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ADDICTION : HOW DNA DETERMINES RISK P. 48

SCIENCE FOR THE CURIOUS

®
NOVEMBER 2019

10thatExperiments
changed EVERYTHING P. 40

PLUS

TELESCOPES KICK OFF

A COSMIC REVOLUTION P. 34
IN SEARCH OF BONUS
SUPERCORN! P. 26 ONLINE
CONTENT
UNCOVERING THE CODE p.3
GENES OF DEPRESSION P. 68
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NOVEMBER 2019
VOL. 40, NO. 8

FEATURES

26
The Fix Is In
Could a marriage between
corn and bacteria solve the
world’s fertilizer problem?
BY TRACY STAEDTER

34
Go Big
A quartet of giant telescopes
will kick off a new era of
discovery.
BY RICHARD TALCOT T

40
10 Experiments
That Changed
Everything
Short on tech, long on
ideas, early thinkers
redefined our world.
BY ADAM HADHAZY

48
Addicted, More
or Less
Your genes influence how
easily you get hooked.
BY BILL SULLIVAN
SARAH HANSON

Thanks to Ozzy Osbourne, researchers

are learning addiction is not a
one-size-fits-all condition (p. 48).

N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 3

 CONTENTS

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS

6 EDITOR’S NOTE
Test, and Test Again
Experimentation — and sometimes failure
— is the key to making the abstract real.

7 INBOX
Readers weigh in on off-planet exploration
and what an ancient bird did for kicks.

9 THE CRUX
Storing data in DNA inches
closer to reality; the historic
p. 18
roots of a word that describes
a cool phenomenon; getting
grounded about water usage;
the human cost of climate
change; and more.

TOP: COLLAGE BY ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER; SHUTTERSTOCK ELEMENTS: THIAGO ANTUNES 027, LIYA GRAPHICS. BOTTOM: RON MILLER
18 VITAL SIGNS
Domino Effect
A healthy, middle-age woman crumples in
her kitchen. It’s just the start of a potentially
deadly mystery.
BY H. LEE K AGAN

22 NOTES FROM EARTH p. 56

#Wildlife
Harnessing social media’s powers for good, 68 PROGNOSIS
ON THE COVER
amateur photographers provide a treasure
trove of footage for researchers.
The Manhattan Project Addiction: How DNA
BY NANCY AVERET T
for Depression Determines Risk p.48
Scientists launch a bold initiative to get to 10 Experiments That Changed
the roots of a massive mental health issue. Everything p.40

BY LINDA MARSA Telescopes Kick Off a

55 OUT THERE: BONUS

Cosmic Revolution p.34

ASTRONOMY SECTION 74 20 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW In Search of Supercorn! p.26

Uncovering the Genes
Where did Earth’s water come ABOUT … of Depression p.68
from? A new hypothesis suggests Moles
a surprising source. Plus: Women So much more than garden pests, moles Cover Photograph by
memorialized on the moon. Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock
have superpowers. Can you dig it?
BY GEMMA TARLACH

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 Discover
SCIENCE FOR THE CURIOUS
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BECKY LANG Editor In Chief

DAN BISHOP Design Director

Test, and Test Again EDITORIAL

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O
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I’ll never forget sitting in physics MCLEAN BENNETT Copy Editor
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Contributing Editors
from Mr. Price. He reveled in getting us TIM FOLGER, JONATHON KEATS,
to visualize in our minds what’s happen- LINDA MARSA, KENNETH MILLER,
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PAMELA WEINTRAUB,
spring bounces back. He pushed us to DARLENE CAVALIER (special projects)
understand the underlying equations,
ART
and then, with his infectious enthusiasm, ALISON MACKEY Associate Art Director
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One story in this issue, for me, is kind ERIK KLEMETTI, NEUROSKEPTIC,
COREY S. POWELL, SCISTARTER,
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6 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
 INBOX
PRINT FEEDBACK
Swimming on Air
(July/August 2019)
“Everything Worth Knowing: Flight” by
Jonathon Keats notes that the
Archaeopteryx likely used its wings
similarly to the butterfly stroke of a
swimmer, but states the purpose of the
vertebrae running through the tail and
the asymmetrical tail feathers remains a
mystery. Having once been a competitive
swimmer, I think the answer to the
purpose of the Archaeopteryx’s tail seems
obvious — it used it like a swimmer’s
dolphin kick. A swimmer uses two dolphin
kicks to every one butterfly stroke with the
arms. Why couldn’t the Archaeopteryx do
the same to propel it through the air? It
could also turn the tail slightly to direct the
flight’s direction and, when soaring, the tail
could be used to aid in ascending and
descending, just like modern birds do.
Mark Austill
Bloomington, Ill.
Life of the Party
(July/August 2019)
I think “Everything Worth Knowing” is
an excellent feature and makes me more
WEB FEEDBACK
Back to the Moon
Vice President Mike Pence announced
March 2019 that the Trump administration
wants to put humans back on the moon
within five years. The mission would
focus on the moon’s South Pole, which
remains relatively unexplored. But with
NASA’s financial setbacks and the
current political climate, it might be more
wishful thinking than anything. We asked
our fans on Facebook: Do you want to
see the U.S. return to the lunar surface?
Mellanie
Nelson Robles:
I want investments in
schools and crumbling
infrastructure, I want a
exciting and the benefits
AGOR2012/SHUTTERSTOCK
Green New Deal — so
many issues have a
higher priority!
its predecessors have all been directed
from Earth, the built-in 20-minute delay
in communication has made this a very
laborious process. But once we finally put
humans on Mars, it seems possible that
they could operate any rover in real time
from an antenna on the Martian surface,
if not by line of sight. With this real-time
control and decent zoom lens cameras,
it would seem feasible to continue our
search for life remotely — just not as
remotely as is currently the case — and at
an accelerated pace.
interesting at cocktail parties. I’m just David Herdman
wondering why I’m not invited to more Winchester, Va.
of them.
David Patterson
CORRECTION
Vancouver, BC, Canada
In our Sept./Oct. feature on gun violence,
the title of a bar graph on firearm deaths
Send the Rovers Over in the U.S. vs. other high-income countries
(June 2019) erroneously stated that the numbers were
It seems to me that there is a quicker per 100,000 people; the numbers represent
and less risky means of looking for life the total deaths in 2015. An updated version
on Mars that does not involve putting is available at DiscoverMagazine.com/
boots on the ground in close proximity to bonus/gunviolence
water, as described in “Protecting Mars
from Ourselves.” We have been using a
series of rovers — which are heat-baked to
Address letters to: DISCOVER
21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box 1612
greatly decrease the risk of contamination Waukesha, WI 53187-1612
— for some time now to conduct that Email: editorial@DiscoverMagazine.com
search. However, because Curiosity and
Francesk Nikolli:
Everyone is saying that the
money can be spent better on
health departments or other things
on Earth, and they’re right. But this kind
of research is also for a better world: By
understanding how our solar system works,
we can have better knowledge on how to
make our planet Earth a better place to
live, and I’m not saying for the next 10,
20 or 30 years, but for the
next 1,000 years and longer!
Mathieu
Steve Roca: Lalonde:
Not under this The real question is
administration, which has set WHY? I’d love to see
Stephen
huge goals for the agency, and humans going back to the
Richard McAdam:
then cut its budget. The ultimate moon, but there has to be
Absolutely. Very
goal (that we’re already seeing and a scientific reason, not
hearing about) is increased “private
to humanity will be a political one.
partnerships” and “corporate
enormous. Good on
sponsorships,” with the ultimate
Trump and Pence.
goal being privatization,
to turn NASA into
NASACAR.
Feedback is edited for space and clarity.
N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 7
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 THE CRUX THE L ATE ST SCIENCE NE WS AND NOTE S

SMART SLIME
No, it’s not a Rorschach inkblot: This image captures two single-celled organisms having a chat. Individual members of
Physarum polycephalum, which in nature clump together by the thousands to form a slime mold, can share information about
their environment via veinlike networks. While researchers have long known that the collective slime molds can learn to avoid
irritants, such as salt, they didn’t know how. But a recent study showed that a single P. polycephalum will actually absorb some
of a potentially problematic substance and hang onto it like a souvenir — and use its venous networks to warn other cells to steer
clear. — JENNIFER WALTER; IMAGE BY DAVID VILLA/CNRS PHOTOTHÈQUE

N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 9

 THE CRUX

10 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
 BIG IDEA
Nature’s
Jump Drive
A new machine may be the tipping point for making DNA-based
data storage mainstream.
IN THE LATE 1990S, geneticists began
studying extinct species’ DNA, analyz-
ing hair and bone preserved in frozen
tundra. At that time, most computers
stored data on floppy disks that held just
1.44 megabytes of memory — smaller
than the average selfie. Today, those disks assembly instructions
might as well be Ice Age artifacts, too. Not for the organism. In the
only is their storage capacity miniscule
by today’s standards, but recovering their
data is practically impossible, due to the
degradation of their materials and the
special equipment required to read them.
The floppy disk encapsulates some of
the greatest long-term challenges to com-
puter science. According to Microsoft
principal researcher Karin Strauss, future
storage will need exponentially greater
density to hold the data we produce as
electronic devices become a greater part
of our lives. Plus, long-term archiving will past couple of decades.
depend on preserving data in a format
that will remain readable, on materials
that won’t degrade.
The answer to those challenges may
lie in you, me and those same prehis-
toric beasts geneticists studied years
ago. “DNA can last for a long time,” says
Strauss, who is also a professor at the
University of Washington. Plus, it can
also store lots of information in very
little space: All the genetic instructions
for a mammoth lie in a single molecule.
By Strauss’ calculation, a whole data
center would be no larger than a couple
cubes of sugar. And since it’s the code
AUGUSTO ZAMBONATO
used by all life on Earth, “we’ll always be support future data centers. The team
able to read it,” she says.
The idea of storing data in DNA
predates Microsoft and floppy disks, if
not quite the woolly mammoth. DNA
is a twisted ladder with rungs made of
four different substrates that connect
in pairs to hold the ladder together. The
order of these substrates,
known as bases, provides
late 1960s, scientists
realized that DNA could
carry other information
if researchers could
dictate the bases’ order
and machines could
read that order. Thanks
to advances in genome
sequencing and genetic
engineering, these
processes have finally
become efficient in the
Computers have also
evolved to become more
powerful. Still, nobody
knew how to efficiently
retrieve precise bits of
the
information from DNA.
That task is “not trivial,”
says UW computer
scientist Luis Ceze,
who directs Microsoft’s
research initiative with
Strauss.
This year, in a joint effort by Microsoft
and UW, Strauss, Ceze and their col-
leagues demonstrated how DNA could
combined software that encodes and
decodes data into DNA with machines
that produce genetic material and
prepare it to be read by the software.
With that system, they managed to store
and retrieve the word hello. The whole
process took 21 hours, but, critically, it
was totally autonomous. “For DNA stor-
age to be practical, we need to remove
the human from the loop,” says Strauss.
Her robot is the first proof-of-concept
for a whole new species of computing.
Still, some scientists question whether
DNA is the best molecule for the job.
“The structure of natu-
ral DNA came from …
The idea of four billion years of
Darwinian evolution,”
storing data in observes Steven Benner,
DNA predates a distinguished fel-
low at the Foundation
Microsoft and for Applied Molecular
floppy disks. In Evolution. In that time,
the late 1960s, DNA has developed a lot
of evolutionary baggage
scientists that can get in the way
realized that of smooth operation in
computers, like physical
DNA could differences in how base
carry other pairs behave. To address
information if this, Benner has recently
developed four artificial
researchers bases that work similarly
could dictate to DNA’s bases, but don’t
have those inherited
bases’ order differences.
and machines Strauss readily
could read acknowledges the bag-
gage, and the long-term
that order. potential of Benner’s
bases. But she points
out that those billions of
years of evolution have provided a good
starting point. Equally important, she
notes, there’s a vast biotech industry
developing the machinery that can help
bring DNA storage from the lab to the
data center. “I think DNA is the best
first molecule for molecular information
technology,” she says. — JONATHON KEATS
N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 11
 THE CRUX
PERSONAL
Dragon Races
Two scientists realize that before you can find out how
dragonflies migrate, you have to catch them.
SARA ZAHENDRA AND KENT MCFARLAND
helped discover something that entomologists
had long suspected: Green darners, a species of
dragonfly, are nomads at heart.
Working with colleagues, the pair, both
biologists at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies,
found that some green darners zoom hundreds
of miles north in the spring, seeking breeding
grounds with fewer rivals and predators. Others,
hatched in the north, zip south in the fall to
escape the cold.
The key to unlocking the insects’ birthplace
was a chemical signature lifted from their wings.
But before the researchers could decode this
critical clue, they had to catch some dragonflies.
Zahendra and McFarland led that effort and,
relying heavily on volunteers, ultimately rounded
up 852 dragonflies. Here, Zahendra describes
their first collecting trip in 2012, at Newnans
Lake in Florida.
12 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
IN HER OWN WORDS . . .
The bet was loser pays for dinner. We
knew a great barbeque place down the
road. I was sure I was going to get more
dragonflies than Kent, but they were
flying above my reach across this field.
Kent is about a foot taller than me,
and he uses this over-sized insect net he
calls Big Papi, like the baseball player
David Ortiz. Kent thinks catching
dragonflies is like hitting a baseball.
“Don’t duff on the first pitch, Zahendra,”
he says. Once you swing at them with
the insect net and miss, dragonflies will
avoid you.
They were avoiding me. But I still
chased them, even though I know they
The green
darner
dragonfly’s
(left) migration
habits were a
mystery until
conservation
biologist Sara
Zahendra
(below) and
team caught
enough of the
insects to crack
the code.
fly 35 miles an hour. I jumped in the
air. I spun in circles. It was like ballet.
I found some Spanish moss and stuck it
in my hair to cloak myself, but it didn’t
work. We were both laughing. There
is something about being bested by an
insect over and over. There was this guy
who saw us from a pickup truck; he
probably thought we were doing some
JERRY MCFARLAND. INSET: KENT MCFARLAND
weird performance art.
I got one dragonfly that day. I was
elated.
The barbeque place served the
best fried okra I’ve ever had. What I
remember about that day is not who
paid for dinner, but how hard I laughed.
— AS TOLD TO MADELINE BODIN
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 THE CRUX

THAT WORD YOU HEARD

Penitentes
If you speak Spanish, this word’s religious meaning is
clear: penitent, or repentant. In scientific circles, though,
penitentes are jagged snow formations, named after
their resemblance to the white, pointed hoods once
worn by some Catholics in Spain.
Researchers believe they form in snowy areas where
it’s sunny but still cold, like mountain peaks in the
summer. Because of the dry, cold air, any snow that
warms too much doesn’t melt; it vaporizes. While other
factors may also play a role, it’s this vaporizing that
whittles the remaining white stuff into the characteristic
points of penitentes.
Earth might not even be the only place you could
spot them. Astronomers suspect that both Pluto and
Jupiter’s moon Europa have their own versions of the
peaks. — LACY SCHLEY; ILLUSTRATION BY CHAD EDWARDS

14 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
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 THE CRUX
BY LACY SCHLEY

Building Blocks

TRENDING Spotting the Signals

A recent New England Journal
of Medicine study says that
electroencephalogram (EEG)
machines can pick up brain

The Human Cost of signals that could hint at

consciousness in unresponsive

Climate Change patients who’ve suffered

brain injuries. Detecting these
In an effort to tackle climate change, dozens of countries, responsible super faint signals isn’t new —
for 55 percent of global emissions, came together to sign the Paris previous work using functional
Agreement in 2016. The pact, which at least 185 countries have magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has spotted them, too.
now signed, aims to limit the global temperature rise to 2 degrees But EEGs are portable and cheaper than fMRI machines. Out
Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) — or even more ideally, to 1.5 C of the 106 patients the researchers worked with, an EEG was
(2.7 F) — and to help countries deal with the impacts of climate able to detect signals in 16 of them. The study’s authors hope
change. In an abstract sense, we all know how important that goal their advancement will help medical staff identify those with
is, but one recent study in Science Advances highlighted just how the best hope of recovery so their families can make more
life-and-death the stakes are. In major cities, extreme heat events informed decisions about life support.
would prove much deadlier with higher global temperatures.
A Problem-Solving
Protein
Lives lost and saved, per single extreme heat event* The fight against malaria is
5,798 tricky. Mosquitoes of the genus
New York 2,716 anopheles, the only carrier of
1,980
the potentially fatal disease, can
2,561 become resistant to the chemi-
Los Angeles 1,085 cal pesticides used to kill them.
759
Plus, those pesticides aren’t

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER; ALPHABE/SHUTTERSTOCK; MAGICLEAF/SHUTTERSTOCK; CHUMAKOV OLEG/SHUTTERSTOCK

2,359 exactly great for the environ-
Miami 1,235 ment. An international research
894
team recently announced, in a Nature Communications paper,
1,781 the discovery of a mosquito-killing biosubstance they say is
Chicago 875
636
better for the planet. It’s a nerve-altering neurotoxin protein
that’s similar to botulinum, the neurotoxin used in Botox.
1,484 Because it’s a protein, it breaks down naturally without leav-
Philadelphia 684
500
ing a residue like other chemical pesticides. The researchers
hope the treatment, which they tested on mosquitoes and
1,372 their larvae in the lab, could someday be a safer alternative.
Detroit 640
462
A Vaccine for
901 Fake News?
Dallas 455
306 In an age where fake news
is an epidemic, experts have
792 been searching for ways to
Houston 352
254 combat its spread. To that end,
Deaths at an increase of 3° C (5.4° F) a team from the University
725
Seattle 384 of Cambridge developed an
279 Lives saved at 1.5° C (2.7° F) vs. 3° C (5.4° F) online game that acts like
a fake-news vaccine. For
526 Lives saved at 2° C (3.6° F) vs. 3° C (5.4° F)
Phoenix 300 15 minutes, players assume
216 the role of propaganda producers in order to learn to spot
the red flags of online disinformation. In their report in the
0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 journal Palgrave Communications, the researchers say that
the 15,000 players they studied were better at spotting fake
*Extreme heat events will differ by locale and average global temperature rise scenarios. For instance, if news after running through the game. Though their tool can’t
temperature rise is capped at 1.5 C, extreme heat may mean 37 C in Chicago and 30.7 C in Los Angeles.
If global temperature hits 3 C, that may mean 39.2 C for New York and 36.5 C for Miami.
stop current fake news in its tracks, the team hopes to at
least learn more about how the disingenuous content can
Source: “Increasing mitigation ambition to meet the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal avoids substantial heat-related hoodwink people.
mortality in U.S. cities,” Science Advances, 2019

16 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
 Well, Well, Well
This geometric patchwork of lush
greens is a satellite shot of farmland in
southwestern Kansas. At the center of
each thriving circle or semi-circle lies
a well. Researchers at the University
of Arizona and the Colorado School of
Mines are especially interested in these
well-water-dependent bits of cropland,
because the wells pump groundwater
that normally would trickle into nearby
creeks and streams before feeding into
rivers. In a recent study (unrelated to
this photo), the Arizona and Colorado
team found that, since such large-scale
groundwater pumping began in the
U.S. in the 1950s, stream flows to rivers
in some portions of the country have
dropped by nearly 50 percent. According
to the authors, knowing how we use our
groundwater now can help us better
manage future use to ensure we’re not
depleting it to dangerous levels.
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“The process of cultural evolution

takes place thousands of times
faster than biological evolution.”
— UCLA psychological anthropologist Alan Page Fiske, who studies
how we respond emotionally to our environment
NASA

N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 17

 VITAL SIGNS
BY H. LEE KAGAN
Domino Effect
A woman is on a roller coaster of cardiac arrest.
What’s wreaking havoc on her heart?
O
Gloria was 46 years old and healthy when she suddenly
« crumpled to the floor of her kitchen like an empty
potato sack. The paramedics found her in full cardiac arrest.
Resuscitated at the scene, she went into cardiac arrest again
in the ER and once more in the ICU, where I caught up with
her. A cardiologist, pulmonologist and general surgeon were
already there.
Anoxic brain injury — oxygen starvation while the heart
stops functioning — had left her unresponsive. A breathing tube
had been inserted through her mouth into her airway. Her heart
rhythm had been restored. Her blood pressure and breathing
were being supported. She was stable, for now.
Initial lab results were all over the map. Liver function
abnormalities, disordered electrolytes, elevated white blood
count — all could be explained by temporary complete lack of
blood flow. But I couldn’t pinpoint the underlying cause of this
disaster. What had triggered the arrests? What had been the first
domino to tip for this woman?
One thing I’d learned as a medical student and have ham-
mered into the heads of my students ever since: The answer
lies in the history. “Listen to the patient; they’ll tell you what’s
wrong.” But this patient was in no position to tell us anything.
18 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
In the ICU waiting room, the special-
ists and I asked the distraught family
members about her health: Prior fainting
spells? No. Recent illness? No. Drug use?
Yes, but she’d been clean and sober for
over a decade, and her toxicology screen
came back clear. Family history of sud-
den death? No. Palpitations, chest pains,
breathing problems? No, no and no.
She had had vague upper abdominal
discomfort on and off for the last week.
Some occasional shoulder pains, too. Not
much, but…
A CT scan related to her abdominal
pains had shown a possible pocket of
air around the site where, 15 years ago,
she’d had a gastric bypass operation. This
air pocket suggested intestinal contents,
including gas, were escaping into her
abdominal cavity. Had Gloria somehow
perforated her gut? The family acknowl-
edged that she’d been taking ibuprofen,
which can cause small holes in the lining
of the stomach and is a no-no for people
with gastric bypasses. Had bowel con-
tents leaked into her abdomen, leading
to shock and now cardiac arrest?
Our surgical consultant wasn’t so
sure, pronouncing her abdominal exam
“unremarkable.”
“But the air pocket in the CT scan…”
we noted.
“The exam was normal,” he assured us.
COLLAGE: ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER. SHUTTERSTOCK ELEMENTS: THIAGO ANTUNES 027, LIYA GRAPHICS
It was a diagnostic dilemma. Which to
One thing trust — the scan or the exam? Did she
or did she not need an urgent, surgical
I’d learned exploration of her abdomen?
as a medical
student U P F O R D E B AT E
“Code Blue, ICU.” Again, she’d arrested.
and have Electric shock was delivered via pads on
hammered her chest and her heart rhythm returned.
into the But a bedside EKG showing Gloria’s heart
rhythm revealed new, dramatic changes
heads of my suggesting a heart attack. The artery
students feeding the lowermost part of her heart
ever since: appeared to be blocked.
The answer “She needs to go to the cath lab now,”
said the cardiologist. “We need to open
lies in the that vessel or she’s going to keep arresting.”
history. “But if there is a leak and we don’t get a
drain into her belly, she won’t survive,” the
surgeon said. Even though the belly exam
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 VITAL SIGNS
had been normal, there might still be serious trouble
in the abdomen.
“She’ll never get off the operating table,” warned
the cardiologist.
“We may have no choice,” replied the surgeon. “I can
be in and out in 10 minutes.”
The urgent debate continued: Was there more risk
in delaying the procedure that would open the blocked
artery or in deferring a surgery to drain the bowel
contents (maybe) spilling out of her gut? There was no
obvious right answer. The only thing obvious was that
we had to decide on something right now.
The cardiologist prevailed, and in the cardiac cath-
eterization lab, he threaded a thin, hollow tube from an
artery in Gloria’s groin up to her heart. As he worked,
I reviewed her EKG again. One section was stretched,
indicating dying heart tissue and potentially an acute
heart attack.
“Normal coronaries,” I heard the cardiologist report.
He had squirted radiographic dye into the arteries sup-
plying both sides of Gloria’s heart. The vessels’ internal
contours showed everything was normal. “There is no
heart attack. The vessels are all open. Let’s get her to the
operating room.”
The members of the surgical team were waiting for
Gloria in the OR. With an anesthesiologist monitoring
her fragile vital signs, the surgeon inserted a flexible
scope through a half-inch opening into her abdomen.
He planned to put in a drain and get out quickly.
The surgeon carefully searched every corner of her
abdomen, packed with organs, bowel, blood vessels
and support structures. Then he looked up from the
monitor, which displayed what the scope saw: “There’s
nothing here. It’s all normal.” Gloria was taken back
to the ICU.
Driving home that night, I kept speculating about
what had tipped this woman into repeated cardiac
arrest. The abdominal discomfort and CT scan had
both been red herrings. So what could look like a heart
attack but not be one?
A TIGHT SQUEE ZE
I thought about angina and an unusual version of it.
Most people have heard of classic angina, the pain felt
in the chest during exertion when some part of the
heart is not getting enough blood flow. Arteries are nar-
rowed as a result of coronary artery disease (CAD) — a
buildup of plaque. Complete obstruction of an artery
from sudden formation of a clot causes a heart attack.
Coronary vasospasm is different. In 1959, physician
Myron Prinzmetal first described vasospastic angina,
aka Prinzmetal’s angina. Unlike typical angina, this
isn’t due to plaque buildup. Instead, what might be an
20 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
R otherwise normal artery spasms tightly. Blood flow is
nearly cut off just as in severe CAD, triggering symp-
toms identical to that of a heart attack. But unlike the
T
P
arteries in CAD, narrowing caused by vasospasm is
reversible. The accompanying EKG changes are like-
Q wise temporary, departing when the spasm resolves.
S Studies by Prinzmetal and others confirmed this
Normal EKG phenomenon in people experiencing coronary
vasospasm, later referred to as Prinzmetal’s attacks.
These unprovoked, spontaneous spasms comprise
about 2 percent of all cases of angina. Its true cause
is unknown because it so often goes unrecognized.
Smoking and stimulant use are among the known risk
factors. Drugs have been identified that can reverse
the spasm; others, when used in a diagnostic test, can
provoke it. I’d have to keep it in mind.
“Tombstone T”
Gloria’s night was uneventful and in the morning
In an EKG, each I learned that she’d begun breathing on her own.
squiggle of the
cardiac cycle is
Coupled with some limb movement, we hoped this
assigned a letter. heralded an early neurologic recovery.
When the cycle is I shared my ideas about vasospasm with the car-
stretched between
the S and T, the diologist, who agreed that a test could confirm the
EKG resembles a diagnosis. But events soon rendered that plan moot.
tombstone — and it’s
a classic indicator Around noon, Gloria’s low blood pressure alarm
of an acute heart sounded. The nurse noted that her heart rate had
attack, based on the
presence of dying slowed to a crawl. And the stretched EKG cycle, which
heart tissue. had disappeared after the previous day’s not-a-heart-
attack attack, was back as well. It was happening again
— the coronary vasospasm. But this time Gloria wasn’t
in her kitchen, she was in the ICU.
She received medicine that reverses the extreme
slowing of the pulse. Coupled with an infusion of
nitroglycerine, a potent dilator of blood vessels, the
T-waves reverted back to normal. The deadly vaso-
Around spasm was aborted.
One in four Prinzmetal’s angina patients will expe-
noon, rience a life-threatening heart rhythm disturbance
Gloria’s — where it’s beating way too fast or way too slow —
low blood during a spasm. The resulting lack of blood flow can
cause fainting or even sudden cardiac death.
pressure That’s what had taken Gloria down. But from now
alarm on, she would take highly effective medications to
sounded. prevent vasospasm.
Had the occasional abdominal and shoulder pains
The nurse mentioned in the history actually been her Prinzmetal’s
noted that discomfort, the pain of non-classic angina? There was
her heart no way to know with certainty. But at least we now had
rate had a name — and a treatment — for that first domino. D
ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER
slowed to H. Lee Kagan is an associate clinical professor of
a crawl. medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. The
cases described in Vital Signs are real, but names and
certain details have been changed.
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 NOTES FROM EARTH
BY NANCY AVERETT

more than a decade to retrieve the card

around 7:30 each morning, then check for
shots of wildlife that had wandered onto
her property in the middle of the night.
She’d captured close-ups of badgers, bears,
pocket gophers — even bobcats. So she
wasn’t surprised that the first photograph,
taken at 4:01 a.m., was a skunk with its
nose poking over the edge of the dish.
Her heart beat a little faster, though,
when she looked more closely and saw
what looked like a rock in the skunk’s front
left paw. In the next photo, the front half of
the skunk’s body was on top of the ice and
it appeared to be using the rock to break
the ice; the third photo seemed to show
the animal drinking. “I have had a camera
in my garden since 2008, so I have seen
thousands and thousands of pictures of
skunks,” Dickerson says, “and I have never
ever seen one holding a rock in its paw.”
Little did she know that not only had
she made an unlikely observation —
scientists believe less than 1 percent of
animals use tools — but she was also
about to become part of a growing phe-
nomenon. As technologies that were once
the exclusive province of professionals,
such as motion-detecting cameras and
telephoto lenses, find their way into the
hands of more laypeople, the amount of
A first, caught on photographic documentation of wildlife

#Wildlife
film by a backyard has exploded. Now, often through the
camera trap: a skunk
using a rock as a tool. use of social media, those data are being
discovered and used by researchers. “I
Researchers tap a treasure trove of observations think there’s huge potential for this kind of
collaboration between scientists and keen
in social media posts by amateur photographers. amateurs,” says Christian Rutz, a professor
at the Centre for Biological Diversity at the

O
Two holes in the ice caught Sue Dickerson’s attention University of St. Andrews. “We’re starting
« when she checked a black plastic water dish in her yard Her heart to see some of the first examples of people
one morning in February 2018. The temperature had dropped beat a little doing this, but I think there is much more
to 18 degrees Fahrenheit overnight, so it didn’t surprise her faster when to come.”
that the top layer of water in the dish had frozen. But what had Rutz recently co-authored a paper with
made those holes? She studied them for a moment. “Flickers,”
she saw a photographer while compiling a timeline
she thought to herself. The woodpeckers often hung out in her what looked of observations of nuthatches, small song-
Colorado Springs, Colorado, front yard and had likely pecked like a rock in birds, using tools. Rutz had found four
through the ice to get a drink. Dickerson, who had stepped the skunk’s published reports of the behavior in the
outside to grab the photo card from the motion-activated camera academic literature — from 1968, 1993,
SUZANNE DICKERSON

she’d set up near the dish, crouched, hooked her index finger into front left 1995 and 2016 — but none offered pho-
one of the holes and tossed the ice. paw. tographic evidence of the birds at work.
Back inside, she settled in front of her computer monitor and At the last minute, Rutz thought he’d bet-
started clicking through the photos. It had been her routine for ter double-check. “I did a classic Google

22 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
 NOTES FROM EARTH
image search, ‘nuthatch tool use,’ just to
make sure,” he says. Up popped a page from
gardenbirdwatching.com, a blog created by
Simon Deans, a retired supermarket execu-
tive. On it were several photos of a Eurasian
nuthatch using a piece of wood to try to lift
up a patch of willow tree bark, presumably
looking for something to eat.
Deans had spotted the unusual phenom-
enon in June 2013, while strolling through
a park near his home in south London.
He’d been at the park photographing birds
for several hours and needed to leave to
pick up his daughter from school, but it was
then that he noticed two nuthatches flitting
around a willow tree. He raised his telephoto
lens and watched them for a while. Then as
one of the birds picked up the wood and
tried to pry up some bark, he started snap-
ping. “I was quite lucky that I managed to get
the photographs,” he says.
He received a handful of congratulations
on his Facebook page but no one who saw
the pictures recognized their significance
— until Rutz, who, despite his own excite-
ment, was reserved when he first got in
touch with Deans. “I wanted him to tell me
in all honesty the details of that observation
without me prompting certain answers,” he says.
He and other scientists say they must be careful
interpreting data collected by laypeople, and they
don’t believe data gathered via social media or other
online sources should be seen as an alternative to
fieldwork. Nevertheless, they feel it would be foolish
for researchers not to tap into such a resource. “We’re
undergoing very rapid environmental changes at the
moment, from land conversion to climate change.
And the challenge is that, particularly for the kinds of
animals we study with camera traps, we have very little
data. They’re all nocturnal forest animals that hide
away,” says Marcus Rowcliffe, senior research fellow
at the Zoological Society of London. He recently co-
authored a paper calling for a global, interconnected
network of remote motion-detecting cameras to
monitor biodiversity. The effort would include train-
ing citizen scientists to set up and retrieve photos from
camera traps in the wild.
“Such a network would not be a trivial thing to set
up,” Rowcliffe says, “but could have huge benefits.”
One benefit could be a better understanding
of how different species are adapting to climate
change. Emiliano Mori, an evolutionary biologist at
the University of Siena, wanted to learn more about
24 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
interference competition — when one spe-
cies chases another away from a resource
they both want — between roe deer and
chamois, a type of mountain goat in the
Western Alps. The two species only recently
have begun interacting, he says, as climate
change brings the roe deer to higher alti-
tudes. When he checked the academic litera-
ture for evidence of these interactions, Mori
came up empty. So he turned to Facebook
pages created for Italian amateur wildlife
photographers, and found 67 photographic
examples. “I told them they were going to
be part of a research paper and they happily
participated,” he says of the photographers.
Dickerson also connected with a scientist
after she saw her shots of the skunk with
the rock. She quickly posted several on her
Twitter account along with the comment:
“Do skunks use tools? I may be reading far
too much into these photos.” Then she went
to make a cup of tea. “Normally, if I get 25 or
50 likes, that’s pretty good for me,” she says. “I
went and made my tea, then came back just
to see if anybody had perhaps retweeted it
… and I saw I had 100 notifications. I started
going through them and thought, ‘Oh wow,
The work of amateur this is terrific, other people are seeing what
photographers I’m seeing.’ ”
has increasingly
helped researchers One of the first to respond to the tweet was Mario
looking for rare Pesendorfer, a postdoctoral researcher at the Cornell
or undocumented
animal behaviors. Lab of Ornithology, who studies animal behavior. He
Above, a nuthatch in a reached out and asked Dickerson if she’d like to be a
city park uses a stick
to pry up tree bark. co-author on a research paper about the tool-using
skunk. Nine months later, the two, along with a third
author, Jerry Dragoo, an expert on skunk behavior,
published the finding in the journal Ecosphere.
Having her photographs in a scientific journal after
10 years of using camera traps was hugely satisfying to
Dickerson. But the best part about the whole process,
As one of she says, was the reaction from her two daughters.
the birds Though normally their eyes glazed over when their
picked up mother starting talking about her hobby, that wasn’t
the case when Dickerson showed them the photos and
the wood told them she was probably the first person to have
and tried to captured skunk tool use on film.
pry up some “No!” her daughters exclaimed. “There’s no way
bark, he you’re the first person to do that.”
Dickerson laughed. “I know you wouldn’t think so,”
started she replied, “but I really think there’s a chance that
snapping.
SIMON DEANS
I’m the first.” D
Nancy Averett is a freelance writer covering the environment.
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 THE
FIX
IS IN
GREATSTOCK/ALAMY

Some plants can form

a partnership with soil
bacteria to get the
nitrogen they need.
Can we teach modern
corn a similar trick?

26 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
 Could a
marriage
between
corn and
bacteria
solve the
world’s
fertilizer
problem?
BY TRACY STAEDTER
STEVE GSCHMEISSNER/
SCIENCE SOURCE
 I
n retrospect, a Wisconsin cornfield in mid-
September 2018 wasn’t exactly the best
place for an academic seminar. It was hot.
There were horseflies. The sun cast a glare
on the white poster boards, and the metal-
lic chunk-chunk-chunking of a nearby
grain elevator made it difficult at times to
hear the main speaker. He was Walter Goldstein, a
soft-spoken man in his mid-60s who had invited
about 30 researchers and farmers to this field to make
a point: Corn could thrive with little to no nitrogen
fertilizer.
“We’re using too much nitrogen,” Goldstein said.
“It’s polluting all of our water … It’s polluting the
Mississippi. It’s just awful, and yet we need it in order
to get the yields.”
Goldstein, an agronomist and the founder and
executive director of the nonprofit Mandaamin
Institute in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, said he’d been
breeding corn under low-fertilizer conditions for
decades. He asked one of his assistants to hold a
poster board with a blown-up photo of rows of corn.
“Can you see the color differences here?” Goldstein
asked. On one side of the photo were the rows of corn
he’d bred, noticeably more vibrant and deeper green
than the rows of commercial corn planted on the
other side. This deep color indicated the plants were
getting abundant nitrogen, a fundamental element
they need to grow and make chlorophyll, the green
pigment necessary for photosynthesis.
Although commercial corn typically gets some
nitrogen from decayed organic material in soil, it
mainly gets it from fertilizer — either organic, such
as manure, or inorganic, such as ammonia — spread
Nitrogen is an
essential nutrient for
plant growth. The
darker green color of
the hybrid corn plants
on the left shows
they are getting more
nitrogen than the
commercial variety
on the right.
28 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
by the farmer (See “A Century of Ammonia,” opposite
page). Goldstein said he hadn’t added fertilizer to
his greener crops, though. Instead, he had cultivated
varieties that would team up with microbes that pro-
cess, or “fix,” nitrogen into a form usable by the plants.
Goldstein’s microscopic organisms came as a
powder that he sprinkled in the soil when the seeds
were sowed. These particular bacteria convert nitro-
gen gas in the air, which plants can’t process, into
nitrogen-rich ammonia, which they can. In return
for the ammonia, plants provide the nitrogen-fixing
bacteria with shelter and the sugary carbohydrates
they need to survive.
That the microbes enhanced the corn’s vitality was
somewhat of a surprise. For a long time, scientists
thought these microorganisms only lived inside the
nodules on the roots of legumes — members of the
bean family, like soy, peas and alfalfa — not corn.
Nodules give microbes a safe place to produce the
enzyme nitrogenase, necessary for fixing nitrogen,
while shielding them from oxygen, which can shut
down the reaction.
But over the years, research teams have found
nitrogen-fixers living in the root nodules of other
species, too, like red alder trees and certain tropi-
cal trees and shrubs. They’ve also found them in the
plant tissues of sugarcane and some trees. And last
year, researchers published a report that an ancient
corn variety in Mexico was harboring N-fixers, too.
Though it once seemed impossible that plants without
nodules could team up with bacteria to get this essen-
tial nutrient, it’s become increasingly clear that that’s
not the case. Most importantly, it’s not the case for
corn, one of the planet’s most nitrogen-hungry crops.
FROM LEFT: ALEN KADR/SHUTTERSTOCK; WALTER GOLDSTEIN/MANDAAMIN INSTITUTE
 For decades, scientists have been working to NITROGEN-FIXING NODULES
find a way to grow corn with less fertilizer. Some Plants need the element nitrogen to grow, but they can’t use the
are using genetic engineering techniques to nitrogen that’s in the air. Legumes, members of the bean family, get
focus on the plant, others have been experi- around this problem by providing a home for nitrogen-fixing bacteria
menting with microbes, and still others, in nodules on their roots.
like Goldstein, have been using classical
Bean plant
breeding methods to tap into the plants’ Atmospheric
age-old ability to partner with the nitrogen (N2 )
bacteria.
What these scientists uncover could
upend agriculture as we know it by
reducing the global use of fertilizer
— all while still producing the yields
Nodules
necessary to sustain our civilization. Nitrogen-fixing
bacteria
SKIP THE MIDDLEMAN

ia
er
t
For nearly 20 years, a simple ques- b ac
tion has nagged Luis Rubio, an s the
ee d
f
associate professor at the Center for Sugar t
p lan
Plant Biotechnology and Genomics the
to
in Madrid, Spain. Why can’t plants fix gen
nitro
NH3 provides
nitrogen on their own, without the help
of microbes?
He suspects it’s because plants can’t
make the nitrogenase enzyme. “Here comes
Nitrogen-fixing bacteria
a challenge: Let’s make it possible,” he says. use an enzyme called N2
For Rubio, that means moving the genetic nitrogenase to convert
instructions to produce nitrogenase from a nitrogen from the air (N2)
bacterium into a corn cell. into ammonia (NH3 )
for the plant. In return,
This involves a host of challenges. How bacteria the plant provides the
make enzymes differs from how plant cells do it — bacteria with sugar. NH3
enough that simply transferring genes won’t work. Nitrogenase
On top of that, the instructions for the nitrogen-
fixing reaction are complex, a puzzle of between

A CENTURY OF AMMONIA
For centuries, growers relied on manure and crop rotation to keep soil fertile. But in 1908,
German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch invented a way to transform nitrogen gas and
hydrogen into a liquid chemical — ammonia — that could be sprayed onto soil to make it
almost instantly fertile. Relatively cheap to produce and easily mixed with other nutrients like
phosphorus, potassium and sulfur, this new way to fertilize sparked an agricultural revolution.
Crop yields skyrocketed 30 percent to 50 percent. So did the world’s population, which went
from 1.65 billion in 1900 to 7.6 billion today.
Fertilizer use comes at a cost, though. Manufacturing it produces 3 percent of the world’s
carbon emissions. Most commercial farmers in the U.S. apply between 160 and 220 pounds of
FROM TOP: JAY SMITH; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/JOHN VACHON

mainly inorganic fertilizer per acre. Nearly a third to a half of that is lost to the environment.
Rains can soak fertilizer into the soil, where it pollutes groundwater. Soil bacteria process
ammonia from both inorganic and organic fertilizer and turn it into nitrous oxide, the third
most significant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and methane. Washed into rivers, lakes
and oceans, nitrogen increases the population of microscopic organisms. Toxic cyanobacteria
poison fish and other aquatic animals. Blooms of algae decrease oxygen in the water. The
decay from dead marine animals further consumes oxygen in the water, creating dead zones,
like those in the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay.
Inorganic fertilizer has become an agricultural catch-22, polluting the world it feeds.
Without it, yields would decline by 40 percent, putting millions of people at risk of starvation.
But if corn — the most prevalent crop in the U.S. — could fix its own nitrogen, some estimates A farmer in Iowa pours fertilizer into a
say fertilizer use on the crop could drop by 25 to 50 percent. corn planter in 1940.

N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 29

10 and 20 different genes — and each needs to be
assembled in precisely the right order for the overall
system to work.
Since 2012, Rubio and his colleagues have been
using genetic engineering and computer science to
overcome these obstacles. First, they search databases
for genes from bacteria cells that might be able to
perform a particular function, such as make one part
of the nitrogenase enzyme.
Once they pinpoint such a target, the scientists
make a synthetic copy of the gene and insert it into
yeast, which grows and multiplies quickly, to make
other copies. Next, they extract the product of the
gene — its protein — purify it, and check that it func-
tions well. If it does, the gene is then combined with
another gene that was analyzed the same way to see if
the two work well together. If they do, that subgroup
is combined with another subgroup and they’re ana-
lyzed to see how well they function together. Over
and over again, genes are copied and tested, first alone
and then with others, slowly adding to the chain of
genetic command.
So far, Rubio’s team has gotten 15 of 20
genes to work well together, in three distinct
subsets of just a few genes each. Recently,
they started testing a string of working genes
in rice, which is more complex than yeast.
The crop is similar to corn, but easier to work with.
Piecing together this scientific puzzle and putting it
into corn may take another two decades, Rubio says.
GENETIC ENGINEERING
If plants could make their own nitrogenase, could
they fix their own nitrogen? One research team hopes
to find out by piecing together a synthetic version of the
enzyme that will move into the plant cell’s mitochondria.
Plant cell
Instructions for making
and transporting Nucleus
nitrogenase
Oxygen (O2) kills
nitrogenase, so it needs to
find a low-O2 home inside
the cell. Chloroplasts, which
turn carbon dioxide (CO2) and
light into sugar and O2 during
photosynthesis, generate too
much oxygen. Mitochondria are
a more promising location, and
additional genetic instructions
could send the nitrogenase there.
30 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
A petri dish full of
poplar tree cuttings
covered in goo led
to the discovery that
nitrogen-fixing bacteria
can exist inside plants
other than legumes.
When the researchers succeed, they’re aiming to get
the engineered enzyme into a corn cell’s mitochon-
dria, where energy production naturally occurs; it
will be shielded there from reaction-ruining oxygen.
This bioengineered corn, if successful, would pull the
nitrogen it needs right out of the air.
T H E R O OT O F T H E M AT T E R
It was white. It was slimy. It was frustrating. For the
umpteenth time that month, Sharon L. Doty, then a
post-doctoral researcher in the biochemistry depart-
ment at the University of Washington, peered into
a glass petri dish at yet another small tree cutting
contaminated by gobs of goo. Bacteria. It was muck-
ing up her labwork. She sent the slime out to have its
DNA sequenced, thinking that if she could identify
the bacteria, she could kill it.
But Doty was surprised to find that the slime was
made of common soil bacteria called Rhizobium
tropici, the kind that fixes nitrogen in the low-oxygen
environment of legume root nodules. No one had
Chloroplasts ever found Rhizobia living inside the tissue of the
stems, branches or leaves of trees outside of that plant
family. Doty went on to discover several different
kinds of these endophytes, or bacteria that live inside
plant tissues, in other poplars and willow trees.
She spent the next 18 years trying to convince
the scientific community that she’d found endo-
Mitochondria
phytes that fix nitrogen. Many shrugged her off
O2 because the research went against the dogma
that nitrogen-fixing microbes only lived
Nitrogenase is
FROM TOP: SHARON L. DOTY; JAY SMITH
in root nodules of specific plants. “It’s only
shielded from
oxygen inside through my stubbornness that I kept pushing
mitochondria it and pushing it,” says Doty.
It paid off. In 2016, she published a report
in PLOS One about the nitrogen-fixing
endophytes she’d found in poplars. By then,
she’d also exclusively licensed the microbes
to the ag-biotech firm, Intrinsyx Bio, which is
 developing them as a microbial product for crops, BIOFERTILIZERS
called an inoculant. Beneficial microbes introduced to plants, seeds or
This year, distributor Unium Bioscience released soil are known as biofertilizers. The effect of a specific
the first commercial product based on Intrinsyx’s microbe varies from plant to plant — the same bacteria
formulation. Called Tiros, it’s available in the that might help a pea plant fix nitrogen won’t work
the same way in corn. However, researchers have
United Kingdom as a liquid to apply as a seed
discovered pairings that do seem to work.
coat, and the group is working on powder and
small pellet forms that could be applied straight
onto a field during sowing. As the seeds sprout, Biofertilizers can
be applied:
the microorganisms grow with the plant, and
migrate into plant tissue through cracks at the Seed
1. As a coating
junctions of branching roots or root hairs. Once Coating on seeds before
inside, the endophytes fix nitrogen. planting
In early tests conducted on corn fields in or
Iowa, growers who applied a typical amount of
2. As a powder,
fertilizer plus Tiros got six additional bushels liquid or pellet
per acre (state average is 196.) More recent field added to the soil
trials that reduced fertilizer by up to a third also or plant.
showed promising results, but Intrinsyx Bio CEO
Ahsan Ali says that more tests are needed. In May
2019, the company received a grant to work with
Microbes
scientists at the Donald Danforth Plant Science enter roots
Center near St. Louis to test their microbes on 250 and penetrate
cell walls
corn varieties, and, among other things, figure out
how to get the highest yield with the smallest amount
of nitrogen fertilizer.
Root

STAR T SM ALL
“One of the blessings in research is not getting fund-
ing,” says Ted Cocking, a plant scientist and professor
emeritus at the University of Nottingham.
For decades, Cocking believed, as other scientists
did, that nitrogen fixation could only occur in the
root nodules of legumes. Trained in plant physiology,
cell biology and bacteriology, he originally set out to
breed corn that grows root nodules of its own, with
the notion they would attract nitrogen-fixing bacteria The microbes then
already living in the soil. spread throughout the
plant as it grows.
He got the nodules to sprout, and the bacteria to
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: JAY SMITH; THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM; AZOTIC NORTH AMERICA

move in — but only into dead tissue. The critical

symbiosis with the living plant never formed. With
his funds drying up, he realized he had to take a dif-
ferent approach. Instead of trying to get the bacteria
to live in root nodules, he wondered if they could live
inside the plants’ root cells.
His new proposal was approved, and the new
funding allowed him to move forward. But he faced
a double challenge. Cocking required a bacterium
that could fix nitrogen, even in the presence of some
oxygen, and make its way past a plant’s tough cell wall.
He eventually hit the jackpot with Gluconacetobacter Ted Cocking, right, worked
diazotrophicus, a bacterium found in Brazilian with a strain of bacteria found
sugarcane. in Brazilian sugarcane that
led to the development of a
He brought Gluconacetobacter into his lab and commercial product called
got the bacteria to break through. The plant cells Envita. The widespread tiny
black dots of bacteria in corn
then surrounded them with a thin membrane, in cells, above, show how they
a natural process called endocytosis, to form little spread through the plant.

N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 31


self-contained bubbles. The bacteria survived off
sugars the plant made during photosynthesis, and
tapped into the cell’s own energy molecules —
adenosine triphosphate (ATP) — as a power source
for their nitrogen fixation. And Gluconacetobacter,
unlike Rhizobia, can fix nitrogen even when there’s a
little oxygen around — like in a plant cell.
“We have now, for the first time in the world, a plant
with nitrogen-fixing bacteria [sitting] side by side,
almost fused, with chloroplasts,” says Cocking, refer-
ring to the structures inside plant cells responsible for
photosynthesis. This close relationship between the
bacteria and the chloroplasts allows them to directly
swap the sugar, nitrogen and ATP that each need to
do their job in the plant cell.
In 2012, the Lancashire, England-based company
Azotic Technologies formed to develop an inocu-
lant based on Cocking’s science. Called Envita, the
product began selling commercially this spring as a
CLASSICAL BREEDING
Crossing tropical corn plants with
conventional corn — or other
varieties that grow particularly
high yields — could create
nitrogen-efficient hybrids
that require little to no
fertilizer.
X → ? held up an ear of corn. He told the crowd he had had
Tropical Conventional Hybrid
~16 ft. ~9 ft.
32 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
liquid applied with the seed when it’s sowed. Nolan
Berg, Azotic North America’s president and general
manager, says it will be added this year to more than
100,000 acres of cropland. In 2020, Azotic plans to
break a million acres.
In the U.S., farmers who used a normal amount of
fertilizer plus Envita got up to a 20 percent boost in
yield. Tests indicated they could reduce fertilizer as
much as 27 percent and get the same yield as before.
“Farmers don’t have to choose between productivity
and sustainability,” says Berg. “They can have both.”
NATURE’S SOLUTION, HIDING IN PL AIN SIGHT
In the montane forests of Sierra Mixe (pronounced
The gelatinous goo MEE-hay), in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, grows
oozing from these a corn — or maize — with clear, gelatinous film
corn plants hosts
nitrogen-fixing oozing from fingerlike structures protruding from
bacteria. Discovered its stems.
in the tropics of
southern Mexico, Here, in the birthplace of corn, indigenous peoples
these ancient domesticated maize from the wild grass teosinte. Over
varieties of maize
are considered millennia, the local farmers preferentially planted the
some of the oldest corn that grew best at different altitudes and in fields
in the world.
that were sometimes poor in nutrients. In doing so,
they produced a wide variety of plants with different
ear sizes and kernel shapes, colors and textures. Today,
these local cultivars, or landraces, are considered some
of the oldest varieties of maize in the world.
But there is something special about the varieties
that produce gelatinous film. Starting in the 1990s,
Mexican scientists began to study the goo and found
that it harbored nitrogen-fixing bacteria. And last
year, a team from the University of California, Davis,
confirmed that the corn was indeed taking advantage
of the nitrogen the bacteria produced. Plus, they
discovered, the ancient teosinte from which corn
descends had this ability all along.
By actively selecting maize varieties for their resil-
ience, indigenous farmers in Sierra Mixe had inad-
vertently amplified the natural ability of their crop to
partner with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Meanwhile,
farmers and breeders elsewhere in the world acciden-
tally did the opposite, fertilizing corn until it lost this
natural ability. Now, it seems the secret to corn’s future
may lie in its ancient past. Researchers successfully
planted the goopy corn in Wisconsin and continue to
explore how to bring this ancient nitrogen fixation to
commercial farms in the future.
T H E E AR S H AV E I T
FROM TOP: JOHN-MICHEL ANÉ (2); JAY SMITH
Back in the Wisconsin field in September, Goldstein
the kernels of his greener plants analyzed, and that
the data indicated the presence of nitrogen fixation.
His classical corn breeding method involves cross-
ing a broad range of cultivated varieties, including
ancient landraces from Argentina, Peru and Mexico’s
Sierra Mixe. He grows the plants under stressful,

nutrient-limited and sometimes waterlogged condi-
tions, and then selects for ones that flourish, which is
unlike contemporary methods that rely on selecting
plants based on genetic analysis. To date, Goldstein
has cultivated seven hybrid varieties that do very well
without fertilizer, he says.
“His breeding efforts are very interesting and
very useful,” says crop scientist Martin Bohn, an
associate professor at the University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign.
In 2018, Bohn and his team planted Goldstein’s
hybrids along with a handful of others in cornfields in
Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, as well as in greenhouses
under more controlled conditions. He says Goldstein’s
hybrids, especially one in particular, consistently did
well in soil with low, medium and high fertilizer, and
even in the presence of weeds. Bohn thinks it has
something to do with the roots, which are always
large, well-developed and very dense. Roots from con-
ventional plants tend to stay small in the presence of
abundant nitrogen or grow large in nitrogen-deficient
soil, he says. Normally, when plants use energy to
grow larger roots, their yields can suffer. But Bohn
says he didn’t see this with Goldstein’s best hybrid.
“This root system is not only structurally dif-
ALISON MACKEY/DISCOVER
ferent … but it might be possible that these plants
cultivate a microbial community that favors bacteria
that fix nitrogen,” says Bohn, who has long studied
how root systems manage microbial communities to
make nutrients more available to corn.
Walter Goldstein
kneels in a field full
of experimental corn Goldstein only recently published his evidence on
varieties, organized the presence of nitrogen fixation in some of his corn
in numbered rows.
A nitrogen-efficient hybrids, and he has not analyzed the genetic makeup
hybrid on the right of the microbes. This dearth of published data rankles
outperforms the
conventional corn
some scientists. One university research professor,
planted on the left. who didn’t want to be named, says Goldstein doesn’t
understand how nitrogen fixation works or how to
measure it.
But Abdullah Jaradat, a research agronomist
at the USDA who has collaborated with Goldstein
on grant-funded research, says Goldstein “looks
at the larger scale, which does not necessarily
reflect the fine relationship between the plants and
the microbiota, but an overall outcome of several
physical, chemical, biochemical and environmental
factors.”
Jaradat doesn’t think the approach has any flaws
in a general sense, and says Goldstein brings value
to research on maize because he has collected and
crossbred many varieties, reshuffling genetic sources
of corn using techniques that were once a mainstay
of North American farming. In Jaradat’s view, there
is room for both the modern analytical approaches as
well as the more traditional methods of breeding.
“There must be a hybrid between the old and the
new,” Jaradat says, “to bring about a change to the
current state of affairs.” D
Tracy Staedter is a science journalist based in Milwaukee
who covers innovations in sustainability.
N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 33
The Extremely Large Telescope, shown
in artist renderings close up (left) and
on location in Chile, will be one of a new
crop of telescopes that could change
astronomy forever.

34 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
OPPOSITE PAGE: ESO/L. CALÇADA/ACE CONSORTIUM. THIS PAGE: ESO/L. CALÇADA

A quartet of giant telescopes will kick off

a new era of discovery.
BY RICHARD TALCOTT
W
  hen the Hooker Telescope first
looked skyward in 1917, no one
knew what wonders it might reveal. Within a decade, astronomer
Edwin Hubble used it — then the largest telescope in the world,
at 100 inches across — to discover that galaxies exist beyond the
Milky Way, and that the universe is expanding.
History repeated itself starting in 1949, when the 200-inch
Hale Telescope took its first photograph of the night sky. In the
early 1960s, astronomer Maarten Schmidt used the instrument
to analyze unusual, “quasi-stellar radio sources”— quasars for
short. These turned out to be supermassive black holes accreting
matter in the centers of galaxies, a science-fiction fantasy when
the Hale Telescope was built.
By the 1990s, technology advanced far enough to usher in an
era of telescopes 8 to 10 meters across (26 to 33 feet), and the
same story played out once more. With an essential assist from
the 2.4-meter Hubble Space Telescope orbiting above Earth’s
image-distorting atmosphere, these instruments could analyze
a few dozen distant Type Ia supernovas — the cataclysmic explo-
sions of white dwarf stars. Shockingly, researchers discovered that
the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Again, this was only
possible with the increased firepower of the latest telescopes.
Now, astronomers stand on the threshold of a new telescope
revolution. During the next several years, researchers expect
three instruments that are more than twice the size of their closest
competitors to start scanning the skies. And a fourth telescope,
one “only” 8 meters in diameter, will use advanced technology
to image the entire night sky every three days.
This quartet of new instruments promises to deliver stun-
ning science on the hot-button issues. But, as with the previous
great leaps forward in size, the new scopes likely will also make
discoveries that no one can yet envision. As Pat McCarthy, vice
president of the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) Organization,
puts it: “We expect to learn things we don’t know.”
SIZE MAT T ER S
Astronomers are always looking to stretch boundaries — to see
fainter objects in greater detail. A bigger telescope collects more
light, and so allows a deeper view of the cosmos. Double the diam-
eter of the main mirror gathering light for the telescope and you’ve
quadrupled its surface area, and thus the amount of light it gets. An
observation that once took four hours can now be accomplished in
one, and this same mirror will let you see roughly twice as far away.
But you might wonder where the law of diminishing returns
sets in. There’s only so far you can see, after all. Perhaps the
Hubble Space Telescope recently approached those limits when it
wrapped up its Frontier Fields program, which allowed research-
ers to observe galaxies as they existed only a few hundred million
years after the Big Bang. And for closer objects, Hubble delivers
images beyond compare despite a relatively small size. What else
can people want?
Well, professional astronomers don’t live by imaging alone.
More often than not, they need breakdowns of light, called spec-
tra, of the things they observe, to tease out information about an
36 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
object’s temperature, velocity, rotation and composition. Indeed,
a spectrum is the only way to distinguish starlight from a glowing
gas cloud, or a faint star in the Milky Way’s vicinity from a fuzzy
galaxy in a distant corner of the universe. And to get enough light
to do even a minimal amount of spectral analysis takes about 100
times longer than getting an image does. Luckily, bigger scopes
allow that processing time to come down significantly.
Resolution also increases with a telescope’s diameter. Make a
mirror twice as wide and it delivers twice as much detail. And
thanks to a quirk of physics, you can reap the same benefit by
placing smaller telescopes farther apart and then combining
their light, through a process known as interferometry. (Radio
astronomers using this technique produced the first image of a
black hole earlier this year: A global network of radio telescopes
saw across about 54 million light-years to capture the supermas-
sive black hole at the center of the giant galaxy M87.)
Ground-based telescopes face an additional challenge: Earth’s
detail-destroying atmosphere. As light from a celestial object
passes through air at different temperatures, it gets jostled about
and loses clarity. That’s a big reason why designers place large
OPPOSITE PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: LSST PROJECT/NSF/AURA; TODD MASON, MASON PRODUCTIONS INC./LSST CORPORATION; GIANT MAGELLAN TELESCOPE – GMTO CORPORATION (3)
telescopes on high mountaintops — there’s far less air above
them to interfere. Even temperature differences between the air
outside and inside a telescope’s dome can generate air currents
that adversely affect an image’s sharpness.
That’s where adaptive optics comes in. In the past few decades,
astronomers have honed this technique, which mechanically com-
pensates for any atmospheric shenanigans and delivers images
nearly as sharp as the mirror can theoretically produce. The heart
of an adaptive optics system is a thin, flexible, computer-controlled
mirror. Astronomers target a fairly bright reference star close to
the object they want to study. The computer analyzes the incoming
light to measure how the atmosphere blurs it, then tells the control
system how to adjust the mirror’s shape to correct the image in
real-time. Because atmospheric turbulence changes constantly,
such systems can alter the mirror’s shape up to 1,000 times each
second. And if no bright reference star lies nearby — as often
happens — astronomers can simply shine powerful laser beams
into Earth’s upper atmosphere and create their own reference light.
MAKING MIRROR S
Before they can take advantage of the next generation of tele-
scopes, of course, engineers have to craft the parts — namely,
those essential and enormous mirrors. Astronomers have devel-
oped two designs for them.
In the first, they cast a single, monolithic mirror. University of
Arizona astronomer Roger Angel pioneered this method after
conducting a backyard experiment around 1980. Technicians start
the process by loading chunks of glass into a furnace mold. They
then raise the furnace’s temperature to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit,
and spin the entire assembly at a rate of five revolutions per
minute. Once the chunks melt to the consistency of thick honey,
the glass flows into a bowl-like or parabolic shape — perfect for
focusing incoming starlight — as a result of the rotation. The
mirrors are no more than 1 inch thick and have a honeycomb
structure to keep their weight down. Technicians then grind and
polish the mirror’s surface to the exact shape needed.
Arizona’s Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab has cast mirrors for
 SUPERFA ST SKY SUR VE Y
So what will these new instruments actually be, and what
will they do? Of the four next-generation scopes preparing to
revolutionize astronomy, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
(LSST) should be the first to land on the scene. What sets the
LSST apart is not its size — its 8.4-meter primary mirror would
fit in comfortably at several current mountaintop observatories
— but its ability to image wide swaths of sky quickly.
Situated atop Cerro Pachón in north-central Chile, the LSST
should take just 15 seconds to deliver sharp images covering
9.6 square degrees of sky — equivalent to the area of more than
40 full moons, and nearly 5,000 times the field of Hubble’s Wide
Field Camera 3.
“The LSST will get the big picture in space-time by taking over
800 images [nightly] of every visible patch of sky in six color
filters,” says LSST chief scientist Tony Tyson of the University

Each of the Giant Magellan Telescope’s seven mirror segments must be

carefully crafted to exact specifications, to ensure accurate observations.
From top: Staff at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab place a fresh layer of glass
into a mirror mold; a crane lifts one mirror segment from the furnace floor;
another mirror segment undergoes polishing.

many of the world’s largest telescopes, including the 6.5-meter

MMT Observatory and the twin 8.4-meter monsters of the Large
Binocular Telescope, both in Arizona.
The second design technique, developed in 1977 by the late
astronomer Jerry Nelson of the University of California, Santa
Cruz, combines many hexagonal mirror segments into a single
structure. Although the segments themselves are not huge, join-
ing them together can result in a world-class telescope. Both of
the 10-meter Keck telescopes on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea feature 36
segments, each about 6 feet across and weighing 880 pounds.
The 10.4-meter Gran Telescopio Canarias on La Palma in the The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will capture photos covering the
entire night sky, starting in just a few years. These artist renderings show
Canary Islands has the same number of hexagonal segments as the exterior (top) and interior of the relatively modest instrument, 8 meters
the slightly smaller Kecks. across, on its Chilean mountaintop.

N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 37

Construction has already begun (left) on the Giant Magellan Telescope at Chile’s Las Campanas Observatory, due to be completed in about 10 years. The
observatory (right), shown in an artist’s rendering, will combine seven mirror segments for a telescope effectively 24.5 meters across — about 10 times the
size of the Hubble Space Telescope.
of California, Davis. “This will be a digital color movie of the
universe, probing nature in new ways.”
Equally important to the LSST’s success is its 3.2-gigapixel
imaging camera. The largest digital camera in the world is not
one you would want to lug along on your next vacation: It spans
5.5 by 9.8 feet and weighs about 6,200 pounds. With it, the LSST
will take two consecutive 15-second images of a single patch of
sky, and then quickly compare them to reject any stray radiation
hitting the detectors. (It’s similar to taking multiple photos of
a famous building to digitally remove the tourists.) The scope
then whips to the next area of sky — a movement that takes just
10 seconds, on average — and repeats the process. Such rapid-fire
imaging means the LSST can cover the entire sky visible from
Cerro Pachón every three days.
Computer software will initially process the images in 60 sec-
onds, looking for anything that has changed brightness or position
compared with previous images of the same area. When it finds
something, it’ll immediately send out an alert to researchers for
quick follow-up. Astronomers expect the LSST to deliver up to
10 million alerts per night — an average of 278 per second during
a typical 10-hour observing session.
This will be a boon to scientists studying transient events, such
as the stellar explosions that produce novas and supernovas. The
LSST’s efforts should also develop a detailed census of small solar
system objects, discovering 10 to 100 times more near-Earth
objects and distant Kuiper Belt objects beyond Neptune’s orbit.
The LSST’s mirror, cast in the Caris Mirror Lab starting in March
2008, made it to the mountaintop May 11, 2019. Astronomers
expect it to come online in 2020, with full science operations for
its planned 10-year survey starting in 2022 after it’s fully calibrated.
SE VEN TIME S THE CHARM
If one huge mirror can deliver so much science, why not try
seven? That’s the idea behind the GMT, under construction at
Chile’s Las Campanas Observatory. The GMT comprises seven
8.4-meter mirrors in a single structure, arranged in a daisylike
pattern with one central mirror surrounded by six “petals.” The
38 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
Caris Mirror Lab has been busy working on this project, and
just completed the second mirror in July; the next three have
all been cast and are at various stages of grinding, polishing or
testing. At Las Campanas, a 40-person crew finished excavating
the telescope’s foundation last spring.
“We can operate with four mirrors in place,” says McCarthy.
“That still makes it the largest telescope in the world by far.” The
FROM LEFT: GIANT MAGELLAN TELESCOPE – GMTO CORPORATION; GIANT MAGELLAN TELESCOPE – GMTO CORPORATION/PRODUCED BY MASON MEDIA INC.
GMT should reach that milestone in 2026, and all seven should be
in place by 2028. Collectively, the mirrors will give the instrument
an effective aperture of 24.5 meters, about 10 times that of Hubble,
so it should achieve resolutions 10 times better than the orbiting
observatory. And its location some 8,248 feet above sea level in the
arid Atacama Desert will give it superb views in visible light as well
as the near-infrared spectrum. But it won’t be the only one with
those new and improved views.
A HE X UP ON YO UR SCOPE
The other two giant telescopes of the next decade have gone a
different route. Both the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) and the
Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will consist of hundreds of hexago-
nal segments joined together to create mammoth collecting areas.
Europe’s ELT boasts 798 segments in its primary mirror — each
measuring 55 inches across — giving the telescope’s primary mir-
ror an aperture of 39 meters. The German optical company Schott
cast the first of these segments in early 2018, and has been churning
them out since. Groundbreaking for the mammoth telescope took
place in June 2014 on Cerro Armazones, a 9,993-foot mountain in
Chile. If all goes according to plan, the ELT should see first light in
2025, around the same time as the GMT.
As its name suggests, the TMT’s 492 segments will give the
telescope’s primary mirror an aperture of 30 meters. The project’s
Japanese partners are producing the rough mirrors, which are
about the same size as the ELT’s, while groups in Japan, China,
India and the United States will polish, cut and mount them. The
TMT will join its Keck cousins on the summit of Mauna Kea at an
altitude of 13,287 feet. The site gives the TMT access to the entire
northern sky, something none of the other three can get from

their sites in Chile. It is also the highest of the big new scopes,
placing it above more of Earth’s atmosphere.
But the site also comes with a major drawback. Mauna Kea is
sacred to Native Hawaiians, and the telescope’s construction has
drawn various protests. It wasn’t clear whether the new observatory
would ever be built, but Hawaii’s Supreme Court ruled in October
2018 that construction could proceed.
The TMT’s enclosure — which will house the scope itself and
related electronics — is already finished and awaiting shipment
to the island from Canada. With the legal challenges presumably
FROM TOP: ESO/L. CALÇADA; TMT INTERNATIONAL OBSERVATORY
settled, scientists are looking toward first light in 2026.
SCIENCE BY THE BOATLOAD
With their unprecedented light-gathering power and resolution,
the GMT, ELT and TMT promise astronomers the best views yet
of faint objects and crowded regions. Scientists expect these behe-
moths to shed light on a variety of vexing problems. Close to home,
hunting for Earth-like planets in Earth-like orbits around nearby
stars will be a priority. Even more exciting will be the new ability to
scrutinize these worlds. “Most of these exoplanets are in too close to
their parent stars to study today,” says McCarthy. But with the GMT
and other large scopes, “We’ll separate the light of hundreds of
The Thirty Meter Telescope (bottom) will provide astronomers better, closer
views of the universe, along with the Extremely Large Telescope (top), shown
using lasers to help imaging software correct distortions in the atmosphere.
planets from their host stars. We’ll be able to track weather through
color changes and look at the chemistry of planetary atmospheres.”
Star birth and star death should also be fertile fields of study.
High-resolution spectra will help researchers understand why stars
come in such a wide range of masses, and probe deeper than ever
into the lower-mass failed stars known as brown dwarfs. At the
opposite end of a star’s life, these monster instruments will search
for supernovas in the farthest reaches of the universe and study
closer ones in extraordinary detail, looking at the cosmic alchemy
happening in these exploding stars. The scopes’ high resolution
will also let astronomers study the crowded central regions of
the Milky Way Galaxy and star clusters such as R136 in the Large
Magellanic Cloud.
These giant telescopes should also answer even bigger questions
about the basic structure of the universe. With these large-aperture
scopes and infrared capabilities, McCarthy says, “we’ll [be able to]
look back to the early universe, to galaxies only 100 to 500 million
years old.” This will be a vital first link to providing a grand view of
how galaxies evolve over time, and their relation to the supermas-
sive black holes at their centers. The scopes should even illuminate
how the Milky Way has grown by swallowing nearby dwarf com-
panions, and potentially solve the riddle of what came first: galaxies
or their black holes.
On the biggest stage, the cosmos still baffles scientists seeking
explanations of the dark matter that holds galaxies together and the
dark energy that causes the expansion of the universe to accelerate.
These new telescopes will provide vital new data to help solve these
mysteries, and may help resolve the discrepancy between different
ways of measuring the universe’s expansion rate.
In most of these endeavors, the big new scopes will work together
with the orbiting 6.5-meter James Webb Space Telescope, which
is scheduled to launch in 2021. With any luck, we may know a lot
more about the intricacies of our cosmos in the next 10 to 15 years.
But as the Hooker and Hale telescopes showed, we may also have
a new batch of mysteries to try to figure out. D
Richard Talcott is a senior editor at Astronomy magazine.
N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 39
10
COVER STORY

EXPERIMENTS
That
Changed
Everything
Short on tech, long on ideas, early thinkers redefined our world.
BY ADAM HADHAZY
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARK MARTURELLO

Every day, we conduct science experiments, posing an “if” with a “then”

and seeing what shakes out. Maybe it’s just taking a slightly different
route on our commute home or heating that burrito for a few seconds
longer in the microwave. Or it could be trying one more variation of that
gene, or wondering what kind of code would best fit a given problem.
Ultimately, this striving, questioning spirit is at the root of our ability to
discover anything at all. A willingness to experiment has helped us delve
deeper into the nature of reality through the pursuit we call science.
A select batch of these science experiments has stood the test of time in
showcasing our species at its inquiring, intelligent best. Whether elegant
or crude, and often with a touch of serendipity, these singular efforts have
delivered insights that changed our view of ourselves or the universe.
Here are nine such successful endeavors — plus a glorious failure —
that could be hailed as the top science experiments of all time.

N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 41


ERATOSTHENES
MEASURES THE WORLD
E XPERIMENTAL RE SULT: T H E F I R S T R E C O R D E D
ME A SUREMENT OF E AR T H ’S CIR CUMFERENCE
WHEN: END OF T HE T HIRD CENT UR Y B.C .
Just how big is our world?
Of the many answers from
ancient cultures, a stunningly
accurate value calculated by
Eratosthenes has echoed down
the ages. Born around 276 B.C.
in Cyrene, a Greek settlement
on the coast of modern-day
Libya, Eratosthenes became
a voracious scholar — a trait
that brought him both critics
and admirers. The haters
nicknamed him Beta, after
the second letter of the Greek
alphabet. University of Puget
Sound physics professor James
Evans explains the Classical-
style burn: “Eratosthenes
moved so often from one
field to another that his
contemporaries thought of him
as only second-best in each
of them.” Those who instead
celebrated the multitalented
Eratosthenes dubbed him
Pentathlos, after the five-event
athletic competition.
That mental dexterity
landed the scholar a gig as
chief librarian at the famous
library in Alexandria, Egypt. It
was there that he conducted
his famous experiment. He
had heard of a well in Syene,
a Nile River city to the south
(modern-day Aswan), where
the noon sun shone straight
42 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
7.2
down, casting no shadows,
on the date of the Northern
Hemisphere’s summer solstice.
Intrigued, Eratosthenes
measured the shadow cast by
a vertical stick in Alexandria
on this same day and time.
He determined the angle of
the sun’s light there to be
7.2 degrees, or 1/50th of a
circle’s 360 degrees.
Knowing — as many
educated Greeks did — Earth
was spherical, Eratosthenes
fathomed that if he knew the
distance between the two
cities, he could multiply that
figure by 50 and gauge Earth’s
curvature, and hence its total
circumference. Supplied with
that information, Eratosthenes
deduced Earth’s circumference
as 250,000 stades, a Hellenistic
unit of length equaling roughly
600 feet. The span equates to
about 28,500 miles, well within
the ballpark of the correct
figure of 24,900 miles.
Eratosthenes’ motive for
getting Earth’s size right was
his keenness for geography, a
field whose name he coined.
Fittingly, modernity has
bestowed upon him one more
nickname: father of geography.
Not bad for a guy once
dismissed as second-rate.
WILLIAM HARVEY
TAKES THE PULSE OF NATURE
E XPERIMENTAL RE SULT: T HE DISC OVER Y OF
BLO OD C IR C UL AT ION
WHEN: T H E O R Y P U BL I S H E D I N 1 6 2 8
Boy, was Galen wrong.
The Greek physician-cum-
philosopher proposed a model
of blood flow in the second
century that, despite being
full of whoppers, prevailed for
nearly 1,500 years. Among its
claims: The liver constantly
makes new blood from food we
eat; blood flows throughout the
body in two separate streams,
one infused (via the lungs)
with “vital spirits” from air; and
the blood that tissues soak up
never returns to the heart.
Overturning all this dogma
took a series of often gruesome
experiments.
High-born in England in
1578, William Harvey rose to
become royal physician to
King James I, affording him
the time and means to pursue
his greatest interest: anatomy.
He first hacked away (literally,
in some cases) at the Galenic
model by exsanguinating —
draining the blood from — test
critters, including sheep and
pigs. Harvey realized that if
Galen were right, an impossible
volume of blood, exceeding
the animals’ size, would have
to pump through the heart
every hour.
To drive this point home,
Harvey sliced open live animals
in public, demonstrating
their puny blood supplies.
He also constricted blood
flow into a snake’s exposed
heart by finger-pinching a
main vein. The heart shrunk
and paled; when pierced,
it poured forth little blood.
By contrast, choking off the
main exiting artery swelled
the heart. Through studies
of the slow heart beats of
reptiles and animals near
death, he discerned the heart’s
contractions, and deduced
that it pumped blood through
the body in a circuit.
According to Andrew
Gregory, a professor of history
and philosophy of science at
University College London,
this was no easy deduction on
Harvey’s part. “If you look at
a heart beating normally in its
normal surroundings, it is very
difficult to work out what is
actually happening,” he says.
Experiments with willing
people, which involved
temporarily blocking blood
flow in and out of limbs, further
bore out Harvey’s revolutionary
conception of blood circulation.
He published the full theory in
a 1628 book, De Motu Cordis
[The Motion of the Heart]. His
evidence-based approach
transformed medical science,
and he’s recognized today as
the father of modern medicine
and physiology.
GREGOR MENDEL colors, and he got repeatable results that suggested some law of
heredity at work.”

CULTIVATES GENETICS
E X PERIMENTAL RE SULT: T H E F U N D A M E N TA L R U L E S
OF GENE T IC INHERITANCE
WHEN: 18 55 - 186 3
A child, to varying degrees, resembles a parent, whether it’s a
passing resemblance or a full-blown mini-me. Why?
The profound mystery behind the inheritance of physical traits
began to unravel a century and a half ago, thanks to Gregor Mendel.
Born in 1822 in what is now the Czech Republic, Mendel showed a
knack for the physical sciences, though his farming family had little
money for formal education. Following the advice of a professor, he
joined the Augustinian order, a monastic group that emphasized
research and learning, in 1843.
Ensconced at a monastery in Brno, the shy Gregor quickly
began spending time in the garden. Fuchsias in particular grabbed
These laws became clear with his cultivation of pea plants. Using
paintbrushes, Mendel dabbed pollen from one to another, precisely
pairing thousands of plants with certain traits over a stretch of about
seven years. He meticulously documented how matching yellow
peas and green peas, for instance, always yielded a yellow plant. Yet
mating these yellow offspring together produced a generation where
a quarter of the peas gleamed green again. Ratios like these led
to Mendel’s coining of the terms dominant (the yellow color, in this
case) and recessive for what we now call genes, and which Mendel
referred to as “factors.”
He was ahead of his time. His studies received scant attention in
their day, but decades later, when other scientists discovered and
replicated Mendel’s experiments, they came to be regarded as a
breakthrough.
“The genius in Mendel’s experiments was his way of formulating
simple hypotheses that explain
a few things very well, instead
£

To learn about some of

his attention, their daintiness hinting at an underlying grand of tackling all the complexities the top modern science
design. “The fuchsias probably gave him the idea for the famous of heredity at once,” says Gliboff. experiments, visit www.
experiments,” says Sander Gliboff, who researches the history of “His brilliance was in putting it DiscoverMagazine.
biology at Indiana University Bloomington. “He had been crossing all together into a project that com/TopModern
different varieties, trying to get new colors or combinations of he could actually do.”

N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 43


ISAAC NEWTON EYES OPTICS
E X PERIMENTAL RE SULT: T H E N AT U R E O F C O LO R A N D L I G H T
WHEN: 1 6 6 5 - 1 6 6 6
Before he was that Isaac Newton — scientist extraordinaire and
inventor of the laws of motion, calculus and universal gravitation
(plus a crimefighter to boot) — plain ol’ Isaac found himself with
time to kill. To escape a devastating outbreak of plague in his college
town of Cambridge, Newton holed up at his boyhood home in the
English countryside. There, he tinkered with a prism he picked up at
a local fair — a “child’s plaything,” according to Patricia Fara, fellow
of Clare College, Cambridge.
Let sunlight pass through a prism and a rainbow, or spectrum,
of colors splays out. In Newton’s time, prevailing thinking held that
light takes on the color from the medium it transits, like sunlight
through stained glass. Unconvinced, Newton set up a prism
experiment that proved color is instead an inherent property of
light itself. This revolutionary insight established the field of optics,
fundamental to modern science and technology.
Newton deftly executed the delicate experiment: He bored a
44 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
hole in a window shutter, allowing a single beam of sunlight to pass
through two prisms. By blocking some of the resulting colors from
reaching the second prism, Newton showed that different colors
refracted, or bent, differently through a prism. He then singled out
a color from the first prism and passed it alone through the second
prism; when the color came out unchanged, it proved the prism
didn’t affect the color of the ray. The medium did not matter. Color
was tied up, somehow, with light itself.
Partly owing to the ad hoc, homemade nature of Newton’s
experimental setup, plus his incomplete descriptions in a seminal
1672 paper, his contemporaries initially struggled to replicate
the results. “It’s a really, really technically difficult experiment to
carry out,” says Fara. “But once you have seen it, it’s incredibly
convincing.”
In making his name, Newton certainly displayed a flair for
experimentation, occasionally delving into the self-as-subject variety.
One time, he stared at the sun so long he nearly went blind. Another,
he wormed a long, thick needle under his eyelid, pressing on the
back of his eyeball to gauge how it affected his vision. Although he
had plenty of misses in his career — forays into occultism, dabbling
in biblical numerology — Newton’s hits ensured his lasting fame.
MICHELSON AND MORLEY
WHIFF ON ETHER
E X PERIMENTAL RE SULT: T H E WAY L I G H T M O V E S
WHEN: 18 8 7
Say “hey!” and the sound
waves travel through a medium
(air) to reach your listener’s
ears. Ocean waves, too, move
through their own medium:
water. Light waves are a special
case, however. In a vacuum,
with all media such as air and
water removed, light somehow
still gets from here to there.
How can that be?
The answer, according to
the physics en vogue in the late
19th century, was an invisible,
ubiquitous medium delightfully
dubbed the “luminiferous
ether.” Working together at
what is now Case Western
Reserve University in Ohio,
Albert Michelson and Edward
W. Morley set out to prove
this ether’s existence. What
followed is arguably the most
famous failed experiment in
history.
The scientists’ hypothesis
was thus: As Earth orbits the
sun, it constantly plows through
ether, generating an ether wind.
When the path of a light beam
travels in the same direction as
the wind, the light should move
a bit faster compared with
sailing against the wind.
To measure the effect,
miniscule though it would
have to be, Michelson had
just the thing. In the early
1880s, he had invented a
type of interferometer, an
instrument that brings sources
of light together to create an
interference pattern, like when
ripples on a pond intermingle.
A Michelson interferometer
beams light through a one-way
mirror. The light splits in two,
and the resulting beams travel
at right angles to each other.
After some distance, they
reflect off mirrors back toward
a central meeting point. If the
light beams arrive at different
times, due to some sort of
unequal displacement during
their journeys (say, from the
ether wind), they create a
distinctive interference pattern.
The researchers protected
their delicate interferometer
setup from vibrations by placing
it atop a solid sandstone slab,
floating almost friction-free in a
trough of mercury and further
isolated in a campus building’s
basement. Michelson and
Morley slowly rotated the slab,
expecting to see interference
patterns as the light beams
synced in and out with the
ether’s direction.
Instead, nothing. Light’s
speed did not vary.
Neither researcher fully
grasped the significance of
their null result. Chalking it
up to experimental error, they
moved on to other projects.
(Fruitfully so: In 1907, Michelson
became the first American
to win a Nobel Prize, for
optical instrument-based
investigations.) But the huge
dent Michelson and Morley
unintentionally kicked into ether
theory set off a chain of further
experimentation and theorizing
that led to Albert Einstein’s 1905
breakthrough new paradigm of
light, special relativity.
MARIE CURIE’S WORK MATTERS
E X PERIMENTAL RE SULT: D E F I N I N G R A D I O A C T I V I T Y
WHEN: 1898
Few women are represented
in the annals of legendary
scientific experiments,
reflecting their historical
exclusion from the discipline.
Marie Sklodowska broke
this mold.
Born in 1867 in Warsaw, she
immigrated to Paris at age
24 for the chance to further
study math and physics.
There, she met and married
physicist Pierre Curie, a close
intellectual partner who helped
her revolutionary ideas gain
a foothold within the male-
dominated field. “If it wasn’t
for Pierre, Marie would never
have been accepted by the
scientific community,” says
Marilyn B. Ogilvie, professor
emeritus in the history of
science at the University of
Oklahoma. “Nonetheless, the
basic hypotheses — those that
guided the future course of
investigation into the nature of
radioactivity — were hers.”
The Curies worked together
mostly out of a converted
shed on the college campus
where Pierre worked. For
her doctoral thesis in 1897,
Marie began investigating
a newfangled kind of
radiation, similar to X-rays
and discovered just a year
earlier. Using an instrument
N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER
called an electrometer, built by
Pierre and his brother, Marie
measured the mysterious
rays emitted by thorium
and uranium. Regardless of
the elements’ mineralogical
makeup — a yellow crystal
or a black powder, in
uranium’s case — radiation
rates depended solely on the
amount of the element present.
From this observation, Marie
deduced that the emission of
radiation had nothing to do
with a substance’s molecular
arrangements. Instead,
radioactivity — a term she
coined — was an inherent
property of individual atoms,
emanating from their internal
structure. Up until this point,
scientists had thought atoms
elementary, indivisible entities.
Marie had cracked the door
open to understanding matter
at a more fundamental,
subatomic level.
Curie was the first woman
to win a Nobel Prize, in 1903,
and one of a very select few
people to earn a second Nobel,
in 1911 (for her later discoveries
of the elements radium and
polonium).
“In her life and work,” says
Ogilvie, “she became a role
model for young women who
wanted a career in science.”
45

IVAN PAVLOV
SALIVATES AT THE IDEA
E X PERIMENTAL RE SULT: T HE DISC OVER Y OF
CONDITIONED REFLE XES
WHEN: 189 0 s - 1 9 0 0 s
Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov scooped up a Nobel Prize in
1904 for his work with dogs, investigating how saliva and stomach
juices digest food. While his scientific legacy will always be tied to
doggie drool, it is the operations of the mind — canine, human and
otherwise — for which Pavlov remains celebrated today.
Gauging gastric secretions was no picnic. Pavlov and his
students collected the fluids that canine digestive organs
produced, with a tube suspended from some pooches’ mouths
to capture saliva. Come feeding time, the researchers began
noticing that dogs who were experienced in the trials would
start drooling into the tubes before they’d even tasted a morsel.
Like numerous other bodily functions, the generation of saliva
was considered a reflex at the time, an unconscious action only
occurring in the presence of food. But Pavlov’s dogs had learned
to associate the appearance of an experimenter with meals,
meaning the canines’ experience had conditioned their physical
responses.
“Up until Pavlov’s work, reflexes were considered fixed
or hardwired and not changeable,” says Catharine Rankin, a
psychology professor at the University of British Columbia and
president of the Pavlovian Society. “His work showed that they
could change as a result of experience.”
Pavlov and his team then taught the dogs to associate food
with neutral stimuli as varied as buzzers, metronomes, rotating
objects, black squares, whistles, lamp flashes and electric
shocks. Pavlov never did ring a bell, however; credit an early
mistranslation of the Russian word for buzzer for that enduring
myth.
The findings formed the basis for the concept of classical, or
Pavlovian, conditioning. It extends to essentially any learning
about stimuli, even if reflexive responses are not involved.
“Pavlovian conditioning is happening to us all of the time,” says
W. Jeffrey Wilson of Albion College, fellow officer of the Pavlovian
Society. “Our brains are constantly connecting things we
experience together.” In fact, trying to “un-wire” these conditioned
responses is the strategy behind modern treatments for post-
traumatic stress disorder, as well as addiction.

precise strength where they

ROBERT
MILLIKAN
GETS A CHARGE
E X PERIMENTAL RE SULT:
T HE PRECISE VALUE OF A
SINGLE ELECTRON’S CHARGE
WHEN: 19 0 9
By most measures, Robert
Millikan had done well for
himself. Born in 1868 in a
small town in Illinois, he went
on to earn degrees from
Oberlin College and Columbia
University. He studied physics
with European luminaries in
Germany. He then joined the
University of Chicago’s physics
department, and even penned
some successful textbooks.
But his colleagues were
doing far more. The turn of
the 20th century was a heady
time for physics: In the span of
just over a decade, the world
was introduced to quantum
physics, special relativity and
the electron — the first evidence
that atoms had divisible parts.
By 1908, Millikan found himself
pushing 40 without a significant
discovery to his name.
The electron, though, offered
an opportunity. Researchers
had struggled with whether
the particle represented a
fundamental unit of electric
charge, the same in all cases.
It was a critical determination
for further developing particle
physics. With nothing to lose,
Millikan gave it a go.
In his lab at the University
of Chicago, he began working
with containers of thick water
vapor, called cloud chambers,
and varying the strength of
an electric field within them.
Clouds of water droplets formed
around charged atoms and
molecules before descending
due to gravity. By adjusting the
strength of the electric field, he
could slow down or even halt a
single droplet’s fall, countering
gravity with electricity. Find the
balanced, and — assuming it
did so consistently — that would
reveal the charge’s value.
When it turned out water
evaporated too quickly, Millikan
and his students — the often-
unsung heroes of science —
switched to a longer-lasting
substance: oil, sprayed into
the chamber by a drugstore
perfume atomizer.
The increasingly
sophisticated oil-drop
experiments eventually
determined that the electron
did indeed represent a unit
of charge. They estimated
its value to within whiskers
of the currently accepted
charge of one electron
(1.602 x 10-19 coulombs).
It was a coup for particle
physics, as well as Millikan.
“There’s no question that
it was a brilliant experiment,”
says Caltech physicist David
Goodstein. “Millikan’s result
proved beyond reasonable
doubt that the electron existed
and was quantized with a
definite charge. All of the
discoveries of particle physics
follow from that.”

46 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
YOUNG, DAVISSON AND GERMER
SEE PARTICLES DO THE WAVE
E X PERIMENTAL RE SULT: T HE WAVEL IK E NAT URE
OF LIGHT AND ELECTRONS
WHEN: 1801 AND 192 7, RE SPEC T I V ELY
Light: particle or wave? Having
long wrestled with this seeming
either/or, many physicists
settled on particle after Isaac
Newton’s tour de force through
optics. But a rudimentary,
yet powerful, demonstration
by fellow Englishman
Thomas Young shattered this
convention.
Young’s interests covered
everything from Egyptology
(he helped decode the Rosetta
Stone) to medicine and optics.
To probe light’s essence, Young
devised an experiment in 1801.
He cut two thin slits into an
opaque object, let sunlight
stream through them and
watched how the beams cast a
series of bright and dark fringes
on a screen beyond. Young
reasoned that this pattern
emerged from light wavily
spreading outward, like ripples
across a pond, with crests
and troughs from different
light waves amplifying and
canceling each other.
Although contemporary
physicists initially rebuffed
Young’s findings, rampant
rerunning of these so-called
double-slit experiments
established that the particles of
light really do move like waves.
“Double-slit experiments
have become so compelling
[because] they are relatively
easy to conduct,” says David
Kaiser, a professor of physics
and of the history of science
electron particles
proton particles
at MIT. “There is an unusually
large ratio, in this case,
between the relative simplicity
and accessibility of the
experimental design and the
deep conceptual significance of
the results.”
More than a century later,
a related experiment by
Clinton Davisson and Lester
Germer showed the depth of
this significance. At what is
now called Nokia Bell Labs
in New Jersey, the physicists
ricocheted electron particles
off a nickel crystal. The
scattered electrons interacted
to produce a pattern only
possible if the particles also
acted like waves. Subsequent
double slit-style experiments
with electrons proved that
particles with matter and
undulating energy (light) can
each act like both particles and
waves. The paradoxical idea
lies at the heart of quantum
physics, which at the time
was just beginning to explain
the behavior of matter at a
fundamental level.
“What these experiments
show, at their root, is that the
stuff of the world, be it radiation
or seemingly solid matter, has
some irreducible, unavoidable
wavelike characteristics,”
says Kaiser. “No matter how
surprising or counterintuitive
that may seem, physicists must
take that essential ‘waviness’
into account.”
ROBERT PAINE
STRESSES STARFISH
E X PERIMENTAL RE SULT: T HE DISPR OP OR T IONAT E
I M PA C T O F K E Y S TO N E S P E C I E S O N E C O S Y S T E MS
WHEN: INIT IAL LY PRE SENT ED IN A 1966 PAPER
Just like the purple starfish
he crowbarred off rocks and
chucked into the Pacific Ocean,
Bob Paine threw conventional
wisdom right out the window.
By the 1960s, ecologists had
come to agree that habitats
thrived primarily through
diversity. The common practice
of observing these interacting
webs of creatures great and
small suggested as much. Paine
took a different approach.
Curious what would
happen if he intervened in an
environment, Paine ran his
starfish-banishing experiments
in tidal pools along and off the
rugged coast of Washington
state. The removal of this single
species, it turned out, could
destabilize a whole ecosystem.
Unchecked, the starfish’s
barnacle prey went wild —
only to then be devoured by
marauding mussels. These
shellfish, in turn, started
crowding out the limpets and
algal species. The eventual
result: a food web in tatters,
with only mussel-dominated
pools left behind.
Paine dubbed the starfish
a keystone species, after
the necessary center stone
that locks an arch into place.
A revelatory concept, it
meant that all species do not
contribute equally in a given
ecosystem. Paine’s discovery
had a major influence on
conservation, overturning
the practice of narrowly
preserving an individual
species for the sake of it,
N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER
versus an ecosystem-based
management strategy.
“His influence was absolutely
transformative,” says Oregon
State University’s Jane
Lubchenco, a marine ecologist.
She and her husband, fellow
OSU professor Bruce Menge,
met 50 years ago as graduate
students in Paine’s lab at the
University of Washington.
Lubchenco, the administrator
of the National Oceanic
Atmospheric Administration
from 2009 to 2013, saw over the
years the impact that Paine’s
keystone species concept had
on policies related to fisheries
management.
Lubchenco and Menge
credit Paine’s inquisitiveness
and dogged personality for
changing their field. “A thing
that made him so charismatic
was almost a childlike
enthusiasm for ideas,” says
Menge. “Curiosity drove him
to start the experiment, and
then he got these spectacular
results.”
Paine died in 2016. His later
work had begun exploring
the profound implications of
humans as a hyper-keystone
species, altering the global
ecosystem through climate
change and unchecked
predation. D
Adam Hadhazy is based in
New Jersey. His work has also
appeared in New Scientist and
Popular Science, among other
publications.
47
ADDICTED,
MORE OR
LESS
Your genes influence how
easily you get hooked.

by B I LL SU LLI VA N
i l l ustra t i o n s by S A R A H H A N S O N

N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 49

 Nowadays, you can
sequence your genome
in a weekend for about a thousand
bucks. But would you believe that
the first human genome sequenced
took 13 years (1990 to 2003) and cost
$2.7 billion?
Back in those days, when Harry
Potter had just started his on-screen
adventures at Hogwarts, getting
your genome sequenced was a
rare privilege. Among the first
people to remove the invisibility
cloak from their DNA were James
Watson, one of the scientists who
helped solve the structure of DNA
in 1953, and Craig Venter, who
was instrumental in making the
Human Genome Project happen.
Steve Jobs was also one of the first
to have his genome sequenced
(which I imagine lab techs referred
to as the iGenome). What other
luminaries did scientists reach
out to for secrets their DNA held?
Stephen Hawking? High IQ record-
holder Marilyn vos Savant? That
guy who won 74 games in a row
on Jeopardy?
Nope. Scientists wanted Ozzy
Osbourne.
50 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
Born in 1948, John Michael Osbourne answers to sev-
eral names, including “Ozzy,” “Prince of Darkness” and
“Godfather of Heavy Metal.” Ozzy rose to stardom with
Black Sabbath in the 1970s, and then went on to a wild, and
wildly successful, solo career. But Ozzy’s music has often
been eclipsed by his legendary drug and alcohol binges. So
why would researchers want to peek inside Ozzy’s genes?
Truth be told, Ozzy is a remarkable human specimen.
He’s constantly struggled with addiction to multiple vices
(cocaine, booze, sex, pills, burritos), tirelessly toured and
OPENING COLLAGE ELEMENTS: ISTOCK: KRULUA, SHUTTERSTOCK: TRIFF, ZITA, PAPARACY, RAWPIXEL.COM, SUNNYTOYS, AFRICA STUDIO, NESTOR RIZHNIAK, MONIKA WISNIEWSKA, BEST_PHOTO_STUDIO, NAMNING, I LOVE COFFEE
partied for half a century and survived reality television
while taking up to 25 Vicodin pills a day at the time. His
immune system was so weakened from drugs and alcohol
that he once falsely tested positive for HIV.
Living one week of the Ozzy lifestyle would easily
kill most of us, so scientists couldn’t wait to get their
latex-gloved hands on this Iron Man’s DNA sequence.
What death-defying genes could Ozzy possibly have that
would allow someone to survive cocaine for breakfast and
four bottles of cognac a day for decades?
In 2010, scientists at Knome Inc. read the DNA diary of
a madman and discovered that Ozzy is indeed a genetic
mutant. Among some of the more intriguing things
spotted in his DNA was a never-before-seen mutation
near his ADH4 gene. ADH4 makes a protein called
alcohol dehydrogenase-4, which breaks down alcohol.
A mutation near ADH4 is likely to affect how much of the
protein is made. If Ozzy’s body is built to detoxify alcohol
much faster than normal, it might help explain why his
liver hasn’t exploded.
Ozzy also possesses variations in genes linked to addic-
tion and alcoholism, as well as how the body processes
marijuana, opiates and methamphetamines. All told, his
DNA revealed that he is six times more likely than the
average person to have alcohol dependency or alcohol
cravings, 1.31 times more likely to have a cocaine addic-
tion, and 2.6 times more likely to have hallucinations
caused by marijuana.
Ozzy, who claimed that “the only Gene I know
anything about is the one in KISS,” was fascinated by the
results. And although the variants found in his genome
are tantalizing, the truth is, we don’t know enough about
these genes yet to build a comprehensive picture that
shows us why this man has an addictive personality —
or why he is still reasonably healthy after abusing his
body for more than 50 years. Addiction is a complex
behavior, but research is revealing that our genes, plus
other biological factors outside our jurisdiction, can
conspire to make life a living hell.
ALCOHOLISM IN YOUR GENE S?
Alcoholism includes cravings, loss of control, physical
dependence and tolerance. The National Council on
YOUNG OZZY: MICHAEL PUTLAND/GETTY IMAGES. ALL OTHER COLLAGE ELEMENTS, SHUTTERSTOCK: ZITA, VSHIVKOVA, S_BUKLEY
Alcoholism and Drug Dependence esti-
mates that 1 in every 12 adults suffers
from alcohol abuse or dependence in the
United States alone. Americans spend
nearly $200 million a day on booze, and
about 100,000 people die each year from
alcohol-related causes, such as drunken
driving, suicide or falling down stairs.
Alcohol addiction is clearly a serious
problem, but I’m not trying to cast alcohol
as the devil’s nectar. The important ques-
tion is why some people can’t stop imbib-
ing when they know they should. The
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and
Alcoholism says that genes are responsi-
ble for about half of someone’s propensity
to develop alcohol addiction. But as with
Ozzy’s genome, there is rarely a single gene
that fully explains this complex behavior.
Indeed, numerous genes have been
linked to alcohol dependence. The first
one relates to why people like to hit the
pub after a stressful day at work. A 2004
What death- study by geneticist Tatiana Foroud at the
defying genes Indiana University School of Medicine
linked a gene called GABRG3 to alco-
could Ozzy holism. This gene makes a subunit of
possibly have the brain cell receptor that recognizes
gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a
that would allow so-called “inhibitory” neurotransmit-
someone to ter that tells the brain to calm down.
Without it, a person is more likely to turn
survive cocaine to booze to do the same. This discovery
for breakfast and gave credence to the theory that the
disease is linked to an overactive brain.
four bottles of Due to its sedative properties, alcohol
cognac a day for relaxes hyperactive neurons, serving to
dam the raging rivers in the mind.
decades?
WHY SOME JUST S AY NO
Genes that govern how the body deals
with alcohol or other drugs also influence
N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 51
 whether someone is more prone to becoming a substance
abuser. For example, some people, particularly those of East
Asian descent, experience rapid flushing and a quickening
heart rate when consuming alcohol. This is commonly
referred to as Asian flush or Asian glow, but the more inclu-
sive name is alcohol flush reaction (AFR). People with AFR
possess a genetic variant that impairs production of an
enzyme that helps break down alcohol in the body.
In the liver, alcohol is broken down to acetaldehyde,
which is toxic, and then to acetate, which is non-toxic.
In those with AFR, alcohol is converted to acetaldehyde
just fine, but then the acetaldehyde is not broken down
efficiently and builds up in the body. This buildup causes
blood vessels to dilate, which produces the redness and
heat we call flushing. Excessive acetaldehyde can also
cause headaches and nausea. The uncomfortable sensa-
tions associated with drinking prompt some to lay off the
sauce, making people with AFR less likely to suffer from
alcoholism.
The same principle underlies the use of the medication
disulfiram as a treatment for alcohol abuse. Disulfiram
52 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
causes drinkers to experience the same unpleasant reac-
tions of AFR when they consume alcohol, discouraging
them from hitting the bottle.
Drugs have different effects on different people, largely
based on what users have in their genetic toolbox to process
COLLAGE ELEMENTS: ISTOCK: KRULUA, SHUTTERSTOCK: WANGBAR, ROZBEH, PUHHHA
the substance in question. For example, about 20 percent of
Americans have a mutation in a gene called fatty acid amide
hydrolase (FAAH). This gene makes an enzyme of the same
name that breaks down anandamide, the so-called bliss
molecule. Your body produces anandamide naturally to
decrease anxiety by binding to your cannabinoid receptors.
People with the mutated FAAH have more anandamide
in their brain all the time; they not only tend to be calmer
and happier than others, but they are also less likely to use
marijuana because it simply doesn’t do much for them.
WHY IT ’S HARD F OR SOME TO STOP
Alcohol and other drugs are foreign chemicals that are
processed by the body. If the body keeps seeing alcohol
over and over, it reacts by making the liver work overtime
to increase the number of enzymes to get rid of it. The
body’s attempt to resume normalcy is why drinkers build more alcohol. Such a feedback mechanism is analogous
up tolerance to alcohol, which means they must ingest more to how the satiety hormone leptin tells the brain when the
and more to get the same feeling of satisfaction. To novice stomach is full. Studies like these suggest that people’s
drinkers, one shot may produce a buzz. But after a few ability to know their limits with alcohol may be because
weeks of drinking, it will take two or three shots to reach they were lucky to be born with a more effective liver-brain
that buzz, because their liver is processing the alcohol communication system.
more efficiently.
After prolonged drinking, people need to consume W H AT A L O N G , S T R A N G E T R I P I T ’ S B E E N
alcohol just to feel normal. To compensate for alcohol’s You may never have thought about it this way, but just
sedative effects, our brain chemistry adapts to make more about everyone is or has been addicted at one point to
neurotransmitters that activate neurons to excite them caffeine. Sure, caffeine is mild compared with hardcore
again. If alcohol intake suddenly stops, the brain is no drugs, but the fundamental principles are the same.
longer being sedated, but those excitatory neurotransmit- We enjoy the jolt of energy that caffeine brings, but soon
ters are still cranked up to 11. This is why people undergo- we can’t seem to function without it. We get tired and
ing withdrawal experience the shakes, cranky. Many people are complete ogres
anxiety and restlessness. until they have had their morning cof-
Because the brain takes time to Alcohol interacts fee. After a little while, we find ourselves
recalibrate to the lack of alcohol, many having a second or third cup because one
people with withdrawal symptoms with numerous just doesn’t cut it anymore. Try to stop,
resume drinking just to calm down. The other systems and you will be tortured with fatigue,
excess alcohol that needs to be consumed headaches and irritability. It’s easier just
starts to wreak havoc on other bodily in the brain, to brew another pot and keep the habit
systems including the liver, kidneys and going. If asked to give up the coffee pot,
stomach. Benzodiazepines like Xanax
and genetic many would say you’d have to pry it from
and Valium are sometimes administered variations can their cold, dead hands.
to people undergoing alcohol withdrawal It’s the same basic cycle for those with
as a means to replace the effects of alco-
exist in any of other addictions, but the substances
hol with a medicine that increases the them, explaining involved are much more difficult to
anxiety-reducing neurotransmitter quit. Perhaps we can use this common
GABA. The administration of benzodi-
why responses to ground to reshape our approach for
azepines can be better controlled than alcohol and the helping people with addiction issues.
alcohol intake and often helps restore the The addiction is punishing enough, and
proper balance between excitatory and tendency to further punitive action has proven to be
inhibitory activities in the neurons. become addicted an abysmal failure that has needlessly
Alcohol interacts with numerous other ruined the lives of many good people.
systems in the brain, and genetic varia- vary so widely. The true crime of people with addiction
tions can exist in any of them, explaining is having the wrong genes in the wrong
why responses to alcohol and the ten- place at the wrong time. With better
dency to become addicted vary so widely. education, we might prevent more people
Traditionally, scientists have uncovered from doing drugs in the first place. With
genes associated with increased drinking, but a 2016 a better understanding of the biology behind addiction,
study led by Gunter Schumann at King’s College London we can develop effective treatments. With a better idea of
revealed a gene that may explain why some people know the genes predisposing people to an addictive personality,
their limits. A variant in the gene that makes a protein we can screen for people who may be at risk. We need a war
called beta-Klotho was found in about 40 percent of study on addiction, not a war on drugs, and certainly not a war on
participants who show a decreased desire to drink alcohol. those who are addicted. D
The beta-Klotho protein is a receptor in the brain that
catches a hormone called FGF21, which the liver secretes
when it is processing alcohol. Schumann and his team Excerpted from Pleased to Meet Me, originally
believe that beta-Klotho may be involved in cross-talk published by National Geographic Partners,
between the liver and the brain, a type of SOS that there is LLC, on August 6, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by
too much alcohol in the liver. When the team genetically William J. Sullivan.
engineered mice without beta-Klotho, these mice drank

N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 53

OUT THERE P OWER E D BY A ST RO N O M Y M AG A Z I N E

ALL WET
Scientists have recently speculated that Earth’s vast stores of water may have come from the same collection of gas and dust that
birthed and surrounded our infant planet, shown in this artist’s rendering. But many researchers are skeptical of the new idea, and
still believe our water came from other solar system objects that bombarded a young Earth. Learn more about this decades-long
mystery starting on page 56. Then, on page 62, take a tour of the lunar landmarks named for women. — BILL ANDREWS; IMAGE BY NASA/JPL-CALTECH

N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 55

 OUT THERE
BY NOLA TAYLOR REDD

Asteroids could have carried water,

locked away in their minerals, to a
young Earth, depositing it through
impacts during our planet’s early
years. But this isn’t the only possible
explanation for our watery world.

56 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
 SPECIAL BONUS CONTENT FROM ASTRONOMY MAGAZINE

Where Did
Earth’s Water
Come From?
Most astronomers believe asteroids carried water
to early Earth. But new research suggests it may
have come from even closer to home.

O
Karen Meech doesn’t spend a lot of time digging through
« Earth’s rocks. An astronomer by trade, she is usually behind
the telescope, investigating comets and looking for hints about
how Earth got its water. But a field trip to Iceland in 2004 ulti-
mately sent her scrambling through the craters of Hawaii nearly
a decade later in search of clues about the liquid that helped birth
life on this planet.
On that fateful Icelandic tour, Meech saw geothermal areas
with gas billowing out of the ground. The guide told the group
not to worry — it was only water. “Then she said, ‘This is prob-
ably primordial water,’ and it set a lightbulb off,” Meech says.

THE FL AVOR S OF WATER

The source of Earth’s water has been a long-standing mystery;
Meech herself has been trying to solve it for at least 20 years. Most
of that search has focused on sorting out the various isotopes
of hydrogen that go into making the water — or “the flavor of
water,” as Lydia Hallis of the University of Glasgow calls it. One
of those “flavors” is heavy water, a form of water that incorporates
deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen whose nucleus contains one
proton and one neutron. Normal hydrogen lacks a neutron, so
water with deuterium weighs more than ordinary water.
By simulating conditions in the early solar system, researchers
can calculate the ratio of heavy water to ordinary water when
the planets were forming. On Earth, the observed ratio is higher
than it would have been in the young solar system, leading many
astronomers to suspect that the water was imported because the
ratio should remain constant over time. Today, most scientists
believe asteroids carried water to the young, dry Earth.
Meech was suspicious of this idea because measurements of
Earth’s deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) ratio, which is connected
RON MILLER

to the ratio of heavy water to normal, is generally based on the

composition of today’s oceans. Reservoirs with a high quantity

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 OUT THERE
of heavy water have a high D/H ratio,
while deuterium-poor reservoirs show a
lower ratio.
But Earth’s ratio should have changed
over time. Like most planets, Earth
probably lost some of its atmosphere to
space, and the lighter hydrogen would
be easier to strip from the planet than
its heavier counterpart. Geological pro-
cesses, such as the evaporation of water
from reservoirs like lakes and oceans,
can also change the ratio, as can biologi-
cal reactions, because lighter isotopes
are used differently than heavier ones
in metabolic processes. All of these pro-
cesses would give the modern Earth a
higher D/H ratio compared with when
the planet was newly formed.
When Meech heard that primordial
water could be spouting from the surface
in Iceland, she grew excited at the chance
to study the earliest flavor of water. But
after chatting with a geologist, she learned
that the plumes actually came from more
recent activity — they weren’t primordial
after all. However, the geologist revealed
that some rocky material brought up from
Earth’s mantle does contain small traces
of water. That material may never have
mixed with the stuff on the surface and
could represent Earth’s early water. No one
had investigated the D/H ratio in those
samples because the technology to do so
was new. But the University of Hawaii,
where Meech is based, had just purchased
a new ion microprobe that might be able
to do the job.
What Is Heavy Water?
Heavy water, or D2O, contains
deuterium in place of hydrogen.
Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen
whose nucleus contains one proton
and one neutron, whereas normal
hydrogen contains only a proton.
The ratio of heavy water to normal
water in a sample gives scientists
information about how it formed —
information researchers are now
using to try to unravel the origin of
Earth’s water.
58 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
Geysers such as Strokkur in Iceland inspired
Karen Meech to hunt for Earth’s primordial
water. Although such geysers do not spew the
unaltered early water needed to pursue this line
of study, other geological processes do, such as
volcanic plumes.
“I thought, wow, here’s a way we can
actually measure the original fingerprints,”
Meech says. “At that point, I got very
excited.”
IN SE ARCH OF THE CULPRIT
Earth and the rest of the planets formed
inside a nest of gas left over from the birth
of the sun. This material, known as the
solar nebula, contained all the elements
that built the planets, and the composi-
tions varied with distance from the sun.
Deuterium oxide (D2O)
Heavy water
The region near the star was too warm for
some material to coalesce as ices, which
instead formed in the outer part of the
solar system. Around Earth, hydrogen
and other elements could stick around
only as a gas. Because the nebula was
short-lived, most scientists suspect that
Earth didn’t have enough time to col-
lect these gases before they escaped into
space. That idea, along with the planet’s
high D/H ratio, led many to believe that
Earth’s water must have arrived after
Earth had cooled.
When the European Giotto spacecraft
visited Halley’s Comet in 1986, research-
ers noticed its heavy water content was
higher than in the gas near Earth’s part
of the early solar system. A new theory
emerged: Comets could have carried
water to early Earth. After the planets
formed, the enormous bodies would con-
tinue to stir things up, with giant planets
like Jupiter hurling some material toward
the inner solar system. Icy objects that
formed in the outer solar system could
have been tossed at Earth to rain down as
giant water-laden impacts.
But as other missions probed more
comets, it became clear that the amount
of heavy water wasn’t consistent among
them. In fact, most of the comets’ heavy
water ratios were far too high to be
responsible for dropping water on Earth.
Another culprit must be responsible.
Comets weren’t the only thing that
the gas giants tossed around. As Jupiter
plowed through the asteroid belt early
H2O
Water Proton
FROM TOP: SIXLOCAL/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS; ROEN KELLY/DISCOVER
Neutron
Electron
 in our solar system’s history, it scattered
the rocky debris in all directions. Like
comets, some of the material rained down
on Earth. Unlike comets, asteroids don’t
lock up water as ice. Instead, they trap
its components — hydrogen and oxygen
— inside minerals. Also, the heavy water
content in asteroids falls much closer to
Earth’s current ratio. That’s why asteroids
are the leading suspect for the source of our
planet’s water.
“Really, we’re not talking about water;
we’re talking about hydrogen,” says Anne
Peslier, a geochemist at NASA’s Johnson
Space Center. Peslier studies the geo-
chemistry of Earth’s mantle and the other
terrestrial planets, including the hydrogen
trapped within minerals.
When Earth formed, the hydrogen sur-
rounding the growing planet was captured
in its rocks and minerals. When hydrogen-
rich and oxygen-rich minerals melt
because of the mantle’s heat, the resulting The cliffs near Baffin Island, Canada, grant researchers access to material from Earth’s deep mantle,
water can spew from the planet’s crust. which may contain the fingerprints of our planet’s earliest water.
Most of the mantle is rocky, and enor-
mous quantities of hydrogen and oxygen olivine crystals were captured early enough normal and heavy water. Hallis was
could be trapped inside. Researchers esti- during Earth’s formation and remained intrigued by the chance to scramble
mate that as much as 10 oceans of water undisturbed for the planet’s 4.5 billion- across craters in Hawaii and along the
may exist within the mantle. year lifetime, they could reveal how much shores of Baffin Island in Canada in
Erupting volcanoes usually bring up the ancient ratios of heavy and normal search of clues. Baffin is one of the few
magma from the upper part of Earth’s water shifted, if they changed at all. The places where Earth’s deep mantle is acces-
mantle, the region closer to the surface. tiny time capsules could provide answers sible. The chain of eruptions that formed
This material is more likely to be polluted to the long-standing questions regarding the island also created Greenland and
by hydrogen from the crust, which con- the source of Earth’s water. Iceland. “The Baffin Island samples are
tains the same higher D/H ratios measured But first, they had to be found. the most pristine examples that we have
in the oceans today. More pristine samples of the deep mantle,” Hallis says.
lie much farther down in the mantle. HUNTING PRIMORDIAL WATER Hallis also received samples collected
Although it’s hot there, less than 20 percent While Meech knows a great deal about by Don Francis, now an emeritus profes-
of the mantle rock has melted, Peslier says. water in the solar system, she wasn’t as sor at McGill University in Montreal,
When the melted material erupts, it can familiar with rocks on Earth. She pulled from a tiny uninhabited island called
have a violent effect on the solid rock. in Hallis, then a postdoctoral student, Padloping, off the eastern coast of
FROM TOP: TIMKAL/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS; JAMES ST. JOHN/FLICKR

“If [the lavas] go fast enough and bru- to lead geological excavations in a Canada and northwest of Baffin Island.
tally enough, they sometimes break hunt for those early fingerprints of According to Hallis, Francis collected the
off pieces of what they are travers- first of his samples in 1985. The isolation
ing along the way,” Peslier Green olivine crystals in lava of Padloping Island meant that research-
can contain and protect
says. She describes the hydrogen collected during ers had to travel there by boat and set up
result — called mantle Earth’s formation, allowing camp. The sheer cliffs made falling rocks
xenolith, after the Greek researchers to determine plentiful, and Francis picked up the
its ratio of deuterium to
word for “foreign rock” hydrogen. This sample best-looking minerals from the beach.
— as crystals of bright of mantle xenolith from A return trip in 2004 netted even more
Peridot Mesa in Arizona
green olivine and black exhibits high-quality samples.
pyroxene embedded in green peridotite (olivine) “Something I would really like to do is
embedded in gray
the black lava. phonotephrite (volcanic) go back [to Padloping Island],” Hallis says.
If the hydrogen-rich host rock. The imposing cliffs make it challenging

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 OUT THERE
Earth’s Interior
If the ingredients of water
were absorbed by Earth
early in its formation, they
may remain unchanged
within the planet’s
interior. Researchers are
searching the deeper
mantle for samples,
which can be brought to
the surface by volcanic
activity, to determine
the exact flavor of our
planet’s primordial water
— and whether it came
from the solar nebula or
an outside source.
to collect samples, but if she could obtain
some from the steep overhangs, she would
be able to pinpoint where and when the
material rose to the surface.
With the well-preserved samples in
hand, Hallis and her colleagues began to
systematically destroy them. The rocks
were ground up into sandlike powder.
Using the microprobe, the scientists
sorted the enclosed crystals by color.
Meech helped to categorize the crystals.
“I found it hard to manipulate the tiny
little bits of sand without spilling them on
the floor,” she admits ruefully.
Part of the process involved ensur-
ing the samples were stripped from the
mantle rather than the crust as the volcanic
plume burst upward. Previous studies of
the Baffin Island minerals suggested that
they came from the mantle’s depths, and
mineralogical evidence revealed that the
samples Hallis had in the lab were most
likely pristine. The tiny glass beads were
protected in part by olivine crystals, which
act as a barrier to prevent weathering once
the rocks are on the surface. Even so,
they weren’t entirely perfect.
“Even with the most
pristine samples that we
have, it’s not 100 percent
exactly deep mantle,”
Hallis says. “It’s always
going to have some
incorporation of the
[upper] mantle in there,
60 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
Crust
Upper
mantle
Mantle
Outer
core
Inner
core
just because it has to travel through so
much of the mantle to get to the surface.”
While the Baffin Island samples were
free of crust pollution, the team wasn’t
so fortunate with the rocks gathered near
their university. The Hawaiian minerals
had suffered from weathering and had
been heavily affected by surface water,
most likely rain. The pollution kept these
samples from revealing the flavors of
pristine water.
With the first fingerprints of Earth’s
water finally taken, Meech and Hallis
began to compare them with other
samples. Hallis expected to observe a
heavy water content closer to the mete-
orites thought to have delivered water to
the young planet. Instead, the samples
weighed in with about 25 percent less
heavy water compared with normal water
— far less than expected.
“That was a bit of a surprise,” Hallis
says. “It suggests that carbonaceous
chondrites [a class of meteorites] are not
a good fit for the source of Earth’s water.”
Carbonaceous chondrites
contain either water
or minerals affected
by the presence
of water. These
meteorites were
thought to be a good
candidate for Earth’s
early water delivery
system, but their
heavy water content
suggested otherwise.
While meteorites may have provided
some of Earth’s water, she doesn’t think
that they delivered all of it.
T H E S O U R CE O F E AR T H’S WAT E R
What do the samples suggest is the source
of Earth’s water? Hallis suspects it came
from the solar nebula. While many sci-
entists argue that the nebula would have
dissipated within 6 million years — long
before our planet could have grown large
enough to capture it — she points out that
several young stars have been found with
gas around them for as long as 10 million
years. That would give the tiny rocks that
ultimately built Earth enough time to
incorporate elements like hydrogen and
nitrogen into their structure. Hallis says
nitrogen and hydrogen in the solar system
tend to follow one another — “If you have
a certain flavor of hydrogen, you have a
certain flavor of nitrogen,” she says.
“Perhaps you still have pockets in the
Earth that have preserved this initial
hydrogen source,” says Zachary Sharp,
a researcher at the University of New
Mexico who also suspects that Earth’s
D/H ratio has shifted over time.
Hallis’ results aren’t the only ones to
suggest that Earth may have picked up the
bulk of its water from the start. While the
moon was once thought to be completely
dry, recent re-examinations of Apollo
moon rocks have revealed traces of water.
The leading theory for the moon’s forma-
tion is that it was created when a Mars-
sized object slammed into the young
Earth. Liquid water on the surface would
have been vaporized, leading many to
conclude that Earth had to pick up more
water from elsewhere. But the low D/H
ratios from the lunar samples suggest that
the moon could have collected the water
FROM TOP: ROEN KELLY/DISCOVER; JAMES ST. JOHN/FLICKR
in minerals locked in its interior, a region
neither comets nor asteroids could have
polluted. Later volcanic eruptions hurled
that material to the surface, to be returned
to Earth by astronauts.
Why is this important? The high tem-
peratures post-collision would have been
similar to those found in the solar nebula,
Hallis says. That helps to make the case
that even in the hot early solar system,
volatiles and water could be accreted.
 The asteroid Vesta, imaged above by NASA’s
Dawn spacecraft, contains water with a similar
flavor to that of Earth’s. This suggests both
bodies’ water may have come from the same
available reservoir. The young star HL Tauri,
imaged at right in radio wavelengths, has a
protoplanetary disk with gaps where planets may
be forming — and accreting hydrogen, oxygen,
and water from their surroundings.
But hydrogen comes in heavy and light
flavors, so doesn’t that mean the ratio
could change in either direction? Not
really, according to Sharp, who has revis-
ited the idea that most of Earth’s water
may have been collected from the nebula
rather than later collisions. “It’s easy to
increase the isotopic ratio of the samples,
but it’s difficult to lower them,” he says.
That’s because the lighter hydrogen is
easier to remove. For instance, hydrogen
rises more easily to the top of the atmo-
sphere, where the solar wind can strip it
away. The heavier deuterium tends to stay
closer to the ground.
Asteroids are also providing hints that
Earth’s water may have come from the
gas that birthed the planets. Studies of
meteorites from the large asteroid Vesta
have revealed ratios of heavy water similar
FROM LEFT: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/UCAL/MPS/DLR/IDA; ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
to the Baffin Island estimates.
“Now that we are finding low values in
Earth, the moon, and Vesta, and also in
the water reservoir of the asteroids, now
maybe the [nebula] story is possible,”
says Alice Stephant of Arizona State
University, who studies Vesta. “It seems
like they all share a common reservoir
that is lower [in deuterium] than what
we thought.”
T H E SM O K I N G G U N
The lower D/H ratios revealed by Hallis,
Meech, and their colleagues are not
yet widely accepted. Conel Alexander,
a cosmochemist at the Carnegie
Institution of Washington, says there are
two reasons why other researchers didn’t
immediately change their minds about
the source of Earth’s water.
One argument against the results
stems from how Hallis extrapolated the
isotopes and elemental abundances in
her measurements; Alexander says some
scientists disagree with how the final
numbers play out using her method.
The other issue is how Hallis explained
her results. “Lydia’s interpretation was
unique,” Alexander says. “There may be
other ways of getting hydrogen into the
melt inclusions that she was measuring.”
Alexander’s chief concern stems from
the fact that only a single source of rocks
— the Baffin Island samples — was used
to estimate the entire planet’s ancient
ratios. “The bulk of Earth may have a
completely different composition, and
there may be something weird about
ocean islands’ basalts,” he says. He hopes
that other scientists will follow Hallis’
lead and measure the D/H ratio from a
variety of deep-mantle plumes.
Hallis is ready to take her own trip
to Padloping Island to collect more
samples. One thing she would like to
do is investigate not just the hydrogen
involved, but also the nitrogen. But ana-
lyzing the nitrogen in samples is more
difficult than hunting down hydrogen,
partly because there is even less nitro-
gen in these samples than hydrogen.
Measuring nitrogen also requires instru-
ments capable of very high precision.
Hallis says it’s pushing the limit of what
current technology can do.
Alexander says that Hallis’ goal of
hunting down nitrogen from future
samples will also help firm up any doubts
about the primordial nature of the Baffin
Island samples. “If she can show that
there is both light hydrogen and light
nitrogen in these inclusions, I think that
would be a smoking gun,” he says.
“If the nitrogen follows the hydrogen,
then we proved our theory that [the
samples] are primitive,” Hallis says. D
Nola Taylor Redd is a freelance science writer
with a focus on space and astronomy.
N OVEM B ER 2 019 . D IS C OVER 61
 OUT THERE
BY WILLIAM SHEEHAN AND KEVIN SCHINDLER

Apollo 10’s command module

appears to the lower right of
Mount Marilyn on the Sea
of Tranquillity’s shore. The
mountain would serve as a
navigational tool for Apollo 11’s
landing two months later.

O
The
The Apollo program transformed
« our understanding of the moon. It
helped unlock our satellite’s complex his-
tory, and proved that the moon formed
return to family and friends. You might
expect this longing for home would
inspire them to name newly found lands
after their distant loved ones. You’d

Women
when a Mars-sized object slammed into
Earth in the solar system’s earliest days.
Apollo’s legacy extends to the naming
of several lunar features. Craters honor
be wrong.
Christopher Columbus didn’t name
anything after his wife, Filipa Moniz
Perestrelo. Neither Ferdinand Magellan

in the many of the Apollo astronauts, and

Mount Marilyn — named for astronaut
Jim Lovell’s wife — served as a key navi-
gational landmark during the first moon
(whose wife was Beatriz) nor Captain
James Cook (Elizabeth Batts) honored
their wives with the names of faraway
countries. Walter Raleigh did name

Moon
The mountain named after
landing. Remarkably, this recently named
mountain is one of only a few lunar fea-
tures that carry a woman’s name.

Marilyn Lovell made her
one of a handful of women
IT ’S A MAN’S WORLD
Explorers, at least since Odysseus, have
struggled between the urge to forge
Virginia after a woman, but it was his
royal patroness, Elizabeth I of England,
often referred to as the “Virgin Queen.”
Sadly, for every million people who have
heard of these explorers, perhaps only
one knows the name of any of their wives.
Telescopic explorers of the moon,
NASA

immortalized on the moon. ahead toward new discoveries and to beginning with Jesuit priest Giovanni

62 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
 SPECIAL BONUS CONTENT FROM ASTRONOMY MAGAZINE

Catharina

Hypatia

When Giovanni Riccioli first named features on the moon in 1651, he immortalized only two women with craters: Catharina and Hypatia.

Riccioli, were equally lacking in sensitiv-
ity. On his 1651 map, Riccioli introduced
the now hallowed tradition of naming
craters after noted scientists, philoso-
phers, and explorers. He selected 147
new names; all but two of those names
honor men, some of whom were still
alive at the time. Riccioli even reserved
a prominent crater for himself.
Of the two women he honored, Saint
Catharine of Alexandria got the bigger
prize. Catharina is an imposing crater
that adjoins Cyrillus and Theophilus in
an impressive chain. A much-revered
Christian martyr, Saint Catharine, alas,
apparently never existed. Her legend
seems to be based on that of Hypatia of
Alexandria — a Neoplatonist philoso-
pher, astronomer, and mathematician —
and the second woman Riccioli honored.
Hypatia Crater is less than half the size of
Catharina and far less prominent.
The lack of women on Riccioli’s map
largely reflects the subordinate roles they
played in Greco-Roman and Christian
societies, and the fact that women were
generally dissuaded from scholarly
endeavors. It may also reflect the real-
ity that many scholars were priests or
CONSOLIDATED LUNAR ATLAS/UA/LPL
singularly lacking in female company as
the monasteries of Mount Athos.
Shakespeare wrote in the moon-
enchanted A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
“The course of true love never did run
smooth”; this has been even truer on the
moon’s rugged surface. Astronomers
wanting to immortalize their loved
ones sometimes had to disguise their
purposes. A case in point: On the map
of the moon compiled at the
Paris Observatory under the
direction of Jean Dominique
Cassini, a woman’s face in
profile projects from the
mountainous Promontorium
Heraclides into the smooth
bay of Sinus Iridum. Through
a telescope at low power, this
feature appears striking when
it lies on the terminator, but
under higher magnification,
it disappears into a miscellany
of hills and ridges.
Who was this mysterious
lady in the moon? Although
it is impossible to know for
certain, a co-author of this
story (Sheehan) and French
accomplishments, selenographers
bestowed their names on lunar craters.
Still, women remained a distinct minority.
Among those honored were redoubtable
18th- and 19th-century figures such as
Nicole-Reine Lepaute, Mary Somerville,
and Caroline Herschel (whose crater,
C. Herschel, is much less distinguished
than that given to her brother William).
More recently, women honored on the
moon include Maria Mitchell
and several of the human
“The course “computers” who analyzed
photographic plates at the
of true Harvard College Observatory:
love never Williamina Fleming, Antonia
did run Maury, Annie Jump Cannon,
and Henrietta Swan Leavitt.
smooth” — Marie Curie, the first double
and it’s Nobel laureate, was honored
with her maiden name,
even truer Sklodowska, nine years before
on the her husband, Pierre, got his
moon’s own crater.
The first woman in
rugged space, Russian cosmonaut
surface. Valentina Tereshkova, is the
only one officially honored
while alive — she’s still going

bachelors. According to the late English
astronomy popularizer Patrick Moore,
French philosopher René Descartes
claimed that named lunar craters are
inhabited by the spirits of their name-
sakes. Had what Descartes said been
true, the moon would have been as
scholar Francoise Launay have argued
that it was meant to be a celestial portrait
of Cassini’s wife, Geneviève de Laistre.
A L ADIE S CLUB STAR TS TO F ORM
As more women gained recogni-
tion for their scientific aptitude and
strong in 2019. In the latest count of the
more than 1,600 craters on the moon,
only about 30 bear a woman’s name.
Part of this reflects stringent rules set
by the International Astronomical
Union (IAU), the governing body for
naming features on the moon and other

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 OUT THERE
Above: The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this oblique view of Mount Marilyn through its narrow-
angle camera. Right: Jim and Marilyn Lovell pose at the Adler Planetarium’s 2018 Celestial Ball in Chicago.
planetary bodies. The rules were adopted
to prevent solar system nomenclature
from becoming utterly chaotic and
capricious. But it also, no doubt, exposes
the long-standing sexism and discour-
agement of women in mathematics and
science in Western culture.
Though generally (and in view of past
abuses, not unreasonably) strict about
adopting the names of people still alive,
the IAU has overlooked this rule on occa-
sion. Tereshkova is a prime example, and
several Apollo astronauts also have been
honored. Other exceptions have sneaked
in because only insiders knew their back
stories. For example, American mappers
in 1976 named a small lunar crater “Kira”
in tribute to the eminently worthy Kira
Shingareva, principal scientist at the
Planetary Cartography Laboratory at the
Space Research Institute in Moscow.
Against this background of the IAU
insisting on the integrity of lunar nomen-
clature, we come to what is undoubtedly
the most interesting feature from the
Apollo era to receive a personal name:
Mount Marilyn. It doubles as the only
Apollo landmark visible to earthbound
observers through binoculars or a
small telescope.
MOUNT MARILYN
We are now more than 50 years removed
from the historic Apollo 8 mission, in
which astronauts Frank Borman, Jim
64 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
Lovell, and Bill Anders first circumnavi- that lacked the contrast — and impact
gated the moon. Though often overlooked — of a blue Earth above the gray moon
in favor of Apollo 11’s lunar landing in set against the stark blackness of space.
July 1969, the December 1968 flight of It also mattered that a robot took the
Apollo 8 was probably more significant earlier image whereas a human took the
— and certainly more radical. As the first second. The astronauts saw the scene with
manned mission to leave Earth orbit and their own eyes, reacted to it, and snapped
reach the moon’s sphere of gravitational the picture.
influence, it accomplished a Although Apollo 8 accom-
truly astronomical leap for- plished many firsts, it also
ward in distance. It would be In the was a trailblazer for Apollo
as if the Wright brothers, after latest 11. To fulfill President John F.
their first successful flight at Kennedy’s audacious goal of
Kitty Hawk, immediately set count of landing a man on the moon
out to fly around the globe. the more and returning him safely
Above all, Apollo 8 raised to Earth by the end of the
the consciousness of people
than 1,600 decade, Apollo 11 astronauts
back home with a ravishing craters needed Apollo 8 to serve as
FROM LEFT: NASA/GSFC/ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY; COURTESY OF ADLER PLANETARIUM
color image of a beautiful on the a scout. One important task
blue Earth rising over a deso- was to locate suitable land-
late moon. Anders took the moon, only marks along the approach to
“Earthrise” shot on Christmas about 30 the prospective landing site
Eve during the third of 10 in the Sea of Tranquillity.
orbits around the moon. It
bear a Lovell’s job was to study
gave us a cosmic perspective woman’s the lunar surface with an
on our home planet, reveal- name. eye toward navigation. On
ing the precious jewel in all Apollo 8’s second orbit
its beauty, fragility, and finite- around the moon, Lovell
ness. The photo even helped accelerate the looked down on craters that he described
environmental movement. as resembling what pickaxes make when
It surprises many people that this was they strike concrete. Passing toward the
not the first image of Earth from the Sea of Tranquillity, he took note of the
vicinity of the moon. Lunar Orbiter 1 crater Taruntius, then of the low ridges
captured a similar view in August 1966, near the northwestern edge of the Sea
though it was a black-and-white image of Fertility. The range, known as Montes
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 OUT THERE
Secchi, grazes Secchi Crater, named for
Jesuit astronomer Angelo Secchi.
Lovell’s voice came across clearly on
the radio. “The mountain range has got
more contrast because of the sun angle.
I can see the initial point right now,
Mount Marilyn.”
Mike Collins, at ground control,
replied, “Roger.”
Despite Collins’ affirmative, no sel-
enographer would have recognized the
name. Lovell already had identified this
triangularly shaped mountain — officially
known at the time as Secchi Theta — as
a significant navigational landmark from
a Lunar Orbiter scout image even before
he had lifted off for the moon. (It seems
rather strange now, when GPS can get us
from here to there with little effort on our
part, but one really did rely on printed
maps to land on the moon in those days.)
Lovell decided to name the feature after
the one person whose support was most
indispensable to his own success — his
wife, Marilyn. Chivalry was not yet dead.
Indeed, in naming this feature for his
wife, Lovell showed more chivalry than
had the great explorers of the 15th and
16th centuries.
A LO N G T I M E C O M I N G
The triangular mountain would always
be Mount Marilyn to Lovell, and so
it was to the astronauts of Apollo 10.
During that May 1969 mission, the
lunar module descended to within 8.9
miles (14.3 kilometers) of the surface.
On a later orbit of the moon, the crew
saw the feature out the window. “We’ve
just passed over Mount Marilyn and
the crater Weatherford. Over,” intoned
Commander Tom Stafford upon reaching
the point where the next mission would
ignite the lunar module’s engine to slow
down the craft and begin the descent
toward the lunar surface.
When the real thing took place on
Apollo 11 in July 1969, Mount Marilyn
again pointed the way:
Buzz Aldrin: “We’re going over Mount
Marilyn at the present time, and it’s igni-
tion point.”
CapCom [Bruce McCandless]: “Roger.
Thank you. And our preliminary tracking
66 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
Apollo 8 and 13 astronaut Jim Lovell also has a lunar feature named for him, this 22-mile-wide
(35 kilometers) oblong crater on the moon’s farside.
data for the first few minutes shows you
in a 61.6 by 169.5 orbit. Over.”
Aldrin: “Roger.”
CapCom: “And Jim [Lovell] is smiling.”
ON THE ROAD TO SUCCE S S
Oddly, Mount Marilyn long remained
an unofficial name — despite, as Lovell
told one of us, “representing a significant
event in the history of spaceflight. It was
the initial point where Apollo 11 started
its descent into the Sea of Tranquillity. It
is the only visible icon to represent that
historical feat.”
In fact, starting in 1973, it became
something of an orphan — a feature
without a name. Not only was that the
last year the IAU sanctioned the names
of craters for still-living individuals, but
it was also when the group abandoned
a long-standing precedent of designat-
ing topographic prominences around
named features. Thus, even Secchi Theta
was wiped from the map. Instead, the
mountain that had played such a crucial
role in the history of manned lunar explo-
ration was officially just one of the peaks
in Montes Secchi.
A long and sometimes bitter political
battle ensued between those wanting
to see Mount Marilyn adopted and the
IAU. Despite how unpopular the stance
proved to be, the IAU steadfastly rejected
the name chiefly on the grounds that
the name Marilyn was commemorative
and that it was associated with a
living person.
But supporters did not give up, and
after repeated attempts, the IAU finally
changed its mind. On July 26, 2017, the
organization decided that the name was
appropriate after all. It was not meant to
commemorate a specific person (Marilyn
Lovell, Marilyn Monroe, or anyone else).
It merely assigned a female first name
to the feature. The IAU’s Gazetteer of
Planetary Nomenclature lists the origin
of the name as simply “Astronaut named
feature, Apollo 11 site.” By comparison,
the origin of Lovell Crater on the moon’s
farside reads “James A., Jr.; American
astronaut (1928–Live).”
Thus, officially, the association of
Marilyn Lovell with the mountainous
feature is merely a back story, like that of
Geneviève de Laistre with the lady’s face
at Promontorium Heraclides. But the
name will serve to remind future explor-
ers of the important role, and sacrifice, of
those “who also serve who only stand and
wait” — the wives of the astronauts. They
helped make history, and the triumph
NASA/GSFC/ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
belongs as much to them as to their hus-
bands who actually went to the moon. D
William Sheehan is a historian of astronomy
whose books include Epic Moon (with
Thomas Dobbins). Kevin Schindler is
the historian at Lowell Observatory in
Flagstaff, Arizona.
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 PROGNOSIS
BY LINDA MARSA

while he was a university student, and

talked to anguished people who had lost
all hope.
Witnessing the devastation when one
of his family members attempted to take
their own life had a profound effect on
him. Flint’s pursuit of psychiatry was
a natural choice, he says now, but he
also gravitated toward figuring out the
underlying biological mechanisms that
make us more prone to mental illness.
Now, as a psychiatrist, he finds himself
as one of the experts at the forefront of a
massive scientific enterprise to uncover
the genetic links to depression. UCLA’s
Depression Grand Challenge aims to cut
in half the severe psychological burdens
of the disorder by 2050, and to eliminate
it altogether by the end of this century.
Flint certainly has his work cut out
for him. More than 300 million people
worldwide have depression, which the
World Health Organization has called
the No. 1 cause of disability. Depression
can lead to suicide, which claims the lives
of about 800,000 people annually around
the globe.
In the U.S., suicide rates have jumped
33 percent in the past two decades. More
than 47,000 people take their own lives
each year. Drugs and talk therapies can
help, and about 65 percent of adults with
depression receive treatment. Yet even

The Manhattan In the U.S.,

suicide
rates have
if they do, only half get some relief from
their symptoms. In fact, this year’s FDA
approval of esketamine, a nasal inhalant

Project for jumped

33 percent
derived from the anesthetic and mood-
boosting drug ketamine, was a landmark
of sorts: It’s the first new drug for depres-

Depression in the
past two
sion in 30 years.

AT TACKING DEPRE S SION

As suicide rates reach new heights, researchers decades. O N M U LT I P L E F R O N T S
launch a quest to identify the genetic basis The Depression Grand Challenge is led
by Nelson Freimer, director of UCLA’s
of the disorder. Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics
YUPA WATCHANAKIT/SHUTTERSTOCK

and a professor of psychiatry, who calls

O
Jonathan Flint grew up surrounded by the notion of suicide. the estimated $500 million program the
« The bookshelves in his childhood home in London were “Manhattan Project for depression.” It
filled with tomes on the subject, as well as on bereavement and will involve dozens of UCLA faculty
counseling. His mother was an early volunteer at one of the first members as well as other institutions,
suicide prevention hotlines, and the friends she brought home and includes researchers from many
were involved, too. He even accompanied her one afternoon disciplines, from neuroscience, genetics

68 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M

Discovery of “Stem Cell Organ”
Reveals Cure for Old Age
Plays key role in healing process; restores joints, brain, heart, bone
strength, skin, and blood sugar to youthful levels in clinical studies
A shocking discovery stands to help millions of
Americans plagued by the ill-effects of old age.
Calling it a “previously unknown feature of
human anatomy,” the New York School of Medicine
FRQÀUPVDQHZO\GLVFRYHUHGKXPDQRUJDQLVYLWDO
to the “function of all organs, most tissues, and the
mechanisms of most major disease.”
The organ — called the interstitium — is a huge,
interconnected network of sponge-like tissues that
surround your brain, heart, lungs, and every joint
in your body. And plays a key role in your body’s
healing process.
6SHFLÀFDOO\ 6WDQIRUG 8QLYHUVLW\ VD\V LW KDV
“broad implications for tissue regeneration and
aging,” because it controls the supply of vitamins,
minerals, proteins, and other various building
blocks your heart, lungs, brain, and all of your other
organs need to get and stay healthy.
$FFRUGLQJ WR WKH &ROXPELD 8QLYHUVLW\ GRFWRUV
who discovered the interstitium, there is a simple
reason why it has such wide-ranging health
EHQHÀWV 6LPSO\ SXW IRU HDFK RQH RI WKH WULOOLRQV
of cells in your body, they state “it is crucial for
cellular function.”
WHY SO MUCH EXCITEMENT?
The discovery of the interstitium is the latest
breakthrough in a hot new area of medicine, stem cells.
Stem cells are immature “baby” cells that can
mature into any cells your body needs. Experts call
stem cell advances a “quantum leap forward” in
medicine, because being able to manipulate these
cells “promises to repair everything.”
Perhaps the most famous example occurred at
Harvard Stem Cell Institute. There, scientists grew
new pancreatic cells from stem cells. This helped
diabetics — a disease considered incurable — get
healthy blood sugar again.
%XWKHUH·VWKHSUREOHP8QWLOUHFHQWO\VFLHQWLVWV
didn’t fully understand how stem cells matured.
And they couldn’t control the process either. And
that’s where your interstitium comes in.
GREATER CONTROL OVER HEALING
One of the key functions of your interstitium is
to control the maturation process of the stem cells
already inside you. In other words, it’s like an
“incubator” for all of the cells your body needs to
get and stay healthy.
And because it gives us greater control over
the once mysterious process of human healing the
“regulation of stem cell self-renewal [through the
interstitium] will lead to far greater advances in
healing than ever before thought.
NEW STEM CELL FORMULA
FLYING OFF SHELVES
World famous stem cell pioneer Dr. Al Sears
discovered certain nutrients keep your interstitium
working properly. So it can fully keep every other
organ in your body healthy.
Based on this research, Dr. Sears recently
released a pill called Primal X Plus, and it’s become
so popular, he’s having trouble keeping it in stock.
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attended his book signing at the event. And NFL
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Medicine.
Primal X Plus has only been available for a few
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“I’ve never taken a supplement like this before
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did. I just feel better. I have more energy and feel
engaged in the morning. Even though I’m sleeping
the same.” says Brandon E.
CLINICAL RESULTS
Nutrients that support the health of your
interstitium have logged impressive results.
A study in Diabetes Care reports one alleviates
blood sugar concerns thanks to “50% better
insulin sensitivity.” A study from the Department
of Public Health in Belgium found 200 patients
experienced “at least 20%” less aches with
another. A German hospital found another led
to “19.9% more healthy bone growth.” Skin
Pharmacology and Physiology found another
“reduced skin wrinkles.”
And according to the results of one 5-year study
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Nutrition it supercharges your heart, mind and adds
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HOW IT WORKS
Clinical studies show your interstitium controls
the delicate process of removing waste from
your organs, and delivering the proper balance of
vitamins, minerals, proteins, stem cells and other
nutrients you need to get and stay healthy.
And experts agree greater control over this process
may reveal a cure for all the ill-effects of old age.
For example, The Alzheimer’s Association
states: “Beta amyloid plaques are prime suspects in
cell death and tissue loss.” As more of these plaques
clog your brain, thinking slows and your memory
starts to fade.
But beta-amyloid clearance along the interstitium
could be the newest and best way to prevent such
cell death — and a new way for supporting brain
health.
The famous Framingham Heart Study — which
started in 1948 and continues to this day — looked
at the interstitium surround the heart and concluded
´3HRSOH ZKR KDG KHDOWK\ LQWHUVWLWLDO ÁXLG OLYHG
longer and were much healthier.”
HOW TO GET PRIMAL X PLUS
To secure bottles of this hot, new formula,
buyers should contact the Sears Health Hotline at
1-866-760-2847 within the next 48 hours. “It’s not
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Hotline allows us to ship the product directly to the
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Dr. Sears feels so strongly about this product,
he offers a 100% money-back guarantee on every
order. “Just send me back the bottle and any unused
product within 90 days from purchase date, and I’ll
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The Hotline will be open for the next 48 hours.
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 PROGNOSIS

and psychology to economics and engi-

neering. “The conversation about
Depression’s Fallout
depression is now really starting to Around the world, more than 300 million people
have depression. In the U.S., more than 8 percent
happen in society, much more so of adults are diagnosed with the disorder, which
than when we began five years ago,” affects men and women at different rates.
says Freimer. “We’ve really captured
the zeitgeist.” Percentage of adults age 20 and over
with depression
They want to attack the illness in
several ways: identify genes that play BOTH SEXES 8.1%
Jonathan
20-39 7.7%
a role in triggering depression, and then Flint
40-59 8.4%
devise better therapies; examine the efficacy 60 and over 8.0%
of therapies like electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) MEN 5.5%
and antidepressants to unravel how they work; “This is just 20-39 5.5%
use high-tech strategies to screen, monitor and a start; this 40-59 5.2%
60 and over 6.1%
treat people so depressive episodes don’t escalate
into a crisis; and encourage more openness about
is proof that WOMEN 10.4%
depression so people seek help. But the project’s these genes 20-39 10.1%
40-59 11.5%
centerpiece is the quest to identify the errant DNA can be found 60 and over 9.6%
that makes people vulnerable to depression. To
do so, Freimer and his team will conduct one of
and that this Percentage of adults age 20 and over with
the largest genetic studies of a single disorder: It’s problem was depression, by family income level
(In 2019, Federal Poverty Level was $25,750 for
expected to run 10 to 15 years and involve 100,000 tractable, a family of four.)
patients or more. that we BOTH SEXES
“In a complex condition like depression, there Less than 100% of FPL 15.8%
are lots of genetic effects and a lot of environmental could 100%-200% 10.9%
contributions. That boundary is very porous and actually do 200%-400% 7.8%
400% or above 3.5%
the two interact in different ways,” Flint says. “The something MEN
genetic component is predisposing you to have bad
things happen. If you could get the genetic approach
about it.” Less than 100% 10.8%
— Jonathan Flint,
100%-200% 7.3%
to work, then you’ve got a biological handle on the 200%-400% 6.1%
on a key 2015 study
condition that would really help.” that identified 400% or above 2.3%
genetic markers
for depression WOMEN
FAM I LY T I E S Less than 100% 19.8%
We’ve long known there is a familial component to 100%-200% 13.9%
this form of mental illness. Studies showing major 200%-400% 9.4%
depression clusters in families date back to the early 400% or above 4.8%
20th century, and a series of twin studies over the Percentage of adults age 20 and over
past decade has confirmed that 38 percent of twins with depression who reported difficulty with work,
will share depressive symptoms. home or social activities due to symptoms
“Genetics account for about two-fifths of [a BOTH SEXES
patient’s] overall vulnerability,” says Kenneth No difficulty 19.8%
Kendler, the director of the Virginia Institute for Some difficulty 50.2%
Moderate to extreme difficulty 30.0%
Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at the Virginia
MEN
Commonwealth University and a psychiatrist who No difficulty 20.1%
conducted the twin studies. “The drugs we have Some difficulty 48.4%
now are safer with less side effects, but they’re no Moderate to extreme difficulty 31.5%
more effective than ones that have been around WOMEN
ELENA ZHUKOVA/UCLA HEALTH

for decades. Part of what molecular genetics does No difficulty 19.6%

is identify pathways that make us vulnerable to Some difficulty 51.2%
depression. Traditional approaches haven’t panned Moderate to extreme difficulty 29.2%
out, so molecular genetics may be the best road.” Source: NCHS, National Health and Nutrition
Examination Survey, 2013-2016
But nailing down the actual genes responsible for
depression has proved elusive for several reasons.

70 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
 PROGNOSIS

Symptoms, severity and someone is feeling blue or

recurrence of episodes can has full-blown depression.
vary greatly among people “Even using GPS, which
with the disease — especially tracks where people are
between men and women and how they move about,
— which suggests they may gives us useful diagnostic
have other mental disorders. information — which was
Previous large-scale popula- a real surprise to me,” says
tion studies, which encom- Flint. “In a very simple sense,
passed more than 25,000 if you’re moving around
volunteers, have come up less, that’s predictive of
mostly empty. your mood.”
In 2015, Flint and Kendler The smartphone app is
were the first to identify part of a more comprehen-
two genetic markers, in a sive platform called STAND
study of more than 5,300 (Screening and Treatment
Chinese women with severe for Anxiety and Depression),
depression. To eliminate which researchers hope will
the confounding variables, solve their ethical dilemma
the researchers looked at a and ensure all the genetic
sliver of the population most study participants receive
likely to have major depres- treatment.
sion: women in China who Since 2017, when STAND
had had multiple depressive episodes. Almost none Participants initially launched, about 5,500 UCLA students have
smoked, drank or used illicit drugs, and they were been screened. Nearly 800 of them have been offered
all of Han Chinese ethnicity. learn new treatment through an online self-guided therapy
“There’s more stigma in China, and mental health ways of program that teaches participants cognitive behav-
services are more stretched, so the people who got thinking to ioral techniques. They learn new ways of thinking to
into the hospital had to cross more barriers and help them cope with symptoms of mild to moderate
were much more severely depressed than we would
help them depression.
have found elsewhere,” says Flint, who was then at cope with Periodically, fellow student volunteers check in
the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics at the symptoms through in-person or video chats to keep partici-
University of Oxford. “The major lesson from that pants motivated and to prevent emotional troubles
study was, ‘This is just a start; this is proof that these
of mild to from escalating out of control.
genes can be found and that this problem was trac- moderate In the near future, Flint and his team hope other
table, that we could actually do something about it.’ depression. colleges use the program as a template. “There is
But it needs to be done on a much bigger scale, with now good evidence that psychological therapies
bigger samples and more detail.” delivered over the internet are effective,” says
Freimer. “We simply don’t have enough psychiatrists
A BI G G ER PL AT F ORM to provide treatment for all the people who need it.
Flint got the chance at that bigger scale by moving We need to employ treatments that are scalable and
to UCLA, with the potential of tapping into the can treat those who haven’t had access before.”
2 million patients in UCLA’s healthcare system. But In the meantime, now that a workable treat-
right away, he and his team hit an ethical stumbling ment platform is in place, recruitment for the
block: Since there are many patients who aren’t larger genetic study has begun. But even scaling
being treated for depression, how could they study up to 100,000 people may not be enough to spot
REDSHINESTUDIO/SHUTTERSTOCK

them and not provide some kind of relief?
As a consequence, before embarking on the
genetic study, the researchers needed to offer coun-
seling to people with depression. They couldn’t over-
whelm mental health clinics with referrals, so they
came up with an innovative solution: a smartphone
mental health tracker app that can gauge whether
the genes behind this devastating mental disorder,
says Flint.
Those he met in adolescence have stayed with
him, though; Flint’s quest will continue until he finds
some solace for the millions like them. D
Linda Marsa is a Discover contributing editor.

72 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
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 20
THINGS
YOU
DIDN’T
KNOW
ABOUT...
Moles
From top: The star-
nosed mole has 22
tentacle-like rays on
its snout that provide
it with an exceptional
sense of touch; neither
mole nor lizard, the
Mexican mole lizard
is an amphisbaenian
reptile; an architectural
mole, or breakwater,
protects a harbor on
the Baltic Sea.
74 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
BY GEMMA TARLACH
The range of the
European mole, Talpa
europaea, stretches
from Scotland to
Russia.
1 With forelimbs like clawed shovels, little or no eye- probably can’t tell the sex of most moles just by looking
sight and a penchant for tunneling, the much-maligned at their genitalia. The females of several species have
mole is considered a monster by many a gardener. But genitals that appear similar to those of males, while for
dig into the details of these fossorial, or burrowing, males of some species, the penis is an internal organ.
mammals, and you might envy their superpow- 11 Yes, it can be confusing. So are the number of animals
ers. 2 Take the star-nosed mole. Found throughout called moles that aren’t moles at all. Mole rats are mem-
the northeastern U.S. and Canada, the semi-aquatic bers of several different rodent lineages spread across
Condylura cristata has 22 symmetrical, tentacle-like Africa and Eurasia, named for their subterranean,
appendages that sprout from its snout. 3 The wiggly, molelike lifestyle. 12 Separated from rodents by nearly
fleshy nose-fingers, or rays, have nothing to do with 100 million years of evolution, moles belong to the
smell. They’re covered with 25,000 sensory receptors family Talpidae. Their closest living relatives include
called Eimer’s organs that give the star-nosed mole a hedgehogs and shrews. 13 Meanwhile, the Mexican
supersized sense of touch. 4 C. cristata can identify, mole lizard is neither mole nor lizard. It’s an amphisbae-
capture and eat its prey, generally insects and worms, nian, a small group of reptiles also known as worm liz-
in an average of about 230 milliseconds. That’s roughly ards and often mistaken for snakes. 14 Formally known
three times faster than a human driver’s reaction time as Bipes biporus and found mostly in Baja California,
to a red light. 5 Move over, cheetahs: This lightning-fast the reptile has impressive, molelike forelimbs built for
detection-to-ingestion, called handling time, earned burrowing. Evolution nixed its hind limbs entirely,
the star-nosed mole the Guinness World Records title however. 15 If you want to nix blisters, you might try
FROM TOP: ERIC ISSELEE/SHUTTERSTOCK; ROD PLANCK/SCIENCE SOURCE IMAGES; CHRIS MATTISON/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; RDONAR/SHUTTERSTOCK
of fastest mammalian eater. Not moleskin. The fabric gets its name from mimicking the
bad for an animal that resembles burrowing mammal’s velvety pelt. The fur has no nap,
a baked potato. 6 While the star- or direction of growth, to avoid rubbing the wrong
nosed mole is impressive, don’t way as the animal moves through tight underground
underestimate the 20-plus other tunnels. 16 Another mole-inspired invention: the color
burrowing mole species, which taupe. The classic neutral shade’s name is the French
are spread across the Northern word for mole. The English term for the animal may
Hemisphere. 7 North America’s have descended from mulda, the proto-Germanic
Eastern mole, for example, has word for “loose earth.” 17 The Latin word moles gave
evolved a unique way to survive us a structural mole: a large breakwater or pier made
underground, an environment with decreased oxy- from piled earth or masonry. The oldest example of
gen and elevated carbon dioxide. 8 Other mammals this kind of mole, at Wadi al-Jarf, is more than 4,500
(including most moles) living in these conditions years old and dates to Egypt’s Old Kingdom period.
typically have what’s called a high affinity for oxygen. 18 Non-animal moles aren’t always massive. Sometimes
That means oxygen binds super-efficiently to proteins they’re minute. The mole is one of seven base units in
in red blood cells that then deliver the crucial element the International System of Units (SI), the world’s most
throughout their bodies. 9 However, Eastern moles common measurement system. 19 Redefined in May
have a lower affinity for oxygen. Instead, they get by using a more precise mathematical formula, the SI mole
because their blood proteins release oxygen more eas- is widely used in chemistry to calculate and express
ily to muscles and other tissues. Their blood also may the mass of particles and molecules. 20 Holy moley, a
bind more efficiently to carbon dioxide, helping rid mole is so much more than a scapegoat for your lousy
the mole’s system of the excess gas as it moves around lawn. (By the way, that expression has nothing to do
down under. 10 A different kind of down under: You with the burrowing animals, either. It’s a 19th-century
euphemism for the exclamation “holy Moses.”) D
Gemma Tarlach is senior editor at Discover.
DISCOVER (ISSN 0274-7529, USPS# 555-190) is published eight times per year (January/February, March/April, May, June, July/August, September/October, November and December). Vol. 40, no. 8. Published by Kalmbach
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