2020-10-17 New Scientist International Edition

HOW TO MAKE
AN EXTRA DIMENSION

Ouantum trickery creates
new directions in space

ER, LIKE, WHAT?

The secret signals we send
with our ums and ahs

SONIC ZOOM

We now know the
ultimate speed of sound
'
WEEKLY 17 October 2020 '

SPECIAL REPORT '

THE OTHER 42
GLOBAL CRISIS
9 770262 407343
While the world’s been distracted by coronavirus,
climate change has been ramping up.
Here’s what you need to know

No3304
£5.95

CAN$7.99

PLUS NAKED MOLE RATS ATTACK / STONE AGE PEOPLE OF IRELAND /
YOUR CORONAVIRUS OUESTIONS ANSWERED / AOUATIC ASTEROID



This week’s issue

On the 40 How to make 40 Features
cover an extra dimension
Quantum trickery creates “With the
34 The other global crisis new directions in space shackles of
While the world’s been traditional
45 Er, like, what? dimensions
distracted by coronavirus, The secret signals we send cast off,
climate change has been with our ums and ahs things could
ramping up. Here’s what quickly get
10 Sonic zoom wild”
you need to know We now know the
ultimate speed of sound
Vol 248 No 3304
Cover image: Eiko Ojala 8 Naked mole rats attack
11 Stone Age people of Ireland
12 Your coronavirus questions
answered 20 Aquatic asteroid

News News NASA/GODDARD/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA Features

8 Earth 2.0 20 Water, water everywhere NASA reveals asteroid Bennu’s secrets 34 The forgotten crisis
Planetary digital twins could How has the climate been faring
help us tackle climate change as the world has grappled with
the coronavirus pandemic?
9 Where’s the beef?
Dairy cows are being 40 Synthetic dimensions
implanted with beef cattle We have begun to cook up extra
embryos to boost profits dimensions in the lab and
investigate what lurks within
16 Cold season
How the covid-19 pandemic 45 Er, like, what?
affects other diseases Our ums and uhs are a hidden
language we all understand
Views
The back pages
23 Comment
We must pay attention to 51 Stargazing at home
the subtle effects of climate Spotting the Red Planet
change, says Hannah Cloke as it orbits near Earth

24 The columnist 52 Puzzles
Graham Lawton on finance A cryptic crossword, a bridge
and climate change too far and the quiz

26 Letters 54 Almost the last word
Life beyond our planet Why are cabbages made up
of a tight bundle of leaves?
28 Aperture
Prize-winning photo of 55 Tom Gauld for New Scientist
orphaned macaque for sale A cartoonist’s take on paradoxes

30 Culture 56 Feedback
New documentary on the Coronavirus erotica
impact of online media and black hole bargains

17 October 2020 | New Scientist | 1

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on New Scientist

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The leader

The other emergency

Covid-19 has delayed climate action, but we have the technology to make big changes

AT THE height of the first wave of enough precedent to spend money in ways it perhaps didn’t even a
decade ago. What happens next will
coronavirus lockdowns, we commented to save people’s lives” (see page 23). And hinge on the colour of the financial
stimulus that follows the pandemic,
here on the falls in pollution and carbon individual behaviour and culture can and the technologies that leaders
back. They need to be green.
emissions because of car-free roads and change in weeks rather than years.
As this week’s columnist, Graham
plane-free skies. We also warned that True, the emissions bounceback has Lawton, points out, individuals aren’t
powerless to effect systemic change,
“we must be realistic that this will have shown us limits to behavioural change. either. Bare economic reality is already
greening the financial system. Anyone
little if any long-term effect on global But no serious plans advocate harmful lucky enough to have a pension or
other savings pot can exert pressure
warming” (New Scientist, 30 May, p 5). to accelerate that process (see page 24).

Five months on, and the scores are on “What happens next will depend Coronavirus won’t be the last crisis
the world faces as climate change grinds
the doors. Global emissions are indeed on the colour of post-pandemic on. The mathematics of cutting carbon
emissions demands that, like covid-19
more or less back to where they were financial stimulus, and the vaccine trials, we must tackle these
crises in parallel, not in series. It is time
before the pandemic. Meanwhile, more technologies that leaders back” to start firing on all cylinders. ❚

valuable time has been lost in creating a

workable plan to restrict global warming coronavirus-style restrictions as a

to the “safe” level of 1.5°C set out in template for how to drastically cut

the 2015 Paris agreement (see page 34). emissions. Systems need overhauling,

Yet the coronavirus pandemic has with sweeping, deep-reaching changes

shown us that another world is possible. to how we power our homes, industry

Governments can act decisively: in the and transport, and how we use land.

words of natural hazards researcher The good news is that the technology

Hannah Cloke, we now have “more than and know-how to do that now exists,

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News

Patrons in a pub in
Liverpool watch the news
that bars there must close

CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES full lockdown and the massive
human – and, indeed, economic –
England cost of an uncontained epidemic.”

Three-tier covid-19 alert Some scientists have welcomed
the simplification of the rules.
The UK government ignored scientific advice and is bringing in “The introduction of a three-tier
three levels of restrictions for England, reports Layal Liverpool system does provide greater
clarity,” said Linda Bauld at the
A NEW three-tier system for for being overly complicated. until the measures are reviewed. University of Edinburgh, UK, in
setting coronavirus rules in The new system begins with a Most regions that already a statement. Bauld said the new
England was announced by UK guidelines are in line with recent
prime minister Boris Johnson lowest alert level called medium, had some form of additional evidence linking infections to
on 12 October. The approach falls or tier 1, rising to high (tier 2) and restrictions are under tier 2, contact between households
short of advice from science then very high (tier 3). meaning that people aren’t and visits to hospitality venues.
advisers who called for tougher allowed to mix with those from
measures several weeks ago. The Liverpool city region, other households indoors. This However, documents
which recorded around 600 cases medium alert level covers most released on the same day as
Under the new framework, of covid-19 per 100,000 people of England. Measures include the the announcement reveal that
which began on 14 October, in the week ending 6 October, rule of six, which limits gatherings scientific advisers called for more
different sets of restrictions of has been classed as tier 3. Those to six people, and a 10 pm closing stringent measures weeks ago,
increasing severity will be applied living in the area aren’t allowed time for restaurants and bars. raising concerns that the new
to separate regions based on to meet people from different system may be too little, too late.
infection rates, as well as the rate households indoors and in “This is not how we want to live
at which infections are rising. some outdoor settings, except our lives,” said Johnson during the A paper from the government’s
members of a support bubble, announcement. “But is the narrow Scientific Advisory Group for
Speaking in parliament, while gyms, pubs and some other path we have to tread between Emergencies dated 21 September
Johnson said that the system businesses are required to shut social and economic costs of a includes a recommendation
was intended to simplify and of a two-week “circuit-breaker”
standardise current measures, Daily coronavirus news round-up lockdown to curb the spread of
which already vary according to infections in the UK. Not acting
region and have been criticised Online every weekday at 6pm BST now to reduce cases “will result
newscientist.com/coronavirus-latest in a very large epidemic with
catastrophic consequences in
terms of direct COVID related
deaths and the ability of the
health service to meet needs”,
the group wrote.

Other recommendations that
also weren’t implemented at the
time include banning contact
between different households
other than members of a support
bubble, closing bars, restaurants,
cafes, indoor gyms and personal
services such as hairdressers
and moving almost all university
and college teaching online.

James Naismith at the
University of Oxford has warned
in a statement that delaying action
now could lead to more stringent
measures later on: “There is a risk
that we will end up having to
lock down again (perhaps with
a different name but in effect
the same thing). If we do so the
duration of lock down will likely
be longer as a result of delay.”  ❚

17 October 2020 | New Scientist | 7

News

Climate change

Virtual Earths to be created

Digital twins of Earth that model human and physical systems in detail
could help plans to mitigate climate change, says Adam Vaughan

WORK is set to begin within environmental objectives,” improved level of mapping help examine scenarios such as
months on building “digital says Massimo Craglia at the resolution – greater detail at a local how extreme weather will affect a
twins” of Earth to better predict European Commission’s Joint level – than most observations and specific city for the next decade or
the future of climate change, Research Centre modelling today. It will also use how southern Europe will have to
extreme weather and the machine learning to make sense adapt as more arid conditions lead
environment. The Destination Peter Bauer at the European of the patterns in the petabytes to more fires and drought, he says.
Earth project aims to create a Centre for Medium-Range Weather of data produced daily by the
tool for everyone from politicians Forecasts (ECMWF), one of three European Space Agency (ESA), The digital twins won’t
to energy companies to simulate groups being consulted on the the ECMWF and the European replace climate models, says
in unprecedented detail how project, says it will accelerate Organisation for the Exploitation Bauer. However, they could help
human and physical systems efforts to model Earth at a national of Meteorological Satellites. climate scientists by allowing
will change in a warming world. or regional level that policy- them to plug their models into
makers can use. Destination Earth “It’s certainly a level up, in the system to run at a better
Three digital twins are initially should bring a dramatically terms of getting a better insight resolution, with more processes
planned. These simulations, into the processes of our planet, such as cloud formation and with
built on satellite and field data, Digital twins of Earth with different observations and more “ensembles” of models,
will cover extreme weather and could help inform modelling and AI,” says Josef in which parameters are slightly
disaster risk management, climate policy-makers Aschbacher at ESA. It will also tweaked and models run many
change adaptation and the oceans. times to assess likely outcomes.
More twins will come later. GETTY IMAGES/EDUARD MUZHEVSKYI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY RF
The budget for the project
The European Union is funding hasn’t been published yet, but
the project and sees it as vital to Bauer says it will be significant.
informing government decisions An earlier vision of a similar
on the EU’s Green Deal, which scheme known as Extreme Earth
aims to reduce carbon emissions had been allocated a budget of
to net zero by 2050. For example, €10 billion over 10 years before
some twins could let policy-makers it was axed, but Destination Earth
model the impact of swapping out will probably cost less. If a budget
gas power stations for renewables, is agreed by the European
or one crop for another. Commission before the year’s
end, as is hoped, work will begin
“It’s key for us and future on Destination Earth early next
generations. We have so much year. The twins should then be
data and computing and we available for use by 2023.  ❚
need to use it better to support

Animals

Naked mole rats are sterile workers and only one colonies, marked each animal, then the following year they found two
invade their individual, the queen, reproduces, returned them to their burrows. pups from the attacked colony
neighbours similar to honeybees. This allowed them to track living as workers in the other one.
individuals over successive years.
THOUGH normally the most sociable Stan Braude at Washington For years, Braude suspected
of mammals, naked mole rats have University in St Louis, Missouri, In May 1994, they began he had simply made a mistake.
been seen invading neighbouring and his colleagues observed the capturing two neighbouring “We just didn’t have the tools
populations and even kidnapping animals attacking their neighbours colonies and noticed that the to make sure that I hadn’t totally
newborn pups, which become in the 1990s, but couldn’t confirm queen of one had wounds on her screwed up,” he says. Now, genetic
workers in the conquering colony. their suspicions. face, suggesting that the other analyses of tissue samples from
colony had attacked. They put the the original animals have confirmed
The mole rats (Heterocephalus The researchers were tracking animals back in their burrows, but that the pups really had ended up
glaber) are one of a handful of colonies of naked mole rats in Meru in a different colony (Journal of
mammal species that are eusocial: National Park, Kenya, and noticed “Naked mole rats live in Zoology, doi.org/fctc). It seems
they live in large underground 26 examples of colonies expanding underground colonies the pups became completely
colonies in which most members their territory into burrows in which most members integrated into their new home.  ❚
previously occupied by others. The are sterile workers” Michael Marshall
team repeatedly captured entire

8 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020

Archaeology Farming

Eurasia’s oldest Dairy cows are bearing
known balls may beef cattle to boost profits
have been for sport
Michael Le Page
Colin Barras
FARMERS in the US have begun emissions, says Alison Van and it is taking off elsewhere.
THE first ball games in Eurasia may implanting dairy cows with the
have been played 3000 years ago, fertilised embryos of beef cattle, Eenennaam at the University of The problem is, demand for the
according to a new analysis of three so they produce calves bred
leather balls unearthed in an ancient for beef rather than for milk California, Davis. “It really alters cross-breed calves is falling in
cemetery in northern China. production. The idea is to make
dairy farming more profitable. the sustainability metric.” the US. “Their value is declining
The Yanghai cemetery contains
more than 500 graves and was Cattle have been bred for Dairy cows must keep having sharply,” says Sigurdson.
in use between about 3200 and either milk or beef production.
Beef breeds typically put on calves to keep producing milk. If beef embryos are implanted
Balls like this more muscle faster for less
one were food than dairy cattle do, Female dairy calves can be used instead of just using beef
stuffed with and the meat quality is better.
either leather This makes beef calves far to replace ageing cows, but male semen, female dairy cows can
strips or with more valuable than male dairy
wool and hair calves, which are often killed dairy calves aren’t as valuable as produce pure beef offspring
immediately after birth.
1850 years ago. Archaeologists those bred for beef production. that are worth even more than
working there a few years ago Select Sires in Minnesota
uncovered three leather balls from has trialled the implantation Some farmers kill male dairy the hybrids, more than making
three graves. The balls, each about of beef cattle embryos and
9 centimetres in diameter, had been is now commercialising the calves after birth because it up for the higher costs of
stuffed with either leather strips or technique. “It’s in its infant
PATRICK WERTMANN with wool and hair. Two of them had stages,” says Chris Sigurdson often costs more to raise them implanting embryos.
a red cross painted on one side. at Select Sires, but the company
hopes the practice will become than they can be sold for.
They were first thought to be routine. “That’s the vision.”
2400 to 2800 years old, making These calf deaths have been “Some farmers kill
them the earliest known balls in If it does catch on, it would
Eurasia. Patrick Wertmann at the also help reduce the industry’s reduced by the growing use male dairy calves after
University of Zurich in Switzerland substantial greenhouse gas
and his team have now carbon- of reproductive technologies. birth because it isn’t
dated the wool stuffing of one ball A herd of cows
and concluded it is between 2930 at a dairy farm in Many dairy cows are now economical to raise them”
and 3210 years old. They also Pickett, Wisconsin
carbon-dated artefacts from the inseminated with semen from
graves that yielded the other two
balls. They fell within the same dairy bulls sorted to remove Cattle are responsible for
range (Journal of Archaeological
Science: Reports, doi.org/fcr2). sperm with a Y chromosome. around 10 per cent of all

Ten curved, wooden sticks were This means the resulting greenhouse emissions. Having
also found in the cemetery, similar
to those used to play polo, a game offspring are nearly all female. a female cow that produces milk
for horseback riders. Whips and
riding trousers in the graves suggest But if every calf were female, plus a cross-breed or pure beef
the men buried with the balls rode
horses. But the “polo” sticks came there would be too many. So, calf in a year is more efficient
from much younger graves. We
can’t be sure what the balls were about half the time, dairy cows than feeding a dairy cow plus a
for, but Wertmann suspects they
were used in some kind of sport – are inseminated with semen beef cow for a year to get one
played perhaps for exercise, for
fun or as part of military training.  ❚ from beef bulls. The resulting beef calf, says Van Eenennaam.

cross-breed calves are more Dairy cows also produce less

valuable for meat production methane because they are

than male dairy calves. fed richer foods, she says.

In the US, this is standard “That’s a bigger impact

practice on large dairy farms in terms of emissions than

anything that’s going to happen

with genome editing,” she says.

Phil Brooke from Compassion

in World Farming says the

organisation supports the

use of sexed semen because it

improves welfare – by reducing

the number of unwanted

males – as well as production.

“It ticks all the boxes,” he says.

But the organisation is opposed

to embryo transfer, he says,

because it is more invasive

MORRY GASH/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK than insemination and the

larger size of beef calves could

increase the risk of dairy cows

having difficulties during birth.

Van Eenennaam says

the procedures are equally

invasive. ❚

17 October 2020 | New Scientist | 9

News

Physics

Ultimate speed of sound
has finally been pinned down

Leah Crane

THE maximum speed of sound of heavy elements, so there would used that fact along with the limit is about twice the speed
in a solid or a liquid has just been be no carbon, no life,” he says. proton-electron mass ratio and of sound in a diamond.
calculated for the first time. It is the fine structure constant to
about 36 kilometres per second, Sound is a wave that propagates calculate the maximum speed at The speed of sound is also
more than 8000 times slower by making neighbouring particles which sound could theoretically dependent on the mass of the
than the speed of light. interact with one another, so its travel in any liquid or solid. They atoms in the material, so the
speed depends on the density of found it was about 36 kilometres researchers predicted that solid
We have known the universal the material it travels in and how per second (Science Advances, metallic hydrogen – a material
speed limit of electromagnetic the atoms within it are bound doi.org/ghd8j4). that theoretically exists at the
waves travelling through a vacuum together. Atoms can only move centre of giant planets, but for
for over a century, but the limit for so fast, and the speed of sound “The common wisdom was which laboratory evidence has
sound, which requires a medium, is limited by that movement. that diamond has the highest been hotly contested – should
has been elusive until now. speed of sound, because it is have the highest speed of sound.
Trachenko and his colleagues the hardest material, but we They calculated that it should
To calculate it, Kostya didn’t know whether there was a be close to the theoretical limit.
Trachenko at Queen Mary Sound waves travelling in theoretical fundamental limit to
University of London and his liquids or solids top out at it,” says Trachenko. The theoretical They also looked at
colleagues started with two well- 36 kilometres per second experimental data for more
known physical constants: the than 130 materials and found that
ratio of proton mass to electron MEHAU KULYK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY none of them broke the limit.
mass, and the fine structure
constant, which characterises However, Graeme Ackland at
the strength of interactions the University of Edinburgh in
between charged particles. the UK says that it isn’t clear the
calculations produce a speed limit.
Trachenko says we have a “You can use these fundamental
pretty good idea of these values, constants to get something with
because if they were changed units of velocity, but I can’t quite
even a bit, the universe wouldn’t see a good fundamental reason
look at all like it does. “If you for why it is a bound. I’m not
change these constants by a few completely convinced,” he says.
per cent, then the proton might
not be stable anymore, and you Ackland says that more work is
might not even have the processes necessary to find exactly how the
in stars resulting in the synthesis approach applies to sound moving
through heavier elements. ❚

Technology

AI can alter the layers and taught an AI to identify the neural network and sped video, near-seamlessly masking the
timing of just one moment they cross over each other
object in a video the people or objects in them. up or slowed down. That is done (arxiv.org/abs/2009.07833).

EXPECT more startling video This neural network homes in on by deep learning, associating the “The paper will inspire further
special effects soon. A neural development of such techniques
network can distinguish between the things in each layer by focusing elements around an object with the for advanced video editing in the
people and objects in footage, and future,” says Jia-Bin Huang at
speed up or slow their movements on their movements. Then it further object itself. Previously, elements Virginia Tech University.
separately while ensuring they
interact smoothly. This could be separates each object or person had to be highlighted by hand – a Huang points out that the
used to dramatise or de-emphasise method used requires training the
motion or events caught on film. onto its own layer. The background time-consuming, costly process. AI on each individual video, making
it time-consuming. In addition, the
To achieve this, a team at Google is isolated into another layer. The AI stitches all these things authors say that the neural network
and the University of Oxford split struggles to pick up things such
each frame of video into separate It also tracks the way people back together after altering them. as flashing lights as objects that
need to be discretely animated. ❚
or objects interact with the world The result is the ability to speed up, Chris Stokel-Walker

around them in the video. “You also say, one pair of ballroom dancers

have to change the things in the and slow down another in the same

scene that move with them – their

shadows, reflections or water “Details like shadows,

splashes,” says team member Erika reflections and water

Lu at the University of Oxford. splashes are also sped

These details are picked up by up or slowed down”

10 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020

Archaeology Animals

Ancient Irish genes Rats that hunt with
whiskers are four
Stone Age people in Ireland had dark skin and were lactose-intolerant species, not one

Michael Marshall Jake Buehler

SOME Stone Age people AN ELUSIVE type of wading rat
armed with super-powered
in Ireland left their dead to whiskers is actually four separate
species, researchers have found.
decompose in a rocky chamber
African wading rats, formerly the
on a mountain. Genetic analysis single species Colomys goslingi, are
truly unusual rodents. They are one
of two of these bodies shows of the only semi-aquatic rodents
in Africa, striding into streams on
they had darker skin, like many stilt-like feet. There, they drape
long whiskers on the water’s
people in Europe at the time. surface, sensing the vibrations of
their prey: aquatic insects, tadpoles
The chamber was discovered and small fish moving underwater.

in 2016 by a hillwalker exploring “It was known all the way from
Liberia to Kenya, which is an insanely
Bengorm mountain in north- wide distribution for a really small
animal,” says Tom Giarla at Siena
west Ireland. Finding human College in Loudonville, New York.

bones on the floor, he called the Giarla and his colleagues
wondered if the territory was
police. The bones turned out to actually inhabited by a series of
hidden species. The team examined
be thousands of years old and THORSTEN KAHLERT dozens of wading rats in museum
collections, and captured specimens
the site was turned over to across their wild range.

archaeologists led by Marion The group compared the rodents’
physical features and analysed
Dowd at the Institute of their DNA. The team also compared
them with the similar Ethiopian
Technology Sligo in Ireland. amphibious rat (Nilopegamys
plumbeus), of which only one
“It’s a Neolithic site that has specimen has ever been collected,
in 1927, and which may be extinct.
been completely undisturbed from around 3000 BC. The pair View from a chamber
entrance on Bengorm Two of the wading rat
for 4500 to 5000 years,” she says. were distantly related, sharing mountain, Ireland populations in the Congo basin
and West Africa were distinct,
The team found a total of the same amount of genetic with the Mediterranean or unrecognised species. The team
Middle East today, says Cassidy named them Colomys lumumbai
4899 bone fragments, which material as second cousins, says (Oxford Journal of Archaeology, and Colomys wologizi, respectively.
doi.org/fct8). This is in line with The team also discovered that
belonged to at least eight Cassidy. “That tells us they’re other Neolithic Europeans, she a Colomys goslingi subspecies
says. “There was diversity. in Cameroon was a full species
individuals, both adults and coming from a community You’re getting a lot of [gene] (Zoological Journal of the
variants circling at that time.” Linnean Society, doi.org/fct4).
children. However, the chamber that’s sizeable enough that you
The Bengorm population may Giarla says he is most interested
wasn’t the final resting place can avoid close inbreeding.” well living ancestors in Ireland in learning more about how the
today, says Dowd. The site was new species interact with their
of some of their other bones. Both Bengorm men were used for funeral rites for at least environments. Understanding
800 years, suggesting a long- the rats’ habitat requirements is
Instead, people carried corpses lactose-intolerant, so they lasting population. We have less important because their rainforests
information about the hunter- are threatened by deforestation,
to the chamber and left them for couldn’t digest the lactose in gatherer groups that lived in mining and political strife. ❚
the British Isles before the
up to 2 years to allow the flesh to milk without discomfort. Today, farmers, but a 2018 study of the 17 October 2020 | New Scientist | 11
10,000-year-old “Cheddar Man”
decompose, then took away the skeleton from the UK found
evidence that he had dark skin
skulls and other large bones. “There was diversity. that was significantly darker
than the Bengorm men had.
Such elaborate funerary rites You’re getting a lot of
Later, genetic variants linked
were common in the Neolithic, gene variants circling to lighter skin tones became
much more common in Europe.
the last phase of the Stone Age. at that time” but we don’t know when that
happened, says Cassidy, because
By this time, the first farmers we have little DNA from the
Bronze and Iron Ages so far.  ❚
had moved into western Europe most adults with European

from further east. In the British ancestry can digest lactose, but

Isles, they largely replaced the the trait only evolved in the past

hunter-gatherers that had been 5000 years. Neolithic farmers

living there for millennia. probably coped by processing

Neolithic funeral practices milk to remove most of the

often lasted years and were lactose, says Carles Lalueza-Fox

probably tied to religious beliefs at the Institute of Evolutionary

about the afterlife, says Dowd. Biology in Barcelona, Spain. “If

“The physical disintegration you make cheese, then you get

of the body possibly mirrors rid of the lactose problem.”

the spiritual journey.” The two adult males had

Lara Cassidy at Trinity College “intermediate to dark” skin,

Dublin in Ireland obtained according to the DNA analysis.

DNA from two of the bones, Their skin was probably in a

belonging to two adult males range traditionally associated

News Coronavirus

Reader Q&A

Your questions answered

From immunity to vaccines and face coverings, Jessica Hamzelou, Graham Lawton,
Michael Le Page, Donna Lu and Adam Vaughan have the answers

WE HAVE now been living with and where everyone is wearing
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes masks, as currently required in
covid-19, for the best part of a the UK, the risk should be lower.
year. In that time, our knowledge However, the risk also depends
has expanded dramatically, but on the odds of encountering
there is still so much we don’t infectious people. If case numbers
know – and even when we think are rising, these odds rise too.
we know things, the science can How you travel to the museum
change fast. will also matter.

On 24 September, we held a live And how about outdoors? NINA WESTERVELT/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
Q&A event online for subscribers The risk will vary enormously
about the pandemic and were depending on circumstances,
inundated with questions. On the such as how windy it is, how
following pages, our reporters many people are around you,
tackle some of the most common. how close they are and if any
are infectious. Time is also a
Transmission factor: you might have to stay
in close proximity to an infected
How does the coronavirus spread person for some time to breathe
through the air? Is aerosol in a high enough dose of the
transmission a possibility? virus to infect you.
The coronavirus definitely infects
people via the air. The rather How long does the virus remain remain stable for 28 days at 20°C samples were tested in a lab in
confusing debate among experts active on surfaces? on non-porous surfaces, such the dark – mean the results don’t
is whether it is only carried by After reviewing the scientific as glass touchscreens, stainless reflect real-life situations.
large droplets that rapidly sink literature, Emanuel Goldman steel and paper banknotes.
to the ground or whether people at Rutgers University in New The Australian team behind the Are masks an effective measure? Is
can also be infected by smaller Jersey concluded that the risk research agreed that the virus there a need to wear one outdoors?
droplets that can remain airborne of infection from surfaces is spreads mainly through aerosols A growing number of studies
for hours, known as aerosols. tiny for most people. “The focus and droplets in the air, but suggest that face coverings reduce
should be on masks, social your chance of getting infected,
It is very hard to establish distancing and doing things “The focus should be on make infections less severe if you
exactly how people have been outdoors as much as possible,” masks, social distancing do get infected – by reducing the
infected, but the overall evidence he says. “Inanimate surfaces are and doing things outdoors amount of virus you are exposed
does suggest that aerosol a very minor player in all this.” as much as possible” to – and stop you infecting others
transmission is happening. To if you have caught the virus. No
give one example, a study looking Don Schaffner, also at Rutgers, concluded that surfaces may single study is conclusive, but
at how a passenger on a flight says he has found only one be an important route too because looked at as a whole, the evidence
between London and Hanoi in case providing evidence of the virus “can remain infectious is convincing. Even when there
Vietnam infected up to 15 others transmission via surfaces, or for significantly longer time is no requirement to wear face
concluded: “The most likely fomites, in the peer-reviewed periods than generally considered coverings outside, it is still a
route of transmission during literature. It was for two possible”. However, real-world good idea in crowded places
the flight is aerosol or droplet individuals who sat in the differences in temperature, where you cannot avoid being
transmission.” same seat in Singapore. But humidity and sunlight – the virus close to others.
he says by all means mitigate
What about aerosols indoors? I’m the risk by using hand sanitiser
wondering if I brave a museum visit. and washing hands regularly.
The risk is thought to be greatest “I’m not telling people to not
in crowded, poorly ventilated worry about surfaces,” he says.
spaces where people don’t wear “I’m saying worry first about
masks and shout or sing, such other people.”
as some pubs. In a spacious
museum that isn’t crowded A paper published on 7 October
found that SARS-CoV-2 could

12 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020

Reporting a pandemic

A free, subscriber-only, on-demand recording
Available at newscientist.com/events

Vaccines Visitors at the reopening of Treatments from people who have recovered
the Metropolitan Museum from the disease will work. And
What is the progress on developing of Art in New York in August With improvements in treatment, several small, early studies have
a universal coronavirus vaccine? how has the fatality rate for reported promising results. But
Never before in vaccine history has and so flu vaccines for them covid-19 changed? we need to wait for the results of
so much progress been made in contain added components called We have a good idea of how large trials because the complexity
such a short time. Several vaccines adjuvants that boost the immune many people have died in richer of biology often confounds
are already in phase III trials to see response. We don’t know whether nations. What we don’t know is expectations. For example, it has
if they actually work, and dozens this will be necessary for the how many have been infected, as just been discovered that a tenth
more potential vaccines are being coronavirus, but the Novavax the number of reported cases isn’t of people with severe covid-19
developed. Vaccine manufacturers vaccine already in phase III trials the full story. So there is no produce antibodies to a key
are also being paid to prepare for contains an adjuvant, and several definitive way to calculate the
making billions of doses. Hopes other vaccines with adjuvants are infection fatality rate (which 28 days
are high, but even if several in earlier stage human trials. estimates the proportion of deaths
vaccines prove effective, it will take among infected people) or how it The amount of time the virus might
years to roll them out worldwide. If several strains of the new is changing – estimates still vary remain stable on touchscreens
coronavirus emerge, can widely. Figures from the UK’s
Will the first vaccines benefit we expect any vaccine to Intensive Care National Audit antiviral molecule made by
the most vulnerable? be completely effective? & Research Centre suggest that their own bodies – a kind of
Older people have a lower There are many reasons why 83 per cent of people admitted autoimmune response. Plasma
immune response to vaccines vaccines might not be 100 per to intensive care units after donated by these individuals
cent effective, unfortunately. 1 September are surviving could make the disease worse.
For instance, they might not compared with 60 per cent before
produce a strong enough immune this date, but these numbers must Origins
response. The differences between be treated cautiously. Intensive
coronavirus variants are small, care units might have turned away Are we any wiser about the origins
so the hope is that any one vaccine more borderline cases during the of SARS-CoV-2?
will work against all of them. If first peak due to a lack of resources, We still don’t know for sure where
this doesn’t prove to be the case, for instance, making the apparent the virus came from, and we may
however, it should be possible to death rate higher then. never know. But by far the most
tweak vaccines so they protect likely source is a bat.
against multiple strains, just Is plasma therapy likely to
like flu vaccines typically do. be effective? That is based on the virus’s two
In theory, there is every reason closest-known genetic relatives,
How much time would have been to think that treating covid-19 which are coronaviruses isolated
saved in the development of a patients using blood plasma taken from horseshoe bats in China. But
vaccine by doing challenge trials, neither virus is the direct recent
versus the traditional approach? SILVIO AVILA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES ancestor of the new coronavirus.
With challenge trials, healthy Only the discovery of a much more
people are given the coronavirus closely related virus in a wild bat
to test a vaccine’s efficacy. These will confirm the bat origin story.
might be able to give results in
weeks instead of months or years – It is also possible that the source
at least for young people. No one is an intermediate species that
is proposing challenge trials caught the virus from a bat and
involving older or vulnerable then passed it on to humans.
people, though, so they wouldn’t The number one suspects are
tell us how well any vaccine pangolins, which are also known
works for these key groups. to carry coronaviruses that are
genetically similar to SARS-CoV-2.
A health worker in Brazil
gives an injection as part of Bats and pangolins were
a coronavirus vaccine trial almost certainly on sale in the
live animal market in Wuhan,
China, that has been identified >

17 October 2020 | New Scientist | 13

News Coronavirus

as the pandemic’s ground zero. clear that exposure to the virus protect against infection, but calculate their own personal
So the virus could have crossed provokes a classic immune also makes the symptoms of risk of experiencing a severe or
the species barrier there, from response that protects people the disease worse. Vaccine potentially fatal case, says Tim
a bat or a pangolin into a human. against reinfection. However, we developers are well aware of Spector at King’s College London.
don’t know how long immunity this risk. Thankfully, it hasn’t There isn’t yet a “personal risk
But it is also possible that the lasts. It may only be months. been spotted in any of the calculator” available, but Spector’s
market was merely the venue experimental vaccines so far. This
of a superspreader event, not There are a handful of also suggests that reinfections 200m
where the virus jumped species. confirmed cases of reinfection, won’t typically be worse.
One scenario that cannot be but nowhere near as many as This many people may have died in
ruled out is that a progenitor virus would be expected if the immune It appears that the recent “second the Black Death from 1331-1353
acquired from bats was circulating response always fades rapidly. It waves” of the virus are in different
in humans for months causing is possible that the people who areas from those hit hardest team is working on ways to predict
only mild symptoms, but then got reinfected had an unusually initially. Does this suggest that risk based on early symptoms and
mutated into SARS-CoV-2 and weak response the first time or there is some degree of immunity data collected from the COVID
began spreading in the market. encountered a mutant virus that in those places? Symptom Study app.
was biologically different enough Antibody surveys are probably
“If the immune response to evade their so-called immune not picking up the true extent of At the moment, however,
fades rapidly, we would memory. The test results could immunity to the virus. These tests there is no way to predict who
expect to have seen more also have been false positives. look for circulating antibodies, is at risk of “long covid”, where
cases of reinfection” which are known to fade quite often debilitating symptoms
At least one person who had rapidly after an infection or are can last for months.
Wilder scenarios are that covid-19 twice is reported to have hardly produced at all. One survey,
the virus accidentally escaped become more severely ill, which for example, found that among Environment
from a laboratory or that it was raises the spectre of something UK doctors who had tested and animals
deliberately engineered as a called “disease enhancement”. positive for the virus, 12 per cent
bioweapon – both of which This is where a second bout of had no detectable antibodies. How is the pandemic related to
are exceedingly unlikely. an infectious disease is worse over-exploitation of the planet?
than the first. A few viruses, The T-cell response, which is The role our destruction of nature
Why are bats the reservoirs for most notably dengue, are known the arm of the immune system plays in infectious diseases
so many viruses? to do this, but it is too early to say that kills infected cells, seems spilling over into humans is
Bats are clearly trouble: they also whether SARS-CoV-2 does too. to be much more robust. something we have only begun to
gave us the original SARS virus, Immunologists think that if grasp fully in the past two decades,
plus Ebola, Nipah and more, and There is a similar phenomenon we did population surveys of says Peter Daszak at the EcoHealth
are by far the most prolific source called “vaccine-enhanced disease”, T-cells, we would see higher Alliance. He says the drivers
of zoonotic viruses, ones where a vaccine not only doesn’t levels of immunity. This so-called include: rising human population
originating in animals. Bats can cryptic immunity may be why the density; encroachment into and
tolerate extremely high virus Antibodies responding to an second wave is hitting different road building in forests; and
loads, meaning that they are infection by a SARS-CoV-2 areas to different extents. But hitting thresholds of contact
an efficient incubator of novel virus (green) we can’t be sure. between wildlife, humans and
viruses. Humans also come livestock at which a disease
into contact with bats relatively KTSDESIGN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Can I predict my personal risk emerges, then spreads through
frequently, especially in parts of for covid-19? trade and travel networks.
the world where they are a source All sorts of factors, including age,
of meat and traditional medicines. race and pre-existing health Global analyses have found
conditions, determine your risk that the risk of zoonotic diseases
Immunity of becoming severely ill. Because it emerging is highest in tropical
still isn’t clear who will develop an areas where land use is changing,
At least one person who had asymptomatic case of covid-19, it such as forests being cleared for
covid-19 a second time had a more is difficult to predict the risk to an cattle farms.
severe illness. Could we have issues individual who hasn’t yet caught
vaccinating people who have had it? the virus. But once symptoms Daszak also says that the wildlife
Fortunately, it is now becoming start, it should, in theory, be trade in China readily mixes
possible for an individual to legally and illegally captured
and traded animals, and involves

14 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020

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Get a weekly round-up of health news in your inbox
newscientist.com/healthcheck

DAVID CLIFF/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES Is there really any hope that the
coronavirus will be defeated or will
we have to live with it forever?
Many infectious disease experts
believe we will have to learn to live
with it. Global social inequalities
and air travel imply that so long
as the virus exists in people
somewhere in the world, its easy
transmission means it will spread.

Even if a vaccine is developed,
it doesn’t mean that the world
is likely to “beat” or eliminate
the virus. “What will a vaccine

“Despite a decade of
warnings about a new
pandemic, covid-19
caught the world napping”

domestic and international confirmed infections only show Face coverings have become part do? It certainly won’t stop it
commerce – and that viruses mild symptoms. of daily life for people using public becoming endemic,” says David
exploit those pathways. transport in the UK Heymann at the London School
Whether animals can pass the of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
However, it would be wrong virus back to humans is less clear. viruses, not slightly mutated “We don’t understand enough
to think that people in the A paper that hasn’t yet been peer- seasonal ones. about immunity to understand
West aren’t also to blame. “The reviewed suggests that mink at what that vaccine might be
encroachment of people into high Dutch farms have transmitted The H1N1 pandemic lasted and if herd immunity can
biodiversity regions is a global the virus to farm workers. If about a year-and-a-half, but that is be established.”
driver of emerging infectious confirmed, it would be the first no guide to how long the current
diseases and it’s largely done to documented case of animal-to- pandemic or future ones will last. Do you think experience of this
supply our overconsumption in human transmission. To date, The duration of a pandemic pandemic will help better prepare
richer countries,” says Daszak. there are no recorded cases of depends on the biology of the us for future ones?
domestic pets infecting humans. disease and the measures that are Despite a decade of warnings from
Is it possible for pets to carry used to control it. There is also the the WHO that a new pandemic
and spread the coronavirus? Pandemics ongoing pandemic of HIV that was a certainty, covid-19 caught
SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in began in the 1980s. the world napping. Experts say
a number of animals, including How long do pandemics normally there will be another pandemic
tigers, lions and rabbits. Ferrets, last for? Other relatively recent sooner or later, but we are unlikely
hamsters and cats have been Covid-19 is the second pandemic pandemics include the 1918 flu, to be any better prepared for it
shown to be able to pass the virus of the 21st century. The H1N1 the flus of 1957-58 and 1968-69 despite our current predicament. ❚
to others of the same species, and influenza outbreak of 2009-10 and the cholera pandemic of
transmission between mink in the sickened and killed far fewer 1961-75. However, history is PLEASE NOTE
Netherlands has led to outbreaks people than covid-19 already has. littered with them, including the
at more than 40 mink farms. You could argue that there is a worst of them all, the Black Death We urge you to keep up to
flu pandemic every year, yet the of 1331 to 1353, which killed up to date with and follow your
However, cases of pets catching World Health Organization (WHO) 200 million people out of a global local guidelines. If you sent
the coronavirus from their owners saves the term for novel flu population of about 450 million. us a question that wasn’t
remain rare, and research By comparison, we could consider answered here, take a look
indicates that most pets with ourselves lucky. at our website, where you can
find a longer and more in-depth
version of this article.

17 October 2020 | New Scientist | 15

News Coronavirus

Infectious diseases

What to expect from viruses as
winter hits northern hemisphere

Michael Le Page

WINTER is coming to the north. MARCO BELLO/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
If what happened in the southern
hemisphere is any guide, anti- respiratory viruses to spread. It is less clear what is happening Flu vaccinations are key
coronavirus measures could result “The social distancing works for with other respiratory viruses to limiting the burden on
in fewer people than usual getting other viruses as well,” says Steves. such as rhinovirus, adenovirus hospitals in a pandemic
flus and colds. The respite may be and parainfluenza virus as they
brief, though. These viruses could In some places, the effect has seldom cause serious illnesses so Australia imposed its lockdown
come roaring back when measures been dramatic. Normally the there is no systemic surveillance just before winter in the southern
to limit the spread of covid-19 end. number of people who go to in most countries. However, the hemisphere, whereas most
hospital with an illness diagnosed US Centers for Disease Control and northern hemisphere countries
If fewer people susceptible to as flu or respiratory syncytial Prevention (CDC) monitors them. don’t have lockdowns in place
these viruses are infected this year, virus climbs sharply every winter. now. Australia also instituted
there will be more susceptible This winter, in Western Australia, “Positive detections of strict travel restrictions that
people around next year, says the number of reported cases non-influenza respiratory viruses remain in place, limiting the
Daniel Yeoh at Perth Children’s instead fell to zero most weeks, have been lower than we would odds of flu being reintroduced
Hospital in Australia. Yeoh’s team has reported. expect in August and September from other countries, says Yeoh.
with the exception of rhinovirus/
If we fall ill at the moment, In fact, Australia, Chile and enterovirus,” says a CDC Indeed, in the UK, the
we tend to worry that we have South Africa have reported just spokesperson. number of people reporting
covid-19, especially if we have a 51 positive results for flu out of symptoms of illness between
fever or a cough. But such illness is 80,000 tests done during the What matters is what happens 8 and 21 September is up by 74 per
more likely to be due to cold or flu southern hemisphere winter. In during the northern hemisphere’s cent compared with the same
viruses than to the coronavirus. the previous three winters, these winter, when the number of cold period in August, says Steves.
countries reported 25,000 positive and flu infections usually peaks. The percentage testing positive for
“Colds and flus still dominate results out of about 180,000 tests. Flu cases add to the pressure on covid-19 is up too, at 2.8 per cent.
over the coronavirus overall,” healthcare systems, which is why
says Claire Steves at King’s College Fewer flu cases than normal it is more important than normal She says that viruses other than
London, a member of the team were also reported in the northern that people get the flu vaccine this the coronavirus were probably
behind the COVID Symptom Study hemisphere summer. “The year. Fewer flu cases than usual largely responsible for this surge
app. The app’s users in the UK, US numbers are low,” says John may occur where anti-coronavirus after schools reopened, but
and Sweden report daily whether McCauley at the World Health measures are in place, but not within this there was a concerning
they are well or have symptoms. Organization. He says that as few as in Australia. “There are rise in covid-19 cases too. As
many resources usually dedicated a couple of key differences in coronavirus restrictions lift, and
“The social distancing to monitoring flu are now Australia that may have combined with potentially more susceptible
that limits the spread monitoring coronavirus instead. to lead to the very low numbers people next year, we could see a
of coronavirus works “We could be underestimating seen here,” says Yeoh. spike in future colds and flus. ❚
for other viruses too” prevalence,” he says.

Between 8 and 21 August, for
instance, just 0.4 per cent of UK
app users who reported symptoms
of illness tested positive for the
coronavirus, says Steves. People
reporting a runny nose and
swollen glands were unlikely to
test positive, but 90 per cent of
those who did have a positive test
had severe headaches and fatigue.

Another study of key workers
in the UK found that only half
of the people who thought their
symptoms indicated covid-19
actually had the disease.

Measures being taken to try to
stop the spread of the coronavirus
are also making it harder for other

16 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020

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News

Space exploration

An asteroid’s watery past

The parent body of the asteroid Bennu probably had flowing water on its surface

Leah Crane

THE asteroid Bennu is a strange both water and organic molecules, There are also differences asteroid’s evolution after it was
little place, but data from NASA’s Bennu’s parent was unlikely to be across the surface of Bennu that chipped off its parent. “The way
OSIRIS-REx mission is starting teeming with life. are hard to explain. It is covered Bennu’s colour changes over time
to unravel its mysteries. The in boulders, but the largest ones is quite a bit different than what
spacecraft, which has been “You’re in the vacuum of space, are mostly in its southern we have seen on other planetary
orbiting Bennu since December there’s no atmosphere, you’re hemisphere. The boulders surfaces like the moon or other
2018, is gearing up to take a sample looking at a lot of irradiation, themselves are strange too, with asteroids that we’ve visited,”
from the asteroid’s surface later it’s cold – you wouldn’t want to some being so porous that empty says Daniella DellaGiustina
this month. In preparation, sit on the surface,” says Kaplan. space appears to comprise up to at the University of Arizona.
it has gathered a smorgasbord “It’s not a favourable environment 55 per cent of them, more than any
of information, including hints per se, but it does have a lot of meteorite we have ever recovered. Ageing an asteroid
that Bennu’s parent asteroid the factors that make a place
may have had flowing water. technically habitable.” There seem to be two Astronomers can date different
populations of rocks: porous, areas of Bennu by comparing
Bennu is a rubble pile, formed One of the main goals of OSIRIS- darker-coloured ones and denser, fresher regions with more
when something smashed into REx is to investigate the carbon on lighter-coloured ones that often weathered ones, revealing how
a larger asteroid billions of years Bennu because Earth was probably have carbonate veins. These they change over time. Rocks
ago and the bits coalesced into built from rocks similar to it, and differences aren’t obvious to the on Bennu seem to become more
many smaller asteroids. By human eye – the surface would blue, whereas those on other
studying Bennu, which is about 55% seem to be a fairly uniform dark- space rocks tend to become more
500 metres wide, we can learn grey to us – but they could be red. This may be because those
more about this parent asteroid, Some boulders on Bennu are critical in helping us figure out carbonate-filled rocks interact
which was probably a few made of this much empty space how Bennu formed. They may with the solar wind and
hundred kilometres across. have come from two different micrometeorites differently to
these may have brought the areas in Bennu’s parent body, rocks without carbonates, says
When OSIRIS-REx reached ingredients for life here. “These with the denser rocks coming DellaGiustina.
Bennu, it spotted something same types of organics may have from deeper underground.
strange: some of its boulders had been delivered to early Earth and On 20 October, OSIRIS-REx will
bright veins up to 150 centimetres may have been the start of some That wouldn’t answer all take a small sample from Bennu’s
long and 14 centimetres thick. of the organic chemistry that led of Bennu’s mysteries, though, surface before heading back
These are too large to have formed to life as we know it,” says Kaplan. because some relate to the towards Earth. When the sample
on Bennu itself, says Hannah gets here in 2023, researchers
Kaplan at NASA’s Goddard Space NASA/GODDARD/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA will hopefully be able to answer
Flight Center in Maryland, so they many of these questions. “All
were probably portions of larger the characterisation work we’ve
cracks on Bennu’s parent that were done for Bennu basically puts
up to several kilometres long. this return sample into context,”
says Benjamin Rozitis at the Open
“They suggest that there was University in the UK. If we can
fluid flowing on fairly large scales study the sample thoroughly and
on Bennu’s parent asteroid,” says understand how it relates to the
Kaplan. That is because the veins different rocks on Bennu, that
are made of carbonates, a type of makes it easier to compare with
compound that generally forms other asteroids and small bodies.
due to interactions between water
and rocks (Science, doi.org/fctb). “We can’t do a sample return
from every interesting place in
Over 98 per cent of Bennu’s the solar system, but by studying
surface seems to be coated in Bennu globally and trying to
carbonates and organic molecules, understand it as a small world,
complex carbon-bearing we get a much better sense
compounds seen as precursors to of how Bennu relates to other
life. Yet despite probably having objects in our solar system
that we might never be able to
OSIRIS-REx will take sample,” says DellaGiustina.  ❚
a sample from asteroid
Bennu later this month

20 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020

News In brief

Psychology

Strangers get more help in
wealthier neighbourhoods

RICHARD BAKER/IN PICTURES VIA GETTY IMAGES CITY and country folk are just as she just began picking up the cards.
helpful as each other. In fact, the In a third test, Zwirner started
chance of people assisting a crossing the road when a car was
stranger in the UK by posting an approaching to see if it would stop.
envelope seems to depend only on
a neighbourhood’s relative wealth. The pair found that people living
in less urban neighbourhoods were
From 2014 to 2017, Nichola no more likely to help than those
Raihani and Elena Zwirner at in cities. However, people were
University College London carried much less likely to help if they
out tests in 37 areas in cities, towns were in deprived areas, as defined
and villages across the country. by income and employment.

One involved dropping a In relatively wealthy areas in both
stamped, addressed envelope on cities and towns, around three-
the ground to see if people picked it quarters of the letters were posted.
up and posted it. In a variant, a letter In poorer neighbourhoods in cities,
was put on a car windscreen with half were posted. In poorer parts of
a note asking the finder to post it. towns or villages, only a third were
posted (Proceedings of the Royal
In another test, Zwirner dropped Society B, doi.org/ghd2gt).
some cards on the pavement when
she was 5 metres from another The findings go against studies
pedestrian to see if they would help suggesting that wealthier people
her pick them up. Sometimes she are less helpful, but these tend to
asked for assistance, other times be lab tests. Michael Le Page

Technology Botany

Squad of bots may together effectively by varying Super vine grows its on a S. bryoniifolius plant had
lend artists a hand the colours of the trails they laid own greenhouses expanded and overlapped to
down, while also considering form enclosures. Inside these
SWARMS of robots could help the colours laid down by A VOLUNTEER nature guide in were many developing fruits.
artists paint pictures, rushing neighbouring robots (Frontiers Japan has discovered that a type
across a canvas to lay down in Robotics and AI, DOI: 10.3389/ of vine creates mini-greenhouses He eventually contacted Shoko
colours in the right places. frobt.2020.580415). to warm its developing fruits. Sakai at Kyoto University, whose
team has now studied these vines
María Santos at the Georgia Santos says the next step will Schizopepon bryoniifolius on Mount Gassan in the Dewa
Institute of Technology and her be to develop robots that can (pictured) is an annual vine that Sanzan mountains in Yamagata
team designed a system that handle real liquid paint. “This step grows throughout east Asia, often prefecture. The researchers
would allow an artist to select involves not only developing the on the edges of forests. It belongs monitored the temperatures
regions of a canvas to be painted hardware necessary to manage to the same family as cucumbers, in leaf enclosures and in places
in certain hues. These are then paint, but also studying the pumpkins and squashes. In the where the leaves were removed.
created in real time by 12 robots painting release mechanism autumn of 2008, guide Nobuyuki They found the temperatures
that cross the canvas leaving trails needed to achieve appropriate Nagaoka noticed that some leaves in the enclosures were up to 5°C
of colour behind them. colour mixing.” higher at noon on sunny days.
SHOKO SAKAI
Currently, the robots don’t carry Vanessa Sanchez at Harvard They think the leaf structures
real paint. Instead, the researchers University says another challenge also protect developing fruits from
tested their ability to work with using liquid paints will be frost damage, but they haven’t
together using projectors that the drying time, as the robots shown this. Far fewer fruits grew
simulated coloured paint trails currently run on wheels, which well when the enclosures were
behind the robots. Each of the could result in them streaking removed. Plants at higher, colder
machines can produce three paint across the canvas before it sites also grew thicker enclosures
primary colours – magenta, cyan has dried. One way to avoid this (Proceedings of the Royal Society B,
and yellow – which can also be might be to use different types of doi.org/fctm).
combined to make other shades. robot, such as drones, she says.
“You wouldn’t have to worry This isn’t the only plant that
Santos and her team found about tracking of the wheels.” makes its own greenhouses.
that the robots were able to work Layal Liverpool A species of Himalayan rhubarb
does something similar. MLP

17 October 2020 | New Scientist | 21

New Scientist Daily

Get the latest scientific discoveries in your inbox
newscientist.com/sign-up

Really brief Medical devices

RIZA AZHARI/ALAMY Something smells New technique may people will experience it at some up to a year (Science Translational
a little less fishy alleviate tinnitus point in their lives. Treatments Medicine, doi.org/fctr).
such as cognitive behavioural
If you don’t find the A GADGET that stimulates the ears therapy and counselling are often The researchers believe the
smell of fish particularly and tongue may curb the severity used to help, but there is no cure. device works by making the
off-putting, you may have of tinnitus, a hearing disorder auditory brain more sensitive to
an olfactory gene mutation involving phantom noises. Hubert Lim at Neuromod many inputs and acoustic stimuli,
that makes these odours Devices, which developed the so it becomes distracted and less
seem less disagreeable. The approach uses headphones device, and his colleagues tested it sensitive or aware of tinnitus.
Researchers have identified that play a sequence of tones and in a trial including 326 people with
a gene, TAAR5, that affects white noise in the wearer’s ears, tinnitus. Over a 12-week period, A second trial is ongoing, says
the perception of odours as well as a small mouthpiece that three groups of participants used Lim. It will be vital to separate the
containing trimethylamine, simultaneously provides electrical it twice a day for 30 minutes. device’s effects from those that
a compound found in rotten stimulation to the tongue. might have been observed anyway.
and fermented fish (Current The researchers found that this “There is a strong placebo effect
Biology, doi.org/fctn). Around 13 per cent of people significantly reduced the severity when assessing interventions
in the UK live with persistent of tinnitus symptoms for between for tinnitus,” says John Phillips at
Plastic waste to fuel tinnitus and about 30 per cent of 75 and 89 per cent of participants, Norfolk and Norwich University
hydrogen economy? with improvements persisting for Hospital in the UK. LL

Chemists have used Palaeontology Sports science
microwaves to get
hydrogen from plastic Get your marathon
waste. Researchers mixed time before you run it
plastic with a catalyst of
iron oxide and aluminium GREGORY FUNSTON PLANNING to do a marathon?
oxide. When blasted with A new way of analysing data from a
microwaves, the catalyst Dinosaurs that lost a finger smartwatch could more accurately
created hot spots in the show evolution in action forecast how you will perform.
plastic and stripped out
hydrogen (Nature Catalysis, A TWO-FINGERED dinosaur may That means it may have used its Currently, most smartwatches
DOI: 10.1038/s41929- help researchers better understand hands for nest-building instead estimate your VO2 max – the
020-00518-5). how animals evolve to lose digits. of grabbing prey, says Funston. maximum rate at which you use
oxygen during exercise – via heart
The AI doctor will Oviraptorids, a group of bird-like Over millions of generations, rate measurements. They use this
see you now dinosaurs, usually had three fingers animals evolve away body parts estimate to predict race times. But
on each hand. But a set of juvenile that become less useful – including relying on this single parameter
A robot that can perform skeletons have two-fingered hands, fingers and toes, says Funston. It is can result in errors of up to 20 per
colonoscopies may make suggesting an adaptation. akin to the loss of the tail in humans cent, says Thorsten Emig at the
the procedure simpler and after they evolved to walk upright. French National Centre for
less unpleasant. The robot Gregory Funston at the University Scientific Research (CNRS). So he
uses a machine-learning of Edinburgh, UK, and his team have The researchers acquired the and his colleagues have developed
algorithm to move a flexible named the dinosaur, which was skeletons (pictured) after Mongolian a more accurate mathematical
probe along the colon via probably ostrich-like, Oksoko customs officials confiscated them model to do the job.
the rectum (Nature Machine avarsan. Unlike its three-fingered from black market fossil traders.
Intelligence, DOI: 10.1038/ relatives, the new species had While this was enough to confirm It uses smartwatch data to
s42256-020-00231-9). shorter forearms and only two the discovery of a new species, the calculate two physiological
functional, stout fingers with a illegal nature of the excavation has parameters: the speed a runner
22 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020 limited range of motion (Royal prevented a full investigation of has at maximum oxygen uptake
Society Open Science, doi.org/fcth). their origins. Christa Lesté-Lasserre and the rate they lose power
during a race. The first is directly
related to a person’s VO2 max; the
latter is linked to their endurance.

The model was tested using
smartwatch data from about
14,000 people, from recreational
runners to elite athletes. It was
able to predict marathon times to
within 10 per cent of actual times,
on average, and to within less than
5 per cent of finish times for elite
athletes (Nature Communications,
doi.org/ghd3q8). LL

Views Letters Aperture Culture Culture columnist
On the great hunt Prize-winning photo New documentary on Sally Adee on a
The columnist for life beyond our of orphaned macaque the negative impact science fiction
Graham Lawton on planet p26 for sale p28 of online media p30 morality tale p32
finance and climate
change p24

Comment

Hidden killers

Catastrophic events hog the climate limelight but there are more
subtle effects that demand attention too, says Hannah Cloke

MICHELLE D’URBANO SOME climate crises are big, rising. But faced with non-stop spend big to save lives. to save the lives of people in far-off
noisy and obvious: think pandemic news, public concern In the UK, measures to lands, or far-off times, is a difficult
hurricanes, typhoons, floods about environmental issues is sell. But show that the danger is
and wildfires. But there are other falling, according to polling prevent the transmission of here and now, threatening us all
climate crises that tend to be company YouGov. It found that the coronavirus, and to support in our homes, and governments
overlooked. These are quieter environmental concern in the people and businesses in the suddenly feel compelled to act
and more insidious, and we often country peaked towards the economic crash that has resulted, on our behalf.
fail to properly recognise them. beginning of this year. will probably cost more than
£300 billion this year, according So much for the cost. What
Take the example of when the A person worried about to the government’s spending about the inconvenience?
UK’s Office for National Statistics inaction on climate change watchdog. That is nearly £5000
reported that, in the second week might despair. But there is good for every person in the country, One of the great barriers to
of August, deaths from covid-19 news. When facing a foe that just in one year. effective climate action is the
had reached the lowest weekly can strike anyone – including scale of the lifestyle changes that
levels for five months. Among the rich and powerful – we have Convincing taxpayers that their are involved, including changing
a flurry of coronavirus statistics, shown that we are willing to governments ought to make big diets, driving less and taking fewer
the statisticians were keen to point payments and rack up huge debts flights. The past six months have
out, presumably to avoid any shown that all those things are
panic, that the spike in deaths possible when people are
that occurred that week – 9392 motivated enough to change.
deaths in total, 447 more than
the previous week – was probably In the past, we could be forgiven
due to a heatwave rather than for not knowing how our present
the coronavirus. activities could affect the future
climate. We could also be forgiven
Let’s be clear: an unusually hot for putting people in harm’s way,
week in the UK, which we know is purely because we didn’t know
made much more likely by climate that a hazard was approaching.
change, probably killed a jumbo Now, our eyes are open.
jet full of people in just a few days.
The heatwave may have killed We can forecast both when a
three times as many people that typhoon will hit with a few days’
week than died with covid-19. Yet warning and the impacts of
there was very little outcry and raised greenhouse gas levels
few calls for a public enquiry. in a few decades. We have the
capability, the technology and
After record-breaking heat in more than enough precedent to
the first half of August in the UK, spend money to save people’s
the second half of the month lives. We just need the leaders with
brought torrential downpours. the boldness to see it through. ❚
In Scotland – where world leaders
will meet next year to discuss For more on climate change,
actions to slow down climate turn to page 34
change – a deluge-induced
landslide derailed a train, Hannah Cloke is at the
killing three people. University of Reading, UK
@hancloke
The UK’s climate death toll is

17 October 2020 | New Scientist | 23

Views Columnist

No planet B

It’s the economy, stupid Finance will play a huge role in how we
tackle climate change. Reassessing your own investments could be
a good place to start, writes Graham Lawton

M ANY of us at New as fossil fuel extraction, mining as usual, that will plunge the
Scientist have specialist and deforestation. What’s more, planet deeper into the red.
areas of weakness. an accounting system that greedily
Happily, change is happening.
Mine is physics. In the grand counts the profits, but often writes Some of it is driven by outside
factors, such as the escalating
scheme of things, they are actually off external environmental costs, risks of investing in projects that
could be wiped out by extreme
considered a strength: if I can incentivises destructive practices weather. Some of it is driven by
consumer sentiment, such as the
understand an article about, say, such as dumping greenhouse reputational risk of investing in
socially unacceptable sectors like
quantum theory, then anyone gases into the atmosphere. coal. This latter pressure point is
something that many of us can
can. But recently, it has dawned Since the 2015 Paris climate apply. About 85 per cent of adults
in the UK have a savings pot that
Graham Lawton is a staff on me that I have a more serious agreement, the financial sector is invested on their behalf for
writer at New Scientist and retirement. Collectively, these pots
author of This Book Could Save weakness in my understanding has invested $1.9 trillion in total $3 trillion. Globally it is vastly
Your Life. You can follow him more. Few people know what their
@grahamlawton of the world. One which, as I write fossil fuel projects. Short-term money is invested in though.

Graham’s week about environmental issues, incentives have created a world I dread to think about mine. I
vaguely remember ticking a box
What I’m reading I ought to fill. The subject? Finance. economy in which, according to on a form demanding that at least
I read and write all day, part of it be put into ethical funds.
so sometimes find books Ugh. I skim past those pages the World Economic Forum, half But I don’t know what “ethical”
hard going. I’m listening means in this context. For all I
to a great podcast series in the newspaper. As soon as of global GDP is dependent on know, my pension may be adding
called Uncivil, all about to deforestation, fossil fuel use,
untold stories of the somebody mentions bonds or the destruction of nature. factory farming or worse.
American Civil War.
What I’m watching derivatives, my brain seizes up. It doesn’t have to be this way. I intend to find out. Make
Charles I: Killing a king My Money Matter helps small
on the BBC. What a story! Frankly, I am an snob about it. I It would be unfair to portray all investors understand where our
What I’m working on funds are and how to move them
Articles about the future think there are higher-minded finance as rapacious, short-termist or use them to put pressure on
of the coronavirus. companies to change. Influential
and more important things to institutions such as the University
This column appears of Cambridge are divesting from
monthly. Up next week: think about than money. “For all I know, my environmentally destructive
Annalee Newitz But I have come to realise that pension may be adding industries. It is time for
to deforestation, fossil individuals to do the same.
24 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020 finance ignorance, or f-wittery if fuel use, factory
you will, isn’t a useful state. If we If it all sounds a bit too
are going to transition the world complicated, consider that
environmentally conscious
to a more sustainable future, farming or worse” financial behaviour can have a
disproportionate impact, way
reform of the financial system is beyond that of other consumer
choices. According to Make My
a non-negotiable starting point. and uncaring. If that were so, Money Matter, shifting your
investments can reduce your
The fine details of bonds and we wouldn’t have seen such carbon footprint up to 27 times
as much as giving up flying and
derivatives still elude me. But radical advances in clean energy going vegan. Money is power.
Wield it. ❚
thanks to a documentary called technology, and all of nature

Our Planet: Too Big To Fail made by would be destroyed by now.

the conservation group WWF and With the right incentives in

a pressure group called Make My place, finance can be remade as

Money Matter, I now grasp the a force for good, channelling

rudiments of the global financial investment into sustainable

system and its connections to businesses and technologies that

things I care about: climate change help to end, rather than accelerate,

and destruction of nature. the destruction of nature.

Here’s the technical bit; The incentives need changing

concentrate! In essence, finance and the documentary makes a

is the business of transferring convincing case that the penny

money from people who own has finally dropped. But change

capital to people who need it to has to happen now, in this window

fund expensive projects, in return of opportunity created by the

for a share of the spoils. All too pandemic. As we build back,

often, the first question that gets decisions made by financiers –

asked is, what’s my return? The who have $300 trillion at their

second is, how quickly can I get it? disposal – will decide which

And so capital frequently flows projects get funded and hence

into projects that ruthlessly shape the economy for decades to

squeeze profit from nature, such come. If they default to business

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Views Your letters

Editor’s pick The infections coincided need better political systems” since microbiome composition
with specific conditions: the to deal with climate change, but is modified by dietary intake.
On the great hunt for alignment of Venus between I would go further. To deal with It would seem that robust
life beyond our planet the sun and Earth, a solar storm it, we will require unprecedented conclusions can only be drawn
and a northerly airflow from the cooperation between people, after long-term studies in which
3 October, p 36 Arctic. In the absence of any other industry and governments. changes in the microbiome with
From Martin Jenkins, London, UK rational explanation, Barber’s time are also accounted for.
I should like to add some nuance to suggestion was that the solar wind The latter two groups will do
Dan Falk’s fascinating article on the may have stripped bacteria from nothing until they see which way I was always a fan of the
possibility of advanced civilisations the clouds of Venus, carrying them the people are moving, and so we polyculture argument
beyond Earth. The assumption to Earth and depositing them in must stop looking to others and
behind the search for extraterrestrial the Arctic to blow south to the UK. move ourselves if we want the 3 October, p 24
intelligence is that such intellect issue dealt with. When many of us From Oliver Arditi,
is likely to be used to develop From Andrew Smyth, act it becomes a substantial force. Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk, UK
technology, but this isn’t inevitable. Los Angeles, California, US Interrogating politicians about James Wong makes the oft-
If advanced ETs do exist in our their decisions and providing repeated claim that monocultures
The cultures of both classical galaxy, we have the technology them with reasoned argument give greater crop yields from a
Greece and imperial China had to find them: 1000 radio receivers and positive suggestions, given plot of land. As I understand
technological capabilities, but of the same size as the Arecibo all coupled with relentless it, and as past research indicated,
preferred to apply intelligence telescope may be able to detect persistence, is as important as monocultures enable the highest
to the arts. Also, in some cases, an Earth-like civilisation up to any personal “green” behaviour yield of a single crop from a given
technology may not be an available 13,000 light years away. The real we might be adopting. plot, but polyculture can generate
option. Isaac Asimov observed challenge for us – and perhaps a higher overall yield, spread
that technology as we know it for ETs – may be to persuade our Just as you reported across a variety of crops, from the
started from fire – in which case, leaders to fund such large projects. it, so it happened same piece of productive land.
intelligence that evolved in a marine
environment may never develop it. From Eric Kvaalen, 26 September, p 14 This was the primary basis
Les Essarts-le-Roi, France From David Aldred, of the arguments that I originally
The implication is that, if there In your leader (3 October), you Elloughton, East Yorkshire, UK heard 30 years ago for preferring
are intelligent civilisations out say that because there are so many After reading the rather worrying multi-crop systems of agricultural
there, they may not be interested planets, “even if the odds of life story “US science coverage is production, plus the subsidiary
in developing the means of contact, arising on a particular world are biased against people with names environmental and food security
or may not be able to do so. Perhaps tiny, there is a good chance it has not of British origin”, I found reasons that Wong mentions. I am
they are sitting on their planets happened many times”. Let’s myself doing exactly what the not an agronomist and I haven’t
or under oceans thinking great assume that there are 1012 planets article predicted: the only name stayed abreast of the latest
thoughts and making beautiful art. in our galaxy and 1012 galaxies in I could remember was that of research, however, so I would be
the visible universe, making a total the Birmingham City University interested to know if it has now
From Conrad Jones, of 1024 planets. If the chance of life expert, Marcus Ryder. I had to been shown that polyculture is
Cynwyl Elfed, Carmarthenshire, UK arising on any planet is tiny, say re-read the article in order to find less productive overall.
Finding what is probably a sign of 10−27, the chance of another planet the author of the actual study: Hao
life in clouds on Venus (3 October, with life in the whole visible Peng at the University of Michigan. So nice to finally
p 12) is eye-opening for anyone universe is just one in 1000. meet you all
seeking extraterrestrials, a hint I just picked 10−27 out of the One part of diet science
that we may be looking in the blue.  Itcould be 10−100. is a bit chicken and egg From Andrew Clegg,
wrong places and that we Martock, Somerset, UK
shouldn’t just be targeting planets Only people power will 12 September, p 34 I have just watched your online
in the so-called Goldilocks zone. get this job done From Prakash Virkar, event on New Scientist’s coverage
Bangalore, India of the pandemic. What a pleasure
From Mike Curran, 26 September, p 22 I read your article on precision to meet you all. More please.  ❚
Teignmouth, Devon, UK From Roger Taylor, nutrition with great interest.
In 1963, Donald Barber, a fellow of Meols, Wirral, UK It suggests that dietary response ❚ The editor writes:
the Institute of Physics, the Royal Annalee Newitz is right to is, in part, associated with For more virtual events, see
Astronomy Society and the Royal conclude that “we are going to microbiome composition. newscientist.com/science-events
Photographic Society, submitted Yet surely this is a catch-22,
a paper to a photographic journal For the record
detailing a 25-year investigation Want to get in touch?
into unusual bacterial infections ❚  A picture in our exposé on
of photographic plates at a UK Send letters to [email protected]; the plight of giant river fish was
observatory. The bacteria were see terms at newscientist.com/letters mislabelled (3 October, p 41).
tolerant of this silver/gelatine Letters sent to New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street, Both fish on page 43 were
environment, normally deadly London WC2E 9ES will be delayed actually American paddlefish.
to terrestrial bacteria.

26 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020

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28 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020

Macaque misery

Photographer Paul Hilton/
Wildlife Photographer of the Year

ORPHANED and alone, this young
pig-tailed macaque has a bleak
future ahead. It is one of many
captured primates on sale at
this open-air bird market in Bali,
Indonesia, where it will either
become someone’s pet or be
sold to a zoo or laboratory for
biomedical research.

Conservation photojournalist
Paul Hilton feigned interest in
purchasing the macaque in order
to gain access to the market’s back
room to take this shot of it chained
to its cage, amid a backdrop of
other young macaques in the
same situation. Titled Backroom
Business, the image won the
Wildlife Photojournalist Story
Award in this year’s Wildlife
Photographer of the Year
competition, developed and
produced by the Natural History
Museum in London.

Pig-tailed macaques live in large
social groups in the wild, but as
deforestation drives them out of
their habitat, more and more are
being shot as pests when they
raid crops for food. Those that are
caught are packed closely together
in their cages, encouraging the
spread of disease. Hilton’s work
raises awareness of the plight of
these monkeys and other wildlife
in international commerce, as well
as the critical role animal markets
play in enabling illegal trade in
endangered species.

The Wildlife Photographer of
the Year exhibition is on at the
Natural History Museum from
16 October to 6 June 2021. ❚

Gege Li

17 October 2020 | New Scientist | 29

Views Culture

We are the product

Former big tech employees are rounding on the companies they helped
create and that now have us in their grip, finds Donna Lu

Film

The Social Dilemma

Jeff Orlowski
Netflix

THERE is a telling phrase that

has been around in some form

or another since the 1970s: “If

you’re not paying for the product,

then you are the product.” Applied

to internet companies, it means

that even though some services

appear free, they make money

by selling their users’ data.

It is an idea discussed at length

in new Netflix documentary EXPSOURE LABS/NETFLIX

The Social Dilemma. The film

examines the ways big tech

manipulates human attention

for profit. Very little will be eye-

opening to anyone with even

a passing interest in tech, but

the documentary makes for director of monetisation at Rachel Wenitsky recently A new documentary
lampooned this in a sketch that explores the negative
interesting viewing nonetheless Facebook for five years and was went viral. “I thought we were impact of online media
doing a good thing,” she deadpans
because of who it features. directly responsible for developing in character. “After we altered the and climate change. On the
course of US politics and I made other hand, tech companies have
The Social Dilemma interviews its advertising model. This is the enough money to retire at 27, I deliberately used insights from
realised I was wrong.” behavioural psychology to make
tech insiders – former execs and same model that has driven the their platforms as hard to put
The tech interviews are down as possible.
employees of Google, Facebook, decline of traditional media interspersed with fictional
scenes of a family: one daughter Though human minds are
Twitter, Instagram and so on – companies and been used for is a Luddite, while her two siblings perhaps not entirely powerless
are unable to get through a few in the face of shadowy algorithms
including the inventors of spreading misinformation and minutes of dinner without conspiring to exploit us for
checking their phones. money, as The Social Dilemma
Facebook’s “Like” button, undermining democracies, all suggests, the film does a good
If one were to be generous, job of comprehensively covering
YouTube’s recommendation while Facebook made billions. some of the problems faced big tech’s troubling aspects.
by the tech sector today could
algorithm and the now- Many of the participants recall be explained by the law of While we can individually
unintended consequences. take steps to use technology
ubiquitous infinite scroll feature. It is plausible that many tech more consciously, this
moguls had good intentions, documentary asks us to look at
These people, mostly male, “It is plausible that but were too blinkered by the the wider societal implications
young and white, express many tech moguls had allure of rapid growth to foresee of social media too. Platforms
reservations about the platforms good intentions, but that their networks and that were created to connect
that they helped turn into “the were blinkered by the algorithms would be used to us have mutated into ones that
richest companies in the history allure of rapid growth” radicalise people and spread can now divide us. Regulation,
of humanity”, as academic unscientific propaganda that the film argues, has never been
hinders efforts to tackle covid-19 more pressing. ❚
Shoshana Zuboff says in the film.

The result is both compelling a bright-eyed enthusiasm,

and hard to swallow. There is a verging on naivety, that they felt

bitter irony in hearing from the in their years working for big tech.

people who have profited from the “When I was there, I always felt

very companies they now claim like, fundamentally, it was a force

are eroding the fabric of society. for good,” says a former Twitter

Curiously absent is recognition executive. “I don’t know if I feel

of complicity, let alone regret. that way anymore.”

One of the interviewees, Tim These about-turns aren’t wholly

Kendall, for example, was the convincing. The comedy writer

30 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020

Don’t miss

Build your own network

When nobody would build a phone network for people in a rural
Mexican village, they decided to go it alone, finds Simon Ings

Book still tries to run its affairs – indeed, station could communicate with Read
the entire Oaxaca region staged each other and connect globally The Wonder Book
Connected: How a an uprising against centralised over the internet. of Geometry by David
Mexican village built its Mexican authority in 2006. Acheson takes us on an
own cell phone network Yet the network never worked illustrated tour through
Some traditional Mexican very well. Whenever the internet the history of the field,
Roberto J. González buildings are built partially of went down, the whole place lost from ancient Greece
University of California Press mud. It is much easier and cheaper its mobile coverage. Recently, to the present day, and
to use – not to mention a more the phone company Movistar has uncovers some of the
IN 2013, the world’s news media repairable and more ecologically moved in with an aggressive plan prettiest surprises in
fell in love with Talea de Castro, sensitive material – than the to provide the region with regular mathematics on the way.
a Mexican village (population imported alternatives. Despite (if costly) coverage. The idea of
around 2400) in a remote corner this, almost every new building in an autonomous network in Talea Watch
of northern Oaxaca. América Móvil, Talea de Castro is made of concrete. de Castro lives on, however, in a Max Winslow and the
the telecommunications giant cooperative organisation of House of Secrets finds
that ostensibly served their area, The village backed another community cell phone networks a lacrosse player, a
had refused to provide them piece of imported tech in 2013: that represents nearly 70 villages social media influencer,
with a mobile phone service, a DIY phone network, assembled across several regions in Oaxaca. a gamer, a bully and
so the Taleans built their own. by US-born rural development a computer hacker
specialist Peter Bloom and Erick Connected is an account of how competing to win an
Imagine it: an embattled, Huerta, a Mexican telecoms lawyer. a rural community takes control eccentric billionaire’s
predominantly indigenous Both considered access to mobile over the forces that threaten its mansion. Alas, the
community besting and phone networks and the internet existence. The people of Talea de building’s resident
embarrassing Carlos Slim, to be a human right. Also involved Castro are dispersing ever more AI has other ideas.
América Móvil’s owner and the were “Kino”, a hacker who helped quickly across continents and
richest person in the world at the indigenous communities evade platforms in search of a better life. Read
time. The full story of that short- state controls, and Minerva Cuevas, The “virtual Talea” they create Arctic: Culture and
lived, home-grown network is an artist best known for hacking on Facebook and other sites climate opens at
more complicated, says Roberto supermarket barcodes. to remember their origins are London’s British
J.González in his fascinating touching, but the fact remains: Museum on 22 October.
account of rural innovation. Talea de Castro’s network ran 50 years of development have The wealth of objects
off an open-source mobile phone done more to unravel a local culture and artworks on display
Talea de Castro was never network program called OpenBTS. than 500 years of conquest.  ❚ in this beautiful exhibition
a backwater. A community that Mobiles within range of a base guide reflect the region’s
survived Spanish conquest and has 30,000-year history
resisted 500 years of interference CARLOS SALINAS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES of habitation.
by centralised government may SKIPSTONE PICTURES; TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
become many things, but 17 October 2020| New Scientist | 31
“backward” isn’t one of them.

Globalisation is a homogenising
whirlwind of technology, finance
and bureaucracy that brings with
it new roads, hospitals, schools,
entertainment, jobs and medicine.
Yet for every outside opportunity
seized, indigenous skills are
watered down or forgotten. Talea
de Castro’s farmers can now export
coffee and other cash crops, but
many fields lie abandoned as its
youth migrate to the US. The village

Talea de Castro’s DIY
mobile network had global
reach – when it worked

Views Culture

The science fiction column

A world of redemption The unfolding story of what happens to a young man
whose tongue has been cut out during a brutal civil war provides an unmissable
but hard to read lesson about the morality of forgiveness, says Sally Adee

Body parts are key to a
tale of inhumanity and
forgiveness

Sally Adee is a technology VICTOR MOUSSA/ALAMY claimed sci-fi turns you into a
and science writer based credulous, uncritical reader who
in London. Follow her on THE main problem with this book have been spirited to the place isn’t able to fully inhabit the mind
Twitter @sally_adee of the characters. A more recent
is you aren’t going to want to read to become incubators for organs. study takes issue with this,
Book arguing that what happens is
it. But it’s good and you should. Here, some life-saving good is more complicated: sci-fi can put
The Book of Malachi you at a slight remove that may
Malachi Dakwaa, the forcibly extracted from existences actually improve your ability to
T.C. Farren engage with difficult material.
Titan eponymous character in that only made the world a worse
I thought of these studies often
Sally recommends... T.C. Farren’s novel, is a young place. Fitting penance, the boss as Farren’s beautiful, spare prose
dragged me on. I did cry, but the
Book man whose tongue was cut out argues, and as overseers go, tense plot kept the characters
distant enough that I didn’t drown
The Ministry in a brutal civil war. In the years Malachi is ideal. To receive his in their darkest moments.
for the Future
since, he has eked out a half-life tongue, he needs to make sure he It does leave an imprint, though.
Kim Stanley Robinson In the original, biblical Book of
A blueprint for the future as a quality control manager at never makes the mistake of seeing Malachi, Malachi isn’t a real
that is as obsessively person but a “messenger”. Farren’s
researched as his Mars a chicken processing plant, mute messenger tells us a lot
trilogy. Instead of colonising about our world. The book may
Mars, The Ministry for the ensuring the uniform compliance “Sci-fi can put you at a be near-future sci-fi, but it doesn’t
Future is about recalibrating of shrink-wrapped body parts. seem implausible when prisoners
humanity to live properly slight remove that may in China are reportedly killed for
on and with Earth rather One day, he gets an offer for a job their organs and inmates in the
than terraforming it into he didn’t apply for, with a payment actually improve your US are used as firefighters.
a climate hell.
he could never have hoped for. Do ability to engage with Withdrawing empathy by
32 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020 categorising people into cases
six months at a secret facility run difficult material” outside our moral responsibility
makes it easy to let them suffer.
by a pharmaceutical multinational How readily we turn each other
and the natural world into things
that does research that isn’t the people as anything other than to be consumed.

supposed to exist and he walks inhuman lest he try to save them This book shows how a small
tear in the label you give a person
away with a new, perfectly grafted from their grisly fate. can reveal shared humanity. Once
you see it, the tear can only get
tongue. The NDA is particularly The book is thrilling, high- bigger and let in the possibility
of unexpected redemption and
tough: if he ever discusses what stakes world-building, but it took maybe a whole new world.

he saw in the facility, the company me a couple of months to finally This grace and hope elevate
The Book of Malachi from the
can repossess his payment. commit to reading it. This is no foundations of its sci-fi action-
thriller narrative. The questions
At the facility, he finds a body- grand escape from reality, but a Farren asks about who controls
our ideas of forgiveness, who
horror experiment, but one a strict searing overexposure to the worst deserves it and why could stay
with you for a long time. ❚
utilitarian might find morally things that can happen to people

uncomplicated: the people who may or may not deserve them.

deemed the worst in the world This isn’t why we read science

(like “the monsters” his boss labels fiction, or at least, not to judge by

those who took Malachi’s tongue) a recent dust-up when researchers



Features Cover story

Climate’s
make or
break year

Throughout 2020, climate change has played
second fiddle to the coronavirus crisis – but
decisions we are taking now will seal the fate
of our warming planet, says Adam Vaughan

THE orange skies looked more like a with climate mitigation would be something
smoking hellscape from the film Blade very different.”
Runner 2049, but this was California
2020. The images of the huge wildfires Coronavirus is far from over. But it is time
there, and in Australia earlier in the year, to think what we want the world to look like
are perhaps as emblematic of 2020 as those 10, 20 and 30 years down the line. What has
of queues of people wearing face masks. been happening with the climate crisis while
the world’s attention has been diverted?
Climate change hasn’t stopped because How has the pandemic changed the game,
of a global pandemic. Yet our turbocharged and what can and must we do now to avoid
heating of Earth has become an almost catastrophic warming? Read on to find out.
forgotten crisis. “Climate change has been
put on the back burner,” says climate scientist 2019: flatlining from 2014 to 2016, emissions have
Corinne Le Quéré at the University of East THE CLIMATE grown again, reaching 43.1 billion tonnes
Anglia, UK, who advises the UK and French PRE-COVID-19 in 2019. The world has now already warmed
governments. about 1°C since the pre-industrial age.
First, a recap. Humanity’s reliance on fossil
In the meantime, the world has seen a fuels has driven atmospheric carbon dioxide This is the backdrop that spurred nearly
welter of uncomfortable records or near- levels from about 280 parts per million 200 governments to agree to “pursue efforts”
records this year on measures related to before the industrial revolution to an average to hold warming to 1.5°C, with a backstop
climate change, from global temperatures of 409.8 ppm last year, with that figure now limit of 2°C, as part of the 2015 Paris climate
to Arctic sea ice loss, with ever-clearer rising by more than 2 ppm year on year. agreement. Emissions-curbing plans under
consequences for global health, wealth The culprit is mainly CO2 we emit by fossil the Paris agreement leave Earth on track
and happiness. fuel burning and land use change, such as for warming of 3°C. If we are to hit a 1.5°C path,
converting forest to farmland. Despite briefly our remaining “carbon budget” is now highly
“It’s understood the covid crisis is a constrained: roughly speaking, the world
short-term public health crisis and an needs to halve emissions by 2030 and
economic crisis for a few years,” says reduce them to net zero by around 2050.
Petteri Taalas at the World Meteorological That’s where we were.
Organization. “But it’s very well understood
that the magnitude of crisis we face if we fail

34 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020

RAY CHAVEZ/MEDIANEWS GROUP/THE MERCURY NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES

Wildfires light the sky over
the San Francisco-Oakland
Bay Bridge on 9 September

Atmospheric carbon dioxide abundance (ppm) 2020: forest unprecedented since records began.
420 A YEAR OF NEW
CLIMATE EXTREMES Siberia has also been exceptionally

The past year has been a reminder that, warm. It was 10°C above average in May,
however much coronavirus has distracted
400 us, time is running out for climate change with one town north of the Arctic Circle,
action. California’s sepia skies are just the
most recent physical signal of this. Australia’s Verkhoyansk, baking in 38°C heat on a
record bush fire season, from June 2019 to
380 March 2020, wreathed cities in the planet’s record June day. Most striking wasn’t the
worst air pollution, killed an estimated 3
billion land vertebrates and burned an area of temperature highs, however, but how

360 long the heat lasted. “It’s extreme, but

it’s also very persistent, persisting since

340 January,” says Samantha Burgess at the

320 EU-sponsored Copernicus Climate Change

Service (C3S). Arctic fires released a record

300 amount of CO2, breaking last year’s record.
1970
1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 Arctic sea ice extent hit an all-time low
Year
for July, and cover for the summer ranked

SOURCE: NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION second lowest ever, after 2012. >

17 October 2020 | New Scientist | 35

Europe experienced some excess deaths All but one of the 10 hottest
linked to early August heatwaves, but this years on record have been
was unremarkable compared with last year, in the 21st century, most in
when the continent baked in extreme the past decade
temperatures. The US is another story.
Adam Smith at the US National Oceanic (Excess temperature over the 1901-2000 average,
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) rolling average September-August)
says the country has seen extraordinary
extreme weather and events. “Unfortunately, 2015-2016 1.06°C REUTERS/MOHAMMAD PONIR HOSSAIN
we are starting to get used to this,” he says. 2019-2020 1.01°C
2018-2019 0.91°C
California wildfires, many of which were 2016-2117 0.91°C
unusually triggered by lightning in August, 2014-2015 0.84°C
have burned almost as much land in the 2017-2018 0.82°C
state in one year as across the whole of the 2009-2010 0.75°C
1990s. This year has seen five of California’s 2013-2014 0.73°C
six largest wildfires on record. In Oregon, 1997-1998 0.69°C
hundreds of thousands of people were told 2006-2007 0.67°C
to evacuate, while blazes took hold in areas
usually too wet to burn. SOURCE: NOAA

The climate change link isn’t complex. We’ve seen that with wildfires, damages, 2020 may bring the biggest financial losses
Warmer temperatures mean drier, easy- and now with temperature extremes and yet attributable to extreme events, partly
burning trees and vegetation. California’s consecutive days of extremes,” says Smith. because more people in the US now live near
fires have their roots in the historic 2011-2017 forests and coastlines, but also undeniably
drought there. The state has been hit by Meanwhile, the US hurricane season may because of climate change, he says.
major wildfires for four years in a row since, break the record for the number of named
although 2019’s were less severe. tropical cyclones in a year, currently 28 in Extreme flooding has hit many parts of
2005. That may yet just be cyclical variation, the world, too, from China and Bangladesh
Here and now rather than anything to do with global to West Africa. “It’s a warning call that climate
warming, but hurricane intensity is thought change impacts are here now. We can say
The US also smashed temperature to grow in a warming world. Hurricanes with confidence the world is warmer than
records this year. Death Valley in California Laura and Sally brought destructive rain, it would otherwise have been without
recorded an air temperature of 54.4°C, wind and storm surges to the US, while in the anthropogenic emissions. And because
the hottest such temperature ever recorded US Midwest region a derecho storm – a large it’s warmer, it makes these events more
in the world, if verified. Phoenix in Arizona system of fast-moving thunderstorms that likely,” says Burgess. Attribution studies have
saw 53 days with highs of 43.3°C (110°F) can whip up very strong winds – caused already made the links explicit for Siberia’s
or more. The previous record was 33 days billions of dollars of crop damage. Smith says heat and Australia’s bush fires.
in 2011. Such a leap shows that, with
the climate, change isn’t always linear. Globally, this year is likely to be the second
“That’s an example of this step function: warmest on record, says Taalas. According to
an exponential jump, not a little creep. NOAA figures, the 12 months to the end of
August 2020 were 1.01°C above the 1901-2000
Meeting the Paris agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C means taking action baseline figure, second only to a 1.06°C excess
to move from our current trajectory now recorded ending in August 2016 (see table,
above). Figures from the C3S indicate this past
2.00 Current warming rate September was the hottest globally on record.

1.75 Who cares about second? Well, 2016’s
record was boosted by the natural warming
Temperature change (°C) 1.50 of the El Niño climate phenomenon; 2020
has been incredibly warm without it. “The
1.25 biggest change we see from climate change
is on temperature, and there climate is an
1.00 Observed Possible future scenarios to absolute game changer,” says Friederike
0.75 warming lead us to 1.5°C Otto at the University of Oxford. “Even at
0.50 1°C warming, climate change is bringing
us to the edge, or even over the edge, of what
0.25 SOURCE: IPCC we are able to cope with.”

0 1980 2000 2020 2040 2060 2080 2100
1960

36 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020

WILL COVID-19
HAVE ANY LASTING
CLIMATE IMPACT?

HOW HAS THE Residents walk The dip in emissions due to the coronavirus
PANDEMIC AFFECTED flooded streets has at least bought time for countries with
CARBON EMISSIONS? in Munshiganj legally binding climate targets such as the
District near UK, which since 2008 has had five-year
Initially, the response to the coronavirus Dhaka, “carbon budgets”. “What covid will deliver
pandemic looked as if it would also be a Bangladesh, generally is a bit of extra breathing space in
game changer for greenhouse gas emissions. on 25 July the carbon budget,” says Chris Stark at the
Government-imposed restrictions on Committee on Climate Change, which
movement and activity worldwide saw running tap. If the tap keeps running, advises the UK government. “I hope they use
global emissions drop 17 per cent in April. the bath water continues to rise. it wisely.” The pandemic slightly delayed the
Most of the decline was from less road and committee’s advice on the UK’s next budget
air travel, and from industry shutting down, In May, expecting a slower-running tap to be set, for 2033-2037, which will now
especially in China. because of coronavirus, Betts made revised consider covid-19’s impacts. Stark says the
predictions for fractionally lower report, now due out on 6 December, will
The latest estimates are for an annual atmospheric CO2 levels at the Mauna Loa probably forecast that shipping and aviation
emissions decline of between 4 and 7 per monitoring station in Hawaii. Observations emissions won’t return to pre-pandemic
cent. Emissions had crept back closer to for May, June and July tracked close to his levels for many years.
normal by June, but nonetheless any fall in downgraded forecasts, whereas August
that range would be a dramatic break from was closer to his pre-pandemic forecast. Others are also looking at the pandemic’s
decades of rising emissions – the biggest longer-term impacts. Oil giant BP’s response
annual decline since the second world war. Betts is cautious about reading too much is to cut oil production 40 per cent by 2030. Its
“It’s really huge,” says Le Quéré. into one month’s data and measurements rival Shell sees three ways things could play
at just one site. Regardless, atmospheric CO2 out: a world in which wealth is prioritised and
But then the bad news levels in May hit a record monthly high of emissions keep growing; one where public
417.1 ppm, a level unseen for several million health comes first and emissions start falling
As Le Quéré notes, however, the higher years. The figure for May 2019 was 414.7 ppm. towards the late 2020s; and one where
figure is roughly, but not quite, the annual “We were correct in saying [lockdown]
decrease of 7.6 per cent needed to check wouldn’t make much difference to “The pandemic’s
warming at 1.5°C – this year, and every year, atmospheric CO2,” says Betts. To change emissions
until 2030. That is because climate change things, we need to turn the tap off fully reduction is what
is a cumulative affair. Richard Betts at the and start actively draining the bath too. we need this
UK Met Office likens atmospheric CO2 to the year, and every
water in a bath and our CO2 emissions to a Piers Forster at the University of Leeds in year until 2030”
the UK has estimated that this year’s covid-19
restrictions will have a global cooling effect economies falter amid renewed coronavirus
of just 0.01°C by 2030, if we return to business outbreaks, social and geopolitical tensions
as usual. Staying at home and grounding grow, and while emissions stall in this
planes only goes so far without simultaneous scenario, so does climate action.
systemic change to industry, transport and
power generation. “To make a real difference Leaving this bleak picture aside, David
to CO2 we can’t just make a short-term cut, Hone at Shell says the emissions path the
we have to get to net zero [emissions],” he world takes now will depend on how long
says. “We aren’t going to make the necessary public health concerns necessitate continued
changes without much longer infrastructure large-scale social shifts, such as lots of people
change and the whole structural changes to working remotely. A year may not be enough
the way economies work.” to cement lasting change on that front, but
things could be different after three or four
years of this, he says: “People might even do
renovation for a home office, then they’d >

17 October 2020 | New Scientist | 37

say I’m not leaving because I’ve spent money. Million tonnes of CO2 per dayGlobal daily fossil CO2 emissions WHAT’S HAPPENING
The whole system starts to change.” City 100 WITH GLOBAL
authorities could be forced to address empty 80 CLIMATE ACTION?
urban centres, potentially rezoning them as
residential districts. Pre-pandemic, Hone 60 This year should have been crowned by
thought there was some “wishful thinking” COP26, a landmark UN climate summit
about meeting the Paris agreement goals. 40 hosted by the UK in Glasgow in November.
Today, he sees the health crisis as a possible At it, the world was to thrash out concrete
trigger for the necessary structural change. 20 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 plans to limit global warming to 1.5°C. It was
1970 Year postponed by a year. While no one argues
“We are in a rupture phase,” says Le Quéré. with delaying a 30,000-person conference
She thinks there are two reasons global SOURCE: LE QUÉRÉ ET AL. NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE (2020); amid a pandemic, it does mean preparatory
emissions could change radically. One is GLOBAL CARBON PROJECT; FIGURE: @JONES_MATTW meetings were deferred. A diplomatic drive
car use, which in the EU accounts for of the sort that helped the 2015 Paris summit
44 per cent of all transport-related emissions. Change in global daily fossil CO2 emissions make progress has been hampered.
Curbs on driving and measures to encourage
home working, cycling and walking could Residential Public Aviation This year is also the deadline for countries
immediately cut car emissions. Equally, to submit carbon-cutting plans known as
health concerns may see people opt for 0 nationally determined contributions, or
cars over public transport; there is already NDCs, to narrow the gap between current
evidence of this happening in London. -5 pledges and what needs to happen to meet
the Paris climate goals. Only 12 of almost 200
The second, bigger reason is governments’ % -10 Power nations have done this, and none is a major
post-virus financial stimulus. How much is -15 Industry economy. In September, however, China
for green infrastructure – electrification of Surface surprised the world by pledging to achieve
cars rather than road-building projects, say – Transport “carbon neutrality” by 2060 and promising
will dictate how much we cook the planet. a new NDC. The European Union is signalling
-20 Feb it will have an enhanced NDC before the
The past offers some lessons. The 2008- year’s end, and the UK announced a summit
2009 financial crash was followed by a Feb Mar Apr May for 12 December, the five-year anniversary
stimulus that drove emissions up almost 2020 of the Paris deal being agreed, to encourage
6 per cent in 2010, entirely offsetting the brief leaders to announce new NDCs then.
emissions downturn the crisis had brought SOURCE: LE QUÉRÉ ET AL. NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE (2020);
about. Fortunately, history looks unlikely to GLOBAL CARBON PROJECT; FIGURE: @JONES_MATTW
repeat itself. “The climate stuff really was
buried in 2008, we didn’t really have a green A floating solar Silver lining
stimulus package,” says Stark. “I do think panel array at
this time it’s different. The changing climate a copper mine The delay to COP26 could actually be a good
is much more in the forefront of people’s outside Santiago, thing. Stark says it will allow the UK to put
minds around the world.” Green tech has Chile, in 2019 in place domestic policies needed to hit its
also matured rapidly. In the UK, renewable target of net-zero emissions by 2050, such as
sources generated 6.7 per cent of electricity REUTERS/RODRIGO GARRIDO bringing forward a ban on sales of new petrol
in 2009; in 2019, it was 36.9 per cent. and diesel cars. Momentum is also growing
from businesses, city mayors and other sub-
“One thing that is an improvement on national leaders for stronger emissions cuts,
2008 is there is less of a discussion of whether says Nigel Topping, the UK government’s
investment in green stuff is needed, less High Level Climate Action Champion.
debate over whether climate change is a Meanwhile, Greta Thunberg and other
thing,” says Victoria Cuming at Bloomberg campaigners are maintaining the pressure.
New Energy Finance. She and her colleagues
have noted $159 billion of government Work on basic climate science is one thing
investment announcements mentioning coronavirus hasn’t stopped. Three major
emissions-cutting technology since the start new climate science reports are expected
of the pandemic, with electrification of from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel
transport scooping up about a quarter of that. on Climate Change (IPCC) next year: one
on the physical science of climate change,
Yet three countries – France, Germany one on its impacts and how we adapt, and
and South Korea – account for three-quarters one on how we stem warming. A fourth
of this money, and the $159 billion is only report, a synthesis of the others, is due out
about 1 per cent of all the stimulus. Increasing in 2022. Together they will comprise the sixth
that percentage would offer significant
rewards. Forster found a strong green
recovery now would avoid 0.3°C of warming
by 2050 – a huge step in the right direction.

38 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020

REUTERS/KACPER PEMPEL Climate protesters
in Warsaw,
Poland, on
25 September

assessment report (AR6), a new gold standard WHAT DO fantasy’ or a very ambitious climate
in our understanding of climate change. WE NEED TO presidency, and that will change the
HAPPEN NEXT? geopolitics massively,” says Topping.
The headline news in these reports may
be new estimates of climate sensitivity, In one sense, the events of 2020 have Regardless of the result, the wider world
a measure of how much Earth warms in changed nothing about climate change; has the technology and the tools to halve
response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 – in another, they have changed everything. emissions by 2030 and reach net zero by
in other words, just how bad this is likely to “From a policy perspective, 2020 was not the 2050. The UK’s statutory climate advisers
get. The new, more sophisticated computer year we expected,” says Burgess. And while said last year that the country’s 2050 goal is
models being used for AR6 put the likely the response to covid-19 has shown that deep feasible. It will cost about 1 to 2 per cent of
range of warming at between 1.8 and 5.6°C, emissions cuts can be made quickly, it also GDP with existing technology and without
up from 1.5 to 4.5°C previously. “The general highlights the challenge of making change radical behavioural changes. Governments
perception is [the models] are running hot. last and the limits of individual action. need the political will, and businesses, which
I think most people are expecting it to be no will pay for a lot of it, will be vital. Economic
more optimistic than [the last generation of Significantly, covid-19 has been a reminder shifts well under way, such as the falling
models], and possibly worse,” says Michael that we will have to deal with shorter-term costs of renewable energy and batteries,
Meredith at the British Antarctic Survey. crises as we race to tackle the big one that will will make some decisions easy. Citizens,
play out over centuries, and that these may meanwhile, who can only do so much
The reports will also look in more detail be intertwined. The toxic smoke from the by insulating their homes or buying an
at climate change on a regional level, and US West Coast fires, for example, exacerbated electric car, need to pressure their political
there will be a greater focus on low- the pneumonia that covid-19 can cause, while representatives, in writing, in elections
likelihood, high-impact changes such as coronavirus social distancing complicated and where necessary on the streets.
extra sea level rise from ice mass loss in housing thousands of people fleeing the
Antarctica and Greenland. There will be blazes in sports halls and schools. When covid-19 has become just a
a new chapter dedicated to attributing Wikipedia page, climate change will still
extreme weather events to climate change One big factor in how things play out is the be shaping all our lives, says Meredith.
and detecting humanity’s fingerprint on outcome of the US elections on 3 November. “Whilst our attention is on covid, and
Earth systems. In addition, the global Whoever wins, Donald Trump’s pledge to rightly so, the fact we are losing attention
warming potential of methane, an take the US out of the Paris agreement will on climate change really does hamper
atmospheric pollutant that is shorter-lived become reality the day after. Joe Biden has our ability to do what we need to do, and
than CO2 but with a stronger greenhouse promised a climate plan working towards the time we’ve got is dwindling.” That is
effect, is expected to be upgraded. net-zero emissions by 2050, and pledged to the reality of climate change in 2020. ❚
return the US to being a constructive player
All of that means more hard science in UN climate talks. “We’re either going to Adam Vaughan
for a delayed summit to respond to. have four more years of the ‘bring back coal is New Scientist’s
“I actually think it’s a positive. We’ll lose chief reporter
a year on the negotiations, but gain way
more than a year in terms of ramping up 17 October 2020 | New Scientist | 39
ambition,” says Topping.

Features

How to build
a higher

dimension

We have begun to cook up extra dimensions
in the lab and explore what lurks within.
Jon Cartwright investigates

CHRIS MALBON YOU are running through an open field dimensions, and even suggestions that
with the wind in your hair. Or you are exotica such as new particles might lurk in
diving into the ocean, feeling the cool the extra-dimensional wilderness.
water surround you. At moments like these
we feel free, liberated. Few of us stop to This is a frontier that we are barred from
consider the truth – that we are trapped exploring directly. We are forced instead
in an invisible prison. to look for the subtle imprints that extra
dimensions make on the three dimensions
Up-down, left-right, forward-back: these we are confined to. Even so, we could be
are the three dimensions in which we eat about to extend the boundaries of reality
and breathe, make friends and grow old. in ways that come close to the limits of
As prisons go, it could be worse. Then our descriptive powers.
again, we have never known anything
else. Despite some imaginary claims Talk of extra dimensions might sound a bit
to the contrary, no one has ever really mystical, but spatial dimensions have a clear
experienced a higher dimension. definition. They are a way of describing our
possible range of movement. In normal space,
But now, in some of the world’s most you only need three of them – usually labelled
sophisticated labs, we are building our own x, y and z. True, time is sometimes referred
synthetic extra dimensions. The concept is to as the fourth dimension, and physics tells
so far removed from our experience that it us that it is married to space in the union
is hard to imagine what they could be like. known as space-time. But that is as far as
We have, however, already seen the ghostly we conventionally go. Even the majority of
effects of four-dimensional space touch on physicists seem to be resigned to just three
our own and wired up electric circuits with dimensions. If they were seriously expecting
an extra dimension. It is unlikely to stop more, they might not have chosen their labels
there. Now we have got the hang of it, there from the end of the alphabet. Our struggle to
is talk of creating five, six or even more grasp extra dimensions is nicely captured in

40 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020

Edwin A. Abbott’s 1884 novella Flatland,
which set out to criticise the small-
mindedness of Victorian England by
portraying a flat world inhabited by two-
dimensional shapes. When the square-
shaped narrator is visited by a sphere, he has
great difficulty believing in the existence of a
third dimension. All he can perceive of the
visitor is the shape created by its intersection
with his familiar two dimensions – a circle.
Likewise, when the narrator has a dream in
which he visits a one-dimensional world,
Lineland, the locals reject his tales of the
second dimension: all they can see are the
dots he casts on their narrow path.

“Physicists seem Life on the edge
resigned to just
three dimensions. The story of synthetic dimensions also
If they were begins in a flatland, in materials that are
expecting more, wafer-thin and therefore, to all intents and
they might not purposes, two dimensional. If you apply a
have chosen magnetic field to such a wafer, it makes all
their labels from the electrons inside it want to move in tiny
the end of the circles. And that is just what happens – except
alphabet” at the edges, where there isn’t enough space
and the electrons’ trajectories are chopped
off into semicircles. But instead of stopping
in their tracks, these electrons zip along the
edge, forming a conducting periphery. This is
called the quantum Hall effect, and it creates
a material that is electrically insulating in the
middle but conducting on the sides.

This unusual duality depends on the
one-dimensional edge feeling the effects of
a higher dimension. To see how this works,
imagine a one-dimensional line, much like
Lineland in the novella, with electrons sitting
on it. If you apply a magnetic field to this, the
electrons can’t move in circles; that isn’t
possible in one dimension, so they remain
fixed in place. If this line is the edge of a wafer,
however, the electrons can skip through the
two-dimensional plane. This edge
conductivity is known as a topological state.

If a one-dimensional line can pull neat
tricks when it feels the imprint of another
dimension, can higher dimensions do the
same? The answer is yes. In 2008, decades
after the original discovery of the quantum >

17 October 2020 | New Scientist | 41

Hall effect, physicists discovered a similar University of Birmingham, UK. “Trying to A slice of the
phenomenon in which the electrons on a understand higher-dimensional physics is Calabi-Yau
2D surface skip through the 3D innards of a like crossing into a different universe. You manifold, a
material. Like all topological states, these don’t know what’s waiting beyond that representation
materials have a useful characteristic. It turns frontier,” she says. She wanted to see what of multi-
out that any impurities on the surface won’t new physics might be there, so set out to dimensional
impede an electron’s progress because it can try to make Zhang’s ideas a reality. space (right)
always skip through a higher dimension.
This makes them good electrical conductors. To see how, let’s briefly return to Flatland An illustration
Some physicists think they will be useful in once more. In the story, the sphere finally from Flatland
designing superfast quantum computers. persuades the square of the existence of (far right) shows
the third dimension by bobbing up and how a sphere
Long before this, in 2001, the late theorist down, and thereby changing the size of his would appear
Shou-Cheng Zhang and his colleague intersection with the square’s plane of vision. in a world with
Jiangping Hu, then both at Stanford He starts as a dot when he and the plane are less than three
University in California, dared to consider just in contact, becomes a big circle when his dimensions
a wild progression. Would it be possible to equator passes through the plane, and reverts
create a four-dimensional analogue of the to a dot when he is all the way through
quantum Hall effect, one in which a regular (pictured, far right). The late theorist David
three-dimensional material felt the imprint Thouless developed a real analogue of this
of a fourth dimension? They ended up process in the 1980s. It is called a topological
developing the mathematics that could pump and entails changing the distance
describe such a thing. But it seemed destined between particles in an array in such a way
to remain theoretical – it was tough to picture that it looks like a higher dimensional object
how this kind of maths could be made real. is being “pumped” through them.

Lately, though, a few physicists have In 2018, Immanuel Bloch at the Max Planck
given it a go, including Hannah Price at the Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany,

Two dimensions in one

12 3

45 6 12 34 5 67 8 9

78 9 Now, arrange those points in a one-dimensional Researchers recently repeated this with
line, but have them connected in the same way several rows of real electrical components
One way to build a dimension is to connect a as they were in the grid shown above right. You to create the world’s first four-dimensional
one-dimensional line of components as if they have effectively created two dimensions in one. circuit (see main story).
were a two-dimensional grid. To see how it works,
think of a grid connected as shown above left.

42 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020

VCHAL/GETTY IMAGES
THE HISTORY COLLECTION/ALAMY
“With the shackles of
traditional dimensions
cast off, things could
quickly get wilder”

together with Price and others, created a dimensions. Start with a grid on a sheet of dimensional space, the entire circuit
lattice of atoms held in place by lasers. By paper. Now redraw all the points on that grid conducted seamlessly like a single
tweaking the lasers, they could deform the in a row, and connect them up with squiggly metallic mass. And unlike the previous
lattice to generate the ghostly shimmer of a lines – don’t worry about crossing them – so experiments, the effect wasn’t time-
four-dimensional object. It was a real-world that they are connected with their original dependent. “It’s a permanently four-
example of what the square had experienced neighbours. What you have just drawn, dimensional lattice,” says Price.
with the sphere in Flatland – and, together topologically speaking, is a two-dimensional
with a separate experiment published at the grid in one dimension (see “Two dimensions With the shackles of traditional
same time, it was the first realisation of the in one”, left). Now, replace the points with dimensions cast off, things could quickly
quantum Hall effect in four dimensions. electrical components, and the lines for get wilder. Price, Zilberberg and others say
“We were a bit spooked when we wrote the wires, and you have a situation like the that topological pumps could manifest the
papers,” says co-author Oded Zilberberg at quantum Hall effect, where electrons can quantum Hall effect in six dimensions.
the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology skip through a higher dimension to get to Theorist Motohiko Ezawa at the University
in Zurich. “We thought people might think where they want to go. of Tokyo in Japan says that electric circuits
we’re dealing with science fiction.” have the potential to manifest as many
Expect fireworks dimensions as experimentalists have
Despite Zilberberg’s enthusiasm, it is the patience to wire up.
hard to point to what, or where, the fourth Earlier this year, based on a concept of Price’s,
dimension is in these experiments. It could Yidong Chong at Nanyang Technological But as we build experiments that are
be seen as an illusion cast on the positions of University in Singapore and his colleagues governed by more than four dimensions,
the atoms when their behaviour is viewed expanded this kind of circuit to include the behaviour we observe from our limited
over time. Freeze the system at any instant components not just in a row, but multiple three-dimensional vantage point is no longer
and there is little sign that anything special rows and layers. Applying a voltage across going to be easy to make sense of. It won’t
is happening. “Our experiments weren’t 4D the edges of the stack had no effect: it didn’t be as simple as the Flatlanders discerning a
enough,” says Price. conduct. But when the researchers applied a sphere as a circle of changing width. Instead,
voltage to the components that would have we can expect a firework display of
Far better than conjuring the impression of marked the edge of the four-dimensional bewildering effects.
a fourth dimension is actually building one – grid, had they not been rewired into a three-
so that is what Price did next. To understand In 2018, for instance, Seiji Sugawa at Kyoto
how it works, again picture a scenario in two University in Japan and his colleagues laser-
cooled a cloud of rubidium atoms in such a >

17 October 2020 | New Scientist | 43

Even when we feel
most free, we are
trapped in a three-
dimensional prison

MANUEL BREVA COLMEIRO/GETTY IMAGES to tune the way each particle interacts with its
neighbours – whichever dimension they are
way that its internal states obeyed the “There is a more in – and this would potentially allay Ryu’s
mathematical rules of five dimensions. powerful way to build concern about unnatural behaviour. “This
The signal that trickled out had the weird a synthetic dimension, is my dream,” says Price.
hallmarks of a magnetic monopole, an exotic one that relies upon
object that, unlike any normal magnet, has quantum rules” The dream is perhaps not far from coming
only a north or south pole, not both. Zhang true. In 2015, two independent teams of
calculated that it might even be possible repulsion that results from their charge – physicists created synthetic dimensions of
to observe a five-dimensional version of a may well still be governed by the three the quantum energy-ladder variety out of
Weyl particle, which behaves like a massless normal dimensions. As a result, making atoms, making systems of two dimensions
electron. It isn’t clear whether these could be our own dimensions might not be a in total. That is still two dimensions short
harnessed for a practical application though. reliable way to study the finer points of of the other implementations, but Price
extra-dimensional physics. “That’s my believes that this strategy could ultimately
There is a bigger question before we get to worry,” says Ryu. provide a way to explore bona fide extra-
that: are these synthetic dimensions real? In dimensional physics.
the case of Price’s electric circuit, the extra Still, the story might not end there,
dimension certainly has tangible effects. Yet according to Ryu. There is a more powerful If we pull that off, then Ryu is hoping there
there is a difference between it and the three way to build a synthetic dimension, one that will be new applications, such as making it
dimensions we normally experience. We can relies on quantum particles such as atoms easier to link up the quantum bits, or qubits,
still see the interconnects that collectively having energies that go up in discrete steps. that form the basis of emerging quantum
manifest the extra dimension: it is as if the You can think of these energy states as being computers. The fact that topological states
fourth dimension is somehow wrapped up like a ladder, which the particle can hop up or are protected from impurities and other
within the three dimensions of regular space. down. This might feel like a trick because the sources of disruption suggests that those
Experiments like this ask us to pretend that particle itself doesn’t actually move – its states could deliver high volumes of data
the interconnects – or the lasers, or whatever extra dimension is contained within a fixed without fear of signal loss.
else is responsible for sustaining the extra- position in three dimensions. But this is
dimensional physics – aren’t there at all, exactly the point. This type of extra Studying the behaviour of synthetic
like stagehands at the theatre. dimension is completely independent of the dimensions could also help us understand
regular three. Magnetic fields could be used the possible role of extra dimensions in
Shinsei Ryu at Princeton University fundamental physics. Thanks to Ryu and
raises another issue. If we take Price’s four- others, the theory behind topological
dimensional electrical circuit, he says, the states is so well mapped out that there
primary flow of the electrons is governed by exists a “periodic table” of possible extra-
the synthetic dimension, but their natural dimensional behaviours, dictated by how
interactions – for example, the mutual much underlying symmetry there is in the
system. According to Ryu, it may be no
44 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020 coincidence that there are 10 classes of
symmetry in the table and 10 dimensions
in string theory – the most famous extra-
dimensional idea in physics. “There’s
certainly mathematical connections
between them,” he says.

We are, it seems, only just realising that
we have been living in our own Flatland. “It
opens our minds,” says Zilberberg. “We can
explore things like this for real.” ❚

Jon Cartwright is a freelance
journalist based in Bristol, UK

ANDY SMITHFeatures >

Speak like, 17 October 2020 | New Scientist | 45
uh, a pro

Far from signalling stupidity, our ums
and uhs are part of a hidden language
that we subconsciously understand,
finds David Robson

YOU might expect it to take more than
a two-letter word to sink a politician’s
credibility. But one did just that for
Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau,
in June 2016. With a huge wildfire burning
in the province of Alberta, he had been asked
about the country’s capacity to cope. “Uh,
certainly, I think we’re, uh, all aware that,
uh, uh, a prime minister, uh, showing up at
Fort McMurray, when firefighters are busy
trying to, uh, uh, contain a massive raging
wildfire is, uh, not a particularly helpful
thing,” he began. Trudeau went on to use
a total of 50 uhs in a statement lasting little
more than a minute.

A video soon went viral, and online
commentators were universally scathing.
“Canada’s dumbest, uh, Prime Minister”
wrote one viewer. Reading the unedited
transcript, you may well have questioned
Trudeau’s intelligence yourself. Surely such
hesitation is a sign of sloppy thinking and
ineloquence. Weren’t we taught as children
to eliminate uhs from our conversation?

Yet the latest research shows that this
is an unfounded prejudice. Far from being
an inarticulate waste of breath, filler words
like um, uh, mmm and huh are essential for
efficient communication, sending important
signals about the words we are about to
say so that two speakers can better
understand each other. “They streamline
our interactions, smooth the flow of the >

conversation and manage our social University. They analysed vast records of
relations,” says Mark Dingemanse, who conversations spoken in English covering
studies language and social interaction millions of words and concluded that, far
at Radboud University in the Netherlands. from being mere accidents, filler words
Indeed, he argues that the complexity of constitute a “collateral signal” or
our language today couldn’t have emerged “metalanguage”. In essence, this means that
without them. To which the obvious without changing the overall meaning of a
response may be, “huh?” sentence, they help us coordinate
conversations with minimal confusion.
It is only recently that scientists have paid
filler words any serious attention, with many Take uhs and ums. The analysis revealed
linguists previously considering them to be that these words don’t merely replace
mere errors in speech production with no pauses in a speech, they announce them.
useful function. “People were taught that Intriguingly, the pauses following ums
they were just garbage,” says Jean Fox Tree were about twice as long as those after uhs.
at the University of California, Santa Cruz. This suggests that each filler word signals
The few studies that were done mainly riffled something specific to the listener, rather
through that supposed rubbish for clues to than arising as a processing error, argued
deception – with mixed results (see “I’m, uh, Fox Tree and Clark. These simple “inserts”
telling the truth”, page 48). are managing the listener’s expectations
of what will come next, priming them to
The turning point came in 2002, with either wait patiently as the speaker collects
a landmark paper by Fox Tree and her their thoughts or dive in and help out.
colleague Herbert Clark at Stanford “You’re using these words to negotiate
communication in real time, with a waiting
addressee who wants to communicate with
you right at that moment,” says Fox Tree.
As an illustration, she pauses mid-sentence
without an uh or an um to signal the delay –
and I can confirm that it is indeed very
disconcerting.

Heads up

The paper has now been cited more than
1000 times, igniting more research to
explore the idea that filler words are signals
that guide us through a conversation.
Susan Graham at the University of Calgary,
Canada, for instance, has found that these
words prepare us to be surprised by
something new or unfamiliar. “They are
a signal that something is changing in the
conversation,” she says.

In a series of experiments, Graham hooked
her participants up to special goggles that
tracked the movements of their eyes as they

46 | New Scientist | 17 October 2020