Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2019 i Discover

I’ve got this red pencil at my desk, with a pithy little saying printed in all caps: “Less dreaming more ass kicking.” I bring it up not to be crude, but to point out that the two actions aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s been on my mind because that saying could be applied directly to the adventures of three astronauts in the summer of 1969. Millions watched as Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon, part of an Apollo program that clipped along over 12 years and a series of successful flights. Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and the teams supporting them wouldn’t have made it without a decent dose of dreaming, a pile of hard work and a lot of science. We devote dozens of pages in this…

Using nozzlelike extensions on the side of its head, a tropical velvet worm shoots streams of sticky slime when hunting or defending itself. Within the fluid are “nanoglobules,” tiny balls made of lipids and proteins. Once the slime hits the target, it’s over fast: The movement of the struggling prey, such as beetles and termites, causes the globules to harden into fibers as strong as nylon, creating a netlike trap that immobilizes the unlucky insect. Remarkably, the ball-to-fiber process appears reversible, but researchers at the University of Kassel in Germany are still working to understand it. If they succeed, the sticky secretions could inspire future polymer fabrication.…

High Prices Still Ramp Up Health Care Costs In the United States, a trip to the doctor can break the bank. But in the last few years, Americans have seen attempts to reform policy and health care systems. Has anything changed? That’s what researchers asked in a recent study published in the journal Health Affairs. The team used data published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to determine how much the U.S. shells out per capita for health care compared with other high-income countries. When they compared that spending with overall economic growth, measured in gross domestic product (GDP), and availability of care, things didn’t look so good for Americans. Annual Per Capita Health Care Spending Average Increase** Per Year, 2000 to 2015-16 Comparison of Health Care…

Being an astronaut isn’t easy: grueling physical training, punishing mental workouts, willpower pushed to the limits. Plus, of course, the risks — there’s no guarantee of safe return. “If you want to get in this business,” says Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell, “you better be optimistic.” The 32 men assigned to fly in the Apollo program faced unprecedented challenges, but they also got to do something no one else has ever done. We spoke to some of them to find out what it was like. —BILL ANDREWS; INTERVIEWS BY ERIC BETZ, DAVID J. EICHER, ALISON KLESMAN, COREY S. POWELL AND RICHARD TALCOTT Quotes have been edited for length and clarity. WALTER CUNNINGHAM APOLLO 7, OCTOBER 1968 INTERVIEWED IN JULY 2018; NOW AGE 87 ON DEALING WITH THE PRESSURES “The general public at…

The Smart Neanderthal: Bird Catching, Cave Art & the Cognitive Revolution By Clive Finlayson What can birds tell us about our extinct evolutionary cousins? Quite a lot, explains Finlayson, who has long argued for modern humans to give Neanderthals their due. From Gibraltar’s swelter to a frigid Norwegian fjord, the evolutionary biologist takes readers on an adventure in unexpected revelations about this lost lineage of humans. The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild By Thomas D. Seeley Cornell University biologist Seeley is one of the most beloved authors in the beekeeping community, and with good reason: His writing elucidates the lives of honeybees with clear science and a sense of joyous discovery. Seeley employs that approach here; even non-keepers will appreciate his bee’s-eye…

2,610 YEARS AGO When Earth experienced one of its most intense solar storms, inundations of solar radiation that can affect things like power grids and navigation systems. Experts found traces of the storm, which was 10 times stronger than any recorded by scientific instruments, locked in ice cores and tree rings. 100,000x Roughly how much narrower than a human hair researchers think fossilized dark matter impressions would be. In a recent paper, experts suggest dark matter — the elusive stuff that makes up most of the universe — could have left minuscule traces in ancient rocks, similar to how nuclear fission events can create tiny tunnels through the rocks’ microstructure. Only now do we have the technology to spot such infinitesimal imprints, the authors say. 174 MILLION YEARS How long…

Shiny and sharp, obsidian is enjoying a bit of a pop culture moment. It plays a central role in HBO’s hit fantasy series Game of Thrones, now wrapping its final season. Called dragonglass on the show, obsidian is one of only two substances that can cut down White Walkers, malevolent otherworldly warriors. In the real world, the volcanic glass reveals the human story in a way no other material can. Our evolutionary ancestors used obsidian for toolmaking for more than a million years. Thanks to the material’s unique chemical attributes, archaeologists can determine the geographical origin of even small pieces. But that’s only part of the story. Arizona State University archaeological scientist Andrew Zipkin says knowing where our distant ancestors collected obsidian allows researchers to ask much broader questions, such…

Neil Armstrong took one small step for man in 1969, but it would be decades before NASA made one giant leap for American women. The agency’s first team of astronauts, dubbed the Mercury 7, were selected in 1959 after passing a strenuous series of fitness and medical exams. No women were asked to participate, but a year later, William Randolph Lovelace, the doctor who had designed the qualifying exams, invited seasoned pilot Jerrie Cobb to complete the same qualifiers. The testing was intense, including having ice water blasted into her ears to induce vertigo and a rubber tube slid down her throat to test her stomach acid. She passed with flying colors, and within a year, 12 more female pilots not only had passed, but often exceeded the test scores…

Our ancestors, such as Homo erectus, began leaving Africa and moving into Eurasia by about 1.9 million years ago. Subsequent waves of dispersal, eventually including our own species, followed. The timing and route of this travel out of Africa has been murky due to a lack of archaeological sites. Perhaps that’s because, for decades, researchers focused on a route out of Africa from what’s now Egypt, migrating along the eastern Mediterranean coast into the Middle East. A route across the southern end of the Red Sea, from the East African coast to the Arabian Peninsula, would not have been possible, conventional thinking went, because it would have required crossing a strait about 20 miles wide at its narrowest point. But recent genetic analysis of baboons living on either side of…

Humans have walked on only two worlds in the solar system — Earth and its moon. But it’s looking more certain that Mars may be the next member of this exclusive club. Along with NASA, private companies like SpaceX and Mars One are itching to put boots on the Red Planet. Human exploration could certainly improve the science performed on Mars, but our arrival could also have important implications in the hunt for life. Whether or not life ever managed to evolve on Earth’s red neighbor remains an open question. Conditions on Mars don’t support large creatures, but microscopic life-forms may have once thrived in the planet’s oceans. They may even survive today in the sparse pockets of water on and below the Martian surface. If so, it’s possible they…

Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition By Patricia Churchland MacArthur fellow Churchland melds evolutionary biology, neurology, philosophy and genetics into an accessible, provocative look at how each of us tells right from wrong — including how different brains can reach very different conclusions. Cosmological Koans: A Journey to the Heart of Physical Reality By Anthony Aguirre This is not your average hard science book. Physicist Aguirre borrows from the Zen Buddhist tradition of koans, or contemplative riddles, to present some of his field’s most esoteric concepts. Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything By Robert M. Hazen It’s everywhere — including inside us — but carbon’s importance is rarely appreciated. Earth scientist Hazen sets the record straight in this thoughtful love letter to the element.…

With the topic of immigration taking over the news, University of Washington researchers wanted to figure out a way to accurately count migrants around the world. Using a new statistical method that they developed, the team looked at migration trends from 1990 to 2015. They found that, as the world’s population kept climbing, the rate of people relocating to another country has remained steady, at just over 1 percent. For example, from 2010 to 2015, about 85 million people (out of a global population of 7 billion) crossed an international border to a new home. That’s compared with 69 million from 1990 to 1995, when the global population was 5.3 billion. The researchers also found that 1 in 4 of these international moves is a migrant returning to their homeland.…

You’ll find the name Neil Armstrong in any historical listing of the world’s greatest explorers. No one would quarrel with the Apollo 11 commander, test pilot and first man on the moon being high on that list. Except Armstrong, that is. He saw himself as an engineer first. In an early interview for my biography of Armstrong, he expressed the raison d’être of his career in flight: “I flew to the moon not so much to go there, but as part of developing the system that would allow it to happen.” He once told the National Press Club: “I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams…. Science is about what…

U.S.: Spurred on by the signing of President Donald Trump’s Space Policy Directive-1, the United States is committed to sending astronauts back to the moon by the late 2020s. China: After a series of robotic missions, China aims to land a crew on the lunar surface in the early 2030s. Russia: A handful of upcoming Luna missions will probe lunar resources, restarting a long-stalled legacy of Soviet-era moon missions. European Union: The European Space Agency plans to mine lunar regolith — moondust — for valuable resources like oxygen and water by 2025. Japan: The country’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft will use facial recognition technology on craters to prep for extremely precise lunar landings in the early 2020s. India: The country’s second lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, was set to…

Aquaterra, even at its largest, would not have let the First Australians keep their feet dry. The extended landmasses of Sunda (modern Southeast Asia) and Sahul (today’s Australia and New Guinea) have never been connected. Reaching Australia required seafaring skills, navigating boats through strong currents and Wallacea, a transitional zone of islands. Named for British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who described it in the mid-19th century, the islands of Wallacea were never connected to either Sunda or Sahul. Animals found in Sunda, to the west, may have made it to Wallacea, but most never expanded beyond it to Sahul in the east. Among mammals, there are just two exceptions: rodents and humans. More than 40 years ago, anthropologist Joseph Birdsell attempted to find the most likely path of human migration…

Like many Americans, my cellphone is with me 24/7 — in the car, on my morning run, and yes, in the bathroom. I use it to check on my family, stay on top of my kids’ activities and navigate from point A to point B, among other things. But more and more, I’ve noticed that I also turn to my phone to fill what might otherwise be a quiet moment. Instead of letting my busy mind wander, I scroll through social media sites, check email and watch YouTube clips. I’m even guilty of sending texts while sitting at a stoplight or in heavy traffic. I’m not alone. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s 2015 National Survey on Distracted Driving Attitudes and Behaviors, 42 percent of adults reported answering calls…

1 When Apollo 11 touched down on the moon, could Neil Armstrong have made a “giant leap” if we’d never evolved feet? “One small slither for man” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. In truth, our feet have enabled one of our most impressive, ah, feats. 2 With its big heel bone, short toes and long, stiff arch, the human foot is a defining trait of our genus because it enabled efficient bipedalism: locomotion on two legs. 3 Being bipedal made humans great long-distance walkers and runners while freeing our upper limbs to make and use tools, including weapons. You could say it was a giant leap on the way to becoming Earth’s dominant animals, for better or worse. 4 Already fully bipedal ancestors such as Homo erectus…