76. What Lies Beyond the Edge of the Universe
The visible edge of the universe is, by defnition, the most distant thing that we can see. at does not mean it is the most distant thing we can feel, however.
According to astrophysicist Alexander Kashlinsky of Goddard Space Flight Center, something from way beyond the edge seems to be pulling powerfully on galaxies in our universe, yanking them along in a motion he calls “dark flow.” Kashlinsky and his team noticed this phenomenon while studying the cosmic
microwave background, radiation left over from just after the Big Bang. Giant clusters of galaxies scatter the radiation in a way that makes it possible to determine how each cluster is moving. When Kashlinsky plotted those motions, he determined that the galaxies seem to be racing in a particular direction, roughly aligned with the constellation Centaurus. The phenomenon was so unexpected that he conducted an expanded survey, looking at more and
brighter galaxy clusters. The results, released last March, not only conform the dark flow but extend its known reach. “ is motion persists as far as we can
see,” Kashlinsky says. Nothing in the known universe can account for the dark ow phenomenon. So Kashlinsky thinks the galaxies are responding to the pull
of matter and energy lying beyond our cosmic horizon. at unseen stu could be at least a thousand times farther out than the horizon and cause “a slight tilt to our universe,” he theorizes. Kashlinsky plans to use the European Space Agency’s new Planck spacecraft to make re ned measurements of the dark ow to better understand what is causing it.
According to astrophysicist Alexander Kashlinsky of Goddard Space Flight Center, something from way beyond the edge seems to be pulling powerfully on galaxies in our universe, yanking them along in a motion he calls “dark flow.” Kashlinsky and his team noticed this phenomenon while studying the cosmic
microwave background, radiation left over from just after the Big Bang. Giant clusters of galaxies scatter the radiation in a way that makes it possible to determine how each cluster is moving. When Kashlinsky plotted those motions, he determined that the galaxies seem to be racing in a particular direction, roughly aligned with the constellation Centaurus. The phenomenon was so unexpected that he conducted an expanded survey, looking at more and
brighter galaxy clusters. The results, released last March, not only conform the dark flow but extend its known reach. “ is motion persists as far as we can
see,” Kashlinsky says. Nothing in the known universe can account for the dark ow phenomenon. So Kashlinsky thinks the galaxies are responding to the pull
of matter and energy lying beyond our cosmic horizon. at unseen stu could be at least a thousand times farther out than the horizon and cause “a slight tilt to our universe,” he theorizes. Kashlinsky plans to use the European Space Agency’s new Planck spacecraft to make re ned measurements of the dark ow to better understand what is causing it.
77. Wired Bees Do Field Research
This orchid bee was one of 16 outfitted with a radio transmitter backpack as part of a study of the insects’ flight habits by ecologists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. “We can ask animals how they see their surroundings by observing their movement,” says lead researcher Martin Wikelski. Teams on the ground tracked the pollinators while a helicopter crew provided additional monitoring. The results, published in May, indicate that individual bees typically cover a home area of about 100 acres, but some set off on long-distance flights. One intrepid bee took a three-mile jaunt across the Panama Canal, where it spent a few days before returning home.
78. Good Listeners Get Inside Your Head
What is it like to get inside another person’s head? You already know the answer, according to Princeton neuroscientist Lauren Silbert. She placed herself in an fMRI brain scanner and noted her neural response when she spoke about a vivid memory (two boys fighting over her at her high school prom). Later she and her collaborators scanned the brains of a group of volunteers as they listened to a recording of her story. The outcome, published last June, was remarkable. Among the listeners who paid close attention to the story—as measured by a subsequent questionnaire—brain activity paralleled the activity in
Silbert’s own brain. More surprising, among the most attentive listeners, key brain regions lit up before her words even came out, suggesting anticipation of what she would say next. “The more you anticipate someone, the more you’re able to enter their space,”
Silbert’s own brain. More surprising, among the most attentive listeners, key brain regions lit up before her words even came out, suggesting anticipation of what she would say next. “The more you anticipate someone, the more you’re able to enter their space,”
79. Strange Days on Saturn’s Moons
“Frozen” does not mean “static,” at least not among the icy moons orbiting Saturn. A remarkable 2010 image from NASA’s Cassini probe—now in its seventh year orbiting the ringed planet—shows just how dynamic these frigid worlds really are. Thomas Romer and Gordan Ugarkovic, graphic designers who specialize in astronomical images, produced this portrait by merging two Cassini shots taken minutes apart as the probe whizzed past Enceladus on May 18. Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, dominates the view. Its thick, opaque orange atmosphere rains liquid methane, which flows into lakes on the surface. The foreground action here comes from another Saturnian moon, 310-mile-wide Enceladus, which emits huge jets of icy particles, here dramatically backlit by the sun. The material in these plumes may originate in an underground ocean before being forced to the —300 degree Fahrenheit surface and spewed out through cracks at the moon’s south pole. That spooky line cutting across the scene is an edge-on view of Saturn’s rings.
80. Magnets Can Change Your Moral Values
Think you have clear standards of right and wrong written into your brain? ink again. In April neuroscientist Liane Young and her colleagues at MIT and Harvard University reported that they had altered people’s moral judgments using transcranial magnetic stimulation, a procedure that brie y disrupts neural processing with a magnetic field induced by electric current. Young asked each of volunteers to judge scenarios that involved morally questionable behavior. (One example: Grace slips her friend what she thinks is poison but is actually sugar. e friend is una ected. How immoral is Grace’s action?) Then she
stimulated the subjects’ brains at an area near the right ear called the temporoparietal junction, a region theorized to play a role in our ability to gure out others’ intentions, and repeated the tests. Before and after, the subjects rated the scenarios on a sevenpoint scale, ranging from morally forbidden to morally permissible. After stimulation, her subjects were consistently more likely to rank the actions of the characters as being closer to permissible; their answers
averaged one step higher on the scale. Young’s interpretation is that when subjects were zapped, they were more likely to focus on the outcome
(nobody died) than on the intent (Grace tried to poison her friend). Manipulating morality with a magnet may sound diabolical, but Young has no interest in mind control. Her goal, she explains, is to learn more about why intentions matter to us when we make moral judgments.
stimulated the subjects’ brains at an area near the right ear called the temporoparietal junction, a region theorized to play a role in our ability to gure out others’ intentions, and repeated the tests. Before and after, the subjects rated the scenarios on a sevenpoint scale, ranging from morally forbidden to morally permissible. After stimulation, her subjects were consistently more likely to rank the actions of the characters as being closer to permissible; their answers
averaged one step higher on the scale. Young’s interpretation is that when subjects were zapped, they were more likely to focus on the outcome
(nobody died) than on the intent (Grace tried to poison her friend). Manipulating morality with a magnet may sound diabolical, but Young has no interest in mind control. Her goal, she explains, is to learn more about why intentions matter to us when we make moral judgments.
81. Melting Ice Exposes the Past
As ice patches melt around the world, archaeologists are finding remarkably preserved artifacts emerging from millennia of deep freeze. Last April, Craig Lee of the University of Colorado at Boulder announced the oldest discovery yet: the foreshaft of a 10,400-year-old wooden dart, recovered from melting ice near Yellowstone National Park. The slender birch object still shows the marks left by its maker’sstone tools. Artifacts made of organic materials like wood—much
less likely than stone to survive the millennia—give us “another window to the past,” Lee notes. Over the past decade, “ice-patch archaeologists” have scoured the earth’s northernmost latitudes. Lee looked farther south in the Rocky Mountains, hunting in shady valleys and along north-facing mountain
slopes. His success was a matter of timing as much as strategy: Organic artifacts begin to decay the moment the ice melts back. When Lee found the wooden dart, it was “lying under the clear blue sky, exposed.
less likely than stone to survive the millennia—give us “another window to the past,” Lee notes. Over the past decade, “ice-patch archaeologists” have scoured the earth’s northernmost latitudes. Lee looked farther south in the Rocky Mountains, hunting in shady valleys and along north-facing mountain
slopes. His success was a matter of timing as much as strategy: Organic artifacts begin to decay the moment the ice melts back. When Lee found the wooden dart, it was “lying under the clear blue sky, exposed.
82. Scientists Tap Wisdom of Crowds
When University of Washington biochemist David Baker needed help predicting the structure of proteins, he did not turn to his colleagues. Rather, he decided to let the whole world participate. Increasingly, scientists are relying on such “crowdsourcing”—calling on ordinary citizens to volunteer their help in addressing complicated problems. In Baker’s case, he helped develop Foldit, a computer game that challenges players to wiggle and shake protein chains into stable structures. In August a paper in Nature revealed that Foldit players, ost of whom had little or no biochemistry education, surpassed or matched the performance of a sophisticated protein- folding algorithm on 8 of 10 puzzles. “People are better at analyzing the whole situation,” Baker says. “Computers just approach problems randomly.” Volunteers for the Galaxy Zoo project have classified a million images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, leading to about 20 scientific publications and one genuine enigma: a peculiar green intergalactic blob. Other crowdsourced projects include labeling aerial photos f Mongolia in a quest to find Genghis Khan’s tomb and improving climate models by poring over World War I ship logs for weather information. the action too, listing projects on a new Web site, challenge.gov, and offering prizes. In July a retired engineer from New Hampshire won $30,000 from NASA or a model that forecast solar activity with 75 percent accuracy. “There’s a huge appetite from people who aren’t scientists to actually get involved in science.
83. Biggest Star of All
Last year BRITISH ASTRONOMERS identified the most massive star ever seen: a behemoth weighing
times as much as our sun, so huge that it challenges astronomers’ models of how stars are born. ose models suggested that stars max out at solar masses; anything more was thought to be too unstable to coalesce. But Paul Crowther of the University of She eld, examining images from the Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope, identi ed four young stars exceeding that mass in R, a stellar cluster , light-years away. The new heavyweight, dubbed Ra, shines as bright as million suns.
Normal stars form when clumps of gas and dust collapse
due to gravity, but Crowther says this is inadequate to
explain Ra. Possibly it beefed up by colliding and merging
with other young stars in the cluster. As for the fate of these
huge stars, he adds, “ ey could explode as spectacular
supernovas and leave no remnants behind.”
times as much as our sun, so huge that it challenges astronomers’ models of how stars are born. ose models suggested that stars max out at solar masses; anything more was thought to be too unstable to coalesce. But Paul Crowther of the University of She eld, examining images from the Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope, identi ed four young stars exceeding that mass in R, a stellar cluster , light-years away. The new heavyweight, dubbed Ra, shines as bright as million suns.
Normal stars form when clumps of gas and dust collapse
due to gravity, but Crowther says this is inadequate to
explain Ra. Possibly it beefed up by colliding and merging
with other young stars in the cluster. As for the fate of these
huge stars, he adds, “ ey could explode as spectacular
supernovas and leave no remnants behind.”
84. Yardstick for Killer Waves
When a magnitude 8.8 earth quake ravaged Chile in February, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii put most of the Pacific Rim on alert. With no way to know how big the resulting ocean wave might become, the center’s geophysicists had no choice but to prepare for the worst. Aiming to do better, Tony Song of devised a much more precise tsunami prediction system based on readings; he tested it successfully for the rst time this past year. Song’s technique predicts the exact scale of a tsunami by tracking ground motions to estimate how much water has been displaced on the ocean oor—and, by extension, how much energy is feeding the wave. When the Chile earthquake struck, Song’s system showed that an underwater fault had slipped
almost feet, potentially enough to produce a tsunami several yards high. But then Song crunched the numbers and saw that the tsunami scored only a moderate . on his - point intensity scale, so he correctly predicted that it would not spread far beyond Chile. Soon nations around the world including India, Italy, Portugal, and Taiwan, began calling Song to inquire about his prediction system. He envisions eventually deploying one receiver for every miles
of coastline to track the strength of developing tsunamis. “ adds a new dimension, a more complete picture that is very fast,” Song says. “We will tell not just what the tsunami is, but what it will be.”
almost feet, potentially enough to produce a tsunami several yards high. But then Song crunched the numbers and saw that the tsunami scored only a moderate . on his - point intensity scale, so he correctly predicted that it would not spread far beyond Chile. Soon nations around the world including India, Italy, Portugal, and Taiwan, began calling Song to inquire about his prediction system. He envisions eventually deploying one receiver for every miles
of coastline to track the strength of developing tsunamis. “ adds a new dimension, a more complete picture that is very fast,” Song says. “We will tell not just what the tsunami is, but what it will be.”
85. Robot Skin Can Feel Your Touch
Artificial organs keep us alive, artificial arms build our cars—and soon artificial skin may allow robots or prosthetics to respond to our every touch. This past year, two independent groups made notable advances in that direction. At the University of California, Berkeley, electrical engineer Ali Javey and his team attached a grid of nanowire transistors to a polyimide film placed atop a layer of rubber. The resulting electronic skin recognizes pokes and prods as changes in electric resistance. Meanwhile, at
Stanford University, materials scientist Zhenan Bao and collaborators cut pyramid-shaped holes in an elastic polymer to produce variations in capacitance, the ability to hold an electric charge. In tests, the material could “feel” objects as light as a butterfly.
Beyond robots and artificial limbs, synthetic skin might be used someday in extremely responsive touch screens or in car devices that alert drivers if their hands slip off the wheel. “It would be nice if the machines we interact with could interact with human beings intelligently.
Stanford University, materials scientist Zhenan Bao and collaborators cut pyramid-shaped holes in an elastic polymer to produce variations in capacitance, the ability to hold an electric charge. In tests, the material could “feel” objects as light as a butterfly.
Beyond robots and artificial limbs, synthetic skin might be used someday in extremely responsive touch screens or in car devices that alert drivers if their hands slip off the wheel. “It would be nice if the machines we interact with could interact with human beings intelligently.
86. Bowerbirds Use Illusion to Seduce Mates
Male bowerbirds, like the males of so many species, lure mates with displays of wealth. The male collects up to 5,000 stones, bones, shells, and man-made objects to build an elaborate court where he awaits potential partners. And also like so many other males, bowerbirds exaggerate what they’ve got. Last September John Endler, an evolutionary ecologist at Deakin University in Australia, reported that bowerbirds seem to use their trinkets to create a carefully plotted optical illusion. The birds arrange objects by size from largest to smallest along an avenue leading to the court. This may make the court seem
smaller—and the male larger—to females looking up the avenue. Using this trick, called forced perspective, males may woo passing females with their deceptively large stature. When Endler rearranged the objects, the male quickly returned them to their original position. Endler is now making videos of bowerbird flirtations to see if a greater gradient results in increased mating success.
smaller—and the male larger—to females looking up the avenue. Using this trick, called forced perspective, males may woo passing females with their deceptively large stature. When Endler rearranged the objects, the male quickly returned them to their original position. Endler is now making videos of bowerbird flirtations to see if a greater gradient results in increased mating success.
87. A Superfast Magnetic Shift
Every 200,000 years or so, the earth’s poles trade places. Typically it takes several thousand years. But when geologists Scott Bogue of Occidental College and Jonathan Glen of the U.S. Geological Survey examined 15-million-year-old Nevada lava, they found evidence that the planet’s magnetic field shifted several thousand times faster than normal at least once. When lava cools, it locks away a record of the earth’s magnetic field. Examining lavas that cooled in two consecutive years, Bogue and Glen found the field swung 53 degrees from east to north, about 1 degree a eek. They thought they had erred, but more detailed tests confirmed the pattern, which they announced in September. The only other evidence for rapid field change comes from Oregon lava analyzed in 1985. Bogue thinks the quick shift took place near the end of a millennialong polarity reversal, when a slow magnetic drift accelerated dramatically for reasons unexplained. “I suspect it’s a very herky-jerky, unsteady process,” he says. Further study could help geologists understand the turbulent motion of the earth’s liquid core, which generates the magnetic field and may initiate its flips.
88. Same-Sex Parents Do No Harm
Ever since U.S sperm banks began to accept lesbian clients in the mid-s, critics have argued that same-sex parenting could damage children’s psychological
well-being. In June a -year, ongoing study published in the journal Pediatrics came to a very di erent conclusion, nding that children of lesbian mothers experience healthy social, emotional, and psychological development. The study, led by University of California, San Francisco psychiatrist Nanette
Gartrell, included kids conceived through donor insemination and raised by lesbian mothers. Beginning in Gartrell interviewed women in San Francisco, Boston, and Washington, D.C., during pregnancy and again when their children turned , , , and ; she also used clinical question naires to de ne behavior. At those children scored higher, on average, than their peers in social and academic competence and lower in aggressive behavior and social problems.
e results have appeared in legal briefs, documentaries, and research papers. “ The study is continually brought up to counteract non-science-based allegations against same-sex marriage or adoption,” Gartrell says. She admits that there is more research to be done, however. By including only
mothers who sought donor insemination before it was largely accepted, the study does not re ect the diversity of female couples raising children today
well-being. In June a -year, ongoing study published in the journal Pediatrics came to a very di erent conclusion, nding that children of lesbian mothers experience healthy social, emotional, and psychological development. The study, led by University of California, San Francisco psychiatrist Nanette
Gartrell, included kids conceived through donor insemination and raised by lesbian mothers. Beginning in Gartrell interviewed women in San Francisco, Boston, and Washington, D.C., during pregnancy and again when their children turned , , , and ; she also used clinical question naires to de ne behavior. At those children scored higher, on average, than their peers in social and academic competence and lower in aggressive behavior and social problems.
e results have appeared in legal briefs, documentaries, and research papers. “ The study is continually brought up to counteract non-science-based allegations against same-sex marriage or adoption,” Gartrell says. She admits that there is more research to be done, however. By including only
mothers who sought donor insemination before it was largely accepted, the study does not re ect the diversity of female couples raising children today
89. Chinese Pompeii Unearthed
In 2003 Chinese archaeologists began excavating piles of tiles and bricks in Sanyangzhuang, a rural town located in the central plain of China. What they found exceeded their wildest expectations: an entire immaculately preserved village dating back more than 2,000 years to the Han Dynasty. The site consists of four walled houses—each the residence of an extended family—surrounded by wells, toilets, ponds, and trees. In July, archaeologist Tristram Kidder of Washington University in St. Louis and his Chinese colleagues discovered evidence of even older agricultural fields beneath the excavated houses and a larger buried town about two miles away. “If these are preserved in the same way the houses are, it would really turn out to be a staggering development,” Kidder says. The 2003 find was buried intact by 28 inches of flood sediments, which formed a protective layer over the village. Kidder thinks a massive late-summer flood of the Yellow River hit so quickly that people left behind everything, from large grinding stones to tiny coins. In addition, impressions of mulberry leaves, considered a sign of silkworm production, were found, indicating that Sanyangzhuang was one of the places where the Silk Road began
90. Slick Materials Could Lead to Super Electronics
Score another point for the physicist who have been working to make our electronic devices continually smaller and faster. The wires inside such devices are now so thin that electrons sometimes have trouble passing through them: A microscopic bump can seem like Mount Everest in a copper strand one- housandth the thickness of a human hair. But last year a group of researchers at Princeton University revealed materials whose surfaces allow electrons to move unimpeded past pesky obstacles. These intriguing materials, called topological insulators, do not allow electrons to pass through (hence the “insulator” part of their name), but their surfaces have proved to be outstanding at shuttling electrons along. In a study whose results were published in Nature last July, physicist Ali Yazdani used a powerful microscope to track electrons as they encountered stairlike barriers on the surface of antimon , a material that shares several characteristics with topological insulators such as bismuth telluride. In a typical copper wire, most electrons would bounce back from such an obstruction and the rest would get absorbed, impeding the ow. “With copper, surface imperfections slow things down and create unwanted heat,” Yazdani
explains. With antimony, however, nearly half the electrons passed right across the barrier. Yazdani thinks that topological insulators might start to
replace copper in next-generation electronics.
explains. With antimony, however, nearly half the electrons passed right across the barrier. Yazdani thinks that topological insulators might start to
replace copper in next-generation electronics.
91. Sun Plane Takes 24-Hour Flight
Each day, commercial aviation around the world dumps a half-million tons of carbon dioxide into the air. In Switzerland,however, one plane points the way toward cleaner skies.
On July 7 at 6:51 a.m., the sunpowered Solar Impulse took off from a Swiss airfield and did not touch down for more than a day. Unmanned solar planes have been around since the 1980s, but the Impulse flew overnight while carrying a pilot, project cofounder André Borschberg.
This aviation first was made possible by nearly 12,000 photovoltaic cells on the plane’s tail and 210-foot-long wings, which sent extra energy to batteries during the day to power its four propellers all night. Borschberg flew more than 26 hours without using any fuel. Solar planes are not quite ready to displace jetliners, though. The Impulse averaged 24 miles per hour during the flight—about the same speed as the fastest human can run
On July 7 at 6:51 a.m., the sunpowered Solar Impulse took off from a Swiss airfield and did not touch down for more than a day. Unmanned solar planes have been around since the 1980s, but the Impulse flew overnight while carrying a pilot, project cofounder André Borschberg.
This aviation first was made possible by nearly 12,000 photovoltaic cells on the plane’s tail and 210-foot-long wings, which sent extra energy to batteries during the day to power its four propellers all night. Borschberg flew more than 26 hours without using any fuel. Solar planes are not quite ready to displace jetliners, though. The Impulse averaged 24 miles per hour during the flight—about the same speed as the fastest human can run
92. Sharks Use
Math to Hunt
“The ocean seems like a featureless place,” says David Sims of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom. “How does a shark find prey when it doesn’t really know where it is when it moves around?” In June he reported the answer: The animal forages along a complex mathematical pattern called a Lévy flight, a type of fractal. Moreover, a shark’s movements more closely conform to that pattern when food is scarce, suggesting that these routes optimize
the likelihood of finding a meal.Sims and his colleagues tagged 55 marine animals from 14 species and tracked them for a total of 5,700 days. They observed that the animals’ movements traced out Lévy flights, tight bundles of random motion punctuated by longer leaps. Those patterns are self-similar; that is, they look the same “in an area the size of a football field or the size of an ocean,” Sims says. Lévy flights may be a common foraging pattern that evolved in
many species, on land and in the sea, Sims suspects.
the likelihood of finding a meal.Sims and his colleagues tagged 55 marine animals from 14 species and tracked them for a total of 5,700 days. They observed that the animals’ movements traced out Lévy flights, tight bundles of random motion punctuated by longer leaps. Those patterns are self-similar; that is, they look the same “in an area the size of a football field or the size of an ocean,” Sims says. Lévy flights may be a common foraging pattern that evolved in
many species, on land and in the sea, Sims suspects.
93. A Green City Rises in the Desert
In September residents began moving into Masdar City, a .-squaremile experiment in ultragreen living taking shape in the desert outside Abu Dhabi. The billion city aims to be the world’s most sustainable: a community of , residents and , commuters that is completely carbonneutral. sparkle, though. Designers scrapped plans to produce the city’s renewableonly
energy supply on-site. A feet of self-driving cars zooming through underground tunnels is planned, but for now there will just be street-level electric vehicles. Still, the city will serve as a test lab for technologies that could be deployed less dramatically,
but more meaningfully, in conventional cities.
energy supply on-site. A feet of self-driving cars zooming through underground tunnels is planned, but for now there will just be street-level electric vehicles. Still, the city will serve as a test lab for technologies that could be deployed less dramatically,
but more meaningfully, in conventional cities.
94. Natural Cycle Melts Alpine Glaciers
The earth’s mountain ice is not disappearing from human activity alone, according to Swiss glaciologists. Natural shifts in ocean currents could account for about half the melting of Alpine glaciers in this decade, Matthias Huss and colleagues at the University of Fribourg reported in June. Huss gathered more than 100 years of field measurements, aerial photographs, and local weather logs pertaining to 30 large Swiss glaciers to build computer models of each, identifying fast melt in the 1940s and in the past couple of decades. This cycle coincides with the natural rise and fall of sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic, which fluctuate roughly 0.2 degree Celsius every 60 years as warm currents shift. However, at least half the decline in Alpine ice during the past 150 years is “certainly due to human-induced climate change,” he says. Huss plans to clarify the future of the earth’s land ice by extending his model. “The big question,” he says, “is how to apply this to other glaciers and make it The uncertainty about global ice retreat fueled controversy in 2010 when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledged a blunder: The group’s 2007 claim that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 was, they admitted, poorly sourced.
95. Rubik’s Cube Decoded
Since its invention, Rubik’s Cube has taunted mathematicians trying to figure the maximum number of moves necessary to solve it from any of its
43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible starting positions. Someone dubbed the effort a search for “God’s number,” ignoring the theological consensus
that Einstein’s maxim “God does not play dice” is likely to apply to yo-yos, Slinkies, Rubik’s Cubes, and the whole range of handheld human amusements.
Whatever you call it, the search has ended. In 2010 a team of whizzes laid bare the plifting truth: As hopelessly scrambled as one’s cube may appear,
one is never more than 20 moves from rendering each of its six faces a solid color. “We were secretly hoping in our tests that there would be one that required
21,” team member Morley Davidson, a mathematician at Kent State University, told the BBC. But it was not to be
43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible starting positions. Someone dubbed the effort a search for “God’s number,” ignoring the theological consensus
that Einstein’s maxim “God does not play dice” is likely to apply to yo-yos, Slinkies, Rubik’s Cubes, and the whole range of handheld human amusements.
Whatever you call it, the search has ended. In 2010 a team of whizzes laid bare the plifting truth: As hopelessly scrambled as one’s cube may appear,
one is never more than 20 moves from rendering each of its six faces a solid color. “We were secretly hoping in our tests that there would be one that required
21,” team member Morley Davidson, a mathematician at Kent State University, told the BBC. But it was not to be
96. Male Pipefish Pick Their Litters
Male sea horses have been lauded as the gallant “Mr. Moms” of the animal world, and pipefish, their close relatives, are devoted fathers too.
The female pipefish injects eggs into the male, which then bears live young. But research published in March suggests these model dads are not being selfless: Pipefish treat their offspring well only if they really like their mates.
At Texas A&M, researcher Kimberly Paczolt mated Gulf pipefish in multiple trials. Previous studies had shown that the males, which breed with a single female at a time, show a preference for larger partners.
Paczolt found that offspring of these attractive females had higher survival rates than those of their less comely kin.
She suspects the males employ “cryptic choice,” a strategy of selecting a mother for their babies after mating has occurred.
The father pipefish might do this by transferring more nutrients to broods mothered by attractive females and allowing less desirable broods to languish. “If it’s just
the only female he’s been able to find and she isn’t particularly attractive, it may trigger a signal that says, ‘Hold off—I think I can do better in the future.
The female pipefish injects eggs into the male, which then bears live young. But research published in March suggests these model dads are not being selfless: Pipefish treat their offspring well only if they really like their mates.
At Texas A&M, researcher Kimberly Paczolt mated Gulf pipefish in multiple trials. Previous studies had shown that the males, which breed with a single female at a time, show a preference for larger partners.
Paczolt found that offspring of these attractive females had higher survival rates than those of their less comely kin.
She suspects the males employ “cryptic choice,” a strategy of selecting a mother for their babies after mating has occurred.
The father pipefish might do this by transferring more nutrients to broods mothered by attractive females and allowing less desirable broods to languish. “If it’s just
the only female he’s been able to find and she isn’t particularly attractive, it may trigger a signal that says, ‘Hold off—I think I can do better in the future.
97. Science Explains Why Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
Hellen Fisher a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, knows all about love. She has observed the brain regions associated with romantic love light up as a man gazes at his inamorata, both in new relationships and in decadeslong marriages. Fisher seems to have become a bit jaded by years of Hallmark moments, however. “Who cares about people who are happily in love?” she wants to know. “It’s when you’ve been rejected that you turn into a menace.” So she has started exploring the science of heartbreak instead. In a study published in May, Fisher and her colleagues asked people who had recently been dumped but were still in love to consider two pictures—one of the former partner and one of a neutral acquaintance--
while an MRI scanner measured their brain activity. When looking at their exes, the spurned lovers showed activity in parts of the brain’s reward system, just as happy lovers do. But the neural pathways associated with cravings and addictions were activated too, as was a brain region associated with the distress that accompanies physical pain. Rejected lovers also showed increased neural response in regions involved in assessing behavior and controlling emotions.
These people were working on the problem, thinking, what did I do, what should I do next, what did I learn from this,” Fisher says. And the longer ago the breakup was, the weaker the activity in the attachment-linked region. In other words: Love hurts, but time heals.
while an MRI scanner measured their brain activity. When looking at their exes, the spurned lovers showed activity in parts of the brain’s reward system, just as happy lovers do. But the neural pathways associated with cravings and addictions were activated too, as was a brain region associated with the distress that accompanies physical pain. Rejected lovers also showed increased neural response in regions involved in assessing behavior and controlling emotions.
These people were working on the problem, thinking, what did I do, what should I do next, what did I learn from this,” Fisher says. And the longer ago the breakup was, the weaker the activity in the attachment-linked region. In other words: Love hurts, but time heals.
98. Roaming Rocks of Death Valley
Large boulders like this one wander across the flat clay surface of Racetrack Playa, a dry lake bed in Death Valley National Park in California, leaving long furrows but no hint of what propelled them. Last summer, NASA’s Cynthia Cheung may have discovered their secret: The rocks, some weighing several hundred pounds, probably glide on collars of ice that form around their base. When rain or snowmelt wets the valley, the collars act as flotation devices, Cheung says. The boulders then slide so easily that high winds can send them scooting, improbably and beautifully, across the slick surface
99. Sex Secrets of the Bi-Gender Chicken
One in every 10,000 chickens is born gynandromorphic: half male and half female. Legend has it that such birds were once tried as the “spirit-partners” of witches. Now developmental biologist Michael Clinton has an explanation that is a bit more scientific, if nearly as bizarre. “We expected to find that the birds had abnormal cells,” says Clinton, who works at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland. Instead he found healthy male and female cells. These cells keep their identity even when injected into an mbryo of the opposite sex, indicating that their gender is innate. The discovery that each cell in a chicken can be inherently male or female is a huge departure from biological dogma, which holds that hormones control sex characteristics in vertebrates. Gender-imprinted cells may exist in us, too. “Male and female cells might respond slightly differently to hormonal signals, which may partially explain differences in male and female behavior and susceptibility to some diseases,” Clinton says.
100. Portrait of a Violent Star
This ultraviolet image of the sun was captured by the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), launched last February to monitor Earth’s temperamental star with unprecedented precision.
The purplish aura reveals high-arcing loops of 3.6-million-degree plasma that link sunspots and other magnetic areas on the surface; white lines illustrate computer calculations of how the magnetic areas connect.
Occasionally eruptions on the sun are so powerful that they can cripple
Earth’s electrical grids and global positioning satellites. SDO’s observations will help scientists understand the mechanism behind these outbursts—research that isparticularly important as the sun awakens from its longest slumber in a century
The purplish aura reveals high-arcing loops of 3.6-million-degree plasma that link sunspots and other magnetic areas on the surface; white lines illustrate computer calculations of how the magnetic areas connect.
Occasionally eruptions on the sun are so powerful that they can cripple
Earth’s electrical grids and global positioning satellites. SDO’s observations will help scientists understand the mechanism behind these outbursts—research that isparticularly important as the sun awakens from its longest slumber in a century