achieving its ambition. But then came an ingenious be relatively easy. Most humans manage to master the requisite
idea: Why not create a competition? The agency would invite skills to drive. Plus, there are only two possible outputs: speed
anyone in the country to design their own driverless car and and direction. It’s a question of how much gas to apply and
race them against each other on a long-distance track, with how much to turn the wheel. How hard can it be?
a prize of $1 million for the winner. It would be a quick and But, as the irst DARPA Grand Challenge demonstrated,
cheap way to give DARPA a head start in pursuing its goal. building an autonomous vehicle is a lot trickier than it looks.
On the morning of the 132-mile race, a ramshackle lineup of Things quickly get complicated when you’re trying to get
cars gathered at Slash X, along with a few thousand spectators. an algorithm to control a great big hunk of metal traveling
Things didn’t quite go as planned. One car flipped upside down at 60 mph.
in the starting area and had to be withdrawn. A self-driving
motorbike barely cleared the start line before it rolled onto its BEYOND THE RULES OF THE ROAD
side and was declared out of the race. One car hit a concrete Imagine you’ve got two vehicles approaching each other at
wall 50 yards in. Another got tangled in a barbwire fence. speed, traveling in different directions down a gently curved
The scene around the saloon bar began to look like a robot county highway.
graveyard. A human driver will be perfectly comfortable in that scenario,
The top-scoring vehicle, an entry by Carnegie Mellon knowing the other car will stick to its own lane and pass safely
University, managed an impressive 7 miles before misjudging a few feet to the side. “But for the longest time, it does look
like you’re going to hit each other,” explains Paul Unfortunately, the answer to that
Newman, professor of robotics at the University question is probably not anytime soon.
of Oxford and founder of Oxbotica, a company That driverless dream we’re all waiting for
that builds driverless cars. might be a lot further away than we think.
How do you teach a driverless car not to panic That’s because there’s another layer of
in that situation? You don’t want the vehicle to dificulty to contend with when trying to
drive off the side of the road trying to avoid a build that sci-i fantasy of a go-anywhere,
collision that was never going to happen, says do-anything, steering-wheel-free driverless
Newman. But, equally, you don’t want it to be car, and it’s one that goes well beyond the
complacent if you really do ind yourself on technical challenge.
the verge of a head-on crash. Remember, too,
these cars are only ever making educated guesses THE PEOPLE FACTOR
about what to do. A fully autonomous car will also have to
How do you get it to guess right every deal with the tricky problem of people.
single time? That, says Newman, “is a hard, “People are mischievous,” says Jack Stilgoe,
hard problem.” a sociologist at the University College
It’s a problem that puzzled experts for a long London who studies the social impact of
time, but it does have a solution. The trick is to technology. “They’re active agents, not
build in a model for how other — sane — driv- just passive parts of the scenery.”
ers will behave. Unfortunately, the same can’t be Imagine a world where truly, perfectly
said of other nuanced driving scenarios. autonomous vehicles exist. The No. 1 rule
“What’s hard is all the problems with driving that have noth- in their onboard algorithms will be to avoid collisions wherever
ing to do with driving,” says Newman. possible. And that changes the dynamics of the road. If you
For instance, how do you teach a self-driving algorithm to stand in front of a driverless car, it has to stop. If you pull out
understand that you need to be extra cautious upon hearing in front of one at a junction, it has to behave submissively.
the tunes of an ice cream truck, or when passing a group of “People who’ve been relatively powerless on roads up till
kids playing with a ball on the sidewalk? now, like cyclists, may start cycling very slowly in front of
Even harder, how do you teach a car that it should some- self-driving cars knowing that there is never going to be any
times break the rules of the road? What if an ambulance with aggression,” says Stilgoe.
its lights on is trying to get past on a narrow street and you Getting around this problem might mean bringing in
need to drive up on the sidewalk to let it through? Or if an oil stricter rules to deal with people who abuse their position as
tanker has jackknifed across a country lane and you need to cyclists or pedestrians. It’s been done before, of course: Think
get out of there by any means possible? of jaywalking. Or it could mean forcing everything else off the
“None of these are in the [U.K.] Highway Code,” Newman roads, as happened with the introduction of the automobile.
points out. And yet a truly autonomous car needs to know That’s why you don’t see bicycles, horses, carts, carriages or
how to deal with all of these scenarios if it’s to exist without pedestrians on an expressway.
ever having any human intervention. Even in emergencies. If we want fully autonomous cars, we’ll almost certainly
That’s not to say these are insurmountable problems. have to do something similar again and limit the number of
“I don’t believe there’s any level of intelligence that we won’t aggressive drivers, ice cream trucks, kids playing in the road,
be able to get a machine to do,” says Newman. “The only roadwork signs, dificult pedestrians, emergency vehicles,
question is when.” cyclists, mobility scooters and everything else that makes the

problem of autonomy so dificult. That’s ine, but Automation,” on the hidden dangers of
it’s a little different from the way the idea is cur- relying too heavily on automated systems.
rently being sold to us. A machine built to improve human perfor-
“The rhetoric of autonomy and transport is all mance, she explained, will lead — ironi-
about not changing the world,” says Stilgoe. “It’s cally — to a reduction in human ability.
about keeping the world as it is but making and By now, we’ve all borne witness to this
allowing a robot to just be as good as and then in some small way. It’s why people can’t
better than a human at navigating it. And I think remember phone numbers anymore, why
that’s stupid.” many of us struggle to read our own hand-
But hang on, some of you may be thinking. writing and why lots of us can’t navigate
Hasn’t this problem already been cracked? Hasn’t anywhere without GPS. With technology
Waymo, Google’s autonomous car, driven mil- to do it all for us, there’s little opportunity
lions of miles already? Aren’t Waymo’s fully to practice our skills.
autonomous cars (or at least, close-to-fully- There is some concern that this might
autonomous cars) currently driving around the happen with self-driving cars — where the
roads of Phoenix? stakes are a lot higher than with handwrit-
Well, yes. But not every mile of road is cre- ing. Until we get to full autonomy, the car
ated equally. Most miles are so easy to drive, will still sometimes unexpectedly hand
you can do it while daydreaming. Others are far back control to the driver. Will we be able
more challenging. to remember instinctively what to do? And
At the time of writing, Waymo cars aren’t will teenage drivers of the future ever have
allowed to go just anywhere: They’re “geo-fenced” the chance to master requisite driving
into a small, predetermined area. So, too, are skills in the irst place?
the driverless cars Daimler and Ford propose to have on the But even if all drivers manage to stay competent, there’s
roads by 2020 and 2021, respectively. They’re conined to a another issue we’ll still have to contend with: What level of
pre-decided go-zone. And that does make the problem of awareness is being asked of the human driver before the car’s
autonomy simpler. autopilot cuts out?
Newman says the future of driverless cars will involve these One level is that the driver is expected to pay careful atten-
types of go-zones. tion to the road at all times. At the time of writing, Tesla’s
“They’ll come out working in an area that’s very well known, Autopilot is one such example of this approach. It’s currently
where their owners are extremely conident that they’ll work,” like a fancy cruise control: It’ll steer and brake and accelerate
says Newman. “So it could be part of a city, not in the middle on the motorway, but expects the driver to be alert, attentive
of a place with unusual roads or where cows could wander into and ready to step in at all times. To make sure you’re paying
the path. Maybe they’ll work at certain times of day and in attention, an alarm sounds if you remove your hands from the
certain weather situations. They’re going to be operated as a wheel for too long.
transport service.” But that’s not an approach that’s going to end well. “It’s
impossible for even a highly motivated human to maintain
STAYING FOCUSED effective visual attention toward a source of information, on
Lisanne Bainbridge, a psychologist at the University College which very little happens, for more than about half an hour,”
London, published a seminal essay in 1983 called “Ironies of Bainbridge wrote in her essay.
Other autonomous car programs are inding the same Researchers found that, after an alarm sounded for passen-
issues. Although Uber’s driverless cars require human gers to regain control, it took them about 40 seconds to do it.
intervention every 13 miles, getting drivers to pay attention Ironically, the better self-driving technology gets, the worse
remains a struggle. In March, an Uber self-driving vehicle these problems become. A sloppy autopilot that sets off an
fatally struck a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. Video foot- alarm every 15 minutes will keep a driver continually engaged
age from inside the car showed that the “human monitor” and in regular practice. It’s the smooth and sophisticated auto-
sitting behind the wheel was looking away from the road in matic systems that are almost always reliable that you’ve got to
the moments before the collision. watch out for.
“The worst case is a car that will need driver intervention
A PLAN FOR THE INEVITABLE once every 200,000 miles,” Gill Pratt, head of Toyota’s research
Though this is a serious problem, there is an alternative. The institute, told technology magazine IEEE Spectrum in 2017.
car companies could accept that humans will be humans, Pratt says someone who buys a new car every 100,000 miles
acknowledge that our minds will wander. After all, being might never need to take over control from the car. “But every
able to read a book while driving is part of the appeal of self- once in a while, maybe once for every two cars that I own, there
driving cars. would be that one time where it suddenly goes ‘beep beep beep,
Some manufacturers have already started to build their cars now it’s your turn!’ ” Pratt told the magazine. “And the person,
to accommodate our inattention. Audi’s Trafic Jam Pilot is typically having not seen this for years and years, would . . . not
one example. It can completely take over when you’re in slow- be prepared when that happened.”
moving highway trafic, leaving you to sit back and enjoy the
ride. Just be prepared to step in if something goes wrong. But ADJUSTING EXPECTATIONS
there’s a reason why Audi has limited its system to slow-moving As is the case with much of the driverless technology that is so
trafic on limited-access roads. The risks of catastrophe are keenly discussed, we’ll have to wait and see how this turns out.
lower in motorway congestion. But one thing is for sure: As time goes on, autonomous driving
And that’s an important distinction. Because as soon as a will have a few lessons to teach us that apply well beyond the
human stops monitoring the road, you’re left with the worst world of motoring — not just about the messiness of handing
possible combination of circumstances when an emergency over control, but about being realistic in our expectations of
happens. A driver who’s not paying attention will have very what algorithms can do.
little time to assess their surroundings and decide what to do. If this is going to work, we’ll have to adjust our way of
Imagine sitting in a self-driving car, hearing an alarm and thinking. We’re going to need to throw away the idea that
looking up from your book to see a truck ahead shedding its cars should work perfectly every time, and accept that, while
load onto your path. In an instant, you’ll have to process all mechanical failure might be a rare event, algorithmic failure
the information around you: the motorbike in the left lane, almost certainly won’t be.
the van braking hard ahead, the car in the blind spot on your So, knowing that errors are inevitable, knowing that if we
right. You’d be most unfamiliar with the road at precisely the proceed we have no choice but to embrace uncertainty, the
moment you need to know it best. conundrums within the world of driverless cars will force us
Add in the lack of practice, and you’ll be as poorly equipped to decide how good something needs to be before we’re willing
as you could be to deal with the situations demanding the to let it loose on our streets. That’s an important question, and
highest level of skill. it applies elsewhere. How good is good enough? Once you’ve
A 2016 study simulated people as passengers, reading a built a flawed algorithm that can calculate something, should
book or playing on their cell phones, in a self-driving car. you let it? D
Adapted from the book HELLO WORLD: Being

Human in an Age of Algorithms by Hannah
Fry. Copyright © 2018 by Hannah Fry Limited.
With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton
& Co. Inc. All rights reserved.

ALL IN Biochemist
THE
David Baker
changed
the study
of proteins
FOLD — now he’s

changing the
proteins.
BY
JONATHON KEATS
LEFT: BRIAN DALBALCON/UW MEDICINE. RIGHT: IBREAKSTOCK/SHUTTERSTOCK
I
n a sleek biochemistry laboratory at the toxins and enzymes to convert waste into biofuels.
University of Washington, postdoctoral fellow His team currently numbers about 80 grad students
Yang Hsia is watching yellowish goo — the and postdocs, and Baker is in constant contact with all
liqueied remains of E. coli — ooze through of them. He challenges their assumptions and tweaks
what looks like a gob of white marshmallow. their experiments while maintaining an egalitarian
“This isn’t super exciting,” he says. environment in which ideas may come from
While growing proteins in bacteria anyone. He calls his operation a “communal
and then purifying them, using blobby brain.” Over the past quarter-century,
white resin as a ilter, doesn’t make for this brain has generated nearly 450
riveting viewing, the end product is scientiic papers.
extraordinary. Accumulating in “David is literally creating
Hsia’s resin is a totally artiicial a new ield of chemistry right
protein, unlike anything seen in front of our eyes,” says
in nature, that might just be Raymond Deshaies, senior vice
the ideal chassis for the irst president for discovery research
universal flu vaccine. at the biotech company Amgen
David Baker, Hsia’s adviser, and former professor of biology
calls this designer protein a “Death at Caltech. “He’s had one irst
Star.” Imaged on his computer, its after another.”
Yang Hsia
structure shows some resemblance to
the notorious Star Wars superweapon. NATURE’S ORIGAMI
Though microscopic, by protein standards it’s When Baker was studying philosophy at
enormous: a sphere made out of many Harvard University, he took a biology
interlocking pieces. class that taught him about the
“We’ve igured out a way to put so-called “protein folding problem.”
these building blocks together The year was 1983, and scientists
at the right angles to form these were still trying to make sense
very complex nanostructures,” of an experiment, carried out
Baker explains. He plans to stud in the early ’60s by biochemist
the exterior with proteins from a Christian Aninsen, that revealed
whole suite of flu strains so that the fundamental building blocks
the immune system will learn to of all life on Earth were more
recognize them and be prepared complex than anyone imagined.
to fend off future invaders. A single The experiment was relatively
Death Star will carry 20 different Death Star straightforward. Aninsen mixed
strains of the influenza virus. a sample of the protein ribonuclease
Baker hopes this collection will cover — which breaks down RNA — with a
the entire range of possible influenza mutation denaturant, a chemical that deactivated it. Then he
combinations. This all-in-one preview of present and allowed the denaturant to evaporate. The protein
future flu strains could replace annual shots: Get the started to function again as if nothing ever happened.
Death Star vaccination, and you’ll already have the What made this simple experiment so striking was
requisite antibodies in your bloodstream. the fact that the amino acids in protein molecules are
As Baker bets on designer proteins to defeat folded in three-dimensional forms that make origami TOP: CONRADO TAPADO/UW MEDICINE. BOTTOM: INSTITUTE FOR PROTEIN DESIGN
influenza, others are betting on David Baker. look like child’s play. When the denaturant unfolded
After revolutionizing the study of proteins — Aninsen’s ribonuclease, there were myriad ways it
molecules that perform crucial tasks in every cell of could refold, resulting in structures as different as an
every natural organism — Baker is now engineering origami crane and a paper airplane. Much as the folds
them from scratch to improve on nature. In late 2017, determine whether a piece of paper can fly across a
the Open Philanthropy Project gave his University of room, only one fold pattern would result in functioning
Washington Institute for Protein Design more than ribonuclease. So the puzzle was this: How do proteins
$10 million to develop the Death Star and support “know” how to refold properly?
Rosetta, the software platform he conceived in the “Aninsen showed that the information for both
1990s to discover how proteins are assembled. Rosetta structure and activity resided in the sequence of amino
has allowed Baker’s lab not only to advance basic acids,” says University of California, Los Angeles,
science and pioneer new kinds of vaccines, but also to biochemist David Eisenberg, who has been researching
create drugs for genetic disorders, biosensors to detect protein folding since the 1960s. “There was a hope that
it would be possible to use sequence information to get
three-dimensional structural information. Well, that
proved much more dificult than anticipated.”
“We’ve figured out
Baker was interested enough in protein folding and a way to put these
other unsolved mysteries of biology to switch majors
and apply to grad school. “I’d never worked in a lab building blocks
before,” he recalls. He had only a vague notion of what
biologists did on a daily basis, but he also sensed that
together at the
the big questions in science, unlike philosophy, could right angles to form
actually be answered.
Grad school plunged Baker into the tediousness these very complex
and frustrations of benchwork, while also nurturing
some of the qualities that would later distinguish
nanostructures.”
him. He pursued his Ph.D. under Randy Schekman,
who was studying how molecules move within cells,
at the University of California, Berkeley. To aid microscope, Baker concentrated on preserving cell
in this research, students were assigned the task of structure. If the cell were a wristwatch, his approach
dismantling living cells to observe their internal would be equivalent to focusing on the relationship
molecular trafic. Nearly half a dozen of them, between gears, rather than trying to keep it ticking,
frustrated by the assignment’s dificulty, had given while taking it apart.
up by the time Baker got the job. “He was completely obsessed,” recalls Deshaies,
Baker decided to follow his instincts even though who was his labmate at the time (and one of the
it meant going against Schekman’s instructions. students who’d surrendered). Nobody could stop
Instead of attempting to keep the processes within Baker, or dissuade him. He worked for months until
a cell still functioning as he dissected it under his he proved his approach was correct: Cell structure
INSTITUTE FOR PROTEIN DESIGN
Protein molecules play critical roles in every aspect of life. The way each protein folds determines its function, and the ways to fold
are virtually limitless, as shown in this small selection of proteins visualized through the software platform Rosetta, born in Baker’s lab.

drove function, so maintaining its anatomy preserved
the internal transportation network. Deshaies believes
Proteins 101
Each 6-foot-long strand of DNA packed into our
Baker’s methodological breakthrough was “at the core cells has the information to create 20 diferent
amino acids. These amino acids form chains
of Randy’s Nobel Prize,” awarded in 2013 for working and fold in a seemingly endless number of ways
out one of the fundamentals of cellular machinery. to create about 100,000 diferent proteins. Each
But Baker didn’t dwell on his achievement, or cell protein has a specific purpose, most of them crucial
biology for that matter. By 1989, Ph.D. in hand, he’d to keeping our bodies functioning.
headed across the Bay to the University of California,
San Francisco, where he switched his focus to
structural biology and biochemistry. There he built
computer models to study the physical properties of
the proteins he worked with at the bench. Aninsen’s
2
puzzle remained unsolved, and when Baker got his irst
faculty appointment at the University of Washington,
he took up the protein-folding problem full time.
From Baker’s perspective, this progression was 1
perfectly natural: “I was getting to more and more
fundamental problems.” Deshaies believes Baker’s
tortuous path, from cells to atoms and from test tubes
to computers, has been a factor in his success. “He
just has greater breadth than most people. And you
couldn’t do what he’s done without being somewhat
of a polymath.”
ROSETTA MILESTONE
Every summer for more than a decade, scores
of protein-folding experts convene at a resort in
Washington’s Cascade Mountains for four days of
hiking and shop talk. The only subject on the agenda:
how to advance the software platform known as 1 DNA
Rosetta. They call it Rosettacon. Stored in the nucleus of the cell and
made up of four chemical building
Rosetta has been the single most important tool blocks — A, C, T and G, for short.
in the quest to understand how proteins fold, and to DNA contains an organism’s
design new proteins based on that knowledge. It is the blueprints, or instructions, for life.
link between Aninsen’s ribonuclease experiment and
Baker’s Death Star vaccine. 2 mRNA
Because a cell’s protein-making
When Baker arrived at the University of Washington factory cannot directly interpret
in 1993, researchers knew that a protein’s function was the instructions encrypted in DNA,
determined by its structure, which was determined by an enzyme converts the directives
the sequence of its amino acids. Just 20 different amino into a message know as mRNA.
acids were known to provide all the raw ingredients.
(Their particular order — speciied by DNA — 3 RIBOSOME
ILLUSTRATION ABOVE: NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION. ILLUSTRATIONS BELOW: JAY SMITH
The cellular factory known as the

makes one protein fold into, say, a muscle iber and ribosome builds proteins according
another fold into a hormone.) Advances in X-ray to mRNA instructions. The ribosome
crystallography, a technique for imaging molecular links the corresponding amino acids
structure, had provided images of many proteins in together into a protein chain.
all their folded splendor. Sequencing techniques had
4 PROTEIN
also improved, beneitting from the Human Genome Tireless workers in the cell, proteins
Project as well as the exponential increase in raw function as tiny molecular machines.
computing power. Each protein performs a specific
“There’s a right time for things,” Baker says job, which, like any widget, depends
entirely on its precise shape.
in retrospect. “To some extent, it’s just luck and
historical circumstance. This was deinitely the right
time for this ield.”
Which is not to say that modeling proteins on a
computer was a simple matter of plugging in the data.
Proteins fold to their lowest free energy state: All of
3
Protein Structures
Made of long chains of amino acids, each protein folds into elaborate, precise structures that determine how they function.
While the folding patterns are unique and complicated, they can be thought of in four different levels of complexity:
Phe Gln
Gly Ile
Thr Arg
Gln
Ser Arg Arg
Arg Gly
Thr
Gly Gly Met Thr
Arg Gly Arg
Cell
PRIMARY PROTEIN TERTIARY PROTEIN QUATERNARY PROTEIN
STRUCTURE SECONDARY PROTEIN STRUCTURE STRUCTURE
Sequence of a chain STRUCTURE Three-dimensional folding Protein consisting of more
of amino acids. The amino acids fold into patterns of protein. than one amino acid chain.
repeating patterns in the
shape of pleated sheets
or an alpha helix.
Two Tracks of Research
PREDICTING HOW PROTEINS WILL FOLD

Using a software platform called Rosetta, researchers try to predict all the
ways a sequence of amino acids can fold. The goal is to find a protein’s
most stable structure. Baker’s lab has identified this state of equilibrium for
Folded Protein about 600 of the 15,000 known naturally occurring protein families.
The complex ways proteins
fold are determined by their CREATING NOVEL PROTEINS
individual amino acids, Researchers also use Rosetta to design new proteins from scratch.
which naturally arrange Because the folding pattern, or structure, determines function, once
themselves in a state of researchers find the right shape, they can reverse engineer the correct
equilibrium with each other. amino acid sequence that will create that specific folding pattern.

Rosetta’s impressive computational power allows researchers to predict how proteins — long, complex chains of amino acids —
will fold; the platform also helps them reverse engineer synthetic proteins to perform specific tasks in medicine and other fields.
their amino acids must align in equilibrium. The trouble protein-folding prediction from a parlor game into
is that the equilibrium state is just one of hundreds of legitimate science.
thousands of options — or millions, if the amino acid In addition to incorporating fresh insights from
sequence is long. That’s far too many possibilities to the bench, team members — using a janky collection
test one at a time. Nature must have another way of of computers made of spare parts — found a way to
operating, given that folding is almost instantaneous. run rough simulations tens of thousands of times to
Baker’s initial approach was to study what nature determine which fold combinations were most likely.
was doing. He broke apart proteins to see how They successfully predicted structures for 12 out of
individual pieces behaved, and he found that each the 20 proteins. The predictions were the best yet, but
fragment was fluctuating among many possible still approximations of actual proteins. In essence, the
structures. “And then folding would occur when they picture was correct, but blurry.
all happened to be in the right geometry at the same Improvements followed rapidly, with increased
time,” he says. Baker designed Rosetta to simulate computing power contributing to higher-resolution
this dance for any amino acid sequence. models, as well as improved ability to predict the folding
Baker wasn’t alone in trying to predict how proteins of longer amino acid chains. One major leap was the
fold. In 1994, the protein research community organized 2005 launch of Rosetta@Home, a screensaver that
a biennial competition called CASP (Critical Assessment runs Rosetta on hundreds of thousands of networked
of Protein Structure Prediction). Competitors were given personal computers whenever they’re not being used by
the amino acid sequences of proteins and challenged to their owners.
anticipate how they would fold. Yet the most signiicant source of progress has been
The irst two contests were a flop. Structures that RosettaCommons, the community that has formed
competitors number-crunched looked nothing like around Rosetta. Originating in Baker’s laboratory and
folded proteins, let alone the speciic proteins they were growing with the ever-increasing number of University
BRIAN DALBALCON/UW MEDICINE
meant to predict. Then everything changed in 1998. of Washington graduates — as well as their students and
colleagues — it is Baker’s communal brain writ large.
FUNCTION FOLLOWS FORM Dozens of labs continue to reine the software,
That summer, Baker’s team received 20 sequences from adding insights from genetics and methods from
CASP, a considerable number of proteins to model. machine learning. New ideas and applications are
But Baker was optimistic: Rosetta would transform constantly emerging.
The communal brain has answered Aninsen’s big
question — a protein’s speciic amino acid alignment
creates its unique folding structure — and is now
“Proteins that just
posing even bigger ones. evolved by pure,
“I think the protein-folding problem is effectively
solved,” Baker says. “We can’t necessarily predict blind chance can do
every protein structure accurately, but we understand
the principles.
all these amazing
“There are so many things that proteins do in things. What happens
nature: light harvesting, energy storage, motion,
computation,” he adds. “Proteins that just evolved by if you actually
pure, blind chance can do all these amazing things.
What happens if you actually design proteins
design proteins
intelligently?” intelligently?”
DE NOVO DESIGN
Matthew Bick is trying to coax a
protein into giving up its sugar thousands of designs, each
habit for a full-blown fentanyl representing a modiication
addiction. His computer screen of the amino acid sequence
shows a colorful image of predicted to envelop fentanyl
ribbons and swirls representing instead of sugar molecules. An
the protein’s molecular structure. algorithm then selected the best
A sort of Technicolor Tinkertoy several hundred options, which
floats near the center, representing Bick evaluated by eye, eventually
the opioid. “You see how it has really Matthew Bick
choosing 62 promising candidates.
good packing?” he asks me, tracing the The protein on Bick’s screen was one
ribbons with his inger. “The protein kind of his favorites.
of envelops the whole fentanyl molecule like a “After this, we do the arduous work of
hot dog bun.” testing designs in the lab,” Bick says.
A postdoctoral fellow in Baker’s With another image, he reveals
lab, Bick engineers protein his results. All 62 contenders have
biosensors using Rosetta. The been grown in yeast cells infused
project originated with the U.S. with synthetic genes that spur
Department of Defense. “Back the yeasts’ own amino acids to
in 2002, Chechen rebels took a produce the foreign proteins. The
bunch of people hostage, and transgenic yeast cells have been
Protein (in green)
there was a standoff with the enveloping
exposed to fentanyl molecules
Russian government,” he says. fentanyl molecule tagged with a fluorescing
The Russians released a gas, chemical. By measuring the
widely believed to contain a fentanyl fluorescence — essentially shining
derivative, that killed more than a ultraviolet light on the yeast cells to
hundred people. Since then, the Defense see how many glow with fentanyl — Bick
Department has been interested in simple can determine which candidates bind to the
ways to detect fentanyl in the environment in case it’s opioid with the greatest strength and consistency.
TOP: CONRADO TAPADO/UW MEDICINE. BOTTOM: BICK ET AL. ELIFE 2017
used for chemical warfare in the future. Baker’s lab has already leveraged this research to
Proteins are ideal molecular sensors. In the natural make a practical environmental sensor. Modiied to
world, they’ve evolved to bind to speciic molecules glow when fentanyl binds to the receptor site, Bick’s
like a lock and key. The body uses this system to customized protein can now be grown in a common
identify substances in its environment. Scent is one plant called thale cress. This transgenic weed can cover
example; speciic volatiles from nutrients and toxins it terrain where chemical weapons might get deployed,
into dedicated proteins lining the nose, the irst step and then glow if the dangerous substances are present,
in alerting the brain to their presence. With protein providing an early warning system for soldiers and
design, the lock can be engineered to order. health workers.
For the fentanyl project, Bick instructed Rosetta to The concept can also be applied to other biohazards.
modify a protein with a natural afinity for the sugar For instance, Bick is now developing a sensor for
xylotetraose. The software generated hundreds of aflatoxin, a residue of fungus that grows on grain,

Cassie Bryan, a senior fellow at Baker’s Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington, checks on a tube of synthetic
proteins. The proteins, not seen in nature, are in the process of thawing and being prepped to test how they perform.
causing liver cancer when consumed by humans. He acid sequence. And he can use any amino acids at all
wants the sensor to be expressed in the grain itself, — thousands of options, some already synthesized and
letting people know when their food is unsafe. others waiting to be designed — not only the 20 that
But he’s going about things differently this time are standard in nature for building proteins.
around. Instead of modifying an existing protein, he’s Without the freedom of de novo protein design,
starting from scratch. “That way, we can control a lot Baker’s Death Star would never have gotten off the
of things better than in natural proteins,” he explains. ground. His group is now also designing artiicial
His de novo protein can be much simpler, and have viruses. Like natural viruses, these protein shells
more predictable behavior, because it doesn’t carry can inject genetic material into cells. But instead of
many million years of evolutionary baggage. infecting you with a pathogen, their imported DNA
For Baker, de novo design represents the summit would patch dangerous inherited mutations. Other
of his quarter-century quest. The latest advances in projects aim to take on diseases ranging from malaria
Rosetta allow him to work backward from a desired to Alzheimer’s.
function to an appropriate structure to a suitable amino In Baker’s presence, protein design no longer seems
so extraordinary. Coming out of a brainstorming
session — his third or fourth of the day — he pulls me
aside and makes the case that his calling is essentially
“The current world the destiny of our species.
“All the proteins in the world today are the product
is quite a bit different of natural selection,” he tells me. “But the current
world is quite a bit different than the world in which
than the world in we evolved. We live much longer, so we have a
which we evolved. We whole new class of diseases. We put all these nasty
chemicals into the environment. We have new needs
live much longer, so for capturing energy.
“Novel proteins could solve a lot of the problems
we have a whole new
BRIAN DALBALCON/UW MEDICINE
that we face today,” he says, already moving to his next

class of diseases.” meeting. “The goal of protein design is to bring those
into existence.” D
Contributing editor Jonathon Keats’ most recent book is

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Origin
Story
Know
Your
Enemy
A surge of research into
ancient killers may help us
outsmart them in the future.
BY GEMMA TARLACH
→ The deadliest and most devastat-

ing opponents our species has
faced have never been across a battle-
ield. They’ve been on our skin and in
our blood and bones.
Viruses and bacteria have killed or
debilitated millions during the course
of human history — and well before. Jones and fellow Cambridge we see three, or 10, or 12.”
Researchers have unraveled the story computational biologist Barbara The reign of Jones and Mühlemann’s
of a few, most notably the bacterium Mühlemann were key members of a HBV genome as world’s oldest was
Yersinia pestis, which causes plague. team that published the oldest known short-lived: That same week, in the
CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: NICOLE NICKLISCH; ALEXEY A. KOVALEV; PHANIE/SCIENCE SOURCE; BEN KRAUSE-KYORA ET AL./ELIFE 2018;7:E36666
But indings about the origins and genome of the hepatitis B virus online journal eLife, a separate team
evolution of other scourges, including (HBV) in Nature in May. The roughly reported additional HBV genomes
leprosy, hepatitis B and syphilis, have 4,500-year-old sample was one of a up to 7,000 years old, including now-
been elusive or contradictory. dozen ancient HBV genomes found as extinct strains previously unknown
Now, two key advances — a surge the researchers sifted through one of to science.
in ancient DNA samples and powerful the largest databases of ancient human
computer programs to process the DNA ever assembled. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK
data — are allowing scientists to study Mühlemann, a co-lead author Hunting ancient pathogens is a recent
disease-causing bacteria and viruses of the paper, says advances offshoot of paleogenetics, which focuses
like never before. are being made not just in on the extraction and sequencing of
“There were very few ancient how far back researchers ancient DNA (aDNA) from animals,
human virus samples can ind ancient including humans, and plants. The
even six months ago,” pathogens, but primary challenges of working with
says Terry Jones, a in how many aDNA from these macroorganisms are
computational biologist they’re inding: degradation — genetic material breaks
at the University of “Where before down over time — and contamination.
Cambridge. “In terms we saw maybe Paleogeneticists interested in
of being ‘ancient,’ 300 one genome sequencing human aDNA, for example,
years was considered sequenced, now will extract a sample from human
old, and that was only remains, ilter out both modern
two or three samples. A partial skull from and non-human genetic material
a 7,000-year-old site
Now we’re inding in Karsdorf, Germany, — generally the result of microbial
viruses up to 7,000 years old. provided DNA from contamination — and look at what’s
the hepatitis B virus,
… We’ve gone from zero to the oldest sample left. The ancient pathogen hunters,
this almost out of the blue.” ever obtained. on the other hand, will take that same
Two key developments allowed the current
flood of research into ancient pathogens:
powerful new data-crunching software and
many more ancient genomes available for
study, such as from these 4,500-year-old
skeletons in Mongolia (left) and a partial
jaw from Germany (right), both of which
contained the hepatitis B virus (above).
sample and try to identify every single Researchers estimate WRITTEN IN BONE
fragment of genetic code. Bacteria, however, can be easier to ind.
That’s where things get chaotic. that there may be up Some bacterial diseases, such as leprosy
Researchers estimate that there and syphilis, can leave distinctive marks
may be up to a trillion species of
to a trillion species of on victims’ bones. Mycobacterium
bacteria and closely related archaea, bacteria and closely leprae, which causes leprosy, damages
compared with about 8 million peripheral nerves, reducing sensation.
species combined of plants, animals, related archaea, Over time, this leads to increased risk
fungi and algae. To complicate of injuries and infections that cause
matters, bacteria in particular
compared with about localized cell death. Bones, especially
are notorious for horizontal gene 8 million species of the extremities, appear to dissolve.
transfer: picking up bits of DNA Syphilis, one of a handful of diseases
from other organisms and integrating combined of plants, caused by the bacterium Treponema
it into their own. Then there are pallidum, leads to inflammation of the
viruses, some of which carry their
animals, fungi and algae. connective tissues surrounding bones
genetic code in DNA, and others in and can cause bone lesions.
RNA, complicating identiication. from organisms across a broad In June, University of Zurich
“We don’t choose what to study. We spectrum of biodiversity. paleogeneticist Verena Schuenemann
look at the data and see what comes Limits remain, however. Viruses and colleagues published three
out,” says Jones. “It may be genetic in particular are wily targets. Blood- T. pallidum genomes after sampling
material from the host, or a parasite, borne HBV, for example, lingers in an human remains with bone lesions. The
or bacteria, or another virus, or DNA individual, including their bones, for genetic material may not seem ancient
from the food they ate the day before years. But many other viruses cause — the individuals were buried in a
they died, or even from something acute infections, fatal or otherwise, 17th-century Mexico City cemetery
they came into contact with.” without leaving a trace of their — but they are the oldest T. pallidum
Powerful new software tools can presence behind. genomes known, and the irst to
sort through all the ancient genetic “The number of viruses you can be sequenced from archaeological
fragments in a sample and match expect to ind in ancient human DNA material, a feat researchers in an
them to millions of sequences samples is not very large,” Jones says. earlier study considered “not possible.”

Origin
Story
Paleogeneticist Verena Schuenemann (above) and colleagues

typically examine bones for signs of disease to determine
which are most likely to retain traces of certain pathogens.
Her team recently found genetic material from the bacterium
that causes leprosy in a medieval Danish skull (right) with
pitting indicative of the disease.
Schuenemann credits a new program

called MALT that can process
“he evolutionary inconclusive skeletal evidence that
syphilis and related diseases have been
hundreds of millions of genetic history of M. leprae is present worldwide for millennia. The
sequences in a few hours. three new T. pallidum genomes are too
Schuenemann also used MALT much more complex few to answer the question deinitively,
to ind 10 new samples of ancient than previously but they are valuable puzzle pieces
M. leprae DNA in individuals researchers will be able to use, one day,
with telltale skeletal deformities thought to be,” says to see the big picture.
from several medieval European Likewise, a Current Biology study
cemeteries. The genomes, reported in a paleogeneticist. published in July described the earliest
May in PLOS Pathogens, included the evidence of Salmonella enterica,
oldest published M. leprae genome: Schuenemann. “Already in [medieval] which causes deadly enteric fever,
an English sample that’s about Europe we ind a much higher diversity in northern Europe. The bacterium
1,500 years old. than assumed.” was found in the bones and teeth of
In 2005, an early attempt to In fact, the newest indings hint a young woman who died about 800
LEFT: JOHANNES KRAUSE. RIGHT: DORTHE DANGVARD PEDERSEN
understand the evolution of M. leprae that M. leprae may have originated years ago in Norway. What’s surprising
concluded that the pathogen most in Western Eurasia, perhaps is that the particular variety found
likely arose in the Middle East or Europe itself. is rare today in Europe and North
Eastern Africa, with only a few strains America; it’s much more common
making it to Europe. But the newly THE BIG PICTURE in Asia and Africa. A bacterium of
published ancient genomes reveal Ideas about the origins of syphilis are the same type was also identiied
almost all of the major strains of the also up for revision. It’s often been in 16th-century victims in Mexico,
bacterium were present in Europe. called a New World disease, thought according to a January study in
“The evolutionary history of to have spread globally only after Nature Ecology & Evolution.
M. leprae is much more complex widespread European contact with Combined, the data allowed
than previously thought to be,” says Native Americans. But there’s some researchers to dig deep into
Origin
Story
1 cm
Different subspecies of Treponema pallidum (left) cause syphilis and other treponemal
diseases. Researchers long thought it impossible to find the bacterium in archaeological
remains due to DNA degradation. In June, however, a team identified and sequenced
T. pallidum genomes from bones (above) interred at a centuries-old Mexican cemetery.
S. enterica’s past, something that just started to open the window to see
was previously impossible to do
While the what the truth is, but we’re nowhere
because only modern genomes of the chronological cutof near the bottom of it.”
pathogen were available for study. The new research is not just about
Their conclusions: The bacterium was point for inding hindsight. Nearly a million people
once much more widespread globally die each year from complications
and thousands of years older than
genetic material from of hepatitis B infection, and leprosy
thought — and may have jumped to ancient pathogens is still infects more than 200,000 people
humans through contact with early annually. Syphilis is considered a
domesticated pigs. still unknown, each re-emerging global public health
Similar recent studies on lesser- new genome found threat, with about 6 million new cases
known pathogens are redeining each year.
our shared histories. Jones and ofers hints about an “Working on ancient pathogens
Mühlemann collaborated with has implications for modern-day
colleagues on a study published in even deeper past. pathogens: Understanding the
July in PNAS that used aDNA to evolution of a bacterium, its past
change our understanding of human While the chronological cutoff spread and diversity leads to a
parvovirus B19 (B19V). The virus point for inding genetic material from better knowledge of how this
LEFT: SCIENCE SOURCE. RIGHT: JV SCHUENEMANN ET AL./PLOS NEGLECTED TROPICAL DISEASES, JUNE 21, 2018
causes a common, mild childhood ancient pathogens is still unknown, bacterium changed over time and
disease but can have more serious each new genome found offers hints adapted to environmental changes,”
consequences in adults. Previous about an even deeper past. Schuenemann says.
research based on modern strains The three ancient HBV genomes And thanks to gene transfer and
suggested B19V arose in the early presented in the eLife study earlier other quirks of evolution, bacteria and
1900s, but the PNAS study found it this year, for example, are more viruses are especially wily at adapting.
in human remains that were up to closely related to strains that still “Fossilized animals that are extinct
6,900 years old. infect non-human primates in Africa are not coming back, but in the case
Just how far back will ancient than they are to modern strains. That of viruses, they can come back,” says
pathogen hunters ind their quarry? could bolster a theory that the virus Jones. “Parts of them can come back.
“The general assumption for the may have found its irst human hosts You’ll never see, for example, an
survival of aDNA is 1 million years,” on that continent. Jones believes it’s elephant with a mammoth head, but
says Schuenemann, who adds that some even possible that HBV was present in that can happen with viruses. When
microbes are more likely than others to species ancestral to our own. we study the past, we know what may
be preserved. “I actually have hope to “What’s the chance of it not happen in the future. It gives us a way
ind very old M. leprae DNA; it has a infecting an earlier species?” he asks. to anticipate future changes.” D
very thick additional cell wall layer that “The virus has been around for
seems to also protect its DNA.” hundreds of millions of years. We’ve Gemma Tarlach is senior editor at Discover.
Out
here
A Sprite-ly Spacecraft Such diminutive spacecraft,

assembled from off-the-shelf
components at a cost of about $25
Scientists hope the world’s smallest satellites will boldly go apiece, could play a big role in future
where no probe has gone before. BY STEVE NADIS space exploration, Manchester says.
They may even represent our best
chance of getting a human-made
→ During an interview at a Boston-

area café, Zac Manchester
apologized for not bringing along a
aeronautics and astronautics. “I’ll put
one in an envelope and mail it to you.”
Even a small envelope would sufice,
device to a star other than the sun. An
upcoming ISS mission should show
him just how close we already are.
copy of his latest satellite — one of given that Manchester has created
many duplicates due to enter orbit the tiniest satellite yet. The Sprite, as SLOW STARTS
this fall during a mission to the it’s called, weighs just 4 grams and Manchester started working on the
International Space Station (ISS). measures less than 2 square inches project in 2009, shortly after he began
BEN BISHOP
“Don’t worry,” says Manchester, a — roughly the size and weight of a graduate studies at Cornell University,
Stanford University professor of standard sugar packet. following up on earlier work by
he next big challenge — so named because Manchester
inanced the mission through a
is to get Sprites crowdfunded KickStarter campaign.
But the Sprites’ release had to
flying freely in space, wait more than two weeks because
where they can talk of a NASA request to keep the area
clear for a Russian Soyuz launch.
with each other and After that delay, KickSat-1 failed to
discharge its Sprites because of an
with Earth-based electrical problem likely caused by
command posts. exposure to radiation. As a result, the
whole spacecraft burned up during
atmospheric re-entry without having
released the Sprites.
A LOOMING LAUNCH
Hopes now rest on KickSat-2, another
shoebox-sized craft set to launch in
November from NASA’s Wallops
Flight Facility in Virginia. It took
Manchester more than four years
to try again because of dificulties
securing a Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) license, required to
communicate with ground facilities in
the United States. The FCC was also
concerned about orbital debris and the
ability to detect the minute spacecraft,
which can be dificult to track.
“That has posed a problem for
the entire small-satellite research
Zac Manchester holds the original 2014
community,” says Manchester. He
KickSat, full of Sprites. A new version, managed to skirt this issue by handing
KickSat-2, should launch in November. over responsibility for the mission to
NASA Ames Research Center, for
The shoebox-sized KickSat releases numerous
tiny Sprite satellites in this illustration. The
Manchester’s Sprites went on to fly whom he had previously worked.
cheap, abundant and self-contained Sprites on the hulls of the Latvian-German Once KickSat-2 enters its prescribed
could represent the next step in space tech. Venta 1 satellite and the Italian- orbit, Manchester and his team can issue
German Max Valier satellite, which commands from the ground to release
his adviser Mason Peck and fellow launched into low-Earth orbit in June its roughly 100 Sprites from a spinning
graduate student Justin Atchison. By 2017. The Sprites are still attached container, so that they’ll naturally spread
early 2011, he had already produced to their host satellites today, having out in space. “They’ll fly for a few days
some preliminary versions of the Sprite. demonstrated they can harness solar to a couple of weeks, at most, before
When a last-minute spot opened up on energy and successfully communicate they burn up, which makes for a short-
a space shuttle flight that year, he and with ground stations. lived experiment,” he says.
Peck managed to get their experiment The next big challenge is to get The mission’s primary goal is to
to the ISS. Astronauts mounted three Sprites flying freely in space, where establish communications among the
of the devices to the outside of the they can talk with each other and with minute satellites through an approach
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
space station during a space walk. Earth-based command posts. The irst called mesh networking, which involves
Three years later, all were still working, attempt came in April 2014, with the passing messages to nearby satellites so
proving the electronics could withstand launch of around 120 Sprites aboard a that information eventually propagates
the harsh space environment. shoebox-sized satellite called KickSat-1 to all the Sprites. Although it’s a

Out
here
Up Close With a Sprite

The latest version of the Sprite satellite is almost unbelievably small and cheap.
It’s essentially a thin circuit board, similar to those found in mobile phones, with
a variety of self-contained instruments.
It’s powered by a A MAGNETOMETER

COMPUTER CHIP about acts like a compass. SOLAR CELLS cover
1/16 of a square inch about half the
A GYROSCOPE surface.
(originally created to
senses rotation.
open car doors), roughly
equivalent to a 286
microprocessor from the
A V-shaped
early 1990s.
pair of wires
serves as an
ANTENNA.
Along with large light sails, Sprites could be

part of an ambitious plan to send a spacecraft
to the nearest exoplanet within 20 years.
giant telescope at a much lower cost.

Other tools, such “This truly is the last frontier for radio
as a CAMERA, astronomy,” Burkhart says.
ACCELEROMETER and
A TRANSCEIVER THERMOMETER, are
Sprites are also key to another
can send and easy add-ons. ambitious endeavor, Breakthrough
receive radio Starshot. Its goal is to launch a
signals.
squadron of the tiny probes in about
20 years to the Alpha Centauri star
system, 4.3 light-years away. These
standard technique on Earth, it has “All of these Sprites would likely be equipped
never been done in space. with super-lightweight, lens-free
Secondary goals will be to test the steps are cameras 100,000 times smaller than
Sprites’ positioning and navigational building blocks conventional cameras because,
abilities, such as determining the Manchester notes, “it’s all on a chip.”
distance between individual satellites toward enabling He’s already looking forward to
by sending radio signals and measuring one photo in particular, taken as his
the transit times. “All of these steps
large-scale satellites race by at 20 percent the
are building blocks toward enabling spacecraft swarms speed of light: a snapshot of the planet
large-scale spacecraft swarms to act Proxima Centauri B. The picture he
collectively,” Manchester says. to act collectively.” has in mind is something like the
famous Pale Blue Dot photographs
THE FUTURE IS NOW survey the sky in the low-frequency of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 space
LEFT: REBECCA MANCHESTER. RIGHT: BREAKTHROUGH INITIATIVE
Although KickSat-2 is meant to be radio range. These observations cannot probe in 1990 as it started leaving the
a technology demonstration project, be done from the ground, Burkhart solar system.
Manchester is eager to start doing explains, because Earth’s ionosphere “I’m hopeful that in a few
actual science, too. The swarms of interferes with those frequencies. Such decades, we’ll get a picture like
low-cost, disposable flying objects radio waves also have huge wavelengths, this,” Manchester says, “not looking
could perform tasks that no single in the tens and hundreds of meters, so back at Earth, but looking toward a
spacecraft can do on its own. observations could require a telescope new Earth.” D
He’s already teamed up with Harvard a few kilometers across, Manchester
University astronomer Blakesley estimates. If researchers can overcome Steve Nadis, a contributing editor to Discover
Burkhart, devising a plan to deploy a a few minor bugs, an array made up and Astronomy, plays handball and volleyball in
separate swarm of small satellites to of Sprites could perform the job of a Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he also lives.
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20 Things You Didn’t Know About …
Lasers BY ERIKA K. CARLSON
1 Chances are, you can thank a laser for helping bounce back, and determines how far away an object
you get through the day. The technology lets us do is, like bats using echolocation to ind dinner. 12 It’s
everything from scan groceries at the checkout to not batty to think lidar will be part of driverless
remove regretted tattoos. 2 The word laser, coined car technology. Engineers are experimenting with
in 1957, is an acronym for “light ampliication it to monitor the vehicle’s surroundings and judge
by stimulated emission of radiation.” Since that when to brake. 13 Archaeologists use aircraft-based
-er ending makes a laser seem like a doer of . . . lidar to map a different kind of surrounding: sites
something, it soon spawned the verb “to lase.” hidden beneath dense forest canopies. 14 In 2016,
3 Unlike the sun or a flashlight, which shines in a researchers using lidar described vast ancient cities
broad range of colors combined to produce white in Cambodia’s rainforests. The extensive urban
light, lasers lase by producing a concentrated beam network reached its zenith in the 12th century and
of a single wavelength, or color. 4 In 2016, scientists may have been the largest empire on Earth at the
created a new type of microlaser, smaller than a time. 15 Astronomers, meanwhile, use lasers to
red blood cell, which could lead to innovations in measure real-time turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere.
COUNTERCLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: ZEPHYRMEDIA/SHUTTERSTOCK; LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY; GIPHOTOSTOCK/SCIENCE SOURCE; MARK WALTERS VIA SKETCHFAB/CC 4.0; NASA
medical imaging. 5 That same year, the world’s most With this information, they can adjust telescope
powerful laser, China’s Superintense Ultrafast mirrors to account for atmospheric blurring and
Laser Facility (SULF), ired a single pulse make sharper images, a technique called adaptive
equivalent to 5.3 petawatts — 5.3 quadrillion optics. 16 If an aircraft flew into one of these laser
watts! 6 SULF isn’t the world’s largest beams, the crew could be disoriented. Facilities that
laser, however. That would be California’s use adaptive optics employ spotters whose sole job is
National Ignition Facility (NIF), about the to watch the night skies for planes straying too close,
size of three football ields. The megalaser ready to flip an emergency shut-off switch. 17 The
can deliver the same amount of energy precision afforded by adaptive optics has resulted in
released by a couple pounds of TNT to a target images of exoplanets in other star systems and even
the size of a pea. 7 Ultimately, researchers want to two supermassive black holes colliding hundreds
use NIF’s energy to trigger a nuclear fusion reaction, of millions of light-years away. 18 The laser-based
squishing the nuclei of hydrogen atoms together to Strategic Defense Initiative, proposed in 1983 and
make helium and producing energy the same way nicknamed “Star Wars,” soon fell into a metaphori-
stars do. 8 Speaking of stars, give a big gold one cal black hole, but laser weapons aren’t all iction.
to the true inventor of lasers, whomever that may The Department of Defense is developing systems
be. Three scientists shared the 1964 Nobel Prize for that can take down drones and even small planes
work leading to the irst lasers, but grad student and boats. 19 Star Wars the movie featured a giant
Gordon Gould designed one before the laureates planet-destroying laser, but when scientists shoot
Counterclockwise — one of whom was also his adviser. 9 Gould sued lasers at our moon, it’s for peaceful purposes. The
from top right:
Laser tattoo
and inally received patent rights in 1977. A ifth beams ire at mirror arrays placed on the lunar land-
removal; workers scientist actually built the irst working laser, in 1960. scape by astronauts from several Apollo missions.
at the world’s 10 Since then, lasers have landed a lot of Nobels, 20 Aiming lasers at these moon mirrors measures
largest laser facility,
in California; including in 2017. That award went to team leaders the precise distance to our satellite sidekick, and has
a beam reflected at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave revealed that the moon is slowly moving away from
off a mirror; a map
of hidden buildings Observatory (LIGO), who were irst to measure us. Hey, Moon, was it something we said? D
found through long-predicted ripples in space-time. 11 Lasers play
lidar; mirrors
placed on the moon a starring role in another measuring method: light Erika K. Carlson grew up in Livermore, the home of
decades ago to detection and ranging. A lidar system shoots out a NIF. She writes this in fond memory of physics professor
measure distance
using Earth-based
laser pulse, calculates how long it takes the pulse to Alfred Kwok, who had an infectious enthusiasm for lasers.
lasers.
DISCOVER (ISSN 0274-7529, USPS# 555-190) is published monthly, except for combined issues in January/February and July/August. Vol. 39, no. 9. Published by Kalmbach Media Co., 21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box
1612, Waukesha, WI 53187-1612. Periodical postage paid at Waukesha, WI, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to DISCOVER, P.O. Box 62320, Tampa, FL 33662-2320. Canada Publication
Agreement # 40010760. Back issues available. All rights reserved. Nothing herein contained may be reproduced without written permission of Kalmbach Media Co., 21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box 1612, Waukesha, WI
53187-1612. Printed in the U.S.A.
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Why We're Superstitious P.26 World's Tiniest Satellites Ready for Launch P.

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November 2018 DISCOVER 3

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