Discover April 2014

When it came time to pick the cover for this issue, it wasn’t much of a debate. “The Second Coming of Sigmund Freud” (page 54) was the clear choice for our cover story, and not just for the light it sheds on the fascinating field of neuropsychoanalysis, or the new ways in which Freud’s insights into the mind could aid the study of the brain. As one of our editors said during our cover meeting: “Whether his theories were right or wrong, Freud’s pretty iconic. Almost as iconic in his way as Einstein. Why wouldn’t we put him on the cover?” Of course, some of you might not consider that a rhetorical question, and already may be composing a vigorously worded response. That’s the thing about heroes and icons: We…

Don’t be shy about sharing your opinions, whether via letters, email or our social media communities. Here’s what you’ve been telling us lately. JOIN THE CONVERSATION Send email to: editorial@DiscoverMagazine.com Address letters to: DISCOVER 21027 Crossroads Circle P.O. Box 1612 Waukesha, WI 53187-1612 Connect with us on: Facebook facebook.com/DiscoverMag Twitter twitter.com/DiscoverMag Google+ plus.google.com/+discovermagazine Questioning Randomness December’s issue included an excerpt from Our Mathematical Universe by MIT professor Max Tegmark. His book suggests that the physical world is one big mathematical object. I am 14 years old and was very interested by Max Tegmark’s article “Math Made Flesh,” but I had one question. How does this theory account for radioactive decay or other random events? Are these things not truly random, or is there some mathematical equation for true randomness that…

High above the Alps, the International Space Station’s robotic arm prepares to grasp the unmanned Cygnus spacecraft on Jan. 14. In its first fully loaded supply mission, Cygnus carried over 2,700 pounds of provisions and science gear, including microsatellites, material for antibiotics research and a colony of ants. Cygnus and the Antares rocket that carried it to orbit were designed and built by Orbital Sciences, only the second private company (after SpaceX) to send a payload to the ISS. – ERNIE MASTROIANNI; PHOTO BY NASA…

For 20 hours in spring 2012, a red helicopter crisscrossed northwest Cambodia, flying over one of the world’s greatest archaeological sites: Angkor, the onetime heart of Southeast Asia’s Khmer Empire. A team led by archaeologist Damian Evans beamed a laser pulse 200,000 times per second from the helicopter toward the dense forest below. They hoped a few pulses would slip through tiny gaps in the lush canopy and, by bouncing off objects and earth, send back secrets from a long-lost metropolis. It worked. By calculating the precise distance of each split-second journey, Evans and his team captured the remarkably orderly contours of long-hidden cityscapes. The work has revealed never-before-seen footprints of ancient roads, canals, ponds, field walls, occupation mounds and other facets of urban life in the heyday of the…

Evolutionary biologist Christopher Muir has seen plenty of unusual vegetation while exploring tropical rainforests, from a foot-long flower to a plant that uses ants to protect itself. But it was in a hallway near his office at the University of the Balearic Islands in Spain that he spied something truly memorable: a holey houseplant, Monstera deliciosa, also known as the Swiss cheese plant for the large holes that punctuate its leaves. The plant immediately struck Muir (a distant relative of famed naturalist John Muir) as odd because plants need to maximize surface area to absorb as much sunlight as possible. They can do this by either having lots of small leaves, or fewer large ones. Why, Muir wondered, would this large-leafed plant punch windows in its foliage? Searching for a…

The indigenous village of Lajamanu, population 600, sits on the southern edge of the subtropics of northern Australia. It’s the kind of place where a truck rumbles in once a week to deliver staples to the local store, and where electricity comes from diesel and solar generators. It’s so remote that the oldest members of the community still remember the first time they saw a white person in the 1930s. Carmel O’Shannessy landed on Lajamanu’s dirt airstrip in 1998 as a government employee sent to support local teachers of English and Warlpiri, a language spoken in several places in the Northern Territory. By 2001, she realized that the children had been busy inventing an entirely new mixed language, borrowing words and grammar from both mother tongues. O’Shannessy, now a linguist…