Innehållsförteckning för May/June 2024 från Discover

I DON’T REMEMBER how old I was, but I do remember where I was when I first met a Neanderthal. He was on display in what was then known as the Hall of Human Biology at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York. My family was in the city for a long weekend and my parents naturally gravitated to the museum as an inexpensive and educational distraction for me and my brother. It was an education all right. As far as I can remember, it was the first time I was introduced to the concept of evolution, and here I was looking at a full-sized representation of one of our closest human ancestors, now long extinct. Initially, I just identified him simply as a caveman. My big…

WHEN YOU think of great survivors in the animal kingdom, your mind might not immediately go to the humble pig — but maybe it should. In the wild, pigs are extremely durable. They can thrive in almost any environment, and they’re well-known for being able and willing to eat just about anything. While those two traits signal that wild pigs are highly adaptable creatures, they also make them a nuisance; in the U.S., feral hogs are now considered a highly destructive invasive species. But in Europe, especially in Bavaria, Germany, the meat of the hairy, tusked wild boar (Sus scrofa) is one of the most popular forms of game meat, highly prized prey among hunters in that part of the world. For many years, though, scientists have known that these…

IF YOU REGULARLY ignored a playground’s monkey bars, seesaw, and slide, and instead made a beeline straight for the merry-go-round, you’re likely familiar with the intoxicatingly dizzy feeling that accompanies a good spin session. The light-headedness may come with a touch of vertigo, causing the world to tilt around you, or even bring on feelings of sudden elation. In Turkey, practitioners of Sufism known as whirling dervishes take advantage of these effects, twirling as they dance as a form of meditation and to induce spiritual experiences. Others undergo extensive training to suppress dizziness while spinning: Professional ballet dancers, for example, complete countless pirouettes with ease, while circus performers often dangle gracefully from ropes dozens of feet in the air. There’s no doubt that humans have found many creative ways to…

The 5-year-old girl lay limp in her father’s arms, fast asleep, as he rushed her into the doors of the pediatric emergency department. “We can’t wake her up,” he pleaded, eyes wide and voice rushed with desperation. “Maddie’s never slept this deeply. It’s strange,” he continued frantically. “She fell asleep in the car on the way home from camping. We yelled, pinched her, splashed cold water on her face. She just stays zonked.” She looked like Sleeping Beauty; her cheeks were pink and her breathing comfortable, yet her eyes remained closed. I rubbed her breastbone with my knuckle — a trick that usually wakes kids up — and she didn’t flinch or awaken. A thorough physical exam revealed no signs of injury or illness. Her heart rate, blood pressure, and…

The ability to use fire forever changed the fate of our species: For starters, it allowed our ancestors to cook food, which made them much more efficient eaters. Instead of gnawing on nuts and berries all day, they could now cook animal meat, which packs much more of a caloric punch. They also used fire to make more effective weapons and tools. But there’s a lot we don’t know about humans’ early encounters with fire and its transition into effective, everyday use. What we do know is that H. sapiens weren’t the only hominins who fanned flames. Early humans were at least aware of fire — about 2 million years ago, well before the arrival of modern humans, says John Gowlett, an archaeologist at the University of Liverpool in the…

MICROPLASTICS are everywhere. Everyday items like clothing, food packaging, cosmetics, and car tires shed tiny particles of plastics, which in turn find their way into our blood, baby poop, placentas, and breastmilk. According to recent research, plastics are even in the intricate, delicate tissue that makes up our lungs. Research from 2019 suggests that we might breathe in up to 11.3 microplastics per hour, or up to 272 microplastics in 24 hours. A study published in the journal Physics of Fluids in 2023 discovered that those plastics can get lodged into our airways and stay there over time. “People never thought that we could inhale microplastic, so the data is underestimated and the result is more severe,” says Saidul Islam, the paper’s lead author and a professor at the University…

HEY EVERYONE, Stephen Hawking is throwing a party, and we’re all invited! One catch: Hawking has been dead since 2018, and the party was in 2009. Still, the invitation stands. What if you threw a party and nobody came, but that’s exactly what you expected? That’s precisely what famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking did on June 28, 2009. He rented a space at Cambridge University and got balloons, decorations, and, yes, champagne. Then he sat in the empty room for a few hours and left. Only then did he send out the invitation. ESSENTIALLY, Hawking’s time travel party was held for our future descendants, should they ever crack the mystery of time travel, one of the biggest puzzles faced by modern physics. The setup may seem silly, but Hawking was actually…

They gathered in secret, in the dead of night. To find their way, they consulted a map originally drawn more than a century earlier, counting paces and triangulating their position with compasses. When they reached what they hoped was the right spot, they began to dig. It sounds like something from a movie, but it’s a scene that has played out over and over in real life — and will again in about 17 years. The treasure-hunters are a group of scientists at Michigan State University, taking part in one of the world’s longest-running experiments. Instead of a chest of gold, their treasure is a vault of seeds buried in 1879. Their ongoing mission, passed down through the years, is to answer a seemingly simple question: How long do seeds…

David Grimaldi pauses before a gleaming white cabinet, one of dozens arranged in long rows in a sparse, high-ceilinged room on the first floor of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York. With care, Grimaldi pulls a glass-topped box from its shelf, revealing row upon row of jewel-bright butterflies pinned to a backing board, their yellow and aquamarine hues little dimmed by age. The smell of mothballs wafts from the interior, the ghost of the paradichlorobenzene used decades ago to keep beetles and other pests away from the precious collection. “Our collection of butterflies is probably the best-organized in the world,” says Grimaldi, an entomologist and curator of invertebrate zoology at the AMNH. That’s no mean feat, considering that some 1.3 million butterfly specimens reside in the…

In the age of air travel, the Calanais Standing Stones (or Callanish, in the anglicized spelling) are not so hard to get to, and yet, the site feels remote. The ancient stone megaliths are perched at the edge of the village that shares their name, on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis, part of the Outer Hebrides chain of islands that sits off the northwestern coast of Scotland. Having read of Calanais’ status as the “Stonehenge of the North,” I was determined to make the journey; it had been on my bucket list for years. Stonehenge itself tends to unfairly dominate conversations about prehistoric Britain. Yes, it is the most visited stone circle, and certainly one of the most striking, but it is hardly alone. Many hundreds of…

INSIDE THE GREEN MONSTER Energized electrons fizzle in this composite image of Cassiopeia A, the cosmic remnants left behind after a star violently burst in a supernova about 11,000 light-years from Earth. For the first time, astronomers have combined data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to peer deeper into the supernova remnant and unspool a mystery: the origin and presence of the wispy, serpentine “Green Monster,” named due to its resemblance to the wall in Fenway Park. The unusual structure has puzzled scientists since it was first spotted in JWST data in 2023. Comparing the X-rays from Chandra and infrared data from JWST revealed that the Green Monster came from the supernova’s blast wave smashing into surrounding debris, producing radioactive emissions.…

CLOSE YOUR eyes and imagine a snoozing triceratops or a T. rex taking a siesta. How, exactly, did these prehistoric beasts sleep? For scientists, it’s difficult to say — largely because most dinosaurs didn’t die that way. In other words, the only way we can know how a dinosaur slept would be if they fossilized in a sleeping position, but finding a dinosaur in a sleeping position is uncommon. Most fossils we’ve found show dinosaurs in a classic “death pose,” as shown at the upper right, their bodies contorted as they brace for their imminent demise. Still, a few key specimens found in recent years have provided some clues into the sleeping world of these ancient creatures. SCOTT PERSONS, a paleontologist at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina,…

MAYBE YOU’RE sprawled on the sofa, clutching the armrest in terror — yet still unable to tear your eyes away — as Freddy Krueger slices his way across the screen in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Or perhaps you’re tiptoeing through a haunted house at a local amusement park, bubbling with nervous anticipation as you walk around every corner. You might even be sitting in the dark of a movie theater, gasping and shrieking at the latest horror flick in unison with dozens of strangers. Most people tend to avoid things that scare or frighten them. So why, exactly, do some of us shell out money to watch movies and visit attractions designed to trigger feelings of terror? “What has historically been called the ‘paradox of horror’ is that, on…

WHEN EUROPEAN ARCHAEOLOGISTS and anthropologists started stumbling across the first Neanderthal fossils almost two centuries ago, they didn’t imagine that they’d discovered a distinct species. Their initial investigations inspired them to think that they’d identified some of the oldest specimens of Homo sapiens in Europe; it wasn’t until years later that they realized the remains represented another species altogether, completely separate from our own. The low, long shape of the species’ skull and the short, stubby build of the species’ body were initially interpreted as indications that Homo neanderthalensis — named after sites in Germany’s Neander Valley where some of the specimens were first found — were neither intelligent nor innovative. Despite the fact that some of these first fossils were buried beside stashes of stone tools, Neanderthals were swiftly branded…

With their tools, art, and control of fire, it’s increasingly difficult to see the achievements of the Neanderthals as all that different from the achievements of our own ancestors. Adding to that difficulty is recent research into Neanderthal speech. In 2021, researchers at University of Binghamton in New York state and Universidad de Alcalá in Spain discovered that Neanderthals had auditory and speech capacities similar to modern-day humans. Drawing on CT scans and 3D models of the ear structures of both H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens, the findings are a further indication that we share more similarities with Neanderthals than scientists previously thought. While fossilized footprints and food scraps have hinted that Neanderthals were competent social creatures, how they communicated with one another remained a mystery. The 1989 discovery of…

ANDREA MOSIE greeted me at the doorway to the moon with a wink. “Are you ready?” she asked. I had been warned about the technical procedures that would precede my visit, but I was not prepared for what I would see, and she knew it. Only a few hundred humans have ever been to space. Only a handful have ever walked on the moon. But there is one other way to experience that other realm, and it is through a doorway at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. I entered a boringly tan federal building, walked up an undecorated flight of stairs, and reached the vault of our stars. It’s called the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office, and it’s where you can meet 842 pounds of the moon, up close…

In the cooler months, a visit to kłlilx’w in Osoyoos, British Columbia, will only bring a view of a kidney-shaped lake. But when summer nears and the water evaporates, a different sight emerges. That’s when colorful polka dots materialize on the lake’s surface, inspiring its more well-known name — Spotted Lake. The hundreds of formations are brine pools surrounded by a white, salty crust formed out of calcium, sodium sulphate, and magnesium sulphate, along with traces of other minerals. Since the lake is endorheic — landlocked with no outlets — water can only depart through evaporation, leaving minerals behind. Its colors range from blue to green to yellow, depending on the spot’s chemical concentration as well as the amount of rain that year. During World War I, the lake’s unique…