SCIENCE • HISTORY • NATURE • FOR THE CURIOUS MIND www.knowledgemagazine.in
Volume 1 Issue 5 July/Aug 2011 ` 100
how to build
a planet
Could the cosmic recipe finally be within our grasp? p42
HOW TRAINS WON THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR p26
what’s going on with the weather? p50
PLUS Fancy smashing sub-atomic particles at the speed of light? p94
cHINA’S ICONIC ‘CAT BEAR’ - THE PANDA p72
HISTORY
The cover
Jul/Aug 2011
26 Blood on the Tracks
50 What’s Going On? Weather is a favourite topic of conversation- what with harsh winters, blazing summers, droughts, devastating hurricanes and rainstorms making news. We bring to you a detailed view of the current scenerio.
NATURE
on the cover: NASA, Alamy X2, science photo library, bridgeman art library
SCIENCE
Warfare changed forever after the American Civil War became the first major conflict won and lost on the railways – so much so that the global map would look very different today were it not for the advent of trains.
SCIENCE
42 Birth of the solar system 72 Panda Mania China’s most famous resident enjoys a happy friendship with humankind, but it’s not always been such a comfortable relationship – nor is it a story with a guaranteed happy ending.
Just how did all these lumps of rock and gas whizzing around the Galaxy wind up living in harmony? You may think you know, but we think we might just change your mind
24 World News in Context What were the factors that led to the recent uprising and revolution in Egypt?
Jul/Aug 2011
3
Contents
Jul/Aug 2011
SCIENCE
History
FEATURES
SCIENCE
34 Art Forgery
WEATHER
To build a life imitating art
26 Blood on the Tracks COVER STORY It’s 150 years since the American Civil War became the first war won and lost on the railways. How did these industrial machines revolutionise global conflict forever?
34 Forging a Career Meet Tony Tetro, formerly one of the world’s leading art forgers, who explains how technology has made it almost impossible to build a life imitating art.
42 How to build a planet COVER STORY With new theories pushing aside old ideas, are we on the brink of finding out, once and for all, how the Solar System was formed?
50 The Weather: What’s Going On? COVER STORY We are all at the mercy of weather. From drought to flood, baking summers or freezing winters, weather defines us.
52 The Weather People COVER STORY For some people, the weather becomes more than a simple obsession – it takes over their whole lives. Meet the pioneers, mavericks and forecasters, who tell us the lesser known facts about weather.
24 World News in Context How Egypt’s youth overthrew the government
56 The Most Extreme Weather in our Solar System
86 Q&A
COVER STORY If you think it’s a bit chilly where you are, you should try living on the south pole of the Moon.
93 Resource
Recommended books and online resources 4
Jul/Aug 2011
SCIENCE
alamy x2, eyevine, corbis X2
NATURE
NATURE
Why do the Sun and Moon appear bigger when they’re near the horizon?
64 Portfolio: Madagascar Around 80 per cent of Madagascar’s wildlife is endemic to the African island nation. From colourful chameleons to legions of lemurs, it really is like nowhere else on Earth.
72 Panda Mania COVER STORY It’s hard to believe that most of the world has only known the lovable ‘cat bear’ for a century and a half, such is humankind’s firm friendship with China’s iconic animal.
78 The Big Idea: Consciousness For all our scientific advances, a great mystery remains very close to home. What do we really know of the nature of consciousness?
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Contents 18 Update
Including a mystery of Indiana Jones proportions
Jul/Aug 2011
Regulars 10 Inbox A selection of your letters and comments about recent issues.
12 Snapshot Dirk Bogarde reckoned the camera to be “better than a paragraph of sweet polemic.�
UPDATE 18 The Latest Intelligence Your regular digest of the latest research in the fields of science, history and nature.
64 Portfolio
Take a journey to the island of Madagascar
23 Insights One of the young Indian car racers, Arman Ebrahim, talks about his passion for racing.
22 Comment & Analysis Should employers be able to use genetic screening to help with recruitment choices?
24 World News in Context David Keys examines the background to the recent uprising and revolution in Egypt.
86 Q&A Let our panel of experts sprinkle their answer-dust over your questions.
Resource 93 Reviews beinecke rare book and mauscript library x2, Nick Garbutt, getty
Books, blogs, websites and podcasts to keep the tiny grey cells busy until next we meet.
96 Time Out If you can solve all these puzzles and riddles then Knowledge doffs its hat to you.
98 The Last Word Filmmaker Mike Pandey talks about his tryst with the big cats in Africa
78 The Big Idea What is cosciousness? 6
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Mystery.
Adventure. Hellenologophobia. And that’s just the first 15 seconds.
For the first time in India there’s a magazine that’s specially created to engage attention and inspire you to think differently. Flipping through it will always present new, fascinating things. (Hellenologophobia is the fear of complex words.) It regularly features sagas of scientific triumph, tales of historical intrigue and articles on wonders in nature. If you want to get an edge in today’s hyper-competitive environment, you know what to do next.. SCIENCE • HISTORY • NATURE
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inbox Welcome First, a BIG thanks to so many of you who sent us emphatic and impassioned letters, emails, views on our last issue - Does God Exist? From here on, look out for our selection of a ‘star’ letter every issue. This time round, we shift our focus from the intangible to the physical world. Specifically our solar system, and the wondrous act of its origin. On page 42. It makes one wonder, if the birth of the universe is a fantastic co-incidence or a measured act aimed at an end result. While efforts are in full swing to decipher the planets beyond ours, there is much more persistence to unearth the mysteries that make up the third rock from the Sun itself. The mercurial weather for example (p50). It’s fascinating how weather affects cultures (maybe there is more to feeling blue on dark, downcast days?) and how it holds the key to what happens to us in the future. But recent events involving earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes compel all to wonder, What’s Going On? Discover.
Experts this issue Dominic Sandbrook is a British historian and writer educated at Oxford, Cambridge and St Andrews universities. As well as writing for a number of newspapers and magazines, Dominic has written a series of respected books charting the modern history of Britain. His article this issue asks whether national stereotypes are determined by the weather. See page 52
Christian Wolmar is one of the UK’s leading transport journalists and train historians. His recent book Engines of War (Atlantic Books, 2010) charts how the advent of the railways brought about wholesale changes to the very nature of warfare. His feature for us on this subject marks 150 years since the outbreak of the American Civil War. See page 26
Henry Nicholls has a PhD in evolutionary biology and is a freelance science journalist whose work regularly appears in publications such as Nature, PLoS Biology and New Scientist. In this issue he traces our surprisingly recent friendship with China’s most iconic animal – the panda. How did this calm creature come to represent conservation around the world? See page 72
Preeti Singh
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Mike Pandey is a wildlife filmmaker and conservationist, and has produced over 600 films. In addition to national and international awards, he is the recipient of three Green Oscars. His first ever was in 1994 for The Last Migration Wild Elephant Capture in Sarguja. Pandey has also received the CMSUNEP award for Outstanding Achievement in Global Conservation. See page 98
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SCIENCE • HISTORY • NATURE • FOR THE CURIOUS MIND Know more. Anywhere.
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CorrespondencE Star LETTER
God sparks debate
Intelligent energy
Have faith, but decide your own fate
It is extremely difficult to prove the existence of God. Philosophically, it is untenable too. If the concept of proof is mathematical, we begin with axioms and rules of inference, and try to prove theorems, but the axioms remain unproved. The author of this article is very right when he asks the question about the meaning of the term “existence”. It is an age-old question. Most of the thinkers and philosophers have to accept three avenues to human knowledge: sense perception, reason or verbal testimony (is what Bertrand Russell calls “knowledge by acquaintance”). Our five senses give us knowledge about ordinary objects but are insufficient to explain God. Reason gives knowledge, which is indirect but is open to challenge by a superior logician or thinker who knows more about the world and nature. The infinite intelligent energy or consciousness can be called God. In religion, this idea of God is neither deistic (absentee God) nor pantheistic (as identical with the empirical world). This concept of God is panentheistic – the whole Universe is in God, but God is more than the Universe. The Supreme Divine is thus, the substratum of the Universe. Dr SG Nigal, Thane, Mumbai
WRITE IN AND
WIN Write in and you have a chance to win a UCB wristwatch worth ` 4499. Congratulations, Dr Nigal, winner of this issue’s star prize.
Corrigendum In our previous issue, Vol 1 Issue 4 dated May/June, the feature Digging for Dino had an error. In the first paragraph, the year should be 1828 instead if 1928. The error is regretted.
Rather than questioning God’s existence (May/June 2011), it is important to have faith in God. God’s real power lies in the faith of his followers. Without faith, there is no existence. We see certain things happening and on the basis of evidence and intellect, we form the basis of belief. I am not interested in knowing how life came into being and what will be the end, rather, I would like to know why we came into being and what the purpose of our life is. We choose what kind of a life we want, and as such we decide our fate with each and every step we take. It is ‘I’ who decides what ‘I’ want to do and ‘I’ reap the fruit according to what ‘I’ sow. But very often, when things go wrong, we tend to pile it on our ‘fate’. Harshvardhan Nagori
God is infinite
I would like to bring to your attention that your description of God as a “thing” is incorrect. The reference assumes God to be finite and something that is not beyond human mind. If someone tries to prove God’s existence by considering Him as finite, it would be impossible. I have been taught that something proved by human minds cannot be greater than human, but inferior to him. Only through God can God be known. A finite human cannot grasp infinite God. Riya Biju
Simplify the language
The cover story and features of the God issue were very interesting. However, since the magazine has been projected as a children’s magazine, the treatment of the subject was such that children could not relate to it at all. The ideas, the words, the theories and their explanations were in a language beyond the comprehension of an average child. I spoke to several children, including mine, and they all admitted that they did not understand the stories and the features. I, on the other hand, enjoyed reading the magazine. Utkarsh Patel, Mumbai
A good read
I thoroughly enjoyed Robert Matthews’ feature (Does God exist, May/June 2011). I doubt if we will ever be able to prove something unless we stand out of what we exist in. In God we live and move and have our being. The only thing that is not run perfectly (pre-programmed) in the Universe is the human mind. The sun, stars, animals, plants and ecology are all preprogrammed to help us exist. The fact that evil is overpowering does not prove the nonexistence of God but proves the existence of our free will. The existence of free will is what gives rise to the aspect of exercising it in a non-biased environment, where you feel you are free to choose. The sum of all choices will help us integrate or disintegrate. John
He exists
Yes, God does exist. There are incidents in history where humans have turned against each other and have committed cruelties against their own kind. This is proof of cruelty and not of the non-existence of God. God is not a physical object, but a feeling. Can we see pain? Can we see love? Can we see hunger? No, we do not see, but feel these emotions. Similarly, God cannot be seen, but felt. Naveen
Joy of reading
BBC Knowledge is one of the most creative compilations I have seen in a long time. It has great content and is graphically rich and engaging. My daughters found the features on God extremely interesting and engaging. I myself enjoyed reading the bits on rogue waves and dodo as well. It is heartening to rediscover the joy of spending time, browsing through a vibrant print publication in today’s electronic age. Hope you have an iPad application to complement this creation. A BIG thank you to everyone on the team. Shyam Jul/Aug 2011
11
Snapshot
SCIENCE
I walk the line Corvatsch, Switzerland
press association
Having first walked on a tightrope at the age of four, Swiss acrobat Freddy Nock has made breaking records something of a personal mission. At an altitude of 3303m (10,836ft), he set a new world record for the highest ever cable wire walk on 29 January this year. The 46-year-old circus performer walked the 1600m (5249ft) between mountain stations on Switzerland’s Corvatsch mountain as temperatures plummeted to -13oC (8.6oF). Nock successfully completed the walk on his second attempt – the first having been abandoned due to the treacherous conditions – without using a safety harness or net and with only a long pole to help him balance.
Jul/Aug 2011
13
Snapshot
NATURE
Nothing to hide Glass frog
heidi & Hans-JÜrgen koch
There’s no need for ultrasound scanning on this expectant mother – her eggs can be clearly seen thanks to her transparent abdominal skin. There are a number of species of so-called glass frogs in the family Centrolenidae. The classification of this particular species remains the subject of some debate – not to mention the evolutionary reasons for glass frogs’ unusual physiology. Commonly known as either the Rancho Grande glass frog or Aragua glass frog, Cochranella antisthenesi is endemic to Venezuela, where it is found in tropical and subtropical forests and rivers.
Jul/Aug 2011
15
Snapshot
HISTORY
We shall overcome 24 May 1961
Jul/Aug 2011
getty
Freedom Riders Julia Aaron and David Dennis ride the bus from Montgomery, Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, protected by National Guardsmen. Throughout that spring and summer 50 years ago, Freedom Riders met with violent opposition across the South as they sought to test a Supreme Court ruling outlawing racial segregation on interstate buses. Many were beaten, arrested or suffered mob violence. Despite US Attorney General Robert Kennedy urging restraint on the part of the Riders, they persisted in what became a major turning point of the Civil Rights struggle.
17
Update
The latest intelligence
daniel stolte / UANEWS, beinecke rare book and mauscript library x2, thinkstock, university of manchester, alan hicks / new york department of environmental conservation
E Why handwriting aids brainpower p19 E The unreliability of crime witnesses p20 E Which disease is threatening bats with extinction? p21 E Were moon trees planted on earth? p21
Greg Hodgins (left) oversees the carbon dating process of the beautiful and mysterious Voynich manuscript (above)
Clue to manuscript’s origins Is the mysterious Voynich tome ready to reveal its secrets?
T is one of the big
he Voynich manuscript
mysteries of our time. Owned by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, it contains unintelligible text that flows around intricate illustrations. Academics and even World War codebreakers have all attempted to decipher the text’s meaning without success. For the first time, scientists at the University of Arizona have used carbon dating techniques on the manuscript. Sample sizes required for carbon dating are now small enough to not significantly impact on the manuscript, which is on parchment (sheep18
Jul/Aug 2011
skin) and bound in a calfskin casing, or vellum. The researchers have reliably dated it to between 1404-1438 – a century earlier than thought. “Academics have been put off from studying the manuscript because it was unclear to which era and tradition the book belonged,”
beginning of the 15th century, so people with an interest in this time frame could be encouraged to study it.” The dating rules out the idea that it had several authors contributing at different times. “There were not big differences between the ages of the book’s leaves,” says Greg Hodgins, an
The manuscript contains unintelligible text and intricate illustrations says Rene Zandenbergen, a leading ‘amateur’ Voynich researcher based in Germany. “There’s always the possibility it could just be a fake. Now it has been rather firmly dated to the
assistant professor in physics at the University of Arizona, who led the dating research. The book was discovered in 1912 at the Villa Mondragone near Rome by antique book
dealer Wilfrid Voynich while he was sifting through a chest of books offered for sale. Its text, although indecipherable, follows Zipf ’s law, a mathematical pattern in word frequency to which all natural languages adhere. The illustrations suggest the manuscript is split into several sections, covering topics such as astronomy and biology. “It’s the sheer mystery of the text that’s prompted so much interest,” explains Zandenbergen. “What does it say? On top of that, the drawings are very peculiar.” But the recent carbon dating has caused a split in the Voynich research community. “There’s a strong tendency to disbelieve the results. Some argue that they have not yet been formally published.” The scientific paper on the carbon dating should be published in the autumn.
Handwriting aids information recall Computer use may reduce ability to learn
T good for the brain, he act of writing is
or so new research appears to show. It seems that physically scribbling out what we want to learn helps new information to stick. These days we increasingly type and click rather then
write by hand. But, say two academics, very little research has been carried out into the cognitive implications. In a research paper published in the periodical Advances in Haptics, Anne Mangen, an associate professor in the reading centre at the University
of Stavanger in Norway, and French neurophysiologist Jean-Luc Velay pick apart the differences between writing and typing. They conclude that there’s clear evidence of the benefits of writing when it comes to memory. It’s been a key area of study for Velay. In one experiment he carried out at the University of Marseille, France, 20 volunteers were given characters from Indian alphabets to learn. They were tasked with memorising half of these characters by writing them down and half with the aid of a computer. After a three-week learning period, the volunteers were shown the letters again and a clear picture emerged: they were more easily able to identify whether characters had been correctly orientated when they had learned them by writing rather than by using a computer. Furthermore, when some of the volunteers were placed in an fMRI scanner, which shows which parts of the brain are active, there were stark differences. “When volunteers
were judging the correct orientation of the letters they had learned by writing, it reactivated the parietal and premotor areas of the brain, which we use when we write,” says Velay. It was almost as if the volunteers were mentally re-writing the letter to check its accuracy. As well as different neural mechanisms, Velay and Mangen also suggest that the fact that it takes longer to physically write something rather than type a character may help the learning process. The research has clear implications for children who are learning how to write. “Teachers and parents should be aware that making something easy – typing on a keyboard for instance – may not necessarily be the best thing from a learning perspective,” says Mangen. Mangen and Velay now plan to look at a related area: how differently we interact with printed and digital books, and whether the different mechanisms have an influence on what we remember.
Walk like an Egyptian Two wooden toes dating back to 600BC in Egypt may have been about more than just aesthetics. The ‘Grenville Chester’, housed at the British Museum in London, and the ‘Cairo toe’ at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo were thought to have been used by embalmers to complete bodies before their burial. But University of Manchester researcher Jacky Finch recruited two volunteers who had both lost their right big toe to try out replicas of the artificial digits while they wore Egyptian sandals. One volunteer walked well in both devices and both volunteers said the Cairo toe was particularly comfortable. The earliest known prosthesis had been thought to be the Roman Capua leg, dating to 300BC.
Best foot forward: are these wooden toes the earliest prosthetics?
Jul/Aug 2011
19
Update
The latest intelligence
EEE ROUND UP Keeping abreast of the top science, history and nature research from around the world
roger hanlon, thinkstock x3, alamy, public health image library, nasa, tomas carlo / penn state university, dreamstime
WILDLIFE A pheromone produced by female squid immediately initiates fighting in males that come into contact with it. It is the first pheromone of its kind to be discovered in a marine mammal. A team of American and Australian scientists noticed that male longfin squid (Loligo pealeii) instantly become aggressive when they encounter eggs laid on the seafloor. The researchers discovered that the aggression is due to a protein pheromone produced in the female reproductive tract and embedded in the eggs’ outer surface.
PSYCHOLOGY
Crime witnesses are more likely to give misinformation about what happened if the police take a statement immediately. That’s the rather surprising finding of an Iowa State University study. Volunteers watched an episode of the TV show 24. Some were then asked questions about what they’d seen, while others simply played the video game Tetris. Then they all listened to an audio description of what happened that contained some red herrings; the ones who had been quizzed were more likely to retain the incorrect information. 20
Jul/Aug 2011
Female squid release a pheromone that causes aggression in males
ECOLOGY
Conservationists generally argue that invasive species of plants – species introduced by humans and now outnumbering natives – should be removed from an environment. But Penn State University research appears to show that this strategy may do more harm than good. Biologists studied Happy Valley in central Pennsylvania, where species of honeysuckle Lonicera spp is invasive, and compared this environment with other urban and rural areas. They discovered that the more honeysuckle, the greater the number and diversity of birds.
ARCHAEOLOGY
Foxes may have been man’s best friend before dogs. At the 16,500-year-old burial ground in northern Jordan known as Uyun al-Hammam, a grave was discovered containing the skull and humerus of a fox, along with the bones of other animals such as deer and gazelle. A neighbouring grave contained human remains and a near-complete fox skeleton minus its skull and humerus. Archaeologists believe this indicates that the fox and human were moved from the original grave together, implying a close bond.
SPACE
Far from being unchanging as once thought, the landscape of northern Mars (above) evolves over time. A camera on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter taking images at the edge of Mars’s north polar cap over two Martian years (four Earth years) has revealed shifting sand dunes. Astronomers believe strongerthan-expected gusts of wind are responsible, along with the freezing and sublimation of carbon dioxide. This transformation from solid to gas destabilises the dunes, producing avalanches.
News
in Brief Milestones
Missing Moon trees
Fungal growth is visible around infected bats’ muzzles “I believe that this nation should commit itself...”
50 years ago G 25 May 1961: In a speech to a joint session of Congress, US President John F Kennedy states his intention to put man on the Moon by 1970. Speaking just weeks after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space and Alan Shepard became the US’s first astronaut, he says $9000m will be needed over the next five years. “If we were to go only halfway or reduce our sights in the face of difficulty,” he says, “it would be better not to go at all.”
30 years ago H 5 June 1981: five homosexual men in Los Angeles, California, are reported to have a rare form of pneumonia only seen in people with weakened immune systems. They are the first recognised cases of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, the disease that has so far claimed over 25 million lives across the world.
The AIDS infection has been a huge killer for three decades
Killer in the cave White Nose Syndrome threatens bats
C
onservationists racing to save bats from a disease that threatens many species with extinction plan to carry out detailed studies of their caves to understand how the infection is spread. The ecological sleuthing will provide answers as to whether techniques such as a bat cull will work. White Nose Syndrome is estimated to have killed a million bats across North America and has also been recorded in Europe. The six bat species struck down with the condition have a distinctive fungal growth around their muzzles and wings. But little is known about how the disease, caused by the fungus Geomyces destructans, spreads or how it actually kills its victims. “The bats’ behaviour is disrupted,” says Janet Foley, a disease epidemiologist at the University of California, Davis. “They are programmed to store the right amount of brown fat for the winter and that’s assuming they are going to be relatively quiescent. But with the disease they fly around and are not awake enough to feed, so they starve to death.” New research suggests that their wing membrane may also be involved. “The membrane is very fine and it turns out that water is absorbed and released across it. If the membrane is infected with a fungus, it could disrupt the bat’s ability to regulate water.” Foley’s research will concentrate on the syndrome’s ecology – whether other animals are affected. “There are small mammals in the caves and we will also look at arthropods,” she says. “How important is the fungus residing in the soil and living on other animals? It’s an area that’s been completely overlooked and it’s going to have a bearing [on any intervention taken].” The spread of the disease by bats and potentially by humans is another key question. “We don’t know how far bats move,” says Foley. “We know they go deep into Mexico. Could they spread the disease there?” Foley, who worked with bat and disease ecologists from public agencies and academia to review where research into the disease stands, says the aim is to provide information for a management strategy. “We want enough ecological information to say whether culling is going to help.”
The search is on to find hundreds of ‘Moon trees’ across the US. The trees were grown from seeds that orbited the Moon during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971. On returning to Earth, the seeds were planted at US Department of Agriculture Forest Service nurseries and, when they grew, were transferred to sites across the US – many of which are unknown. Now NASA curator Dave Williams wants to trace all the trees before they die off. See http://bit.ly/moontree for the latest location list.
A winning design
The unusual shape of the seahorse’s body has been explained thanks to some high-speed video footage and mathematical models. Scientists in Belgium and the US found that, compared with the straightbodied pipefish from which it evolved, the seahorse can strike at more distant prey. This ability is due to the extra reaching power imparted by its characteristic posture.
New world dawning
For the first time, astronomers may have spotted a planet forming in the short-lived disc of material around a young star. An international team used the European Space Agency’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in northern Chile to stare into a parting of the dust around the star T Chamaeleontis, 350 light years from Earth. Further research will be needed to confirm whether the object they saw is indeed a planet and not a brown dwarf – an object larger than a planet but not large enough to sustain the hydrogen fusion seen in stars.
Comment & Analysis Ronald M Green asks if employers should be free to use genetic tests to select new staff
“The ‘gene warriors’ were not just reckless, they were shrewd risk-takers” tests on potential employees, that ban doesn’t extend to genetic tests for ability. As the links that scientists establish between genes and ability increase in number, pressure on US lawyers to find loopholes – and on politicians to change the rules – could well grow.
Risky business: research found that reckless choices were often best
I the spotlight has never been more
getty, alamy
n the wake of the financial crisis,
firmly on the likes of bankers and hedge-fund managers and their ability – or otherwise – to make sound decisions. But what if we could employ staff who are hardwired to get things right, their genes predisposing them to make shrewd decisions? You can imagine bank bosses jumping at the chance. Staff who have financial acumen written across their DNA – what could go wrong? And, if new research from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is anything to go by, that possibility may not be far off. It’s been known for a while that carriers of a particular form, or variant, of the MAOA gene MAOA-L may be more likely to be aggressive or to lash out when provoked – a link that’s led to MAOA-L being dubbed the ‘warrior gene’. The Caltech researchers wanted to see whether MAOA-L carriers would be more prone to risk-taking while making financial decisions. They were. In fact, MAOA-L carriers took the riskier choice in 41 per cent of decisions, while carriers of another 22
Jul/Aug 2011
variant, MAOA-H, did so only 36 per cent of the time. But, on examining their data more closely, the researchers made an unexpected discovery. Although the MAOA-L carriers took risks, they also made the optimal financial choice more often than those with MAOA-H. The ‘gene warriors’ were not just reckless, they were shrewd risk-takers. Scaling up While it could be questioned whether a five per cent advantage would ever justify the effort of gene testing in the workplace, tiny percentages multiplied across vast sums produce enormous profits in the banking industry, as they do elsewhere. It’s easy to imagine the heads of some firms being attracted to building a warrior team of traders with astute financial daring. In the US, the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act forbids the use of genetic information in hiring, firing or making promotion decisions. But the same rules don’t apply everywhere. In the UK, for instance, while the law bans employers from carrying out health-related genetic
Exercising caution But, before Gordon Gekko begins drawing vials of blood from his potential staff, there are a few words of warning. Firstly, the pathways of genetic causation can be hard to pin down. The Caltech researchers admit that the improved performance they measured could come from some other factor that the gene may affect – such as greater intelligence or numerical ability – rather than from improved risk-taking. But there’s nothing wrong with having smarter employees. Employers might be willing to put aside the question of just how these financial wizards produce profits, as long as they do. In fact, they may even want to expand their use of genetic testing to reach out for some of the genes that have been implicated in higher performance on IQ tests. And a few have. The more troubling problem is that genetic findings are always merely probabilistic. While there might be a slightly increased chance that someone
Will medical staff one day become part of the interviewing panel?
COUNT
DOWN carrying the MAOA-L variant will possess enhanced financial acumen, it can never be said with certainty that this individual will do so. Gene expression is affected not only by the external environment, but also by the environment within the genome itself. The vast array of gene variants possessed by each of us modulate one another within the genome’s symphony. This probabilistic quality is especially true in the complex realm of behavioural genetics. The MAOA gene provides a good example. Although some variants were initially believed to be associated with a propensity for violence, further studies revealed that certain MAOA variants are likely to lead to adult violence only after the individual has been exposed to abuse as a child. And other variants work in the opposite direction to exert a protective effect. So no MAOA variant is uniquely predictive of behaviour. All this means that anyone using genomic information for profit had better be careful. Instead of getting a financial wizard, they could end up with a bank-crashing maniac. We are only at the dawn of the genomic age. The Caltech study contributes to our understanding of the role that genetic factors play in shaping temperament or behaviour. But its use by companies would be unwise and probably unfair. That said, genetic information may eventually help us better understand our aptitudes and make smarter career decisions. For now, bank bosses and leading lights in other industries should put aside dreams of genetic competitive advantage. It could go badly wrong. Ronald M Green is a professor of ethics at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and the author of Babies by Design: the ethics of genetic choice (Yale, 2007)
What do you think? Does the future of employment include genetic testing in the workplace? And should it? email: bbcknowledge@wwm.co.in
3.2 million years ago is when our human ancestors are now known to have walked bipedally. The shape of the fourth metatarsal of Australopithecus afarensis indicates the foot was permanently arched, a sign of upright walking.
10,000 fewer cases of lung cancer would be recorded over a lifetime in Beijing if the same stringent air pollution controls introduced for the 2008 Olympics were maintained, say US and Chinese researchers.
79 unprovoked shark attacks on humans took place in 2010, a rise from 63 in 2009. Thirty-two attacks took place in North American waters alone, University of Florida research reveals. Humans kill 30 million to 70 million sharks per year in fisheries.
3.35m (11ft) would have been the standing height of the world’s largest bear, the South American giant short-faced bear. Fossils of the animal, which lived 500,000-2 million years ago, have been discovered in La Plata City, Argentina.
5 per cent is how much smaller the brains of birds living around the Chernobyl site are compared to those not exposed to the area’s heightened radiation. The mechanism behind this difference is unclear.
insights
Armaan Ebrahim
“Motor racing by its nature is a challenging sport. There is an element of danger“ I followed dad into racing. Chennai is the hub of motorsports in India and as a kid, I used to tag along with my dad, Akbar Ebrahim, who was an F3 driver. I suppose racing is in my genes and it was only a matter of time before I opted for a racing career. I started winning karting championships in my early teens, and that set me up on the path to formula racing. I’ve been racing since I was 13 and now when I look back, I don’t think I’ve ever had the chance to think of any another career. A combination of talent and hard work leads to success. So while one may be talented, it needs to be nurtured to realise its potential. I am confident that hard work and a focused approach will pay off. After all, discipline is the foundation for any sport. You cannot compromise on it. You need to sacrifice a lot if you hope to achieve success in your chosen field - whatever that may be. There is no short cut to success. Motor racing by its very nature is a challenging sport. There is always an element of danger. But, that goes with the territory. My racing career has seen its share of ups and downs, but I know that I have to focus. It is tough, but you need to persist. Nothing is certain until you cross the finish line. Every race is different and each time you go out on the track, a new challenge awaits. You need to always remain calm and react to a situation in a composed manner rather than get emotional about it. It is tough, but I believe that if you keep at it, and put in your time, success will beckon. Even though 2008 was a bad year because of lack of budgets that didn’t allow me to race much, I didn’t give up. I kept training and even did a lot of go-karting just to be in touch. Towards the end of the year, I was called by Team India in A1 GP to drive in the rookie session for the Malaysian race. I was the third quickest overall. This helped boost my confidence. I haven’t looked back since. Although I haven’t had my greatest achievement yet, every win, every podium has been an achievement. I know for sure that I will keep on racing and make it to Formula One. I want to give it my best shot, and be counted among the best, such as Ayrton Senna. I look up to him, just as I admire cyclist Lance Armstrong. Armaan Ebrahim is a car racer. At 19, he represented Team A1 India in the A1 GP (the World Cup of Motorsport Championship), becoming the youngest driver in the history of World Motorsport to do so. Ebrahim lives in Chennai.
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World News in context
12 February 2011: Egyptians in Cairo celebrate Mubarak’s resignation after 17 days of demonstrations
Egypt
How the country’s youth brought about revolution The Egyptian revolutionaries of 2011 are in many respects the demographic and political products of the regime they have just helped bring down, as David Keys reports
I 17 days to oust one of the Arab t took the people of Egypt just
This map shows the locations of the major protests against Hosni Mubarak’s administration in January and February 2011 Mediterranean Sea
ISRAEL
Alexandria Mansoura el-Arish Shebin el-Kom Ismailia Cairo Suez Beni Suef
LIBYA
eyevine, press association. illustration BY Sheu-Kuie Ho
world’s most formidable leaders. Yet the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak in February – or at least the sheer scale and nature of it – was the product of Egypt’s long-established sense of nationhood, which is far older than that of most other Middle Eastern countries. This political identity, which can be traced back thousands of years, has helped develop a deeply rooted civil society and a long tradition of political and social protest and insurrection. Starting in 1798, protesters took to the streets to tell Napoleon that his invasion was not appreciated. But more modern protest in Egypt really has its roots in the
Minya
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Asyut Sohag
Kharga oasis
KEY Demonstration where many protestors were killed Other anti-government protest and demonstrations
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Luxor
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1882 uprising against the country’s ruling dynasty. Then, between 1906 and 1910, a younger generation of Egyptian nationalists – under a veteran of 1882 – led a streetbased protest movement against the British, who had occupied Egypt to stop the earlier revolt succeeding. Protest years The years 1918–24 saw recurrent unrest and strikes – including an attempted popular revolution against the British. Further demonstrations broke out in parts of Egypt in 1936, 1946 (both against the British), 1948 (over the birth of Israel), 1951-52 (against the British presence in the Suez Canal zone) and 1971-72 and 1977 (both against Egypt’s then president Anwar Sadat). More recently, in 2006 and 2008, street protests erupted against President Mubarak. Indeed, it was during the unrest in 2008 that the organisation that initiated the recent revolution was born. That organisation was a group of young Egyptian Facebook users who had utilised the social networking site to orchestrate support for a strike by textile workers in the Egyptian town of El-Mahalla El-Kubra, just to the north of Cairo, in spring 2008. Fascinatingly, football, not politics, had initially been responsible for the rapid growth in Facebook membership among Egyptians in 2008. When the national football team reached the finals of that year’s African Cup of Nations
tournament, Egyptian fans set up a massive – mainly youth-oriented – Facebook group to support their heroes. Soon, many of these new Facebook users were lending their support to the textile workers’ strike – and, in doing so, found themselves on a collision course with the Egyptian government and its security apparatus. Paradoxically, the governmental system that the protesters have recently helped to oust was itself born out of Egypt’s long tradition of protest and revolt. The Mubarak regime was simply a continuation of a system established by a popularly backed revolution in 1952. As the populace’s dissatisfaction with the government grew, that revolution was spearheaded by young army officers, themselves led by the brilliant organiser Gamal Abdel Nasser, who would become President of Egypt in 1956 and leader of the Arab world. Between them, Nasser, his successor Sadat and then Mubarak ruled Egypt for 59 years. And yet they all belonged to the same generation, born within ten years of each other – Nasser and Sadat in 1918, Mubarak in 1928. As time went on, the age gap between them and their subjects grew ever wider – and ever more problematic. On the eve of this year’s revolution, Mubarak was 82 and planning on standing for president yet again, while the median age of Egypt’s 80 million citizens was just 24. Mubarak was old
Brief history of A revolution 1798-1801 Demonstrations against French occupation 1882 Egyptian nationalists in power are thwarted by a British invasion 1906-10 Anti-British demonstrations
enough to be most of the population’s grandfather – or even great-grandfather. Baby boom Egypt has what is known as a ‘youth bulge’ – a massive concentration of population in its teens and twenties. This is a direct consequence of progressive social policies pursued by the governmental system created by the 1952 revolution, which saw Nasser and his successors massively expanding health care, and a rapid fall in the infant mortality rate. So, in a way, today’s young revolutionaries are the demographic and political products of the generation that spearheaded and then consolidated that revolution – the generation with which they are now at loggerheads. However, other, purely external factors also played a crucial role in the build-up to January’s uprising. Over the past two to three years, climate change, the growth of the middle classes and world recession have all combined to dramatically push up the price of food. A general increase in the number of extreme weather events worldwide has reduced food output. Meanwhile, a rapid growth in the size of the middle classes in countries such as China, India and Brazil has increased demand for meat – a development that has reduced the land and resources available for the production of grain for human consumption. To make matters worse, the world recession has dealt Egypt a double blow. It
Cairo, 1972: Students protest over the alleged arrest of 1500 of their colleagues
has driven speculative investors across the globe to buy commodities rather than key currencies, which has had the effect of pushing up food prices around the world. Just as significantly, the recession has massively reduced job opportunities – especially among the young and educated. Indeed, there have only been 200,000 appropriate jobs available for the 700,000 graduates who leave Egyptian universities each year. In Egypt, as elsewhere in the Arab world, economic problems, high unemployment and rising food prices have served not only to undermine confidence in the traditional governmental system but also to steadily increase backing for Islamist political organisations. In Egypt, chief among these is the Muslim Brotherhood, which now has the support of an estimated 25-30 per cent of the population. Mass mobilisation The Brotherhood was able to mobilise massive grass-roots social, political and religious support during this year’s demonstrations. In fact, its participation, alongside the secular, youth-oriented power of the new media, was one of the main reasons why the anti-government movement was able to put hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of people onto the streets of Egypt’s towns and cities. With rising food prices and reduced job opportunities, Egyptians have found themselves confronted with acute financial problems similar to those faced by the Tunisians, whose successful revolution in late December and early January helped to inspire Egyptians to follow suit. But Egypt’s January street demonstrations needed one additional ingredient in order to succeed. In many other countries in the Middle East – and indeed in the world at large – the demonstrations would have been successfully suppressed by the state’s security forces almost as soon as they broke out. This simply wasn’t the case in Egypt, where the army intervened to protect the demonstrators from the police by forcing the police off the streets and out of the equation. It turned out to be perhaps the single most critical development of the entire revolution.
1918-24 Strikes, and anti-British revolution in 1919 1926-46 Continued demonstrations 1952 Nationalist government comes to power 1971-72 Anti-government demonstrations 1977 Protests over food prices 2008 Strikes, demonstrations and bread riots December 2010 Tunisian revolution inspires Egyptians January/February 2011 Egyptian revolution.
So why did the army intervene? Nobody knows for certain but it’s likely that the army leadership feared that large-scale violence would undermine the domestic and international credibility of Egypt’s governmental system. It must also have realised that the army, which is largely made up of ordinary Egyptians serving as conscripts, would not have been prepared to open fire on their compatriots. The generals ultimately seem to have concluded that Mubarak would need to be sacrificed in order to preserve their own military and economic privileges – and the interests of the system as a whole. What’s more, Mubarak had begun to toy with the idea that his son (who is not a military man) should succeed him – a notion that almost certainly would not have impressed the army’s top brass. In the end, the hundreds of thousands of young Egyptians on the streets, the precedent set by successful demonstrations in Tunisia, the popular conscript nature of the army, Egypt’s tradition of civil society, the elite’s sense of self-preservation and quiet encouragement from the international community – especially the US – combined to force the Arab world’s top leader out of office. David Keys is a specialist correspondent for the London daily newspaper The Independent and is also a regular broadcaster
find out more E Egypt on the Brink: from Nasser to Mubarak by Tarek Osman (Yale, 2010) E Egypt: a short history by Robert Tignor (Princeton, 2010) E Historians, State and Politics in 20th Century Egypt by Anthony Gorman (Routledge, 2003/2010) Jul/Aug 2011
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Blood on the
TRACKS The American Civil War, 150 years ago, was won and lost on the railways. Christian Wolmar explains how the burgeoning railways transformed warfare from localised pitched battles to huge conflicts spanning continents
August 1862: a locomotive engine is a casualty after the Second Battle of Bull Run during the American Civil War Jul/Aug 2011
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HISTORY
HISTORY
blood on the tracks
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us library of congress x4
he American Civil War was a new kind of war, waged over many years across an entire continent and with hundreds of thousands killed. The nature of war had changed radically and irrevocably. But the catalyst for this dramatic transformation was not so much improved weaponry as another important invention to emerge from the Industrial Revolution: the railways. The growth of the railways and their mobilisation for military purposes changed the nature of war in an unprecedented and massive way. The more gentlemanly encounters of the pre-industrial age turned into monstrous conflicts that killed hundreds of thousands of men and wrought untold damage. Although railways played a role in several earlier conflicts such as the Crimean War, where a specially created railway helped the British and French forces eventually take Sevastopol, it is the American Civil War that lays claim to being the first ‘railway war’. This is demonstrated not only by its length – the four years from 1861 until 1865 – but the breadth of the conflict, which raged over an area the size of Europe. Around 620,000 American soldiers died in this war – as many as in all the other conflicts in which the United States has been subsequently involved put together.
Herman Haupt’s work on the railways helped win the American Civil War
The North controlled the privately-owned railways from early in the conflict, while the Confederacy never really imposed itself There is another telling statistic. During those four long years of carnage, there were no fewer than 400 encounters serious enough to be recorded as battles – that’s one every four days. It was the mobility afforded by the railways that made such a high level of activity possible. Massive role To a large extent, the impact of the railways has been disregarded by conventional military historians, who tend to focus on battlefield strategy
January 1865: the President’s carriage, which would soon be used as Abraham Lincoln’s funeral car
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and the technology of weaponry. Just as the role of the railways in stimulating the massive economic development of the 19th and early 20th centuries is often overlooked, so is their role in wartime. In fact, the role of the railways is undeniable and almost impossible to exaggerate. A good example is to look at the differences between the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century and World War I a century later. While the Napoleonic Wars, which lasted for a dozen years from 1803, saw armies bigger than anything before, they still followed the pattern of previous conflicts. They were a series of big battles fought over a few days with long intervals between them, during which time there were various skirmishes. Moreover, wars were largely confined to the spring and summer because of weather conditions as well as the availability of food. The Battle of Waterloo, the final encounter of the Napoleonic Wars,
blood on the tracks
was over in just one day – 18 June 1815 – with a total of around 50,000 killed or wounded on the two sides. Contrast that with the Battle of Verdun, one of the biggest battles of World War I, which lasted from February to December 1916 and had more than ten times the number of casualties. By then, the seasons were no longer a barrier since railways remain open all year round. Napoleon was one of the few pre-industrial age generals to really understand the role of logistics in war. He even called the long series of wagons that were used to supply his armies ‘trains’. But despite his awareness of the vital nature of transport, he was restricted by the technology of the day and, crucially, the appetite of horses, which weren’t just used for cavalry but also as transport. Carts pulled by horses could manage barely 40km (25 miles) per day – oxen were even slower. If the supplies were too far behind the lines, they were useless since the horses would need to eat more than they could carry. The railways changed that equation. General Herman Haupt, the railway genius of the American Civil War, reckoned that a singletrack line could supply an army of 200,000 men – provided it was operated in a correct way.
distances were made on the railways, with the biggest being the 1950km (1200 mile)-journey by 20,000 men from east to west along the boundary between the rival armies in early autumn 1863. The troops had been sent from the eastern seaboard to reinforce the beleaguered Union troops at the key rail hub of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and were vital in preventing the Confederates from taking the state following an earlier Union defeat. It was not just troops that were moved by rail but all the supplies and ammunition essential to maintain the armies. Indeed, west of the Mississippi, in what became known as the Western Theater, battles would not have been possible without the railways since the area was largely uncultivated and troops would not have been able to live off the land. The better organised and resilient railways of the North helped it secure victory. By cutting off Atlanta, Georgia, from any railway support, General Sherman was
HISTORY
able to launch the final assault that ensured the South’s defeat. Having used the railways to supply his troops for the attack on Atlanta, he then destroyed them behind him in order to prevent the enemy from using them to pursue him as he headed eastwards. Vital control As Sherman’s tactics show, the American Civil War was pioneering in another respect – the development of the art of destroying railways. Here, too, the Union proved superior, using more thorough techniques, such as a hook that was dragged behind a train to tear up the sleepers. The North, too, had been better organised, taking control of the railways early in the conflict while the Confederacy never quite managed to impose itself over the privately-owned railways. This would prove vital and was understood in subsequent wars by countries such as the UK, where the railways were taken over by the government at the outset of both E General Sherman’s men destroy railroad tracks to prevent the Confederates from using them
Victory sealed The railways were involved in the Civil War from the first battle to almost the last. The arrival of troops by rail proved decisive in the earliest big battle, the Battle of Bull Run in Virginia, 32km (20 miles) from Washington. The Union Army had the rebel forces on the run until reinforcements arrived by train on the Manassas Gap railroad, which allowed the Confederates to counterattack and clinch victory. Throughout the war, massive troop movements across huge
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The wheels of change How the railways revolutionised the way war was waged across the globe Without the railways, the Holocaust wouldn’t have logistically been possible
H The Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese conflict of 1904-05 arose because of the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which gave Russia easier access to the Pacific Ocean. The Japanese were worried about the growing influence of Russia in the Far East and, despite Russian reinforcements arriving on the railway, won all the major battles of the conflict. The railway survived and 15 years later played a significant role in the Russian Civil War, as witnessed in the film Dr Zhivago (1965).
Japanese troops open fire on a Red Cross train transporting wounded Russian soldiers
getty, alamy x2, mary evans, rex
G The Holocaust The despatch of millions of Jews and other victims of the Third Reich to the concentration and death camps in World War II would not have been possible without rail transport. Eventually, 1600 trains carrying around eight million people were sent to the camps. For the most part, freight trains were used, with between 100 and 150 victims crowded into each wagon with no food or water and just a bucket as a latrine. However, in places where the Germans tried to maintain the myth that the Jews were simply being ‘resettled in the East’, the victims travelled in third-class carriages and were forced to buy a one-way ticket, with children being charged half fare. The average journey time was more than four days as the trains were given the least priority and consequently were frequently made to wait for freight and troop services. The whole macabre logistical exercise would not have been feasible by road because of the manpower involved in transporting and guarding hundreds of thousands of trucks and buses, and the use of fuel, which was in short supply.
The railway station at Balaklava was crucial in the fight for Sevastapol during the Crimean War
G The CRIMEAN War Best remembered for Florence Nightingale, the Crimean War can lay claim to another innovation – the first ever railway built purely for military purposes. Just 11km (7 miles) long, the Grand Central Crimean Railway was a crude affair that was in part horse-hauled, with locomotives used on the lower stretch. Nevertheless, it proved vital in supplying the army outside Sevastopol, helping it to capture the town in 1855 after a year-long siege.
blood on the tracks
HISTORY
H The Boer War The Boer War between the British Empire and the Dutch-speaking Boers in Southern Africa from 1899 to 1902 saw the intensive use of armoured trains in a battle zone for the first time. They proved useful to the British for patrolling the vital rail line, on which all the major battles were fought, and protecting it against attacks by the Boers. But the armoured trains also revealed their vulnerability when future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, travelling as a journalist on a patrolling train, was captured in an ambush. He eventually escaped and regained British lines by jumping on a freight train.
14 October 1899: Boers attack a British armoured train
H The BURMA railway Immortalised in David Lean’s multi-Academy Award-winning 1957 movie The Bridge On The River Kwai, the construction of the Burma Railway – sometimes tellingly called the Death Railway – during World War II saw the Japanese force Allied prisoners of war to join with Asian workers to construct a railway between Bangkok in Thailand and Rangoon, Burma. The movie was later criticised by some survivors of the construction camps who claimed that it didn’t go far enough to show the brutality of their treatment by the Japanese. Some 16,000 POWs are reported to have died during construction, which was treated as a war crime at the end of the war.
World Wars because they were so vital to wartime movements. However, although the evidence of the American Civil War made it clear that the railways were now vital instruments of war, on the other side of the Atlantic it took time for the implications to be taken on board by conservative military administrations. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the French started off with the better railways but they bungled the initial mobilisation and lost the initiative. Troops roamed about getting drunk because train services were delayed and officers became separated from their men, resulting in ill-discipline. Meanwhile, the Prussians had prepared well for the attack on France, giving
E
and dispatching them to the front. An elaborate scheme – the Schlieffen Plan – had been devised by the Germans to prepare for the rapid invasion of Belgium and France. Railways were at the core of the plan, which set out the timing of the offensive in precise detail. The French border was to be reached on the 22nd day and Paris on the 39th, but inevitably there were unexpected obstacles, such as the Belgians blowing up their railways and the British entering the war sooner than expected. In fact, Paris was never reached. World War I was the ultimate railway war, with all sides utterly dependent on transport by rail. Motor transport was still in its infancy and at the outset of the conflict there were
Inevitably there were unexpected obstacles, such as the Belgians blowing up their railways them a decisive advantage that they never lost. However, they operated the railways badly once they were in enemy territory and were hampered by basic mistakes. For instance, the chimneys on many of their locomotives were too high to get under the French bridges, resulting in a number of embarrassing mishaps. The French guerrilla forces, the francs-tireurs, soon realised that blowing up bridges and sections of line was the best way to harass the enemy, which further delayed progress. Although the Prussians did eventually emerge victorious, better use of the railways might have concluded the war earlier as their supply lines in the siege of Paris fell apart and the troops had to be sent out in the countryside to forage in the old-fashioned way. Schlieffen Plan By the time of World War I, the lessons had been digested. German preparations were based entirely on the role of the railways in mobilising troops
hardly any cars or lorries. Few roads were tarred, which meant they soon became mud traps in the autumn rains, so the railways were essential in keeping armies supplied. Armies had become far more sophisticated, requiring everlarger quantities of supplies, and the increasing power of guns meant that far more ammunition had to be carried than in previous conflicts. Only the railways could cope with this everincreasing load. The terrible stalemate on the Western Front during World War I was the result of the prevailing level of development in both weapon technology and transport. Both sides could deliver huge resources to the front lines and keep them maintained but the weaponry was not good enough to allow for significant breakthroughs. As the war went on, more and more small, 60cm (24in) gauge railways were built, linking the main line railways in the rear with the trenches at the Front. Yet despite the importance of the railways in the war, their role was E
The Bridge On The River Kwai dramatised construction of the Burma Railway Jul/Aug 2011
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HISTORY
blood on the tracks
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A Soviet nuclear missile is loaded on a train as the Russians leave East Germany in 1988
E rarely given sufficient emphasis. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George wrote in 1932 about the coverage in John Buchan’s account of the war: “The Battle of the Somme has about 60 pages and yet it did not make that much difference in the war. But the shells and the guns that enabled the army to fight it, all the organisation of transport behind the lines, do you know how much is given to this? 17 lines.” The official record of the war’s logistics does not make the same mistake, devoting most of its 600 pages to the performance of the railways during the conflict. In World War II, again, the role of the railways proved vital, despite the increased use of motor transport. The railways remained by far the most efficient way of transporting men and materials over long distances and there were many examples where the lack of railway support would be decisive. For example, Hitler may well have won
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a more decisive victory at Dunkirk had the German offensive not stalled due to the lack of supplies caused by a shortage of rail capacity. And it was the lack of sufficient railway support that made it impossible for the German assault on Russia in 1941 to succeed – arguably the turning point of the war. Conversely, it was not until Allied air attacks had destroyed the German railway system in 1944 that the result of the war became inevitable. Korean War Railways remained important in several conflicts after World War II. In Korea, the Americans had great difficulty destroying the lines of communication from China that kept the Communist North supplied. General James Van Fleet, commander of the United Nations forces, later wrote: “We knew [the Communists] were getting the bulk of their supplies by rail. We knew the location of all rail lines.
We had air and naval supremacy. But, in spite of all our air and naval interdiction attacks, their railroads continued to keep them supplied, even to the point of building up reserves for offensive actions.” Railways proved difficult to destroy from the air until the advent of precision-guided missiles. Even in the Cold War, the railways proved useful. The Russians built massive trains that transported nuclear missiles capable of reaching American cities. They employed rail because it made the locations of the weapons far more difficult to detect. Now, however, the very nature of war has changed. There are no set-piece confrontations between massive armies that need to be supplied by rail. Wars are far more mobile and involve far fewer troops. New weaponry, universal road networks and the availability of air power means the railways no longer have a role. With the demise of mass industrial-scale warfare, the age of the railway war is over. Much blood was spilt on the tracks but railways will never again be called upon to be the engines of war. Christian Wolmar is a British writer, broadcaster and railway historian. His book Engines of War was published last year.
find out more E Engines of War: how wars were won and lost on the railways by Christian Wolmar (Atlantic, 2010) EThe Great Train Race: railways and the Franco-German rivalry by Allan Mitchell (Berghann Books, 2000)
What do you think? Have the railways helped create a better world for humankind? email: bbcknowledge@wwm.co.in
SCIENCE
Forging a
career
corbis
Dodgy DalĂs and bogus Botticellis are a major hazard for art dealers. Andy Ridgway meets a master art forger happy to be going straight in today’s age of digital detectives
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Science offers a number of clues to tip the wink to dealers of fakes and forgeries
SCIENCE
FORGING A CAREER
T radically different from the ony Tetro’s life today is
one he once led. “I’m so lily-white I can’t stand myself,” he says. “I haven’t done anything kinky in years.” Tetro’s way of making a living was once decidedly “kinky”. He was an art forger who imitated painters, such as Salvador Dalí, Marc Chagall and Joan Miró, his work being passed off as previously undiscovered originals by these masters. Tetro’s ability to fool even experienced art dealers made him rich. At the height of his success, he owned two Ferraris, a Lamborghini, a Rolls-Royce and a bachelor pad in Claremont, California. But then came the crucial mistake. An art dealer commissioned him to create a series of watercolours in the style of Hiro Yamagata (Tony Tetro never sold his paintings himself – there was always a middleman). Unfortunately for Tetro, the dealer
sold his ‘originals’ to a gallery in Beverly Hills right next to one with an exclusive deal to sell true Yamagatas. “Extremely stupid,” says Tetro, bluntly. So when Yamagata himself walked by, he spotted the fakes and the game was up. Goodbye to the Ferraris In 1989, after a court case that dragged on for four and a half years, Tetro was convicted of art forgery. The cars and condo were all sold to pay his lawyers and he went to jail until 1994. “I feel this from the bottom of my heart: I never had one victim,” he says. “When I was on trial, they put ads in newspapers trying to find one victim and they couldn’t find one person. No-one complained because they didn’t know they had a bad piece.” To this day, many of the paintings’ buyers are completely oblivious that it’s actually a Tony Tetro that takes pride of place in
Tetro in his forgery heyday with his Ferrari Testarossa
their gallery, rather than, say, a real Salvador Dalí. Art dealers and historians are usually pretty adept at spotting fakes – a mistake could cost them millions, after all. But Tetro, whose career as an art forger spanned 30
tony tetro, The National Gallery x3, alamy x4, dreamstime
TONY TETRO’S TOP TIPS Attention to detail is key to faking a ‘masterpiece’, says the man who fooled them all
Get the right paints It’s fairly easy to analyse the pigments used in a picture and compare them with those in a known masterpiece, so choosing the right paints is crucial. Regardless of whose work he was forging, Tetro knew what he had to buy. “I know Dalí used Lefranc & Bourgeois oils when he painted in Europe and Grumbacher oils when he was in the USA – he often wintered in New York.”
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Get the other materials right If it was for a Dalí, Tetro could buy a new canvas and age it himself. For an old master, it was better to get an old picture and strip it with paint remover. One canvas needed to be from Montmartre, France, and date back to the 1920s or 1930s. In order to get it right, he paid $7000 for a picture before stripping off the paint. “That painting could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars today. It wasn’t that good anyway.”
Paint the right scene If you’re out to create a previously undiscovered classic, it’s worth researching the paintings of the same artist and the same era, and then using similar themes. Getting the texture right is also important. For instance, Salvador Dalí painted with no texture – the brushstrokes often aren’t visible and the texture of the canvas itself can be seen.
Age the painting Ageing the canvas starts by applying diluted bleach to the back in order to make it feel old and brittle. Then a concoction of umber (natural brown clay pigment) diluted with thinner and the liquid from cigarette ends soaked in water is rubbed into the back of the canvas and the surrounding wood. “I wouldn’t mind if the painting got scratched and damaged – remember it’s old.” The front is aged with a 70/30 mix of thinner and umber blend.
Add ‘crackular’ It takes 50 years for cracks to appear in a painting. “It adds a ton of authenticity to it. A lot of this is psychological – you’ve got to make ’em think they’re looking at something that’s been around for a while.” Tetro mixed oil and waterbased liquids that cracked when applied to a painting. A thin layer of umber was applied and wiped off, filling the cracks to look like dirt. Finally, it was simply a case of applying a varnish.
years, shows that even the best-trained eyes can be fallible. But now things could be about to change. Increasingly sophisticated computer analysis is proving to be incredibly effective at weeding out fakes, potentially providing art dealers with a particularly capable line of defence. Canvassing opinion One of the leaders in the field of computer art analysis is C Richard Johnson, a professor of Engineering at Cornell University in New York State. Johnson has been developing software that analysess not the painting, but the canvas it is painted on, characterising the pattern of threads. Some painters, such as Vincent van Gogh, bought their canvases by the roll, which means that van Goghs from the same era should have the same thread pattern. If there’s no match, it indicates that something could be amiss.
Infra-red imaging revealed the under-drawing, proving that the painting is from the 19th century
Spotting a forgery The only trouble is that the front of any painting is, logically, covered in paint and, in many older paintings, the rear is often overlaid with other canvas to reinforce it, obscuring the original. Happily, there’s a solution. Many canvases between the 16th and 20th centuries were covered with E
“They don’t want the images turning up on T-shirts and pants without making some money”
How an Italian masterpiece was revealed to be a fake In 1924, the National Gallery in London was handed a painting as part of a large bequest. The Virgin and Child with an Angel was said to have been painted by Italian artist Francesco Francia, who worked in the 15th and 16th centuries. However, suspicions were aroused about the painting in 1954 when another version of the same picture appeared on the market. A technical analysis at the time suggested that the National Gallery’s painting was a copy. This decision was reversed in the 1980s – the thinking being that it was a badly damaged original that had been over-painted. But now, as part of an exhibition at the Gallery, the painting has been re-examined using the latest techniques and it seems it is indeed a fake.
Infrared analysis
Staff at the National Gallery in London use the latest technology to analyse paintings
The Gallery’s team of scientists, led by Ashok Roy, carried out a detailed study. First, they took a tiny sample the size of a printed full-stop from the painting and looked at it under an optical microscope. They could identify many of its pigments simply from their appearance. A scanning electron microscope allowed a more detailed analysis which showed that 19thcentury materials had been used in the picture. The next step involved illuminating the picture with infrared radiation and studying it using a special camera. Infrared causes the paint surface to be heated very slightly and penetrates the paint layers. It is absorbed by materials used for under-drawing – the first outline sketch by the artist. The under-drawing reflects comparatively little light so it shows up as black lines on the infrared image. In some cases, the style of an under-drawing can reveal whether a painting is genuine. “The way people draw is very characteristic of an individual, whereas you can copy the way someone paints,” says Roy. In this case, it was the fact that pencil rather than a more traditional material was used that was the giveaway.
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SCIENCE
FORGING A CAREER
A historical problem Passing off a painting as a masterpiece isn’t such a modern phenomenon During routine cleaning at the National Gallery in London, doubts were raised about the authenticity of one of its paintings. The Gallery’s Science Director, Ashok Roy, became suspicious about the background of the Portrait of Alexander Mornauer, then believed to be by the German artist Hans Holbein the Younger. “I ran my finger along the background and it was very smooth,” he says. At the time the portrait was created in the 15th century, the blue would have been painted in azurite, which has a gritty texture, so something wasn’t right. “I took a tiny cross-section from the upper edge of the picture, which showed the original brown background with a thick layer of varnish on top and a layer of Prussian blue on top of that.” It’s thought that an original 15th-century picture was altered in the 18th century to look like a Holbein, a celebrated master.
The portrait as it was before restoration. The background has been painted in Prussian blue during the 18th century so it resembles the work of Holbein the Younger.
the national gallery x2, press association, getty x2, tony tetro x2
“We had a very simple brushstroke count that could determine whether a painting was a real or fake Van Gogh” E cheap white lead paint to smooth them before the artist set to work. X-raying the canvas reveals the thread pattern. X-rays have been used by museums for years to analyse different layers of a painting, revealing how artists changed their minds as they worked. “I can’t come in with a new million-dollar camera and say this fancy thing is going to do all kinds of things you can’t even imagine,” says Johnson. “But first you’ve got to take everything off the walls and let me photograph it. It’s just not going to happen. But people have already got the X-rays.” And museums are happy to hand over their X-rays – happier at least 38
Jul/Aug 2011
than they are about handing over high-quality images of the paintings themselves. “They don’t want the images turning up on things like T-shirts and underwear and stuff like that without making some money out of it,” says Johnson. “It’s a crude way of explaining it, but you can see why they’d be protective.” Going Dutch But some organisations have been prepared to go out of their way to help with Johnson’s research. Among them are two museums in the Netherlands: the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Kröller-Müller Museum near Arnhem. Both provided Johnson
Because the blue background had been painted on a thick layer of varnish, it could be scraped away, revealing the original wood-grain patterned background – and a taller hat.
with near-unprecedented access to high-resolution scans of more than 100 paintings. In 2007, three teams were invited to analyse the paintings, explaining their conclusions at the first of what are now regular workshops involving analysts and art historians. Among those to take part was Eric Postma, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, who has taken a completely different approach to Johnson. He has carried out computer analysis of the complementary colours van Gogh typically used in his paintings – such as red/green and blue/yellow – to help define the contours (the edge or line that defines a figure or shape). “In our first study, we measured the presence of these features in paintings,” says Postma. “It’s a weak measure with regards to authenticity, but it helped to convince the art historians that we could measure something that was
Celebrated forgers Artists whose clever fakes have deceived the art world already known.” Next came analysis of the number of brush strokes that van Gogh used across his paintings. “We had a very simple brushstroke count that could determine whether a painting was a real or fake van Gogh,” says Postma. “The things we now try to look at are more abstract features. Maybe the best way to think of them is combinations of brushstrokes.” Postma’s work has generated enquiries from owners of paintings, who are keen to prove that what they have hanging on their walls is indeed the real thing. “What I always emphasise is that we are not art historians, we are just comparing paintings. We always do that for free because we don’t want any claims.” Outsmarting the forgers But while the scientists’ techniques have been shown to be effective, aren’t the forgers simply going to work even harder to overcome any new fake-spotting technology? Postma is aware of the danger. “As soon as we have a system that can detect all fakes, then the knowledge in that system can be applied in reverse to create an even better forgery. So it’s a race.” Johnson thinks it’s a race the scientists will win. “A lot of the
fakes discovered in the mid-20th century were spotted because certain paint pigments were used that didn’t exist at the time of the artist they were trying to copy. The forgers know not to do that any more. But once the techniques get to be so elaborate, the forgers are not going to be able to carry through on all of them.” Today, Tony Tetro has gone legit. Instead of creating ‘undiscovered masterpieces’ to mislead dealers and museums, he provides a service painting replicas – or ‘master copies’ – of pictures for his clients. But he still keeps an eye on how the science of fake-detection is progressing and he’s seen things becoming increasingly tricky for the would-be forger. “I don’t read the scientific papers so much, I just glance at them for old time’s sake and think ‘Oh good, I’m glad that wasn’t around’.” Andy Ridgway is ‘Update’ Editor of BBC Knowledge Magazine and Deputy Editor of Focus magazine
find out more E www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/ research/the-virgin-and-child-with-an-angel National Gallery page about The Virgin and Child with an Angel, and other copies and fakes
John Myatt In what British police have called the biggest art fraud of the 20th century, former art teacher John Myatt produced more than 200 new works ‘by’ Surrealists, Cubists and Impressionists. His paintings, created with materials such as emulsion mixed with KY jelly, were sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds by London auction houses. Many have never been traced. Myatt was sentenced to a year behind bars. His purveyor John Drewe, said to be the ringleader, was given six.
Elmyr de Hory Hungarian-born forger de Hory claimed to have sold over 1000 fakes to galleries all over the world. De Hory started with Picassos and later expanded his work to include Matisse, Modigliani and Renoir fakes. The authorities caught up with de Hory on the Spanish island of Ibiza in 1968 and a Spanish court convicted him of homosexuality and consorting with criminals, sentencing him to two months in prison. He was never charged with forgery as the authorities couldn’t prove he’d produced any on Spanish soil. He died in 1976.
Han van Meegeren
ORIGINAL by tiepolo, circa 1732
Finished copy by tetro
Tetro now makes legitimate copies of old masters. On the right is his replica of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s 18th-century painting The Angel Succouring Hagar, shown on the left
This Dutchman is considered to be one of the most ingenious forgers of the 20th century, copying, among others, Johannes Vermeer. He went to extraordinary lengths, buying 17th-century canvas and mixing paints to authentic formulas. He also came up with a system of using phenol formaldehyde so the paints hardened after they’d been applied, making the work look 300 years old, and faking cracks. He was eventually convicted of forgery and fraud and sentenced to a year in prison. However, his health deteriorated rapidly during his trial and he died in 1947 before his sentence began. Jul/Aug 2011
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Sept/Oct 2008 July/Aug 2011
Solar system
science
How to build
a planet Our Solar System is a teeming maelstrom of gas giant worlds, rocky planets and smaller asteroids. But astronomers have yet to figure out exactly where it all came from, as Robert Matthews discovers‌
In a nutshell
What’s the story? According to the textbooks, the Solar System formed from a huge cloud of gas and dust that collapsed under its own gravity, forming the Sun and planets. Yet this simplesounding theory struggles to explain even its most basic features – such as the existence of the so-called gas giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn. The problems have been made worse by the discovery of even bigger planets on bizarre orbits around other stars. Some astronomers believe these problems are so severe that the time has come to develop far more radical theories to explain the origin of planets. Sept/Oct Jul/Aug 2008 2011
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Solar system
A accustomed to travelling through stronomers have become pretty
time. With the light from even the nearest star to the Solar System taking over four years to reach the Earth, they’re used to peering into the past. But when NASA’s orbiting Spitzer telescope turned its gaze towards a faint star in the constellation of Taurus, 450 light years away, it gave astronomers far more than just a vision of events taking place there in Tudor times. Images of the star, code-named UX Tau A, released late last year revealed the presence of vast of dust and “Even our own Solar System has raised lanes debris around it questions over the viability of the – the raw material from which planets traditional textbook account of how are made. It seems planets form” this distant Sun-like star is giving us a view of events that took place around it 450 years ago – and that also happened around our own Sun at the very birth of our own Solar System, 4.56bn years ago. Analysis of the images by a team from the University of Michigan also revealed a gap between the lanes of cosmic rubble – suggesting that at least one planet has
already formed, and is now clearing a path for itself before settling down to orbit its parent star. But the biggest surprise is that all this is taking place around a relatively nearby star in the first flushes of youth: just a million years old – about 0.01 per cent of its likely lifetime. All the indications are that UX Tau A will give astronomers key insights into one of the major mysteries in science: how do planets form? Yet to judge by most astronomy textbooks, this is no mystery at all. They describe scenarios in which the birth of our own Solar System took place in a gigantic, swirling cloud of gas and dust that collapsed under its own gravity, forming a central star surrounded by a vast disk of debris made from ‘planetesimals’ – 10km (six miles)-wide chunks of matter which collide together and merge, the building-blocks for full-blown planets. Known as the solar nebular theory (SNT), this explanation first began to emerge over 250 years ago. For most of that time, astronomers have had only one example on which to test their theories: our own Solar System. Yet even this test-case has raised questions over the viability of the textbook account of how planets form. E
Planetary migration
xxx
science photo library x2, corbis
A Russian psychiatrist raised the prospect of planets ricocheting around the Solar System like balls on a snooker table. He was ridiculed by the scientific community – but was he right all along? During the 1950s, a Russian psychiatrist named Immanuel Velikovsky (below) caused something of a scientific sensation by claiming that the planets were once in very different orbits from those they inhabit today. In a best-selling, hugely controversial book called Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky claimed that Venus had been ejected from the planet Jupiter and then swept in on an elliptical orbit to make a series of close encounters with the Earth. He also argued that Mars had originally been closer to the Sun than the Earth, but was dramatically hurled outward following an encounter with Venus, and arrived at its current orbit only around 2800 years ago. Velikovsky accepted that his theory was a
major challenge to mainstream astronomy, which viewed the Solar System as essentially stable. Even so, he believed it was the only way of making sense of a host of ancient legends and Biblical accounts of bizarre celestial events. At the time, the idea of planets zooming around like snooker balls was dismissed out of hand by astronomers, with Professor Harlow Shapley of Harvard University declaring: “If Dr Velikovsky is right, the rest of us are crazy.” Since his death in 1979, Velikovsky’s claim of celestial upheaval in relatively recent times has failed to gain any support among mainstream scientists. Yet his barely less radical idea that planets can and do undergo dramatic orbital changes – at least in their early stages – has become accepted wisdom. Theoretical calculations show that planets can move – or ‘migrate’ – both inwards and outwards through interactions with debris in young planetary systems, and with neighbouring planets. Some astronomers now
Was Mars hurled outside Earth’s orbit by a collision with Venus?
suspect all the large planets – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – migrated outward to their current location during the early history of the Solar System. Other planetary systems beyond our own also show signs of migration, with giant planets moving closer to their parent stars.
Solar system
science
H two Competing theories
How did the Solar System begin? Solar nebula theory (SNT)
The capture theory
H This is the textbook account of how planets are formed, and begins with a huge cloud of gas and dust starting to collapse under its own gravity – perhaps prompted by blastwaves from a nearby supernova explosion. At the centre of the cloud, the density and temperature becomes high enough to trigger nuclear fusion, and a star begins shining. Meanwhile, the debris around it begins to coalesce into everlarger chunks. These ‘planetesimals’ then become the cores for full-blown planets, the debris around them helping to make their initially highly elliptical orbits more circular. The end result is one or more planets orbiting the central star.
H An alternative to the solar nebula theory is the capture theory, in which the Sun acquired the gas and dust from a star in the process of forming nearby. Most stars begin life in so-called stellar clusters, where close encounters are common. In the capture theory, one such encounter between the newly created Sun and a nearby ‘proto-star’ led to the capture of some of the proto-star’s material by the Sun’s gravitational field. Once in orbit around the Sun, the disk of debris coalesced to form four ‘gas giants’ – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – and the four rocky inner planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
Path of orbit
1. Proto-star moves on hyperbolic orbit 1. Planetesimals collide and become larger
2. Sun’s gravitational field attracts material from proto-star
Sun
2. Planets form and debris slowly clears
3. Material is captured from proto-star by Sun’s gravitational field and planets slowly form
4. 3. Planets settle into varying orbits Jul/Aug 2011
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Solar system
Planets far, far away New ways of viewing distant objects could reveal even more Until recently, attempts to solve the mystery of the origin of the Solar System were hampered by the fact that astronomers only had one example on which to base their ideas – our own. That all changed in October 1995, when Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the University of Geneva, Switzerland, announced the discovery of the first planet orbiting another ordinary star. Painstaking measurements of the movement of the star, 51 Pegasi, revealed a tiny to-and-fro motion – the tell-tale sign of the gravitational pull of an otherwise invisible planet orbiting around it. The discovery of a star with a planetary companion so close to Earth – just 50 light years away – was itself hugely significant, suggesting that planet formation may be a relatively commonplace event. By 1999, astronomers had identified the first family of planets, orbiting the binary star Upsilon Andromedae just 44 light years from Earth. To date, around 270 planets have been discovered around other stars, with five thought to orbit the star 55 Cancri alone. Most have been found using the same technique used by Mayor and Queloz, but other methods are now proving effective. The simplest is the so-called transit method, in which the presence of planets around stars is revealed through their effect on the observed brightness of the star as they pass across its disk. The European Space Agency (ESA) has pioneered this technique with the COROT mission (COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits), launched in December 2006, which uses an orbiting telescope to monitor the light from stars. In May 2007, COROT found its first planet, an object roughly the mass of Jupiter, orbiting a star 1500 light years away in the constellation Monoceros. Detection of a planet at such a huge distance suggests that COROT – and its US-built counterpart, Kepler, launched in March 2009 – will be able to detect planets as small as the Earth around stars closer to home.
Exoplanets around a distant star. Astronomers hope to make our views as clear as this artist’s impression 46
Sept/Oct 2008 July/Aug 2011
Solar system
believe nothing less than a whole new theory of planetary formation is needed. “The SNT has so many flaws – and they are all just about terminal from the point of view of the viability of the theory,” contends Michael Woolfson, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of York, UK.
“The challenges involved are driving planetary formation specialists to ponder ideas once deemed outrageous” Since the 1960s, Woolfson and his colleagues have been working on the idea that the planets condensed from material that the Sun captured from a star being born in the same stellar cluster around five billion years ago. Known as the capture theory, it immediately solves two major problems facing the SNT. First, by having the Sun and planets form out of different clouds of debris, there’s no link between the rotation of the Sun and the orbits of the planet – and thus no problem with the Sun spinning relatively slowly. Second, the material captured from the passing star could allow even Jupiter-sized planets to form quickly. E According to Woolfson, computer
Swirling cosmic dust – but how does it coalesce into a solar system?
An artist’s impression of XO-1b, one of the newly-discovered planets casting doubt over the SNT
NASA X2, ESA
E Take that claim that the Sun and the planets both emerged from a swirling cloud of interstellar gas and dust. As it collapsed under its own gravity, the cloud should have started to rotate ever faster, like a spinning ice-skater pulling in her arms. The result should then have been a family of planets orbiting a rapidly rotating star. Yet our own Sun spins at the rate of just one rotation every 28 days. How did it slow down to its current sedate pace? One suggestion is that the early Sun was slowed down by the ‘drag effect’ of its own magnetic field interacting with the orbiting debris. Yet it’s far from certain that the Sun’s magnetic field was ever strong enough, or that the debris was able to generate enough drag, for this to happen. Then there’s the problem of getting the giant planets we see today – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – to form from small planetesimals colliding and bonding. Studies of these vast balls of gas by space probes have revealed that each is built around a colossal solid core with masses of around five to 20 times that of the Earth. Calculations suggest creating such cores from the steady accumulation of small planetesimals is simply unrealistic. Yet more problems have reared their heads since the discovery in 1995 of planets beyond the Solar System. Most of these so-called exoplanets are bigger even than Jupiter, and on bizarre orbits far closer to their central star than Mercury is to the Sun. In May last year one such ‘gas giant’, XO-3b, was found to have a mass 12 times that of Jupiter, while zipping round its parent star once every 77 hours. Quite how so vast a planet could form so close to a star without being absorbed into it is hard to explain – just like the apparent presence of a planet around UX Tau A barely a million years after the star lit up. “The variety of planetary systems makes it clear to me that planet formation is not a simple sequence of events,” says Dick Durisen, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Indiana. “There are many competing nonlinear processes, and how they play out in any given system may be essentially unpredictable, like the weather.” The challenges involved are driving planetary formation specialists like Durisen to ponder ideas once deemed outrageous – like the migration of planets within the Solar System. But some astronomers now think that even this is not enough: they
science
Jul/Aug 2011
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Solar system
Death throes Towards the end of its existence, could the Solar System go haywire? While arguments may rage over the details of planetary formation, few astronomers doubt that the early Solar System was a pretty anarchic place. With planetesimals colliding with one another and whole planets migrating hundreds of millions of kilometres to their final orbits, it seems far removed from the clockwork-like regularity of today’s Solar System. Yet computer studies of the future of the Solar System have found hints that complete anarchy could break out once more among the planets. The source of the trouble is the gravitational attraction between the planets. While their orbits are largely dictated by the pull of the Sun, each planet also feels the force exerted on it by its fellow members of the Solar System. Predicting the effect of these ‘perturbations’ is like trying to predict the weather years in advance. While small, their interplay produces so-called chaotic effects of incredible complexity. Even so, astronomers have been using computer simulations of the planets to find out what might happen to the planets over billions of years.
These have revealed that the orbit of the smallest and innermost planet, Mercury, is susceptible to regular jostling by Jupiter, the largest planet, producing radical changes in its orbit. In a study published earlier this year, the French theorist Jacques Laskar of the Paris Observatory ran 1001 simulations of the Solar System over billions of years, and found that Mercury’s orbit could end up much more egg-shaped than at present, bringing it relatively close to its nearest neighbour, Venus. That, in turn, could have dramatic effects on all the inner planets – including the Earth. Fortunately, the relatively large mass of the Earth makes it hard to shift from its current orbit. However, our planet could still face catastrophe as a result of changes in the orbits of the other planets. Recent simulations carried out by Gregory Laughlin and Konstantin Batygin of the University of California, Santa Cruz, found that we could be hit by Mercury or Mars if their orbits changed – with Mars facing a small chance of being ejected from the Solar System altogether within the next billion years.
TIMELINE: of planet formation theories 300 BC Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos puts the Sun at centre of the Solar System
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1734 H Formation of planets from a dust cloud around the Sun is suggested by Swedish scientist Emanuel Swedenborg
1755 H German philosopher Immanuel Kant develops Swedenborg’s idea, describing planet formation from a rotating dust-cloud or ‘nebula’
1796 French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace independently rediscovers the ‘nebular hypothesis’, which remains the dominant theory of planet formation
1919 British astronomer Sir James Jeans suggests a passing star pulled material from the Sun, which cooled to form the planets
Is the chaos from which it formed set to reign in our Solar System once more?
Solar system
for&against Is the solar nebula theory dead?
Professor Michael Woolfson, University of York, UK
yes
An enormous amount of capital, both time and financial, has been invested in the solar nebula theory, and so there is a great reluctance to give it up. For this reason the workers in the field consider ever more outlandish schemes for solving their many problems. But the theory has so many flaws – and they are all just about terminal. What can be more indicative of the implausibility of a theory than that after 40 years it can neither produce a slowly spinning Sun nor planets in the right places – or perhaps even planets at all? In contrast, the most attractive feature of the capture theory model is that all the mechanisms involved – tidal interactions, gravitational collapse and collisions – are well-understood and readily and robustly modelled.
Robert Matthews is a science journalist and Visiting Reader in Science at Aston University, UK. www.robertmatthews.org
Find out more E The Origin and Evolution of the Solar System by Michael Woolfson (Taylor & Francis, 2000) E www.tinyurl.com/cwhsb The COROT space project E http://tinyurl.com/ervkt NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope E www.tinyurl.com/yuzd32 The formation of planets: lecture notes by Dr Phil Armitage
Professor David Hughes, University of Sheffield, UK
NO
If you get six cosmogonists [people who study the origins of solar systems] in a room together, they will all disagree with each other, but I don’t see anything that shows that the solar nebula theory isn’t right. It just seems a more reasonable approach to the formation of the planets than the capture theory. I do think the stellar near-encounters needed for the capture theory take place, and I think the problem of the slow rotation of the Sun compared to the planets is a very real difficulty for the solar nebula theory. All low-mass stars like the Sun are rotating ridiculously slowly. But the attitude of many of those working in this field is that this is a problem with the Sun and stars, not the planets – which move at a rate expected if they formed from dust in this part of the Galaxy.
Who do you agree with Write and let us know: bbcknowledge@wwm.co.in
E www.tinyurl.com/yvu2gj Online exoplanet resource
1964 H British physicist Michael Woolfson puts forward the capture theory of planet formation
Science photo library, esa
E simulations have shown the possibility of huge gas giants forming on vast, highly elliptical orbits which are then made smaller and more circular by interaction with the captured debris. Better still, the whole process can take just a few million years – consistent with the timescales suggested by studies of exoplanets. Despite this, the capture theory is still regarded as too radical by many astronomers, who think the SNT can survive – albeit with major modifications. Whether their confidence is well-placed will become clear over the coming years. Planetary specialists are expecting major insights about our own and other planetary systems to flow from new telescopes, probes and computer simulations now being planned. As Durisen says: “We’re living in a golden era.”
science
1969 Soviet theorist Viktor Safronov develops the theory of planet formation from chunks of debris called planetesimals
1999 H First multi-planet system beyond the Solar System is located, orbiting a binary star system in Andromeda
2006 H The European Space Agency launches the COROT orbiting observatory, able to detect small planets around other stars
2007 NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope observes signs of planet formation around two young stars in the constellation Taurus
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science photo library
This artist’s impression gives a snapshot of the diverse weather and climates found around the world
WEATHER
WHAT’S GOING ON? Why the weather is the most important thing in the world The weather – that favourite topic of conversation – recently seems to have given everyone more to talk about than usual. Freezing cold winters and blazing summers, droughts, rainstorms or devastating hurricanes are seldom far from the news. High time, then, to take a closer look at what’s going on. Most of Earth’s weather phenomena occur in the lowest level of the atmosphere – the relatively thin layer called the troposphere. It contains 70 to 80 per cent of the atmosphere’s total mass and almost all of its water vapour. The gases surrounding our planet are continually shunted around the globe in established convection patterns. Solar radiation heats the Earth’s surface and, in turn, the air above it. As warm air rises, cooler air slides in to replace it, giving rise to the wind. These heat and pressure differences lie at the heart of the weather machine. But there’s so much more to weather. It defines us as nations, it affects our ability to form societies and it determines where and how we live. Areas of temperate weather tend to be wealthier and more advanced, while those who inhabit the extremes of our planet have their lives far more directly affected by climate. Life on Earth is only possible thanks to the delicate balance of our climate, making an understanding of weather vital to our very existence.
The Weather People p52 Why were pigeons thrown out of a hot-air balloon? Does climate determine national stereotypes? Who pioneered forecasting?
The most extreme weather in our solar system p56 The worst the Earth can throw at us pales into insignificance next to the extremes on our sister planets
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The weather people We may not think it often, but all of our lives are defined by our climate to some degree – for some more so than for others
Are we all the product of our national climate? Dominic Sandbrook thinks so English moralist Dr Johnson T hefamously remarked: “It is commonly
alamy x2, getty, national portrait gallery
observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.” That was in 1758, and things have changed little since then. Today, millions of people switch on their televisions or check online for the forecast – and after recent extreme weather events across the globe our obsession runs stronger than ever. Historians have long paid attention to the importance of the weather. According to the French Annales School – one of the most influential scholarly movements of the 20th century – the behaviour of “a few princes and rich men, the trivia of the past” mattered much less than the patterns of climate and geography that shaped people’s lives. Meanwhile, in his classic history of the Mediterranean, first published in 1949, historian Fernand Braudel insisted that political events were “surface disturbances, crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs”. The story of the region, he insisted, was of the winds and the sea. When Braudel wrote of the tides of history, he often meant it literally. Climate and landscape have played a large role in the formation of history. Ten
What could be more quintessentially English than a businessman with his brolly?
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years before Dr Johnson made his famous quip, the French social commentator Montesquieu suggested that the fate of societies was predestined by their climate. People in hot countries, he reasoned, were inevitably “too hot-tempered” while northern Europeans were “stiff ” and “icy”. The ideal climate, producing moderate men and balanced politics, he concluded, could be found – surprise, surprise – in France.
By the 19th century, it had become a truism that Britain owed its prosperity and political stability to its temperate climate – such a contrast with the blazing summers and tropical storms that blighted lazier, more quarrelsome or simply “lesser” races. In 1827, the Quarterly Review, a British cultural magazine, wrote: “Better is it for us to be condemned to labour for our country’s good than to luxuriate amid olives, vines and vices.”
People in hot countries were “hot-tempered” while northern Europeans were “icy” Montesquieu’s opinions about climate and national character proved particularly popular in Britain, where the unpredictability of the weather, so worrying to farmers, meant that climate was a common topic of conversation. His ideas have a long history. Montesquieu was himself influenced by the ancient Roman writer Tacitus, who had argued that the German tribes were hardy, savage and uncivilised because of their cold, wet climate.
Modern readers might like the sound of olives, vines and vices, but our predecessors were having none of it and such stereotyping continued well into the 20th century. In his essay ‘North and South’, socialist writer George Orwell recalled: “The histories I was given when I was a little boy generally started off by explaining in the naivest way that a cold climate made people energetic while a hot one made them lazy, and hence the defeat of the Spanish Armada”. The northern type, he observes, is always a “hefty, vigorous chap with blond moustaches and pure morals”; Mediterranean Europeans, however, are “sly, cowardly, and licentious”. Rain, to put it simply, is good for the soul. Tempting as it is to dismiss such stuff, there may be something to it. Doctors now recognise Seasonal Affective Disorder as a genuine malady – and one that accounts for high Scandinavian suicide rates. Braudel’s heirs would certainly agree that our lives and our outlook are profoundly shaped by our national climate. Dominic Sandbrook is a writer and historian. He has a regular column in BBC History Magazine
WEATHER People
WEATHER
Up and away! The death-defying tale of a pioneering meteorological adventurer
C of physics in the 17th century. Since then it has been limate science first properly took off with the birth
Those magnificent men: Glaisher frantically tries to halt their craft’s endless ascent alone as Coxwell lies unconscious
advanced by a succession of ideas and experiments. In 1862, James Glaisher (1809-1903), one of the founders of the British Meteorological Society, decided to find out for himself what happens in clouds. With pioneering aeronaut Henry Coxwell, he made an ill-fated ascent in a hot air balloon. They deliberately ignored an overcast sky, ascended directly into a rainstorm and were sucked into a thundercloud where they were able to witness thunder and lightning from a proximity bordering on the foolhardy. Nevertheless, they made measurements and at 4800m (15,800ft) threw an experimental pigeon out of the balloon. They noted that it was disorientated but still managed to fly. At 8000m (26,400ft), another hapless pigeon dropped like a stone. Meanwhile the explorers were suffering from altitude sickness and frostbite. When the release cord for the balloon’s gas valve got tangled up, it appeared that their only hope of descending was dashed. Glaisher had passed out at around 8800m (29,000ft) and Coxwell temporarily lost the use of his limbs. Somehow he managed to catch the cord in his teeth and open the valve. By the time they started to descend, they had reached 11,200 metres (37,000ft), close to the limit of human survival. But they had also climbed to the top of the weather.
The father of forecasting: how an aversion to war led a pacifist to pave the way
L (1881-1953) was an influential ewis Fry Richardson
English physicist and a wellknown Quaker pacifist who was passionately committed to the idea of measurement. He tried to measure everything, beginning with meteorology, and later moved on to apply measurement to other areas, including the frequency and likelihood of war. In 1913, Richardson joined the Met Office, the UK’s national weather service, where he began to develop his ideas. His numerical weather forecasting linked up ideas of uncertainty and predictability. Without his work, the computing of weather and other continuous processes that happened in the 1950s and 1960s simply wouldn’t have progressed. He also laid the ground for a whole range of mathematical techniques that have since become tremendously important. His career was interrupted by a stint as an ambulance driver in France
during World War I. He returned after Richardson spent the rest of his career the conflict ended but in 1920, due to his in academia, researching and lecturing Quaker pacifist beliefs and his experiences in physics and maths, but it is thanks in the war, he left the Met Office as it to his early work that he is credited as had become part of the Air Ministry – in being the father of numerical weather effect, part of the British Armed Forces. forecasting – which is at the heart of E He took his mathematical work and today’s methods. applied it to peace studies instead. Richardson’s book Weather Prediction by Numerical Process was published in 1922 (CUP). Although it gained scientific recognition, it was to be over 30 years before his work could be successfully applied to weather forecasting, largely thanks to the introduction of fast Pacifist Richardson left the computers and better Met Office once it joined observation techniques forces with the British military in the 1950s.
WEATHER
weather People
Modern weather forecasting BBC’s Helen Willetts explains how it’s done far ahead can we predict H ow the weather?
alamy, paul whitfield, bbc, press association
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At the Met Office, the UK’s National Weather Service, we can give you a trend for 10 days ahead, but for the purposes of television it’s five days ahead. Any further than that and the chaotic nature of the atmosphere makes it impossible to forecast precisely with any confidence. It gets much more difficult to forecast the weather the longer the lead time. Is the weather easier to predict in some continents than others? It’s certainly easier to predict the weather in continental areas than it is in the UK’s temperature climate. Deserts, such as the Sahara, have very predictable weather with large daily changes in temperature and little, if any, rainfall, whereas in the subtropical areas of Africa, the weather is split between a dry season and a season of heavy rains. Because of its location in the world, the UK’s weather is much
more variable, ranging from ice and snow in winter to hot, dry summer days.
model is released, it can only add to the accuracy of the forecast.
When did weather forecasting become a modern science? With the arrival of computers and satellites. It’s said that the modern era arrived when an electronic computer was installed at the new Met Office HQ in Bracknell in 1962.
But it’s about interpreting the data too... To be a forecaster is to know when the model is not performing at its best, what areas are its weak aspects and how to incorporate late data coming into the model, which is run every six hours. It’s about experience and interpretation.
Why are computers important? Because they can perform calculations much faster than a human can. Our current supercomputer calculates what the weather will be like around the globe for the next six days in just three hours. Computers are becoming much more powerful and the resolution on the computer models – not just across the globe but right up into the atmosphere – is getting better all the time. The models are being fine-tuned and refined and the little errors and bugs are being worked on constantly by our team of scientists at the Met Office. As each new
What is the one scientific breakthrough that would make your job easier? Life is never going to be easy as a forecaster because it is not an exact science. Even if you could monitor every car emission, every drop of water evaporating from the oceans, every single plant going through its photosynthesis process, every power station, home, aerosol, flap of the wings of a butterfly – all the things that affect the weather – I don’t think we could model that. The task is far, far too great. But the more powerful computers become, the faster we can run the models and the more detail we get. Do viewers know just how much science goes into a TV forecast? What we present on screen shouldn’t be too scientific. It should be user-friendly with no jargon. There’s no real need for viewers to know about the science behind it because we’re all qualified meteorologists and are able to get across the complexities of the forecast.
Meteorologists such as Helen Willetts have an 85 per cent success rate in the UK, but predicting global weather is a complicated science
What special challenges does extreme weather present for the forecaster? Forecasting extreme weather is a challenge for every forecaster because the potential impact can be much greater when compared to ‘normal’ dayto-day weather. Being able to accurately forecast very heavy rainfall five days ahead, such as the rain that caused flooding in Cumbria in 2009, and the heavy snowfalls of recent winters, helps to save lives and property. If you can pinpoint potentially extreme weather early enough, emergency services and the public can prepare and take action in good time.
Weather people
WEATHER
Corbyn can’t say how he defies the odds when betting on his weather predictions
Making money from the weather The maverick who bets against the pros’ predictions astrophysicist-turnedB ritish maverick-weather-forecaster
Piers Corbyn makes good money predicting the weather from his cupboardsized office in the basement of a London business centre – but he can’t tell you how he does it. There are no supercomputers, just Corbyn, a small network of colleagues and a long strip of squared paper, on which the dates of the next month or so are marked with coloured highlighters and pen strokes. This forms the basis of his weather forecasting consultancy, WeatherAction. Unlike conventional weather forecasting, Corbyn’s methods involve studying changes in the activity on the surface of the Sun. After gaining a first-class physics degree from Imperial College London and a masters degree in astrophysics from Queen Mary College, he began to look for correlations between solar activity and weather. “I was staggered that the Met Office couldn’t get it right even a few hours before the event,” he says. He began to make some trial forecasts, testing them by placing bets with a leading bookmaker. He would ask for odds on such forecasts as “a wet June” or “a cold August”. The bookies would ask the Met Office to
set the odds. Between 1988 and 2000, he estimates he won £20,000 ($32,560). “I was essentially betting against the Met Office predictions and I still made money,” says Corbyn. His success led him to launch his consultancy. So how does he do it? The WeatherAction long-range forecasts
“I bet against the Met Office predictions and I still made money” are now produced using Corbyn’s Solar Lunar Action Technique (SLAT), which supersedes his original Solar Weather Technique. It uses predictable aspects of solar activity and lunar modulations as the basis for forecasting weather in advance and predicting extreme events. Corbyn has not published his method in a peer-reviewed journal and by his own admission cannot fully explain it. This has led to criticism from traditional
meteorologists, who are reluctant to take his ideas seriously. We contacted a number of meteorologists, none of whom believed Corbyn’s method nor wanted to be quoted by name. Matt Huddleston, Principal Consultant on Climate Change at the Met Office, was willing to go on record but it soon became obvious that he was finding it difficult to pass any form of comment on Corbyn’s work. It’s understandable. Since Corbyn has not published his method and by his own admission cannot explain it, how can another scientist study the method he uses in sufficient detail to decide whether or not it works? “We work with causal mechanisms, not correlations,” says Huddleston. “We are often contacted by people who claim to be able to predict the weather better than us. All we can do is be as open as possible about what we do and how we do it.” Corbyn says all the apparently freakish phenomena of recent years, such as tornadoes and floods, simply follow cycles determined by particles from the Sun. “I reject the arguments for manmade climate change,” he says. “We’ve now got the situation where if anything happens to the climate, it’s blamed on man-made global warming. The climate has always been changing and it’s mainly down to natural processes.” Regardless of the lack of scientific proof and the criticism thrown in his direction, Corbyn is still sure he’s onto something big. “Sometimes I’m right, sometimes I’m wrong, but I’m way ahead of what luck says I should get right.” Stuart Clark is a science journalist and author of The Sun Kings (Princeton, 2007) Jul/Aug 2011
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science photo library
WEATHER SCIENCE
Hurricane Floyd as seen from space – but what of the extreme weather systems that we’ve observed on other worlds?
The most extreme
WEATHER in our solar system So you think the weather has been bad of late? Paul Parsons says it’s nothing compared to what the rest of the Solar System endures
Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on 29 August W hen 2005, it wreaked havoc, killing over 1800 people and
causing damage totalling in excess of $80bn. Yet even Katrina paled in comparison to some of the storms that batter the other worlds of the Solar System. On Jupiter, for example, a hurricane three times the size of the Earth (or 60 times as big as Katrina) has been raging for the past 400 years. On Neptune, windspeeds reach up to 3200km/h (2000mph) – that’s over 10 times higher than the strongest gusts mustered by Katrina. Meanwhile, the lightning bolts on Jupiter strike with 1000 times the power that they do on Earth. There are weather phenomena that we can’t even imagine from the safety of our own world. On Mars, dust storms can engulf the entire planet. On Saturn’s moon Titan, it rains liquid methane, while our nextdoor neighbour Venus is choked by a thick smoggy blanket of sulphuric acid. So it seems our low cloud and scattered showers really aren’t worth worrying about.
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HOTTEST: Venus Florida’s got nothing on our nearest neighbour when it comes to sunshine
nasa/jpl x2, science photo library x2
L Anyone hoping to get away for a hot summer break will be hard pushed to find a destination as warm as the planet Venus – nor would you want to. With an average surface temperature of 460ºC (860ºF) – hot enough to melt lead. It’s not the closest planet to the Sun, however. Lunar-like world Mercury is only half the distance from the Sun as Venus and therefore receives four times more light. But Venus has an atmosphere, which traps the Sun’s heat. That’s because Venus is in the grip of a greenhouse effect much like the one causing climate change here on Earth – except that on Venus the greenhouse effect is on steroids. Whereas Earth’s atmosphere is less than 0.04 per cent carbon dioxide, which has warmed the planet by just under a degree over the last 100 years, carbon dioxide makes up over 96 per cent of the atmosphere on Venus. It’s little surprise the place is so hot. The atmosphere on Venus is extremely dense,
Venera 13 offered the best – if short-lived – view of the surface of Venus (below)
weighing 93 times the total mass of Earth’s atmosphere. It exerts a pressure on anything at the planet’s surface equal to the pressure one kilometre (0.6 miles) beneath the ocean’s surface on Earth. As well as carbon dioxide, the atmosphere is rich in sulphuric acid, clouds of which float high in the Venusian sky. If it weren’t for the planet’s scorching temperatures preventing these clouds from condensing, Venus would suffer from torrential acid rain. A number of lander spacecraft have been sent to investigate Venus, though most of them lasted for just a matter of minutes in the intense heat and pressure. The record-holder is the Soviet Venera 13 probe, which lasted for just over two hours and returned the first colour images of Venus’s surface. The probe and its sister Venera 14 used parachutes to slow their initial descent into the planet’s atmosphere but then jettisoned them and drifted down to the surface unassisted – the thick, gloopy atmosphere cushioning their descent
like a pebble slowly sinking to the bottom of the ocean. In the face of all these hazards, a manned mission to the surface of Venus seems like sheer folly. However, it has been suggested that very high up in Venus’s cloud decks, the temperature and pressure drop to Earth-like levels. While you would certainly require an oxygen mask in order to breathe, this could be the only place in the Solar System beyond the Earth where you wouldn’t actually need a spacesuit to protect you.
Hottest place on Earth: Lut desert, Iran L The highest air temperature ever recorded by a weather station was 57.8ºC (136ºF), at El Azizia in Libya in September 1922. However, in 2005 the MODIS spectroradiometer aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite recorded a land temperature of 70.7ºC (159ºF) for the Lut desert in Iran.
Extreme weather
COLDEST: The Moon With no atmosphere, it’s chillier than Pluto L Common sense might lead you to believe that you’re most likely to need your thermal underwear on a distant world far from the warmth of the Sun, such as Pluto or an icy comet lost in the Solar System’s outer reaches. But, in fact, the lowest temperature ever measured in the Solar System is much closer to home – on our own Moon. In September 2009, readings taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) revealed that temperatures near the Moon’s south pole plunge to a teethchattering -240ºC (-400ºF), 10ºC (18ºF) colder than the dayside of Pluto, which was measured in 2006, and barely 30ºC above absolute zero (-273ºC, or -459ºF), the coldest temperature permitted by the laws of physics. The lunar cold spots were found in craters on the Moon that are permanently shaded from the Sun’s heat. This happens because their high rims and proximity to the lunar south pole means that the Moon’s rotation never brings them into full sunlight. With no atmosphere on the Moon to blow a warm breeze their way, the crater floors become seriously chilly. So who in their right mind would want to go anywhere this cold? Future lunar colonists, that’s who. Maintaining a permanently crewed base on the Moon would require a constant supply of that stuff that all life on Earth relies on: water. As well as being vital for drinking, it can also be split into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen – rocket fuel, an essential commodity for any space colony. But could there really be any water on the Moon? Calculations had previously shown that shaded lunar craters could be replete with water ice, but only if their temperatures are below -220ºC (-364ºF). The LRO observations were thus encouraging. Any remaining doubt evaporated just two months later when another NASA mission – the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) – fired a projectile into the floor of one of the shaded craters and then measured the composition of the debris cloud thrown up. They found it to be sodden with water vapour and ice.
Coldest place on Earth: Antarctica L
WEATHER
You’d be wise not to light a fire if you’re planning a fishing trip to Titan’s methane lakes
WETTEST: Titan The rain here would double up as rocket fuel L Titan, the largest moon of the planet Saturn, is prone to scattered showers. But if you do venture out for a stroll in the rain on Titan, take care not to light a fire – because here it rains liquid methane, a type of hydrocarbon so flammable that NASA is investigating it as a possible future rocket fuel. (Though, of course, in reality you’d need to add oxygen for it to burn – of which there is very little in Titan’s atmosphere.) Ever since the Pioneer 11 spacecraft flew past in 1979, it’s been known that a thick, cloudy atmosphere enshrouds Titan. Methane is a component of this atmosphere, and the temperature and pressure are just right for it to condense into liquid droplets that hang in the Titanian atmosphere as clouds. But could these droplets condense further into rain? In January 2005, the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Huygens probe touched down on the chilly (-180ºC /-292ºF) surface of Titan. It found a Mars-like landscape, strewn with rocks made of water ice and, as suspected, sodden with liquid methane. During its descent, Huygens captured panoramic views of the surrounding terrain. The pictures revealed that highland areas were much darker than the low-lying plains. Huygens’ scientists realised this was due to brightly coloured chemical residue falling out of the atmosphere and then being washed away from the higher areas by methane rain. Much of the methane that falls from Titan’s skies soaks away into the ground, but some of it collects in recesses to form giant hydrocarbon lakes. Images returned by the Cassini probe – the spacecraft that ferried Huygens to the Saturn system – have revealed numerous bodies of liquid methane on Titan, together with rivers and tributaries connecting them. Just like the water cycle on Earth, the methane slowly evaporates from these lakes and seas, and rises high into Titan’s atmosphere, from where it falls as rain once more.
Wettest place on Earth: Mawsynram, India
Chilling stuff: a topographical map of the lunar south pole
L The place with the most annual rainfall is in the hilly country of northeast India. The village of Mawsynram records a distinctly soggy annual rainfall of 11,872mm (467.4in). The Colombian town of Lloró claims to be wetter still – 13,299mm (523.6 in) – but its figure is an estimated one. Jul/Aug 2011
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SCIENCE WEATHER
Extreme weather
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Dust storms on Mars sometimes cover the entire planet
WINDIEST: Mars No other world experiences dust storms like these L Mars is a barren, desolate desert scoured by tornadoes. Its dust storms are the biggest anywhere in the Solar System. No other world experiences dust storms of a magnitude that can enshroud a whole planet. Even so, these are rare. While minor Martian dust storms are common, typically lasting a few days, only around 10 planet-wide storms have been observed. Solar heating is thought to warm the ground, setting up rising air currents that lift surface dust into the atmosphere. It’s possible that the lack of rain, which washes dust particles from the air on Earth, contributes to the longevity of Mars’s storms. The Red Planet’s atmosphere is just one per cent the density of Earth’s, so only the finest particles can be suspended, giving Mars’s dust storms the consistency of smoke.
Mars is also home to a more localised tornadolike whirlwind – a dust devil. Dust devils are seen in desert terrain on Earth, forming when a warm updraft sucks in nearby air to create a spinning vortex. On Earth, they can be anything up to 20m (66ft) across and a kilometre (3280ft) high. Dust devils on Mars, however, can be 50 times larger than this due to the lower density of the atmosphere.
Windiest place on Earth: Mount Washington L In April 1934, meteorologists at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire recorded a gust that topped out at 372km/h (231mph), a record that’s stood for more than 75 years.
Pale blue-green Neptune is a peaceful world
CALMEST: Uranus Weak internal heat makes for a peaceful existence L Most of the gas giants lying in the outer Solar System play host to dramatic weather systems, but Uranus is an exception. This pale green world appears to be a place of perpetual calm. The weather on any planet doesn’t just happen, it needs a power source. On the worlds of the inner Solar System, power is provided by the Sun. Solar heat gets absorbed by the ground, which in turn warms the air, causing it to undulate in giant convection currents that whistle over the planet’s surface as wind. Uranus orbits way out beyond Saturn. You might think its calm state is due to the Sun’s feeble heat at this distance, but weather on the gas giants isn’t powered by the Sun. Instead, the heat generated
internally by each planet is thought to be responsible. Neptune, for example, orbits further out than Uranus, but displays marked weather patterns. It has been found to give off more than 2.5 times as much heat as it receives from the Sun. For Uranus, this figure is a paltry five per cent. Some astronomers believe this is due to an impact with an Earth-sized body early in Uranus’s history that disrupted the planet’s internal heat source.
Calmest place on Earth: The Doldrums L The Doldrums is the meeting place of the northern and southern trade winds. Having nowhere else to go they rise up and re-enter the global circulation of the atmosphere, leaving sailors becalmed beneath them.
DEADLIEST: Space science photo library x3, nasa/soho
‘Space weather’ releases tremendous pent-up energy L It’s not just the planets that are prone to inclement weather – the space between them also gets its fair share of storms. Rather than blizzards and gales, ‘space weather’, as astronomers call it, consists of showers of high-energy subatomic particles belched out by our star, the Sun. Solar outbursts are triggered by natural shifts in the Sun’s magnetic field. They come in various forms. Solar flares, for example, are caused when magnetic fields near the Sun’s surface become tangled together and then suddenly snap apart, releasing pent-up energy that is often equivalent to millions of times the yield of the most powerful nuclear weapons. Another type of solar eruption, a coronal mass ejection (CME), 60
Jul/Aug 2011
causes billions of tonnes of material to be disgorged from the Sun’s ghostly outer atmosphere. Space weather can be a deadly hazard to astronauts. The Apollo teams were simply lucky that a flare did not occur during a mission, while the crew of the Earthorbiting International Space Station must take cover in specially shielded areas during periods of high activity.
Deadliest year on Earth: 2010 L Natural disasters killed well over 250,000 people worldwide. Many experts cite poor construction and development practices and overcrowding as key reasons for extreme weather events causing so much tragedy.
A coronal mass ejection from the Sun blasts out more than a billion tonnes of matter
These red spots on Jupiter are massive cyclonic storm systems – the largest has been around for centuries
STORMIEST: Jupiter A tremendous hurricane has lasted for at least 400 years L Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot is a colossal hurricane in the planet’s southern hemisphere, roughly three times the size of the Earth. The Spot has been present for at least as long as humans have been able to observe the planet through telescopes – around 400 years – and shows no signs of dissipating. Whereas southern-hemisphere hurricane systems on Earth spin clockwise, Jupiter’s spins anticlockwise. This is because hurricanes on Earth are low-pressure systems, but Jupiter’s are in a region of high pressure. As air rushes towards the low-pressure centre of a southern-hemisphere terrestrial hurricane, the Earth’s rotation causes the air to veer to the left, setting up a clockwise spin. But on Jupiter the wind rushes outwards from the high-pressure core, so the leftward deflection sets up an anticlockwise spin. Such a deflection due to the planet’s rotation is known as the Coriolis effect. Jupiter rotates more than twice as fast as Earth, making the effect there particularly strong, which goes some way to explaining why the Great Red Spot is so big and long-lived. Another factor is the absence of any land masses on Jupiter. Terrestrial hurricanes are powered by heat from the Sun that has been absorbed by the sea – so as soon as a hurricane makes landfall, its power source is removed and it wanes. Jupiter, however, is a ‘gas giant’ with no solid landmasses where this can happen. No storm is complete without lightning. The Voyager and Galileo spaceprobes detected evidence of electrical
discharges on Jupiter. Similar evidence has been found on Uranus, Saturn and Venus. On Earth, lightning bolts are caused when negative electrical charges accumulate on the undersides of clouds. This is thought to be due to ice crystals in the cloud, which tend to gather positive charge and are then carried to the tops of the clouds by updrafts of air. The clouds’ charge induces an opposite charge on the ground and neighbouring clouds and, when the charge difference is strong enough, the electrical resistance in the air breaks down and a current flows as lightning. A terrestrial lightning bolt can carry up to a billion volts of electricity and create temperatures six times hotter than the surface of the Sun. The same mechanism is responsible for lightning on Jupiter. Its light atmosphere (mostly hydrogen and helium) and strong gravity conspire to make supercharged storm clouds three times bigger than their earthly counterparts, generating lightning bolts 1000 times as powerful. What’s more, given the planet’s gaseous atmosphere through which sound can easily travel, huge thunderclaps must accompany lightning on Jupiter.
Stormiest place on Earth: Disputed L Many places claim this title, including the Bay of Bengal, Antarctica, the American Midwest and the Cayman Islands. Judging by lightning strikes alone, according to NASA satellite data the crown goes to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Paul Parsons is a science journalist, cosmologist and author of How to Destroy the Universe (Quercus, 2011)
find out more E http://1.usa.gov/marsdustdevil A group of dust devils crossing Mars, filmed by NASA’s Spirit rover E http://bit.ly/Jupiterclouds Time-lapse film of Jupiter’s cloud belts
What do you think? What’s the most extreme weather you’ve experienced? email: bbcknowledge@wwm.co.in
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Portfolio Madagascar It may be just off the coast of Africa but when you’re in Madagascar, you feel light years away from anywhere else on Earth. Nick Garbutt welcomes you to a truly topsy-turvy world
NATURE
Branching Out Charles Darwin never visited Madagascar, but had he done so, its fantastic biodiversity would surely have helped to inspire his work on evolution. Take the chameleon. Today, more than 80 species – half the world’s total – are found here, including this panther chameleon, whose coloration varies depending on in which area of the island it is found. Many chameleons sport horns and armoured ‘shields’ behind their heads. Legend has it that chameleons change hue to blend into their background, but it is now recognised that their riotous colours convey
emotions and reproductive state as well as providing camouflage.
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NATURE
sunbathing G Nights in southern Madagascar are often chilly and, as the first rays of sunshine hit the forest floor at dawn, ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) often seek out warmth in which to bask. This group descended from the tree where they had slept and sat in a pool of early sunlight like miniature Buddhas. With no competition from higher primates on Madagascar, lemurs have diversified into more than 100 species, encompassing a wonderful variety of shapes, sizes and behaviour.
Dawn chorus
Finger buffet
F My favourite lemur is the largest living species – the indri (Indri indri). In looks, it recalls a gangly teddy bear and it can leap up to 10m (33ft) between trees. But its plangent, haunting cries are more extraordinary still and have the emotional power of whale song. In the early morning, waves of this hackle-raising sound travel far and wide through the indris’ rainforest home in the humid east of the island, as each family declares its territory.
G The aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) encapsulates all that is outrageous and wonderful about Malagasy wildlife. It is one of the most difficult species to see in the wild – hardly surprising given that it is rare, nocturnal and black. In 20 years, I have seen aye-ayes just six times. Uniquely among primates, they have incisors that grow permanently, which they use to gnaw rotten wood and extract insect grubs using a skeletal middle finger.
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portfolio
Last in a long line? The Avenue des Baobabs is one of Madagascar’s most enduring and iconic views. Soaring to 30m (100ft) high, these Grandidier’s baobab trees (Adansonia grandidieri) are the last survivors of a forest clearance last century. However, they themselves are now in danger. With tourism a key source of income, the government is keen to discover why they have begun to fall down in recent years. It is thought that irrigation of the paddy fields in which they now find themselves may be to blame for the collapse of these spectacular trees, which are believed by the locals to have spiritual importance.
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portfolio
Blue in the face
Warning signs
G The helmet vanga (Euryceros prevostii) is the most spectacular member of the endemic vanga family. This thrush-sized bird is found only in undisturbed rainforests in the east and north east and is a consummate predator, watching and waiting before swooping to pick off small reptiles, amphibians and large invertebrates. Vangas display such a variety and diversity of body sizes and beak shapes that it can be hard to accept that they are related to each other.
E The Malagasy or painted mantella (Mantella madagascariensis) seems uncannily similar in both appearance and behaviour to the poison-dart frogs of Central and South America (Dendrobatidae sp.). It’s an exquisite example of convergent evolution, whereby similar biological traits are acquired by unrelated species. In fact, the Malagasy versions are not nearly as toxic as their New World counterparts, though their bright warning coloration is every bit as striking.
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NATURE
Devilish cunning F Leaf-tailed geckos are Madagascar’s undisputed kings of camouflage. The large species mimic tree bark, while the smaller ones such as this Satanic leaftailed gecko (Uroplatus phantasticus) resemble dead, shrivelled leaves. During the day they lie motionless among desiccated foliage and are virtually impossible to find. At night, when they hunt actively, the chances of an encounter improve significantly.
The photographer Nick Garbutt has been visiting Madagascar for 20 years and has travelled to just about every corner of the island. He has baby-sat an infant ring-tailed lemur (pictured), eaten roasted locusts, been infested by numerous parasites, caught malaria three times and become addicted to Malagasy chocolate. He frequently travels all over the world photographing wildlife. He has twice been a winner in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition and is the author of several critically acclaimed books about Madagascar and its wildlife. He was an adviser on the recent BBC TV series Madagascar (2011).
find out more
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E www.nickgarbutt.com Nick Garbutt’s official website 71
NATURE
Panda
mania
alamy
With China’s latest efforts to ensure the long-term survival of the beloved ‘cat bear’ making headlines around the world, Henry Nicholls traces our obsession with this rare and charismatic creature
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NATURE
Panda mania
J panda? It is such a feature of the ust what is it about the giant
natural history museum, rex, getty x2, corbis, press association, katherine feng/flpa
global cultural landscape that it is easy to take its mass appeal for granted. But the story of how this vegetarian mammal emerged from near obscurity in the late 19th century to achieve worldwide recognition is a remarkable one. There are plenty of tantalising stories implying that Chinese emperors knew of the panda’s existence. However, if that is so, there is an unanswered mystery; why is there not a single artistic rendition of this endearing beast in any of Imperial China’s illustrated natural histories? Hunted for study In fact, evidence strongly suggests that the panda, though almost certainly familiar to those living in the vicinity of its mountainous hideaway in China, was unknown further afield until Père Armand David, a French Catholic missionary and zoologist, got his hands on a couple of individuals in 1869. During the 19th century it was standard practice for missionaries to dabble in natural history and, in China at least, it was Catholic missionaries like David who made the most significant discoveries. David collected thousands of plant and animal specimens for the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. He paid local hunters to shoot a panda after hearing rumours of
their existence and became the first person to send a skin back to Europe for study. The subsequent history of the giant panda has been characterised by intense rivalry among its human admirers. Taxonomists squabbled to be the first to put it in its rightful place in the tree of life; explorers set out to be first to see and then shoot one; collectors hoped to be first to get one out of China alive; the public fought to be first to see live individuals; zoos strove to be the first to produce a baby; and scientists vied for the chance to study them in the wild. Today,
The giant panda’s history has been characterised by intense human rivalry captive pandas are the subject of a vast amount of top-class research, work that has transformed the initially faltering efforts to breed this species in captivity. DNA studies show pandas belong to the same family as bears, although they are on an evolutionary offshoot from the main group. Their gut and teeth more closely resemble those of meat-eaters than herbivores. At some stage in their evolutionary history, they adapted to
Staff at the Wolong panda-breeding facility in Sichuan province tend to a crop of babies. The centre has been shut since the 2008 earthquake
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survive on the bamboo that was readily available across their range, but the inefficiency of digestive systems originally designed to cope with meat means that they need to consume copious amounts per day. Time not spent eating is generally spent resting. In the late 1920s, however, all such knowledge was in the future and there was a different goal. President Theodore Roosevelt’s sons Kermit and Theodore Junior vied to become the first Westerners to shoot a panda dead. They persuaded the Chicago Field Museum to foot the
bill for an expedition to collect, among other specimens, a panda to grace its new Asian Hall. The account of the Roosevelts’ exploits in China, Trailing the Giant Panda (Blue Ribbon Books, 1929), makes for awkward reading today, but at least it shows how far attitudes towards unusual species have advanced. Giant steps The next milestone in the panda’s history was to take one alive. It fell to American fashion designer Ruth Harkness to realise this in 1936 with the capture of a baby panda she called Su-Lin. Recently widowed from her explorer husband Bill, Harkness used the money from his estate to travel to China, where she scattered his ashes. Armed with a baby bottle and formula milk, she and her guide stumbled across a den while the mother was away foraging and captured the infant. Once safely back in the United States, the excruciatingly cute antics of her fluffy charge at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo soon won hearts across the country – and across the world. More pandas began to be collected and exported. Gate receipts rocketed at zoos where they were held. It was not long before China’s Communist Party got wise to the Western obsession with all things panda and, with the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, this sort of exploitation E
TIMELINE:
Our relationship with this enigmatic bear has come a long way in a short time
1869 Père Armand David, a French missionary, is the first to send panda skins to Europe. They contribute to the first accurate depiction and formal scientific description.
1929 American hunters Kermit and Theodore Roosevelt Jr claim to be the first Westerners to shoot a panda. The animal was put on display in Chicago’s Field Museum the following year.
1936 Fashion designer Ruth Harkness wins the unofficial contest to be the first to remove a live giant panda from China. Su-Lin lives at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo until his death in 1938.
1963 In Beijing, the first giant panda cub is born in captivity. It weighs just 125 grams, a weight later discovered to be above average for a newborn.
2006 The Chinese Ministry of Forestry attempts the first reintroduction of a giant panda into the wild. It dies after an apparent fight with another male.
The leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, gives the first two pandas to the Bronx Zoo in New York – the first time the species is used as a diplomatic gift.
1990 Twin pandas are born in China – the first captive-born twins and the first successful use of artificial insemination in pandas. This is now the most common method of captive panda-breeding.
2009 2010 A new reintroduction programme begins in China. Four pregnant, captive-reared pandas are released into a large fenced area of bamboo forest.
The panda genome is sequenced by an international team of 120 researchers. It is the first member of the bear family to have its sequence decoded.
2011 Cao Gen and his mother are moved to an enormous mountain enclosure in the latest phase of the reintroduction programme (see ‘Born to be Wild’ p74).
NATURE
Panda mania
E soon came to an end. Under Chairman Mao Zedong, the rare and exclusively Chinese panda, there known as ‘da xiong mao’, rapidly emerged as the country’s ‘national treasure’. Henceforth, any foreign involvement with pandas would be strictly on China’s terms. Almost simultaneously, but independently, WWF (then called the World Wildlife Fund) alighted on its now-familiar logo in 1961. Publicly, the
Cao Gen is carried to his new mountain home in February 2010
Born to be wild The latest attempt to return pandas to the wild is underway
rex x2, thinkstock, press association, eyevine. illustration by sheu-kuie ho
A decade ago, the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda (CCRCGP) near Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province began to lay plans for the first reintroduction of a captive-raised giant panda to the wild. In 2006, amid much media fanfare, a young male, Xiang-Xiang, was radio-collared and released after years of preparation. But within a year he was dead, his injuries suggesting that he had been in a scrap with another panda. The setback resulted in a total rethink of the reintroduction protocol and last year the CCRCGP released four captive-reared female pandas into a large fenced area of bamboo forest. In August a cub, Cao Gen, was born. Mother and son have had as little contact with humans as possible – when people do need to get close they dress up in panda costumes to avoid habituating the animals. By February Cao Gen was showing no signs of dependence on humans so the researchers moved the pair to a much larger area. Their new home encompasses 40,000 square metres (430,556 square feet) of mountain range, with plenty of bamboo. They will be remotely observed using 55 surveillance cameras and GPS.
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charity announced that it had chosen the panda because it “owes its survival to the sort of careful conservation which all wild creatures deserve”. But, with China’s first dedicated panda reserves still two years away, this was not quite the whole story. Like China itself, WWF wanted an animal that was charismatic, precious and rare as its symbol; it also needed something that would print well in black and white. With the panda taking such confident strides from the zoological into the human world, it is hardly surprising that field researchers were drawn to the species. But China’s ‘closed door’ policy during the Cultural Revolution effectively blocked study throughout the mid-1960s and ’70s. In the west of China, the panda’s stronghold, people cut down forests to fuel steel-smelting furnaces and open up new land for crops, effectively fragmenting the panda’s habitat. The first coherent fieldwork did not get underway until 1980, in a joint effort between China and WWF. There were tensions over their rival claims to the panda’s identity, but nowadays it is the Chinese who are responsible for many panda ‘firsts’. No sooner had Dolly the sheep, the first successful clone of a mammal, trotted into the spotlight in 1997 than there was talk in China of cloning the panda. This was despite the significant challenges of applying such a controversial technology to an endangered species. Cloning requires a lot of unfertilised eggs and, assuming cloned embryos can be produced, a lot of surrogate mothers into which to insert them. This might not be a problem with
common species, but it is a different story for those on the brink. For any other species under threat, these would be insurmountable ethical difficulties – but apparently not for the panda. With funding from China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, Chinese researchers began using rabbits as a source of eggs and as surrogate mothers. They had some early success, but we still await news that the first panda cloning has taken place. Even the successful sequencing of the giant panda genome in 2009 was more spectacle than substance. The (mostly Chinese) researchers involved were driven more by the desire to showcase new sequencing technology than by a motivation to lay bare this particular creature’s DNA sequence. But at least the project carried none of the ethical baggage of the proposal to clone pandas and has successfully generated a vast set of data that will one day help in the effort to conserve the species.
Tim Walker, chairman of WWF UK, pictured with WWF international president Prince Philip in 1986
A vet examines a 36-day-old panda cub. Newborns are 1/1000th of their mother’s weight
Baby boom Many breeding institutions in China receive a financial reward for each new panda cub they rear, resulting in a covert annual competition to boast the greatest number of babies per reproductively active female. This has certainly had its benefits, helping to bring the world’s captive population to more than 300. It is a significant figure – enough to maintain genetic fitness without ever needing to take another panda from the wild. With this landmark reached, China may now be in a position to begin rewarding institutions for the quality, rather than merely the quantity, of their pandas. The
FACTSHEET
www
Ailuropoda melanoleuca The giant panda is a highly specialised animal, with unique adaptations
Latin name: Ailuropoda melanoleuca Common name: Giant Panda length: 60-90cm (2-3ft) tall, 1.2-1.8m (4-6ft) long Workers shows off some of the 18 baby pandas born at the Chengdu Panda Base in 2008
The penalties for panda-poaching are among the toughest for wildlife crime animals’ all-round fitness is likely to be the key to the successful reintroduction of captive-bred pandas to the wild, a key goal that is yet to be realised (see Born to be Wild, left). It is rather satisfying that the changing fortunes of the panda should mirror the balance of economic and political power as it shifts from West to East. As modern China has grown in stature and strength, the fate of its national treasure is now looking increasingly secure, thanks to strong commitments from the government. The penalties for poaching pandas are among the toughest imposed for any wildlife crime anywhere in the world. China’s Wild Animal Protection Act of 1989 rules that anyone caught killing a panda – or even smuggling a skin – would face at least 10 years in prison, the possibility of life behind bars or, in extreme cases, death. Furthermore, a nationwide logging ban imposed in 1998 has made it possible for the country’s State Forestry Administration to expand its network of protection for wild pandas. There are now more than 60 dedicated reserves that cover more
than 70 per cent of the suitable habitat and ring-fence about half of the wild panda population. At the last count, it was estimated that there could be around 1600 adult pandas left in the wild, a population that shows a surprisingly high level of genetic diversity. While China remains economically strong, the long-term prospects for the panda’s survival are also good. If, through some human failing, wild pandas do disappear from their remote pockets of bamboo, it is certain that the species will live on in our global culture for as long as we can sustain one.
shoulder length: 1-1.5m (3.3-4.9ft) Weight: Males up to 113kg (250lb), females up to 100kg (220lb) Diet: Almost exclusively (99 per cent) bamboo. Its inefficient digestive system is closer to that of a carnivore than a herbivore. It passes a great deal of waste and spends 10-16 hours consuming up to 18kg (40lb) per day of bamboo. BREEDING: Females ovulate once a year and are sexually mature aged 4-8 years. During the breeding season (March to May), they may take multiple mates. One or two cubs are born in August to September; the mother raises only one which stays with her for up to three years. LongEvity: Up to 30 years in captivity; probably less in the wild. HABITAT and Range: The giant panda is confined to six isolated mountain ranges in south-central China, occupying temperate forest 1500-3000m (4900-9800ft) above sea level. Conservation status: Endangered. Official estimate suggests there are fewer than 1600 mature giant pandas in the wild.
PANDA Geographic Range
Henry Nicholls is an evolutionary ecologist and science journalist. Find out more at www.henrynicholls.com or follow @wayofthepanda
find out more E The Way of the Panda: the curious history of China’s political animal by Henry Nicholls (Profile, 2010) E www.panda.org.cn/english/index.htm Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding – one of China’s foremost panda conservation centres
Beijing
Geographic Range
CHINA South China Sea
In a nutshell
What is consciousness?
Getty x2
Consciousness is something we all believe we possess, but defining exactly what it is has long challenged philosophers. Scientists have sought to solve the problem using techniques ranging from measurements of brain activity using medical scanners and electroencephalographs (EEGs) to meditation. The results of these tests have revealed that consciousness is just a very small part of brain activity, but one demanding huge effort to create from the information pouring in from the senses. Experiments suggest that it takes around half a second for the brain to make us conscious of outside stimulation – though the delay is ‘edited out’ by the brain to keep it out of awareness. The result is a conscious mind that allows us to do more than merely react to external stimuli, as simple organisms do. Instead, our consciousness provides us with a sophisticated model of reality, bringing huge evolutionary benefits in the Darwinian battle for survival in ever-changing environments.
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The Big Idea exploring life’s great mysteries
Robert Matthews investigates
Consciousness It’s something that governs our perception of reality and tells us we exist. We all know that we have it, yet scientists are still struggling to pin down exactly what it is…
T totally silent. Sitting on cushions, he room is full of people, yet
their eyes are closed and their faces expressionless. They look totally absorbed in something – as well they might, for they are attempting to get to grips with one of the most profound mysteries in all science: the nature of consciousness. As practitioners of E Buddhist meditation, they’re using mindwatching techniques that were developed over 2500 years ago by the Indian philosopher Siddhartha Gautama, better known as the Buddha. The aim of these techniques is to turn the conscious mind in on itself and to watch it in action. According to Buddhists, such introspection can give insights into the nature of the mind, reality and the mystery of consciousness. Such claims usually cut little ice with scientists, yet now highly trained Buddhist monks are joining with them to probe the nature of consciousness. By summoning up mental states while undergoing brain scanning, the monks are opening up a new approach to what researchers call ‘the hard problem’: how does brain activity produce the experience of being conscious? For something most of us are sure we possess, consciousness has proved amazingly hard to pin down. As early as the 5th century AD the philosopher and Catholic saint Augustine of Hippo identified self-awareness as a key aspect of consciousness when he declared: “I understand that I understand”. It took another 1200 years before the first working
Buddhism Developed by the Indian philosopher Siddhartha Gautama (563–483 BC), Buddhism is an approach to dealing with the many imperfections of life. It lays particular emphasis on using meditation to observe how the mind constantly craves sources of temporary happiness, only to find them unsatisfactory. It also stresses the importance of ‘mindfulness’ – making a conscious effort to live in the moment, rather than to live in the past or be chasing the future.
Young Bhuddist monks at prayer
definition of consciousness emerged, with the English philosopher John Locke claiming it to be “the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind”. As for how this perception emerged, the 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes used what he regarded as unimpeachable logic to conclude that the conscious mind must surely be made of different stuff from E brains and bodies – a distinction now Jul/Aug 2011
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The physics of the mind
Might consciousness be a quantum phenomenon?
Roger Penrose considers whether our consciousness is determined by the effects of subatomic particles
science photo library. getty x2, alamy
Is the body essential for consciousness to exist? Surveys suggest around one in 10 people has experienced a so-called out-of-body experience (OBE), in which they felt as if their conscious being had separated from their body. Some scientists have claimed that this is evidence that consciousness can exist beyond the physical brain. If this were the case, people undergoing OBEs should be able to see objects out of view of their physical bodies. To date, however, no convincing evidence has emerged from experiments. In contrast, researchers have recently found evidence that OBEs are just an illusion triggered by the brain. In 2007, a team at Antwerp University in Belgium published research showing that patients being treated for a hearing disorder experienced OBEs when part of the right side of their brains was stimulated.
Disembodied consciousness – or is it just an illusion?
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E known as Cartesian Dualism. Not until the mid-19th century were scientists able to attempt an assault on the mystery of consciousness. The advent of anaesthetics – in which physical exposure to chemicals like ether triggered unconsciousness – had revealed an intimate connection between the F body and mind, flatly contradicting Descartes’ claim. Researchers then set about tackling ‘the hard problem’, seeking to bridge the gulf between the subjective experiences of the mind and the objective study of brain activity. In the 1860s, Wilhelm Wundt of Heidelberg University – now regarded as the father of experimental psychology – took the first tentative steps, using the ancient technique of introspection, training students to note their conscious response to outside stimuli. Wundt’s research highlighted the importance of understanding ‘qualia’, the subjective experiences we have of the world around us – the ‘redness’ of red, or ‘sweetness’ of sugar. Yet while Wundt worked hard to make his work objective, it was hard to gauge if someone’s experience was the same every time, or matched anyone else’s. He also lacked ways to reliably and objectively measure brain activity that he could correlate with subjective experience. Wundt’s biggest achievement was convincing leading figures such as influential American psychologist William James that consciousness was a direct outcome of brain activity, and thus worthy
One of the most controversial theories of consciousness was put forward in 1989 by Roger Penrose, an Oxford professor whose expertise seems at first unrelated to consciousness – quantum mechanics, the laws of the subatomic world. In his best-seller The Emperor’s New Mind (Oxford University Press, 1989), he argued that the human mind’s ability to make intuitive leaps towards truths about the Universe is the result of a special type of computation triggered by quantum
of study. The challenge now was to find a way to tackle ‘the hard problem’. The first breakthrough came in 1929, when German neurologist Hans Berger used electrodes placed on the skulls of subjects to measure electrical activity within the brain. Called the electroencephalogram (EEG), it allowed Berger to discover two types of electrical activity E, called alpha and beta waves, that seemed to be linked with key aspects of consciousness. Alpha waves oscillated around 10 times a
The electroencephalogram was the original mind-reader
The Big Idea exploring life’s great mysteries
effects in the brain. These effects, he suggested, might also bind together the activity in the brain to create a sense of a single, coherent consciousness. In collaboration with American anaesthetist Stuart Hameroff, Penrose later argued that these quantum effects took place within tiny protein cylinders in nerve cells known as microtubules. Despite attracting huge public interest, Penrose’s theory – known in scientific circles as Orchestrated Objective Reduction, or Orch OR – has few adherents among consciousness researchers. Critics claim that the quantum effects required are too fleeting to explain the wave-like activity observed in real brains, and damage to the supposedly vital microtubules appears to have no effect on consciousness.
second and appeared to reflect the state of consciousness, becoming fainter during sleep or anaesthesia. Beta waves, on the other hand, were about three times faster, and reflected concentration levels and nonconscious responses like the startle reflex. Are we running on autopilot? Berger’s discovery began the study of what are now called neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs): types of brain activity associated with conscious experience. These are now a major focus of research by scientists, many of whom think that the key to understanding consciousness involves them understanding how the brain binds together a host of NCCs into a single, unified whole. It is a belief spurred on by a surprising discovery made in the 1960s: that we’re consciously aware of only a tiny fraction of what our brains perceive. A team led by American neurologist Benjamin Libet applied very weak stimuli to the skin of patients whose brains had been exposed for neurosurgery. EEG measurements revealed that their brains had detected the stimuli, yet the patients said they felt nothing. It was the same story with stronger stimuli that lasted less than 0.5 seconds – while the brains of the patients detected it, the patients hadn’t consciously felt anything. Similar findings have since emerged from studies of NCCs like vision and the resulting qualia such as the ‘redness’ of
red. Our eyes funnel in information at the rate of around a megabyte per second, yet our consciousness seems to ignore all but a tiny amount of it. This huge disparity suggests the brain processes a massive amount of sensory input unconsciously, distilling it down before we become aware of it. Such processing must take time to perform – suggesting there must be a time delay between our brains detecting a stimulus and our mind consciously registering it. Attempts to measure this delay have led to perhaps the most startling discoveries yet made into the nature of consciousness. In 1976, a team of researchers led by the German neurologist Hans Kornhuber decided to set up an experiment that would measure the time delay involved in consciously deciding to move a finger, and actually making the movement. The speed of nerve impulses suggested the time delay would be around 200 milliseconds (ms), similar to that of reflex actions. Yet the delay found was much longer – which was at least consistent with the idea that anything involving the conscious mind involves a lot of processing. However, the researchers also found that the brain activity began around 800ms before people claimed to have consciously decided to move a digit. Earlier this year, researchers at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, Germany, claimed to have found evidence for an astonishing seven-second gap between brain activity linked to a decision and conscious E awareness of that decision.
JARGON BUSTER The hard problem Many feel that this is the key problem any theory of consciousness must solve: how to link the objective, physical structure of the brain to the subjective feeling of being conscious. The term was first coined in 1994 by the Australian philosopher David Chalmers at the University of Arizona.
cartesian Dualism A view that sees the conscious mind as fundamentally different to the living, working brain. Originally put forward by 17th-century philosopher René Descartes – hence ‘Cartesian’ Dualism – the idea that the mind is more than mere brain activity is not widely accepted today.
Quale The subjective experience of, say, the ‘redness’ of red, the softness of wool or the taste of lemons. Impossible to describe, yet regarded as essential to the concept of being conscious. Some philosophers contend there is no such thing as a quale (or, in the plural, ‘qualia’).
Neural correlates Of Consciousness (NCCs) Actual parts of the brain and nervous system whose function can be directly linked to aspects of consciousness. Some scientists claim that key features of consciousness lie in primitive parts of the brain like the thalamus and brain stem.
The electricity within
What are brain waves?
The electrical activity that determines the shapes of our brain waves is a direct result of our state of mind
Whatever consciousness is, it is likely to be linked to so-called brain waves – the rhythmic flows of electrical activity between neurons. Hard-working brains show the fastest type – beta waves, with frequencies up to 40 cycles a second (hertz, or Hz), while resting brains typically show slower, largeramplitude alpha waves. Drowsiness or meditation produces even slower theta waves of 4-7 Hz, while delta waves of just 1-4 Hz appear only during sleep.
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The Big Idea exploring life’s great mysteries
Libet’s discovery In experiments on patients undergoing open-brain surgery in the 1960s and 70s, American neurologist Benjamin Libet and his colleagues found that unless the brain is sufficiently stimulated for at least 500 milliseconds, it fails to notice anything. In further tests, they stimulated the patients’ brains, but this time followed it 250ms later with a stimulus applied to their skin. As the 500ms delay should apply in both cases, the patients were expected to report feeling the brain stimulus first, followed by the skin stimulus 250ms later. Bizarrely, however, the patients reported feeling the stimulus on their skin first. Libet concluded that the brain effectively edits out the 500ms delay from the skin response to ensure that the actual time of the stimulus and the perception of it remain in sync.
The brain edits out the delay between catching a ball and registering the catch
TIMELINE Getty x3, Mary evans, SPL
Studying conscious thought
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E These findings have disturbing implications for the long-cherished notion of free will, as it suggests our actions are not initiated by our conscious mind, but by the non-conscious brain activity out of our perception. As such, free will maybe limited to our consciously choosing not to act in ways determined by our unconscious mind. Another F perplexing discovery was made in 1979 by Libet and his colleagues during studies of the effect of applying direct stimuli to the brain. Again, common sense suggested only a brief delay should exist between the stimulus and conscious detection – but, once more, the researchers found a substantial delay, of around 500ms. And they found something else: that the brain ‘back-dates’ the conscious response, thus creating the impression there was hardly any delay at all. All these findings suggest that the brain has developed a host of techniques for binding together sensory inputs from the outside world to give us a conscious model of what’s going on around us.
The theatre of the mind This notion of consciousness as a model of reality fits in well with the sense we have of our brains creating a kind of mental ‘theatre’. In 1988, the Dutch-born American psychologist Bernard Baars took this idea to create the ‘global workspace’ theory of consciousness (GWT). According to GWT, conscious processes are those currently in the ‘spotlight’ of mental attention, while others remain out
An fMRI brain scan shows activity in the area controlling the left hand
of the spotlight, stored in the memory until needed. Meanwhile, unconscious processes are at work behind the scenes – and also form the audience, reacting to what’s currently in the spotlight. GWT is no mere metaphor. It is based on results now emerging from the biggest breakthrough yet in the objective study of conscious processes – brain-scanning. Techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) give researchers detailed, real-time maps of brain activity, allowing it to be related to conscious processes. This has led to an explosion in NCC study, with specific parts of the brain relating to conscious processes. For example, a central region of the brain known as the thalamus
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Indian philosopher Siddhartha Gautama – aka the Buddha – makes study and control of consciousness the basis of a movement now known as Buddhism
H In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the English philosopher John Locke defines consciousness as “the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind”
German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt moves consciousness out of purely philosophical inquiry, and advocates its study via introspection
H The philosopher and Catholic saint Augustine of Hippo identifies selfawareness as a key aspect of consciousness, declaring: “I understand that I understand”
1890 G Pioneering Harvard University psychologist William James rejects Cartesian Dualism, concluding that consciousness is just a product of brain activity
Question Time appears to be crucial in bringing sensory input into the ‘spotlight’ of conscious attention, while the ventromedial cortex near the front seems to create our sense of life having some sort of purpose. At the same time, researchers are starting to look again at Wundt’s methods for tackling the notoriously difficult subjective aspect of consciousness. They have been recruiting a group of people with decades of experience of controlling their conscious states and reporting their experience – Buddhist monks. Early results from brain-scan studies of monks suggest their years of practising intensive meditation enables them to produce stable mental states to order, giving researchers the consistency needed for reliable insights into the subjective experience of consciousness. Research teams from Rutgers University in the United States and the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris have worked with a Tibetan Buddhist lama who can repeatedly switch mental states to order and hold them for around a minute, giving plenty of time to gather data. Such a meeting of cutting-edge technology and ancient spiritual practice may lead to new insights into the role of NCCs and our ability to control them. Yet it still fails to address some major mysteries about consciousness. Why do we possess it? What advantages does it confer? And are humans alone in being fully conscious? One possible explanation lies in the view of consciousness as a means of creating a mental model of reality. Any organism with such a model can do more than merely react to stimuli and pray the response is fast enough to escape predators. It can use the model to foresee threats and opportunities
out there in the ‘real world’ – freeing it from the speed limitations of non-conscious reflexes. A conscious creature, in other words, need not stumble around blindly, hoping its reflexes will keep it safe. By binding together non-conscious responses to create even a simple model of reality, a creature possessing some degree of consciousness can avoid getting into tight spots in the first place – giving it a huge evolutionary advantage. This in turn suggests that asking whether an organism is conscious or not may, in fact, be the wrong question. Rather, consciousness may be a matter of degree – with, say, an insect having a markedly less sophisticated model of reality than a human. As with so many aspects of consciousness, definitive answers are still some way off. Even so, there is growing excitement that scientists are now closing in on the mystery of how 1400g (3lb) of squidgy tissue can endow us with our ineffable but unique sense of self. ROBERT MATTHEWS is a science journalist and Visiting Reader in Science at Aston University, UK. www. robertmatthews.org
find out more E www.consc.net/online Online resource of research papers on consciousness E www.consciousness.arizona.edu Center for Consciousness Studies, University of Arizona E Understanding Consciousness by Max Velmans (Routledge, 2000)
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American brain scientist Benjamin Libet discovers the half second delay between brain activity and the conscious sense of deciding to act. The brain edits out the delay to keep our conscious experiences in step with reality
Psychologist Bernard Baars puts forward his ‘global workspace’ theory, according to which consciousness is the process by which normally unconscious processes are said to be brought together on a mental ‘stage’
H Advent of brain-scanning methods such as fMRI prompts huge leap of interest in consciousness by revealing brain activity in unprecedented detail
Max Velmans is Emeritus Professor of Consciousness at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, and co-founder of the British Psychological Society. He has written a number of books on the subject of consciousness
What, for you, is the biggest mystery about consciousness? In my view, there isn’t just one dominant problem, but a series of deeply interconnected problems. Some are conceptual – for instance, how can there be causal interactions between consciousness and the brain? We don’t need more examples of consciousness to get some understanding of it, as we get those in every waking moment of our lives. What we need is a better way of thinking about it – and that has consequences for empirical research. If you don’t have a reasonably clear idea about what consciousness is, how can you work out its neural causes or relation to information processing in the brain?
How might such questions be resolved? For me, the most important step is an accurate description of the rich phenomenology of conscious experience. That takes you on a journey with some real surprises, which I’ve tried to summarise in my book Understanding Consciousness. Over the years I have developed a way of thinking about how conscious experience relates to the world described by physics and to unconscious processing in the mind and brain.
What benefit might come from further research into consciousness? There’s so much! The more that we know about the nature of our own experience, the better we can explore it – and if we want to, to change it and deepen it. An understanding of the way that our consciousness is embodied and embedded in nature and in our relationships to each other will also, in the end, give us a better understanding of how to live. In our current, disconnected world, nothing could be more important.
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HIGHLIGHTS E Why does the Sun look bigger near the horizon? p87 E How does a shoot know to grow upwards? p88 E Are black holes hot or cold? p89 E Why do we blink when we hear a loud noise? p90 E How do you get electricity from waves? p91 E Which animal has the smallest heart? p92
Expert Do millions PANEL of raindrops make Susan Blackmore
A visiting professor at the University of Plymouth, UK, Susan is an expert on psychology and evolution. Her books include The Meme Machine (OUP).
Dave Brian Butvill
Based in Costa Rica, Dave is a freelance writer who specialises in the natural world as well as environmental and scientific research.
Robert Matthews
Robert runs dual careers as a writer and researcher. He is a Visiting Reader in Science at Aston University, UK, and a proud winner of an Ig Nobel Prize.
Gareth Mitchell
As well as lecturing at Imperial College London, Gareth is a broadcaster, writer and presenter of Digital Planet on the BBC World Service.
only one rainbow? The true figure for the number of raindrops involved is in the trillions, but more importantly, in reality, there’s never just one rainbow. The almost poetic truth is that everyone gets their own unique rainbow. The reason each of us only sees one is because of the way rainbows are formed. When a ray of sunlight enters raindrops, the different wavelengths of light it contains are bent off-course by different amounts: those corresponding to the colour red being deviated the least and violet the most. What emerges from the raindrop is thus a spread of colours, each bent through an angle of between around 40° and 42°. While this happens with every raindrop lit by the Sun, each of us only sees the rainbow formed by those raindrops that happen to be at the correct angular direction to send the different colours into our eyes. So each of us receives our own special rainbow created by a dedicated set of raindrops in the sky. RM
Luis Villazon
Luis has an MSc in zoology from the University of Oxford. He is a freelance science journalist based in England and is also a long-serving coastguard.
Nick Rennison
photolibrary.com, alamy, Getty, Thinkstock
Nick has worked as a bookseller, editor, and freelance writer. He contributes regularly to BBC History Magazine.
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When it comes to seeing rainbows, everyone gets their own unique view
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Why do the Sun and Moon appear bigger when they’re near the horizon? The Sun and Moon often appear bigger when they’re lower in the sky, which was once thought to be an optical illusion caused by the atmosphere refracting light. But if you take a picture, their size in the image is unchanged regardless of their height in the sky. It’s now believed that the actual image of the Sun or Moon received by our retinas is unchanged in size, but our brains compensate for the perceived change in distance by interpreting them as larger. GM
KNOW SPOT
What happens if you’re thrown into space without a spacesuit?
A drive system for drills and compressors unveiled in November 2008 is capable of one million revolutions per minute. Developed by researchers from the Department of Power Electronics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, it has a titanium shell to stop it flying apart.
Surprisingly, you probably wouldn’t explode. Skin is almost completely gas-tight and strong enough to withstand a pressure differential of well over one atmosphere. You also wouldn’t instantly freeze. In a vacuum, the only way to lose heat is by radiation (which occurs very slowly for a relatively cool object like a human body) or by evaporation of fluid. You would still die, of course, but it would be by asphyxiation. Your blood holds enough oxygen for about 15 seconds of brain activity. After that you’d black out, with complete brain death following within three minutes. Don’t try to hold your breath before they throw you out, though. The air in your lungs will cause your lung tissue to rupture quite abruptly as it expands into your chest cavity, forcing air L A VIT S bubbles into your T STA bloodstream. This will be fatal even the if you are es in lly c ie p ber of commercia m subsequently u n the est ’s larg ble jigsaw rescued. LV world a ail
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Why did white skin evolve? The apes we’re descended from probably had pale skin under their dark fur, just as modern chimps have now. Dark skin evolved around a million years ago as our ancestors moved from the forest to the savannah and began to lose their fur. At equatorial latitudes, dark skin protects from sunburn, but it also preserves folate, which is essential for making DNA and is destroyed by the Sun’s UVA rays. Further north, the UVA exposure drops and dark skin isn’t so important. At very northerly latitudes it can actually be a disadvantage because it blocks the production of vitamin D3, needed for strong bones and teeth. In general, the farther north you go, the lighter the skin of the indigenous peoples. The Inuit and Yupik are exceptions; they’ve retained their dark skin despite getting hardly any sun at all because they get all the vitamin D they need from their fish diet. Some studies have shown that there is also a sexual selection factor, whereby white skin is seen as more desirable in women. This occurs in almost all cultures, even those with no history of European imperialism and where the natural population is dark-skinned. It’s not clear why this should be, but it may have helped to drive the evolution of white skin. LV
Jul/Aug 2011
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Why are we replacing petrol-driven cars with hydrogen-powered rather than electric ones?
When a shoot emerges from a seed, how does it know which way is up?
newspress, getty, science photo library, photolibrary.com. illustration by jonty clark
This is called geotropism or gravitropism and it’s controlled by the plant hormone auxin. Virtually every cell in a plant contains auxin, but it isn’t distributed evenly. Molecular pumps ensure that the concentration is always higher on the lower side of the cell membrane than the upper side. Among many other functions, auxin controls the rate of cell expansion, but the particular way that each cell reacts to auxin levels depends on the kind of cell it is. Root cells expand less in the presence of auxin so a horizontal root shoot will grow faster on its top surface than its bottom, which bends it downwards. The cells in the stem react the opposite way, so that shoot bends upwards. LV
Thanks to plant hormones, seedlings know which way up they need to grow
KNOW SPOT The world’s smallest bee is Perdita minima, a species just 2mm (0.08in) long. Native to the southwestern USA, it builds a tiny nest in sandy desert soils and feeds on the nectar and pollen of spurge flowers.
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Hydrogen-powered cars are electric: the power comes from converting the gas to electricity in a fuel cell. Many of the leading car manufacturers have advanced hydrogen prototype vehicles, so we know the technology works. But one of the big challenges is storage. Hydrogen must be highly compressed to give a range of more than 100km (62 miles). Even then, the tanks are so big there’s barely room for any luggage. The latest trials involve miniaturising the tanks by doubling current compression pressures up to 700 atmospheres. The other issue is the energy involved in splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the first place. But this technology is improving all the time and increasingly involves renewable energy sources. GM
What makes up the solar wind? The solar wind is a stream of energetic particles ejected by the Sun. These include electrons and protons from hydrogen, along with atomic nuclei like helium, otherwise known as alpha particles. L There are also traces of ‘heavy ions’ and atomic nuclei ITA S V T of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, neon and magnesium. STA Recent missions have even detected tiny amounts of potassium, titanium and nickel. The solar wind is s tellite al sa iter, r more exotic than we ever imagined. GM u t a p fn
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WHAT DID YOU IS KNOW IT KNOW SPOT The world’s most expensive stretch of railway is next to the Channel Tunnel, which links France and Britain. The Channel Tunnel Rail Link (now called High Speed 1) connects the British end of the tunnel, in Folkestone, with London St Pancras. The grand sum of £5.3bn ($8.6bn) was spent on building this 108km (67 mile)-stretch between 1988 and 1994. The costs emerged during an investigation by the Commission for Integrated Transport, an independent body advising the British Government on transport policy.
game over for a king It’s possible that James I of Scotland lost his life because he loved tennis. According to legend, the king was attacked by assassins in a monastery in the Scottish town of Perth. He tried to escape by crawling through sewers that emerged in a real (indoor) tennis court. However, he had given orders that the sewers be blocked up as he was sick of losing tennis balls in them. As there was no escape he was knifed to death. NR
What are muscle knots and how do you get rid of them? Muscle knots, or ‘myofascial trigger points’, are painful lumpy regions of tense muscle. Their cause is somewhat controversial, not least because of the lack of an unambiguous definition of the condition. Subjectively, a muscle knot feels like it is somehow locked into a permanent state of contraction, but surgical biopsies of knotted muscle have found unusual protein deposits within the tissue, so it’s possible that the muscle is being prevented from contracting properly by these proteins. True muscle knots – as opposed to muscles that are simply tense or tired – don’t respond that well to treatment. Hot pads, cold pads, stretching, massage and acupuncture are all suggested as possible ways to manage the pain, but there is no evidence that any of these are a permanent cure. LV
QuicKFIRE What was the life expectancy of dinosaurs? Studies of growth patterns in fossilised bones and the distribution of different-sized animals within a given species suggest that most large dinosaurs grew fast and didn’t live especially long. Tyrannosaurus rex, for example, probably grew a metre (39in) every year for the first six years of its life, and most of them died before they were 28 years old. LV
Are black holes hot or cold? Being black, you might expect black holes to be cold. But, according to theories pioneered by Stephen Hawking, the temperature of a black hole depends on its size. The smaller a black hole, the more concentrated its gravitational effects on its surroundings, and the hotter the black hole appears to be. Microscopic black holes should be hotter than the centre of the Sun. RM
Can a lip-reader tell if you have an accent? About a third of the sounds that we use for speech don’t use the lips or the front of the mouth, so they can’t be distinguished by a lip reader. Accents show most of their variation in the vowel sounds and these are the hardest to pick up. A strong regional accent can make lip reading impossible, so a lip reader may be able to tell that you had an accent simply because they couldn’t understand you. It is hard to identify accents. More likely, a lip reader would infer your accent from dialect words and phrases. LV
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Strange but true Bubble wrap
getty, dreamstime x2, illustration by richardpalmergraphics.com
The queen parrotfish (Scarus vetula) is by day a beautiful and diver-friendly reef fish. However, by night, it’s a reclusive slime-bag – literally. Come sundown, this watermelon-sized Caribbean gem slips into a crevice and, using special glands behind its gills, secretes a bubble of mucus that swells up and over its head. The pouch spreads towards the fish’s tail and, within 30 minutes or so, the fish is resting inside a spacious sac of slime. The cocoon – in which the fish spends the entire night – has many benefits. It is laced with antibiotics that kill known parrotfish pathogens and also blocks blood-sucking parasites from getting near the fish. In addition, it appears to seal in the sleeper’s body
The queen parrotfish secretes its own handy slime shield at night
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odour, masking it from scenttracking predators such as moray eels. The instant the pod is disturbed or torn, its owner wakes up and runs for cover. But the queen’s slimy behaviour doesn’t end there. Another gland constantly churns
out a second type of mucus that protects the fish’s skin against ultraviolet light, like sunscreen. Most fish have it, but parrotfish can control where it goes. As they flock to shallow-water reef-tops each high tide to feed on algae, they slather about twice
as much of the ointment over their top half than on the rest of their body. In this way, they can browse all day without burning their backs, and not waste the ‘sunscreen’ on parts where the sun rarely shines. DBB
Why do we blink when we hear a loud noise? This reaction is called the acoustic startle-reflex eye blink and is part of the protective mechanism we show in response to potential danger. Loud noises can mean danger and our eyes need protecting more than most parts of our bodies. It happens faster when people are frightened – for example, when told they are about to get an electric shock, even if they don’t get one. Feeling relaxed decreases the response, while trauma increases it. For example, exaggerated startle reflexes have been measured in people suffering from post-traumatic stress, including veterans of the Vietnam and Gulf wars. Alcohol decreases the effect, while amphetamines increase it. SB
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KNOW SPOT Weighing just 3g (0.1oz) and with a wingspan of 10cm (4in) the DelFly Micro is the world’s smallest flying camera drone. Developed by researchers at the University of Delft in the Netherlands, it can transmit live video footage and remain airbourne for three minutes.
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Are near-death experiences just hallucinations? Yes, but they’re compelling and often lifechanging ones. People who come close to death report rushing down tunnels towards a bright light. This is caused by excessive activity in the brain’s visual system, and similar tunnels can be induced by hallucinogenic drugs. Some people find themselves looking down on their body in an ‘out-of-body experience’ (OBE), which is caused by disruption in the temporo-parietal junction – part of the cortex that controls our body image. OBEs can be induced by artificially stimulating that spot. Some people report visiting other worlds, which they interpret as Heaven or Hell. These depend on the person’s culture, so Christians tend to see St Peter while Buddhists report ‘bardos’ (transitional states between reincarnations). Many believe the soul leaves the body during near-death experiences and survives after death, but in 20 years of research I have never found convincing evidence for this. SB
QuicKFIRE Is it true that most ginger cats are male? Yes, but not all. The ‘ginger gene’ which produces the orange colour is on the X chromosome. Females have two X chromosomes and so need two copies of this gene to become ginger, whereas males need only one. This means there are roughly three males to one female ginger cat. Ginger toms father tortoiseshell or ginger females. If both parents are ginger, then all their kittens will be ginger too. SB
How much salt would I need to float in my bath? As Archimedes showed over 2200 years ago, the trick lies in boosting the density of the bathwater until it exceeds that of your body. The easiest way to do that is to add salt to the water. But it requires a lot of the stuff: around 30kg (66lb) in a standard bath-tub. RM
Which animal has the smallest heart?
Could lightning be used as a source of energy?
dreamstime x2
The violence of lightning certainly seems impressive and there are around 16 million storms worldwide each year, with typical lightning bolts unleashing around 500 million joules of energy. But don’t be fooled by the big numbers. All that energy is equivalent to the daily consumption of just two households and, spread over the entire planet, those storms amounts to barely one strike per km2 (0.6 square miles) per year. In short, as a source of reliable energy, lightning is completely hopeless. RM
KNOW SPOT The shortest distance between any known expolanet (extrasolar planet) and its parent star is 1.2 million km (745,000 miles). SWEEPS-10 orbits its star every 10 hours. 92
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An insect has a heart but it’s not like a mammalian heart. It is just a narrow tube that pumps hemolymph (an insect’s ‘blood’) towards its head. This circulates fluid in an open system with no veins or arteries. The smallest insect is said to be the fairy fly, less than 0.2mm (0.008in) long. You’d need a microscope to see its heart. SB
Resource
Queen Victoria, Kaiser Wilhelm, Tsar Nicholas II, Marianne and Mutsuhito carve up the Chinese cake
Orient express How the world tried to take China out of the hands of the Chinese The Scramble for China: foreign devils and the Qing Empire, 1832-1914 By Robert Bickers Allen Lane/Penguin, 512 pages, `949
K The term ‘The Scramble for Africa’ is embedded in the vocabulary of historical understanding – even though the process was far more of a quasi-gentlemanly partition. Colonial powers mostly negotiated the frontiers of their acquisitions, hence some 30 per cent of colonial Africa’s borders were straight lines. It did, however, take place rapidly – essentially over the space of a couple of decades. But was there really a ‘Scramble for China’? The
time-span of 1832 to 1914 seems quite leisurely by comparison. Nor did the vast hinterland of China get divided up between the predatory Imperial powers, as happened so completely in Africa. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that in the period covered by Bickers’s excellent book, a sustained, often brutally ruthless assault took place on the territorial integrity of China, resulting in a host of concessions to the Imperial powers involved. As a consequence, by 1914 the coastal area of China was pockmarked with foreign treaty ports and military and naval bases. To the north, Russian and Japanese aggression had led to
substantial areas in Manchuria and Korea coming under foreign rule. Despite its long history, its culture and civilisation and its impressive list of inventions, during the 19th century China was generally perceived by the western Imperial powers as a ‘dying’ or failing country, whereas Britain, the USA and Germany, for example, were rising, thriving nations. This perception owed much to an Imperial-Darwinian view of the world, whereby only the fittest nations would survive and prosper. This goes a long way to explaining the ferocity and arrogance of the Imperial assault on China and the routine cruelty of the invading forces, all of which reached a
Lin Zexu leads destruction of opium chests in Canton during the Opium Wars
climax with the 1930s Japanese invasion and the horrifying ‘Rape of Nanking’ in 1937. It is also important to remember that the Chinese authorities were equally contemptuous of the ‘foreign devils’ who made such inroads into the country. In a strange way, like clashed with like. Bickers has produced a wonderfully readable account of this extraordinary encounter, leading us deftly through a tumultuous and often confusing period from the British-inspired Opium Wars of the 1830s to the Boxer Rebellion and the outbreak of World War I. Western adventurers, Manchu Emperors, corrupt and shifty local administrators, ruthless warlords and many more strut their stuff. The main loser, as is so often the case in these situations, was the mass of Chinese people whose sufferings are so vividly recounted here. Finally, the author makes a plea for readers to understand how this brutal interaction still impacts upon China today. With its vast economic, banking and industrial expansion, China is now the world’s second largest economy and looks set to challenge the US as the foremost superpower. As Bickers puts it: “A powerful global China is unprecedented. That provides new food for thought, especially as Chinese youth comes out into the world equipped for instinctive indignation at China’s past humiliations and what they feel to be contemporary echoes of these.” In other words, tread carefully. Denis Judd is a British writer and historian. He is Professor Emeritus of Imperial and Commonwealth History at the London Metropolitan University Jul/Aug 2011
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A feast for the mind
Get your clicks H GALLERY
H WEBSITE
H WEBSITE
Art history up close
Schools out
Postcards from the edge
www.googleartproject.com
http://ocw.mit.edu
www.edgeofexistence.org
Google has mapped the streets of the world – now it’s doing interiors. And these are interiors worth exploring – its Art Project opens up the collections of 17 of the world’s best-known art galleries on-screen. You can tour the corridors of Madrid’s Reina Sofia or Washington DC’s Freer Gallery of Art, but when you find an artwork you like the site really comes into its own. Google has scanned many of the works in super-high resolution, so you can see the bold brushstrokes of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers as if you had your nose pressed to the canvas.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of the world’s top five universities, with fierce competition for places. So if you’ve missed out on admissions this year, it’ll be pleasing to discover that you can find virtually all MIT course content at this website – for free! There are course notes, past papers and lecture videos covering almost all of the 2000 courses run by MIT, from electrical engineering to advanced calculus, astrophysics to business strategy. And, unlike attending in person, there’s no registration required.
The Edge is a conservation organisation run by the Zoological Society of London to protect unique animals that are on the verge of extinction. If they disappear there will be nothing like these animals left on the planet – animals like the Chinese giant salamander, the long-beaked echidna or the Philippine moonrat. This detailed portal features full information on each unique animal – images, hours of video and regularly updated blogs that detail the steps being taken to raise awareness of the precarious existence of endangered animals.
E VIDEO
The greatest mind since Einstein Physicist Richard Feynman (19181988) won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 for his work on quantum electrodynamics. He was a gifted teacher and speaker with a common touch and was frequently filmed. This site has many of his videos, covering topics from the human imagination to the likelihood of flying saucers. www.feynmanphysicslectures.com
BLOG
GALLERY
The past can still make the news and, when it does, it’s sure to be mentioned on this blog. The author’s entries cover all epochs and areas of the globe, from the looting of ancient Egyptian artefacts after the recent uprising to the last known video of President Kennedy, filmed the night before he was assassinated in Dallas. www.ablogabouthistory.com
World War I holds a grim fascination as the conflict that first brought slaughter on an industrial and global scale. The rare colour images on display on this site show that it was also the first to be captured – in sometimes-grim detail – by colour photography. They offer a startling insight into the shattered landscapes that were fought over almost 100 years ago. www.worldwaronecolorphotos.com
The past, up to date
Great War in colour
WEBSITE VIDEO
Streaming wildlife America’s Public Broadcasting Service has been broadcasting its ‘Nature’ series for nearly 30 years and many of those films have made it online here. From this video-rich site you can stream full episodes about wildlife on land and sea, ranging from the buffalo to the walrus. www.pbs.org/wnet/nature 94
Jul/Aug 2011
Accelerated enjoyment Particle physics and children have not traditionally gone together well, but a visit to this site will change that. It has films, games and multimedia that are perfect to pique a 7-12-year-old’s curiosity when it comes to smashing sub-atomic particles together at close to the speed of light. project-cernland.web.cern.ch
WEBSITE
Get involved The unused computing power of your PC could be could be put to use classifying Hubble Space Telescope images of galaxies or sorting through weather observations. Zooniverse is a great site for finding out about some of
the most interesting of these ‘citizen science’ projects currently on the web before donating your RAM. www.zooniverse.org
WEBSITE
Close to nature One hundred and fifty million tribal people live in more than 60 countries across the world. With video, background analysis and captivating images, this site is a remarkable window into the ancient ways of life that are threatened by the disease and resource exploitation that encroaching modernity brings. www.uncontactedtribes.org
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What better way for you to prepare for the future than to get a sneak peek into it. BBC Knowledge with its engaging content on science, history and nature will arouse curiosity, fire up your imagination and inspire you to think differently. If you want to get an edge in today’s hyper-competitive environment, you know what to do next. SCIENCE • HISTORY • NATURE
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Time out The recharger
Q4 What do the stripes on the United States flag signify? Q5 Who is the current Duchess of Cambridge?
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old as Tom is now, who is the oldest, the next oldest, and the youngest?
Q12 According to Greek mythology who is the Goddess of fertility?
Q15 What common English verb becomes its own past tense by rearranging its letters?
Q13 If Tom is twice as old as Howard will be when Jack is as
Q16 In the series O, T, T, F, F, S, S, E, __ which is next?
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Q17 What is the full form of SIM? Q18 A motor-boat is going up a river at speed of 14.4 kilometers per hour, when it’s pilot sights a drifting boat which is 234 meters distant and reaches it after 52 seconds. What is the speed of the stream?
Q18) 0.5 meters per second Q19) 3 + 9 / 4 x 6 - 8 / 5 + 7 = 9 Q20) Murmur, rumour, furore, reform, ferret, effort, future.
Q14 SAMURAI SUDOKU
Solution to Crossword no.5 Jul/Aug 2011
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8
7
6
Q11 Which of the 3 Tenors is not Spanish?
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4
4
7 1
6
5
9 9 6
3
8
6 4 7
2
4 9 6 3 1 6 8
3 9
5 5 4 6 9 6
1 3 8 2 4 9
Q7 Who composed Vande Matram?
Q9 In the periodic table, what does the symbol Sb stand for?
9 1
6 7
Q6 What is Michelangelo’s famous fresco on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel called?
Q8 What was the codename of the CIA Operation which eliminated Osama Bin Laden?
3 8 4
9
3 7
5 8 2
4
6 1 8
1 2
1 6
9
2 7 5
9 4
4 5
Solutions
Q3 Who wrote “The Mayor of Casterbridge”?
Q19 Starting at the point as per the arrow marked, and moving clockwise, find one way by which you can insert all the four arithmetical signs - two of them twice - in the blank squares and carry out all the operations in sequence to obtain the answer given.
Q8) Neptune Spear Q9) Antimony Q10) 12 Q11) Pavarotti Q12) Demeter Q13) Tom is the oldest, then Jack, then Howard. Q15) Eat and Ate. Q16) N; Nine (One, Two, Three...) Q17) Subscriber Identity Module
Q2 Who won the Orange Cap at the 2011 IPL?
Q14 Samurai sudoku puzzles consist of five overlapping sudoku grids. The standard sudoku rules apply to each 9 x 9 grid. Place digits from 1 to 9 in each empty cell. Every row, every column, and every 3 x 3 box should contain one of each digit.
Q1) La Marseillaise Q2) Chris Gayle Q3) Thomas Hardy Q4) The thirteen colonies that rebelled against the English monarchy Q5) Catherine Elizabeth Middleton, wife of Prince William Q6) The Last Judgment Q7) Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
Q1 What is the French national anthem called?
Knowledge crossword NO.5 HOW IT’S DONE
The puzzle will be familiar to crossword enthusiasts already. Novices should note that the idea is to fill the white squares with letters to make words determined by the – sometimes cryptic – clues to the right. The numbers after each clue tell you how many letters are in the answer. There are no prizes for completing the crossword but do let us know how you got on. All spellings are US. Good luck!
E ACROSS
4 One of two Mars’ moons (6) 7 A starlike object that may send out radio waves and other forms of energy (6) 8 Asteroid discovered in 1977 named after a famous centaur (6) 9 The most popular comet (7) 10 The ringed planet (6) 13 & 15 Across: A faint star having enormous density (5,5) 16 Number of rings 10 Across has (4) 19 Jupiter’s largest moon (8) 21 Planet known as the morning star (5) 23 They are usually found between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter (9) 25 The second largest satellite in our solar system (5) 26 The path described by one celestial body in it’s revolution about another (5) 27 The largest and first discovered asteroid (5)
H DOWN
1 Milky Way is ours (6) 2 The second asteroid to be
3 5 6 10 11 12 14 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 24
discovered and named after the Greek goddess of wisdom (6) Astronomer who discovered Uranus (8) The planet closest to the Sun (7) Star that is our primary source of light and heat (3) 9 Across is visible to earth every ___ - __ years (7-3) A star that becomes more luminous as it ejects some of it’s material (4) ___ dwarf: A small relatively cool star (3) The seventh planet from the Sun (6) ___ star: A star that has collapsed under it’s own gravity (7) _ giants: 14 & 22 Down (3) __ giant: Jupiter for one, Saturn for another (3) Astronomer who discovered Jupiter’s four largest moons (7) Our planet (5) The brightest asteroid (5) Planet discovered by Alexis Bouvard (7) Celestial bodies (4)
Did you know
War casualties During the summer and fall of 1914, France lost as many men on the battlefield as the U.S. Army would lose in all of the 20th century! During the course of the Great War 11percent of France’s entire population was killed or wounded.
Volcano erupts! In 1883, the explosion of the volcano Krakatoa located in Indonesia put so much dust into the earth’s atmosphere that sunsets appeared green and the moon appeared blue around the world for almost two years.
Dynamite and peace prize The Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence. Mr. Nobel had invented the dynamite.
Jul/Aug 2011
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The
last word
African lions don’t necessarily make a correct first impression, says Mike Pandey
The law of nature is irrefutable especially in the wilderness of Africa A conjures up images
ASHWIKA KAPUR
frica. The very name
of some of the most breath-taking and extreme wilderness and terrains on Earth. The land of the greatest animal migration on the planet, home to some of the most formidable life forms ever found. This is also the domain of the majestic and fiercely beautiful African lion. Lions have always fascinated me. Usually seen sprawled across the savanna grasslands, they may appear idle and in deep lethargic slumber but contrary to the general first impression, lions can be as fast as lightening when the situation demands. They are ambush predators, have unbelievably fast reflexes and can be extremely dangerous. Animals have their own territory and codes of conduct which we, as intruders into their domain must respect. Break the rules and accidents happen. Once we were filming a pride of eleven lions on the Nairobi-voi Road. A little distance away, young cubs were playing under a shady Acacia tree. We had been parked off the road for hours, waiting for some activity. We watched as a new batch of tourists arrive, four jeep loads, clicking and patting each other at their good luck. Soon seeing no movement from the sleeping 98
Jul/Aug 2011
pride, they moved away. Only one jeep stayed back. A young couple eager to photograph the playing lion cubs. While I was busy filming, we heard an unexpected growl rumble through the stillness. I turned around and saw that the young man had got off his vehicle and had moved to the front fender of the jeep. He was kneeling down...perhaps to get a low angle shot from ground level. He was almost 25 feet from the sleeping lions. I had just started to shout a warning when all hell broke loose. The alpha male was already up and rocketing towards the man. The attack left him seriously injured. Was it recklessness, ignorance or just plain arrogance of humankind? The
price paid that day was heavy. Years after the this incident, we were in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, on the lookout for my favourite cat, the famous blackmaned crater lion. It was being elusive. I was with Zobe, an experienced forest ranger and my guide. We drove off the road towards a cluster of Acacia trees where Zobe had seen an elephant in labour a day earlier. We began filming the nursing mother and calf. Suddenly a herd of impalas, almost 50, broke cover and shot out of the thick grass into the clearing in front of our jeep. They headed for the Acacia thicket, in the direction of the elephants. A bleating sound alerted Zobe. Unable to keep pace, an impala fawn had got left behind. Zobe was on foot, now about five metres from the moving grass where the fawn was bleating. Just then, the mother elephant began rumbling, with both its ears flapping forward. The sun was setting, the golden grass was still and beautiful. The deceptively still tufts of grass suddenly became alive, morphing into a huge, charging form of a fierce ball of fury – a vision I will
never forget. The crater lion came in full charge: with smoldering eyes and bristling mane lunging at cannonball speed. This was the largest, most intimidating lion I had ever seen. But just then, I was almost knocked aside as the elephant rushed past me to meet the charging lion. Astonishingly, the lion dropped into the grass and melted away. The mother elephant kept trumpeting and trampling the ground. It suddenly dawned on us. The lion had been stalking the impala herd and had been waiting patiently to claim the fawn. It was when Zobe got too close to his kill, he decided to charge. The nervous mother elephant could smell the presence of the lion, it assumed the lion was after her calf and charged. The elephants’ split second charge saved all of us from a potentially dangerous encounter. Many lessons were learnt that evening: The need to understand, respect the space and domain of the other life forms that we share the planet with. The law of nature is irrefutable, and there is no place on Earth where this is more apparent than in the wilderness of Africa. Mike Pandey is an internationally renowned wildlife filmmaker and conservationist. He is based in New Delhi