Escolar Documentos
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INVISIBLE
PLANET
PLUS Electric Hamsters, Light-Powered Rockets,
Unknown Immigrants, Solar Energys Second Coming,
and Can DNA Save Health Care?
Science, Technology, and The Future
IN SEARCH OF
THE MISSING
SOLAR SYSTEM
DELIRIUM
DINOSAUR
FOOTPRINTS
ALCHEMY
MATHEMATICS
OF TERROR
ALIEN CHATTER
MEDICINES
BLIND SPOT
VIRTUAL WARFARE
THE FIRE UNDERFOOT
DO WIMPS RULE
THE UNIVERSE?
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c ntents
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THE
PLANET
Some of the tools that
render the invisible
visible: Xenon100 dark
matter detector, PCR
amplication of DNA,
wide-angle camera
mounted on an F-18,
quantitative analysis
software, Philosophers
Stone, Allen Tele-
scope Array, Tin Man
chemical sensor, rapid
genome sequencer.
Below, their stories.
FEATURES
INVISIBLE PLANETOIDS 34
Every part of the solar system is full of stuff
planets, comets, asteroidsexcept for one lonely
zone between Mercury and the sun. Will new
searches nally reveal something hiding there?
BY PHI L PLAI T
MATHEMATICS OF TERROR 38
Quantitative analysis can explain the movements
of stock markets and the patterns of weather
events. Recent studies suggest the techniques can
even decode the mind of a terrorist.
BY ANDREW CURRY
DISCOVER INTERVIEW:
ELENA APRILE 44
The Columbia University physicist unveils her latest,
greatest scheme for hunting WIMPsthe unseen
particles that may dominate the universe.
BY FRED GUTERL
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN 46
When illegal immigrants cross into the United
States, a distressing number of them vanish into the
Sonoran Desert. Anthropologist Lori Baker is using
DNA forensics to give them back their identities.
BY JANE BOSVELD
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATT NAGER
Above: Western
Hemisphere lights.
ON THE
COVER
Photograph by
Joshua Scott.
DISCOVER
ON THE WEB
Videos, breaking
news, and
morethe latest
is online at
discovermagazine.com
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THE STREETLIGHT EFFECT 54
Scientic inquiry is beset by errors, contradictions, and false con-
clusions. The author says he knows why. BY DAVI D H. FREEDMAN
DISCOVER INTERVIEW: RICHARD A. CLARKE 58
Americas former counterterrorism czar discusses the nations vulner-
ability to cyber attack, laying out how to prepare for a future in which
virtual wars could be fought by computer. BY ROBERT KEATI NG
EARTH ON FIRE 60
All over the world, burning coal beds are belching toxic fumes,
spewing greenhouse gases, and proving nearly impossible
to extinguish. BY KRI STI N OHLSON
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF GIANTS 66
Fossilized tracks provide an eloquent record of what dinosaurs
were like when they were living, breathing, stomping animals.
An extraordinary trove in Utah offers up its secrets. BY AMY BARTH
DISCOVER INTERVIEW: LEROY HOOD 72
A key player in the Human Genome Project predicts a total
transformation of medicine, fueled by our rapidly deepening under-
standing of how DNA works. BY PAMELA WEI NTRAUB
ISAAC NEWTON AND
THE PHILOSOPHERS STONE 74
Alchemy gets a makeover: Far from being the work of superstitious
fools, it was an essential step toward modern science, endorsed
by two of historys greatest geniuses. BY JANE BOSVELD
CALL WAITING 84
For 50 years, scientists have scanned the cosmos for signs
of intelligent alien life. After a half-century of failure, they are
amazinglymore optimistic than ever. BY MI CHAEL LEMONI CK
DEPARTMENTS
MAIL 3
CONTRIBUTORS 6
EDITORS NOTE 8
DATA 10
Solar power gets a reboot; biologys master
on-off switch; garbage collection on the high
seas; light-powered rockets; your microbial
ngerprint; slicing Saturns rings; and more.
HOT SCIENCE 24
The best new books and movies, plus Cleopatras
palace and a dose of extra-dry British wit.
THE BRAIN 28
A look at what happens inside the head during
and after a brain injury. BY CARL ZI MMER
VITAL SIGNS 32
An older womans sudden delirium exposes a
family secret. BY ANNA REI SMAN
20 THINGS
YOU DIDNT KNOW ABOUT
NANOTECHNOLOGY 96
Electric hamsters, super computers, and
eco-dust. BY REBECCA COFFEY
PAGE 34
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Mail
Killer Robots
As a Vietnam draftee, I had mixed feelings
while reading about the use of robots in
war [The Terminators, May, page 36].
Tactically it seems like a great idea: It
keeps our soldiers out of harms way.
Strategically, however, it is a scary thought
for exactly the same reason. If our lead-
ers know there is no threat to our sons
and daughters, they will be more inclined
to enter a war. They are already protected
from public outcry by our volunteer army.
Carl Bruckman
Denver, CO
I am terried of humanitys developing and
using robots that can harm humans. Soft-
ware manufacturers cant release bug-free
word processors; heaven help us if we let
them develop kill-decision software. Isaac
Asimov had it right in the 1940s with his
Three Laws of Robotics: A robot may not
injure a human being or, through inaction,
allow a human being to come to harm; a
robot must obey any orders given to it by
human beings, except where such orders
would conict with the First Law; and a
robot must protect its own existence as
long as such protection does not conict
with the First or Second Law. These rules
were hardwired into the positronic brains
of robots at manufacturing time. Give me
Asimov or Ill have no robots!
David Sigetich
Toronto, Ontario
Reading about autonomous warfare
machines brings to mind a possible use of
similar technology that would benet us
civilians: smart stoplights. How close are
we to having affordable, camera-based
trafc controllers that make decisions
based on the actual facts on the ground,
rather than simple pressure-plate detec-
tors or idiot timing devices? Couldnt they
save society a tremendous amount of
time and gasoline? Scott Green
Elkins, WV
Diabetes Detective Work
Terry Wilkins ideas about the type 1
diabetes epidemic [Childs Plague,
May, page 50] are interesting but beg two
unresolved and , on the surface, unrelated
questions. First, the clusters of type 1
cases make it difcult not to raise the
question of a common-source exposure
(remember John Snows pump and chol-
era in 1854). Second, the suggestions of
high body mass index (BMI) causing
diabetes may have the cart before the
horse. Would it not be more intriguing to
consider a common chemical or biologi-
cal exposure that damages the insulin
production process, in turn causing a
surge in weight? How else to explain
the gradual return, after birth, to normal
height/weight growth patterns of babies
born to diabetic mothers?
H. Spencer Turner, M.D.
Fernandina Beach, FL
You omitted an essential piece of informa-
tion that could explain the exponential rise
in diabetes cases. As you mention, in the
1890s the death rate of children due to dia-
betes was roughly equal to the rate of new
cases. Therefore, juvenile diabetes suffer-
ers never made it to childbearing age, and
any genetic defects related to the disease
were not passed on to offspring. Now, with
the miracle of modern medicine, diabetics
are living full lives. Unfortunately, until we
identify and modify the genes responsible
for the attack on insulin-secreting cells, it
seems that the disease will follow the pat-
tern of a new genetic trait introduced into
a population. Kem Kough
Oasis, NV
How to Return to the Moon
I take strong exception to the claim in
Theres Hydrogen in Those Hills [May,
page 61] that propellants account for the
vast majority of the cost of existing rockets.
Almost all the recurring cost of launch-
ing a payload comes from the expended
hardware. Thus, the key to low-cost space
transportation does not lie in technol-
ogy breakthroughs to reduce propellant
requirements but in designing fully reus-
able launch vehicles. By developing launch
systems that dont waste any hardware,
we can send astronauts to the moon and
Mars at a small fraction of what NASA
wanted to spend on Constellation.
Dick Morris
Lynnwood, WA
Hydrogen and the Hindenburg
Item 8 of Mays 20 Things You Didnt
Know About Water [page 80] perpetu-
ates the tired folklore that an explosion in
hydrogen-lled lifting cells destroyed
the Hindenburg. Research by the Zeppelin
Co. and Addison Bain proves that static
charges sparked a re on the outer skin,
which was coated with a mixture of metal-
lic aluminum and iron oxide (essentially
the same thing that fuels our orbiters
solid fuel boosters). No one doubts that
the hydrogen, once it got loose in the
atmosphere, contributed to the inferno, but
the Hindenburg would have succumbed
regardless. Samuel O. Lindeman
Muskogee, OK
Guillaume de Syon, historian and author
of Zeppelin! Germany and the Airship,
19001939, responds:
While the Hindenburgs fabric was
slightly different from that of other airships
and may have been more conductive,
it likely did not lead to the re. The best
reconstructions suggest the cause was a
combination of accumulating hydrogen
from a ripped ballonet inside the hull, static
electricity built up from a nearby storm
(which may have been exacerbated by the
dope on the fabric), and sheer bad luck.
Send e-mail to editorial@discovermagazine.com.
Address letters to DISCOVER, 90 Fifth Avenue,
New York, NY 10011. Include your full name,
address, and daytime phone number.
JULY/AUGUST 2010 | 3
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Hints: 1. It occupies a conned space for about 65 days. 2. It often has companions. 3. The adult
version is something you would commonly nd around the house. For the answer, see the September
issue or visit discovermagazine.com/web/whatisthis. Last months answer: page 20.
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MICHAEL LEMONICK wrote Call Waiting
(page 84) in response to the 50th anni-
versary of SETI (Search for Extraterres-
trial Intelligence) research. Although that
effort has yet to yield a single alien signal,
Lemonick was amazed to nd that the sci-
entists involved with the quest are more
excited than ever. One key source for
the piece was astronomer Seth Shostak,
a senior scientist at the SETI Institute, who
spoke at length about the serious thinking
behind his seemingly quixotic research.
Lemonick describes Shostak as kind
of the Robin Williams of astronomy, with
quick quips and leaps of imagination.
Lemonick is a senior staff writer at Cli-
mate Central, a nonprot group working to
bridge the gap between climate scientists
and the public. He also teaches journalism
at Princeton University. Previously, he was
a science writer at Time magazine for 21
years and was once an executive editor
at DISCOVER. Lemonick is currently writ-
ing a book about the imminent discovery
of Earth-like planets around distant stars.
The photograph on this page was taken
by his wife, Eileen Hohmuth-Lemonick,
and includes their daughter, Hannah,
who is now 22. She fell out of the tuba
right after the camera ashed, but I caught
her, Lemonick says.
KRISTIN OHLSON was visiting southern
Ohio when she heard about a local coal
mine that had been burning for 120 years,
ever since striking miners loaded a wagon
full of timbers, set it on re, and pushed it
into the mine. Ohlson became captivated
by the subject and visited two other burn-
ing mines for Earth on Fire (page 60).
One of them was in Kentucky, where she
saw smoke curling from the ground and
minerals encrusting nearby leaves. The
other mine re, in Centralia, Pennsylvania,
is probably Americas most notorious. It
was winter, and there was smoke belching
up from the ground and freezing on the
grass, she says. In addition to science,
Ohlsons writing interests include travel,
food, and culture. She has written for The
New York Times, Food & Wine, American
Archaeology, and Smithsonian.com. Her
memoir, Stalking the Divine, about getting
to know a group of cloistered nuns, won
the American Society of Journalists and
Authors Best Nonfiction Book Award in
2004. Her nonction book Kabul Beauty
School, coauthored with Deborah Rodri-
guez , was a New York Times best seller.
MATT NAGER knows rsthand the harsh,
long desert path that some illegal immi-
grants face when attempting to enter the
United States from Mexico. He took pho-
tographs for Gone but Not Forgotten
(page 46), which documents the process
of identifying the remains of those who do
not survive the nearly 100-mile journey.
Its tough out there. Its not a place you
want to be crossing, but I dont really see
anything changing, Nager says. In the
intense heat of Arizonas Sonoran Desert,
bodies quickly decompose, leaving little
Contributors
more than bones.
The limited informa-
tion makes identifi-
cation difficult, but
forensics expert Lori
Baker of Baylor Uni-
versity is using DNA
testing to help fami-
lies find their miss-
ing relatives. For this
story, Nager met with
Baker, border-con-
trol ofcers, medical
examiners, relatives
of lost immigrants, and activist groups that
provide water for those making the cross-
ing. In his career he has traveled all over
the world, including Bolivia, where he pho-
tographed local coca traditions, and Italy,
where he is documenting the rise of cancer
in Naples due to what he describes as the
Maas environmental neglect. To see more
of his work, visit www.mattnager.com.
JANE BOSVELD was intently watching The
Teaching Companys history of science
DVDs when she wondered: Why were
famed scientists like Isaac Newton and
Robert Boyle toying with something as
absurd as alchemy?
Bosveld, a senior edi-
tor at DISCOVER at
the time, learned that
the scientists hoped
to create the legend-
ary Phi l osophers
Stonea substance
that could turn lead
into gold. For Isaac
Newton and the Phi-
l osophers Stone
(page 74), she got in
touch with Lawrence
Principe, a chemist and science historian at
Johns Hopkins University who worked on
the DVDs, and his colleague William New-
man. The two have managed to decode
cryptic recipes left by Newton and Boyle
and replicated a number of their alchemy
experimentsbut so far, no Philosophers
Stone. These alchemists werent the wack-
adoos people think they were. Alchemy was
a progression toward modern chemistry,
says Bosveld, who also wrote Gone but
Not Forgotten (page 46) for this issue. Bos-
veld is a contributing editor at DISCOVER
and a freelance writer based in New York.
AMY BARTH
ucnazt tzuoucx
tauz eosvztc xestu ontsou
uatt uaeze
6 | DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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Editors Note
B
I
W
A
S
T
U
D
I
O
ast April, right
around the time we started putting
together this special issue of
DISCOVER, Mercury was making an
unusually prominent appearance
in the evening sky. I had never
gotten a good look at the elusive
innermost planet, so I waited for clear
weather and scanned for my target. I
failed: too much twilight glare, too
much New York skyline blocking the
western horizon.
L
I take some solace from the legend
that Copernicusthe clever fellow who
gured out the true conguration of the
whole solar systemnever saw Mercury
either. And I get a deeper satisfaction from
knowing that I was participating in an
old and noble process of seeking out the
invisible. As Phil Plait describes on page
34, astronomers have spent 399 years
searching for a planet or asteroid belt
circling even closer to the sun than Mer-
cury. Despite 399 years of staring at blank
elds, they keep going. The universe is
full of things that elude our limited human
senses, and the only way we ever will nd
them (and, by extension, learn more about
our place in that universe) is to press on,
failures be damned.
There is not just one kind of invisible
that science pursues; there are three
distinct varieties, represented by the three
interviews in this months issue. There are
the invisible things that hail from beyond
our worldlike dark matter (being sought
by physicist Elena Aprile; see page 44) and
like those sun-hugging asteroids. There are
the invisible things embedded in our every-
day lives, like the diseases written into our
DNA (geneticist Leroy Hood talks about his
quest to nd them, page 72). And there are
the invisibles that we create ourselves, like
Internet connections and all the information
that ows through them, both good and
evil (security guru Richard Clarke focuses
on the dark side of cyberspace, page 58).
The rst two types of invisibility pursuits
demonstrate some of the most noble
aspects of human inquiry. They express
a faith that we humans can overcome the
limitations of our senses and discover
greater truths than our eyes alone can
reveal. I use the word faith deliberately,
for there is something transcendent in this
act. It is kin to what Albert Einstein called
the cosmic religious feeling: The indi-
vidual feels the futility of human desires
and aims and the sublimity and marvelous
order which reveal themselves both in
nature and in the world of thought.
The third type of invisibility search
provides a different perspective, one that
is attained by looking inward rather than
outward. It nds meaning even in these
frailties that Einstein dismissed as the futil-
ity of human desires and aims. It applies
mathematics to terrorist attacks and uncov-
ers better ways to maintain the peace (page
38). It uses DNA forensics to restore identity
to immigrants who die alone in the desert
(page 46). It even deconstructs itself by
examining the very methods and limitations
of scientic research (page 54).
What I nd especially exciting about
all of these explorations is their cumula-
tive nature, as each generation is able to
push the boundary of the invisible another
step farther out. Soon we will know if dark
matter exists, or if genetic medicine can
succeed. And every day we self-aware
apes are getting just a little closer to
understanding (and, perhaps, mastering)
our inherent humanity.
COREY S. POWELL
8 | DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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Data
10 | DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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PREPARE
FOR
LANDING
THE MOMENT: Engineers hook
up the data acquisition system
before a test of the landing radar
that will guide the next Mars
rover, Curiosity, to the surface
of the Red Planet in the summer
of 2012. This past spring, the
radar (attached to the nose of
the helicopter) went through
two months of ight tests over
desert terrain in Southern
California at different altitudes
and angles intended to simulate
trajectories under consideration
for the Mars landing. Preliminary
results indicate that the radar is
performing as expected.
THE SHOT: Photograph by
Spencer Lowell using a Canon
EOS-1Ds Mark III and 1635 mm
lens, f/5, 1/125 sec.
JULY/AUGUST 2010 | 11
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THE MOMENT: A preserved
ship sturgeon sits in the local
history museum of Aralsk,
Kazakhstan. In the decades
since 1960, the nearby Aral
Sea, where the sh once
lived, has shrunk to a quarter
of its original size because
of the diversion of rivers for
irrigation. This species is now
locally extinct and is critically
endangered worldwide. But
the Aral Sea itself may be
recovering: A dam built in 2005
has brought rising water levels
to its northern part.
THE SHOT: Photograph by
Carolyn Drake with a Mamiya
RZ67 Pro II camera, 65 mm
lens, ISO 160.
STURGEON
GENERAL
Data
12 | DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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the convenience of the Web
One click takes you to the story
you want
Fully searchable content
Zoom in on photos and illustrations
Bookmark your favorite pages
Share stories through e-mail
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Data Big Picture
Everybody loves the idea of photovoltaic solar
cells: endless clean electricity generated directly
from sunlight. The problem lies in the messy
reality of making the technology work well. For
instance, says Boston College physicist Michael
J. Naughton, the cells two functionscaptur-
ing light and making energypull the optimum
design for a solar panel in opposite directions.
Photo wants it thick, Naughton says, but
voltaic wants it thin. So Naughton and other
like-minded scientists are rethinking the fun-
damental elements of solar cells. They aim to
rewrite the rule book and nally make solar energy
cost-competitive with coal and natural gas.
The limitations of current-generation solar
cells are painfully clear. Although experimen-
tal cells have reached efciencies greater than
40 percent, most silicon-based commercial
designs struggle to get past about 20 percent.
The lower the efciency, the more cells it takes
to generate a given amount of electricity. That
in turn makes photovoltaics bulky and expen-
sive. As a result, the United States had just 800
megawatts of grid-connected solar photovol-
taic power in 2008, and solar accounted for
less than a tenth of one percent of all energy
consumed in the country.
Naughton is trying to boost efficiency by
tackling the thick-thin dilemma. The thicker a
solar cell, he explains, the more light it can cap-
ture. But when it comes to generating electricity,
thin is best: Electrons must travel farther in a
thick cell, so fewer reach the photovoltaic layer
where they create usable electricity. Naughtons
approach is to add an array of extremely ne
wires that stand up vertically on the at plane of
SOLAR POWER
GETS BRIGHTER
P
E
T
E
R
G
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T
E
R
/
C
O
R
B
I
S
Engineers are pushing the
physics of photovoltaic cells
with one overriding goal: to
make electricity from sunlight
cheaper than coal power.
a solar cell, like a miniature bed of nails, to catch
additional rays . Although they are just a few
microns tall, the wiresmade of a metal, often
silver, and coated in a thin layer of photovoltaic
amorphous siliconcan substantially boost ef-
ciency. Solar cells with this construction could
soak up about 10 percent more light without
requiring a thicker panel. Groups at Caltech and
the University of California at Berkeley are work-
ing on similar kinds of wire-enhanced cells.
Another roadblock hindering solar cells is that
much of the light they collect is wasted as heat
and not converted to electricity. When sunshine
strikes a solar cell, some of the electrons in the
cell take on energy but quickly lose most of it
as thermal energy rather than breaking loose to
become part of an electric current. Naughton
and colleagues are at work making improve-
ments here, too. They are trying to tap these
so-called hot electrons before their energy dis-
sipates. They hope that a layer of small semi-
conductor crystals called quantum dots may be
able to extract the high-energy electrons before
they cool, potentially doubling solar cell efcien-
cy. Naughtons group has already successfully
extracted hot electrons in a superthin silicon at
panel and next plans to combine that approach
with the wire array architecture.
Physicist David Carroll of Wake Forest Univer-
sity takes a different approach to the challenge
of capturing more sun. Existing at panels, he
notes, work best only under direct sunlight; the
low-angle rays of the early-morning and late-
afternoon sun are mostly reected away and
lost. So Carroll and his team are developing
solar cells that can grab light from many angles
BuzzWords
AMORPHOUS
Lacking a regular
internal arrange-
ment of atoms.
(In contrast, a
crystalline solid has
a repeating pattern
of internal atomic
structure.)
HOT ELECTRON
An electron in a
solar cell bear-
ing more energy
than can typically
be extracted as
electricity.
QUANTUM DOT
A cluster of atoms
so small that its
electronic proper-
ties are governed
by the laws of
quantum physics.
BAND GAP
The energy thresh-
old required to
excite an electron
in a semiconductor,
allowing it to carry
electrical energy.
14 | DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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Its not the advice youd expect.
Learning a new language
seems formidable, as we
recall from years of combat
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in school. Yet infants begin at
birth. They communicate at
eighteen months and speak
the language uently before they go to school. And they never battle
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young childrens play with parents and playmates whats this
clap, clap your hands my ball helps children develop
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This image depicts the magnetic eld
lines between two bar magnets. Earth
has a eld of its own that protects
us from charged particles from
the sun. It channels some of these
particles toward the poles, where they
can collide with air molecules and
release energy in the form of light,
producing brightly colored auroras.
in the brain, they have drawbacks.
Implants can iname the surround-
ing tissue, and scarring can disrupt
the connection between neurons and
electrodes. A sensor developed by
University of Pennsylvania neurolo-
gist Brian Litt could address those
problems. It consists of electrodes
embedded in a exible plastic mesh
that molds to the brains surface
(but it does not penetrate the gray
matter). Litt and his colleagues were
able to record neural signals from
cats brains for a few weeks without
causing inammation. Neuroscientist
Gerwin Schalk of the New York State
Department of Health has found that
test sensors placed on the outside of
human brains pick up signals that can
identify spoken or imagined words.
The surface is a sweet spot, he says.
AMBER ANGELLE
20 | DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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Look at a typical rocket and youll see
a whole lot of fuel with a little payload
tacked on top. That inefciency is a big
part of why it costs about $10,000 per
pound to get a satellite into orbit. It is also
why a group of researchers are investi-
gating a radical alternative that could loft
objects into space far more cheaply
using lasers instead of chemicals.
Recently declassied work by
aerospace engineer Franklin Mead Jr.
of the Air Force Research Laboratory
and physicist Eric Davis of the Institute
for Advanced Studies at Austin, Texas,
describes this lightcraft propulsion.
Their technique aims a high-powered
laser beam upward at a small, low-mass
craft. During takeoff, the laser causes air
at the base of the craft to explode into
a jet of hot plasma, generating thrust.
Beyond the reach of Earths atmosphere,
the laser continues to point at the crafts
underside, heating a propellant material
(such as plastic-based Delrin) that lines
its bottom. Mead has experimented
with small-scale models to prove the
feasibility of light propulsion, and Davis
LAUNCHING ON A BEAM OF LIGHT
has investigated how to get the most out
of the lasers energy. The two research-
ers claim that their design could get
satellites into low Earth orbit for around
$1,400 per pound. Not carrying the
whole energy source on board reduces
the cost to a fraction of what were used
to paying, Davis says.
Although no lightcraft has yet made it
into space, one prototypedesigned by
Leik Myrabo, an engineering physicist
at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
successfully ew 233 feet into the air
under laser power. Myrabo says he
could increase that height thirtyfold
or more just by upgrading to a wider and
more powerful laser beam. But reaching
orbit will require megawatt lasers; so
far, the best commercial lasers used in
experiments have less than one-tenth that
power. Military lasers could probably
cut it, but they are difcult to access for
civilian research. Myrabo is now col-
laborating with the Brazilian Air Force on
efforts to boost laser power in tests at
the Institute for Advanced Studies in
So Jos dos Campos, Brazil . NI CK ZAUTRA
Chemical rockets
devote a lot of space to
fuel. Laser propulsion
could reduce that bulk.
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Data
Much like the ancient holiday of Saturnalia, when Roman
masters swapped roles with servants, the recent buzz surround-
ing Saturn has mainly focused not on the giant planet but on its
satellites. And with good reason: The largest of those moons,
3,200-mile-wide Titan, has an atmosphere that may be similar
to that of our own planet in its younger days, and Enceladus, a
300-mile-wide ball, has a geologically active surface. Another
Saturnian satellite, two-faced Iapetus, puzzles astronomers with
one bright hemisphere and one that is as black as coal. But
recent images from the Cassini spacecraft, whose mission has
just been extended to 2017, are putting Saturn itself back in the
spotlight, giving us new information about the planets power-
ful weather patterns and the structure of its glorious rings. The
major rings are designated A, B, and C (running inward from
the outermost ring). LAURIE RICH SALERNO
S AT URN
STORMY WEATHER
Clouds of ammonia
and ice in Saturns
atmosphere produce
huge electrical storms
that rage for weeks
or months. Early in its
mission, Cassini started
to detect lightning on
Saturn using its radio
instruments, but recently
the probe released the
rst-ever movie of
lightning on another
planet, showing a 190-
mile-long ash from a
10-month storm in 2009.
INVISIBLE RING
The Cassini Divisiona
dark swath between
Saturns broad A and B
ringslooks empty, but
it is actually a separate
ring, just one with fewer
particles. NASAs Voyager
discovered this hidden
material, and the Cassini
probe shows previously
unseen ringlets and gaps
within it. The cause of
some of those gaps is
not evident; in January,
a group of astronomers
proposed that they result
from the gravitational pull
of particles in the giant,
nearby B ring.
YOUTHFUL COMPANIONS
Saturns rings consist of water-ice particles
typically ranging in size from a few inches to
many feet that continually gather into clumps
and drift apart again. The particles incredible
brightness makes some astronomers suspect
that the rings are much younger than the planet:
If they were old, they would have been darkened
by accumulated carbon from meteoroid impacts.
In 2017 the Cassini probe will plunge between the
planet and its innermost ring , which should reveal
much about the rings age and composition.
MIND THE GAPS
Moons cause most of the gaps between Saturns rings. Like a boulder in a riverbed, a
moons gravitational pull creates a wake in the surrounding ow of ring material. In 2006
Cassini discovered football-eld-size wakes caused by previously undetected moonlets
orbiting within the A ring. This image is from Saturns late 2009 equinox, when the rings
were tilted edge-on to the sun, giving them an unusually dark appearance.
N
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22 | DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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Make Sense of Black Holes
Black holes. They are one of the most exotic, mind-boggling,
and profound subjects in astrophysics. Not only are they at the
heart of some of the most intriguing phenomena in the cosmos,
theyre the gateway to fundamental and cutting-edge concepts
like general relativity and wormholes.
Nearly everyone has heard of black holes, but few people out-
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their implications for our universe. Black Holes Explained f-
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with 12 lavishly illustrated lectures delivered by distinguished
astronomer and award-winning Professor Alex Filippenko. As
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Like its subject matter, this course is intriguing, eye-opening,
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National Science Foundation
At the National Science Foundation, Green is forward
motion, the progression of technology, and a revitalization of
how we power our lives.
is transformation comes to life in our agencys new Green
Revolution video series. ese videos show how researchers use
tomorrows science and engineering innovations to make our
world cleaner and more e cient.
Learn how engineers in Massachusetts redene transportation
and its place in the community.
Discover how microbiologists in Pennsylvania use dirty water to
generate electricity.
www.nsf.gov/green_revolution
e National Science Foundation (NSF) is
an independent federal agency that supports
fundamental research and education.
DV0710NSFAD1A_WC 27 5/14/10 12:37:12 AM
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y
T O Y S
OWI T3
If you are tired of buying batteries,
perhaps its time to play with the power
of the sun. OWIs new T3 transforms
into three different toysa standing
robot, a tank, and a vehicle called the
Scorpionall of which are propelled by
solar electricity. A photovoltaic panel,
about one inch square, feeds energy to a
gearbox that turns gears to operate the
vehicles. No batteries required.
Be advised, though, that with its
many small plastic parts and some DIY
wiring, the T3 takes time and patience to
assemble. And, of course, its perfor-
mance suffers if the clouds roll in.
OWI also recently debuted a photo-
voltaic model solar system, complete
with tiny planets orbiting the sun. It even
comes with a set of acrylic paints, just in
case you are not satised with the color
nature provided. A.M.
H
O
T
S
C
I
E
N
C
E
Stand Back: Were Going to Try Science
LOOK AROUND YOU
Open your math textbooks to
chapter 3.1415926 and enjoy
the subtle but distinctly British
humor in this straight-faced
send-up of classic classroom
lm strips. Originally a BBC pro-
duction, Look Around You ew
under the radar during its initial
run on BBC America in 2004, but
its 10-minute bursts of absurdity
returned to the States via Adult
Swim in 2009. In this rst Ameri-
can DVD release of the show, you
will discover the secrets of sulfur,
math, iron, and more. Step into
a laboratory where scientists
toss out their instruments after
a single use, where a tissue will
block magnetic elds, and where
drinking a sulfur and champagne
mixture called sulphagne lets
you shoot deadly lasers from
your eyes. But please, dont try
these experiments at home.
Release date: July 20.
ANDREW MOSEMAN
B
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P
B O O K S
THE POWERS THAT BE
BY SCOTT L. MONTGOMERY
(UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS)
Worldwide demand for energy
continues to soar, driven by the
emerging industrial economies of
China and India. This exhaustive yet
accessible look at the global energy
supply weighs the future of fossil
fuels and carefully considers the
alternatives. Colliding social, politi-
cal, and environmental concerns
make comprehensive solutions to
our power predicament difcult, but
Montgomery, a geologist, is certain
of one thing: We are all in this
together, and notions of achieving
genuine energy independence are
pure horse pucky.
FOUR FISH
BY PAUL GREENBERG (PENGUIN PRESS)
Salmon, bass, cod, and tuna
through this troubled quartet of
dinner-table mainstays, journalist
Greenberg skillfully tells the tale of
how the worlds sheries got to be
in such a precarious state. Today
nearly all the salmon on grocery
shelves is farmed, and the popula-
tion of the wild variety is four to
ve times lower than it was before
the Industrial Revolution. But
Greenberg is no downtrodden pes-
simist. He highlights ways to save
these four sh, such as making
cod shermen more like herd-
ers managing particular swaths of
water where they have an incentive
not to drive the population too low.
Fish, Greenberg argues, require
absolutely no input from us in order
to continue, other than restraint.
BLIND DESCENT
BY JAMES M. TABOR (RANDOM HOUSE)
Self-styled supercavers endure
grueling physical challenges and
the constant threat of death to
explore our planets dark, wet
labyrinths. Vivid descriptions of
geological marvels add color to this
account of two elite spelunkers
American Bill Stone and his rival,
Ukrainian Alexander Klimchouk
competing to nd the deepest cave
in the world. But it is the astonish-
ing nerve and obsession of the men
and their teams that drive the story,
which ends in 2004 with a decisive
victory for one of them.
THE ARTIFICIAL APE
BY TIMOTHY TAYLOR
(PALGRAVE MACMILLAN)
We humans, despite our weak
muscles, fragile bones, and infan-
tile helplessness, came to rule
the earth. How? Archaeologist and
evolutionary scientist Taylor argues
that biology alone is not enough to
explain it. When our ape ancestors
rst fashioned tools, technology
took over as the driving force in
human evolution, propelling us to
success. Without our artifacts, Tay-
lor writes, we are utterly hopeless.
Yet with them, we are the planets
dominant force. ELI SE MARTON & A.M.
26 | DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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The Brain by Carl Zimmer
A blow to the head can change the neural architecture of the
brain from elastic to brittle, with devastating consequences.
E
very spring the National Football League conducts that
most cherished of American rituals, the college draft. A couple
of months before the event, prospective players show off their
abilities in an athletic audition known as the combine. Last winters
combine was different from that of previous years, though. Along
with the traditional 40-yard dashes and bench presses, the latest
crop of aspirants also had to log time in front of a computer, try-
ing to solve a series of brainteasers. In one test, Xs and Os were
sprinkled across the computer screen as the athletes took a test
that measured how well they could remember the position of each
letter. In another, words like red and blue appeared on the screen in
different colors. The football players had to press a key as quickly
as possible if the word matched its color.
These teasers are not intended to help coaches make their draft
picks. They are for the benet of the players themselvesor, to
be more precise, for the benet of the players gray matter. Under
pressure from Congress, the N.F.L. is taking steps to do a better
job of protecting its players from brain damage. The little computer
challenges that the draft candidates had to solve measure some
of the brains most crucial functions, such as its ability to hold
several pieces of information at once. Given the nature of foot-
ball, it is extremely likely that a number of this years draft picks
will someday suffer a head injury on the eld. After that happens,
N.F.L. doctors will give them the same tests again. By comparing
the new results with the baseline scores recorded just before the
draft, the doctors will get a clearer sense of how badly the football
players have damaged their brains and what degree of caution to
take during recovery.
The N.F.L.s sudden interest in neuroscience is just the latest
sign that we, as a society, are nally taking brain injuries more seri-
ously. Its about time. Neurologists estimate that every year more
than a million people suffer brain injuries in
the United States alonenot just from foot-
ball mishaps, but also from car crashes, falls
down stairs, and many other kinds of acci-
dents. And that gure is probably a serious
underestimate, because many brain injuries
go undiagnosed. It is easy to believe that if
you feel ne after a fall, then you must truly
be ne, but even so-called mild brain inju-
ries can have devastating consequences.
Peoples personalities may shift so they can
no longer hold down their job or maintain
their marriage. Sometimes mild brain inju-
ries even lead to dementia.
This hidden epidemic of brain injury is not
only tragic but also strange and mysterious.
Brains dont fail in obvious ways, as bones
do when they snap or skin does when it
rips. Scientists are only now starting to dis-
cover the subtle damage that occurs when
the brain is injured: It gets disturbed down
to its individual molecules.
The brain oats in a sealed chamber of
ce re brospinal uid, like a sponge in a jar of water. If you quickly sit
down in a chair, you accelerate your brain. The force you generate
can cause it to swirl around and shift its shape inside the brain-
case. The brain is constantly twisting, stretching, and squashing
within your head. Given the delicacy of the organa living brain
has the consistency of custardit is amazing that we manage to
get to the end of each day without suffering severe damage.
Douglas Smith, director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair
at the University of Pennsylvania, has been running experiments
for the past decade to understand how we are able to survive such
regular assaults. Smith builds miniature brains by growing live rat
neurons on a stretchable membrane attached to a custom-built
metal plate. Roughly the size of a postage stamp, the plate is
lined with microscopic grooves crossing a exible strip of silicone
that runs across the middle. As the neurons grow on each side,
they sprout long branches, called axons, which creep down the
grooves to make contact with neurons growing on the other side
in order to transmit electric signals between them.
Once the axons have matured, Smith and his colleagues shoot
the metal plates with carefully controlled puffs of air. They direct the
puffs at the silicone strip, which stretches in response. In the
process, the air delivers a sudden force to the axons as well.
Smith and his colleagues then observe the axons to see how they
handle the assault.
It turns out that axons are remarkably elastic. They can stretch
out slowly to twice their ordinary length and then pull back again
without any harm. Axons are stretchy due in part to their exible
internal skeleton. Instead of rigid bones, axons are built around
structural elements, mostly bundles of laments called microtu-
bules. When an axon stretches, these microtubules can slide past
Motor vehicle
crashes cause
nearly 300,000
traumatic brain
injuries in the
United States
each year.
28 | DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
DV0710BRAIN2B1_WC 28 5/12/10 9:50:36 PM
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Who came before us? How did we get here? Where do we come from?
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one another. If the movement is gradual,
the microtubules will immediately slide
back into place after the stretching stops,
with no harm done.
If Smith delivers a quick, sharp puff of air,
however, something else entirely happens.
Instead of recoiling smoothly, the axon
develops kinks. Over the next 40 minutes,
the axon gradually returns to its regular
shape, but after an hour a series of swell-
ings appears. Each swelling may be up to
50 times as wide as the normal diameter of
the axon. Eventually the axon falls apart.
These kinks form, Smith believes, when
microtubules are stretched so rapidly that
they snap. The broken laments can no
longer slide neatly back over one another
and instead bunch up, causing the kinks.
Normally, enzymes inside neurons are
constantly taking apart microtubules and
building new ones with the recycled parts.
But now the enzymes attack the broken
ends of the microtubules, causing the inter-
nal structure of the axon to dissolve. With
the microtubules turning to mush, the axon
begins to relax and lose its kinks. The axons
look fairly normal, but they are catastrophi-
cally damaged.
Microtubules do more than give neurons
their structure. They also serve as a kind
of cellular railway network. Proteins travel
from one end of a neuron to the other by
moving along microtubules. If microtu-
bules break, the result is much like what
happens when a railroad track is dam-
aged. The proteins pile up, and these traf-
c jams produce the swellings in the axons
that Smith sees in his experiments. The
swellings get so big that they eventually
rupture , tearing the axon apart and spew-
ing out damaged proteins.
Smiths ndings could shed light on a
common but puzzling brain trauma known
as diffuse axonal injury. This happens when
people experience sudden accelerations to
the brainfrom a bombs shock waves, for
example, or from whiplash in a car crash.
Very often the acceleration causes people
to lose consciousness. In serious cases it
can lead to trouble with cognitive tasks,
such as deciding whether the word red is
actually printed in red. When pathologists
perform autopsies on people with diffuse
axonal injury, they see severed axons with
swollen tips, just like what Smith sees in
his experiments.
Smiths research also suggests that
even mild shocks to the brain can cause
serious harm. If he hit his axons with gentle
puffs of air, they didnt swell and break.
Nevertheless, there was a major change in
their molecular structure. Axons create the
electric current that allows them to send
signals by drawing in negatively charged
sodium atoms. A moderate stretch to an
axon, Smith recently found, causes the
sodium channels to malfunction. In order
to keep the current owing, the trauma-
tized axons start to build more channels.
Smith suspects that such a mended axon
may be able to go on working, but only
in a very frail state. Another stretcheven
a moderate onecan cause the axon to
go haywire. Its additional sodium chan-
nels now malfunction, and the axon tries
to compensate by creating even more
channels. But these channels are now
so defective that they start letting in posi-
tively charged calcium atoms. The calcium
atoms activate enzymes that destroy the
gates that slow the ow of sodium through
the channels, so now even more sodium
rushes inand then more calcium, in a
runaway feedback loop. The axon dies
like a shorted-out circuit.
This slower type of axon death may
happen when someone suffers mild but
repeated brain injuries, exactly the kind that
football players experience as they crash
into each other in game after game. Cogni-
tive tests like the ones at this years N.F.L.
combine can pinpoint the mental troubles
that come with dysfunctional or dying
axons. There is precious little research to
indicate how long a football player should
be sidelined in order to let his brain recover,
though, and Smiths experiments dont
offer much comfort. Preliminary brain stud-
ies show that axons are still vulnerable even
months after an initial stretch.
Once a person does sustain a brain inju-
ry, there is not a lot doctors can do. They
can open a hole in the skull if pressure in
the brain gets too high. But they have no
drugs to treat the actual damage. Some
30 compounds have made it into phase 3
trials in humans, only to fail.
The latest research could point scien-
tists to more effective treatments. Smith,
for example, recently found that the anti-
cancer drug taxol can stabilize the micro-
tubules in neurons, protecting them from
catastrophic disassembly after a sharp
shock. Now that we know the damage to
the brain happens at the molecular level,
we may find a cure for the injured brain
waiting there as well.
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Lawrence Principe was sorting through a collection of old chemistry books at the
Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia when he stumbled upon a forgotten manuscript
handwritten by Sir Isaac Newton. Any Newton manuscript is of interest, but this one was worth its
weight in gold, literallyas Principe, a chemist and historian of science at Johns Hopkins University,
recognized immediately. Holding the yellowed manuscript in his hands and studying the scribbled
words, he understood that he was looking at one of the best-kept secrets in the history of science.
Today revered as the father of modern physics and the inventor of calculus, Newton was describing
a recipe for the Philosophers Stone,
a legendary substance that reputedly
could turn base metals like iron and
lead into gold. Newtons dabblings in
alchemy are well known, but his belief
that he had found the closely guarded
blueprint for the Philosophers Stone
was astonishing indeed.
Newton was not the only intellec-
tual heavyweight from his era trying
to make gold. The recipe for the Phi-
losophers Stone had come from his
older contemporary, the famed British
chemist Robert Boyle. As it turns out,
Boyle was a devotee of alchemy too.
If two of the greatest scientists who
ever lived were dedicated alchemists,
then alchemy needs a makeover, a
big one, contend Principe and his col-
league William Newman, a historian of
science at Indiana University. Back in
the day, the two argue, alchemy was
not the misguided pseudoscience that
most people think it was. Rather, it was
a valuable and necessary phase in the
development of modern chemistry.
Among alchemys signature accom-
plishments: creating new alloys;
manufacturing acids and pigments;
inventing apparatus for distillation, the
process used in making perfumes and
whiskeys; conceiving of atoms centu-
ries before modern atomic theory; and
providing a template for the scientic
method by running controlled experi-
ments again and again.
Aiming to restore alchemy to its
rightful status, Principe and Newman
who came to the eld separately
but joined forces after meeting at a
conference in 1989went through
medieval alchemical texts, letters,
and laboratory notebooks lled with
odd symbols and coded language.
Then they did something unheard-of
in recent times: They made replicas
of the laboratory glassware used by
15th-, 16th-, and 17th-century alche-
mists and re-created their experi-
ments rsthand.
There were reasons that alche-
mists thought they could make gold,
Newman says. They had theories
about the nature of metals that made
them believe they could manipulate
their structure. They also conducted
experiments that they believed proved
minerals could be made to grow. In
an age when there were no micro-
scopes to penetrate living cells and
no understanding of the nature of
atoms and molecules, the alchemists
were not misguided so much as mis-
informed, doing their best to make
sense of a world they could not see.
That they understood as much as
they did is the real marvel: In pursu-
ing what today seems like little more
than witchcraft, the alchemists were
Alchemy by
Jan Stradanus,
painted in 1570.
76 | DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
DV0710ALCHEMY6A_WC 76 5/14/10 1:06:40 AM
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was still a good century or two away.
Newton was even more secretive than
Boyle, disguising his alchemical investiga-
tions (he wrote more than a million unpub-
lished words on the subject) with codes,
obscure symbols for chemicals, and col-
orful metaphors. His notes contain cryptic
references to Green Lion, Neptunes Tri-
dent, and the Scepter of Jove. Newman
has not yet gured out what substances
any of these terms refer to.
To really understand what Newton was
seeing in his laboratory, Newman realized in
2002, he needed to repeat some of the old
alchemical experiments himself. He started
by building replicas of alchemical furnaces
and glassware, including distilling appa-
ratus, with the help of Indiana Universitys
chemistry department. One key alchemical
experiment was called the Tree of Diana, a
magical-looking demonstration that metals
could grow like vegetation. Newman learned
that the Tree of Diana really works. If you
immerse a solid amalgam of silver and mer-
cury in nitric acid with dissolved silver and
mercury, you produce tiny, twiglike branches
of solid silver , he says. Today this process
is regarded as a simple matter of chemistry.
But to Newton, the Tree of Diana was evi-
dence that metals could be made to grow
and, therefore, possessed a sort of life.
The image of the growing metallic tree
can be found in another type of experiment,
one that Starkey, Boyle, and very likely
Newton all conducted: the attempt to syn-
thesize the Philosophers Stone. Principe,
who had studied the alchemical work of all
three men, came to the same conclusion
as Newman and decided that he, too, had
to replicate the long-abandoned alchemi-
cal experiments rsthand. He culled recipes
from alchemists like Starkey and, after a
lengthy process involving various materials
and numerous distillations, obtained Phil-
osophical Mercury, just as Boyle had 350
years earlier . Principe mixed the Philosophi-
cal Mercury with gold, sealed it in a glass
egg, and watched. Just as Starkey and
other alchemists reported, strange things
started to happen inside the egg. The mix-
ture began to bubble, rising like leavened
dough, Principe says. Then it turned pasty
and liquid and, after several days of heating,
transformed into what he likens to a den-
dritic fractal: another metallic tree, like the
trees the miners saw underground, only this
one was made of gold and mercury.
Principes tree, like all the trees any
alchemist managed to create, did not actu-
ally grow any gold, of course; the gold that
came out was no greater than the amount
that he put in. But the experiments proved
something that Principe had long sus-
pected. Alchemists were not just tinkering
blindly. In fact, they produced what he calls
a solid body of repeated and repeatable
observations of laboratory results. In their
tightly controlled experiments they made
metals bubble, change colors, and grow
sparkling laments, and they did it over and
over again, establishing, in a crude way, the
foundations of scientic experimentation. In
the process they were learning fundamen-
tal principles of chemistry: breaking down
ores, dissolving metals with acids, and pre-
cipitating metals out of solution.
Ever since he found that singular Newton
manuscript, Principe has wondered what
was going on in the mind of one of historys
most brilliant scientists. How close did New-
ton and Boyle think they had come to mak-
ing gold? Did they believe that with just a few
more tweaks, their experiments would even-
tually work? Principe says yes, they prob-
ably did. Why, otherwise, would the highly
apolitical Boyle have lobbied the Houses of
Parliament to overturn a law forbidding gold
making? He was a very scrupulous man,
and before he went about doing transmu-
tation, he wanted to make sure it wasnt
against the law, Principe says.
Further evidence of their seriousness
emerged after Boyles death in 1691. In
life, Boyle had guarded his recipe for red
earth as if it were the most precious thing
in the world. But upon his death, his exec-
utor, the philosopher John Locke, also an
alchemist, was more generous, sending
Newton the recipe along with a sample
that Boyle had made before his death.
No one knows what Newton did with
the red earth. Principe notes that Newton
suffered a mental breakdown a year after
Boyles death and wonders if that episode
might have been brought on by mercury
poisoning. After all, the rst steps in mak-
ing red earth require repeatedly heating and
cooling mercury. Shortly after he would
have gotten copies of this recipe, he was
distilling mercury, Principe says. But New-
man thinks that Newtons breakdown is just
as likely to be related to Lockes trying to set
him up with a well-to-do widow. Newton
had a sort of pathological fear of females,
and around that time Locke was pressur-
ing him to date. That may be what pushed
him over the edge, he notes. (Newton is
believed to have died a virgin, according to
historian Gale Christianson.)
No matter how skillfully the two giants
of 17th-century science manipulated the
red earth and set their sights on the Phi-
losophers Stone, they would have failed to
make gold. We know now that such a trans-
formation requires not a chemical reaction
but a nuclear one, far beyond the reach of
the technology of the time. By the early
18th century, alchemists had given up on
their quest for gold. Theyd gured out that
in a practical way their attempts to make
the Philosophers Stone never worked,
Newman says. That does not mean that their
other work was abandoned, however. As
Newman says, The goals of 18th-century
chemistrynamely, to understand the mate-
rial composition of things through analysis
and synthesis and to make useful products
such as pharmaceuticals, pigments, porce-
lain, and various rened chemicalswere
largely inherited from the 16th- and 17th-
century alchemists.
Without the pioneering alchemists, none
of that would have been possible. They
were the masters of premodern chemical
technology, Newman says. As the true
power and limitations of chemistry came
into focus, interest in the Philosophers
Stone simply faded away, much as the
belief in the classical Four Elements had
faded away centuries before. Almost over-
night, the perception of alchemy became
conated with an unforgiving view of the
protoscientic world as one populated by
mystics and superstitious fools.
As for Isaac Newtons prized sample
of red earth from John Locke, it was very
likely thrown out after Newton died in
1727. Unless someone kept it. Imagine a
little packet of Philosophers Stone stuck
between the pages of a book from New-
tons library. If it is out there, for the sake of
alchemy and science, lets hope Newman
and Principe are the ones who nd it.
Alchemists made
metals bubble,
change colors, and
grow sparkling
laments.
82 | DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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Imagine examining artifacts in the Smithsonian
Institution and finding a never-before-seen sketch for
the largest and highest denomination American coin
ever proposed? Thats just what happened as one
coin expert recently explored the collection at this
celebrated public institution. But as this numismatist
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To his own surprise, he had
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for a hundred dollar denomina-
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coin designer. These sketches,
hidden within an original sketchbook
for nearly a century, represent perhaps
the grandest American coin ever proposed
the $100 Union.
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For the uninitiated, the name SETI Institute may conjure up sleek glass
buildings, mammoth radio dishes, and creased-brow researchers rushing
about waving enigmatic printouts. After all, SETIthe Search for Extrater-
restrial Intelligenceis one of the most far-reaching and controversial proj-
ects in science. The idea that the universe might contain civilizations other
than our own probably helped get Giordano Bruno burned at the stake in
1600. It sparked a famous 19th-century newspaper hoax in which astrono-
mers were said to have found a society of man-bats on the moon. It
motivated Percival Lowells writings about canals on Mars at the turn of the
last century, and it inspired Orson Welless infamous War of the Worlds
radio broadcast in 1938, which sent hundreds of thousands of listeners into
a panic over a ctional Martian invasion they thought was real.
As the culmination of that grand history, the SETI Institute deserves an
equally grand location, but the reality is quite a bit more modest. The insti-
tute occupies a single oor in an ofce park across the street from a resi-
dential district in suburban Mountain View, California, not far from a printing
company and a shop called Fun House Theatrical Costumes. This is the
biggest such operation in the world, says Seth Shostak, a senior scientist
with the institute, and there are just 10 or 12 of us here doing SETI. Its not
legions of lab-coated scientists with clipboards. I wish it were.
At rst blush, the organizations results might seem equally disap-
pointing. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the rst modern SETI
search: It was in April 1960 that astronomer Frank Drake pointed a radio
telescope at the nearby star Tau Ceti and began listening for the telltale
ping of an alien communication. Instead he just heard static, and in the
half-century since, the silence has been complete.
Call
Waiting
B Y M I C H A E L L E M O N I C K
For 50 years a devoted group of scientists has
been listening for signals from intelligent aliens.
Despite all the dead air, the true believers say the
odds of success are now better than ever.
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The Allen Telescope Array
in Hat Creek, California,
has been listening for signals
from ET since 2007.
JULY/AUGUST 2010 | 85
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So is Shostak discouraged by all the dead air? Heck no, he says,
not missing a beat. Despite ve decades of null results and chronic
underfunding, he and his colleagues are more upbeat than ever. He
ticks off some reasons: Dramatic improvements in technology are
speeding up the search. Recent star surveys indicate that planetary
systemsvery likely including many Earth-like planetsare common
throughout the Milky Way and the rest of the universe. And the latest
explorations of our own planet demonstrate that life can exist in a
much wider range of environments than anyone previously thought.
As a result, many SETI scientists regard the last 50 years as just
a learning process. Imagine, says Jill Tarter, director of the Cen-
ter for SETI Research at the SETI Institute and one of the stalwarts
in the eld, that you didnt know whether there were any sh in
Earths oceans. So you go out and dip a single eight-ounce glass
in the water. You might nd one. But if the glass came up empty, I
dont think your rst response would be There are no sh.
SETI searchers have known from the beginning that success would
be a long shot. A discriminating search for signals deserves a con-
siderable effort, wrote Cornell physicists Giuseppe Cocconi and
Philip Morrison in a 1959 Nature paper titled Searching for Interstel-
lar Communications, the rst formally argued rationale for SETI. The
probability of success is difcult to estimate; but if we never search,
the chance of success is zero. Cocconi and Morrison argued that the
best way to communicate across interstellar space would be by radio
because it is practical to transmit and receive and can easily pass
through Earths (and presumably the alien planets) atmosphere.
Drake was a young radio astronomer at the time, working at
the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West
Virginia. When the Nature paper came out, he was already work-
ing on a detector he could use on the observatorys 85-foot radio
dish to search for alien signals. He called that rst search Project
Ozma, after the princess of Oz from L. Frank Baums books. The
project failed, but he was not surprised. After all, he had looked
at just a handful of stars and radio frequencies, for a whopping
two months. Nobody could possibly expect to luck onto an alien
broadcast that easily, unless there happened to be technologically
advanced civilizations lurking around just about every star.
Soon after this rst attempt, Drake came up with the celebrated
Drake equation, which became the fundamental organizing principle
for the new cross-disciplinary eld of astrobiology. The equation
looked at all the factors determining how many (if any) detectable
extraterrestrial societies are out there. Drake multiplied the number
of sunlike stars in our galaxy that form each year by a handful of
variables: the fraction of those stars that have planets; the number
of planets per planetary system where life could exist; the fraction
of habitable planets where life actually arises; the fraction of those
where intelligence emerges; the fraction of intelligent species that
develop interstellar communication; and nally, the average length
of time that those communicating civilizations survive.
The only one of those factors that scientists had a clue about at
the time was the formation rate of sunlike stars. The rest was pure
speculation. On the question of how often life arises under the right
conditions, for example, optimists like Carl Sagan thought it would
almost always happen. Others suspected that life was actually a rare
occurrence. At a gathering convened by Drake early on, opinions as
MANY SCIENTISTS regard the last 50 years as just a learning process.
SETI pioneer
Frank Drake
(standing,
center ) at
the National
Radio
Astronomy
Observatory
in 1962.
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86 | DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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