Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2020 i National Geographic Magazine

HUMANKIND HAS A complicated relationship with robots. On one hand, we appreciate how they can do dangerous, repetitive work so we don’t have to. Robots don’t need vacations or medical insurance. And in areas such as agriculture, where farmers can’t find enough people to pick the produce, robots can shoulder (do they have shoulders?) some of those tasks. But polls show that the growing robotization of the planet makes us feel deeply uncomfortable—and threatened. Pew Research Center surveys after 2017 found that more than 80 percent of Americans believed that by 2050, robots would do much of the work humans now do—and about 75 percent believed that would make economic inequality worse. Across lines of race, age, and education, people who said automation has hurt workers outpaced those who said…

LABORATORIES LIKE THIS “high containment” facility are used to safely handle infectious agents. Whether detecting pathogens and diagnosing diseases or unraveling the molecular structure of microbes, scientists use specialized tools with great care. This lab, at the Szentágothai Research Center at Hungary’s University of Pécs, is rated at a high biosafety level, meaning that transmission of microbes handled here can cause serious or deadly disease. This work space is photographed through a technician’s face shield and past its respirator mask valve.…

This army ant bears a beetle behind When colonies of hundreds of thousands of army ants go on the march, with them go symbionts that sponge off the army’s resources—and members. One symbiont found in Costa Rica was hiding in plain sight: a beetle that clamps its mandibles around the ant’s middle and rides along, looking like a double-vision version of the ant’s backside. —PATRICIA EDMONDS PALEOANTHROPOLOGY WALKING BACK IN TIME, IN A VOLCANO’S SHADOW A TANZANIAN VILLAGER HAS DISCOVERED A TREASURE TROVE OF ANCIENT FOOTPRINTS. NINE MILES NORTH of the volcano called Ol Doinyo Lengai, which means “mountain of God,” researchers funded by the National Geographic Society have cataloged a rare find: more than 400 fossil footprints (above) laid down by humans who walked and jogged across mudflats 10,000…

IN ALMOST EVERY PHOTO from our 1986 family vacation to Washington, D.C., I am showing off the souvenir I picked out from the gift shop at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo—a white, oversize, cotton sweatshirt with puff-paint pandas dancing on the front. I was nine years old, and pandas were cool. Not even midsummer heat could deter me from keeping that sweatshirt on throughout the trip. I remember very little from the vacation, aside from the thrill of being at the zoo and seeing the giant pandas, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing—star attractions on the tourist circuit. The following year Ling-Ling gave birth to twin cubs. The babies didn’t survive, but I don’t remember learning that as a kid. Nearly 30 years later I found myself in the midst of a pool of…

1. DETECT A camera senses the target object and sends data to the software in the robot’s “brain”—a desktop computer—which sends command signals to the hand. 2. GRASP Pressurized air from a compressor activates fingers, allowing them to curl and straighten as required, while controlling any impact. Fingers mold around the object for a firm grasp. 3. MANIPULATE A soft, compliant hand and opposable thumb allow the robot to change the position of the object to perform various tasks, such as getting a better grasp on it or passing it on. 4. INTERACT Soft robots are safer than rigid, metal ones when it comes to working with humans. Any impact or force that could harm a human is reduced by the soft materials. FROM CLAWS TO TENTACLES The human hand…

Climate change has shortened the ice season considerably on the Great Lakes. A complicated combination of factors—the El Niño phenomenon, for one—influences the weather in any given year. So some winters are still cold and icy, but warmer, shorter seasons are becoming more common over the long term. In this rare, nearly cloud-free satellite image taken February 23, 2020, all five of the lakes are mostly ice free. Even the shallowest, Lake Erie, barely shows any ice.…

WHO Woods is a Dutch-Canadian documentary photographer based in Italy. WHERE Les Cayes, a city in southwest Haiti WHAT A Hasselblad medium format film camera with a 50mm lens Woods lived for several years in Haiti, where many people may not read or have access to television or the internet but radio is ubiquitous. In the city of Les Cayes, Woods spent months photographing radio programs’ hosts. One of the most popular, Sister Melianise Gabreus broadcast a daily advice show on 95.5 FM, the Roman Catholic diocese’s channel. She was shy at first, says Woods, but posed for this 2013 photo when “I told her many of her faithful listeners would be very happy to see what she looks like.” This page showcases images from National Geographic’s Instagram accounts. We’re…

THE IMPRESSIVE LANDSCAPES on Earth can take a person’s breath away. But for Reuben Wu, that wasn’t enough. Wu—a photographer, visual artist, and music producer—felt that the planet’s majestic mountains, glaciers, and beaches were missing something. Specifically, unnatural lighting. The idea was born from a mistake. One night near Death Valley, California, Wu set a camera to make a time-lapse series in the dark. A pickup truck drove by and washed out the scene with its harsh headlights. At first, says Wu, “I was really annoyed. But when I looked at the images, I was fascinated. Here was artificial lighting in a natural environment.” The juxtaposition launched his desire to try adding light to other scenes where it didn’t belong: on lakes, in canyons, on tall rock pillars in the…

Cities in the United States used a wide range of interventions to try to contain the 1918 pandemic—from closing schools and banning public gatherings to enforcing isolation and quarantine. Each city shown here adopted at least one measure. The time of implementation and duration of social distancing measures proved to be significant factors in a city’s mortality rate.…

All three electric eel species are found in tropical South America. Electrophorus varii evolved in lowland waters that were murky, slow flowing, and mineral-rich. E. electricus and E. voltai adapted to highland rivers where water is clear and mineral-deprived. Some experts believe that E. electricus and E. voltai split as species when the Amazon changed to its modern course. CELLULAR CIRCUITRY Thousands of excitable cells called electrocytes make up the eel’s electric organs. When activated, gated sodium channels in the electrocytes’ membranes open. An incoming flow of ions then polarizes the eel’s skin and creates an electrostatic field in the water around it. The voltage one electric eel can generate is the sum of all the small charges produced by the electrocytes. TOP CHARGERS Once believed to be solitary animals,…

HATCHLINGS KNOWN as “penny turtles” or “pet-shop turtles” were sold in Australian stores in the 1960s and ’70s. Aussie reptile expert John Cann couldn’t figure out the turtle’s species or origin for years—until he saw one in its only native habitat, the Mary River in Queensland. That was just the first of many intriguing discoveries about Elusor macrurus—the Mary River turtle, listed as endangered by the IUCN and other conservation groups. It’s one of Australia’s largest freshwater turtles, topping out at nearly 18 pounds in a 17-inch-long shell. It’s thought to have split from other species about 40 million years ago and is the only species in its genus. It may live to be 100 years old and not start reproducing until it’s 20. And when E. macrurus does breed,…

Most of us happily get by on a single cartoonish idea about ostriches: They’re the big birds that bury their heads in the sand in times of crisis, supposedly thinking that if they can’t see danger, danger can’t see them. In our ragbag of stereotypes, ostriches have thus become the quintessential dim-witted animals. Even the Bible says they’re dumb, and bad parents too. The head-in-sand idea is a threadbare, 2,000-year-old hand-me-down from the Roman naturalist Pliny, who sometimes passed on tall tales. Think about it. Ostriches have long, bony legs, a torso held aloft like a great floating raft of flesh and feathers, and a neck like a periscope, topped by a wedge-shaped head with eyes bigger than an elephant’s, at a height of up to nine feet. It is…

PRIORITY AREAS Protecting 35 percent of the ocean (green areas) would benefit biodiversity, food production, and carbon storage. Dark green shading indicates top conservation priorities. MARINE CONSERVATION While 7 percent of the ocean has some form of protection, only 2.5 percent is highly protected from extractive activities. SPECIES SURVEYS The team has measured the size, abundance, and biomass of more than 7,000 species so far.…

Last winter, ice covered only 19.5 percent of the Great Lakes’ surfaces, nearly a record low. If the water doesn’t cool enough in the winter, it will warm faster in the spring and summer. The Great Lakes’ ice seasons are shortening by an average of about half a day per year. It’s still dark and well below freezing when Kristie Leavitt pulls to a stop and turns off the ATV’s rumbling motor. For a moment, there’s no sound but the faint whisper of wind sweeping over the ice. The navy blue sky begins to lighten. The cold air burns in her lungs. Bundled in a hot-pink coat that matches her fishing hut and gear, Leavitt hops down from the driver’s seat onto the 18-inch-thick ice that covers this corner of…

When Enric Sala quit his job as a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2007, it was because he was tired of writing death notices. ‘I found myself writing the obituary of the ocean with more and more precision,’ he says. Rather than spend any more of his life documenting the dying, Sala decided to try to safeguard the living in the few remaining patches of ocean where the Grim Reaper had yet to swing his scythe. These scattered remnants are the last wild places of the sea—the marine equivalent of the remotest tracts of old-growth forest in the Amazon—still undamaged by overfishing, pollution, and climate change. “It was necessary for us to go to places that still look like the ocean as it was 500 years ago,” Sala…

FOR THE LONGEST TIME, I ASSOCIATED THE CITY OF GDAŃSK WITH MY POLICE DETENTION. IT WAS DECEMBER 16, 1982, AND A YEAR EARLIER THE COMMUNIST AUTHORITIES HAD IMPOSED MARTIAL LAW. They were signaling an easing of restrictions by releasing the Solidarity trade union leader Lech Wałęsa after 11 months of internment. A government spokesman smugly described him as “the former head of a former union.” Wałęsa was due to give a speech that day, and about 40 of us—foreign correspondents, photographers, and our Polish assistants—were clustered next to the entrance to his apartment block, expecting to go inside for an interview. Instead, police barred us from entering. Because Solidarity was banned at the time, Wałęsa’s speech and our attempt to see him were deemed illegal. The face-off was at first…

JANUARY 1947 In the aftermath of World War II and Soviet occupation, the Polish communist party takes power in a fraudulent election. DECEMBER 1970 Demonstrations and strikes against price hikes break out in Gdańsk and spread to other Baltic coast cities. At least 40 people are killed and more than a thousand wounded. OCTOBER 1978 Karol Józef Wojtyła, the archbishop of Kraków, becomes Pope John Paul II. His 1979 visit to Poland rallies millions of the disaffected. AUGUST 1980 Led by Lech Wałęsa, workers at the Gdańsk Shipyard go on strike. By the end of the month, authorities recognize the Solidarity trade union. DECEMBER 1981 Backed by the Soviet Union, Poland’s leader declares martial law. Wałęsa and other dissidents are arrested. OCTOBER 1982 Solidarity is banned. JULY 1983 Martial law…